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¹² “Even now,” declares the Lord,
    “return to me with all your heart,
    with fasting and weeping and mourning.”

¹³ Rend your heart
    and not your garments.
Return to the Lord your God,
    for he is gracious and compassionate,
slow to anger and abounding in love,
    and he relents from sending calamity.
¹⁴ Who knows? He may turn and relent
    and leave behind a blessing—
grain offerings and drink offerings
    for the Lord your God.

¹⁵ Blow the trumpet in Zion,
    declare a holy fast,
    call a sacred assembly.
¹⁶ Gather the people,
    consecrate the assembly;
bring together the elders,
    gather the children,
    those nursing at the breast.
Let the bridegroom leave his room
    and the bride her chamber.
¹⁷ Let the priests, who minister before the Lord,
    weep between the portico and the altar.
Let them say, “Spare your people, Lord.
    Do not make your inheritance an object of scorn,
    a byword among the nations.
Why should they say among the peoples,
    ‘Where is their God?’”

What to do in the face of the impending calamity – this threatened invasion of a great army (1-11)? In today’s passage God speaks directly through His prophet, and calls for a national prayer meeting in which all ages are to come together before Him in genuine repentance (12-16). He is looking for the reality of repentance, and not just an outward, symbolic, ritualistic expression.

The appeal to God is on the basis of the Lord’s character (13b,14). It is also for the sake of the Lord’s Name (17).

I was thinking, ‘When did we last have a national call to prayer in the UK?’ Also reflecting, with sadness, that it is hard to imagine there being such a thing any time soon; when I found an article which begins like this:

”Four days after he became prime minister in May 1940, Winston Churchill approved a national day of prayer. Roused by news of the German onslaught against the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in Belgium and France, people throughout Britain flocked to their local churches and chapels. Five days later, news reached the country of the successful evacuation of the British army from Dunkirk. Many laymen, as well as clergy, quickly attributed this as a ‘deliverance’ or ‘miracle’ to divine providence and to the day of prayer. Churchill himself became an enthusiast, approving two national days of prayer in each of the next three years. Then, in 1943 and 1944, he agreed to brief halts in war production so that factory and office workers could join in the BBC’s broadcast services.

This event is now probably the best known example of a custom that, in the British Isles, goes back to the tenth century when King Aethelred ordered prayers for God’s help to withstand a Danish invasion. Growing in number during the wars of Edward I, Edward II and Edward III, special acts of worship continued after the Reformation and were soon to become a settled tradition of public fasts and days of humiliation or thanksgiving.

Between 1535 and the last national day of prayer in 1947, there were 544 English and Welsh or British occasions, as well as 170 separately ordered Scottish and 84 Irish occasions. These extraordinary moments of special national worship are a register of great moments of crisis, anxiety and celebration in Britain’s past.” (https://www.historyextra.com/period/modern/praying-britain-national-day-prayer-history-when-deliverance/)

2 Blow the trumpet in Zion;
    sound the alarm on my holy hill.

Let all who live in the land tremble,
    for the day of the Lord is coming.
It is close at hand—
²     a day of darkness and gloom,
    a day of clouds and blackness.
Like dawn spreading across the mountains
    a large and mighty army comes,
such as never was in ancient times
    nor ever will be in ages to come.

³ Before them fire devours,
    behind them a flame blazes.
Before them the land is like the garden of Eden,
    behind them, a desert waste—
    nothing escapes them.
⁴ They have the appearance of horses;
    they gallop along like cavalry.
⁵ With a noise like that of chariots
    they leap over the mountaintops,
like a crackling fire consuming stubble,
    like a mighty army drawn up for battle.

⁶ At the sight of them, nations are in anguish;
    every face turns pale.
⁷ They charge like warriors;
    they scale walls like soldiers.
They all march in line,
    not swerving from their course.
⁸ They do not jostle each other;
    each marches straight ahead.
They plunge through defenses
    without breaking ranks.
⁹ They rush upon the city;
    they run along the wall.
They climb into the houses;
    like thieves they enter through the windows.

¹⁰ Before them the earth shakes,
    the heavens tremble,
the sun and moon are darkened,
    and the stars no longer shine.
¹¹ The Lord thunders
    at the head of his army;
his forces are beyond number,
    and mighty is the army that obeys his command.
The day of the Lord is great;
    it is dreadful.
    Who can endure it?

In an introduction to Joel in ‘With the Word’ Warren Wiersbe writes:

‘God’s ”army” of locusts (2:11, 20, 25) was but a picture of a future army that would invade the land in the last days. Joel called the nation to repent (2:12-17) and promised that the Lord would forgive and bless them (2:18-27). He also promised blessings in the last days when Israel’s tribulation would be ended (2:28-32; 3:18-21). God’s message of judgment is not without a promise of hope’ (p.578).

G. Campbell Morgan wrote: ‘It is always the day of the Lord.’ Whatever calamities may befall people and nations, God is ultimately in control, and these things remind us of the greater judgment (the Day of the Lord ) yet to come.

Some people also see, in verses 2-11 in particular, an ideal picture of a united and victorious church, irresistible in strength, under the Headship of God. Perhaps the key thought for us here is that ‘He is Lord.’

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.’