Jan. 1, 2017 Plagues Released and Recalled by Pastor Josh Sheldon

Well, before I begin, just to settle my mind, not my spirit,

I need a little participation from you. When I ask this question, all you're going to have to do is raise your hand.

Look down at your bulletin and raise your hand. Look at the green bulletin, please, and tell me how many of your bulletins have a picture of the locusts in Joel on the front?

A few. How many of you have, rather, the picture of our church, that old schematic kind of picture of our church on theirs?

Okay, so in my morning announcement, and I said I got the bulletin all wrong, and your reading schedule's wrong, if you have a picture of Joel, and if on the inside you had, oh, four thousand tongues is the first hymn, then

I am the only one who ended up with last week's bulletin, and I thought you all had the same bulletin

I had. I'm totally confused. I have no idea how that happened, but as often does happen,

I'm the one who's out of kilter, and you all are correct. Now, if you're in Sunday school this morning, and you listen to Conley teach about Congregationalism and how the pastor, elder, or pastor's elders don't have final ham -fisted authority over everything, you've had a good example of why

God just set it up that way, because I can really mess some things up. The Lord willing, not the gospel, but if your bulletin says, has

Joel and the picture of locusts on it, and the inside begins with, oh, four thousand tongues, and the scripture reading matches what

Jesus so accurately did, which was I asked him to read, then you all are in good shape, and pray for me as I try to make sense out of the passage before us, even with such an inauspicious beginning.

But it is January 1st, 2017. We've had an auspicious beginning to this year with the news of little

Deacon Malick being born, and it does give us opportunity, doesn't it, to think about just the ebb and the flow of life, and God's providence, and what he gives us to consider our ways, and consider him.

A good way to begin a year is to reflect on the old, of course, and to look ahead to the new.

And this is nothing new, that's no innovation, I'm not breaking into new ground here, I mean, for eons people have looked upon the first day of the year,

January 1st, and used that as a day, a marker, because you can always remember on the new year, on January 1st,

I looked back and I saw these things that I want to correct, and so on January 1, this marker, this line in the sand that I can remember easily,

I set myself to make such and such a correction. So it appears to us that unless the

Lord should return, but if the Lord should continue to carry in his return, and not calls to himself, we have ahead of us 2017, and I would suggest that January 1st, 2017 is a good day to look back on 2016, and from that review, anticipate perhaps what we might want to do in 2017.

So this morning it seems good to me to do just this, I don't want to ramble through a bunch of common resolutions,

I resolve to quit this bad habit or begin this new one or whatever the case is, you can do that yourself.

What I want us to do this morning, on this New Year's Day, is as we are so committed doing in this place, is to consider

Scripture, and use Scripture as the guide to consider where we are and how we got here, and if needful, what to do about it.

I'm not going to give a message about how to get your savings plan back in order or anything like that, and I want us to set our attention on the book of Joel, the last

Scripture that Jesus read to you. Now that reading began with this invasion brought against God's people, these plagues of locusts that kept coming and coming and coming, and left nothing but devastation, starvation really, in an agrarian culture in its path.

And then the eight verses towards the end spoke about how the effects of those plagues were reversed.

And so with that minor and very quick introduction to this book, the message this morning is simply this, whatever we have done to incite

God to send locusts against us, and I would suggest we look back at 2016, and to see what plagues have been brought against us, what plagues we have really brought against ourselves.

Whatever we've done to incite those locusts, God stands ready to restore those who by repentance, by faith, return to Him.

And so this day, January 1st, 2017, with the book of Joel as a guide for us, though it's not really a book about New Year's Day or anything like that, but I think it is a good jumping off point for us, let's consider these locusts, how they come, who's responsible for them, what we can do about them, and what that means to us for the year to come.

Again, the year to come, not presuming that we'll be here tomorrow or next month or for another

New Year's Day, and see 2018 come around. We don't know what tomorrow will bring. We do not presume a bond tomorrow, but we do know that so far, up to today, the

Lord has indeed tarried. Now there's some groundwork in the book of Joel for us to lay down, and the first question we really need to ask here, because it's so important in the context and how we interpret, and in this case even apply any passage of scripture, much less a book, the first question is, when was this prophecy made?

And by prophecy I mean the whole book of Joel. When did Joel minister? When did he preach? And theories range all over the place, because there are no clear markers in the book.

Hendrickson and many others say it was after the exile, after the exile to Babylon, and that's an argument from silence.

No king is named, and because there's no king named, they say, well, that's after all the but no

Davidic king sitting on the throne who could be named, say, because of that lack of a named king, therefore it must have been after the exile.

Others say it was after their return from Babylon, but before the temple was rebuilt, mainly because the temple's not mentioned, which is, some of Joel's emphases would require the temple then to be mentioned, and still others argue that it was before all of that, that it was before that disaster when

Babylon came. We just don't know. And it is a valid question for us to ask in any prophetic book, because the historical context helps us to understand the book, to interpret the book, and more importantly, to apply it correctly.

With Joel, we just don't know. There are no clear markers. There's no historical references to things that we can say, yes, that was the earthquake, that was when that king passed away, that was when this king was installed, or this invasion occurred.

Now Douglas Stewart rescues us from all this. Let me quote to you what he says. Ultimately, however, any dating of the book of Joel can only be inferential and speculative.

There is reason to think that the book is pre -exilic, but such a dating is not essential to the appreciation of the book's message.

Here is a book that in its first half describes present distresses, and in its second half describes future deliverance.

Present distress and future deliverance. He goes on, since it is possible to appreciate the general character of both the distress and the deliverance, the impact of the book remains unabated, even when the precise date of the invasion or Joel's era cannot be determined.

And so as interesting as the dating would be and as important as the historical context is when we can determine it, what's our message in terms of that?

We're not going to worry about it this morning. And because we don't know exactly when Joel was written and what was going on historically, what the context of all that was, who was invading, who was leaving, where was the victory, we don't know any of that.

But that lack of certainty does give us a certain latitude in how we apply the book, which is why it's your

New Year's message this morning. There's another question, and after this we will look at the text and find our

New Year's message in it, and that question is whether the locusts were real or figurative.

Were they real or figurative? If they were real, if there was actual plagues of locusts that came, which was a fairly common event, but this won't be particularly cataclysmic the way it's described.

But if it was real, then Joel is pointing to this actual thing that really happened and he's using it as a springboard to teach a deeper spiritual truth.

Now this is very much like what Jesus did when, remember when the disciples told him how Herod had mixed the blood of the worshippers with the sacrifice?

That was something that actually happened, a real event. And Jesus used that as a springboard for a deeper spiritual truth.

He answered them, do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered in this way?

No I tell you, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. My only point here is that it's not uncommon then for an actual historical event, something that really occurred that the people who are being preached to or are hearing this could remember, to use that event to turn their minds, their spirits to a deeper truth.

Something that God would have them to learn from the disaster. So in favor of the locusts being purely metaphorical and not related to anything that actually happened is the way their carnage is reversed.

But whether real or purely metaphorical, in either case, the whole idea of the locust swarms would strike fear into the heart of a culture that's so much dependent upon its agrarian basis.

So here's how I see this. I think there had been actual swarms of locusts. I think Joel is pointing to something that occurred that the people who heard him would remember and their crops were completely devastated.

It was huge. It was memorable. It was like the Dust Bowl in the United States in the 1930s, something like that.

And like any disaster, it's completely in God's hands. We worship a sovereign

God and actual plagues of locusts, not just bad luck, not just a random event that just happened to be very negative for them, but in the hands of a sovereign and powerful and loving

God. Here's how I see it. Each grasshopper, think of a swarm of locusts.

Locusts are really just grasshoppers gone mad. This huge swarm after swarm after swarm.

You can't count them. Each one of those insects is doing what

God decreed that each one would do. Each head of wheat that it consumed was the one that our

Lord intended. Just as the fish that Peter pulled out of the water was the one that Jesus intended that would have the piece of money in its mouth to pay the tax.

We worship a sovereign God. There is no bad luck. There is no random chance and it just happened to be negative in your case.

We serve a God who is completely sovereign and is all -powerful and is all -knowing.

Joel reminds them of the swarm of locusts and then he warns them of worse to come should they fail.

What? Should they fail to protect themselves against locusts? No. Should they fail to repent?

Much like Jesus. When the disciples said to him about this terrible thing

Herod had done, do you think there were worse sinners? No, there's a deeper spiritual truth you need to understand here. Unless you likewise repent, you will also perish.

Now here's how this helped us today in this place. We can look back at 2016 and we can ask ourselves where locusts after locusts, literal actual things that have happened, events in our life and what brought it on.

Has it been good? Has it been bad? How did that happen and what do we do about it? If you look at verse 1 in chapter 5, it says,

I don't think you have to be an actual rolling down drunkard to fit this. Wine here might just stand for people who are nonchalant, just carrying on as usual, not thinking about God and how

God relates to the things that have been happening to them. Drinkers of wine. It sounds to me like they're marrying and giving in marriage to use

Jesus' words. They're enjoying a nice glass of wine. They're just being casual about things. They're not thinking in terms of the scripture, in terms of God.

And what Joel says here is no, don't do this. It's not a day for business as usual. And when we've had these plagues upon us, when these things have occurred to us, if we look back at the year just gone by, it's not just to sit down nonchalantly and see what happens next.

No, we have to consider. We have to review. We have to ask ourselves, why did the locust plague come in the first place?

Why did this thing happen to me? And if we serve a sovereign God, the answer is with Him.

What's happening here, people just not considering things in terms of the

Lord Almighty, the Lord who gave us His word. They're carrying on as they always have, and they're just sort of waiting for the bad stuff to pass away and the good times to return.

Now they remind me here of the people in Haggai's day. You don't have to turn there, but very quickly they had just returned from exile.

They were determined to rebuild the temple, and nothing was going right. They're surrounded by enemies.

The crops are failing. They're poverty stricken. There was drought. They had no chance. Nothing was looking hopeful for them.

Everything was failing. Now all this is easily enough explained in the literal sense.

Why is there drought? Can we scientifically explain drought? I don't remember which of those ocean currents brings rain.

Is it La Nina or El Nino? I don't remember which one, but we could look at the ocean currents and say, okay, there's the reason the moisture is not going up in the clouds or the moisture that is in the clouds is not coming down to us.

We can explain it scientifically, as we can explain poor crops and all these other things.

What did the people do in Haggai's days? They just worked harder. I think that's much like what was happening with Joel.

They just worked harder. They planted more. They waited for rain. Or, again in Haggai's day, they just gave up, which is where Haggai found them.

But listen to God's explanation. In Haggai chapter 1 verses 9 through 11, and this applies to us today, as we make scientific explanations for why we're not getting enough rain or why we're getting too much rain, as we understand tsunamis being continental plates shifting or whatever the case may be, as we look at our lives and say, this relationship is not working the way it should or many other things.

This is how Haggai explains it to them. Well, stop for a second and remember that we have meteorologists,

I'm sure some of them are brilliant, who can tell us how the ocean currents are holding back the moisture going up to the clouds and all that other stuff

I just explained a moment ago, and I'm not going to go into the science of meteorology because I'm not qualified to.

But I can tell you that God says here in Haggai, as He says in Joel, and we'll come back to Joel in a moment,

I withheld the rain. I withheld the dew falling on your crops.

Therefore the heavens above you withheld the dew and the earth has withheld its produce. And I have called for drought on the land and the hills, on the grain, the new wine, the oil, and what the ground brings forth, a man and beast and all their labors.

Is it el niño, la niña? Is it continental shelves shifting against themselves in a literal sense?

Yes, we could attribute it to those things. But what causes that? God says,

I withheld. I brought the drought. You see, you'll never fix the problem if you don't figure out the cause.

You know, I had all kinds of good examples for you this morning of misdiagnosis, especially working on cars.

You know, some people analyze what's wrong with their car by replacing parts. One problem with that is once you put the part in, you can't return it.

And if you diagnose the problem just by replacing things, it gets very expensive, and usually you don't find out what the problem is.

That's why you should pay a mechanic, because they can figure it out pretty quickly. But I have a better example of that, actually.

My brother -in -law, he's a retired electronic tech. He was here looking at the air conditioning system, trying to figure out why we couldn't get it to warm up in the back rooms there.

And we started to think that maybe it was the equipment out there, which is very expensive. Finally, he pulled out this box that had a couple of fuses in it, told me to take it home, use my little tester, see if it has continuity, and it didn't.

Twenty bucks later, we got two new fuses, popped them in, now we've got heat back there. We could have done all kinds of things, because we didn't know what the problem was.

You can't fix the problem unless you get a right diagnosis of it. What's the cause? What's behind the things that are happening?

For us as Christians, as we look at the events in our lives, and here

I mean particularly the things that have been a little bit more rugged to get through, the things that have been a little bit harder to experience, the things that just haven't gone the way we had hoped they would go.

For us as Christians, we only really have one avenue of inquiry, and it's not continental shelves shifting against each other.

It's not La Nina or El Nino or all these things. It's the spiritual realm.

We as Christians don't look at things with the natural eye, but with the eye of faith, because we know that there's a

God who's behind everything that happens. I believe as R .C. Sproul says, show me a molecule that is not under God's direct control right now, no matter how far away it is, and I've lost my sovereign

God. He is that pervasive in His will. 1

Corinthians 2 .13 tells us, we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the

Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. And if we are spiritual, if by rebirth and regeneration of the

Holy Spirit, if by faith in Jesus Christ, repentance towards God because of faith in Jesus, we are spiritual beings, we have been reborn, we have been made new.

Paul says, behold, I make all things new, meaning the Spirit within us, recreated.

If we are spiritual beings, then everything ultimately has a spiritual dimension.

It must have. 2 Corinthians 10 .4 says, the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but have divine power to destroy strongholds.

See, it's a spiritual struggle we're in. And if we look back on 2016, and the things that we want to correct,

I mean especially the things where we have fallen short of the glory of God, where the particular,

I always pick on relationships, where relationships have not gone the way we want, the way we thought they would.

What do we do about it? Do we just try harder? Do we just submit more to our husband?

Do we just love our wives better? Well, we do do those things. But we must look first in the spiritual realm of things.

The physical explanation is comforting. If we can just find the reason what

I did wrong, I just need a little more discipline. If I don't do this again, then she or he won't be angry and we'll have a smoother relationship.

If we just look at it that way, I think we missed the point. I think we missed the power that is given to us by God and the rule of the scripture.

The physical explanation, the natural explanation is comforting because it carries with it no moral accountability.

The other's a little tougher. We as God's people know that the ultimate reality is not these things that are so easily fixed, but it is

God and his spirit. And so understanding we're spiritual beings and we must look at things spiritually and we're looking for the truth that God is trying to teach us.

Let's go back to the locusts a moment, to Joel's plagues. The locusts really happened.

I think there were actual plagues that Joel is pointing to. So what do we do when we have these locust plagues that come upon us?

And in this case, we're applying it in the metaphorical sense. What do we do? What should we do? Well, one response might be to pray to God to fix things.

Just fix it. Just make it easier. Just make it better. And in one sense, you know, there might not be something wrong with such a prayer.

We serve a great and loving God who can fix things. A God who made the axe head float, if you recall from Kings.

But think about it a moment. If God simply intervened and corrected the messes we get into, some of them because of our own stubbornness, as we insist on doing things our own way, other dilemmas that are not of our making, economy or companies failing or moving, sickness from cancer or heart disease.

But if God just fixed it, where would we be?

Well, we'd have a wonderful God who we could tell our friends about. We could say, hey, are you having financial woes? So was

I. But you know what Jesus did for me? Why, he put the money right back on my account. Poof, and there it was.

Now I can afford a Rolex for my wife and all three of my kids. Believe in him and he'll fix you right up.

Often it is relationships, and this is usually when I talk to people about these things we want to correct.

This is really what it comes down to. Husbands refuse to love, wives can't stand to submit, children won't obey.

We pray to God and what do we ask? Too often what we want is for God to fix that other person.

Oh God, make him more this or make her less that or make my kids better at whatever it is.

We can almost ask, why not just have a fairy godmother for a God? Just open up somebody's head, open up their cranium, pour in what we want, close it back up, and there we go.

What's missing? Well, that's just not how God works, is first of all. Nowhere in the Bible do we find him just making things right for people.

Understand what I'm saying here. What I'm not saying is that God doesn't intervene and set us on a better path, but brethren, when he does so, he does it in a way that is for our good and it's usually not for our good just to fix things, just to make it better, just to take away the consequences for our bad decisions.

He does it in a way that's for our good. He shows us where we went wrong. In a word, he looks to us to understand where we went wrong and to repent and to find in him a newly invigorated determination to follow his ways according to his word in his scripture.

Now this doesn't mean that we repent in order that the money we fritted away might return like the oil in Elijah's miracle.

We repent because God commands it and if it pleases him to make up for what we lost, he'll do it.

If it doesn't, so be it, but it's for our good and this is key.

What he does, what he doesn't do, he is directly working for our good.

That's what Romans 8 .29 is all about. Romans 8, excuse me, 8 .28,

8 .29 in Romans says his goal there, what good is he working in us is to bring us into the image of his son

Jesus. And this often, if not usually, means that we need to have forced into our view where we faltered because there's an understanding where we went wrong and how we brought the locusts upon us and repenting of that and asking

God to mold us more into that image by repentance and prayer and a renewed commitment to his word.

This is how he brings us into the image of his son. Back to the locusts.

They weren't just random chance. It wasn't bad luck. God, you see, it was

God who sent them. Now some people might be more happy to say God didn't hold them back.

He could have stopped them, but he didn't. I prefer that God sent them. Now if you prefer that God didn't hold them back, the message this morning is the same and we can meet later and I'll instruct you in a better way of understanding

God's sovereignty over every one of those insects. But today is the beginning of the new year.

It's a good time to look back. Let's identify our locusts. Let's think about this. I've already spoken of some of the woes that we experience whether we're passive victims or active participants in bringing them on.

Did you have some of them back in 2016? I mean, remember way back about 12 hours ago it was last year.

Think about the 12 months prior to that. Were there locusts? Were you plague ridden?

It doesn't have to be every month or every day or anything like that. I'm just asking us to think back on that year just passed and ask ourselves how things went.

And again, I don't mean that stock market and how that affected your 401k or anything like that. I'm speaking of coming into the image of Jesus Christ.

I'm speaking of Romans 8 .28 and 8 .29. God's will for us to be conformed to his son

Jesus. How did we do? What were the locust plagues that we brought on that kept us from that?

That kept us distracted from that goal? I mean, in order to learn anything of any value we need to analyze things correctly.

Like I said, if we don't diagnose the problem we can't get to the solution. And to get there we must first go to God.

Not as a problem solver but as the sovereign lord of the universe. We need to analyze our condition, the things that have happened, the things that we want to correct against what he says, what he's given us in his scripture.

It becomes very important then that we look at where we're at and we take it to the word of God.

This is very much what happened with the two disciples that Jesus met after his resurrection. And they're on the road back to Emmaus.

Do you remember that? And they're talking to him but they didn't recognize him. They didn't know who he was.

And he says, what manner of conversation are you having among yourselves? And they said, he's the only one in Jerusalem. Did you just show up and you don't know what's happened here?

And they go on to explain to him about Jesus. How he was mighty in word and deed.

We thought he might be the one, the prophet that God was going to send. We thought he might be the Messiah but he got crucified.

Now he's dead. And they were hopeless. Jesus says, oh foolish ones and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken.

And beginning with Moses and all the prophets he interpreted them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.

What do we learn from this? What do we learn from this? From Joel. From Haggai if we went that far forward in terms of ourselves looking back on last year.

It's simply this. God's word is the explanation for our circumstance.

God's word and the sovereign God the sovereign authority of God that keeps us constrained by the parameters he sets in his word.

That's the explanation for our circumstance. Whether it's hard or easy it's God that gives us the answer.

It is God who makes it hard or easy. And it is his word that explains it.

Those two disciples when they understood what the scriptures had to say they went from sorrow to joy. Why?

Because they didn't understand things. They weren't looking to the right place to analyze their condition or their situation or the things that had happened.

They were just looking on the surface. And what does Jesus say? Can I paraphrase it to say how foolish it is of you to look only to what you see and not look back in the scriptures which

God has given you which would explain it to you fully and then you would understand not sorrow but joy.

Joy, why? Because the Lord is resurrected and the prophets have been speaking of that for centuries. We need to look to God for the answers.

We need to first understand that these things come about because we are spiritual beings under the care of a loving

God. And we need to ask him for the answers. And he will by his spirit drive us to the word.

We're not to be simply cursory readers of the word and close the book and forget all about it as James warns us but doers of the word.

The answer it gives might be hard. The truth of the matter usually hits us where it hurts us the most.

When we read the scripture what is the first thing that usually has to get broken down in order to correct that plague of locusts that we experienced?

Well usually I've found in my experience and this is only experience is pride.

It's sheer unabated pride. We just don't like to admit when we're wrong.

If you doubt that just flip through your Bible and see how often God has a prophet telling people where they've erred.

And over and over the same God to the same people who commit the same sins. Flip through the book of Numbers or flip through the book of Judges or 1st and 2nd

Kings or the seven letters to the churches in Revelation. And what is it that keeps man in his opposition to God?

And constantly looking to these bad providences that keep happening and never analyzing them quite correctly.

It's pride. I don't want to admit I'm wrong. I want to do things my way.

And if I go back to relationships and I know I pick on those a lot. Well it's this other person because I have to be right.

I will not admit that I was wrong about anything. And I think the more stubborn we get the more to use the

Old Testament metaphor the more our forehead gets like that piece of flint and things just bounce off of it.

And God starts sending harder and harder providences. Chastisement not final judgment if you're in Jesus Christ by repentance for your sins.

Chastisement. Teaching. But they can be very hard. And we need to learn hard lessons.

But when the lesson is learned if we do submit to it because God opposes the proud doesn't

He? He gives grace to the humble. And what I'm speaking of here is repentance which requires humility of spirit.

When the lesson is learned then there can be joy. Because then God will not keep sending these things because the lesson has been learned.

He has shown you the way. And you've acknowledged that. James 1 .12

said Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life which

God has promised to those who love him. You see if you're thinking back on 2016 as I've asked so many times and you think about the hard things that you've had to deal with I can tell you from the scriptures with that authority the locusts were sent to you for a good purpose.

A good purpose. They came to stop us in our tracks to force us to examine ourselves to see whose way we're really following.

To see whether our confidence is in ourselves or in God. You know if the locusts simply came or if you made a mistake in planning or in executing your plans or accomplishing things then all that's needed is to regroup to review what went wrong to make the necessary changes then get on with things.

And all this might be appropriate but only so long as the starting point is God. Why did

God send this to me? What is God doing? What good is he doing in me?

Through this difficult time that I know that he sent just as he sent each insect against each head of wheat in Joel's time.

Usually the answer actually is simple. Not simple to do but simple to find. Yet even now declares the

Lord return to me with all your heart with fasting with weeping and with mourning and rend your hearts and not your garment.

I mean think about it you've gone through your Bible you've found out what went wrong and now what do you do? Do you jump in and fix things?

Do you make up a checklist that okay Monday I'm gonna start here and Tuesday I'm gonna get these other things done and it's just gonna get better?

No that's not what to do. Don't just start fixing things. Jumping in with our own wisdom is usually what causes these messes in the first place.

Return. He says return to me with all your heart. Return is the Hebrew word

Shub. Shub. It means to turn around. It means to repent. Just like the

Greek for the same word it means a change of mind. Your direction becomes 180 degrees different from what you were doing.

A complete about face. So what's the message? It's return to a God who never left.

We might abandon him willfully at times. Other times we get in such a hurry we forget to seek him before we act.

But it is we who make the distance. Because God says if you're in Christ I will never leave you or forsake you.

Jesus says there's none who can snatch you out of his father's hands. Joel says return with all your heart.

Don't return to God just to get things running smoothly again. Repent so that you might be restored back to a full and vital relationship with him.

Repent because this not replenishing whatever was lost is what he commands and that's what pleases him.

All heaven rejoices when a single sinner repents. That's what Jesus says. Now that's alluding of course to salvation to repenting unto salvation.

But can it not apply in some sense to God's pleasure when we, we who have repented of our sin and found forgiveness in Jesus Christ when we repent.

Is that not still pleasing to God? Is this not why so often the call is to God's people.

To you who have been forgiven of your sins. And the call is still to repent. To repent.

Return to the Lord says Joel. He goes on. For he is gracious and merciful slow to anger and abounding in his steadfast love and he relents over disaster.

Alludes of course to God's self -revelation to Moses when he passed him by while Moses was protected in the cleft of the rock.

Abounding in mercy. Forgiving iniquity. It's his goodness that sends the locust to teach us where we've slipped.

And there he stands merciful with the open arms of the prodigal's father ready to welcome the contrite son who had finally returned to his senses.

He'd come to his right mind and there's God who was never so very distant as he might have thought.

And while I'm alluding to that it might be worth taking a look at the prodigal son. Matter of fact why don't you turn there.

Luke chapter 15 and verse 19. It's very important when

Joel with so many of the prophets with Jesus Christ himself saying return to me and I will return to you.

Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. And here we have the prodigal son where he representing all of us who have wandered away from God and the father in the parable representing of course

God. And you remember that he had rehearsed for himself a long speech.

He was going to tell his father I've sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be made your son.

Make me as one of your hired servants. But when he actually recites the speech if you look at that in 1519 do you see what's missing?

Look down at that for a moment. It's that last phrase. The father intervenes and wouldn't let him say that last part.

Make me as one of your hired servants. The rest of the speech is okay he did sin and God's going to hear us when we repent of our sin.

I'm not worthy to be called your son and God's going to let us say that because only Jesus is worthy to be called his son and it's only because of Jesus and faith in him that we come to God in the first place as his sons and daughters but because of Christ.

But then he says make me as one of your hired servants and the father would not hear that because the status cannot change.

You are my son. You're not a hired servant. They put the ring they put the robe on him.

The picture of what God does with us when we come to his son. We come by faith. We come by faith to him.

Joel attaches a promise to heart -based heart -moved repentance to those who look upon their personal swarms of locusts that seem to have left nothing behind and there's that promise and it's there in Joel 2 .25.

I apologize for having you flip around so much but go back to Joel now. Go to Joel 2 .25

I find it one of the most wonderful promises in the entire Bible. What does he say?

After the call to repentance even now declares the Lord return to me with all your heart. Return to the

Lord your God. He is gracious and merciful. Blow the trumpet in Zion. All those things that Jesus read to you a moment ago which is what?

It's saying let's have a revival. Let's get together and fall down before God in repentance for our sins and when

God sees this when God hears the cry of his people 1 John 1 .9

we confess our sins. He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all our unrighteousness.

When he hears repentance what is his answer? Joel 2 .25

I will restore to you the years that the swarming locusts have eaten the hopper, the destroyer and the cutter my great army which

I sent among you. You see God doesn't drive us into the ground. He might allow us to wallow in our self -made mire but then it is his joy to pull us out and when he does our restoration to him is full and complete as the prodigal.

He puts the signet ring on our finger. He puts the royal robe over our shoulders. We may not get everything we wasted restored to us the prodigal didn't but we have a relationship with God fully restored.

Nothing left out. He holds no grudges. What he forgives is done with removed as far as east is from the west so far as he removed our sins from us.

First John 1 .9 I cited a moment ago wonderful promise. He cleanses us of all unrighteousness when he hears repentance.

When we confess our sins when we go to him when we admit that the locusts that ate away at us perhaps in the year that just passed are upon us because we didn't follow his ways.

Repent. The promise everywhere in the Bible I think most clearly in Joel God returns to those who do so and he restores.

I will restore to you the years of the swarming locusts have eaten. Our standing has never changed with him that was secured by Christ Jesus.

It is our intimacy with God through faith in his son by the working of his spirit that is refreshed and put back in its rightful place.

Could be that what we've wasted in this world by our own error is gone. Maybe not.

It's up to God. This though is certain. James 4 .8 Draw near to God he will draw near to you.

Cleanse your hearts you sinners and purify your hearts you double minded. The call to repentance.

Our confession puts it this way. It's a bit of a lengthy quote but from the 1689.

True believers may have their assurance of their salvation in divers ways shaken diminished and intermitted as by negligence in the preserving of it.

By falling into some special sin which wounds the conscience and grieves the spirit. By some sudden or vehement temptation.

By God's withdrawing the light of his countenance and suffering even such as fear him to walk in darkness and to have no light.

Yet are they never destitute of the seed of God and life of faith. That love of Christ and the brethren that sincerity of heart and conscience of duty out of which by the operation of the spirit this assurance may be in due time revived.

Revived how? It's the call to repentance. It's the call to look back and admit that it is we who brought the locusts on.

It's God who sent them each one of them whatever came upon us. To be revived by God's spirit.

By faithful repentance. And by the witch meaning repentance and that revival.

And by the witch in the meantime they are preserved from utter despair. So look back on 2016.

Has it been a tough year? Can you look to God's word and see why God let it be tough?

I don't mean passively let it to be tough. I should have said made it tough because there's a good and loving and caring

God who abounds in mercy and doesn't let us just stumble along in our own way but he sends the locusts for a reason that we might look back upon them and see where we have sinned against God by our error and repent.

So did we see locusts in 2016? Most of us have. Can I promise you they'll be gone in 2017?

I cannot. I can tell you that if you repent before God even you as a believer even you who have repented of your sin and have faith in Jesus Christ and his work on the cross even you need to repent and see your relationship with God restored by him.

If you have Jesus as your advocate through faith in him through repentance for God by rending your heart then by rending your heart before him perhaps the locusts will be sent away.

God will restore the waste that has been left behind perhaps not everything in the physical sense but we're speaking of your relationship with God.

God willing with others. And 2017 can be a year of renewed strength in the

Lord and vigor in following his ways. Amen. Heavenly Father thank you for your word.

Thank you Lord for the conviction that it gives us and for the constant call in all circumstances to look upon ourselves to look at ourselves accurately which means in accordance with your word and find their need for repentance.

And we thank you Father that you are gracious and merciful God who loves to hear from your children but especially when we have acknowledged our errors and that we have repented before you

Lord for having brought on the locusts which you sent for our good. I just pray

Father that we would all take to heart the words of the prophet and that we would in just the way he says come before you rend our hearts and not our garments and seek your forgiveness and know

God your complete restoration that you would restore all the years what we have wasted the locusts which you have sent and we ask in Jesus name