PART 1. SEE THE SITUATION AND SEE GOD
INTRODUCTION TO PART 1 (JOEL 1:1 to 2:17)
REVIVAL BEGINS WITH SEEING OUR SITUATION AND SEEING GOD
Joel begins by showing His people their true condition in compromise and ravaged by sin. But they, and we, are not left hopeless, God also reveals Himself to be the ‘compassionate and gracious God’ who comes to revive our spiritual state.
CONVICTION, CONFESSION AND WORSHIP
God, through Joel, confronts us with our sin. Any true move of the Holy Spirit includes this. A route to, and sign of, spiritual revival is conviction and turning from sin. But this turning from compromise is also a turning to God with a new fire for worship. A route to and sign of revival is always seen in devotion to worship.
Here are a few quotes on how spiritual revival begins with conviction.
‘Before we deal with the position of those who are outside, let us first examine ourselves and make our confession. For every true revival in the world starts as a revival the church, and revival come to churches which realise their need an impotence and turn to God in prayer for forgiveness and for anew strength.’ (Lloyd-Jones)
‘Now, how may we secure such an Outpouring of the Spirit? You answer, by prayer. True, but there is something before prayer. We will have to deal first of all with the question of sin; for unless our lives are right in the sight of God, unless sin has been put away, we may pray until doomsday, and the Revival will never come. "Your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid His face from you so that He will not hear." ( Isa. 59: 2. ) (Oswald J. Smith).
CONTENTS
1. Come to Jesus Daily devotional- Monday – Be moved by the devastation
- Tuesday – Wake up to sin and its causes
- Wednesday – Sorrow leading to worship
- Thursday – See the King of kings
- Friday – Return to God with all your heart
2. Community Group/family study
For links to the message go to our website,
1. COME TO JESUS DAILY DEVOTIONAL
One of our goals as a church is to spend at least 20 minutes every day in prayer and worship out of the bible. I hope you find this devotional helpful toward that end. This week’s devotionals, from the prophecy of Joel, focus on Chapter 1:1 to 2:17.
MONDAY – KEY 1 – BE MOVED BY THE DEVASTATION
Joel likens the invasion of this army to that of a locust invasion which destroys everything there is to eat.
Joel 1:2-4 Hear this, you elders; listen, all who live in the land. Has anything like this ever happened in your days or in the days of your ancestors? Tell it to your children, and let your children tell it to their children, and their children to the next generation. What the locust swarm has left the great locusts have eaten; what the great locusts have left the young locusts have eaten; what the young locusts have left other locusts have eaten.
Thankfully, in our nation, our food supply is very secure, and, unfortunately, this can cause us to take things for granted. But, Just imagine waking up tomorrow to empty supermarket shelves and the prospect of starvation - this is what Joel is predicting.
For Christians, this prophecy still has relevance for us. It addresses those who ‘live in the Land’ - it speaks, principally, to you as a Christian. It warns us that our sin brings loss and God’s discipline on us. If we are in rebellion to God, the ‘locusts’ will (or have) come on us robbing us of joy and fruitfulness.
For example, Paul sternly warns us,
‘Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.’ (Galatians 6:7-8)
Sin ‘arouses the Lord’s jealousy’ - it releases the devastation of the ‘locusts’ in our lives.
RESPONSE
As an aside, it’s very important to pray and give thanks for our food as Jesus teaches us in Matthew 6:11 “Give us today our daily bread.”
Be moved by the devastation
Principally, today, God wants us to see the state of the nation and church and be moved by the devastation - this is a key to revival. Like Jesus may it be said of us,
‘When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd’ (Matt. 9:36).
We will only give ourselves to prayer or any other activity if we see the devastation of the locust invasion.
William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army was a man who was so moved. He wrote, and may this stir our hearts,
While women weep, as they do now, I'll fight. While little children go hungry, as they do now, I'll fight. While men go to prison, in and out, in and out, as they do now, I'll fight. While there is a drunkard left, While there is a poor lost girl upon the streets, While there remains one dark soul without the light of God, I'll fight-I'll fight to the very end! (William Booth)
Let the work of God in the revival in Wales enflame your spirit with compassion for a similar gracious move of our compassionate God in the church and nation,
‘It was in 1904. All Wales was aflame. The nation had drifted far from God. The spiritual conditions were low indeed. Church attendance was poor. And sin abounded on every side…Nothing had ever come over Wales with such far-reaching results. Infidels were converted, drunkards, thieves, and gamblers saved; and thousands reclaimed to respectability. Confessions of awful sins were heard on every side. Old debts were paid. The theatre had to leave for want of patronage. Mules in the coal mines refused to work, being unused to kindness. In five weeks 20,000 joined the Churches.’ (Oswald J. Smith).
TUESDAY – KEY 2 – WAKE UP TO SIN AND IT’S CAUSES
Joel 1:5-7 Wake up, you drunkards, and weep! Wail, all you drinkers of wine; wail because of the new wine, for it has been snatched from your lips. A nation has invaded my land, a mighty army without number; it has the teeth of a lion, the fangs of a lioness. It has laid waste my vines and ruined my fig trees. It has stripped off their bark and thrown it away, leaving their branches white.
1. WAKE UP TO SIN
We live in a culture that has normalised what, a generation ago, would have been considered evil and indecent. Watch any film and you will probably see behaviour for which Jesus had to die to remove it’s condemnation - and we enjoy these things!
In Joel’s day, as in ours, drunkenness is a sin that had become rife. The people of God were living for pleasure and were spiritually asleep - the abuse of alcohol leads to spiritual lethargy. If we are right is assuming that Joel prophesied at the beginning of the eighth century, this was a time of peace and prosperity, both of which can be a breeding ground for complacency and compromise.
Most of us have safety and wealth like never in history. We have easy access to entertainment, alcohol, food, drugs…We all have to learn wisdom so as not be seduced into a life of ungodly distraction with wasted time and gifts. Paul says something very similar to Joel in Romans 13,
‘And do this, understanding the present time: The hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armour of light. Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.’ (Romans 13:11-114)
RESPONSE 1. WAKE UP
Ask the Holy Spirit to help you to ‘wake up’ to your sin and for grace to stop doing it.
2. WAKE UP TO SIN’S CAUSES
Joel changes his metaphor for these attackers from a Locust invasion to that of attacking lions. God, through this prophet, wants us to ‘wake up’ to the strength of our enemy and the danger we are in.
Just imagine how you would feel and behave if you knew that a horde of lions had escaped into your community. Would we walk round town with our eyes glued to our phones? Would we sit on a bench and enjoy the sunshine? Would we let our children out to play? “No, Way!” I hear you say! So how is it that the church lives like she is on holiday when she is under attack from ‘locust’ and ‘lions’ - from demonic powers!
If we are complacent and unprotected against these ‘lions’ (and Locusts) – demonic powers, we will yield to temptation and will pay a high price and he ‘snatches the new wine, from your lips…lays waste my vines, ruins my fig trees, strips off their bark and throws it away, leaving the branches white.’
RESPONSE 2. RESIST THE DEVIL
A key to spiritual revival is the church waking up to the danger they’re in and making a new commitment to resist evil. Too often the state of the church, nation and our own lives is attributed to things that we can solve. But, when we see the true nature of our enemy, we are humbled to pray and seek the Spirit’s breakthrough.
The Father urges us,
‘Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings.’ (1 Peter 5:8-9)
Waking up to sin and its causes is a powerful key for revival. Oswald J. Smith writes,
‘There is only one obstacle that can block up the channel and choke God’s power, and that is sin. Sin is the great barrier. It alone can hinder the work of the Spirit and prevent a revival. “If I regard iniquity in my heart,” declared David, “the Lord will not hear me” (Psalm 66:18)… Sin then is the great barrier, and it must be put away. Nor is there any alternative. There can be no compromise. God will not work as long as there is iniquity covered up.’ (Oswald J. Smith).
WEDNESDAY – KEY 3 – SORROW LEADING TO WORSHIP
Joel 1:8-12 Mourn like a virgin in sackcloth grieving for the betrothed of her youth. Grain offerings and drink offerings are cut off from the house of the Lord. The priests are in mourning, those who minister before the Lord.The fields are ruined, the ground is dried up; the grain is destroyed, the new wine is dried up, the olive oil fails. Despair, you farmers, wail, you vine growers; grieve for the wheat and the barley, because the harvest of the field is destroyed. The vine is dried up and the fig tree is withered; the pomegranate, the palm and the apple tree— all the trees of the field—are dried up. Surely the people’s joy is withered away.
1. SORROW - MOURN LIKE THE BETROTHED
Have you ever done something that has wounded someone that you love? This is how God wants us to feel when we sin. If you have the privilege of being a Christian, you are also considered a part of the ‘bride of Christ’. As Jesus’ bride, we should be very careful not to be stained by sin which is unfaithfulness to Jesus. As in the natural, so it is in the spiritual, anyone who has is unfaithful to their ‘betrothed’ - to Jesus - will know what it is to have their ‘joy withered away’. Spiritual revival, or becoming a Christian, begins with sorrow for our sin (conviction is another word for this).
RESPONSE 1. MOURN LIKE A BRIDE
A key to revival is to be broken-hearted. Ask the Spirit to reveal your spiritual condition and to give you such a love for Jesus that to sin breaks your heart.
2. SORROW - MOURN LIKE A WORSHIPPER
With the loss of produce through the locusts and lions the ‘Grain offerings and drink offerings are cut off from the house of the Lord’. There is nothing for the priests to offer in worship to God.
When the people’s hearts turn away from Him, God will stop the insincere and heartless worship that is being offered. The prophet Malachi wrote,
“Oh, that one of you would shut the temple doors, so that you would not light useless fires on my altar! I am not pleased with you,” says the Lord Almighty, “and I will accept no offering from your hands.” (Malachi 1:10)
Jesus confronts those who have a veneer of worship when He says,
“‘These people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.” (Matthew 15:8-9)
If we are Christians, the state of the worship to Jesus should be of huge concern to us.
RESPONSE 2. MOURN FOR WORSHIP
It grieved God’s people when the enemy stole their offerings; for us, we should be grieved when a church or individual has become ‘lukewarm’ in worship, or, most importantly, have allowed the enemy to rob them of Jesus - the gospel. Such people have nothing to offer in worship!
If you are a Christian you are are a priest, you are, in fact, the temple of the Holy Spirit.
A key to revival is to consider our spiritual condition, grieve if necessary over the state of our worship. Ask Jesus to ‘turn over the tables in the temple’ of our lives (See Matt. 21:12-13) and restore Himself to the rightful place in our hearts.
THURSDAY – KEY 4. SEE THE KING OF KINGS
Joel 2:10-11 Before them the earth shakes, the heavens tremble, the sun and moon are darkened, and the stars no longer shine. The Lord thunders at the head of his army; his forces are beyond number, and mighty is the army that obeys his command. The day of the Lord is great; it is dreadful. Who can endure it?
Today we are going to be reflecting of a mystifying but essential truth - God is over all things including evil! All of the dreadful things we have been looking at this week - the armies of locusts, lions, destruction, joy withered away… were ordained by God. God reminds us that,
‘The Lord thunders at the head of his army; his forces are beyond number, and mighty is the army that obeys his command…’
The fourth key to spiritual revival is gaining and responding to an awesome vision of God as King of kings. Whenever the Spirit moves, He always reveals the greatness of God.
‘Revival cannot happen while certain truths are denied and concealed…here is the first. The truth concerning the sovereign, transcendent, living God who acts, and who intervenes, and irrupts into the history of the Church and of individuals.’ (Lloyd-Jones, Revival, Page 37)
God was in charge of the locusts and lions
Let’s be clear, it was God who was disciplining His disobedient people, precisely because they were His people. He is enacting a process that will cause them to repent and turn back to Him from their hearts.
The exile of the north and south of Israel had been by God’s design. He had promised blessing for obedience and curses for disobedience, and Israel had presumed that God would be easy-going with sin - they were wrong!
We may presume that Christians are exempt from God allowing bad things to happen to us - I mean, if He loves us, He will not allow evil to touch us… However the bible clearly teaches that God is over all the difficulties of our lives for the purpose of our sanctification (making us holy - more like Jesus). We see this in the book of Hebrews,
‘It says, “My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son.” Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father?’ (Hebrews 12:5-7)
The author then tells us the result of God’s discipline,
‘God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness…it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.’ (Hebrews 12:10-11)
RESPONSE
God would have us see a fresh vision of His greatness and compassion. I cannot tell you all that a true vision of God will do, but it will do amazing things in us and our churches. Let’s ask the Spirit for greater revelation as to who God is - knowing God is surely the essence of revival.
God would have us see a fresh vision of His greatness and compassion. I cannot tell you all that a true vision of God will do, but it will do amazing things in us and our churches. Let’s ask the Spirit for greater revelation as to who God is - knowing God is surely the essence of revival.
FRIDAY – KEY 5. RETURN TO GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART
Joel 2:12-17 “Even now,” declares the Lord, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.” Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity. Who knows? He may turn and relent and leave behind a blessing— grain offerings and drink offerings for the Lord your God.Blow the trumpet in Zion, declare a holy fast, call a sacred assembly. Gather the people, consecrate the assembly; bring together the elders, gather the children, those nursing at the breast. Let the bridegroom leave his room and the bride her chamber. Let the priests, who minister before the Lord, weep between the portico and the altar. Let them say, “Spare your people, Lord. Do not make your inheritance an object of scorn, a byword among the nations. Why should they say among the peoples,‘Where is their God?’”
Rend your heart
The ‘rending of the heart’ of non-believers is vital in preparation to receiving Jesus as their Saviour - it’s only the sick who know that they need a doctor! Paul sets us an example of this even whilst he’s imprisoned,
'Several days later Felix came with his wife Drusilla, who was Jewish. He sent for Paul and listened to him as he spoke about faith in Christ Jesus. As Paul talked about righteousness, self-control and the judgment to come, Felix was afraid and said, “That’s enough for now! You may leave. When I find it convenient, I will send for you.”’ (Acts 24:24-25)
As Isaac Watts wrote,
‘Wherever God works with power for salvation upon the minds of men, there will be some discoveries of a sense of sin, of the danger of the wrath of God, and the all-sufficiency of his Son Jesus to relieve us under all our spiritual wants and distresses’
It is principally Christians, who are are commanded to ‘rend your hearts’ – examine our hearts and lives in the presence of God. Personal revival and the revival of the church always starts with repentance and a new desire for holiness.
Restoration of worship
On Wednesday we saw how God had shut down the worship in the temple. Joel writes, ‘Grain offerings and drink offerings are cut off from the house of the Lord. The priests are in mourning…’
In seasons of revival, worship is revived with the worship of Jesus being the central theme; Fore example, during a season of Revival in 1734, in Northampton (North America), Jonathan Edwards writes of the affect of the work of the Spirit on worship,
‘Our public services were then beautiful: the congregation was alive in God’s service, everyone earnestly intel on the public worship, every hearer eager to drink in the words of the minister as they came from his mouth; the assembly in general were, from time to time, in tears while the Word was preached; some weeping with sorrow and distress, other with joy and love, other with pity and concern for the souls of their neighbours.
Our public praises were then greatly enlivened; God was then served in our psalmody, in some measure, in the beauty of holiness. It has been observable that there has been scarce any part of divine worship wherein good men amongst us have had grace so drawn forth, and their hearts so lifted up in the ways of God, as in singing his praises…’
RESPONSE
This week we have been looking at some keys to revival from Joel 1:1 to 2:17. The keys are:
1. Be moved by the devastation
2. Wake up to sin and its causes
3. Sorrow leading to worship
4. See the King of kings
5. Return to God with all your heart
In the end, it’s only God who can revive us, our church or nation. But if we implement these keys to revival, who knows what God might do! Take some time to ask the Spirit to search and revive you the church and do a merciful work in the nations.
2. COMMUNITY GROUP/FAMILY STUDY
During this 3-week (God willing!) series on Joel, we are thinking about spiritual revival. Firstly how can we define revival? Revival is, the pouring out of the Holy Spirit is such a way that the church and those outside the church are transformed.
This week we are thinking about preparation for revival.
In Joel 2:18-32 (and we will look at this next week) we see God pouring out His Spirit in revival power. But, prior to this, in Joel 1:1-17 – and any study around the subject of revival will show us this – that before God pours out His Spirit in a community - in or outside the church - The Spirit begins with conviction of sin and our need to repent and get right with God.
Read these two quotes together,
‘Before we deal with the position of those who are outside, let us first examine ourselves and make our confession. For every true revival in the world starts as a revival the church, and revival come to churches which realise their need impotence and turn to God in prayer for forgiveness and for anew strength.’ (Lloyd-Jones)
‘Now, how may we secure such an Outpouring of the Spirit? You answer, by prayer. True, but there is something before prayer. We will have to deal first of all with the question of sin; for unless our lives are right in the sight of God, unless sin has been put away, we may pray until doomsday, and the Revival will never come. "Your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid His face from you so that He will not hear." ( Isa. 59: 2. ) (Oswald J. Smith).
Discuss
- In light of the mess in our lives, the church and nation, what does Joel 2:12-17 tell about the radical, prayer response that God wants from us?
- What does Ephesians 4:30-31 say about sin and how it affects our relationship with the Holy Spirit?
- Read James 5:16–18. What does it say about the connection between confession -seeking righteousness- and God working in power?
Let’s pray together.
In light of the scriptures we have been considering, let’s pray regarding ourselves. Is there sin that you need to confess and repent of? Is there a lukewarmness that you need the Spirit to revive? How do you need to pray?
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