Dennis Tuuri

The central idea is the text that we’re from Joel chapter 2. Joel is the second minor prophet found toward the end of the Old Testament. Joel chapter 2. Blow ye the trumpet in Zion. Sound an alarm to my holy mountain. Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble. The day of the Lord cometh, for it is nigh at hand. The day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness, as the morning spread upon the mountains.

A great people and a strong, there hath not been ever the like, neither shall be anymore after it, even to the years of many generations. A fire devoureth before them, and behind them a flame burneth. The land is the Garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness. Yea, and nothing shall escape them. The appearance of them is as the appearance of horses, and as horsemen, so shall they run.

Like the noise of chariots on the tops of mountains shall they leap. Like the noise of a flame of fire that devoureth the stubble, as a strong people set in battle array. Before their face the people shall be much pained. All faces shall gather blackness. They shall run like mighty men. They shall climb the wall like men of war, and they shall march everyone in his ways, and they shall not break their ranks.

Neither shall one thrust another. They shall walk everyone in his path, and when they fall upon the sword, they will not be wounded. They shall run to and fro in the city. They shall run upon the wall. They shall climb up upon the houses. They shall enter in at the windows like a thief. The earth shall quake before them. The heavens shall tremble. The sun and the moon shall be dark, and the stars shall withdraw their shining.

And the Lord shall utter his voice before his army. For his camp is very great, for he is strong that executeth his word. For the day of the Lord is great and very terrible, and who can abide it? Therefore also now sayeth the Lord, turn ye even to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning, and rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God.

For he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil. Who knoweth if he will return and repent, and leave a blessing behind him, even a meat offering, and a drink offering unto the Lord your God. Blow the trumpet in Zion, sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly. Gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children, and those that suck the breasts.

Let the bridegroom go forth of his chamber and the bride out of her closet. Let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, “Spare thy people, O Lord, give not thine heritage to reproach, but the heathen should not rule over them. Wherefore should they say among the people, where is their God? Then will the Lord be jealous for his land and pity his people.

Yea, the Lord will answer and say unto his people, Behold, I will send you corn and wine and oil. Ye shall be satisfied therewith, and I will no more make you a reproach among the heathen. But I will remove far off from you the northern army, and will drive him into a land barren and desolate, with his face toward the east sea, and his hinder part toward the utmost sea, and his stink shall come up, and his ill savor shall come up, because he hath done great things.

Fear not, O land. Be glad and rejoice, for the Lord will do great things. Be not afraid, ye beasts of the field, for the pastures of the wilderness do spring, for the tree beareth her fruit, the fig tree and the vine do yield their strength. Be glad then, ye children of Zion, and rejoice in the Lord your God, for he hath given you the former rain moderately, and he will cause to come down for you the rain, the former rain and the latter rain in the first month.

And the floor shall be full of wheat, and the vats shall overflow with wine and oil. And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpillar, and the palmerworm, my great army, which I sent among you, and ye shall eat in plenty and be satisfied. And praise the name of the Lord your God, that hath dealt wondrously with you, and my people shall never be ashamed.

And ye shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and I am the Lord your God, and none else, and my people shall never be ashamed. And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh. And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy. Your old men shall dream dreams. Your young men shall see visions. And also upon the servants, and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out my spirit.

And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood and fire and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood before the great and terrible day of the Lord come. And it shall come to pass that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered. For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, as the Lord hath said, and in the remnant whom the Lord shall call.

—

You just say before I again that I’m very pleased that God has provided us a facility in which I can stand apart and distinct from the word of God. God’s word is powerful, sure, infallible and my word is not. I think you mentioned before that Calvin said that good elders are right probably 80% of the time and I think it’s very nice that God and his providence has given us facility to make—to give you a visual picture of my word as opposed to God’s word.

Hopefully I’ll be true to it this morning and that’s what we’ve all prayed for.

Now we are going through a summary overview really of Joel, the book of Joel over these weeks. We started last week in chapter 1. Today we’re going to chapter 2. Next week, Christmas Eve service, we’ll go to chapter 3 and have a short sermon. And really Joel builds these different—the word that people use today to describe different portions of the book like this is a pericope, I guess.

And there are these various sections or divisions to the book of Joel that are called pericopes. It’s pronounced pericope. But in any event, these sections of Joel hinge together. They build, they climax at the end of the book of Joel. And so next week will be better than this week in a sense because we’ll have gone toward that and looked at the fullness of the salvation that we see pictured in today’s chapter.

Chapter 2. Chapter 1, you remember, was essentially a call to realize that God’s judgment was upon the land and then a call to engage in a holy convocation, an official lamenting service together. And as you probably noticed as we went through the text, the first half of chapter 2 does that same thing, and then builds and turns in the middle of chapter 2 into the day of the Lord’s approach. And this is Advent season when we think about God’s coming, Jesus’s coming in the flesh.

And then, of course, God’s coming in history. We have Advents every week when we get together for evaluation and judgment and blessing in the Lord’s table. But in any event, the coming described in the book of Joel, it’s why I chose Joel for this particular season as it talks about this coming and it talks about it in these three chapters. First in terms of judgment, second in terms of salvation from sin, and then third in terms of the implications for that for the whole world, not just for a select small little group of people huddled in a particular land.

And so those are the themes that I’ve tried to stress every Christmas. And it’s an important thing to remember at our home that Christ came to take God’s judgment upon himself to provide salvation for our sins, but then also to usher in a kingdom that would grow over the face of the world. And so Joel 1, 2, and 3 point that out real nicely. And that’s why we’ve turned to that.

Now, let’s turn to chapter 2 then. We’ve got a lot of material here. It is an overview. And today we’re going to focus on Advent as the coming of salvation from sin. Last week we talked about Advent the coming of judgment. And I tried to make the outline so that it reads like a sentence. You know, the outline if we read it all together is that Advent is the coming of salvation preceded by judgment and repentance. The coming of God yields salvation sovereignly, graciously for his people and land, sustaining them, protecting them, recreating them, yielding joy for the teacher of righteousness.

And so that’s really what we’re talking about today is that sentence. And so salvation again in chapter 2 is preceded by judgment. And there’s a lot of correlations between, as I said, the first half of chapter 2 and chapter 1. And remember chapter one, as I said, was first a call to realize God’s judgment and then second a call to convocation. And so the first two points of our outline, verses 1–11 of chapter 2, are also pictures of God’s judgment.

And then verses 12–17 of chapter 2 is again a call to a national convocation of lamenting. And so there’s a repetition of what we just talked about last week. And the similarity of terms in verses 1–11 shows this: the term “day of the Lord” in verse one goes back to the day of the Lord in verse 15 of chapter 1. The fact that all the inhabitants are summoned in verse one of chapter 2 goes back to the second verse of chapter 1 that talked about all the inhabitants. Here we have all the inhabitants, the same phrase in chapter 2 verse two.

In chapter 2 verse two we read about a great people and strong. That phrase is found in essence in verse 6 of chapter 1. At the end of verse two we read that this great people is something that has not happened before, even to the years of many generations at the end of verse two of chapter 2. Remember at the beginning of chapter 1 we talked about the Psalm 78 type language where this is a great thing that happens, it’s an important thing to transmit to your children and to their children to many generations. And so here at the beginning of chapter 2, we have that same term generations. So there are different terminologies that link chapter 2, the first half of it back to chapter 1.

Additionally, remember we talked about the fourfold judgment of God, four different names given for locusts. We see that later on in the chapter. But this picture of fourfold or complete devastating judgment from God pictured in chapter one with four terms relating to one really locust. Here we see it in a fourfold roaring that happens of the army of God in verses 4 and 5 of chapter 2. The army is said specifically—there are four words translated in the English version as “or like” comparing the army of God to other things, and the repetition is fourfold again.

In other words, the army of locusts, the foes that come against Israel, the army of locusts are described in four ways again in terms of intensity. And so you have that same fourfold picture of judgment that God gave us in chapter 1 being repeated here in chapter 2. In addition to these correlations, then drawing similarity between chapter 1 and chapter 2, there’s an intensification of the judgment that’s pictured for us.

There is a theophany description, another big word. It simply means that God has these—theophany is a visible manifestation of God. And there’s terminology we just read this morning from Psalm 97 that when God comes, fire goes before him and fire behind him. The picture of the coming of God. In verse three of chapter 2, we see that a fire devours before them and behind them a flame burns. And so there’s a turning up of the heat as it were, if you don’t mind that metaphor, put in here in the midst of fire.

There’s continuity between 1 and 2, but chapter 2 turns up the heat some. The theophany blessing-to-curse motif in verse three here shows that intensification. Eden is before this coming of this great army of God. By the time the army of God goes through Eden, it’s all wilderness. So it’s changed from paradise to wilderness, from blessing to cursing because God’s come through and done this terrible, horrific judgment.

Additionally, this judgment is described in cosmic terms. In verse 10, the earth quails before them. The heavens tremble, moon goes dark, sun goes dark, etc. The stars go out. So there’s this tremendous—you know, that you couldn’t find any stronger language, could you? Essentially, God is saying here, it’s going to be like everything’s gone. Everything’s judged. The sky is ripped in two, as it were. Heavens quake, earth trembles, the whole cosmos is affected because God comes in judgment.

So this is intensification. And then in verse 11, it says that the army is led by none less than Yahweh himself, by God. The Lord shall utter his voice before his army. Who is the chief guy in front of all these terrible devastating locusts? Well, it’s God himself. It’s the God of deliverance. It’s the God who had brought them into covenant. But now he’s become their enemy. He’s become their foe. So the linkages show that the same thing’s being repeated but with a new and heightened sense here in chapter 2—intensification.

The day of the Lord is described as darkness. That fourfold picture of darkness, of course, is quite powerful to meditate upon and to realize the implications of that in terms of judgment. Additionally, there are many other things we could talk about, but the point is that this first section, the salvation preceded by judgment—the judgment is intensified in this material. It’s closely linked to another passage of Scripture which we won’t look at: Isaiah 13. Very much the same sort of descriptions go on in Isaiah 13. But as we talked about last week, Isaiah 13 is a description of the day of the Lord against the Babylonians, against the foes of Israel, okay. And here the same language is used of God’s judgment against the nation itself, not against the Babylonians now, but against Judah, against Jerusalem, against Israel.

Now, it’s interesting that the section starts with blowing the trumpet. And hopefully all of us know about Ezekiel and the watchmen described in Ezekiel. You know, the watchman was to sit and stand on the wall. When he saw trouble approaching, he was to blow out a warning to the people, and they could either leave if it was big trouble or they could stay and defend themselves against the foe coming. The watchman was a part of, you know, what the scriptures are all about—a warning of judgment.

Paul talks about how he was a watchman to the church, warning people of God’s judgment. And that’s what’s kind of being reversed here. The watchman in this case blows the trumpet not because the Babylonians are coming, but because God is coming, because God’s at the head of his army to judge his people. The crucial point of this part of Scripture then is that Yahweh is at the head of this terribly destructive invading army.

Even more than that, he commands the host. The theophanic description here shows us that it is the advent of Yahweh himself that is in mind here. And that is a right terrifying thing for sinful men. The sorrow of verse of chapter 1 that we talked about—the sorrow that it was in man’s heart because of the blessings curses of God against the land. In chapter 2 that sorrow turns into terror before God. There’s an intensification of reaction as the intensification of the judgment goes up.

Leslie Allen in his commentary on this passage of Scripture called what Joel paints here a religious nightmare, and that is a good picture for it. Leslie Allen mentions that in Ephesians 1:18 and 19, Paul prayed that the spiritual eyes of the readers might be enlightened so that they might know the infinite greatness of God’s power. With similar yet contrasting purpose, Joel seeks to rip away the veil of normal perception and reveal a new dimension of divine power at work in the locust.

His aim has been gradually to arouse in his hearers in sensitive minds and consciences a sense of utter foreboding and a state of intolerable tension. Having strung his hearers to a pitch of feverish excitement warranted by the occasion, he is ready to channel their emotions to a point of spiritual release. So the point is that this first part of your outline is just intensification of judgment. Terrible stuff, and it wakes up people not only to sorrow but to actually fear and tremble before God.

And then following upon that, as it followed in chapter 1, there’s a call to repentance. Then in verses 12–17, and additionally, there are terminologies that go back to chapter 1. The call to a convocation of repentance is talked about, and that’s just like chapter 1. It’s attended by all people. Remember that was just like chapter 1. It said gather all the elders and the people around. And so, and it’s officiated by the priests in verses 12–17 of this chapter just like in chapter 1.

And so there are these correlations. But again, and also, one other correlation is, again, there’s a designated liturgy given by Joel that they’re supposed to use. And it says in verse 17, “Let the priests say this.” And the priests are supposed to say, “Spare thy people, O Lord, and give not thine heritage to reproach.” And it goes on.

So, as in chapter 1, there’s a specified liturgy the priests are supposed to use. And so there’s this linkage we’ve been talking about. But additionally, in the call to convocation, there’s also an intensification. There’s a ratcheting up as there was in the judgment. There’s a ratcheting up in the call to convocation. How so?

Well, first of all, the congregation is spelled out in much more specific detail in chapter 2. You may have noticed that it talks there in chapter 2 about all the congregation coming out. And then it specifies who some of those people were that were supposed to come out. In verse 16, assemble the elders, gather the children, those that suck the breasts. Little babies are supposed to come out as well. Let the bridegroom go forth in his chamber and the bride out of her closet.

Now, of course, bridegrooms and brides ready to be married or in the process of being married. This is the great point of joy in their life. Remember the bridegroom was supposed to take a year off—the year of exclusion—to cheer up his wife, to cause her to joy in the marriage, and he is supposed to rejoice in the wife as you. So joy is the picture of marriage. And to think of somebody in joy, we would normally, even today, most of the time think of a bridegroom or a bride.

And so these are people in great joy, ’cause you’re going to get married. But Joel says, “No, have them also come and lament and weep and rend their garments and hearts, as it were, before God in this lament.” And so there’s this intensification because all the congregation is spelled out in detail. And the detail includes probably the last element we’d want to see or would imagine seeing called to a service of lamentation: bridegroom and bride about to be married and rejoice in the relationship God has brought them into.

Additionally, there’s an intensification of the need to repent. In verse 12, this fourfold model that’s gone throughout the book of Joel is applied to how they’re supposed to lament or repent. In verse 12, God says, “Turn ye unto me with your heart and with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.” Now, in the New American Standard, those last three verbs—fasting, weeping, mourning—are all put together. But in the Hebrew, the term “with” is there four times, intensifying the need to approach with each one of these elements.

And so really the King James is a better translation there, repeating the Hebrew reiteration of the word “with.” So they’re called to repent with their heart, with fasting, with weeping, with mourning, stressing again and intensifying the need for them to come forward really broken before God.

Also, God’s potential deliverance that we looked at in chapter 1 is also repeated and intensified in chapter 2. Here’s a potential of deliverance. God’s gracious attributes are cited in the context of this call to convocation. It says in verse 13, “For he is gracious, merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness and repentance of evil.” And so God’s attributes are listed out there to intensify the possibility of God repenting of all this, changing his mind, as it were.

And then indeed in verse 14, it talks about the actual possibility of that. “Who knoweth if he’ll return and repent?” And it’s interesting because the word “repent” there is the same word that has been given to the congregation. They’re supposed to turn and come back to Yahweh, and he may, per chance, in the words of the text, may turn his actions from cursing into blessing. And so the possibility of deliverance is ratcheted up as well.

Additionally, the early stopping of offerings, meat and drink offering being stopped. Remember that from last week? Well, here it says, “Who knows, he may repent and we may actually again have meat and drink offerings to offer up to God.” And so everything’s ratcheted up. Everything keeps increasing. Whereas the first section urged the people to flee from Yahweh. “Blow the alarm. Watch out. He’s coming.” Now this second section of chapter 2 the people are urged to come to Yahweh repentantly. So there’s a shift here.

And one other thing I wanted to point out textually is that it says that, who knows, in verse 14, “If he will repent and leave a blessing behind him.” You notice that there in verse 14. “Who knows, he may repent and leave a blessing behind him.” Remember we just read that fire goes before him and behind and before him is the garden of Eden, behind him is wilderness. But here, if we repent, the possibility exists that in back of God, he will leave behind him—as he repents now toward his action, he’ll leave behind blessing. And so there’s this ratcheting effect in terms of the deliverance offered as well in this second section.

One other thing before we leave this: note that the basis of the appeal to God, the basis of the lament, is not the well-being of the people ultimately. It’s the name of God himself. They say, “Look, you know, please stop these things because we’re being, we’re becoming ashamed to the people around us, and they will then have implications for the name of Yahweh our God when we suffer and if we suffer perpetually.”

And so the basis for their appeal is very similar to the basis of the appeal spelled out in Psalm 79, where we read, “Help us, oh God of our salvation, not for our sake but for the glory of thy name. And deliver us and purge away our sins for thy name’s sake.” And so the lament, the liturgy of lament given to them, specifies that the repentance is supposed to be ultimately for the purpose of glorifying God’s name in terms of the world, not for our own well-being.

Very—we said before, Joel essentially means the same as Elijah, “Elohim” (Yahweh, God is Yahweh), “my strong one is Yahweh, Jehovah is the God of all gods.” And so Joel means the same thing. And Joel’s very God-centered, theocentric, as we said last week, and you see that throughout the things we’re talking about.

Now before we go on to point three, I want to make a couple of points here about these first two points in terms of judgment and then a call to repentance. Now, we said before that Joel is somewhat of a timeless book. There’s no time references given in the book of Joel. We don’t know when it happened. Different people guess at different eras. What’s also very interesting about this book, to me anyway, is there’s no specific sin mentioned. You can’t find out what the people’s problem was. He just says, “Judgment’s here. God’s judging you. Repent, and he may deliver you.” But he doesn’t tell him what to repent of. Kind of interesting, isn’t it?

See, there’s a timeless aspect to this that I think is very important for us. It’s very easy to look at stuff from the Old Testament and say, “Well, this is fulfilled back then,” or “Maybe this was fulfilled in Jerusalem in AD 70.” And certainly it was. I mean, certainly the day of the Lord came to Jerusalem, the apostate Jewish nation that had rejected Messiah. We talked about that last week. But listen folks, this has application to us, okay?

The—I mentioned before the spelling out of all the congregation including the nurse and babes. N.T. Wright in his commentary on that said that a stronger proof of the deep and universal guilt of the whole nation could not be found than that on the great day of penitence and of prayer even newborn infants were to be carried in their arms. Now we know that behind all that is the concept of total depravity and covenant judgment.

And I guess what I want us to realize here is that this isn’t just for them. This is for us. And I think that while we have come to a place of appropriating and delighting in God’s law, one thing that should bring upon us is a greater fear of violation of that law. And it’s very important when we read verses such as this, we recognize this is the just penalty of God against sinful men. Okay? And sinful men and women means sinful members of the congregation of Reformation Covenant Church.

It doesn’t just mean those lousy pagans out there. This judgment is coming upon the house of God, and the house of God is met in this church. The one aspect of it is this has implications for us. And if we don’t understand that we need to repent on a regular basis before God for our sins, then everything’s lost here, okay?

If we are exposing ourselves to the word of God and the implications of that word for all of our life, it must bring a convicting element to us. It must produce reformation in our lives, repentance, restoration, and moving on and increased obedience. We never come to the place of being good enough to take communion. For instance, we talked about that before. Examination doesn’t get us in a holy enough state to take communion. Examination means we got to take care of the obvious things that God tells us to in the scriptures, and we’ve got to recognize the basis for that meal being blessing to us instead of cursing is not ourselves. It’s the work of Jesus Christ. It’s grace and mercy from God.

If you don’t have a picture of the awfulness of the judgments pointed out here in your own mind, and if you’ve never gone through that kind of God twisting your arm, as it were, and ratcheting up the darkness in your life, then you don’t know what sin’s about. And if you don’t know what sin and judgment are about, then you can never understand the full beauty of the gracious statements in the second half of this chapter.

And so I guess what I want to make sure of is that all of us take this first half of this chapter and what we did last week into our homes and meditate upon these things and teach our children these things, and teach our children that if we turn our back against God, this is what happens. This is what happens to us. God’s judgment comes upon us, and we’ll find ourselves in positions of darkness and judgment, and we’ll go out of Eden. We’ll go into the howling wilderness again. We must feel the threatening, for we also are sinners in this church.

That’s why we make prayer of confession each week. And believe me, if that becomes an empty ritual, it’s too bad because the whole point of the prayer of confession is that we’re coming up before a holy God. And when we have a picture of God’s holiness, we should understand our resultant sinfulness and inability to approach him apart from the blood of Jesus Christ. Very important we recognize that.

One exercise I would give you to help sensitize yourself to sins in your own life—I mentioned this before—but the Westminster standards are tremendous. The catechism questions in the Larger Catechism dealing with the Ten Commandments talk about the implication of those commandments, and it would be a good exercise to read through those this week. They’re not very long, a couple of pages, and you’ll realize the depth of the commitment that God calls forth from you and your inability to meet all of those things.

Just as an example, we’ve talked about this before, but the Fifth Commandment, the requirements of husbands and wives: excellent to read through that on occasion, meditate about your own performance. As I was reading through this, I thought of Victor Porlier. I talked about him a couple weeks ago, the illustration of lifting up holy hands. You know, you can start lifting up holy hands as you start to read this. Then it says it’s required of superiors according to the power they receive from God and the grace for granted.

It says they are called to care for them; to love them; to pray for them sometimes; to bless them; to instruct, counsel, admonish them; countenancing, commending, rewarding such as do well; discounting, reproving, chastening such as do ill; protecting, providing for them all things necessary for soul and body. Boy, I haven’t done that too good. I’m still paying my wife a dollar back. I’ll be the rest of my life trying to restore a dollar to my wife that I didn’t give her when we got married. I could go on, but you get the point.

Now, if you think you do all these things, think again. Think again in the quiet of your prayer time, ’cause I guarantee you none of us do these things perfectly. One man did, and he is our salvation, Jesus Christ. We’re going to talk about the seven deadly sins starting in January, and it’s going to be a time of conviction, and some of these verses from the judgment of God may well come back to us. I’ve gone through periods of time with great darkness. I’ve gone through judgments of God, and I think it’s important we remember those times that he’s used to humble us.

Okay. Point three. Although it’s preceded by judgment and repentance, the coming of God yields salvation. And under this, the first point I want to make is that this salvation again is sovereignly distributed by God. Sovereignly by God. First of all, God is sovereign and issuing the call to repent.

In verse 12, we have the call to repent. And we read, “Therefore also now, saith the Lord, turn ye even unto me with all your heart, with all this stuff.” See, even the call to repent comes sovereignly from God. We didn’t even have that in ourselves. God says it. And Joel, he could have just said, “You know, do this. We understand the prophet.” He emphasizes the point that the call to repent comes from God because he sticks this phrase in: “saith the Lord.”

So God is sovereign even in issuing the call to repent. Again in verse 12, the call to repentance is based not on man but on God. He goes on to say, because God is gracious, merciful, slow to anger, of great kindness, and repents himself of evil. The call to repent is issued by God and it’s based upon God’s characteristics, not man’s characteristics. Secondly, God is sovereign in the decision to possibly grant the deliverance.

It’s interesting, isn’t it? If you probably some of you may have noticed where it says, “Who knows? God may repent. God may turn our cursing back into blessing.” That kind of strikes us the wrong way, doesn’t it? We kind of want to say, “Hey, you know, if we repent, you’re supposed to bless us, right? I mean, this lever, this repent thing that we’re supposed to do, that’s supposed to mean the apples start coming out now.”

But see, God doesn’t do that. God makes it real clear that he may or may not grant blessing to you if you repent. You see, he maintains his sovereignty in the issuance of sovereign grace. It’s not as a result of our works. It’s the result of God’s free election and choice. And he makes that quite clear here that he may not give you blessings if you repent. God’s sovereignty is assured here.

So, he’s sovereign in issuing the call to repent. Secondly, he’s sovereign in his decision to possibly grant deliverance. And then third, he’s sovereign in terms of the deliverance—the actions of deliverance themselves. His holiness, we should understand our resultant sinfulness and inability to approach him apart from the blood of Jesus Christ. Very important we recognize that.

Now, one thing I’ll point out is that the second half of this chapter we’re dealing with is described not as a result of what they’re doing but as what God is doing. And so God is the agent of deliverance. Deliverance is not something that we achieve for ourselves. It’s something that God sovereignly delivers to us. And so the actions of deliverance are sovereign acts of God—sovereign and determined by his character.

They are called to cast themselves upon his inscrutable will, in a conviction of their utter unworthiness, and leave the rest to him. Joel was issuing a call to faith, not in a doctrinal system but in an intensely personal God. A faith that is only partially cited and trusts in the transcendent God. He is putting to death the notion that says that Yahweh automatically delivers the goods when the money is put in and the button is pressed.

God’s sovereignty in granting blessing on the basis of repentance is hereby spelled out—very important. We don’t worship a god of mechanism. We worship a personal God who makes decisions. Because God has sovereignly brought us to a place of repentance, or, in terms of Joel here in this section of Scripture, it is also graciousness on God’s part. We are told there that it’s God’s gracious attributes. He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, that is the basis for being able to come to him in repentance.

Verse 18 says, “Then will the Lord be jealous for his land and pity his people.” And there’s this link there between land and people. Not only that, but the basis for the mercy is Christ’s work, and we’re going to talk about that toward the end of this sermon. But the fact that God can be gracious in granting the deliverance spoken of in the second section of chapter 2 is all on the basis of Jesus Christ’s work.

I assume nobody has a question. Do we have a question? What is it? Is God reaching out to his people, calling them to repent and then to receive blessing from him? And as a result, God’s deliverance is gracious and sovereign. And God’s deliverance, his salvation that he brings, is effective for both people and land. We just pointed that out. There’s this correlation. God is jealous for his land and he pities his people. He owns both. Land and people are seen as one unit essentially owned by God. We are both his property and his people.

I wish I could spend some time here, but suffice it to say that Richard Meyer has reprinted an article, short article by R.J. Rushdoony out of Law and Liberty showing the correlation between family and property in the scriptures. Excellent article, and as soon as the newsletter is out, I encourage you all to read it. And this whole concept of people and land together in this verse, in verse 18 of Joel chapter 2, but throughout the scriptures is quite important for understanding a biblical picture of family and people. But in any event, we’ll go on.

Well, one other thing there is that remember we said that early on, the first hint from chapter 1 that God was going to change his mind and turn curses into blessings. Remember in chapter 1, very early on through the first few verses, God said, “My fig tree rather and my land has been invaded by these locusts.” There was the first picture, and here we have it totally come to fruition, as it were. God becomes jealous for his land and he pities his people, and this okay—so we’ve got judgment, we’ve got repentance, then we’ve got sovereignly and graciously moving to affect salvation for people and land.

And that salvation is seen as sustenance, protection, and recreation. Sustenance, protection, and recreation. First, he sustains the people. He gives them back all the good things that were taken away by the locust. He gives them material blessings in verses 19 and 24–27. He says in verse 19 in a summary fashion, “Behold, I’ll send you corn, wine, and oil. Ye shall be satisfied therewith, and I will no more make you a reproach among the heathen.”

So you’ve got the two elements there: provision and protection. Sustenance and then protection from enemies. And so the sustenance comes from—he gives us back corn, wine, and oil. And then in verses 24–26 that is spelled out in more detail in terms of his restoring in one year what the locust had eaten over several years.

Secondly, he protects them. In addition to sustaining them with food, there’s a lot of correlations we could draw there. We don’t have the time, in terms of all those terms. We talked about those connotation-related terms in the first chapter. Corn, wine, and oil being blessings from Deuteronomy, curses, the removal of them. Now he returns them. The vine yields forth its fruit again, etc. Those pictures are all there correlating back to chapter 1. So he gives sustenance and he also protects them.

He gives protection in verses 20 and verses 30–32. In verse 20, he says, “I’ll remove the northern army and he going to drive them into the sea. Their bodies will rise up and stink, etc.” And this is actually could be literally true at the time in terms of a specific locust attack. There are historical accounts of locusts being driven into the seas frequently throughout history in this part of the world. And indeed, their stench has gone up and actually made people sick when they go into the seas, drowned, and then start rotting in these massive numbers that they’re in.

But in any event, one other thing I want to point out here textually is it says that this judgment becomes upon his locusts. At the end of verse 20, it says “because he hath done great things.” Just so you’ll know there, the great things means he is highminded. He has become enamored of his own ability to wreak havoc, as it were. The locust has okay. And so he becomes—he has the old word is hubris, I guess. He has pride, he has a highmindedness of his own abilities apart from being God’s agent. And God then turns around and destroys him.

It’s interesting because then the next verse talks about how God has done great things. See, God can do great things. God is the standard by which great things are measured. But when man or beast starts thinking of himself independently of God as an independent agent, God’s havoc then is wrecked upon them. Okay.

Let’s see. So we’re talking about God’s protection of the people, and that goes on in verses 30–32 toward the end of the chapter. We have some judgment language that is spoken of after he has promised him this material prosperity, after he promises the outpouring of the spirit upon all flesh. He then goes back to some theophanic or terms that indicate his judgment again in verses 30–32. He says, “I’ll show wonders in the earth and the heavens, smoke and fire, pillars of smoke, sun shall return into darkness, etc.”

And so there’s an indication here of what we’re going to look at next week. Next week we’re going to see God’s vengeance declared against all foes of his people. And this is kind of a little hint at that. But I’ve included in the outline here because it does involve the blessing of salvation where God protects them from their foes. Exodus sort of language is used here, and protection from evil foes is talked about, and we’ll talk more about that next week.

And then thirdly, the salvation given to them on the basis of God’s grace sovereignly involves a recreation. A recreation in verses 21–23. First, you’ll notice there in that section, in verses 21–23, God calls for a rejoicing session before him. And that rejoicing session involves three specific groups. First, he tells the land to rejoice. And then secondly, he tells the beasts to rejoice. And then third, he tells men to rejoice.

And commentators have pointed out how that’s the order of creation as well. The land was made first, and then the beasts were made, and then the men were made. And so now, when God turns again and brings blessing instead of cursing—remember we talked about the great cosmic language of things being torn apart and you know terrible devastation of judgment—decreation, I suppose, is a term people use today. All that terrible judgment from God in terms of ripping apart and rending, and now he cures everything and heals it. And so now he’s talking about the land rejoicing, beasts rejoicing, men rejoicing—the same order of creation.

And there’s this concept behind this, I think, then, of the idea of a new creation at work. Again, to quote from this commentator named Princes on this section of Scripture, Prince says, “Thus the entire cosmos is called in ascending order to praise Yahweh. The unity of the created world with its creator emerges vividly. The earth, the beasts, and Yahweh’s people join in one great carol to sing Yahweh’s praise. The act of salvation is tantamount to a new act of creation whereby order is restored.”

Of course, the call to rejoice reaches its crescendo in the summons to acknowledge that Yahweh is in the midst of his people. And so you have this call for rejoicing. And in terms of man himself, I think that the spiritual blessings that commentators have spoken of from verses 28 on—verse 28, that’ll come about afterwards. “I’ll pour out my spirit on all flesh.” Very familiar portion of Scripture being quoted in Acts the second chapter. We’ll deal with that in a moment. But I think that what’s going on here is that now that God has given man back life, he’s recreated him, he gives him back his spirit as well.

Remember, one of the first things that God does to make Adam a living creature is to breathe the spirit of life into him. Jesus Christ to his disciples, before he leaves them, breathes upon them and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” God’s spirit now fills men’s lungs, as it were, and comes upon men mightily because they’re now recreated. They’re a new generation. They’re a new race, as it were, of men redeemed and saved in the work of the Savior. And here pictured in the Old Testament looking forward to the coming of Jesus Christ. And so there’s a new creation and involves spiritual blessings.

Couple of words here—just you might have questions on this idea of “all flesh” in the context. What he goes on to describe—all flesh meaning is there’s no distinction in terms of sex, and there’s no distinction in terms of age. Men and women, young people, old people, all people get his flesh. Get rather—all flesh, in terms of all covenanted people, receive the spirit from God. I don’t think there’s any picture here that certain people, old people, have a particular type of spiritual manifestation, young people don’t. That’s not what’s being said here. It’s a device used to say that all people irrespective of age or sex yet God’s spirit poured out upon them and are recreated.

Numbers 12:6 is important here. It says, “Hear my words. If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision and will speak unto him in a dream.” You see, visions and dreams are given to prophets irrespective of age. Both things are given to a single person. So this verse 28 does not mean to say that certain people have visions, other people have dreams, or whatever. That’s not the point. The point is he’s trying to include all flesh as getting manifestations of the Spirit of God.

God puts his spirit within them just as he revitalized nature by pouring out rain in terms of the blessing, and we have a renewal of life. So he renews men by giving them afresh of his spirit. His spirit pours down on men, as it were, and they are renewed and brought back to a recreation, as it were. As rain to parched ground is God’s spirit poured out on human flesh, revitalizing, renewing, recreating them, so to speak.

And the result of this is the yielding of joy. Joy in verses 21–23. We’ve talked about that a little bit already. We have a threefold call to rejoice before God. Land, beasts, and men all sing before him. And we go on then to see the reason for all this. Of course, is this great reversal again that’s happened. God has brought the locust, and now God brings the blessings. God took away the joy, and now he restores joy and gladness. Lost joy and gladness are restored.

There’s a double reference in this section to men indeed to rejoice before God. And so the basic staple commodities which were removed are now then replaced. And so because of this great reversal, as it were, and the salvation that God brings, men are to rejoice as a result. All blood, judgment, and destruction have been converted to deliverance, prosperity, and blessing from God. And for that, they’re supposed to rejoice.

And ultimately, they’re rejoicing because of the coming of the teacher of righteousness. The last point in your outline—I could get into a long discussion of this, but I will not. I’ll just make some very brief comments. In verse 23, it’s quite important for you to look at that verse right now. Verse 23 of the text.