Then will the Lord be Jealous for His land, and pity His people.
The Divine attitude towards repentant souls
I. Toward repentant souls God is strict in the manifestation of a jealous regard. “Then will the Lord be jealous for His land, and pity His people.” Thus we see the change which repentance makes in the circumstances and conditions of men. And God is jealous of the welfare and honour of the truly penitent soul. He will save it wisely from former enemies who have endangered it, and He will shield it kindly from all reproach which may threaten. The soul is His. He has redeemed it. He has given it the grace of repentance. He will be jealous for its good.
II. Toward repentant souls God is beneficent in the restoration of withdrawn mercies. “Yea, the Lord will answer.” etc. And happily true it is that while sin despoils life of many of its richest mercies, repentance with kind hand gives them back again. There is a glorious tendency in repentance to ameliorate and remove the loss and woe wrought by moral evil. Repentance does not always heal the pain of sin. It does not erase sad memories. It does not always restore a wasted bodily constitution. It does not always bring back the substance wasted in the far country. But its tendency is to do this The moral touches the material.
III. From the repentant soul God will turn aside the plagues which have previously afflicted it. “But I will remove far off from you the northern army,” etc. The repentant soul is beset by old enemies. They are in the hand of God. He can cover their plans with defeat. Lessons--
1. That God will protect the interests of repentant souls.
2. Let us see in the glad effect of repentance in this life a prophecy of the joy of the sinless life.
3. That the enemies of repentant souls will be brought to shame. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)
Divine favour the best alliance
These words are a Comfortable promise to Judah, upon a sincere humiliation and repentance, of the Divine kindness and favour; the earnest of all blessings, the fountain of all prosperity, success, and happiness that can attend a people, or they can reasonably wish or hope for.
I. In how exact a posture our affairs stand with those of Judah. Joel is supposed to point to the troubles of the reign of good King Hezekiah. We (1701) shall find that the coast from which we are alarmed and threatened, and the enemy from whom we apprehend our danger, has all the characteristics and marks of those enemies of the Hebrews described here by the prophet. They were powerful, cruel, and numerous. Neither is a foreign power the only evil we have reason to be apprehensive of and to provide against. We are a divided and dissatisfied people, maligning our governors, and murmuring at providence.
II. The necessity for seeking a suitable and seasonable remedy in these times of danger. It is the safest course for nations, when they are apprehensive of danger, to implore the Divine aid and assistance to their consultations and enterprises; to deprecate God’s wrath, and to engage His blessing. Self-preservation should engage us to cure a distemper in its beginnings and first approaches; lest, by indulging too long to it, it prove incurable and mortal. For when diseases are once deeply rooted, and become so mixed with the blood and humours as thoroughly to taint them, it costs the patient much more pain and time to bear the several courses and operations he is enjoined in order to a cure. To how near a crisis the malady of our sins has brought us; then how necessary it is to use the most effectual means for our recovery! There is great danger, if we dissolve our public peace, and do not timely cure our fatal divisions. It is not enough for us to think we have justice on our side, if we ourselves break God’s most holy laws. When people abuse mercies, and receive the grace of God in vain, it is the highest aggravation of guilt, and most apt to incense the goodness of God, thus abused and slighted. Hence He has often raised up wicked men, and wicked nations, as instruments to punish others, who were less such, but transgressed God’s laws against clearer light and plainer evidence. God, like a tender father, is jealous of, and resents deeply the transgressions of His children, whom gratitude and a stricter sense of duty ought to restrain and keep within due bounds.
III. Upon a due application of repentance we shall be safe. True repentance is a healing balm, like that of Gilead, that cures the wounds of our sins, and has a sovereign charm to render a nation invulnerable; having power enough to ward off the force of any stroke of Divine vengeance, though just ready to be given. Illustrate by pious Hezekiah and good Jehoshaphat. Repentance has such influence upon heaven as to reprieve from ruin some of the vilest people and most wicked princes, as in the cases of Nineveh and Ahab. Upon these considerations what should hinder us from speedily closing with God in a duty upon which our safety and happiness so much depend; and which, if we perform seriously and in earnest, we shall not fail of His powerful protection and succour? Every individual person ought to begin at home. Let us therefore acknowledge before God with the deepest sense of humility and contrition how unworthy we have rendered ourselves of the least of His mercies. Let us turn from our evil ways, and walk in those of true virtue, religion, and holiness, that so we may engage Him to be jealous for His land, and pity His people.” (John King, D. D.)
The glorious issue of repentance
The prophet was successful. The people gathered at a great and solemn national fast. Verse 18 reads in R.V., “Then was the Lord jealous for His land, and had pity on His people.” Then the message of the prophet becomes one of joy and hope. The scarcity shall be replaced by abundance. God will give the pledge of His loving regard in the sweet rain upon the burnt up and thirsty soil. He gives this gift of rain at first, because an after gift and a better one is to follow. Thus we reach the re-establishment of confidence and love. But we have reached a higher plane than merely the repose which comes because a terror has departed, and nature is resuming her normal regularity of beneficence. The true ground of the reposeful and confident spirit is this, that the people know the Lord is in their midst, and that He is their God and none else. Repentance if it is to do nothing else must convince men of that. It must establish the eternal fact of God’s presence. It must lead us to feel that we are God’s, and that we owe ourselves to Him. This confidence in the Lord their God alone is the first resting-place of our prophecy after the day of humiliation. But it is only a first resting-place. He who gave the former and the latter rain for the harvest gave them as gifts to be followed by others. A gift was coming which would lift the people into a much higher plane of thought, and into much more spiritual conceptions of life. It is the gift of the Spirit: it is the gift of new power upon repentant souls. The thought of the prophet carries with it a principle which to the men of his day must have been lofty, and perchance strange in its loftiness. This highest gift of God, like all gifts, is to make us great with that greatness which is service. Baptized with the Spirit, the apostles were baptized into the spirit of service. Here we see the higher region of the prophet’s ambition. It is not the restoration of temporal blessings which exhausts his desires on their behalf. He desires for them a spirit of true insight into the meaning and significance of life. One method of raising and rousing others is by awaking aspirations, by painting the possibilities which may yet be achieved. It is the Divine method to inspire by placing high possibilities, yet higher ranges of life and duty before our eyes. No doubt there is always something above earth in all the higher gifts of the Spirit. The poetic gift is the power to see--not what is not--but what is. “Imagination is the power to see things as they are.” The gift of the Spirit enables men to see the real significance of the facts of life--the true meaning of what men are, where they are, and why. This is exactly what the prophet has been leading us up to. The most real of all presences is the spiritual presence of Christ. The most real aspects of life for all men must be their spiritual aspects. The gift of the Spirit was to reveal the tremendous gulf which existed between life as men lived it and the life which God sought to see lived by men. Among the knights of Malta, the cross given and worn was the eight-pointed Maltese cross. The eight points signified the beatitudes. The cross was to be carried in the remembrance of the blessing which belonged to the poor in spirit, the sorrowful, the meek, the hungerers after righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted. The Cross of Christ was to be carried in the Spirit of Christ. It is thus that the victory of Christ in the world will be won. More than ever we need the simple, guileless, loving, pure spirit of Christ. (Bishop Boyd Carpenter.)
Interaction of the Divine and human
I. That the material condition of a people depends upon the Divine operations.
1. The withdrawal of calamities. “I will remove far off from you the northern army,” etc. Men may and ought to employ means; but futile for ever will be all human efforts without the co-operation of Almighty power. This fact should teach us ever to look to Him and Him only for deliverance from evil at all times, both material and moral.
2. The bestowment of blessings. “The Lord will answer and say unto His people, Behold, I will send you corn,” etc. The productions of the earth are dependent every moment upon Almighty power.
2. That the Divine operations are influenced by the moral condition of the people. The priests and the ministers of the Lord wept between the altar, and said, “Spare Thy people, O Lord,” etc. “The porch before the temple was a hundred and twenty cubits high, twenty broad from north to south, and ten from east to west. The altar was that of burnt-offering in the court of the priests. Here, with their backs toward the altar, on which they had nothing to offer, and their faces directed towards the residence of the Shekina, they were to weep and make supplication on behalf of the people.” That the Divine conduct towards us depends upon our conduct towards heaven, is inexplicable to us although clearly taught in the Word of God. Indeed consciousness assures us that He is to us what we are to Him. It is absurd to suppose that God will alter the laws of nature because of human prayers and human conduct, says the sceptic scientist. But what laws of nature are more manifest, more universal, settled, and unalterable than the tendency of human souls to personal and intercessory prayer? Every aspiration is a prayer. Scripture abounds with examples of God apparently altering His conduct on account of man’s supplication.
III. That the right moral conduct of a people will ensure them Divine benediction. In these verses there is a beautiful gradation. First the destroyed land is addressed; then the irrational animals; then the inhabitants. All are called to cast off their fears and rejoice in the happy change which God would effect. It is too clear for either argument or illustration, that if you change the moral character of any country from ignorance to intelligence, from indolence to industry, from intemperance to self-discipline, the whole material region in which you live may abound with plentifulness and beauty. (Homilist.)