My message this morning is one I know I’ve preached before and I will likely preach again, though from a different passage no doubt. But I urge you not to just tune it out because it may be a familiar topic. Instead, use this time as a chance to let the Lord examine your heart and mind, and do as King David asked, for the Lord to search you and see if there is any offensive way in you and lead you in the way everlasting.
My message today is about holiness, which really shouldn’t be a surprise considering the Nazarene denomination is a holiness tradition. Sometimes people misunderstand what that means, and of course I don’t want us to misunderstand and I want us to be able to explain why holiness is so important to all Christians, not just Nazarenes.
Let’s look at our passage for today, again in the Old Testament, in Joel 2:12-17. Now Joel is one of the minor prophets, and the book of Joel is a little tricky because we don’t know for sure where in the timeline of the Old Testament it really fits. Most Biblical scholars put it about 100 years, or a little less than 100 years after the Kingdom of Israel was split into two, with Israel in the north and Judah in the south. We talked last week in the book of Jeremiah about how the Assyrian empire came and eventually destroyed the northern Kingdom Israel, and how the Babylonian empire did much the same with the southern Kingdom Judah. In the book of Joel, neither of those empires are mentioned at all, so Joel seems to take place after the Kingdoms split, because Judah is mentioned, but also before Assyria and Babylon come on the scene.
What we see from the beginning of the book of Joel is that there was a plague of locusts that had swept through the land, absolutely destroying it, and there was also a severe drought that caused widespread starvation, and fires because of the drought. The people of Judah were in bad shape. And it’s here that our passage picks up.
““Yet even now,” declares the Lord, “Return to Me with all your heart, And with fasting, weeping, and mourning; 13 And tear your heart and not merely your garments.” Now return to the Lord your God, For He is gracious and compassionate, Slow to anger, abounding in mercy And relenting of catastrophe. 14 Who knows, He might turn and relent, And leave a blessing behind Him, Resulting in a grain offering and a drink offering For the Lord your God. 15 Blow a trumpet in Zion, Consecrate a fast, proclaim a solemn assembly, 16 Gather the people, sanctify the congregation, Assemble the elders, Gather the children and the nursing infants. Have the groom come out of his room And the bride out of her bridal chamber. 17 Let the priests, the Lord’s ministers, Weep between the porch and the altar, And let them say, “Spare Your people, Lord, And do not make Your inheritance a disgrace, With the nations jeering at them. Why should those among the peoples say, ‘Where is their God?’” (Joel 2:12-17, NASB)
As bad as things already were for the people, the beginning of chapter 2 actually talks about how much worse it’s going to get. Joel talks about the day of the Lord coming, a day of darkness, judgment, a desolate wilderness with no escape when mighty men will climb walls to try to get away and cannot, when there will be earth quakes and the sun and moon will grow dark. This, coupled with the description Joel gives of the locusts which sounds a lot like the description John gives of the locust like demons in Revelation, is supposed to found very familiar to us, and very apocalyptic. Even though Joel was writing hundreds of years before John, the language they both use is very similar.
Just like Jeremiah 29 last week, we can clearly see here how this passage in Joel is not only historical, but we can draw similarities and application throughout the New Testament and into today. Joel’s message was that things may look bad now, but they will get worse. Destruction was promised. It was the eleventh hour, almost too late, and Joel says, “Yet even now…”
The people were supposed to know that even as their destruction was bearing down upon them, even as they were staring at their doom, even then it wasn’t too late for them to do what was right. And what does Joel tell them to do, or rather what does the Lord tell them to do through Joel?
He tells the people to return to Him, return to the Lord, with all their hearts. There’s two words here that Joel uses here, in verse 12 and 13, that get translated as “return”, but they’re two different words which when you use them together, help give us a full understanding of what return means. Joel uses the word nacham, which means that we should have a sense of sorrow, that we should have pity and be sorry. So we understand that this returning to God comes from a place of sorrow for our sins, that we are supposed to feel sorrow and sadness for what we have done that is against God.
Joel also uses the word shuv, which means that we turn around, or change our minds, and it’s not just seen in a change of thinking, but a change in actions. This kind of turning around is marked by a change in the life of the one who has turned, a change in their pattern of conduct. In Matthew 3:8 Jesus says this, which uses a word with a similar meaning, “Therefore produce fruit consistent with repentance,” (NASB) The kind of turning Joel is speaking about isn’t just changing your mind or feeling sorry. It’s about turning so far away from what you feel sorry about and changing the way you act.
Joel says to return with all your heart to God. With all your heart! The Jewish people thought that the heart was the seat of all emotions, personality, intellect, sensibility, and will. They thought the heart was the very essence of the human spirit. So when Joel says that they are to return to God with all their hearts, he was saying that the people were supposed to feel sorrow for their sins, change their minds and actions in a way that was so deep that it involved every part of who they were as people.
We see very similar ways of thinking in Deuteronomy 6:5 and Matthew 22:37, that we are to love God with all our hearts. This means that we love Him with every thing that we are, and if you are seeking to love God in this way, you’ll see that there is a change in your heart that is seen in the way that you act.
This is exactly what we see God promise for His people in Ezekiel 36:26, “Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” (NASB) He promised to give to His people the ability to replace their hard, cold, stone hearts that were always turned against Him, and give them soft, flesh hearts that are capable of loving Him fully. This is what is needed to see the kind of returning to God that Joel talks about!
Joel says we are to return to God “with fasting, weeping, and mourning; 13 And tear your heart and not merely your garments.” He was talking about some traditions that had become ritual and routine and had lost their meaning. Fasting, weeping, and mourning comes from the temple sacrifices that were offered to atone for sins. The people were called to fast, weep, and mourn their sins as they understood that the price for their sins was death, and that an innocent animal was being slaughtered to pay their price. They were meant to fast, weep, and mourn for the destruction their sins brought and the distance their sins put between them and God.
When Joel talks about tearing their garments, this was a sign of grief when someone died, it was a sign of mourning. The problem was that even by the time Joel was writing, all these signs of genuine sorrow and weeping for sin and grief had become ritualized and routine. They no longer really meant anything. They were just something that you were supposed to do, rather than something you did because your heart was truly sorrowful and you desired to truly change your ways. Joel was saying that fasting, weeping, and mourning should be done from hearts that are truly saddened by sin and are wanting to really turn back to God, otherwise, those outward signs mean nothing!
Joel was told by God, “Gather the people, sanctify the congregation, Assemble the elders, Gather the children and the nursing infants. Have the groom come out of his room And the bride out of her bridal chamber. 17 Let the priests, the Lord’s ministers, Weep between the porch and the altar,”
I want you to see here that there is no single person in all of the group of God’s people that were to be left out of this call to return to God. The elders are to be gathered, which isn’t an official title, rather it refers to age. Those who are the oldest of God’s people are included, as well as the children, and even the nursing infants. Those of all ages are called to come and give their whole hearts to God.
Joel talks about brides and grooms coming out of their chambers to answer the call as well. In Deuteronomy 24:5, we learn the reason for this little caveat. Newly-weds were to be given a whole year, free from being in the army or being assigned any duty, so they could spend that year at home in newly-wed bliss. So even people, who may seem to have an excuse given by the law of God’s word, are told that when it comes to the call to return their hearts to the Lord wholeheartedly, they have no excuse. There is no excuse that a person could possibly come up with that will excuse them from the urging Joel gives to return to God and give Him your whole heart.
The other thing here too, is that this call to give God your whole heart, though its to all of God’s people, and they are supposed to gather and seek God together as an assembly with prayer and worship, the act of returning to God and giving them their whole hearts is a personal one. The act of giving God a person’s whole heart isn’t a decision that only a few can make, and it isn’t a decision that someone can make for someone else. Each person was being called to return to God with their whole hearts, individually, personally. The whole group of God’s people was called to do this, and they were meant to do it with one another, but each had to make the personal decision to devote themselves to the Lord.
So now you might already see what this means for us. Just like we saw last week in Jeremiah 29, we live in the midst of Babylon. We know though that destruction is promised. Babylon and all its redefinitions of good and evil will one day be destroyed. Yet even now, even when we know this is what is coming for this world, it’s not too late to return to God.
This is the message that brings us hope! This is the message that we share to those who do not know Jesus, that He doesn’t care about traditions and rituals and religion, He wants our hearts! All He requires of us is that we turn our hearts to Him wholly and fully. Remember, all of our emotions, personality, intellect, sensibility, and will are included in that. We give ourselves completely to God, to be used for His purposes and His glory. He wants our hearts.
This isn’t just some Sunday prayer we make one time as kids, this is a true turning from the ways we acted and thought before we came to Jesus. This isn’t just checking some box, or going through with some ritual or tradition just because this is what we’ve always done or this is what’s expected. And this isn’t making the choice once and then thinking that you’re good for the rest of your life and there’s no need to ever change. This is heart purity. This is being completely and fully sacrificed to the Lord. This is sanctification, being completely surrendered to God. This isn’t just a one-time commitment, fix it and forget it, this is a lifetime choice that sometimes must be made every minute of the day. This is what God asks of us. We remember Romans 12:1-2, to offer our lives as living sacrifices, for this is our spiritual act of worship.
This was the radical life that Joel was preaching, and its the same life I preach today. God isn’t interested in tradition, religion, or ritual. He’s not interested in flippant sacrifices or commitments. He wants your full heart, your full devotion, your full life.
I feel like I’m maybe a broken record when I say this, but does this mean we get it “right” all the time? No, certainly not. We’re going to mess it up, but the point is that we’re in such a place with God that if we do, we don’t want it to happen again. We show the kind of humility that Jesus talked about in the Sermon on the Mount, and we are quick to be humble and poor in spirit before God. We turn, completely, just like Joel was urging the Jewish people to do.
And the really amazing thing that Joel brings up is that if the people, God’s people, us, do this full heart turning to God, what we find is that He is gracious, meaning He is inclined to forgive sinners that repent. We find that He is compassionate, He sympathizes with our miseries and desires what is good for us. We find that He is slow to anger, He doesn’t allow His anger to break immediately upon discovering our sin, but waits to see if we will repent and do better. We find that He is merciful, not giving us what we truly deserve. And we find that He relents, He changes His actions toward those who repent. This is the kind of God we love, and are called into deeper and deeper love each day.
1. Grow UP with God: Think about your relationship with God. Is it marked by the heart humility Joel and Jesus talked about? If not, why not?
2. Grow DEEPER with the Body: The call to heart holiness is for all God’s people. How can you help a brother or sister understand the importance of holiness?
3. Go OUT: What is promised for those who do not turn to God? How can you share with a pre-Christian in your life this week that God is not after religion or ritual, He wants our hearts?