Jon Kim, “Day of the Lord Revival”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpowSymyyu4
TEXT: Joel 1:1-20
[1] The word of the LORD that came to Joel, the son of Pethuel:
An Invasion of Locusts
[2] Hear this, you elders;
give ear, all inhabitants of the land!
Has such a thing happened in your days,
or in the days of your fathers?
[3] Tell your children of it,
and let your children tell their children,
and their children to another generation.
[4] What the cutting locust left,
the swarming locust has eaten.
What the swarming locust left,
the hopping locust has eaten,
and what the hopping locust left,
the destroying locust has eaten.
[5] Awake, you drunkards, and weep,
and wail, all you drinkers of wine,
because of the sweet wine,
for it is cut off from your mouth.
[6] For a nation has come up against my land,
powerful and beyond number;
its teeth are lions’ teeth,
and it has the fangs of a lioness.
[7] It has laid waste my vine
and splintered my fig tree;
it has stripped off their bark and thrown it down;
their branches are made white.
[8] Lament like a virgin wearing sackcloth
for the bridegroom of her youth.
[9] The grain offering and the drink offering are cut off
from the house of the LORD.
The priests mourn,
the ministers of the LORD.
[10] The fields are destroyed,
the ground mourns,
because the grain is destroyed,
the wine dries up,
the oil languishes.
[11] Be ashamed, O tillers of the soil;
wail, O vinedressers,
for the wheat and the barley,
because the harvest of the field has perished.
[12] The vine dries up;
the fig tree languishes.
Pomegranate, palm, and apple,
all the trees of the field are dried up,
and gladness dries up
from the children of man.
A Call to Repentance
[13] Put on sackcloth and lament, O priests;
wail, O ministers of the altar.
Go in, pass the night in sackcloth,
O ministers of my God!
Because grain offering and drink offering
are withheld from the house of your God.
[14] Consecrate a fast;
call a solemn assembly.
Gather the elders
and all the inhabitants of the land
to the house of the LORD your God,
and cry out to the LORD.
[15] Alas for the day!
For the day of the LORD is near,
and as destruction from the Almighty it comes.
[16] Is not the food cut off
before our eyes,
joy and gladness
from the house of our God?
[17] The seed shrivels under the clods;
the storehouses are desolate;
the granaries are torn down
because the grain has dried up.
[18] How the beasts groan!
The herds of cattle are perplexed
because there is no pasture for them;
even the flocks of sheep suffer.
[19] To you, O LORD, I call.
For fire has devoured
the pastures of the wilderness,
and flame has burned
all the trees of the field.
[20] Even the beasts of the field pant for you
because the water brooks are dried up,
and fire has devoured
the pastures of the wilderness.
SERMON: “Day of the Lord Revival”
Like last time, I’m not going to do a whole intro, instead I’m going to just tell you the main point of our passage today and dive straight into our points. The main point that I would like to get across to you today is this….
Call out to God in faith when you are in spiritual apathy, for you will experience God.
Because of the cross of Jesus, you can be sure that if you call out to God, he will answer you and you will experience him in full. And I would like to get this point by going through Three Points:
Spiritual Apathy
Spiritual Revival
Spiritual Life
So FIRST, SPIRITUAL APATHY
I’m not sure if you know who Harold Camping is? But he’s an evangelist and Christian radio broadcaster from Oakland, California. But if you happen to know him, my guess is that you probably don’t know him necessarily because of his radio broadcast ministry. But Harold Camping became more infamous for predicting the end times. He scourged through the Bible and calculated the day that the world would end. And so he predicted that the world would end on September 6…… 1994. Obviously, you know what happened, but after September 6, 1994. He went back to the Bible and revised his calculations and said that the end would come on May 21, 2011…. After May 21, 2011, he revised his calculations again and said the end would come on October 21, 2011. After October 21, 2011…. Finally, in March 2012, at the age of 90, he finally admitted, “no man can know the day or the hour.” A bit funny that he ignored this verse for 90 years of his life. Yet at the same time, a little bit hopeful to see what sanctification realistically looks like in life.
And so why do I bring this up? Our society is a bit obsessed with the Apocalypse. For some of you, you grew up reading the Left Behind series. In my generation, in 2012, people thought the world would end because the Mayan Calendar was ending. Movies have been created about nuclear apocalypse or zombie apocalypse. There’s this obsession of this day of destruction and the end. A hyper-fixation on suffering because we don’t like suffering. And I bring all this up because when you look at the book of Joel, it’s easy to think that this book is like any other prophetical book.
But Joel is unique in that it reads more like apocalyptic literature. From the screen, you probably can see that this sermon series is titled, “The Day of the Lord.” And this is because this phrase…. “The Day of the Lord” is repeated throughout the book of Joel as this big day of judgment. You see this very clearly in verse 15 of our passage. As it says… “Alas for the day! For the Day of the LORD is near, And as destruction from the Almighty it comes.” And most of you are probably wondering at this moment… What is this destruction that will come on the Day of the Lord according to Joel? And you get your answer in verse 4 of our passage… “What the cutting locust left, the swarming locust has eaten. What the swarming locus left, the hopping locust has eaten. And what the hopping locust left, the destroying locust has eaten.” The picture of God’s judgment is a locust swarm and plague. After watching some YouTube videos, I learned that some locust swarms can be as big a 40 miles wide. About the distance from Camarillo to Santa Barbara. And these locust swarms can eat up to about 40,000 tons of vegetation. And the result from the Day of the LORD is that the land of Israel would be completely wiped out of its natural resources. All the food and water will be destroyed. You see this all throughout our passage. Verse 10, the fields are destroyed, the wine dries up. Verse 16, is not the food cut off. And I know that was a lot of information right there… And you may be wondering…. What in the world does this have to do with me today???? What does not having food and water have to do with me. Because you and I live in the opposite world. Instead fighting for food, we have an overabundance of food and choices. The worst it got for us Californians, was that eggs got really expensive, or you had to buy one-ply toilet paper instead of 2-ply during the pandemic. We’ve been in a drought for years and my guess is that most of us didn’t change our water usage. We don’t really know what it feels like to not have our basic needs. And so we’re looking at 20 verses of not having food or water…
So what does the book of Joel have to do with you and me. And I think where our story connects with Joel is not in the destruction. And it’s easy to get caught up in the destruction. But rather, the way you and I connect to Joel is by looking at the state of God’s people that God is talking to in our passage. And what I would like to argue today is this… The Israelites in the book of Joel were stuck in a spiritual apathy towards God. They lived in spiritual apathy towards God. And they were in danger because they were too content and comfortable with their relationship and experience of God… And why did they become spiritually apathetic. The suspicion that commentators have is because the Israelites had everything they needed. There was food. There was wine. And because they had everything in life, there was no need to come to God. To further this point, when you read through most of the Old Testament prophets, there’s usually a sin that God calls Israel out for. God says, repent from your idolatry, repent from your oppression against the widow, the orphans, and the foreigners, repent from your violence. And I don’t know if you noticed this, but there wasn’t any of that in our passage today. The language is not, stop sinning, but instead, wake up, cry out. Observe and feel all the commands in Joel. Hear this, tell you children, awake, wail, lament, be ashamed, put on sackcloth, consecrate a fast, cry out. The language are of those who are asleep and don’t care. God is basically saying, DO something different from what you’re doing now….. And this is why I think the book of Joel speaks so much into our safe, and peaceful suburban little world here in Ventura County. Because maybe the best way to say all this is in this way… the world that you and I exist in, it’s a world that is designed and it’s fine tuned to cultivate spiritual apathy because you have everything that you need.
Donald Barnhouse in the 1965 issue of Eternity Magazine, he wrote an essay in which he imagined what it would look like if Satan took control of a city. If I told you to imagine a city that Satan took over, you would probably think of maybe a city where sin is celebrated, chaos ensues, violence is at an all time high. But in this article, Barnhouse suggested that a city that was ruled by Satan would actually look more like this…. Moral and orderly; bars would be closed, pornography eliminated, streets clean, and churches full — but Christ would not be preached because Christ is not needed. This is a gut-check that just because you live in a more quiet, peaceful place, that you are somehow immune to the attacks of Satan. Our society here is fine-tuned for spiritual apathy. And the way that you know that you are in a state of spiritual apathy is if God is optional. Comfort is a huge idol here in Ventura County. As long as I’m comfortable, no one bothers me, I don’t bother you. Life is “fine,” I have a routine, a job, I eat, I can pay my bills, I go on vacation every year, I have parking in front of my house, weather is beautiful, what is there to complain about… I’m comfortable. And how do you know that comfort is your god? When prayer becomes optional. What do I need to pray for, I have everything I need. You may say to me, Jon, I’m not comfortable. I’m very busy.. My calendar is packed with my job, taking my kids to their activities and sports, I have all these chores to do. Busyness can bring about the same amount of apathy that comfort does. You know you’re are spiritually apathetic when the Word of God which is described as your daily bread, is optional. I’ll read it if I have time. You know spiritual apathy exists when moral decency replaces any need of grace. It’s good enough to be good, kind, responsible, and hardworking. I’m a law-abiding citizen. It’s actually celebrated here. You know there is spiritual apathy when you don’t feel like you need Jesus’ grace. Or even when you think to yourself that your quote on quote “good neighbor” you have doesn’t need to hear about the forgiveness of Jesus…. It’s easy to not care, go numb, and go with the flow in the world that we live in. And I want you to know…. I’m not bringing up prayer, reading your bible, or asking Jesus for his grace or evangelizing to guilt you and tell you that you need to check these things off of your checklist if you’re a Christian. If you think I’m telling you to do these things for the sake of doing them, you’ve missed the point. But I bring these things up because these are simply symptoms of something deeper. Symptoms of a heart problem. That maybe your heart does not feel like it needs God. That this life is perfectly fine without any experience of God. And if that’s the case, I just want to let you know…. You are massively missing out. Because to experience God is everything that you soul needs and is unlike anything else that the world can offer you. The unconditional love of God cannot even be compared to the love that we receive from our followers on social media, or even the love that we get from our family and friends, which can often be transactional. The comfort of God holding your eternity cannot be matched to any comfort that your doctor could ever give you.
A few years after Tim Keller was diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer, he did an interview. And he said this… And I’m paraphrasing here. Now that I’ve experienced cancer, I now never wonder why God gave me cancer. And how is it possible Keller was able to come to this point? Because Keller said he experienced God in such a new and precious way. And one of Keller’s biggest prayers to God was this… that if he were ever to be healed from cancer, he prayed that he would never go back to his old prayer life because his new prayer life and experience of God was that much better.
My goal and hope for you today is simple: That you would experience God…. Not just today, but when you leave these doors, throughout this week. Experience his love. Experience his goodness. Experience the freedom he provides for you. Experience the comfort that you are in his sovereign care. Experience his presence. I know as presbyterians, this is scary talk. Experience God??? It feels so subjective, emotional, other churches have used experiencing God’s presence to manipulate and hurt others. And all those reasons are valid, but those are not enough reasons that should make us afraid to talk about experiencing God. I don’t know if you may have forgotten… but God… the alight God of heaven and earth, he is present here right now.
Here at Christ Our Redeemer at TIME on June 15th, 2025. God is here. And God is speaking directly to you today through his Word and through his Son. God is changing you today through the working of the Holy Spirit. And experiencing God doesn’t have to be this cray over the top thing. If you ever feel convicted of a sin, you are experiencing God. If you ever feel encouraged by the Word, you are experiencing God. If you feel called to love your neighbor, forgive someone, you are experiencing and communing with our God. And our hope are at Christ Our Redeemer is that you would experience, to taste and see just how good our God is. And so, let’s be people who aren’t afraid of a spiritual revival and let us have the courage to confess and leave our spiritual apathy if we are in it. And this leads me to my second point:
SPIRITUAL REVIVAL
So how do you and I experience a spiritual revival or experience God? And it’s simply this… Call out to God. That is the emphasis of Joel 1. The emphasis is not just the destruction that’s happening, but it’s an emphasis to call out to God NOW. If you look throughout our passage, Joel commands the people of Israel to do many things. Wail, wake up, cry out to God, put on sack cloth. And all of these commands build and culminate to verse 19. And in verse 19, Joel emphasizes calling out to God. And you know this is emphasized because this is the first time Joel says, I. To you, O LORD…, I…. CALL. This prophecy to call out to God is not to say, call out to God simply when destruction and suffering comes.
But to call out to God NOW, TODAY. Call out to him in faith. And why should you call out to God? And the answer is this…. Because he promises to answer you. Because if you have put your faith in God’s Son, Jesus Christ, God promises to never turn his face away from you. For in Matthew 27: 46, as Jesus hung on the cross…. Paying for our sins and punishment… as he took on all that we deserved for our sins… Jesus in his agony.. Jesus called out to his Father with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani.” That is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And when Jesus called out, because he became our sin, Jesus was met with silence. Because Jesus bore our past, present, and future sins upon himself… God turned his face from his only begotten Son….. And why did Jesus do such a thing… Jesus died, not only so that you wouldn’t have to face the punishment of wrath for your sins, but so that God would never turn his face away from you when you call out to him. Jesus bearing your punishment means that you will never be met with God’s silence because Jesus took on the punishment of God turning his face away from you upon himself, Jesus Christ our savior. God promises to answer you every single time you call to him.
And you see this VERY CLEARLY in 2 Corinthians 1:19-20 as it says, “For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, was not Yes and No, but in him it is ALWAYS YES. For ALL (not some) ALL the promises of God find their Yes in Christ Jesus! That is why it is through Jesus that we utter our Amen to God (when we pray) for Jesus’ glory.” And what this passage means is not that God answers every single on of your prayers and cries with a yes. It doesn’t mean that if you ask God to heal you of your cancer, that he will say yes. It doesn’t mean that if you ask God for a million dollars, that he will say yes. But it means that whenever you call out to God, God always answers you with the promises of Jesus. That no promise of Jesus will be withheld from you. And what are these promises. The promise that Jesus will never leave you or forsake no matter how disobedient you may have been. The promise that he is working all things for your good, even if you are suffering right now. He will even turn the evil things that have happened to you or that you have done for your good. He promises that all of heaven’s spiritual blessings are being poured out upon you. That you are his child and cannot be taken out of his hands. That when you are faithless, he will continue to be faithful. That there is always forgiveness for you. That he will strengthen your soul to get through this week. That he will protect you. Surely God WANTS you to experience him when you call out him. For Jesus made sure on the cross that your Heavenly Father’s face would never be turned away from you…
But the reality is also this… Because you and I are sinful, we will choose to not call out to God in faith. We won’t want to. We’ll be too tired to. We’ll be too busy. But even when you refuse to call out to him, there is good news that you learn from the book of Joel… And the good news is this… when you refuse to call out to God… if you are his in Christ Jesus, because God loves you so much, he will bring you to a place where you will call out to him again. Whether he does through speaking to you through his word, or through the person sitting next to you… or even sometimes he will do it through suffering and judgment. And I think what our passage teaches you and me is this… As sucky as God’s judgment is…. Sometimes God allows his people like you to suffer and will even strip you of all of your comfort because that is his love and mercy to you. Because only when he takes you out of your comfort, he shows you that he is not optional to you.
In verse 20 of our passage today… on “The Day of the LORD,” with all the food being stripped away, it says this… “Even the beasts of the field pant for you.” The famine is so bad that even the animals recognize their need for God. And if the animals can recognize this, surely his people will. And this is how God’s judgment can also be his mercy… Because when everything is taken away from you, you realize that ultimately your soul always NEEDED God. And when you finally come to God in faith, and call out to him in your need, he will satisfy your soul. So let us call out to him today. For this is the spiritual life you are called to. And this leads me to my last point… And I promise this will be short.
SPIRITUAL LIFE.
What does a spiritual life that is filled with the experience of our God look like in this life. Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 speaks about what life often looks like… I won’t read the whole thing, but just some selected verses….
“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven…
A time to be born, and a time to die
A time to break down, and a time to build up
A time to weep, and a time to laugh
A time to mourn, and a time to dance
A time to keep silence, and a time to speak
A time to love, and a time to hate.”
I don’t know which season all of you may be in life. Some of you are going through seasons of joy. Others of you are going through seasons of difficulty. For some of you life is smooth sailing. For others of you, you are flying by the seat of your pants. Some of you are sick. Others are healthy. Life is always changing. You will feel and experience all types of things in this life. And what this passage teaches you is that life is always changing. And when life is changing and unstable, what helps us in the chaos is to know that there is something stable. And the two things that I want you to know today that are stable to help you live a spiritual and experiential life with God. The first thing that will never change is… your need for God and for the grace of Jesus. No matter how good life may be, your soul was created for God, and therefore you need him.
And the second thing that will never change, is God’s love for you. It cannot be shaken or moved because of the cross. And so the spiritual life often looks like going back to these two truths over and over again in this life. And this is why the church is important, the people next to you are important because we remind each other of these truths. And the hope would be that for the rest of your life you will call out to God over and over to him and he will continue to be faithful. Whether you experience him in a plain way such as getting enough strength to get past this week. Or in a radical way, where you see a huge transformation in your life, whether it’s God killing your sins and how you see life. May we as a church experience our God today.
