Becase I now live with the person I did one to ones with last year, it'd be a bit weird to carry them on in a formal way with church too this year, so through church I'm doing them with one of the ministry trainees, and we're going through Joel! Which is really exciting because I've never really looked at it before and it's just amazing when you feel like you;ve learnt something from a part of the Bible you've never looked at before...because it makes me at least, realise how much I still have to learn fromt he Bible. It's just amazing how you can go back again and again to the same book and learn something new and different and relevant...ever time.
We were just talking about how amazingly clever God is! Sounds obvious, but when you see in the Old Testament just how God had everything planned out and Jesus is evident in every page, it just blows you away a bit really!
So I just thought I'd do a bit of an overview of the first bit of Joel that we looked at today, as muych for my own benefit really as for anyone else who may or may not be reading this! We looked at chapter 1:1-12.
Joel is one of the minor prophets and he came to the Israelites we think after a real locust invasion, to warn them of the fact that it was a judgement from God that had been prophesied before, and that they need to turn in full repentance to God.
He uses four imperatives in this first part: Hear, Wake up, Mourn and Despair, and he applies it to all kinds of people in the nation: elders, children, drunkards, virgins and farmers. Basically I guess, representing a whole cross section of the nation - it applies to everyone!
In vs 2 it says "Has anything like this ever happened in your days or in the days of your forefathers?" It shows how it was something major, a huge disaster, the like of which had never been seen before! This is reinforced later as well by the repetition of the different types of locusts in vs 4, and by the language used later in vs 6-7 like "invaded, powerful, lion, laid waste, ruined and stripped off". The repetition of locusts shows the totality of the destruction and devastation, showing how they came back again and again until nothing was left. And the image of a tree being stripped of it's bark in vs 7 shows how they were left without protection to die, as a tree does without it's bark.
More than anything these verses show God's sovereignty, they show how he is in control, as Job says "The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away". The children of Israel could be under no doubt that the locusts were a curse sent rom God in judgement of their turning away from Him.
vs 8 struck us where it says "Mourn like a virgin in sackcloth grieving for the husband of her youth". They are not just commanded to mourn because they have lost their food livelihoods, but they are commanded to mourn like someone who has lost the one that they loved, and not only jiust someone they loved, but the one they were going to marry, but before they were actually married. That is just a picture of what must be the most awful grief when they know that they have lost the hope that they had of a new life, and that they may never find that hope again. They were to mourn not for the loss of material things, but for the loss of their close realitionship with God!
The following verses just reiterated to us how much had been lost, and as a result, how far from God the children of Israel were. They have no grain and no wine which meant not only no food, but no offerings to make to the Lord. We read in Numbers I think it was, about all the offerings the people had to make int he Old Testament which it is so easy to forget about! I usually think of it as a once a year thing with the passover and everything, but no, there were sacrifices to be made EVERY day., That is the extent of our sin, it's just amazing then to think of how easy it is for us now, and how priviledged we are to live in these New Testament times, when Jesus is interceding for us and has paid for our sins, once and for all!
This was well summed up in Hebrews 7:20-25, I'll copy it all in because I think it's quite beautiful, especially in the light of Joel:
"And it was not without an oath! Others became priests without any oath, but he became a priest with an oath when God said to him:
'The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind
You are a priest for ever.'
Because of this oath, Jesus has become the guarantee of a better covenant. Now there have been many of those priests, since death prevented them from continuing in office; but because Jesus lives for ever, he has a permenant priesthood. Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them."
Amen! :)
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