SPARE YOUR PEOPLE, LORD – LESSON 2
“Discovering the Years the Locusts Have Eaten”
Kay Arthur, Teacher
Has anyone ever come up to you and shared that awesome verse? But listen, I know where you’ve been; I know what you have been through. I know your life is a mess; but the Lord will restore to you the years that locust have eaten. Do you remember hearing that for the very first time? Are you excited now that you know the context of it? It is found in the book of Joel, in the second chapter. “I will restore to you the years the locust have eaten. You know locust can just ruin everything, can’t they? You have studied it, you’ve seen, and you’ve read the insert on locust, and you see what they do and the total devastation that they bring. Yet God can say to this nation of Israel that has been destroyed, so to speak, ruined by this locust plague, “I will restore to you the years that the locust have eaten.” This is what we want to look at. I want to look at it more from a national point of view than I do from a personal point of view, because the context of this verse is found as God speaks to a nation, a nation that has been ruined, a nation that has been devastated, a nation that is experiencing something that they have never experienced before.
Go to Joel 1:1-2. “The word of the Lord that came to Joel, the son of Pethuel. (20) Hear this, O elders, and listen, all inhabitants of the land. Has anything like this happened in your days or in your fathers’ days?”[In other words,“You are older. In all these years that you have lived, have you ever seen anything like this? Did your fathers ever tell you anything like this,that something like this had ever happened to the land? Is it written in our history books? The answer, obviously, is no. So he says,] (3) “Tell your sons about it, and let your sons tell their sons, and their sons the next generation.”[In other words, what is being told in this book is so critical that it is to go from one generation to another generation to another generation. This is why God has chosen to leave Joel in the word of God, to make it part of His HolyScriptures, and in doing so, He wants to tell the message of Joel to this generation, so that you and I, in turn, can take the message of Joel and share it with the next generation.
What is the message? What does He want them to hear? Well, it is more than locusts, but it has to do with locusts. (4) “What the gnawing locust has left, the swarming locust has eaten; and what the swarming locust has left, the creeping locust has eaten; and what the creeping locust has left, the stripping locust has eaten.”[Now what is He saying? He is describing locust in all stages of development. The first stage of development, when it first emerges from the egg, is a gnawing locust, and it comes in the springtime. When it is born, it is wingless, and all it can do is gnaw, but it can gnaw. Then what it has left, the swarming locust has eaten. What is the swarming locust? In late spring, this one that was the gnawing locust then puts forth its little ones, and so it begins to deposit little ones. So that’s why you call it swarming locust, because it begins to multiply. Then it says,]“and what the swarming locust has left, the creeping locust has eaten.”[The creeping locust now has small wings, and it is able to leap, but it cannot fly. Those wings cannot take them through the air. It devours a lot at this stage. Then,]“what the creeping locust has left, the stripping locust has eaten.”[Now this is the mature locust.It has a wing span of about three inches; it has six legs, and the two in the back (of the six) are extremely strong, and that’s what gives it this great ability to leap. And, of course, it has a horrendous appetite. Here are these locusts that have come along that have matured, or are at all different levels of maturity, and they have literally stripped the land dry.]
(5) “Awake, drunkards, and weep; and wail, all you wine drinkers, on account of the sweet wine that is cut off from your mouth. (6) For a nation has invaded my land,”[Now this nation that He is referring to is not a people group, but rather, it is this nation of locust.]“mighty and without number; its teeth are the teeth of a lion, and it has the fangs of a lioness. (7) It has made my vine a waste, and my fig tree splinters. It has stripped them bare and cast them away; their branches have become white.”[In other words, everything is gone off of those branches; even the bark is gone off the branches.
I remember when I was a little girl (I was a tomboy, and I loved to play outside.) I am so glad that they didn’t have television until I was twelve. I would have adventures. I would go out and I would get me a nice limb. I would strip that limb, and get that green off it, until it was nice and shiny while. Then I would drill a hole through the top of that limb, and I would put a rope through that. You know what that was—that was my horse. I had all sorts of horses, and I made a corral for them in the lot next door. It was the time of my childhood, and I loved it. I was not a stripping locust, but this is what was happened here.] (7) “It has made my vine a waste, and my fig tree splinters. It has stripped them bare and cast them away; their branches have become white. (8) Wail like a virgin girded with 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 field is ruined, the land mourns; for the grain is ruined,”[Now watch this new word “dries up.”]“the new wine dries up, fresh oil fails.”[So it’s not just that the crops are ruined, but you are going to find out that there is no water on the land. There is no water coming.]
(11)“Be ashamed, O farmers, wail, O vinedressers, for the wheat and the barley; because the harvest of the field is destroyed. (12) The vine dries up, and the fig tree fails; the pomegranate, the palm also, and the apple tree, all the trees of the field dry up. Indeed, rejoicing dries up from the sons of men.”[Now you can imagine how wonderful it would be to hear that message, “I will restore to you the years that the locust have eaten”? It seems, possibly, that what has happened has not just happened in just a day and gone away, but is a period of time. Here they are wailing, and they are mourning, and they are weeping, because everything has been devastated. Locusts ruin everything.]
Let’s just stop and parallel that to our lives. Doesn’t sin ruin everything? Doesn’t it bring an awful, awful devastation? I was just recently with some friends, and they are going through such a painful situation in the family, and it is because of sin. It is because people will not walk the way God wants them to walk, and this is such a wonderful family. They could have such wonderful relationships, if only the sin had not come in and devastated it. If only they would put away the sin. Then what would happen? He could restore to them the years the locusts have eaten, but something has to be done about that sin.
In vv.13-14, He is going to tell them what to do. He says, (13) “Gird yourselves with sackcloth, and lament, O priests; wail, O ministers of the altar! Come, spend the night in sackcloth, O ministers of my God, for the grain offering and the libation are withheld from the house of your God. (14) Consecrate a fast, proclaim a solemn assembly; gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land to the house of the Lord your God,”[You have marked that, and you know the importance of this.]“and cry out to the Lord.” [What is He saying? “Listen, the locust has ruined everything, and you’re weeping, wailing and mourning, and rightly so. You’re bearing the pain of it all, but now what do you do? What do you do when the locust has ruined everything? Where do you go, and where do you run? Where do you run in the day of disaster? Where do you run in the day of stumbling? Where do you run in the day of failure? Where do you run when everything is ruined? There is only one place to run,if you want the years that the locusts have eaten to be restored. You have got to run to God. So they would run to the house of God, and He would tell them to come, and to call a solemn assembly, and to fast there, and to seek God, to cry to God.]
(15) “Alas for the day! For the day of the Lord is near, and it will come as destruction from the Almighty.”[Watch what he is doing here. He is taking them from this present situation, from this literal plague of locust and all of its devastation, and he’s turning them, and saying, “There is another day coming. There is another day coming. There is another day of devastation; there is another day of destruction. Alas for the day of the Lord is coming.”]
When we move into Joel,Chapter 2, what does he talk about? (1) “Blow a trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm on My holy mountain!”[You are going to study it this week.]“Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming; surely it is near,” [He goes down, and he describes that day of the Lord. He tells us what is going to happen. He likens it to what the locusts are doing. He likens it to a mighty army that moves like the locusts move in their line, stripping and destroying everything as they go along, leaping through windows, etc.](11) “The Lord utters His voice before His army; surely His camp is very great, for strong is He who carries out His word. The day of the Lord is indeed great and very awesome, and who can endure it? (12)‘Yet even now,’ declares the Lord, ‘Return to Me with all your heart, and with fasting, weeping and mourning; (13) and rend your heart and not your garments.’ Now return to the Lord your God.”[So what do you see? Now watch the pattern, and you will see it. In Chapter 1, you have the locusts, and you have the devastation of the locusts. Then you see them turning to God. We could call it repentance, changing their mind and coming back.The word is not used there, but they are turning to God. “Come to the house of the Lord; cry to God.” Then, in Chapter 2, you see another devastation. You see the day of the Lord, a day that He parallels, and uses the same imagery of the locust and the devastation that it brings. Then what happens? What does He say? “Return to God.” You see the present in Chapter 1; in Chapter 2, you see the future devastation; but in both of those times of calamity, what does He say to us? He says to us, “Return, come to Me; put on sackcloth, wail, mourn, weep.Come to the house of God; fast, seek Me, cry to Me.” This is His message always, beloved, in the midst of calamity, in the midst of judgment, God is saying to us, “Return to Me.” Isn’t that awesome? He doesn’t say, “You are done; I’m through with you. Go away; you blew it, you messed up. I delight in judging you.” No! You and I know from the New Testament that God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance, to have a change of mind, and come back to those arms that are open wide. Those arms that are opened as wide as the ones nailed to Calvary’s tree, where God says, “I so loved you, when you were enemies, when you were helpless, when you were Godless, I loved you. Now, come to me.” And when we come, what do we find?
(17) “Let the priests, the Lord’s ministers, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, ‘Spare Your people, O Lord,’” [Do you see? “Crying to God” in Chapter 1, “crying to God” in Chapter 2, and then in v. 18.](18) “Then the Lord will be zealous for His land, and will have pity on His people. (19) And the Lord will answer and say to His people, ‘Behold, I am going to send you grain, new wine and oil,’”[You are going to study that in depth, but come over to v. 24.] (24) “And the threshing floors will be full of grain, and the vats will overflow with the new wine and oil. (25) Then I will make up to you (English Standard Version, King James) – I will restore to you the years the locust have eaten.’”[What is He saying? “I’m God. I’m holy; I must judge. You can’t just go through the formality of religion. Worship is a matter of the heart; it’s not mere externals. You have made it mere externals, and because you have made it mere externals, I have had to judge you. I have had to bring judgment upon this nation, because I am your God and you are My people. And even if you weren’t My people I have to bring judgment, because the One who sits on the throne, the One whose sovereignty rules over all, is a holy God. And a holy God has to deal with sin.” Yet the one who sits on the throne in all His holiness is also a redeemer. So always there is that call, “Come back, come back; return to the Lord. I will restore to you the years the locust have eaten.”]
When I look at the first twenty-nine years of my life, and I look at the ruin and I look at the devastation, the locust that have ruined everything, and then I look from the year twenty-nine, all the way up through the year seventy(which is what I am now and I don’t feel it), when I look at all of that, I see that He is a great restorer. He is a great redeemer. He redeems the years the locust have eaten. If we do our part, and our part is right here, we are to turn to the Lord, we are to cry to the Lord. We are to return to Him, we are to wail, we are to weep. Let’s go back and look it, and look at what we are to do.
Go to Joel 1:13. If you go through and you number these (I’m not going to touch Chapter 2 now anymore, because you’re going to study it), I just want you to see that pattern. Of course, there is more to see in Joel, but I don’t want to tell you that right now, because I want to discover it. But look at v.13, and let’s number what they are to do? (#1) They are to gird themselves with sackcloth. What is sackcloth? Sackcloth is a hairy black cloth that you would put on yourself to show your sorrow, to show your grief, to show the way, in the sense, that you see yourself. I will never forget, and it was the second or third year when Bill Bright started the prayer and fasting, and I remember before he did the first one. I was on my way to Israel, and I got a phone call from Bill. So I called Bill when I got to Israel, and he said, “This is what is on my heart.” He says, “I have been in the Scriptures, and God has burdened my heart for this nation.” And he says, “I believe that we really need to have a day of fasting. Will you be part of that committee?” I said I would be honored to be part of that committee. It was always an honor to work with Bill and Vonette Bright. What a godly couple! What a godly, visionary man he was! He was always my example for the spiritual gift of faith.
Well, I think that it was the second one, and we were praying. We were to go to the platform(the ones that were working with him on this leadership team), and we would get together in a circle. There were many, many other people there. But we would get together in a circle, and we would pray. God had led me to bring a black rough wool wrap with me. And all that day I had been crying in prayer; I was a mess. God just showed me, “Take off your shoes, wrap that black sackcloth-like thing around your head, and go to the platform. Read the Scriptures, call to the people to repent, to return to God, to seek Him in prayer and fasting.” It was just a matter of covering yourself with sackcloth, and approaching a holy God, with my shoes off (God showed me), because I was standing, so to speak, on holy ground, and humbling myself before Him. God moved mightily.
(13) “Gird yourselves with sackcloth and lament, O priests;” [There is a time to weep, there is a time to grieve, there is a time to sigh. The problem in our society today is, instead of grieving, and weeping, and wincing over sin, instead we laugh, and we snicker, when we ought to be weeping.]