We Face the Day of the Lord: A Call to Wake Up

I can tell you there's been a lot of things that God has been doing recently.

And I was reminded this morning with Brother Josiah's song, God's been good.

And he has been so, so good to us in the church, and he's been good to us in our lives.

Just recently, we're going to be starting a new ministry here at our church.

And this, this started back in 2019.

We had a dear brother named Sean Tice, who is one of our missionaries, come into our church.

And he presented a heart for the fatherless.

And it's obviously a problem within our country.

You know, so many young people are growing up in homes without fathers, and the single moms need support and all that kind of stuff.

And he came and presented back in 2019, I think it was.

I'll have to go back in my records, but from that moment on, I was like, I believe that God is calling us to have a ministry like that here at our church and prayed over it, brought it up multiple times.

And then year after year, I'm like, well, maybe, maybe I'm misunderstanding what the Lord is calling, because I'm not sure if, if this is going to catch.

And not too long ago, I had two individuals come up to me in two different times and say, hey, I really want to do that ministry.

So I'm so excited for that ministry starting.

That was an answer to prayer, and that's a testimony I want to give to the Lord here tonight.

Well, we're going to go ahead and start a new series here on Sunday nights for the foreseeable future, and we're going to be discussing some minor prophets.

How many of you don't raise your hand, but are not as familiar with the minor prophets as maybe the New Testament or the major prophets?

And when we use the word major and minor, it's not that the major prophets are more important than the minor prophets.

It's really just all about the length of the book of the Bible.

But in the minor prophets, there's a lot of rich teaching about what was happening then, and also obviously prophetic teaching of the day of the Lord.

That is the common.

We're going to start with the book of Joel.

So if you have your Bibles here this evening, turn with me to the Book of Joel.

For all of you that maybe aren't used to turning to the book of Joel, it's right after Hosea, and maybe Hosea you're more familiar with.

That's more of a, a common prophet to be studying.

We're going to look at, in, in this series, we're actually going to look at Joel, Amos and Obadiah, some really interesting ones.

And the Book of Joel has really just three chapters.

It's a short book.

It's one of the 12 minor prophets, and it covers enormous amount of prophetic territory.

Though one of the themes that you're going to see throughout the Book of Joel is this phrase, the day of the Lord.

And really within this book, you really have two days of the Lord.

And when we say day, we're not talking just about a literal 24 hour day.

We're talking about a span of time in which God is going to do his work of judgment.

So we're actually in chapter one, going to be seeing a real live day of the Lord happening in Judah during this time.

So it's, it's playing kind of two roles here.

It's telling us about a historical event and then it's also portraying what we believe is going to be the day of the Lord in the future of God's judgment upon all of those who are in rebellion to him.

And how many of you, okay, you can raise your hand on this?

How many of you?

It makes you a little bit squeamish to talk about bugs.

Okay, some of you, okay, well, I'm just going to give you a, a warning.

We're going to be talking about locusts and bugs in this chapter, because chapter one is all about this huge locust swarm that comes into Judah and swarms the crops and obviously has huge implications upon the people there in Israel at the time.

So the historical setting is Joel writing this to the people of Judah.

We don't know there, there isn't a date that, or even any indication of when this was written.

There's different commentators writing different things about this being pre exilic or post exelic, meaning when they were exiled to Babylon.

But really the timing of the story isn't as important as the message that's being brought about here through this locust plague.

And so we're going to see in chapter one this locust plague described, and this is where really Joel is warning the people that it's because of their rebellion to God that God is bringing this judgment upon them.

And he talks about how they can be in repentance and turn back to the Lord and, and find his provision and protection.

So there is a literal locust swarm that's happening here in chapter one, but also prophetic symbolism that's happening for the day of the Lord.

So a good way to understand The Book of Joel.

So as we're getting into this book, a good way to understand it is that there's a literal, historical locust judgment that's happening here in the book, but also God is using this historical event as a prophetic picture and a future greater judgment that is to happen.

So we have to see this through some level of a prophetic viewpoint as we look into the Book of Joel, but also with the viewpoint of the day of the Lord and judgment.

There's also in chapter two, a lot of allusions to salvation, about having a heart turned over to God.

He talks about in chapter two, not just one, rending their clothes, but rending their heart.

And you'll know what that means as we get into it.

But really, the call for the people there in Israel was to come to a place of repentance.

And one of the ways that they would have shown their repentance to God was by rending their clothes, tearing their clothes.

But what he's going to talk about here is it's more than just an outward act of rending our clothes or putting sackcloth and ashes on, but it's also about our heart being broken over the sins that we commit.

And so here in the Book of Joel, we're going to see a lot about that as well.

And I hope that it'll be a blessing for you as we look at things that happened in the past, things that are happening now, and ultimately what we believe is things that are to come in the judgment of God that's coming to the world.

So let's go ahead and go to Joel, Chapter one, and we're going to just go through the first section here tonight, and we're going to look at Joel's writings here and his warning to the people of why they're going through, what they're going through.

And I think for all of us that are living in the world today, and if we are aware of what's going on around us, there's certainly a lot of things that our country, our, our own, you know, Christian Fellowship should be aware of that's happening around us.

And we, we are calling for revival.

Obviously, I think that all of us would agree.

We want revival in our country, we want revival in our churches, we want revival in our homes, we want revival in our hearts.

But where revival is, so is repentance.

Repentance is always married to revival because we can't have revival, we can't have that renewed focus unless we turn away from the things that are pulling us away from that Focus.

So here in the book of Joel, he is going to emphasize repentance and the need for repentance to come to a place of restoration before the Lord.

So really, the first four verses is him calling to the people to remember the devastation of what's happened here in this locust swarm.

And really what the call for us in our own life is to do is to remember the devastation that sin brings in our life.

So often we forget about the devastating elements of sin sometimes when we're in that punishment, when we're in that difficulty, when we're in that trial, we're not tempted to think about how sin is good.

But when we're kind of out of that and we've received forgiveness and we've walked a little bit farther on in our Christian walk, we've sometimes forgotten about the.

The difficulty and the devastation that we faced with that sin.

So the first step here is devastation.

He says the word of the Lord that came to Joel, the son of Pethuel.

So.

So don't.

Joel doesn't begin with his opinion.

He says that this is the word of the Lord.

And that's how the prophets start out as well.

I think you understand that the prophets aren't just talking about their opinions.

They're not just talking about their experiences.

But really, we believe that the Old Testament prophets are speaking forth the word of God.

They are the ones that are the mouthpiece for God at that time.

And so this is an important approach as we look at this book, because we have to understand this isn't just Joel's interpretation of what he sees.

This is God speaking through him, and this is the message that he's bringing.

So the authority of the message doesn't come from Joel.

It comes from God.

And that's really, in any sense, when anyone's bringing forth the word of God, the authority and the.

The power of that message is not in the person delivering the message.

It's in the message that God is bringing and the source of that message.

So in verse two, he says, hear this.

I love that phrase there.

He's basically saying, listen up.

I don't know of any of you that have had kids.

You talk to them and you wonder if they're actually listening to you.

I'm always like, look at me.

I want to see your eyes.

That's.

That's what Joel is saying here.

He's like, listen up.

Hear this, ye old men, and give ear all ye inhabitants of the land.

I want to stop there because I want you to see something.

He calls for everyone to pay attention, the old men, all the inhabitants of the land, and as we're going to see here, the future generations.

He, he says, hath this been in your days or even in the days of your fathers?

Tell ye your children of it and let your children tell their children and their children another generation.

What is he saying here?

Well, there's a, I believe, a discipleship connection here.

He says, hey, you need to not only remember yourselves what's happened before you and what's happening now, but you need to pass this on to the next generation.

You need to pass this on to your children, your children's children, your children's children's children.

Right?

And all the generations that come before.

And so this was something very important for Joel and ultimately for the Lord to get across to these people.

And it's important for us today.

This isn't just an inconvenience that they're facing.

This is an impact that not only should affect them and their own life, but it should affect generations to come.

And I want to stop here and talk about the importance of us telling the next generation what it means to follow God and then the dangers of not following God.

I think that so many times we want to sugarcoat our mistakes, and I understand why we do that.

You know, I don't want to get up here and tell you all the problems that I've had in my life.

My parents are here, so if you really want to know all that, just talk to them after the service.

And please don't tell too many bad stories about me.

But, you know, I get, I get we have to be careful, right?

Because we don't want to tell everyone and glorify the sin that we've had in our past and the devastation thereof.

But also I do believe that there is an importance to warn the next generation of the devastation of a sin filled fleshly life.

And I think that so many times, at least when I was growing up, my parents would tell me, you know, don't do that.

And I would say, they just don't want me to have fun.

Right?

I would.

Then I'd hear the preacher preach the same thing at chapel, at school.

Well, you know, you need to stay away from that thing.

Well, they just, they don't understand.

They, they, they, they don't care about me.

They just want me not to have fun.

No, there was a real warning behind those things that they were sharing that, hey, you don't want to have to go through this.

I've shared this analogy with you guys before.

But in Florida, there's.

What we have is venomous snakes, okay?

There's venomous snakes everywhere.

We live by a lake, and so there's water moccasins, there's coral snakes, there's rattlesnakes, there's all these different snakes around and other scaly creatures that, you know, get into your house sometimes.

And so you had to be careful, right?

But I didn't have to go up.

Let's say a rattlesnake was right there, okay?

And it's got a rattle on it.

And my dad said, hey, that snake that has a rattle on it, if it bites you, you're going to be in big, big trouble, okay?

You're going to have to go to the hospital, you're going to have to get anti venom and, you know, get taken care of.

It might even take your life.

I didn't have to go and say, okay, well, Dad, I, I believe you, but I got to really experience this bite before I can really understand it.

No, I can learn from the warnings that someone has come before me to know that I need to stay away from that.

That's what Joel is talking about here.

He says, guys, you need to pass on to the next generation the implication of a life that is away from God.

This wasn't just like, hey, warn them or you're going to lose your food.

He says, no, this is a day of the Lord that you need to warn against.

And so there's a discipleship principle here.

God's people are supposed to remember and teach what God has done in ways of blessing, also in ways of discipline.

God shows that he loves his family by discipline them.

I show that I love my children because I discipline them.

That's part of the love process.

But also we should explain to the next generation that there are things that we can learn that we can build upon that, you know, fit beautifully into this message that Joel is talking about here, that you don't have to fall into the trap of this, of this sin.

So what God teaches one generation should be intentionally passed down to the next.

I think that's so, so important.

I'm thankful for people that shared the truth with me.

I'm thankful for my dad and my mom.

I'm thankful for my grandparents who were a testimony before me.

I'm thankful for people that shared the faith with them.

I'm thankful for my Sunday school teachers.

And by the way, if you're a Sunday school teacher to a child, you might not understand that that child is learning something.

And maybe they're not indicating that they're learning something, but that is being implanted in their minds and in their hearts.

If you're teaching a class or if you have a ministry, those are important ministries because it's the cumulative effect that's building into the life of these people that are learning and formulating the way to think and the way to live.

So he says here in verses two and three, warn the next generation about what has happened.

Then we see here in verse number four, he starts to describe this devastation.

He says, that which the Palmer worm hath left half the locusts eaten.

And that which the locusts have left hath the canker worm eaten.

And that which the canker worm hath left half the caterpillar eaten.

So if one thing left another thing, the other thing ate it.

And.

And so what he's saying here is that there is nothing left.

These, these things that were eating the.

The crops were just devastating.

One wave consumed the part, and then the next wave consumed what was left.

And so we saw that happening there four different times.

And we see really that this is a picture and of God's overall judgment upon the wicked.

And if this is what the locusts could do, imagine what the true day of the Lord is going to be when God comes in judgment.

By the way, I think that's part of also a need for us within our evangelistic outreach at our church, right?

If we don't truly believe that there is a judgment that truly is coming to those who are unsaved, we're not going to have a passion to share our faith with other people.

But if we truly understand that there is going to be a day of the Lord and there is going to be a judgment upon all those that are in rebellion to him, that should give us a passion and a fervor to say, you know what?

I don't want to get distracted from the things in this world.

I don't want to look at all these things that really don't matter and take up all of my time and miss the message of the hope of the gospel to all those around us.

And he's.

So basically, he says, wake up.

Verse five, awake ye drunkards.

Using some strong words here, he says, you guys are intoxicated.

He says, awake, ye drunkards, and weep.

There's a time to weep.

There's a time to be broken.

They need to be broken over their sin.

They need to be broken over their apathy.

And he says, and howl, all ye drinkers of wine, because of the new wine, for it is cut off from your mouth.

For a nation has come up upon my land and strong and without number, whose teeth are like teeth of a lion, and he hath the cheek teeth of a great lion.

So what is he.

What are you talking about here?

What we say, number one, that the people that are living in this sin need to break away from this.

They need to understand that their self indulgence has led them to a place of judgment.

And then he says, hey, you guys are spiritually asleep.

So he says, wake up, wake up.

You know, there's times in my life that I think all of you have probably had where you see somebody, they're not paying attention to what they're doing.

And we know that sometimes people have to hit what we call rock bottom before them for them to understand.

But a lot of times in our life, we love someone so much that we want to say, wake up to what you're doing in your life or what you're not doing in your life.

And you're missing the point.

And so he says, wake up.

Wake up to this.

This what you think is comfort, but really it's apathy.

Spiritual comfort is different than just laying back and saying, well, what I'm going to do whatever I want to do to make myself feel good.

And sometimes that desire for comfort above conformity to the Lord brings us to a place of spiritual danger.

Sometimes God is going to allow circumstances to disrupt our comfort so that we will wake up.

I don't want.

I personally don't want to get to that point in my life where God has to wake me up.

I think all of you probably don't want that either.

But there is a time and a place in our life to actually pray for people, to have God wake them up because it's gotten so bad.

And we're in a place here in the book of Joel that Joel is telling these people from God to wake up and be aware of what is coming.

And he says, hey, there is a nation that is come up.

Joel describes the locust almost like a military invasion.

And he describes them as having teeth like in a lion, a destructive power.

He says in verse seven, he have laid my vine waist and barked my fig tree, and he hath made it clean bare and cast it away in the branches and thereof are made white.

He says, it's like a lion that comes and consumes us.

And we even know that there's going to be times in our life that we, we need to understand the obviously the danger of the enemy.

Right?

I think.

I think we all need to understand that Satan is like a lion walking about seeking whom he may devour.

But also at the same time, we need to have a healthy respect and fear for God and his righteousness in our own life.

And if we walk around just saying, well, God doesn't care, he loves us, we can just go do what we want to do.

That is obviously not what God wants us to be doing.

He wants us to live in a healthy fear and respect for his judgment.

Now, obviously, as believers, we have no more condemnation, but there is going to be a time in our life where we have to come to grips with what we're doing and what we believe about God.

And so he says in verse number seven that he gives this vine and fig tree analogy, and this vine and fig tree analogy can symbolize probably Israel's prosperity and blessing going away because of this judgment.

Now, I don't think it only has to deal with economic blessings, but I do believe it's the blessings of God being pulled away because of their rebellion, because of their disobedience to God.

You know what?

I'm again talking about it this morning.

I'm thankful to be an American.

I'm thankful to live in a country that to some degree is still focused on the things of God, even though obviously we're not what we used to be.

And there's a lot of concern with that.

But at the same time, many of the freedoms that we have religiously and across the board when it comes to the government, those are not guaranteed.

We know that people gave their life for that.

There was sacrifice for these freedoms.

In the same time, as a Christian, we just sometimes take for granted what we have in our life as freedom.

And what he's saying here is he says, wake up, because these things can be taken away from us.

These, these are not guaranteed in our life.

Verse 8, he says, lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the husband of her youth.

Joel uses an imagery of a young lady mourning the death of her husband in an early place in her life.

And the grief should be, rightfully, should be deep, personal, devastating.

He says, that's the kind of sorrow that you should have because of the sin that you guys are living in.

And, you know, I, I, I struggle with this sometimes.

I struggle over not necessarily celebrating sin, but not being so broken hearted over sin because we get so used to it.

We're around it so much.

It's, it's in our workplaces, we turn on the tv, it's everywhere we go.

It's right in front of us, and we just get to a place in our life where we become numb to the things that are against the things of God.

And I'm not saying that we have to walk around all day weeping and crying, but there is a healthy time and a place to identify the dangers and the pain of sin in our life.

And so he says in verse number eight to lament.

But then he goes on in verses nine and ten, and he says that the meat offering and the drink offering is cut off from the house of the Lord.

The priests, the Lord's ministers, mourn, the field is wasted, the land mourneth for the corn is wasted, the new wine is dried up, and the oil languished.

What's he talking about here?

Well, this is, I believe, one of the most important parts of this chapter.

Why is this significant?

Because Israel's agriculture, their devastation of these locusts, have now affected not only their food supply and their material life, but it's also affected their worship.

Right, you see that there, Their meat offering and their drink offering are cut off from the house of the Lord.

They've now allowed this physical, tangible issue of the locust affect their worship and their submission to God.

And so it's more than just them being hungry or thirsty.

This has now reached the temple.

This has now come to a place where their relationship with God and their worship to God is being affected.

How often do we not even notice how the sin in our life is affecting our worship to God, affecting our hearts?

How many?

How many?

And again, don't raise your hand, but how many times have we possibly been in a place where we shouldn't be in our flesh?

And we come into a church service and we should have a heart for God.

We should have a heart for worship.

We should have a heart of thanksgiving.

But instead, we're thinking about something that someone did to us yesterday and how we can get back at them.

Or maybe we're just thinking about all the different things that I could be doing.

Or maybe we're thinking about all the different things in our life that are going wrong and there's no joy in our life.

There is a real way in which sin in our life can steal our joy.

The Bible says that in, in the book of Nehemiah that the joy of the Lord is our strength.

And so as Joel is explaining this to them, he says, hey, it's gone deeper than just your fields.

It's gone deeper than your vineyards.

It's gone deeper than your.

Your pocketbooks.

It's now affected your worship it's affected your relationship with God.

And so now he.

He even goes a further.

And he talks about, in verse 10, that.

That the ground is.

Is mourning itself.

He personifies the land.

And he says, hey, look, every.

This is.

This is everyone.

The whole nation is experiencing the consequences of this sin.

And then he talks about verses number 11 and 12.

He says, Be ashamed, O ye husbandmen.

Howl, O ye vinedressers.

For the wheat and for the barley, because the harvest of the field is perished, the vine is dried up, and the fig tree languisheth, the pomegranate tree, the palm tree also, and the apple tree.

Even all the trees of the field are withered because their joy is withered away from the sons of men.

So the crops are failing.

And verse 12 concludes with the.

The joy is withered away from the sons of men.

And so the picture here is just as these fig trees and these apple trees and these palm trees and these pomegranate trees.

By the way, that when I was reading that pomegranate tree, I was just thinking back when we were in Israel, the pomegranate juice, that's everywhere.

It's freshly squeezed.

I was like, I just.

I thought about that.

They have a lot of pomegranates and date trees and, And.

And palm trees there.

But what he says is, just as those fruits are withering on the vine, so is the joy withering away from the sons of men.

Their joy is being taken away.

And this connection between the physical blessings and the human complacency throughout the Old Testament is connected.

And so what we're seeing here is that God removes something that they depended on.

And so he says in verse 13, 14, gird yourselves and lament.

So this is his challenge to them.

Now he's actually going to direct this to the priests.

These are the leaders.

The priests were the spiritual leaders.

And so he says it starts with leadership.

He says, this is what you need to do.

Gird yourselves.

Pull yourselves together.

I mean, there's been times in my life where I've just been a blubbering mess.

And someone said, like, hey, pull yourself together.

Get.

Get yourself together.

That's what he says here.

Get yourself together and lament, ye priest, how ye ministers of the altar come lie all night in sackcloth, ye ministers of my God.

For the meat offering and the drink offering is withholden from the house of your God.

He says, you guys need to wake up too.

He.

He says, gather yourselves together.

Cry unto the Lord.

Verse 14.

Sanctify ye a fast, says you guys need to get serious about this.

You, you.

You need to take desperate measures, so to speak.

Start to get to a place in your life where you are in complete need of God.

Sanctify ye a fast.

Call a solemn assembly.

Gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land into the house of the Lord your God, and cry unto the Lord.

He.

He ends it there with this thing that I think all of us should get to in our life.

And it's a point where we're in so much desperation that we realize that God is the only answer for anything that we're facing in our life.

And we have to get down and cry out to the Lord.

He says, sanctify a fast.

Biblical fasting isn't like, hey, I'm going to stop eating for a while to lose some weight.

That's not that.

I mean, nowadays they have this, like, intermittent fasting.

That's.

That's not necessarily what he's talking about here.

He.

He's talking about fasting being connected with humility, repentance, prayer, seeking unto God.

And he's calling the whole community, but particularly the leaders, to lead all the people to a place of corporate repentance.

You know, I.

Growing up, you know, revival week at our church, I love revival week.

It was fun.

One of the reasons why I liked revival week is I didn't have any homework because they're like, expecting you to be in church every single night.

So there was no homework on revival week.

And I'm like, great.

We go to revival week and we have a preacher who is a strong preacher.

He was getting up and he was.

He was loud, he was fiery.

There was a lot of music.

There was a lot of coming forward, and.

And that was great.

I'm.

I'm not condemning any of that.

But what I am saying is that revival and repentance is more than just, hey, you know what?

I'm going to make someone feel guilty about their life, because I could sit here tonight and guilt you into something that maybe isn't something that God's really working on in your life.

What, what true biblical revival is, is that we come to a place where we recognize the holiness of God, then we recognize where we are in our life, and we realize how.

How much we've fallen short of God's holiness, as we always will.

But then we get to a place in our life where we look to the grace of God and are we embracing the grace of God and the mercy of God and the forgiveness of God, or are we walking in our flesh and doing what we want to do.

He says it starts with the leaders, but it ultimately drips down, falls down to all the people that are there, that, that are in the land of Judah at this time.

And so I believe, personally, verse 15 is the key to this whole chapter, to understanding this whole thing.

And, and, and let's read it and then we'll, we'll talk about it.

It says, alas, for the day, for the day of the Lord is at hand.

So for them, this, this particular time was the day of the Lord for them.

Now we know that this isn't the final day of the Lord, but for them, he says, the day of the Lord is at hand, and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come.

And so really, I believe that this is the turning point of all of this.

Up to this point, Joel has been describing what has happened.

But, but now what has happened should make us think about what should and what will be coming in the future.

The locust plague was just a warning sign that was immediate judgment and it was real.

But what he's really pointing to is, is a greater picture of the greater day of the Lord that is to come.

The day of the Lord is, is not just simply a 24 hour period.

And now it's over.

The biblical expression of this day, of the salvation in the, in the context of that, Joel's immediate circumstances provide a picture for what is inevitably going to come.

And then we're going to get to chapter two and we're going to see him describe a future day of the Lord that is to come.

And so from our perspective that we have, he is coming to a place of now warning them that, hey, this is what you're dealing with, but this is also what is to come if we continue in this rebellion.

So, so Joel returns to the the, the here and now, verse 16, he says, or here now for them, not the here now for us, he says, is not the meat cut off before our eyes, Yea, the joy and gladness from the house of our God.

The seed is rotten under their clods, and, and the garners are laid desolate.

The barns are broken down, for the corn is withered.

How do the beasts groan?

The herds of cattle are perplexed because they have no pasture, yea, the flocks of sheep are made desolate.

Then he really concludes this, this chapter with verses 19 and 20.

This is, this is Joel's personal response to all of this thing that he's bringing to the people.

It says, oh Lord, to thee will I cry for the Fire hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness.

So now Joel has made this a personal thing for him.

He's witnessing all the destruction around him.

But now this is stirred in his heart a way to respond.

He says, lord, it was to you I will cry.

The fire has consumed the pastures.

And he says, and the flame have burned all the trees of the field.

The beasts of the field cry also unto thee, for the rivers of water are dried up, and the fire hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness.

And so we see obviously some apocalyptic illusion here to the fact that there's just this complete destruction that's happening.

And Joel ends the chapter basically crying out to God for help.

So Joel is the messenger, you know, sometimes being the messenger, you know, what's the phrase?

Don't, don't kill the messenger.

Don't hate the messenger.

Right.

Joel is just the messenger, but ultimately in this case, he's part of it.

And so he is in his own mind remembering what God has done.

And so the way that you could break down this chapter is to remember what God has done in his judgment, recognize, wake up to what he is doing and how one could get out of this place, repent, and to realize that the day of the Lord is coming.

So what are some takeaways that we could take from chapter one?

Well, number one, God's judgment is real.

A lot of times people downplay the judgment of God, but just know that just as much as we preach the forgiveness of God and the grace of God, we also have to preach the holiness and the judgment of God.

Because if I just come to someone and say, well, God loves you the way that you are, keep living the way that you want to live, it doesn't matter what you believe, eventually we'll all make it to the right place.

I, um, Pastor Ethan and I had a.

A lady drop a book off to us.

And I was looking through that book last night, and essentially the book summarized it this way.

All of the holy books in the world are basically the same message.

All, you know, the Quran, the Bible, the Torah, whatever, whatever these books are, you know, it's all coming from the same source.

And so if we're all just genuine about, know, being a better person, finding a state of peace, being kind to one another, you know, everything's going to be okay.

And that's a message that the world just eats up.

Why?

Because I can do what I want.

Like, I can find my own way.

I can essentially be my own God.

But that in and of itself is not a Biblical message.

Because the biblical message is, yes, God is gracious and God will forgive, but there's also a place of repentance and faith that must come to us to be part of the family of God, to accept, escape the day of the Lord.

And so God's judgment is real.

And we have to be aware of that.

We have to understand not just only what God has done in the past, but what he's doing now and what he's going to do in the future.

God sometimes uses difficulties and disruptions to get a hold of his people, to wake them up.

Sometimes things, I mean, we can look at Scripture and see that.

We can look in Scripture and see that God is getting.

He goes even as far as allowing his people to go into exile from a pagan nation, right?

He allows Babylon to come in and take them away.

There was times in which he allowed his people to go through dire struggles and trials so that they could awake themselves to their disobedience to God.

We also have to understand that sin and spirituality in, in the, in the case of our spiritual complacency have serious consequences.

Though, though we know that there's no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, our spiritual complacency can bring us to difficulties in our own life and actually bring us to a place of ineffective Christianity.

You know, I, I think about this from the perspective of how much new life do we have within the church.

I love when babies are born in the church.

That's one way to grow the church.

Obviously, you know, we're, we're trying to contribute to that and, and Ms. Alicia is expecting and we're excited for that thing.

But at the same time, what we have to understand is that within the church, if we're not seeing new life in the church, there's a problem.

We have to be seen new folks saved.

We have to be seeing new individuals turning their lives over to Christ because that's a part of a healthy body.

And sometimes spiritual complacency can lead us to a place of spiritual ineffective nature.

And ultimately we're going to see that we're going to be shriveled up, as the Bible says here, like the, like the palm tree that shrivels up.

It could be the family of God that it's not effective.

And obviously we conclude the thought with genuine repentance involves the whole person.

We're going to look at this next week.

But in Joel, chapter two, he talks about the heart.

God.

God wants our heart, not just our garments.

God wants our everything.

As Romans, chapter 12 describes.

And so I hope that this study in the Book of Joel will help us understand not only what's happened in the past, but also what is to happen in the future.

Now, I don't know when that day of the Lord will be, but we believe that that day is coming.

We believe that God will enact his righteous judgment upon all those who are in unbelief.

That should bring us not just a sense of comfort because we're not part of that, but it also should bring us a place of urgency to share with people around us the great need of their salvation, the great need of forgiveness, the great need of walking in a relationship with Jesus Christ.

And so I hope that this is a study that can help us as we study the day of the Lord.

And then we'll get to the Book of Amos and talk more about that.

And then we'll get to Obadiah, which is a very difficult passage of Scripture, but we'll get there.

And I hope that you'll enjoy this time.

And maybe it's something that you've never heard preached in church.

Oftentimes the.

The minor prophets get overlooked.

But I definitely wanted to.

To do a study in this in the near future.

So that's where we're at there.