Tag: where is their God

9.i. ‘Where is their God?’”

Joel 2:15  Blow the trumpet in Zion; consecrate a fast; call a solemn assembly; gather the people. Consecrate the congregation; assemble the elders; gather the children, even nursing infants. Let the bridegroom leave his room, and the bride her chamber. Between the vestibule and the altar let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep and say, “Spare your people, O Lord, and make not your heritage a reproach, a byword among the nations. Why should they say among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’”

The trumpet horn was used to awaken the people as well, to arouse them to get moving.  Many places we hear of the trumpet being used to signal the armies into battle.  The sound of the trumpet meant; “now we start”, “now we begin”, and for every man to fight with all their strength for their lives and the lives of their families.  All of the Jewish people knew that at the sound of the trumpet they all started as one unified unit.  Everyone knew their place and what they had to attack or defend.  Here we see Joel using the “Trumpet” as a call to urgently gather as one before God and seek His forgiveness and withdrawal of His judgment upon them.  The urgency in his prophecy is fully evident.  Elders, children, nursing infants, bridegroom, and bride are all to listen and urgently and humbly come before God with pleas of healing their land.  Joel had previously called the people to return to God and repent of their disobedience.  This call to sound the trumpet seals the call to return and repent with humble repentant hearts.  The trumpet call does no good to those who will not react to its sound.  It does no good to those who reject the thought of humbly coming before God.  It does no good to those who reject the thought of God being in control and can reverse the course of their trials and troubles.  But to those who hear the sound and humbly come before God with repentant hearts, they will see His mighty hand at work with renewed hope and trust.

“Where is their God?”

Psalms 115:2  Why should the nations say, “Where is their God?”

Psalms 42:3     My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, “Where is your God?”

Exodus 32:12     Why should the Egyptians say, ‘With evil intent did he bring them out, to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your burning anger and relent from this disaster against your people.

Numbers 14:15-16     Now if you kill this people as one man, then the nations who have heard your fame will say,  ‘It is because the LORD was not able to bring this people into the land that he swore to give to them that he has killed them in the wilderness.’

2 Kings 19:10-19     “Thus shall you speak to Hezekiah king of Judah: ‘Do not let your God in whom you trust deceive you by promising that Jerusalem will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.  Behold, you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands, devoting them to destruction. And shall you be delivered?  Have the gods of the nations delivered them, the nations that my fathers destroyed, Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, and the people of Eden who were in Telassar?  Where is the king of Hamath, the king of Arpad, the king of the city of Sepharvaim, the king of Hena, or the king of Ivvah?’”  Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers and read it; and Hezekiah went up to the house of the LORD and spread it before the LORD.  And Hezekiah prayed before the LORD and said: “O LORD, the God of Israel, enthroned above the cherubim, you are the God, you alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth; you have made heaven and earth.  Incline your ear, O LORD, and hear; open your eyes, O LORD, and see; and hear the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to mock the living God.  Truly, O LORD, the kings of Assyria have laid waste the nations and their lands  and have cast their gods into the fire, for they were not gods, but the work of men’s hands, wood and stone. Therefore they were destroyed.  So now, O LORD our God, save us, please, from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you, O LORD, are God alone.”

People on the sidelines mock and challenge God.  They look for reasons to prove He does not exist or able or capable to intercede in the affairs of man.  Those who’s hear, mind, and soul desire to know, honor, serve, follow and obey, continually see the hand of God at work in their lives.  He speaks into their life.  He guides their thoughts and leads them through a journey of faith filled action.  Our strength is in the LORD.  He is my Hope and my salvation.  He alone is God and is able to do more than we ask and much more than we can imagine.  Through His word we find peace and encouragement for each day.