FBC Morning Light – November 18, 2022

Well, a good Friday morning to you. Here we are at the end of another work week, and I hope your week has gone well for you.

Looking forward to this coming Lord's Day. Gather together and seek to worship the

Lord, this particular Lord's Day before Thanksgiving. What a great time of year this is.

Hope you can make it to God's house this coming Sunday. Speaking of Sunday, we'll be beginning a new series in our adult

Sunday school class on Sunday morning at 9 .30. We have three different men in our church who will be sharing the teaching responsibilities of the book of Philippians.

Each one of these men will take a chapter or a lesson each week and share that with us.

I encourage you to get in on the ground floor, if you will, of this series this coming Sunday morning at 9 .30.

Today, we're in the Old Testament book of Joel, and we're getting to the last books of the

Old Testament as well. I want to focus on something that is perceived as being a very terrible thing, and that is the day of the

Lord. What in the world do we do about this? How do we deal with this?

It's a day of, well, not too pleasant experience. Listen to what Joel says.

He says in verse 15 of chapter 1, he says, Alas for the day, for the day of the

Lord is at hand. It shall come as destruction from the Almighty. Who likes to think about that?

Broadcast that in the community, right? The day of the Lord is coming, and he's going to destroy things. It ain't going to go over real well.

But in chapter 2, verse 1, got the same idea. He says, The day of the Lord is coming, for it is at hand, a day of darkness and gloominess.

Who likes that, right? We're getting to a time of year where we're very familiar with days of darkness and gloominess.

You get up in the morning, and you have to go off to work, and the sun is barely up yet.

You come home from work, and it's already dark, and it gets really aggravating with all the darkness and the gloominess.

Well, he says the day of the Lord is coming, and it's what it's going to be like, a day of darkness and gloominess. Then at verse 11 of chapter 2, he says,

The day of the Lord is great and very terrible. Then he asks this question, who can endure it?

Who can endure it? It's a rhetorical question. It's meant to be answered with, well, no one.

It's a day of destruction from the Almighty. It's a day of darkness and gloominess. It's a day that is great and terrible.

Certainly, no one can endure it. Yet, the Lord holds out a possibility of being able to endure it.

Listen to what he says next. Joel writes in chapter 2, verse 12,

Now therefore, says all of your heart with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning, in other words, repent with genuine deep brokenness in your soul.

So rend your heart, he says. Tear your heart and not your garments. What that's referring to is this

Jewish cultural custom when you are deeply grieved over something that you rip your garment.

Maybe you've seen that portrayed in movies or something before. Turn to me with your heart, he says.

Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God. So he calls us to repentance.

He asks the question, who can endure this great and terrible day of the Lord? He asks the question and leaves it hanging, and immediately turns to this call to repentance.

Why does he do that? He explains at the end of verse 13. He says, Because the

Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness, and he relents from doing harm.

Who can endure the great and terrible day of the Lord? A day of destruction from the Almighty?

A day of darkness and gloominess? Who can endure it? Those who will truly repent, turn from their sin, and return to the

Lord. And they will discover that he is indeed gracious and merciful, that he is slow to anger, and he is great in kindness.

He is a God of justice, he is a God of righteousness, he is a God who has to judge sin, and he shall.

But he's also a God of great mercy and grace. He is slow to anger, he's great in kindness.

Now we might say, well, you know, this is an Old Testament book, a prophecy of judgment coming upon Israel, God's people in the

Old Testament, and indeed it is. But I want to remind you that we also read in the

New Testament that the day of the Lord is coming. Take for example what you read in the book of 2

Peter. I'll give you that as an assignment to read on your own, and you discover that there is nevertheless still a day of the

Lord coming. It's a day that will be a day of judgment for the unrepentant.

So how do you endure such a thing? How do you endure such a day? Here's the answer. Turn to the

Lord with all your heart, with all of your broken heart. Turn to him, call upon him, and he will be merciful, and he will be gracious, and he will not vent his anger.

He will not bring forth his wrath upon the deserved judgment upon your sin.

Turn to him. Do so today, if that is your need. Our Father and our

God, we are so grateful that you are a God who is gracious and merciful.

We're thankful that you're slow to anger. As soon as we slip up, and we mess up, and we start to go astray, you don't lash out in judgment and destruction upon us.

You are slow to anger, and you are of great kindness. Oh, that we would be wholeheartedly given to you, that we might know and experience and enjoy that great kindness from your hand.

We pray in Jesus' name and for his sake, amen. All right, well have a good rest of your

Friday, and again, as I mentioned at the beginning of the week, if you find these devotionals to be of any help and encouragement to you, maybe they will be to somebody else.

So let me encourage you to share them. Share them on your Facebook page. You can send them as a link in an email or whatever, a text, whatever, however you need to do it.

But you know who might benefit from this? Pass it along. It'll be a blessing to you and to them,