Be God's Family
S3 E30. Joel’s Call to Repentance
This is the Be God's Light Podcast with Ben Greenbaum and Mark Elsasser. Back in 2022, we spent an entire year looking at the life of Jesus from the Four Gospels. Then in 2023, we explored the rest of the New Testament that's Acts through Revelation. And here in 2024, we're looking at all of the Old Testament, kind of bouncing across it like a stone on a pond. That's the best I could think of it, Ben, because we are taking a lot of these prophets and spending one week on them, either in a sermon or a podcast. And there's obviously a wealth of information or study that we could do on any one of these. But in order to get through the Old Testament in 11 months, which is our goal, we are taking this approach. But it's working for me, you think it's working for others? Sure. Or are they just kind of nodding their head? Who knows? To make us happy? Yeah. Who knows? People seem engaged. Those of you listening, let us know. You know what? I don't know that we can change anything this year or not, in terms of depth, unless you want three-hour podcasts, which we could always accommodate. Now we're going to get inundated with one-star ratings. Well, that would be more ratings than we currently have, I think. I'm not sure we have ratings. Right. Which we would encourage you to do, by the way. Maybe that will... Five stars. Do something. Five stars. How many stars are there? There's five. Okay. Because when Lisa, my wife, gives rewards to people for something they do really well, she gives like 20,000 stars or a million gold points. That's just how Lisa rolls. So a five-star seems super low from the world I've been in for the last 40 years with my wife. Yeah. Five stars. Five stars all the way. Okay. So if she gives five stars to me someday, then I should be happy. Well, you're a math guy, so how many times is a million divisible by five stars and then just keep rating us over and over and over until you hit the million stars? So you hit the million. Okay. Maybe give us five stars every day for the rest of your life, and that will be good. Well, today we're talking about this prophet named Joel. Joel doesn't get a lot of attention, I think, in the modern Christian church. I don't know that there are a ton of sermons on Joel or a ton of Bible studies on Joel. I could be wrong, maybe that's in my own experience, but Joel just kind of is there and people know that it's a book of the Bible, know that he was a prophet in the Old Testament, but not a lot of love. The only time you hear about Joel is on Pentecost because of Joel chapter two and Peter's quoting of it at Pentecost. But yeah, outside of that, it is a rarity that people study Joel or know what's actually in the book itself. So what you're saying is this is so unique, people should give us six stars out of five. Yeah. Absolutely. Pony up. Find a way to do that. This is a deep dive. Pony up. This is it. Well, one of the aspects that we're doing with this Old Testament is there's a lot of different components. And if you go to our church app or church website, you can find these different components. And one of those is a daily reading or five days a week, a reading that will take you a little deeper as well as the sermon. There's also these devotions that I've been writing, and I'm just going to read a quote from my devotions for this week on Joel because it sets the context for who he is. So this is Mark quoting from Mark. How does that work? We'll do that. And here's what I wrote for the devotions. Joel carried out his prophetic ministry during the reign of Joash. This King Joash, who we read about yesterday and yesterday's devotion. So if you're reading those, recall that Joash quote, did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, all the years, Jehoida the priest instructed him. The high places, which is where the idol worship took place, the high places, however, were not removed. The people continued to offer sacrifices and burn incense there. So this is kind of how it worked. I mean Joel was a prophet in the southern kingdom of Judah, and they had a little bit better kings. Some of them were pretty bad, some of them were pretty good. The north was almost all bad, but Judah had a back and forth with different kinds of kings. And Joash was one of those better kings, and he did some really good things, restoring the temple and some really great things, but he left and placed this idol worship. These places where people could go and serve false gods. And it was in that context that Joel became a prophet, was the prophet of Judah in the south. Let's just start off with that. What is it that you think Ben, like what is it about people, leaders, kings and priests and presidents and pastors and whomever, fathers and mothers, that there's an aspect where we want to say, we're all in for God, we're going to restore the temple, we're going to restore faith in our household, we're going to do great things for our community, our nation, our world or whatever. But there's another aspect where we say, but you know, there's these high places or places idolatry or places of falsehood, we're just going to let it slide. It probably more of a political decision there on his part from the standpoint that by doing that, he probably figured he'd upset the apple cart too much. And maybe that's what drove him to leave the high places there to where idol of worship was allowed to persist within the community. And I think that's one of those things where sometimes people count the cost and the cost seems too high. And so rather than living into God's will, they make a decision, a conscious decision to say, you know what, I did all this good stuff over here, I'm seeking to be personally faithful to what God has called me to, but I'm leaving well enough alone because I know the personal cost to me is going to be too great for the personal cost to, and in this case, my kingly reign is going to be too great that I'm just going to leave it alone. It's interesting because there's kind of an uncertainty among people whether these kings had ultimate power, sort of like authoritarian dictators of our day. But what you're describing is a king who did not want to remove from the people something that they liked doing idol worship because the king was insecure in his position. Yeah, and I think, I think, and again, not to the, maybe not to the heights of what we consider idolatrous or idol worship, but even within the context of, you know, for some in the context of their pastoral ministry, for instance, there are certain things that certain people just will not touch or even ask the people or push back on a particular activity within the context of a church setting because they've counted the cost, in essence counted the cost of it and have not seen it as worthy of pressing into or their concern that if they do press into, and it might be something that's really significant, but that they do press into it, you know, it might even be challenging. I mean, in a real case of what we would consider idolatrous worship, it might be challenging a particular church idol or church understanding as a means of seeing the church move near to Christ. But then sometimes those ideas aren't challenged and just as a, for instance, there was a church that I worked that years ago, but when I followed somebody who was a universalist and Define that for our listeners, believe that that everyone was going to be saved. Was they believed in Jesus? Were they believed in Jesus? Are we going to God or not? God himself, because God is love, their perception of that within a cultural setting within their own cultural context, the idea of God as love meant that everybody would be present with God and eternity, that God was going to make it away for everybody. It didn't matter what you believe, but you would be with God and eternity. Okay. So then you're next man up. And so within about two weeks of being at this church, I had somebody come into my office and declared to me that they were a universalist. And so I have a decision to make at that point. Do I press, realizing that this is an, an idol or a theological position held by people that was an affront to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Do I press into this issue in risk losing potentially half the church? Because I'm going to confront the issue of universalism. Or do I just leave it alone, let things play out and see how maybe, maybe the gospel takes root over time and people change. And you know, at the time, I just made the decision that we were just going to press into it. And so did a 16 week Bible study on Romans and did about a 10 week sermon series on Paul's letter to the church and Colossians, which deals with Christology and who Jesus actually is and just decide to press into it. And you know, thankfully, especially the, the one person who came to me to declare that he was a universalist, crazy enough about a year and a half, two years later, that guy was about as evangelistic as you would ever find someone and led probably multiple people to Christ, but also saw through his ministry, multiple people actually come into the church as well. Well, that's a great story. You know, bringing that all down to a more personal level or everyday level, there are three dads here in this room, you and, and I, and then we also have Doug, who's we do, he records and fixes and produces and makes us sound like we're smarter than we are. So we have three dads here in the room. And I think about what it means to raise kids. And there are sometimes we put our foot down and say, this is how you live is how you behave or this is what we're going to have you do. And there are other things that we sort of know to be true, that, that teenagers spend like 70 hours a day on a screen, you know, and we all know that that's bad for them. Every bit of study and research, whatever has proven like this is not good. And yet we give it a pass, like what we don't want to single our kid out or make them not have as much screen time or make them actually talk to another human being or whatever else. And I think there's lots of examples of this when we look at what this king did, he was a good guy, did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, yeah, he gave some things a pass. And before we throw something at him, we have to realize we probably have a boomerang in our hands and we're throwing at something at him that's going to come back and nail us right between our eyes. Absolutely. And that's why in our life with Jesus Christ, there is this constant, we should be living in what I would qualify as this constant tension, allowing the objective truth of God to challenge our given behavior, no matter what it is, whether our life in vocational ministry, our life in our vocation, whatever that vocation might be, our life with our family, making sure that we are ultimately constantly asking ourselves a question, am I yielding fully to what God wills and desires for my life or am I not? And it's easy sometimes to celebrate the victories and allow them to ultimately blind us to the idols that do exist. And so I would think with the king here, there is this element where unlike many other kings that he could have compared himself to, he was doing what was right in the eyes of God. Scripture declares that and yet potentially even allowing for that to be the means by which he justified not touching the high places. So your question was, am I doing it right or am I not? And Joel clearly says not. So here in Joel chapter one, let's pick it up in verse two, when Joel declares here this you elders, listen all who lived in the land, as anything like this ever happened in your days or in the days of your ancestors, tell it to your children, let your children tell it to their children and their children to the next generation, what the locust swarm has left, the great locusts have eaten, what the great locusts have left, the young locust had eaten, what the young locusts have left, other locusts had eaten. That's this picturesque view of these locusts swarming in and wiping out the land and yeah, I remember back in 2021, I took my nephew Abraham and also son-in-law Adam and we went to Washington DC for a trip. It was a trip that Abraham was supposed to go to in 2020, but COVID interrupted it. So I promised him, hey, we're moving to a new community, you won't get to go with your former school, so I'll take you to DC. But that's when the cicadas were everywhere. And so when we were in Gettysburg on the way there, when we were moving down toward Virginia, and all these different places we would go, then in DC, we kept getting attacked by cicadas everywhere and there were a bunch of them. So this is an image that almost everybody can see, because we've experienced at one time or another, of course, locusts, you know, are now like coming in and the image is, they're going to eat everything, they're going to destroy everything. In fact, in chapter two, he picks up on that imagery again and he's talking about these locusts that are going to come and they're going to destroy pretty much everything. He says in chapter two, blow the trumpet in Zion, sound the alarm on my holy hill, let all who live in the land tremble for the day of the Lord is coming. It is close at hand, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and blackness, like dawn spreading across the mountains, a large and mighty army comes, such as never was in ancient times, nor ever will be in ages to come. So both in chapter one and chapter two, there's some parallel between his imagery of locusts and invading armies that are going to come into the land. Now what's the purpose of this from your mind, like these locusts, these armies, these people are coming in to bring a warning, to bring retribution, to bring discipline, to bring a reminder to the people to turn their hearts back to God. How do you see Joel using this imagery? As a means of God's discipline, I mean, that's what the intent would be that the people would ultimately rent their hearts to the Lord and repent of their disobedience, repent of their idolatry and turn their hearts back to God. So here's the warning that Joel gives to the people, he's built up this imagery, these armies are coming, like a locust would come, that they're coming, and he gives this cult repentance, let me just rattle these off, in chapter one, verse five, wake up and wail, verse eight, mourn, verse 11, despair, verse 14, declare a fast. Chapter two, verse 12, return with fasting, weeping and mourning, verse 13, render your heart. Okay, these verbs that he is using are powerful words, they're not like words of uplift and encouragement, wail and mourn and despair and weep and render your heart. These are sort of in your face moments to say the way that you're living alive here under Joash and that you guys are going out to these high places and offering sacrifices to false gods to idols is not kosher with God and you need to change your heart toward God. That doesn't earn you preacher of the year, you know, I mean, that kind of language is really in your face. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's one of the issues that sometimes within pastoral ministry, we can, I hate to say fall victim to you, but what it is easy to throw out and to condemn the sin that everybody agrees with in your congregation. So depending upon the, you know, theological bent of your congregation, depending upon the political bent potentially of your congregation, it's easy to highlight the sin that everybody would say amen to and that sin. It is another thing to come before your people and say, yes, these are sins that we see that are existent within our cultural context, but here are the sins that are existent within our church context and calling people to repentance that are sitting that, that are sitting in the pews in front of you, calling yourself and in, you know, within the community calling yourself to repentance as well, recognizing areas where we might not be as faithful to God or faithful to God as we are called to be. Yeah, that doesn't necessarily earn you the paths on the back to exercise the prophetic voice, which is to tell the, the people within the body of Christ to say we need to render our hearts unto God because here is an issue that we are struggling with. Here is an element of disobedience that is existent within our church or within our denomination, whatever it might be. Yeah, that's not necessarily going to earn you a path on the back. And that's where Joel finds himself. Maybe that's why Joel isn't as remembered as some of the other prophets or whatever else because he didn't have a light and lively message here. No, but like I look at like Jeremiah, for instance, and maybe there's so much more ink that is spilled in the book of Jeremiah, but, but Jeremiah was someone who persistently just suffered, you know, and yeah, we, we remember Jeremiah, um, or a longer book. Yeah, it could be, but even like Elijah, there's not much ink, like you said, but, but at the same time, here's somebody who went head to head with this wicked evil king and his wicked evil wife, and, uh, and so we remember Elijah, who no, yeah, we don't have the narrative about Joel and any confrontation that he had maybe as much with the king as we would with Elijah. Maybe that's, that's part of it. So anyway, he's doing this. And I love what he does in verse 13 and 14 because now he begins to turn it and he talks about the nature of God and I think this is really beautiful. This in verse 13, he begins, "Rend your heart and not your garments." Of course, it was customary for people that wanted to show their sign of repentance to rip their clothes and he said, "That's not really what you need to do. It needs to be your heart." That's what needs to be changed. He says, "Return to the Lord your God." Now he begins to define the nature of God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity. Who knows? God may turn and relent and leave behind a blessing, grain offerings and drink offerings for the Lord your God. I love that because right in the middle of this hard hitting news that these invading locust invading armies are going to come and it's because you have settled your heart in the wrong place and he wants you to render your heart and weep and mourn and wail and all these things. Here's God. And God is not just sitting in heaven, wringing his hands, waiting to send lightning bolts. God is gracious, compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in love. God really desires for us to repent, that is to turn our minds, to turn our hearts, to turn our lives around and confess and then move toward him. Yeah. And that's the key point is repentance because sometimes people take the language of grace and compassion and frame that so as to mean that God accepts you as you are universalist. Yes. And affirms you as you are because he's abounding in love, therefore, you know, you're all good. You do you type mentality, but that's not word grace in God's compassion and God's abounding love leads, God's abounding love toward us, which defies reason, leads to repentance. It leads to faithfulness. It leads to humility before God to say, God, you're the author of what is right, true and good. You're the author of love, you're the author of truth. And therefore, I am going to yield to you in those areas of my life that are not aligned with you. I'm going to repent of those things and turn to you because this is the offer. The offer is God extending his arms and saying, I want you to repent. I want you to experience the infinite depth of my grace. I want you to experience the infinite depth of my love and compassion. But if they do not repent, they're going to experience the fullness of God's discipline. And yet that discipline, as harsh as it may sound, that discipline is also intended to turn them to repentance, that they would come to experience the fullness of God's compassion. The message of this is not, God is gracious and compassionate and slow to anger. Therefore go ahead and keep worshiping false gods and idols on the high places. That is not the message of this. And somehow we sort of make that the message these days, like that God is so great. I can do whatever I want and live any way that I want. Here's my summary. God loves us as we are. He never wants us to stay as we are, that I don't see anything in Scripture that says, he loves us. He's in his son to die for us because of his love for us. But the message is never, you just keep doing you. You just keep being who you've been and God will affirm that. That is not from Genesis to Revelation that I read. And Joel's right smack in the middle of this saying, "No, weep, will, mourn, rent your heart. Turn to God. Stop what you're doing because God's waiting for you to do that." It's like the story that Jesus tells with the prodigal son, the father figure, is waiting on the porch, looking with his eyes toward the horizon, hoping his son will return and his son comes and returns and repents and he's restored. And that's the story of the gospel. And for the older son in that story too, he refused to return and repent. And he stayed out of that thing. Okay, so we got this going on and let's wrap it up by looking at what God's answer to all of it is. And it's in chapter 2, verse 18, when they're all saying, "Look at this. This is what you do, rent your heart, weep, wail, mourn, all those things." And this is the nature of God. Now what does God do? Verse 18, "Then the Lord was jealous for his land and took pity on his people." And it goes on to talk about God's sinning grain and wine and oil in verse 19, driving out the invaders in verse 20 and that causing us to be glad in verse 23. And then the famous passage that you referenced in verse 28, "And afterward I will pour out my spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your old men will dream dreams. Your young men will see visions. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my spirit in those days." And it goes on to talk more about the things that are quoted in the book of Acts and in other parts of the New Testament. This wasn't fully fulfilled for another 700-plus years after Joel until the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit, after Jesus ascends into heaven, sends the Holy Spirit. So there are some aspects of this where it seems immediate, the invading army, if you do this, you're going to get restored, and you're going to get some grain and wine and oil and the stopping of the invaders. And there are some aspects of this which are prophetically spoken for 700-plus years later. Yeah, and that's one of the things when reading the Old Testament, as we've been going through this year, especially within the prophetic books, is what we encounter. Is there is a present reality to the people that the prophet is speaking to? There's a future reality that is completely centered in Jesus Christ, but may be testifying to his first advent, or it might be even testifying to his second coming as well. And so when we read through the Old Testament, one of the things that we're going to see is while there's going to be all of this prophetic word that has come to pass, there are aspects to it that have not yet come to pass and will not be seen until the final return of Jesus Christ. Wow. Well said. Well said. Okay, well, we're going to wrap up Joel. There's more to reading Joel and we encourage you to read through his book and just take these line-by-line paragraph, paragraph, whatever, and see what Joel seems to be saying to the people of his day and the future, as Ben just described. Next week, we're going to take a look at another prophet. His name is Amos and he has quite a bit of picturesque imagery, again, calling the people to turn back to God. I mean, that's pretty much all the prophets like turn back to God, turn back to God, turn back to God. That's pretty much the summary of what they do because they were speaking to people and to kings and leaders and others who had forgotten God and done other things. We'll take a look at Amos next week. If you wanted to get more about these things we've talked about, you can go to our website, FishersBoomC.org or find the church app and click on the BeGod's light link. And if you want to stay up to date with these podcasts, then we encourage you to follow and rate with what we say, a seven out of five, rate wherever you get your podcasts and we'll see how that maybe we'll have more than one rating by next week. I bet on it. I bet on it. I'm going to go rate ourselves multiple times now. Yeah, the most interesting part is I bet like less than one percent of the people listening to the end of this when I give the same speech every time. That's possibility. All right, God bless. We'll see you next time. (gentle music) (gentle music)
Mark Ellcessor and Ben Greenbaum explore the ministry and message of the prophet Joel.