Bible Talks - Traditional Church (Sunday 8am)
The anger and the love of God
Sunday, 12 November 2006
1. Thunder storms and God
I love watching summer thunder storms. You get great thunderstorms in January! And if you are on the coast particularly, it’s just a great thing to watch a summer storm brewing.
You see the clouds gathering on the horizon, the great columns of Cumulus Nimbus building higher and higher, getting darker and darker. As the storm gets closer, and the clouds spread across the sky, you can see the electrical activity inside the clouds. And all this is long before any rain comes, but the deep, ground shaking rumble of thunder tells you that something is on it’s way.
Summer storms often promise relief from heat and humidity – although that relief will probably be fairly dramatic and perhaps even traumatic.
And as the clouds continue to build and block the sun out, as the rumbles of thunder get louder and more dramatic, you may even see lightening strikes to ground in the distance. Then you see those first really big drops of rain strike the ground, and you think ‘here it comes!’, as they splatter the ground and make loud thumps on the car roof.
But those big drops often only last a few seconds though and then go away, and some people might think that they misread the signs and the storm will come to nothing.
But of course, that’s not the case, and often what might come next is smaller drops but much heavier, and then perhaps hail – and that’s really good to watch isn’t it? Unless they are really big hail stones and your car is parked outside!
But the hail is often only on the edge of the storm, and after the hail comes the serious rain, beating down hard and fast, and the lightning activity ramps up, so that the thunder can almost become a continuous noise pounding your eardrums!
2. The coming of the day of the Lord
The coming of the day of the Lord is like a thunder storm. It’s like a storm, in that you can pay attention to all the details, and yet forget that a storm is coming.
You can pay attention to the sequence and forget the really important stuff.
A guy at the weather bureau admitted that the other day. Responding to criticism of a lack of notice given about an early hail storm in Brisbane, he admitted that sometimes the weather nerds at the Bureau get so wrapped up in watching a big storm develop – recognising the shift in temperature and air currents, etc, etc , that they forget that they are watching a destructive, violent storm develop!
It can be like that with the day of the Lord, because there are all kinds of things that go to indicate that the day of the Lord is coming, but they don’t indicate when he is coming.
And yet, when you watch the ‘end of the world movies’ and TV series, and listen to any number of ‘end of the world’ preachers, there are endless people who spend their time trying to work out the sequence of events, and so pinpoint the timing of the day of the Lord.
But thunder storms don’t often follow the same sequences of events... Sometimes, there’s lots of lightning, sometimes little. We don’t always have huge building up of dark clouds, and so on.
The day of the Lord is like that. All kinds of things indicate that it is coming... more than that, indicate that it is coming soon, that it’s on the way... But those signs and indication still don’t tell us exactly when.
We know it’s coming because there are already plenty of signs to indicate that – if you know what to look for.
Joel saw it in the locusts.
He saw it in the locust plague that he describes so wonderfully in 2:1-11. It’s the day of the lord... “Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy hill. Let all who live in the land tremble, for... the day of the Lord is coming.. it is close at hand.”
v11: “The Lord thunders at the head of his army; his forces are beyond number, and mighty are those who obey his command. The day of the Lord is great; it is dreadful. Who can endure it?”
Joel sees in the locusts, the day of the Lord.
It’s a symbol of the day of the lord... but more than that, it’s part of the day of the lord.
It’s like the lightning. The lightning is a symbol of the storm, but it is also part of the storm. The storm hasn’t come, but it is coming. It has come, in the sense that I can see it, I can even feel it in the air, but it hasn’t really arrived yet. I’m not wet yet! But if I stand around long enough, the storm will arrive fully, and I will get very wet!
The locusts were like destructive hail in a storm... Do you remember the violent storm that hit this area in February 2002? The hail stripped plants and trees of all their leaves. Pummelled small plants into the ground, left large dings in unprotected cars.
But according to the SES, hail damage is always light compared to what usually follows: ie, downpours of rain. Hail is destructive, but floods are much more so. The deluge that follows even severe hail storms can cause much wider, and much worse damage than the hail itself.
So Joel’s locusts – they aren’t the end of the world, but they are the beginning of the end of the world, they are part of the end of the world. They can do tremendous damage, as v3 indicates
But there is still more to come. The locusts are just the start.
3. The hand of God
And as we saw last week, the locusts are not a natural disaster - Joel clearly sees here the hand of God.
You and I, we read the newspapers or watch the news, and we read and hear of one disaster after another: here’s a war, there’s a famine, a volcano erupts somewhere, an earthquake happens somewhere else, and we say ‘Oh yes, that’s nice, or ‘what a pity’, and turn to see how Kylie’s doing after her breast cancer surgery. It all washes over us, because it’s all happening ‘out there’, overseas, or the like, and not in Toongabbie.
But the reality is not like that. This is God’s day of judgement coming upon us. This is part of the end of the world, this is the sign that the world we are in is under the judgement of God, that the world we are in is not going well.
The world we are in is to be destroyed, it is all part of God’s destructive purposes... note 2:11 again, that it is the Lords army that Joel is describing. The locusts of devastation are God’s army doing his work of devastation.
This really highlights a big problem in some churches. The idea of dualism, the idea of the ‘good God’ and the ‘bad god’. And that everything good happens at the hand of the ‘good God’, and everything bad at the hands of the ‘bad god’ – commonly called the devil or Satan. And so, when something goes wrong, that’s the devil, and when something goes right, that’s God... But that’s not what the Bible says at all!
In fact, when people talk about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in that way, it’s really all got to do with self-centeredness...
When something goes well, like I get better, or I get a pay rise, then we’re happy to say that’s God blessing us. But when something goes bad in our life, people blame the devil. ‘Good’ and ‘bad’ are described in terms of what makes me happy or unhappy! I’ve heard exactly that taught in churches not far from here.
But it’s nonsense. God is at work bringing about his purposes. Isaiah 45:7 says “I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things.”. He sends the rain, he sends the crops, he sends the sunshine to grow the crops...
BUT he also sends the locusts and he sends the fire, and he sends the famine, because his beautiful world is a sinful world that he’s going to destroy.
Remember when God brings his people into the Promised Land, a land ‘flowing with milk and honey’, and he says if you obey my covenant, you will continue to live in a land flowing with milk and honey, but if you disobey my covenant, I will send plagues and disasters upon you!
They disobeyed the covenant, and he sends the plague. And so when the lord’s army comes that we read of in 2:11, note that the question is: “The day of the Lord is... dreadful. Who can endure it?”
And that question is exactly right.
Who can endure such a thing? The mighty power of the day of the lord is spelled out in the poetry of chapter 2.
Look at v6ff “At the sight of them, nations are in anguish; every face turns pale. They charge like warriors; they scale walls like soldiers. They all march in line, not swerving from their course. They do not jostle each other; each marches straight ahead. They plunge through defences without breaking ranks. They rush upon the city; they run along the wall. They climb into the houses; like thieves they enter through the windows.”
It’s an awful picture, isn’t it? Can’t you just feel them everywhere, millions upon millions of crawling, hopping, flying insects, running over every surface, getting in every crevice, turning every surface the colour of their bodies... the stuff of nightmares!
We lived in a house with a large infestation of cockroaches once. Most cockies are afraid of light and only tend to come out during the day... Not in this house! At any hour of the day or night, they would stroll across the floor, the walls, through the cutlery drawer, over your feet when you were in the bathroom. Robyn woke up one day with a couple under her pillow... We got pretty good at getting them with a shoe or sandal, but when you’re dealing with 30, 50, hundreds of them, there’s no way you can kill them... they breed faster than you can squash them. And our house full of cockies was nothing compared to Joel’s army of locusts... there is no way to get rid of them. There is no sword that will fight them... It’s an awful picture, isn’t it of walls, floors, everything covered in a seething mass of insects. An army that no one can defeat, because it’s God’s army.
And so when you see the picture of the judgement of God, you say “Who can endure it?”. And the answer is ‘no one can’ it’s awful.
Which leads us to v12-17 and the call to repentance from God, which we spent some time looking at last week, but take a look at those verses again: “‘Even now,‘ declares the Lord, ‘return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.‘ Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God...”
Remember, the returning to God must be genuine! All their heart. It must be sincere – not just the external signs of returning, but changed lives... so much more than just saying sorry.
4. God’s character.
And the basis of this repentance is God’s character – v13 “...Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity.”
We have to work at understanding the character of God... which is complex, like your character and mine. Would you like someone to describe your whole character in one sentence? In three words or less? “Jacquie/Derek is...” What three words would you choose to totally capture all that is Jacquie/Derek!? It really can’t be done can it?
Yet so many people go around spouting ‘God is love!’, as if that’s the be all and end all of God. God is more than loving. He’s compassionate as well, we are told here. And merciful. He’s also truthful, faithful, reliable, powerful... He’s angry too, and just, he is slow to anger... and so on...
There are lots of things we can say about the character of God. Part of his character is that he doesn’t want to destroy. Because is he loving and merciful and he does want to forgive and pardon people... But part of his character is that he is also just and angry because he loves.
Remember, the opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference. The opposite of love is not hate or anger, because we only get angry about things that we love, that we are concerned about – usually ourselves, but it can be other things.
I’m angry about very small children being kept in immigration detention centres – because I care about them and the damage being done to them. When I see people misleading others about gospel issues, I get angry about it – and rightly so!
So when God looks at what we, his creations, have done to the world and each other, he gets angry about it.
Because God loves us, he’s angry with what we do to each other. But... because he a loving and compassionate God, if people do turn back to him, maybe... maybe God will relent and have pity. He may forgive, because his character is forgiving, his character is gracious and compassionate, perhaps he will turn back, perhaps he will bless us!
And so the priests are to lead in the repentance, to cry for mercy before God, to cry out to God to spare his people... (v17).
5. The Salvation of God
And then, in v18ff, we have clear shift, and we see the salvation of God. A radical change takes place.
V1-11 have promised the coming of the day of the Lord – the locusts. V12-17 is this call to this urgent, genuine repentance. Now, v18ff is about what God will do. Or rather, what God has done. Because Joel has written this book to tell us about the locust plague, but by the time he has written the book, the plague is over.
Up to now, he’s told the story with great drama, warning us about what was going to happen... now, he shifts to telling us what God did. And so v18-27 is really in the past tense – despite how the NIV reads!
And so we know that God does rescue his people, and the army of locusts was dispersed by a wind– half into the east sea (the Dead Sea) and half into the western sea – the Mediterranean. We can’t squash them – but God can just blow them away!
But he does more than that – he restores his people with new grain and wine and oil. V23 – He sends the rain when it’s needed – in abundance! All that they need! So that the nations around will all know that the God of Israel is the one true God!
Why does God rescue his people? So as to fulfil his purposes, so that his name will be glorified in all the nations of the earth.
But there’s an even greater promise in v28-32 which connects straight through to the New Testament, the Day of Pentecost and to our day... but that’s for next week.
To wrap it up. The great thunderstorm that is the day of the Lord, is a day of judgement, condemnation, punishment, destruction, devastation... But it is also a day of salvation, rescue, mercy, replenishment, love.
Somehow, those two extremes go together...
Our country is going through a rough time at the moment with the drought. We city slickers don’t really understand the implications, but there are towns in NSW who only have weeks of water supply left. One town reports it’s dam level as being -3% - that is, the tiny amount of water left is below the pumping level.
But when the drought does break, it will bring with it harmful, damaging floods... The rain brings life to the land, yet the storm brings destruction. The good and bad are all mixed up... but God is going to come and separate them out by bringing them together in the final, great climax of all the universe.
But it’s just like that in the death of Jesus... Was the death of Jesus a good thing? Of course! It was fantastic! The day that Jesus died was the day my sins were completely paid for! Sin was defeated once and for all! Death was defeated! Hell was defeated! Wonderful day! But is wasn’t so crash hot for Jesus, was it? It was an awful day for him. The day when the prince of peace, author of life was murdered. The most awful day in human history, you can’t do anything worse that what we did on that day. Good Friday is the blackest day of the year.
The judgement of God and the salvation of God come together in the day of the Lord, for God is both angry and loving.
In the locust plague, Joel saw the ‘thunderstorm’ of God’s judgement, which is why he says in 1:3 ‘pay attention’, pass this on down through the ages, all the way to 21st century Australia: “Remember the locust plague!’, and the famine, and the drought, earthquake, tsunami, volcano, all the disasters of this world, remember! Remember they are all part of the day of the Lord. Not just a symbol of it, but like the early rumbles of the thunderstorm, they are all part of it.
And whenever we see or hear of these things, they are to keep reminding us –that he is coming, and he is coming soon...
Lets pray.