What is your “destiny?”  What do you believe will be your ultimate fate?

These are questions with which every living person must wrestle.  Every major religion has attempted to come up with some answer.  I am a Buddhist, I place my hope in attaining enlightenment and to allow myself to dissolve into the oneness of the universe.  If I am a Muslim, my hope is to pass my god’s strict judgment and attain a heavenly reward.  In other words, every major religion seeks to escape from the present world.  Christianity is very different.  As we hear God’s voice through Joel, we learn more about what God intends for the fate of mankind.

JUDGMENT OF OTHER NATIONS

Having discussed Israel’s future (Joel 1-2), Joel now turns his attention to rival nations.  They’d mistreated Israel in the past; now they face the burning fires of God’s righteous anger:

Joel 3:1-21 “For behold, in those days and at that time, when I restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem,  ² I will gather all the nations and bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat. And I will enter into judgment with them there, on behalf of my people and my heritage Israel, because they have scattered them among the nations and have divided up my land,  ³ and have cast lots for my people, and have traded a boy for a prostitute, and have sold a girl for wine and have drunk it.

⁴ “What are you to me, O Tyre and Sidon, and all the regions of Philistia? Are you paying me back for something? If you are paying me back, I will return your payment on your own head swiftly and speedily.  ⁵ For you have taken my silver and my gold, and have carried my rich treasures into your temples.  ⁶ You have sold the people of Judah and Jerusalem to the Greeks in order to remove them far from their own border.  ⁷ Behold, I will stir them up from the place to which you have sold them, and I will return your payment on your own head.  ⁸ I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the people of Judah, and they will sell them to the Sabeans, to a nation far away, for the LORD has spoken.”

We’re getting a clearer picture of what the “Day of the Lord” might look like.  Some of these events have clearly happened in the past.  But our own news broadcasts remind us that some of God’s promises have yet to reach fulfillment.  Though Israel achieved independence in the last century, she remains far from the restoration that God promises (3:1).  Nor have all of Israel’s rivals been defeated.  In the next section, we see that the judgments of the Day of the Lord are still in the future:

⁹ Proclaim this among the nations: Consecrate for war; stir up the mighty men. Let all the men of war draw near; let them come up.  ¹⁰ Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears; let the weak say, “I am a warrior.”  ¹¹ Hasten and come, all you surrounding nations, and gather yourselves there. Bring down your warriors, O LORD.  ¹² Let the nations stir themselves up and come up to the Valley of Jehoshaphat; for there I will sit to judge all the surrounding nations.  ¹³ Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Go in, tread, for the winepress is full. The vats overflow, for their evil is great.  ¹⁴ Multitudes, multitudes, in the valley of decision! For the day of the LORD is near in the valley of decision.  ¹⁵ The sun and the moon are darkened, and the stars withdraw their shining.  ¹⁶ The LORD roars from Zion, and utters his voice from Jerusalem, and the heavens and the earth quake. But the LORD is a refuge to his people, a stronghold to the people of Israel.  ¹⁷ “So you shall know that I am the LORD your God, who dwells in Zion, my holy mountain. And Jerusalem shall be holy, and strangers shall never again pass through it.

This is a call to arms—and one that isn’t entirely welcome.  It seems that there is a temporary state of peace that is interrupted by war.  Before Jesus’ promised return, there will be a seven-year period known as the “tribulation.”  In the first half of this period, the world will experience unrivaled peace.  But in the second half, the world will experience unrivaled devastation.  Why such violence?  Because God’s fiery wrath will purify the nation, and allow them to truly reflect the purity of His character.

This should disturb us.  How can a loving God condone—nay, commit—such acts of violence?  Should we not pursue peace?  Who would worship a God like that?  This is a fair objection.  But wait; if God allowed injustice to continue, if He allowed His people to be mistreated, could He truly be called a God of love?  If God remained passive to injustice, we would call Him indifferent at best and callous at worst.  A loving God pursues restoration—even when restoration carries the price of violence.

GOD’S NEW WORLD (Joel 3:18-22)

What we can ultimately cling to is the reminder that the Day of the Lord carries the promise of restoration that follows judgment.  Joel concludes with a beautiful passage that describes what God’s new world will look like:

¹⁸ “And in that day the mountains shall drip sweet wine, and the hills shall flow with milk, and all the streambeds of Judah shall flow with water; and a fountain shall come forth from the house of the LORD and water the Valley of Shittim.  ¹⁹ “Egypt shall become a desolation and Edom a desolate wilderness, for the violence done to the people of Judah, because they have shed innocent blood in their land.  ²⁰ But Judah shall be inhabited forever, and Jerusalem to all generations.  ²¹ I will avenge their blood, blood I have not avenged, for the LORD dwells in Zion.”

As we noted earlier, every major religion teaches that man’s greatest hope is to escape this earth.  Christianity is very different.  Sure, Christianity teaches us that heaven is real.  But Christianity tells us that man’s final destiny is experienced when God creates a new world, and the heavenly city descends from heaven “as a bride adorned for her husband” (Revelation 21:2).  Christianity teaches a marriage of heaven and earth, where we rest in the joy of having God’s presence among us, and every day is as the first day of spring.

In the meantime, this teaches us that all earthly suffering is temporary.  Death itself has been robbed of its victory and its sting (1 Corinthians 15:55).   I doubt that you’ve experienced things like locust hordes and worldwide conflict.  But could it be that there are things in your life that God is using to get your attention?  These reminders—be they great or small—remind us of just how little control we possess.  And sometimes they remind us of just how painful this world can be.  “Blessed are those who mourn,” Jesus told His followers.  “For they shall be comforted.”  (Matthew 5:4)  When we see God’s great story, as we have in Joel, our response should be one of shed tears and not clenched fists.  And it should be with the hope that the world we see is not all there is.  Suffering will not have the last word, and so we face the world with the soft tears of a crying confidence, and the hope that God can make all things new again.

“God made man in His own image,” a philosopher once wrote.  “And then man returned the favor.”  If we’re honest, we want a God who fits our mold.  We assume that God’s on our side, that each year of human progress only further reveals His character.  The Bible says: “Be Holy as I am Holy” (Leviticus 11:44-45).  But in our world—if we believe in God at all—we twist that to fit our own expectations.  “Be open-minded as I am open-minded.”  “Be casual as I am casual.”  “Be tolerant as I am tolerant.”  An angry God?  A jealous God?  Maybe that’s the portrait offered by the “Old Testament,” but surely we’ve outgrown such primitive, superstitious ideas.

If you grew up in evangelical Christianity it wasn’t much different.  Our worship, our teachings, our books—so many of them stir the emotions, but often in a way that is absurdly one-dimensional.  Think about it: how many songs can you name that emphasize God’s love?  How many can you name that emphasize God’s anger?  I daresay there’s an imbalance.

The gospel says that God’s love and God’s anger must be understood together.  And this is what we find in what we might call “the gospel according to Joel.”

THE WRATH OF GOD (Joel 2:1-11)

Joel continues much of the thought from chapter 1.  Now, Joel moves from the agricultural and financial devastation (the locust hordes) to actual military conquest.  The following reads like something out of a Tolkien novel, where the very air of Mordor is “a poisonous fume:”

Blow a trumpet in Zion; sound an alarm on my holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the LORD is coming; it is near,  ² a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness! Like blackness there is spread upon the mountains a great and powerful people; their like has never been before, nor will be again after them through the years of all generations.  ³ Fire devours before them, and behind them a flame burns. The land is like the garden of Eden before them, but behind them a desolate wilderness, and nothing escapes them.  ⁴ Their appearance is like the appearance of horses, and like war horses they run.  ⁵ As with the rumbling of chariots, they leap on the tops of the mountains, like the crackling of a flame of fire devouring the stubble, like a powerful army drawn up for battle.  ⁶ Before them peoples are in anguish; all faces grow pale.  ⁷ Like warriors they charge; like soldiers they scale the wall. They march each on his way; they do not swerve from their paths.  ⁸ They do not jostle one another; each marches in his path; they burst through the weapons and are not halted.  ⁹ They leap upon the city, they run upon the walls, they climb up into the houses, they enter through the windows like a thief.  ¹⁰ The earth quakes before them; the heavens tremble. The sun and the moon are darkened, and the stars withdraw their shining.  ¹¹ The LORD utters his voice before his army, for his camp is exceedingly great; he who executes his word is powerful. For the day of the LORD is great and very awesome; who can endure it?  (Joel 2:1-11)

What is the “day of the Lord?”  Even this simple phrase reminds us that God’s judgment cannot be divorced from God’s blessings.  The phrase is used to describe God’s past deliverance from Egypt (Ezekiel 30:3).  But the phrase also refers to Israel’s oppression from the Babylonians (Isaiah 13:6-13; Jeremiah 46:10),  as well as a time of future judgment—a time of anguish and mourning (Isaiah 2:10-21; Amos 8:10).

An online entry from Bible.org presents this diagram that may be helpful.  Do you see “The Church?”  All that’s missing is a “You are here” sticker.  See, we live between two examples of the “Day of the Lord.”  It’s something that happened in the past when Israel was overcome by rival armies.  But it’s something that happens in the future when Christ returns to set right everything that has gone so wrong.

This means that the “Day of the Lord” also conveys the idea of enormous blessings—at least ultimately.  Because the Day of the Lord promises that those who trust in God will be delivered from God’s fierce wrath.  That’s what the rest of Joel 2 is saying.

MAN’S REPENTANCE (Joel 2:12-17)

The next set of verses describe man’s response to God’s fierce anger.

¹² “Yet even now,” declares the LORD, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;  ¹³ and rend your hearts and not your garments.” Return to the LORD your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster.  ¹⁴ Who knows whether he will not turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind him, a grain offering and a drink offering for the LORD your God?  ¹⁵ Blow the trumpet in Zion; consecrate a fast; call a solemn assembly;  ¹⁶ gather the people. Consecrate the congregation; assemble the elders; gather the children, even nursing infants. Let the bridegroom leave his room, and the bride her chamber.  ¹⁷ Between the vestibule and the altar let the priests, the ministers of the LORD, weep and say, “Spare your people, O LORD, and make not your heritage a reproach, a byword among the nations. Why should they say among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?'” (Joel 2:12-17)

It’s easy to get wrapped up in religious ceremony.  People used to literally tear their clothing to reflect their inner anguish.   But according to Joel, no outward expression is worth it if the heart isn’t in it.  I love the Derek Webb song that says: “You can make your life look good.  You can do what Jesus would.  But you’d be surprised what you can do with a hard heart.”  God’s not impressed with religious appearances.  He desires a heart that’s tuned to His.  And that’s what repentance truly is.  It’s not about changing behavior—though it often (if not inevitably) leads to that.  It starts with changing our attitude toward God and toward self.

Here’s the problem.  If I’m focused on my behavior alone, then some sins will be so enslaving that true repentance seems impossible.  It’s no wonder that Paul describes his own struggle in Romans 7.  But if I ignore behavior entirely then repentance no longer seems impossible—it seems unnecessary.  Why bother with personal holiness?

Our confusion shatters when we begin to understand the gospel and apply it to our lives.  When we begin to understand that Christ’s performance—and not our own—is what gains God’s approval.  When we begin to understand that Christian maturity isn’t marked by our perfection, but by gradually growing into Christ’s character.  The ceremonies Joel describes are intended to be something of a marking post, maybe even a journal entry—that by following after God they might one day look back to realize how far they’ve come, though only through God’s provision.

THE MERCY OF GOD

The next section could easily be described as “the gospel according to Joel.”  Before we saw God’s great anger.  Now we see God’s great mercy.  Jesus’ death satisfied the anger of God.  Now we are the recipients of His mercy.  How did this happen before Jesus came?  It’s simple.  God forgave the people of the Old Testament not because of what Jesus accomplished, but because of what Jesus would accomplish.  It’s similar to a credit card.  They received God’s mercy in their day, but the bill would later be paid on the cross.

So we can simply read this section and see the reaction of God toward His people:

• God’s character (Joel 2:18)

¹⁸ Then the LORD became jealous for his land and had pity on his people.  (Joel 2:18)

• God’s blessings (Joel 2:19-27)

¹⁹ The LORD answered and said to his people, “Behold, I am sending to you grain, wine, and oil, and you will be satisfied; and I will no more make you a reproach among the nations.  ²⁰ “I will remove the northerner far from you, and drive him into a parched and desolate land, his vanguard into the eastern sea, and his rear guard into the western sea; the stench and foul smell of him will rise, for he has done great things.  ²¹ “Fear not, O land; be glad and rejoice, for the LORD has done great things!  ²² Fear not, you beasts of the field, for the pastures of the wilderness are green; the tree bears its fruit; the fig tree and vine give their full yield.  ²³ “Be glad, O children of Zion, and rejoice in the LORD your God, for he has given the early rain for your vindication; he has poured down for you abundant rain, the early and the latter rain, as before.  ²⁴ “The threshing floors shall be full of grain; the vats shall overflow with wine and oil.  ²⁵ I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army, which I sent among you.  ²⁶ “You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and praise the name of the LORD your God, who has dealt wondrously with you. And my people shall never again be put to shame.  ²⁷ You shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I am the LORD your God and there is none else. And my people shall never again be put to shame.  (Joel 2:19-27)

• God’s deliverance (Joel 2:28-32)

“And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions.  ²⁹ Even on the male and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit.

³⁰ “And I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke.  ³¹ The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes.  ³² And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved. For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those who escape, as the LORD has said, and among the survivors shall be those whom the LORD calls.  (Joel 2:28-32)

Do you see how powerful this message is?   God’s anger can’t be divorced from God’s love.  If I only see love, then God’s attitude toward me could only be a matter of polite indifference—and that’s not real love.  If I see only anger, then God’s attitude toward me could only be of a judge, or some cosmic policeman.  The gospel says that God is violently angry at me over my sin.  But rather than demand my blood, He offers His own.  That’s mercy.  That’s grace.  When I understand this, suddenly my “to-do” list of religious duties is transformed to a “get-to” list of delights.

Expect the best, and you’ll get the best.  Expect the worst, and you’ll get the worst.  In social science, it’s called the Rosenthal effect—also known as the Pygmalion effect.  In the workplace, employees adjust their performance to the expectations of their employer.  In the classroom, teachers will rate their performance by their students’ reactions to them—the more attentive the students are, the more highly the teacher will rate his or her abilities.  It’s the sort of thing we might call a “self-fulfilling prophecy.”

But what about God?  What does He expect from us?  Maybe a better question to ask is: What do we assume God expects from us?  For instance, if you believe in an angry God of judgment, then you might assume that you’re destined to fail.  You can  no more meet His standards then a demanding parent.  Why bother trying?  If instead you believe in a God who shrugs His shoulders, then you might assume your only task is to practice the same tolerance toward others.   Why pursue holiness?

The book of Joel deals with God’s expectations of humanity.  Joel offers us a fierce God, a wild God, a God unconstrained by human expectation.  Joel’s purpose is this: apart from God, humanity is destined for destined for destruction.  Our only hope is repentance.  The locust plague, the judgments—these aren’t just isolated events in Israel’s history.  They represent the fierce wrath of a ferociously holy God.

ABOUT JOEL (1:1)

“The word of the LORD that came to Joel, the son of Pethuel” (Joel 1:1)

Trying to piece together the prophets is often like assembling a puzzle without knowing what the picture is supposed to be.  The name “Joel” literally means “Yahweh is God.” Don’t dismiss this as a “Sunday School” lesson—this was a bold statement in a world that believed in many rival gods.

We know literally no other information about Joel, apart from the name of his father.  When did he write?  Where did he live?  There is much scholarly debate on this, yet nothing is conclusive.  He may have written before Israel was exiled by the Babylonians, he may have written during their years of exile, or he may have written after their return.  We’re addressing Joel here primarily because that’s where his book fits in the original Hebrew Bible.  It was John Calvin who said: “it is better to leave the time in which [Joel] taught undecided; and, as we shall see, this is of no great importance.” (John Calvin, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, 2:xv).

LOCUSTS (1:2-7)

² Hear this, you elders; give ear, all inhabitants of the land! Has such a thing happened in your days, or in the days of your fathers?  ³ Tell your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children to another generation.  ⁴ What the cutting locust left, the swarming locust has eaten. What the swarming locust left, the hopping locust has eaten, and what the hopping locust left, the destroying locust has eaten.  ⁵ Awake, you drunkards, and weep, and wail, all you drinkers of wine, because of the sweet wine, for it is cut off from your mouth.  ⁶ For a nation has come up against my land, powerful and beyond number; its teeth are lions’ teeth, and it has the fangs of a lioness.  ⁷ It has laid waste my vine and splintered my fig tree; it has stripped off their bark and thrown it down; their branches are made white. (Joel 1:2-7)

Joel pulls no punches.  He speaks of a locust infestation that represented the very wrath of God.  In a culture that depended on agriculture to thrive and flourish, this would have been more than a nuisance.  In 1991, Iraq set fire to Kuwait’s oil wells to retaliate after being repelled during the Persian Gulf War.  Estimates indicate that the fires—which burned for months—caused billions of dollars of damage, not counting the environmental impact.  Imagine if the fires had been more massive, or had continued for much longer.  Now we have something close to what the Israelites were experiencing.

Recall that to be a “prophet” was to speak to the people on God’s behalf.  In today’s world, we don’t always know whether a tragic experience is an example of God’s anger.  But God—speaking through Joel—used the locust horde as an object lesson: repent or die.  

Does this sound harsh?  Think about how that impacts your view of God.  If we picture God as a cosmic Mr. Rogers, it’s hard to fathom this level of anger.  But if God is eternally and indescribably holy, then anything that falls short of this perfect standard is vile—worthy only to feed the locusts.  The problem?  You and I fall short of God’s magnificent standard (Romans 3:23).  What do you think that tells us about our own worth in comparison to God?

PEOPLE’S RESPONSE (1:8-20)

The next set of verses describe three specific reactions/consequences of this powerful display of anger:

• Mourning (1:8-12)

 ⁸ Lament like a virgin wearing sackcloth for the bridegroom of her youth.  ⁹ The grain offering and the drink offering are cut off from the house of the LORD. The priests mourn, the ministers of the LORD.  ¹⁰ The fields are destroyed, the ground mourns, because the grain is destroyed, the wine dries up, the oil languishes.  ¹¹ Be ashamed, O tillers of the soil; wail, O vinedressers, for the wheat and the barley, because the harvest of the field has perished.  ¹² The vine dries up; the fig tree languishes. Pomegranate, palm, and apple, all the trees of the field are dried up, and gladness dries up from the children of man.  (Joel 1:8-12)

• Fasting (1:13-15)

 ¹³ Put on sackcloth and lament, O priests; wail, O ministers of the altar. Go in, pass the night in sackcloth, O ministers of my God! Because grain offering and drink offering are withheld from the house of your God.  ¹⁴ Consecrate a fast; call a solemn assembly. Gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land to the house of the LORD your God, and cry out to the LORD.  ¹⁵ Alas for the day! For the day of the LORD is near, and as destruction from the Almighty it comes.  (Joel 1:13-15)

• Suffering (1:16-20)

 ¹⁶ Is not the food cut off before our eyes, joy and gladness from the house of our God?  ¹⁷ The seed shrivels under the clods; the storehouses are desolate; the granaries are torn down because the grain has dried up.  ¹⁸ How the beasts groan! The herds of cattle are perplexed because there is no pasture for them; even the flocks of sheep suffer.  ¹⁹ To you, O LORD, I call. For fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness, and flame has burned all the trees of the field.  ²⁰ Even the beasts of the field pant for you because the water brooks are dried up, and fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness.  (Joel 1:16-20)

In his book The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis observed that “pain is God’s megaphone to the world.”  Does that mean that suffering is a result of God’s anger?  I honestly don’t know.  What I do know is this: it’s easy to feel sovereign.  To feel in control.  I only need to swipe my finger across a screen, and I’m in control.  My Amazon.com app easily feeds my lust for possessions.  My Facebook app lets me feed on the emotions of others.  My Netflix app lets me indulge my senses whenever and wherever I want.  Who needs God?  I practically am God.

But what if I were to lose it all?  What if the things I use to fill my heart were stripped away—maybe not with locusts, but with tragedy, with the unexpected and undesired footfalls of destiny?  That’s what happened to Israel.  The mourning, the fasting, the suffering—these are all forms of repentance that take all of you.  It’s easy to take God lightly.  It’s easy to suck the wildness from our worship.  But what would happen if we were confronted by how small we truly are?  What if we were challenged to face our own powerlessness, and to realize our own helplessness.  On that day repentance would leap from our Sunday-school vocabulary and become a vital lifeline to which we can only cling.

But there’s good news.  In the sixteenth century, Martin Luther said that “all of life is repentance.”  Every new day is another chance to repent—that is, to change our attitude toward self, and to ascribe our ultimate worship to God.