As my Assembly of God and charismatic friends are so fond of reminding me, Joel was the first to prophesy the outpouring of the Spirit upon all flesh. His prophecy seems to have been delivered to him all at once, unlike Hosea’s which was spread over a period of years. What is interesting though about Joel is that it’s prophecy and its scope extend to the end of time.
He was probably the earliest of the minor prophet writers.
It would appear his message is so important that he mentions nearly nothing
about himself except for a few words. The prophecies of Joel focus more on the
divine right from the very start. Right from the beginning we see that it is
not Joel’s prophecy but it is the. “word of the Lord.”
Joel
1:1 ~ The word of the Lord that came to Joel, the
son of Pethuel
In the first chapter we see bugs and lots of
them. Locusts. Joel was a prophet to Judah the southern kingdom and he used God's
present judgment of a locust plague to make his point. With the utmost urgency
God calls His people to repentance to avoid even worse judgment that would
befall them because of their sins. We see the locust compared to a coming army
as a typology or shadow of what was to come. In explicit language God through
Joel describes the plague, calling first to the old men to affirm that this
plague had seen no precedent of severity. Even the desensitized half-brain dead
drunks are aware of the effects because the locusts wipe on the
vines/vineyards. The priests have no meat, offering of corn, no drink offering of
wine to offer.
Before the locusts the land is likened
to the Garden of Eden, in their wake it is a barren moonscape.
Joel 2:3 ~ A fire consumes
before them and behind them a flame burns. The land is like the garden of Eden before
them but a desolate wilderness behind
them, and nothing at all escapes them.
This army of locusts astounds those
who have never seen it before which leads one to believe that the prosperity to
this point in the land has been unparalleled…but now…so would be their utter
destruction for their sins. Do we see haunting shadows hanging over the
American landscape? The United States which was a once great country that
aborts their children by the millions and condones and celebrates nearly every
form of sexual immorality?
So we see the swarm come and they
blot out the sun like night and they are legion.
Joel 2:2 ~ A day of darkness
and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness. As the dawn is spread over the
mountains, so there is a great and mighty people; there has never
been anything like it, nor will there be again after it to the years
of many generations.
The advancing throng of insects attack
anything that is green and kills it. Wave after entomological wave comes and will
even strip the bark from the trees.
Joel 1:6-7 ~ For a nation has invaded
my land, mighty and without number; its teeth are the teeth of a lion, and it
has the fangs of a lioness. It has made my vine a waste and my fig tree splinters.
It has stripped them bare and cast them away; their
branches have become white.
The land will be so devastated it
will barely recover. The dirge of their wings can be heard for miles, and the crackling
of their feeding is like dry wood in a raging fire. The land they’ve passed
over will literally look as if a field fire has destroyed it. Like the sinners
of the nation have stripped the nation of any honor and dignity it might have
once had, so too the locusts stripped the country bare.
It is the nearing "The Day of
the Lord."
Joel 1:15 ~ Alas for the day! For
the day of the Lord is near, and it will come as destruction
from the Almighty.
Joel urges all classes of the
people to repent. Why? It is because the Day of the Lord signifies judgment
from God and none will escape it. The locusts are a prelude to the coming armies
of invasion which were about to come as a merciless scourge of God upon the land,
and the final Day of the Lord described in the third
chapter. Joel calls on the Lord to spare His people. His call to repentance is enforced
by conditional promises. We See God’s willingness to bless if the conditions
are met. The removal of the scourge, the plentiful rain and ample crops…and we
even see something profound-the promise of an outpouring of God’s Spirit.
It is in this last promise that
we see the central premise of the book outside of judgment. It is in this last
promise that we see the ever-present shadow of Christ who is imminent and
glorious and sovereignly reigns over history. The other prophets will prophesy
the details of Jesus’ life on earth and of His future reign. It is Joel that
will foretell of the Spirit of Christ that will be poured out on all believers,
male and female, Jew and Gentile, slave and freeman. There was coming a day
when all would be one in Christ Jesus. We are told this blessing would come from
Jerusalem.
Joel 2:32 ~ And it will come about
that whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be delivered; for on
Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there will be those who escape, as the Lord has
said, even among the survivors whom the Lord calls.
Joel 3:18 ~ And in that day the mountains
will drip with sweet wine, and the hills will flow with milk, and all
the brooks of Judah will flow with water; and a spring will go out
from the house of the Lord to water the valley of Shittim.
We know
from Peter in the New Testament that this is fulfilled at the Day of Pentecost
(Acts 2:16, 32-33). As with most prophecy, this prophecy still has yet and
unfulfilled aspect after the Great Day of The Lord. Joel looks into the distant
future and sees a final day when the Lord Jesus Christ will come in judgment in
Joel 3:13. It is the same day that Christ spoke of in Matthew
and is mentioned other places also. We will see the winepress again in the Revelation
of Jesus Christ from John the Revelator.
Joel 3:13 ~ Put in the sickle, for
the harvest is ripe. Come, tread, for the wine press is full; the
vats overflow, for their wickedness is great.
Matthew
13:39 ~ “…and the enemy who sowed them is the devil. The harvest is the close
of the age, and the reapers are angels.”
Revelation
14:18-20 ~ “Then another angel, the one who has power over fire, came out
from the altar; and he called with a loud voice to him who had the sharp
sickle, saying, “Put in your sharp sickle and gather the clusters from the vine
of the earth, because her grapes are ripe.” So the angel swung
his sickle to the earth and gathered the clusters from the vine of the earth, and threw them
into the great wine press of the wrath of God. And the wine
press was trodden outside the city, and blood came out from the wine
press, up to the horses’ bridles, for a distance of two hundred
miles.
What does Joel say to us today?
We must see the desolate
condition of the Church today. It is has been poorly defended at times and hard hit by many spiritual foes, many
directly coming from within its own ranks. Most of this destruction could’ve been avoided
had people actually read the Bible, understood proper theology and stopped
trying to conform to the culture/world. We are literally engulfed by plague and
drought on all sides and from within. God is calling us to awaken to His holiness and He will even give us His Spirit to aid us in our walk...if people would just freaking listen...but many will not and they will perish. Just as in Joel’s day a call goes out for the wayward to
turn back to God and repent. We present the Gospel and then it is up to them and
the Spirit if they respond. It will be dramatically more effective if repentance
begins with the leaders, ministers, elders as they have the ability to affect
the most people. If people turn their hearts to the Lord we too can be the
recipients of His promise, recipients of His Spirit. It is this body of
believers that will be equipped by the Spirit to fight the battle against the
legions of darkness, and be ready for the gathering of souls…
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