Exposition on Joel - Introduction - 8

     Well, if at this point you’re still asking yourselves, “What does this really have to do with Joel?” Recall that I mentioned the confusion that may have occurred in the typical Jewish mind; as circumcised members of visible Israel, they largely didn’t expect God’s wrath to ever befall them, and they especially didn’t expect the judgment contained in the prophesy of the DotL to be directed toward them because it was a day where they all expected salvation. And that’s just like people today not resting their faith in what Christ has done, but rather in their baptism or their parent’s faith. I think I can rightly claim that confusion based on the topics that the New Testament writers had to address, and the manifest difficulties seen in that transition. So the discussion of this view of covenant signs and linage has to do with the Jewish expectation at the DotL. Joel had been sent, in part, to disabuse the people of their misinterpretation of that coming Day, a Day that Joel spends a great deal of time talking about. And I believe we’ve sufficiently covered that theme in Joel. Even though we will have given more time to the theme of the DotL, now we must consider what is like to be regarded as the main theme in Joel. Repentance appears to be the overarching theme, as it is in many of the prophets. Many times the prophets were instructed to call the nation to repentance and when it eventually occurred it would generally manifest in one primary outward aspect: The corporate expression of grief over the nation’s sins. And in the Old Covenant paradigm this grief was supposed to result in: individuals pleading for God’s covenant mercy through prayer and fasting.

Regarding this outward display of repentance, in addition to Joel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Daniel all mention fasting, and part of Isaiah’s ministry was to criticize the nation’s misuse of the regulation of fasting and Joel was careful to call the people not just to an outward expression of repentance; not to rend their clothes alone, but more importantly, to rend their hearts—it’s a bit like when Jeremiah spoke of the Law being written not only on tablets of stone but upon our very hearts.

In the midst of all this talk of destruction which resulted from their lack of repentance, the one thing we can’t afford to forget is that, Joel gives us a glimmer of hope. In the context of promises made directly to the divided Jewish nation, Joel gave the people, and he gives all who are counted among God’s people a pledge that one day our suffering will be vindicated and that God will bring us peaceably through whatever wrath He may pour out upon the heads of the wicked. But in the end, and somehow to God’s glory, both justice and mercy will be done; justice for all those who have spurned God’s general call to believe, and mercy for all who do believe. We see this glimmer of hope beginning in chapter 2:18 &19 where the Lord is said to have pity on the people because of the jealousy He has for His Land, which is actually an allusion to the former promise God made to Abraham. Verses 19 and 20 God’s acts of mercy are described. In the passage from verse 21-27, God declares His plan to vindicate and restore that which is His, and He goes on to describe the way in which He will do it. And finally in verses 28 and 29, somewhat book-ended by the terrorizing aspect of the Day of the Lord, God promises the blessing of His Spirit, a blessing that we have seen come to pass at the Day of  Pentecost..