One memory of my youth that is etched into my conscience is that of a particular act of disobedience. I remember that my mother had put me down for a nap and then went to rest herself. After a short time, because I could never rest for long, I got up, found my brother’s indelible ink markers and headed for the living room with my teddy bear. I sat down in the chair in the corner and began coloring away upon my bear. The last thing I remember is looking up and seeing my mother coming toward me. The screen goes blank after that. Perhaps the reason was that we don’t like to remember discipline in our lives. We want to put the pain of discipline away from us. The problem with this is that if we fail to remember the lesson that God wants to teach us in discipline we will fall again into that same pattern of disobedience. I believe this is the reason that Joel gives the admonition for the fathers to tell their sons and their sons to tell the next generation. Let’s not forget the lessons that God wishes to teach us through the discipline that He brings into our lives.
Remember that the key idea in this section of Joel’s prophecy is that God’s justice and holiness demand that He disciplines or judges any nation that disobeys His moral code.
1. Disobedience
Now I want to recap last week’s message concerning disobedience. The whole point of the message is that due to our disobedience, God’s judgment is coming or has come to our nation. And in looking at this passage, though the prophet mentions precious little about the disobedience for which the Israelites were receiving this discipline, it is quite clear from the whole tenor of Scripture that God judges nations that turn against Him.
And we mentioned last week that though no evil can dwell with God and His justice and righteousness demand He judge sin yet He is patient. Yet in His patient there is a limit. A person or a nation can go on only so long in their course of sin before God’s unrelenting judgment is poured out. Sometimes that patient waiting on God’s part may be a long time but there is no guarantee as to the number of years before God pours out His wrath on a people. And the truth is that God pours out His wrath against every nation that turns against Him. He doesn’t reserve His judgment merely for the Jewish nation. In Ezekiel 14:13, God said, “If a country (if any country) sins against me by committing unfaithfulness, and I stretch out my hand against it . . .” God doesn’t distinguish between countries. Any country that turns against God’s commands will suffer judgment. His judgment is righteous because He has put into every person the true sense of right and wrong. And when people begin to reject this moral law that God has placed inside us He turns us over to our own devices and allows us to perish by those same devices.
A. Three places of disobedience
Next we looked at three places upon which God poured His wrath. I’ll just mention these places for time’s sake. The places of disobedience were the Amorite nation that God spewed out of the land of Canaan for their sin. The second place was the region of Sodom. And we know that God completely destroyed that area of the world to make it completely uninhabitable. The final place was the city of Ninevah. Ninevah was so completely destroyed and covered over that it wasn’t until the mid-1800’s that it was rediscovered even though it was such a large city.
B. Their sins of disobedience
Then we looked at their sins of disobedience. For each place we answered the urgent question, “What caused God to pour His burning anger against these people so that they would be dispersed throughout the world or destroyed?”
i. The murder of their children
For the Amorites, the answer to this question was “The murder of their children.” 2 Kings 16:3 says that, “He even made his son pass through the fire, according to the abominations of the nations whom the Lord had driven out from before the sons of Israel.” God drove the Amorites out of the land because of their abominable practice of burning their living babies on an altar. They passed them through fire as part of the worship to their gods. And God said that the land was polluted with their blood.
ii. Abundant idleness and sexual perversion
Now we must ask, “What caused God to pour out His anger against the people of Sodom?” The Scripture says that it was the sins of abundant idleness and sexual perversion.
Their material prosperity made them proud and their great amount of free time caused them, not to pursue God but, to pursue their own pleasures and increased luxuries. And so in failing to acknowledge God they became futile in their speculations and their foolish heart became darkened. Because they found much idle time on their hands they perverted God’s gift of sex. They were involved in adultery and homosexuality. And they would not be turned away from their evil practices.
iii. Physical Violence
Finally we asked, “What caused God to pour out His anger against the people of Ninevah?” For the Ninevites, their sin was physical violence. The prophet Nahum depicted the condition of the Ninevah. In chapter three of his prophecy he says, “Woe to the bloody city . . . many slain, a mass of corpses and countless dead bodies.” The Ninevites were known for their brutality. They would massacre defeated cities. They would stack bodies like cords of wood. One Assyrian king piled a pyramid of chopped off heads in front of an enemy city. These people were corrupted in their violence. They were a viciously violent people. When they invaded a city they showed no compassion. They killed young and old alike. They ripped the babies out of pregnant women’s bellies. They were wicked in their violence.
Each time we noted the sins of the cities we also noted that America is following hard after all these practices. We have murdered more children than any of those nations that God destroyed in the past. Our sexual immorality and sexual perversion are rampant. We are an increasing violent society. And we are becoming violent beyond belief.
Then we asked, “Why are all these things taking place in our land?” Some of you last week wanted me to name the culprits for this; to pin the blame on the one’s responsible. I did name them last week. And so to avoid confusion I will said it loudly and clearly today. You and me. The Christian population. When the world sees us having hatred and unforgiveness toward someone the country has their excuse for murder. When the country hears of sexual scandal in the church it encourages them to pursue their own sexual scandals. And believe me they will go even further down the road than us. When the country sees us blow our cool and lash out at others whom we should be loving they see it as one more reason they can hit and shoot and abuse those around them.
It is not any particular political party. It is we the believers. Instead of passing down a legacy of vibrant Christianity we show the world a watered down version because we fail to be living in whole-hearted devotion to Christ. We disregard the command to be filled by the Spirit of Christ. We neglect to be consumed with the Word of Christ. And we exchange a living relationship with God for an insipid, that is a tasteless, Christianity that doesn’t affect anyone. Don’t think that change in this country is going to begin anywhere else than right within these very walls. And it can. But how? We will get to that next week.
2. Discipline
Now let’s quickly look into God’s discipline in Joel. There are three aspects of God’s discipline at which we need to look.
A. The sovereign nature of discipline (1:4; 1:17)
The first aspect of God’s discipline at which we need to look is the sovereign nature of discipline. What I mean by this is that God can bring about discipline in whatever way He wants. And the reason that He does this is to show us that we are not in charge. We see this in verses 4 and 17 of chapter 1. First Joel says, “What gnawing locust has left, the swarming locust has eaten; what the swarming locust has left, the creeping locust has eaten; and what the creeping locust has left, the stripping locust has eaten.” Here God disciplines the nation of Judah through an enormous plague of locusts. Verse 17 reads, “The seeds shrivel under their clods; the storehouses are desolate, the barns are torn down, for the grain is dried up.” Next God follows His locust plague with a drought.
God will use anything He wants to accomplish His purposes of discipline upon us. He will use foreign invaders or foreign insects. He will use disease or unease. He can use disease as in the case in South Africa where the population is experiencing a great plague of AIDS as a consequence of their sinful actions. He can use unease as in the United States where though we might have everything we want we cannot find peace of mind or soul which has resulted in the boom of psychotherapy that has not found a solution to give people the peace for which they long. They find no peace because their real peace can only be found in Jesus Christ and they are seeking peace everywhere else.
God can use national catastrophe or a financial cave in. He can use a professional crisis or personal calamity. God is in no way limited by what means He can discipline. He is sovereign. The Scripture says, “Who can say to Him, why are you doing this?” This is the sovereign nature of discipline.
We see this in 2:25. God calls this locust plague, “My army which I sent among you.” God was seeking to carry out His purposes in sending those locusts. In 2:11, He describes this army as having carried out His word.
We don’t like to think of God in these terms. We want to sugar coat the fact of God’s righteousness and holiness. We somehow feel the need to apologize for the greatness of God’s justice and holiness. And although there is the possibility of overemphasizing God’s righteousness and holiness to the neglect of His love and mercy, the truth is that we often are lopsided the other way.
Isn’t it funny how we feel no need to minimize God’s justice and righteousness when we are looking for God to judge justly against those who have done wrong to us. But when we come to grips with our own disobedience we somehow think that God should overlook it. We think that if we merely confess our sin that there will never be any consequences that follow our sin. And if there is any difficulty, any trials, any hardships at all, instead of repenting of our sin, instead of looking at how we should change we begin to blame God for our difficulties.
Perhaps a reason we minimize God’s holiness and justice is that God is so patient with us and gracious to us we forget that discipline is a necessary part of our holiness. The author of Hebrews says we can forget our encouragement that is addressed to us as God’s children. “My son” he says, “do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by Him; for those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, and He scourges every son whom he receives.”
The author of Hebrews then goes on to describe the purpose of discipline in the life of the believer. It is quite a different purpose than the discipline of an unbelieving nation. He says, “All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyous, but sorrowful; (He’s saying its not a fun time) yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.” So its purpose is to bring about righteous fruit in our lives.
There is one other issue I want to address concerning the sovereign nature of God’s discipline before we move on. What about believers who are suffering but not as a consequence of any particular sin? What is going on there? What about those who through blood transfusions received AIDS, what about those who suffer pain because they have been hit by a drunk driver? Or those who are paralyzed in a diving accident.
I say also, without apology, that God too in this is sovereign. God can use what we call accidents or even the sins of others to cause us to change in ways that we never thought we needed to change. Too often in situations like these we focus on the other person or our pain instead of seeing how God wants to use it in our lives. If you truly believe God’s Word then you will see all these things as opportunities for God to bring about His great purpose in our lives. God reveals the idols in our hearts by allowing these things so that we may have opportunity to change the way we think and act. Do you see those around you who irritate you as nuisances or as God’s agents for your change? Do you pray, “God take these people out of my life,” or “God show me how you want my attitude to change toward these people?” Do you ask God, “Take this pain out of my life,” or “Use this pain to make me more like Christ?”
God uses these difficult and sometimes painful circumstances much in the same way we use hot water to bring out the flavor in a tea bag. If what comes out of you in the midst of this hot water you are in is not good tasting you need to ask God to change what flavor of tea you are not to make the water a little cooler. Let’s study a little more closely the idea of discipline not being joyous but sorrowful, which brings us to the next aspect of God’s discipline.
B. The wearing nature of discipline
The second aspect of God’s discipline that we need to look at is the wearing nature of discipline. This discipline is not presently joyous. It is no fun at the time that it takes place. It can be exhausting and deflating. There is a reason for it but presently it is no fun. Ask my son if he likes discipline. He will tell you no. But I can tell you that he would be a completely different person if he did not receive it. He wouldn’t someone that you would like to be around. I think the term that is used is brat. But he would still say that he would rather avoid discipline. And by Joel’s description of God’s discipline I think we would say the same thing if didn’t understand God’s purpose in discipline. Joel gives us three characteristics of the wearing nature of discipline.
i. Wasted & Decaying Lives (1:7)
The first characteristic of the wearing nature of discipline is that we experience wasted and decaying lives. Joel describes this in 1:7. “It has made my vine a waste and my fig tree splinters. It has stripped them bare and cast them away; their branches become white.” I think that this description here is metaphorical. I think that God is speaking about the people of Israel and not necessarily the actual condition of fig trees and vines. The reason is that the language God is using is personal. He says, “My vine” and “My fig tree.” Israel is called God’s vine in the Scripture. And what I think God is saying is that His people are wasting away. “My vine is a waste,” God says. The lives of His people are wasting away because of the discipline that He is bringing upon them.
When God brings discipline upon our lives sometimes it seems as if we were wasting away. Sin saps the vitality of our strength because the pleasures of sin are merely for a season. Often the discipline that we experience in the waste and decay of our lives are the natural consequences that God has placed into sin. Sexual impurity ruins our marriage because it causes a separation between our spouse and ourselves. Lying brings about mental anguish that torments us because we don’t know if we’ll be caught or because the lie weighs heavily upon our conscience.
Often a heavy trial due to our sin can weigh on us and cause us to lose our peace and the joy of our salvation. After King David had confessed his sin of adultery and murder, he cried out, “Restore unto me the joy of my salvation.” This discipline can remove our joy and plague us with despair. And yet when we face difficulties, we blame others, we blame God, we long for a way out of our difficulties instead of following God’s way through the difficulty.
ii. Failed Efforts (1:10-11)
The third characteristic of the wearing nature of discipline is failed efforts. We see this in verses 10 & 11. Here Joel says, “The field is ruined, the land mourns; for the grain is ruined, the new wine dries up, fresh oil fails. Be ashamed, O farmers, wail, O vinedressers, for the wheat and the barley; because the harvest of the field is destroyed.” In other words our efforts are fruitless when we fail to obey the Lord.
This truth was recently conveyed to me when I heard of a recent locust plague in a South American country. As the farmers saw the locusts begin to swarm down upon their farms they began to frantically beat the locusts, seeking to kill as many as they could. But it was all to no avail. The locusts continued to come and chew up everything in their path. For every locust killed another was right behind it.
This is one way in which God brings His discipline upon us. What we try to do fails. We see no success from our efforts. We try harder, we redouble our efforts and yet they are in vain. The prophet, Haggai speaks of this very thing in his prophecy. He says, “You have sown much, but you harvest little; you eat but there is not enough to be satisfied; . . . and he who earns, earns wages to put into a purse with holes . . . You look for much, but behold, it comes to little; when you bring it home, I blow it away.”
One of God’s means of discipline is to cause our efforts to fail. He wants us to become so frustrated that we turn back to Him. He wants us to realize that we can really accomplish nothing lasting without Him. How often does God need to allow our efforts to fail before we realize that all He wants is for us to acknowledge our complete dependence upon Him?
We say that we are going to work ourselves out of this tough situation. “I’ll make a go of it. I know that if I just try a little harder I can pull it off.” We focus on our effort instead of stopping and see what it is that God is trying to show us through His discipline.
If you have been experiencing ongoing failed efforts then look back to God’s Word and see how He is trying to direct you. Again, we will look at just what God requires of us next week.
iii. Loss of joy (1:12)
The fourth characteristic of the wearing nature of discipline is the loss of joy. God’s discipline can be difficult on us because we lose our joy. What happened to the Israelites here is that they were rejoicing in that which was fleeting. They were rejoicing in their crops, they were rejoicing in their vines. They were rejoicing in these things without rejoicing in the source of these things. It is not wrong to be glad for what you have. It is wrong to fail to acknowledge their source.
Are you rejoicing in what you have or are you rejoicing in who you have? Are you rejoicing in things or God? Are you rejoicing in your job or your Savior? You see if these people in Joel’s day had rejoiced in God they would still have cause to rejoice when those things around them were taken away. If we seek to rejoice in God, when the transient, the temporary things are removed from our lives we will still be able to rejoice. When Job’s property was destroyed and his children were killed, the Scripture records that Job said, “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, blessed is the name of the Lord.” Because Job’s focus was already on God’s ownership of all he had, he was able to let God be in control of all he had. He was able to worship in the midst of the loss of everything. I’m not saying that things were pleasant for Job but in the midst of his difficulty he was able to rejoice. Though Job had every reason to murmur against God, he chose instead to rejoice.
When we put material goods, or people, or anything else ahead of God we are merely setting ourselves up to be let down when we lose those things or when those people fail us. God has to be our source of rejoicing or else we will be a thankless, ungrateful and joyless people.
C. The costly nature of discipline
The third aspect of God’s discipline that we need to look at is the costly nature of discipline. God’s discipline isn’t free. It will cost us a great deal. It will definitely cost us something when we experience God’s hand of discipline. The apostle John said that if we allow God’s discipline to continue it will cost us our very lives. But God’s discipline in our lives doesn’t just cost us something. It costs others something as well. And there are two effects experienced by others through the costly nature of discipline.
i. Others suffer the consequences of our discipline
The first effect experienced by others through the costly nature of discipline is that others suffer the consequences of our discipline. We see this in verses 18-20. In verse 18, Joel relates, “How the beasts groan! The herds of cattle wander aimlessly because there is no pasture for them; even the flocks of sheep suffer.”
Though Israel was experiencing this locust plague and drought because of their disobedience, their animals, that did no wrong, suffered as well. When we experience the discipline of the Lord because of our disobedience, people around us will suffer as well. We cannot say that our sin will not affect others also. You may very well destroy your own body by smoking. You may reap the consequences of discipline for your actions. But you may also lead your children to follow in your steps. God said in Exodus 34 that He visits the sins of the fathers on the children and grandchildren. Your sin will affect your children. And if you don’t turn from your sin, if you continue in your ways you may receive the discipline from your sin. But it doesn’t stop there. It will affect your children too. How come we see that children of violent people are often violent? It is not because there is a violent gene. It is because the sins of the fathers (and mothers) are passed onto the children and grandchildren. These sins are learned behavior. Our children pick up on these things and follow them wholeheartedly. These things don’t need to be passed onto your children. But if you are not to pass them on you need to break from them. You need to make a concerted effort to show your children that they are not acceptable for them nor are they acceptable for you. Because if you merely tell them that they are unacceptable for them but you continue in them they will believe your actions rather than your words.
And in the same way when you experience God’s discipline others are hurt as well. You may think that your sin will affect only you. But you need to realize that the consequences of your sin reach much farther than you think. Joel described the condition of these animals. “The cattle wander aimlessly because there is no pasture for them.” Others are going to see the discipline upon your life and they will lose their direction because of you. They too will “wander aimlessly.” They thought that your life was worth following. But when they saw God’s discipline come upon you for your disobedience they said, “Why should I follow that way” and they lose their direction.
Perhaps others will feel the discipline personally because of their relationship to you. For example, If you were to steal from your employer and were caught and fired your family would reel from the financial effects of the loss of your job. You will find that others will suffer from the consequences of our discipline. We are not alone in it. Our sin doesn’t affect us only.
ii. It causes others to doubt God’s existence (2:17)
The second effect experienced by others through the costly nature of discipline is that it causes others to doubt God’s existence. We see this in 2:17. Here Joel says, “Let the priests, the Lord’s ministers, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, ‘Spare Your people, O Lord, and do not make Your inheritance a reproach, a byword among the nations. Why should they among the peoples say, “Where is their God?”’”
When God disciplines us for our disobedience, the unsaved look at us and wonder whether God is real or not. You see unbelievers watch us to see if what we say is true. When we tell them that God answers prayer and He gives us the ability to live godly lives yet they don’t see our prayers answered because of our disobedience then they will question whether our God exists. The Scripture says that we are ambassadors for Christ. We are to represent our God to a watching world. But when we are reaping the reward of our disobedience the world simply looks on and scoffs at our large boasts about God. And instead of bringing honor to God we bring shame to His name.
If we would only believe His Word and let His power live through us the world would marvel at it and believe that there is a God who dwells in our midst and that He is the true God. Will you leave your disobedience and disbelief and do what He wants or will you continue to suffer the defeat of God’s discipline in your life? If you really want to have a vibrant relationship with Christ, if you really want to overcome then come back next week to hear Joel’s solution to this issue of God’s discipline. Though it may not be any easier than hearing about our disobedience it will provide God’s solution to dealing with it.