As we come to a new series in Joel, we must recognize that we study God’s Word in tumultuous times. A day before this study, a 2-month long “circuit breaker” just ended in Singapore. Over the past 2 months, the entire nation was encouraged to stay home to break the chain of transmission. This pandemic has introduced deep changes to our society, causing difficult and painful disruptions to our churches, our livelihoods and our communities.
And the world is not just fighting a pandemic. Racial tension and unrest rock many parts of the US, and has sparked a worldwide conversation about racism. Many of us may look at these incidents and feel a deep sense of hopelessness and loss. As we are bombarded with such news every day, we may start to wonder: where is God in the midst of this moment of great crisis? Is He even there?
It is therefore fitting for us to start on a new study on the book of Joel in the Old Testament. The book of Joel is the second of twelve minor prophets. It deals with calamity and crisis, allowing us to understand why disaster may happen in the life of God’s people. And in our studies, we pray that we may be comforted and strengthened, as we consider how God’s people should respond in a time of crisis and calamity?
(A) Christ prophetic on the day of calamity (Luke 13:1-5)
To begin, we consider 5 verses from Luke 13:1-5. Luke 13 stands as a unique passage in the Gospels. It shows us how Jesus Himself responded to a real-time calamity, in his day. And as we read this passage, we can ask ourselves: how did Jesus respond to a historical calamity in his own day? And what would He have to say about the current and future crises we have?
In Luke 13:1, we learn about the nature of the calamity that was at hand, in Jesus’s time. Pilate (the same one who would condemn Jesus to death) is mingling the blood of Galileans with the sacrifices. As we remember in the Old Testament, that is a huge taboo, as the sacrifices of God are to be kept pure. In an act of political oppression and a violation of their religion, the Gentile rulers of the day had corrupted the Israelites’ worship: tainting their offerings of sacrifices with blood! It hinted at violence in the temple. Imagine for instance, that when gathering with brothers and sisters in Christ in a church service on Sunday, someone arrives and overturns the pews, vandalizing the hall that we gather with others, throwing an unclean substance in our church sanctuaries. People would naturally be outrageous and offended, especially if such an incident is publicized: that someone would dare to desecrate a place of worship!
How does Jesus respond to this disaster? Jesus brings up two things in the coming verses. Firstly, in Luke 13:2, he leads those around him to consider: “Did the Galileans suffer, because they were worse sinners?” And secondly, he brings up yet another tragedy. Jesus speaks of another incident that occurred in a town called Siloam: where a tower had collapsed, killing 18 people (Luke 13:4).
Jesus places these two events before our eyes: a deliberate, villainous act of oppression (the Galileans and Pilate); and an unplanned, non-human calamity (the collapse of the tower). Jesus lines up these events together: an event caused by wicked men, and another caused by an “act of God”: and he applies the same principle in both these events.
What is that principle? We see this in Luke 13:3 and Luke 13:5. “Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish”. His answer in the presence of calamity is one of repentance.
Why is that significant? Firstly, in light of Jesus’s response, Jesus is removing the temptation for us to think that those who suffer in calamity are suffering because they are worse off than others. In other words, he tells us that we cannot think that the person who suffers is “less than” anyone of us.
That is a temptation for many of us in our present day. and especially after past natural disasters. There can even be murmurs among some groups that certain events occured to certain people, maybe because they are not so “good”, or were “guilty” of something in the past. Jesus tells us that we cannot make such hasty judgements. Rather, these are moments for us to pause and realise that we too, could perish any moment and must therefore repent.
Repentance is the message, the emphasis of Jesus Christ in a day of calamity. Repentance is the word of this prophet, we call Christ. On a day of calamity, his prophetic word to the people is to repent.
In so doing, we learn so much about the character of our Saviour. His response to disaster is deeply unique. In a time of disaster, He does not dive into grand philosophical treatises about systemic injustices, into grand theories about who is righteous and unrighteous. He says straightforwardly that death comes to all, for in our sinful state, all will perish. The response that must come from those who understand Him and His Father’s will is a humble word of repentance. Repentance must be the way that Christians understand calamity.
It is good for us to consider these verses as a preface to our study of Joel. Today, we live in uncertain times. On top of a global pandemic, we learn about widespread protests and chaos due to deep racial injustices committed the US. We live in a similar place of injustice, as in Jesus’ time. We too, must sit before the Lord, in these days, and grieve for our sins.
Repentance in the face of calamity is a major theme of the book of Joel. Repentance is the ultimate goal of Joel. As we read Joel, let’s remember the words of Jesus in Luke 13, as words that saturate the prophetic word of Joel. We sometimes think of the prophets as distant from the time of Jesus. When we are tempted to feel in such a way, we must remember that Jesus calls us to repentance, in the same way that Joel calls us to repentance.
(B) The minor prophets in their day
We now turn to Joel, paying a bit of attention to its context that surrounds Joel’s call to repentance. There are two historical events that Joel speaks of: firstly, the exile of God’s people from the land and secondly, a locust swarm and a mighty invasion to come.
In Joel 3:2-3 and 17, we learnt that the people of God have been taken into exile by foreigners. In other prophetic books, we learn about the burning of the temple, and other such situations, where the Israelites were conquered by the Babylonians and Assyrians. These events are also part of the context of Joel.
In Joel 1:4-6, we read of the second set of historical events that Joel is speaking of. We learn that there has been a swarm of locusts, that devastates the agriculture. We should note that these are not far off realities. At this time of writing (in June 2020) we learn from various reputable news outlets that massive swarms of locust have attacked harvests in countries such as Kenya, Ethopia, Yemen, India and Pakistan: causing widespread devastation, with UN agencies warning of the risk of devastation of famine in these countries. A historical event similar to what we can read about in the news happened in Joel’s time.
Here, we learn an important tip for reading both the minor and major prophets. We must understand that God’s Word to the prophet is primarily based on something historical, something that actually happening in their time. They are based on events that take place in their time. Therefore, admonishments, warnings and even promises in the prophetic book cannot be immediately taken by us, and applied to everything around our lives.
Why is this important? Many of us would probably be aware of some popular explanations of the verse Jer 29:11 (“I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and give you a future...”) These explanations lead us to apply, or “claim” this verse directly into life situations, job prospects, choice of schools and all. However, in doing so, we fail to recognize that these verses come with their own historical context, and the prophets were writing to an audience before us. When we fail to understand that, we misread these verses, making these verses more about our own success, than their original, intended meaning.
To be clear: these verses do tell us about the hope we have in God. But first, we must consider the historical context, how the first audience understood it. Why should we pay attention to these historical contexts? We must see that we are not being unnecessarily pedantic over here. Read rightly, the prophets are telling us that in response to these events, God’s word comes to the prophet, and the prophet speaks. In other words, God speaks to help the people of God understand and respond to events in their time.
This should make us sit up, and (hopefully!) desire to read the prophets more. We learn from the prophets how God wants us to understand the events of human history and time. And just as Jesus responded to the fallen tower of Siloam, the mingling of blood with sacrifices, or even the far more recent events of COVID-19 and other news, we learn that God has a view of history. God has a view of time and space. In light of that, we should consider: when crises erupt and many are in a scramble on how to respond, are we “listening” more to Google, to cultural commentary, to the popular opinion of the day, or are we truly listening to our God in His Word?
Do we allow the world and all of its voices to tell us what to think about these recent events? Or would we allow God’s Word to shape and develop our instincts, that we may know how to respond? One of our hopes as we open the book of Joel, is that we learn to be men and women who are reverential towards our God, who is sovereign over crisis. For this God we speak of is One who allows the locust, the army, the exile to happen, and reveals His sovereign plan over all these things. And surely He is the same God who is sovereign over all the events of our time. The minor prophets must be read in light of its historical events, so that we can apply them rightly into our time.
Knowing that, we want to dive into a few verses in Joel. The table below summarizes two key features of Joel, and the minor prophets at large:
Through the verses in Joel and the table above, we want to highlight two crucial features of the prophets: the Word of the Lord, and the idea of multiple horizons of fulfilment. We need both to understand the prophets rightly.
The word of the Lord
Joel begins with these words in Joel 1:1: “The word of the Lord came to Joel, the some of Pethuel.” This is a feature of all the prophets, where nearly all begin with this line: “The word of the Lord came to ______” That helps us to understand how we should read the prophets. We must see that the prophets are conveying God’s thoughts, God’s revelations, God’s message:it is God’s Word! God is the One speaking, and He addresses us through the prophets And that’s why the first verse clarifies where the message is from. It is from the Lord.
This therefore is a mark of the prophet. The prophet speaks the words that do not belong to himself. The prophet is the one to whom the word of the Lord comes. He must never speak what He has not heard. He only speaks what he has received. The very first verse of Joel (and the other minor and major prophets) remind us of this important truth. Therefore, when we say prophetic, we mean God-originated. Deut 18:20-22 was recorded for us by Moses, the first prophet of Israel. The verses showed Israel how they were to understand the prophetic office, where the words spoken by prophets do not come from themselves, but they come from the Lord. Therefore, what makes a prophet a prophet is not charisma, or eloquence, or some mystical gifting; rather it is a God-originating message. The test as to whether a prophet’s Word is true is whether the Word comes true, whether it truly bears fruit. False prophets are those who speak falsely of God, and are enemies of God.
How then, should we approach the minor prophets? We must do so with a reverential ear: knowing that it is the Word of the Lord spoken, and promised to come true. This is also why we must be aware of the events that surround the writing of the prophetic books. Because, these events fulfil the truth of the prophetic word. A good way is for us to understand: “What is God saying? What does God say to the audience of the time? What does he desire of them?”
We live in a time where we hear thousands, nearly hundred of thousands of words a day. We read them in messages, social media. We are inundated by the word of fear, the word of man. But all those things drown out, crowd out, and relativize the word of the lord. The world is conspiring to drown out the Word of the Lord. We must retain a reverential ear, to hear what the Lord has to say.
Multiple horizons of fulfilment
We learn about a second feature of the minor prophets. In Joel 1:15, we learn about a “day of the Lord”. What does that refer to? Joel 1:16 speaks of a time of mourning: where because of the locust swarm, food and grain offerings are no longer able to offer grain offerings, such that joy and gladness are cut off from the house of the Lord. In this verse, the day of the Lord therefore refers to the locusts: when the locust swarm comes, it is the terrible day of the Lord: a day of destruction from the almighty.
What else do we see about the day of the Lord? In Joel 2:1 we see another occasion of the “Day of the Lord”. But when we look at 2:1, the prophet Joel doesn’t seem to be speaking of locusts anymore. Rather, he speaks of the “day of the Lord” in terms of a vast, invading army. Again, this reminds us of the historical event of an invasion. The day of the Lord is also near in the invasion.
How then do we understand this “Day of the Lord”? We must see that in Joel, the phrase “the day of the Lord”, is clearly being used to refer to different events: a locust swarm, and a military invasion.
Joel 2:28-32 adds to our understanding of the “Day of the Lord”. But in these verses, we learn more about Pentecost. In Acts 2, Peter would quote Joel 2:28-32 directly, noting that this is fulfilled when the early church was filled with the Spirit. And in verses 30 to 32, we learn about the Day of the Lord in terms of salvation.
We should pause here and consider what this means. We must see here that this phrase: “The Day of the Lord” clearly refers to multiple, different events, with the same character. This gives us another important feature of the minor prophets: We must learn to look for multiple horizons of fulfilment.
What does that mean? Bible scholar D.A Carson helps us understand these “multiple horizons of fulfilment” with an analogy. Imagine being on a holiday, where you are driving down a long windy road, with the distant, foggy appearance of a mountain in the horizon. You see a clear peak to the mountain. But if you were to go closer to the mountain, you sometimes might find that what you once thought was a single-peaked mountain was actually multiple mountains, maybe a whole mountain range, all together. And if you were to go even closer, we might realize that what we thought was a clear single peak is actually multiple mountain peaks, all together!
The prophecies most often refer to an immediate event: say, the historical locust swarm in Joel’s time. But these immediate events may “stack up” with other later events, that fulfil it in a greater and more complete way. We must understand these “multiple horizons”, when we think about how the prophecies were made. The “great day of the Lord”: the day where God has his way, where His purposes of blessing and judgement are fulfilled refer to multiple days, building on one another, until the final Day. The great day of the Lord in the fullest sense therefore refers to the final day when Christ comes again, and His great purposes of blessing and judgement are ultimately fulfilled. But along the way, there are many small horizons of fulfilment, even as we look to the final one.
These are 2 key principles we must have, as we think through and seek to understand Scripture. We look for the immediate event when we read the prophets. And after doing so, we look beyond it, and see if it speaks to a larger, greater fulfilment. That’s the principle we need, to make sense of the prophets.
(C) Prophetic waiting in our day (2 Pet 3:1-13)
Before we approach Joel in our subsequent studies, we should pause to ask ourselves: how should we as Christians approach Joel, the Old Testament prophets? How can we do so in a way that helps us think through our lives, practically? In light of that, we look at 2 Pet3:1-13.
We see some commonalities from 2 Peter 3, and Joel. Peter asks the church to remember the writings of the Old Testament prophets. He asks them to remember these writings (2 Pet 3:1). Sadly, many of us stand in violation of these verses: we have no interest for the prophets, considering them obscure and complicated, not worth our time. If that was what we have thought of the prophets, these verses are a rebuke to us.
Peter warns then, in the subsequent verses, that people will doubt that Jesus will come again. But where do we see that in the prophets? In 2 Pet 3:2, note how Peter writes about the “predictions of the holy prophets” along with “the commandment of the Lord and Saviour through your apostles”. What Peter does here is to suggest that the Old Testament prophets’ words and the New Testament’s apostles teaching, occur along a single, harmonized timeline. Or, in other words, 2 Pet 3:3-8 suggests that the prophets do anticipate the coming and second coming of Christ. We should note that the very logic of 2 Peter 3 suggests the presence of “multiple horizons of fulfilment”.
However, 2 Pet 3:3-12 warns us that people will doubt this combined testimony of the prophets and the apostles. People will be scoffers, doubting that Jesus will come again (2 Pet 3:3) And even more, in 2 Pet 3:4, we see how people will doubt that God will fulfil His promises to judge and to bless. It is a rather que sera sera moment, where people insist that “whatever will be, will be”. People will consider the OT and NT commands to wait for the coming of the Lord as a mere “pipe dream”, and insist that the world will carry on the way it always has.
Peter wants to pre-empt the scoffing that will come, when people doubt the fulfilment of God’s promises. We ought to reflect: have we been confronted by such a belief? We live in a time where it is trendy to believe that God is dead; that He is a mere social construct. Some do think that God is outdated and hateful, and even view believers as harmful and hateful to others. We must see that there will be many who would cast doubt on our faith, as we hold to these promises.
In such times, where the people of God are surrounded by those who would disbelieve and hate them, how ought they live? And how should we live, in these challenging times? Peter calls the people towards trust and repentance (2 Pet 3:9), towards holiness and godliness (2 Pet 3:11). But what unites these various exhortations is Peter is a call to wait (2 Pet 3:12). Waiting describes so clearly the nature of our Christian life: where we are in the middle of a promise, and its fulfilment. Waiting requires the faith to depend on the promise, and the wait for the fulfilment. It means that we cling to what God has said, and we believe that what He will do, is what He said He will do.
As we read Joel, we might wonder: why do we repent? Why do we want to live in this way, where we turn away from sin and self? We mentioned earlier about listening reverentially to God’s Word. Why do we want to do that? We do that because we believe that God has spoken, and He has promised what will happen to us, where something will happen because of what He has promised to us.
The temptation of the Christian is not to wait. In our lives, we are tempted to build our own purposes, to organize our lives, without any reference to what God has promised in Christ, and what we hunger and wait for: His coming. And Peter shows us that our endurance even in scoffing, our faithfulness, our desire to live lives of holiness and godliness are all built upon the fact that we are waiting earnestly for the fulfilment of God’s promises. And as Peter reminds us in 2 Pet 3:8-9, what seems like a ‘long time’ to you and I is not long to God. He is not slow to fulfil His promises to us, and will surely come again (2 Pet 3:9-10).
It is our hope that our studies in Joel would allow us to look at the promises of God in the days of the original readers, and to see that those promises are not just in the days of those readers alone, but points us to a fuller fulfilment: in the day of the Lord to come. And for us, as we wait after the Lord’s coming, we are looking at the promises, then looking ahead, and hoping with all of our hearts, with conviction to know that God does not lie. And so, we respond with a life of faith-filled waiting.
In our Christian lives, are we waiting for Jesus? What indication is there in our lives, that Jesus has promised us something we are waiting for Him to fulfil? The person who waits desperately clings to His Word. They would turn that promise again and again in their minds, almost like a child promised a great Christian present, waiting in excitement and anticipation. And that person does not get distracted by the many things that come. That is the life of faith! And we turn away from sin, from idolatry, leading us to be single-minded on Christ.
And so, repentance is not just a moral thing: for what we perceive as ‘serious’ flaws. Repentance is turning aside from anything or anyone, that would detract from our focus on God. Are our affections divided? Is God just someone “pressed” into our plans, an “add-on” we merely force into our life?
Coming to the end of this study, perhaps it is right for us to pray: “Lord Jesus, teach me to wait. Teach me to wait with all of my heart”. For the promises He has made, are yet to be fulfilled. May our hearts be stoked to love His promises, given to us in Christ. Let us look to Him. Let us pray that we might fix our eyes on the great day of the Lord, that we may come to Him with renewed affections, remembering the greatness of our salvation, in Jesus Christ.