Return With All Your Heart | Joel 2:1–17

roger ferguson: What does it actually mean to come back to God? We can feel sorry and still keep going in the same direction. We can make a sincere promise in a frightening moment, then settle back into the life we had before. Even a strong feeling can pass without changing what we trust or how we live. Joel speaks directly into that difference. He gives us a terrible warning, but he also tells us where to go with it. God is calling people back to Himself. Ancient books. Presented by Modern Mind Ancient Book, we're going back to move forward, finding a love for the law, the prophets, and the writings, so that we can know Jesus more. Today we're reading Joel chapter two verses one through seventeen. Joel is a prophet speaking God's word to the people of Judah, with Jerusalem and its temple at the center of the scene. A locust plague has already stripped the land, the loss has reached fields, households, animals, and worship. Even the grain and wine brought as offerings are gone. Now Joel tells someone to blow a ram's horn. Danger is approaching, and the whole land must hear. Later in our reading, he calls for that same horn again, this time it gathers people to pray. Between those two calls the Lord tells them to return with all their heart. That is where this teaching is going. We'll follow the warning into the city, listen to God's invitation, and see why he gathers everyone, from the oldest person to a nursing child. Along the way, We'll go back to Moses to understand why Joel expects mercy from the very God whose judgment he announces. The question isn't simply whether the warning moves us, it's whether we will answer the one who is speaking. Let's begin where Joel begins, with the horn sounding in Jerusalem. Listen to Joel chapter two, verses one through five. Blow the ram's horn in Zion, sound the alarm on my holy mountain. Let all who dwell in the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming. Indeed, it is near. A day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and blackness. Like the dawn overspreading the mountains, a great and strong army appears, such as never was of old, nor will ever be in ages to come. Before them a fire devours, and behind them a flame scorches. The land before them is like the Garden of Eden, but behind them it is like a desert wasteland. Surely nothing will escape them. Their appearance is like that of horses and they gallop like swift steeds. With a sound like that of chariots they bound over the mountaintops like the crackling of fire, consuming stubble, like a mighty army deployed for battle. Zion names Jerusalem here. Especially as the place of God's holy mountain in worship, the alarm sounds in God's own city. That should make us stop and listen, these people belong to the Lord. Their temple, prayers, and offerings are part of a real covenant relationship. A covenant is a binding relationship established through promises and obligations. God rescued Israel and gave his people a way to live before him. Yet belonging to him does not make his warnings unnecessary. It makes listening to him essential. The holy mountain is the place from which the alarm must sound, not a place where people can pretend no danger exists. Joel calls the approaching event the day of the Lord. That means the Lord acts decisively, bringing his judgment and making his rule known. As this book unfolds, his day will also carry hope for deliverance. Here, though, Joel makes us face the judgment. He describes darkness and trembling, not a celebration of how much better Judah is than everyone else. Other prophets make that point too. In Amos chapter five, people who long for the day of the Lord are warned that it will be darkness for them. They cannot assume God's coming will only expose someone else's wrong. His people have to stand before him as well. Think about what an alarm is supposed to do. If a warning sounds in a house, admiring the device is a strange response. So is arguing that this is a good house and therefore the alarm cannot concern us. The sound calls for attention because something important is happening. Joel is calling for that kind of attention, but the one speaking is God. He does not tell the people that To become fascinated with fear, he tells them that his day is near, and their ordinary confidence will not be enough. Then the picture grows. Something spreads across the mountains like dawn. We usually welcome dawn. It helps us see our surroundings and begin the work of the day. Joel uses its spreading reach to describe an overwhelming force. The horizon fills. There is no reassuring gap where the people can imagine the threat that Has stopped. Ahead of it is land like the Garden of Eden. Behind it is wasteland. That comparison brings the Creator into view. A fruitful land is a place where living things can flourish. There's food to gather, work to do, and a future to prepare for. Joel watches that good order disappear as the force moves through it. He isn't giving directions to the original garden, he is showing the depth of the loss. What had supported life now lies stripped. The contrast reaches beyond a farmer losing money. The land that fed a community no longer does so. If you heard our previous study, you'll recognize the locus behind this picture. They consume what one group left for the next until very little remained. In chapter two, the language of an army comes to the front. Horses, chariots, battle, and fire give the advancing host its terrifying movement and sound. There is an important question here. Is Joel describing locusts as soldiers or soldiers through the picture of locusts? Careful readers differ. Duane Garrett understands a coming human army described through the earlier plague. James Crenshaw reads much of this scene as locusts portrayed like warriors, with the picture expanding into something greater and more dreadful as the heavens begin to shake. Both readings take the military imagery seriously. Both recognize the locust pattern. The difference concerns how those pictures fit together. And the passage doesn't name a king or invading nation that would settle every question for us. We can follow the force of the poem without pretending the question is simpler than it is. Joel wants us to see in advance that nothing in its path can casually dismiss. The host moves like horses, sounds like chariots, and consumes like fire racing through dry stalks. The familiar memory of the plague makes the warning painfully real. Notice how Joel helps people hear this before they can explain everything about it. He gives them sound, motion, and the difference between the land before and after. A person who has seen a field ruined does not need a lesson in military strategy to understand the threat. The covenant scriptures had prepared Israel to take both crop failure and invasion seriously. Deuteronomy chapter twenty eight includes locusts consuming produce and an enemy laying siege to fortified cities. Those warnings belong to Israel's covenant life in the land God gave them. Their fields and walls were never independent of him. That background helps us understand Joel without supplying an accusation he hasn't made. He doesn't give us a list of particular offenses behind this crisis. He does give a clear summons to return. We should hear that summons as it stands, rather than inventing the missing details. So far the danger is on the horizon. We have watched it spread across the mountains and leave the fruitful land bare. Now it reaches the places where people expect to be safe. The question becomes very personal. What happens when the things we rely on cannot keep the danger outside? Joel chapter two verses six eleven Nations writhe in horror before them. Every face turns pale, they charge like mighty men, they scale the walls like men of war. Each one marches in formation, not swerving from the course. They do not jostle one another, each proceeds in his path. They burst through the defenses, never breaking ranks, they storm the city. They run along the wall, they climb into houses, entering through windows like thieves. Before them the earth quakes, the heavens tremble, the sun and moon grow dark and the stars lose their brightness. The Lord raises his voice in the presence of his army. Indeed his camp is very large, for mighty are those who obey his command. For the day of the Lord is great and very dreadful. Who can endure it? Look at the contrast between the people and the advancing host and The people lose their color. The host keeps its course. Fear has disrupted one side, but nothing seems to disrupt the other. Each advances in formation. They climb, cross, and enter. Joel repeats the movement because every new obstacle fails to stop it. First we saw the mountains, then the walls. Now we are inside the houses. A city wall is meant to give people time and protection. A house brings that protection closer. It's where you put your child to bed, keep your food, and set down the burdens of the day. You expect the world outside to remain outside for a while. Joel's thief comparison takes away that last comfort. Windows become openings for the invading force. The threat is no longer something people can watch from a distance. It has entered the place they call home. That is part of why the locust and army pictures belong so poorly. grow powerfully together, both communicate a kind of advance that pays no attention to the boundaries people hoped would hold. The poem moves us from public danger into private life. Then Joel looks beyond the city altogether, earthquakes, heaven trembles, the lights of the sky grow dark. We depend on those lights without thinking much about them. The day begins, the night follows and ordinary work takes place within that order. Joel's language reaches past a damaged wall to the created world on which every wall depends. We should let that language carry its full weight. It is more than a report that frightened people felt upset. The Lord's judgment reaches beyond human power into creation itself. At the same time, Joel has not handed us the date of an eclipse or a calculation for identifying a modern war. Prophetic poetry can speak truth. With an image larger than a plain battlefield report, here the darkened sky and shaking earth tell us that this is God's day. We are dealing with the Creator, not merely with a stronger neighbor. And then we hear his voice, the Lord raises his voice before his army. That is perhaps the hardest line in this whole scene. The people would want God to be on their side against the threat. Joel tells them that the threatening host itself answers to him. No force has become so powerful that it has pushed the Lord aside. He remains Lord over the world he made. The disaster does not prove that another power has taken his throne, but God's rule over a force is not the same thing as God's approval of everything a human being does within it. Scripture itself teaches us that distinction. In Isaiah chapter ten, Assyria is described as an instrument of God's anger. Yet the Assyrian king has his own purpose to conquer and destroy. He boasts that his strength and wisdom have given him the nations. God then announces judgment on that very pride. The instrument is accountable to the one who uses it. God's purpose does not make the king's arrogance good. Isaiah helps us understand divine rule without identifying Joel's unnamed army for him. Joel is not authorizing a listener to call a personal enemy God's target, or to make a favorite nation the Lord's army. The authority in this passage belongs to the Lord's word, not to whoever borrows its most forceful language. That matters because it is easy to enjoy a judgment passage when we imagine ourselves watching from God's side of the scene. Joel places his hearers underneath God's word. They are the people being called to tremble in return. The prophet's purpose is not to give them a better way to accuse outsiders. It is to wake them to their own need before Him. Now the question at the end of verse eleven makes sense. Who can endure such a day? The poem has moved through the answers people might offer. A productive land can be stripped, an impressive wall can be crossed, a private house can be entered. Even the sky overhead cannot be treated as something outside the Creator's command. Joel has not said that houses are wrong or that walls are useless in ordinary life. He has shown that no created protection can become our protection from God Himself. That is a much deeper question than whether we have prepared well enough for the next crisis. We can plan wisely, work hard, and care for our families. We still remain creatures who must answer to our Creator. There is no clever reply that makes his judgment small. Joel lets the question stand long enough for us to feel the limit of our own strength. Then the Lord speaks again, and this time he tells the people what they can do. Listen to Joel chapter two, verses twelve through fourteen. Yet even now, declares the Lord, return to me with all your heart with fasting, weeping, and mourning. So rend your hearts and not your garments, and return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in loving devotion, and he relents from sending disaster. Who knows? He may turn and relent and leave a blessing behind him. Grain and drink offerings for the Lord your God. The invitation comes from the Lord Himself. The people have not found a hidden weakness in the warning. God has spoken a way forward, He calls them to return to Him. That gives repentance its direction. They are not simply trying to recover the comfortable life they had before the fields were ruined. They are being called back to the God whose gifts made that life possible. There is a difference between wanting God's help and wanting God. We can want him to remove a consequence while still resisting his authority over the choice that brought us there. Joel's invitation reaches deeper than relief. The Lord calls for the whole heart. In this passage that means the return must be real within the person. Loyalty and action belong together. God is not asking for a public display that leaves the settled direction of life untouched. Joel names fasting, weeping, and mourning. These are visible responses. Fasting means setting aside food, tears and mourning give grief an honest expression. The people are to make room in their lives to acknowledge their need before God. Then comes the command to rend their hearts rather than their garments, to rend is to tear. Tearing clothing could express grief. Someone looking at the garment would know that something serious had happened. But cloth is easier to tear than pride is to surrender. A person can make grief very Visible while keeping a decision protected inside. The outward sign says that everything has changed. The next choice reveals that nothing has. Joel will not let the sign take the place of the return. Yet he has just called for fasting and tears, so he cannot mean that every outward practice is empty. He is joining the inside and outside of a person's life before God. That is an important distinction. Sometimes people trust an act because it can be counted. They attended a gathering, said a prayer, or gave something away. Other people treat inward sincerity as an excuse to do nothing at all. God knows their heart, they say, while their conduct continues to injure the people around them. Joel's words challenge both responses. The heart must turn, and the life must tell the truth about that turn. Imagine someone who has spoken harshly to a family member and This is an example, not a particular offense Joel has named. The person feels bad, apologizes, and wants the conversation to end. But the same harshness returns whenever that person loses control of the room. An apology may be a good beginning. It cannot carry the whole weight of repentance. Returning to God means bringing that desire to control before him and accepting his authority over the next conversation. It means learning to speak truth without using anger to dominate, and taking responsibility when someone has been hurt. The change will need to become visible over time. The injured person is not required to call the pattern healed because the apology sounded moving. A returned heart begins to accept the work that truth requires. That makes repentance more substantial than a burst of shame. Shame can leave us staring at ourselves. Joel directs the people toward the Lord whose character gives them a reason to move. Why does he expect them to find mercy there? He says that the Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and full of loving devotion. Those words come from deep within Israel's covenant story. To hear them properly, we need to return to Moses and the mountain. In Exodus chapter thirty two, Israel has been rescued from Egypt, but Moses has remained on the mountain longer than the people expected. They ask Aaron to make gods to go before them. Aaron takes their gold and makes a calf. The people give to that image the honor that belongs to the God who delivered them. Their failure is not a small misunderstanding. They have turned aside from what God commanded. The Lord names their corruption, and his anger is real. Moses intercedes. He appeals to God's rescue of his people and to his promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Israel. He also asks what the Egyptians will say if the people are destroyed after being brought out of Egypt. Keep that prayer in mind. Before we finish Joel's passage, we will hear priests appeal to God's people and his name among the nations in much the same way. In Exodus, judgment is not imaginary. Moses comes down, sees what has happened, and breaks the tablets. The calf is destroyed. People die, and the Lord sends a plague. Mercy in this story never means that evil was harmless. Then another question becomes urgent. Will God's presence go with the people? Moses will not settle for arriving at a good destination without the Lord. In Exodus chapter 33, he pleads for God's presence. What would distinguish these people if God did not go with them? The land itself could not replace the relationship. That is the same distinction Joel's invitation brings before us. The gifts matter, but the giver is the center. Restoration cannot mean enjoying his provision while refusing him. When we reach Exodus chapter thirty four, God tells Moses to prepare new stone tablets. He comes down and proclaims his name. He reveals his compassion, grace, patience, loving devotion, and faithfulness. He forgives sin and he does not declare guilt to be nothing. This is the revelation behind Joel's call to return. Joel is not hoping that God will become a different kind of God. He is calling Judah back to the Lord who has already shown who he is. The reason for hope rests in God's character, not in the quality of the people's performance. We need to get that straight if we are going to know Jesus more fully. Mercy does not suddenly enter the Bible after the law and prophets are finished. Here it is within Torah in the account of a people who have grievously failed their deliverer. God's holiness and his compassion are not rival personalities. The same Lord tells the truth about sin and provides a way for his people to return. Deuteronomy develops that hope as well. In chapter four, Moses speaks of distress and a return to the Lord. He tells the people that God is merciful and will not forget his covenant with their fathers. In chapter thirty, return with the whole heart is joined to God's compassion and his gathering of his people. Those promises belong first to Israel and its covenant history. We don't need to erase that setting to recognize the faithful God at work. The Bible's covenants have their own promises and responsibilities, but the Lord does not become unrecognizable as the story moves forward. Joel calls his own hearers to trust that revealed character. They may come before God truthfully because he is compassionate. They must come truthfully because he is holy, and then Joel asks, Who knows? After such a strong description of God's mercy, that can sound surprising. Why doesn't Joel just announce the result the people want? Because repentance does not put God under our control. The people may fast and pray, but they do not acquire the right to dictate the harvest, the timing, or the removal of every consequence. God remains the one to whom they return. That humility is not the same as having no hope. Joel has given them a very solid reason to ask for mercy, the Lord's own character. They can pray with trust while leaving the answer in his hands. We know something of that difference in ordinary relationships. A real confession does not arrive with a contract requiring the injured person to make everything comfortable immediately. The person confessing begins by telling the truth and accepting responsibility. With God, that surrender goes deeper still. We are returning to our creator, not negotiating as his equal. So if someone says no I prayed and the problem didn't disappear. Joel helps us ask what prayer was being asked to do. Was it an appeal to God or a way of making him deliver a chosen result? We can ask him for concrete help. The people in Joel certainly do. But faith does not require us to pretend we have been promised a particular earthly outcome when we have not. Now look at the blessing Joel hopes God will leave behind. Grain and drink offerings for the Lord. Earlier we saw what was left behind the advancing host. A fruitful land became wasteland. Here Joel imagines something very different left behind, a blessing that allows the people to bring the land's gifts before God again. That is a beautiful reversal. The field and the place of worship belong in the same picture. Restored grain and wine would mean food, renewed work, and offerings. The people want to live again. Before the God who provides for them. The hoped for answer is not simply that danger moves away and everyone forgets it, it is renewed life directed toward the Lord. That brings the invitation into focus. The whole heart returns because God has made himself known. The outward life begins to follow, and hope grows without becoming a demand. Now Joel tells the community to answer together. Joel chapter two verses fifteen through seventeen Blow the ram's horn in Zion, consecrate a fast, proclaim a sacred assembly, gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the aged, gather the children, even those nursing at the breast. Let the bridegroom leave his room and the bride her chamber. Let the priests who minister before the Lord weep between the portico and the altar, saying, Spare your people, O Lord, and do not make your heritage a reproach. An object of scorn among the nations. Why should they say among the peoples, where is their God? There is the horn again. The first call announced danger. This call gathers the people before God. Nothing magical has happened to the instrument. The difference is the word God has spoken between the two calls. He has told his people to return, so the community now has a faithful response to make. Joel calls for a sacred assembly, a gathering set apart for this purpose. Ordinary business must yield to the shared need before the Lord. The fast is not one person's private project, the whole people are summoned. Then Joel names those who might otherwise disappear into the word everyone. The aged are to come. Chapter one had already called on elders to remember and tell, now they must take part in the response. A long history within the community does not place anyone beyond the need to listen. Children are to come too, including those still nursing. Their presence shows how deeply the crisis reaches into the people's life. These little ones depend on adults to bring them, care for them, and act faithfully on their behalf. Joel includes babies in the gathering. He does not tell parents to withhold the nourishment babies need. The command makes the dependent visible. A community facing God cannot imagine its life only in terms of the adults or Who can speak for themselves. Then the bridegroom and bride are called from their rooms. Their new life together would naturally hold their attention. Joel interrupts even that deeply personal occasion because the whole people are being summoned. This is not contempt for marriage or for the beginning of a household. It is a recognition that a household lives within a larger people. The couple's future is bound up with the community's future before God. The list stretches. Across generations and stages of life. Memory, dependence, and new beginnings are all present. The people cannot divide the need into separate corners and decide it belongs somewhere else. That helps us hear something we might miss if we think repentance is always a private matter. Joel has just addressed the heart, but he has not sent every person home to work things out alone. Hearts belong to people who live with other people. Their worship, choices, and responsibilities meet in a shared life. A community can learn to avoid truth together. It can also begin to tell the truth together. Its leaders help shape which of those habits becomes normal. That is why the priests appear here as people who must weep and pray. They do not stand outside the summons, directing an emotional response from everyone else. They stand before the Lord with the people whose need they carry. Joel places them between the portico and the altar. The portico is the temple's entrance porch. The setting brings us into the place of worship where those who serve before the Lord plead for mercy. Their prayer begins with the relationship God established. These are his people, his heritage. They belong to him. That plea is different from saying the people have earned protection. The priests appeal to the Lord's bond with them. They need mercy from the one whose name they bear. This takes us back to Moses' intercession after the golden calf. Moses appealed to God's people, God's promises, and what the surrounding nations and Would say about the Lord. Joel gives the priests a prayer that stands within that same covenant concern. The nations might look at the humiliation of Judah and ask where their God is. The priests plead that God's heritage will not become an object of scorn. Their need is real. And the way the Lord is known among the peoples matters. We must understand that concern honestly. Honoring God's name does not mean hiding what his people have done. In Exodus, Moses names the sin plainly. In Joel, the people are called to tear their hearts, mourn, and return. Concealment would move in the opposite direction. So a church or family cannot use concern for God's reputation as a reason to cover up harm. If wrongdoing has happened, telling the truth and taking responsibility honors him more than preserving a polished appearance. A community that bears his name must let his word judge its own conduct. That is an application of the passage's direction, not an accusation Joel has made against an unnamed modern congregation. We stand under the same call to truthful response rather than using the text to target someone from a distance. At the end of verse seventeen, the prayer remains open. The priests have asked the Lord to spare his people. Joel has not yet given us the answer within today's reading. That places the community before a response we need to understand. Joel is calling them to act, to come, fast, mourn, and pray. His invitation is not passive, yet the result still belongs to God. Faithful action and surrendered control can exist together. We do what He has made clear while trusting Him with what remains beyond us. The next part of Joel will tell us of His compassion and restoration. For now, we have reached the place the two horn calls were leading. A whole people before the Lord, asking for mercy because they are his. When we turn from Joel to Jesus, we should carry that whole picture with us. Otherwise we can make repentance sound like a gloomy religious task that has very little to do with good news. In Mark chapter one, Jesus comes into Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God. He announces that the time is fulfilled and God's kingdom is near. He calls people to repent and believe the good news. God's coming rule means our response matters. The king is not merely offering advice to people who remain their own final authority. Jesus calls us to turn and trust him. Joel helps us recognize why that can be good news. The Lord who calls for return is gracious and compassionate. His invitation does not require us to become good enough to make him merciful, it calls us to respond to the mercy he has made known. The connection grows more explicit as the biblical story moves forward. Later in Joel chapter two, God promises to pour out his spirit and bring salvation and To those who call on his name. In Acts chapter 2, Peter points directly to that promise when the Spirit is poured out at Pentecost. Peter then tells the people about Jesus, his death, his resurrection, and his exaltation. God raised him, and the exalted Jesus has poured out the promised spirit. Peter identifies him as Lord and Christ, the Messiah, God's appointed King. The people listening are cut to the heart. They ask what they should do, and Peter calls them to repent. And be baptized in Jesus' name. God's promise reaches them, their children, and those far away whom He calls. Notice how the response involves the heart and then the life. Being deeply affected is the beginning of a response, not a substitute for one. The good news gives people a direction in which to move. Paul takes up Joel's promise in Romans chapter ten. He joins confession that Jesus is Lord with belief that God raised him from the dead. The same Lord is generous to Jew and Greek who call on him. This is how we come to Jesus through Joel without forcing him into every detail of the advancing army. God's own promises provide the road, we hear his call to return, his promise of the Spirit, and His salvation. Then the apostles show us the crucified and risen Jesus at the center of their fulfillment. Israel's story has not been discarded. The nations are being invited to know the Lord whom that story reveals. So let me bring our opening question back to the life we are actually living. What does it mean to come back to God? It begins with listening to what he has said, even where his word exposes something we would rather defend. It takes shape as we entrust the whole matter to him, including the next choice we know we need to make. Perhaps you already know where that choice lies. There may be a truth you need to acknowledge, an apology that needs to become changed conduct, or an act of obedience you have kept postponing. You do not need to manufacture an emotional scene before taking that step. Bring the truth to the Lord. Ask for his mercy and let your response become real in what you do next. Where others have been affected, let the return include honest responsibility toward them. You are not performing for an audience. You are answering God. And if all you can see right now is your failure, remember who gave the invitation in Joel. The Lord spoke it. He called his people to himself after the alarm had sounded, when they had no impressive defense left to offer. His compassion was the reason to return then. The mercy made known in Jesus gives us reason to answer him now. In our next study, we'll continue with Joel chapter two, verses eighteen through thirty-two. We'll hear God's answer to this prayer, see what restoration means for the land and its people, and look closely at his promise to pour out his spirit. That promise will take us from Joel's own hearers to Peter's announcement about Jesus at Pentecost. Thank you for joining us. Please follow Modern Mind Ancient Book and share this teaching with the people you love. Find the way, meet Rabbi Jesus, walk the way. Modern Mind Ancient Book. May the Lord bless you and keep you and make his face shine upon. May he be gracious to you and turn his face toward you and bring you peace. Walk the way. Modern mind, ancient book.