Minor Prophets Joel Pt-3

The Minor Prophets: Joel Pt-3 

 

The Solution: 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.

• Pour out – Locusts hate storms, 

  • Rain changes their behavior from gregarious and swarming to becoming docile. 

  • Wind blows their swarms out of the land and apart

 

The Growing Problem: Joel 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: 

The Promise: Joel 2:25 And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpiller, and the palmerworm, my great army which I sent among you.

 

The Power: 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. Even on the male and female servants in those days, I will pour out my Spirit. 

 

Power for What: “And I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke. The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes.

Power to be a Witness: And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved.

 

1. The 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 apple trees for apples, NOT SHADE 

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. 

• Fruit is the work 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! 

2. Locust: Hebrew Arbeh – It means military. Strategic attack.

The Locust is a strategic  – Terrorist attack – Fear

• The strategy is to launch in formation with fear, intimidation, worry – they go together in step.

  • Fear of Judgment and Condemnation: This fear can stem from a misunderstanding of God’s love and character, as the Bible emphasizes God’s mercy and willingness to forgive. 

  • Fear of Being Known: Individuals may fear that others will know their sins and reject them, leading to isolation and a sense of shame. 

  • Fear of Losing Salvation: Some may fear that their ongoing sin will cause them to lose their salvation or relationship with God, when the reality is that God does not walk away from you; it is you who cease to believe and walk away from God.

  • Fear of the Future: Consequences are loss on Earth and eternal loss in hell. 

• 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, act after act, seems 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.

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 1:5Wake 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 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.” 

• 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, or a generational curse: Warn your children and your grandchildren 

Acts- the promise of a 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. 

All God’s People Will Prophesy

 

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

• Hosea 6:2 After two days he will 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. 

  • 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.