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Dr. Manny Arango
Hey, Bible nerds. This is Dr. Manny Arango and I'm your host for the Bible department podcast. Powered by Arma. This podcast follows a Bible reading plan we created to help you read the entire Bible in a year. You can head to the show notes or thebibledepartment.com to download our reading plan and join the journey. Let's be honest, a lot of us are still treating digital ministry like it's a backup plan from 2020. But discipleship isn't just happening on Sundays anymore. People need gospel centered connection every day of the week. And if you're stuck juggling five different platforms, one for giving, another for sermons, something else for events, it's no wonder engagement feels off. That's not ministry. That's a mess. Subsplash changes that one platform. Everything you need. Media, giving, events, messaging, your app, your website built specifically for churches. No hacks, no workarounds, just clarity and simplicity. Because every day you wait, families scroll past your sermons, new guests click away from clunky sites, and real people miss real moments with Jesus. Don't waste another summer stuck in digital survival mode. Use it to get ahead, simplify, upgrade. Get back to what matters. Head to subsplash.combible-dept and schedule a free no pressure demo. And let this be the summer your church gets focused and fully equipped. Family, we are on day 180. We got the whole Book of Joel today. But don't be intimidated, don't be scared. Joel is just three short chapters and we're gonna knock it out in one day. So for context clues. Well, first of all, let me say this. If you haven't done the reading, go do the reading. Stop the audio, pause the video, go do the reading. You got three short chapters to read. Should take you maybe 10, 15, 20 minutes. You know, somewhere in that range is not going to take long. But we believe that the Word of God is a daily diet. Man doesn't live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. We don't want this content to substitute for you reading the Word. We want it to supplement your reading of the word. So if you haven't done the reading, go do the reading. For everyone that's done the reading. We're going to dive into the Book of Joel today. And. And I got a bit of a curveball. Typically, I always give you context clues, nerdy nuggets, and a timeless truth. The thing that makes the Book of Joel pretty fascinating is that there are no context clues. Okay, well, there's a context of It's a prophetic book. So it fits the same format as all the other prophetic books, but Joel kind of eludes all. A lot of scholars, like most scholars, don't know when it was written, who was written to it doesn't mention any kings by name. So when we get into the other prophets, you'll begin to see, like, Isaiah is very clear on, like, who he's prophesying to, whether he's prophesying to the northern kingdom of Israel or the southern kingdom of Judah. Same with Micah and Amos and Hosea. And all the prophets are gonna give us, like, a location or a setting where they're prophesying, when they're prophesying, and who they're prophesying to. Joel, for whatever reason, omits all of that. And there are, like, learned, educated, really smart scholars on both sides of the debate. There are. So I'll present both sides of the coin to you for the context for the book. There are a lot of really, really, really intelligent, smart people who believe that Joel is written first. Like, it becomes the prototype prophet. So a lot of the themes that we're gonna see in the book find their way into books like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Zephaniah, Zechariah. Okay? So the themes that we see and the verbiage, like the words that we see are gonna find their way into other books, which could mean that other prophets are influenced by Joel. And then there's a whole other group of scholars who believe that Joel is one of the last books to be written and that Joel is influenced by all the other prophets. So it could honestly go either way. Like, both arguments make total sense. I have probably spent way too much time listening to arguments for both sides. I am going to probably come down on it being an earlier prophet, okay? And so I'm going to present it that way. And that is why it's the first prophet that we're actually going to look at. Not only am I gonna make the argument that it's written early rather than written late, but all of the themes that we find in the Book of Joel, like, become a prototype or an archetype for all the other prophetic books. So there are eight elements that we're gonna look at. Eight elements found in Joel's the Book of Joel, the content of the book. And I'm gonna give you those eight elements, okay? Eight elements right here. You can write those down if you've got a notebook. The first is chapter one, verses one to 12, is that there's an announcement that disaster is coming all right? That is gonna be seen in all the prophetic books. Hey, disaster's coming. The Assyrians are coming. The Babylonians are coming. Disaster's coming. Now, we'll look at this in more detail in a bit, but one of the specific ways that Joel is gonna talk about disaster and is the day of the Lord. Okay, so here's a second element. Number two, this is Joel 1, 1320, is that the Torah predicts this. So repent. Like, we shouldn't even be shocked that disaster is coming. The Torah predicts that we will experience disaster if we sin against God. Way, way, way, way, way back when, when we were looking at the prophets, I remember telling you that prophets are not just foretelling, but forth telling. So the prophets are holding people accountable to the Torah. So this line right here, that the Torah predicts that this disaster is coming. The idea that the Torah predicts something, okay, that helps you to kind of see the Torah and the book of the prophets as one cohesive whole. Nah. Number three, if we don't repent, the curses that are laid out in the Torah will come from Yahweh. This is Joel, chapter 2, verse 1 to 11. Number 4. So return to your king. This is Joel, chapter 2, verses 12 to 17. Return to your king. So let's kind of recap. Hey, disaster's coming. The Torah kind of predicted that disaster would come. So repent, change, okay? Change your ways. If you don't, the curses from the Torah are going to come from Yahweh. So return to your king. Number five, your king will restore you. But one of the big themes of the book of Joel is restoration, okay? That the same God who has to chasten you or discipline you, the same God who has to send curses to reprimand you is the same God who wants to restore you and who will restore you. Number six. The spirit of Yahweh will be poured out upon you. Number seven. And obviously number six is gonna be huge for Pentecostals. Okay, that verse, that section is Joel 2, 2832. That his spirit will be poured out upon you. Peter on the day of Pentecost actually quotes this section of the book of Joel. Number seven. Your enemies will be defeated. This is Joel 3, 1, 16. And then lastly, number eight, your king will dwell with you, which is the ultimate goal of God. This is God getting us back to the garden, back to Eden, where he dwelled in harmony with Adam and Eve. This is Joel 3, 17, 21. These eight elements, like just those eight ideas, are gonna be found in all the prophetic books, maybe not in the exact same order, but those elements, those ideas. Hey, disaster's coming. Hey, the Torah actually present, like, predicted this disaster. We need to repent. If we don't repent, the Torah curses are gonna come true. Return to the king. Return to Yahweh. The king wants to restore you. His spirit will be poured out upon you. Your enemies will be defeated. His and your king will dwell with you. That announcement of disaster, and then there's a chance for repentance. And after repentance comes restoration. And restoration gets spelled out. Restoration looks like his spirit being poured out, enemies being defeated, and him actually dwelling with his people. That format, that kind of flow, we are going to see that over and over and over and over and over. Okay, so in terms of context clues, we don't really have, like, hardcore context clues, because we don't know. We can take our best guess as to whether or not Joel is prophesying early or late. Is he one of the first prophets? Is he one of the last? That debate is gonna happen until Jesus comes back. Okay? The best thing for us to do is go, you know what? Even if we don't know when Joel was written or who it was written to, there's a clear format that's found in this book that is gonna then be reflected in the other prophets. And for that reason alone, it's actually worth studying it first. And so I know that's a different way of talking about context clues, but it's the way that we're going to talk about context clues today because Joel is such a curveball. All right, let's get into nerdy nuggets. All right, first of all, the day of Yahweh. Now, the day of Yahweh, or in your English translations, the day of the Lord. This is going to be a theme that's going to get repeated not just in Joel, but through a lot of the prophets. The day of the Lord. The day of the Lord. The day of the Lord. And the day of the Lord is actually any day, okay, Where Yahweh breaks into human history. Anytime he showed his sovereign hand over Israel and the nations, this could be in terms of salvation. So when Yahweh judged Egypt in the Exodus and saved his people, this could be seen as a day of Yahweh or day of the Lord. Also, if Yahweh judged his people, so it could be a day of salvation, but it could also be a day of judgment. If Yahweh judged his people like during the Judges period or the split of the kingdom, the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah, that could be seen as the day of the Lord as well. Okay, so it's a little bit like the Antichrist in the book of Revelation. Is there just one Antichrist, or does every moment in history kind of have an Antichrist, and that there's always gonna be an Antichrist figure that may culminate in one Antichrist figure at the end of the age. The day of the Lord works the same way that there are multiple days, multiple times where God is broken into human history. And those can be referred to as the Day of the Lord. But then we believe that Jesus is going to return, that he is going to come back, and that for some, that day will be a day of judgment. And for some, that day will be a day of ultimate salvation or a culmination of salvation. And so we look at the return of Jesus as an ultimate day of Yahweh, or day of the Lord. So Day of the Lord has any time where Yahweh breaks into human history, but we believe that Yahweh will break into human history one final time. And that one final time will be when Jesus cracks the sky, when he returns, when he comes back, where he separates the sheep from the goats, where he calls people to he judges the living and the dead, where the window of opportunity to receive him as Lord closes, where every knee will bow and every tongue will confess, whether it's of their free will, volition, or not. And that will be a day of salvation for a lot of people. But it'll also be a day of judgment for a lot of people. So therefore, throughout the prophets and definitely in Joel, the Day of the Lord gets used for days of salvation and for days of judgment, because it's ultimately pointing to an ultimate day of the Lord. It's a little bit like the signs in the Book of John, okay? All of the signs are pointing to the ultimate sign, which is the resurrection. And then that ultimate sign is pointing towards the person of Jesus. So the signs point to a sign, a definitive sign. And then that sign points to the ultimate reality, which is Jesus. The day of the Lord works the exact same way. It's important for us to understand what the Day of the Lord means. Cause you're gonna hear it in almost all the prophetic books. You're gonna hear or read the Day of the Lord over and over and over and over and over. Family, the wait is over. My brand new book, Crushing Chaos, is out now. And available everywhere. Books are sold. Literally, today I walked into a Barnes and Noble and I signed a bunch of copies at a physical location. So you can grab this book at a physical Barnes and Noble or you can go to a Books A Million or Amazon or anywhere books are sold and grab a copy. If you enjoy reading the Bible from an ancient perspective, if you understand that the beauty of Scripture is actually knowing it in context, then you'll love this book. And if there's any chaos in your personal life, I think that reading the Bible from an ancient perspective can actually help to crush the chaos in your life. I think this book is going to be a New York Times bestseller. I really do. I think we wrote a good one. I think you should get a copy today. All right, back to the episode. All right, One of the other big themes, another nerdy nugget, are going to be locusts. Okay? So if you remember the Eighth Plague from the Book of Exodus, there, Joel is going to pick up on that judgment theme. He's going to talk about locusts. So locusts are going to kind of be. If there was. If there was a poster, if Joel was a movie, you know, and. And there was a poster for the Book of Joel, it would definitely be a sky turning black with locusts and it'd be the moon turning to blood, you know, like, that would be the movie poster for the Book of Joel. I actually want to bring you to a verse that has meant a lot to me. I want to bring you to Joel 2. 25. This is an amazing verse. I remember studying this verse while I was reading the Bible five times in nine months when I was living in the uk. And this verse, just like, I don't know, this verse hits my heart in a real way. It says this, I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten. I just want us to stop right there. I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten. That for a lot of us, the number one thing that the enemy has taken away is time. Not the money that the locusts have eaten or the flocks that the locusts have eaten or the stuff that the locusts have taken away, but the. The years that when the enemy is able to attack us, he actually takes away our most valuable thing, which is the time that we have, the time that we have on this planet, the time to live out our human existence. Also I wanna just point out is God is saying, wait a second, I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten. The Great Locust and the Young locusts, the other locusts and the locust swarm. Get this. My great army that I sent among you. So you were disobedient. In order to discipline you or to punish you for your disobedience, I sent locusts. Okay, you were disobedient. I sent locusts. And I'm still going to repay you. I remember when this reality hit me because I felt like there were certain decisions that I had made in my life where I was no longer deserving of, like, God's ideal for me. Like, there are decisions that I'd made, there are sins that I've committed. There's stuff that I just got involved in, people I dated, dumb people I hung out with, habits I formed. And I felt like, man, I'm going to be stuck with Ishmael forever. I'm no longer eligible for the Isaac that God promised me because I got distracted by the allure of an Ishmael in my life. And I remember God saying as I began to read Joel that he said, well, you are disobedient. I sent locusts. The locust robbed you of years, but I'm still gonna repay you that. That's how God disciplines. He doesn't just discipline, but he restores after he disciplines. And I remember feeling like I don't deserve for God to give me the ideal, even though I've fallen short. And I remember God saying, grace isn't just me restoring you to where you were. It's restoring you to where you should have been had sin not gotten in the way and actually derailed your growth and derailed your progress. And you wanna know what? I begin to pray. This is actually a season where, to be very blunt and honest, I had wasted a lot of time dating people. And I've just felt like, man, there's no way that I'm on track. I feel like I'm late. I don't feel like I'm on schedule for the call of God on my life. And I remember God saying, as I began to study Joel, remember the Lord saying, I'm going to accelerate your time that. That I'm able to restore to you the years that sin ate, the years that disobedience ate up. I'm able to restore to you the time that you wasted doing dumb stuff. I'm able to not just cause the Locust to attack you, to discipline you, but then I'm actually the God that brings you back to exactly where you should have been. And I don't just restore you. I put you back on schedule. And for Anyone who was like me, who's very like, where should I be by 25? Where should I be by 30? Where should I be by 40? Maybe that's not you, but I'm like that. I'm very much like, well, where should I be by 50? There's a certain pace to life that I want to maintain. And God says, even though your disobedience derailed you, I'm going to restore you. So that it's almost as if you didn't even waste five years being an idiot or waste five years doing something that I definitely told you not to do. And this verse has a lot of value for me in that way. That is the Last nerdy, last 30 nugget. That is the last nurturing nugget. I'll get into our timeless truth. Here's the timeless truth. I want to go to Joel, chapter two again. And there are two verses that I want to look at. The first one is this, verse 13. Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love. And he relents from setting calamity. Rend your heart, not your garments. In Judaism, when you were in mourning, when you wanted to repent, you tore your clothes and you began to take on sackcloth and ashes, right? It was a way to show that you were mourning. But anyone who's been a part of any religious system for any length of time knows that stuff that is genuine could be performative, right? There's some people who fall out in the spirit. Cause the spirit's actually moving. And then there's some people who fall in the spirit because they just know that that's the culturally appropriate thing to do. I've done both, by the way. Anyway, no judgment, so. So God says, hey, don't just do the thing that's performative, like rend your heart. I don't care how much you tear your clothes. I don't care how much it looks like you're in mourning. I'm the God who doesn't just see what you do. I'm the God who sees your heart. And God says, by rending your heart, by tearing open your heart, by being vulnerable, that. That rending of the heart is a return to the Lord. And then the last verse that I'll leave you with as our timeless truth. So we got a double timeless truth today is Joel, chapter two, verse 28. It says this. And afterwards I will pour out my spirit on all people. Man, this is The Pentecostal verse right here. I love this verse. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your old men will dream dreams. Your young men will see visions. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my spirit in those days. So there's one thing I need you to see. That I will pour out my spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters, that's male and female sons and daughters. Even on my servants, both men and women. I will pour out my spirit in those days. So verse 28 and 29 have a focus on men and women receiving the Spirit of the Lord. This is why Pentecostals believe that women should preach right here, right here in Joel. Okay. This is why Baptists, if you don't believe that the Holy Ghost has been poured out, if you don't believe that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are active for today, that doctrine leads you to also believing that women can't be actively involved in ministry. So if you were ever wondering, why is it that Pentecostal churches, platform women, and churches that are not spirit filled don't platform women, it's right here because rooted in Pentecostal theology is a belief that God's Spirit, his Spirit, which empowers us to preach his Spirit, that empowers us to lead his Spirit has been poured out on all people, sons and daughters, men and women. So if you're Pentecostal, and you just need to know some Pentecostal distinctives, this is one of them. And it's found right here in the book of Joel. And Peter is actually going to quote it in Acts, chapter two on the day of Pentecost, that day of Pentecost being the day that the Spirit gets poured out, which makes us Pentecostal. So I gave you context clues, nerdy nuggets, and our timeless truth. Hey, Tomorrow is day 181. Get on a streak. Don't skip. I'll see you right here. As we continue to dig into the Word of God, I hope that this adds value to you. I'm so proud of you. If you're on a streak, I'm super proud of you. I love you so much. I'll see you tomorrow. Peace. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department podcast. You can find us online and learn more about the show at thebibledepartment.com and on Instagram hebibledepartment. If you enjoyed this episode and want to dive deeper into the Bible, you can get free access to our library of courses@thebibledepartment.com. we'll see you back here tomorrow.