Okay, we're beginning a study of the book of Joel this morning, and I'm expecting that this study is going to last for a month or five weeks or so. It's a very important study in my mind, not so much for the exposition of this particular prophet, but for a fuller understanding for us of God's redemptive plan, of a historical context of this book, and the Old Testament in general, and the distinctions between the Old and the New covenants concerning what God was and is doing in salvation history. 

My problem, or our problem I would say, is that we are largely ignorant of the history, the context, the characters found in the Old Testament. Some we know, perhaps anecdotes, Bible stories from our childhood, or random sermons here and there, but few of us in the church today have an exhaustive knowledge of the details of the times of the Kings and Chronicles, or the minor prophets, such as we find in books like Obadiah and Joel. I know I would be hard-pressed to give a synopsis of such books, the lives of those prophets, or kings, and judgments, and restorations of their time. I could probably tell you a great deal about the book of Romans, or Ephesians, or Philippians, but what about Numbers, or the Eupers' favorite book, Haggai?

So we start with a deficit, a deficit of knowledge, an understanding of context, the author, the audience, the intent of these books. What's going on in Joel? Why did Joel live, or when did he live? I'm sorry, when did Joel live? Why did God send him to Judah to give this warning and prophecy? To whom did he speak? Under what conditions did they live, and is there application for us here, or what can we learn? 

In order to answer these questions, we must first establish an understanding concerning the historical context. We must come to this book as we would any other study of God's Word, starting with the words, considering the context, the author, the audience, the intent. So we must spend some time doing these things before we can get to the exposition of the book. 

And we'll begin this endeavor this morning with a little bit of study in 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles. We're going to read a lot of scripture to begin to understand the background and the history in Israel that resulted in a judgment from God on Judah in the form of a historic plague of locusts, and what God's plan was in bringing such a judgment on his people. 

Dating this book is difficult. I've spent a good deal of time trying to search this out as best I can. We don't know anything about Joel the person, really. We find no king mentioned in this book, no battle or invasion that would help us understand this timing by comparing it to other records of such an event. The best understanding for many conservative scholars is that these events, the prophecy of Joel, occurred about 835 BC. So one of the earliest prophets. 

So what I'd like to do this morning is to establish what events led up to this word from the Lord, this judgment from God, and what he was doing in Judah and Israel at this time, and also establish some understanding of the way that God related to his people, the nation of Israel, under the Old Covenant, and contrast that with the church and the New Covenant for our understanding, and that'll be more next week. 

So I've given you, I'm going to give you some handouts. There's one on the back of your outline this morning, a chart, chronology of the early prophets, and our plan is to allow time at the end of each of these messages for questions and answers or discussion, and then after we're finished with the book, we plan to have a Sunday where we can draw it all together and have an extended time for discussion and questions concerning what we have learned. The plan is similar to what we did in Romans 7. We'll have a message in the morning, discussion, then some lunch, and then maybe another time of study after lunch. 

So I encourage you as we're going through this to take notes, to be studying, to write down questions, and also to participate in the discussions as we go so that in a month or so, we will have a much greater foundational understanding of how to approach these Old Testament studies. 

Let's look at Joel 1 again. We'll read those verses in Joel 1. 

"The word of the Lord that came to Joel, the son of Pethuel, hear this you elders, and give ear all you inhabitants of the land. Has anything like this happened in your days, or even in the days of your fathers? Tell your children about it. Let your children tell their children, and their children another generation. What the chewing locust left, the swarming locust has eaten. What the swarming locust left, the crawling locust has eaten. And what the crawling locust left, the consuming locust has eaten. Awake you drunkards, and weep and wail all you drinkers of wine, because of the new wine, for it has been cut off from your mouth. For a nation has come up against my land, strong and without number. His teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he has the fangs of a fierce lion. He has laid waste my vine, and ruined my fig tree. He has stripped it bare, and thrown it away. Its branches are made white. Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the husband of her youth. The grain offering, and the drink offering have been cut off from the house of the Lord. The priests mourn who minister to the Lord. The field is wasted. The land mourns, for the grain is ruined. The new wine is dried up. The oil fails. 

Be ashamed you farmers. Wail you vinedressers for the wheat and the barley, because the harvest of the field has perished. The vine has dried up, and the fig tree has withered. The pomegranate tree, the palm tree, also the apple tree. All the trees of the field are withered. Surely joy has withered away from the sons of men."

Well, I've given you four points on your outline this morning. First, an historical context. Second, distinctives of the Old Covenant. Third, coming to Joel 1 and fourth, the structure of the prophetic books. 

Well, if we're going to fully appreciate the judgment of God on Judah that we find in Joel chapter 1, we're first going to have to understand the historical context that brought us to this point in 835 BC. To do this, we're going to have to go back to 2 Kings 8 and 2 Chronicles 22. 

And if you look at the chronological chart of the kings of Israel and Judah that I gave you on the back of your outline, we can work our way up to this time and see what God is doing. We see that in 849 BC, Joram became king of Israel. Now, Israel is the northern kingdom consisting of ten tribes of Israel. After Solomon, the kingdom was divided north and south. The southern kingdom is Judah, consisting of two tribes. 

In Judah, in 845, you'll see on your chart there that Jehoram becomes king. Now, this gets interesting, almost like a movie or a soap opera as we learn about these people, who they were, what was going on in the two kingdoms. The parents of Joram are two people you might remember, Ahab and Jezebel. You remember from the time of Elijah and Elisha that King Ahab and particularly his wife Jezebel were some seriously wicked people. And you don't find people still to this day, think about this, almost 3,000 years later, naming their daughters Jezebel. Jehoram of the south was not much better. He was a son of Jehoshaphat, and he killed six of his brothers so that he could ascend the throne. 

His father Jehoshaphat had allied with the kingdom of Israel, and one of the terms of this alliance was that Jehoram married Athaliah. Athaliah was the daughter of Ahab. But despite this alliance with the stronger northern kingdom, Jehoram's rule of Judah was very shaky. Edom and Libna revolted. These kings were all wicked and followed Baal. They did unspeakable things. Athaliah was especially wicked, and after the death of Ahaziah, king of Judah, who was her son, she killed all the heirs and made herself queen of Judah. But she missed one of the sons of Jehoram, Joash, who was hidden in the temple for the six years of her reign. 

So I want to go back to 2 Kings, and we're going to spend a little bit of time reading these scriptures just to develop the story so we have a little bit of understanding of what was going on when we come to Joel 1. Go to 2 Kings 8 at verse 16. 

We'll just kind of read this together. You can follow along. Now in the fifth year of Joram, the son of Ahab, king of Israel, so that would be on the top of your chart there, Jehoshaphat having been king of Judah, Jehoram the son of Jehoshaphat began to reign as the king of Judah. So they basically have the same name, but Jehoram is the son of Jehoshaphat. Joram in the north is the son of Ahab. 

So he's talking about Judah now, Jehoram taking the throne in Judah. Verse 17, he was 32 years old when he became king and reigned eight years in Jerusalem. And he walked in the way of the kings of Israel, just as the house of Ahab had done, for the daughter of Ahab was his wife. And he did evil in the sight of the Lord. Yet the Lord would not destroy Judah for the sake of his servant David, as he promised him to give a lamp to him and his sons forever. 

Now if you go down to verse 25, it says in the twelfth year of Joram, the son of Ahab, king of Israel, Ahaziah the son of Jehoram, king of Judah, began to reign. So now Ahaziah, if you look on your chart there, takes over. He was 22 years old when he became king and reigned one year in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Athaliah, the granddaughter of Omri, and also the daughter of Ahab and Jezebel. 

And he walked in the way of the house of Ahab and did evil in the sight of the Lord, like the house of Ahab, for he was the son-in-law of the house of Ahab. Now he went with Joram, the son of Ahab, to war against Hazel, king of Syria at Ramoth Gilead, and the Syrians wounded Joram. Then King Joram went back to Jezreel to recover from the wounds which the Syrians had inflicted on him at Ramoth when he fought against Hazel, king of Syria. And Ahaziah, the king of Jehoram, king of Judah, went down to see Joram, the son of Ahab and Jezreel, because he was sick. 

Okay, so you see the picture here. They'd gone to war with Syria. The king of Israel is wounded. He goes back to Jezreel, the capital in the north, and he's recovering. And Ahaziah says, I'm going to go down and see him. So now you have both kings of Israel and Judah together in Jezreel. 

2 Kings 9 verse 1. And Elisha the prophet called one of the sons of the prophets and said to him, Get yourself ready. Take this flask of oil in your hand and go to Ramoth Gilead. Now when you arrive at that place, look there for Jehu, the son of Jehoshaphat, the son of Nemeshe, and go in and make him rise up from among his associates and take him to an inner room. Then take the flask of oil and pour it on his head and say, Thus says the Lord, I have anointed you king over Israel. Then open the door and flee and do not delay. 

If you look at verse 14. So Jehu, the son of Jehoshaphat, the son of Nemeshe, conspired against Joram. Now Joram had been defending Ramoth Gilead, he and all Israel, against Hazel, king of Syria. But King Joram had returned to Jezreel to recover from the wounds which the Syrians had inflicted on him when he fought with Hazel, king of Syria. And Jehu said, If you are so minded, let no one leave or escape from the city to go and tell it to Jezreel. So one of the students of Elisha goes and anoints Jehu king under God's instruction. 

So now Jehu is the rightful king and he's going to go down to Jezreel and he says, Don't tell anybody about this. 

2 Kings 9 16. So Jehu rode in a chariot and went to Jezreel for Joram was laid up there and Ahaziah king of Judah had come down to see Joram. Now a watchman stood on the tower in Jezreel and he saw the company of Jehu as he came and said, I see a company of men. And Joram said, Get a horseman and send him to meet them and let him say, Is it peace? 

So the horseman went to meet him and said, Thus says the king, Is it peace? And Jehu said, What have you to do with peace? Turn around and follow me. So the watchman reported saying, The messenger went to them, but is not coming back. Then he sent out a second horseman. Same thing happened. He went out to meet him. He's not coming back and he says, It looks like Jehu, verse 20. Then Joram said, Make ready. And his chariot was made ready. Then Joram king of Israel and Ahaziah king of Judah went out each in his chariot and they went out to meet Jehu and met him on the property of Naboth of the Jezreelite. 

Now it happened when Joram saw Jehu that he said, Is it peace, Jehu? So he answered, What peace? As long as the harlotries of your mother Jezebel and her witchcraft are so many. Then Joram turned around and fled and said to Ahaziah, Treachery, Ahaziah. Now Jehu drew his bow and we see as you follow down to verse 29 that Jehu kills both kings. 

Okay, God had sent him to kill these two wicked kings. And we get to verse 30, it says, Now when Jehu had come to Jezreel, Jezebel heard of it. She put paint on her eyes and adorned her head and looked through a window. Then as Jehu entered the gate, she said, Is it peace, Zimri, murderer of your master? And he looked up at the window and said, Who is on my side? Who? So two of the three eunuchs looked out at him. Then he said, Throw her down. 

So they threw her down and some of her blood spattered on the wall and on the horses and he trampled her underfoot. And when he had gone in, he ate and drank. Then he said, Go now, see to this accursed woman and bury her for she was a king's daughter. So they went to bury her, but they found no more of her than the skull and the feet and the palms of her hands. Therefore they came back and told him, him and said, This is the word of the Lord, which he spoke by servant Elijah the Tishbite, saying, On the plot of ground at Jezreel, dogs shall eat the flesh of Jezebel, and the corpse of Jezebel shall be as refuse on the surface of the field in the plot at Jezreel, so that they shall not say, Here lies Jezebel."

In chapter 10, we see that Jehu has the 70 sons of Ahab killed, and their heads sent to him, and he piles them at the gates, a little graphic ordeal. Then he wipes out all of the remaining people associated with Ahab and Ahaziah. So God has sent Jehu, he's anointed him as king, and he sent him to clear out all of Ahab's house, all of Ahaziah's house. 

Now just to tie up a couple loose ends, let's turn to 2 Chronicles, at verse 23. In this chapter, we see the chief priest, Jehoiada, rises up and serves the Lord. So this is the chief priest in the temple in Jerusalem, 2 Chronicles 23-2, and they went throughout Judah and gathered the Levites from all the cities of Judah and the chief fathers of Israel, and they came to Jerusalem. 

And all the assembly made a covenant with the king in the house of God, and he said to him, Behold, the king's son shall reign, as the Lord has said of the sons of David. So now we're in Judah, and Athaliah is still reigning. But remember, they've hidden Joash in the temple. So what you're going to see here is the plan of the high priest to anoint and crown Joash as the rightful king, and to kill Athaliah. 

So he says, This is what you shall do. One-third of you entering on the Sabbath of the priests and the Levites shall be keeping watch over the doors. One-third shall be at the king's house, and one-third at the gate of the foundation. All the people shall be in the courts of the house of the Lord. But let no one come into the house of the Lord except the priests and those of the Levites who serve. They may go in, for they are holy, but all the people shall keep the watch of the Lord. 

And the Levites shall surround the king on all sides, every man with his weapons in his hand, and whoever comes into the house, let him be put to death. You are to be with the king when he comes in and when he goes out. So the Levites and all Judah did according to all that Jehoiada the priest commanded. And each man took his men who were to be on duty on the Sabbath and those who were going off duty on the Sabbath, for Jehoiada the priest had not dismissed the divisions. 

And Jehoiada the priest gave to the captains of hundreds and spears and large and small shields which had belonged to King David that were in the temple of God. Then he said, All the people, every man with his weapon in his hand, from the right side of the temple to the left of the temple, along by the altar and by the temple, all around the king. And they brought out the king's son, put the crown on him, and gave him the testimony, and made him king. Then Jehoiada and his sons anointed him and said, Long live the king. 

Now when Athaliah heard the noise of the people running and praising the king, she came to the people in the temple of the Lord. When she looked, there was the king standing by his pillar at the entrance, and the leaders and the trumpeters were by the king. All the people of the land were rejoicing and blowing trumpets, also the singers and musical instruments and those who led in praise. So Athaliah tore her clothes and said, Treason, treason. 

And Jehoiada the priest brought out the captains of hundreds who were sent over the army and said to them, Take her outside under guard and slay with the sword whoever follows her. For the priest had said, Do not kill her in the house of the Lord. So they seized her, and she went by the way of the entrance of the horse gate into the king's house, and they killed her there." 

Okay. So all of this, my brothers and sisters, brings us to 835 B.C. and the word of the Lord that came to Joel. God was doing a work in Israel and Judah. Ahab and Jezebel along with Jehoram and Athaliah and Ahaziah and Judah had ruled in wickedness, had led the nation astray, had gone after Baal, had set up the priests of Baal. Jehu also kills all the priests of Baal and tears down that worship. 

And what we see in preparation for the words of Joel and the plague of locusts and the warning and call to repentance for the people of Judah is that God is purging His house of all the rot that had developed and reigned there for these many years. He raises up Jehu and anoints him king and sends him to kill all of the house of Ahab and Ahaziah and all the priests of Baal and to wipe out all the false worship and set righteous kings of Israel and Judah in place in the persons of Jehu and Joash. 

And we read that these men ruled in righteousness, Joash, for 40 years. This is the historical context that brings us to Joel chapter 1. So at this time, God sends the plague of locusts and Joel the prophet to call His people to repentance and bless them and bring them into a time of righteousness and following of Jehovah. 

In the context of God's redemptive plan, we also must understand the distinctives of the Old Covenant and the nation of Israel, which is the timing and context of the book of Joel. And for that, we need to turn to Deuteronomy 28. Here we find the parameters under which God relates to His people, His chosen nation Israel. We are under the Old Covenant, the Law Covenant of Moses in this time, and this began at Sinai in Exodus after God led Israel out of the land of Egypt. 

We will consider the time before the Law Covenant with Israel next time, the time when God promised the New Covenant and began to establish the nation of Israel through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But for now, we want to look at the conditions of the Old Covenant as God related to the nation of Israel. 

So Deuteronomy 28 at verse 1. Now it shall come to pass if you, and I want to just stop right there. Notice those words, if you. What we see immediately concerning the Old Covenant is that it is a conditional covenant. If you diligently obey the voice of the Lord your God to observe carefully all His commandments which I command you today, and we will see that the New Covenant promised to Abraham in Genesis 12 is an unconditional covenant, meaning that God said, I will, I will, I will. It does not say if you. 

So the New Covenant promises are not dependent on anything Israel does, but rather are only based in God's Word, His character, and His nature. But the Old Covenant given by Moses was conditional. If you obey, verse 1, then the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth, and all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you because you obey the voice of the Lord your God. Blessed shall be you in the city, blessed you shall be in the country, blessed shall be the fruit of your body, the produce of your ground, the increase of your herds, the increase of your cattle, the offspring of your flocks. 

He goes on and on with all these blessings, mainly concerning crops and prosperity and abundance and safety from her enemies. All these kinds of prosperity blessings if they obey. And he says that the reason that he's doing this, the reason that he called out the nation of Israel, the reason he wants to bless them in such abundance is that they would be a witness to all of the nations. 

That the other nations would know that God, Jehovah, is the only true God. That they would be drawn to Him. That's why the Scriptures call Israel a city on a hill, a light to the world. That was God's purpose in calling them out. But he goes through all these blessings, and then when you get down to verse 15, he turns to the curses. 

Deuteronomy 28, 15. But it shall come to pass if you, right, if you as dependent on what they do, if you do not obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully all His commandments and His statutes which I command you today, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you. And he says, cursed you'll be in the city, the country, your basket, all those prosperity things, you will have famine, you will have drought, you will have your enemies plague you and oppress you. 

And it goes on and on, loss of grain, wine, livestock, children, sickness, plague. In verse 38, notice verse 38, it says, you shall carry much seed out to the field, but gather little in, for the locust shall consume it. Verse 42, locusts shall consume all your trees and the produce of your land. Why? Because they did not obey the laws and the statutes, they did not keep the covenant, and they followed after other gods. These are the curses that would come upon them. 

And things get very serious in verse 49, look at verse 49. These are the curses, the judgments that God will bring upon the nation of Israel for disobedience. The Lord will bring a nation against you from afar, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flies, a nation whose language you will not understand, a nation of fierce countenance which does not respect the elderly nor shall favor through the young. They shall eat the increase of your livestock and the produce of your land until you are destroyed. They shall not leave you grain or new wine or oil or the increase of your cattle or the offspring of your flocks until they have destroyed you. 

They shall besiege you at all your gates until your high and fortified walls in which you trust come down throughout your land, and they shall besiege you at all your gates throughout all your land which the Lord your God has given you. Look at verse 53. You shall eat the fruit of your own body, the flesh of your sons and your daughters whom the Lord your God has given you in the siege and desperate straits in which your enemy shall distress you. The sensitive and very refined man among you will be hostile towards his brother, toward the wife of his bosom, toward the rest of the children whom he leaves behind so that he will not give any of them the flesh of his children whom he will eat because he has nothing left in the siege and desperate straits in which your enemy shall distress you at all your gates. 

The tender and delicate woman among you who would not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground because of her delicateness and sensitivity will refuse to the husband of her bosom and her son and her daughter her placenta which comes out from between her feet and her children whom she bears. She will eat them secretly for lack of everything in the siege and desperate straits in which your enemy shall distress you at all your gates. If you do not carefully observe all the words of this law that are written in this book that you may fear this glorious and awesome name, the Lord your God, then the Lord will bring upon you and your descendants extraordinary plagues, great and prolonged plagues and serious prolonged sicknesses." 

He's going to bring the nations on them. My friends, this is the economy under which God relates to the nation of Israel in the parameters of the Old Covenant. And those things literally came true in the siege of Babylon in 586 of Israel, and you can read about that in Jeremiah Chronicles Lamentations when they ate their own children. This is exactly the context we find ourselves in in the first chapter of Joel. 

Think about the setting, Ahab and Jezebel, Joram of Israel, Jehoram, Ahaziah, Athaliah in the south of Judah, wickedness, murder, intrigue, worship of Baal, disobedience, following after other gods. And what does God bring in Joel 1? Just what he promised under the Old Covenant, dealing with the nation of Israel, a massive plague of locusts, consuming and destroying everything. 

He says, "'Hear this, you elders, and give ear, all you inhabitants of the land. Has anything like this happened in your days? Or even in the days of your fathers? Tell your children about it. Let your children tell their children and their children another generation.'" They're going to talk about this forever because it's so devastating what the chewing locust, the first phase, what the chewing locust left, the swarming locust has eaten. What the swarming locust left, the crawling locust has eaten. What the crawling locust left, the consuming locust has eaten. Complete utter devastation is the judgment of God because they did not obey. 

Now we'll get more into the details next time, but the poetic language here paints a picture. It gives you a feeling of doom, of devastation. This is a judgment from God because of the disobedience of Israel. Look at Joel 2.25. I'm sure you've heard sermons on this verse, and if you have, try to remember those sermons and think about how often they've been torn out of this context. He says, "'I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the crawling locust, the consuming locust, the chewing locust. I will restore the years the locusts have eaten,' and preachers like to take this and make all kinds of wide application." 

But I want you to notice as the end of that verse, what does God say? My great army, which I sent among you. The locust plague is God's army, which he sent among them to judge his people. As we close here, I want to also point out the structure of the prophet Joel as we prepare to study it. 

And this is typical of the prophets of the Old Testament. In chapter 1, we see a judgment. Or sometimes it's a warning. And actually, we're going to see a warning in chapter 2. But you have a judgment or a warning of judgment. Then you see a call to repentance. God's dealing with a nation here. He's dealing with a nation of people. Most of these people are not believers. Israel today is apostate. Most Jews die and go to hell. The promise of the new covenant is still in effect for Israel. 

We're going to look at that next time. What I want you to understand is that we have a prophet talking to a nation. And he gives them a warning, or God brings a judgment. Then there's a call to repentance. And then there's a promise of restoration. In chapter 1, we see the judgment, a warning in chapter 2. Then we see a call to repentance. And finally, a promise of restoration and blessing in the end of chapter 2 and end of chapter 3. 

And this is how the prophetic books are laid out in general. The day of the Lord judgments, we're going to talk about that phrase, the day of the Lord. The day of the Lord judgments can be temporal, relating to the nation of Israel, like this locust plague. Or they can speak of the final day of the Lord when Jesus comes to judge the earth and ushers in the kingdom. The promise of blessing and restoration likewise can be temporal in the time of the prophet. I think we see that in chapter 2 of Joel. 

Because remember, the whole context, you have this wickedness. And God clears out those wicked rulers. And then Joel comes. He brings the judgment. Joel comes and calls them to repentance. And then what do we see? Restoration. We see Joash come to rule in Judah. And he rules in righteousness, following Jehovah for 40 years. And God restores what the locusts have eaten. 

So there was a temporal blessing, a temporal restoration, because they repented and turned back to the Lord and began to follow his laws and statutes again and set up the worship in the temple and so forth. So sometimes it's a temporal restoration. But all of the prophets turn to that final time of restoration, that promise of blessing, which is what we see in chapter 3. When Jesus will come and set his feet on the earth, he gathers all the nations and executes judgment and fulfills those promises made to Israel in the kingdom. 

So the promise of blessing and restoration likewise can be temporal in the time of the prophet. But it ultimately moves to those end time events. So this is the basic structure of the prophets; they vary a little bit. Some of them are longer, some of them shorter. But Joel is very concise in three chapters, warning and judgment, call to repentance, promise of blessing. 

So we see, as we prepare to study this book, the historic context. We see the distinctives of the old covenant and how God related to the nation. And we see the basic structure of the prophets. So next week, we'll look more closely at chapter 1 and also the distinctives of the new covenant and how the promise of this new covenant runs through the Bible and culminates in the second coming of Christ and his kingdom on the earth and even into the new heavens and the new earth for eternity, according to 2 Peter chapter 3. 

I just felt like I had to lay this groundwork and set this context if we were going to have any understanding of what we're studying in the book of Joel. 

Well, let's close in prayer. 

Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for teaching us about your character, your nature. We thank you for the history, for the picture that we find in Israel and the sacrificial system and the mediating priesthood, picturing the Lamb of God, Jesus, who would come to die in our place for our sins, to be buried and rise again the third day, showing that you were fully satisfied with the payment. We thank you that he stood in our place, that he took what we deserved, that he took your wrath for our sins. 

And we thank you for the promise of salvation through faith in him. In Jesus' name, amen. 

OK, I just want to give a little bit of time. That was a lot of information. So if you have questions now or you want to discuss something, we can take a few minutes and do that. And then hopefully, you'll be studying some of these things. I'll probably email a couple of documents for you to be looking at over the week and prepare. So does anybody have any questions? 

Yes. You've got to feel them with the minor prophets because it's not chronological. 

Right. It's not chronological. Obadiah is the earliest. I think it's on your chart there. Obadiah is the earliest of the minor prophets. And then Joel, I believe, would be next in chronology. So what is it? Hosea first, I believe, and then runs all the way through Malachi, those minor prophets. I believe that's right. 

Yeah. The minor prophets, did they also prophesy anything that Joel prophesied? 

Well, in pattern, they prophesy a lot of the same things, especially concerning the final blessings, the fulfillment of the promises made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and developed. You see the promises of the new covenant in Ezekiel 36, 25, and following, Jeremiah 31, explicitly laid out. 

And then we see Paul develop that in the church age in Romans 11 with the grafting in. And you know how he says, has Israel fallen to a point where they can't get back up, basically, in Romans 11, 11? And he says, by no means. Meginotah, a strong negative. He says, in order to provoke them to jealousy, salvation has come to the Gentiles. 

And then he explains in that illustration of the tree how God has grafted in the Gentiles. But that Israel will be saved when they look on the one whom they pierced from Zechariah. And if they do not continue in unbelief, they'll be grafted back in. So all of the prophets point towards that final fulfillment. But they also deal with temporal things going on in Israel. And they span a great deal of time. 

So here we're in 835 BC. Almost 300 years later, you're dealing with Babylon. The events of Daniel and some of those prophets that were alive at that time in the siege of Judah. 1 and 722, you have the Assyrians come against the northern kingdom. 586, the Chaldeans come against. So all that's covered in the course of the prophets. 

So John, have you given any thought as to why God was silent to the people? 

Hmm. No, the only thought I have on that is what we see develop in that time is Judaism and the revelation of God in the Old Testament completely twisted into a works-righteous, man-centered religion when Jesus comes on the scene. When John the Baptist comes and then Jesus comes on the scene, he comes into that environment with the scribes and the Pharisees and so forth. 

I don't know. I don't have a good answer to that question, Don, but arguing from silence, hey. But it seems to me that that time developed a very wicked manifestation of Judaism that Jesus came into. 

Yeah. Yeah. 

Yeah, when you think about passages like where God says all day long I've reached out my hand to a stiff-necked and disobedient people, when you start to read through the Old Testament, it's stunning the long-suffering and patience of God. I mean, we read something like these judgments and you think, oh, how can that be? But man, the people just constantly turning, constantly turning. And I don't know what the right words are, but if I was God, I'd be frustrated at some points. 

Anything else? 

Yes. How do you decide if something's literal versus possible? 

Well, we want to take the scriptures naturally is the way I would explain that. So not necessarily literally, but naturally as we read that. So when we read about the locust had teeth like a lion and fangs like a lion, this is a poetic or figurative language meant to draw this picture, give you a feeling of the devastation. 

And we see that same kind there, like horses. You see that same thing in Revelation. What I would say is when you study the scriptures, you want to take it naturally. So unless there's a reason to take it figuratively, such as language like that. For instance, Revelation 20, I think, would be a good example of that. In Revelation 20, he talks about how Satan is bound for 1,000 years so that he would deceive the nations no more. And then it talks about after a time, he's bound with a chain and an angel guarding. And then after the 1,000 years were finished, he's released for a while. 

That kind of language is not figurative or poetic when you have these very definite time periods or even dates or descriptions and a purpose with that. So I don't see any reason to take something like that figuratively. But when it talks about locusts with teeth like lions, I think that's meaning to convey the fierceness and devastation that was going on. 

I don't know if we have a, do you have any thoughts on that? No? 

All right. Well, Bobby's been studying poetic language a little bit. So. 

Well, actually, it's a very good analogy because if you take a look, a close look at it, there's two kinds of horses and they actually do it differently. 

Right. They have lion's teeth, basically. 

Yeah, and I'll have some statistics for you when we get into chapter 1. But the locust plague thing is unbelievable. And they eat everything. There's nothing left. So I think the point here is bringing Israel to a point of desperation where they have nowhere to turn but to God. 

So and some of us have had a similar spiritual experience in our life where we've come to a place where we have nowhere to turn but to God. 

So did we study this or is there a history to this that we can find in fact? 

I'll tell you what. I mean, you can find stuff like on, you can find it in Chronicles and Kings, all these details about Ahab and so forth, and Jezebel and those kind of things, and Elisha. But as far as resources for studying Joel, I've found like nothing. 

The only like commentary or whatever, and then if you do find something, there's a lot of conjecture. I found one sermon on Sermon Audio. I just thought I'd listen in Joel 2. So the guy preached on Joel 2, and he picked out verse 25. He'll restore the years locusts have eaten. 

And the whole sermon was on verse 25, and it was all about how if I'm like a junior in college playing basketball, and I hurt my knee, and I lose that year, then God will restore that year. And he'll do that by drawing me into a closer relationship with Jesus. 

And you know, that all preaches nice, but it has nothing to do with the book of Joel. It has nothing to do with it. I learned nothing about the book of Joel. And I also made application of a verse that has no application to me. We just talked about the whole context, and the setting, and the parameters under which these people lived, and what God was doing. 

Would you like to live under Deuteronomy 28? If you keep God's law perfectly, but if not? But we need to understand those things, and we need to understand them. And that's why I did what I did this morning, to lay that whole thing. 

So, Mike, I don't know. I don't. I don't have anywhere to point you, other than the history books in Chronicles and Kings, and some of those help us quite a bit. 

I have a couple mostly history books that were helpful, but only 15 of them. 

Oh, I do have one book that's just not commentary on Joel, but historical stuff. Yeah, that was. But for this, it's really in there as well, in Chronicles and Kings. 

Oh, Kathy, we studied this in Bible study, and Kathy had come out of some of the word faith charismatic background. And she said Joel 225 was one they used continually. And if you're not getting Cadillacs and mansions, then you're not praying hard enough. 

And Kathy said I was praying like a madwoman, you know? But how devastating is that to someone's faith? How much disillusionment is there when you're trying to take something for yourself that's not meant for you? And that promise isn't there. We don't have a promise in the new covenant church age of clothes, and food, and no persecution. 

I mean, you could talk to Paul about that, right? Second Corinthians 11. Why was he persecuted? Why did Nero cut his head off? Because of his faithfulness. Because he was bold in preaching the gospel. We don't have that promise. 

So you know, I never know. You know, I don't have any reason to talk about it. I mean, I'm not going to be a Christian to talk about it. 

Right. I don't even have anything to say. We just don't observe it. 

Would I say, Don, that I have greater faith than those Christians because I have a nice house, and a nice truck, and prosperity? 

I mean, really? That's where the word faith kind of movement has to go. And it can't be God's fault. So ultimately, if you don't get your dreams and wishes, then it's your fault, and your faith, and your, and yeah. 

So we have to be careful. We're going to talk more about that next week. We're going to look at Matthew 10, and some of the Sermon on the Mount, and some of that stuff in that context. 

OK. 

Yeah, Lisa. 

No. For the sake of obeying him, I will say a few things. First, explain why he doesn't believe in God. 

Well, I guess we would have to define repentance. I think that we repent in the sense that, let's compare that to Joel, just what we've been talking about all morning, OK? So the nation, I think the key thing to understand here is God's dealing with a nation in the Old Covenant. Israel, this is what drives me crazy with some of the teaching today. 

Israel is so different than the church. Think about that. How do you get into Israel? You're born into Israel, right? That's the only way. Ethnicity, nationality. How do you enter the Old Covenant? By circumcision. So it's ritual. So you have a mix, mostly unbelievers. You think Korah, when he rose up against Moses, and God opened the earth and swallowed him, do you think he went to paradise? 

Mostly unbelievers. How do you get into the church? Faith. Faith, right? Faith alone, and Jesus alone, and what he's done. And everyone, by definition, in the church is a believer. 

All right? What else do we have in Christ? Romans 8, 1 says, there's therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. We've talked about how we don't have promise of material blessings, but we do have promise of spiritual blessings. We've been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies, Ephesians 1. 

So in Christ, there's no condemnation. Is there any condemnation for Israel? Yeah, if they don't obey completely, they eat their children. So repentance, as I would define it in the Old Covenant, is this idea of God's call to restoration, and they need to turn back to God, and turn back to his law, and turn back to the mediating priesthood and the sacrificial system, and God's way of coming to him. 

OK? So I don't think we have to repent in that sense, because we have turned from what we were trusting in. That would be a one-time event in the past, where we turned from our religion, or our self-righteousness, and we could all give testimony of that, right? And we turned to faith in Jesus. 

So in that sense, we have repented and believed. I think in another sense, you could define repentance as being sorry for your sins, as coming to God and asking him to get you back on the right path, or thanking him for forgiving you in Christ. 

So I think it would depend on how we defined repentance, but we don't need to. It's not like, you know, I grew up in the Catholic Church. So what we did in the Catholic Church was we got into the church by ritual, because we think in the Catholic Church that we're still Israel. So we have a mediating priesthood and a sacrificial system, and then you get in by baptism, as opposed to circumcision, and then you're saved, OK, through the sacrament. 

Anybody ever hear of a venial and mortal sin? No such thing. But in the Catholic system there is, because a mortal sin kills your salvation. So then when you commit a mortal sin, you're lost. If you died in that moment, you go to hell. What do you have to do? Get baptized again. Go to confession, right? Go to the other sacrament, and then do your penance. You know, I remember one time I went when I was in second grade and the priest said, well, you know, how long just to come to you? 

Oh, Father, forgive me. I've sinned. There's been so many since my confession. I said, my dad told me to water the chickens, and he asked me, and I said, yeah, I watered the chickens, and I didn't water the chickens. I lied to my dad. So he said, all right, three Hail Marys and an Our Father, and you're good to go, OK? 

So I did three Hail Marys and an Our Father, and now I'm saved again until I commit a mortal sin. So that would be the mistake of understanding repentance in that way for the Christian life. And some Arminian-type theologies would believe that, that you can lose your salvation and that you need to repent and be saved again. And that would not be built. I don't know if I answered your question, Lisa, but. 

Repentance is change. So I know that I'm saved. I don't have to do that again. That's right. But, you know, I'm always looking for that change. Right. 

I'm attracted to be more of what God wants me to be. Yes. 

And the key, I think, is understanding God's means for that in the New Covenant. So we're going to talk about that probably next week, how he intends to produce holiness in our lives and conform us to the likeness of Christ. And that's based on regeneration, which is the promise of Ezekiel 36. 

The New Covenant promises are applied to the church in what I call pre-fillment. So it's based on regeneration. I've died to sin. I've died to law. I'm no longer in bondage to fear of death, Romans 6 and 7. And also, Jesus lives in me, right? And the Holy Spirit indwells me and imparts strength to my inner man, Ephesians 3. 

So now my life, Jesus, explained my life in Christ as a branch abiding in a vine. So now I let the word of Christ dwell in me, Richard. I walk in the spirit. I abide in Christ, all those synonyms, and then he produces the fruit through me. So Galatians 2.20, for example, would summarize that. 

So yeah, I'm not, and I think that's the mistake of saying I need to repent all the time is like I'm somehow out with God and I need to get back in. It's not that kind of relationship. He's my father. He's my Abba, my Papa, my Daddy. I can crawl up into his lap, as it were, come boldly to the throne of grace and find help in time of need. 

I stand in grace, right? I have full access to God through Jesus Christ. They didn't have access in the Old Testament. Once a year, the high priest goes in and ties a rope to his leg and gets some bells and see if you need to drag him out. That's not the kind of relationship that we have with God. 

So it's really important that we understand these things so that we're fighting the battle at the right point in the Christian life. Or as you say, reckoning with it. Absolutely. That's Romans 6, 1 to 11. He gives us seven facts there. He tells us logizomai in verse 11. You hear the word, and there's a counting term. Count up the facts. So what he says is, here's the truth of who you are in Christ. 

Now reckon it to be so. Choose to believe what God says. Not my experience, not my past, not my feelings. But choose to believe what God says is so. And then present your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. 

So our life is knowing, reckoning, yielding, right? OK. 

And do you think this is ongoing? Absolutely. Absolutely. But it's also based in a one-time truth. And that's something that I feel like is really lacking in the church. 

It's understanding regeneration. Because people so often say to me, well, I'm in Christ. And God, when he looks at me, he sees Christ. And that's true. That's positional righteousness justification. 

But then they'll say, I'm just a sinner. I'm desperately wicked. My heart's deceitful. I have all this sin. Well, that's not what God says about you. Indwelling sin, the biblical term, sin still dwells in us. We died. Sin didn't die. 

But my relationship to that sin has changed. So I need to understand that God did an actual work. It's not just positional righteousness and justification. It's actually I'm changed on the inside. My spirit was quickened. The Holy Spirit came and dwelled in me. I got a new heart. 

And now my relationship to indwelling sin has changed. And it's reasonable. Romans 12, 1, he tells us about renewing your mind and so forth. And he uses that same word, logizomai, with logic. He says it's our reasonable act of service or our spiritual worship. 

But it's reasonable for me to live a holy life every day. Do you believe that? Yes. We'll talk about that next week, too. 

Yeah, yeah, there's a difference between positional and practical. Positional righteousness is done in Christ. Practical righteousness is something that's on the sanctification. That's an ongoing work. 

And it's an outward, according to Romans 12, too, it's an outward conforming to an inward reality. Metamorphame, right? That change. That's what Jesus, when he pulled back his flesh as it were on the mountain and they saw the glory of who he was. 

It's the outside coming into conformity with the inside. Well, I need to understand who I am in Christ if I'm supposed to live according to who I am, which is Ephesians 4, equal weight, worthy of your calling kind of language. 

I think there's a sense, as a believer, of recognizing your sin and being sorry for your sin. You know what I mean? Not that you were saying that's not true. 

So I think there's that, whatever you want to call that. I think reckoning, more properly, would be knowing what God says and then choosing to believe him. But I think when I, like, let's say, honey, I know it would never happen, but let's just say that I say something cross to you. Right? You need to repent. I need to repent, in a sense. 

I need to come to you and say, I'm sorry, I was wrong, I love you. You understand what I'm saying? I do, but there's a confusion about what that word means in the life of a Christian and if it means I'm out of the will of God. 

Right. 

Well, think about that for me and you. Our relationship is secure in marriage, but there's still a wrong I've done to you that we need to be in fellowship, you could say. 

It all comes in defining repentance, like I said. Right. 

So if you think of repentance as being out and God's mad at you and you're outside of grace or outside of his salvation, that's wrong. If you think of it as being, I've sinned and I'm sorry. I disappointed my father. And I want to make sure we're OK, that he knows I'm sorry. 

Maybe John 1, 9, and then we'll get into a whole other discussion there. I'm just wondering if going into the Hebrew or the Greek, there are different words of love that are so much more expressive than we have in English to find them. Is that true with repentance? 

Well, I think repentance generally means to turn from, to turn away from something to something else. And we could look at that, Diane, and see if there are some different words. But I think of like 2 Corinthians 3, where he's talking about Moses and he had the veil over his face because the glory was fading. 

And he says in the end of that, for those who turn to the Lord, the veil is lifted. I think that's kind of the idea. It is a turning from. but it's also a turning to, I'm turning to Jesus in faith. 

So the key points are we are secure, we stand in grace. Our righteousness is based on what Jesus has done. But at the same time, we have a much more powerful motivation because the love of Christ compels us. 

It's not I'm trying to keep an external law, it's I love Jesus because he died for me and I want to live for him. The greatest desire in my heart is to live for him. 

So it's a whole different motivation and it's a much more powerful means. For instance, if we had a chili supper here last night and we were talking and I said some inappropriate thing, when I go home, the Holy Spirit grinds my guts, right? 

And what I want to do, I want to call Diane and say, I'm sorry, that was, I'm sorry, right? Forgive me, I need grace. Right, that is so much more powerful than the 10 commandments, right? 

I mean, we have a much greater means within us now to live for him. It's like an unfolding of his salvation plan, that redemptive history. So we don't need to go to the law. 

The law's written on our hearts. The Holy Spirit lives in us. The law has no means to help us keep it. So we need to understand these things. I have a question about what kind of success, for instance, what it would solve, the salvation thing. 

It's kind of like, you're driving down Los Angeles Highway the wrong way. You're going the wrong way. And then you realize there's, you're completely coming the wrong way. That's just not a deal. 

Now, you might pull a tire on the way now, or whatever, but you're not on the right path. I heard about that when that happened, Don, and Cindy called you on your cell phone, and she said, it's on the news, there's a guy going the wrong way on the highway, and you said, no, they're all going the wrong way. 

That actually happened on Jack and I. And after I got control, well, not control, but I ended up on 51 with my truck and my trailer on Jack and I, and I was facing a magnitude of pressure. Fortunately, they all stopped. 

All right, well, we'll explore this more next time. We're going to talk about the distinctives of the New Covenant to kind of sort some of these things out we were talking about this morning, and then we'll get into Joel one a little bit next week. 

So if you have questions, email, but be studying, thinking I'm going to send you a short version of a document I wrote on the distinctives of the Old Covenant and New Covenant, and then I'm also going to send you a tree illustration that Bobby drew, and a narrative with that, because some people that I gave it to requested a narrative explaining it, which was kind of ironic, because it's supposed to be an illustration. 

But anyway, all right, we'll see you next week. Thank you.