More on Joel

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/28/2015 11:14 PM

My Worship Time                                                                                          Focus:  More on Joel

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                             Reference:  Joel 1:1

            Message of the verses:  “1 The word of the LORD that came to Joel, the son of Pethuel:”

            We mentioned in our last SD on Joel that the theme of his book is “The Day of the Lord,” and it seems that the Lord was using some very difficult economic conditions in the land of Judah to get the attention of the people of Judah who were not living for the Lord.  We also wrote about the different ways that the day of the Lord is seen in the book of Joel beginning with the very first chapter, and also mentioned how the locusts played into this theme.

            Joel’s name means “the Lord is God,” and like all true prophets of the Lord Joel was commissioned to cal the people back to the worship of the Lord, the One true God and he did this by declaring the Word of the Lord to them.  We can see this in the very first verse of his book and it can also be seen in the first verse.  Jeremiah 1:2 says “to whom the word of the LORD came in the days of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign.”  Ezekiel 1:3 says “the word of the LORD came expressly to Ezekiel the priest, son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans by the river Chebar; and there the hand of the LORD came upon him.)”  Dr. Wiersbe points out that the first verses of Hosea, Micah, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi all begin in the same way talking about the Word of the Lord.  God will use His prophets to bring the people back to Him by using His Word.  Dr. Wiersbe writes “It was the task of the priest to teach the people the law, and it was the responsibility of the prophets to call the people back to the Lord whenever they strayed from His Law.  The prophets also interpreted historical events in the light of the Word of God to help the people understand God’s will for their lives.  They were ‘forth-tellers’ as well as ‘foretellers.’”

            It was Joel’s job to tell the people of Judah how to understand what God was doing through the drought along with the plague, (the locusts).  As we look around the world today and see things that are happening that cause disasters like earthquakes, floods, droughts, and other things that cause devastation I wonder how many people are asking how the Lord is involved in all of this.  We can be assured that God is in control of all things and for the believer we have to trust the Lord in all circumstances that come about as Romans 8:28 tells us.

            Dr. Wiersbe concludes this section of his commentary by writing “As you can see from the suggested outline of Joel’s book, the prophet announces ‘the Day of the Lord and applied it to three events:  the plague of locusts, the future invasion of the Assyrians, and the distant judgment that the Lord would send on the whole world.  In this chapter, we want to focus on the first two applications of the ‘Day of the Lord.’”  Now as far as the last section of the Day of the Lord we are looking at that in our study of the book of Revelation, and have also looked at it last year in the study of both letters to the Thessalonians.

7/28/2015 11:34 PM