Tag: lament

9.d. “The great day of the LORD is near, near and hastening fast”

Joel 1:15  Put on sackcloth and lament, O priests; wail, O ministers of the altar. Go in, pass the night in sackcloth, O ministers of my God! Because grain offering and drink offering are withheld from the house of your God. Consecrate a fast; call a solemn assembly. Gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land to the house of the Lord your God, and cry out to the Lord. Alas for the day! For the day of the Lord is near, and as destruction from the Almighty it comes. Is not the food cut off before our eyes, joy and gladness from the house of our God? The seed shrivels under the clods; the storehouses are desolate; the granaries are torn down because the grain has dried up. How the beasts groan! The herds of cattle are perplexed because there is no pasture for them; even the flocks of sheep suffer.

Psalms 37:13     but the Lord laughs at the wicked, for he sees that his day is coming.

Isaiah 13:6-9     Wail, for the day of the LORD is near; as destruction from the Almighty it will come!  Therefore all hands will be feeble, and every human heart will melt.  They will be dismayed: pangs and agony will seize them; they will be in anguish like a woman in labor. They will look aghast at one another; their faces will be aflame.  Behold, the day of the LORD comes, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger, to make the land a desolation and to destroy its sinners from it.

Ezekiel 7:2-12   “And you, O son of man, thus says the Lord GOD to the land of Israel: An end! The end has come upon the four corners of the land.  Now the end is upon you, and I will send my anger upon you; I will judge you according to your ways, and I will punish you for all your abominations.  And my eye will not spare you, nor will I have pity, but I will punish you for your ways, while your abominations are in your midst. Then you will know that I am the LORD.  “Thus says the Lord GOD: Disaster after disaster! Behold, it comes.  An end has come; the end has come; it has awakened against you. Behold, it comes.

Zephaniah 1:14-18    The great day of the LORD is near, near and hastening fast; the sound of the day of the LORD is bitter; the mighty man cries aloud there.

Revelation 6:17    for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?”

The “Day of the Lord” is in contrast to man’s day or Satan’s day.  His “Day” is coming.  We see glimpses of what He is able to do and what it will be like throughout scripture.  We see some of His judgments executed here in Joel.  The locust, drought, and fire, but the “Day of the Lord” coming will not be like anything ever seen before. This day will begin right after the rapture of the believers.  This day will come like a thief in the night, unexpected.  It will come upon the whole earth and is given a great deal of detail in Revelation.  We see prophets throughout scripture warning of this “Day”.  And yet, people go about living as though it is not coming.  How long has it been since you have heard someone say “that man / woman is a “God Fearing” person?  Doesn’t is seem like that “God Fearing” is gone?  Living in a soft prosperous culture has a way of getting people to take their eyes off God and more on self and what the world has to offer.  The time of salvation is now.  Not tomorrow.  Not next week. Not when convenient.  Nos is the day of salvation but a time is fast approaching when the “the Day of the Lord” will come.  Believers expectantly look for this day for they will be ushered into His presence forever and ever more. When God is not given thought, sin is not given thought, redemption and salvation is not given thought, repentance is not given thought, honoring Jesus Christ is not thought, reliance is not thought, obedience is not thought…… Each day we must deny self and intentionally choose to humbly serve, honor, glorify, follow, obey, and trust Jesus Christ with all our heart, mind, and soul, and strength.  The “Day of the Lord” is coming soon and with it the rapture of believers and wrath, anger, and judgment on those who have rejected His call to repentance and belief in and through Jesus Christ.

9.c. “And gladness dries up from the children of man.”

Joel 1:4   What the cutting locust left, the swarming locust has eaten. What the swarming locust left, the hopping locust has eaten, and what the hopping locust left, the destroying locust has eaten. Awake, you drunkards, and weep, and wail, all you drinkers of wine, because of the sweet wine, for it is cut off from your mouth. For a nation has come up against my land, powerful and beyond number; its teeth are lions’ teeth, and it has the fangs of a lioness. It has laid waste my vine and splintered my fig tree; it has stripped off their bark and thrown it down; their branches are made white. Lament like a virgin wearing sackcloth for the bridegroom of her youth. The grain offering and the drink offering are cut off from the house of the Lord. The priests mourn, the ministers of the Lord. The fields are destroyed, the ground mourns, because the grain is destroyed, the wine dries up, the oil languishes. Be ashamed, O tillers of the soil; wail, O vinedressers, for the wheat and the barley, because the harvest of the field has perished. The vine dries up; the fig tree languishes. Pomegranate, palm, and apple, all the trees of the field are dried up, and gladness dries up from the children of man.

This total devastation of the land is the result of the plague of locusts. The nation has become a disaster area. The Lord calls upon different segments of the population to mourn and repent.  What we might call a natural disaster is actually a judgment of God upon the people of Judah.  Joel tells them why the locusts have come and to mourn and repent.  Mourn over their loss and repent (turn away from) of the things they were doing, not being obedient to God nor living in such a way to bring Him honor and glory.   I do wonder about all of the “natural disasters” we are seeing with seemingly much more frequency.  Is not God in control of all things?  Yes, He is.  Are these judgments, reminders, or times of testing for us?  What are we to learn from them?  We know that the increase in frequency brings us much closer to the return of Jesus Christ.  How much more frequent and widespread do they have to be before we look to heaven with expectant hearts for the return of Jesus?  Not much I would think.  He could return today.  When we look at this wide overarching spread of Corona virus you have to wonder how much longer will the return of Jesus Christ for His church be.  The message is clear in Joel, “Repent”.  Could the Corona virus be God’s last call to repentance before the return of Jesus?  The point is to look for and expect the return of Jesus at any moment.  “For if they had known what time the thief would come they would have been prepared” but they were not prepared.  The parable that this comes from was a warning to those who don’t give thought to Christ and to those who think they are already right before God but are not.  Some may wonder what they have to repent from.  This is a fair question.  What they don’t know and what they don’t care about from God’s word leaves them unknowing.  Avoidance, neglect, and being complacent with God’s Word will never lead a person to repentance.  Only when God’s Word is desired and sought with a heart and soul-deep want is when the Holy Spirit will lead us to places within our hearts that we need to repent of.  Don’t neglect His word.  Don’t wait for a disaster to land on your front doorstep before you seek God.  Don’t wait for things around you to crumble into ruin to desire God.  Look deep into His word with a heart and mind that wants to be changed in ways that will honor and glorify Him alone.