Principles Of A Solemn Assembly — Douglas Small

Principles of a Solemn Assembly: Joel and Psalm 80

Grab a notepad, we're gonna go very fast, but I'm gonna focus on Joel chapter one and chapter two, and then Psalm 80. I wanna work through some principles regarding solemn assembly. And then I wanna take you to a sermon that was preached in Philadelphia at Christ Church with the Continental Congress sitting there, a day of national fasting and prayer on July the 20th, 1775.

This is a fascinating sermon because it shows the nation at a crossroads and it's a call for solemn assembly. And I think in a sense we're right back in July of 1775. So grab a Bible, we'll first go to Joel chapter one, chapter two, then we'll pop over to where this sermon is rooted in Psalm 80.

If you can be a part of this for the next 90 minutes or so, I welcome you. I'm gonna teach for a while and then pray, and then pray, and then teach for a while, and pray and teach for a while. Tonight, Kevin Jessup, you don't want to miss Kevin Jessup.

He was the principal driver behind the return in Washington, D .C. Jonathan Cahn joined him for that effort. And then my dear friend Carter Conlin from Times Square Church in New York that always has a real passion for repentance and revival.

And then tomorrow, Dan is back and David Ford, a wonderful young Southern Baptist evangelist who's just given his life to the Lord and links to people like Richard Owen Roberts and now the names escape me, but if I call them out, you would know extraordinary, extraordinary names and a real passion.

God used him in a signal way a few years ago at Liberty University for a campus revival. Now, Father, you know what? You have crowded into my heart. And really, this is something I've never shared before.

And I'm asking you to help me with recalled and to follow the scribbled notes that I have and to make this clear. And most of all, I'm asking for the compelling voice of the Holy Spirit. I'm praying for somebody who might catch this, who might watch it even later, who will be exposed to principles and ideas that they've never thought about before and they'll be moved to do something beyond what perhaps I could do or even what Dan could do because we're at a point in the nation where only divine intervention can save us.

Joel's Warning of an Unprecedented National Crisis

We pray this for your glory in Jesus' name, amen. If you open your Bible to Joel chapter one, here's what you find, verse two. You find this, hear this you elders and give ear all the inhabitants of the land because nothing like this has ever happened before.

We have never been where we are now. Go back, he said, even the days of your fathers in generation. He said, I'm not just talking about something that's unique to our times. I'm talking about something that's unique across the generational continuum.

We are at a national crossroads, arguably at the greatest crisis of our national life, perhaps as great as the months and years leading up to yes, the civil war. We've never been here before. He said, you're gonna tell your children about this and they're gonna tell their children about this.

Generations will hear about this. Now this means that this is one of the times in history where we dare not miss our moment, where we dare not miss God, where we have to buckle down and turn up our radio and say, God, we need to hear from you clearly.

And this is what I'm praying for every day, that I would hear clearly the voice of God. God, what are you saying to me? What are you saying about my responsibility to the churches that I minister to, the people that I minister to, and even the nation itself?

Joel chapter one, verse three. He says, there's a natural calamity that is coming and this natural calamity is actually an invasion of locusts so it's agricultural, it's environmental, if you will. And he said, it's so severe, you're gonna talk about it for generations.

And that's going to affect the supply and demand of commodities. But there's a second thing that's happening. A nation has come up against our land, strong and mighty. So this is an international crisis that is perhaps the most formidable crisis they've faced in a long, long time.

But there's a third thing that's involved here. The house of the Lord has been affected and it's been affected in two ways. Number one, it's been affected by the grain offering. If you don't know the code here, you missed this.

Consecration Through the Grain and Drink Offerings

Now, what is that grain offering all about? Well, it's an offering of consecration. Here's what he's saying. My people are no longer consecrating themselves to me. The grain offering specifically was the consecration of talents.

It was the consecration of labor. It was the work in the harvest field. It was the bringing back from our labor, the fruits of our labor and giving them to God. It was in a sense, the involvement of God in the vocation of our life and the recognition that God worked in our work, whether we worked at the church, the priest, the temple, or whether we worked in the field.

This invitation, this integration of God into daily life, this is what has stopped. And then the drink offering, what's the drink offering? The drink offering is the life poured out before God. So let's just stop and repent.

Let's just repent that we segregated our lives. Father, we see it so clearly. We see this secular, sacred divide, even among your people. We see the lack of integration of faith into the property and the very essence of our life itself.

Father, we see, I've got grandchildren with me and I thought I had them quarantined downstairs, but obviously one has escaped and joined me up here. They're wandering through the house. We'll keep praying here.

Father, we just repent that we've not poured out the energy of our lives before you and for your work that we've segregated our lives into the sacred and the secular, into the 10 and the 90%, into the Sunday and the Monday.

And we just pray, Lord, for a reordering of our own personal priorities. And here's what the Bible says. The Bible says because of this diminishment of energy into the Lord's work, and you see that everywhere in America, because of this diminishment of investment in the Lord's work, the priests are mourning.

The Church's Loss of Lament and Brokenness

In the 1950s, church attendance was about 50 in America, about 50 in the early fifties and in the early sixties. Now, before COVID, it was down to 17%. More than four out of five Americans were not in church on any Sunday and over an eight week period.

Only one out of four were in any kind of, were in any kind of church service. We now, with COVID, are well under 10%. And we probably, we may, some say, never rise above that again. We're in a crisis in terms of our investing in the Lord's house and the Lord's work.

And here's what the Bible says. The Bible says the priest, and in this case, I think it's best translated because of the priest and the laity division in the Old Testament, which is true in the New, but nevertheless, because of that, I think it's better to understand this as pastors.

The pastors mourn, and then he says the land mourns, and then he says the people, the vinedressers, the workers, the laborers in the field mourn. Paul says in Romans eight that creation is groaning. He says that the spirit is groaning, and then he says we groan, but we are not.

We are not groaning. Even in COVID, even after almost a year of quarantine, there's no lament in the church. There's no repentance in the church. There's no brokenness in the church. There's a lot of anger.

There's a lot of frustration with the government. There's a lot of pushback against the restrictions, but there's no brokenness in the church. Pastors tend to want to get back to the way things were before.

Everyone wants to go back to the way things were before, and God is saying to us, I don't want you to go back to the way things were before, so let's just pray. Father, we pray for a spirit of lament.

We pray for a spirit of brokenness. We pray, Lord, that we would read the signs of our times. We pray that we would discern the voice of the spirit and the fact that the Holy Spirit is himself lamenting, and he's inviting us to join us in intercessory lament.

We're not doing that now. We need the touch of the Holy Spirit upon our life to pray like we have never prayed before. We pray that pastors would lead the way in brokenness before you. We ask this in the name of Jesus, and we just see an interesting thing here.

In verse 12 of Joel chapter one, he talks about the vine and the fig tree and the pomegranate tree and the palm tree and the apple tree and all the trees of the field. What's he talking about, the Garden of Eden?

And he's saying that the land has become almost like the Garden of Eden again, and now that garden is being lost just as the first garden was lost because of sin. And so we should wail because Israel is about to be shut out of her own garden again.

Just as Adam and Eve were shut out of that garden, they're about to be shut out again. And here's the word of the Lord to the people. Gird yourselves and lament and wail before God. I can tell you with the happy music we have in their churches, we are not wailing.

We have made no room, 40 of the Psalms are laments. We make no room in our modern triumphal praise and worship narrative to be broken before God. We're uncomfortable with it, I'm telling you people.

I'm telling you church, I'm telling you pastors. We need to lament, here's five quick things. Number one, here's what God is saying, it is time to wail. And we take intercessors to wail, and there are a few of them and we put them over to the side.

We don't even admit them to our own prayer meetings because it's just too uncomfortable. The sound is too uncomfortable, it's too wrenching for us. But they are giving voice to the heartbreak of God himself over what's happening in his relationship with us and what's happening in his relationship with this nation.

It's time for tears, it's time for brokenness. And brokenness, if it is genuine, it demands tears. It's the recognition, something is not right. It is in fact broken, the church is broken. I tell you, the nation is broken.

Christianity as we know it and perceive it to be is broken. The idea that you are a good person and if you remain good and pray your prayers and do this and that, you're gonna go to heaven. When you die, 70 to 80 of Americans believe that, that is not the gospel, that is not the gospel at all.

Repentance for National Stewardship

You know, every parent around Christmas, you remember the times when you got the toys and the kids are feverishly playing with the toys inside or out and then inevitably on Christmas day or a day or two after, you hear tears.

And some child is bringing you a broken toy. Now maybe you can fix it, but they come to you expecting you to fix the toy. And sometimes you can't fix it. Sometimes you can't be the parent healer who can fix this.

Sometimes you can't glue it back together. Sometimes you can't tape it back together. Sometimes it cannot be fixed. You've given them a gift, you maybe can fix it and you admonish them a little bit about taking care of the gift.

And this is really what this is all about. We've been given the gift. We've been given the gift of a land. We've been given the gift of a blessing and now it's broken and we have not taken care of it.

And we come back to God, but this may not be fixed so quickly. This cannot, God doesn't always work magic. This cannot, this may not be fixed so easily. This may be broken in a way and at a degree that we've never considered before.

This extraordinary gift, this nation, this Republic, this opportunity to be a free self-governed people with no king, a government of the people, by the people. It's broken and we broke it. And we come to God and we want him to just magically fix it and make it go away.

The problems of this nation go away as if we're not willing to accept responsibility of our lack of stewardship. It's time for tears. It's time to weep and wail because this has happened on our watch.

Would you just stop and pray with me? God, I give you permission to break my heart. I give you permission to let me weep. If you have not wept over the state of this nation, then pray this with me again.

God, I give you permission. I ask you, break my heart. Let me weep over this nation, this broken nation. Let me weep over this broken nation. Have mercy on us, oh God. And yet, God, we pray not just for the thing itself, for the nation itself.

We pray for us and our brokenness as stewards of righteousness and holiness. Change us, God. Begin with us, God, in Jesus' name, in Jesus' name. Number two, it's not only time for tears. This may sound like the same thing, but it's not.

It's time to lament. Now, lament is a particular genre of literature in the Old Testament. It's a protest. It's legal. It's offered in the courtroom of heaven in terms of being a protest against the way things are.

It is a radical, emotional, desperate plea. Entered in the courtroom of heaven, a prayer that says, God, things cannot continue the way they are. You must intervene. You must come down. And it is a protest that acknowledges we can't fix the thing.

We can't heal the thing. And perhaps we've made our appropriate appeals here, and now we make our appeal to heaven. Because we cannot get justice. We cannot get help. There is no remedy on this earth.

And so we enter the courtroom of heaven, and we protest the way things are. And we may be offering a protest against ourself. We may be revolted at our own behavior, and deeply involved in repentance before God, asking him to change us.

So let's just stop. Let's offer a protest. God, things cannot continue as they are. We can't continue with the brand of politics that doesn't have room for you. We cannot continue with the brand of politics that sees pluralism as acceptable to the fate of our fathers.

We can't continue with the brand of politics that sees all marriage as equally acceptable, and reverent, and sacred, and justifiable as that of a man and woman. We cannot continue with the brand of politics that stamps approval upon sexual perversion and aberrance.

We can't continue with a brand of politics that isn't for life, and that allows and champions even abortion. We cannot continue with a brand of politics that sees drugs as merely recreational. Prostitution has merely a, we can't continue like this, God.

We can't continue like this. And right now, the only hope that we see is not in Washington or in our state houses. It is in you. And we protest, God. We protest things the way they are, and we ask for a divine intervention from heaven.

It's self. Number three, there must be tears. Number two, we have to go to court and file a protest against the way things are. And in that sense, listen to me. In that sense, we invite God. We open the door.

We've been given jurisdiction down here. We've been given jurisdiction in terms of positional authority. We've been given jurisdiction in terms of relational authority. And so we want to invite God to come to the earth.

We'll welcome him. It's not that he couldn't come. He could kick the doors down, but we don't want him to come like that. We want him to be invited. He comes where he is invited. We want to invite him, to welcome him, to come and march through our streets and champion the causes for which the earth is twice his.

He redeemed it. He created it and he redeemed it. And so, Lord, we're asking you now to reclaim it. We're asking you now to assert your rule in this place and that place, where there are people who are ready to steward the influx of your glory and your grace, we pray, that you would come and assert yourself and reclaim the land and the territory.

We ask this for your glory. It's time for tears. It's time to lament. It's time for passionate prayer, not casual prayer, not customary prayer, not just a little talk with Jesus, praying it's time for passionate prayer, from the heart prayer, prayer that sometimes is more tears than talk, prayer that is full of passion.

It can't always express itself because it's just so full of the life and angst of what we are feeling. And number four, it's time to fast. It's time to consecrate a fast. It's time to give priority to the spiritual.

You know, you notice the nation. I mean, we can quarantine people from going to church, but we're going to have our sports if we have to play in empty stadiums. We are going to have our entertainment.

We've not flipped. We've not switched back to the spiritual. We're very much focused on the carnal, on the entertainment, on the worldly, its pleasures, all of those things. And I'm not, please don't, I'm not approved.

I'm not against your sports team or whatever, but it has to be in its place. It can't be at the top of your list. And number five, here's the call for a solemn assembly. This is a call for corporate prayer.

Gather the elders into the house of the Lord. Gather them into the temple and gather the inhabitants of the land into the house of the Lord and cry out to God. Don't just pray, cry out to God. This is desperate prayer.

This is God is our only hope prayer. Priests, pastors, ministers, servants, elders, people, every class is to be gathered. Why? Because the day of the Lord is at hand and it will come as destruction from the Almighty.

The Day of the Lord and the Call to Gather

Now, let me give you a little theology here. Up until Joel, the day of the Lord is good news for the people of God and bad news for everybody else. But Joel turns the day of the Lord on its head. It's gonna be a bad day for Israel because he puts Israel in the crosshairs of judgment.

And he's giving them a warning. This day of judgment is approaching. It is onus, it is near. Now, nobody wants to hear that. Nobody wants to believe that. Nobody wants to listen to Joel. Nobody wanted to listen to Jeremiah when he said the Babylonians are going to come, destroy the city and the temple.

They put him in jail. They wouldn't put him on television. They shut his Facebook account down. They didn't wanna listen to him. We don't wanna hear that. We wanna hear positive prophets. And there were plenty of positive prophets and there are plenty of positive prophets today.

Most of them are speaking about the political scene or this or that or whatever else. Very few are speaking to the church and almost none are saying this could be the judgment of God upon our nation. And we could experience shortages of staples of everyday things.

And we could experience drought and not even be able to produce our crops. And we could experience shortages of food supplies. And then he mentions destructive fires and all you have to do is look at California and see the ravaged trees and the forest and the pastures and the brooks that are dry.

This is what Joel is talking about. And at least in part, this is what we're experiencing. The fires, he said, have already destroyed, devoured our pastures. So blow the trumpet in Zion. This is a prophetic call to solemn assembly, to prayers.

Sound an alarm in my holy mountain and let the inhabitants of the land tremble. I would suggest to you that there are no tears and I would suggest to you that there's no trembling, no fear of God. And you see, my friend, if you don't take heed, if you don't hear the warning, if you haven't heard the trumpet, if you don't hear the warning, you'll run right into the wall.

We're already on the warning track. There's no doubt about it. How close we are to the edge, how close we are to the wall, how close we are to the destruction of the judge, I don't know that. But we're already on the warning track.

And we don't realize, even the church, even pastors, they don't realize that we're on a warning track. And so what happens is the intensity grows. And what was a warning is now a watch. He calls for a watch.

The day of the Lord is coming. And so he calls for a watch to be vigilant. Turn to me, he says, turn with fasting and prayer and weeping and mourning. And he calls for us to set up a watch. Now the intensity is greater than it was before.

This is vigilant prayer. This is prayer in the night. This is 24 seven prayer. This is not nice, sweet prayer. This is agonizing, tearful prayer for the nation. Let's pray again. Father, we are hearing prayers, but we're not hearing agonizing prayers.

And we just pray for agonizing prayers, for travail, for weeping God. And we pray Lord for a different kind of prayer. And we pray Lord that we would heed the warning and move to the watch. We pray that churches would launch 24 seven prayer.

We pray that churches would be open seven days a week for people to come in and just find a place to pray. Forget about the value of the electronic equipment. My goodness gracious, open the church and make it a house of prayer for the nations.

God, we just pray that people will be stationed there. That we walk in the church and Wednesday afternoon, scriptures would be playing on the wall and soft music would be playing and we'd hear a sound and over there someone's on their face that over there someone's on their face and they're praying.

And when they leave others slip in until the church again becomes a house of prayer, a house of prayer for the nations. Until we're praying 24 hours, seven days a week, God. God, we just pray for the spirit of prayer and travail to grip your church.

What must we do? Here's what Joel says. Number one, you blow the trumpet. Now listen carefully. This is a metaphor for the spirit. On the back of the table of showbread, the golden table that had the 12 cakes or loaves were places to hang the two silver trumpets.

So the table, the bread, the word, the trumpets are bound together. The trumpets represent the voice of the spirit bringing to us the word of the Lord. So they are a metaphor. When a prophetic voice is heard in the land, the greater need is not for a prophetic voice.

The greater need is for us to hear the voice of God. And indeed, the prophetic voice is never the final voice. It's a call to hear God. When you hear a true prophetic voice, what you wanna do is wait, listen, watch, wait, wait.

Because what God is about to do is he is about to speak by the spirit into the hearts of his people. You don't wanna go on the word of a prophet. You wanna go on the word of the Lord that's confirmed by a prophet or in the mouth of two or three, or two or three witnesses.

The question we have to be asking now is what is God saying to this nation? And I believe God wants to talk to us as a nation. And we need to listen and we need to hear what he might be saying. In fact, let's just stop and pray right now.

God, there just seems to be a vacuum of what you are saying to us, your people, and what you're saying to the nation. There's all kinds of voices that have political messages, but what we're lacking is the voice that calls your people and speaks to your people and centers your people and directs your people.

That's what we're lacking. Lord, the clearest voice that I've heard is David Jeremiah's word, that when God shuts a people away, he does it for a season in order that he might prepare them for something and that he speaks and that he acts and he moves with them and calls them to move with him.

And I do sense, God, that you've quarantined us for a season for a reason and that you're trying to prepare our hearts, but I fear that we are not preparing ourselves. I fear that we're not readying ourselves.

I fear that we are not hearing you. I fear that we're not hiding away with you. I fear that we are not taking the time to pray. And I pray that you would speak to us, oh God. What must we do? Number one, we gotta blow the trumpet and hear the voice of the trumpet, the voice of the spirit.

Number two, we need to watch. That means we have to pray. And here's why. Because there are additional signs. There are additional signs that come. Here's what Joel mentions. He mentions earthquakes, he mentions uncommon eclipses, signs in the stars, he mentions irregular constellations, the earthquakes before them, he says, the heavens tremble, the sun and the moon grow dark.

And that's either a partial eclipse or something that happens that affects the level of light. The stars diminish their brightness and the Lord gives voice before he acts to execute his word. Number one, stop, God wants to talk to us.

Number two, set up a watch. Start praying more than you're praying. And don't think that prayer is talking. It's hearing from God and begin to look at the signs. Where is God moving? What are the indicators that God is breaking in?

Number three, turn. Now therefore says the Lord, turn to me with all your hearts. This can't be rote, it can't be routine, it can't be casual. It has to be the complete reorientation of our life. It has to be a recentering of our values.

I don't know who I'm talking to. You may have just stopped pausing this on Facebook, but here's the word of the Lord to you. God is calling you out of ordinariness and he's calling you to extraordinariness.

That may not even be a word, but you know what it means. God is calling you to break out of your rut, out of the routine and seek for him, search for him. You may have just gone through a job change in COVID.

You may have just gone through some kind of shift or something. You may have gone through something that was good for you or bad for you. But God in the process of that change is telling you, he wants more than that from you.

God is calling all of us to change, turn. I want you to change your behavior, this recentering of your values. Number four, I want you to fast, turn with fasting. And what fasting does is it demonstrates my altered priorities and appetites.

And it moves from giving the natural or the flesh priority to giving the spirit priority. And here's what begins to happen. When you pray and fast and fast and pray, your ability to hear God heightens.

Your ability to hear God just goes to a completely different level. Here's number five, weep. Be broken before God, turn with fasting and with weeping and with mourning. There has to be passion. There has to be brokenness.

This cannot be merely intellectual. It cannot be rational left brain praying. It has to be holy desperation before God because there's a perceived sense of loss here. Something again is broken. We are broken and we have to mourn.

That's an indication of grief and grief is a love word. And so I've lost something and I wanna get back to it. We love the nation and we're about to lose it. You say that couldn't happen, I'm not so sure.

We love life the way it was when we grew up, 50s, 60s, 70s, not bad times, even in the 80s. But we want it back. Grief is a love word. Something has been lost. Something has been stolen. Our innocence has been stolen.

Our safety has been stolen. Our sense of security has been stolen. Our sense of global dominance has been stolen. All of these things have been stolen. So Joel is pouring out his heart. And I think what he is saying is relevant, is relevant to us.

Rend Your Heart and Return to the Lord

I wanna ask you a question. You think the folks in Joel's day got this? I'm telling you, only the deprivation, only the signs, only the approaching army seemed to awaken them. And then it seems that they heard and paid some attention to the voice of a prophet.

I don't know what it will take to wake us up, but we have to pray. Whatever that is, God, would you wake up this nation? And again, I remind you that this is the way Jeremiah's generation treated him.

They locked him in jail because he was not politically correct. And they didn't wanna hear the message that the nation itself was at peril. Here's number six. Rend your heart and not just your garment.

This is a willingness to change at our very core, a willingness to shift our values and recenter ourself and change the core beliefs and behavior of our life, to shred our life if need be as it is in order to get back to God.

And then he says again, return to the Lord. This is behavior. First beliefs, core values, and then behavior. I tell you, I need faith because for America to do this, I just don't know how. I don't know how it could happen.

It would have to be a miracle. Let's pray again. Father, we pray for the sound of the spirit to be heard across America among your people. And we pray for a prophetic voice, a baby of prophetic voices to be raised to you.

We pray for an intensification of prayer, 24 seven prayer. We pray that we might turn to you, that we might fast, that we might weep, that we might rend our heart, shred the core values that have kept us from being in a right relationship with you and change and alter our behavior.

We pray for a miracle for America. And here's the shocking thing. Here's the shocking thing. The expectation of Joel is that God is gracious and he's merciful and he's slow to anger and he has great kindness and he relents of judgment.

As Luther would say, judgment is his alien nature. Love is his native nature. But listen to me very carefully and Joel makes it clear. The outcome is not guaranteed. This is not a matter of repenting.

If we don't repent today, we can repent tomorrow. And if it gets worse, we can have a prayer meeting in church and if it gets really bad, I mean, we could pray all night. And if it gets really, really, really bad, we could give up pizza or something.

No, no, no, you don't understand. You simply don't understand. Listen to me carefully. I'm not a Calvinist, but God frames a window for repentance. And if you miss that window, like coming back in from outer space, there is that window.

And if the astronauts don't hit it at the right angle, they don't reenter, they're forever lost in space. There are windows of time. There are portals that God offers. We're at a window, we're at a window.

And you can't put this off. You can't say tomorrow. You don't choose the time. God chooses the time. And we are at one of those now or maybe never times. God is gracious, there's no doubt about it. He's merciful, no doubt about it.

He's slow to anger. I mean, look how long this has been building. He's kind, greatly kind, graciously kind. And he often threatens judgment and then responds in a merciful way. And then Joel says this, who knows if he will turn.

And relent and leave a blessing behind. Thomas Watson, the great Puritan writer said, repentance is the condition for the petitioner who comes to God asking for grace. Repentance is the condition, but it is not the cause.

That is what happens in terms of revival, what happens in terms of spiritual awakening is not up to us, not completely up to us. There are conditions that God ask of us, his people. But we're not in charge of this.

If God spoke to us yesterday and we put it off and we just brushed him off and said, I'll come back to you, just stay where you are. I'll come back to you tomorrow. And we treat him in such a light hearted manner.

We may come back to him and find that the window is closed. There are times, there are moments and you miss God and the moment may never come again. This is a solemn thing. This is a, and I know those who come from a Calvinist point of view rejoice in that.

That's true, they say. And those who come from a more Armenian, Wesleyan point of view, they resist that idea. I'm trying to find the balance. And I'm telling you, God is in charge. We're not in charge.

God is sovereign. We're not sovereign. We don't dictate the terms and we don't dictate the time. He dictates the terms and he dictates the times. And if he offers us terms and time and we decide we want to negotiate with him and alter the contract, he's not always amenable to that because he's God.

And that shows a lack of respect for his sovereignty. And that attitude will seek to exploit him in some future thing. And that is not what he's wanting. He's wanting a heart that's broken. He's wanting a heart that trusts him.

He wants a heart that's dependent upon him. He wants a heart that's fully yielded to him. That's why I said, we can't miss our time. Who knows if we do this, maybe he will turn. Maybe he'll relent of the judgment that we deserve indeed.

It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of an offended God. And immediately here's what Joel does. He moves to consecration. And he again says, blow the trumpet in Zion. Send forth a prophetic call.

This is a veiled plea again, I say, to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit. Consecrate a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the people, sanctify the congregation, gather the children, gather the nursing babies.

Nobody is exempt. In fact, even in this moment, weddings themselves are canceled. And then he said, let the priest who ministered weep between the porch and the altar. This is the court of the priest that stood before the flat surfaced area before the altar.

It's the approach to the altar. So in this approach to the altar, deep into the court of the priest, let the priest, the pastors, the leaders weep. Let them cry out to God. And so leaders are to lead in prayer.

They're to lead in weeping. Here is open intercession. It's not intercession in the holy place. It's not intercession at the altar of incense. It's in front of the public altar in full view of the people.