Sinclair Ferguson examines Joel 1, focusing on the locust plague as a metaphor for divine judgment and a call to repentance. Ferguson emphasizes the need for spiritual awakening, urging listeners to turn to God in times of crisis, recognizing His sovereignty and seeking His mercy. The sermon highlights the themes of disaster, divine discipline, and the hope of restoration through genuine repentance.
The following unedited transcript is provided by Beluga AI.
Gracious God and Father, you are the God of infinite light and all knowledge and understanding. You have spoken to us into the darkness of our lives and into the silence of the universe. We pray that that word that you have spoken to us in the Holy Scriptures and by your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, may bring us light and lead us out of the darkness and bring us hope and lead us out of despair and bring us grace and lead us out of our sin to you, the fountain of all grace and mercy.
Hear us, we pray, for Jesus Christ our Savior’s sake, Amen. Please be seated.
Now, as you know, we are beginning a new series of sermons this Lord’s Day morning from the book of Joel. In the Old Testament Scriptures, you’ll find the passage on page 760 of the Pew Bible.
If you’re using your own Bible in a different version and want to do that, then if you’re of any difficulty finding the little prophecy of Joel, you need to look for the major prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and if you come through the prophecy of Hosea, you’ll come to the little book of Joel. Page 760 of the Pew Bible, and we read the entire first chapter, let us hear the word of God.
The word of the Lord that came to Joel son of Pethuel. Hear this, you elders; listen, all who live in the land. Has anything like this ever happened in your days or in the days of your ancestors? Tell it to your children, and let your children tell it to their children, and their children to the next generation. What the locust swarm has left the great locusts have eaten; what the great locusts have left the young locusts have eaten; what the young locusts have left other locusts have eaten.
Wake up, you drunkards, and weep! Wail, all you drinkers of wine; wail because of the new wine, for it has been snatched from your lips. A nation has invaded my land, a mighty army without number; it has the teeth of a lion, the fangs of a lioness. It has laid waste my vines and ruined my fig trees. It has stripped off their bark and thrown it away, leaving their branches white. Mourn like a virgin in sackcloth grieving for the betrothed of her youth. Grain offerings and drink offerings are cut off from the house of the Lord.
The priests are in mourning, those who minister before the Lord. The fields are ruined, the ground is dried up; the grain is destroyed, the new wine is dried up, the olive oil fails. Despair, you farmers, wail, you vine growers; grieve for the wheat and the barley, because the harvest of the field is destroyed. The vine is dried up and the fig tree is withered; the pomegranate, the palm and the apple tree— all the trees of the field—are dried up. Surely the people’s joy is withered away.
Put on sackcloth, you priests, and mourn; wail, you who minister before the altar. Come, spend the night in sackcloth, you who minister before my God; for the grain offerings and drink offerings are withheld from the house of your God. Declare a holy fast; call a sacred assembly. Summon the elders and all who live in the land to the house of the Lord your God, and cry out to the Lord. Alas for that day! For the day of the Lord is near; it will come like destruction from the Almighty.
Has not the food been cut off before our very eyes— joy and gladness from the house of our God? The seeds are shriveled beneath the clods. The storehouses are in ruins, the granaries have been broken down, for the grain has dried up. How the cattle moan! The herds mill about because they have no pasture; even the flocks of sheep are suffering. To you, Lord, I call, for fire has devoured the pastures in the wilderness and flames have burned up all the trees of the field. Even the wild animals pant for you; the streams of water have dried up and fire has devoured the pastures in the wilderness. (Joel 1, ESV)
When I was a teenager, I think I actually was a Beatles fan at the time. It was a very cold, wintry night. There was not only frost, but ice on the ground, and I was what nowadays would be called a seeker. I was coming home from an evening church service in the darkness, and I slithered on the ice to a halt, and as I caught my balance, I found myself standing beside a little elderly gentleman in a dark coat. We engaged momentarily in conversation. I saw his eyes go down to my Bible.
And then he looked into my eyes and he asked me what actually was the most important question I’d ever been asked. And I never ever saw the little man in the dark coat again. In many ways, Joel reminds me of that little man. He appears in the Scriptures from nowhere. The only thing concretely we know about Joel is his father’s name. Unlike other prophets, he doesn’t tell us the reigns of the kings during which he prophesied.
And unlike some other prophets, there is no way to tell with any certainty from anything in his prophecy exactly when he lived. And so the scholars who are really detectives in this area come to judgments of hundred years apart as to when Joel actually lived and when his prophecy was actually preached. I don’t know whether he was a small and elderly man and wore a dark coat, but he certainly appeared and he asked the questions that are really the most important questions in all the world. But we do know one thing about him.
We know that he lived in a time of extraordinary need. And that need, caused, as verse 4 tells us, by a plague or perhaps more than one plague of locusts that had swept through the land. Now, to an Old Testament Jew, there was nothing very special about a locust. They were commonplace. So commonplace that actually the Hebrew language has nine different nouns for a locust. They were as commonplace as that.
And yet, of course, as we know, those of you who have seen some of those National Geographic documentaries or read in this area know how devastating a swarm of locusts can be. One locust laying eggs today in June as you’re cranking up your air conditioning may have, by the time you put it off in October, 18 million living descendants.
And some of the stories that come down to us from history of the sheer multitude and devastating power of a plague of locusts is well caught up in the language that Joel uses when he speaks in verse 6 about a nation coming up against God’s land with teeth like lion’s teeth. One little locust, nothing but a plague. Multi-millions of locusts darkening the sun, ravaging the earth, causing this kind of destruction. And you’ll notice how Joel describes it not only as an army in verses 6 and 7, but also as a destructive power in verse 10.
And then in verse 12, the vine drying up and gladness drying up in the land because of the famine. And the whole world, including the beasts of the field, verse 18, the herds of cattle are perplexed by the devastation. And Joel is concerned that the people of God will learn lessons from this natural disaster.
And so he addresses their leaders in verse 2, “Hear this, you elders, and all the inhabitants of the land.” And he asks them, these leaders, to make sure they learn the lessons of the disaster.
He addresses the leaders and the people and urges them to tell their children about this. And to urge their children to tell their children’s children about this. Not so much because of the extraordinary power of this army of locusts, but because of what God means to teach the people in their time of need when their resources are gone. And that, of course, is the great application of this book. Perhaps it’s the reason why in the providence of God we have no date, no time, no particular situation described for Joel.
Because, like so many of the Psalms, it’s a psalm that describes a particular experience that has widespread application to the people of God. Not just when they go through an identical experience, but when they find themselves in need. When they find themselves, as here, perplexed and in difficulty, their wealth destroyed, their human resources vanished. And we’re given a little hint here in verse 15, “Alas for the day! For the day of the Lord is near.”
We are given a little hint that Joe sees this destruction and the subsequent need as a kind of divine warning signal to God’s people to learn to live their lives in the light of God’s final assessment of their lives. A little hint to say, learn to live your life in the light of its conclusion, that you may live it well for the glory of God. In actual fact, it’s the same principle that Jesus regularly uses in the parables of the kingdom.
Although often in the case of an individual, a family, or a particular group of people, the punchline is always, “Are you learning the lessons? Are you learning the lessons?” Or, in this case, to put it more precisely, “In what are you placing your confidence for time and for eternity? In what do you trust?” Perhaps it takes an outsider to smile at the back of American currency, the almighty dollar, and see written these words, “In God we trust.” But we have ceased to speak about the Almighty God.
Now we continue to speak, don’t we, about the almighty dollar. And here God has come to a situation. As God often does in our individual lives, and He lays waste those things in which we have trusted in time, in a work of severe mercy, in order that we may learn to trust Him not only for time, but to trust Him for all eternity.
And so in the midst of this loss, with which you and I in different ways and contexts can so easily identify when something has taken place that disturbs our security, it can be anything from a broken relationship as a teenager to the loss of someone who is dear to us. It is an intimation that comes from eternity not to trust in anything less than God and His grace and His promise and His Son and the blessings that He alone can give.
Because as Joel was saying to the people, when we grip too tightly onto even the blessings that God gives to us and release our grip on the benefactor of these blessings, we discover that those blessings become sinking sand under our feet and crumbling grains of sand in our hand. And so you notice as Joel appears so suddenly on the scene, he comes with a series of imperatives, of command verbs. You will notice them in verse 5 and again in verse 8 and again in verse 11 and two of them in verses 13 and 14.
And these are the words of God to come to our conscience, to bring us, as it were, under a sense of this great question, in what are you and I trusting for time and for eternity? His first imperative in verses five through seven is to wake up, to wake up.
Isn’t it interesting how in the old days when God came, for example, in the 18th century and in the middle of the 19th century, the language that was used for God coming was not the modern language so much of a revival, but the language of an awakening, an awakening from a spiritual slumber. And you’ll notice that Joel addresses two connected groups in verse five.
5 Awake, you drunkards, and weep, and wail, all you drinkers of wine, because of the sweet wine, for it is cut off from your mouth. (Joel 1:5, ESV)
Now, the issue, of course, is not simply the amount of alcohol that these people were consuming. The issue was, in the case of those who were drunkards, that they were alcoholics, that they were enslaved to wine. And the reason they were enslaved to wine was because they thought it was a way of escape from all the other bondages of their lives. But then there are others that he places, interestingly, fascinatingly, in the same category.
They are not so much those who have become alcoholics, because of the wine, but who are connoisseurs of the wine, who are bon viveurs, as the French would say if they spoke French with a Scottish accent. They are good livers. And pleasure, it’s the pleasure of it that’s the great thing. It’s not an addiction to the thing itself, but in so many different ways. And of course this has such a wide variety of applications. Everything from wine to sport to money to power to influence.
We are not addicted to it, but we are addicted to the pleasure that it gives to us. And so we are under the control of it. And the easiest way to show that we are under the control of it is to see our reaction when somebody challenges us simply to give it up. Like the rich young ruler who seems to be appearing in these sermons time and time again. Who was under control of his wealth so much so that he could keep all the commandments until Jesus said, well let’s try this one.
I see you released from your wealth and come and follow me and be my disciple. And he realized that he was enslaved. That it had had spiritually a soporific effect upon his life. And so as Joel is saying, the test you see of where you are trusting is where do you find your greatest pleasure. And the issue is this. Do you find your greatest pleasure and treasure in the Lord? It’s a very simple question, but it’s a devastating question as you list the pleasures of your life.
If you are doing it in a job application, here are the things that I do for pleasure. And the most important thing I do for pleasure is to live my whole life for the pleasure of the Lord. That is what gives me greatest pleasure. And so, it is a strong call to find lasting pleasure in the Lord. God has sent this trial in order to waken them up. The second imperative is found in verses 8 through 10. And it is one of the most graphic and poignant pictures anywhere in the whole Bible.
Wake up and lament. And you see this picture: lament like a virgin wearing sackcloth for the bridegroom of her youth. It’s the picture of a girl who’s had the photographs taken for the wedding. And in between the photographs being taken and the wedding, the one she loves is struck down in death, and all her hopes are dashed. And all the prospect of protection and family to which she had looked forward, devastated in her life. And she puts on sackcloth instead of the beautiful wedding garments.
And she wails, she laments because the security to which she had now given the whole of the hopes of her life was dashed and devastated. I wonder actually if this word is particularly spoken to the people in Jerusalem. Them because of the way he goes on to speak about the priests mourning and the ministers of the Lord mourning. I think it probably worked like this: So long as the devastation is in the countryside, there is still food in the shops. And it will never touch us, but then it also touches us; the unthinkable has happened.
The devastation and the shock that we too are impoverished and we too discover that we have been trusting in our own resources. Don’t you think that one of the things that caused so much emotion at the time of 9-11 was yes, the awfulness of the loss of life, but we have seen even greater loss of life without feeling some of the emotions that we felt on 9-11. What was it that created a kind of twist in those emotions? It was this.
How could it happen to us, the most secure nation in all the world, and suddenly we are no longer secure, and you can’t go anywhere on an aeroplane these days without being reminded that we are no longer feeling the security that we once felt? And that was what was happening. Or you could think of it like this: you go to Europe and you see the devastation of the Christian faith in Europe. And you say, “Isn’t it pathetic? Isn’t it terrible?”
And inwardly, you are saying, “Thank God it could never happen here,” but there are all kinds of signs that the plague of locusts is already upon us, as it was in Europe a hundred years ago. We still have the great churches and the large attendants, but you see the word of the Lord as the plague of locusts has devastated them, and the country around Jerusalem is. And what are you trusting? Where is your confidence?
And if your confidence is anywhere else than in the Lord, oh, he says, lament and wail that the Lord may have mercy upon you. And then a third imperative in verses 11 and 12, which is now addressed to the working people, to the labourers. Wake up, lament, and now be ashamed, oh tillers of the soil, wail, oh vine dressers. What’s he speaking about? He’s speaking here about those whose whole life is wrapped up in their jobs. That’s what he’s speaking about. An agricultural context, day and night, they’re thinking about their jobs.
If you speak to them, their job and their identity are one and the same thing. And because of the pressures of their job, they’ve had very little time to express their devotion and trust and pleasure in the Lord. And they’ve allowed all that to be squeezed out. And God has now come in this extraordinary judgment and no matter how hard they work, there is never going to be any fruit from their labour. And they are ashamed and they are embarrassed.
I mean, I suppose you can be hiding in the office, and it’s a while before anyone discovers, but it only takes a matter of months for a fruit farmer to realize that for all his labor, there is absolutely nothing he can do to produce a crop, and so he hangs his head in shame. I am interested in the way these two sections awake, lament, and then be ashamed work.
In verses 8-10 he is speaking about it being like a girl whose whole security has been in family and now he is speaking about people whose whole security has been in work. In the first instance, if I can put it this way, the question in the society of that girl in the first instance would be what family do you belong to? And in the second instance the question would be what is your occupation? And those are the two things that we trust in that give us security.
I am fascinated by, because I can describe myself, if need be, in a whole series of different ways. I am fascinated by the gradations in respect that I am given depending on the different ways in which I describe myself. It is absolutely fascinating. Some of you know this. If you have a title, or if you have a name, your profession, or your family, but you see, says Joel, is that where your security rests? Or do you have a more lasting foundation? That is how Jesus ended the Sermon on the Mount, isn’t it?
Building on sand or building on the rock? Is there anything underneath what I do? Is there anything underneath the name I have? Is Christ there? On Christ the solid rock I stand. All other ground is sinking sand. Do we really believe that? “Oh,” says Joel, “don’t let your trust be in either princes or in the sons of men.” And so his fourth imperative in verses 13 to 18, where he’s addressing the priests, the ministers, the spiritual leaders, and he says you need to put on sackcloth. Why? Do you notice the reason?
The reason is because there is, verse 16, no joy and gladness. It’s been cut off from the house of the Lord. I wish there were time to say more about this. I always wish there were more time to say more about everything, but do you see what he’s saying? He is saying the evidence that the real famine is not simply the famine that’s been caused by the plague of locusts on the fields, but by the plague of spiritual locusts that have eaten away into our hearts is what?
That we have no joy and gladness and eagerness and anticipation and enthusiasm for worship. And he addresses himself particularly to the leaders, as though to say, like leaders, like people. “Oh,” he says, “what are we going to do?” And he takes the lead himself in verse 19. “To you, O Lord, I call.” And you remember, this is the prophet of the day of Pentecost. This is the prophet that Peter was quoting in his great sermon on the day of Pentecost when, similarly, people were crying out, “Oh, what are we going to do?”
They were convicted that they were spiritually bankrupt. “What can we do?” they said. “Oh,” said Peter, “put your faith in Jesus Christ because God has given us this great promise in the prophecy of Joel, a chapter later on, all those who call on the name of the Lord will be saved, and life can begin again.” That old man who met me, remember him? My Joel-like prophet who asked me the most important question I’d ever been asked. Do you know what his question was? Out of the blue, he said to me, “But are you saved, son?”
Are you saved? And he didn’t know; he couldn’t have known that he was a messenger from God to me because the most important thing in all the world had become to me that I knew I was trusting in Christ and in nothing else. And he told me, like Joel, to call on the name of the Lord. My friends, that’s what we need to do, isn’t it? Whenever our lives have these little signals built into them, we need to hold on to this promise that those who call on the name of the Lord will be saved.
Our Heavenly Father, thank you that across the ages your word continues to speak to us right into our personal and corporate situation. Take from our hearts, we pray, every obstacle to trusting only in Christ. We ask this in your name, Amen.
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