Bible Guys Classics: Joel 2:12–17

You're listening to The Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun and practical ways. Hey, everybody. Welcome to The Bible Guys, and thanks for tuning in. Here we are. We are right here. We are. We are on the stage of Heritage Church. Man, oh man. It's going to be a good one today. Yes, it is. We're going to do our best. Yes. And you know what? I wasn't planning on doing that until you said it. But now, why not? I was shooting for mediocrity. Why not just give it the best we got? That's great. Well, hey, we are in the middle of a series called Dangerous Prayers. And today, actually this whole week, our prayers of intercession, right? To intercede on someone else's behalf. And before we get into that, we have a segment that Desiree put together. And this segment is.. These ones are so important to us. Actually, what is this? It's a dad joke competition. Oh, it's a dad joke competition. I know. I haven't looked through these yet, so I'm excited about it. I think I messed up. I turned to the wrong scripture. Are we in Joel? We are in Joel. Oh, wow. Yeah. Okay, so I'm on the wrong, I'm on the whole wrong thing. All wrong day? Yeah, I'm on the whole wrong day. I'm on tomorrow's thing. This is going to be a rough episode. I've turned to 2 Chronicles. Oh, okay. Oh, that's a good one too. Yeah, so for those of you who are wondering, we're in 2 Chronicles tomorrow. Tomorrow. It's going to be really great. It's going to be great. Okay, so dad joke competition. So you want to start? Okay, here we go. Ready? Here's my first one. Yep. So we're doing five. Five each. We're trying to win. Yeah, we're going to vote. Okay. I told my computer I needed a break. Now it won't stop sending me Kit Kats. I think I hate it. Yeah? You hate that one? Yeah. How could your computer send you Kit Kats? I don't know. Just Amazon? Oh, I guess it could do that. Yeah, I guess. I don't know how to explain that. I might have liked it more. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I didn't like it. Okay, here we go. I used to be a baker, but I couldn't make enough dough. Now I'm just needing the job. Oh, no. That's a rough one. We're over. I think we're over. We are. We are. Oh, no. Here you go. Here's my number two. Yep. What's the best way to watch a fly fishing tournament? Which way? Livestream. Oh, I love it. You like that one? It's great. Okay. Really? Yeah. Livestream. Livestream. Okay. Okay. Okay. It's great. I mean, did it make me laugh out loud? No. Yeah. But it was clever. Okay. Number two. I was wondering why the Frisbee keeps getting bigger, but then it hit me. I like that one. I like that one too. That's a good one. I like mine more than yours. Yes, yours was, I'm going to say you're the winner on two. I was wondering why the Frisbee kept getting bigger, but then it hit me. There was no winner for one. I think you're the winner on two. Okay. So it's one, nothing. I'm winning. What's a skeleton's least favorite room in the house? The living room. Oh, okay. I see what you did. Not bad. Okay. I know where you're going with this. All right, here we go. Uh, I'm afraid of the calendar. It's days are numbered. Ooh. But why would he, oh, for the calendar. For the calendar. Okay. I'm afraid. I'm afraid for the calendar. Okay. Okay. So it was in your delivery. It was in my delivery. Yeah. I'm sorry. But it's still bad. It was still bad. Okay. So it's still just one, nothing. I think. I think so too. I don't really understand electricity, but I'm shocked by it. Yeah. It's rough. Yeah. It's too easy. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. It was too easy. All right, number four. Because we like clever dad jokes. We do. Yeah. Yeah. All right. What historical period did people have the tidiest shirts? What historical period did people have the tidiest shirts? T-I-D-I-E-S-T. Tidiest. Uh-huh. Tidiest. Tidiest shirts. I don't know. The Iron Age. Iron Age. So they iron their shirts. This is rough. Oh, my goodness. That's what it means? So I just read ahead, and this one's worse. It can't be worse than the one I just read. What do you call a fruit that magically shows up? Okay. A pear. Oh, my word. Like a pear? A pear. Yeah, yeah. A pear? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is such.. It's a rough one. That is such a stretch. It's a rough one. Dude, we got one. I think out of 10. What's your fifth one? I want to crawl in a hole. Yeah, this is a rough one. All right, here we go. Ready? I asked for 12 bees. Oh, I like this one. This is a good one. Okay. Yay. We have a good one, ladies and gentlemen. Okay. All right. Here we go. Okay. Here we go. I asked for 12 bees, but hang on. Okay. I asked for 12 bees, but the beekeeper gave me 13. He said it's a freebie. Okay. Okay, that's a good one. That's a good one. Freebie. Okay, I think you're the winner. I think I like it. Because we had one laugh. Oh, this was great. Okay. I think this is a great joke. It's a freebie. See, it's the surprise. Good dad jokes need to always have a surprise to them. Not just a groan. I cannot wait to tell Tori this joke. Okay, so... Okay. That's great. So I think you're the winner today. I am. I'm just going to concede. Well, you know what? We don't have any control over this, Jeff. We just get to vote. Desiree is the one who picks these. That's correct. And sometimes I wonder if she, excuse me, I don't know why. Well, yes, I do. It's a little lighter. It's dark outside. But I sometimes wonder, I really do. I never ask her, but I sometimes wonder if she chooses bad ones on purpose to get our reaction. Yeah. In order to get the one really great one. Yeah, you know, so that we could laugh on one and be like, we're appalled on the other one. I think so. Or does she just, like, say, hey, chat GPT, give me some jokes, and then just tosses them in there? She doesn't care about her job or her salary or you or me? Exactly. Well, so right now, we're supposed to be saying nice things about her. Which is not true. We're supposed to be saying nice things about her. Correct. But she is in my office, Fantasy Football League, and we're going head-to-head this week. And right now, So our office fantasy football league has two teams. Yes. The league you're in and the league I'm in. So it's not two teams. It's 16 teams. There's two leagues, right? So there's the league you're in. There's the league I'm in. And Des is in my league. And right now, she's the only undefeated person on our entire Heritage Church staff. Wow. Right? She's beaten everybody up. And so I have to play against her this weekend. Yeah. And so while by the time people hear this, I will have already beaten her. Oh, I was going to say you have already lost. Well, very likely. The way it's been going. Yeah. The way it's been going. So I think you're going to have to say nice things about her, but I just, I can't today. Okay. All right. Yeah. Well, that is, that is something. Yeah. Okay. So we are in, I'm not even going to try to transition this. Oh, talking about saying nice things for people. All right. Yeah. So there's a call to repentance and then God promises to restore in Joel chapter, 2 verse 12. And for our short time listeners, if you just started listening, Chris and I, we went through every highlight passage in the entire Old Testament and we covered the book of Joel. I don't know, maybe a hundred episodes ago or more. So maybe go back and check that out if you're interested. But here's what it says in Joel chapter 2 verse 12. It says, that is why the Lord says, turn to me now while there is time. Give me your heart's Come with fasting and weeping and mourning. Don't tear your clothing in your grief, but tear your hearts instead. Return to the Lord your God, for he is merciful and compassionate, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. He is eager to relent and not punish. Who knows, perhaps he'll give you a reprieve, sending you a blessing instead of this curse. Perhaps you'll be able to offer grain and wine to the Lord your God as before. Blow the ram's horn in Jerusalem. Announce a time of fasting. Call the people together for a solemn meeting. Gather all the people, the elders, the children, and even the babies. Call the bridegroom from his quarters and the bride from her private room. Let the priests who minister in the Lord's presence stand and weep between the entry room to the temple and the altar. Let them pray, spare your people, Lord. Don't let your special possession become an object of mockery. Don't let them become a joke for unbelieving foreigners who say, has the God of Israel left them? And then the Lord will pity his people and jealously guard the honor of his land. The Lord will reply, look, I am sending you grain and new wine and olive oil, enough to satisfy your needs. You will no longer be an object of mockery among the surrounding nations. Well, there you go. There it is. Wow. What a prayer. Yeah. And some parts of it are very specific, like grain and things. We don't deal with grain, you and me. You don't deal with grain, do you? I mean, we eat bread and pizza. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you don't harvest grain. No. Did you harvest grain on the farm growing up? No, we didn't. You have to have a special license to grow wheat and barley and those things. The government controls that. Oh, really? Yeah. But besides that, the rest is pretty relevant, right? Yes. This is what the Lord says. Turn to me now while there is still time. Give me your hearts. Come with fasting, weeping, and mourning. Don't let your clothing... Don't tear your clothes. Okay. Okay. So it's going on. By the way, tearing your clothing was a common thing back then. They would tear their clothing. It was a demonstrative, look how upset I am. Yes. I'm in sorrow. I'm in mourning. It was a demonstration. So if somebody was walking around with clothing that was torn, you knew that they were in mourning. So anyway, but turn to me while there still is time and turn to me with weeping and fasting and mourning. That is a request, isn't it? Yeah. So the whole first chapter is in the first half of the second chapter is God saying, listen, people of Judah, turn back to me. Remember, at this point, the kingdom is divided. So there's the northern kingdom, Israel, and the southern kingdom, Judah. Northern kingdom walked away from God way before Judah did. And they were just following after idols and wickedness and all kinds of things. And God brought judgment on them regularly. But Judah prospered. But then over time, Judah began flirting with the same things and eventually started going their own way, rebelling against God, starting to worship idols and things. And God now through Joel is warning them saying, listen, judgment is coming and it's going to be really, really horrible if you guys don't come back to me. And so then Joel starts. So in chapter two at the beginning, he says, sound the trumpet in Jerusalem, raise the alarm on my holy mountain. Let everyone tremble in fear because of the day of the Lord is upon us. So Joel is like, listen, people, judgment is not coming. Judgment is here. We have to turn away from our sin and come back to God. And then that's where we picked up in verse 12. That's why the Lord says, come back to me. Because I want to be slow to judgment. I don't hate you. I'm willing to discipline you. Like a parent needs to discipline a child in order to get their attention to do the right thing instead of the wrong thing. He says, I love you. What is the one verse he just said a minute ago? For he is merciful and compassionate, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. He is eager to relent and not punish. Right. God's not delighting in the fact that punishment is coming. He's really eager to relent and not punish. He's full of mercy and unfailing love if the people would just turn from their sin and turn to God. That same principle is available to you and me today. That's awesome. And I love how it's a call to repentance. And what he's really saying is, is he's saying, who knows, perhaps he will give you a reprieve, sending you a blessing instead of a curse. And really what he's saying is, is it's never too late. Yeah. Right? Yeah. It's never too late. Right. So it doesn't matter where you are. It doesn't matter if you think like, hey, I've crossed the line of no return. You know, there's no way that God can forgive me. Judgment is coming. You know, there's a lot of people, what they do is they make mistakes and then they find themselves in the midst of consequence and You know, and then all of a sudden everything around them starts crumbling or relationships start to get severed. And it's just like, it's almost like they've held their position of non-repentance and people just somehow think that, you know, they're just going to hang on to their view. But you know what? I think that even in the midst of, I mean, even if judgment were to come is what I'm picturing. That's sort of where my mindset is. It's like, even if judgment were to come and even if, you know, There was some sort of a big judgment coming. There's still a repentance factor that will allow God to bless you even in the midst of the valleys, right? Because doesn't God still bless in the midst of the valleys? Doesn't he still grant mercy even when there's earthly consequences to our bad choices? So the way that the prophets talked, no. So when once judgment is unleashed, the only thing that turns it back is full repentance. That's it, right? So there's no, I'm judging you and blessing you simultaneously. It's the gloves are off and judgment is here now. And it's going to be really, really bad until you repent. And I was having a conversation with a guy who's been going through some really, really difficult things as a result of his own bad choices. He lost so much in his life. He lost his home. He lost his marriage. He lost so many things. And he was so hateful and resentful for a while towards others. He was demanding all this justice and things as he felt. But he was the one who pulled his life down around him. Other people participated, perhaps, and made it worse. And then finally, as we were going through this conversation, the Bible says God opposes the proud, but he gives grace to the humble. And I asked him, I said, so are you still wanting revenge on everybody else? Do you want your enemies to suffer? All these things. He started crying. He said, no, not anymore. I said, well, what changed? He said, I have nothing. All I have is my books. He started crying. He said, I wouldn't even want my enemies to live this life. And I said, you're in exactly the right place now for God to begin to bless you. Right? Because you have nowhere else to turn. And that's usually what God does. Once judgment comes, it's unrelenting. until we repent. And that's what he was doing in that moment. He was repentant going, no, you're right. I've done this to myself and all I have is God's mercy to help me out from that. So, yeah, I see what you're saying. I understand what you're saying. I think that when you read the minor prophets like this, judgment is unrelenting until repentance. And that repentance means that I have to get to the point where I'm the one who caused this. The consequences are I remember one time my parents were spankers. They spanked me. Always under control and discipline. So they weren't beaters. They didn't just beat me. It was very disciplined and orderly. And my dad would always make me sit alone for a while while he calmed down. So he'd never spank me when he was angry. He'd come and say, listen, why? Why is this going to happen? And I'd be like, because I lied or I stole or I disobeyed. I did whatever, right? And I think it's the same thing with God. In Hebrews, he says, if you don't get disciplined by God, chastened is the word, then you're an illegitimate child. You're not one of his own. So God does that. And it's not that God's being mean. It's that our own behavior isn't going to turn without a certain amount of pain sometimes. And God knows when that moment is in our life. And so he'll bring it to us. But the second we repent, and this is why it says he's eager to relent. And not punish. He's just waiting for the first hint of repentance. God, I did this to myself. I deserve it. Would you forgive me? This is what happened with that guy yesterday. The tax collector says, God have mercy on me, a sinner. Yeah. Right? So I had a very early ministry experience early on, like within my first seven years of being in ministry full time. And I had a staff member who... had a moral failure and uh and then i left that church and then went to another church in the area stayed there for another three years and then i was moving from atlanta georgia to michigan well he had heard that i was leaving the state so we hadn't talked since this big conflict and everything else so he said why don't you uh why don't we meet it's time it's high time that we met since this big falling out and uh and i said okay that's fine because i'm interested in in reconciliation obviously but uh but this guy by the way was like six foot three and like 250 pounds and could destroy me and uh he goes oh let's meet in the best buy parking lot and i said best buy parking lot that's where i would have my cousin meet somebody with brass knuckles yeah with brass knuckles to put a hit on him and he goes fine where you want to meet and i said i said that's fine i said let's just meet in the best you know best buy parking lot that's fine so we met there And I remember him grabbing my truck and, you know, my truck had like these rails on it. And he grabbed my truck and he was shaking it. He was so mad. And the whole truck was shaking. I'm thinking, man, this guy's strong. He could kill me, right? But he didn't. It was a fine meeting. But in that meeting, I just said, I said, why didn't you just admit it? He went through, I mean, the church split. Everybody just, I mean, just the consequences kept coming and coming and coming and they just, and, and, and, which is why I sort of even brought it up because, because it was like, it was like, so yeah, it was coming. The judgment was there, right? You had this moral failure. You did all these different things. You did like three things. And, uh, and, and anyway, it's a long story, but I, but I just said, why didn't you just say, okay, fine. I did those things. And, and yes. The consequences could have still come, right? And maybe the end result could have been the same. Well, if he had confessed and repented, the consequences would have been far less. That's what I'm meaning. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what I was trying to mean here. Because he's slow to get angry and he's filled with unfailing love. Yeah, that's why I said like true repentance and then God could still bless you in the midst of the valleys. Yeah. Right? So it could still be a huge valley moment. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, okay. I see what you're saying. So I was seeing the valley as the punishment. Yeah. And if you're not in the punishment, you're coming out of the valley. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's what you were saying. Yeah. That's what I was saying. I was just saying, like, I was saying, like, things would have gone better. A hundred percent. A hundred percent better if you would have just said, yes, I did those things. Yeah. And we have to understand that, like, you know, so, you know, ministry, but honestly, it's not just ministry. It's Christianity, isn't it? Right. Right. Like, you know, to be a godly husband, to be a godly father, to be a godly friend. Right. I mean, just. To be a Christian, you never win, or excuse me, you never lose by admitting the bad things. I mean, ultimately, yes, there's going to be consequences for the bad things. You're just not going to avoid it. But if you stay, you know, hanging on with clenched fists— To the lie. It's just going to get worse and worse. An unrepentant heart. Yes. It's like, what kind of person is that? Yeah. Right? And so when all the evidence points to the contrary. So it's just like, if you let go and you say, yes, I did those things, then all of a sudden now, oh, hey, he did those things, but he's repented. Look, his character is good. His heart is good. Right? He's going back to God. Things are heading in the right direction. It's just, it's a win every single time. Yes. So in the midst of the consequences, you know, if you made bad choices. Well, there's not going to be, Jesus said, the truth will set you free. Right? So there's not going to be any freedom from the weight of the consequences of our sin until we finally get honest with God, honest with ourselves and honest with others. Right. And so that's, I think is great. Then you have this intercession piece, right? So this week is an intercession thing. He says, blow the ram's horn in Jerusalem, announce a time of fasting, call all the people together for a solemn meeting. Right. And gather the elders and the children and the babies, right? Brides and bridegrooms, everybody. And then let the priests who minister in the Lord's presence stand and weep between the entry room to the temple and the altar. And then let them pray, spare your people, Lord. Don't let your special possession become an object of mockery. Don't let them become a joke for unbelievers and unbelieving foreigners who say, has the God of Israel left them? And so there's the personal repentance in those first five verses or four verses. And then there's public repentance, where as a group, we're praying for each other now. The people are gathering together. We're praying for each other. The priests are praying on behalf of the people. God, don't let this ruin us. Set us free. And there is a lot of power. Sometimes there are people who are in the middle of the judgment. They're in the middle of the hard time, and they're having a hard time even articulating what they need or what they know they need to do for God. And we can go and the Bible says that the fervent prayers of a righteous person accomplishes much. And you and I can go pray for our friend. We can go pray for our family member who they don't even know how to pray for themselves right now. They're such a mess. They don't even know what to do. And then the Bible says, then the Lord will pity his people and jealously guard the honor of his land. And God can begin restoring because of the prayers of people who love other people. Right. So fast and pray is what he says here. And if you guys come with this attitude, you can intercede for each other even while you're confessing your own personal sin. And there's a lot of power in that. We're going to talk about that tomorrow. As a matter of fact, the idea of us collectively praying for our land and praying for our people. And this is what's happening in this point. And God says, then the Lord will pity his people. It's after all the people come together and begin praying for each other, not just for themselves. Yeah, that's great. Well, that's a great place to end. And it looks like that's our time. So hopefully we will see you tomorrow on The Bible Guys.