Bible Talks - Traditional Church (Sunday 8am)
The Judgement of God
Sunday, 26 November 2006
1. A tale of two cities
What is Sydney the city known for? How do people ‘see’ this large and busy city of ours? It’s known as the ‘harbour city’, a description that conjures up images of a carefree, attractive place of leisure and yachts and ferries.
It’s known as a hub of commerce and finance – the biggest in our country, and if you believe the politicians, it’s almost invulnerable. Nothing can stop Sydney’s growth and financial and commercial might!
But they said that of New York too. Until Sept. 11th 2001. When the world trade centre was destroyed in the terrorist attack, it plunged not just New York, but most of America into a financial recession, costing untold billions of dollars and many jobs.
The image of the great, unbeatable U.S. of A. crumbled as fast as the twin towers.
Tyre and Sidon were also mighty cities. And like many cities of today, they had a presence, a character, a sense of strength, and yes, even of invulnerability. They were trade cities, port cities like Sydney, ‘fast lane’ cities like Sydney, involved in the slave trade, like Sydney – although ours is a little more sophisticated and theirs more barbaric. But the result is similar – people bought and sold for the benefit of financial and trade empires and their profits. Tyre and Sidon did little to hide the fact that they thrived on not only the trade of goods, but also in the trade of human life.
They felt safe and secure because they couldn’t be attacked. You could easily attack many ancient cities by just surrounding them with soldiers and starving them. But you can’t do that with a port city, which has clear access to the sea. So they knew they were safe and secure… until they were both destroyed.
2. Joel and the history lesson.
As we come to chapter three, you can probably see elements that are similar to chaps 1 and 2, but there are some new ideas creeping in as well. In previous talks, we’ve taken little peeks at how Joel’s words here are sometimes echoed by other prophets in the O.T. as well as being fulfilled in the N.T. (as we saw last week).
But to really get our heads around chapter 3 , we need to have a idea of why God used people like Joel and the other prophets.
So hang to your Bibles as we dive right back to Genesis 12:1-3 –look it up, because here we have in some ways, a three verse summary of the whole O.T.
Genesis 1-11 is really the story of the search for the special person whom God would use to bring a halt to the destruction, misery and death that sin has bought into the world. By Genesis 12 that’s been narrowed down to one man and his family: Abram.
” The LORD had said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you. "I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” Genesis 12:1-3
To Abram three things are promised:
1. To leave his land and go the land that God had picked out – what we know as Palestine.
2. God promised that he would become a great nation, that he would father children who would go on to father a great nation of people more numerous than the sand on the beaches and the stars in the sky. And it came to be. A huge proportion of the world’s population call Abraham ‘father’. Quite extraordinary!
3. The third promise, which is a little strange, is that Abraham will be the channel for blessings and curses for the rest of the world – v3.
The whole rest of the O.T. is the story of the working out of those promises. God repeats the promises to Isaac – Abraham’s son, to Jacob who becomes ‘Israel’, and who has the twelve sons from whom the 12 tribes of Israel come, and so forth.
He repeats them to Moses in the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy, and in Numbers and Leviticus, where God actually turns the promises into a formal contract – a covenant! Where he sets out again to state that his people will be the owners of the land, that they will be a mighty nation, and all the other nations would be blessed – or cursed – through their association with Israel.
Of course under King David, it all seems to come true, because at the time of David they owned the promised land and David actually expanded the borders! They were a mighty nation! And they were a blessing to everybody in the region, for whenever nations formed an alliance with Israel, wealth and prosperity followed, and whenever people opposed them, they would be destroyed.
Solomon is the high point of Israel’s prosperity under the promise. But… from there on everything started to go pear shaped, it’s a steady decline downhill, and it’s because part of the contract God worked out with Moses required certain things of the people of Israel:
If they were to live as God’s people in God’s land, they had to be different, they had to be distinctive, they had to live as God’s people day by day, in all they did.
They had to keep God’s law – and they failed… miserably. And God had spelt out to Moses back in Deuteronomy: ‘This is what I will do if you fail to keep your side of the contract. I will destroy you’. I will destroy you by sending plagues, and pests and so forth.
And so we come to Joel… because Joel has recounted for us the locust plague sent by God as part of his judgement on his people.
Joel doesn’t tell us what the people had done wrong, but he does tell us that God is sending his day of judgement.
And now the locust plague comes, just as God has promised. The punishment on his people.
But remember, this locust plague was in indicator of something far greater, a bigger judgement, part of the day of the Lord, part of the end of the world. Like the thunder and lightening of a storm, they indicate that the storm was coming. But they’re also part of the storm, not separate from it.
So the locusts were to the day of the Lord, just the beginning. The beginning that indicates the end. If you think the locusts were bad, wait until the day of the Lord comes in it’s fullness – it will be worst than your worst nightmare!.
And so the locusts came with the prophetic word of Joel, and the people repent. Which is what they are called to in 2:12ff . And in 2:18-27 we see that God does relent, and as the people repent, God turns aside the locust plague, and replenishes the land. And once again they are the people of God, living in God’s land, enjoying peace and prosperity at his hand.
But know there is more this time. As we explored last week, in 2:28-32, there is something further this time, they are now going to receive the Spirit of God, something that is bigger and better than Israel had ever experienced, even at the heights of David’s day. They will have what Moses only dreamt of – they are going to have the Spirit of God living in them – all of them! Old, young, men, women. – they would all become prophets of God!
And everyone of them that calls on the name of the Lord will be saved on the coming day of judgement!
3. The next step…
And so, finally we come to chapter 3! And God is going to restore the fortunes of his land – Judah and Jerusalem – v1
The chapter looks forward to a wonderful time when God dwells in the land, when he would be in Zion – the hill in Jerusalem that the temple sits on – v17-18 “Then you will know that I, the LORD your God, dwell in Zion, my holy hill. Jerusalem will be holy; never again will foreigners invade her. "In that day the mountains will drip new wine, and the hills will flow with milk; all the ravines of Judah will run with water. A fountain will flow out of the LORD's house and will water the valley of acacias”
God will come back to his land, and all his people will be there – v20. Egypt won’t survive, nor Edom, but God declares that he will be there in his land with his people. This is the great promise Joel is looking forward to, and can you see the connection to the promises made to Abraham?
God promises to take care of his people – v16 he will be a refuge to his people, a stronghold for them. Wonderful promises! Connecting right back to Abraham, and forward into the N.T. !
They are the highlights of this chapter.
But most of chapter 3 isn’t about the land or the people, most of the chapter is about blessings and curses – again harking back to the covenant with Abraham, but in a different way, because this is about the effect on the other nations around Israel, and most of it is actually about curses.
And so, despite the high points this is another pretty serious and unhappy chapter of the Bible, there’s a happy end to it all, but some misery to deal with before that…
This chapter is a call to gather the nations into the valley of Jehoshaphat –which means ‘the valley where God is the judge’ – v2, 12, 14. So this is like a huge courtroom on the day when the sentence is passed down, a judgement against the nations.
It’s against them in relation to God’s people, Israel (v2), for those accused have scattered God’s people amongst the nations and divided up the land, they’ve cast lots for God’s people (v3), trading boys for prostitutes and girls for wine.
4. Remember Abraham…
But remember Abraham…: ‘Whoever curses you Abraham will be cursed’. The nations of the world have gathered to curse God’s land and his people. They are now to gather together and God will judge them.
And the judgement is that the nations are to be destroyed by God.
This is another situation where some of this is in the ‘now’ of history. And some of it is in the end of the world – like the thunderstorm, it has stages to it, but it’s all part of the judgement of God.
Indeed, what is taking place now in the world is indicative of something bigger that is going to happen in a while.
And so looking back from where we stand, we can see Joel is writing about how there will be a reversal of the barbaric slave trade with Greece that v4-6 accuses Tyre and Sidon of. V7-8 talk of God’s judgement on those cities and people – the slave traders will themselves become slaves!
That’s going to happen, says Joel, in his future – but what we would now call history. But, just like on the other ‘day of the Lord’ scenes that we’ve been pondering, some of this goes beyond history and into our future – the end of the world, where all the nations gather together to war with God.
Hard to imagine a valley that will take all the nations of the world, and therefore how this will actually happen in our future, is a little unclear.
But v10 has God challenging the nations that would oppose him and saying, ‘come on then, put up a real fight! – turn all your farm tools into weapons, and come and fight me!’
Which is, of course just absurd! Ploughs and pruning hooks against the living creator of the whole universe!
v11 Hurry up all you nations, get yourself together and get yourself down to the valley, where I, the Lord God, will sit in judgement on you! Seriously scary stuff.
v 13 – the harvest time has indeed come, but (v15) the moon will be dark, the stars will no longer shine… it’s bigger judgement that is really in mind here… perhaps one in our future…
5. Joel fulfilled
Well, the prophecy of Joel was fulfilled. It was fulfilled back then in history, Edom was destroyed (you don’t any Edomites these days, do you?), And Egypt, the richest of all the ancient world cultures, has never succeeded again, it has remained a second rate power for centuries.
The slave trading out of Tyre and Sidon was indeed reversed, Alexander the Great came in the 4th century and destroyed both cities, and 40,000 Sidonians were sold off in one day. It all happened just as Joel said it would happen.
But the prophecy was also fulfilled by Jesus!
Well… fulfilled and not really fulfilled!
Even allowing for the poetic style of v18, those things haven’t been fulfilled even to this day… A fountain hasn’t come forth from the house of the Lord – the temple in Jerusalem. That was destroyed in 70 ad and all that remains today is a single wall.
So how did Jesus fulfil the prophecy of Joel 3?
We know that Jesus didn’t do those things of v18… but when he came, he died and he rose again, and poured out his Spirit on his people, for Jesus is part of the Day of the Lord, Jesus is part of the judgement of God on the world.
Jesus in his death, was the judgement, the centre of the thunderstorm. For there, all the fury of God was spent on that one man. Then the power of God raised him to new life, and he poured out his Spirit upon us. So that all the people of God would no longer be the physical descendants of one particular man – Abraham, but the spiritual descendents, those who are born again by the Spirit of God.
And all who call on the name of the Lord Jesus, are indeed saved, and God has dwelt with his people from Zion – not the hill in Jerusalem, but the heavenly city of Zion.
For the fulfilment that Jesus bought is not the physical fulfilment, but a spiritual one. Still real! But spiritually real!
For the promised land was not Palestine, nor Jerusalem – that’s not the city of God, it’s only a symbol of the heavenly city, the new Jerusalem that Revelation 21 speaks of .
The Jerusalem in Palestine today, has nothing to do with the fulfilment of Scripture. Because it’s in Jesus that God has established his people in heaven, with him!
It’s the Spirit of God in me that makes me a ‘descendant of Abraham’. I’m a citizen of the city of God, I’m one of God’s people who live in that heavenly city!
But… we need to remember that the judgement seat is there also, for all who bless the name of Jesus are blessed, and all who curse it, will be cursed themselves. Since Jesus, it’s not just Israel, but all nations can find blessing in him, and those who reject him will be cursed.
When Jesus was around, he looked at the hard and unrepentant hearts of his own day in Matthew 11:21-22 “21"Woe to you, Korazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! [People with the blood of Abraham coursing through their veins, people who lived in Palestine, the Promised Land, God’s land! But people who had rejected the Messiah when he came] If the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. 22But I tell you, it will be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you” –
The people who bless God because of the great son of Abraham, Jesus, will be blessed. And the people who curse God and reject his son Jesus, will be cursed.
The judgement is well and truly underway people.
We are in the latter part of the thunderstorm. And places like 2 Peter 3 shows us that there is still more to come, and there’s a big clean up operation yet to happen. But how is all this going to happen? We don’t need to worry about it, because it’s all been worked out for us.
Joel saw it in the locust plague. He saw that you if you turn with all your heart, God in his mercy, forgave.
But he saw that there was more to happen – the Spirit of God was to be given as well, and that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord would be saved. And he saw that this wasn’t just for Israel, but would have implications for all the rest of the people on earth too.
We who live on this side of the death and resurrection of Jesus know even more about it. Not that the basics have changed – repenting, and calling on the name of the Lord Jesus is still the way to be saved. We know more because we have received the Spirit of God into our lives, which changes us and transforms us into the people God wants us to be. We know more, but only more of what God has already told us.
And we know the judgement of God to be real, because we know that Jesus bore the judgement of God on himself. That’s how we know we are forgiven if we call on his name – but that’s also how we know that we will be lost if we reject him.
Joel’s task, under God, was to speak to his generation, warn them of the coming day of the Lord, and urge them to repent. He also spoke of the day when God’s Spirit would be poured out on all people who call on the name of the Lord Jesus, and are thereby saved.
All those things he spoke of, speak to us today – just as powerfully, but with an even deeper sense of urgency. That we and all we know might call upon the name of the Lord Jesus and be saved before that great, but terrible day of the Lord finally comes in all it’s glory and destruction.
Let us not sit on our hands , just waiting for that to happen…