Joel 3:9-14 - Homiletics

Providence, preparation, and prevention.

Circumstances of great solemnity and grandeur shall usher in the day of vengeance on the wicked sinners of every class, especially such as persecute and oppress the people of God.

I. THE PROVIDENCE GOD AT WORK . Men propose, God disposes; they pursue their own individual plans, and yet all the while they are only carrying out the Divine purposes. A remarkable example of the wonderful scheme of God's providence is recorded in the fourth chapter of the Acts, when earthly kings and rulers were gathered against the Lord and his Anointed. "Of a truth," it is added, "against thy holy Child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together;" but in all they planned and purposed and performed, though following their own impulses, they only did "whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done." So in the case before us, the Gentiles are assembling in great force and strenuously pushing forward their hostile movements against the people of God; and yet they, without thinking it and without intending it, are accomplishing the Divine purposes against themselves. They are hastening on their own destruction, and rushing on their own ruin.

II. THE PREPARATION MADE . The preparation is heralded among the Gentiles by a formal and fearful proclamation. The warlike preparations are on the grandest scale; they mean the work of war in earnest. Not only mighty men and men of war are summoned to the strife; but, besides the men whose trade is war, husbandmen are called away from their peaceful occupations, their implements of husbandry are changed into weapons of war. Even the weak are for the time to gird themselves with strength. What is the object, one naturally asks, of all this immense assemblage, of their activity and energy and vast preparations? Every one in that huge multitude thinks his mission is to destroy the people and Church of the Most High, and imagines himself commissioned for that purpose; nor do those mighty masses dream that their own doom is sealed, and that they are convened, not for the annihilation of the people of God, but for their own. They are convoked to appear before the august tribunal of the righteous Ruler of the universe to receive their sentence—a sentence in agreement with unerring justice, and to be executed in accordance therewith. The executioners are already on the spot; they are agents appointed and armed for the express purpose. It matters not whether they are angels or men; perhaps the enemies themselves, engaging in internecine strife, as was the case with the confederates that once came to fight against Jehoshaphat, then turned their arms against each other.

III. PREVENTION OF HIS PEOPLE 'S FEARS . God repeats the summons to his enemies to assemble themselves for judgment.

1 . This he does to persuade his own people that their fears are groundless, and to prevent them apprehending peril from the power and preparations of their enemies. To prevent them being troubled by the might and multitude of their enemies, he repeats his challenge, if I may so term it, for them to come on, one and all, with all their powers. Thus he means to show how puny and insignificant all those enemies were in his sight, and let his people know that his hand is in the whole business, overruling all and controlling all.

2 . But he makes it evident that all his proceedings are in righteousness, that justice and judgment are the habitation of his throne. He pleads before he punishes; he sifts the case judicially before he passes sentence. He sits to judge, taking sufficient time and pains, so that he is justified when he speaks, and clear when he judges.

IV. PERIOD OF EXECUTION . Once judgment is pronounced and sentence passed, the execution is not long delayed. The ripeness of the harvest now ready for reaping, the fulness of the presses now fit for treading, and the overflow of the vats now waiting for the foot of the trampler, are figures easily understood, and of which the corresponding fact is the greatness of the wickedness. Harvest is used in a good sense, oftener in a bad sense; while the treading of the wine-press is always expressive of Divine wrath. The ripeness of the one and the fulness of the other imply not only the height of abounding ungodliness, but that the fulness of the time for punishment has arrived, as in the case or' the old world, when all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth, so that God said, "The end of all flesh is before me;" or as Sodom, when fire and brimstone were rained from heaven on its wicked inhabitants; or as when our Lord said, "Fill ye up the measure of your fathers. "They," says Pococke, "were ripe in their sins, fit for a harvest, and as full of wickedness as ripe grapes, which fill and overflow the vats, through the abundance of the juice with which they swell"

V. PROCESSION OF THE CONDEMNED CRIMINALS TO THE PLACE OF PUNISHMENT . The prophet himself is tilled with amazement at the assembling multitudes. He looks on for a time in wonder, as one mass of living beings follows in quick succession another, till at last, as if the procession would never come to an end, he is lost in wonder, and exclaims, in view of the assembling throngs and multitudes, "Whichever way he looked there were yet more of these tumultuous masses, so that there was nothing beside them. It was one living, surging, boiling sea; throngs upon throngs—mere throngs." The place of rendezvous is the valley of Jehoshaphat, or the valley of judgment, where Jehovah judgeth; but it is also the valley of decision. This is something more than mere judgment; it is the place of sharp, strict, severe judgment