Mankind sins when we do not follow God’s laws and commandments. This devotion looks at how our committing those sins call for repentance and judgment.
Nuggets
- Repentance means turning away from sin and turning to God.
- God comes to a point where He judges us for our sin.
- We must be punished when we depend on ourselves rather than God.
- The only way we are going to repent and get our relationship right with God is through prayer.
Devotions in The Days According to Joel series
During days of calamity, our relationships with God need to be strengthened. Boyd-Carpenter wrote, “It calls man to repair the bond which is more precious than the bond of benefits or material gifts and sacrifices. It bids the people to look at the broken links of that golden chain which is righteousness, purity, faith.”
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Joel scolded the Israelites and encouraged their repentance. Repentance is very important. We have to acknowledge the sins we have committed.
More than that, we have to genuinely strive to be obedient to God’s laws and commandments.
Let's Put It into Context #1
Here is a running list of nuggets for the series.
The Day of Repentance
“Put on sackcloth, you priests, and mourn; wail, you who minister before the altar. Come, spend the night in sackcloth, you who minister before my God; for the grain offerings and drink offerings are withheld from the house of your God. Declare a holy fast; call a sacred assembly. Summon the elders and all who live in the land to the house of the Lord your God, and cry out to the Lord” (Jl. 1: 13-15 ESV)
Repentance means turning away from sin and turning to God.
Joel was calling on the Israelites to do a complete 180o. They had to turn away from what they were doing.
We have to go from indulging in sin to hating sin. It has to be a spiritual attitude.
God calls us to do that in a certain way. He calls us to repentance.
But there is a little more to it. Excell noted that Joel urged the Israelites “… to thoughtfulness and repentance.”
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I think, many times, we bypass the thoughtful element of repentance. We think that is what God wants, so we just have to do it.
No, God wants us to make a conscious decision to follow Him. He wants us to choose to turn away from our sin and start doing His Will.
That means we have to put some though behind our repentance. It has to be well thought out, complete, and binding. We can’t repent for a day or two, and then go back to our sinful ways.
But look at to whom Joel was talking. No, Joel didn’t go to some government official.
Joel went to the ministers of God. “Put on sackcloth, you priests …” (Jl. 1: 13 ESV). There was a moral condition that they needed to address with immediate attention.
Only God could address mankind’s need. There was nothing man could do on his own.
Now, we read that the priests were also in need of repentance. Still, Excell noted they had to step up quickly. He wrote, “They were to hasten at once to the duty required by the circumstances of the nation and by the retribution of God. This was no time for indifference or sloth; their best energies were required.”
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But God’s ministers need to be ever mindful of the spiritual condition of others. It is their responsibility to bring others back to God’s fold.
The priests had a ministerial duty to guide the Israelites to make the changes needed for true repentance. They were the to shepherd all others.
The priests were to put on sackcloth. Sackcloth is the coarse material that garments were made out of to signify mourning.
I know. I normally say the inward expression of faith is more important than the outward expression.
But we do need both — especially when we are in a high profile situation Ike the priests. Others have to learn by our example.
Verse 14 talks about declaring a fast. The King James Version translated it is sanctifying the feast.
I like the concept of the feast being sanctified. Sanctification is the transformation of mind, body, and soul, which begins with regeneration; gradually changes our nature and morals through the promptings of the Holy Spirit; and ends with perfected state of spiritual wholeness or completeness.
To me, sanctification is tied with repentance. We have to repent first and then navigate the Sanctification Road. Sanctification leads us closer to God.
The priests were to declare a fast. A fast is more than just not eating.
It is about breaking the routine to confess our sins through repentance by cleansing our thoughts. Remember, thoughts are an element of repentance.
It is a day of restraint. We have to stop ourselves from following the worldview.
We have to realize that fasting, itself, doesn’t lead to the forgiveness of sin. It is the means, not the end, because it must be accompanied by faithfulness and a decision to follow God.
The priests were to call an assembly. They were to call out to God in prayer to ask for forgiveness.
I know. When we have sinned, we don’t want everyone to know.
Instead, we need to approach our repentance in humility. We have to be sincere in asking for forgiveness. Our devotion to God has to be genuine.
When was the last time you cried unto God? Was it about Him fixing something, like your health, your finances, or a relationship gone wrong? Or was it about fixing your relationship with Him?
The Day of the Lord
“Alas for that day! For the day of the Lord is near; it will come like destruction from the Almighty” (Jl. 1: 15 ESV)
God comes to a point where He judges us for our sin.
I have been waiting all chapter for Joel to get here. He finally uses the term the day of the Lord.
Remember, Joel had prophesied about a locust attack. But that was just the beginning.
Why did Joel call it the day of the Lord? If the Israelites thought the locusts were bad, then the coming judgment was going to be even worse.
Excell interpreted what Joel was saying to mean that “… all the judgments which come upon men in the present are indicative of the final judgment which is to come, and are warnings of that awful event, so that we may not be unprepared to meet it.”
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Judgment Day is going to show us God as He really is. It is going to be a display of His power and vengeance.
But it will also be a display of God’s love.
Excell pointed out how different this day will be from others. God gives us our free will to choose whether we are going to follow Him or not.
- Just as the Pharisees chose in Jesus’ day to have Him crucified, we choose whether we believe He is God’s Son.
- Some choose today to blatantly run Jesus and His disciples down.
- Worse still, there are those who say they are followers of Jesus — but really aren’t.
When the day of the Lord comes, free will is going to be a thing of the past because there will not be any more time to make the choice. God will show that He is Sovereign God.
All mankind will be judged against God’s standards. It doesn’t matter how we think we should be judged. It is all up to God.
It has bothered people for centuries that Scriptures say “For the day of the Lord is near …” (Jl. 1: 15 ESV) — and this world spins on.
Don’t worry. God knows when this day is going to be.
It is going to happen suddenly. “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed” (II Pet. 3: 10 ESV).
Joel gets back to this theme in the next chapter.
The Need for Punishment
“Has not the food been cut off before our very eyes — joy and gladness from the house of our God? The seeds are shriveled beneath the clods. The storehouses are in ruins, the granaries have been broken down, for the grain has dried up. How the cattle moan! The herds mill about because they have no pasture; even the flocks of sheep are suffering” (Jl. 1: 16-18 ESV)
We must be punished when we depend on ourselves rather than God.
In my opinion, Joel went back to talking about the locust attack. Crops had been decimated. There wouldn’t have been any grass left, so the cattle and sheep were out of food.
We have to realize the significance of that.
- They were depending on the harvest to have food for the next year.
- They were depending on the harvest to have seed for next year’s crop.
- They were depending on the harvest to provide for anything they wanted.
But then all of that is wiped out after they had put so much work into getting it to the point it was.
They probably thought they were entitled to a harvest. God said, “Think again.”
God saw their sin and their need for punishment.
Yes, God has the authority to punish us. Excell explained it this way. He wrote, “But it is a righteous thing that sin should be punished, and in the manner most likely to restrain it, and this is often done by the destruction of a cherished hope.”
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It is all about righteousness. Righteousness is the indwelling goodness that is the result of a solid relationship with God built by a sincere life of conscientious obedience to God’s laws and commandments and from which all virtues flow.
If it is about goodness, it can’t be about sin because sin is evil. Anything not of God is evil, even if the worldview has proclaimed it good.
Joy and gladness always comes from God, not from this world. Our sin places obstacles in its path from God to us.
We talked in the first section about wanting to hid our sins. We talked then about how we shouldn’t.
Here Joel said it doesn’t matter. “The seeds are shriveled beneath the clods …” (Jl. 1: 17 ESV).
It doesn’t matter if sin is hidden or out in the open. It is still sin and has the same judgment.
Repentance through Prayer
“To you, Lord, I call, for fire has devoured the pastures in the wilderness and flames have burned up all the trees of the field. Even the wild animals pant for you; the streams of water have dried up and fire has devoured the pastures in the wilderness” (Jl. 1: 19-20 ESV)
The only way we are going to repent and get our relationship right with God is through prayer.
God will forgive us when we sincerely ask and submit to His Will.
But it is more than just the asking. It is the believing God is Who He says He is.
It is submitting to give God control than trying to keep it ourselves.
Topsell made an interesting comment. He wrote, “When men do only complain of this or that want without prayer they tempt God …”
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We know what we are complaining of is wrong. We know God is against it.
We are trying to force His hand into giving it to us anyway.
Ooo, baby! Wrong way!!
We need to ask God what is right by His definition, not ours. He knows better than us what we need.
It is only through God can we gain strength. Only by earnestly directing our petitions to Him can we gain mercy to not be judged as we should.
We do have hope in verse 19. “To you, Lord, I call, for fire has devoured the pastures in the wilderness and flames have burned up all the trees of the field” (Jl. 1: 19 ESV).
The judgment was already a done deal. The fire had devoured the pastures and fields.
Joel didn’t say to give up or blame God. Even as bad as it was, he still called to Him.
Making the Connections
How can we keep out of the calamity of sin? We look at the opposite of what Black talked about.
- Give thanks to God for all He has done for us.
- Bag our pride.
- Be faithful to God.
- Look to God instead of the wealth and sexual promiscuity prevalent in the world.
Reject the worldview — even that which looks good. - Look to imitate righteousness.
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How Do We Apply This?
- Support others in their relationships with God.
- Genuinely repent.
- Fast and worship God when we are in need of repentance.
- Seek grace to sanctify fasting.
- Publicly confess sin and worship God.
- Bathe our fasting in prayer.
- Cry unto God to have Him fix our relationship with Him.
- Live with the day of the Lord in mind.
- Witness to others so they can be ready for the day of the Lord.
- Realize sin gains us nothing in the end.
- Accept sin diminishes our joy and gladness.
- Acknowledge sin brings loss where God would bring gain.
- Live a life of faith in God.
- Evaluate our relationship with God so we can confess and repent from sin.
- Get our faith to the heart level.
- Make ourselves a living sacrifice to God.
- Don’t offer just prayers of complaint.
- Know that we can sometimes only gain strength through prayer.
- Cry out to God even when it feels like all hope is lost.
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Father God. We need Your forgiveness. Too many times, we depend on ourselves. We need to focus on You and grow to have Your character. Amen.
What do you think?
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