A wake-up call from God

A hundred years ago, a vast locust swarm descended on Israel, and this is what one eye-witness, a schoolboy at the time, wrote:

In 1915, the entire Middle East, from Turkey to Egypt, was invaded by swarms of locusts, the extent of which was said never to have been known in any part of the world. They appeared over Jerusalem about 2pm, in such density that they eclipsed the sun. Our headmaster told us to get tin cans and bang them, to stop the locusts settling on our vegetable gardens. But nothing prevented them from devouring everything green, even the bark of trees, in minutes. They moved into every opening. We shut doors and windows tight and yet somehow they managed to get through. Frightened, we gave up and retreated inside. For days the sky, the ground, the streets, homes, and shops were full of locusts until they had devoured everything edible. [The Story of my Life, Sami Haddawi].

A hundred years on, and East Africa is now suffering the most devastating locust swarms of recent times. In Kenya last year, one swarm alone covered 930 square miles (that’s 21 times the area of Newcastle) eating everything in sight. So no wonder a BBC report was entitled ‘The Biblical locust plague of 2020’ because there are two locust plagues on that scale in the Bible. One is in Exodus, when God sent a locust plague on Egypt as one of the judgements that would finally make Egypt release his people Israel from slavery. And the other is in the Bible book we’re starting a new sermon series in tonight. It’s the book of the Old Testament prophet Joel, which came out of a time when God sent another locust plague, this time on his own people, to wake them up to the dire state of their relationship with him. So before we jump into Joel 1, let me lead us in prayer:

Father, thank you for speaking through the prophet Joel, not just to the people of his day, but for us as well. Please help us to see how his message fits our situation and speaks to our needs. In Jesus’ name. Amen

So if you’re at the in person service, Joel 1 is on your handout. If you’re at home, would you turn to it if you have a Bible. We’re looking at A Wake-up Call From God. And my first heading is:

1. The disaster

Look down to Joel 1.1:

The word of the Lord that came to Joel, the son of Pethuel

Which is all we know about Joel. Unlike most prophets, we’re not told when he spoke for God, and in the reign of which king of God’s people. But putting the book’s clues together, I go with those who think Joel probably preached after God’s people had returned from exile, and had rebuilt the temple, but had no king. So 500 years or so before Jesus. But that’s not certain and doesn’t affect what we get from the book. So, Joel 1.2-4:

Hear this, you elders [in other words, the leaders of God’s people Israel];give ear, all inhabitants of the land [in other words, all the people along with them]!Has such a thing happened in your days,or in the days of your fathers?Tell your children of it,and let your children tell their children,and their children to another generation.[In other words, this is something you’ll tell your grandchildren about – this is the once in a hundred year event.Verse 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.

cIn other words, they’d been devastated by a locust invasion. So think the 1915 locust invasion of the Middle East, or think East Africa today, and that’s the disaster they’d been through. And Joel is about how God allowed that locust plague disaster, as part of his plan, to wake his people up to the dire state of their relationship with him. So Joel has two big working assumptions, which you find throughout the Bible. Assumption number one is that God is sovereign – in other words, he has ultimate control over everything. So nothing happens unless it’s part of his plan, nothing happens without his say so. So he’s sovereign over locusts and the economic and political and social impact they have. Just like he’s sovereign over viruses and the economic and political and social impact they have. So assumption number one is that God is sovereign. And assumption number two is that God is always working to bring people back into relationship with him. And he sovereignly allows and uses disasters whether national, global or personal to do that. And many of us could testify to the way God either brought us to faith, or brought us back to faith or grew our faith significantly, through some disaster large or small.

That was certainly true for me through a broken engagement. For others, it may be through cancer or divorce or unemployment or exam failure or being caught up in all the effects of this pandemic. Whatever it is, many of us know the truth of those old lines:

I walked a mile with Pleasure;She chatted all the way;But left me none the wiserFor all she had to say.I walked a mile with Sorrow;And ne’er a word said she;But, oh! The things I learned from her,When Sorrow walked with me.[Along the Road, Robert Browning Hamilton]

So what was God saying to his people Israel through this locust plague disaster? Onto heading two:

2. What God targets through disaster

The book of Joel has various clues that things were not well in the way that God’s people Israel were relating to him. Most would have called themselves God’s people, the Old Testament equivalent of saying they were Christians. But God sees the heart and sees when other things take his place, and when our attitude to him is wrong. And through the locust plague, along with Joel’s words, God targeted what he saw in their hearts, and the first thing he targeted here is what people substitute for him. Look on to Joel 1.5-7:

Awake, you drunkards, and weep,and wail, all you drinkers of wine,because of the sweet wine,for it is cut off from your mouth.For a nation has come up against my land,powerful and beyond number;[So he’s talking about the locusts as if they were a foreign army invading Israel]its teeth are lions' teeth,and it has the fangs of a lioness.It has laid waste my vineand splintered my fig tree;it has stripped off their bark and thrown it down;their branches are made white.

So the first group of people in Joel’s sights were the drunkards. I remember a hairdresser I often talked to about Christian things, and one time she asked me what I really lived for, so after saying my bit I asked her what she really lived for and she said, “You won’t approve, but I live for the weekend when I can go out and get completely drunk three nights running”. So I said, “Why do you do that?” And she said, “To enjoy myself – because what else are we here for? – and to escape how awful life is the rest of the time”. Just this week, I read about some new research on drinking, and those were its top two reasons for alcohol dependence: seeking enjoyment and seeking escape.

And Joel knew that in his or her heart, the drunkard is saying, “There is no God or purpose in life or life beyond this one. So I’ll just enjoy myself as much as I can while I can because what else are we here for?”And alcohol for them becomes the way of seeking enjoyment and seeking escape from the lack of it. Which goes for other drugs, as well. And so through this locust plague, God cut off the alcohol supply. No more grapes, no more wine. As if he was saying, “You’ve substituted something else for me, so I’m allowing the substitute to be threatened, and even taken away”.

Now we know that’s what God was doing through the locust plague of Joel’s day, because he also spoke through Joel to say so. Whereas in the disasters large and small we face today, we don’t know with the same clarity what God is doing, because we don’t have specific words from him about each situation. So we have to be careful in applying this, and look for what is true for all time about God and how he relates to us. And one things that’s true for all time is that when we substitute something or someone else for him, he often does allow the substitute to be threatened or even taken away. So maybe we substitute a relationship for him and he allows it to be threatened or even taken away. Or we substitute career and status for him, and he allows it to be threatened or even taken away. We substitute something or someone else for God and he allows disasters large and small to threaten or even take them away to show us that they were never going to give us the security and significance we hoped for, and which only he, the real God, can give.

And in a way, the Joel 1.5 drunkards stand for everyone who, consciously or subconsciously, is saying “There is no God or purpose in life or life beyond this one. So I’ll just enjoy myself as much as I can while I can – because what else are we here for?” And that’s pretty much the basis of our society, isn’t it? Which is why life and health are the ultimate blessings we seek, and why the NHS is the ‘god’ we look to for those blessings. And the Lord has allowed all that to be threatened by this pandemic, to make us think again.

The next thing he targeted here is peoples’ motives for worshipping him. Look on to Joel 1.8-10:

Lament like a virgin wearing sackclothfor the bridegroom of her youth.The grain offering and the drink offering are cut offfrom the house of the Lord.The priests mourn,the ministers of the Lord.The fields are destroyed,the ground mourns,because the grain is destroyed,the wine dries up,the oil languishes.

I remember a young woman at a previous church who lost her fiancé. One minute she was planning a wedding and a future with him, and the next, he’d fallen under a train in a terrible accident and that future was taken away. And that’s the picture in Joel 1.8:

Lament like a virgin wearing sackclothfor the bridegroom of her youth

Because through this locust plague, God had suddenly taken away the future blessings from him which they had planned on. Which, in their minds, were more crops, more prosperity, and so on. And they thought the way to ‘get those blessings out of God’ was simply to keep giving him the temple offerings he’d asked for – regardless of how else they behaved towards him. They had the Aladdin’s genie view of worship: rub God’s lamp with regular offerings, and it’ll make him come out and bless you. And so through this locust plague, God cut off the offering supply, as well. Joel 1.9-10 again:

The grain offering and the drink offering are cut offfrom the house of the Lord [the temple].[So the grain offering was a mixture of grain and oil offered with the daily, morning and evening animal sacrifice which the priests made for Israel. And the drink offering was wine poured over the same sacrifices. But read on:]The priests mourn,the ministers of the Lord.[Why? Because…]The fields are destroyed,the ground mourns,because the grain is destroyed,the wine dries up,the oil languishes.

It’s as if God was saying, “If you treat me like Aladdin’s genie, if you think your offerings will make me bless you regardless of how else you’re behaving towards me – then I’ll take away your grain and wine and oil so you haven’t got anything to offer, if your motives in worship are so self-centred, I’ll stop your worship”. And what’s true for all time is that we are equally capable of serving God self-centredly, for the blessings we get from him, rather than serving him simply because he is God, and deserves our love and obedience. And when we do, he often does still allow those blessings to be threatened or delayed or withheld, to clarify and purify our motives.

For example, to clarify whether we’re prepared to love and obey him regardless of whether marriage comes along, or whether children come along in marriage. Or to clarify whether we’re prepared to love and obey him regardless of whether our plans to get those grades to get that place to get that job actually work out. Or to clarify whether we’re prepared to love and obey him, as the marriage vows say, ‘in sickness and in health, for richer for poorer, for better for worse.’ Simply because he is God, and deserves our love and obedience.

Then the other thing he targeted here is peoples’ sense of being in control. Look on to Joel 1.11-12:

Be ashamed, O tillers of the soil;wail, O vine dressers,for the wheat and the barley,because the harvest of the field has perished.The vine dries up;the fig tree languishes.Pomegranate, palm, and apple,all the trees of the field are dried up,and gladness dries upfrom the children of man.

So now he targets the farmers. And remember the Lord had given them one of the most fertile lands going. So it was easy for the farmers to begin to think, “We can do this. We can grow crops. We can make the land do what we want it to. We can control our environment to our advantage”. And into that atmosphere of self-sufficiency and self-confidence, God sent a billion locusts, to bring the message, Joel 1.11:

Be ashamed…

Literally, ‘Be humbled.’ It’s like James saying in his New Testament letter (James 4.13-16):

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance

And there’s no doubt that the pandemic has been humbling. There’s no doubt that it’s shown us that Boris Johnson and other leaders may be in power, but that that’s a very different thing to being in control. In fact it’s been good to hear various politicians and experts saying in news interviews,
“One thing this has taught us is that we’re less in control than we like to think”. And it’s taught us all that, hasn’t it, because even if, unlike Boris, we’re only planning on a personal scale, many of our plans have also been brought to nothing by this pandemic, to remind us that none of us is in control of even the smallest area of life. God is. And through disasters large and small he can make us think again about that, too. So we’ve seen: The disaster, What God targets through disaster. Then a brief last word on:

3. What God purposes through disaster

So remember Joel’s two working assumptions: 1. God is sovereign, 2. he’s always working to bring people back into relationship with him. And that was true even in the middle of this locust plague disaster, and it’s true for all time – even in the middle of the disasters large and small that we’re caught up in. So look on to Joel 1.13-14, where Joel tell them:

Put on sackcloth and lament, O priests;wail, O ministers of the altar.Go in, pass the night in sackcloth,O ministers of my God!Because grain offering and drink offeringare withheld from the house of your God.Consecrate a fast;call a solemn assembly.Gather the eldersand all the inhabitants of the landto the house of the Lord your God,and cry out to the Lord.

In other words, realise the state of your relationship with God – however dire or even non-existent it is and then come to him in prayer, and tell him you want that to change, and ask him to change it. Joel says much more about that in Joel 2 – about how we can know whether we’re being sincere in coming to the Lord, and how we can know he’ll forgive us if we do. But for now it’s enough to know that, just like he wanted the people of Joel’s day back in relationship with him for the first time, or back from straying, so he wants us. Only we have the advantage of living this side of Jesus’ death for our forgivenss on the cross. Which means we can look there and know that through that God is always saying, Whoever you are, whatever you’ve done, I will always have you back if you come.