Joel 3:15-17 - Homiletics

That day-the fear of the wicked, the hope of the just.

These verses picture the dread accompaniments of the time and place of the destruction of the wicked. They give us a glimpse, and a most alarming one, of the final catastrophe.

I. THE DAY OF DECISION SHALL BE A DAY OF DARKNESS , Apart from the decision itself and consequent execution of Divine wrath upon the ungodly—an execution which, as if baffling the power of words to describe, is left to imagination to conceive—the attendant terrors of that day invest it with the blackness of darkness. Not only shall sun and moon withdraw their shining and undergo a total eclipse, but the stars shall frown upon them. The lights of heaven shall be darkened, or those lights shall dwindle before the unspeakable brightness of the glory in which the Judge shall appear, just as the stars pale and disappear in presence of the sun when he rises in splendour above the eastern horizon.

II. THAT DAY SHALL BE A DAY OF DREADFULNESS . Dreadful sounds as well as dreadful sights shall augment the terrors of that day. "As the failure of the light of the sun at our Lord's passion betokened the shame of nature at the great sin of man, so, at the day of judgment, it sets before us the awfulness of God's judgments, as though it dared not behold the severity of him who judgeth and returneth every man's work upon his own head;" so the voice of God, when he shall roar out of Zion, shall be a voice of terror. Even when the voice of God speaks words of warning, it is compared to the roaring of a lion, as we read, "The Lord hath roared, who will not fear? the Lord hath spoken, who can but prophesy?" How much more when that terrible voice is no longer a voice of warning, but a voice of wrath?

III. THAT DAY SHALL BE A DAY OF DESOLATENESS . The frame of nature shall feel the shock of strong convulsions. The heavens and the earth shall shake, but this shaking is only a prelude to something still more awe-inspiring, even such convulsions as seem to betoken their dissolution. "Nor shall it be a slight shaking of the earth at his coming," says an old writer, "but such that all the dead shall be roused, as it were, from their sleep." And when the day of final decision comes, "the heavens," we are told, "shall pass away with a great voice, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up." Minor judgments are premonitions of, and should be improved as, preparations for the judgment of the great day.

"The day of wrath! that dreadful day,

When heaven and earth shall pass away,

What power shall be the sinner's stay?

Whom shall he trust that dreadful day?

"When, shrivelling like a parched scroll,

The flaming heavens together roll,

And louder yet, and yet more dread,

Swells the high trump that wakes the dead;

"Oh! on that day, that wrathful day,

When man to judgment wakes from clay,

Be thou, O Christ, the sinner's Stay,

Though heaven and earth shall pass away."

When God, in punishing his enemies, shakes as it were earth and heaven, causing such changes and commotions as seem to threaten a general upheaval and convulsion of the course of nature, it is not strange if the people of God should be agitated with fears and exercised with apprehensions lest the storm should burst over them. Accordingly, he vouchsafes to them promises to secure them against such fears and fortify them for the ordeal.

I. HE IS THE HOPE OF HIS PEOPLE . He comforts his people so that the terrors of a time of great convulsions do not overwhelm them. As God is the Ground and Founder of his people's hopes, so will he be their Crown and Consummation. He is their Harbour of refuge and their Fortress of safety. Fleeing to him, they shall not only be admitted to , but preserved, in safety. He is their Refuge on earth while the storm of wrath is sweeping over the wicked; he will be their Home in heaven at last. "The saints in the great day shall arrive at the desired haven, shall put to shore after a stormy voyage; they shall go to be ever at home with God—to their Father's house, the house not made with hands."

II. HE IS THE HAPPINESS OF HIS PEOPLE . He is the Hope of his people and the Strength of the children of Israel. We are thus taught that while all are not Israel that are called Israel, so all who are really God's people are the true spiritual Israel; and that all his spiritual promises to Israel in the past apply in the present, and may be claimed by all those who are Israelites indeed. When other men's hearts fail them, God is the Strength of his people's hearts and their Portion for ever. When the judgments of God are abroad in the earth, and sinners overtaken by them, God is a present Help to his people; and in that time of terror when the vials of wroth shall be poured out upon the wicked, joy and gladness shall be reserved for the righteous, while the joy of the Lord shall be their strength. Thus, amid all the trials of this mortal life, "in all time of our tribulation; in all time of our wealth; in the hour of death, and in the day of judgment," God is the Hope and Happiness of his people, the Support and Strength of all his true Israel.

III. HE IS THE HOLINESS OF HIS PEOPLE . While God is a holy God, heaven a holy place, the angels of God holy angels, even the Church militant is holy, and the redeemed of the Lord a holy people. But in this world the Church is a mixed society; there are tares among the wheat, chaff as well as good grain. It will not always be so. In millennial times, to which the passage points, there shall be higher degrees of holiness, of purity, of prosperity, and peace, than the Church has yet attained; but in heaven alone holiness shall be perfect and happiness complete. Meantime we are encouraged by the promise that God's presence is enjoyed by his people. He himself is the Source of holiness; the Church on earth, like Zion of old, is made holy by his presence; the place of his people's habitation, like Jerusalem of old, is a holy place; his people are a holy people. Strangers may force or find an entrance to the Church militant, or earthly Jerusalem, and pollute it; but the Jerusalem that is above, that is, the Church triumphant, shall never be trodden by stranger's foot, nor entered by anything that defiles or works iniquity. None but the true citizens of Zion shall be there, and so only those that have a right to be there. Even here and now we have the happy consciousness that God, our own God—our own "as much as if possessed by none besides, filling all with gladness, yet fully possessed by each, as though there were none besides "—dwells with us, and in us, while hereafter we shall have "unvarying, blissful, hallowing presence, never withdrawn, never hidden, never shaded, but ever shining upon us."