When the Locusts Attack

Reflections on Joel 1 and why we should care about it...

The Prophet Joel from Michelangelo’s ceiling of the Sistine Chapel

I’ve begun a new process of reading scripture. Too often I find myself beginning with the ever benevolent intention of reading the Bible in a year, only to find myself oftentimes shying away from it as it becomes drudgery, flipping open the holy scriptures seeking to check a box rather than to check my heart. As such, I’m doing away with the idea of tearing through scripture in a year in favor of reading one chapter daily. 1195 chapters equates to over three years of reading. However, hopefully, by the time I have reached the final book, my understanding of scripture has been expanded greatly, and my love for God’s Word will find all the more expression because it is hidden away deeply in my heart.

For whatever reason, the first book I decided to study in this way was the book of Joel. We know precious little about the contemporary events around Joel’s time, as his oracle contains little outside information that would be helpful in dating the book, and as such, the time frame varies wildly, ranging from the 9th century BC to the 4th century BC. At any rate, the message of Joel is being poured out on a suffering people, and is meant to catch their attention. For ease of study, I’ve included the text of the first chapter of Joel below:

1 The word of the Lord that came to Joel, the son of Pethuel:

An Invasion of Locusts

2  Hear this, you elders; give ear, all inhabitants of the land!Has such a thing happened in your days, or in the days of your fathers?

3  Tell your children of it, and let your children tell their children,and their children to another generation.

4  What the cutting locust left, the swarming locust has eaten.

What the swarming locust left, the hopping locust has eaten,and what the hopping locust left, the destroying locust has eaten.

5  Awake, you drunkards, and weep, and wail, all you drinkers of wine,because of the sweet wine, for it is cut off from your mouth.

6  For a nation has come up against my land, powerful and beyond number;its teeth are lions’ teeth, and it has the fangs of a lioness.

7  It has laid waste my vine and splintered my fig tree;it has stripped off their bark and thrown it down; their branches are made white.

8  Lament like a virgin wearing sackcloth for the bridegroom of her youth.

9  The grain offering and the drink offering are cut off from the house of the Lord.The priests mourn, the ministers of the Lord.

10  The fields are destroyed, the ground mourns, because the grain is destroyed,the wine dries up, the oil languishes.

11  Be ashamed, O tillers of the soil; wail, O vinedressers, for the wheat and the barley, because the harvest of the field has perished.

12  The vine dries up; the fig tree languishes. Pomegranate, palm, and apple,all the trees of the field are dried up, and gladness dries up from the children of man.

A Call to Repentance

13  Put on sackcloth and lament, O priests; wail, O ministers of the altar.Go in, pass the night in sackcloth, O ministers of my God! Because grain offering and drink offering are withheld from the house of your God.

14  Consecrate a fast; call 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.

15  Alas for the day! For the day of the Lord is near, and as destruction from the Almighty it comes.

16  Is not the food cut off before our eyes, joy and gladness from the house of our God?

17  The seed shrivels under the clods; the storehouses are desolate; the granaries are torn down because the grain has dried up.

18  How the beasts groan! The herds of cattle are perplexed because there is no pasture for them; even the flocks of sheep suffer.

19  To you, O Lord, I call. For fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness,and flame has burned all the trees of the field.

20  Even the beasts of the field pant for you because the water brooks are dried up, and fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness.

What Judah was experiencing was utter destruction. There was a progressive removal of goods and blessings from the nation until there was no food even to live by. Long ago, it would have been difficult for me to have imagined this in our country. We have long lived by standards that are outright gaudy compared to most countries. Yet, even now, we are staring at the possibility of food shortages in our own country in the near future. The reason I bring these things up is not to make a political argument, for the problem extends for beyond mere ballot boxes and popularity contests. I bring this up because I think it dovetails nicely with what I pulled out of the first chapter of Joel:

1. God brings calamity upon people when they stray too far from His law.

2. God wants leaders to lead.

Let’s expound on the first premise:

God brings calamity upon people when they stray too far from His law

How often can we look over scripture and see God punishing the people of Israel when they strayed from Him? Let’s look at Judges 2:11-15

And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals. 12 And they abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt. They went after other gods, from among the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed down to them. And they provoked the Lord to anger. 13 They abandoned the Lord and served the Baals and the Ashtaroth. 14 So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he gave them over to plunderers, who plundered them. And he sold them into the hand of their surrounding enemies, so that they could no longer withstand their enemies. 15 Whenever they marched out, the hand of the Lord was against them for harm, as the Lord had warned, and as the Lord had sworn to them. And they were in terrible distress.

And if that wasn’t enough, there were seven more instances in the book where the people of Israel “did what was evil in the sight of the LORD.” That’s just the number of times that it was mentioned. There were more than 13 judges, and the obvious implication is that every time God called a new judge it was in response to the people doing what was evil in the sight of the Lord.

If the book of Judges contained too little warning against turning away from God, I’d implore you to look over any of the minor prophets, or spend time reading in the major prophets. The whole of the Old Testament can be boiled down to God trying to get the attention of His lost people, calling them to repentance and promising their redemption. But don’t fail to see that God is consistent in His use of national calamity to bring about either repentance or judgement.

A potential rejection of this could be to retort that God brings calamity on His people, but allows people outside of His covenant community. That, however, would require ignoring the book of Habakkuk (Habakkuk prays to God how unfair it is that the people of Israel are so evil, so He promises Habakkuk to chastise them… with the Babylonians, who God eventually judges and destroys as well), or the book of Obadiah (an oracle about the eventual destruction of Edom). While we are on topic, the entire book of Jonah is about God’s sending of Jonah to the Assyrians to preach repentance. Of course, the implication of this is that God judges even those outside of His covenant community when they have reached the point where He deems it necessary.

Why is this poignant now? I’d argue simply that we live in a time unlike any time in the past, a time that has exponentially magnified the depravity we have in the world, and the depravity we have sunk to as a nation. Without turning this into a cultural war zone, at the very least, we have, even as believers, begun to redefine God’s word and what it means. We have replaced God’s word and God’s wisdom with our own understanding, which scripture DIRECTLY warns us not to do. Instead, in the name of relevance and inclusiveness, the new “salvation” in today’s cultural milieu, the church has begun to sink away from solid and sound doctrine, and has instead entered into the struggle for “relevance.” When the church has lost its flavor, there is little hope for seeing a difference in our world. The words of Jesus in Matthew 5:13 are devastating in their decisiveness:

Salt and Light

13 “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.

Make no mistake. Once the people of God taste just like the world, they have lost their saltiness. You can’t restore it, because we have traded solid doctrine and sound orthopraxy for the false god of relevance. Once that is done, we are not good for anything. And as we have continued to descend into depravity, the state of our world is ever more reflected in the fact that our leadership is no longer capable of delivering solid leadership. Until we rediscover what it means to love God, and what it means to be salt and light, as the church, we are powerless to turn the direction of the people. Furthermore, without the church to be a guiding light, the nation soon becomes ripe for judgment, which it is quite possible we could be witnessing in our very own time. And with that, let’s look at the second and final premise.

God wants leaders to lead.

Notice in verses 13 and 14, Joel calls on the leaders of the assembly and the people to call for repentance. Don’t miss this point. When God gives us leadership responsibility, He isn’t giving it to us to treasure and benefit from. He is giving us that responsibility to be His leaders here on earth. Wherever you are called to lead, by all means, LEAD!!! Are you a parent? Lead your children! You are a parent BECAUSE you are called to lead. Consider what Charles Spurgeon said when he read through this same passage:

In this simple way, by God's grace, a living testimony for truth is always to be kept alive in the land--the beloved of the Lord are to hand down their witness for the gospel, and the covenant to their heirs, and these again to their next descendants. This is our first duty, we are to begin at the family hearth: he is a bad preacher who does not commence his ministry at home. The heathen are to be sought by all means, and the highways and hedges are to be searched, but home has a prior claim, and woe unto those who reverse the order of the Lord's arrangements. To teach our children is a personal duty; we cannot delegate it to Sunday school teachers, or other friendly aids; these can assist us, but cannot deliver us from the sacred obligation; proxies and sponsors are wicked devices in this case: mothers and fathers must, like Abraham, command their households in the fear of God, and talk with their offspring concerning the wondrous works of the Most High.

Leadership in the home is the single most essential step to making the change we need in our country for the church to be salt and light. Raising children who are steeped in the Gospel, who have been watered by the frequent pouring out of the Holy Spirit through bible study, prayer, discussion, and the setting of a godly example in the home is the single best way we can lead our homes, and it is no trifling affair. No, leading a home is the first and foremost calling of every husband on earth. And without providing solid leadership in the home, we can’t expect our families to pull our spiritual weight in response. It is a sad state when the wife and children are pulling the spiritual weight in the home. I know because I’ve made mine do it at times. But even in areas of repentance, leaders are called to lead. Joel called the leaders to lead in repentance because we tend to follow our leadership as humans. If our leaders are not interested in growing spiritually or in acknowledging their flaws and imploring God for forgiveness and restoration, neither will we.

Of course, the question is how to apply the lesson of Joel 1 to our lives. Simply put, lead your homes in godliness. Pray with your children. Pray for our leadership in America. God still chastises those whom He loves, and though the iron scepter be heavy, the hands that wield it are waiting to love and restore the people whom He loves. If you have ever wondered whether or not God is for you, remember these words:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. 4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:1-4)

This, dear reader, is our final state. Every tear wiped away, death but a memory, and eternal day for us to enjoy the light of the Son. But before we rest in that palatial abode with the Lord, we are called to lead and do battle here on earth, and to be witnesses to the faithful and true One, who does not hesitate to allow His loved ones to suffer a while if it creates in them a desire to repent.