Minor Prophets Pt-2: Joel

 

Minor Prophets Part 2: Joel

• He was a prophet to Judah, The Northern Territory was Samaria by this time. 
• Likely written during the time of Ezra and Nehemiah 
• Much of the book of Joel looks to the past and uses this as a warning for the future!
• A terrible locust plague that causes starvation for animals and humans. 
• Joel takes this as a sign that people should lament and repent. God responds positively beginning in 2:18. 
• After 2:29, the book moves from historical events to the “Last Days” and the “Day of the Lord,” the end time, a time when the world will be changed and when strange and frightening signs will appear (2:30-32). In the new age, all people will prophesy (2:28-29). 
• Joel is quoted in the account of the Pentecost experience in Acts 2:17-21.
  • Lessons: 
    • Idolatry had come in stages – slowly 
    • But the judgment of the Lord is swift and comes as fast as a car crash 

ESV Joel 1 :1 The word of the Lord that came to Joel (יוֹאֵל (Yoʾel) = “Yahweh is God”), the son of Pethuel ((פְּתוּאֵל Pethuel = “Opening or vision of God”)An Invasion of Locusts. 2 Hear this, you elders; give ear, all inhabitants of the land! Has such a thing happened in your days, or in the days of your fathers? 3 Tell your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children to another generation. 4 What the cutting locust left, the swarming locust has eaten. What the swarming locust left, the hopping locust has eaten, and what the hopping locust left, the destroying locust has eaten.

KJV 1:4 That which the palmerworm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that which the locust hath left hath the cankerworm eaten; and that which the cankerworm hath left hath the caterpillar eaten. 

1. Palmerworm: 

2. Locust: 

3. Cankerworm: 

4. Caterpillar: 

Easy to think that each of these is a different buggy, but they are all locusts. 

• Important Hermeneutical lens: Just at different stages of development.

Joel is saying: What you see going on in the land is a result of the pestilence that you have allowed in your hearts a long time ago through idolatry.

• Understand how a strategy of Satan with sin, self-righteousness, and religion.

Illustration: We can see sin just like the car crash, 

• As a witness, or as the one in the car.

• It looks like from the car, everything suddenly and surprisingly happened at once

• From the street corner, you could see the event play out in almost predictable stages.

Satan infests your life with sin over a long period. It grows and develops, slowly consumes not undergo immediate destruction. We don’t recognize it until the end, and it’s a swarm.

• Sin not only destroys your life, it eats it up, feeds on it, and grows from it.

• Sin is like cancer – it grows by malignant cells feeding on healthy cells.

• Paul likens it to yeast – yeast cells are a fungus that feeds on its host until its host is changed.   

  There are four distinct stages of consumption from sin.

  See Joel telling Judah about it in our text:

1. Palmerworm: Hebrew, Gazam – Gnawing locust,  Nibbling locust – targets fruit. 

• Gnaw means to wear away by persistent nibbling 

• He attacks the fruit – the result of all your sowing and planting

• You plant for fruit 

• You work for a reward

• You plant trees for apples 

The purpose of the apple tree isn’t to shade, its purpose is fruit! The Palmerworm cleans out the fruit, leaving the rest of the tree intact.

A couple of ways to look at this:

• As Christians, we have a mandate to submit to the Holy Spirit’s work of producing the fruit of the Spirit: Galatians 5:22-23

  • You will not be rewarded in Heaven nor hear “well done” for your knowledge.” 

  • Or your time spent coming to church, hearing sermons, listening to podcasts, watching YouTube preachers, listening to Christian radio, reading Christian books, etc. 

  • Many of us are educated far beyond our level of obedience! 

• Even your level of self-righteousness is filthy rags before the Lord

  • You will be rewarded for allowing the Holy Spirit to work through your life and produce fruit through your life. 

  • He does the work, you do the surrendering. 

These are the works of the Holy Spirit: Fruit FEEDS! FEEDING IS FOR OTHERS! 

Satan is a master at gnawing away at the fruit the Holy Spirit wants to produce in you!

• He doesn’t come all at once! 

  • He will begin gnawing away at your joy, 

    • Nibbling at your peace, 

    • Chewing on your love, your patience

    • Consuming your source of love and faithfulness 

He attacks to eat the fruit from the inside out – But leaves the rest of the tree intact.

• Having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof – 2 Timothy 3:5

  • You will be changed into a hypocrite – Appearance of life but no fruit!

  • There is a tree, there is life, but up close, the fruit is being consumed from the inside out. 

The price of secret sin, self-righteousness– Palmerworm eats the fruit of the Spirit from the inside out. 

Satan’s Cheap Knock-Off and Imitation: Religion: 

• Religion is a Fruitless tree – Is an apple tree an apple tree without any fruit?

• That is an apple tree! Not without any apples on it!

  • Is a Christian a Christian without any fruit? 

Satan will eat the fruit and then leave the tree: 

• I am an oak for Jesus! 

  • But there is no fruit!  – Where is your Joy, peace, love, etc…..

    • No one feeds from the Spirit working in you! 

The thief has come to steal, kill, and destroy – not all at once but in increments

• He  doesn’t want to just kill you, he wants you to suffer – to gnaw you to death

• He doesn’t want to take it away from you all at once

• He wants to gnaw –HE IS A PEST and 

• Like a PESTILENCE! He will take it little by little = Sick, Poor, Miserable!

You scratch your head and say, “Why doesn’t God do something about this?”

• God is saying, “Why don’t you do something about this?”

• You got worms! 

• That’s why you have no fruit!

• Repent and then spray spiritual pesticide – God’s word over every thought and every decision, and every word you speak.

Don’t let the enemy take your joy, your peace, spray him out of there!

• Jesus promised more than life! 

• Abundant Life was his mission. 

  • You do not have Abundant Life unless the Spirit is producing Fruit that Feeds!

    • That’s what Abundance is FOR! 

      • Few experience it!

We should see abundance, not just life. 

• Many times we work and minister and sow and see little return, if any at all.

• Where is the abundant living? 

  • You are alive – the tree

    • But there is no abundant life – no fruit on it

      • Multiplied seeds of blessing!

Secret sin, self-righteousness, and religion – They are the Palmerworm that will leave you with some life, but consume the abundant life from you. 

What are you doing about your WORMS? 

• Well, I am working on it! – That’s your problem! 

• The Bible never says that it works that way! 

  • Works are God’s part through you 

    • THE SPIRIT OF SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS is the greatest sin! 

    • I WILL WORK AT IT! 

    • It’s a Walk, not a WORK! 

    • Sin enters your heart, and we begin trying to work ourselves free – this is a trap becuase sin is a WEB SPUN by a BUG! 

Galatians 5:16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. …19 Now the works of the flesh

• Works are flesh and produce sin regardless of intention – the path to hell is paved with good intentions. 

• The walk is of the Spirit – Relationship is a Walk – the 

• The wedding ceremony symbolizes this – How can two walk together, lest they agree? 

• All of the Fruit of the Spirit is relational! 

 Review: The Palmerworm is a nibbler and a gnawer. 

2. The Locust is a strategic terrorist attack – Fear

• The strategy is gorilla warfare, locust studies you and will launch in formation with fear, intimidation, worry – they go together in formation.

• Terrorize your information  

Proverbs 30: 27“Four things on earth are small, yet they are extremely wise, 27 locusts have no king, yet they advance together in ranks; 

 

Solitary and gregarious behavior: What makes locusts swarm 

• It is this enforced mingling that triggers the physical change from solitary to gregarious, 

• Shortage of food turns grasshoppers into military locusts by forcing them to come close together,

  • Which affects their nervous systems and changes their body’s physical make-up.

    • Swarming locusts are just solitary grasshoppers until you bunch more than one together.

Ongoing sin and self-righteousness, act after act, seem like there is little to fear.

• Constant sin without repentance invites the formation of fear, intimidation, and worry.

• Drought represents throughout the bible a QUEENCING AND GRIEVING of the Holy Spirit.

• Refusing to walk in the Spirit and seeking His Presence! 

Rain represents in the Bible the Spirit. – We’ll look at this again in a minute!

 

3. Cankerworm: The word yeled means wingless locust larva, undetectable worm

It’s a larva–attack that is designed to hatch and consume your future 

• The attack that devours your possibilities 

• Possibilities before they become realities 

• Sin will consume your future:  The person you are is not the only person on the line. 

• The person you could become is on the line, too!

Heard the Expression: Nip it in the bud? Satan uses sin to destroy you before you do something or become someone greater

A pear tree releases a blossom, and a little nut behind becomes a pear. 

• This locust doesn’t attack the fruit 

• It lays an egg and the larva eats the bud before it becomes the fruit.

Hatching things to come against you. A larva hatches from eggs and then transforms into a pupa or chrysalis – it is an undercover. 

Put an egg in an incubator right conditions it will hatch right conditions

• Satan will plant an egg in your heart and then use your own life to incubate it so that it hatches to destroy you.

Stewing on unforgiveness, fantasizing, incubators!  

• Never let the conditions be right for something to hatch. 

• 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 Thoughts become realities! 

• “I was blindsided. I fell into this sin!”  No, you didn’t!  You let it hatch.

• What the palmerworm hasn’t eaten the locust will eat, what the locust has left the cankerworm will eat, what the cankerworm has left the caterpillar will eat.

When Jesus said in John 10:9-10 The thief has come to steal, kill, and then destroy.

• He wants to destroy you. 

• But he does it in stages: 

  • He will begin by stealing, then by killing, then on to destruction.

  • Jesus starts with Life and then on to Abundant Life! 

4. Caterpillar: Chasil (Destroyer) Adult ravager: Scorched Earth – nothing green left.

• This speaks of eternity 

• The Devil’s plan isn’t to stop you or destroy part of your life. 

• He wants to consume all of it. But even more than that, He wants to see you with him in hell.

He wants you in hell, but starts as a thief, not a destroyer 

Joel gives us the Picture 

Joel 1:5 Wake up, you drunkards, and weep! Wail, all you drinkers of wine; wail because of the new wine, for it has been snatched from your lips.  6A nation has invaded my land, powerful and without number; it has the teeth of a lion,

the fangs of a lioness.  7 It has laid waste my vines and ruined my fig trees. It has stripped off their bark and thrown it away, leaving their branches white.  8Mourn like a virginb in sackcloth, grieving for the husbandc of her youth. 

 

Something very interesting here:

1. The husband of the youth tells you what that means 

2. She was a virgin – that means that she was engaged

3. She is grieving in sackcloth because she never got the opportunity to see the wedding day.

4. She never had the opportunity to have intimacy, come close, or see her wedding day

We are betrothed and engaged to Jesus currently.

• When we get to heaven, there will be a moment called the marriage supper of the Lamb.

• This is when the Bride of Christ is finally joined to her husband, Jesus.

Satan’s strategy is to leave the church and Christians to die without seeing the wedding day. 

•  Joel 1:8 Mourn like a virgin in sackcloth, grieving for the husband of her youth. 

 

God’s not done with Judah and us yet.

Joel 2:12 The LORD says, “Turn to me now, while there is time. Give me your hearts. Come with fasting, weeping, and mourning. 13 Don’t tear your clothing in your grief, but tear your hearts instead.”

• Even though God has threatened destruction of his own people, God gives the opportunity of repentance and salvation at the 11th hour. 

• If they will repent, he will relent. 

• If they will “Tear their Hearts”, he will cease to tear apart their land.

So in verses 15–17, Joel calls for fasting, and the priests pray for God not to make his heritage a mockery among the nations. They humbled themselves 

• Comes verse 18: “Then the Lord became jealous for his land and had pity on his people.” 
• He turned away from judgment. 
• Restoring What the Locusts Have Eaten

Joel 2:25 – “I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpiller, and the palmerworm.” 

• It says not what the locusts have eaten but the years.

• Nothing grows for years because everything is destroyed and eaten beyond the seed level.

• The entire food chain collapses, and it takes years for anything to begin to grow, and then more years for more complex life to be able to eat it.

• God does not say he will undo the past – you can’t unscramble eggs!

God is saying that he will heal your present enough to seed and grow a future

God is a God of restoration!  

• God promises to restore the land to be able to produce again – a picture of our spiritual lives.  

But he doesn’t stop there: 

• Ever see what happens when it’s dry, you walk on grass that’s dead? Everything is wilted, nothing green. Grass gets so dry that it crunches – Sounds like you are walking on corn flakes. 

• Bet let it rain, and the next day everything changes.

Joel 2:28-29 – “It shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; …upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out my spirit.” 

• Locusts swarm and attack because of drought. 

• The problem isn’t the locust swarm; that is the symptom. 

• The problem is the drought that invites the locusts.

Cool, that is one of 3 Ways to fight locusts: Locusts hate torrential Rain, 

• Rain, Wind, Fire

Holy Spirit- Rain – Example- Flood 

The Holy Spirit is the Wind

• Exodus 10:19 And the LORD changed the wind to a very strong west wind, which caught up the locusts and carried them into the Red Sea. Not a locust was left anywhere in Egypt. 

 

Fire: Peter in Acts, after the Holy Spirit was poured out, there appeared tongues of fire over their heads. 

• Acts 2:38 This promise is unto you and unto your children and unto your children’s children.

  • He is quoting Joel, which has the same line: Tell your children and your children’s children. 

  • Joel 1:3 Tell it to your children, and let your children tell it to their children, and their children to the next generation.

Joel – the problem of sin invites locusts generational curse: Warn your children and your grandchildren 

Acts- the promise of the Holy generational blessing, tell your children and your children’s children.

 

Rather than letting the locusts eat the field, they learned to start a big fire. 

• The size of the locust infestation determined how large a fire they would kindle. 

• If the infestation was large, they would pile heaps and heaps of wood onto the fire to create a massive blaze and dense, dense smoke. 

We need some Holy Ghost Smoke and Fire!
Similarly, we who sow God’s Word into hearts must learn how to deal with “locusts,” the demonic spirits or scavengers who come to eat up the harvest for which we’ve been waiting.
When God says in Joel 2:12, “Return to me with all your heart,” it is clear what he is fighting for: all our heart, not a piece on Sunday!

• When we do, he restores the years, potential, destiny, and future that the enemy has consumed from our lives.

• And then fills us with His Spirit and with power to walk in victory.

Minor Prophets Part 2: Joel 

The Prophecies of Joel and THE LAST DAYS or AGE: Age is 2,000 years in the Bible. 

• Hosea 6 refers to the return of the Jews from captivity.  Consider this verse:  Hosea 6:2 After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight.
• This verse states that God will revive Israel after two days, and they will be revived on the third day. 
• Many prophecy teachers combine this verse with the teaching of 2 Peter 3:8, which states: “one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”

The Eschatological Day of the Lord.

1. Joel foreshadowed that an ultimate JUDGMENT on sin was coming during a worldwide tribulation.

Joel 2:30 “And I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke. 31 The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes.

2. Joel prophesied that the end times would come, but a day of PROMISE in that the Holy Spirit would also come.  

Joel 2:28“And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. 29 Even on the male and female servants in those days, I will pour out my Spirit.