God of all days

The LORD utters his voice

before his army,

for his camp is exceedingly great;

he who executes his word is powerful.

For the day of the LORD is great and very awesome;

who can endure it?

Joel 2:11

The prophet Joel uses a triple play of natural disasters to call the people of God to ponder the Lord in His power to judge. He compels them to return to the Lord in repentance. The book opens describing a plague of locusts that obliterated all agriculture like a ruthless, efficient army... no grain, no vineyards, no olive groves were spared. Then by the end of the first chapter dried stream beds and burning countryside show that drought and wild fires took their toll on what was left. The Promised Land had been reduced to environmental chaos in order to get the attention of a people who had turned away from the proper worship of their God. And at this point Joel points to a bigger judgment yet to come on God’s cosmic agenda.

As grim as life looked under this trio of disasters, a future Day of the Lord would be even more unbearable on a global scale. That is what Joel is prophesying here. The Lord would lead His hosts against a future evil and destroy it by the word of His mouth. No one would stand against Him. This day will be “great and very awesome”.

The God of that day is still the God of this present day. Once this warning is clear, Joel makes his appeal for the people around him to repent, tearing not just their garments in outward mourning, but their hearts in internal, genuine personal sorrow over sin as a commitment to obeying the Lord (Joel 2:12-14). This was their only hope for restored blessing. The God whose judgment is great and awesome is also “gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love”. And because God is simultaneously perfect in holiness, righteous judgment, grace, love, and mercy, He will respond to those whose hearts are truly broken over sin and whose hands and minds are ready to serve Him faithfully again. Praise God that He is always all these things!