When Locusts Attack

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But switching gears, we’re going to talk about something a little different today. We’re going to start a different series today on the book of Joel. And you may wonder why the book of Joel.

this year we’ve finished studying our way verse by verse through 1 Corinthians, which was a beneficial study for me. I learned a lot just in preparing to share with you. Then we took a break into a topical study of those spiritual disciplines.

As I was looking at what we were going to do next, I realized we need a balanced diet of God’s Word. So I started looking at what are some books we don’t talk about much in church. I started looking at the minor prophets.

I really wanted to get into Amos, but I know you ladies are about to finish up a Bible study on Amos, right? And honestly, you may know more than I do at this point. So I said, not Amos.

I just taught all the way through Jonah at VBS, and I wanted to do Micah, and I just couldn’t get it ready. We’ve come to Joel, which I think Joel is one of those books that we don’t talk about a lot, but there’s great practical application for the world that we live in today. And one of the things that’s interesting to me about the book of Joel is he starts out by talking about a plague of locusts that are going to hit Israel.

He starts out by warning about that. I don’t know if some of you may remember a few months ago when the media was in a panic. The media is always in a panic about something, so you may have forgotten because they’ve panicked about eight other things since then.

But several months ago, the media was in a panic, and a lot of people were in a panic because they were talking about how we were going to be overrun with cicadas this year because two cycles of cicadas that that have not appeared at the same time since Thomas Jefferson was president were going to coincide in Oklahoma this summer and I remember everybody being really weirded out by the thought that cicadas were going to be coming from everywhere I was excited because I thought hey free chicken feed right I just let the girls out and I don’t have to go buy any 40-pound bags, anything from Atwoods. They can just feast in the yard for a couple weeks. Sadly, those have not materialized.

I’ve found one little shell in our flower bed this year. That’s what I think of with locusts, because when I was a kid, we would find those little shells and we were told those are locust shells. I didn’t know what a cicada was until I was an adult.

Turns out, when the Bible uses the word locust, I don’t think it’s probably those cicadas it’s talking about. It’s talking about something more along the lines of grasshoppers, hungry grasshoppers. There’s the word, the word that we, the words that we translate as locusts cover a lot of, a lot of insects.

And they were, they’re not just cute little grasshoppers. You know, every once in a while I’ll find baby ones out in the garden and they’re kind of cute until they get big and eat everything in the garden. But when you get enough of them, they can really do some damage.

Years ago, I remember, I have a vivid memory from when I was a child, walking around a cemetery in southeast Oklahoma where a lot of my mother’s family is buried. We’d gone out there, and you couldn’t take a step without dozens of grasshoppers flying up. That’s the worst I’d ever seen.

And it looked like they had eaten most of the greenery in that cemetery. But even that pales in comparison to what Israel was about to face. And so this morning, as we start this study of the book of Joel, It’s not just about the locusts.

If you’re thinking, okay, what’s the practical application here? Is this a gardening lesson? What is it?

There’s a spiritual reason why he’s warning about the plague of locusts that’s going to hit. So this morning we’re going to be in Joel chapter 1. We’re going to look at the first 14 verses of the book of Joel.

If you’d turn there with me in your Bibles. If you didn’t bring your Bible or can’t find the book of Joel, I understand I had to hunt a couple times before I remembered exactly what order it’s in. It will be on the screen for you, but once you find it, if you’d stand with me as we read together from God’s Word and hear what the prophet Joel said to the people of Israel about these locusts that were going to eat everything.

It says, That’s a rhetorical question. Spoiler alert, the answer is no, it has not happened. He says, tell your sons about it and let your sons tell their sons and their sons the next generation.

What the gnawing locust has left, the swarming locust has eaten. And what the swarming locust has left, the creeping locust has eaten. And what the creeping locust has left, the stripping locust has eaten.

Awake, drunkards, and weep, and wail, all you wine drinkers, on account of the sweet wine that is cut off from your mouth. For a nation has invaded my land, mighty and without number. Its teeth are the teeth of a lion, and it has fangs of a lioness.

It has made my vine a waste, and my fig tree splinters. It has stripped them bare and cast them away. Their branches have become white, whale like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the bridegroom of her youth.

The grain offering and the drink offering are cut off from the house of the Lord. The priests mourn, the ministers of the Lord. The field is ruined, the land mourns for the grain is ruined.

The new wine dries up, fresh oil fails. Be ashamed, O farmers. Wail, O vine dressers, for the wheat and the barley, because the harvest of the field is destroyed.

The vine dries up and the fig tree fails. The pomegranate, the palm also, and the apple tree. All the trees of the field dry up.

Indeed, rejoicing dries up from the sons of men. Gird yourselves with sackcloth and lament, O priests. Wail, O ministers of the altar.

Come, spend the night in sackcloth, O ministers of my God, for the grain offering and the drink offering are withheld from the house of your God. Consecrate a fast, proclaim a solemn assembly, gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land to the house of the Lord your God, and cry out to the Lord. You may be seated.

Well, that’s an uplifting message, isn’t it? It does get more uplifting a little bit at moments as we go through the book of Joel. But oftentimes we have to start with the bad news before we can get to the good news, Otherwise, we don’t understand how good the good news is.

Like if we just tell people Jesus died for their sins, they don’t understand how good that news is until they understand the bad news of how our sin separates us from God. So frequently we have to start with the bad news. And he’s starting with the bad news here.

Joel’s prophecy warned Israel of intense times of trouble ahead. And we saw in verses 2 and 3 as he’s asking them, has anything like this ever happened before? Again, it’s a rhetorical question.

he’s telling them nothing like this has ever happened before. Now there have been disasters, there have been disasters where everything has been eaten, but he’s telling them Israel has never seen anything like what is about to occur. This is the kind of thing that when future generations hear you lived through that, they’re going to want to know what it was like.

You know, there are certain things, certain tragedies that stick out in the collective memory. And when my kids or the kids here at the school say, wait a minute, you were alive during 9-11? Yes, I was.

Wow, you’re old. Okay, thanks. Thanks for that.

You were alive during the Oklahoma City bombing? Yes. You were alive during the tornadoes that hit more?

Yes. They want to know about those things. And what he’s saying is what is about to happen to Israel is going to be one of those moments that goes down through history and the generations are going to know about it.

The mere mention of it is going to bring questions and amazement, and you’re going to want to tell your kids and your grandkids, this is what happened. This is how the Lord dealt with Israel. This is what we learned.

This is what happened on the other side. He’s saying, this is what is going to happen is going to be a teachable moment for generations of your people. And while the teaching that we get through that can be a good thing, I’m getting kind of tired of living through historical teachable moments, aren’t you?

I’m getting tired of living in interesting times of history. He’s saying, that’s what they’re about to experience. There are going to be times of trouble ahead.

And what he has at the forefront of his mind is what we see starting in verse 4, and he talks about it really ongoing through verse 13, was this imminent infestation of locusts. And like I mentioned already, locust is a general term. It covers grasshoppers and cicadas and all different species of these things.

We don’t know exactly what was going to come in, but we know that the devastation from this plague was going to be complete. When you look at verse 4, you see he talks about four different kinds of locusts. He talks about the swarming locust, the creeping locust, the stripping locust, the gnawing locust. I’m sorry, I missed that one the first time.

And I looked at multiple commentaries this week, and some people say, oh, that’s four different species of locusts, and they were just going to come in one after the other. Others say, no, no, no, it was four different life cycles of the same, because it’s four different Hebrew words. They disagree about what it means.

Others say it’s four different life cycles of the same kind of locus, and it’s just going to go through four generations coming through in quick succession. And there’s this, I don’t think it’s a heated debate, but there’s all this discussion about, well, is it different generations or is it different kinds? And I’m thinking it doesn’t matter, you’re missing the point.

He’s saying what one set of locus leaves behind, the next is going to eat, and what little they leave behind, the next is going to eat until there’s nothing left. He’s not worried about what kind they are. He’s telling you there will be nothing left for Israel when all is said and done.

The devastation was going to be complete. And this is something that God is going to allow to happen because of Israel’s sin. It was going to be a judgment.

That’s why he moves straight from the locusts in verse 4 to verse 5, talking about awake drunkards, whale wine drinkers. He’s talking about something that they have done, something that Israel has done to bring on this calamity. Now, I won’t say that every tragedy that befalls us is a direct consequence of something we’ve done.

If God wants to say that through a legitimate prophet, he’s welcome to do that, but I’m not going to step beyond what he said and say, oh, every time there’s a tornado or a hurricane, it’s a direct judgment from God. We live in a fallen world where sometimes death and destruction happen just because sin is everywhere. But in this case, he’s telling them there’s destruction coming because of their sin.

He’s speaking through one of his prophets here. And this plague of locusts, if you go into verse 6, he talks about an invading army. Now he’s talking about the locusts, but the locusts also foreshadowed something else that was going to come.

And that was eventually the locusts were not going to be enough to get Israel’s attention. And the Babylonian armies were going to come in and do on a larger scale to the whole nation what the locusts had done their agriculture. Now, I keep saying Israel.

I really mean Judah. I mentioned that to y’all a few weeks ago. This is during the time where the two nations had split.

I’ll try to be clear which one I mean, but it’s God’s people. He’s talking to his people in the tribe of Judah that he was going to send judgment on them, and eventually the Babylonian army did come. And both of those things that he’s talking about foreshadow something else.

See, it starts small, it gets a little bigger and eventually it gets biggest of all. Joel talks all throughout his prophecy about the day of the Lord that’s coming. Joel’s talking about the judgment at the end of everything.

And these locusts feature into that because they foreshadow the Babylonians and the locusts and the Babylonians foreshadow the judgment that’s to come at the end. But all through this, Joel is warning them that, hey, things are going pretty good right now. And it’s easy to get complacent.

It’s easy to think that things are just going to keep going well like they are. But I’m warning you, there’s a judgment coming. There’s a time of trouble ahead.

And God’s Word warns us repeatedly that sin has dire consequences. What Joel has written here, what Joel continues to write through this book of prophecy, is not out of step with what the rest of Scripture teaches. God warns us repeatedly that sin has dire consequences.

All sin is serious. Now, some of the consequences. The consequences of some sins are bigger than some of the consequences of other sins.

But all sin has consequences. Now for me, the question that this raises is what is the sin here that he’s talking about? He’s worked up about the prophet Joel is under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit has worked up over the sin of Israel, but he’s a little bit cagey and revealing what it is.

So what is it that Israel did? We’re not a hundred percent sure because he doesn’t say much about it, but there are a couple of possibilities. We know from the rest of the Old Testament, the history that was going on at the time period of the Minor Prophets, that Israel struggled with idolatry.

As a matter of fact, that was the direct cause of God sending the Babylonian armies to take Judah captive, was to get their attention and draw their hearts away from idols. This was a struggle for generations as they continued to adopt the gods and the practices of their pagan neighbors. They tried to be like everybody else, which God had told them they were not supposed to And within the text itself, the closest that Joel comes to actually identifying or addressing a specific sin is what he wrote in verse 5 where he talks about drunkenness.

And nobody that reads this though seems to think that drunkenness is the only problem. It’s just an example of what’s going on in a culture that was driven by excess and self-indulgence and materialism and really prioritizing comfort and pleasure over the things of God. And we know from the scriptures that Israel struggled that as well.

So even though we don’t know exactly what sin, you know, what was the straw that broke the camel’s back that God finally said, all right, that’s enough. Joel, go get them. What was the sin that led to that?

We don’t know for sure. But it’s kind of like with 1 Corinthians, you know, there were a few things that I just had to level with you and say, I don’t know exactly what Paul’s talking about here. And for all their credentials and explanations, I think most of the commentators would have to be honest and say, we don’t really know exactly what Paul’s talking about here.

but the folks at Corinth knew exactly what he was writing about. There are a few places like that. We may not know exactly what it was that God pulled the trigger on this for, but the people of Israel knew exactly what they had done.

They knew, and maybe God left it a little vague so we wouldn’t say, oh, it’s just about that sin. Instead, we have to look at the kinds of things that were going on in Israel, and when we do, we kind of recognize it looks a little like our culture. God’s people trying to be too much like the world, prioritizing what we want and what pleases us over what God, those are easy things to do.

Those are easy traps to get sucked into. Ultimately, whatever they were doing had something to, history, the history around this book tells us it had something to do with God’s people being way too much like the world. And in response to that, God took away the things that made them too much like the world.

As we see the list of all the things that were going to happen, He’s talking about all the food that made life so easy for them. All the wine that they overindulged in. All the things that, you know, we look at it and say, oh, they had apples and pomegranates.

They were that excited. You know, in the ancient world, you had lots of food, you had it made. That was their leisure and their luxury.

And God said, all right, if that’s going to become an idol to you, if that lifestyle is going to be more important to you than I am, then it’s gone. their prosperity was taken away. And don’t miss this little detail in verse 10 where he says the grain is ruined, the new wine dries up, the fresh oil fails.

People who are historians of that time period will tell you that the staples of life for these people were the wheat, the olive, and the grape. Those are the three main necessities of life that they lived off of. And so you think about the things that we think we can’t live without, and that’s our equivalent of what he says here in 10, their prosperity had allowed them to forget God.

And sometimes when we get prosperous, it leads us to forget God. Not everybody. This is not a message that, hey, you’ve got a positive balance in your bank account, shame on you.

That’s not what this is about. But we can get to a point where we get comfortable, and it’s not always about money. But we can get to a point where we get too comfortable, and it makes us prioritize that and protect that instead of doing what God’s called us to do.

And I’ve noticed something going throughout Scripture, looking at the history of Israel, looking at the history of the nations around them. God often judges idolatry by destroying people’s idols or letting people’s idols destroy them. Oftentimes, that’s how God’s judgment on idolatry works.

I think of a couple of examples right offhand where the Philistines were bringing the Ark of the Covenant into their temple and putting it there as a trophy. And part of God’s judgment on the Philistines for that was repeatedly making their statue of their false god fall down in worship and get its hands broken off and its head broken off, God was destroying their idol right in front of them. Come to the New Testament, Romans chapter 1, you see the things that a society can put ahead of God, and sometimes God’s judgment on that idolatry is to say, that’s fine, let’s let the idolatry run its course, and the idolatry destroys the idolater.

We see this dire consequence for Israel’s sin as verses 4 through 12 describe how there was going to be nothing left for them. And all of this shows us how seriously God takes sin. God has never been on board with sin.

God has never been okay with sin. And folks, there’s never going to be a time where God says, no, it’s fine, it’s cool. And I say that as a sinner.

God is not okay with my sin. That sin needs to be dealt with. It needs to be repented of.

It needs to be forsaken. God has always taken sin seriously. We see it here when He says, you know, I love you, but there’s got to be a time of discipline.

We see God here willing to count the cost Himself. I don’t know if you noticed this, but in verses 9 and 13, it talks about the offerings that we’re going to be missing from the temple. Wait, those are things that are used in the worship of God.

The Old Testament worship of God in the temple, it required them to have showbread. It required them to have wine. It required them to have oil.

It required all of these things, and God’s saying, I don’t care if it means there’s none of that for the temple. It’s gone, if that’s what it takes to get your attention. Now, that was a minor cost for God, but we see all throughout Scripture that God treats sin as a serious deal, and if necessary, is willing to pay the price himself to deal with it.

And nowhere is that more clear than at the cross. This gives us a foreshadowing of the seriousness of sin, where God says, no, this is not okay. this is not going to continue.

I love you too much to let you continue down this road. Some of you have had that conversation with your kids. I love you too much to let you act that way.

I heard that as a kid. I didn’t believe it. Now I’m a parent.

I understand it. Hopefully my kids someday will believe it and understand it as well. And there are all of these times where God throughout the Old Testament even deals with little sins in ways that don’t always make sense to us, but it’s because sin is a serious deal to God.

And nowhere is that more clearly demonstrated than at the cross, how seriously God treats sin. We can look at it and say, the people of Israel in Joel’s day, maybe they were a little drunk, maybe they were a little lazy. What’s the big deal?

To God, it’s a very big deal. If God would look at our sin and say, this is such a horrendous deal, this is such a huge offense that it has to be punished and it has to be paid for in blood, that Jesus would voluntarily go to the cross and bear that kind of judgment on our behalf instead of just saying, it’s fine, it’s okay. We can’t ever look at sin. We can’t ever look at somebody else’s sin or our sin especially because I can’t necessarily do something about somebody else’s sin, but I do have the responsibility of addressing mine.

We can’t ever look at sin and say, no, it’s fine, it’s not a big deal. The cross shows us that it is a serious thing to God. It was serious in the Old Testament, it’s serious in the New, And God’s going to deal with it. But the way God deals with it is not just punishment.

He revealed that at the cross. He reveals that in the way that He deals with the people in Joel’s day as well. Because there’s this call.

There’s not just the rejection of us as sinners, even though God would be completely within His rights to look at us and say, you know what, y’all are awful. I don’t want to mess with y’all anymore. He wouldn’t be violating any law or rule if He did that.

But God, even in His holiness and in His justice, God is loving and gracious enough that he’s willing to forgive. And that’s why he called the people of Israel to repent. The last third of the section we read today deals with this repentance and calling different people to mourn and to weep and to repent.

Now, there’s more to repentance than just weeping and feeling sorry. Repentance, I think, is one of the most misdefined words in all of Scripture. And if we’re not careful, we can think, oh, it’s just I feel bad about what I’ve done.

Well, if it was just about feeling bad, I mean, I need to feel bad before I do it and then don’t do it. If that’s all it was, I feel bad. We can also misunderstand it and think, I’ve got to clean up my life completely to come to Him.

But the word that’s used in Greek all throughout the New Testament for repentance means a change of mind. Now, it’s a change of mind that does show up in the way we behave, in the things that we love, in the things that we pursue. But the repentance itself is just a change of mind.

If you’ve ever dealt with a child who just is in trouble and they just dig in harder, or maybe you’ve been that child, I’ve been that stubborn child, they’re not repentant because they don’t want to admit that they’re wrong. I mean, who does? That’s not the way we’re wired.

We don’t like to admit we’re wrong. The difference between a repentant sinner and an unrepentant sinner is that the unrepentant sinner loves their sin and hates God, at least in comparison, while the repentant sinner loves God and hates their sin. And I, as a believer, when I repent, it means I’ve come to the point where I’m no longer trying to justify my sin to God.

I’m no longer trying to explain it, make it okay. I’m acknowledging, as God says, that it’s wrong. God, you’re right, and I’m wrong, and I don’t want this anymore.

Now, am I going to be perfect from then on out? Unfortunately, no. But that repentance is just a turning of our mind to be on the same page with God about who He is and what our sin is. and he calls his people to repent when we’ve wandered astray.

Now, God wouldn’t call us to repent if there wasn’t forgiveness available. If there wasn’t forgiveness available, repentance would be a meaningless exercise. But he calls them back to him.

He called numerous people and groups to repent. But I noticed that the priests here are the most prominent. It’s the leaders of God’s people.

And there are other prophecies. You’ll notice there are other prophecies in the Old Testament where he will prophesy judgment on some other country, but most of it’s directed toward his people, calling his people back to repentance. Not just the sinners out in the world, but his people come back to me.

Again, like dealing with your own children. I try not to get on to other people’s children because I’ve got enough of my own to get on to. The other day, I was getting on to my children.

We’re trying to talk to a teacher. Y’all stop. Charles says, ours are over there.

Sorry, I mean, you still need to stop, but you’re not mine to tell that to. No, God starts with His children. God starts with His children and says, y’all need to act right.

That’s why He started with the priests, the religious leaders. That’s why He started with Israel. My people, come back.

How can we expect the sinful world to get right with God when God’s children are running around wild? And so He told them, in verse 14, consecrate a fast. That means they were going to take away the things that distract from the Lord. Apparently their food and drink were a big distraction.

You know what? It’s going to be easy for them to fast because they weren’t going to have it anyway. The locusts were going to take it.

But consecrate a fast. Take away the things that distract from the Lord. If there are things in our lives that keep us distracted away from the Lord, we need to be ruthless in cutting those out of our lives. He says, proclaim a solemn assembly.

That meant they were supposed to drop everything they were doing and go to the temple. And I think there’s a lesson in there for us, too. When we’ve wandered away, drop what you’re doing and don’t focus on anything else until things are right with the Lord.

Gather the elders. Verse 14, come together with a common purpose. See, repentance is not just an individual thing.

It can be for groups. It can be for a church. It can be for churches.

It can be for the church. When we’ve wandered astray, we need to come together in repentance. And he says, cry out to the Lord.

It wasn’t just a feeling. It wasn’t just empty words. they were supposed to cry out to God from their hearts, seeking Him, drawing near to Him.

And if we take nothing else from Joel today, I think that’s good advice for us. When we recognize we’ve wandered, we need to do those things. We need to purge our lives of the things that distract us from God.

Even if they’re good things, if there are things that we love more than God, if there are things that we’re holding on more tightly to than we’re holding on to God, we need to throw those aside. Drop everything we’re doing and cry out to the Lord. We have the promise of His Word.

we have an even stronger promise of forgiveness than what he gave to Israel because our forgiveness has already been paid for in full. When God dealt with their sin at the cross, when God dealt with our sin at the cross, when God dealt with the sins of all humanity at the cross, when Jesus took responsibility for all of it and was nailed to the cross and shed his blood and he died, our payment was made in full. So we’re not looking at this the way they were going, well, I hope I can do well enough.

I hope I can repent enough. I hope I can walk the straight and narrow enough. We look at it in recognition that it’s already been paid for.

And we’re like the prodigal son who’s welcomed back with open arms. Not because our sin’s been paid for, but because the Father’s willing to accept us back. And the Father’s willing to accept us back because Jesus has paid our way.

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