God Is The Ultimate Cause of Natural Disaster - Part 1 — Tim Conway

Joel’s Place Among the Minor Prophets

Okay, Joel. Joel is the second of the minor prophets. Right behind Hosea. Now, it's amazing that Hosea is 14 chapters. I wondered, hmm, can I do it in one sermon? Well, I did it in one sermon. Joel's three.

I thought, certainly I can do that in one. But you know what? I think it's at least two. So, Joel. What does the Old Testament minor prophet of Joel have to say? I mean, look, God preserved it. God preserved it for Christians today.

Why God Preserved the Book of Joel

Why has God preserved Joel? These three chapters. Now, if I were to guess, you can correct me if I'm wrong. If I were to guess, not a single person here has ever heard a message on Joel unless you knew that I was going to preach on it and you listened to one.

Right? Well, I'm saying, if I were to guess, and somebody can say wrong, but I suspect that the vast majority of that's right. You've never heard a message on Joel. Maybe Para has, but. And then, I suspect that you probably, if you're honest, before you heard I was going to speak through the minor prophets, if somebody would have just simply stopped you on the streets and said, tell me everything you know about Joel.

You probably would have said, what do we all know about Joel? Or you should know. What is the most famous thing about Joel? Acts 1. Prophecy of Acts 2. Acts 2. That's right. It's the only place where the prophet Joel is quoted in the New Testament.

And it is on the day of Pentecost, and it is precisely when Peter says, you remember, they said these guys, they're drunk with new wine, and Peter said, no, these men are not drunk as you suppose. He said, this is nothing other than what Joel said would happen.

So, and what did Joel say? Well, in the last days it shall be, God declares that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh. So it's this promise of the sending of the Spirit of God. That is what Joel is most well known for.

Obviously, it makes sense that it would be. It's quite an extensive, I mean, if you think about how much scripture is quoted in the New Testament, well, it's often quoted. But if you really think about, I haven't looked at this, but I have a feeling this is probably the longest or close to the longest quote from the Old Testament found in the New Testament.

And so, and then of all things, it's this promise of the coming of the Spirit. This is why I have to do two messages because I can't really, I don't have time to deal with that, which is what the letter's really known for.

And I have all sorts of questions in my own mind about this quote that Peter quotes from Joel and applies it obviously to his time in Acts 2. The real question that I think we need to answer is how much does it apply to our time in this day?

And anyway, Lord willing, that's next week. You may be surprised to find out that the book of Joel, even if you know about it being quoted in the book of Acts, you may think, well, you know, that's probably what Joel's all about.

The Locust Plague in Joel

Actually, Joel starts out primarily about a swarm of locusts. Did you know that? Now, that's what we want to think about. What is a locust? Besides being the favorite fruit of John the Baptist, what is a locust?

I mean, what comes to your mind? Yeah, grasshopper. I mean, look, the reality is that they're, a locust does not equal grasshopper. But a locust is a grasshopper. But all grasshoppers are not locusts.

It's a type. It's a type of what they call short-horned. Now, you know, when I was a kid, we had lots of grasshoppers in Michigan. And I'd catch these things and I'd study them. Yes, I'd rip their legs off so that they couldn't jump away.

I don't know if you have those in England, but we had them all over. And in Texas, it's awful dry, and so it's not as common. But in Michigan, oh, they were everywhere, and all sorts of different kinds.

And some of them could jump a little ways, and some of them could jump really far. The thing about the locust is it actually, God has equipped it with wings where it can fly a long way, like a bird. And they are also a form of grasshopper that is given to multiply at certain seasons.

When all the conditions are just right, they multiply in absolute abundance, and they stay together. They don't all separate, they swarm. It's the only kind of grasshopper that actually is social like that and stays in a swarm.

And so that's a locust. The thing about locusts is they can chew the bark off a tree. They can chew off small limbs. These things are ferocious in appetite. They literally can wipe out everything that's green across the face of the land.

They can virtually devour all the crops, all the leaves on the trees, all the fruit, everything in the vineyard. I mean, they're destruction. And if a plague of locusts, we're talking about billions, we're talking about they have clouds of locusts that darken the sun.

And these things can ravage a land and annihilate everything. And I want you to get a feel for it. I want you to get a feel for the completeness of the destruction. Now, here's the thing you need to recognize about Joel.

The plague of locusts has already happened. It is not a book that is foreseeing this calamity. It actually is a book that's been written about a recent calamity that's passed and it looks forward to an even greater calamity in the future.

That's what's happening here. But I want you to get a feel for the magnitude of what happened. Verse four, Joel 1 .4. Now I recognize if you have a King James version, you may get some words like palmer worm or canker worm in here.

But listen, those are words that the King James guys came up with that they didn't really know what they were dealing with. And even today, we're not precisely certain what the term... I mean, there's bug names given to us here that people are not really certain about what they mean.

What they're speculating is this, that what you have in verse four are different stages of the locust because this is something interesting about the locust. They go through numerous stages and that is what is thought is being expressed here.

But anyway, aside from the technicalities, you get the feel. What the cutting locust left. So in other words, you get one wave and what was left over? What did it leave? Well, it ate the most edible things.

You can be sure the first wave or the first stage of these locusts, what did they probably eat? The tenderest things, the easiest to eat things. But whatever they left, the next wave, the swarming locust, they ate.

What that wave of locust left, the hopping locust has eaten. What the hopping locust left, the destroying locust has eaten. What was left by one stage got ravished by the next. Notice verses six and seven of chapter one.

For a nation. Now, this language. What God is going to do here is he's going to liken the locust to a nation. He's gonna liken these locusts to several things and you're gonna see this. A nation has come up against my land, powerful, beyond number.

Its teeth are lion's teeth. It has the fangs of a lioness. It has laid waste my vine and splintered my fig tree. It has stripped off their bark and thrown it down. Their branches are made white. And all you need to ask is what sort of nation, what sort of enemy attacks the crops and eats the trees?

I mean, that's basically what you have here. Look at verse 10. The fields are destroyed. The ground mourns because the grain is destroyed. All the food is destroyed. The things in the field are destroyed.

This is not an enemy that comes in and attacks people directly. This is an enemy that comes in and it directly attacks the grain. It attacks the food sources. It is destroying the fields. And God likens these things to fire because the reality is when you have a wildfire go across, basically the devastation left is the same as having locusts go across.

It's like fire. He keeps likening them to fire here. Notice verse five. Pick up partway there. You see where it says, like the crackling of a flame. Like, that's a likeness. You basically have similes here.

There's a likeness. The crackling of a flame, a fire devouring the stubble. Like a powerful army. So you see, these locusts are like the flame. They're like this army. Why are they like fire? Well, such is the destructive tendency of these things.

Why are they like an army? Because they can't be resisted. I mean, this thing, notice this. Look at chapter, oh, when I said verse five there, I meant chapter two. You probably wondered where I was. Where was he reading?

Like a crackling flame of devouring stubble. It's chapter two, verse five. You want to look at that because you just want to get a feel for this, the likeness. So often in these Old Testament prophets, you have things described one way, but there's a lot of figurative.

There's a lot of analogy taking place here. Like the crackling of a flame. Like a powerful army. That's Joel 2 .5. So now if you go to 2 .3, fire devours before them and behind them a flame burns. And I don't think you want to take that literally.

I mean, it's just basically, it's like verse five. It's like a crackling flame of fire. It devours the stubble. That's the issue here. Notice verse three. The land is like the garden of Eden before them, but behind them a desolate wilderness.

Nothing escapes them. Now you think today, if you had this happen here, well, for one, you get so much rain, things grow back fairly quickly. When you're somewhere like in the Middle East where you depend on the rainy season and you're not in the rainy season because the rainy season's already come and it watered the ground to get the crops going.

And now they come in and destroy and now everything is dry. And you don't have a Tesco down at the corner and you don't have ships coming from afar that are docking in the harbors, bringing food from all over the world.

You basically recognize if you had something like locusts go through and wipe out all your food, all the vineyards, all the fig trees, everything, you're in trouble. Like there's going to be famine. Again, you basically have whatever you have in reserve.

And you know how it is with poor people? They live hand to mouth. And you can imagine what's happening. Look at Joel 2, verse 7. Like warriors, they charge. Again, see the likeness here. He's likening them to all these things.

Like warriors, they charge. Like soldiers, they scale the wall. They march each on his way. They do not swerve from their paths. They do not jostle one another. Each marches in his path. They burst through the weapons and are not halted.

Can you imagine if you've got all your actual soldiers out there in front of your city and they've got bow and arrow and they've got their shields and they've got their swords and not stopping these guys, they just burst right through.

They burst through the weapons. They're not halted. You can't slow them. I mean, what are you gonna do? And even if you grab one out of the air, there's billions of others. They're just right past you.

They're not halted. Notice what it says, verse 9. They leap upon the city. They run upon the walls. They climb up into the houses. They enter through the windows like a thief. I mean, you get the picture.

These things are coming in in swarms. You can't stop them with human weapons. They're all over the city. They're running on the walls. They're running on the houses. They're getting in the windows. They're getting in your house.

That's the picture here, folks. I think you see it. This is no small thing. And you know what happens? You know what happens when this takes place? There's going to be famine. There, and you know what comes with famine?

I mean, your crop gets decimated. The trees, the vineyards, and what happens? There's starvation. And once people start to starve and once there's famine, then people, their immune systems are down. Disease sets in.

The weak, typically children and the elderly, begin to die first. People are starving. That's what happens. And you know what happens? What we see, like when famine gets really bad, like when somebody throws siege, they start eating their babies.

I mean, all sorts of, God said that these kinds of things would happen. People do crazy, you know what happens? People get selfish. People begin to hoard their things. You know how that is? It's not like everybody says, okay, let's band together.

We're going to endure this all together. No, selfishness. And you know what it says here? It says that there's no more grain offering. One of the things that happens in Israel when there's this kind of famine is there's no grain.

So there's nothing, people are not bringing their offerings. And now there's no grain being offered on God's altar. That's one of the things that's said here in Joel. So, okay, the question is obviously this.

Passing Joel’s Warning to Future Generations

Okay, we see it. Now, what does that have to do with us? I mean, how does this affect us? Well, I would say this. Apparently, quite a lot can be learned from this, or God wouldn't have preserved it. Notice chapter one, verse three.

I mean, this really jumps out at me. I find this to be, tell your children of it. Let your children tell their children and their children to another generation. In other words, this is something that is worth repeating to people.

This is something you want to tell folks about. This is something you don't want to just tell your kids about. You want to tell your grandkids. You want your grandkids to tell their kids and beyond. And so you know what?

This is something to get passed down. This is something worth passing down for how many ever thousands of years, because we're that generation to come. Now, why do we need to know about this? That's the question on the table.

What does a plague of locusts thousands of years ago have to say to you and me here in this place at this time? And believe me, it really does have, there's a message here for us. First few times I read Joel, it was when Sam was here and I said, Sam, I don't have any idea what I'm going to say about Joel.

I could read it and read it. But then it's like all sorts of things began to jump out at me. Now listen, this is three chapters. The first chapter is basically this. It's a lamentation over the plague of locusts.

Notice verse five, chapter one, verse five. It says, weep. It says, wail. It's a lamentation. Go down to verse eight. Lament like a virgin. That's lamentation. It means mourn. It means be sorrowful. So chapter one is basically that.

It's this lamentation. It's this mourning. It's this weeping and wailing. In fact, you know what is interesting? Look at verse seven, chapter one, verse seven. It almost sounds like God himself is a victim.

Notice how he says this. This is another thing that really jumped out at me. Whose vine and fig tree got destroyed in this? Anybody looking at the text? His. Who's his? God's. You know what God's saying?

My vine got destroyed in this. My fig tree got eaten in this. I mean, he almost makes it sound like he's a victim. This nation of locusts has laid waste my vine, my fig tree. But here's the thing. As we go deeper into this book, something begins to happen.

The Day of the Lord Beyond the Locust Plague

Now think with me. The locust plague is already past. Look at chapter two, verse 19. And I'm only having you look here just to see the past tense nature of this. To you, O Lord. This is actually Joel.

This is one of the few places where you see Joel in his entire three chapters. Mostly it's God speaking to us. Here is Joel. To you, O Lord, I call. For fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness.

Flame has burned all the trees of the field. You see, past tense. So this thing is over. All the way through here, the indication that you have is that the gnawing of the locusts has already left things like they've been scorched by fire.

Yet, notice chapter one, verse 15. Alas for the day. For the day of the Lord is near. Now see, you can almost just read through, you know, if you have a Bible reading plan or schedule, you read Joel once a year.

You could read through it. Yeah, you heard these references in there to the day of the Lord. You could think, well, maybe the day of the Lord speaks of that day when they have the locusts. But you know, if you really stop and you pay attention, the locust thing is past.

The day of the Lord is future. And it keeps happening in this letter that way. Notice again, Joel 2, verse one. Blow a trumpet in Zion. Sound an alarm on my holy mountain. Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble.

For the day of the Lord is coming. It is near. Now, it's right here that we need to just stop and think. Okay, locusts, that's already happened. But you know what God is doing? Okay, I'm looking back.

I'm looking at the locusts and God is taking my head and he's spinning it around and he's saying, but what you really need to see is what's coming ahead of you. That's what keeps happening in Joel. Something is coming.

Something, it's, folks, what he wants us to see is this day of the Lord. But we need to ask this. Okay, what's the day of the Lord? I mean, you come across this in the New Testament. You come across this in the Old.

What does that mean? Look at chapter two, verse 28. This is important. Chapter two, verse 28 is where Peter quotes from in Acts 2. And why is this so important? Just for this reason. We know when this happens.

When? In Peter's day, giving of the Spirit. Acts chapter two, that's when this is fulfilled. Now notice this. 228, it shall come to pass afterward, Peter says in the last days, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh.

Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy. Your old men dream dreams. Your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female servants, in those days I will pour out my Spirit. I will show wonders and I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke.

The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood. Get this. All of that happens before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. Now that's key because when he says it's near, it's ahead and it's near, he sees it as being past the time when the Spirit is poured out upon the church.

What happens before this day comes? Well, we will live in the day of the poured out Spirit and then the day of the Lord comes. That's key. So what is it? Joel chapter three is where it tells us about what's coming.

The Valley of Jehoshaphat and Divine Judgment

And I would just have you drop down and look at verse 12. Let the nations stir themselves up and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat. Now that word Jehoshaphat gets used here more than once. Jehoshaphat means Yahweh judges.

Notice, let the nations stir themselves up and come up to the valley of Yahweh judges. For there I will sit to judge all the surrounding nations. Put in the sickle. This imagery here ought to remind you of revelation.

No question. Put in the sickle for the harvest is ripe. Go in tread for the wine press is full. The vats overflow for their evil is great. Multitudes, multitudes. There you have the nations. All the multitudes in the valley of decision.

You know what? Again, you might just read cross this and say, oh, valley of decision. That's like, you know, people are making decisions either for God or against. No, no, no. We're at the day of the Lord.

You've heard of a court making a decision, a judicial decision. A judge makes a decision. That's what's happening. This is not an evangelistic decision, folks. This is the decision of the divine court.

That's what's happening here. The day of the Lord is the day when God is going to judge all these nations. Look at verse 14, chapter three. Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision. For the day of the Lord is near.

Just like it was said before. There it is again. In the valley of decision, the sun and the moon are dark and the stars withdraw their shining. The Lord roars from Zion and utters his voice from Jerusalem.

The heavens and the earth quake, but the Lord is a refuge to his people, a stronghold to the people of Israel. Wow. That day, there are some people that are gonna find refuge, but it is a day of darkness.

Israel is gonna have her ultimate glory. So here's the question. Why keep reinforcing this day of the Lord when the locusts come? I mean, what's the connection? Okay, you're living in a day and a calamity happens.

What's the connection with the day of the Lord out there at the end? What's one reason? One reason. There's a verse that captures this. Look at Joel chapter two, verse 11. Brethren, you really need to see this and you need to feel this.

This is a very pivotal verse in this book. The Lord utters his voice before his army. Now, if you're in 2 -11, I mean, you look right before that. He's talking about in verse nine, they leap on the city, they run upon the walls, they climb up into the houses, they enter through the windows.

He's talking about the locusts here. And he's basically saying, the Lord utters his voice before his army. They're his locusts. That's his army. Remember, they were eating his vines, his fig tree. You kind of get a picture here.

Yeah, they're eating my vines, but I'm not a victim here. That army is mine. I sent them to eat my vine. By the way, all that we have is his. The fullness of the world is his, folks. He owns it all. That is the idea here.

He lets us use it. He's letting them use those vines and those fig trees to provide food for their families and for themselves. And when he decides that he's gonna send his army to take away those vines and those fig trees from those people, he can do it.

He could do it in a second. And that's exactly what has happened. His army, this is the locust army. God sends that locust army to destroy his own vines, his own fig trees. Is the day of the Lord future here?

Look at this text. The Lord utters his voice before his army, for his camp is exceedingly great. That's the camp of these locusts. He who executes his word is powerful. You gotta know what that's saying.

It means God executes his word. God says to those locusts, to his army, go and do that, and it's powerful, folks. It happens. And then it says this, for the day of the Lord. Now, if it was gonna be just like all the other times, it would say it's near.

It just says the day of the Lord is great and very awesome. Who can endure it? So is the day of the Lord future here, or does it actually refer to the time of the locusts? It's hard to tell, but I'll tell you what's happening.

God is saying when devastation sweeps abroad, it's my day, that's the Lord's day. There are no plagues of locusts sweeping over the country, but they march at God's command. Be certain of that. That day of the Lord, if indeed what God is doing there is calling the locusts the day of the Lord, that day is a foretaste of that day.

That is a foreshadowing of another day, and that's the idea. Folks, the main thing is this. God does not hesitate to take full responsibility for this disaster and for all the suffering that results from it.

God’s Sovereignty Over Natural Disasters

Now, think with me. You imagine a mother. She doesn't have any food. And so what happens? Her milk dries up and the baby dies. Brethren, that's what's gonna happen. Famine has come upon the land. People are gonna die.

And you know what? God says, I did that. I'm responsible for this. To many people, a plague of locusts, a tsunami. You know what happens? What happens today? Well, we get this atheistic crowd out there that basically says, well, you know, everything started with the Big Bang.

We don't need God to explain that. Everything that's alive has come forth through evolution. We don't need God to explain that. And so they don't really need God to explain when a plague of locusts come, or a tsunami, or an earthquake, or I don't even know.

Around here, you might be able to relate with the potato famine that happened back in the 1850s. I don't know what great devastations you've had over here on this island, but these things happen. And you know what?

You know what people are very quick to do? They're viewed just simply as a natural disaster. That's how people see it. That's how the news sees it. This anti-God media, that's how they view everything.

It's just natural disaster. It's a chance occurrence. God has nothing to do with this. I mean, have you noticed how men view disaster through these little humanistic lenses that they have? And so in the U .S., we get tornadoes.

We can get hurricanes. We can get wildfires. There's any number of things that happen. The West Coast is prone to earthquakes. We get drought. We've had COVID across the world. People get cancer. Many cry, well, it's arbitrary, random chance.

There's no plan. There's no purpose to it all. Things just happen. You know what Joel steps in and says? He says, you better rethink that. And then, but we also get people that they're all hung up on secondary causes.

I mean, you find that. People look at something and, oh, it must be global warming. By secondary causes, I just mean what God uses. You know, people just get all hung up. Well, where did the locusts come from?

It's the weather. It's the farmers. They didn't use the right insecticide. It's the manufacturers. Their factories are polluting the rivers and this has messed up the whole food chain and everything. You know, people wanna, it's the politicians.

If they weren't so greedy, they would have fixed this. That's what happens today. People are always looking for answers in all these different things and, you know, earthquakes. Well, you know, it's tectonic plates moving.

You know what Joel tells us? That's God moving. God did that. God caused those, God is in control of those plates and he's in control of global warming and he's in control of all these things. And Joel steps in and says, yeah, we better slide away those secondary causes and look at the ultimate cause.

God is in control of this. That's what Joel is all about. The Lord utters his voice before his army of locusts. His camp is exceedingly great. He who executes his word is powerful. Now, listen, listen to me.

This is key. This is a key for unlocking these things. Jesus comes along in the New Testament and you probably have an idea. He says, he talks this way, like in what I think, Matthew 24, Mark 13. But I'll tell you, I'll quote just what he says from Luke.

Luke's account 21. He says, there will be great earthquakes and in various places, famines and pestilences. What's locust? A pestilence. That's what it is. Do you know what he calls those things? Terrors and great signs from heaven.

Now that is worth just thinking about. A pestilence is a great sign from heaven. Now look, the children know signs. They sit there with their face against the window as you're driving down the road and they're looking at the signs that go by.

You have signs that say, we don't have these signs in the US. Signs that say a roundabout is coming with all the legs off of it and a bazillion little letters telling you where they all go that nobody can read in the time that the driving instructor is telling you, go to this place and you're...

And signs tell you something about where you're going. Listen, Jesus says, pestilences are a sign from heaven. That means they're telling us something. That's what signs do. They tell you what the speed limit is ahead.

They tell you what city lies ahead. That's what they are valuable for. They give you information. Here's a swarm of locusts or a tsunami. Remember the tsunami that hit Japan? Remember the one that hit Indonesia?

The one that hit Indonesia, wiped out? They figured like 300 ,000 people died from that. That's a sign from heaven. It's meant to communicate something like a sign along the motorway. Don't miss this.

It's a sign from heaven. That means it's God telling you something. Now listen, when those kinds of things happen, a lot of people die. But do you know they're meant to tell the people that didn't die something?

You wanna think about that because what they're supposed to tell us is the big thing. Folks, God sends these. That's the point. Get off the secondary causes. Folks, it doesn't matter what our thinking is about why these different things happen.

You can always clear aside all that, all that the headlines say, all the theories, all the science supposedly. You know what God says in Scripture? I make well-being, I create calamity. I am the Lord who does all these things.

You know, Scripture says, whatever the Lord pleases, he does in the heaven and the earth, seas and all the deeps. And then you have other people that say, have you ever heard the preacher that gets up and says, God wasn't responsible for that?

You know, some big storm comes, all sorts of people die, and you got some preacher somewhere, God wasn't responsible. God wept with all the rest of us. And so you got the people that are just basically making God out to be impotent, harmless, disconnected, like the deist idea.

I mean, they want us to believe that these things catch him by surprise, just like they catch us by surprise. I'll tell you what popped into my mind is Job. I mean, when God comes along, God has a lot to say about nature.

God’s Rule Over Creation in Job

He has a lot to say about things like locusts and things about storms and all that. He comes along and he says this, the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind. So for one thing, he obviously controls the whirlwinds.

And if you've seen a good whirlwind, a tornado, some of these, they're terrifying storms. Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Just for action like a man, I will question you. You make it known to me.

Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Now you get a point right there. God laid the foundations of all of this. Job, who prescribes the limits to the ocean? Do you do that? Listen, you know what happens when a tsunami comes?

It breaks out of the limits of the ocean. God says, I do that. I set the limits of those waves, Job. Were you there when I did that? Job, do you know where the hail comes from? Do you know where the frost comes from?

Do you know where the rain comes from? Do you know where the source of the wind is? I know that, Job. I made those. Do you know that? Do you know how all these animals, he goes through lions and ostriches and the wild donkeys, and he's going through all these things.

He said, Job, do you give the strength to the horse? Job, I made behemoth just like I made you. This is the God of Scripture, folks. This is the God. And in the end, Job is just saying, I repent in dust and ashes.

If we were to ask Job, Job, where do you think the locusts come from? I imagine he'd have a good answer for us. Who makes them by the billions? Who designed their mandibles to be able to even eat away the bark to leave the trees white?

God made them like that. Who decrees that a whole country be decimated? God did that. God did that in Joel's day. Not a single one of those locusts would have hatched or stretched forth its wings in flight except by the order of God Almighty.