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A Call to Lamentation

¹³ Put on sackcloth, you priests, and mourn;
    wail, you who minister before the altar.
Come, spend the night in sackcloth,
    you who minister before my God;
for the grain offerings and drink offerings
    are withheld from the house of your God.
¹⁴ Declare a holy fast;
    call a sacred assembly.
Summon the elders
    and all who live in the land
to the house of the Lord your God,
    and cry out to the Lord.

¹⁵ Alas for that day!
    For the day of the Lord is near;
    it will come like destruction from the Almighty.

¹⁶ Has not the food been cut off
    before our very eyes—
joy and gladness
    from the house of our God?
¹⁷ The seeds are shriveled
    beneath the clods.
The storehouses are in ruins,
    the granaries have been broken down,
    for the grain has dried up.
¹⁸ How the cattle moan!
    The herds mill about
because they have no pasture;
    even the flocks of sheep are suffering.

¹⁹ To you, Lord, I call,
    for fire has devoured the pastures in the wilderness
    and flames have burned up all the trees of the field.
²⁰ Even the wild animals pant for you;
    the streams of water have dried up
    and fire has devoured the pastures in the wilderness.

It is true that we ”should always pray and not give up” (Luke 18:1)…

But there are serious times that demand especially serious and sacrificial prayer.

It starts with the leaders of God’s people who must set an example visually and issue a call verbally.

Let the leaders call the people to serious prayer, and let the people come. There are two sides to this equation and both are entirely necessary.

‘Even so, to our knees, O Christians! Desist the folly of sprinkling today’s individual and international iniquity with theological rose water! Turn loose against this putrefaction those mighty rivers of weeping, of prayer, and of unctionised preaching until all be cleansed.’ Leonard Ravenhill.

The word of the Lord that came to Joel son of Pethuel.

An Invasion of Locusts

² Hear this, you elders;
    listen, all who live in the land.
Has anything like this ever happened in your days
    or in the days of your ancestors?
³ Tell it to your children,
    and let your children tell it to their children,
    and their children to the next generation.
⁴ What the locust swarm has left
    the great locusts have eaten;
what the great locusts have left
    the young locusts have eaten;
what the young locusts have left
    other locusts have eaten.

⁵ Wake up, you drunkards, and weep!
    Wail, all you drinkers of wine;
wail because of the new wine,
    for it has been snatched from your lips.
⁶ A nation has invaded my land,
    a mighty army without number;
it has the teeth of a lion,
    the fangs of a lioness.
⁷ It has laid waste my vines
    and ruined my fig trees.
It has stripped off their bark
    and thrown it away,
    leaving their branches white.

⁸ Mourn like a virgin in sackcloth
    grieving for the betrothed of her youth.
⁹ Grain offerings and drink offerings
    are cut off from the house of the Lord.
The priests are in mourning,
    those who minister before the Lord.
¹⁰ The fields are ruined,
    the ground is dried up;
the grain is destroyed,
    the new wine is dried up,
    the olive oil fails.

¹¹ Despair, you farmers,
    wail, you vine growers;
grieve for the wheat and the barley,
    because the harvest of the field is destroyed.
¹² The vine is dried up
    and the fig tree is withered;
the pomegranate, the palm and the apple tree—
    all the trees of the field—are dried up.
Surely the people’s joy
    is withered away.

Joel lived and spoke God’s Word at a time when drought and a plague of locusts had devastated the economy. He ‘joined the dots’ between sin and judgment, but also held out the hope that there could be restoration if the people would sincerely repent. Eugene Peterson writes, in his introduction to Joel in ‘The Message’: ‘He used a current event in Israel as a text to call his people to an immediate awareness that there wasn’t a day that went by that they weren’t dealing God. We are always dealing with God.’

In today’s passage I am particularly struck by the repetition of the word ”my” (verses 6,7). The land belonged to the Lord, not to the people who were infecting it with their sin. Similarly, we need to recognise today that the church is Christ’s. Whatever people may be doing to the visible church with their doctrinal and moral infidelity, the invisible church of Jesus – the true church – is on the building site. It is going up, and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it.

The church is the Lord’s. This understanding can bring peace to our heavy hearts when we mistakenly start to think it’s all on our shoulders. It most certainly isn’t.

But it should also warn us sternly:

 ”Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? ¹⁷ If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for God’s temple is sacred, and you together are that temple.” (1 Corinthians 3:16,17).

…as we enter a new week.

For many years I have kept a journal. My journals are filled with plenty of mundane details, but they also remind me of the goodness and faithfulness of God. I try to regularly look back to what I have written twelve months previously/ Last week, as I was doing some sermon prep, I found a quote from Andrew Murray – something I’d jotted down about a year ago:

‘…we find the Christian life so difficult because we seek for God’s blessings while we live in our own will. ‘ See the whole below :

We find the Christian life difficult because we seek for God’s blessing while we live according to our own will. We make our own plans and choose our own work, and then we ask the Lord Jesus to watch and see that sin does not overtake us and that we do not wander too far from the path. But our relationship to Jesus ought to be such that we are entirely at His disposal. Every day we should go to Him first, humbly and straightforwardly, and say, “Lord, is there anything in me that is not according to your will, that has not been ordered by you, or that is not entirely given over to you? What would you have me do today?

Without wood a fire goes out;
    without a gossip a quarrel dies down.
²¹ As charcoal to embers and as wood to fire,
    so is a quarrelsome person for kindling strife.
²² The words of a gossip are like choice morsels;
    they go down to the inmost parts.

The parallel drawn in verse 20 likens gossip to wood thrown on a fire. It adds fuel to the flame. Note the further reference to gossip in verse 22. In our sinfulness we savour these tit-bits; these juicy morsels. The flesh goes ‘yum, yum’ and feeds on the stuff. But gossip does no good. Someone said that a rumour is like margarine. Once it’s spread it can’t be un-spread. As a general rule, before saying (or repeating) anything, it is wise to ask three questions:

1. Is it true?
2. Is it necessary?
3. Is it Kind?

But as verse 21 indicates, gossip is not the only way to keep a fire burning. It reads like this in ‘The Message’:

A quarrelsome person in a dispute
    is like kerosene thrown on a fire.

I feel I may be addressing these words to someone who is seriously tempted to throw a piece of wood on a fire. Perhaps it’s already in your hand. I understand, believe me, I do, But I beg you to take the high road – by God’s grace. You won’t regret it. But you may very well come to wish you hadn’t tossed that piece of wood in the fire’s direction. You can end up being badly burned yourself, let alone the damage done to others.

”Sensible people control their temper; they earn respect by overlooking wrongs” (Proverbs 19:11: ‘New Living Translation”).

A sluggard says, “There’s a lion in the road,
    a fierce lion roaming the streets!”
¹⁴ As a door turns on its hinges,
    so a sluggard turns on his bed.
¹⁵ A sluggard buries his hand in the dish;
    he is too lazy to bring it back to his mouth.
¹⁶ A sluggard is wiser in his own eyes
    than seven people who answer discreetly.

¹⁷ Like one who grabs a stray dog by the ears
    is someone who rushes into a quarrel not their own.

¹⁸ Like a maniac shooting
    flaming arrows of death
¹⁹ is one who deceives their neighbor
    and says, “I was only joking!”

²⁰ Without wood a fire goes out;
    without a gossip a quarrel dies down.
²¹ As charcoal to embers and as wood to fire,
    so is a quarrelsome person for kindling strife.
²² The words of a gossip are like choice morsels;
    they go down to the inmost parts.

The word ”sluggard” is both repulsive and funny at one and the same time. Or so it seems to me. The writer of Proverbs clearly does not approve of laziness. Who would in their right mind?

As I was reflecting on this reading, I happened to listen to the ‘parable of the talents’ in Matthew 25:14-30. These words of the ”master” grabbed my attention: ”You wicked, lazy servant!” (26a). This was said to the servant who ”hid his master’s money” in a hole in the ground. The thing is, we are to be diligent in making good use of the abilities/opportunities the Lord has given us.

Warren Wiersbe comments: ‘As we wait for the Lord to return, we must invest our lives and earn dividends for His glory. Christ gives us opportunities that match our abilities, and the one-talent servant is just as important as the five-talent servant. The key is faithfulness (1 Cor.4:2), for God measures us against ourselves and not against the other servants. Are you afraid to step out by faith and take some risks for God?’ ‘With the Word’, p.651.

In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered. 

There is one further thing I feel the need to highlight from this tenth verse: it is the sheer God-centredness of it all. Let’s not lose sight of it.This ”everything” includes me. My existence is for God’s purpose and glory; but His existence is not for my benefit (although, all believers would agree that we do greatly benefit from knowing Him – and we are deeply thankful).

Sometimes things needed to be turned around to be fully appreciated. Bible teacher, David Pawson, was once invited to speak on the subject, ‘The Holy Spirit in the life of the believer.’ He said that, at the meeting, he got up and said, ‘I’ve taken the liberty of changing the subject to ‘the believer in the life of the Holy Spirit.’ What an important alteration of perspective that brings, just from switching around the wording.

As we saw recently, the Lord Authors wonderful salvation stories. But He writes us into His script. We don’t get to write Him into ours. Let’s get the order straight.

 In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered. ¹¹ Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters. ¹² He says,

“I will declare your name to my brothers and sisters;
    in the assembly I will sing your praises.”

¹³ And again,

“I will put my trust in him.”

And again he says,

“Here am I, and the children God has given me.”

¹⁴ Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— ¹⁵ and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. ¹⁶ For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants. ¹⁷ For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. ¹⁸ Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

It seems to me that verse 11 forms the text for the remainder of the chapter.

Jesus had to become a human being in order to rescue humans from their slavery to the fear of death, and in order to represent them before God as their Priest.

We need the perfect God-Man to fully save us, and to perfectly understand us (see 4:14-16).

Still today there is a Man in heaven. What Jesus became in the Incarnation He did not unbecome in His Ascension.

”Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him. He lives forever to intercede with God on their behalf” (Hebrews 7:25).

Someone said, ‘You’re on Jesus’ prayer list. That ought to make your whole day.’

In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered. 

Before concluding our look at chapter 2, I want to linger one more day over verse 10. Recently, I was praying through the passage. I don’t always do this, but I find it to be a good way to meditate on Scripture. Its meaning often seems to open like a flower when I turn it into prayer. Anyway, I was arrested, and inspired, by the word author (translated pioneer in later versions). I thought to myself, God writes wonderful salvation stories. I’m not just thinking about the moment of conversion, but the on-going story of salvation. (Salvation come is in three tenses: we have been saved; we are being saved; we are yet to be saved ). It is a ‘God-story’ from start to finish, and God is still writing it in our lives right now. This also spurred me to pray by name for people I know, that the Lord will write them into His great big salvation story – an epic which spans the ages.

PRAYER: Lord God, I pray for ——– that you will author your salvation story in his/her life

 In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered. 

It is as much a heresy to deny the full humanity of Christ as it is repudiate His total divinity.

If a Jesus not quite God is, as someone put it, ‘a bridge broken on the farther side’, a Jesus not quite man is a bridge broken on this side of the chasm.

At first glance, verse 10 may appear strange. ‘But we thought Jesus always was perfect,’ we say. Quite right. He was, and is. But what this is talking about is the perfecting, or completing, of His human experience. The One who was to die to rescue human beings, and then represent them as Priest before God had to be flesh and blood. He had to fully share their humanity. This is something we’re going to see in the remainder of the chapter.

After what has gone before it, it is not surprising that chapter 2 concludes in this way:

 For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants. ¹⁷ For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. ¹⁸ Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

So it is in this sense that Jesus was perfected – that He was given a fully human experience. He knows intimately what it is to suffer and be tempted. He became like us in every way – apart from the sinning.