Please turn to Joel 1. We will continue looking at this book and some of the verses that we are finding in Joel 1. I will read from the first verse. Joel 1:1-11:
The word of the LORD that came to Joel the son of Pethuel. 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? Tell ye your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation. That which the palmerworm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that which the locust hath left hath the cankerworm eaten; and that which the cankerworm hath left hath the caterpillar eaten. Awake, ye drunkards, and weep; and howl, all ye drinkers of wine, because of the new wine, for it is cut off from your mouth. For a nation is come up upon my land, strong, and without number, whose teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he hath the cheek teeth of a great lion. He hath laid my vine waste, and barked my fig tree: he hath made it clean bare, and cast it away; the branches thereof are made white. Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the husband of her youth. The meat offering and the drink offering is cut off from the house of the LORD; the priests, the LORD’S ministers, mourn. The field is wasted, the land mourneth; for the corn is wasted: the new wine is dried up, the oil languisheth. Be ye ashamed, O ye husbandmen; howl, O ye vinedressers, for the wheat and for the barley; because the harvest of the field is perished.
We have been going through this chapter, verse-by-verse. Last time, we focused on Joel 1:5. We spent a little bit of time looking at what God has in view by “wine” and “drinkers of wine.” We saw that it can be used in a positive way or in a negative way. For instance, in Isaiah 55:1:
Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.
All of the language here has to do with the Gospel. It tells us to “come, buy,” but then it says “without money and without price”—God will freely give it. So the “wine” is pointing to the true Gospel of the Bible and to the Lord Jesus Christ and to the Word of God that can save a sinner from eternal damnation.
But in another way, the “wine” is used to describe those who are perverting the Gospel—those who are using the Bible but coming up with a gospel that God has not laid out in His Word; it is another kind of a gospel. For instance, if we go back to Isaiah 28:7-8, it says:
But they also have erred through wine, and through strong drink are out of the way…
And “the Way” is the Lord Jesus. He is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”
…the priest and the prophet have erred through strong drink, they are swallowed up of wine, they are out of the way through strong drink; they err in vision, they stumble in judgment. For all tables are full of vomit and filthiness, so that there is no place clean.
We can really see the picture that God is painting. It is like someone who is drinking alcohol—wine, beer, hard liquor, whatever, strong drink—and they are drinking themselves drunk and then they get sick and they vomit all over the place. Here, though, God is saying that it is on the tables. The table is where you lay the bread. It is where you put the drink of the Gospel. Who would want to eat off of this kind of a table? Remember, God says in Psalm 23:5:
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies…
Look at the table that is being prepared for those who are under the hearing of this type of gospel—it is “full of vomit,” although they can not see this; they do not recognize this. But spiritually speaking, it is unclean; it is filthy. There is nothing truthful or proper about the gospel that the priests and the prophets are bringing to their congregations.
Turn to Isaiah 29:9 and look at this verse:
Stay yourselves, and wonder; cry ye out, and cry: they are drunken, but not with wine; they stagger, but not with strong drink.
So God is using this same kind of picture as the famine where He says that it is “not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD.” You see, He is explaining what type of famine is in view during our day of this time of Great Tribulation, it is a spiritual famine—the same thing here.
In this one verse, God explains that it is not really “of wine” that He is concerned about. It is not actual “strong drink.” It is not the literal stuff that you can get at the liquor store. It is the spiritual “wine” and “strong drink” of other kinds of gospels.
This is what is making man drunken. At least, as far as the Bible is concerned, this is what makes someone inebriated. That is an old word or a word that you do not hear too much that means that you are basically out of your mind. That is what alcohol does, does it not? People drink because they have problems—they had a difficult day, a difficult week, a difficult life. Some of them think that it is constant where every Friday, every Saturday, they just need to forget about their cares and worries and troubles, so they go and drink. At that point, when they drink themselves drunk, they lose their senses, to a certain degree. Everything can be funny. Nothing is serious.
There are different kinds of actual drunken behavior, but this is what some people do and they forget about their troubles momentarily. Of course, they are adding to them and they are multiplying their troubles with the drinking because it brings further grief. When you have problems, maybe it is financial problems, “Oh, how am I going to pay these bills?” It is something that is so troubling that the person goes and starts drinking. He is spending more money that he does not have, and it just multiplies sin. It increases the problem; it never solves it; but it helps people to escape.
Spiritually, what is the problem? What is the problem that all of us have? It is sin. It is our condition of being spiritually dead and rebelling against God. We are under the wrath of God and under the Judgment of God. Is there nothing that can put this out of my mind? I am troubled deep-down within in my inner conscience and I do not want it to surface because I do not know how to handle it.
Well, there is a solution. Someone hears a person on TV or someone recommends a church, so they go to the church where the pastor or the priest or the minister or whoever begins explaining, “Here is how you can get right with God. Here is what you have to do.” So they give them a formula; they give them the steps to take. “Come to this class; learn this; and then make a profession of faith; be baptized; then regularly come to the Lord’s Table”—and they are drinking it in.
Remember the Gospel is like “wine;” it is like a spiritual drink. They are drinking of this teaching that they are getting in whatever church, and it is not true. It is not going to save them. It is not going to heal their relationship between them and God, but they think that it has.
Really, it makes them inebriated, spiritually speaking, where they are no longer concerned—they are carefree—just like the effects of literal alcohol. They now think that they are going to Heaven and that they have eternal life. Yet God is saying, “They are drunken, but not with wine; they stagger, but not with strong drink.” It is a spiritual drunkenness that God has in view.
If we go to Proverbs 26:9, it says:
As a thorn goeth up into the hand of a drunkard, so is a parable in the mouth of fools.
You see, God is using that picture of drunkenness. We do not really remember too much of our past and the sins that we have been involved with but I am sure that there are people who have in the past fallen into the sin of drinking and have gotten drunk, so you might be able to understand very well what God is saying here:
As a thorn goeth up into the hand of a drunkard…
You are anesthetized by the alcohol. You do not feel a lot of things. You could fall flat down in the street and you could bang your face up, you could have cuts and be bleeding, yet you continue on your way as if there is no problem. It might take someone to point this out to you, or maybe it is the next day and you wake you up and you realize that you hurt yourself in this way while in a drunken stupor. God is saying that like a thorn that goes into the hand of a drunkard, he does not feel it. The next day, when he is waking up, there is going to be an ache; there is going to be a pain there and he might not have any recollection of how he did it, but there is the wound.
God is saying that this is how it is with a “parable in the mouth of fools;” he does not know what he has. He does not know what the Bible is saying. God has written the Bible and we know that Christ spoke in parables. This is the style of writing in which God chose to give us His revelation and to give us His Word. So the Bible speaks of many things, like we are finding here—wine and bread or strong drink—and they represent things. There is spiritual meaning behind many of the words of the Bible. Actually, there is spiritual meaning in all of the Bible, but through these pictures, God paints pictures and He teaches Truth.
So someone who is spiritually drunk is not going to be aware of what the Bible is saying. They are not going to understand Matthew 24, when God is likening the churches to Judaea and He is saying, “When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation…stand in the holy place…them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains.” They will not understand “Judaea” or “mountains” or “flee.” They will not understand that it is all talking about when Satan is loosed as the “man of sin” and has taken his seat in the church, ruling over the congregations, and that it is time to come out of the church. They are not going to understand what “Babylon” represents or God’s command, “Come out of her, My people.” They are not going to understand because they are not aware of the Word of God. They are not aware of how God has given His Word and has written His Word—that we have to look for Gospel meaning. They are not aware that we have to look for a deeper spiritual meaning, so they are drunk with their own type of gospel. This is a very sad thing and it is very sad that many people are going to stay this way right up until the end.
As we turn back to Joel 1, we read in Joel 1:5:
Awake, ye drunkards, and weep; and howl, all ye drinkers of wine, because of the new wine, for it is cut off from your mouth.
We were looking at those words, “new wine.” In the English, it is translated as two words, “new wine.” This word is found in about a half a dozen or so places in the Bible. One of the places that we find it is in Joel 3:18:
And it shall come to pass in that day, that the mountains shall drop down new wine, and the hills shall flow with milk, and all the rivers of Judah shall flow with waters, and a fountain shall come forth of the house of the LORD, and shall water the valley of Shittim.
This is all language pointing to our present day: the time of the “latter rain,” the time of God’s outpouring of the Gospel to the world in a way that the world has never seen or known before. It is spoken of as being “new wine.” It is the words that God has sealed up until the time of the end, and it is still all in the Bible but as God opens up the Scriptures that have been closed and sealed, it becomes new information for us—it is a “new wine.” So this “new wine” is able to flow, as it says here:
…the mountains shall drop down new wine…
And this is referring to God Himself. He is going to send this “new wine” into the world.
Or turn to Amos 9. Amos is the next book after Joel. We read in Amos 9:13-15:
Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed; and the mountains shall drop sweet wine…
“Sweet wine” is the same word as “new wine.” It continues:
…and all the hills shall melt. And I will bring again the captivity of my people of Israel, and they shall build the waste cities, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and drink the wine thereof; they shall also make gardens, and eat the fruit of them. And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be pulled up out of their land which I have given them, saith the LORD thy God.
This is referring to salvation. When we become saved, we enter into the “Promised Land” of the Kingdom of Heaven, and so this is in the context of the mountains dropping “new wine”, dropping down the “sweet wine” of the Gospel.
This is occurring today. This is happening right now anywhere in the world where you would want to go—India or China or Africa—it does not matter what country—anyplace in the world, the Word of God is going forth and God is saving people. By the end of this Great Tribulation, it will be a great multitude. We do not know how many are being saved today or how many have been saved already or how many are left. We do not have any of this kind of information, but we know that God is going to bring in His elect and that He has a wonderful plan for the world of our day.
The sad news is that in the churches and congregations, there is no “latter rain.” There is no “latter rain” or “new wine” or blessing of God upon anyone there, and there are Scriptures that declare this in the book of Jeremiah. They will not experience the “latter rain,” so this is why it is sad as we read in Joel 1:5:
Awake, ye drunkards, and weep; and howl, all ye drinkers of wine, because of the new wine, for it is cut off from your mouth.
God has brought judgment upon the congregations. The Day of the Lord has begun upon the churches. It will continue on until the very Last Day, literally, of the world, then it will progress and transition into the final Day of Judgment, as all men give account. But, you see, God is cutting off this “new wine.” It is His doing; it is His work—He is the One who has decided to loose Satan and to bring Satan and judgment upon the congregations. But also, it is those teachers and preachers in the congregations themselves who are cutting themselves off because they will not humble themselves; they will not obey God and God’s command to “Come out of her,” to leave the church. So they are doing this to themselves; they are doing it to their families; they are doing it to their congregation—they are destroying all of those who are under their teaching and are listening to what they say. So it is a terrible thing when God says, “The new wine…is cut off from your mouth.”
Then we read in Joel 1:6:
For a nation is come up upon my land, strong, and without number, whose teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he hath the cheek teeth of a great lion.
We know, historically, who this nation is. This is the nation of Babylon whom God historically brought against Judah, and God called Nebuchadnezzar, “My servant.” So this is the nation that is in view. A nation comes “out of the north,” we read in the book of Jeremiah, and we see that it is the Babylonians who are destroying Judah, historically.
God prophesied of this back in Deuteronomy. I will read this verse and then I will skip ahead to a few other verses. We read in Deuteronomy 28:33:
The fruit of thy land, and all thy labours, shall a nation which thou knowest not eat up; and thou shalt be only oppressed and crushed alway:
Remember in this chapter, beginning in Deuteronomy 28:15, God is listing all of the curses that come upon a disobedient people. Really, a lot of it is pointing to the church of our day and how they have not obeyed the Word of God. Now turn to Deuteronomy 28:48-52. It says there:
Therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies which the LORD shall send against thee, in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things: and he shall put a yoke of iron upon thy neck, until he have destroyed thee. The LORD shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flieth; a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand; a nation of fierce countenance, which shall not regard the person of the old, nor show favour to the young: and he shall eat the fruit of thy cattle, and the fruit of thy land, until thou be destroyed: which also shall not leave thee either corn, wine, or oil, or the increase of thy kine, or flocks of thy sheep, until he have destroyed thee. And he shall besiege thee in all thy gates, until thy high and fenced walls come down, wherein thou trustedst, throughout all thy land: and he shall besiege thee in all thy gates throughout all thy land, which the LORD thy God hath given thee.
It is very important language when God says, “He shall besiege thee in all thy gates.” If you turn to Psalm 118, it explains what is in view here. We read in Psalm 118:19-20:
Open to me the gates of righteousness: I will go into them, and I will praise the LORD: this gate of the LORD, into which the righteous shall enter.
So this has to do with what? This has to do with salvation—we go into “the gates of righteousness.” Jesus is the Door. He is the Gate that leads to Heaven, “For there is none other Name under Heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” It has to be through the Lord Jesus Christ—through that Gate.
In Deuteronomy 28, God is saying that He is going to bring this nation upon them and come against them; it is a fierce nation, an ancient nation, and this nation “shall besiege thee in all thy gates.” Historically, this is what happened as Babylon came round Judah; they compassed the city round.
Remember at the very end, Zedekiah, the last king of Judah, fled. He tried to flee “out the way of the plain.” Maybe he had been examining the strength of the defense round about the city and saw where there were not too many Babylonians in this one area, so the “men of war” and the king fled the city at last and they went through “the way of the plain,” then they were overtaken. The Babylonians realized what was happening, so with their forces they “brought him up to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon to Riblah in the land of Hamath” where they “slew the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes,” then they “put out Zedekiah’s eyes.”
That is how charming Nebuchadnezzar could be. He was a ruthless king, a king of a “fierce countenance.” Babylon was a fierce nation; they could be very cruel to those whom they conquered and destroyed. So they besieged the gates of Judah, the gates of Jerusalem. No one could go in; no one could go out. Once again, God uses another picture, another type and figure of no salvation. This is because the “gate” represents Christ.
It is amazing that hundreds of millions or maybe a billion or two people profess to be Christians. They are in churches everywhere practically in the world. In every nation, all of the cities, as far as I know, have congregations and churches. It is amazing that all of those “gates” are “besieged.” Every one of them is “besieged” by Satan, by his emissaries, by the forces of the kingdom of darkness, and there can be no entering into the “gates of righteousness”—no salvation at all.
God is telling us repeatedly that this is the case. It is for a person’s own good, or a family’s own good, that they come out of the congregation, that they come out of the church and that they leave that church behind, like Lot left Sodom and was told to “look not behind thee”—do not even concern yourself with that church. Forget about it; leave it to God. God will deal with them. As far as you are concerned, try to obey God and the Word of God and do things God’s way—and there will be blessing.
As far as the word “nation,” God divides up the human race into two people groups—the saved and the unsaved. There are those who are in the Kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. The rest are in the kingdom of darkness; they are in the kingdom of Satan—he is the god of this world—he rules over them.
We saw last Sunday that God gave a name to Satan in Revelation 9 of “Abaddon” and “Apollyon.” “Abaddon” is from the Hebrew and it means “destruction.” “Apollyon” means basically the same thing. It is a word that means “perish” or “lost;” it has the idea of someone who is going to end up under the wrath of God and who is going to be brought down to Hell. That is Satan’s name, or one of the names that God has given him. He is this king of “fierce countenance” that is coming upon the churches and has taken his seat in the congregations and is ruling over them for only one purpose: to destroy, to completely annihilate the people of God. That is Satan’s desire.
Let us read Joel 1:6 again:
For a nation is come up upon my land, strong, and without number, whose teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he hath the cheek teeth of a great lion.
If we turn to Psalm 57:4, we read:
My soul is among lions: and I lie even among them that are set on fire, even the sons of men, whose teeth are spears and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword.
God is identifying the “lions” to be “the sons of men.” Satan is the “great lion.” That word “great” is translated “old” in some places. He is the “old lion.” He is the “lion” from way back in the Garden of Eden who has been around ever since, going about the earth, “seeking whom he may devour.” He is that “lion,” but all those who are giving the appearance of being “ministers of righteousness” but in reality are ministers of Satan, are also “lions”—just as God says in Psalm 57:4:
My soul is among lions…the sons of men…
Or turn to Psalm 22. This is the Messianic Psalm that describes the suffering of Christ upon the Cross. We can see this in Psalm 22:13:
They gaped upon me with their mouths, as a ravening and a roaring lion.
There were these men all about the Cross looking at Jesus—the leaders of Israel, the Pharisees, the Scribes. This is what they had desired. This is what they had wanted. They wanted to destroy Jesus, so God describes them as “a ravening and a roaring lion.”
What does a lion do? A lion tears and devours. It destroys. The Bible talks about Daniel being “cast into the den of lions.” It is a tremendous miracle that they did not touch Daniel. There was no hurt or harm that came to Daniel, only because God is in control of all things in His creation and God had “shut the lions’ mouths.” But these were hungry lions and when King Darius realized that Daniel was still alive, he was “exceeding glad for him” because the king had been hoodwinked and deceived into passing that law. King Darius realized what these men had done so that they could get Daniel because they had envied Daniel.
Now, though, Daniel was alive and it was great evidence that there is a God in Heaven and that He does protect His people and watch over His people. After probably rejoicing for a little while with Daniel and not being able to believe that Daniel had survived the lions’ pit, the king turns and sees all of the presidents and princes that had passed that law and were determined to destroy Daniel. The king labored not to throw Daniel into the lions’ pit, but they kept insisting, “Know, O king, that the law of the Medes and Persians is, That no decree nor statute which the king establisheth may be changed.” Finally the king had to bow to the law—it was the law of his own land—but in the back of his mind he realized that he could not trust these men.
Then when Daniel came up out of the pit, the king turned and had his officers and his soldiers grab all of the presidents and princes. How many presidents were there? There were three; Daniel was the third. So there would have been two presidents over 120 princes. They threw them and their families into the pit. The Bible tells us that before they “came at the bottom of the den,” the lions “had the mastery of them, and brake all their bones in pieces.” There must have been a lot of lions in there. I do not know exactly how they threw so many people in there, but the language is that those presidents and princes and their families, their wives and their children, were all cast into the pit—and the lions devoured them all.
The lion is a truly great beast that God has given us for us to realize certain things about Himself because Jesus is also the Lion of the tribe of Judah and God is a powerful God. In Psalm 50, the Psalm of Asaph, God speaks to those who thought that God was “altogether such an one as thyself.” We read in Psalm 50:22:
Now consider this, ye that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver.
God is an Almighty Powerful God and when He speaks about casting men down into Hell forever and destroying them in fire “where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched,” all of this language is spoken by a God who will do it and is able to do it and who has the strength and power to do it. What kind of power does God have if a lion is such a fearful animal? How much more should we fear God?
If we heard a report that there was a lion running in the street because it had gotten out of the zoo and was running in the streets of Linwood, who would go outside? Who is going to go outside? There is a Proverb about “a lion in the streets.” I would not go outside. We will not go outside because we fear that lion. Yet here is Satan going about as a “roaring lion.” Of course, he does not have any power like God, but still God describes him that way. Yet men walk carefree in this world. They do not concern themselves with Satan because they can not see him, but that does not mean that he is not going about seeking to devour and to destroy and to bring destruction—he is.
So God is telling us here in Joel that these people, these emissaries of Satan who are coming upon the churches, have the “teeth of a lion.” They are not looking out for your welfare. They may say, “God loves you.” They may say, “God has a wonderful plan for your life.” They may use a lot of sweet and flattering words, and they might even give you a hug. There are some churches that are not that warm, but there are other churches where when you go in, people come up to you and wrap their arms around you, “Welcome, brother! Welcome, sister! Come on in!”—and they can make you feel real good and give a lot of attention to you.
Yes, but you just went into the lions’ den—you just went into the lions’ den. You may not be aware of it, but behind the scenes, in the spiritual realm, it is a pit of lions that only want to destroy and break and gnaw your bones. So this is what God is saying has happened to the churches. This is what is going on today.
Turn back to Joel 1:7. It says:
He hath laid my vine waste, and barked my fig tree: he hath made it clean bare, and cast it away; the branches thereof are made white.
This is like four descriptions that God has given. First, the vine is laid waste. Second and third, the fig tree is barked and made clean bare—a little additional information. And fourth, the branches are made white. Every one of these statements is saying the exact same thing. What is that? Well, what is the vine? What is the vineyard? It is the church. You can read about this in Isaiah. God speaks of the vineyard and it is a representation of the church of the world—the outward representation of the Kingdom of God on earth.
“He hath laid My vine waste;” “waste” is a word that means “desolate;” it means, once again, “destroyed.” “Barked My fig tree;” what does a “fig tree” represent? In the Old Testament, it represented national Israel, but it also typifies the New Testament churches and congregations. God uses the “fig tree” to picture both. We know that here it is especially looking to the church of our day during this judgment that has begun on the house of God.
So what does it mean that the “fig tree” is “barked?” It is like when you find a twig or a branch on the ground and you pick it up and start peeling it—you start peeling the bark from it. The covering of the twig or branch is the bark and every tree has some type of bark. The bark is there to protect the tree, right? If you remove all of the bark off the tree, then it does not have any protection and the tree could die.
So God has given the bark as a covering for the tree. It is to protect the tree against the elements. And here, “He hath…barked My fig tree.” The church, the people within the church, professing Christians, think that they have the covering of the righteousness of Christ. They think that they have the covering that is the salvation of the God of the Bible, yet it is made “clean bare.” As Joel 1:7 says:
…he hath made it clean bare…
Turn to Jeremiah 49 where God is talking about Edom or Esau. He says in Jeremiah 49:10:
But I have made Esau bare, I have uncovered his secret places, and he shall not be able to hide himself: his seed is spoiled, and his brethren, and his neighbours, and he is not.
Esau is also a type and figure used of the church. Esau is made “bare” and so is the “fig tree;” it is barked and it is “clean bare.” There is no covering, so there is nakedness—there is spiritual nakedness. This word “clean bare” is also found in Isaiah 20 where the Ethiopians were walking “naked and barefoot, even with their buttocks uncovered.” That same word is translated “uncovered” and it is “to the shame of Egypt.” It is pointing to man’s sinfulness being opened to the eyes of God, just as Hebrews 4 tells us that “all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.”
So it is with the “fig tree.” The corporate entity, the church, has no covering for their sins anymore. Christ is not there. The Holy Spirit is not there. There is no protection against the wrath of God. There is no protection that can spare someone from Hell.
The last part of Joel 1:7:
… the branches thereof are made white…
When you do find a little branch and you start peeling it, it turns white. Well, it does not turn white. It was white underneath all along, but you can see that it is the nice part of the wood that gets nice and smooth after you peel off all of the bark. You are left with that nice, smooth stick; so God is saying that it is “made white.”
This word that is translated as “white” (“laban”) is the same word that we find in Leviticus 13 where there is a “fretting leprosy.” God goes into great detail about leprosy in this chapter, and this word is used several times there.
Why? What is the connection? The connection is that leprosy is a figure and a type of man’s sin. So when the bark is removed and the branch is made white—“I am the vine, ye are the branches,” we read in John 15. “Ye are the branches” and the branch has no covering; it has been barked and made white like leprosy because our sins are now in view. God can see everything that we have ever done—in our heart, in our mind, in our actions, in our thoughts—God sees it all. So there is no covering of any kind for someone who remains in a congregation during these last few days of the world’s existence—no covering whatsoever, no protection against the wrath of God.