Bible In A Year - Joel

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To begin, I'd just like to read, and you don't have to turn there because we'll be turning to the book of Joel, but Psalm 113,
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Praise ye the Lord, praise all ye servants of the Lord, praise the name of the
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Lord. Blessed be the name of the Lord from this time forth and forevermore. In the verse
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I was just thinking about this morning, from the rising of the sun until the going down of the same, the
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Lord's name is to be praised. When the rising of the sun, verse 3, to the going down of the same, the
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Lord's name is to be praised. The idea is that the
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Lord our God is the object of our praise, but when do we praise him? All the time.
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All the time, because he's worthy to be praised, to be spoken well of, because when we think about it, we don't deserve any of the blessings, we don't deserve any of the goodness and the kindness and the mercy and the grace and the love of our
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God, but that's exactly how he acts towards us in a way that we are so blessed and so cared for.
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And not only did he save us, his people, but he continues to save us and to keep us.
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Let's pray. Our Father, we thank you, and we do praise you. And Lord, the sun has risen already, but even now after that has taken place and as the day goes forth and as we go through this day, we want your name to be praised.
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And we have gathered together in this place with our brothers and sisters in Christ for the express purpose of lifting up our souls and coming before you to worship you, to adore you, to give you the glory and honor that is due unto your name.
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And so we would come, Lord, before you asking in the name of Jesus Christ that you would bless us, your people.
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We need you. We pray that you would teach us. We ask that you would remember us as you have in the past.
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We thank you for your faithfulness. Thank you for the very word of God that has been so helpful for us.
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It has been that which by where we've been born of incorruptible seed.
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It is the means by which the gospel has come to us. And, Lord, by the ministry of the
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Holy Spirit, the quickening power of our God raising us from the dead and giving us new life in Jesus Christ, your son, all of us that sit in this room and that will gather in this place today can lift up our hearts and can lift up our souls unto our
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God and say we thank you and praise you. Lord, please be with us in this time as we study.
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I pray that this book of prophecy may just be able to come alive for us and have more meaning and just be a blessing to us.
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In Jesus' precious name, amen. We're going to continue on in the study of the books, and we're now in the book of Joel.
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So if you would turn there, this is, of course, after the
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Psalms and after Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Daniel and Hosea, and then we come to the book of Joel.
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Joel is probably the earliest of the writing prophets.
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The date of his book, I'm just going to say about 800 B .C. Not much known about Joel in that in verse 1, it says, the word of the
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Lord that came to Joel, the son of Pethul. That's all we know. His father's name is
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Pethul. His name is Joel. By the way that he wrote, some of the descriptive language in here, it gives a tone that it indicates that he probably was from around or had been around Jerusalem for a period of time.
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His writing, amongst all the writings of the minor prophets particularly, is very vivid.
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It's very strong. It's very colorful. And we get it when we read in the
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English and we just see the description, as we're going to get into, of what it is that Joel describes.
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We just see the words being so rich and vivid, and it really just describes in such a way that it gives us every indication that Joel saw with his own eyes the devastation that came upon Judah.
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Now, Judah is the southern tribe, and those that were the leading prophetic voices in the southern kingdom were
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Joel, Micah, and Zephaniah, and Joel, of course, being the first one who wrote.
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This, just by way of background, his name means Jehovah is God. Joel provided the scripture, if you remember, and we'll try to touch upon it, where at the day of Pentecost, when
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Peter preached that first sermon there, he referred back to and quoted from the book of Joel, saying that the things that were taking place at the birth of the church, at the time of Pentecost, when the
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Spirit of God was being poured out upon the people there, that what
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Joel had written of, in a measure, in a preview, not in its full fulfillment, not in its full completion, of what
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Joel was writing was taking place. I like that, and we must think about that and remember that.
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When we come to the New Testament and we see the writers there, the apostles, or we see
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Peter preaching in Acts 2, quoting from a verse, the
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New Testament, of course, sheds light upon that which is kind of hidden a bit in the
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Old Testament. It's in the Old Testament we see the truth is concealed, but in the New Testament it is more revealed.
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And what's interesting is you have the writers of the New Testament, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, looking back upon the
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Old Testament and they're interpreting it. They're letting us have an idea of what was being written back there under the direction of God.
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Now, the guy in the Old Testament, or the prophet in the Old Testament, sometimes we get this idea, and I know it can be semantics, it can be just how we're describing it, but the
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Old Testament prophets didn't actually predict anything in and of themselves.
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And I want to explain that just so that you say, wait a minute, I thought they were foretelling. Yes, they did. They foretold things that were happening.
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But we have an idea sometimes where people think that the prophets in and of themselves are just predicting what's taking place in the future.
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What's really taking place is that God has something to say to his people. And God gives that word, or God gives that oracle to the prophet.
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The prophet is not speaking of himself. He's speaking the word of the Lord. And what he's saying to the people of his day is a message that comes to them, the contemporary message comes to them, but it also has some future implication.
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But as he's speaking to them, he's not making it up himself. He's not coming in and of his own abilities or wisdom, being able to say those things.
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He's speaking directly to the people what God has given to him. And I kind of get it like this idea, maybe to bring together what it is that I'm trying to say.
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If you have a professor in a university and the professor puts his syllabus together of what he's going to teach throughout the whole year, he knows where he's going to start, he knows where he's going to finish, he knows all that he's going to do, all the material that he's going to cover.
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If he has an assistant and the assistant takes the syllabus and delivers it to the class, the assistant is not predicting what the professor is going to teach when he delivers that syllabus to the class.
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He's just delivering the message from the professors, knowing that the professor has determined what he's going to do ahead of time.
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And the prophet is like the professor's assistant. He is just taking the message from God because God already knows what he's going to do.
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God has decreed what he's going to do. He already has purposed and planned from the beginning of time what is going to unfold when it comes to history or his story,
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God's history. It's going to take place. And the prophet is just speaking what God has told him to speak, not predicting but just delivering the message, which does tell future things.
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It has a contemporary message for the people that are hearing it. It has an application, a present application, but it also has future implications and things are going to take place in the future.
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But, you know, many times the prophet did not know what that future implication would be or exactly when at times when it would be or how it would be fulfilled.
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There's no way Joel would know back 800 years B .C. that Peter would stand up at Pentecost and preach a message in saying what was going on there, which was wonderful, a demonstration of the power of God.
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Joel did not foresee the fulfillment that way. I mean, they could not back then. I mean, can you imagine some of the things where it talks about, you know, in this book even, where the skies darkened.
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You know, the sun and the moon are darkened. And we have this idea of what's going to take place at the end of time when time is no more and God will judge all of those, all of us will be judged before the
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Lord and it's ushering in eternity. And Joel is speaking of this. He doesn't know exactly what it is that he is saying, how it's going to be fulfilled, but all he knows is that he must deliver, he must be faithful to deliver the message at the time.
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And I only tried to bring that out and only say that because sometimes when we read these books, we don't even understand how it's all going to be fulfilled.
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We can go to the other scriptures, the scriptures that are written later, the other scriptures that shed light upon it, but what's really interesting is if you've ever read the
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New Testament, as you're reading the New Testament and you see the writers going back and quoting prophetic scripture and saying that as it was written, this was going to take place, it's just neat to see how the
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Lord uses the New Testament writer to interpret the Old Testament so that it brings on meaning. It's just pretty incredible to me to see that as the
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Word of God is intact, it's sure, it's settled, you can't change it, and that which is spoken in the
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Old Testament, when it is dealed with in the New Testament, there's just this continuity and there's just this flow and this unfolding of what
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God is going to do. Now, in the book of Joel, we have an account here,
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Southern Kingdom, Judah, 800 BC, and God has a message for Judah.
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Now, and he uses Joel and he uses an illustration that we see that begins right off as he begins to speak to the people.
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Notice, he says in verse 2, chapter 1 and verse 2, Hear this, you old men, and give ear, all ye inhabitants of the land.
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Hath this been in your days, or even in the days of your fathers? Tell your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation.
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That which the palmer wood hath left hath the locust eaten, and that which the locust hath left hath the canker worm eaten, and that which the canker worm hath left hath the caterpillar eaten.
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In your text, you might see other words for these other forms of these insects.
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They're cutting locusts, they're hopping locusts, they're destroying locusts, but these are insects that are going to come in and devastate
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Judah. In verse 5, Awake, you drunkards, and weep and howl, all you drinkers of wine, because of the new wine, for it is cut off from your mouth.
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For a nation is come up upon my land, strong and without number, whose teeth are like the teeth of a lion, and have the cheek teeth of a great lion.
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Now, we get an idea here, and it almost sounds like that what we're seeing here is that a nation is coming after.
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We got this army coming after Judah. You can almost get this idea of horses and maybe chariots and spears and swords, and the words that he's using here, almost using them in such a way to describe, using animal terms to describe this powerful nation coming after them.
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But it's just the opposite. This is a simile. This is where Joel is saying that,
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I mean, he speaks this for something for the future, but what is actually literally happening at the time, is
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God is sending his army after Judah because of their sin for, and devastation is coming about, but this is actually insects.
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It's literally this army of insects, and we'll see as we see the unfolding of the description.
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Notice verse 7. He hath laid my vine waste, and barked my fig tree.
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He hath made it clean bare, and cast it away, the branches thereof are made white. Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the husband of her youth.
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I mean, this is devastating. This is so bad that it's like a newlywed bride who has not had relations yet with her husband, and he has died.
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I mean, it is that devastating. It is that gripping, and it ought to be. It's serious. That's what's taking place.
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The meat offering and the drink offering, verse 9, is cut off from the house of the Lord. The priest, the
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Lord's ministers, mourn. The field is wasted. The land mourneth. For the corn is wasted.
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The new wine is dried up. The oil languishes. Notice as we go on,
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Daniel. Yes? I don't know, but I'll look it up if you'd like, but I haven't got it.
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I mean, there is, I mean, I don't know what its context is, so I don't want to speak to that, but the idea here is that there is, agriculturally, there is a devastation.
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There's a waste in the land, and no matter what it is, whether it is the wine that, it almost gives the idea to me that the grapes that would have made the wine have been devastated, and there's not going to be any new wine, which is the beginning, the non -fermented wine that would come out.
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It's the vines that are being devastated. The fields are being decimated.
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Chapter 2, I want to kind of get to the theme of this book because you'll notice on the sheet that up the top of the first sheet, the first page, beside the name of the book,
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Joel, you'll see the day of the Lord. Notice chapter 2, and in verse 1.
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Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and shout an alarm in my holy mountain, that all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the
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Lord cometh, for it is nigh at hand. A day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness, as the morning spread upon the mountains.
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A great people and a strong, that hath not been ever like, neither shall any more after it, even to the years of many generations.
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Notice as he vividly describes this destruction. A fire devoureth before them, and behind them a flame burneth.
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So like when these locusts are going through the land, it's almost as if there's this consuming fire going before them, and it's leaving this wake of devastation behind it.
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Notice the other description, which is kind of interesting here, because it lays credence to what God had done, and what
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Moses had described at the very first book of the Bible in Genesis. It says, the land is as the
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Garden of Eden before them. So before the locusts, it's like the Garden of Eden, but behind them a desolate wilderness.
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Yea, and nothing shall escape them. The land is being plucked clean, is being totally eaten up.
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The appearance of them is as the appearance of horses. I mean, you've probably, and I don't know if you've seen it,
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I know I've seen it on some of the National Geographic type films, where they do show this great cloud of locusts or grasshoppers coming over a land and just darkening the sky and just leveling everything in its path and leaving nothing behind it.
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And that's what's taking place here. And God is doing this, judging the land because of their sin.
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Yes, Peggy? It has happened. Yea, he has actually seen this.
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Yea, he has seen this. It's taken place. And he's saying, and what's interesting about this is, of course, he's a prophet and he's giving the contemporary message for the day, but what he's saying is, is this devastation that is happening now is nothing compared to the devastation that's going to take place in the day of the
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Lord. The day of the Lord is coming. It's a time, as you notice on the back of your sheet,
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I've got it under Key Doctrines and Joel, the day of the Lord, a general period of wrath and judgment from the
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Lord, a time when God intervenes in human affairs. He unveils his character and he deals with sin.
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And there's an ultimate day of the Lord when time is no more and everyone is going to be brought into account before the
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Lord and there'll be judgment and then after that, eternity is ushered in.
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And Joel is dealing with the current devastation and saying that this is horrible.
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I mean, it's like Eden before these locusts, but afterwards nothing will escape.
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The appearance of them is as the appearance of horses and as horsemen, verse 4, so shall they run.
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The noise of the chariots on the tops of the mountains shall they leap like the noise of a flame of fire.
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They devour the stubble as a strong people set in battle array. Before their face, the people shall be much pained.
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All faces shall gather blackness. Verse 7, they shall run like mighty men.
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They climb up the wall like men of war and they shall march everyone on his ways and they shall not break their ranks.
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Neither shall one thrust another, nor they shall walk everyone in his path. And when they fall upon the sword, they shall not be wounded.
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It's almost like you can't even, I mean, you can't, this is an insatiable appetite that they have and it's almost like they're indestructible and they're coming through and just laying waste the land.
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They run to and fro in the city. They're upon the wall. Climb up upon the houses. Enter into the windows like a thief.
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The earth shall quake before them. The heavens shall tremble. The sun and the moon shall be dark and the stars shall withdraw from their shining.
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And what Joel is saying is here is that this disaster, this national, agricultural, and of course economic disaster which came on the heels of a drought already that was in Judah, what this is is an illustration of God's judgment, a severe judgment on the sin of Judah.
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And what it is is though this is a severe judgment. What's taking place here is a prophetic look to the future that at the day of the
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Lord, it will be far more devastating. The day of the Lord, instead of it being locusts, one day it will be real men, real horses, and real chariots, and real enemy coming after the people of God.
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But in that day, God is going to judge his enemies and he's going to bless his people.
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Now, Joel did not mention in here what the particular sin is like some of the other prophets did.
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The only mention that I saw, and I never saw this in any of the commentaries, but maybe just because it was a natural part of life within any nation, but in 1 .5,
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he talks about those that were drunkards, but that's the only sin that I see mentioned here. But whatever the sin was, and if it was anything like what is spoken of in any of the other prophetic writings as far as idolatry, the people's hearts going away from the
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Lord, disobeying God, that has consequences, and the judgment comes upon the land, yet it doesn't end there.
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And isn't it great, and isn't it wonderful, that here we have this pronouncement of judgment, here we have the judgment taking place for them, and in the future, the day of the
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Lord coming. And notice, just for those of you that want to see this, in 1 .15,
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he speaks of the day of the Lord. 2 .1, the day of the Lord. In 2 .11,
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and I think it's in 3 .14, are mentions. This is a theme that runs throughout this book, this idea of this great judgment that's going to come.
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But it doesn't, but the message, here we have the devastation, here we have the just laying waste of the land, and the question comes in verse 11, and the
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Lord shall utter, this is 2 .11, and the Lord shall utter his voice before his army. Notice, these locusts weren't just a natural phenomenon, it just wasn't a chance, it just wasn't what was taking place.
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This is an army directed by God. An army of insects, yes, but an army,
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I mean, can God take insects, created beings, and use them for his purposes?
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Somebody give me an idea in the Old Testament where God did that. Say again? Frogs. Frogs with Pharaoh, one of the plagues.
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You know, it's always interesting, that to me, when I look back upon that, is Moses goes to Pharaoh and says, when do you want the frogs removed?
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And he says, tomorrow. You know, the next day. I heard somebody preach a message once, one more night with the frogs.
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And really, what he was saying in that message was, one more night, one more day, just toying and playing with sin, just not obeying
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God, just refusing and rebelling against God, loving sin, and we'll just let it go.
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How are we supposed to deal with sin? When do we deal with sin? Immediately, we're to deal with it.
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And, yes, frogs, how about something else? I mean, all the plagues, right? We go there.
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In the, with the, does anybody remember if there was locusts? I can't remember off the top.
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There might have been. Yeah. Quite often. Quite often, locusts.
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Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I've seen like on those films, they're just total waste.
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I mean, not even, it's almost like there's not even any stubble. I mean, everything is just gone. And, of course, the land is in a bad way for a couple of years, at least two years to recover from something like that.
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It's an economic fallout. I mean, and, of course, there's no food.
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And the idea, of course, is God is judging sin. And is sin something to be toyed with or taken lightly before God?
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No, when God deals in this way, he speaks through the prophet. This is what takes place.
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And, of course, you know, I know I'm kind of getting ahead of myself, but God had said that a flood would come because of sin.
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God looked down upon the wickedness of man. He saw the imaginations of the thought of his heart was only evil continually, and the flood came to judge sin.
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Sodom and Gomorrah, God said, the fire is going to fall. Abraham pleading for Lot, for those in the city.
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And God dealt with the sin, the gross and heinous sin of that city with fire and brimstone and wiped it out.
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I mean, we see that in the enemies of God, the Assyrians. And one day the angel comes, 185 ,000 are wiped out.
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It's a serious thing, and it's something that as we look at it, we think, well, yeah,
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Brother Dave, all those things that you said are things that are in the past. What did God say, and how did
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God say he will judge this earth one day with? What is going to take place? Fire.
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This earth and everything created is going to be melted with a fervent heat. The fire of God is going to fall upon this creation as we know it, and this earth will be no more, and it will take place.
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That judgment will come. It is going to happen. And some of these things that Joel writes about, like I said, he doesn't know what's going to take place in the future, in that day of the
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Lord, the day of the Lord. But nonetheless he speaks to it, and he must tell what
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God had said in his current illustration of this devastating locusts that are going through the land.
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You can just hear it. I mean, you know, I've seen it on those films, and you can just hear on the films that I've watched with the locusts coming through.
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It's almost like an airplane. I mean, it's like a huge just, you know, drone of them going forward.
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And he says here that it is like that. It's a great noise, and the earth trembles, and it's so much so that the sun and the moon will be dark, and the stars withdraw from shining.
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And here's the question, 2 .11, and the Lord shall utter his voice before his army, and that's kind of where I kind of went off on a tangent.
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We're now back in. For his camp is very great, for he is strong that executeth his word.
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For the day of the Lord is great and very terrible, and who can abide it? That's the question.
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How can we stand when God unleashes the sword of his wrath?
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How is it that we're going to be able to stand? Who can stand before what God is going to do?
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And you know what's so neat? It just doesn't end there and kind of go off into some other thing. The question is answered.
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And it's just so amazing to me, and I'm going to try to spend some time here because I just think it's so important.
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But maybe before I deal with that, let me just deal with, in case
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I don't get there, if you would take and just hold your place here. Well, I can't really do that because I haven't.
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Let me do it the other way, and then I'll see if I get there. I hope I do. I'm sorry. Verse 12, Therefore, all so now, or even so now, saith the
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Lord, Turn ye even to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning.
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Have we heard this type of language before? God saying he's going to judge, God saying what's going to take place, or the judgment taking place before them, and what does
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God say? That's it. All over. Wipe them out. No more. Now, the
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Lord is, as we're going to see, notice the wording, rend your heart and not your garments, verse 13, and turn unto the
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Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil.
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Have you ever heard anybody say the God of the Old Testament is different than the God of the New Testament?
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Have you ever heard anybody teach that? They say the God of the Old Testament, I mean, he's an ogre.
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I mean, he just rains fire and brimstone down upon people, doesn't care about people, there's no mercy, there's no kindness, there's no grace, and he's just killing people left and right, women and children, and I'm not going to follow a
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God like that. I mean, but I like the God of the New Testament. I like the Jesus of the New Testament's love and happiness and peace and joy, and he's not going to break the bruised reed or the smoking flax,
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I mean, he's just not going to put it out. I mean, I'll go there, but not the God of the Old Testament. What does this say here before us?
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It describes God, and he's giving them an opportunity for this devastation, or at least to be delivered from this, and even for the future, for all those who would hear the prophetic word of Joel, that God is a
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God who is gracious. God is a God who is merciful. I mean, he's gracious in that this is just expressing his free love.
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He's merciful in that he's got a tender, the tender yearning of God's love to have pity upon the suffering of people.
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God looks down upon suffering sinners, and he's going to do something about it.
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He will act upon their behalf, and he will save, and he will restore, and he will help. He's slow to anger.
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I mean, think about that. God is slow to anger. What if any time we sinned,
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God came and chopped off a piece of our body. I just made that up, and I know it's crazy, but just think about it.
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If God came and chopped off a finger every time we sinned, and then another finger, I mean, immediately, quick.
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Then your hand, then up to the elbow. We wouldn't make it past the first day.
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Yeah, right? Exactly right. God is slow to anger. I mean, think about Adam and Eve.
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God tells them, don't eat of that tree, and they eat of it. I mean, he could have just come, the clouds could have just opened up, and God could have just consumed to eat them and taken them right out of the way.
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But you notice that it appears as if God waits until the cool of the day, the end of the day, and he comes to them, not swiftly.
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What's God doing? He's walking in the garden to come to them. And then he says, you know,
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Adam, he's talking to Adam, where are you? God is quick, as we look in the scriptures, he's quick when it comes to the promises.
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I mean, we believe, and we have everlasting life. But when it comes to God's judgment, when it comes to God pouring out his wrath, it's almost as if justice wants to pull out the sword, but mercy keeps it in.
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And we see that even when I described in Lot. We have this dialogue between Abraham and God.
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If there's 50 righteous people, or 40 righteous people, or 30, or 12, 20, I mean, back and forth, back and forth,
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God knows exactly what's taking place in Lot. He knows what's taking place in Sodom and Gomorrah, where Lot is, where Lot vexed his righteous soul in the midst of that perverted generation.
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And God knew, and the stench of it had come up into God's nostrils, and he didn't act quickly there.
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What about when it comes to the time of Noah? And God says that he's going to deal with this sin.
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And he tells Noah to build an ark. How many years did Noah preach righteousness? 120 years.
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120 years. God is long -fused. God is long -suffering.
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He's slow to anger. And doesn't that bring us a whole lot of comfort?
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Because God treats us exactly the same way. Like Carl said, we wouldn't be here a day.
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I don't think we'd be here five minutes after we woke up in the morning. God is so gracious, and he's so kind, and he's slow to anger, and we have that part in there that confuses some people.
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God, he repents of the evil. Not that God can repent like we think of repentance or relent if it says that in your translation.
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Here again we have, we are trying to describe what God is doing in English terms.
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And the best way that we can see it is, is that it seems to us that this is going to take place, but if we turn,
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God is going to divert the judgment. He's going to take it from off of us and going to bless us instead.
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And the openness, of course, we've studied this before. Lewis has taught on it, and I have taught on it.
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And what they're saying is, God doesn't know what's going to happen in the future. We're agents who can make decisions, and we can change
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God's mind. No. It's going to happen, even if a person, or like let's say
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Nineveh, the judgment's going to fall upon Nineveh, and it's going to come. But they turn,
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God knew all of it from the beginning of the end as far as his message coming to them, and whether the grace and the mercy that was going to come their way, and it didn't take
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God by surprise. And when anyone turns, it doesn't take God by surprise because he does know it all.
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But I love this picture, this vivid description here in the middle of the Old Testament, which totally just, which just knocks down, knocks the pillars out from anybody who would say that the
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Old Testament God is different than the New Testament God. Here we see that he's gracious and merciful, and he's gracious and merciful and kind.
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What is the condition here? What is it that the sinner must do? The one who is in the middle of this situation.
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Go back with me if you would in to verse 12 where it says, Therefore also now saith the Lord, Turn ye even to me with all your heart and with fasting and weeping and mourning.
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It's those that turn unto the Lord. Not stay obstinate in their sin and in their rebellion.
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Not those who will not act. Not those who will clench the fist in their teeth before God and say,
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I refuse. But it's those that turn to the Lord. And then we have this great description in verse 13, which out of all, mostly all of the verses in Joel are the ones that I remember the most.
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This 2 .13 where it says, And rend your heart and not your garments and turn unto the
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Lord. He's saying rend or rip your heart and not your garments.
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Now if we didn't understand what this meant, it probably wouldn't mean a whole lot to us. But what's this idea of ripping garments?
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Clothes. Clothes being ripped. What did that mean in the Bible? Some of you probably remember some examples.
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Sorrow, mourning, grief. It could be over the death of a person.
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It could be over the sin of the nation. I think David ripped his clothes when I think it might have been when
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Abner was killed. He had this great sorrow. And what
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Joel is saying, what God is requiring, when you turn to the
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Lord and not just rip the outside clothing, but you rip your heart open, this is true repentance.
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This is true, genuine contrition, sorrow, grief before the
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Lord. It's easy if a person gets caught in their sin to say they're sorry and to go through motions and it's just external.
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But that's easy to do. But what Joel is saying is here, yeah, you can rip the clothes.
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He didn't say that he's not teaching against not being sorrowful and grieving or having this outward demonstration.
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But he says there's got to be more. There's got to be more than just the outward action of saying that I'm sorry.
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But it's being so grieved and it's being so sorry that we understand that our offense is before God, that we have grieved our holy
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God and we are willing to do something about it. We are turning from this sin and turning to the
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Lord. There are many times in the scripture where you have this idea of true repentance where we turn from sin and if you turn from sin, where are you turning to?
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You're turning to the Lord. And if you're turning to the Lord, then you're turning away from sin. That's what true repentance is.
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And it's not just an outward show that is unacceptable to the
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Lord, but it's a ripping of the heart. It's examining oneself and looking at truly what is in there, the evil that is there and dealing with it.
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I remember one time, oh, I must have been, I'm guessing,
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I'm probably in my 30s, and I had an awful mouthache, a toothache.
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Oh, it was so bad. And I went to the dentist and he did some probing around in there and he says,
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I think there's something going wrong with this tooth right here. You know when they tap it and it sends you through the roof?
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That's the one. And he could have said, Dave, you know what? Let's take out my little pick here.
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I'm going to pick around it and just kind of clean it up and brush it a little bit and give you a little lollipop and send you on your way.
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I'll take care of it. Now, he had to deal with the issue and it was one of my teeth that I had from a teenager which had four pounds of the filling in there, one of those big ones.
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And he took that out and literally when he was doing this, he's drilling and all of a sudden he goes like this.
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He backs up a little bit. And he said, it just erupted. I mean, just the infection that was behind it.
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It was obsessed. It was so much so I needed a root canal and he said, I can't even do it now because it's so infected under there.
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I just got to have to put a temporary pack in there and we'll have to come back and get it. The idea of ripping just the clothes on the outside is that idea of just kind of cleaning it up a little bit.
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It's putting a little, you know, you have an abscess or a cyst on your belly, just put a little bandaid on it, you know, and just kiss it.
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Everything's okay. Just walk away from it. No, it's ripping it wide open. The pus and all the filth has to get out.
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And when it comes to our evil hearts, it's dealing what's there. It's confessing before God and owing up to what it is that we have done before the
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Lord and ripping our hearts wide open. And this teaching,
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I'll give you a couple of verses that we could look at. In Psalm, I think it's
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Psalm 34. I'm going to hold you place here. Psalm 34.
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That's the wrong Psalm. Spelled wrong. Psalm 34 in verse 18,
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The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit.
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The Lord is far from the person. Remember it says in one or the other,
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I think it's in Psalm 51 when David is crying out after his heart is ripped because of what he has done with Bathsheba and Uriah.
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In Psalm 51 in verse 17, The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart.
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Oh God, you will not despise. God despises the outward sacrifice, the going through the motion, the ritual, the ceremony, thinking that we are doing those things and will appease
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God. What God wants is a ripped heart. And if your heart has never been ripped over your sin, then you have not experienced true repentance.
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You don't know what it means to really truly deal with sin before God.
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And I'm not saying that it has to be in a degree of weeping or sorrow. Some churches go wrong there where they say you've got to have this degree of crying and you've got to go for four months fasting and they put their man's conditions on it.
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What God is saying is, He's nigh, He's close to, He accepts, He looks at.
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I think Isaiah puts it that way. That might be in Isaiah if you're taking notes. Isaiah 66 .2. God looks at the contrite heart.
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He's aware of and He accepts that. Isaiah 57 .15 says that God dwells with those that have a contrite heart and a broken spirit.
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So when it comes to repentance, God is calling all people to repent. I mean it's the priests, it's the vine dressers, it's the women, it's the children, it's the nursing women, it's the elders, it's all of them.
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And when they are to repent, they are to repent and turn to the Lord in true brokenness.
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And notice what it says in verse 16. It says,
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Gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, the children, those that suck the breasts, let the bridegroom go forth out of his chamber and the bride out of her closet.
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Notice it says, Even the common affairs, this bridegroom, the bride and the groom just getting married, let them go out of the chamber, out of the wedding chamber.
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And what it's saying here is that the common affairs of life need to take second place when it comes to truly turning to the
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Lord. When it comes to getting right before the Lord, the common things of life, our pursuits, our jobs, our passions, whatever it might be, whatever it is that we think is important, is no longer important, it takes the back burner, second place to getting right with the
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Lord. And as we turn to the Lord in true repentance, what does
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God do? We see here, it says that in verse 14,
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For who knows if God will return and repent and leave a blessing behind him, even a meat offering and a drink offering unto the
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Lord our God. So he calls the people to that. So this is Joel's, the message of Joel.
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It's an explanation of what's going on. It is a call to this action and that it is a gift of hope.
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In the first, from the first verse of the book to the 27th verse of chapter 2, we have this idea of what contemporary, the contemporary message to the people, and they're the ones that are supposed to take and grasp that.
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But then after, from 228 to the end of the book, it's eschatological, or it's speaking to the future.
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And it's talking about the great day of the Lord. This day when God will come and visit creation and it will be all over and there will be great judgment and there will be a judgment upon the enemies of God and God will bring his people.
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And as you read chapter 3, you will see this, that this is dealing with the millennial kingdom. It's dealing with the end of time.
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Afterwards, this blessing and God drawing his people and it will dwell with them forever. We have this language in chapter 3.
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And he will bless his people and they will live forever and ever. And there's this message of hope.
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One of the messages of hope that really just blesses me, notice in chapter 2 and in verse 25, and I will restore to you the years that the locust has eaten.
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And he names all the other animals too. And I just think that that is, that is just such neat and descriptive terms here, that this judgment, this messed up life that they have when they rebelled before God and the bad place that they got themselves into.
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I just look at that to apply it to our own lives. The years that we took to devastate our lives and all the things that we did and the sin that we were involved in and what took us several years to mess up,
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God can restore in several moments. I mean, because he's that powerful.
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And he can bring us back to himself if we confess. If our hearts are ripped open before him, we come confessing before the
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Lord. We might think that we are just so far and so there's no hope and there's no way that we can recover.
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But if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness and to restore our lives, to return unto us the joy of our salvation.
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Now, in closing, and I know we're late, a little bit pushing it here, but this idea in Joel where God begins to speak to the future and he says in the book, let me find verse 28.
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It shall come to pass afterwards, 228, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams and your young men shall see visions and also upon the servants, upon the handmaids.
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In those days I will pour out my spirit. Of course, from this point on in the book, it's speaking of the future, not contemporary at the time there and God is saying what he's going to do at the end of time and what's going to happen when he pours out his spirit upon all flesh in the millennial kingdom and then the eternity is ushered in.
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We have Peter in Acts chapter 2, he says when he gets up to preach, after the tongues, the cloven tongues of fire are hanging over them and they're speaking the message and everybody hears it in their own language,
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Peter gets up and says that what you see before your very eyes is that which Joel spoke about and he quotes these verses, verse 28, about the
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God pouring out his spirit and the young men dream dreams, the old men the visions and he wasn't saying that it was a full completion of it because if we read through the book of Joel, we'll see that other things have to take place.
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There's this idea of possibly this Armageddon 314, this valley of decision, there's the idea of the sun turning to and the moon being darkened and the stars stop their shining and other things taking place but what
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Peter was saying was is that it's just a preview, that it's a bit of what
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Joel was saying and he did that and it was a proper interpretation of it because there were two things that were in common,
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God was pouring out his spirit upon all of them at the day of Pentecost and God was calling them whosoever shall call upon the name of the
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Lord shall be saved and you need to repent and he said, and it's just neat because some people would think that's a misinterpretation because it wasn't a full completion but you see, by the
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Holy Spirit's leading, they had the liberty to do so because he understood that God was doing something special at Pentecost and it was like what had taken place what
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Joel was spoken of although not the complete fulfillment of it. Now, we've looked at a whole lot.
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It's a great book, great language the way that it's written and I think what's good for us to consider as we close this morning is just to think about the idea for me practically,
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I like to look at what does the book mean for us today. In the midst of devastation, in the midst of hope,
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I mean in the midst of judgment and devastation, those who believe upon the name of the
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Lord, those who are God's people can trust God because he will keep his people.
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He will hold on to his remnant. He will protect them and when the day comes, if the earth melts underneath of us,
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God is going to take and hold us for all eternity and keep us and usher us into eternity and we see that even as we read through this book and yet, even in our lives, practically speaking, when we sin, don't play with it, don't let it go for a long period of time but to deal with it immediately and to rend the heart and not the garments.
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What a practical verse for us. All right, I'll take one question if there's one. Don't say I have an answer but I'll take one question and then we'll close.
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Any? Yes, Daniel. It continues in chapter 2 as I see it and as I've read in the commentaries but it does also lend itself to you think this is bad, wait till you see what's coming when it's real men and it's real horses and it's real armies speaking of and that's kind of like what he's looking forward in the future to.
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Okay, let's pray. Father, thank you for the time that we spend in this book this morning and thank you for how your word is so clear and thank you,
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Lord, that you are a God who is so kind and so full of mercy and so slow to anger and Lord, if we do turn to you and turn from our sins that you will forgive and that you will restore and that you will keep and for those that have never done it before you will save them, save their souls to the glory of Christ and I'm so thankful,
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Lord, that the lives that we can mess up over a long period of time you can renew and you can restore and you can rebuild and remake in a moment by the sweeping of your powerful hand.
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We bless you and we praise you and we ask that you'd cause us to remember these things so that we may live more holy and pure unto the