Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Joel 2:12-19

Very little is known about the prophet Joel, his background, when he lived, or even where he lived, although likely he ministered in the southern Kingdom of Judah.  It isn’t known if his prophecy was written before the Exile in Babylon, or during the Exile, or afterwards.  Instead, Joel’s message is a universal message that applies in essence to all places and people and times.

Joel begins by relating a then-current disaster caused by plagues of locusts, swarms of many millions of the insects that consume and destroy everything in their path, more destructive than any wildfire.  Joel’s country had been suffering immensely from this horror, and it seemed that the Day of the Lord was near – a time of unprecedented turmoil and fearful judgment.  Not only were the people crying out in their suffering (and perhaps they were starving), the land itself was mourning (v. 1:10) and even the animals were crying to God (1:18, 20).  Joel relates that the watercourses had dried up and fire had devoured the pastures (1:20).  What tragedy for an agrarian people!

In Chapter 2, Joel portrays this plague of locusts as a great and powerful army, marching straight ahead and relentlessly destroying everything in their path.  Nothing escapes.  The people are in anguish (2:6).  Surely they are crying out, begging God to deliver them.  Yet the destruction marches on, terrible indeed.  Who can endure it? (2:11)

This is right where our reading for today starts – and what an amazing change Joel gives us in declaring God’s message of hope, restoration, renewal, and great blessing.  The people had surely been calling out to God, in fear and desperation and hopelessness.  Now God tells them to return with all their heart, with a deeply changed attitude.  The Lord says, “Rend your hearts and not your clothing.” (2:13)  Right in the middle of the locust plague, Joel writes, “Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.” (2:13)  Did the people believe it?  Perhaps some did; likely many did not; Joel doesn’t tell us.  Instead, Joel tells us (2:18) that the Lord had pity on his people.  The Lord said (2:19), “I am sending you grain, wine, and oil, and you will be satisfied, and I will no more make you a mockery among the nations.”  So our reading today begins with desperate circumstances but ends with God’s restoration, renewal, and blessing.

Even so, Joel doesn’t end his message with these material blessings from God.  He goes on to speak of further blessings from God, great prosperity, with the people living lives of praise. 

Joel’s vision keeps on growing until he can see a time, “afterward”,  when God will pour out the Holy Spirit on all flesh (2:28), in contrast to only a few people in Joel’s day who knew the Holy Spirit.  In the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Joel’s message takes on very central importance.  In his great sermon on the Day of Pentecost, the Apostle Peter uses as his text (Acts 2:17-21) exactly this passage (Joel 2:28-32)  in which Joel says that God will pour out the Holy Spirit on all people, on the young and the old, on both women and men, on both slaves and free – on everyone!

And how central and important to the Gospel of Christ is this equality of blessing, as Peter explains, and the other disciples demonstrate that Day of Pentecost, and as all the 3000 people who confessed Christ that day experienced too.  Joel has it just right, “Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” (Joel 2:32 = Acts 2:21)

Glorious as this truth is, some people try to make it more restrictive.  There were people who did that in the early church.  They noted that Joel was writing for the Jewish nation and that Peter at Pentecost was speaking to a Jewish audience, so these early Christians thought that all who came to believe in Christ should become Jews.  It took the Apostle to the Gentiles, St. Paul, to argue strongly that the Gospel of Christ is for absolutely all people, not just Jews, but Jews and Gentiles, poor and rich, simple and sophisticated, humble and famous – it doesn’t matter at all.  How did Paul do it?  He again quoted (in Romans 10:13) the wonderful vision of Joel 2:32, “For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

Let us rejoice always that our Lord’s loving embrace of salvation remains wide open to absolutely everyone who calls on the name of the Lord.

May we abide always in Christ and share in his blessings of salvation,

- Robert Kruse