Joel 2:1-17

Trumpets were used for various reasons.  In today’s passage there is first a call to blow the trumpet as an alarm.  The day of the LORD is coming and it is a most terrible day (2:1-2).  This time it is a people the like of whom has never been.   They are destructive like the locusts, as 2:3-11 indicates.

·        This army, like the locusts, would have the same scorched earth policy.

·        It would be total destruction, as if the Garden of Eden were to be ravaged by locusts.  Nothing would escape them.

·        The noise of the chariots would be like the noise of the advancing locusts.

·        People would be in pain as they came, knowing they could not stop them.

·        As they got close it would feel like an earthquake.

But remember: this is not just an invading enemy.  This is the LORD at work through that army.  Strong is the One who executes His word.  For the day of the LORD is great and very terrible; who can endure it? (2:11)

The previous question is, of course, rhetorical.  No one can endure what God brings.  Therefore what are men to do?  Is there no hope?  Yes, there is hope.  But since it is God at work the hope is not to go to neighboring nations for help in defeating this army.  The answer has to do with God.

·        2:12-13a: Turn to Me with all your heart.  The call for fasting, weeping and mourning simply has to do with all your heart.  The call is for a strong, focused grieving over the sin that has brought this about.  Thus God says, rend your heart, and not your garments.  Mere outward change is not turning to God with all your heart.  Our deep, inner desires must be redirected, away from their natural selfishness and pride and in humility to be in line with the desires of the LORD.

·        2:13b-14: Turning to God with all your heart is the most hopeful thing to do because of what we know about God.  Generations before, on Mt. Sinai, God had described Himself to Moses in a most marvelous way: The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation (Exodus 34:6-7).  God is still the same God to Joel.  Our only hope is to turn to Him because He is the only God who forgives.  Who knows if He will turn and relent?  All other options are hopeless!

Thus there is a second call to sound the trumpet.  This time it is to call a sacred assembly, to gather the people with their leaders, to plead in humility for God to spare your people.  Dealing with the enemy, whether locusts or an invading nation, begins by turning to God for help.  That is the only way we, or Israel, can get it right.