And now we take our Bible reading for this morning and it’s a pleasure to ask Dorothy Lees to come and read the passage for us this morning. Dorothy, I think this mic might be best. After Dorothy has read this passage to us, Colin Adams will come and speak to us from the Signs in Life series, John chapter 2, the passage that we’re having read, verse 13 to 25, a three-day rebuild.

Dorothy and then Colin, thank you. If you want to follow along in the church Bibles, you will find this passage on page 1065, this section entitled Jesus Clears the Temple Courts. When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

In the temple courts, he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle. He scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.

To those who sold doves, he said, get these out of here. Stop turning my father’s house into a market. His disciples remembered that it is written, “Zeal for your house will consume me”.

That is a quotation from Psalm 69. The Jews then responded to him, what sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this? Jesus answered them, destroy this temple and I will raise it again in three days. They replied, it has taken 46 years to build this temple and you are going to raise it in three days? But the temple he had spoken of was his body.

After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken. Now, while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover festival, many people saw the signs he was performing and believed in his name.

But Jesus would not entrust himself to them for he knew all people. He did not need any testimony about mankind for he knew what was in each person. Amen.

Let me take you back in time, 2000 years back in time. Let’s go back to a small village in the backwaters of Israel. Let’s enter a house, a house with a humble exterior.

But as we go inside, there’s a lavish interior. And we discover that inside this house, a wedding is underway. The place is utterly packed.

The wedding’s in full swing. But there’s a problem that we soon discover. We overhear a conversation.

We hear that the wine has run out, a terrible misfortune at a Jewish wedding. But then we see a mother pleading with her son, begging him to save the day and save the wedding. And then we see something astonishing as somehow, through some means, this man turns water into wine.

And we see stewards now filling many cups and distributing them. And we see some disciples putting deeper faith in this Jesus. And it seems such a happy ending.

It seems such an inviting Jesus. This is the sort of Jesus you would want to invite to your next celebration, whatever it is, or is it? Before you send the invite to Jesus, let me take you back to another event. This event happened a little while after the wedding, not in a small town, but in the hubbub of a big city.

Not a local wedding this time, but a national celebration of Israel. It seems as if the whole of Israel is gathering on the eve of the Passover festival. And I suspect that as people entered Jerusalem, there were good vibes in the air as pilgrims made their way up the steps of the temple, the house of the Lord.

But then as we enter the temple courts, we hear some commotion. We look and we find that it is Jesus who is the one causing the stir. The same man who saved the wedding is overturning tables and driving out animals.

And we hear him saying in the sharpest of tones, how dare you turn my father’s house into a market? It’s no longer the helpful and warm Jesus, but a disruptive and angry Jesus. A Jesus who is bringing revolution to our entire religious system. And the question we need to ask is, what is going on here? Why this change in Jesus? Why is he so angry at this point? And what is the significance of all this stuff going on with temples in this little section? We’re going to see that, that the idea of temple dominates this passage.

And we’re going to have to think about what these temples are and what they mean. So, let’s seek some answers. Have your Bible open with me this morning.

And there’s two points we’re going to consider, both to do with temples. So, first of all, let’s think about a temple that needed revolution, a temple that needed revolution. And this is the physical temple that Jesus visited and Jesus caused a ruckus in.

(7:17 – 8:09)

And why is he there? Why is he in the Jerusalem temple? Well, Jesus has left Galilee in the north and he has come south for the festival of the Passover, probably the most important religious festival in the Jewish calendar. It happened annually. The Jews would gather in Jerusalem, and they would remember their rescue from the land of Egypt.

And what happens when Jesus arrives? Well, he goes to the temple. He makes a beeline to the temple. And if you were Jewish and you knew your Bible, you probably would be thinking, maybe this is a fulfilment of Malachi chapter 3, which is the last book in the Old Testament.

(8:09 – 8:27)

And in Malachi 3 verse 1, it says, suddenly, the Lord will come to his temple. And so, Jesus makes this beeline for the temple. And he comes into the outer courts of the temple.

(8:27 – 13:42)

The temple at that time was a huge complex with various courts. And in one of them, probably the outer Gentile court, Jesus sees something troubling. Rather than finding worship and prayer, Jesus finds commerce.

He finds trade. He finds a market. Now, I’ve personally never been to Israel, but I know some of you have, and some of you have told me bits about it.

And I know that one of the things that bothers some of the tourists is that even today, when you go to some of these holy sites, they’re full of moneymaking, full of… I mean, there’s an entire religious industry that can seem to pollute the whole experience. And there’s something of that going on here. And we need to get this right.

It’s not so much that business is wrong or that Jesus is against people making money. Neither, I think, is the issue in particular that there was corrupt business practises happening at the temple. Some of these traders may have been corrupt.

Some of them may not have been. That’s not mentioned in the text. The problem isn’t so much what they are doing, but where they are doing it and what that is crowding out.

What should have been a place of authentic worship had become a cattle market, had become a shopping centre in a similar way to what we saw recently in the book of Joel. Here are worshippers who kept coming to the temple, but they had lost their heart for God. And before we rush past that too quickly, how easy it is, how easy now it remains to keep the wheels of religion spinning, don’t you think? To keep the wheels of religious spinning, but have little heart and soul underneath.

It’s something you hear quite often in testimonies in a good way, in an encouraging way, because people will say things like, I came to church in my teens, and it never meant anything really, and I just went through the motions. It didn’t mean much, but then one day just somehow it all came alive in a sermon, a baptism, maybe something I read in the Bible. It all came alive.

Wonderful. But you see how easy it is to just keep the outward thing going. And you know, if you look for it, there are always things in church, as there was in the temple, there’s always things that will be appealing about it apart from God.

There’s a social element that’s very appealing to many people. There would have been a social element, I’m sure, in the market. There can also be a good vibe, at least in some churches.

I mean, I know some churches are very flat and dead, but there’s a good vibe in some churches. There would have been a very good vibe in the hubbub of this religious market. These might not be terrible things, but they are not faith and they are not worship.

They are not the heart of what this is all about. Something that came to mind when I thought about this was the song that Matt Redmond wrote a number of years ago. Matt Redmond is a worship leader who writes worship songs for a living, so you would think he would be pro-worship songs.

But he realised, and he confesses this in one of his songs, that at one stage, the very music and the very songs and the whole thing that he was doing had become the main thing, and somehow God had become secondary, and the songs had become primary. And as he says in that song that he wrote, he needed to come back to the heart of worship. You see, in so many ways, our hearts can be corrupted.

Our hearts can so easily drift from the very purpose of worship that we were made for. And Jesus is exposing that here. And he’s showing as well that the… There’s a kind of important historical thing here.

(13:42 – 14:10)

He’s showing as well that the Jewish temple is no longer fit for purpose. Jesus’ assessment, Jesus’ judgement is that this temple had lost its way, filled with corruption, needing revolution, needing something new. This is something we’re going to see over the next couple of weeks, actually.

(14:11 – 15:58)

In chapters 2 to 4 of John, I want you to notice as we’re going through this, there’s links between these stories, because in chapters 2 to 4, it’s a case of out with the old and in with the new. So, Jesus is bringing new wine, a new temple, a new birth, and a new worship, four new things that Jesus is bringing. But for the new to come, the old must go.

Jesus’ angry outburst, at one level, is an outward symbol that the temple’s days are numbered, that that whole system, although valuable, is about to be superseded by something greater. Now, just a word or two about the anger of Jesus, because it’s something that people have questions over, isn’t it, the anger of Jesus? A couple of things that helped me as I’ve tried to grapple with this. I think one is to realise what we’ve just said, that this is more than just a momentary outburst on Jesus’ part, that actually there’s also something.

I mean, it’s not undermining the real anger Jesus feels, but there is also a sense in which Jesus is acting out a dramatic symbolism here. I think that’s important to note here. But another thing to realise is that love is in the mix of this anger.

(16:00 – 16:20)

Now, we all know, don’t we, that sometimes anger is not mixed with love. And when anger is not motivated by love, it can be a very destructive thing. But we also know, don’t we, that sometimes love is the motivation for anger in a good way.

(16:22 – 19:17)

If a family member of yours is mistreated, if someone slights your mum or your dad, you feel angry because you love them. If you didn’t love them, you wouldn’t get angry. You wouldn’t care.

You wouldn’t want to defend their honour. But because you love them, you care. Or if you’re a parent, and you see one of your children going off the rails, and there’s unhelpful ways to be angry in that situation, but there’s also helpful ways to be angry in that situation.

And if you, in a loving way and in a gentle way, express that deep concern towards them, even that anger at how they’re harming themselves and harming the whole of their life, well, that’s something you’re doing not as a hateful thing. You’re doing it as a loving thing. And it can be the kind of positive disruption that’s actually needed.

And so I find it helpful to notice verse 16, that it’s Jesus’ zeal for his father’s house, his father’s house, that underpins his anger here. And I also like to think here that Jesus is giving a loving warning, so that it’s not just his love for his father that’s motivating this, but it’s also his love for people that’s motivating this. Because in kicking up some dust and raising the points he’s raising confrontationally, Jesus is confronting the people with their need to change.

He’s confronting them, as we’ll see, with a need to make a decision about him. And so the very anger of Jesus leads some to the opportunity of repentance and faith. So there’s a grace and a love involved and mixed in with this holy anger.

The temple, the old Jewish temple needed revolution. The whole system needed not just a revamp, it needed a replacement, just as your life and my life need a radical revolution. Well, Jesus brings that revolution.

But how does he bring it? Interestingly, Jesus doesn’t bring revolution through kind of, you know, reforming the old Jewish temple. He doesn’t do that at all. Jesus brings revolution in this passage by introducing another temple altogether.

(19:19 – 21:12)

And so we come to our second point, a temple that will be rebuilt. Secondly, a temple that will be rebuilt. Now, I said at the start of the message that there is a big contrast between the water into wine incident in the first half of chapter 2 and the temple cleansing in the second half of chapter 2. When you put these stories side by side, you see that the outcomes to them are really quite different.

In the water into wine story, the disciples believe in Jesus when they see the miracle, and it’s a genuine faith. But here in the temple, as we see in verse 18, there’s a very different response. In fact, initially, there’s a negative response.

Rather than accepting Jesus’ rebuke and realising how much they need revolution, the people instead ask Jesus for proof that God is backing him. Who did Jesus think that he was, clearing out this temple of the Lord? By what authority was he doing this? Give us, Jesus, a heavenly sign to show us that you have the credentials to do this. I love Jesus’ answer.

It’s a little bit spiky, and it’s also pretty genius, because Jesus doesn’t say, he doesn’t say, I’m not going to give you a sign. He says, I’ll give you a sign. No problem.

(21:13 – 23:12)

Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days. I’ll give you the greatest of all signs. All you need to do is destroy the temple, and I’ll do it.

And this is where wires start to get crossed. They think Jesus is speaking of the Jerusalem temple, which is understandable, isn’t it? I mean, they’re standing in the temple. Jesus has just said that this temple needs to be put in order.

And so they think he’s speaking of this temple, and they say, how ludicrous, Jesus. It’s taken 46 years to build this temple. In fact, apparently, there was another decade or so building still to go at this point, and you’re going to reconstruct it in three days.

But then John the author adds a comment of explanation in verse 21 that should make the hairs on the back of our neck stand up. The temple he had spoken of was his body. Now, if we have read John 1 already, which we have, this won’t be a surprise to us that the temple was his body.

Why? Because in verse 14 of chapter 1, Jesus has been spoken of as the dwelling place of God. Jesus, the Word became flesh, and he tabernacled among us. And it’s also been said in that conversation with John the Baptist, it’s also been said that the Spirit of God has come to rest and remain on him.

(23:13 – 24:37)

So the idea that Jesus is a temple, his body is a temple, it’s not just here in chapter 2, it was there in chapter 1. Jesus is a temple of the Lord. He is both fully human and yet fully God. And so, there’s a deeper meaning here.

There’s something here that not everybody would catch. The opponents of Jesus didn’t get it. They didn’t understand he was talking about a resurrected body, and even his disciples didn’t fully get it.

Now, notice that there’s a theme in this passage of getting it. Look back at verse 17, which Dorothy helpfully pointed out, is actually a quotation from Psalm 69. When Jesus’ disciples saw him clearing out the temple, they remembered what was said in Psalm 69, where it speaks of, “‘Zeal for your house will consume me.'” So they saw what Jesus was doing, and they got the fact that something deeper was going on, that Jesus wasn’t just reacting to something in a moment, but somehow, this act was the fulfilment of a 1,000-year-old prophecy.

(24:41 – 24:57)

And yet the disciples didn’t get everything straight away. Verse 22 makes that clear. It says, “‘After Jesus was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said.

(24:57 – 25:38)

Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.'” That’s a wonderful thing, isn’t it? When you hear something in a sermon, or you read something in the Bible, or you’re taught something in Sunday school or by a youth leader, and you didn’t grasp it the first time, you didn’t get it when you heard it or read it or were taught it, here’s a wonderful thing. Years later, after that seed is sown, God can work in you in such a way that you get it. God can work at you in such a way that you understand it, that you believe it.

(25:39 – 26:09)

That’s a real encouragement, isn’t it? If you’re involved at all in sowing the seed of God’s Word, whatever that is, even Jesus wasn’t fully understood at the time, all the time. But they later understood. Later they made the connection, and they grasped not only what Jesus has said, but also that the Scripture spoke of the resurrection.

(26:12 – 26:30)

The resurrection will be the greatest of signs in a book full of signs. But think of the cost of this to Jesus. I think we could just sort of skip over this, couldn’t we? But we shouldn’t.

(26:31 – 27:31)

For there to be a rebuilding of the temple of his body, there needed to be a destruction of the temple, so much more than the knocking down of bricks or turning over tables. For the revolution to come for all humanity that would cleanse the temple of our corrupt sinfulness, we needed the temple of Jesus to be utterly destroyed, put to death on the cross. There, there would be righteous anger, the righteous anger that our sin deserved, taken on board by Jesus when he died on the cross.

Why? For the love of the Father’s honour, and for the love of you. But he didn’t stay down. He didn’t stay in the grave.

(27:32 – 28:51)

The temple of his body was rebuilt. It was destroyed on Friday, but it was rebuilt on Sunday, so that we could live in the presence of God forever. Again, there’s so many connections here.

End of chapter 1, do you recall that Jesus compared himself to a gateway to heaven, a stairway to heaven, a stairway in Jacob’s day? Jesus said, I am that house of God. I am that access point. Well, here we see how that will happen.

Through the resurrection, Jesus will become the house of God by whom we have access to God, the way, the truth, the life. But there’s a little shock at the end of this passage, because it seems that there’s another response that’s in the mix. We’ve had here the negative response of unbelief and challenge, but there’s actually another response here that’s really quite surprising in verses 23 to 25.

(28:52 – 30:00)

Because what we have here is what seems to be a better response than show us a sign. It says that Jesus was in Jerusalem over the Passover festival, and many people saw the signs he was performing and believed in him. By the by, this must mean that Jesus did a whole bunch of other miracles in the week of the Passover and unleavened bread that John just doesn’t record for us.

So, this is just a selection we’re getting. So, Jesus is doing lots of other signs, and because of it, by the end of that week, there were many who believed in him. It’s going well, right? I mean, isn’t this the same thing that we read at the end of the water into wine story? The disciples believed because of the miracle.

But no, something is off here. Look at verse 24. In a shocking verse, it says that Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all people.

(30:01 – 30:27)

That could be translated, Jesus did not believe in them. They believed in Jesus, but Jesus didn’t believe in them. What does that mean? So far in John, we have thought that there are just two basic responses to Jesus, unbelief and belief.

(30:28 – 31:01)

But it turns out that that’s a little too simple, because there is also two different kinds of faith, and one of them is real, and one of them is spurious. It’s like the parable of the sower. You remember in that parable, the seed is sown, and there’s one soil where there’s abundant life, but there’s also three soils that do not bear the abundant fruit in a way that lasts.

(31:02 – 31:56)

But what’s curious in that parable is that out of those three other responses, two of them seem to show a response, right? Something comes up out of the ground for a short time, and then it dies, or it’s choked. Only the hard soil has no response, but there’s the shallow soil, the thorny soil, where there’s the initial response. There’s a faith of sorts, but what kind of faith is it? That’s a question that John’s gospel is going to get us to think about.

Jesus knows what is in our hearts. He can see what is real, and He can see what is fake. Just as He isn’t taken in by a grandiose temple, He sees the reality.

(31:59 – 33:14)

Jesus knows that many of these same people who are lauding Him now will in just a short time be shouting, crucify, crucify. But true faith is the sort of faith that keeps trusting Jesus through thick and thin. It’s not just faith for the Passover, it’s faith for life.

It’s built on something deeper than mere miracles that impress you or help you. It’s built on knowing Jesus. The way, the truth, the life.

And so let me give you two appeals as I finish this message and try and kind of round this up. The first appeal is, let Jesus be a disruptor in your life. So often people idolise comfort and the absence of any drama.

There’s a whole culture of this now, isn’t it? No drama culture, no disruption culture. I want to feel good all the time. I don’t want to feel anything negative or bad.

(33:15 – 34:28)

We will do anything to avoid revolution. But friends, if we want to know God, and if we want to grow in our knowledge of God, then very often we need times of disruption. We need the work of Jesus, the disruptor, to convict us, to convert us, to show us where we need to grow.

We need not just the Jesus of the wedding, we need the Jesus of the temple. So welcome the disruption. Welcome the disruption.

Pray that God… You know, I don’t know if you’re like me. Sometimes I get scared when I pray. You ever have this when you pray? You maybe pray something like, Lord, change me.

Lord, sanctify me, make me more holy. I’ve no sooner prayed it and I’m thinking, oh no. Like, what is God going to do now to actually make me see my sin, to actually make me grow in faith? But we need that disruption.

(34:30 – 36:26)

So welcome it. And then secondly, what you need particularly when there’s been a sense of disruption and chaos, you need something then to stand on. You need something then to give you a foundation and an anchor and a root.

Be confident. Secondly, be confident in the resurrection of the temple, of Jesus’ body, because that is what guarantees the new way to God. In the next chapter, we’re going to think about new birth and new life, but there is no life if Jesus wasn’t raised to life.

The whole of our faith is built on the fact that he rose. So let that new risen temple be the bedrock of your confidence. What more sign do you need to put your trust in Jesus? Father God, help us this morning to welcome the disruption of your Spirit, of your Word, of your Son.

Help us today to plant our feet upon the solid foundation of the resurrection. Help us to come to you, our Father, through the way, through the gate, through the only one that can bring us right to you. Thank you so much, Lord Jesus, for all that you gave for us, for that destruction of your body that we might be restored.

(36:27 – 36:30)

And we pray this in your name. Amen.

The post A three-day rebuild – John 2v13–25 appeared first on Greenview Church.

During these weeks on Joel, we’ve been saying that Joel is a general book, that Joel is an intense book, and by that I mean general in the sense that it doesn’t have a specific context, not a very obvious specific context, and intense in the sense, well, that it’s intense, very intense. But the same thing I’d like to add, a final feature that I think we see in the book of Joel, that this prophetic book, this general book, this intense book, is also a gospel book. In fact, if you lined up all 66 books in the Bible, I think you could make an argument that Joel is among the most pure gospel of the books in the Bible.

Think about this. Joel begins with the problem of sin and a warning of judgement. That’s where any gospel outline starts.

The calling out of sin and a warning of judgement in chapter 1, 1 to chapter 2, 17. That then leads to the turning point in the book, which is not the people’s repentance, though certainly their repentance was required, but the turning point is not the people’s penitence, but the grace of God. You might remember chapter 2, verse 18 is the big hinge in the book when God gets jealous for his land and feels pity for his people.

It’s after that grace of God that restoration starts to come. And so the whole second half of the book and the third stage in the book then is restoration. And I want to just point out something, maybe this is something you’ve noticed in the previous couple of sermons, but I want you to notice that this restoration happens in a number of stages.

In other words, it doesn’t all happen at once. So there’s an immediate restoration, verses 19 to 27 of chapter 2. God promises an immediate returning of crops and wine and harvests. That was immediately for them right there, right then.

(2:38 – 5:00)

But that wasn’t the end of the restoration. In chapter 2, verses 28 to 32, God promises a last days restoration, which we thought about a few weeks ago that was fulfilled on the day of Pentecost when God poured out his Holy Spirit on all of his people. So that was another stage of restoration, but it wasn’t the final stage.

The final restoration is recorded in Joel chapter 3. And this restoration really is pure gospel. So let’s open our Bibles to Joel 3, and let’s read of this pure gospel that looks to the future. Joel 3, reading from verse 1 to the end of the book.

In those days and at that time, when I restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem, I will gather all nations and bring them down to the valley of Jehoshaphat. There I will put them on trial for what they did to my inheritance, my people Israel, because they scattered my people among the nations and divided up my land. They cast lots for my people and traded boys for prostitutes.

They sold girls for wine to drink. Now what have you against me, Tyre and Sidon, and all you regions of Philistia? Are you repaying me for something I have done? If you are paying me back, I will swiftly and speedily return on your own heads what you have done. For you took my silver and my gold and carried off my finest treasures to your temples.

You sold the people of Judah and Jerusalem to the Greeks, that you might send them far from their homeland. See, I am going to rouse them out of the places to which you sold them, and I will return on your own heads what you have done. I will sell your sons and daughters to the people of Judah, and they will sell them to the Sabaeans, a nation far away.

(5:00 – 10:09)

The Lord has spoken. Proclaim this among the nations. Prepare for war.

Rouse the warriors. Let all the fighting men draw near and attack. Beat your ploughshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears.

Let the weaklings say, I am strong. Come quickly, all you nations, from every side and assemble there. Bring down your warriors, Lord.

Let the nations be roused. Let them advance into the valley of Jehoshaphat, for there I will sit to judge all the nations on every side. Swing the sickle, for the harvest is ripe.

Come, trample the grapes, for the wine press is full and the vats overflow. So great is their wickedness. Multitudes, multitudes, in the valley of decision, for the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision.

The sun and moon will be darkened and the stars no longer shine. The Lord will roar from Zion and thunder from Jerusalem. The earth and the heavens will tremble, but the Lord will be a refuge for his people, a stronghold for the people of Israel.

Then you will know that I, the Lord your God, dwell in Zion, my holy hill. Jerusalem will be holy. Never again will foreigners invade her.

In that day, the mountains will drip with new wine and the hills will flow with milk. All the ravines of Judah will run with water. A fountain will flow out of the Lord’s house and will water the valley of Achasias.

But Egypt will be desolate, Edom a desert waste, because of violence done to the people of Judah, in whose land they shed innocent blood. Judah will be inhabited forever and Jerusalem through all generations. Shall I leave their blood, their innocent blood unavenged? No, I will not.

The Lord dwells in Zion. This is God’s word. Well, as I said in the introduction, it doesn’t get more pure gospel than Joel 3, because essentially what we have here in this Old Testament passage tucked away in the Old Testament is nothing less than heaven and hell, or hell and heaven in the terms that Joel describes.

There are two destinies, two outcomes for all human beings. Or to put it another way, to use the terms of this passage, there is a day to come that will be a double-sided day, a double-sided day. For some, it will be a day of judgement.

And for others, it will be a day of restoration. So this passage is going to challenge us perhaps, or comfort us, depending on whether we’re taking refuge in Jesus this evening. Let’s look at the two sides of the coin.

First of all, judgement day. Judgement day. And this is from verse 1 to the middle of verse 16.

These verses describe the day of final judgement. The terminology that Joel uses here, he calls it the day of the Lord, verse 14. That’s Joel’s way of speaking of the final judgement.

It’s the day of the Lord. It comes five times in this prophecy. And who will be judged on the day of the Lord? Well, verse 2 gives us a very clear answer, doesn’t it? I will gather all nations.

This is God speaking. I will gather all nations and bring them down to the valley of Jehoshaphat. I will put them on trial.

So there’s an unambiguous answer. The nations of the world in their entirety will be judged by God. Despite all of the nationalism that’s rising up in the world today, despite all the jingoism, the sense of my nation’s better than your nation, there will be no nation above another in that day.

(10:10 – 12:59)

No nation, no culture that will escape the judgement of God. Verse 14, notice how it describes the nations as many multitudes, a mass gathering of multicultural humanity. I was thinking that this is the opposite of what we read about in Revelation 7. Some of us were there yesterday morning when Andy Hunter was describing the idea of the church being an assembly, a gathering.

And we thought about how this assembly is really a preview of a great assembly to come, Revelation 7, a gathering in the new creation for praise and worship and celebration. But this is not that gathering. This is a very different kind of gathering.

It’s a gathering for judgement. Perhaps you noticed in verse 2 that this place where the gathering happens is called the Valley of Jehoshaphat. It’s also called that in verse 12, the Valley of Jehoshaphat.

Now, maybe you’re wondering where that is. Actually, if you look for this valley on a map, you will not find it. There is no place called the Valley of Jehoshaphat on a map.

The significance here is not the actual place, but the meaning of the place. The word Jehoshaphat in Hebrew means the Lord judges. So, the Valley of Jehoshaphat is the valley where the Lord judges.

It’s the place of God’s judgement. That’s why in verse 14, it’s also called the Valley of Decision. Maybe you thought, what’s that about? It’s not the valley of our decision.

This is not a valley where we gather and we decide to follow God. This is not like an evangelistic rally or something. This is past all that.

This is at the final judgement, when God will make the decision about us. Here at the end of time, coming at the end of His long patience, God makes His final verdict on a sinful world. And it is a fair verdict, which is why in verses 2 to 8, we have a list of all the charges against the nations.

(13:00 – 13:45)

The crimes that are listed in these verses are horrible in themselves. Human trafficking in verse 3, rape in verse 3, theft in verse 5. These are terrible wrongs in themselves. Yet what makes them especially egregious in the mind of Joel, in Joel 3, is that these are crimes against God and crimes against His people.

So, notice verse 3, they cast lots for my people. Verse 5, you took my silver and my gold. You see, it’s God’s temple they’re robbing.

(13:46 – 14:13)

Or in verse 4, where God asked Tyre, Sidon, and Philistia, these were nations immediately neighbours to Israel. And God says to them, what have you against me? You see, in the end, all sin is an act of God defiance. In the end, all crimes are God crimes.

(14:15 – 15:01)

The essence of sin is God defiance, something that is seen no more clearly than at the cross of Christ, when God in the flesh is despised, dishonoured, and put to death. And what these verses tell us is that God is keeping a record of all such sin. He’s not indifferent about sin.

In fact, God is going to war against those who sin. That’s what’s being depicted in verses 9 to 16. The final judgement is pictured as a war, as a battle.

(15:03 – 21:47)

Notice in these verses that God calls the nations to war, like a boxer calling out an opponent, you know, someone that’s called him a name or something, and he’s calling him out. God’s calling out the nations, calling them to the ring, calling them to the valley of Jehoshaphat, where the battle is going to be fought. And God says, come to this place and bring all of your fighting men, even all of the weaklings, even the people that don’t normally fight.

You need every last man. And bring all the weapons that you can find and fashion. God says that they’ve to convert their gardening tools and convert them into spears and swords.

They’re going to need all the weapons they can muster. You better bring all the armies of the world and all the weapons of the world, because the one you’re coming up against is God himself. It’s amazing how God arranges things, isn’t it? I’ve been reading through the Psalms in my quiet times.

And a few days ago, just when I was starting to prepare this, I was reading Psalm 2. And it’s probably the best parallel to this passage in the Bible, where all the nations of the world, all the rulers of the world are coming against God and coming against his King in their rage. I suppose today, this would not only be the obvious leaders of the world, but it would also be the thought leaders, what we would call the influencers. It would be the enlightenment philosophers.

It would be all the clever people who are telling us that there probably isn’t a God, or that he’s nothing to be worried about, or that at least Jesus is not the one that we should be looking to for salvation. And there they all are in Psalm 2, raging against God and his Messiah. And what does Psalm 2 tell us? It tells us that the Lord is enthroned in heaven, far above the reach of their puny fists that they’re swinging towards God.

And it says that while they are raging on earth, that he in heaven is laughing at them, because their opposition is so ridiculous. Back to Joel, when the battle actually commences, it’s nothing more than a whitewash. In fact, it’s so one-sided that the battle is not described as a battle when it actually starts.

Notice in verse 13, it’s described like harvesting wheat and crushing grapes. So it’s meant to be a battle, but it ends up being as easy as a harvest, going into the field and just sickling the wheat, trampling on the grapes. This is no contest when the nations meet the roaring lion of verse 15.

Now, this is not easy stuff to think about, but I take it that it’s in the Bible so that whoever we are, we will not only take God, but we will take the promises of his judgement seriously. Whether you’re not a Christian and you maybe have the notion that God wouldn’t really judge me, and you’re just not sure about his justice, or whether you actually are a Christian, and you’re suffering things in life that feel very unjust, and you too might be doubting the final justice of God in your situation. Well, this passage says, be assured, whoever you are, that our God, the rock, is without injustice.

Good and upright is he. Therefore, let’s be confident to meet this God. We’ll think about how that can be in a moment, how we can be confident to meet this God, and let’s turn to him in repentance if we’ve never done that before.

What’s so remarkable in this passage is that the idea of meeting God, which is so fearful for the unbeliever, in the second half of the chapter is so enticing for the believer. It really is a tale of two halves, this chapter. So secondly, let’s move on to restoration day.

Restoration day. And I’m picking that language up from verse 1, where it says, in those days, and at that time, when I restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem. This is the reason why we’ve titled this series, The God of Second Chances, because he’s the God of restoration.

I was thinking, you know, God’s a little bit like one of these highly skilled restoration people, you know, that sort of they’re working on antiques and very old items, you know, things that are hundreds of years old, things that you and I might just throw in the skip and not know what to do with. But the skilled restorer takes those things and patiently and perfectly restores them to their former glory. That is what God does with us.

He’s the God of restoration. He’s the God of second chances. He takes our dilapidated fallen lives and he renews them.

And this restoration begins the moment we take refuge in him. It’s interesting, again, in the Psalms, as I’ve been reading through the Psalms, I’ve been very struck by the lack of mention of faith in the Psalms. If you’ve ever read through the Psalms, I don’t know if you’ve noticed that, I think it’s less than 13, I think it’s 13 times the word faith is used.

(21:48 – 25:53)

What was it this morning that Peter said, 98 times in John, the word faith is used? It’s only 13 times in the whole of the Psalms. Why is that? And again, it was interesting, I was reading the other day, someone was talking about the phrase in the Psalms, refuge in the Lord, taking refuge in the Lord. And the writer said, this is the Old Testament Jewish way of speaking about faith in the Lord.

So the Psalms is full of talking about faith in the Lord, but it talks about it in language like taking refuge in the Lord. Think about it. If you take refuge inside some kind of fortress, some kind of protective strong tower, when you go inside that place, you’re putting faith in its protection in its ability to protect you.

And that’s exactly what this is talking about here. Notice again, the hinge of chapter 3, look at verse 16. What’s the only difference for God’s people? Why is it that we aren’t swept away in the exposed valley of judgement? Because verse 16b, but the Lord will be our refuge and a stronghold for Israel.

In New Testament terms, this is when we have faith in Christ and we are then hidden in Christ. You know all that language in the New Testament, the in Christ language. Some of it comes from this idea of being in the fortress, being in the refuge in the Old Testament, hidden in the safety of Christ, hidden inside his righteousness, hidden by his blood sacrifice, swept across the door of refuge.

That’s where our restoration begins. And it’s a refuge that I have now spiritually that is one day a refuge I will enjoy in the new creation. So again, there’s that kind of already not yet going on here.

So what will that be like? What will the restored world be like? That’s what the passage finishes with. We just have a glimpse of it here, but boy, is it good. So just notice a few things with me.

First of all, it will be a restored world of purity. Verse 17, then you will know that I, the Lord, your God dwell in Zion, my holy hill. Jerusalem will be holy.

Never again will foreigners invade her. This is the idea that you see in revelation of all sin and all injustice, all that defiles and spoils and invades our world. All of it will be left outside.

It will be ejected outside of the refuge, outside of the new heavens and the new city. And inside will be purity. No more need for banks and locks and passwords.

No more need for law courts, police services or armies. No more pain and no more tears and no more need for confession of sin because you won’t sin. Imagine how happy our world would be if that was the world we were living in.

It’s kind of ironic, isn’t it, that people think that holiness equals unhappiness. It’s really the opposite. To be in a holy world would be to be in a happy world.

(25:54 – 26:04)

We thought about that this morning, that Jesus is bringing abundant joy. So that leads us to the second word. The second word is prosperity.

(26:05 – 27:54)

The restored world will be a world of prosperity. This is very much in keeping with this morning sermon. Verse 18 promises that the mountains will drip with new wine and the hills will flow with milk and every valley in Israel will be filled with water.

As Peter was saying this morning, this is not really about physical wine or physical milk or even physical rivers. The Jewish people already had that. That was restored pretty quickly when they turned from God and he sort of withheld the famines and so on.

This is about a spiritual prosperity that will be matched ultimately by a physical prosperity. It’s a place of abundant joy and abundant life, which is why, as we saw this morning, Jesus made so much wine. I used to really puzzle at that.

I used to think, why did Jesus make so much wine? Because he’s bringing so much joy, so much peace, so much abundance, so much goodness in the new creation. A wine-filled wedding was just the start of that. People today so want to be prosperous.

People talk about that, don’t they? Being wealthy in every way, in your health, in your relationships and financially. I don’t think the Bible is actually against prosperity. What the Bible is against is when we seek prosperity without God in the picture, when we want to be wealthy without God as our treasure.

(27:55 – 28:35)

When we seek wealth without Christ, when we seek all that prosperity of all types without Christ, what ends up happening is that we end up like Egypt and Eden in verse 19, a desolate wilderness. No wine, no milk, no water. They’re in the desert.

They were the people that were doing well in worldly wealthy terms compared to Israel. But in the end, they’re left with nothing. You can’t get true prosperity without a restored relationship with your Creator.

(28:35 – 29:09)

So there’s going to be purity there. There’s going to be prosperity there. But Joel’s not quite done.

Greatest of all, thirdly, God’s presence will be there. Verse 17, then you will know that I, the Lord your God, dwell in Zion, my holy hill. And then again in the final verse of the chapter, how does it end? The Lord dwells in Zion.

(29:10 – 31:29)

This is more than just the Lord blessing Zion from above. Here is God coming down, not just sending His Spirit, coming in the wonderful form of His Spirit, but here is God in His totality coming and living among His people. The greatest blessing of restoration is the presence of God Himself.

And so two things as we finish, two things as we round off this sermon and this series, as we’ve come all the way from the locusts to the lavish garden of a new Eden, as we’ve come all the way from the devastation to the restoration, two things. Number one, if you are taking refuge in Christ, all that the end of this chapter promises is yours. It is all yours in Christ, all promised to you.

Because you see, in Hebrews chapter 12, there’s a passage that speaks about Zion, and it says that this is for you. In Hebrews 12, we understand from that chapter that Zion is not just a place in the land of Israel, that it’s not just a place where Jewish people live. In Hebrews 12, what we learn is that Zion is the place where the church of Jesus Christ will live for eternity.

It is the heavenly Jerusalem as the writer describes it. And it’s the home of all those who have taken their refuge in Christ, whatever nationality they come from, Jew and Gentile. This is why we sang this at the beginning, John Newton, in his great hymn, Glorious Things of You are Spoken, he said this in the final verse, which we sang, Saviour, since of Zion’s city, I through grace a member am.

(31:30 – 33:43)

Let the world condemn or pity, I will glory in his name. This is all yours in Christ. One more thought.

If this day, the day of the Lord, the day of judgement, the day of restoration, if it looms so large in the book of Joel and in the whole of the Bible, if this day will change everything for every person who has ever lived in history, if this will be the day that will decide every destiny, then you should live every one of your days with one eye on this day. You should be like the engaged couple who every single day, I mean, it’s almost sickeningly annoying, but every single day they’re thinking about, they’re talking about, they’re planning for that day. And until that day comes, it influences every day.

I wonder if the day of the Lord has that kind of grip on your heart and in mine. Let’s pray. Father, God, help us to live our lives with the day in mind.

Thank you for another day that we’re going to focus on now, another day of the Lord, another day of judgement and restoration. Thank you so much that in Christ, in him, we have refuge from your fair judgement. Help us to celebrate that.

Help us, Lord, to experience more of the joy of that. Help us to bring our thanks and our praise to you for all that you’ve given us and for all that you’ve promised us. And it’s in Jesus’ name we pray.

Amen.

The post Coming Soon…the Day of the Lord – Joel 3v1–21 appeared first on Greenview Church.

Feeling a little bit, husky voice today, so apologies for that, just a bit of a cold. Hopefully you’re about to hear me okay. Well, it’s really good to be with you.

Thank you, Colin, for inviting me along to be with you and extend our relationship as churches that are neighbouring each other. We’re looking at John chapter 2 this morning, so if you’ve got a Bible, I can see many of you have got it open already, which is great, but if you haven’t, then this is the time to open your Bibles to chapter 2 of the Gospel of John. I know this series has been titled John’s Gospel Signs of Life, and after an introduction to the identity of Jesus, having John the Baptist testify about who Jesus is, and Jesus calling his first disciples, today we get really to the first sign, what’s called the first sign, as you’ve probably noticed.

(0:53 – 1:12)

And you’ll see, as you work through John over the coming weeks and months, that there are actually seven signs in these next ten chapters that you will come across. And this is the first of the signs, the sign that was performed at the wedding. But let me just pray as well, before I start.

(1:15 – 1:26)

Father, I need your help this morning. We all need your help this morning. We are dependent on your spirit to work in us, to transform us by your word.

(1:27 – 1:42)

Help us to listen carefully, and I include myself in that. Help me to listen carefully to your word this morning, as we seek to learn from it. And change us, change us more and more into the likeness of your son Jesus.

(1:43 – 1:55)

And I pray that you would do that, not just for our good, but for ultimately your glory. In Jesus’ name, amen. We love weddings, don’t we? Well, I do anyway.

(1:55 – 2:07)

I don’t know, I was going to say, hands up if you don’t like a wedding. I don’t think we’ll get many hands up at all. We like them because they are times, they’re beautiful, aren’t they, in many ways? They’re joyful occasions.

(2:07 – 2:25)

And they’re also times to just celebrate harmony, celebrate connection, togetherness, and loving commitment. As I speak, you may be reflecting fondly about your own wedding. Or maybe you’re thinking about a wedding that you’ve been to quite recently.

(2:26 – 2:34)

Maybe it’s the dancing you’re thinking about. Maybe it’s the music. Maybe it’s the joy or the chat, the conversations that you had.

(2:34 – 2:38)

Or maybe it’s the food. Or maybe the wine. I don’t know.

(2:39 – 3:02)

But John doesn’t include the wedding story to reminisce about the great times that he had with Jesus. This isn’t a book that John wrote just to talk about all the fun stuff that he got to do with Jesus. He includes this episode, as he does all the episodes in his gospel account, because he wants to provoke belief in Jesus.

(3:04 – 3:15)

John’s gospel, you see, is all about believing in Jesus. John refers to actually 98 times. I found that a staggering amount when I saw it.

(3:15 – 3:29)

98 times he refers to believing in this gospel. And in all but three of the 21 chapters, we see this kind of theme of believing. And you’ve already seen it three times in chapter one.

(3:29 – 3:58)

Perhaps you’re aware in verse seven of chapter one, speaking about John the Baptist, John says, “He came as a witness to testify concerning the light, so that through him all might believe.” And then you saw it in verse 12 of chapter one. Speaking about Jesus, he said, “Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God”.

(3:59 – 4:21)

And then finally in verse 50 of chapter one, Jesus said to Nathanael, after he’d identified Jesus as the Son of God, “You believe, because I told you, I saw you under the fig tree. You will see greater things than that”. And as we see in this passage, this is the beginning of those greater things.

(4:22 – 4:41)

You’ll see Jesus encounter a lot of people as you work through the book of John. But John always wants to draw our attention to how folk are responding to him, how people are reacting to him. You see, John chapter two, one to 11, is not primarily about a miracle.

(4:43 – 5:07)

It’s not primarily about a miracle that Jesus performed in the little village of Cana. It’s about seeing Jesus through different eyes and responding to him in faith. We saw Nathanael believe in chapter one, and now in the beginning of chapter two, we read the story of how the first disciples came to believe.

(5:09 – 5:42)

But John gives us this wedding account not just to show us how the disciples came to faith. Remember, John wrote his gospel so that you and me, as readers, may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing, you and me may have life in his name. John wants us to see and grow in our understanding of who Jesus is and what he has come to do.

(5:44 – 6:10)

You know how you get the gospel tracts? You may even have some gospel tracts at the back or in the corridor here. Little booklets, or even nowadays you get short videos, don’t you, that succinctly tell us about what salvation in Jesus is. This morning, I want you to think of John chapter two, verses one to 11, as like a gospel tract.

(6:13 – 6:29)

Because in it, we get the good news about Jesus. In it, we get the gospel in a wedding. Firstly, in verses one to five, we see what to do when the good life fails us.

(6:29 – 6:46)

We see what to do when the good life fails us. When we give up pretending that everything is awesome, to use the phrase from the Lego movie that was a few years ago. Verses one and two just set the scene for us, really.

(6:46 – 7:12)

Jesus was at a wedding, along with his mum and disciples, in the small Galilean village of Cana. The bride or groom, or perhaps the parents may have been a friend of Jesus or his mum, were not told that information. Weddings were, as they still are, a big deal in Middle Eastern culture.

(7:13 – 7:42)

In first century Palestine, it was considered to be the most grand event in life, particularly among the poor. A feast would precede the wedding ceremony, and the newlyweds would then be paraded home with a canopy carried over their heads. But as we’re used to, after the celebrations, heading off on honeymoon, there was no such thing happening in first century Israel.

(7:43 – 7:55)

Because as the newlyweds got home, the couple or the parents would host an open house. A celebration that would go on for up to a week. Talk about stress.

(7:56 – 8:19)

Having extended family for a week at Christmas seems one thing, but having the whole community gather on your house is a completely different matter. The bridegroom generally took responsibility for all the catering arrangements. But it may have been that Jesus’ mum was involved in some way in helping with the hospitality.

(8:20 – 9:04)

But we’re told in verse 3 that the joyous celebration hit a snag. The wine had run out, and with the festivities mid-flow, this was not a good situation. Now as western 21st century Christians, we might wonder, what’s all the fuss about? Had folk not had enough to drink anyway? We all know, don’t we, the destruction that alcohol can have when overused? And some of you here today may know this all too true, be it in your own life or be it in the life of your loved ones.

(9:06 – 9:32)

But back then and there, wine was not primarily seen as a means to get drunk, but as a symbol of joy. Psalm 104 says that wine is a gift to gladden the heart. So running out of wine really sucked the joy out of the party.

(9:33 – 10:00)

In fact, sometimes it resulted in legal action being taken. Seems a bit drastic in our day, doesn’t it? But even if the threat of legal action was not on the table, the shame and the embarrassment of failing to provide suitable hospitality would be hard for the couple to live down. Jesus’ mum recognised the problem.

(10:02 – 10:18)

And she did what many of you widows here might do. She went to her oldest boy and asked him for help. “Can you fix it, son”, is what she said.

(10:20 – 10:36)

It’s hard to guess what she was expecting from him. We know that Jesus was a carpenter. Jesus would have been fairly used to perhaps fixing a rickety table or a rickety chair.

(10:38 – 10:58)

But fixing a wine shortage, that’s a whole different level. But Mary, as we all do when we face a problem in life that we don’t know how to solve, goes to the person that she trusts the most. She goes to Jesus.

(10:59 – 11:15)

And although initially he seems to bat her off, she persists and she trusts. She trusts that Jesus will help her. Now, there was a programme in the late 1970s.

(11:17 – 11:25)

Now, just in case you’re wondering, I’m not old enough to remember that programme. It was called The Good Life. Some of you may remember it.

(11:25 – 11:49)

It was about a middle-aged man who left an intense job in the city and together with his wife, moved out to the country for a simpler life. They went in search of the good life. We all crave, don’t we, our own version of the good life.

(11:50 – 11:58)

Be it the perfect job. Be it the ideal spouse. Or the dream home.

(11:59 – 12:17)

Or high-flying kids. Or just good health and peace and quiet. But life really doesn’t work like that, does it? You may feel right now that you’re coasting the crest of a wave.

(12:17 – 12:33)

But then, out of nowhere, something comes along to quench your joy. You’re made redundant. You find a lump and you’re told it’s cancerous.

(12:34 – 12:54)

Your children struggle to cope with life. You lose a loved one. You see, if you’re pursuing and relying on the good life to satisfy you, if you’re pursuing and relying on the good life for your joy, you’re in for disappointment.

(12:56 – 13:11)

When I first arrived at South Glasgow Church in September, they were working through the book of Ecclesiastes. Now I confess I doubted how helpful it would be. Woe is me to think that.

(13:12 – 13:30)

But I couldn’t have been more wrong. Because you see, Ecclesiastes is all about helping us to see what life is really like. It teaches us how to live well in an unwell world.

(13:31 – 13:45)

It jolts us. It’s like a back twinge that helps us to see the reality of life. You see, most people out there are living in a plastic world.

(13:46 – 14:03)

Where everybody’s pretending that their lives are awesome. But deep down, deep down we know that that’s not true. The gospel calls us to be brutally honest.

(14:04 – 14:20)

It calls us to recognise that everything’s not awesome. It calls us to abdicate our pursuit of the so-called good life. It calls us to acknowledge our helplessness and it calls us to acknowledge our fears.

(14:22 – 14:42)

And then it invites us to take them, as Mary does, to Jesus. It invites us to believe that Jesus really can help us. He can help you and he can help me.

(14:43 – 15:02)

John 1.11 is the gospel in a wedding. Firstly, it teaches us that when the good life fails you, turn to Jesus. Secondly, in verse 7 it teaches us that Jesus gives us what we really need.

(15:03 – 15:16)

Not what we think we need, but what we really need. Jesus responds to Mary’s plea for help. He fixes her problem.

(15:17 – 15:28)

He provides the wine needed to maintain the joy of the wedding. But remember that these miracles are not just about displaying Jesus’ brilliance. They’re signs.

(15:29 – 15:49)

They’re signs that point forward to something even greater than the miracle that’s about to be performed. They’re glimpses into the future. In verse 7 we’re given a small amount of detail as to how Jesus went about performing this miracle.

(15:51 – 16:18)

But in essence, all we get is that he took water in stone jars and turned it into wine. Now, I don’t know about you, but if I was writing John’s gospel, I’d want to include a little bit more detail than that. Did he say abracadabra? Did he put his hands in the water? Or did he hover his hands over the top of water? Or did he shake the jars? But we’re not told this.

(16:20 – 16:46)

We don’t get any of that detail, do we? All we get is some seemingly irrelevant detail about the type of pots being used. Look at verse 6 with me. John tells us that nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from 20 to 30 gallons.

(16:48 – 17:03)

Because this is a sign, we need to pay special attention to the detail that John decides to include. Firstly, we’re given the number of jars. There were six of them.

(17:04 – 17:24)

Now, for the Jews, many of you may know this, the number seven indicated completeness. Because God created the heavens and the earth in six days, and on the seventh day he rested. And so seven marks the number of completeness, because the work of creation was finished.

(17:25 – 17:52)

And therefore the number six, not reaching seven, was a number that symbolised incompleteness. But then we’re told that these jars were made of stone and used by the Jews for ceremonial washing. Now, they weren’t used for reasons of personal hygiene, like we would use a sink to wash our hands before a meal today.

(17:52 – 18:14)

They had a far greater significance than that. They acted as reminders to the Jews of their perpetual need for cleaning, for cleansing, of their constant need for purification. They were reminders that they weren’t clean enough for fellowship with God.

(18:14 – 18:47)

They cleaned themselves as Moses instructed them to, but even that was not sufficient to fit them for communion with God. I was speaking to a young person yesterday, and she told me every night she goes to bed thinking of the stuff that she’s done wrong, that she’s not good enough to be forgiven for. She tries and tries and tries to sort it out, but every night there are new things that she realises that she hasn’t done.

(18:49 – 19:21)

We may not wash our hands to purify ourselves today, but we do plenty of other things, don’t we, to try and make ourselves right with God. You might think that if you do enough good, it’ll wipe out all the bad stuff you’ve done in your life. You might think that coming here, going to church on a Sunday, or praying, or reading your Bible, or taking communion, or being baptised can make you good with Him too.

(19:22 – 19:47)

But John, throughout his gospel, as you’ll see, shows us that all our efforts for making ourselves acceptable to God are useless. They’re futile. You see, we need someone to atone for our sins.

We need Jesus. Let’s back up a little bit. Well, two verses to verse four.

(19:48 – 20:10)

Here we’re told about Jesus’ rather bizarre response to Mary’s plea for help. You notice he says, “My hour has not yet come”. What a strange thing to say to Mary’s request. But remember, this episode is a sign that points beyond what Jesus was about to do.

(20:11 – 20:32)

As you work through John’s gospel, you’ll see again and again, Jesus referring to His hour. And always in relation to the time of His glorification, which He reveals is the time of His death on the cross and His exaltation. Jesus knew why He’d come.

(20:34 – 20:43)

He’d not come to do amazing miracles. We see Him doing that, of course we do. He’d come to die for sinners like you and me.

(20:44 – 21:07)

He’d come to cleanse us from our unrighteousness. Remember how John the Baptist described Jesus when he saw Him coming in chapter one? “Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”. You see, what we most need is for our sins to be dealt with.

(21:08 – 21:29)

You see, Jesus is the sacrifice that the Old Testament sacrificial system pointed to. Jesus is the purifying water that the Old Testament cleansing rituals pointed to. Mary and these newlyweds’ greatest need was not for more wine to avoid embarrassment.

(21:30 – 21:49)

It was for their sins to be dealt with. In the same way, our greatest need today, every single one of us here this morning, our greatest need is not for a well-ordered life. It’s not for a wonderful marriage.

(21:50 – 22:03)

It’s not for well-behaved kids. It’s not for a peaceful retirement. It’s not even to know the Bible really well or to be right about everything or for others to think highly of you.

(22:04 – 22:22)

Oh, how I need to repent of that one. My greatest need, your greatest need is to have our eyes opened to your own, to my own sinfulness and your own sinfulness. It’s to see that we cannot pull the wool over God’s eyes.

(22:22 – 22:36)

It’s to see that we can’t cajole His favour. And it’s to see that only through Jesus can our sins be forgiven. This is at the heart of the gospel.

(22:39 – 22:54)

Jesus is not about giving us what we want or think we need. He’s about giving us what we really need. So in John chapter 2 verses 1 to 11, we see the gospel in a wedding.

(22:55 – 23:09)

Firstly, we see that when the good life fails, we’re to turn to Jesus. Secondly, we see that Jesus gives us what we really need. And thirdly, in verses 8 to 11, we see that Jesus gives us more than we expect.

(23:10 – 23:31)

He gives us more than we bargained for. Jesus instructed the servants to fill the big stone jars with water and then He tells them to draw from them and serve up to the master of the banquet. Now the master of the banquet was the guy who the groom had asked to look after everything.

(23:31 – 23:47)

Perhaps it was like the best man today. But this master of banquet seems completely oblivious, unaware of the wine situation. And he seems completely oblivious to the miracle that Jesus has just performed in the kitchen.

(23:49 – 24:04)

But what he says is profound. Look at it with me in verse 10. After the servants had passed him the cup and he tasted the water that had been turned into wine, he called the bridegroom aside and said, verse 10.

(24:04 – 24:22)

“Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheapest wine after the guests had had too much to drink. But you have saved the best till last or the best till now”. He’s astonished.

(24:23 – 24:48)

He’s not astonished at the miracle, but he’s astonished at the quality of the wine, particularly as it’s later in the celebrations. And the best wine was usually served at the beginning before anyone is too inebriated to truly appreciate it. But this man, without even realising it, is unlocking the sign for us.

(24:50 – 25:01)

For the Jews, wine was a symbol of joy. We saw that a little bit earlier. But it was also a sign of the arrival of the kingdom of God.

(25:02 – 25:21)

The prophet Isaiah described it like this. He said, on this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples. A banquet of aged wine, the best of meats and the finest of wines.

(25:23 – 25:37)

Isaiah described it this way. In that day the mountains will drip new wine and the hills will flow with milk. Think ahead now to the Lord’s Supper.

(25:38 – 26:19)

When Jesus said, “I tell you, I will not drink from this fruit of the vine from now on until the day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom”. John, when he was nearing the end of his life, when he was on the Isle of Patmos, he got a glimpse of this banquet. Got a bit of time this afternoon?

Go and read Revelation 19. It will do your soul good today. In Revelation 19, John describes the day when the lamb, the lamb that he spoke of back in chapter 1 of John’s gospel.

(26:21 – 26:49)

When the lamb is described as the bridegroom who will host a banquet to end all banquets. Do you see what Jesus is doing at the miracle at Cana? He’s declaring himself as the king who will usher in the kingdom of God. Jesus is the bridegroom who will embrace and fully cleanse us and provide for his bride, the church.

(26:50 – 27:09)

We are the bride of Christ and he will provide for us all that we need to enjoy him forever. You see, this is the hope of the gospel. That one day Jesus will not only wipe away every tear.

(27:10 – 27:25)

Not only will he put an end to death and do away with all mourning and pain. But he will bring us into a wonderful banquet. Where we will experience the joy of his presence and provision forever.

(27:27 – 27:41)

As we trust him with our lives and our deaths. We will not avoid pain and suffering. But we will begin to enter into the joy of the Lord.

(27:43 – 27:52)

I’ve heard people compare Christianity to a straight jacket. Perhaps you have too. They say that Christianity just restrains joy.

(27:54 – 28:05)

Maybe you think that way yourself. But if you do think that way, remember Jesus brought the wine. He brings the joy.

(28:06 – 28:17)

Maybe you’ve got a friend who’s always telling you the same thing. The idea that Christianity is a straight jacket. Maybe you could just open John chapter 2 with them.

(28:20 – 28:32)

Maybe you could open John chapter 2 with them and show them the gospel in the wedding. In this life we know suffering. But our ultimate need is for Jesus.

(28:33 – 28:42)

Not for more wine. Or physical healing even. As much as is helpful for us to have and good for us to have.

(28:43 – 28:54)

Not for more comfort. Because only in Jesus can we know and experience a joy that will not fade. Actually, let me rephrase that.

(28:55 – 29:07)

It won’t just not fade, it will grow. You see, our joy in the Lord is growing. As we come to know him and appreciate what he has done for us.

(29:08 – 29:19)

What he’s doing for us and what he will do for us. So turn to Jesus when the good life fails you. And not only will he give you what you need.

(29:20 – 29:36)

He will give you far more than you expect. Let me pray. Lord, as we gather our thoughts, as we contemplate your word.

(29:38 – 29:48)

As we reflect on what you have spoken. Through your apostle John. Help us to see the beauty that you reveal in your word.

(29:50 – 30:03)

Help us to see the beauty of your son as it’s revealed in your word. Help us to see the joy that we can have in knowing Jesus. And if there’s people here today that don’t know you.

(30:04 – 30:17)

I just pray that you would be drawing them by your Holy Spirit to yourself. That they would see Jesus for who he truly is. And they would turn to him in repentance and faith and enjoy the good life.

(30:17 – 30:25)

The true good life. The good life that never fades. In Jesus’ name we pray.

Amen.

The post Water to Wine – John 2v1–12 appeared first on Greenview Church.

The Gospel of John, and one of the things we are seeing is that Jesus is the focus, especially in chapter 1, Jesus is the focus, but he’s not the only man featured. Jesus is dominant in John 1, but he’s not alone in John 1. He’s not by himself in John 1. There’s actually someone else, if I could put it like this, who keeps appearing in John 1, a man who keeps reappearing in this chapter, and that person, as you’ve probably guessed or remembered, is John the Baptist. Now, I want you to notice something about how the Bible presents John in this chapter.

To begin with, in verses 1 to 28, he appears in an alternating pattern. So, you get a passage about Jesus, and then you get a passage about John, and then you get another passage about Jesus, and then another passage about John, and then you get another passage about Jesus, and another passage about John. Six times it oscillates back and forth, Jesus, then John, Jesus, then John, Jesus, then John, until verse 29.

(1:29 – 1:53)

And in verse 29, we get this little shift, or big shift, where we move from Jesus, then John to Jesus and John. See that? For the first time, in the same scene, the same verse, the same incident, Jesus and John appear together. In verses 29 to 34, as Jesus points to John and says, look, the Lamb of God.

(1:54 – 2:22)

So Jesus, then John, Jesus and John, and now as we approach the end of chapter 1, and we come to the end of the introduction to John, and as we build the bridge into the rest of the book and the story, notice what happens now. Thirdly, we get Jesus, not John. Jesus, not John, in verses 35 to 51.

(2:23 – 2:42)

Because in these final verses, John passes the baton to Jesus. John fades from the picture and leaves Jesus in centre stage. Jesus, not John, will gather a group of disciples.

(2:43 – 3:00)

Jesus, not John, will make some great claims and promises at the end of this passage. Jesus, not John, will be the Messiah in the rest of this gospel. And so John fades out, that’s the point of today.

(3:00 – 3:13)

He fades out and Jesus starts to shine. And as that happens, there are three lessons for us that we’re going to think about today. Three applications for us.

(3:14 – 3:28)

So number one, the handover we must make. Number one, the handover we must make. As I’ve been saying, this passage records a handover.

(3:29 – 3:42)

A handover from John, who had been in the spotlight in Israel, to Jesus, the one who’s now going to shine. And I like how someone put it. Someone has said this about John the Baptist.

(3:42 – 4:07)

They’ve said, John’s job was to prepare the way, then get out of the way. Right? That’s a good job, isn’t it? To prepare the way for Jesus, but then get out of the way of Jesus. And I guess most of us know this, but actually getting out of the way is not always the easiest thing to do.

(4:08 – 4:21)

It’s not always easy to give up a spotlight you’re enjoying. It’s not always easy to give up control of something you want control of. And yet, that’s what John has to do.

(4:21 – 4:44)

Look at verse 35. The next day, John was there with two of his disciples. I’d never noticed this before, how Scripture emphasises that John’s disciples were his disciples before they became Jesus’ disciples.

(4:46 – 4:54)

John was their mentor. John was their discipler. John had his own personal Bible college going on.

(4:55 – 5:03)

These men sat in John’s lectures on the Bible. They hung on his every word. There was at least two students in this college.

(5:03 – 5:11)

We don’t know. There might have even been more. And what does John do? He sabotages his own kingdom.

(5:13 – 5:30)

When one day, he points his finger at Jesus and says, look, the Lamb of God. Look, the chosen one of God. Look, the one on whom the Spirit rests and remains.

(5:32 – 5:57)

And in case they didn’t hear him the first time, the very next day, John said it again. Look, the Lamb of God. So that, I assume he says that so that his disciples would take the hint, so that John’s disciples would become Jesus’ disciples.

(5:58 – 6:14)

Of course, that’s what they were meant to do. They did the right thing because however good John was, however great his seminary was, he wasn’t the Messiah. He wasn’t the sin-taking Lamb.

(6:16 – 6:51)

And John knew that enough to be able to let his disciples go, to hand them over to the only one who could really rule their lives and the only one who could save their souls. Now, of course, this is obviously a unique moment in history, and John is a unique individual in history, and yet this is a gospel in which there’s going to be a huge emphasis on the glory of Christ and the importance of humble service. This is the only gospel that has the foot-washing scene in John 13.

(6:51 – 7:18)

And I think in the context of this gospel, there is a little point being made here that even as great as John was, he needed to step aside. John needed to hand over the control and the glory to Jesus. And if John needed to do that, how much more do we? See, Jesus not John is one thing.

(7:20 – 7:41)

What about when it’s Jesus not you? What about when it’s Jesus not me? People sometimes use the phrase, don’t they, a Messiah complex. If someone has a Messiah complex, they’re always trying to save their world. They’ve always got to be the fixer.

(7:42 – 8:09)

They’re the person that’s always got to be the hero, always got to get the credit. And when we see it in other people, it’s obvious and it’s ugly, but if we look close enough, we can often see it in ourselves. You know, they’re my kids, and I’m going to parent them so hard and disciple them so well that they’re going to come to faith, and it’s going to be through my influence.

(8:11 – 8:35)

It’s my ministry, it’s my ministry, and I love this ministry that I do. I love the way that I serve, and I get irritated when someone seems to get in the way of me doing my thing. The real test is what can you let go of, because they’re not ultimately your kids, they’re God’s kids.

(8:37 – 9:17)

Can you hand them over to God? No, I mean, not completely, keep feeding them and dressing them and take them to school and keep teaching the Bible to them, but can you hand them over to God in prayer? Can you hand them over to God in your attitudes? Can you give up that ministry? Could you give it up? Please don’t all give up your ministries, there will be nobody to do them tomorrow, but could you give it up? Could you? John could. It’s a great lesson to start with, mainly for those of us who are Christians. The handover we must make, but there’s a second lesson, and I think this takes us more to the heart of the text.

(9:18 – 9:30)

This is no less challenging, but it’s wonderfully invitational, and it’s this. The decision we must come to individually. The decision we must come to individually.

(9:30 – 9:59)

Now, more than any other gospel, John is the gospel of the individual. We’re going to see this throughout this book, that John loves to feature individuals, John 3, John 4, John 9, and here to start chapter 1, the calling of four individual disciples. Now, it’s interesting, in the world today, there’s often two big emphases, isn’t there? When it comes to the individual and the community.

(10:00 – 10:17)

So in some cultures, the individual is above the community. That’s our culture, Western culture, if you’re from Western culture. We define ourselves individually, right? We don’t let our parents define us, we don’t let school define us, I define me.

(10:18 – 10:33)

We sing with Elsa, well, maybe not, but we have the emphasis of Elsa, no right, no wrong, no rules for me, I’m free. That’s individualistic culture. Individual over community.

(10:34 – 10:52)

But in other parts of the world, of course, you get the opposite extreme, where the community reigns over the individual. Where you don’t decide who you marry, your parents decide who you marry. And where you’re defined not by who you are as an individual, but by what family you’re from, what community you’re from.

(10:53 – 11:13)

Where your individuality is swallowed up by the community. Now, which of these is right? The gospel comes along and it says, both of them are right and both of them are wrong. Because it’s not one or the other.

(11:14 – 11:29)

See, this is what we’re going to see in John’s gospel, listen carefully. We will see that Jesus cares for individuals, he calls individuals, but then he connects them into a community. We’re going to see this all the way through John.

(11:30 – 11:55)

He cares for individuals, he calls individuals, but then he connects them into a band of disciples, one flock as he puts it in John 10. And this is what we see right from the start of John, this is verses 35 to 46, four individuals that Jesus cares for, four individuals he calls. And here’s the thing that stands out so clearly, I think.

(11:56 – 12:18)

These individuals have such individual stories. They come to follow the same Jesus, they make the same decision to believe, but their conversion stories are quite different. So take Andrew, Andrew is saved by a preacher and by spending personal time with Jesus.

(12:19 – 12:51)

Look at verse 36, Andrew firstly hears John the Baptist preaching, preaching a sermon, look the Lamb of God. And when he and another unnamed disciple hear this sermon, they followed Jesus. But not only that, following that sermon, if you like, Andrew has a conversation with Jesus and the result of that conversation is that he ends up spending personal time with Jesus.

(12:52 – 13:09)

From what the scholars tell us was 4 p.m. in the afternoon into the whole rest of the evening, Andrew gets to spend an evening with Jesus. And that’s how Andrew came to faith. He came to faith through a sermon and time with Jesus.

(13:09 – 13:26)

Now Simon Peter was totally different. You see Simon wasn’t there when the sermon was preached, he missed the evening with Jesus. Simon came to faith through the witness of his brother.

(13:28 – 13:45)

Andrew was Simon Peter’s brother. No doubt his less famous brother, as history would unfold, it would be Peter that would be the known one. It must be so annoying that, mustn’t it? Like to always be known as Simon Peter’s brother.

(13:47 – 13:59)

Yet without Andrew, Simon Peter would never have been saved. He would never have come to Christ without Andrew. Andrew tells him about Jesus and he brings him to Jesus.

(14:01 – 14:17)

And of course Jesus does the rest. Verse 42, with this remarkable renaming. And I was thinking about this, you know, all of us in a sense get renamed when we come to Christ.

(14:19 – 14:32)

We all, when we become Christians, we all receive a new identity, a new, we’re children of God now. We’re in Christ now. But Simon is given a specific new identity that’s only specific to him.

(14:32 – 14:51)

He will be called Cephas or Peter, which means rock. Jesus calls him, you know, the rock man. Because in the future, so much will be built on the credibility of Peter’s life and Peter’s preaching.

(14:51 – 15:11)

We’ll see this in, particularly in Acts, you know, humanly speaking, the church is birthed through the preaching of Peter when 3,000 are saved. And so Peter’s going to be this rock on which so much is going to be built. And yet, as we see in the gospel, Peter is anything but a rock at this point.

(15:12 – 15:45)

But Jesus sees what He will make Simon into through hard experiences, through failure, and above all, through the giving of the Holy Spirit, Simon will become the rock. Isn’t it encouraging that Jesus sees us not just as we are when we come to saving faith, but He sees already who He’s going to make us to be. He sees who He’s going to make us to be, mature in Christ.

(15:47 – 16:00)

It’s a different story though. It’s not the same as Andrew’s, and it’s not the same as Philip’s. Look at verse 43, third man, Philip, the next day, Jesus decided to leave for Galilee.

(16:01 – 16:15)

Finding Philip, He said, follow me. In the previous two cases, people had come to Jesus or people had been brought to Jesus. It’s all coming to Jesus.

(16:15 – 16:25)

But here, Jesus approaches Philip. He goes to Philip directly. He says, Philip, I’m about to leave town.

(16:25 – 16:35)

Are you coming? Follow me. There’s no personal evangelist in Philip’s conversion. There’s no preacher like John.

(16:36 – 16:55)

There’s just Jesus calling him directly. It’s different, isn’t it? And then fourthly, the fourth individual, Nathanael, is different yet again. So in verse 45, Philip finds Nathanael, and he says, and notice this little detail.

(16:55 – 17:09)

He says, we have found the Messiah. Interesting, isn’t it? Who’s the we? The we is Andrew, Simon, and Philip, right? So there’s a little community. This is the point I was making a minute ago.

(17:09 – 17:24)

There’s already a we. There’s a community already forming here. They’ve come individually, but we have found the one who Moses wrote about in the law and about whom the prophets also wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.

(17:25 – 17:52)

Now, I reckon this witness was going really well until he mentioned the word Nazareth. At the mention of Nazareth, Nathanael flinches. Can anything good come from there, Nazareth? I fear that I might have told you this story before, but I grew up in a town called Kirkintilloch or Kirky as we called it on the north of Glasgow.

(17:52 – 18:11)

And there was a little town down the road from us about three, four miles called Twechar. And there was a bus that used to bring these Twecharites to our school, Kirky High. It was like 90% Kirkintilloch people and then 10% of poor people from Twechar.

(18:11 – 18:22)

And God bless them. They were maligned and abused just because they came from Twechar. And most of us had never been to Twechar, but man, we had it as this rundown little place.

(18:23 – 18:54)

Well, there might be something of that here because we later discover in John chapter 21 at the other end of the gospel that Nathanael came from the town of Cana in Galilee. And Cana was just five miles down the road from Nazareth. It was like Kirky and Twechar, right? So, Philip saying that Jesus the Messiah came from Twechar, Nazareth was a big problem, right? He’s coming from the despised town.

(18:55 – 19:15)

The problem isn’t just that he doesn’t come from Bethlehem, which was the prophesied place of the Messiah, but it’s also that he comes from Nazareth. He comes from this despised dingy little place. Will the Messiah really come from a despised little place? The answer is yes.

(19:17 – 19:39)

If you know the rest of the gospel, Jesus didn’t just come from a despised place, but he went to a despised place. He went to the shameful, despised place of Calvary’s cross. Nathanael didn’t understand that yet.

(19:40 – 19:51)

He didn’t understand that the plan was “Mocked by insults, harsh and crude. In my place condemned he stood”. He didn’t understand that was the plan.

(19:54 – 20:07)

And so, he’s gonna need much more convincing that Jesus is the one. And how gracious is Jesus? In verse 47, Jesus provides him with the evidence to believe. He does it in two steps.

(20:08 – 20:33)

First of all, he, in verse 47, he gives an accurate assessment of Nathanael’s character. Now, when you meet someone for the first time, I mean, you can get a few instant impressions, but you cannot diagnose their entire character in one initial conversation. Even though he’d never met Nathanael before, he seems to know him completely, exactly what he’s like.

(20:34 – 20:46)

And Nathanael, understandably, verse 48, he’s kind of shocked at this. He says, how do you know me? Like, we’ve never had a conversation before and you know what I’m like. And Jesus says, yes, I saw you while you were sitting under the fig tree.

(20:48 – 21:02)

Before Philip even called you, I saw you and I knew you. In other words, Jesus is saying, before we ever met, I already knew who you were. I saw you, I knew everything about you.

(21:04 – 21:28)

And Nathanael is blown away by this miraculous knowledge. Jesus may come from Nazareth, but only the Son of God, only Israel’s King could know such things all about him. It’s another way of someone coming to faith, isn’t it? Nathanael is largely convinced by the miraculous.

(21:30 – 21:47)

You see, all four men believe in the same Jesus. They’re saved by the same grace and power, but they all have an individual story. Just as if you were a Christian, you won’t have the same story as the person sitting next to you.

(21:49 – 22:04)

It might have been through a preacher, through personal study and investigation. Maybe it was a brother or a friend who brought you to Christ. Or maybe, maybe you almost had a kind of direct encounter with Jesus.

(22:04 – 22:14)

Maybe you just read a Bible all by yourself. Or in some other way, Jesus got your attention. Maybe, I mean, maybe it happens less in this country than in other places.

(22:14 – 22:30)

But we hear testimonies, don’t we, of miracles? Miracles drawing people to Christ, opening their eyes to acknowledge who he is. It’s the same Jesus. But his care for the individual and his call for the individual is individual, it’s personal.

(22:30 – 22:59)

Isn’t that wonderful? If you’re not a believer this morning, you need to know that you’re not just a number, you’re a name, and Jesus knows your name, and he wants to bring you to himself in a personal way. Just a word to the church on this. You know, down the centuries, Christians have often argued with one another about what is the right method of evangelism.

(23:01 – 23:40)

Beyond, of course, what must be part of evangelism, which is, it must be the gospel, it must be the gospel, and it must be a work of the Holy Spirit. But beyond that, like, what’s the right method? What’s the right vehicle for the gospel? Is it preaching from a pulpit? Is it, you know, mass evangelism? Is that the silver bullet? Is it friendship evangelism? I mean, I hear nowadays people saying, forget all that stuff, it’s friendship evangelism where the key is one-to-one. Is it apologetics? The Bible’s answer is, “Yes”. There is one Jesus, one gospel, but God uses a variety of ways.

(23:40 – 23:53)

Stop saying that that way won’t work. God can use any way he wants with the one gospel. Let’s also acknowledge in most of these examples that people were involved in sharing the gospel.

(23:53 – 24:16)

In three out of four, in three out of four, ordinary disciples, and in fact, brand new disciples were used to bring people to faith. Think about this. These witnesses in John 1, some of them had been following Jesus for less than one day when they told their family and friends about Jesus and saw them come to faith.

(24:18 – 24:43)

You don’t need experience to be a witness, you need enthusiasm. And just as God brings people on unique journeys of faith, so also he uses you because you’re a unique individual to reach a unique set of people that only you have the in with, and you don’t need experience to reach them. You need enthusiasm.

(24:44 – 24:55)

That’s one of the things that really challenged me when I read this. This is why new Christians often make the best evangelists. Yeah, they don’t have all the knowledge, but they’ve got all the enthusiasm.

(24:56 – 25:20)

And as the Christian life goes on, the danger is we gain all the knowledge and we lose all the enthusiasm. So that’s the second lesson. But after the handover we must make and the decision we must come to individually, for people to keep making that decision and for people to make it in the first place, we need a third thing.

(25:21 – 25:31)

So here’s the third lesson. Thirdly, the greater things, the greater things we must base our faith upon. The greater things we must base our faith upon.

(25:31 – 26:05)

Now, I want to just take a little time on the very end of this passage, because I think these verses 50 and 51 are a bridge into the rest of the whole gospel, right? This is the kind of bridge into the body of John, and they’re really, really important verses. And in these verses, Jesus says to Nathanael, you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree. In other words, you believe Nathanael because I did a little miracle, and that little miracle impressed you and you realised who I was.

(26:06 – 26:45)

But you will see greater things than that, right? That’s just the beginning. That’s a little miracle, right? You ain’t seen nothing yet. Now, many of you will know that at the end of John’s gospel, in John 20, there’s a similar kind of idea, right? John the author looks back on what he’s written, and he says, I’ve written all of these things so that you will believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and so that by believing you might have life in his name.

(26:46 – 27:33)

Now, if you read that verse in context, John is talking about the miracles of Jesus, right? When he says there that I’ve told you these things, these things are the signs or the miracles that are given in the gospel that point to Jesus’ identity. And John says at the end of the gospel, on the basis of these signs, on account of the power and what they signify about Jesus, I’ve given you enough evidence to believe and have life in his name. See, that’s at the end of the gospel, but here at the start of the gospel, we get the kind of bookend to that, right? We get the bridge.

(27:34 – 27:56)

Jesus says, I’ve done this little miracle, but I am going to do greater things than that. I’m going to do a series of miracles that’s going to blow your mind, and that’s going to point you to the identity of who I truly am. Here’s the kind of corollary of that.

(27:56 – 28:26)

It means that Jesus is not expecting us to believe in him without evidence. It means that John, the author of this gospel, is not expecting you to believe in Jesus without evidence. So often, the perspective people have of Christianity is this, they think that Christians place their faith in something that has little or no evidence, but we believe it anyway.

(28:26 – 28:45)

You’re one of those faith people, right? You believe stuff, you don’t really know it’s true, but you take a punt on it. That’s the modern perception of faith, that it’s a leap in the dark. But in the Bible, faith is not a leap in the dark, it’s a leap into the light.

(28:47 – 29:01)

It’s always trusting on the basis of compelling and overwhelming evidence. You see, the Bible’s view is not that there is little evidence for God or Jesus as the Messiah. The Bible’s view is the opposite.

(29:01 – 29:27)

If you read Romans 1, it says that there’s ample evidence about God, the trouble is we suppress it. We try and shove it down and ignore it and pretend it’s not true, it’s not there. It’s like these bins that, you know, why is it these three-week deliveries are absolutely doing my head in at the moment, but, you know, we’re trying to squeeze the stuff down into the bin, aren’t we? And Romans 1 says that’s what we’re like.

(29:27 – 29:50)

We squeeze the truth about God and Jesus down, and we try and ignore it. But there is abundant evidence for the gospel. And so there’s evidence here, and this evidence not only gives you the basis of faith, but it actually leads to a wonderful outcome.

(29:52 – 30:25)

And that’s where Jesus finishes because, and again, this connects to the end of John, by believing you will have life in His name, right? We’re going to see the outcome, Jesus speaking about that. Verse 51, Jesus then added, very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man. This is connected to a famous Old Testament story where, you remember, Jacob has a dream.

(30:26 – 31:20)

It’s in the book of Genesis, and Jacob sees a stairway descending from heaven to earth, and there’s angels going up and down this connected stairway. And what God was promising Jacob in that moment was that in the future, God was going to once again connect Himself and humanity, right? The cursed humanity, the cursed sons of Adam would once again be blessed, and the broken relationship they now had with God was going to be restored, a stairway, right? That’s the imagery, isn’t it? Jesus says, using this veiled identifier, the Son of Man, He says, this is going to happen through the Son of Man. It’s going to happen through me.

(31:22 – 31:47)

The greatest miracle you’re ever going to see is not me turning water into wine or feeding 5,000 people. It won’t even be me being raised from the dead. The greatest miracle will be me, the Son of Man, reconnecting heaven and earth, not by building some physical stairway.

(31:48 – 32:04)

Jesus says, I am the stairway to heaven. See that? The angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man. The Son of Man, Jesus, is the connecting bridge to heaven.

(32:06 – 32:14)

Some of you might remember those old illustrations of the chasm, you know, sinner on the one side, heaven on the other side, and the cross is the bridge. Jesus is the bridge. It’s true.

(32:17 – 32:43)

This is the ultimate basis of our faith, not just the miracles of Jesus, but Jesus Himself. In the end, everything else fades out of the picture. Everyone else becomes insignificant when it comes to the matter of salvation, and we’re left with Jesus only.

(32:45 – 32:48)

Jesus is not John. Jesus is not you. It’s not about you.

(32:48 – 33:18)

It’s about Him, and He is enough. Let’s just pray. Father, give us that perspective that later disciples had when Moses and Elijah vanished from the picture, and they only saw Jesus.

(33:21 – 33:57)

Help us today to see Him, that He is the Lamb, the Chosen One, the stairway, the bridge back to you. May we come through our own very different paths and different experiences, but come through the same gospel and the same grace, but Lord, in such wonderfully different ways. And may we continue to not only follow You, but hand over those things that we hold so dear that Jesus truly would be our Messiah, our Lord, our God, and that we wouldn’t seek to be Him.

(33:57 – 34:02)

Amen. And we ask this in His name, Amen.

The post Follow Me – John Ch1v35–50 appeared first on Greenview Church.

Let’s take a moment of prayer as we open God’s Word together. Father, as we come to your Word now, we ask that by the power of that same Spirit, you will open the Word to us and open us to your Word. We ask these things for the glory of the Lord Jesus and the extension of his kingdom.

Amen. Now, it won’t be long until the lone piper stands again on the roof of Murrayfield Stadium as 70,000 passionate rugby fans belt out Flower of Scotland. But I wonder, and I’ve often wondered this as I’ve heard that sung with passion from the youngest to the oldest there in the six nations, how many of those singing it actually know what they’re singing about? Who or what is the Flower of Scotland? Who exactly was proud Edward? Why and how was he sent homeward, and what second thoughts was he being encouraged to have? Well, of course, it’s a reference to Robert the Bruce’s victory over the English at Bannockburn in 1314.

But it strikes me that that’s not on the mind of many people as they sing that song at the beginning of a rugby match or a football match, because the events long past in history seem much less important than who we are now. In fact, the second verse of that anthem acknowledges that and says, we can still rise now. And so the original historic details, in a sense, are not the most important thing in the singing of the anthem.

And that’s probably true of the American anthem and various others. And I think we’ve been discovering the same thing with the book of Joel. As Joel worked on the Word of the Lord that came to him in chapter 1, verse 1, we get that sense, don’t we, as we move through that he was conscious that he wasn’t simply writing for his time, but that he was writing for all time.

And in that sense, Joel’s very similar to much of Scripture, especially the prophets and indeed many of David’s psalms, which don’t outline the actual event that prompted the prayer or the psalm and caused him to cry out to God in a particular way. And there seems to me that there’s a reason for that pattern. The reason is that others in all ages might not think, well, that was fine for him in that specific situation, but it’s not relevant to me.

The context and the specific situation is often not disclosed so that others in all ages, including us, might enter into the truth about what God is saying here and the truth about God that is being discovered. So, in chapter 1, we remember that God had sent a warning message to his people, this terrible judgement plague of locusts calling them to repent. And then at the beginning of chapter 2, we found out that not only was that an actual plague of locusts that destroyed the land, but that actual plague of locusts was also a picture of something else.

(3:48 – 6:06)

It was a teaser trailer, if you like, of God’s final day of judgement that hasn’t happened yet against not just their sin in Judah at that time, but all sin forever for all time. And so, we saw at the end of last week in verse 17, Joel calls the leaders of the people, those elders, those priests, he calls upon them to repent. But as we come to our passage tonight, starting at verse 18, it strikes me that there is a gap between verse 17 and 18.

I think there has to be. The word then is important. We don’t know how long this pause might have been.

It might have been days. It might have been weeks. It may even have been years.

Who knows? But there’s obviously been a meeting of the people for prayer. The people have got together as a result of the catastrophe that’s happened to them, and they’ve gotten together following Joel’s lead, and they’ve prayed, they’ve cried out to God. We know that from verse 19, because the Lord will reply to them, do you see? The Lord replies to them.

So, here are people who are experiencing this dreadful consequence of rebellion against God. They cry out to God, and then, then the Lord replies. And in the passage that we have before us tonight, God speaks to His people after they respond to Him.

And so, our third study this evening is about a day of deliverance, as God comes in the most wonderful, incredible grace to give His sinful people a second chance. But the first thing we need to notice about this second chance and this grace is where it comes from. What is the source of this grace? And it’s clearly stated by Joel in verse 18, then the Lord became jealous for His land and had pity on His people.

(6:08 – 6:57)

Understanding this verse is the great key to what is going to happen next, because, you see, the really sinful thing about the sin of the people of Judah, and the really sinful thing about any sin that we happen to embrace and practise is not the impact that sin has on them or indeed on us, but the impact that that sin has on God Himself. Your sin and mine, as theirs, has an impact on God Himself. What does that look like? It robs God of His glory.

(6:58 – 7:20)

It robs God of His glory. When we sin, we rob God of His glory. That’s Paul’s definition of sin in Romans 3, isn’t it? All have sinned and done what? How is that sin described? It’s described in terms of a falling short or a marring or a distortion of God’s glory, and so it is here.

(7:21 – 10:27)

They’ve robbed God of the demonstration of His glory. What does that mean? His distinctiveness, His uniqueness, His godness amongst His people and amongst the nations, all of whom had their own gods, remember. And God was jealous—do you notice in verse 18?—He was jealous to have His glory back.

Now, remember the meaning of Joel’s name. God is God. God is God.

And God wanted to be seen as God, not only in the lives of His people but through them among the nations. Now, I wonder, as I was preparing this, I was caused to think about this when people see us. Do they see that distinctiveness of God’s glory in us? Grace and I are just back from a trip to Egypt, and I was struck on that holiday standing in a ferry queue at five in the morning, waiting to get on a ship to cross the Persian Gulf there, to be kept waiting for twenty minutes at five in the morning.

We were all there, all ready to go. The ship was ready, but we were kept waiting at five in the morning, whilst all the men operating the ferry terminal obeyed the Mullah’s call to prayer in an open shelter, in front of everyone—men, young men, older men, all of them, completely unashamed to hold the whole thing up while they demonstrated their distinctiveness and their devotion to Allah. And I said to Grace, are you having the same thought I am? We hardly dare mention the name of the Lord Jesus in public, far less hold up a queue of people for twenty minutes en masse.

Is it possible that as Christian people in Western culture, we have lost our distinctiveness? We’re ashamed of who we are. Well, if we have, it’s God’s glory that’s being compromised. We’re saying something about God right there, because the more sinful our lives become, the less distinctive they become.

(10:28 – 12:40)

We rob God of His glory by living lives that are not distinctively Christian. So God was jealous for what their sin was saying to the world about Him, and at the same time, He saw them in their repentance and their misery and their shame and their need, and He took pity on them. It’s the second half of the verse.

He was jealous for His land and for His name and His reputation, and He took pity on His people. Do you notice that? Now, it’s vital for us to understand the nature and character of God, that we must see these two characteristics of God as not being opposites of one another. They’re not mutually exclusive.

We mustn’t think that if God has taken pity upon these people in their need and in their sinful rebellion, then He must be laying aside His passion for His jealousy and His own glory. He must be compromising His own standards in some way if He’s taking pity on His people. We mustn’t think like that, because the wonderful thing about the gospel right through the Bible is this.

God’s passion for His own glory involves God’s pity for His own people. He wants His people back. Now, if you have children, the biggest fear you have is losing them somewhere when they’re young.

I remember we were in Legoland once, and we lost our son for about ten minutes. Ten minutes in Legoland without your four-year-old is a long time. And all that matters, all that matters right then as a parent is that your child is safe and you want them back.

(12:40 – 14:37)

It doesn’t matter who finds them, where they’re found, what they’ve been doing, how they ended up where they were. All that matters is you want them back, right? You want them back. You don’t even care who’s at the lost children office.

You don’t care who took them there, although you’ll thank them. All that matters is you’ve got them back, and they’re safe, right? That is the emotion of verse 18, part 2. God’s passion to have His children back, His people back for His glory emerges in these verses as we move through. Look at the way their deliverance is described and the way the locusts are chased into the sea in verse 20.

The eastern ranks, they’re going to end up in the Dead Sea. The western ranks, they’re going to end up in the Mediterranean Sea. God divides and conquers His enemies.

He divides and conquers the plague of locusts, and they die. And that deliverance from the plague of locusts tells Joel two things. Firstly, it’s a taste of God’s salvation in the present because it is actually a deliverance from a real plague of locusts.

But it is also a foretaste of God’s salvation that is to come in the future in the power and the gift and in the blessing that God will one day give to His people through the death and resurrection of Jesus, and even more amazingly, the coming and outpouring of the Holy Spirit. So notice with me what Joel says about the salvation that God’s people experience. There are always three dimensions to God’s salvation.

(14:38 – 19:11)

I want you to notice this in the passage. It was true for them, and it’s true for us. When God saves, there are always three elements to it.

Firstly, their enemy is destroyed. Do you notice that in verses 18 to 20? The Lord has pity on them, and in verse 20, He is going to remove the northern army far from them. The northerner, your version might say.

He’s going to remove the northerner far from them. Their enemy is going to be destroyed. The picture is like some still frame from a post-apocalyptic movie like The Day After Tomorrow or 28 Days Later or whatever zombie apocalypse thing you may want to watch.

The locust army is lying on the shores of the sea in piles of dead, rotting insects. You can smell them for miles around. It’s a shocking picture, but it’s a picture of God’s powerful destruction of His enemy.

And you see, God’s salvation always starts that way, doesn’t it? It always starts with the destruction of the enemy. Where have we seen this before? Well, remember the Israelites when they came through the Red Sea? There in Exodus 14, 13, Moses stands on the banks of the Red Sea, and he says to the people, stand firm. Do you remember what comes next? Stand firm and see the salvation of the Lord, which He will work for you today.

Then he says, and the Egyptians, your enemy, whom you see today, you will never see again. Your enemy will be destroyed, and that is where your salvation begins. And Exodus 15 is basically a celebration of the details of the destruction of the enemy who would control them no longer.

And you see similar language in Revelation when Babylon is thrown into the sea, and God’s judgement falls on the city of man, and it’s destroyed, and then there’s a great cry of joy goes up from heaven as Babylon’s destroyed, the enemy of God is destroyed. Salvation always begins with the destruction of the enemy. Think about that New Testament passage, the event when Jesus cast out the demons in the demoniac man and sent them into the pig herd.

Do you remember what happened to the pigs? They flew headlong off a cliff, and they were destroyed. Why would Jesus do that? Why would He do that? Well, the cost of a herd of pigs was a small price to pay for Jesus to bring reassurance to one of His broken children that those demons that had tormented Him and destroyed all of His life till that point now no longer were a problem. They’d been destroyed.

The power of the enemy is destroyed, and that is true spiritually for us. Can you grasp that? We need to be reassured tonight that our enemy has been destroyed. That’s where our salvation begins.

The bonds need to be snapped. Wesley knew that, didn’t he, when he wrote that great hymn, And Can It Be? I always thought it was strange that you’d begin a hymn with the word and. You’re not meant to begin a sentence with the word and, never mind one of the greatest hymns in Christian hymnology.

Anyhow, the words are great, aren’t they? My chains fell off. My heart was free. I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.

My enemy has been destroyed. So that’s the first element of salvation that we see in these verses. But look secondly at verses 21 to 25.

Not only was their enemy destroyed, their joy was restored. I wonder if, like me, over the last three weeks you’ve been feeling that the locusts are actually coming in through the back door of the church, as we’ve been reading this. They’re everywhere.

(19:11 – 19:35)

They’re everywhere. There’s so many of them. A terrible army.

Destruction in their wake, like those wildfires in California, sweeping through the land, destroying everything in their path. But now God says in these verses, don’t be afraid anymore. Don’t worry.

(19:35 – 22:02)

Don’t worry about your animals. In last week’s passage, the animals were dying for lack of food and water and pasture. They were crying out too.

They were suffering as a result of the people’s sin. Don’t worry about your animals. The land will recover.

And then in verse 25, some of the most famous words in this prophecy. I will restore to you the years the locusts have eaten. Because the song of deliverance is also a song of joy.

And do you sense echoes in that verse? I will restore to you the years the locusts have eaten. Do you sense an echo there of Psalm 51? David’s great Psalm of repentance, where he cries out to God, oh Lord. Do you remember he cries out and he says, Lord, restore to me the joy of your salvation.

And then he says, may the bones that you have broken, because I’m in this mess because you’ve judged me because of my sin. I’m experiencing the weight of that. You’ve broken my bones.

I’m broken. May the bones you have broken, just as the people here had been broken by the locusts, may the bones you have broken rejoice. Make me glad that I’ve been delivered from my enemy and that you are now putting back in place the things that my own sin has destroyed in my life.

You’re putting them back in place, Lord. Please do that. And we each have our locust stories, don’t we? We each have our locust years.

As we look back, we have all kinds of regrets, most of them unexpressed to anyone. Maybe regrets of sin that we’ve actively embraced and committed and felt the consequences of. Maybe sin that’s ongoing, unconfessed, and we’re empty shells inside, although we’re going through the motions.

(22:06 – 24:35)

Maybe regret that we feel we’ve done so little with the life God has given us. As we look back, some of us are getting on in age and everything seems to be in the past now. The delights in life that we once had, well, they’re long gone.

What’s it all been for? And the locusts in different ways have eaten up the years of our lives. Where is it all gone? What’s it all been worth? You see, there are always consequences that come with our sin, and there are always consequences that come with our complacency. We’ve learned that already from Joel.

The scars that we bear may never fully heal. Procrastination, regret. I’ve always meant to get around to doing that.

Things we never got around to dealing with that we always meant to. So there’s a word from God as you turn to him and turn away from your sin and turn to him in his mercy and pray that he will be jealous for his glory in your life. And he says to you, as he said to the people here, he says, he comes to us this evening and he says, he says, don’t be afraid.

Don’t be scared. Don’t be frightened. Rejoice.

Be glad. I’ll restore to you what your sin has destroyed. Now, what is that restoration? Well, in the context of the passage, as we have already seen, the restoration is that the land becomes fruitful again.

It becomes fruitful again. It starts to produce fruit. It starts to produce grass and greenery and produce.

It can sustain the lives of the individuals and the lives of the nation. And it doesn’t really matter what age or stage we are in our Christian life or how much we think we may have wasted. God can make you fruitful again.

(24:38 – 27:14)

God can make you fruitful again. That’s my testimony. And it’s the testimony of many others here.

And that joy and usefulness and humble service can be restored no matter what your age or no matter what your regrets. And if you don’t have any regrets yet, do your best to make sure you don’t have any. Live life this way in submission to God’s Word.

Make your priority to know God and His purpose and His will and live distinctively for Him. So, their enemy is destroyed and their joy is restored. But look thirdly in verses 26 and 27.

This leads to their satisfaction being complete. Do you notice that? You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied. Now, this is the complete opposite of what we experience in our consumer culture.

And it’s important for us to understand that only the people of God can experience this kind of satisfaction. Only the people of God can experience this kind of satisfaction. Do you remember Jesus’ words again in the Sermon on the Mount? Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, because they, and as we saw last time, the real impact of that word, they, is they and they alone, because they and they alone will be filled.

Only they will be filled. In 1779, John Newton wrote a magisterial hymn, Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken. And there’s a phrase in it that sounds odd to our 21st century jargon.

In that hymn, he says, Fading are the worldling’s pleasures. It’s a great wee phrase, isn’t it? Fading are the worldling’s pleasures. He wrote that in 1779.

(27:15 – 27:56)

What did he know about worldling’s pleasures in 1779? There was no internet then. There was no multimedia. There was no wall-to-wall football on the telly.

There was no entertainment at the hydro every night. There was no pubs open 24-7. Well, he knew in his culture that the worldling’s pleasure was fading.

And one thing, nothing much has changed in the 246 years since he wrote it. Have they? One thing we can say with confidence to every single person in our world is this, whatever pleasure you’re experiencing right now, it’s fading. It’s fading.

(27:57 – 29:50)

You’re always going to be looking for something else. You’re always going to be moving on to something more. You’re always going to be wanting something different to find pleasure in.

You’re going to get fed up with that. It’s not going to scratch the itch for long. You’re going to need some new form of excitement or entertainment.

You’re going to need something to take your mind off the drudgery. Let me ask you this. If you’ve been fortunate enough to support a sporting team that’s actually won something worth winning, like the Champions League or the URC rugby championship or whatever it happens to be, if you’ve actually been in that place, how long does the joy last? So if they win the cup in May, by the time August comes, you’re having to start all over again anyway.

It’s worthless. What about the happiness of your graduation day? Did it last? Your work promotion, did it last? Your dream holiday, did it last? Your new home, did it last? It’s the law of diminishing returns. You see, they’re all fading, all of them.

Fading is the worldling’s pleasure. Another hymn puts it this way, change and decay in all around I see. That’s the dentist’s hymn.

If there’s any dentists here tonight, change and decay and all around I see. And in Newton’s hymn, he closes it off by saying these great words, only Zion’s children know anything about solid joys and lasting treasure. Only Zion’s children, only the children of God, eat in plenty and become satisfied.

(29:50 – 30:39)

You see, when you devour God’s grace, when you devour God’s grace, you become more and more satisfied with who he is and the amazing and wonderful things that he does and the incredible way he speaks to us in his Word. Look, for example, at verse 26, the end of verse 26 there, my people shall never again be put to shame because he’s dealt wondrously with us. He’s worked wonders.

You will know that I am in the midst of Israel. You will never experience shame again. We all know what it’s like to experience shame.

(30:40 – 37:17)

When I went to school as a five-year-old in Lesmahago in the mid-60s, my dad was a miner, and we didn’t have much money. Mum made all my clothes apart from the stuff she couldn’t make, which was basically underwear and a school tie. Everything else she made, my shirt, my jumper, my short trousers, and she knitted my socks.

None of the other boys at school had knitted socks and knitted jumpers. They all had bought stuff. And there’s me.

Man, oh man, the amount of hassle and bullying and name-calling I got all through primary school, by the way, because I had to wear shorts all the way through. The other boys got to wear long trousers after primary five. So, we all know what shame feels like.

We all know what shame feels like. And here, God says to His people—I’m sure if my mum and dad had thought that that had caused shame for me, they’d have been upset by that, because no parent wants their child to feel shame, right? And here God says, come to me, you’ll never be put to shame again. You’ll never be ashamed.

You’ll never be put to shame. You’ll never be ashamed to have me as your God. And Peter says the same thing in the New Testament, doesn’t he? Whoever believes in him, in Jesus, the cornerstone, that great passage in 1 Peter 2, whoever believes in me will never be put to shame.

Now, we may feel that we’re put to shame here, and we’re not treated well here by the world, but on the final day, as you’ll see in a minute, on the final day, you’re going to be vindicated, and you’re not going to be ashamed that you lined up behind Jesus. Not on that day. Not on that day.

And you see, when we come together like this, we experience something that those who never come among a fellowship like ours will never, ever, ever know. We experience the presence of God among his people in blessing. That’s why we shouldn’t want to miss an opportunity ever to meet with God’s people.

I remember hearing Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones once saying, I never want to miss a prayer meeting, because it might be the one when revival breaks out, and I want to be there. That experience of God among his people in blessing, that’s why we shouldn’t want to miss an opportunity like that, because this is where we feed on God’s grace. This is what our lives broken by sin need.

We need this nourishment. Here’s another Charles Wesley hymn that captures this need perfectly. Oh Jesus, full of pardoning grace, more full of grace than I of sin, yet once again I seek your face.

Open your arms and take me in, and freely my backslidings heal, and love this faithless sinner still. Away home and find that on the internet and pray it tonight. Oh Jesus, full of pardoning grace.

So this passage describes the present blessings of salvation in those three ways, but you notice that for Joel, it’s also a marvellous trailer of the deliverance that is coming in the future, and this is where we’ll end, because the verses that follow are much more familiar to us, because they’re the words that Peter quotes on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2 verse 16. When the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, Peter says, this is that which was prophesied by the prophet Joel. Here is the fulfilment of the promise of worldwide salvation, not just local salvation, not just present salvation, but ultimate salvation.

But you know, even for Joel, the promise here that he puts in his prophecy has a much deeper and richer history than we often think, because this isn’t the first time this desire has been seen before in Scripture. Where have we seen this before? Well, we can go further back into the mists of Israel’s history. Let’s go back to an obscure incident in Numbers 11.

Who thought we would end up in Numbers 11 from Joel 2? Well, in Numbers 11, Moses has asked God for some help. So God, in response to that, sends the Spirit to fall on seventy elders who prophesied in the camp, but the Spirit also rested on Eldad and Medad, two outsiders who weren’t with the people, and they started prophesying, and the people were outraged. And they came to Moses and said, this is ridiculous.

We know it’s okay for these seventy people, these seventy elders and the people, these seventy to be prophesying, but they don’t even belong to us. They’re not part of our community. You’ve got to stop this, Moses.

And in verse 29 of Numbers 11, Moses says these incredible words, I wish that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and the Lord would put His Spirit on them. I wish that everyone was a prophet. I wish that everyone had the Spirit poured out on them, not just seventy, everyone.

Even Moses was frustrated that the times in which he lived didn’t provide the fullness of the blessings that he knew were needed and that he knew God one day would provide. There was something deep inside him that knew there was something bigger than all of that. That pouring out of the Spirit on those seventy people back in Numbers 11 and the prophecy here in Joel were all little tasters for what happened at Pentecost.

(37:19 – 41:57)

Because although these Old Testament examples were amazing for those who experienced them, they just encapsulated that longing that every member of the believing community would one day be empowered by the Spirit of God to hear the Word of God and speak the Word of God. Because although people knew God in the Old Testament, there were some aspects of their faith that, shall we say, were secondhand. Let’s pop to a verse in Amos 3, 7, where God says, “‘Surely the Sovereign Lord does nothing without revealing His secrets.'” To whom? To His servants, the prophets.

So, if you wanted to know the secret of the Lord, if you wanted to know the mystery of the Lord, if you wanted to know what the Lord was saying, you needed to find a prophet to whom God had revealed that secret. Right? But now, wait for this, you’ll love this, now the message of the gospel, the mystery, the secret, which Moses, Joel, and his fellow Old Testament believers only saw in shadows, now that mystery, that secret has been made fully known. This is what was spoken by the prophet Joel.

The mystery hidden for ages and generations is now revealed to whom? To whom? A few selected prophets? A few elite new apostles? No, no, no. The mystery long hidden through the ages is now revealed to His saints, all of them, all of us. Paul tells us that in Colossians 1. This mystery, which, by the way, is Christ in you by His Spirit, the hope of glory is now for all of God’s people, Aye, even you, with all your locust years of mess.

So, when those disciples in Acts 2 experienced the coming of the Holy Spirit and those flames of fire appeared above their heads, what was actually happening there was that the shekinah glory, the living presence of the living God that we sang about in that wonderful hymn, that shekinah glory of the presence of God that up until that point had lived between the wings of the cherubim on the ark of the covenant, that holy flame now lived in them, the very presence of the living God, not in a temple or an artefact, but in His people. That intimacy of the presence of God that in the Old Testament was only known by prophets and priests and kings is now the privilege of all God’s children, intimacy, communion. So, we’re going to share it this evening, fellowship, joy in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Oh, how can they be for me? How can they be mine? Well, Joel tells us at the end of this passage in verse 32, he says, They’re yours if you call on the name of the Lord. Call on the name of the Lord, because everyone, verse 32, who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. So at Calvary God showed wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke.

The sun was turned to darkness. The moon turned to blood. The earth shook.

The rocks were split. And it came to pass that everyone who called on the name of the Lord would be saved. And it’s time for you to call on Him now.

Amen.

The post Day of Deliverance – Joel Ch2v18–32 appeared first on Greenview Church.

It would be good if you could take a Bible and open up with me to John’s Gospel. And if you don’t have a Bible, just take one of the red ones in the seat in front of you, and you’ll find the reading on page 1063. 1063 in the red Bible.

(0:19 – 0:43)

And we’re going to read a few verses in John chapter 1 from verse 29 to 34. Let’s hear God’s Word. The next day, John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

(0:45 – 1:05)

This is the one I meant when I said, a man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me. I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptising with water was that he might be revealed to Israel. Then John gave this testimony.

(1:07 – 1:36)

I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. And I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptise with water told me, the man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is the one who will baptise with the Holy Spirit. I have seen and testify that this is God’s chosen one.

(1:38 – 1:55)

Amen. This is the reading of God’s Word. A very important ceremony happened last Monday to the elation of some and the despair of others.

(1:56 – 2:16)

A certain president who shall not be named was sworn into office. The golden age of America begins now, he said. It’s the kind of grand statement that new leaders make when they sweep into power.

(2:16 – 2:36)

It’s the kind of thing you can say on day one, the golden age is coming. And yet, we all know that the next four years will either prove or disprove the truth of that claim. See, that’s the trouble that politicians have.

(2:37 – 3:03)

They actually need to deliver on all the stuff they promise. And inevitably, when they don’t, and none of them do fulfil all of their promises, expectations crumble, reputations shatter. And what happens is they get ousted, and another leader emerges, ironically promising another golden age.

(3:04 – 3:22)

Because it’s always the next leader who’s going to really bring it to fruition. Well, is it any wonder that eventually we get kind of cynical? We get kind of tired of these leaders and their promises. Oh, for a leader who bucks the trend.

(3:24 – 3:48)

Oh, for a leader who is all that he claims to be. Oh, for a leader who not only promises a golden age, but who actually brings one. The apostle John, who writes an account of the life of Jesus, is introducing us to such a leader.

(3:49 – 4:05)

And John makes it clear right from the start of his gospel that this leader is different. This leader is unparalleled. His background, verses 1 to 18, is cosmic and eternal.

(4:07 – 4:23)

Leaders love to tell us about their backgrounds, don’t they? They like to tell us their origin stories. But none of them have a background like this. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

(4:24 – 4:42)

This leader’s background is what makes him different to all the rest. And so we have his background, and then we have, in John 1, we have his buildup. His buildup, because this man named John, verses 19 to 28, he bursts onto the scene of history.

(4:44 – 5:06)

As Andy pointed out last week, this John is not the same John who wrote the gospel, but a guy called John the Baptist. Most famous for baptising, dunking a whole load of Israelites who were turning back to God from their sin. And this John, John the Baptist, he was a national headline.

(5:07 – 5:17)

He was trending on the Twitter of his day. But John was quick to downplay himself. He wasn’t the main event.

(5:17 – 5:30)

He was just the warm-up act. I’m not the Messiah or an end-time figure, John said. I’m just a voice crying out in the wilderness.

(5:31 – 5:58)

Only a voice, and yet a voice. And he used his voice to build up the expectation for the coming Messiah. You know, one of my favourite examples of how John does this is back in verse 26 in the previous passage, where John with typical modesty says, I baptise with water.

(5:59 – 6:13)

You know, all I’m doing is just splashing people under some H2O. But among you stands one who you do not know. I mean, just imagine that.

(6:13 – 6:26)

Imagine if I said this morning, in this very room, there is a very, very important person. One of the most important people in the world is in Greenview Church this morning. But I’m not going to tell you who, and I’m not going to tell you where they’re sitting.

(6:27 – 6:46)

If you took me at all seriously, you’d all be looking over your shoulder, wouldn’t you? How’s this for building expectations? I’m not the guy, but he’s standing right among you. John is preparing for the big reveal. And it doesn’t take long.

(6:47 – 7:14)

Verse 29, the next day, John saw Jesus coming towards him. And looking at him, pointing at him, John makes two massive claims about Jesus. Two claims, which if they are true, shows us that Jesus is a leader that delivers.

(7:15 – 7:32)

Two claims that if they are true, show us that a golden age has begun for humanity in the lives of some. So what are these two claims? Let’s think about them together. The first claim is that Jesus takes away sin.

(7:34 – 8:06)

Jesus takes away sin. Notice how John starts, verse 29, Look, behold, see the Lamb of God. Now, it’s unusual for us, isn’t it, to call somebody a lamb? In our culture, I think the only exception to that is when grandparents call their children or their grandchildren wee lambs.

(8:07 – 8:14)

There’s a wee lamb. She’s a wee lamb. It means for us, they’re a wee cuddly child.

(8:15 – 8:33)

But here’s John. John points to Jesus, who was 30 years of age at this time, and he says, Behold the Lamb. Now, what does John mean? Well, John, remember, was speaking to a Jewish audience.

(8:34 – 8:54)

And when Jews thought of lambs, they didn’t think of cuteness and snugness. They thought of sin and atonement. See, in a famous night in Jewish history, the Jews had been spared by the blood of a lamb.

(8:55 – 9:13)

When God’s judgement fell on Egypt, each Israelite household killed a lamb. And its innocent blood was painted on the front door. And this was the reason that the judgement of God passed over the house and didn’t come in.

(9:15 – 9:38)

The sin of the people was atoned for by the blood of a lamb. For the Jew then, the lamb is a sin-atoning, sin-removing creature. Indeed, every day, twice a day, at the Jewish temple later in history, lambs would be slain, twice a day, every day.

(9:39 – 9:51)

Lambs would be slain to take away the sin of the nation. And yet, they never quite did. They never quite were enough.

(9:52 – 10:08)

What happened yesterday had to happen again today, another two lambs. There was always more sacrifices, more deaths, more blood required. What they needed was a greater lamb.

(10:09 – 10:24)

What they needed was a human lamb. And that’s what Isaiah later promised very famously in Isaiah chapter 53. He promised a coming lamb.

(10:24 – 10:37)

A lamb who would be slaughtered, a human lamb. He, verse 7 of Isaiah 53, he was oppressed and afflicted. Yet, he did not open his mouth.

(10:38 – 10:57)

He was led like a lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep before its shearers is silent. So, he did not open his mouth. All of Jewish history, all of human history was building up and waiting for this lamb.

(10:58 – 11:27)

And so, with all of that background, with all those promises and shadows in the wings, John points his finger at Jesus and says, The lamb who takes away the sin, not just of Israel, but the world. Who takes away the sin. Not a partial or incomplete removal.

(11:28 – 11:46)

This reminds me of the cleaning adverts, you know, where they show you some kind of miracle spray. And the ad always says that it’s 100% effective on 100% of stains. And so, you buy the thing and you bring it home.

(11:47 – 12:08)

And you soon discover that they’ve never come up against iron brew in their testing. And that in actual fact, it is not 100% effective. And yet, here is the lamb who completely removes every stain and every trace of sin.

(12:09 – 12:28)

It’s a wonderful truth that Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross is this powerful. That it removes the condemnation of our sin completely as if it had never existed. It’s a wonderful truth.

(12:29 – 12:37)

And yet, it is a hard truth sometimes to accept. To trust it. To rest in it.

(12:39 – 13:04)

Even the child of God who is so thankful for the work of the cross, can be vulnerable to doubting its effectiveness. Not for other people, but for me. There are those moments, aren’t there, in the battles of life when we just think, that our sin feels much too present to actually be removed.

(13:06 – 13:22)

And in those moments, we’re in danger too of listening to the lies of the evil one. The devil who is always undermining the gospel in our hearts. Who’s always saying, look at your sin.

(13:23 – 13:41)

Look at the presence of your sin. Can it really be true that this sin is taken away? We need to close our ears to the devil and start listening to John. Who says, look, the lamb of God.

(13:43 – 13:59)

We need to reason with our souls that if Jesus can remove the world’s sin, then my sin for him is an easy case. It’s an easy removal. If he can deal with the sin of the world.

(14:00 – 14:12)

And we need to remind ourselves of where the lamb is now and what the lamb is now doing. Listen to this. This is so brilliant from J.C. Royal.

(14:13 – 14:42)

He says this, Jesus is daily taking it away from everyone that believes in him. Daily purging, daily cleansing, daily washing the souls of his people, daily granting and applying fresh supplies of mercy. And Royal goes on to say, he did not cease to work for his saints when he died for them on the cross.

(14:42 – 15:01)

He lives in heaven as a priest to present his sacrifice continually before God. In grace as well as in providence, Christ is working still. He is ever taking away sin.

(15:04 – 15:15)

That is such an amazing comfort. If you would believe it and if you think you need it. If you think you need it.

(15:17 – 15:37)

So it could be this morning that you’re listening to this conversation with curiosity, more than with a sense of relevance. There’s a man by the name of John Jack Rousseau. John Jack Rousseau is the most influential person that you’ve probably never heard of.

(15:38 – 15:55)

I never heard of him until recently and I read about him in a book. And he was a Swiss philosopher. He lived in the 1700s and he had a new perspective, a pretty new perspective that wasn’t really popular before the mid 1700s about human nature.

(15:56 – 16:14)

Rousseau said that humans start life as a blank slate. He said we’re born innocent. But he said what happens is that as we get older, we’re influenced by our environment.

(16:16 – 16:36)

Sometimes parents influences, sometimes it’s friends, sometimes it’s society, sometimes it’s bad events. These things influence us and they shape us and sometimes they distort us in bad ways. And we become capable of doing bad things.

(16:36 – 16:45)

We become capable. Basically, this is the premise. If you’ve seen the musical Wicked or the film Wicked, this is exactly the premise.

(16:47 – 16:57)

Or the new Joker films that I don’t really recommend watching, but it’s the premise of those films. No one’s born bad. They just have bad upbringings.

(17:00 – 17:17)

And actually, if that’s the case, it means that, well, if you don’t have a bad environment, then you might never get bad at all, right? You’re one of the good folks. And so in the Rousseau view of thinking, the world gets split into the good guys and the bad guys. The faithfuls and the traitors.

(17:19 – 17:29)

You know, the people who should rot in prison and never get out. And the rest of us nice, kind people who give to charity. Who never really do bad stuff.

(17:30 – 17:45)

And if we do make mistakes, it’s never really us. It’s always someone else that’s to blame. If you believe that, you’ve actually bought into a philosophy that’s very much man-made.

(17:47 – 17:57)

And not only does the Bible reject it, but actually most cultures across human history have never believed that. It’s not that our environment doesn’t influence us. Of course it does.

(17:58 – 18:10)

But it’s also true that there’s something in us that isn’t right. Put a baby into the perfect home, in the perfect environment, and they’ll still steal their siblings’ toys. I guarantee it.

(18:10 – 18:17)

I guarantee it. Because sin isn’t just environmental. It’s deeply internal.

(18:20 – 18:32)

And it feels scary to admit that. I think this is why people don’t want that to be true. Because what do you do with it? What do you do with it when you admit, actually, there’s a problem here? There’s a stain here.

(18:33 – 18:41)

And I can’t remove it. Yes, but Jesus can. Jesus can.

(18:43 – 18:58)

The Lamb can remove every trace of my sin, if I will admit that it is there. So that’s the first glorious claim. It’s the first reason that a golden age has already started to begin.

(19:00 – 19:10)

Because all across the world, people are having their sins taken away. So that’s the first thing. Here’s the second great claim and great truth about Jesus.

(19:11 – 19:23)

Second thing we’re told is that Jesus baptises with the Spirit. Jesus baptises with the Spirit. Now, verses 30 to 34, they’re intriguing verses.

(19:24 – 19:58)

Not only because they tell us some stuff about the Holy Spirit, which we’ll come on to, but they also tell us something about how John the Baptist knew the identity of Jesus. I mean, if you thought about that, how did John know? Like, how did he know when he pointed at Jesus that he was pointing at the right person? How did he know that he was the Lamb? How did he know he was the Messiah? Verse 31 tells us, John tells us in verse 31, that at one point, he didn’t know. I don’t think that means that he didn’t know of Jesus, like who he was at all.

(19:59 – 20:06)

Jesus was John’s cousin. But more likely, it means that he didn’t know he was the Lamb. He didn’t, there was a point where he didn’t know that his cousin was the Messiah.

(20:07 – 20:28)

So how did he find out? Well, God gave him a clue. You see that in verse 33. The God who sent John told John, the man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is the one.

(20:30 – 21:00)

Now, just a little aside to that, John was a Jew, and he obviously knew the Old Testament. And he would have understood that actually, the person on whom the Spirit comes down and remains is the Messiah, right? Because he would have known about Isaiah chapter 11 and Isaiah chapter 42. And both of those chapters basically say that, that the Messiah will be this end time Saviour on whom the Spirit will come and remain.

(21:01 – 21:27)

So one day, verse 31, this happens. It’s not explicitly said here in John’s gospel, but we know from other gospels, this happened at Jesus’ baptism. When John baptised Jesus in the water of the Jordan, the Spirit of God descended on Jesus in the form of a dove.

(21:27 – 21:43)

And actually, this kind of clicked in my head when I studied this this week. That was for John’s benefit, right? Jesus didn’t need to… No one needed to tell Jesus that the Spirit had come on him. But the dove was there so that John would see, ah, something’s going on here.

(21:44 – 21:52)

The dove is a symbol in the Bible. Think back to the flood. It’s a symbol of rest after chaos.

(21:53 – 22:09)

It’s a symbol of new creation, a new start. And therefore, it becomes a symbol of the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit always brings new starts and new beginnings. And so when John sees the dove, it clicks into place.

(22:09 – 22:20)

Jesus is the one. Jesus is the Spirit-anointed King. He’s the one on whose ministry the Spirit will remain.

(22:22 – 23:00)

And the Spirit for Jesus would not be like Storm Eowyn, as powerful as it was. It came and went in about 12 hours, didn’t it? Came on Thursday, went on Friday. But the power of the Spirit will remain on Jesus’ ministry all the days of His life, empowering Him to do every miracle, inspiring every act of kindness, and enabling Him to endure the dark sufferings of death on a cross all by the power of the Spirit.

(23:01 – 23:34)

What marked this leader out and what made him different to every spiritual leader of the Old Testament was that every second of his ministry would be empowered by the Holy Spirit. And this is the very reason why Jesus, so endued by the Spirit, can baptise us with the same Spirit. If you know the book of Acts, you will remember that this is what Jesus later does.

(23:34 – 24:14)

After He dies and rises, and before He goes to heaven, the one who possesses the Spirit promises the baptism of the Spirit. This is from Acts 1 verse 5. Jesus says, For John baptised with water, but in a few days, you will be baptised with the Holy Spirit. A promise that came true on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2. So that from that moment on, the church of Christ would always be immersed in something greater than water.

(24:15 – 24:34)

We would be immersed in the Spirit. And I want to say two things about this baptism of the Holy Spirit. Because I think very often, there can be confusion about the Spirit, and certainly confusion about the baptism of the Spirit.

(24:34 – 24:57)

What does that mean? And the first thing I want to say is this, number one, if you’ve got Jesus, you’ve got the Spirit. If you’ve got Jesus, you’ve got the Spirit. The problem is, that so very often, people separate Jesus, they divide Jesus from the Holy Spirit.

(24:59 – 25:13)

So, you get a Christian who says, I believe in the Lord Jesus. I believe in the benefits of His death for my sins. But this Holy Spirit thing, I just don’t get the Spirit.

(25:14 – 25:21)

Don’t know what that’s about. They separate Jesus. It’s like they’ve got the Jesus bit, but they separate Jesus from the Spirit.

(25:23 – 25:33)

As if you can know Jesus without the Spirit. And then you have the opposite mistake. The believer who is really into the Holy Spirit.

(25:34 – 25:45)

And that’s what they seem to be most fixated on. They seem more enamoured with the Spirit. Jesus is just the kind of one that gives access to heaven and access to the Spirit.

(25:45 – 25:51)

But the exciting bit now isn’t Jesus. The exciting bit’s the Spirit. And the power the Spirit gives.

(25:52 – 26:02)

And their mistake is that they separate the Spirit from Jesus. As if you could ever separate the two. Both of these extremes are wrong.

(26:03 – 26:23)

Do you see from this wonderful promise, that you cannot separate Jesus from the Spirit. Because Jesus is the very one who baptises us with the Spirit. If you’ve been here when we do a water baptism, which is a different kind of baptism to this.

(26:23 – 26:35)

But if you’ve seen someone being baptised, there’s always someone doing the baptising. People don’t self-baptise. So there’s someone in the tank, and they are plunging the person under the water.

(26:36 – 26:49)

Right? When it comes to the baptism of the Spirit, Jesus is always the one doing the baptising. Always. Jesus is the Baptist of the Spirit.

(26:50 – 27:12)

And so I say to you this morning, that if you have the Lamb, if you have the Christ, and praise God many of you do, then you have the Spirit. You need to start believing that if you don’t believe it already. And since you have the Spirit, here’s the second thing, you’ve got life and you’ve got power.

(27:13 – 27:27)

You’ve got life and you’ve got power. See what does it mean to be baptised in the Spirit? It means you’ve got life and you’ve got power. It means on the one hand, that you’re spiritually alive.

(27:28 – 27:39)

See that’s the first great work of the Spirit. We’re going to see that in John 3. The very first thing the Holy Spirit does, in anyone’s life, is he brings you to life. He regenerates you.

(27:39 – 27:53)

Jesus says in John 3, that we are born again of the Spirit. Born by the Spirit. And so this baptism, it’s not an immersion into death, it’s an immersion into life.

(27:55 – 28:06)

And it’s an immersion into a new kind of power. Which is particularly what Acts 1 and Acts 2 are about. Jesus’ weakened and afraid

(28:07 – 28:20)

disciples are suddenly, like in an instant, emboldened and empowered to witness. And they become these courageous witnesses. I mean, they’ve not just suddenly grown in their own confidence.

(28:21 – 28:39)

They’ve not been on an evangelism course that suddenly made them more bold. It’s the Holy Spirit that instantly gives them that emboldenment to witness. And so when you become a Christian, this is wonderful, isn’t it? Jesus not only takes away something from you, he gives you something.

(28:41 – 28:51)

He takes away your sin, and he gives you the Spirit. Or actually, as it puts it here, he puts you in the Spirit. He baptises your whole life, spiritually, in the Spirit.

(28:52 – 29:01)

He gives you something that you can’t see with the naked eye. He gives you new spiritual life, and he gives you a new power to live. This is the greatest baptism.

(29:02 – 29:10)

Listen, water baptism is really important. Like, if you’ve not been baptised in water and you believe in Jesus, you should. It’s an important command.

(29:11 – 29:17)

It’s an important symbol. But it is not the most important baptism. It’s not.

(29:18 – 29:29)

The thief on the cross never got wet, but he got baptised in the Spirit. He was given new life in Christ. And this is the baptism we most need.

(29:29 – 29:38)

It’s not religion. It’s not communion. It’s not all the stuff that we do that we think, well, that’s going to make me alive and get me close to God.

(29:38 – 29:44)

That’s not the stuff that does it. It’s not the stuff that does it. It’s being born again of the Spirit.

(29:47 – 30:07)

But again, it takes faith to believe in this reality. To believe that the Holy Spirit is working in my life and empowering me each day. It really does take faith to believe that, doesn’t it? You know, the older I get, the more excited I get by Christian creeds.

(30:08 – 30:17)

You know, these kind of ancient statements of faith. I just think, you know, they’ve stood the test of time, these creeds. And one of the most ancient is called the Apostles’ Creed.

(30:18 – 30:30)

And I really like it because it’s what we call Trinitarian. It talks about how we believe in, first of all, God the Father, the first section. And then how we believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son.

(30:31 – 31:09)

But being Trinitarian, it finally has a section that says, I believe in the Holy Spirit. And I feel convicted, and maybe you might feel it too, that without in any way diverting from my belief in Jesus, but actually as an expression of my belief in Jesus, I need to believe in the Holy Spirit more. I need to wake up every morning and say, I believe not only in Jesus, but I believe in the Holy Spirit.

(31:10 – 31:25)

The one who’s given me life and the one who will empower me to live my life today. The one who can enable me to bear the fruit of the Spirit that I just don’t have in me. I don’t have it in me, but He can create it in me today.

(31:28 – 32:05)

It can be as hard to believe in the Holy Spirit as it is to believe that the Lamb of God has taken away our sin. And yet if I have Jesus, I have the Spirit. So do you have Jesus? Do you have Jesus? Have you had this baptism? Has Jesus baptised you in the Spirit? Has He given you new life? As you’ve come to Him and said, I’m a sinner, and I need your grace, your forgiveness.

(32:06 – 32:15)

Your spiritual life, because I’m heading to a lost eternity. And I need the work of the Lamb. I need the work of the Spirit.

(32:17 – 32:25)

If that’s true of you, then a new golden age has begun. Lots of people don’t realise it. Lots of people don’t see it.

(32:26 – 32:53)

But it’s actually begun in you. Let’s pray together. God and Father Almighty, we say in those words that we’ve just read, I believe in Jesus Christ, your only Son.

(32:55 – 33:23)

I believe in the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, my sin included. And we dare also to say and we pray that you will help us to say, I believe in the Holy Spirit in that baptism that Jesus has given me. May we live in the knowledge and power of it.

(33:25 – 33:28)

In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

The post Look, the Lamb of God! – John 1v29–34 appeared first on Greenview Church.

We’re turning again to the book of Joel, a book which I think it’s fair to say is one of the most intense books in all of the Bible. I don’t know whether Joel himself was intense as a person, but we do know that his prophecy was. His prophecy is highly intense.

(0:23 – 1:59)

He opens with a plague of locusts that have devastated the entire land. And he begins not just with locusts, but he then starts with an immediate call to repentance. So it’s full on, straight in.

As far as the dial goes, he starts at number 10. But the thing about Joel that’s really interesting is that he never really turns the dial down. In fact, as we go into chapter two, we’re going to discover that he actually turns the dial up to a 20.

So we’re going to get even more intense as we come to chapter two and verses 1 to 11. And if you’re using the Red Bibles, it’s page 913. Let’s read verses 1 to 17 of Joel 2. Blow the trumpet in Zion, sound the alarm on my holy hill.

Let all who live in the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming. It is close at hand, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and blackness, like dawn spreading across the mountains. A large and mighty army comes, such as never was in ancient times, nor ever will be in ages to come.

Before them, fire devours. Behind them, a flame blazes. Before them, the land is like the Garden of Eden.

(1:59 – 2:06)

Behind them, a desert waste. Nothing escapes them. They have the appearance of horses.

(2:07 – 2:39)

They gallop along like cavalry. With a noise like that of chariots, they leap over mountaintops, like a crackling fire consuming stubble, like a mighty army drawn up for battle. At the sight of them, nations are in anguish.

Every face turns pale. They charge like warriors. They scale walls like soldiers.

They all march in line, not swerving from their course. They do not jostle with each other. Each marches straight ahead.

(2:40 – 3:06)

They plunge through defences without breaking ranks. They rush upon the city. They run along the wall.

They climb into the houses like thieves. They enter through the windows. 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.

(3:07 – 3:49)

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? Even now, declares the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning. Rend your hearts 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.

(3:49 – 4:19)

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 in the brighter chamber.

(4:20 – 5:13)

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? This is God’s Word. This is an intense passage, and it has two intense but very important points. First of all, we’re going to see the point, sound the alarm.

And then secondly, we’re going to think about return to the Lord. So number one, Joel says, sound the alarm. This is verses 1 to 13.

(5:14 – 5:27)

Now recently, of course, we just had Christmas. And I saw, just to lighten up this intensity, I saw a kind of funny Christmas card. And it had two pigs on the front of the card.

(5:28 – 5:33)

And these two pigs were standing in a field. It was clearly winter. There was snow all around.

(5:34 – 5:54)

And one pig is saying to the other, he says, I know what time of year it is. I know it’s Christmas time. I know you’re worried.

But don’t panic. He said, I’ve heard that pigs get blankets at this time of year. Sometimes in life, we’re in more danger than we think we are.

(5:55 – 6:12)

Sometimes we’re anxious about things we shouldn’t be anxious about. But sometimes, actually, we’re not anxious. And we should be anxious.

God’s people, whenever this was, Joel was writing, needed a wake-up call. Verse 1, blow the trumpet. Sound the alarm.

(6:13 – 6:45)

Because the day of the Lord is near, and a fearsome army is coming. Now notice what Joel tells us about this army. We’ll kind of run through their characteristics first, and then we’ll see maybe what it represents.

So first of all, he tells us that this army that’s coming, it’s the greatest army that humans have ever seen. Verse 2, he says, there’s been none like it in ancient times, and there will be none like it in the future. So it’s the greatest army.

(6:46 – 7:28)

And then in verse 3, he says it’s the most destructive army that’s coming. And when you read verse 3 there, you can’t help but think of the Californian fires that are right now. Verse 3, before them, fire devours.

Behind them, a flame blazes. Before them, before the army comes, it’s like the Garden of Eden. Before the fire comes on those millionaire homes, it’s like the Garden of Eden.

But then once the fire passes, it’s a desert. So this army that’s coming is the greatest army. It’s the most destructive army.

(7:29 – 8:02)

And it’s the most unstoppable army. There’s lots of ways he tells us this. Verse 5, this army leaps over mountaintops, and they plunge through the fences.

Verse 8, and they climb into houses. Verse 9. In other words, you can’t possibly keep this army out. There’s no fortress.

There’s no helms deep. There’s nowhere that you can protect yourself from this fighting force. And that’s, I guess, why it’s a terrifying army.

(8:03 – 8:43)

It’s terrifying, isn’t it, when there’s an army coming against you, and you know there is zero hope of you surviving. And so, verse 1, the people in the land tremble. And then verse 6, the nations are in anguish.

Every face turns pale. So this army is so frightening that not only Israel, the people in the land, but all the nations of the world, as they’re watching on, all the nations in the world are absolutely frightened, scared of this army. And the reason for that is because of whose army it is.

(8:44 – 10:06)

This is the stunning shock that comes at the end of this first section in verse 11. Notice how Joel holds it back. He gives you the whole description, and then he holds back right to the end the punchline, because this unbeatable army coming to attack God’s people in God’s city is led by God Himself.

Look who’s leading the army. The Lord, verse 11, thunders at the head of His army. His forces are beyond number, and mighty is the army that does His command.

You see, the reason that the alarm needs to be sounded so loudly is that God Himself is coming in judgement, and therefore no one can escape it. Now, what does this mean? Let’s just pause and do a little bit of interpretation. In the Old Testament, when God threatened His people with discipline, when He threatened them with a consequence for their sin, there were two main methods God used to judge His people.

(10:06 – 10:42)

And you see this in Deuteronomy chapter 28. The first thing, if the people disobeyed and kept on disobeying, God would send locusts on the land, right? That’s the first thing He would do. He would invade the land with locusts.

They would eat all the crops, and that would be the first warning sign that you need to repent. Then, as you go on in Deuteronomy 28, the Lord says, and if you don’t listen to that warning, the next thing I’m going to do after the locusts is I’m going to send an invading army. A foreign force is going to come, and not just destroy your crops, but destroy the entirety of all that you are.

(10:43 – 13:59)

And we see that in the Old Testament, don’t we? We see the famines that hit the land, and then eventually we see the armies that come on the land. And so this is the imagery that chapter two is picking up on. It’s picking up on both of these curses.

I mean, it sounds like locusts, doesn’t it? This is a devouring army, devouring the Garden of Eden before it, so it’s kind of locust-like, but it’s also, we’re told, like an army. What is going on here? I think what’s going on here is that this really is God saying that if you think these temporal judgments in the past were bad, there’s actually a greater final judgement that I’m about to bring. And it’s called here the day of the Lord.

The day of the Lord in the Bible is always the decisive day of God’s final judgement. And what He’s really doing, He’s taking these images of the locusts, He’s taking these images of the army, and He’s putting it all together, and He’s saying this is going to be the greatest locust army in history, that on the day of final judgement, I myself am going to come, and I’m going to bring the greatest judgement that you’ve ever seen. And if you think chapter one was bad, when your crops were ruined, wait till we get to chapter two.

Wait till I come on the day of the Lord. So it is a stark warning. And it’s also, the way it’s described, it’s a fearful warning, isn’t it? I mean, if Joel were a Christian preaching this in 2025, he would be seen as an intolerant alarmist, wouldn’t he? He would be accused of painting a picture of hell and using fear to coerce people.

And of course, people don’t like that today. They’re very against religion, which has, in their minds, used judgement and fear of hell to influence people and control them down the centuries. And so what happens is, in our culture, many Christians simply go silent about the subject of judgement.

When the topic of life after death comes up at work, we secretly hope and pray that they won’t ask us what we think. You know, when they say, do any of you believe that there’s a heaven? I mean, that’s okay, that part’s okay. But do any of you believe that there’s a hell? And we’re praying, please don’t ask me.

And then they do, they say, you’re one of those Christians, aren’t you? You believe that, don’t you, that there’s a final judgement? Now, what do we say to that? What do we say to people who say to us, this is all just a big scare tactic? We should not deny that the Bible uses fear as a motivation, because it does. I mean, Joel 2, 1 to 11 definitely is using fear to motivate us to repent. However, here’s the first thing I would say.

First of all, fear is a motivation that every one of us uses. Fear is a motivation that every one of us uses. I mean, even the person who accuses the Christian of scaring people is themself using fear.

(14:01 – 20:23)

Because what they’re saying is, you know, if you believe in hell, if you’re one of these intolerant people, then to be frank, I’m going to kind of cancel you. You’re not the kind of person I want to hang out with. You’re not the sort of person I want to work with.

And so, although subtly, they themselves are using fear. They’re saying, if you’re one of these traditional Christians, you’re not acceptable. You see, the person accusing Christians of scare tactics is themself using a scare tactic, which is why many of you Christians are scared to speak about these things.

So, fear is just a thing. Fear is a reality. It is a motivation.

It’s one of the reasons why we do things, and it’s one of the reasons why we change things in life. Here’s the second thing. The second thing is that although fear can be used for bad purposes, it can also be used for good purposes.

Think about the person who is very physically unhealthy, and they have a heart attack, and they narrowly escape death. And the doctor comes in to see them at the bedside, and the doctor looks them straight in the eye and says, now listen, if you don’t change your diet, and I mean today, then you won’t live much longer. Now, is that a bad use of fear, or is that a good use of fear? You see, fear’s not always a bad thing.

The reason we fear things is because it prevents us, and it directs us away from something that’s actually bad for us, dangerous for us. Fear can have a good purpose, and everyone’s motivated by fear. The only question is, what is it are you afraid of, and is that thing true, and is it real? But here’s a third thing, and I think this is actually a wonderful thing we can say to people when they bring this up.

The third thing is that the astonishing message of the gospel is that the God who threatens judgement, because of all the wrongs we’ve done, is the same God who came himself and endured it in all of its fierceness, all of its fullness. See, as I was reading this text, it kind of pivoted in my mind, because I was thinking of his final judgement, and then I realised, you know, this is exactly what fell on Jesus himself. This is what was unleashed by God on God, so that in the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus felt alarm, right? Jesus wasn’t asleep.

No one needed to ring the bell. Jesus was awake and aware to the reality of what was coming over the hill, the army of the Lord, the day of darkness and blackness and gloom. You see it in the text here at one point, it speaks of this, the very sky turns black.

He was alarmed as he contemplated that, and Jesus went through it for us. Verse 11 says, who can endure it? But here’s the wonderful thing, Jesus endured it. Jesus went through it.

He, in one sense, was destroyed by it, but he then was raised from the dead. And so, this is the most remarkable thing we can say about hell to anyone. It is that God went into the flames and endured hell for our sake.

And we know that the wonderful outcome of that is that we then might be able to escape the flames as we do what the second point is going to discuss, which is return to the Lord. So, let’s go to this second point, return to the Lord. And Joel says it twice, which is usually an indicator that it’s something important.

Verse 12, return to me. And then verse 13, he says, return to the Lord your God. And all repentance is a returning, which means that every one of us at one time was close to God, at one time was connected to God.

And that seems a strange thing, particularly if you say it to someone who isn’t a Christian, they say, well, I’ve never been connected to God. I don’t believe in God. But of course, if you are a member of the human race, then you once belonged to God.

You were made by him. He’s your creator. There was a time when humans had perfect fellowship with God, but we know from Genesis that we walked away from God.

As a human race, we all went prodigal. And so, if you’re not a Christian, then you need to return to your Maker. But also, as a Christian, of course, there’s a sense in which the prodigal son story, which we know, famous story, it also applies to us, doesn’t it? That we, too, need to return to our Father in those moments when we say, hey, I want all your stuff, and I want all your benefits, but I want to go and do my own thing and sin in my own way.

And when that happens to us in our Christian lives, we’re called to return to God. So, how are we to do it? Joel says we are to return urgently, authentically, and persuasively. So, let’s think about these.

First of all, urgently. There’s a time thing here. Even now, verse 12, even now, even now that the army is right at the gate, return even now.

And then, verse 14, he says, who knows? It’s a very interesting thing to say, isn’t it? Who knows? He may even turn and relent. Now, that who knows there, I don’t think is doubting God’s desire to accept us. It’s not saying, you know, if you come back to God, God might be having an off day, and He might just not welcome you.

(20:23 – 20:34)

Because we see in the surrounding verses, the surrounding verses tell us that God is gracious. He’s slow to anger. He’s abounding in love, and that He does relent from sending calamity.

(20:34 – 22:07)

Loves to do that. The who knows is there, not because God isn’t willing, but because the time is so late. So, it’s a bit like when you’re at the airport, and they give the final call at gate seven.

Maybe you’ve even heard it a few times. They’re calling to the gate, and then they say, it’s the final, final, final call. And if you rush, you might make it or you might not, because it’s so late in the day.

I think that’s the point of this. You better run now. You better go now.

The army’s at the gate, and who knows? Who knows? Maybe you’re just going to be in time if you move yourself quick enough, but you need to move now. And so, verse 15, notice all the urgency of this, blow the trumpet. You remember it in verse one, it was blow the trumpet.

There’s an army coming. Now, it’s blow the trumpet, because we need to call the people of God together, a trumpet call to fast, a trumpet call to have an impromptu church service. Get everyone together.

Get them together now. And it doesn’t matter who it is. It doesn’t matter what the circumstances are.

Verse 16, even parents with brand new babies, you get down. You get down to church. Even the couple, the couple who just got married yesterday, you need to be there.

Leave the hotel. Leave the honeymoon. Come back.

(22:08 – 22:49)

It doesn’t matter if it’s inconvenient. Get here now. This lesson is very simple, but it causes carnage if we never learn it.

Whether it’s confessing sin for the first time or seeking God’s grace for the millionth time, it can never wait till tomorrow. We should never treat repentance like a new diet. You know how with a new diet, it always starts on Monday for some reason.

(22:50 – 23:01)

It’s Friday, and you think, well, I need to do something about this. But it’s like, it’ll start on Monday. Yeah? We should never treat repentance like a new diet.

(23:03 – 24:23)

Repentance must always start today. If it’s Monday, start on Monday. But if it’s Wednesday, start on Wednesday.

And if it’s tonight, start tonight. Some people, I’ve seen this in my own life at times, but I’ve seen it very much pastorally in the life of others. Some people are crippled forever in their relationship with God, either starting it or making progress in it, because they’re always going to do it tomorrow.

That’s a serious problem. It’s not how repentance works. Return urgently.

But when you do, be very careful to do it authentically. See, verse 12 says, not just return to me, but return to me with all your heart. The heart in the Bible is the inner you.

It’s the core of who you are. It’s the inner you that believes things and wants things and loves things and thinks about things. It’s the centre of your person.

It’s your core. And Joel says, return to God with all your core, with all that you are, with your true self, your whole self. Don’t just come back with your feet.

(24:25 – 24:39)

Come back with your heart. And then he doubles down on that. And he also introduces a danger when he says, rend your heart, not your garments, verse 13.

(24:41 – 26:49)

In that culture, when you felt grief about something, say you were mourning the loss of a loved one, you express that grief through your clothing. You would wear something different, a black sackcloth. And if you really wanted to express how you felt inside, then you would even go a step further.

You would tear your clothes. You’d rip them a bit. And that would be an outward sign that you were inwardly torn, right? So I would look at you with your torn clothes and say, wow, she’s really torn up.

She’s really grieving inside. He’s really grieving inside. And Joel says, quite strikingly, tear your heart instead.

Stop ripping your clothing. I think he says that to these people because these people had faked their obedience for so long. Remember, they were going to the temple.

They were making sacrifices. They were doing the outward stuff. They’ve been faking obedience for so long, putting on the act for so long.

And the danger is that they could fake repentance just as easily. If you can fake obedience, you can fake repentance. You can say a few nice words.

You can make a little pledge at the start of 2025. Tell a few of your friends, you know, I’m going to be, I’m going to be, this is the year I’m going to actually get serious with God. But God is not so fooled as your friend might be if you’re not serious.

God’s not against our commitments or our singing or our praying or our Bible reading. He really does want you to do them, but he wants you to engage with them authentically. He wants real prayer.

He wants real confession. He wants ripped hearts. God wants the inside of who we are.

(26:51 – 27:57)

And you know, that’s hard for some of us. Some of us don’t want anyone to get near the inside of who we are. And we keep people at arm’s length from who we are, but the danger is sometimes we treat God that way as well.

We think we can hold God at arm’s length, but God is always coming for the real you. So maybe that’s our word to someone tonight. We need to come urgently.

We need to come authentically. And thirdly, we need to come persuasively. I couldn’t really think of a better word than persuasively, because it seems to me in verse 17, there’s a prayer that’s also an argument.

After God calls the people to hold this meeting, this assembly, the priests are told to lead the people in repentance, to lead the people in their grief. We saw last week that David made the point that Joel went first. Joel was the first one to call out to God in this book.

(27:58 – 28:54)

But after Joel, the next people to take the lead is the priests, the leaders of the people. And so they are to be the first to seek God urgently and authentically. And God gives them, it’s remarkable really how gracious God is, He actually gives them the words to say.

He gives them a prayer. He says, pray this, right? Pray this to me. But what He gives them, this prayer, it’s an argument, verse 17.

And the argument is basically this, Lord, we are your people. We are your treasured possession. And if you don’t spare us, the nations are going to think that you’re an abandoning God.

Lord, your name will be trashed among the nations. If Israel, if we are burnt up to a cinder, we might deserve it. But Lord, you’re associated with us.

You’re tied in with us. You’ve saved us. Put your name on us.

(28:56 – 31:17)

And so the logic is, Lord, spare us, not because of us, but because of you. This is the sort of opposite of the way our culture thinks. The way our culture thinks is, Western culture, I should maybe say, is I should be spared bad things because I’m a good person.

Right? That’s the way we think in our culture. The Bible says, actually, I’m a much worse person than I think I am. And the reason I should be spared bad things is not because of who I am, but because of who God is.

Right? It’s not, Lord, save me because I. It’s, Lord, save me because you. Because you are gracious and merciful. Because you have made promises of salvation.

Because, Lord, you would be glorified if you saved a wretch like me, and people saw that. And so it’s an argument. And it’s just interesting that, isn’t it? Because sometimes in the Bible, there’s prayers that are not arguments.

Think of the tax collector who makes a statement. He says, Lord, have mercy on me, the sinner. That’s a great thing to pray.

But sometimes you can make an argument. And if you do make an argument in your prayer for mercy, then the only argument can be, Lord, do it for your namesake. Do it for your glory.

Do it for your honour, so that the world might see that you are the God who saves. Sometimes, for the strengthening of our own faith, not to manipulate God and force him to save us, but for the strengthening of our own faith, we can add this kind of argument. Lord, there’s no reason in me that you should do this, but Lord, for your own sake and your glory, be merciful yet again.

Isn’t that the argument, basically, of 1 John 1? A comforting famous verse that Christians love. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us and cleanse us of all unrighteousness. It’s not we’re worthy of being forgiven.

(31:17 – 32:07)

It’s He is faithful. He is just. He’s faithful to His gospel promises, and His justice has been satisfied in the atonement that His Son has made.

And therefore, God will forgive me, not because of who I am, but because of who He is. And so, whether for the first time or in the daily life of repentance, we are to return to the Lord urgently and authentically and persuasively. And when we do that, whenever we do that, destinies change.

We’re going to see that as we go on. The destiny of this people is going to change because of their response to this message. And on a daily basis, actually, our lives change.

(32:09 – 33:18)

We have a very different perspective when we live this life of daily repentance and daily trust in God’s forgiveness. You know, it’s a wonderful thing, just thinking about those horrible fires in LA, but there’s this wonderful thing, and maybe you saw it. There was a picture of what they’re calling the Miracle House, and it’s on one of these millionaire rows in Malibu, and all the houses round about it, they’re sort of burnt to cinders, charred, lost.

And there’s this Miracle House, and they’re all wondering, how is this one house saved? What’s the difference here? And that White House there, that’s the picture of you and me. That’s the picture of the sinner saved by grace. We can be this miracle people spared from a cataclysmic end, perfectly preserved, because our God went into the flames, and he endured it for us.

The post Sound the Alarm – Joel Ch2v1–17 appeared first on Greenview Church.

Good morning, good to see you here. We’re going to be looking in John again, John’s gospel, chapter 1. So if you’ve got a Bible handy or your device, please look up John chapter 1, and you’ll find that on the church pew Bibles on page 1063. And we’re going to read from verse 19 in a moment.

Well, after the prologue, which we’ve been looking at, that first section of John’s gospel, and that great kind of high level cosmic theological sweep from eternity past presenting us the kind of backstory to Jesus. When we get to verse 19, John bumps down into first century life, and we come face to face with the reality of first century religious politics. Just an aside, if it’s not obvious already, but John the gospel writer, who the book is named after, is different from the character of John the Baptist.

They are two different people. That can be a bit confusing at times when you’re reading John, especially the parts where John the Baptist is involved. But it’s one of those details, actually, I think heightens the authenticity of our Bibles.

I mean, a writer who is making this stuff up or concocting these stories decades later would never use the same name for two key characters. I mean, can you imagine a detective novel in which the detective and the villain had the same name? That would instantly be sent back to be changed by the publisher. But of course, in the gospels, we have two Johns, we have two Judases, we have three Marys, so it can be hard to keep track sometimes of who’s who.

But I guess that’s just the reality of life. It’s the hallmark of actual events. Anyway, let’s read from John chapter 1 and verse 19.

Now, this was John, this is John the Baptist. This was John’s testimony when the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was. He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, I am not the Messiah.

(2:32 – 2:51)

They asked him, then who are you? Are you Elijah? He said, I am not. Are you the prophet? He answered, no. Finally, they said, who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us.

(2:52 – 3:31)

What do you say about yourself? John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet, I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, make straight the way for the Lord. Now, the Pharisees who’d been sent questioned him, why then do you baptise if you’re not the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet? I baptise with water, John replied, but among you stands one you do not know. He is the one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.

(3:32 – 5:29)

This all happened at Bethany on the other side of the Jordan where John was baptising. Well, John the Baptist then, this character who appears in the middle of history and is an amazing hinge between the Old Testament and the New Testament. John was the last of the Old Testament prophets.

We know that because Jesus tells us that himself, Matthew chapter 11, these verses should be on the screen for you. Jesus says, for all the prophets and the law prophesized until John, that is John the Baptist. John stands as the last in that great line of prophets, Amos, Hosea, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Elijah, and all the rest stretching back through the Old Testament.

Those servants of God who in their generations had tirelessly called Israel to return to the Lord their God and to prepare themselves for the coming of God’s kingdom, to prepare themselves for the coming of God’s anointed one. An anointed one, the Jewish word for that was Messiah, or the Greek words, the Christ. So, John the Baptist is the last of that great line, but he wasn’t just another prophet.

He wasn’t just the last of the prophets, but he was the greatest of all the prophets. Again, we go to no one less than Jesus for that confirmation again in Matthew chapter 11. Jesus said, truly I tell you, among those born of women, no one greater than John the Baptist has appeared.

(5:31 – 8:33)

So, if Channel 5 ever do a top 100 prophets of all time programme, they must be getting near to doing that at some point, we can have an argument about whether Isaiah would be number three or number five, but Jesus is very clear, John the Baptist would be number one. But as well as being the last, that close to the Old Testament we might say, he is also a bridge into the New Testament, for this was a prophet who would not only predict the coming of the Messiah, but he would see the Messiah and he would announce him to the world. And so, it was 400 years after the last of his predecessors, Malachi, after all those centuries of waiting that had just been punctuated by a little bit of kind of strange activity around Bethlehem 30 years before John appears, that John the Baptist appears in the desert on the edge of River Jordan and he begins to preach.

And very quickly, this strange figure that Mark in his gospel tells us was clothed in camel hair and ate locusts and honey, that this strange figure was causing a sensation and the crowds were flocking to see him from all over Israel. But more than that, the crowds were going and they were being baptised by him in huge numbers. Now, it’s worth noting that this was a period of what we might call messianic fervour in Israel’s history.

It was a time it seemed that there was a real sense of high expectation that the Messiah, that promised Saviour, King, Deliverer that God had promised might appear. Everybody seemed to be on tenterhooks, on the lookout for that moment. Perhaps that excitement, that expectation was raised by the fact they were under Roman oppression and the sense that they were eager for a deliverance, for a change, for a rescuer.

And throughout the decades around this period, we know from history various figures arose claiming to be the Messiah. But usually after staging a small rebellion, they kind of fizzled out and their followers disbanded. But what about John? John was drawing big numbers.

He’s clearly got a kind of charisma about him. He’s getting lots and lots of attention. Could he be the one? That’s a question that was evidently being asked back in Jerusalem, in the capital, the political and religious centre of the nation.

(8:33 – 14:49)

And so we read, don’t we, in verse 19, that the Jewish leaders back in Jerusalem decide to send a delegation out to the desert, out to where John is, to all this activity, to ask him, verse 19, who he was. Go and find out what’s going on. Who is this John character? Why all the fuss? And so as all the crowds gathered around John in that early part of the first century, among them was this group of Levites and priests pushing their way through up to John.

And in their heads, it seems that this group have a list of what we might call end-time characters, figures who were mentioned in the Old Testament whose appearance was going to herald variously God’s final judgement, the establishment of God’s kingdom and rule over all the earth, the coming of the Messiah, God’s saviour and king, and the rescue of his people, the dealing of the sin problem that had blighted humanity once and for all. And all those ideas were, and indeed still are, bundled up together in the hopes and expectations of people longing for God to come and fix this broken world and their own broken lives. And so end-time character number one, the Messiah, the big one.

Well, we don’t get the question, but it’s pretty obvious from John’s answer in verse 20 that the first question was, are you the Messiah? Notice the slightly strange wording of verse 20, he did not fail to confess but confessed freely. Sounds a little bit convoluted, but essentially it’s just stressing how clear and adamant John was in these answers. And his first statement to this delegation is, I am not the Messiah, or I am not the Christ you might have in your translation.

That is, I am not the great descendant of King David who’s going to come and reign in righteousness forever. Okay, if you’re not the Messiah, next name in the checklist, are you Elijah, verse 21? Now Elijah, of course, very famous Old Testament prophet, you can read about him in the book of 1 Kings. But along with his exploits back in 1 Kings, he was quite an early prophet in the history of Israel.

He is then mentioned by Malachi, that last Old Testament prophet, that last of the books in the Old Testament part of the Bible, who almost at the very end of his book, it’s almost the very last verse bar one in the Old Testament, mentions Elijah, looking forward to the day when God was going to fulfil all the hopes of Israel. And Malachi wrote, see, these are the words of the Lord, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. So verse 21, is that who you are? I am not, John replies.

Now if you know your Bibles, most folks here do, and you’re familiar with the other gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, you might be thinking to yourself, hang on a minute, isn’t there somewhere where Jesus says John the Baptist was Elijah? And you’re right, Matthew chapter 11 again, Jesus says, for all the prophets and the law prophesied until John, and if you’re willing to accept it, he is the Elijah that was to come. So is John the Baptist Elijah? Is he not Elijah? Or has the Bible just dropped a big clangour here because there’s a contradiction in the middle of these gospels? Well, the answer you’ll not be surprised to know is yes and no. No, the Bible hasn’t dropped a clangour.

Yes, John is Elijah, but no, he’s not Elijah. Confused, let me try and put some of the bits of the jigsaw together. Let’s see if the question, and I think probably was the question to John the Baptist was, are you the physical reincarnation of that Old Testament man Elijah 1,500 years ago? The answer is very clearly no.

I’m the son of Elizabeth and Zechariah from the hill country in Judea. So John is very clear he’s not claiming to be Elijah come back down from heaven, so they can ditch that thought. The question then is, did Malachi or was Malachi predicting the literal reappearance of Elijah from 1 Kings? And I think that’s where we have to understand that Elijah has a symbolic nature when it comes to these verses and the pages of the Bible.

That is, we need to understand that Elijah is one of those figures whose name became interchangeable with the whole idea of being a prophet. And indeed Elijah in many ways in the Old Testament is the archetypal prophet. In other words, you think of a prophet, you think of Elijah.

(14:50 – 21:20)

Trying to think of some other similar types of examples. For example, somebody who Elijah knew well, the original Elijah knew well was Queen Jezebel, and she has entered that kind of category too. So of course the name Jezebel has now become synonymous with wickedness.

So later in the Bible in Revelation, John the gospel writer, not John the Baptist, can rebuke the church in Thyatira or record the words of Jesus rebuking the church in Thyatira for tolerating that woman Jezebel. Obviously not the Jezebel from one and a half thousand years ago, but somebody of the same type. The same spirit, having the same kind of effect.

I guess we could think of examples in popular culture, couldn’t we? You say kind of Michelangelo, which is synonymous with classical art. And the name Elijah it seemed had assumed that kind of status, which explains the words given to John the Baptist’s father when his birth was foretold by the angel at the start of Luke chapter one. Again, we can read it on the screen.

Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son and you are to call him John, and he will go on before the Lord in the spirit and power of Elijah to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. Looks to me like the spirit and power has been scored through. It’s supposed to be underlined.

Maybe it’s just a screen up there. But you see that John the Baptist comes in the spirit and power of Elijah. So was John Elijah? Physically, literally no.

But was John the Elijah spoken of by Malachi, the prophet who would come and announce the imminent arrival of the Messiah? Yes, he was that Elijah. Okay, third attempt, third name in the checklist. Are you then the prophet spoken of by Moses? This was a reference to words of Moses in Deuteronomy chapter 18.

And again, they’re on the screen for you. This is what these religious delegates would have in their mind when they asked that question. These verses from the start of the Old Testament.

The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me that is like Moses from among you, from your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him. The Lord said to me what they say is good.

I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among them, their fellow Israelites, and I will put my words in his mouth. He will tell them everything I command them. You see, Moses himself was a prophet in that he acted as a spokesman for God.

And yet, in the midst of all Israel’s disobedience and all the times where they ignored what he was telling them and rebelled, he looked forward to a time when God would send a prophet who rather than disobeying and ignoring, that people would actually listen to. Well, of course, there had been many subsequent prophets after Moses, such as Elijah, but the Jews had taken these words to be speaking of an end time figure, a prophet above all the other prophets who would usher in a new era. And so as with the Messiah and Elijah, they were always on the lookout for the potential arrival of this prophet.

I think it becomes clear, however, that Moses’ reference to the prophet here in Deuteronomy is really just an early reference to the coming of the Messiah himself. But in all events, no, John is not the prophet. Well, this isn’t getting us anywhere, is it? You can hear the exasperation in this delegation’s voice in verse 21.

Finally, they said, who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself? And here John does reach back in to the Old Testament, to the words that Alan quoted at the start of our service from Isaiah chapter 40. They are recorded in verse 23.

I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, make straight the way for the Lord. This is quite amazing, isn’t it? How did the greatest man who ever lived, the greatest preeminent prophet of them all, describe himself? I’m just a voice, just a voice out here in the wilderness calling to others. That’s it.

Want to know who John the Baptist is? That’s my purpose. That’s why I’m here. And that, of course, let me say, fundamentally remains the model for every one of God’s servants since and today, that we are people who are called to just urge those around us to be ready to meet God and to do so, as we’ll see next week, by pointing them to Christ.

That’s the purpose of standing on this platform. It’s the purpose as we go out with the 3-2-1 message in months to come, we pray, is simply to point people to Jesus and get out the way. Our calling is to be no more than living, walking, talking signposts to Jesus, to the Messiah.

(21:21 – 30:44)

Because as John reminds us, we are not the Messiah. I am not the Messiah. You are not the Messiah.

We can’t fix people. We can’t meet their deepest needs. We can’t untangle the knots and brokenness in the soul of another.

None of us can raise the dead. None of us can forgive sins. Nobody here can change the heart of a wayward child or take away the pain of somebody who’s been sinned against.

Because whoever kind and clever and popular and successful or charismatic any of us might be, reality is we can’t scratch the surface, we can’t begin to scratch the surface of people’s most heartfelt needs. We’re just a voice. Woe betide us if we ever suggest or give the impression that we are the answer to somebody else’s deepest needs.

It’s also a warning from John not to look for those things in others. Imagine many in that day thought perhaps John was the answer. He’ll fix us.

He’ll sort us out. He’ll tell us what to do. John would have just shaken his head when he said, I am not the Messiah.

No, Jesus is the answer. Jesus is the fixer. He alone can meet those needs.

And so we need a humility and a realism about ourselves. But positively, we might just be a voice, but we have a voice. We were thinking about this in one of our ministry staff teams recently, thinking of Paul’s words in Corinthians where he says, what am I? What is Apollos? We’re just servants.

We’re just stewards. One sense we’re just nobody’s here to help out. But it doesn’t mean we can’t be useful nobody’s.

It doesn’t mean we can’t be nobody’s who don’t have a part to play, who couldn’t be a blessing in some ways to others. We do have a voice. Voices that if we use them well can be of real help and blessing to other people.

That is if they’re used to point people to Jesus. So let’s be unembarrassed about bringing Jesus into our conversations, getting to him, getting to the gospel. I know myself, I often I think kind of pussyfoot around in conversations, even with Christians, small talk, pragmatism, philosophy, maybe because I don’t want to sound overly pious or a bit embarrassed that people will think, try to be too kind of holier than thou.

But maybe we all need to be a little bit more John the Baptist. I’m here to talk about somebody else. I’m not the Messiah.

Let’s talk about Jesus. It’s a good question to ask, isn’t it? When somebody’s struggling with something, how do you think Jesus can help you with that? What difference does Jesus make in how you’re dealing with that situation? It’s always awkward for us, and so let me just commend again the 321 ministry that we’re going into. That will help us to be better in those things, to be a bit more perhaps like John the Baptist.

We’re just a voice, but we do have a voice. But there’s another group, the Pharisees, verse 24, and they’ve got a question of their own, a follow-up question to John, which is, so if you’re not the Messiah, you’re not Elijah, you’re not the prophet, verse 25, what’s with all the baptising? Now, baptism is an interesting thing, because it’s not something that’s actually mentioned or practised in the Old Testament. But we arrive in the New Testament, and people are getting baptised.

It seems to have arisen as a kind of practise, a ritual between the Old and the New Testament in that 400-year period, and the symbolism of water washing being that of spiritual cleansing, perhaps picking up in verses such as in Ezekiel, where it’s written, I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your impurities and your idols. And in particular, it seemed that this ceremony had become something that was used when non-Jewish people converted to Judaism.

And it could be the Pharisees were a bit offended, therefore, that John was baptising Jewish people. I mean, why do they need a conversion ceremony? But John’s baptism, unlike Christian baptism, which then takes on another set of kind of meanings and symbolism of new life in Christ, of entering the church and so on, but John’s baptism at this point was really just a very simple statement of repentance. That is an acknowledgement, a way of saying, I’m sinful, I’m out of step with God, and I need to get right, especially if the Messiah is about to appear.

The acknowledgement of needs that was true for Jews in John’s day, just as it remains true for all people, whatever your background today, however committed a churchgoer you’ve been, whatever your religious pedigree might be, that’s still true for all today, which is, of course, was exactly why John was baptising, because the Messiah had come. God has stepped into human history. The end time prophecies were coming true.

The Messiah was already there, verse 26, he was among them. And yet, these religious experts from the corridors of power had no idea, no idea at that very moment there was one so close to them, of whom the greatest man that ever lived would say, I am not worthy to untie the straps of his sandals. You see, Jesus isn’t just going to be a step up, another albeit deluxe prophet, but rather he is the one, the one in whom all the threads of the Old Testament, all the threads of human history, all the threads of your life and mine will cohere.

He is the Lord, as John has told us at the first part of chapter one. He is the eternal Word, the one who was with God and who was God, the one and only Son who has come from God the Father. He is the one, we will read, to whom God has given all authority and power, the one who’s going to be the judge of all people, every single one of us.

The one that John, the gospel writer, will later tell us in Revelation, before whose face heaven and earth itself will flee away. The one by whom and for whom and in whom all things, you and I, were created. Jesus is going to take your breath away and look, there’s a moment when Peter, that great apostle as he was to become, was suddenly just hit by a little glimpse of the reality of who Jesus was.

Just a moment and he sank to his knees and cried out, depart from me for I am a sinner. Jesus is near among us, so much nearer than any of us think. Are you ready to meet him? May God bless these thoughts from his word.

The post A voice in the Wilderness – John Ch1v19–28 appeared first on Greenview Church.

Well, good evening and welcome to this first session in the book of Joel. When Colin said these words, let’s turn together to the book of Joel, I’m willing to guarantee that not many of you will have heard those words from a pulpit in a church like this, possibly in all of your life. Where do you start with a book like Joel? Well, I thought it may be helpful to start with some factoids about Joel.

It is near the top of the list of the least read and least preached from passages in the Bible. According to Bible Gateway, that online Bible resource, Joel is right up there in the least accessed passages of the Bible. We don’t know much about Joel as a person, apart from the fact that his name means God is God, which is actually quite relevant when we get into the text a little further.

We also don’t know for certain where he wrote and when he wrote. There’s no mention, sorry, although there is mention of the temple here, so it’s likely that it was after the Judah-Israel split. And actually, if we believe in the inspiration of Scripture, which we most certainly do, then all of that is okay.

It’s okay not to know the fine detail here. There’s probably a reason for that. If the fine detail were important, God the Holy Spirit would have made that clear to us.

But the fact that the prophecy is more general actually gives it a wider application and a broader impact, because it deals not so much with specific issues, specific sins, but it deals with disobedience as a big issue, as a root cause, if you will, that brings God’s judgement, and it warns us. And as we saw there in verse 2 and verse 3, through all generations, it warns us that there are serious consequences when God’s people and society at large ignore God’s words of warning. So in that regard, this book is very applicable to our situation here in Scotland at the beginning of 2025.

Joel is speaking to a people who had a spiritually strong heritage, but they were now facing the consequences of neglecting that heritage and living in disobedience to the Word of God. And in that regard, I believe this book has much to say to Western Christians in general, and specifically to Scottish Christians. Our country has a rich Christian heritage.

It has been abandoned by society at large and is in danger of being abandoned by God’s people in particular. Our country used to be called the land of the book, Bible-loving Scotland. The history of the Reformation in our land is as strong as it was anywhere in Western Europe.

But look at us now. But although Joel is writing to say things are bad, he is also writing with a glimmer of hope. He’s also wanting to say to us, there is hope no matter how bad it is or how bad it has been or where you have got to as a result of your neglect of God’s Word, there’s hope if you repent.

And so we’ve called this series, The God of Second Chances. Now, most of us don’t like to be bossed around. I know I don’t.

(4:04 – 6:50)

We don’t like people telling us what to do. We like to do what we want to do, and we like to do what we want to do, when we want to do it, and how we want to do it. Well, here’s another factoid.

Joel is the bossiest book in the Old Testament. It has the highest percentage of command words in any Old Testament book as a percentage of all the words in that book. It’s full of imperative words, command words, do this, do that, and do it now.

And you can see from the chart there that by a margin of some distance, Psalms is next on that list if you can’t read the infograph. By a margin of some distance, Joel stands out in the Old Testament as a book full of imperatives, full of commands. We’re going to pick up some of these command words as our title headings this evening, because for Joel, this is no time in his day for small talk.

And we’ll see the reasons why as we get into the text. So let’s look at some of these commands, starting with the first chapter or stanza in the book, because Joel is written almost entirely in poetic form. Let’s start with verses one to four and think about them under these command words, consider and communicate.

The first command word is listen or consider. Now, if you’ve ever seen Steven Spielberg’s movie, Private Ryan, about the Normandy landings, you’ll know that it contains one of the most dramatic and intense openings in all of cinematic history. It cuts straight into the action with the soldiers on the boat heading towards those Normandy beaches.

And for the next 20 minutes, unremittingly in the movie, it is carnage. It is action all the way. It immerses you right in the awfulness of what that situation looked like, and you begin to feel it viscerally.

Joel is the Private Ryan of Bible books. It has a very dramatic and intense opening. The dial is turned up to 10 right from the beginning, very little introduction, no small talk.

We get a brief introduction sentence, the word of the Lord that came to Joel, son of Pethuel. That’s it by way of introduction, just to clarify that this is the word of the Lord. So Joel is a bona fide prophet.

(6:52 – 7:11)

And that’s it. Then we’re straight into the action. And right away, Joel identifies his target audience.

There’s a special shout out to the leaders. You’ll notice there in verse 2, the elders. And then all the inhabitants of the land are just called in right behind the elders.

(7:13 – 7:51)

They’re all in the crosshairs of Joel’s sights. Everyone needs to listen. Then he refers to an event that is so recognisable by everyone to whom he’s speaking, he doesn’t even need to tell them what it is.

It’s like one of those events that you can always remember where you were whenever they happened. Those of you who were alive in 2001 will remember as soon as I say this, where you were, 9-11. You’ll remember where you were when you heard about it.

(7:51 – 8:30)

And if you had said to anyone in the days and weeks after 9-11, without mentioning the words 9-11, if you just to say to someone in the bus stop, has anything like this happened in your days or in your father’s days? They would know immediately what you were talking about without you actually having to reference it. Because it was such a massive thing that sent shockwaves all through the world. Well, says Joel, that big thing that happened back there, listen to what it’s telling you.

It wasn’t just a random event. It was a message. It was a wake up call.

(8:31 – 12:09)

You’re sleepwalking your way into God’s judgement. Can you see what’s going on here? Now, how good are we at listening or considering the apparent catastrophes that happen in the world, of which there are many and will continue to be many? Because God’s word tells us to expect that in the last days. And when we see apparent catastrophes happening in the world, how do we as God’s people feel about them? Yes, we’re grieved by them, but are we listening to them? Are we listening to them? Are we considering them in the way that Joel encourages the people of his land and God’s people in his day to consider the catastrophes that were happening in the land? Is there the possibility that God is speaking to us and to the world through these catastrophes? C.S. Lewis famously said that suffering is God’s megaphone.

When we see suffering and tragedy in the world, God is shouting at us. The question is, are we listening? So he wants us to consider, and then he wants us to communicate. That’s the second big imperative verb there.

Tell it, hear it, listen, consider. Then in verse 3, do you notice? Tell it to your children, tell it to their children, and their children tell it to the next generation. He wants them to consider this event, but he wants them to communicate it.

He wants this event to serve as a warning for everyone who would hear about it in future generations, which we could argue includes us this evening, because here we are reading about it and learning from it and being warned by it. So what is this big dramatic warning event that should be listened to and learned from? Well, we find out in verse 4. It is a massive plague of locusts. By the way it’s described by Joel, perhaps a greater locust plague than anyone had ever seen before in Israel.

Verse 4 piles on the imagery with pictures of waves upon waves upon waves of these creatures. Now I was on holiday once in North France and a big locust grasshopper type thing got into the caravan. I was scared stiff by this thing.

It was horrific. It was horrifying. Just imagine, just imagine swarms of these beasts, great locusts.

It depends what your text says. The NIV uses words like young and old, and if you’ve got an ESV it’s got some other words like cutting and hopping and swarming and destroying. And for all those that you can’t classify etymologically, they’re actually classified as other locusts.

So this passage is full of locusts, full of them, leaving nothing but destruction in their wake. What is the point Joel is making? Well here’s the surprise. It’s not a lesson about how to avoid dangerous insects.

It’s not got anything to do with insects at all actually. It’s nothing to do with locusts. It’s about God’s judgement on his people.

(12:10 – 14:55)

How do we know that? Well in the Old Testament, as in the Disney kids movie A Bug’s Life, locusts are bad news. Where have we seen them before? Well their first mention, as is often significant in scripture, is in Exodus chapter 10. Moses was begging Pharaoh to let the Israelites go free.

Remember they were in bondage in Egypt and Pharaoh was having none of it. And God pronounces 10 plagues on the nation of Egypt. Plague number eight is a plague of locusts.

In Exodus 10 15 we read that the locusts covered the ground until it was black. Nothing green remained on tree or plant in all the land of Egypt. But there’s more.

In Deuteronomy 28, when God was giving the law with all of its blessings and curses, locusts, destructive locusts, are specifically mentioned as a disciplinary curse on God’s people for disobeying his word and taking him for granted. Imagine you’re planning a special meal out. I’m sure we’ve all done this from time to time, or looking for somewhere to go nice on holiday, and we’re looking for a nice restaurant or a nice resort.

One of the first places we go to these days is TripAdvisor. And when we go to TripAdvisor, we want to check out the reviews. How did it score from other people who have been there? Now, if you’re looking for a restaurant, there are loads of restaurants that score four point something out of five.

They’re unremarkable. You kind of scroll past them, and you think, oh yeah, okay, I’ll come back to that one, come back to that. Then suddenly you see one that scores one and a half, and you think, man, oh man, that must be really bad.

So what you do, you go in and you read all the reviews. You know that five to one, one being terrible. Isn’t that a great word on TripAdvisor? Terrible.

Terrible. You want to read these terrible reviews. So you click on it, and you read all these things.

Don’t go here. We got Campolobacta afterwards, and all that kind of stuff. And you think, man, oh man, I am not going there.

I’m going to listen to the warnings. I’m going to listen to the warnings. Now, we would listen to the warnings on TripAdvisor, and yet we are so slow to listen to the warnings from Scripture.

(14:57 – 18:05)

Why is it that we are so willing to listen to the warnings from TripAdvisor, and we’re so slow to listen to the warnings from Scripture? We are just not taking the warning seriously. If you took a warning seriously, the reason why you take those warnings seriously about these restaurants is you believe and trust the people that wrote them, right? You believe that’s a true and accurate representation of that establishment, and you’re no going near it with a barge boat. Why did we play so fast and loose with the warnings of God’s Word? It’s because we don’t believe the one who wrote them.

We don’t believe him. We don’t believe he would ever judge in the way he says he will. We play fast and loose.

This very negative event has happened to God’s people, and Joel wants it shared far and wide. Now, we aren’t Israel or Judah, and I acknowledge that we need to be cautious about just taking the warnings that are given there in this passage and just applying them straight to us without any context or any sensitivity, but clearly the Holy Spirit included this passage and the generational warning within it so that we should pay attention, more attention than we would or should to a TripAdvisor review. So Joel spends the majority of this chapter describing how horrific this plague was, and he calls on everyone in the nation, no matter their status, to mourn before God for the consequences of their collective disobedience.

You see, when Joel heard God’s Word, he wasn’t just to consider it himself. He had to communicate it. There are implications for the wider community, which is why in our New Testament times so much emphasis is placed on verbal communication of the truth that Jesus is Lord.

God’s revelation and judgement and salvation in Jesus is never intended simply for our own selfish enjoyment as God’s people. There are warnings and implications firstly for the church, but also for the whole world. So communication is our second word.

But as we move into the heart of the text of this section, the next section is no less intense. There are four groups of people brought to us in verses 5 to 13 who represent, when viewed together, the whole community, and each of them receive a strong visceral command specifically for them, followed by a description of the tragic consequences if they fail to listen. And the first group Joel speaks to there in verse 5 looks a bit random to us.

(18:06 – 18:20)

It’s a little bit unexpected. Wake up, you drunkards. Why would Joel start with drunkards of all people? On the surface, the drunkard doesn’t seem to have a care in the world.

(18:22 – 19:35)

Don’t seem to have a care. But Joel calls them in verse 5 to waken from their stupor and open their eyes to the reality of the world around them. This was the foundational problem.

The foundational problem was that the people were stupefied to the reality of the danger they faced. Now, I want you to think this evening of the times you’ve tried to ignore or distract yourself from bad news by doing something fun and pretending that that bad news didn’t exist, as though by doing this fun thing, it might make that nasty thing or bad thing go away. I think we can all identify with doing a bit of that, can’t we, from time to time? Then think of the times specifically in a spiritual sense where you’ve deliberately done something you know to be wrong.

You’ve deliberately rebelled against God, but you’ve pretended it’s no big deal. It’ll just go away. There are no consequences for that.

(19:38 – 21:45)

Joel is not leaving that as an option that’s open to us. He’s saying, waken up, waken up. This is real.

The consequences of your stupor are real and they affect everyone. Yes, even you, whoever you are, whoever you are. Then when he goes on to talk about the vine and the fig trees being destroyed, obviously there’s a connection to the drunkards because their wine, the source of their joy, is going to be cut off at source.

Did you notice that? It’s going to be cut off by this divine plague of locusts. The locusts are described again there in verse 6 with big animal language, sharp teeth like a lion, fangs of a lioness, and the devastation that they wreak behind them. But actually, Joel wants to communicate to the nation and to those drunkards within it and the wider nation that the business of having their joy cut off at source, of having the vine and the fig tree destroyed is actually bigger than the vine and the fig tree themselves because it’s likely that the vine and the fig tree here in Joel’s mind and in the mind of those who are listening were symbols of Israel themselves.

Joel probably means here that the whole nation being stripped of its vegetation and left bare is a visual picture of their spiritual state. If somebody could peel back the veneer and the facade of God’s people, they would have looked like a land spiritually that had just been subjected to a locust invasion. They were empty.

(21:45 – 22:59)

They were dead. They were stripped bare. There was no life there.

Now, I want to ask you this evening if the Lord were to do that for us tonight, if he were to peel back the veneer and make it obvious what our spiritual nutrition looked like and our spiritual state and our spiritual life looked like. The challenge here is would it resemble the nation of Israel with its barren brown covering everywhere and no vegetation and no greenery, no life, no signs of life. The command here you see is, waken up, waken up.

The second group of people Joel speaks to is also an unusual group of people that requires a bit of thinking around why they might be included. Mourn like a virgin in sackcloth grieving for the husband of her youth. What does Joel mean? There were two terrible causes of mourning if you were a Hebrew.

(23:02 – 24:08)

Firstly, the mourning associated with an only son in the family who had died and the family name was being lost. That was a huge source of mourning because the family name was important. We all know that from ancient literature.

But the second example, the second cause of terrible mourning in Jewish culture is given here in verse 8. This is a betrothed girl. Remember, Mary was betrothed to Joseph before she was married to him. This is a betrothed girl whose husband-to-be has died before they get married.

So the anticipation of the joy of intimacy has gone. All that she was looking forward to by way of intimacy, by way of friendship, by way of sexual contact, by way of children, all gone because he’s died. Her joy has been cut off harshly and cruelly.

(24:09 – 28:18)

That was the impact of this severe locust plague on the economy and the spiritual life of the community. Verse 9 is particularly striking because the grain offerings and the drink offerings had been cut off from the house of the Lord. Not that they had been stopped deliberately, but there was no grain and no wine to carry out the offerings.

Do you see? They would still have wanted to go through the ritual of the offerings, but there was nothing to do it with. The very items required for proper worship were unavailable. The elements had gone at source.

There was no joy. No joy. And we feel that.

That resonates, doesn’t it, in our own lives. Following our disobedient behaviours, what happens? Our joy is cut off. The joy in our lives is cut off.

What we once looked forward to, maybe because of our failure and our sin, has turned to ashes in our hands. And we fear that we will never rediscover that joy or comfort, and we won’t unless we learn to mourn over our disobedience. As Jesus taught us in Matthew 5 verse 4 in the Sermon on the Mount, do you remember when he said, blessed are those who mourn over their own sin and disobedience? And then he says, for they will be comforted.

And the essence of the structure of what Jesus says in all the Beatitudes, when he says they will be comforted, what he really means is they and only they, or they and they alone will be comforted. Because there is no ultimate comfort apart from a relationship, a living relationship with the living God, brought about by confession of sin and repentance. I’ve known something of that in my own life, and I’m sure many of you have also known those times when you’ve been far from the Lord, and in his grace, and it’s empty, and it’s barren, and it’s dry, and it’s awful, and it’s bleak, and it was all for nothing, and it’s all a waste.

And then by his grace, God comes to you again with a second chance that we’ll see a bit more of later in the book, and through repentance can restore. Well, the third category, or category is a category that’s a bit closer to home, because we’ve seen quite a bit about the farmers on our news recently, haven’t we? The farmers are next up. We’ve begun to understand, I think, as a result of some of these issues around farming and some of the challenges that our farmers face, we begin to respect them a little bit more maybe, and recognise just how much we actually depend on them for our very survival.

If that’s true for us, how much more true was it in an agrarian culture that Joel lived in? Because almost everyone who had a job worked the land. There wasn’t a tech industry, and an entertainment industry, and a hospitality industry, and a healthcare industry. It was none of that at all.

There was the land, and you worked the land. And these people’s lives were linked to the land and the harvest in a way that it’s very hard for us to understand when we can pop down to Morrison’s for a loaf quite literally at any time of the day or night. But here the crops are all gone, and along with that the enjoyment of the nation itself, and fear about the survival of the nation till the next harvest, because you’re stuck with this for a year at least.

(28:21 – 30:25)

No crops means no blessing, and the Lord doesn’t withhold blessing in their mind without reason. So a sense of hopelessness and despair permeates their lived experience. That’s the note given to the farmers there.

Do you notice it in verse 11? Despair, you farmers. Wail, you vine growers. And that’s what a life lived in disobedience to God looks like.

It’s a life of hopelessness and despair. The command here is to experience that despair and hopelessness, to own it, acknowledge it, recognise where it’s come from, feel what it’s like to hit rock bottom. Sometimes God will take you there, because it’s only there that you start to look elsewhere for help.

Finally, Joel turns to the priests in verse 13. Now, notice the instruction there to dress in sackcloth, which we also saw back in verse 8. But the different thing here in verse 13 is that there is a further instruction given to spend the night in sackcloth, not just to wear it in the day when everyone can see it and see how much you’re mourning and grieving. Wear it at night when it’s just you and no one can see.

Wear it at night. This isn’t brief grief. This is a grief that has to permeate all of their day.

It’s to permeate their lives. Their life has now to be marked by deep cries of mourning day and night. And there’s a need here, you see, for the priests as the spiritual leaders of the people to take personal responsibility for their part in all of this and humble themselves before God to seek His forgiveness.

(30:27 – 30:38)

I want you to think about those situations in your past when you’ve had a big fallout with someone you care about deeply. They happen, don’t they? They do. Let’s not pretend they don’t.

(30:39 – 30:50)

They happen. A friend, a family member, a spouse maybe. The relationship turns sour.

(30:51 – 33:44)

Then as the loud words and the confrontation settles and you reflect in the quietness of the wreckage all around you, you realise that actually you’re wrong. You’re in the wrong. You know deep inside that to restore that relationship, you’re going to have to humble yourself and apologise.

But often that’s the last thing you want to do. Certainly the last thing you feel like doing. Because apologising just adds to the embarrassment and the shame and fear of further rejection.

And so often, and sometimes too often, the feud remains unresolved, often destructively so. Here the people need to return to proper-hearted worship of God. They need to say sorry to God because of their own guilt or shame or fear, or maybe even just their plain old love of sin.

They either can’t do it or they won’t do it. Is that you tonight? You know things aren’t right between you and the Lord. There’s that distance there, that destructive pattern of behaviours that has led you to where you are now.

The feud remains unresolved, but it’s just too embarrassing to confess it, too shameful to admit it, too scared that he’ll reject you. What’s interesting in this passage is that Joel doesn’t actually name what the disobedience is, probably because the people knew exactly what actions had led to the catastrophe. But there might be a deeper reason.

Specific sin here might not be their main issue. What Joel is urging them to do is to take seriously their disobedience, which in this case here is what Tim Keller calls the sin behind the sin, the root sin. So what happens in our lives sometimes is if we are prone to lying or prone to visiting inappropriate sites on the internet or whatever it happens to be, we say sorry for the specific sin, right? And we kind of deal with it at a superficial level the next time it happens, and we’re sorry and we repent of the sin itself, but we never deal with the sin behind the sin.

(33:44 – 35:00)

Why do we go there in the first place? Why do we behave that way? What is the root problem here? What’s the sin behind the sin? As God’s people, we need to learn this lesson about disobedience, too, for although we may not face the same extreme consequences in terms of our physical human survival in a post-new covenant world, that’s not because our disobedience is any less heinous to God than theirs was. It’s not. It’s just the same.

You see, the reason we don’t see the full consequences of our disobedience is because of this table, because of this sacrifice. It’s because of what the Lord Jesus Christ has done on the cross when he faced the ultimate punishment for all our disobedience. But even so, even so, unconfessed sin in our lives, if we carry it and harbour it and refuse to deal with it and refuse to confess it, hear this tonight, unconfessed sin in your life will always, always, always, always lead to carnage.

(35:04 – 35:47)

Our enemy is always whispering to us, it’s not that big a deal. It’s not that big a deal, but sin’s always a big deal. And so as we come to the table shortly, we’re reminded to constantly turn away from our sin, constantly turn away from sin, as individuals, yes, but as we gather together around the Lord’s table tonight to turn away from sin together and to support one another in our turning away from sin and turn towards God himself, the great lover of our souls.

(35:48 – 36:30)

So let’s see finally how Joel does that here. And we come to the last section from verse 14 through to the end of the chapter where the big word really underneath all of the things he says is repent. Look at verse 14.

Declare a holy fast, call a sacred assembly, cry out to the Lord, this is the language of repentance. If the people want to receive a lifeline from the Lord, it’s going to help them if they’re facing him to catch it. There’s no point in doing this, Lord help me when the Lord’s there.

(36:31 – 40:24)

Repentance means that we turn towards him. We turn away from our sin to him. And as we turn towards him and we cry out to him, he throws us that lifeline.

But we only receive it if we’re facing him. You can’t catch it if you’re not facing it. So turn around and cry to the Lord and do it now says Joel in verse 15.

Because if you think that day was bad, those locusts, if you think that was a bad day, I’ve got some news for you. It’s going to get a whole lot worse one day. Verse 15, the day of the Lord is near.

Not the day of the locusts. It was a warning about the day of the Lord. The day of the Lord is near.

And this is the first of several references in Joel to the day of the Lord, which for us as New Testament Christians, of course, immediately conjures up images of final judgement in the book of Revelation. And we’ll get to those references in future weeks. But the underlying message to the people was this.

God’s judgement came on your disobedience and it was horrible when the locusts came. But it wasn’t global. It affected you.

It didn’t affect the whole earth. And it wasn’t final. There’s an opportunity to still repent.

But repent now because a greater day of the Lord is coming when God’s final judgement will come on a disobedient world and there won’t be a second chance. So as we close, just notice one final thing in verse 19. In verse 19, Joel speaks personally.

The tone changes. Until this point, he’s been calling on the nation to repent and all these categories of people to wail and mourn and repent. But now in verse 19, look what he does.

He does something very remarkable. He speaks personally as God’s prophet. And he says, if I’m going to tell you what to do, I need to be willing to do it myself.

So I’m going to start us off. To you, O Lord, I call. That personal identification of himself with all that was going on in the nation.

And he goes first. I repent. I turn away from a lifestyle marked by disobedience.

I cry out. I turn towards God. I seek him.

I rely on him. I cry out to him. I beseech him.

I trust him. And going first is always hard. It’s always the hardest.

If you’re in a difficult meeting at work and it’s tense, going first is difficult. If you’re in a broken relationship, going first is difficult to try and restore it. But here, Joel sets the example and he cries out to God himself.

“To you, Lord, I call”. Brothers and sisters, as individuals who have heard God’s word, ourselves, we mustn’t wait for others. We must be prepared to go first because revival begins with me.

Amen.

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