Joel 1:8-12

The turbulent times that we live in will only continue to escalate. We have not been good caretakers of the world that God created. We have destroyed what He created and labeled it progress. We have destroyed each other and called it good. Our enemies are not of blood and guts our enemies are Satan and his hordes who influence the decisions of mankind.

Man will be held accountable for his stewardship. God will judge.

Joy in Him is our only strength without Him there is no joy..

There is hope for man. That hope is Christ. We need to listen to the the Holy Spirit who is the only guide and teacher that man can internalize with promise. Christ within us is the hope of God’s glory.

We must judge our actions on His teaching while on earth and at the end…we will know in full all the things that we only know now in part.

Natural disasters—from rising flood waters to violent earthquakes—provoke fear and dread. With all their ingenuity, people still cannot control these powerful and destructive forces. They can only watch in awe. Joel begins his book with a description of such a natural disaster—a plague of ravenous locusts. In the prophet’s hands, the destructiveness of this plague becomes a vivid warning of the power of God’s coming judgment and a clear appeal to run to the Lord for mercy. 

Before Jesus ascended into heaven after His resurrection, He promised the disciples that He would send the Holy Spirit upon them. When this was fulfilled on the Day of Pentecost, Peter said, “This is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: ‘And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, that I will pour out of My spirit on all flesh’ ”. Peter attributed the fulfillment of Jesus’ promise directly to the prophecy in Joel 2:28–32.

Joel 1:8-12

⁸ Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth

For the husband of her youth.

⁹ The grain offering and the drink offering

Have been cut off from the house of the Lord;

The priests mourn, who minister to the Lord.

¹⁰ The field is wasted,

The land mourns;

For the grain is ruined,

The new wine is dried up,

The oil fails.

¹¹ Be ashamed, you farmers,

Wail, you vinedressers,

For the wheat and the barley;

Because the harvest of the field has perished.

¹² The vine has dried up,

And the fig tree has withered;

The pomegranate tree,

The palm tree also,

And the apple tree—

All the trees of the field are withered;

Surely joy has withered away from the sons of men.

¹¹ They have made it desolate; Desolate, it mourns to Me; The whole land is made desolate, Because no one takes it to heart. 

Jeremiah 12:11

⁷ The new wine fails, the vine languishes, All the merry-hearted sigh. 

Isaiah 24:7