Christmas and the Last Days

Sermon Summary:


The Old Testament prophet Joel spoke to the people of God about their need to repent of their sin.  He spoke of the plague of locusts as being sent by God as part of the Day of the Lord - a day when sin would be judged.  The Old Testament people of God had assumed that they would be exempt from judgement because they were God's people.  Joel then shared a blessing with the people - God would restore them and be with them at all times.  Furthermore, God would pour out his Spirit on all people irrespective of race, gender or social status.


Questions for Reflection:

1. When you think of an Old Testament prophet, what are your first thoughts?  On what have you based those thoughts?
2. As you read through the book of Joel what are your thoughts about the locusts Joel described in the book?  Are they literal or do they represent some other threat to the people of Israel?  Why?
3. How does being Children of God impact how we might be disciplined by our Heavenly Father?  What does it mean to be a Child of God when it comes to His discipline?
4. When did the Last Days begin?  What are the signs we are in the Last Days?
5. What does it mean to you that God lives within believers at all times?

Sermon: Christmas and the Last Days

I got a new Bible recently.  Actually it’s not a full Bible.  Usually when a portion of the Scripture is produced it’s the New Testament or the Gospels.  It’s not that either.  What I got is a copy called Olde Charlie Farquaharson’s Testament.  I’m not sure if any of you know of or remember Charlie Farquaharson, he was on Hee Haw if any of you remember that TV show.  Charlie Farquharson is played by canadian actor Don Harron.  The premise is that Charlie is a rather well-worn Ontario farmer from near Perry Sound.  Charlie provides commentary on various events but he mixes and muddles his words and in mixing and muddling his words he adds new meanings to what he was saying.

I found an example of Charlie’s commentary that goes like this:

“Every guvmint estimit incloods an extry estimit of how much more it’s gonna cost than yer ferst estimit.  That’s how come they always leeve this big deficit on the floor of yer House.  And a deficit is what you’ve got wen you haven’t got as much as if you jist had nothin’.  If we tried any of this, we’d end up in jail.  But the guvmint gits rid of its detts by Nashnullizing them.  That’s like the alkyholick who solved his problem by poring the booze in all of his bottles into one big container.  Himself.” [from Charlie Farquharson’s K-O-R-N Filled Allmynack, 1976, pg. 79]

In Olde Charlie Farquharson’s Testament when he gets to the prophets he describes them like this:

A profit is sumbuddy gets up on a high place, looks down on everybuddy elts.  No matter what ther name is, everyone of htem profits seems to tell the peeple the same thing:  YER DOIN’ IT ALL RONG!!! (p. 158)

It’s tempting to agree with Charlie in the way in which he describes the prophets.  It seems as though the prophets always needed to bring words of judgment and condemnation because the people of God always seem to stray.  What we often overlook when we read the prophets are the words of blessing that they also brought.  The passage we want to look at as we prepare for Communion today and as we begin the season of Advent is a passage of blessing from the prophet Joel.  If you have your bibles I would invite you to turn with me to the book of Joel.  Joel chapter 2.  Before we get to today’s passage which begins with verse 28 of Joel chapter 2 I want to take some time to go over the other three sections of Joel chapter 2.

Verse 1 of Joel chapter 2 says,

¹Blow the trumpet in Zion;
sound the alarm on my holy hill.
Let all who live in the land tremble,
for the day of the Lord is coming.
It is close at hand—

If you read the first section of chapter 2 which extends from verse one to verse 11 you will read that the people are in a time of national emergency.  There is a plague of locusts that is either in the process of or has recently ravaged the countryside.  They have destroyed everything.  The locusts have moved across the country like a great army or like a wild fire.  Before they came everything was green and lush and after they had passed the nation was like a barren desert.  The locusts totally destroyed everything.  They came into the cities and crawled into the houses of the people.

Some scholars aren’t sure if the term ‘locusts’ in the book of Joel always refers to actual insects or if ‘locusts’ might refer to the large armies of Judah’s enemies.  Most agree that there must have been an actual plague of locusts at some point that Joel used as a point of reference which all the people would know or remember but scholars also seem to think that Joel might be warning the people that their human enemies could also be used by God to destroy the land.

The interesting thing is that in chapter two Joel chose to begin these words to the people by using the term “the day of the Lord”.  The Day of the Lord was seen by the people of Israel and Judah as a day when God would judge their enemies.  The Day of the Lord was supposed to be a day when Israel was vindicated before her enemies, a day when they were justified for having chosen to follow after God.

The people would not have seen the plague of locusts as the Day of the Lord because in their minds the wrong people were judged.  They were God’s chosen people and therefore God would not judge them.  The people seemed to think that being God’s children meant they were God’s spoiled brats who would never be held accountable for their actions - they’d get a free pass.  The prophets often reminded Israel and Judah that the Day of the Lord was a day when God would judge all sin including their sin when necessary.

Joel spoke in verse 11 of the Lord being at the head of His army, the locusts.  God was in charge of this plague that was affecting the people of Israel.  He was leading the army and no one could endure the Day of the Lord.

That leads us to the second section of Joel chapter 2 where God called to the people to repent.  In verse 12 and 13 we read,

¹²“Even now,” declares the Lord,
“return to me with all your heart,
with fasting and weeping and mourning.”

¹³Rend your heart
and not your garments.
Return to the Lord your God,
for he is gracious and compassionate,
slow to anger and abounding in love,
and he relents from sending calamity.

The Lord’s aim in leading the army of locusts was to bring Israel to a point of repentance and return to Him.  The people were used to expressing their grief by tearing their clothes and sitting in ashes.  Perhaps because of the plague of locusts the people had begun to grieve and tear their clothes and wonder why God would do something like this to them; they were after all His chosen people.

Joel encouraged the people to tear their hearts in repentance instead of their clothes in anguish.  This plague wasn’t a random act.  It was God’s very serious invitation to them to return to a relationship with Him.

God is the perfect disciplinarian.  Whenever things happen to us that are His judgement on His people He will let us know the connection between our struggle and our sin.  If we are struggling and we wonder if it is God’s judgement on us for our sin we need to ask Him.  Don’t take the word of those who come to us and tell us God is judging us for sin in our lives.  Ask Him.  If we are being punished for our sin He will show us our sin so that He can forgive it and restore us to a right relationship with Him.  If we are not being punished for our sin He will show that to us as well and He will be present with us as we struggle through our pain; He is the perfect disciplinarian.

In verse 16 the people were invited to come before God for a sacred assembly - a time of collective repentance and prayer.  When the people of God gather to pray and seek His face and repent of their sin something good always happens.

Beginning in verse 17 God spoke to Israel through Joel about their restoration.  He spoke to the people of fields that once more would be green and of trees that would bear fruit.  Threshing floors would once again be filled with grain and vats would once again overflow with wine and oil.  God promised to repay Israel for the years the locusts had stolen.

The promise continued that they would once more praise God.  My favorite promise is found in verse 27 where Joel wrote,

²⁷Then you will know that I am in Israel,
that I am the Lord your God,
and that there is no other;
never again will my people be shamed.

The people are supposed to know that God is present with them and that He is their God and there is no other God than Him.  God’s primary concern is and always has been that He would be known and that He would be the only God His people would worship.  The people will know that God is in Israel.  The other nations always asked to see Israel’s God and they couldn’t point to a physical depiction of Him and at times they doubted if He was with them.  God wanted them to know He was with them.

Then in verse 28 Joel said, 

²⁸“And afterward,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your old men will dream dreams,
your young men will see visions.

²⁹Even on my servants, both men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days.

The event we call Christmas began the Last Days.  People, especially people who love to study End Times prophecy like to tell us that we’re living in the last days.  They’re right we are living in the last days.  The thing they don’t usually tell us is that we’ve been living in the Last Days since Jesus was born in Bethlehem.

In the Last Days God sent His Son, born of a virgin in Bethlehem, who grew up and preached the good news that the Kingdom of God had become flesh and lived among us human beings.  This Son of God was crucified and three days later He rose again.  Forty days after Easter Jesus ascended to Heaven where He reigns, seated at the right hand of the Father.  Fifty Days after Easter an interesting phenomenon took place in Jerusalem.  There was a sound as the rushing of a great wind and the Spirit of God descended and rested on those who were in the room and it looked like tongues of fire on their heads.  Everyone spoke in foreign languages and the the people from across the known world who were in Jerusalem for the feast days were able to hear the gospel in their own language.

Peter stood to preach and when he preached he quoted the prophet Joel but he changed the first words and said, “In the last days I will pour out my Spirit…”.  Christmas was the first of a series of events that culminated on the Day of Pentecost.  Christmas is the time we celebrate that God became human and lived among us.  Pentecost is the day we celebrate that God chose to live within and empower all human beings who choose to follow Him.  Pentecost is Christmas made permanent in each believer, God with each of us.

We celebrate Advent and Christmas as that time when we get ready to receive Jesus who was physically born in Bethlehem all those years ago.  Advent is like the earlier part of Joel chapter two where we repent and prepare ourselves to receive this gift like the people of Joel’s time were invited to gather and repent of the sin that had been part of their lives.

God really wants to live with His people.  He is unlike any other God of any other faith.  In other faiths god or the gods are distant and they don’t speak to their people and they certainly don’t become human and live among them.  There’s never a sense that the gods of other religions love the people.  In fact in other faith persuasions people try to appease the gods, that’s the best they can do.

In Christianity we believe God loves people.  We believe God wants to live with people and be part of our lives as He was with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.  That’s what God wants.  He made covenants with His people so that we could have a relationship with Him.  He provided a way that we could cover our sin before Him through sacrifices.  He sent the prophets to tell His people when they weren’t living according to the covenants they had made and how they should come back to Him.  He sent the Psalmists to give us words to speak when we speak to Him and when we worship Him.  He said through the prophet Isaiah,

¹⁴Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign:  The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.

Immanuel means, God with us.  That’s what God wants - to be with us.  That’s why Jesus came, so that God could be with us.  That’s why God sent the Holy Spirit to live within all people.  If you look back at that verse from Joel chapter 2:28, the Spirit was promised to be poured out on all people, old and young, male and female, slave and free.  There would be no discrimination on God’s behalf - everyone would have God living within them.  That’s a Christmas message about God being with His people.  That’s the Holy Spirit living within us - God with us all the time.

As we eat the Communion meal today we remember Jesus’ death and resurrection and what that bought for us.  We also remember that Jesus is God with us - Immanuel- and that by the Holy Spirit God continues to live with each one of us all the time.  This started in the Last Days.  Christmas begins the Last Days.