Intricately Involved

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James 3 makes a strong warning about teaching. James wrote, “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.” Rightfully understood, this means that teachers of God’s word will be judged more strictly than others. More likely than not, this means that God will judge teachers of His word, in the end, with precision, and with greater harshness. But I have found that there are times in my life when God “judges” me and “tests” me after I preach. This is especially true in challenging texts like Joel.

Take the last 24 hours: I say a lot of this with “tongue and cheek,” but it will give you a glimpse into how I process things and the daily struggle I have with my sinful temptations. Yesterday, after leaving church spiritually full, we went to the church picnic. The picnic was a blast, and it was a great joy to be with our extended church family for a few hours. The weather was awesome, the food was really good, and the people were fun to be around. You could leave yesterday just basking in the goodness of God. Then I had the opportunity to watch a bit of the NFL and watch the night game with my beloved Dallas Cowboys. And if I ever thought my sports love was cursed, Sunday’s game sure seemed that God was “against” me…Then on Monday, which is my day off and the day I write my blog for the week, I started cleaning up around an area where I’ve recently built a pergola (picture below). I’ve been working on keeping that area dry, and the small amounts of rain didn’t seem to wet everything down. But I had 2 buckets that were filled with condensation from an HVAC unit that needed to be dumped. And you guessed it…I spilled one of them all over my shoes, on the concrete, under my newly installed mats, and wet an entire corner area under my grill and smoker. Awesome. I sat down in frustration, with soaked shoes, looking over my formerly pristine area, and thought, “if God was in the locusts and He was in the foreign army, He’s behind the Cowboys getting thrashed and me spilling these buckets.”

Again, I tell you this while laughing and while knowing that these things pale in comparison to the realities that Israel faced in Joel and pale in comparison to every major hardship in our lives. But, it does give you a feel for how we can “remind” ourselves of the truths of God’s word. Rather than losing my mind (which I do often), I took the time to remind myself of what I had learned last week and on Sunday.

Cosmic battle?

I mentioned on Sunday that my hope for us to learn the book of Joel was to see how big our God is and how He is intricately involved in every facet of universal history. And I said in the 2nd service that I would write a little on this from the book of Job.

In the book of Job, we are confronted with a Sovereign God ruling over everything and the chief enemy of our souls, Satan, working at the discretion of God. You can see this in Job 1:6-12. You’ll notice in this text some challenging things: God asked Satan if he’s taken notice of Job, who was a righteous, godly man. Satan responds with the idea that Job is only righteous because good things happen to him, and if bad things happened to Job, he would not be so godly. Then God did something remarkable: he gave Satan permission to take away lots of things from Job (possessions, children, and his health). But God gave him a limit…he couldn’t take his life.

This is what I trying to say in the introduction of Joel. The cosmic battle of the universe is not God and his angels in a war for control with Satan and his demons. It’s not like the Pantheon in Greek mythology. God has no equal, and He is not wrestling with Satan. Rather, Satan is on a chain. He can only do as God allows. And while he is allowed by God to test us, he is not allowed to destroy our souls.

This truth allows us not to be afraid of Satan and to put him in his rightful place in our concerns. Satan is opposed to God and His people. But he is not allowed to run amok, with God allowing him to do so. Let that bring you peace, and your God is at work in every aspect of universal history.

The difference a “tense” can make:

The pastors in our office will tell you that on Friday of last week (which is my writing day), I was in turmoil over something in the book of Joel. In Joel 2:17, Joel has just finished a section where he called the people to seek the Lord, pray, and consecrate a fast. Then Joel 2:18 states, “Then the LORD became jealous for his land and had pity on his people.” This is from the ESV. However, the commentaries I used and other translations (see NASB and NIV) all state vs. 18 like this: “Then the Lord will be zealous for His land. And will have pity on His people.” You’ll notice that it’s in the future tense.

The difference this would make for preaching Joel is pretty important. If it’s past tense, then between vs. 17 and 18, there was a gap of time when the people of Israel turned to the Lord, and He had compassion on them and began the restorative work He promised. If it’s future tense, it shows that there’s no gap in time, and Joel is simply stating what will happen if they repent and turn to Christ. So, this difference is challenging.

What made this worse for my studies was that so many commentators were mixed. John Piper and D.A. Carson (as examples) believed it was past tense. John Calvin and David Prior believed it was future tense.

I landed in the place of seeing this as future tense. My main reason was two-fold: 1) The flow of the text seems to show that this is all future tense. Joel was challenging the people to turn to the Lord, and he was showing them why they should. God will be gracious when we turn to Him, and He will restore His people. 2) The promises that are mentioned after vs. 18 are not ones that happened to the people of Israel at that time. God didn’t restore all that the locusts had taken, and He didn’t turn back the Assyrians (see 722 B.C.). Those reasons made me believe that this was future tense.

Judgment and blessing of the Spirit’s coming:

I didn’t have a lot of time to develop the promise of the Holy Spirit’s coming being fulfilled in Acts 2. But it’s clear from Acts 2 and from Peter’s proclamation that is exactly what happened. And we know from Peter’s declaration that this was a “day of the Lord” event (sun darkened and moon to blood). This means that it was a day of blessing for those who were God’s people, and it was a day of judgment for those who weren’t. We can clearly say that the blessing was on Jesus’ disciples who experienced the presence of the living God indwelling them and empowering them.

But who was being judged? I think we can safely say it was the Jewish people who rejected Jesus as their Messiah. Read Peter’s sermon in Acts 2:14-40, and you’ll notice how sternly Peter spoke to the people of Israel. Vs. 36 is an example: “Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.” He was not mincing words here.

Further, we know from Matthew 21:43 that Jesus was very concerned about Israel’s disbelief and warned them that “Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits.” The fulfillment in Acts 2 of Joel 2 seems to be a moment when this type of shift was taking place.

Looking ahead:

This coming Sunday, we will study the book of Amos. This prophet warns us not to be “at ease in Zion” nor to become spiritually asleep in the midst of prosperity. It’s a great warning for us today.

From the Cheap Seats:

As I mentioned earlier…Cowboys were smoked. Here’s a question that I keep asking myself (my brother and I actually texted this to one another during the game): how do you not cheer for your childhood team? I’ve tried, at times, to pull my sports heart away, but it just keeps getting drawn back. I know many of my sports friends are bandwagoners…they like the Bills now because they’re good. But I’m not that guy. I’m a steady-faithful fan (and man). And don’t tell me about Appalachian State beating A&M! What a bad football weekend for my home teams.
I would love to know how many of you out there will watch Monday Night Football more because Joe Buck and Troy Aikman are on the calls.
As my brother-in-law said Sunday, “that looked like my tee shot”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06wF6-QEpSA. How do you miss that?
But how about this walk-off TD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJ8O2EsA1yU. 4 minutes you’ll enjoy.
I knew that Steve Sarkisian would turn Texas football around, but I wasn’t expecting them to go toe-to-toe with Alabama. But how clutch is Bryce Young??
How does MLB, a $9 billion industry, make a mathematical error and say the Dodgers didn’t clinch a playoff spot?