Rev. Steven Davis
October 24 Sermon - The Great And Dreadful Day
Posted on: 10/24/2010 12:29
Be glad, O people of Zion, rejoice in the Lord your God, for He has given you the autumn rains in righteousness. He sends you abundant showers, both autumn and spring rains, as before. The threshing floors will be filled with grain; the vats will overflow with new wine and oil. "I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten - the great locust and the young locust, the other locusts and the locust swarm - My great army that I sent among you. You will have plenty to eat, until you are full, and you will praise the name of the Lord your God, Who has worked wonders for you; never again will My people be shamed. Then you will know that I am in Israel, that I am the Lord your God, and that there is no other; never again will my people be shamed. "And afterward, I will pour out My Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on My servants, both men and women, I will pour out My Spirit in those days. I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and billows of smoke. The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved; for on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there will be deliverance, as the Lord has said, among the survivors whom the Lord calls. (Joel 2:23-32)
I don't spend much time worrying about eschatology – or what most Christians would call “the end times.” There are people who become so obsessed with this topic that they look for signs of the end around every corner. A few days ago I did a Google search for “the end times” and Google reported a mere 534,000,000 results. I didn't have time to go through them all! In fairness, let's grant that there is going to be some sort of end time. Whether viewed eschatologically or scientifically, there's a general agreement that what we see around us today will someday come to an end. Science tells us that the sun is going to die someday, and before it does it's going to expand into a huge fireball that will boil our oceans away before virtually consuming the inner planets of the solar system and and leaving everything on our planet as a collection of ashes. Don't lose any sleep over that, because apparently it isn't going to happen for about 5 billion years or so! I personally have no plans to be here to see it. And the universe will continue on anyway in some form. That's what science tells us. Eschatology tells us that God is going to come to earth in power to put a final end to evil in some dramatic and possibly cataclysmic way. I wouldn't personally lose any sleep over that, either, because that's what faith in Jesus and grace and salvation are all about! God will recreate. So regardless of whether science or eschatology are right we seem to be on safe ground. What interests me far more than the speculation about what's going to happen when these last days finally arrive is the way Scripture describes the feel of the actual last days, if I can call it that.
Believe it or not, the passage from Joel – and particularly its description of the end times – reminds me of Easter. The two events share a very mixed emotional message. If you can put yourself into an Easter mindset for a moment, remember that on the first Easter morning the women went to the tomb and discovered that it was empty. According to Matthew, their reaction to their discovery was to be “afraid yet filled with joy.” Here, the prophet Joel refers to God's final act of salvation as “... the great and dreadful day of the Lord ...” So the first thing that occurred to me as I read over this passage was this similarity between the women being “afraid yet filled with joy” when they discovered the empty tomb and the description of the day of the Lord as both “great and dreadful.” What an unusual combination for us to think about as we continue to reflect upon the prophets in the weeks leading up to Advent, the season which challenges the church to reflect upon the promises of Jesus that He would, in fact, return: the point which Christians believe to be the fulfillment of the prophecies of the last days.
For a few weeks now we've been discussing Jeremiah as he contemplated the coming exile of God's people. Joel wrote later than Jeremiah. He wrote during the exile, and knowing that helps us to understand the book a little better. The prophecy revolves around what Joel describes as a plague of locusts, and interpreting that literally makes people forget what was happening to the people during Joel's life. Joel isn't speaking about a natural disaster, any more than Jeremiah was when he spoke of the hot desert winds we read about a few weeks ago. The locusts are an analogy; they refer to the Babylonian armies. Joel 1:6, for example, after a graphic description of the devastation wrought by the locusts, says “ a nation has invaded my land,” and the devastation wrought by the Babylonians was exactly the sort of devastation that would be wrought by a plague of locusts. The farmlands and vineyards were destroyed; there was no food; the people were starving and in desperate straits. Joel 1:19 says “fire has devoured the open pastures and flames have burned up all the trees of the field.” Locusts don't start fires – but invading armies do! Then, in Joel 2:25, which we heard earlier, Joel describes the locusts as a “great army that I sent among you.” Remember that in Jeremiah's world view the Babylonians were both sent and used by God to execute judgment. Joel's prophecy really only makes sense if we understand the locusts as the Babylonians.
With that understanding, Joel's prophecy, written during the exile, is more than a promise of relief from a natural disaster; it's now the liberation of God's people from oppression at the hands of their conquerors. The Babylonians had invaded and conquered the land and exiled most of the people, and those who were left really were desperate and starving. His description of the circumstances of the people is so graphic that many people think this is an eye witness account - that Joel may well have been among those survivors of the Babylonian invasion who were left to try to eke out a bare existence with what little was left in Judah. The people were desperate, starving, almost hopeless. And what have we learned about prophecy over the last few weeks? When things seem hopeless, there's always hope to be found in God!
I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten - the great locust and the young locust, the other locusts and the locust swarm - My great army that I sent among you. You will have plenty to eat, until you are full, and you will praise the name of the Lord your God, Who has worked wonders for you; never again will My people be shamed. Then you will know that I am in Israel, that I am the Lord your God, and that there is no other; never again will my people be shamed.
Someday, Joel says, the yoke of oppression will be thrown off – and, as always, God will be the great liberator of His people! There is, of course, still more to come after the liberation of the people from Babylonian rule. The oppression of God's people didn't end; indeed, Jesus said it would never end. Persecution would be a part of what Jesus saw happening to His people. That's why the prophecy goes on. Once the people were liberated, v.28 says that God would “pour out [His] Spirit on all people.” The nightmare of the oppression of God's people would be left behind and replaced by a dream of the glory that lay ahead. “your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on My servants, both men and women, I will pour out My Spirit in those days.” That's how Joel put it. God's people weren't promised an easy or carefree time. There would be, even after the outpouring of God's Spirit, “... portents 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 ...” These things would still happen, but God's Spirit would be upon God's people to give them strength and courage.
We don't know exactly what those “portents” are going to be. Jesus Himself, when discussing the same subjects in passages such as those found in Matthew 25, points to similar signs, and it's surely worth noting that Jesus' apocalyptic teachings also occurred during a time when God's people were oppressed – the land having been conquered and occupied by the Romans. The point seems to be that in times of oppression and hardship the people of God can look forward to something dramatic, something exciting and possibly even something frightening happening that will usher in the final age of God's glory - “... the great and dreadful day of the Lord ...” Perhaps there will again be “fear and great joy,” just as the women who discovered the empty tomb felt. Perhaps the drama and excitement and – yes – the fear felt on that first Easter was something of a precursor to “... the great and dreadful day of the Lord ...” - a day on which the oppressed will be lifted up, while that which oppresses will be brought low. It will be a cataclysmic upheaval, and such things always cause a mixture of feelings. The good news, though, is that those who belong to Christ have nothing to fear. Those who belong to Christ will always belong to Christ, and nothing – not even the end times predicted by both science and religion can change that. Whether the sun turns dark and the moon turns to blood, whether Christ comes on the clouds or whether the earth is consumed in a blaze of solar fire – none of that matters. We belong to Christ forever, and we await His perfect peace and justice with great joy and expectation.
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