CRITICAL NOTES.
Joel 3:18.] After judgment upon all nations, the land of Jehovah shall overflow with Divine blessings; but the seat of the world will become barren waste. Drop] Poetic for great fertility, happy times and plenty. Valley of Shittim] Even the arid desert shall be fertilized with blessings from Jerusalem (Zechariah 14:8; Revelation 22:2).
Joel 3:19. Egypt and Edom] Both remarkable for enmity to Jews and emblems of enemies to God’s people. They have been desolate for centuries (Isaiah 19:1; Jeremiah 49:17; Obadiah 1:10).
Joel 3:20. Dwell] Abide; the true Church shall never be destroyed, but all false, persecuting people will be annihilated (Amos 9:15).
Joel 3:21. Cleanse] Wipe away blood-guiltiness, the climax of her sin, and for long not purged away, but visited with judgment. Amid extraordinary manifestations of wrath in the destruction of the wicked, Israel will be saved, and learn anew that Jehovah is their holy God and King.
HOMILETICS
THE NEW WORLD.—Joel 3:18-21
In these verses, says Lowth, “either the times of the Messiah are described, or we have a description of Jerusalem after its final restoration, when a golden age shall commence among its inhabitants, and when the knowledge of God and his Christ shall a second time be widely diffused from it.”
I. The scene of manifold blessings. These blessings are predicted under significant figures. “The mountains drop down new wine and the hills flow with milk” in rich abundance. Divine influences will attend the preaching of the word, converts shall rapidly increase in number and fruitfulness, the ordinances of religion shall water the land and make it exceedingly productive. “All the rivers of Judah” shall make glad this world of beauty, and streams of pure water shall quench the thirst and quicken the virtues of its people.
II. The abode of perfect happiness.
1. Freedom from foes. Inveterate enemies, as Egypt and Edom, will be destroyed. All opposition, violence, and cruelty to God’s people will be at an end. They shall be free from injury and perpetuated to the end of time.
2. Freedom from barrenness. “A fountain shall come forth of the house of the Lord” to fertilize the most unproductive regions. Temporal blessings shall be accompanied with spiritual blessings without stint or measure. The vivifying and refreshing waters of life shall flow from Christ to bless the capital and the world. “And it shall be in that day, that living waters shall go out from Jerusalem; half of them toward the former sea, and half of them toward the hinder sea: in summer and in winter shall it be” (Zechariah 14:8).
III. The residence of righteous people. The inhabitants will be purged and cleansed from sin. Pollution in general shall be wiped away. Special sins, such as shedding innocent blood, shall be forgiven. Knowledge shall spread, and every one shall know the Lord from the least to the greatest. There will be new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. No strangers will defile nor disturb the peace and prosperity of these happy regions. God will dwell and make his Church a fit residence for his presence and praise. In his presence will be fulness of joy, and at his right hand pleasures for evermore. Seek to be numbered with the saints in glory. While on earth prepare for this glorious era. Help it on by daily effort and incessant prayer.
Teach us in watchfulness and prayer
To wait for the appointed hour;
And fit us by thy grace to share
The triumphs of thy conquering power.
HOMILETIC HINTS AND OUTLINES
Joel 3:18. The glorious fountain. I. Its source. “The house of the Lord.” All springs of grace, comfort, and glory are in God. These blessings take their rise in the sanctuary, like the waters of Ezekiel (Ezekiel 47:1), or those from under the threshold of the temple. The ordinances of God’s house are like fountains of joy and refreshment to thirsty souls. II. Its abundance. It is a fountain, not a mere spring. An abundance to fill all the rivers, lit. channels of Judah. Rivers of living water flow from the Spirit (John 7:38). There is no scarcity of gospel blessings to sinners and saints. III. Its fertility. It creates fertility in the king’s gardens (2 Kings 25:4; Jeremiah 39:4). The waters in Christ vivify and refresh the barren spots in the Church. Valleys of Shittim, arid deserts, shall be fruitful. “There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the Most High” (Psalms 46:4).
Or if Zion’s hill
Delight thee more, or Siloa’s fount that flowed
Hard by the oracle of God, I thence
Invoke thine aid to my adventurous song.
1. The desolation. In contrast to the fruitfulness of the Church, the curse falls upon open enemies and treacherous friends. The low condition of Egypt and Edom for centuries proves the truth of this prediction (Isaiah 19:1; Jeremiah 49:17). So at the second coming of Christ all foes of Israel typified by these nations shall be destroyed.
2. The cause of the desolation. (a) Violence to God’s people (Ezekiel 25:12-13). (b) Shedding innocent blood. How highly does God esteem the death of his people, the blood of the faithful. The warning is repeated time after time to deter nations from the danger. In every place where his cause and crown have been disregarded ruin has followed. Sin blights nations, destroys their palaces, and desolates their land. “Come, behold the works of the Lord, what desolations he hath made in the earth.” “The three words of Joel, Egypt shall become desolation, are more comprehensive than any prophecy, except those by Ezekiel. They foretell that abiding condition, not only by force of the words, but by the contrast with an abiding condition of bliss. The words say, not only ‘it shall be desolated,’ as by a passing scourge sweeping over it, but it shall ‘itself pass over into that state;’ it shall become what it had not been; and this in contrast with the abiding condition of God’s people. The contrast is like that of the Psalmist (Psalms 107:33-35). Judah should overflow with blessing, and the streams of God’s grace should pass beyond its bounds, and carry fruitfulness to what now was dry and barren. But what should reject his grace should be itself rejected” [Pusey].
Joel 3:20. The perpetuity of the Church. Egypt and Edom, all enemies of God, will come to an end. But the gates of hell shall not prevail against her. No enemy can destroy, no ages consume her. She knows no injury, nor decay. The Church of God shall abide in him and by him on earth, and shall dwell with him for ever.
Joel 3:21. This verse has been interpreted in various ways. God would cleanse, or pronounce the blood which had been shed by the enemies to be innocent. This cleansing or sentence would be accomplished by punishing those who shed it. “I will exact full atonement of their enemies for all their oppressions and violence.” Or the meaning may be, “I will blot out their own transgressions, so far as these have not already been purged away.” In one case, the principle is that guilt cannot be cleansed without complete satisfaction. In the other, that security with God can only be enjoyed by removal of all transgression. Hence peace and security with God by atonement for guilt.
1. To the sinner. Guilt must be removed, justice satisfied, and everything taken away which renders him unfit for God’s presence. Without shedding of blood there is no remission of sins.
2. To the Church. The security and happiness of the Church depend upon God’s presence. God will not dwell with a worldly people. “Holiness becometh thine house, O Lord, for ever.” God will not dwell with evil, nor will he tolerate it in the believer, or in his house. Only when cleansed from blood are we fit for the dwelling of the Holy God and King.
The crown and seal. For the Lord dwelleth in Zion.
1. To sanctify.
2. To be praised.
3. To defend. “And the nam of the city from that day shall be, The Lord is there” (Ezekiel 48:35)
The Church has all her foes defied,
And laughed to scorn their rage;
E’en thus for aye, she shall abide
Secure from age to age.
HOMILETICS
THE FINAL SCENE.— Joel 3:1-21
The whole of this chapter may be summed up into two parts, of unequal length and graphic description.
I. God’s judgment upon the nations. Joel 3:1-16.
1. The verdict pronounced in time and place with its nature and ground (Joel 3:1-8).
2. The sentence executed (Joel 3:9-16). The call to hear it (Joel 3:9-11); the throne from which it is given (Joel 3:11-12); and the dreadful overthrow which it specifies (Joel 3:13-16).
II. The final glory of God’s kingdom. Joel 3:17-21.
1. The presence of God in it (Joel 3:17).
2. Its abundant blessings (Joel 3:18).
3. Its perpetual blessedness (Joel 3:19-21). This is contrasted with the destruction of its enemies, and all that oppress its subjects. “In fine,” says a writer, “the closing chapter of Joel’s prophecy is a brief apocalypse, cast in the forms of Hebrew thought and story indeed, and only dimly bodied out, yet setting forth, in language which even the Jews could not and do not mistake, the terrors of the last judgment, the issue of the time long struggle of good with evil, and the golden age of peace and fruitful service, which is to succeed to the conflicts and storms of time.”
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 3
Joel 3:19. A French traveller thus describes this desolation—“Instead of those ancient cultivated and fertile plains, one only finds, here and there, canals filled up, or cut in two, whose numerous ramifications, crossing each other in every direction, exhibit only some scarcely distinguishable traces of a system of irrigation: instead of those villages and populous cities, one sees only masses of bare and arid ruins, remnants of ancient habitations reduced to ashes; lastly, one finds only lagoons, miry and pestilential, or sterile sands, which extend themselves, and unceasingly invade a land, which the industry of man had gained from the desert and the sea.”
Joel 3:20-21. The human mind has ever conceived a reward for the righteous and punishment for the wicked in a future state. Heaven is all the more resplendent by contrast with the dark back-ground of another state.
If there’s a Power above us
(And that there is, all Nature cries aloud,
Through all her works), He must delight in virtue,
And they, whom he delights in, must be happy.