Joel 2:28-3:21

Discussion Questions

1. Joel 2:32 refers to God’s calling on your life to confess faith in Him and your calling out to Him in response (decision) as the means to salvation—this duality is a mystery. Are you able to hold both in tension or are you demanding control over your faith?
2. Do you see the problem of sin as a surface mole that can be easily removed and forgotten or as a cancer “which is eating out the insides of the human race” (Rebecca Pippert)? Why is it important to understand sin as a cancer?
3. Pastor Jim states that one of Joel’s themes is “the ultimate reality and irrevocability of God having the last word.” Does this bring you comfort or does it frighten you? Why?

Transcript

We study through books of the Bible here at The Village Chapel. We have extra copies. If you didn’t bring one with you, and you’d like one to follow along, just raise your hand up real high. I’ve got somebody in the back. Maybe we can get somebody in the front here as well to grab a few. Anybody need a copy at all? Anybody at all, raise your hand. We’ll be glad to drop one off, so you can follow along. I want to thank the folks also who joined us online last week. We heard from folks in, let’s see, New Zealand; Michigan; Melbourne, Australia; Pleasant Garden, North Carolina; Saudi Arabia; Zurich, Switzerland; and Lubbock, Texas. All right. Isn’t that great? Yeah. We’re just so glad you folks from those places could join us. If you’re with us this week, we’re glad to have you back. And for those who have joined us from elsewhere, we welcome you as well.

I don’t know if you have ever wondered if there might come a day when evil will be eradicated, justice will be done, and everything broken in this world will be set right. I’ve wondered that myself. Perhaps you have too. And that’s why I love that we’re going through the Book of Joel. I think it provides us with a really hopeful answer to those kinds of questions. Here we read about what God intends to do about all that is wrong in the world. Five times in three chapters, we hear this phrase, “The day of the Lord.”

So that’s what we titled our sermon last week, part one, today, part two. And we recognize that even as you read across the pages of Joel, just in three short chapters, there appear to have been some historic fulfillments of this day of the Lord that was predicted. There appears to be yet some imminent or intermediate fulfillments and even some further out into the future fulfillments. We’re going to read about those, most of the further out in the future fulfillments, today as we approach our texts, which will be, Joel 2:28 and all the way through the end of chapter three. The notes and quotes can be had if you have your phone, and you’d like to take a snap of the QR code up on the screen.

To remind you, the day of the Lord is a biblical phrase that signifies God’s special interventions in human history where God acts with righteous judgment against sin and evil or, wherein by a sovereign grace, God acts to offer deliverance and salvation to His people. These Bible passages often describe the nature, the scope, the timing of the day of the Lord, and may broadly refer to any of God’s actions in the three-time context: the historic, the past; the imminent, something that might be present or near future; and then the ultimate or the eschatological, as those of you who have studied a little bit of theology may know that term.

I’ll describe it a little bit more as we get into our texts. So, let’s look then at Joel, Chapter 2, and I’m going to read verses 28 through to the end of Chapter 3. Before I do, let me offer this prayer: Father, we open our hearts and minds to You and to Your Word. May Your promises become our inexhaustible hope and our proper confidence. May Your purposes become our meaning and our mission. May Your presence become our delight and joy. Grant to us, as we study today, a clearer vision of Your truth, a greater faith in Your power, and a more confident assurance of Your love for us as we pray in the name of Jesus, for His sake and for His glory. Amen and amen.

I’d call this Joel 2:28. Some of you will be familiar with this. There’s actually a couple of little passages in here today that some of you will already have heard somewhere. Joel 2:28, and the following, is quoted by the apostle, Peter in Acts, Chapter 2 on the day of Pentecost. So, we’re talking about the day of the Lord and Joel, but it’s partially fulfilled. For us, it’s in the past, but for Joel, it was in the future. And it’s what we call the day of Pentecost in our New Testament mindset. It goes just like this, and it will come about after all of the locust invasion, which we’ve read about with Pastor Tommy. And then last week, I walked us through part one of the day of the Lord. We talked about the image of the locust army, just the plague of locusts swarming over Judah and destroying every living plant and eating everything in its path, leaving nothing but desolation behind it. Then that metaphor switched to an army from the north in the first part of Joel, Chapter 2.

And what we had there was we had locusts, we had the darkness of what followed, and we had this idea that there was a lot of death involved as well. And I pointed out how the Book of Joel, short as it is, he’s really aware of the rest of the Old Testament because those images – locusts, darkness, and death – those are the same images from the last three plagues of the ten plagues in Egypt. You remember that. It was locusts, darkness, and death. So, Joel, quite aware of all of that, he mentions that in this prophecy, and Jewish people reading this would’ve gotten that. We are separated from all of that by culture, time, experience, et cetera, et cetera. So for us, I’m just trying to connect the dots when we see images that connect and why would this connect with them in a really good way.

Well, it’s because that’s part of their story. And yeah, we had some cicadas, but it wasn’t like darkness and death came as a result. I’d call it a plague of annoyance, but we didn’t have this kind of devastation like he reads about here. And then in chapter two, that restoration that came afterwards, right? So now, as we go to Chapter 2, verse 28, he’s going to talk about the distant future. And he says, “It will come about after this [all of this happens] I will pour out My Spirit on all mankind.” And the Jews would’ve said, “Oh, what do you mean all mankind? I thought we were the chosen people.” But he says that nonetheless, “I will pour out my Spirit on all mankind. And your sons and daughters will prophesy.” Wait a minute, sons and daughters? Yeah, sons and daughters, that’s right.

And in the New Testament, we even see a fulfillment of this as Philip, who moves up north a little bit after Jesus goes back into Heaven. And when the apostle Paul is coming back through and going to Jerusalem after one of his missionary journeys, he stops in there with Philip. And Philip has four daughters that are prophetesses. So, if they’re to be prophetesses and prophesy, they would have to actually open their mouths and speak. And that’s a good thing. So, I love it that he’s pointing out the Spirit’s going to be poured out, not just drizzled out, but poured out, after all of this, and on all mankind and on sons and daughters. And then your old men will dream dreams, and you young men will see visions. How many of you dream dreams and remember them all the time?

Is that you? Do you remember your dreams? Kim does. She already heard the sermon in the first service, she’s going to visit with the youth for right now, but she remembers her dreams from 10 years ago, 15 years ago, remembers what she wore, what I was wearing. She remembers what she was doing, what I was doing. She remembers who was chasing us, the hook that was swinging on the door of the car after we pulled away, all that kind of stuff. She remembers everything with vivid detail. I hardly ever remember a dream. And yet I am an old man. So, we know this is yet to be fulfilled in my life. But your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. What is the difference between dreams and visions? The best guess I can make is that I think dreams are when you’re asleep and visions might be when you’re awake you see a vision, and it’s possible. I think that’s possible.

But I think the more important point is that your sons and your daughters are both involved, and your old men are involved and so are your young men. And then add to that verse 29, “And even on the male and female servants, I will pour out my Spirit in those days on all of them.” So, what he’s basically saying is there’s coming a day when the Holy Spirit’s going to be poured out on people from every nation, both male and female, all ages, all social classes across the entire community of people. And I don’t know about you, but I think that’s awesome. And I think He’s been busy doing that. The Lord’s been doing that since Acts, Chapter 2 and continues to do it. Because in our view of end times, or the study of eschatology, we would say that the end times actually began when the King arrived. He was inaugurating the kingdom, so it was when Jesus came.

And the end times run all the way up to His return when He once and for all establishes the kingdom in its fullness. So, it’s an already-but-not-yet-completed kingdom. This is predicted to happen, and I think it is happening, and I rejoice in the fact that it’s happening. Verse 30, and by the way, I love when we’re reading through texts like this, we’ve got a whole chapter here coming. If there’s something that I can give you to do that will keep some of you a little more plugged in, a little more awake, the short attention span people, look for all the “I wills” where God says, “I will.” And you can circle those. That’ll give you something to do to stay dialed in, okay? So, “I wills,” that’s the squirrel in the Highlights magazine that you’re looking for. Okay?

“And I will,” this is the Lord speaking, “display wonders in the sky and on the earth, blood, fire, columns of smoke.” Interesting, those three elements as well. These are going to be some of the wonders that He will display in the sky and on the Earth. So, it’s not just personal and people-oriented, it’s also cosmic, this end times and the science of the end times. And not only do they point forward, but they also point backward, like we said before, when we talked about the images of the locusts and the darkness and the death. But notice this as well, blood and fire and columns of smoke points right back to the Book of Exodus. The blood over the doorposts that the Lord God told the children of Israel, take the blood of a spotless lamb and paint your doorposts then the angel of death will pass over your house and there won’t be death in your house that night because that was the first Passover. So, there was blood and fire.

And the children of Israel were delivered out because the angel of death passed over them. The children of Israel were set free from Egypt. They wandered through the wilderness, and they were led around by a pillar of fire in the night and then columns of smoke as well. So, through the wilderness, the exodus before that, and then the clouds. You can remember, some of you, when we studied the Book of Exodus, and all of those studies are online. I’d encourage you to go back and study it sometime, if you want to, on your own. But the smoke covered Mount Sinai where the Lord gave His law to His people, so that we weren’t just left guessing what God thought was good or not good.

We weren’t left guessing what was right or wrong because we’d surely get that wrong ourselves. We all have too many personal agendas. But if there’s a God who really speaks, who speaks with clarity, and who has the final word, then the day of the Lord is always good news because the day of the Lord delivered the children of Israel with the Passover. The day of the Lord led and guided the children of Israel through the wilderness. The day of the Lord, the Lord who was the Lord of that day, also appeared to Moses, spoke to Moses, gave him the law. And blood and fire and columns of smoke are predicted to be part of the end-times displays of God as well. Verse 31, “The sun will be turned into darkness, the moon into blood.” And some of you have probably seen the moon with a little bit of orange.

I’m told by scientists that’s basically the pollution in our atmosphere, sadly. So maybe that’s not quite the sign that the Lord’s going to give to us, but all of this is supposed to happen at the end of verse 31 before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. So, notice the timing, notice the way it’s paced. And we won’t be able to predict with precision like so many people want to. So many people have attempted to predict, selling books as they have done over the last couple of decades about the eschatology and the eschatological sequence and the way things will go. But notice the promises that are here. “It will come about that whoever,” verse 32, “calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Whoever. Is that you? Yes, it is you, actually. The question is will you call upon the name of the Lord?

It’s me too. “Whoever.” It’s a universal offer, but then we are the ones that must respond to that offer. But I love it that he’s giving a universal offer. “For on Mount Zion and Jerusalem there will be those who escape, as the Lord has said, even among the survivors…” And this is interesting. “… whom the Lord calls.” So, verse 32 opens up with, “Hey, whomever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved”, but you’ll end up finding out that you’re also somebody the Lord has called, and it’s God working in us and calling us to Himself. So here, as we close out chapter two, we have the Spirit’s abundant activities – and they’re lavish. He’s moving and He’s moving through everybody. He’s moving through you; He’s moving through me. And some of you’re going, “I don’t know. I’ve never seen the Holy Spirit moving through me.”

Well, I want to awaken you to that possibility that He might want to use you, even today, to encourage somebody in the Gospel or with the Gospel, either one. Whether they’re a believer or an unbeliever, encourage them with the Gospel. May the Gospel fall freely from our lips and be seen in our relationships and in our work and in the way that we might have a joyful demeanor even in the midst of a very oppressive heat or just the way the world is around us. “For, behold, in those days,” Chapter 3 begins, “and at that time,” when all of this is happening, okay, “when I restore,” this is again, God’s initiative here, God’s divine sovereign initiative, “when I restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem,” when I restore my people “I will,” there it is, there’s an I will, “gather all the nations and bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat.”

Now, we don’t know where the Valley of Jehoshaphat is. I know some people read this and they think, “Oh, that’s got to be the valley of Armageddon.” But Armageddon is only mentioned once in the entire Bible and that’s in the Book of Revelation. So, I’m not sure that’s what this is a reference to. Rather, if we took the meaning of the name Jehoshaphat, it’s “Yahweh judges.” And what I hope is that by the end of this study today, you’ll see what a great and wonderful thing, what a beautiful thing, it is that it’s Yahweh who’s doing the judging at the end of all time. Somebody’s going to have the last word. Who do you want that to be? Some of you are going, “Well, I want it to be me.” Listen, I don’t want it to be you, and you probably don’t want it to be me. I don’t think any of us can handle that.

I’m really glad it’s Yahweh who will be the one to judge. And He brings all nations. And listen, I’ve been to Israel, I’ve been to the Valley of Jezreel or Megiddo as it’s called. It’s vast; it’s massive. It still won’t hold all the nations of the world. It’s not that big. So, I think, myself, I think Joel is giving us an image here that there’s a valley where God is going to gather everybody, and He is going to actually bring His judgment. He will have the last word. He says, “I will enter into judgment with them there on behalf of my people and my inheritance, Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, they have divided up my land; and they have cast lots for my people.” There’s three things right there, three accusations against the nations, and it has everything to do with how the nations have treated God’s people.

This is really important for us. Now remember, Joel is Jewish. Joel’s an Israelite, okay? So, he doesn’t even know the scenario of the world that we happen to live in right now. But if Israel has now become all of those people who’ve called upon the name of the Lord and belong to God and to God’s kingdom, then what this promise in the long-term, distant future, eschatological fulfillment is all about is that God identifies with His people, wherever they may happen to live, whether they live in Israel or they live in America, wherever they live. You belong to Jesus, and you belong to everybody else who belongs to Jesus as well. And Jesus takes that responsibility seriously. In the New Testament, the Book of Acts, Chapter 9, a man named Saul who had been persecuting the church, literally dragging Christians out of their homes, ruining their businesses, presiding over some of them being stoned to death, really cruel, really mean; he’s on the road to Damascus.

What happens? The Lord Jesus appears to him in a bright light that knocks him off his horse, literally off his high horse, to the ground. And the Lord Jesus appears to him and speaks to him, and He says these words, “Saul, why are you persecuting…” and He didn’t say, “My church,” He said, “Why are you persecuting Me?” And what that means is Jesus identifies with His church, His people. Just like the Lord Yahweh is identifying here with His people. And I think that’s really hopeful for all of us. But note that God is upset, and He is accusing these nations of, one, scattering His people, dividing them up. They have divided up His land. That’s another way of saying, they have attempted to take ownership over God’s creation, I would say. Because how much of the land does God own? All of it. And it all belongs to Him, and everything in the universe belongs to Him.

So, any of us that arrogantly presume to be claiming, “This is mine, this is mine, this is mine,” whatever, we need to be reminded over and over again that none of this is mine. As a matter of fact, I’m not mine. We have this beautiful little song that we have sung a couple of times, “I am not my own. I belong to the Lord.” It’s such a great truth. It’s the kind of song we need to be singing more often and having our children sing it as well so that we remind ourselves that there’s a real difference between us as creatures and our creator. And we have the great joy and privilege of belonging to Him and knowing where we belong in life. “They’ve scattered my people among the nations, they’ve divided up my land, and they’ve cast lots for my people, Traded a boy for a harlot, and sold a girl for wine that they may drink.”

And yes, that’s as bad as it sounds in verse three. I think that is literally a reference to human trafficking and I’ll talk about that in just a second as we get to the slides in a minute. Verse four, “Moreover, what are you to me?” this is God speaking, “Tyre and Sidon and all the regions of Philistia.” Now, okay, help us with the geographic references here. Tyre and Sidon, two great cities to the north of Israel. So, these folk in this time, they would’ve known of Tyre and Sidon. They’re Gentile cities but not Jewish cities. However, they’re incredibly wealthy cities and they were ports of entry. Lots of trade and commerce would come in from the Mediterranean Sea, stop at the ports of Tyre and Sidon. All flowed their wares and their goods and all that sort of thing, and they would be carried on eastward to be sold.

So, commerce, lots of really amazing cities, much like New York, metropolitan New York kind of a thing. But he’s saying, “What are you, Tyre and Sidon? What are you, regions of Philistia?” That would be the area to the south and east of Israel where the Philistine cities, Ashdod, Ekron, Gaza, they’re five different Philistine cities down in Philistia. And He’s saying to both of those regions, both of those regions that represented perennial enemies of God’s people, they would drive themselves into Israel, they would just slaughter and maraud through towns and villages, killing, burning, destroying as much as they could. And God is basically saying to those perennial enemies of his people, “What are you to Me?”

And then He says, “Are you rendering Me a recompense? But if you do recompense Me,” God says, “swiftly and speedily, I will return your recompense on your head.” In other words, God is not impressed by the powerful nations that have been so violent and evil and wicked toward His people. He’s not concerned at all about the way the course of history is going to go. He says literally, “What are you to Me?” He literally could flick them out of existence if He wanted to. “Since you’ve taken My silver and My gold, brought My precious treasures into your temples, and sold the sons of Judah and Jerusalem to the Greeks in order to remove them far from their territory, behold I’m going to arouse them from the place where you have sold them, and I’m going to return your recompense on your head.”

So, the Lord is going to punish Phoenician arrogance and Philistine violence. And we’ll see as well, he’ll mention Egypt and Edom in just a moment. “Also, I will,” verse eight, “sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the sons of Judah.” In other words, “I’m literally going to reverse it all.” ‘…and they will sell them to the Sabaeans, to a distant nation,’ for the Lord has spoken.” So, we have a God who speaks, a God who is bringing about the day of the Lord in measured steps, and then there is an ultimate day of the Lord when he intends to have the last word on evil and the last word on violence and on everything that goes against who God is. “Proclaim this among the nations,” verse nine says, and there are I think 12 or 15 imperatives here if you need some more stuff to do while I’m reading, okay? Look for the imperatives. That’s a command, okay?

“Proclaim this among the nations;
Prepare a war, rouse the mighty men!
Let all the soldiers draw near, Let them come up!
Beat your plowshares into swords,
And your pruning hooks into spears.
Let the weak say, ‘I am a mighty man.’
Hasten and come, all you surrounding nations,
and gather yourselves there.
Bring down, O Lord, Thy mighty ones.”

Now Joel himself is speaking as we move into verse 11, “The Lord has spoken.” As you can see, most of your English Bibles will have marks that close at the end of verse 10, “Let the week say, I am a mighty man.” So what God is basically saying, and by the way, “beat your plowshares into swords” is the reverse of the way you’ve heard it before. The reverse of it is “beat your swords into plowshares and your spears into pruning hooks.” God is basically saying, “Bring me your nations who are violent, who are wicked, who are evil, who are riddled with idolatry, and who have been so rebellious against the one true and living God. You bring your worst, you bring it to the valley of decision, to the Valley of Jehoshaphat.”

And then he says, “Hasten and come, all you surrounding nations,” verse 11, “gather yourselves there.” Joel is talking now, “Bring down, O Lord, Thy mighty ones.” Is that angels? It could be. Lord, send your angel armies. “Let the nations be aroused and come to the valley of Jehoshaphat for there, I will,” speaks the Lord now, “sit to judge all the surrounding nations. Put in the sickle for the harvest is ripe. Come, tread, for the wine press is full. The vats overflow.” Again, the Lord speaking through His prophet Joel, “Vats overflow, for their wickedness is great. Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision!” verse 14. Some of your Bible translations will say the valley of verdict. And this, again, is about God being the righteous judge. God being the one who will have the last and final word in all of human history on everything. Okay?

So here it is, “Multitudes and multitudes in the valley of decision, [the valley of verdict] for the day of the Lord is near in the valley of verdict.” Verse 14 is the last of the five mentions of the day of the Lord in the Book of Joel.

“The sun and the moon grow dark,
And the stars lose their brightness.
And the Lord roars from Zion
And utters his voice from Jerusalem.
And the heavens and the earth tremble.
But the Lord is a refuge though for His people
And a stronghold to the sons of Israel.”

So in spite of all of that, in spite of all of God is bringing together in this valley of verdict and this judgment, and all this final word, and all of the cosmic things that are going to happen, all of the signs and wonders in the Earth, all of the outpouring of his Holy Spirit – in spite of all of that – here’s what God promises His people: that He will be a refuge, verse 16, for His people and a stronghold to the sons of Israel.

“And then you will know that I am the Lord your God.” I’m Yahweh, your God “…dwelling in Zion, My holy mountain, so Jerusalem will be holy, and strangers will pass through it no more.” In other words, people coming through who are going to drag off the treasures or the people to another land, maybe a reference to the Babylonians when they came through in 586 BC and literally ransacked Jerusalem, if indeed Joel was written post-exile. That is post-exilic writing would be when the children of Israel had come back from exile. So that could be a reference to that. I don’t know for sure though, I have to be honest. It’s just amazing apocalyptic-type imagery, right? And that strangers will pass through it. No more people just coming through, taking whatever they want. “It will come about in that day,” verse 18, “that the mountains will drip with sweet wine.” This is all awesome, amazing. “The hills will flow with milk, and all the brooks of Judah will flow with water.”

There’s three life-giving liquids mentioned there. Do you notice that? There’s the sweet wine, there’s the milk, and there’s the water. I love these images. It’s God’s provision, right? “A spring will go out from the house of the Lord to water the valley of Shittim. Egypt will become a waste.” Egypt would’ve been a perennial enemy of God’s people. Remember, they were held in bondage and slavery down there for 400 years. “Edom,” which is to the south and east of Israel, “will become a desolate wilderness, because of the violence done to the sons of Judah [by Edom] in whose land they have shed innocent blood. But Judah will be inhabited forever, and Jerusalem for all generations. And I will,” this is last I will, “avenge their blood, which I have not avenged.” In other words, all accounts are going to be settled here, God is saying. The part that has not been yet avenged, will be avenged by God.

And then I love the closing statement of all of the book of Joel, “For the Lord [Yahweh] dwells in Zion.” He dwells in His people. Notice back up in verse 17, “Then you’ll know that I am the Lord Your God, dwelling in Zion.” It really is an important aspect of the closing thoughts of the prophet Joel as we close out our study of the Book of Joel. All right, well, I want to give you a couple of things as we think about the day of the Lord, part two, today. Jesus will talk about these kinds of things Himself in Matthew 25. He says, “When the Son of Man,” that’s Jesus’ favorite self-reference, “When the Son of Man comes in His glory,” that’s the return of Christ, “and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne. All the nations will gather before Him and He will separate them from one another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats; and He will put the sheep on His right, and the goats on His left.”

And the idea here is that Jesus, using those same apocalyptic, eschatological images, is basically saying He is the Lord who is going to have that last word. He’s the one that’s going to separate the wheat from the chaff, the sheep from the goats. And that’s a partial as He prophesies in Matthew 25. What He’s doing is He’s basically saying, “What Joel said, yeah, that’s about Me, but it hasn’t happened yet. It’s going to happen when I return a second time.” Remember, we’re talking about the ultimate day of the Lord, the final day of the Lord, when Jesus returns for this second time. Joel is the story of a God who is on the move, in the past, in the present, or even the near future, and even in the far future. He leads up to the ultimate day of the Lord. The unrivaled, righteous judge of all creation will be present with ubiquitous signs, they’ll be everywhere, and a universal offer of salvation. I think that’s amazing.

The question is how will you respond to God? Here we’re told, I think, in the Book of Joel, about the ultimate reality and irrevocability of God’s judgment. And it’s righteous judgment. It’s really important that we point that out as we study about God’s judgment. Otherwise, we just fall into the trap of thinking God is mean and woke up on the wrong side of the universe, and He’s just looking for people to squash. And that just is not true at all. The ultimate day of the Lord will come when God draws the curtain of human history and gives His final verdict on all things. Like I say, we read some of that coming true in Acts, Chapter 2, some of that in Acts, Chapter 9 with Saul becoming Paul. There he is seeing the Lord, identifying with his people like he did there.

But we rely on what we read here, especially as we started with verse 28 of chapter two and rolled into chapter three. I wanted to connect all of that because Chapter 2, verse 28, says, “It will come about after this [all of these other things I’ve talked about] that I will pour out My Spirit” in massive amount on everybody, people from all nations and on the old men, the young men, the sons, the daughters, even different social classes, those who are servants and those who are not. I will pour out my spirit on my people. So that’s, again, looking forward to, along the way, that ultimate day of the Lord. The Holy Spirit is so important. We don’t talk about the Holy Spirit enough, especially in some of our Protestant churches, do we? Anybody here who grew up in a charismatic church? Raise your hand. And you should be bold about that because you were used to swinging from the chandelier and everything, so come on. Raised in a charismatic church?

Yeah, okay, here’s a couple of you. Yeah, it’s good. And I’m not saying we need to start swinging from the chandeliers. I’m not saying that, but I think we should be talking about the Holy Spirit more. I was raised in a church that talked about the Holy Spirit as kind of a distant third member of the Trinity. It was like it’s really all about God and Jesus and every now and then you might hear Holy Spirit, that kind of thing just mentioned in passing, but not really focused much on at all. And that’s because I was in a fold-your-hands-and-check-your-emotions-at-the-door kind of a church when I grew up. That’s just the way it was. I have since been in many environments where the Holy Spirit was quite vibrant and real and moving among people in really powerful ways.

I’ve also been in places where that’s all been abused, and it’s been recklessly used by people just for the sake of sensationalism. But I like what A. W. Tozer said about the modern church, “If the Holy Spirit was withdrawn from the church today, 95 percent of what we do would go on and no one would know the difference. If the Holy Spirit had been withdrawn from the New Testament Church, 95 percent of what they did would’ve stopped, and everybody would have known the difference.” And you realize the guy that wrote this, he died in the 1960s, before here we are, but I think he’s right. We have so much that’s going for us with social programs, and I’m not saying that’s wrong, I’m just saying there’s so much that we could do without even believing in the existence of God because we like to eat, and we like to do social things, and we even like to do social justice things.

There’s so many things we like to do, but we could do all of them without the presence of the Holy Spirit. What we can’t do without the Holy Spirit – we cannot become new people. The Holy Spirit convicts us of our sin, convinces us of what’s true, and then conforms us into the image of Christ. After the Holy Spirit converts us, we become Christians. We’re united with Christ in His life. So, what I can’t do as a human being, I can do a whole lot of fun things and interesting things and maybe some good things. What I can’t do, though, is recreate myself. I don’t have the power to make myself become born again. I need the Holy Spirit to do that. And we need to talk about that just a little bit more and conversion itself, I think. It’s really important. But here, as we think about the righteous judgment of God in the day of the Lord, I want to point out these four things:

One, the basis for God’s righteous judgment. We see it in verses one through three where He’s going to talk about bringing all the nations into the Valley of Jehoshaphat where He’s going to bring final verdict, final judgment, if you will. And even as you go into verse four there, you pick up these nations that have been enemies at odds with God’s people, therefore, at odds with God. And we find the basis for God’s righteous judgment. They have been literally selling children. They have literally scattered God’s people. They’ve divided up all of creation, taken it for their own use, if you will. Abused it and taken it for their own use and “cast lots for my people,” this whole problem of human trafficking, I think, sadly, that is not a problem that’s gone away.

As a matter of fact, I think if anything, it’s worse today than ever before. Some of the organizations that we support as a church, because we want to join God in this fight against human trafficking, they suggest, and it’s really hard to get a good specific answer on this as to how many people are caught up in human trafficking in the world, but some of them have suggested it’s between 30 and 50 million people. This is a horrible problem. It’s a scourge against modern humanity. So, we support groups like Agape International Mission. We support Ancora Tennessee, which began right here in our own church as End Slavery Tennessee, and now still works to fight against human trafficking here in the Tennessee area, which happens right here in our area. We support Freedom’s Promise and the work that they do. Matter of fact, one of their top guys comes here to our church.

International Justice Mission. Justice & Mercy International. And the Village of Hope Uganda. By the way, you may have noticed a bunch of those slides look similar and that’s because you can go on the Village Chapel website, and you can actually visit each and every one of their websites through our website on the missions page. And I want to encourage you to do that and to read about the good work that those people are doing for all of those 30 to 50 million people in our world that are caught up in human trafficking. Why? Because it matters to God, and Joel just told us that. And if it matters to God, it should matter to God’s people. So that’s one of the reasons why when you give here, we want you to know you’re a part of supporting that kind of work, joining God in this mission that He has in this world. And I just wanted to encourage you in all of that.

Justice, in this category, is only one example of what God intends to do when he sets the world right. We need justice in our homes as well, don’t we? Some of you know, I know personally what it’s like to grow up in a home life where there isn’t some justice. There might be a dominating personality that just runs roughshod over the top of everybody else or sometimes does it passive-aggressively just by withdrawing. There’s so much of a need for justice in so many levels and categories, and God is the only one who’s righteous enough to actually help us get there. On our own, we humans are finite and foolish. We are sinful and selfish. We simply don’t have the kind of righteousness needed to be the right ones to have the last word, and that’s why I’m so, so glad that Yahweh will be the one to have the final word.

That’s the basis of God’s righteous judgment on a personal level and it’s also on a global level. We need God to fix things and to set things right. There’s also the integrity of God’s righteous judgment, I think, on display here as well. Keep in mind that God’s holiness and his offer of grace is there. Our sinfulness and our need is also displayed here in Joel’s book, Joel’s prophecy, but God’s judgment is never just capricious or moody. He’s not just waking up on the wrong side of the universe and angry and throwing darts at us and anytime we have a good time, He’s like the troll under the bridge waiting to squash us. That’s not the God of the Bible at all. As a matter of fact, Rebecca Manley Pippert says this really well, she says, “God’s wrath is not a cranky explosion, it’s His settled opposition to the cancer of sin, which is eating out the insides of the human race He loves with His whole being.”

So, the cancer of my sin makes me a selfish guy when I’m tired or when my blood sugar is low or when you cut me off in traffic. I’ve probably yelled at a couple of you and didn’t know it. I didn’t mean to, but it’s just… Well, maybe I did, actually, and that’s what’s wrong with me and that’s what needs to be fixed about me, and that I can’t fix about myself. It’s just a very trivial example, isn’t it though? We need a righteous judge. The Christian view of judgment means that history moves to a goal. Judgment means that evil will be disposed of authoritatively, decisively, finally. Judgment means that, in the end, God’s Will will be perfectly done. And I’m so glad, again, that He’s the one who will be the final judge of all. Why? Because He is righteous, see? He doesn’t wake up cranky.

It’s not just Him being irritable. No, He’s righteous. He wants the world to be set right. And if you want that too, you and I, we can rejoice in the fact that Yahweh is the one who will be full of integrity in His righteous judgment. Thirdly, notice not only the basis and the integrity of God’s righteous judgment, but I think we’re reminded here in the Book of Joel about our role in the context of God’s righteous judgment. Verse nine says, “Proclaim this among the nations.” All right, that’s part of our role right there. We should join Joel in proclaiming all of this among the nations. How do we do that and how do we do that well, and how do we do that in such a way that people hear us, and they believe, and they trust in Christ and respond to the wise warnings of Scripture?

How do we live in light of what we speak? How do we make our walk match our talk if we’re going to be proclaiming this? I want to move us back to chapter 2 one more time,

“’Yet even now,’ declares the Lord,
‘Return to Me with all your heart,
And with fasting, weeping, mourning;
And rend your heart and not your garments.’
Now return to the Lord your God,
For He is gracious and compassionate,
Slow to anger, abounding in lovingkindness,
And relenting of evil.”

That’s the good news we have. We have to tell the truth. Look at what’s wrong. Look at what’s broken about me. Look at what’s broken about us. Look what’s broken in the world. Sin has wreaked havoc. It’s like a locust plague that has just run over the top of us and left us in ruin. We need to be restored.

And the news that we have is the same news Joel had. It’s “Turn to the Lord.” That’s turn away from your sin, turn toward the Lord. That’s what repentance is. It’s a twofold turn. Away from my sin and to the Lord. So, we need to be proclaiming that and we need to be also saying what Joel said in Chapter 2, verses 12 and 13: Who is it you’re turning to? It’s the God who’s compassionate. It’s the God who’s long-suffering. It’s the God who’s eager for you to be restored, for you to be renewed, for you to be forgiven. That’s what we’re calling people to. And instead, what do we sound like all the time as Christians, as people constantly out there saying our message? We just sound like people who are yelling, “Get off my lawn.”

Russell Moore said this way, I like the way he said it, “There are some people who believe that fidelity to the gospel simply means speaking, ‘You kids get off my lawn.'” And that’s the way some Christians sound. I grew up with some Christians that sounded that way. And that is not the message that’s been given to us. “If the call to repentance does not end with the invitation that’s grounded in the bloody cross and the empty tomb of Jesus, which is good news, then we’re speaking a different word than the word that we’ve been given.” I agree with Russell Moore on that. And Carson says it another way. He says, “It’s easy to be prophetic from the margins. What’s needed is to be prophetic from the center.”

When he says this, what he means by “from the margins,” is that it’s real easy to go over here and say, “Oh, just modify your behavior. Just follow these rules.” That’s the margins, that’s the fringes. Here’s the do’s and don’ts list. Be religious; go to church. And tons of things you could do without the Holy Spirit empowering you at all. But, man, when the Holy Spirit gets inside of you and starts to change you, you find yourself actually being motivated by love for God because He’s God, not just because of what you’ll get out of it. You love God because you love God and He is God, you want to do things that delight Him. So now all of a sudden, you find yourself loving people that you couldn’t love before. Good grief, they voted the other way. Good grief, I could never love them. Good grief, they just annoy me. They’re close-talkers with bad breath. Good grief, my weird cousin, my weird uncle, I just can’t love them. Whatever.

You draw all kinds of lines and say you can’t do stuff. Well, you can’t, but the Holy Spirit in you probably can if you’ll just surrender to the work of the Lord. So, our role is to proclaim and to surrender to the Holy Spirit and to allow Him to live large in our lives. And fourthly and finally, the benefits of God’s righteous judgment. So, we’ve seen the basis of it. Yeah, we’ve seen the integrity of it. We’ve seen our role in it, and now we’ve seen the benefits of it here. It opens up with, “They will know that I am the Lord your God.” So, you’ll know who God is. First of all, if you’ve ever had a question about that in this world, in our day and time, it’s kind of, “Have it your own way, God,” isn’t it? It’s sort of just God as you imagine God to be.

That’s the idea that people promulgate out there. It’s that you just come up with a God that you think should be. And what you’re essentially being invited to do is create God in your own image – and that’s how everything just goes wrong, doesn’t it? Because if I do that, then God happens to like everything I happen to like, and God happens to get mad at everything I get mad at, and God happens to be hurt every time I get hurt. All of that goes on and on and on, instead of me believing in a God who actually exists and actually wants to change me and dwell within me. He’s a God I can know because He’s revealed Himself to me. I love that verse 17 includes the idea of God dwelling in Zion and that verse 21, the last line of the entire book, is one of the best benefits of God’s righteous judgment.

He has the final word and what he says is, “I want to be with you.” God wants to be with you. He wants to live with you, and He wants you to live with Him, and I think that is one of the richest, most beautiful things about our God. Here’s from David Pryor, just a couple of quotes and I’ll let you go, “God’s memory and attention to detail do not chop and change like our contemporary media, according to the latest disaster or genocide. He has both books and a bottle,” this is poetic, it’s very good though, I love this, “which together are more accurate and permanent than the world’s most up-to-date computer with its latest software. These have limitless capacity. They contain everything that anyone has ever thought, said, or done. In one particular book are the names of those on the citizen-role of the new Jerusalem.” I hope that’s you. “In the bottle are stored the tears and the tossings of God’s people.”

Your heart broken? Has your heart been broken? Has your heart remained broken? The image is so beautiful, it’s so poetic. It’s from Psalm 56 and tells us that the Lord actually saves each tear of His people, His children, in a bottle. It’s such a beautiful poetic image. They’re precious. Your tears are precious to Him that way. It may not be precious to other people. It certainly can’t be precious to God if your God is just the hum of the universe or just the battery the universe runs on or a God that actually is going to save you based on your merit as opposed to you just trusting Him. If it’s a merit-based God, none of us have a chance. If it’s a battery that the universe runs on, my tears are irrelevant to a battery.

But the God of the Bible? Your tears are precious to Him. He’s saving them because you are precious to Him as well. That’s so important for us to know. This last quote will be John Stott. “Nothing provokes the world’s opposition more than the gospel of Jesus Christ. For it emphasizes such unpalatable doctrines as the gravity of human sin and guilt, the reality of God’s wrath and judgment, the impossibility of self-salvation, the necessity of the cross, the freeness of eternal life, and the dangers of eternal death.” And note this, “These truths undermine human pride, and they arouse human opposition.” There are people that just refuse God because God’s being gracious and kind to people like me, people like you. These people that refuse God, they’re the older brother in the prodigal son story. They don’t like it that the father is gracious to the son because after all, that younger son deserves to be left out.

See, if you’ve got any of that in you, oh, let me call you back to the freedom of grace, not just grace for you, but grace for those who bother you, grace for those who you have been at odds with; there’s great freedom there for you. But you’ll only know it as you receive grace from the Lord. You can pass that on when you receive it from Him. You can look forward to the day when the Lord will dwell with His people as we are promised all the way at the end of the book, in the book of Revelation, “Then I saw heaven, a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, the sea was no more. I saw this holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband; and I heard a loud voice from the throne saying…”

By the way, this is the big day of the Lord, this is the big one, okay? And here’s what it said, “Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be with them.” That’s God’s vision for eradicating evil, for taking care of every wrong in this world, including the wrongs that have been done to you and including the wrongs you have done. That’s God’s vision, new heavens, new earth. Let’s look forward to it. Let’s be excited about the righteous judge being the one that will have the last word. Amen? Amen.

Let’s pray: Lord, thank You for this. It’s remarkable stuff. I find myself constantly overwhelmed by the images, trying to place them, trying to figure it all out. And I must confess, Father, I need to just fall into Your arms, You, the good father that You are. I just need to fall into Your arms and trust You in all of this. You who will have the last word, the final say, our righteous judge. We delight in You, and we delight in the plan that You have one day to set everything right because You are good and trustworthy. We praise You and give You thanks in our own day and intend to do that for the days to come until You return again. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen and amen.