Return to God and He Will Bless, Joel 2:12-27
12"Even now," declares the Lord, "return to Me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning." 13Rend your heart 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.
God calls people to return with all their hearts, and to "rend our hearts and not our garments." He wants us to come to Him humble and broken, to desire His forgiveness, grace and love with every part of our souls. He doesn't want just an outward, superficial declaration, but a true, deep, heart-felt commitment.
In Old Testament times, people would tear their clothes in despair upon hearing some bad news or seeing their condition as unholy and unclean before God. God tells us, though, to rend our hearts and not our garments. Being separated from God because of our sin should tear us apart on the inside and bring us to our knees in repentance, not just damage our outward appearances.
With a change of the inward comes a change in the outward. If we are truly torn up inside, it's going to show on the outside. God wants us to be more concerned with our heart's condition than how we appear to other people.
(13b)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. 14Who knows? He may turn and have pity and leave behind a blessing-- grain offerings and drink offerings for the Lord your God.
When reading the Bible you may notice that in every case before God sends down His righteous judgement upon a people, He first sends a warning and gives them a chance to repent and turn from their sin, thus avoiding the calamity that awaited them. (Some examples are Noah and the flood-- about a hundred years passed while Noah was builing the ark-- Jonah and the people of Ninevah-- God sent Jonah to warn them, and they repented and God relented-- Israel's many many instances of judgement... And in modern times, God has waited 2000 years so far before He will send upon the earth the Great Tribulation!)
Also, God chooses to announce His judgement. He doesn't have to do this. This in itself is a sign of mercy. God is righteous, He could just at any moment send fire down on the earth and destroy us all, but He doesn't. He is long-suffering, that is, He waits and waits for us to turn from our sin so He doesn't have to judge us. And then when He can't wait anymore, He announces His judgement in hopes that hearing it will cause us to repent, and then He waits some more!
He could just say to us, "That's it!!" and blow us all up. But instead He sends us prophets, and signs, and He even gives us the revelation of the future judgement of the earth. He sent His only Son to earth to teach us! He tells us through the truth of His Word that judgement will come if we do not repent. We have absolutely no excuse for being angry with God for His judgements. He warned us!
We don't know that in every single circumstance God will relent in His righteous judgement, so we should not abuse His grace and sin freely and willingly thinking "All I have to do is repent when I'm done and I'll be fine." If you're that willing to sin, one would have to wonder about the sincerity of your repentance. Furthermore, the word "repent" means to turn away from. Not only to be sorry, but to be so sorry that you stop doing it! Paul said in Romans 6, "Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?"
God said that if we confess our sins, He is just and faithful to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9). This shows us that forgiveness does require some action on our part: we have to confess, and we have to repent, turn away from our sin. The bad thing about sinning willingly and abusing His grace is that the more we do it, the harder our hearts become, and we, in pride, eventually will refuse to repent and confess our sins. We have no guarantee of God's relenting in His righteous judgement if we don't repent.
15Blow the trumpet in Zion, declare a holy fast, call a sacred assembly. 16Gather the people, consecrate the assembly; bring together the elders, gather the children, those nursing at the breast. Let the bridegroom leave his room and the bride her chamber. 17Let the priests, who minister before the Lord, weep between the temple porch and the altar. Do not make your inheritance and object of scorn, a byword among the nations. Why should they say among the peoples, "Where is their God?"
God calls all people everywhere to drop what they are doing and immediately cry unto Him for forgiveness and mercy. Our relationship with the Lord is to be #1 in our lives! Once He has warned us of His impending judgement, that there is no time to waste in repenting. Even one second of procrastination could mean the difference between life and death, between forgiveness and judgement!
God shows us that nothing, not weddings, not nursing your baby, not even religious duty comes before your right standing with God. Get priorities straight! Don't take one more step without God's forgiveness!
Often we put practical duties and even church activities before repentance, or even before doing what God has put on our hearts to do. We may say, "I'll repent after church in prayer with a pastor," or, "I'll finish this task at work before I pray," or, "I'll read my Bible after I do this study for tonight's women's group." But your prayer to God, and obeying His command, is to be your first priority!
If the Lord shows you some sin in your heart during a church service, whether in the middle of worship or during the sermon, you should repent right when He shows you. You can still go up for prayer after service, but you can't truly worship God or gain much from a Bible study if you aren't right with God.
You can stop for 3 seconds at work and offer up a silent prayer to ask God for forgiveness (or whatever He's put on your heart to pray for). Prayer doesn't have to be a long, drawn-out, fancy, poetic oration, it just has to be sincere and from the heart. The Bible says "If you confess your sins God is just and faithful to forgive." Not, "If you please the Lord with your poetic skill and linguistic excellence God is just and faithful to forgive." How hard it would be to find forgiveness if the latter were true!
And do what God has been telling you! If God wants you to read your Bible, that means He wants to show you something; He wants to speak to you.
Just the other day I was sitting down at work to do a study for my Monday night women's Bible study. We are reading a book called Loving God With All Your Mind, by Elizabeth George. I had procrastinated and waited until Monday at lunch to do it. But the Lord had been telling me since Saturday that I needed to start doing my lunchtime devotionals again, and I thought to myself, "I'll do my study, and then when I get home I'll read my Bible." But the Lord had other plans.
As I sat down to do my study, I felt aweful, because I knew that I wasn't obeying God. He wanted me to read my Bible and do the study later, but I was worried that I'd not have enought time to finish my study if I did it after work. Eventually I gave up and decided to read my Bible and do my study later, and boy was I ever blessed for obeying Him! I had a wonderful study, and I finished my study for the women's group also. And the next day, He gave me this study. Coincidence???
18Then the Lord will be jealous for His land and take pity on His people. 19The Lord will reply to them: "I am sending you grain, new wine, and oil, enough to satisfy you fully; never again will I make you an object of scorn to the nations.
God will have pity on those who call out to Him and repent. Not only will He relent in His judgement, but He will exceedingly bless them!
20"I will drive out the northern army far from you, pushing it into a parched and barren land, with its front columns going into the eastern sea and those in the rear into the western sea. And its stench will go up; its smell will rise." Surely He has done great things.
God will drive away the enemies and the judgement He had set out for you when you had sinned against Him. (Though you may still bear consequences for your actions, God will bring good out of them. Romans 8:28 says that "All things work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to His purposes".)
21Be not afraid, O land; be glad and rejoice. Surely the Lord has done great things. 22Be not afraid, O wild animals, for the open pastures are becoming green. The trees are bearing their fruit; the fig tree and the vine yield their riches.
This verse shows us that God cares even about the animals and the land and blesses them too, that they may rejoice.
23Be glad, O people of Zion, rejoice in th Lord your God, for He has given you the autumn rains in righteousness. He sends you abundant showers, both autumn and spring rains, as before. 24The threshing floors will be filled with grain; the vats will overflow with new wine and oil. 25"I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten-- the great locust and the young locust, the other locusts and the locust swarm-- my great army which I sent among you."
God's blessings can be so simple that we overlook them and take them for granted. But Joel shows us here that even the winter and spring rains are a blessing to rejoice over. We should give thanks for not only the big, obvious blessings that God bestows upon us, but the simple, easy-to-miss ones as well.
In verse 24 we find that God is so happy and blessed that His people have returned to Him that He doesn't count their sin against them, but He blesses them abundantly so that their threshing floors and wine vats overflow! The Bible says that God blesses us exceedingly and abundantly above all we could ask for or imagine (Ephesians 3:20).
We also see that He blesses them abundantly with new wine and oil-- New blessings, nothing predictable! God doesn't work in a box, His blessings are new every morning!
Not only will God abundantly bless those who turn from sin toward His grace and mercy, giving them a new life in Christ Jesus (2 Cor. 5:17), but He also repays us for the years that were lost and eaten by the locusts of sin. God could have just picked up where we were when we came to Him, but He is so wonderful that He chooses to repay us in blessings for the time we spent in sin, destroying ourselves and our lives! Hallelujah!
26You will have plenty to eat, until you are full, and you will praise the name of the Lord your God, who have worked wonders for you; never again will My people be shamed. 27Then you will know that I am in Israel, that I am the Lord you God, and that there is no other; never again will My people be shamed.
Because God has done all this for His people who have turned back to Him in repentance-- relented in judgement, blessed abundantly and repayed them for their lost years-- the people will turn to God and praise Him. God will not ever shame them, for He will by no means cast out those who come to Him. God will never put to shame those who trust in the Lord and take refuge in Him!
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