Restoring What the Locust Ate - Joel 2:1-32 Ep. #123

The Locust Plague - Another View

“What the devouring locust has left, the swarming locust has eaten; what the swarming locust has left, the young locust has eaten; and what the young locust has left, the destroying locust has eaten. Woe because of that day! For the Day of the Lord is near and will come as devastation from the Almighty.”

Joel 1:4, 15 HCSB

In our last podcast about Joel chapter one we likened the four types of locusts to four stages of gossip:

1. We think negative thoughts about someone.

2. We tell someone our negative thoughts.

3. They tell someone else.

4. Now the gossip spreads like a plague of locusts.

Before we move onto Joel Chapter Two, let’s take another locust-like look at the plague of sin.

Four Stages of the Plague of Sin

1. Temptation chews away your spiritual defenses. Small compromises, rationalizing that a little stretching into bad morals is acceptable.

2. Unnoticed drifts in our character eat away at healthy habits. Sin begins to multiply. Moral transgressions increase going from rare to normal. Your new normal is a state of continual spiritual decay.

3. Swarms of guilt & shame consume your last layers of defenses. The overwhelm of darkness becomes insidiously unstoppable, even to the point of making you comfortable in your separation from God.

4. A tiny voice buried somewhere deep inside of what’s left of your conscience weakly cries out for deliverance. The evil plague of sin is an all consuming destruction. God has left you to your own devices and devoid of divine guidance, your connection to God is finally and fully devoured.

5. Judgement in the day of the Lord will come. Some will return and some will be lost. Some will be delivered and some will be devoured. Some folks will go to heaven and some folks will go to hell.

6. Joel is a leader who responds to the disaster by interpreting or giving the reason it happened and then giving the antidote to the poison of evil choices which is repentance. He calls for a time of prayer and fasting. Leaders follow hard after God and lead people to God. Leaders are deliverers.

In Joel chapter two we read about the army of locusts sent by God, His call to repentance, God’s response and then He gives the promise of His Spirit.

““So I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, The crawling locust, The consuming locust, And the chewing locust, My great army which I sent among you. You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, And praise the name of the Lord your God, Who has dealt wondrously with you; And My people shall never be put to shame. Then you shall know that I am in the midst of Israel: I am the Lord your God And there is no other. My people shall never be put to shame. “And it shall come to pass afterward That I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh; Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, Your old men shall dream dreams, Your young men shall see visions. And also on My menservants and on My maidservants I will pour out My Spirit in those days. “And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth: Blood and fire and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, And the moon into blood, Before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord. And it shall come to pass That whoever calls on the name of the Lord Shall be saved. For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be deliverance, As the Lord has said, Among the remnant whom the Lord calls.” Joel 2:25-32 NKJV

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