Actions have consequences! Repeatedly, God has warned the Israelites of the consequences if they renounce Him and worship idols. Deuteronomy 28:15-24 embodies one of those warnings.
Curses for Disobedience
15-24 “But if you refuse to listen to the Lord your God and do not obey all the commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come and overwhelm you: Your towns and your fields will be cursed. Your fruit baskets and breadboards will be cursed. Your children and your crops will be cursed. The offspring of your herds and flocks will be cursed. Wherever you go and whatever you do, you will be cursed.
“The Lord himself will send on you curses, confusion, and frustration in everything you do, until at last you are completely destroyed for doing evil and abandoning me. The Lord will afflict you with diseases until none of you are left in the land you are about to enter and occupy. The Lord will strike you with wasting diseases, fever, and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, and with blight and mildew. These disasters will pursue you until you die. The skies above will be as unyielding as bronze, and the earth beneath will be as hard as iron. The Lord will change the rain that falls on your land into powder, and dust will pour down from the sky until you are destroyed.
Now it’s 835 B.C. Joel, “Yahweh is God,” son of Pethuel, from a priestly family in Jerusalem, finds himself in a dilemma. The Israelites have lusted after every pagan deity they can find, giving only lip service to the One True Living God who has delivered their ancestors out of slavery and has blessed their land abundantly. Actions do have consequences, and now the Israelites find that God means it when He warns about the curses in Deuteronomy 28. The land is under attack by several different kinds and sizes of locusts. In addition, a harsh drought further complicated by bush fires is also afflicting the land. As a worshiper of the true God, Joel is appalled at the lack of faith and excesses of his countrymen. Now Joel feels impelled to speak out against the evil he has witnessed, calling his people to account for their sins.
Joel 1:1-20 The Lord gave this message to Joel son of Pethuel.
Mourning over the Locust Plague
Hear this, you leaders of the people. Listen, all who live in the land. In all your history, has anything like this happened before? Tell your children about it in the years to come, and let your children tell their children. Pass the story down from generation to generation.
After the cutting locusts finished eating the crops, the swarming locusts took what was left!
After them came the hopping locusts, and then the stripping locusts, too!
Wake up, you drunkards, and weep! Wail, all you wine-drinkers! All the grapes are ruined, and all your sweet wine is gone. A vast army of locusts has invaded my land, a terrible army too numerous to count. Its teeth are like lions’ teeth, its fangs like those of a lioness.
It has destroyed my grapevines and ruined my fig trees, stripping their bark and destroying it,
leaving the branches white and bare.
Weep like a bride dressed in black, mourning the death of her husband. For there is no grain or wine to offer at the Temple of the Lord. So the priests are in mourning. The ministers of the Lord are weeping.
The fields are ruined, the land is stripped bare. The grain is destroyed, the grapes have shriveled, and the olive oil is gone. Despair, all you farmers! Wail, all you vine growers! Weep, because the wheat and barley—all the crops of the field—are ruined.
The grapevines have dried up, and the fig trees have withered. The pomegranate trees, palm trees, and apple trees—all the fruit trees—have dried up. And the people’s joy has dried up with them.
Dress yourselves in burlap and weep, you priests! Wail, you who serve before the altar! Come, spend the night in burlap, you ministers of my God. For there is no grain or wine to offer at the Temple of your God.
Announce a time of fasting; call the people together for a solemn meeting. Bring the leaders
and all the people of the land into the Temple of the Lord your God, and cry out to him there.
The day of the Lord is near, the day when destruction comes from the Almighty. How terrible that day will be!
Our food disappears before our very eyes. No joyful celebrations are held in the house of our God.
The seeds die in the parched ground, and the grain crops fail. The barns stand empty, and granaries are abandoned. How the animals moan with hunger! The herds of cattle wander about confused, because they have no pasture. The flocks of sheep and goats bleat in misery.
Lord, help us! The fire has consumed the wilderness pastures, and flames have burned up all the trees. Even the wild animals cry out to you because the streams have dried up, and fire has consumed the wilderness pastures.
Sometimes God’s calls are dramatic, as in the case of Ezekiel and Isaiah. But sometimes the message embodies the call, as in the case of Joel. It’s likely that as Joel prays several times daily, he begins receiving God’s warnings about the tragic events overtaking the land and God’s call to national repentance. Perhaps Joel first shares these insights with a few priestly friends, only to find himself proclaiming these messages in the outer courts of the temple. From there, Joel finds himself walking the streets of Jerusalem, crying out this message of the need for national repentance.
If you want to be popular, don’t become a prophet! Once God has hold of you, He won’t let go, and you will never be the same again. It’s likely that Joel has never sought the role of prophet, that he has been content to quietly worship God, remaining true while others slip away to fertility cult celebrations and demonic shrines. But the problem with worshiping God is that if you truly worship Him, you are giving Him permission to change your heart and your mind. We frequently fail to realize how the object of our worship will change and mold our hearts. Those worshiping demons will continue to progressively degenerate while those worshiping God will be transformed by His Holiness. God can never meet with sinful people and leave them unchanged.
Just look at Joel: Joel comes quietly into the temple one morning and leaves with a message that he feels impelled to proclaim. Jeremiah described the call of God as a fire burning in his bones, and now Joel feels that same fire.
How does Joel feel about being a prophet? Joel leaves no record about himself or his personal feelings; he only passes on the messages God has given him. An old poem speaks of those God has used as simply being suits of clothing that God puts on to accomplish His purposes. Blessedly, Joel will later give encouraging words. Joel 2:25 tells us, “The Lord says, “I will give you back what you lost to the swarming locusts, the hopping locusts, the stripping locusts, and the cutting locusts.” Other older versions say, “I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten.” Countless believers have claimed this promise of redemption and have seen God work mightily in their lives as they have seen marriages healed, relationships renewed, and lives completely transformed by the power of the One True Living God.
Joel 2:28-29 tells us, “And it shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions. And also on My menservants and on My maidservants I will pour out My Spirit in those days.” This prophesy was fulfilled at the Day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit descended on 120 people praying in the Upper Room in Jerusalem.
What can we learn from Joel? When we worship, God can shape us, making us into instruments for His purposes. The highly successful Korean pastor David Yonggi Cho once told an American pastor, “I pray and I obey.” Joel prays, and Joel obeys, and his life is never the same.
PRAYER: Father God, thank You for loving us and caring for us. Lord, help us to pray and then to obey, even if it means we must deliver unpopular messages from You. In the mighty and precious Name of King Jesus. Amen.
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