AP

Hard Times as a Cause for Hope

Often we are confronted with a sad state of affairs in this world. Is it all too far gone for there to be hope? I’d like to suggest, from the prophets, that hard times are the mechanism God uses to turn a nation around, and therefore hard times are a cause for hope.

Truly these days are becoming harder. We see:

• The bill to end sex selective abortions fail and employers actually pay parental leave to those who have late term abortions.
• The Chinese navy live-fire off our coast totally unmonitored and unopposed and violence on the streets is increasing.
• Churches cowering and pandering on such topics, forced to split, as with the Anglicans.
• Christians prioritising career over childrearing, and Islam surging (Muslims average 3 children compared to Christians at 2.1 according to the 2016 census). 

Is it all beyond salvaging?

The book of Joel provides a wonderful template of how God uses such hard times to turn things from judgement to blessing. And when does the reversal occur? When the nation repents.

“Yet even now,” declares the LORD,

“return to me with all your heart,

with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;

and rend your hearts and not your garments.”

Return to the LORD your God,

for he is gracious and merciful,

slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love;

and he relents over disaster.

(Joel 2:12-13)

The book follows the following four stages:

1 – The Hard Times

Because of Judah’s heinous sins, God devastates the land with locusts, and all is seemingly irrecoverable.

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.

… the fields are destroyed

… the water brooks are dried up.

(Joel 1)

2 – Repentance

Despite the hopeless situation, despite even the inedible vegetation being eaten away and drought drying up the water supply, there is hope that the Lord will turn this disaster around and even “leave a blessing behind him”.

“Yet even now,” declares the LORD

“return to me with all your heart,

with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;

Who knows whether he will not turn and relent,

and leave a blessing behind him,

a grain offering and a drink offering

for the LORD your God?

(Joel 2:12-14)

While there is no explicit affirmation that Joel’s exhortations were followed, the profoundly merciful response of God following these verses indicates a sincere repentance in keeping with the commands:

consecrate a fast;

call a solemn assembly;

gather the people.

let the priests, the ministers of the LORD, weep

and say, “Spare your people, O LORD,

and make not your heritage a reproach,

(Joel 2)

3 – God Relents and Blesses

No words are wasted by Joel focusing on the actions of Judah; the focus is squarely on God who, against all odds, turns the whole situation on its head.

The LORD answered and said to his people,

“Behold, I am sending to you

grain, wine, and oil,

and you will be satisfied;

and I will no more make you

a reproach among the nations.

“The threshing floors shall be full of grain;

the vats shall overflow with wine and oil.

I will restore to you the years

that the swarming locust has eaten,

the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter,

my great army, which I sent among you. (Joel 2)

God then blesses even more broadly and deeply than Judah asked for He heaps up salvation to all nations for all generations, to be started through Christ on the day of Pentecost and worked out by the global spread of the kingdom in our age.

“And it shall come to pass afterward,

that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh;

…

 And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved.

(Joel 2)

What a turnaround!

After such an extraordinary turnaround of events, the locust plague seems almost to fade into insignificance! The lavish and far-reaching goodness that God pours out, in material and spiritual prosperity, leaves it a distant memory.

Therefore, when hard times come, let’s try to greet them joyfully. Because they are like God’s plague of locusts. Hard times are a mechanism to turn the nation back to the Lord. They are a wakeup call, a disciplinary rod to bring us to repentance in dust and ashes.

Every broke farmer and closed factory, every rental we can’t afford, every threat from outside and from within should shout that we need repentance.

God doesn’t bring repentance and godliness in a vacuum. It is worked out from real-world, every-day issues.

And when repentance finally blossoms, we will experience the good times, symbolised by the abundantly flowing milk, honey and wine that God has promised.

– Rory O’Shea