If you're watching this, chances are pretty good that you're at least a little bit somewhat soft and entitled, and as a result, a little bit ignorant and a little bit arrogant. Chances are also pretty good that you're at least somewhat offended by that statement, further evidencing the truth of the statement itself. Thing is, if you live in the 21st century West, and don't get me wrong, I'm fully including myself in this generalization, big old softy right here, you've likely had things pretty good.
We have grown accustomed to comfort and luxury, so much so that what a large portion of the world would consider excessive luxury, we consider basic. And we completely take it for granted. We don't even notice it. We're used to eating every day. We're used to having running water and electricity, or can at least access it when needed. We've never had to fight off a pack of wolves that are intent on eating us or other wild animals, or live in constant fear of the ever-present threat of thieves and marauders that are intent on killing us and taking away our possessions.
We have every opportunity to become educated, to access some form of health care when we're sick. We set standards for our lives about how good they should be. And because of the way that our society has gone, we expect others to respect those standards. You have most likely been convinced that what you think is important enough that it should matter to everyone else. Most of us likely believe that we have the right to dictate how others act towards us.
Furthermore, we have granted ourselves the right to be offended, and indeed often shocked and outraged when others don't comply with our expectations, and we demand better treatment. In other words, we're at least a little bit soft, a little entitled, a little ignorant, and a little arrogant. My name's Aaron, and I'm an associate pastor at Mountain View Church, and we're working our way through a preaching series called Return, Restore, and Renew. And we're focusing on the book of Joel from the Old Testament. How many of you have ever read the book of Joel? And how many of you have understood the book of Joel?
If you've never read it or if you've come away from it wondering what this could possibly mean for you, millennia removed from the writing of the book, this series should help. So back to our soft entitled attitude for a minute. I'm not pointing out this phenomenon of the modern West for the sake of highlighting our flaws with no purpose. My intent is to draw our attention to the idea how this attitude of entitlement and the idea that we should be getting things the way we want is not just affecting our life in the everyday context. Society's love of comfort and allergy to being offended is not just a them problem affecting people outside the church.
This attitude is alive and well in the church as well, and often we only want to hear the comfortable side of things. We want the Bible to reinforce our way of seeing things. And it's a big problem if we come across an idea that offends our fragile dispositions. We tune it right out. With the luxury of so much online Christian content at our fingertips, many of us have become rather choosy regarding the truths that we absorb. And we tend to ignore the hard ones, the ones that cause us discomfort or require us to take hard looks at ourselves and learn hard things about God.
We'd love to hear about God's grace for us, and that's good, but we don't want to pay much attention to his righteous wrath because his wrath makes us look at ourselves and then acknowledge how much we deserve that wrath. We want the soft, feel-good attributes of God, but we're offended when the focus is put on the lacking and despicable attributes that we all have. The gospel, the good news of Jesus, is beautiful, but its beauty is only truly appreciated for what it is when we understand our desperate condition without it and the awesome, holy nature of the God who offers it to us. Ancient Israel that we read about in the book of Joel. God's chosen people, they didn't have the luxury of picking and choosing what parts of the whole of God they were going to pay attention to or what parts of what he had to say they were going to listen to. They didn't get to decide which attributes of God they would accept, which ones they were comfortable with, and which ones they could reject or ignore because of their own discomfort or offense taken. They were given the mandate to follow God as he was and allow themselves to be molded into the people that he chose for them to be. Their opinion didn't factor into the equation. What they thought...
was not important in the sense that they could use that to dictate how God should treat them. They had a choice to follow all of whom God is and be blessed, or to reject him and be cursed with all that he has not. The passage we focus on today from the book of Joel shows us the consequences of the wrong choice. Make no mistake, God is sovereign, and the destruction we read about in Joel is happening as a result of his decree. Through this series, we hope to draw your attention to God, where our attention should be.
in a way from or at least bring light to the road filled with poor choices that we tend to follow when we get soft or lazy or allow distractions to take over our lives. Such distractions divert our attention inwards to what we want and what we think is important instead of our attention being directed upwards to what he wants and what he said is actually important for us. It's a tale as old as time and today our passage focuses on God's response to Israel's prolonged ignorance of his will and a prolonged refusal of his direction. Joel may have been written thousands of years ago, but the God of the book of Joel is the same God that we know today. He has not changed. And as we have seen in the last few messages in this series, we, human beings, we haven't changed much either. The people of Israel, or more accurately in Joel, the people of Judah, although they knew the one true God, knew of the one true God for sure, and had ample evidence of his desire for a relationship with them, they had a habit of putting themselves first. They didn't want to hear about what God wanted.
They didn't want to hear about what they should or they shouldn't be doing. They sort of stamped their feet like petulant children demanding their own way and didn't pay any heed to the fact that God knew best and the correct way was his way. The nation of Israel at this point, old school Israel that the Bible talks about a lot, has been destroyed as a result of their ignorance and not that long ago. And now through Joel, the people of Judah, the remaining tribe, and Benjamin presumably, yet again find themselves being warned of impending calamity as a result of their turning away from God. Today's passage, as read by David, begins with an alarm being sounded.
The day of the Lord is at hand. Now, throughout scripture, we hear this referenced many times and in many different contexts. It can be very confusing, but the day of the Lord refers to a time either at hand or in the future when God is going to act, and a significant event with far-reaching implications is inevitable. To the faithful or repentant, the day of the Lord can be a deliverance, but to the unrepentant or rejecters of Yahweh, it can be doom. The Crossway ESV study Bible overview of the book of Joel explains the day of the Lord this way.
Within Joel, the day refers not only to the final judgment upon the nations, but also God's ongoing judgment of Israel, both past and future, and instances of his intervention between Israel and the nations. In each case, the day of the Lord indicates a time when the presence of the Lord brings judgment and or deliverance and blessing, depending on the circumstances. Our passage today focuses entirely on the judgment of Judah and is bookended by verses identifying this judgment as the day of the Lord. and how terrifying and complete such a day will be. So if we look at this passage and we take the first part and the last part, focus on them, let's see what we find. In Joel 2, 1 and 2, verses 1 and 2, it says,
So that's the first part of the passage. And then we go right to the end of the passage. Joel 2.11, it says, Essentially, Joel is the trumpet being blown. And his message to Israel is the sound of that warning. Calamity is coming.
Israel has long been God's chosen people, and as such, God gave Israel a clear foundation of what a nation who is to represent him should be like, and the systems and structures and societal framework that they'll need in order to carry out their role. God gives them the blueprints, so to speak, and it is framed in what is known as the law. So the law we're familiar with beginning with the Ten Commandments, but going beyond those to cover God's expectations concerning all facets of life that will govern this nation. Now, the first and paramount commandment is this, and it's found in Exodus 20, verses 2 and 3. I am the Lord your God.
who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. All of the law is predicated on and flows from observance of this first command. Israel must get this one right in order to go forward as God's chosen people. Now God formalizes a covenant with Israel that they will be his people and he will be their God. And he promises them he will lead them to a land where his people can grow and thrive under his protection and in harmony with him.
It's the promised land that we know of today as the area of Israel. The specifics of the law are mostly found in the books of Exodus and Leviticus. But in the book of Deuteronomy, we find something of a summary of what God expects of his people and what being God's representative entails. And in Deuteronomy, we find one very kind of strange, particular, straightforward instruction. It seems super curious to us, but to the people back then, it would have been a very powerful and impactful visual that God would use to remind his people of their part of the covenant with him. God reminds them of the choice that they have and what will become of them based on the choices they make.
So in Deuteronomy 11, 26 through 29, it says, See, I'm setting before you today a blessing and a curse. The blessing if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you today, and the curse if you do not obey the commandments of the Lord your God. But turn aside from the way that I'm commanding you today, to go after other gods that you have not known. And when the Lord your God brings you into the land that you're entering to take possession of it, you shall set the blessing on Mount Gerizim and the curse on Mount Abel. Now, fast forward to Deuteronomy, the end of the book, chapter 28, and we read a list. There's actually a list of the many blessings that he will bestow upon his people should they honor him and the many curses that they will endure should they reject him. And he doesn't just tell them and hope that they'll remember. He gives them a very unique way to help them remember.
Remember in the passage that we just read in Deuteronomy 11, we see that God instructs the Israelites to perform a sort of live action representation of this blessing and curse decree when they get to the promised land. In order that, I mean, it should remind them of what the stakes are for them and how good or bad things will be depending on their choices. Now their arrival to the promised land is documented in the book of Joshua. And there we see that Joshua leads the people in performing this acting out of the choice that they have. So as instructed in Deuteronomy, there are two adjacent close together mountains called Gerizim and Ebal. And Joshua has half the tribes stand on one mountain.
and half on the other. One side represents the promised blessings of God, and the other side represents the promised curses of God. This would have been a very memorable thing to see, and it would have been something you would not forget had you been there. This visual representation was in a language that the Israelites would understand. Often in the Bible, we see these sort of visual representations take place. When we read the book of Joel, we cannot help but look back to Deuteronomy 28 at the list of curses that will result from turning away from Yahweh. And we see more than one of these curses show up in the book of Joel actually happening. Locusts, drought, invading armies, they're all promised curses of God on a rebellious, unrepentant Israel.
In Joel, especially our passage today, we're seeing the actual real curses warned of by God hundreds of years before playing out for the people who knew better than to invite them. The people were warned and they chose not to heed the warning. Now, one of the concepts that is the cause of much debate when looking at the books of oracles and prophecies like Joel is the use of literary tools such as metaphor and hyperbole, which are common in many of the books of the Bible. And we can get caught up in trying to figure out which is which. Now, the Hebrew culture was very deep linguistically, very linguistically.
beautiful in a way. And the Bible projects that very well. In and amongst the historical narratives and accounts, we find a lot of poetry, lyrics, and vivid illustrations. But use of such literary devices are not to be regarded by us as deluding the truth of scripture. God addresses humanity via a means that we are familiar with and that we will understand if we're paying attention. And in the Old Testament, especially when we observe the many literary tools like parallelism, the layers of double meanings of words and phrases, and the poetic nature of Israelite writing,
We should never confuse the use of these communication methods with the authors of Scripture exercising poetic or literary license in their work. They're not using these tools just to make things sound better and at the same time twisting the narrative or masking the truth. They're writing as God led them to write in the language and literary fashion of the people that God is writing to. In Joel and in the rest of the Bible, God is meeting his audience where they're at and in terms that will speak to them. We must not dismiss parts of Scripture as less important or of less use to us just because it seems foreign or difficult to navigate.
All of Scripture shows us the truth of the nature and the will of God. Remember, God has inspired all of Scripture. Paul makes this clear in 2 Timothy 3.16 when he says, All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. Going back to my initial highlighting of our ignorance and arrogance from the beginning, it becomes apparent in the way that we treat Scripture. So today, how many of us are teachable or accept reproof? How many of us submit to correction?
and are willing to be trained in righteousness. Are you? Take a hard look at yourself and be honest in your answer. We must not avoid the more difficult parts of Scripture, like the book of Joel, either because it's not what we want to hear or because it's hard. Even when a passage is difficult to grasp or something that we don't like to hear, we need to ask ourselves, what do I need to take away from this that helps me better understand God's message? In our passage, the day of the Lord is very central, so it should be a focus for us. In the New American Commentary, Dwayne Garrett puts it this way.
His, being Joel's, real concern is not with locusts or enemy soldiers or even the Last Judgment. The real subject matter of the book of Joel is the day of the Lord. Every event in the book is subordinated to that concept. When Yahweh moves, Joel asserted, the old order is inverted, the familiar disappears, and false security collapses. No one can withstand that day because there is nothing left to stand on. On the other hand, as we shall see, Yahweh brings new life and a new world into being. What I presume God wanted the original hearers and readers of Joel's prophecy to focus in on?
is that all people need to pay attention to the coming day of the Lord. Now, in the tribe of Judah's case at that time, the day of the Lord is a day of retribution and judgment that has been prophesied. And God was on the move, pouring out destruction on those who had turned their backs on him. Now, the call to repent, meaning literally to change one's mind, reverse course, and to turn back to God will become clear as we move further through the book of Joel, as well as the amazing mercy and grace that he has for a repentant heart. But focusing solely on today's passage, we should be shaken by the sheer overwhelming force that God was bringing to bear.
and we would do well to remember that God is not only loving in a way that we want him to be, and kind, I mean, he is those things, let me be clear, but the Bible makes clear that he is also jealous for his people, full of wrath for his enemies, and the bringer of justice to a rebellious humanity. God is many things, and Joel is trying to draw people's attention to the less popular attributes of God's nature, towards which we often dare not look. However we should look, God wants us to look. The day of the Lord is when all of whom God is, is on display. And there are many pointers in scripture to a day of the Lord that is yet to come, when God will judge all. Are you ready for that? Our passage today is undeniably gloomy and seems rather hopeless. There seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel here. And there's certainly no happily ever after in view yet. But we do not have to look far beyond this passage in this book to see the light of the world come into view. We 21st century humans in the modern world, we're the same as the nation being warned in this story.
We humans are ruled by the desires of our flesh, the desires of our eyes, and the pride of life. The desires of our flesh and eyes consume us and dwell in our high places and command our worship in the absence of us having a relationship with God. Pride of self and indulgence of self drive us into the arms of evil. We, while walking according to our flesh, as it's referred to, we look right past God and we submit to the ones who promise to satisfy our hunger. In this world, we walk by the flesh and our flesh is ruled by the forces of darkness.
We are easy targets. And though the adversary and his demons push us further into desolation and isolation, honestly, we don't need much encouragement. Just look at the world we live in. Consider the voices that are the loudest in our ears and the novelties that constantly delight our eyes with shiny new distractions. Look at the people that we tend to lift up and celebrate. Our idols, to whom we enthusiastically sacrifice our time and our resources and allegiance and our families and our souls as a result. Celebrities, politicians, social media influencers, and all sorts of others.
They all compete for what we have. Yet, they are not the idols which command the most intimate and deepest parts of our hearts. They hold places of high esteem to us, but most often it is not them that sit on the throne in our lives. We take that spot for ourselves. Now, the enemy does not always encourage us to worship him. He doesn't have to, but he rather easily convinces us to worship ourselves, which accomplishes his goal anyways. Our flesh, when you hear that term, our flesh is like the environment within which our soul dwells. It is much like a cage.
The nature of humanity is to stay complacent in this environment where sin thrives and gratification is currency. Instant gratification or even anticipation of future gratification blinds us to the reality of our prison. We're slaves. We're confined in this environment, chained by our sin and condemned by it. The soul that remains here has no hope and our flesh binds our soul to its hopelessness. The dictatorship of our flesh must be destroyed. Yet we do not have the power to bring about the necessary revolution. Frankly, nor do we want it or even acknowledge that we need it.
Our soul is bound to our flesh, and our flesh runs this way and that, craving that which will never satiate, and consuming that which will never satisfy. We run after what we are sure will fulfill us, just a little more or the next thing, but it is as if we chase the wind. We are the dead, and we will climb over each other to grab more of that which has killed us. If our soul, our spirit, our conscious self, who we actually are beyond the flesh, stays bound in this landscape of the flesh, we will perish, chained to the sin which separates us from God and condemns us to an eternal separation. If our desire continues to reign and we continue to insist on retaining the throne in our own lives for ourselves, we want nothing to do with God. We insist that we do not need him and we insist that he stay far away from us. We may not say that, but our hearts betray it. We impose our own separation from God. And that's what hell will be on an eternal scale. A forever separation from God and therefore from everything that is good. And it is what we demand and what our flesh deserves. Left to our own devices, we will indeed get what we want. The Bible describes hell as a place of outer darkness.
However, on this side of hell, there is not complete darkness, for a light came into our world 2,000 years ago, and that light still shines today. His name is Jesus, and he came to rescue your soul from the cage of flesh within which it is bound. He came to break the chains that hold you, and he has paid the price for your sin that would keep you separated from God. He died the death that you and I should die, and then he rose from death so that you and I might live. We need no longer be the dead, because he has brought us to life. Between the righteous wrath of God and the condemned sinner,
stands the cross. God's wrath goes forth to punish the sinner, but Christ becomes the sinner and absorbs it on our behalf. He is condemned on our behalf. He is forsaken for us. He was born to die so that we could be called to living. And through the Holy Spirit, he seals us to himself. Jesus paid for us to become his own. What man would do this for you? What earthly king? What God of those who the world refers to as gods? None of them. Only the true God would. Our God. He is the God who saves.
He is God with us. In his book, Knowing God, J.I. Packer gives excellent advice as to what our response to God should be, and I'll close with this. Appreciate the goodness of God. Count your blessings. Learn not to take natural benefits, endowments, or pleasures for granted. Learn to thank God for all of them. Do not slight the Bible or the gospel of Jesus Christ by an attitude of casualness toward either. The Bible shows you a Savior who suffered and died in order that we sinners might be reconciled to God.
Calvary, the place of the cross, is the measure of the goodness of God. Lay it to heart. That's good advice. Let's pray. Father, thank you for today. Thank you for all of the Bible. Some books so far removed from our time are hard for us to understand, written to different people in different cultures. But Lord, there's always something there for us because every one of them, every passage, shows us something of who you are. And that should be our pursuit, to know you, to know you better, to know what your will is for all humanity, Lord. Thank you for pointing us.
through the prophets to Jesus Christ and our need for a Savior through the law. I'm so grateful that I can be in this position to be able to talk about this kind of stuff. And I pray that whoever's watching this, that you convict their hearts of their need for Christ or remind them of how blessed they are to have him already. I ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.
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