In this episode, uncover the layers within the book of Joel with host Steve Schwetz. Understand the profound implications of Joel’s prophecies concerning the Day of the Lord. With insights from Dr. McGee, learn about the prophetic vision that guides the ministry and the deep-rooted interpretations that have shaped biblical understanding for generations.
The foundation, ye saints of the Lord, is laid for your faith.
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It’s a great day to study God’s Word. I’m Steve Schwetz, and I’m so glad to be going through the Bible with you as we begin a brief but important study in the Old Testament book of Joel. To get us started, here’s a quick introduction from Dr. McGee on who he thinks should support through the Bible and who should not. I think that you’ll be surprised by what he says.
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God is not requiring anything of man at all. And if you give, it’s to be as a grace. You give, you’ll have to give it from a heart that is prompted by the grace of God, friends. Now, I know that that sounds very strange. That’s one reason on this radio that when we state our policy from time to time and we don’t beg on this radio, nor do I promote anything, and we try to say that if God speaks to your heart and you want to have part in this radio ministry, we’re glad to have you. But may I say to you that if you are an unsaved person today listening in, though this program is dependent upon the listeners. And if the money doesn’t come in on the station that you’re listening to, I’ll tell you very candidly, one of these days we’re going to fade off the air. In fact, we’ve recently canceled a station because of that very fact. And we didn’t spend any time begging and pleading and saying, if you don’t send any gift, we’ll be off the air. We just went off the air without telling anybody. Because we believe God will speak to your heart. And if he wants this program continued, he’ll speak to your heart. And therefore, if you’re a child of God, I think you have a responsibility if you think that this is a program that honors God and actually will reach in to the hearts and lives not only of God’s people, but maybe the unsaved and bringing them to a saving knowledge of Christ. So my unsaved friend today, don’t you send a dime. But my save friend, don’t you pass it by until you search your heart before God. Because I’m confident that if God intends for us to stay on air, he’s going to have to speak to some of you folk listening in to this program today. So that that’s the way that I think we should give today. I do not think that we should carry on any kind of a program of selling something or doing something to raise money for God’s work.
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Dr. McGee’s perspective is a great challenge for all of us, and it’s his vision for this ministry that guides our practices and core values. Even now, years after he passed from this life to the next, God honors his word and provides for getting his word out to the world. Aren’t you glad that he uses us to get that done? Is God calling you, by the way, to find out more about how you can pray and provide maybe a tank of gas to keep the Bible bus rolling in your neighborhood and around the world in more than 250 languages? Well, it’s really easy. You can click on Donate in our app or at ttb.org or just call us at 1-800-65-BIBLE. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, thank you. for your great word and for your spirit that guides us through it. Speak to us today and help us to apply what we learn. In Jesus’ name, amen. Let’s dive into Joel chapter 1 on Through the Bible with Dr. J. Vernon McGee.
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Now as we come back to the prophet of Joel, it may not look very important. Actually, only three chapters and very brief. You might get the impression, well, he doesn’t seem to be a very important prophet to begin with. We know practically nothing about him. and not quite clear as just the time that he wrote. His name means, Jehovah is God. And by the way, it was a very common name in that day. In fact, there have been some that have felt that the one who wrote this was a son of Samuel, because it says, Back in 1 Samuel 8, 2, it came to pass when Samuel was old and he made his sons judges over Israel. Now, the name of his firstborn was Joel. And it’s caused some to jump to the conclusion that this was the one. But if you’d read on down, you’d find out that it says in verse 3 of chapter 8 of 1 Samuel, “…and his sons walked not.” in his ways but turned aside after lucre and took bribes and perverted judgment.” So we’re not talking about the Joel who wrote this book here. It was a common name. Now we can know just a little about where he prophesied and we’re sure that he was in Jerusalem and the Jerusalem area he refers again and again to the house of the Lord. For instance, verse 9, he says the meal offering and the drink offering are cut off from the house of the Lord. And he mentions Jerusalem in verse 20 of chapter 3, “…but Judah shall dwell forever in Jerusalem from generation to generation.” And back in verse 17 of chapter 3, he mentions, “…so shall ye know that I am the Lord your God dwelling in Zion.” And all of this makes us know that this man was a prophet in the southern kingdom of Judah. And he apparently prophesied as one of the early prophets. Actually, there were quite a few prophets, at least 50 prophets. And he evidently prophesied, as it’s generally conceded by conservative scholars, about the time of the reign of Joash, king of Judah. And that would mean that he would probably know Elijah and Elisha. And he is one of the first prophets to prophesy. Now, his theme, and it occurs about, I think I’ve marked six times, that he makes reference to the day of the Lord. And he evidently was the first of the writing prophets. Now, that ought to tell us something. You remember that we’ve already seen that Isaiah and Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel all refer to the day of the Lord. Fact of the matter is, they call it sometime that day, that day. And we’re going to find Zechariah more or less majors in that day, that day. What is that day? It’s the day of the Lord or the day of Jehovah. And Joel is the one who introduces it. Yonder from the mountaintop of prophecy, this man looked down through the centuries and saw farther than any other prophet saw. And he saw the day of the Lord. Now, this is an expression that’s freighted with meaning. And it not only includes the millennial kingdom that will come at the second coming of Christ, but Joel is going to make it very clear to us that it begins with the great tribulation period, a time of great trouble. And he’s going to deal with that. And it means, very frankly, that this expression, the day of the Lord, is a technical expression. And it encompasses and includes that period that begins with the great tribulation and it continues on, I think, into eternity. But we can put down, if you want, a boundary or parenthesis at the end of the millennium. And when he puts down then all unrighteousness, the final rebellion, and then he establishes his kingdom here upon the earth, the eternal kingdom that will continue throughout eternity. So that the day of the Lord is very important. Now, it’s peculiar to the prophets of the Old Testament. And it is an Old Testament expression. It does not include the period that the church is in the world because none of these prophets spoke about the church. They never spoke about a period. that a group of people would be called out from among the Gentiles and from actually the nation Israel and the tribes of the earth and all be brought in one great body called the church and that that church would be raptured And that’s a good scriptural term, and taken out of this world. Now, James, the one that we’ve just been looking at, at the great council of Jerusalem in the 15th chapter of Acts, he more or less outlined this period. He says here, beginning at verse 14 in Acts 15, Simeon hath declared how God at the first did visit the Gentiles. to take out of them a people for his name. And to this agree the words of the prophets as it’s written. Now, notice this. After this, I will return and build again the tabernacle of David, which is fallen down, and I will build again the ruins thereof, and I will set it up. After this, after what? After he calls out the church in the world. God again will turn to this program, and the day of the Lord now refers to this. And he goes on in verse 17, “…that the residue of man might seek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles, upon whom my name is called, saith the Lord, who doeth all these things.” Now, today he’s calling out of the Gentiles a people. And in that day, it’s to all the Gentiles that’ll be entering the kingdom in that day. And I think there’ll be a tremendous turning to God at that time, which the church has never witnessed, nor will it witness. Now, somebody said, why is God following this program? Well, let me read verse 18 of the 15th of Acts. James says this, known unto God are all his works, from the beginning of the world. And don’t ask me the question. Ask God, because I don’t know. And nobody else knows. Somebody says, why is God following this program? Because it’s his program. It’s his universe. He’s not responsible to you. God doesn’t turn in a report to you and to me at the end of the week to tell us what he’s been doing and to get him to prove it. God’s program will never be investigated by a Senate committee. It will never come in under the inspection of the FBI. And anything God’s doing will never be decided by the Supreme Court of the United States or any ruler on top side of the earth or ever has been known unto God or all his ways. And he’s doing it this way because this is the way he wants to do it. And friends, all I can say is it’s just too bad. If you and I don’t like it, because after all, we’re just creatures down here in this world. Now, the day of the Lord is very prominent in the little prophecy of Joel. In three chapters, it occurs six times, average two times a chapter. So that’s the great theme that we have here in this book. Now, there’s something else that we’re going to find here that makes this a remarkable prophecy. Not only was he the first writing prophet to look down through the centuries and see the day of the Lord coming. I don’t think that he saw the church at all. I don’t think that he includes that at all. And the other prophets didn’t either. And when the Lord Jesus went yonder to the top of the mountain, these men who were schooled in the Old Testament came and said, what is the sign of the end of the age? Our Lord didn’t mention his cross to them at that time. He didn’t tell them about the coming of the Holy Spirit at that time. He didn’t tell them about the church period that was coming. He didn’t even mention the rapture to them. And in the Olivet Discourse, that has no rapture in it at all. He went way down to the beginning of the day of the Lord. And he dated it. But it’s not on your calendar or mine. But it’ll be for the people that’ll be there when the day of the Lord begins. And it begins like this. This is the way he identified it. When you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet, then you’ll know that’s the beginning of the day of the Lord. And Joel will make it clear to us that it begins with night. It begins as a time of trouble. And after all, the Hebrew day always began at sunset. My day begins in the morning. The Hebrew day, the evening and the morning were the first day, God says. He begins at sundown. We begin at sunup. Some of us don’t get up till the sun’s been up quite a while. But the point is that the day of the Lord begins like that. Now, that makes it important. But there’s something that’s remarkable here. Did you know that Joel, he’s not like Hosea that we saw in the last prophet that we studied? He says practically nothing about himself. And we know practically nothing about it. Why, Hosea, we even found out about the scandal that went on in his home, that he had an unfaithful wife. I don’t know whether Joel had an unfaithful wife or not. Don’t even know whether the man was married or not. All I know is this. The first verse gives us all that we ought to know. The word of the Lord that came to Joel, the son of Bethuel. And he does not condemn Israel for idolatry. I don’t think at this particular time idolatry was the great sin here at the very beginning. He’ll only mention one sin that the other prophets mentioned. His is altogether different. And he begins with a description of a literal plague of locusts. And then he uses that plague of locusts to compare with the future judgments that are coming upon this earth. And this first chapter is a dramatic and literary gem. In literature, you’d find nothing that’s quite like this. It is a remarkable passage of Scripture. Now, there’s something else here that’s very controversial, even today. And I’m sorry I had to conclude the epistle of James by probably stepping on the toes of some of my Pentecostal friends, and I rejoice that we agree on so much that the little we disagree on, that we ought not to cause that to divide us, and I hope it won’t. But we have here in Joel again, and I never get around to these very often, and Maybe some of you very fine Pentecostal preachers who listen to the program, you tell me that you do. You write me lovely letters. Maybe you want to warn your people now not to listen to this poor preacher here in Joel, because this is the prophet who mentioned the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, which was referred to by Peter on the day of Pentecost. And there’s a difference of interpretation of the pouring out of the Holy Spirit. So we’re going to be looking at that when we get to it. And I’m going through the Bible. And as many of you know, I face every issue when we meet it head on. And I give what I believe is the interpretation. I could be wrong. I found out I was wrong one time, you remember, not long ago. And so I could be wrong. But I’m going to tell you what I believe that the Word of God means. And as one man wrote, he says, I disagree with you violently. He’s a Pentecostal preacher on the second chapter of Acts and on 1 Corinthians 12, 13, and 14. But he said to me, he says, I want to say this. Although I disagree with you violently there, I sure agree with you on the rest of the Bible. And I want to say that long as we can agree on so much, We don’t have to touch down on all four corners. There’s bound to be some disagreement, and I could be wrong, but friends don’t think I am. So we’ll begin joy. Now let me move down a little farther here and give just a brief outline of it today. We have in chapter 1 through the first 14 verses a literal and local plague of locusts. Not only is it literal, but it was a local one, not one down in Egypt. And then the second division is looking to the day of the Lord, and it gives us the prelude to it. And that is chapter 1, verse 15, through chapter 2. And then looking at the day of the Lord postlude. The other was a prelude to it. Now the postlude, looking back, and that’s chapter 3. Now we find in this passage of Scripture here that we have, first of all, a literal and local plague of locusts. And this is very important for us to see. So today I’m going to have a chance to get my foot in the door. The word of the Lord that came to Joel, the son of Bethuel, Now, if you still think that Joel is the son of Samuel, and it couldn’t be because Samuel’s sons were very wicked, by the way, and this Joel certainly is not. But this boy’s father was named Bethuel and not Samuel. And there’s quite a difference in those two names. Bethuel was not what I would call a common name. But Joel is a common name. And there were many that were named that in Old Testament times. Now, will you listen to him here? He says, “…hear this, ye old men, and give ear, all ye inhabitants of the land, hath this been in your days, or even in the days of your fathers.” Now, they’re in the midst, apparently at this time, of this great locust plague. And he calls up the old man and he says, did anything like this ever happen in your day? Did it happen in the day of your fathers? Was it ever handed down to you? And locust plagues were rather commonplace in that land and still are, by the way. But he says, have you ever heard anything like this locust plague? And of course, they have to say, no, this is the worst we’ve ever had. And the trouble about those of us that are older. we begin to, I think, get grandiose ideas. We begin to look back at the past. And if some young person comes along and says to us, say, we just had a wonderful meeting over at our church. We like to say, well, now that’s wonderful. That’s a great meeting. But now when I was a young fellow, we had a meeting back in my hometown. And it was about twice as good as the one that you were having. I used to hear that as a young preacher. Now, this man, Joel, says, you old man, you never heard of anything like this. And they had to agree. Notice again, he says, tell ye your children of it and let your children tell their children and their children another generation. Now, he says, you can pass this on down. You tell your children about this plague. And then have them tell their children. Because there’s not going to be a plague of locusts like this. Does that remind you of anything? When the Lord Jesus Christ, in the Olivet Discourse, in the 24th of Matthew, when he identified this period that he himself called the Great Tribulation Period, this is one of the things that he said about it. He said that there’d been nothing like it before, and there was going to be nothing like it afterward. Now, my friend, that more or less puts a parenthesis around it in time and slips it into the slot of history as being unique. There’s nobody during the Great Tribulation that’ll be able to say, say, this reminds me of when I was a young fellow. We had a time of trouble. Now, we’ve never had a period like that yet. That’s the reason we’re not in the Great Tribulation. We have never been in it yet. Because any particular period that you could put your finger down on, you could put your finger down on another period that would match it. And the Lord Jesus made it very clear. He says in verse 21 of chapter 24 of Matthew, “…for then shall be great tribulation such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time known I ever shall be.” And when people get in the Great Tribulation, there’ll be none of this questioning that you hear today. Do you think that we went through the Great Tribulation during World War II? Or do you think that the Great Depression was the Great Tribulation? Or you think today that all this turmoil is the Great Tribulation? And the answer is very easy to come by. All you have to do is to turn to the words of the Lord Jesus. He says there’s nothing like it. In the past. Well, we’ve had times like this in the past. And they can all be duplicated. And I have a notion that what we’re in today is going to get worse, not better. So that it couldn’t be said that there’s going to be nothing like it in the future. Now, that’s exactly what Joel is saying concerning a locust plague. Then he will, in a very dramatic way then, say, look, this locust plague is unique. Nothing like it. But you can be sure of one thing. There’s coming a day when there’ll be another period with a different label. The day of the Lord, he calls it. Our Lord pulled it out from the millennium and he said it’s the great tribulation period. And that’s the way the great day of the Lord opened. I wish today that these folk that try to want to dismiss the fact that the church is going to leave before the great tribulation and that the great tribulation is going to be a frightful time on this earth, horrible beyond description that’s coming on the earth. And then Christ comes and establishes his kingdom. These people that deny it, I wish they would study the total word of God. Just don’t lift out a few verses. A man wrote me the other day, and he had four or five nice little cliche verses that are used by a certain interpretation of Scripture. I’m not impressed. Take the total Word of God. Go through the Word of God. Now, we’re dealing here with the prophecy of Joel. Now, I see that that’s as far as we can get today. But we’re going to pick up next time and going to look at this local plague of locusts. And friends, there’s nothing like it. The one down in Egypt, I don’t think, compared to this. And I think that’s what Joel’s trying to get them to do. You men that were here, you heard your fathers tell about that plague of locusts in Egypt. It can’t compare to the one we’re having now, which means it was a terrible thing. We’ll see that next time. May God richly bless you, my beloved.
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Well, if you aren’t convinced that the small book of Joel is fundamental in the prophecy that God gave us, then stay tuned. This is a great study and it only gets better. To dig deeper, get Dr. McGee’s free notes and outlines. You can find them in our app or by clicking on Briefing the Bible at ttb.org or call us at 1-800-65-BIBLE and we’ll put a copy in the mail. I’m Steve Schwetz. For all of us at Through the Bible, we’re praying that God blesses and keeps you as you set your heart on Him.
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Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain, he washed it white as snow.
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Our story on the Bible Bus today is just one step in a five-year journey through the entire Word of God. Come along for the ride, and you’ll study both the Old Testament and New Testament, discovering God’s great redemption story. Is this your story too?
