The Buzzsaw of God
Introduction: A Sermon Preached by Insects
We live in an age that has domesticated God. Our modern god is a celestial butler, a divine therapist, a cosmic affirmation machine. He is certainly not the kind of God who would weaponize insects. We prefer our disasters to be natural, our famines to be meteorological, and our judgments to be anything other than judgment. We have insulated ourselves from the raw sovereignty of the God of the Bible with layers of scientific explanation and therapeutic jargon. When the crops fail, we blame climate change. When the economy tanks, we blame the Fed. When our lives fall apart, we blame our childhood. We will blame anything and anyone before we dare to entertain the thought that the living God might be trying to get our attention.
Into this padded, soundproofed room of modern sensibilities, the prophet Joel kicks the door down. He brings with him the Word of Yahweh, and that Word is a locust plague. This is not a random act of nature. This is not an unfortunate ecological event. This is a divine summons. This is an invasion orchestrated from the throne room of heaven. God is preaching a sermon here, and His visual aids have teeth. This is a controlled, purposeful, and devastating act of de-creation. God blessed His people with a land flowing with milk and honey, a new Eden. But when they forgot the Giver and began to worship the gifts, He simply began to un-give them. He started to run the film of Genesis 1 backwards.
The book of Joel is a terrifying and merciful wake-up call. It is terrifying because it shows us a God who is not safe, a God who will dismantle our world to save our souls. And it is merciful for that very same reason. This locust plague is what we might call a severe mercy. It is the smelling salts of God, held under the nose of a people who have passed out drunk on His blessings. We must not read this as ancient history, as something that happened to them back then. This is a pattern. This is how God deals with His covenant people. When we grow deaf to the whispers of His Word, He is not afraid to shout through the whirlwind of His providence.
The Text
The word of Yahweh that came to Joel, the son of Pethuel: Hear this, O elders, And give ear, all inhabitants of the land. Has anything like this happened in your days Or in your fathers’ days? Recount about it to your sons, And let your sons recount about it to their sons, And their sons to the next generation. What the gnawing locust has left, the swarming locust has consumed; And what the swarming locust has left, the creeping locust has consumed; And what the creeping locust has left, the stripping locust has consumed. Awake, drunkards, and weep; And wail, all you wine drinkers, On account of the sweet wine That is cut off from your mouth. For a nation has come up against my land, Mighty and without number; Its teeth are the teeth of a lion, And it has the fangs of a lioness. It has made my vine a desolation And my fig tree splinters. It has stripped them bare and cast them away; Their branches have become white. Wail like a virgin girded with sackcloth For the bridegroom of her youth. The grain offering and the drink offering are cut off From the house of Yahweh. The priests mourn, The ministers of Yahweh. The field is destroyed; The land mourns, For the grain is destroyed, The new wine dries up, Fresh oil fails. Be ashamed, O farmers, Wail, O vinedressers, For the wheat and the barley, Because the harvest of the field perishes. 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.
(Joel 1:1-12 LSB)
An Unprecedented Summons (vv. 1-3)
The prophecy begins with a formal declaration and a call to attention.
"The word of Yahweh that came to Joel, the son of Pethuel: Hear this, O elders, And give ear, all inhabitants of the land. Has anything like this happened in your days Or in your fathers’ days? Recount about it to your sons, And let your sons recount about it to their sons, And their sons to the next generation." (Joel 1:1-3)
First, this is "the word of Yahweh." This is not Joel's analysis of the agricultural crisis. This is God's commentary on the locusts. The locusts are not the subject; they are the predicate. God is the subject. He is the one acting. This establishes the absolute authority of what follows. This is not up for debate.
Second, the summons is issued like a formal court proceeding. "Hear this, O elders." The leadership is called to the stand first. Judgment always begins at the house of God, and it begins with those in authority (1 Peter 4:17). They are responsible for the spiritual state of the nation, and God holds them accountable. But it doesn't stop there; "all inhabitants of the land" are also called to give ear. No one is exempt.
The question, "Has anything like this happened in your days?" is designed to shock them into recognizing the gravity of the situation. This is not just a bad year for crops. This is off the charts. This is a supernatural, covenantal event. It is an act of God so singular that it must be memorialized. It is to become a part of their catechism. "Recount about it to your sons." This is catechism by catastrophe. God is saying, "I want you to take this disaster and make it a permanent part of your curriculum. I want your grandchildren's children to know what happens when My people take My blessings for granted." We are commanded to remember God's deliverance, like the Exodus. Here, they are commanded to remember His judgment. Both are essential for a healthy faith.
The Fourfold Buzzsaw (v. 4)
Next, Joel describes the instrument of God's judgment with terrifying precision.
"What the gnawing locust has left, the swarming locust has consumed; And what the swarming locust has left, the creeping locust has consumed; And what the creeping locust has left, the stripping locust has consumed." (Joel 1:4)
This is not just poetry. This is a picture of total, systematic, and relentless devastation. Whether these are four different species or four successive waves or four stages of development, the point is the same: nothing is left. The first wave chews the leaves. The next wave swarms and eats the fruit. The next wave creeps along and eats the bark. The final wave strips everything that remains. It is a four-stage buzzsaw that leaves nothing but splinters.
This is a perfect illustration of how sin works in a person's life or in a culture. It is never satisfied with just a little. One compromise leads to another, and another, and another, until the whole landscape of a man's soul is desolate. It is also a picture of the thoroughness of divine judgment. When God sets His hand to discipline, He does not do a halfway job. He will continue to apply pressure until He gets the result He is after, which is always repentance.
A Wake-Up Call for the Complacent (vv. 5-7)
The first group specifically addressed is not the priests or the elders, but the drunkards.
"Awake, drunkards, and weep; And wail, all you wine drinkers, On account of the sweet wine That is cut off from your mouth." (Joel 1:5)
Why start with them? Because the drunkard is the archetype of the person who lives for the creature rather than the Creator. His entire world revolves around the gift, not the Giver. His joy, his comfort, his escape are all found in the fermented juice of the grape. So God, in a stroke of severe mercy, removes his idol. The sweet wine is "cut off from your mouth." The tap has run dry.
God is calling them to "Awake." This judgment is an alarm clock. He is waking them from their drunken stupor so they can see reality for the first time. The first step toward repentance is sobriety. And the first emotion of sobriety is grief. "Weep... and wail." The party is over.
The locusts are then described in terrifying, military terms. They are a "nation... mighty and without number." Their teeth are "the teeth of a lion." This is an army. This is an invasion. God has militarized the insect world and sent it against His own land. The result is that the symbols of covenant blessing, the vine and the fig tree, are made a "desolation." The branches are stripped bare, white and skeletal. This is a picture of covenantal shame and nakedness.
When Worship Stops (vv. 8-12)
The grief now spreads from the tavern to the Temple and then to the entire populace.
"Wail like a virgin girded with sackcloth For the bridegroom of her youth... The grain offering and the drink offering are cut off From the house of Yahweh... The field is destroyed; The land mourns... Indeed, rejoicing dries up From the sons of men." (Joel 1:8, 9, 10, 12)
The sorrow is now compared to the most bitter of sorrows: a young woman whose betrothed has died before the wedding. This is a grief over a broken covenant, a lost future. This is precisely what has happened between Israel and Yahweh. Their sin has brought a death into the relationship.
The tangible result of this agricultural collapse is that worship itself is halted. There is no grain for the grain offering, no wine for the drink offering. Their sin has not only ruined their economy, it has severed their fellowship with God. The priests, whose job it is to mediate this fellowship, can only mourn. Their ministry has been rendered impossible. This is a crucial point: a nation's worship is directly tied to its covenant faithfulness. When a people's hearts are far from God, the material means of worship will eventually dry up as well.
The judgment is total. The farmers and vinedressers, the common men, are called to be ashamed. Their hard work has come to nothing. The land itself is personified as mourning. Every kind of tree, from the essential to the luxury, dries up. The whole system has failed.
And it all culminates in the final, devastating summary: "Indeed, rejoicing dries up from the sons of men." This is the goal of the judgment. God is not after their grain; He is after their joy. They had sought their joy in the wrong place. They tried to find it in the wine, the figs, the wheat, the commerce. They tried to have the joy of God without the God of joy. And so God, in His wisdom, turns off the spigot. He is teaching them a fundamental lesson: there is no lasting joy apart from Him. All non-Christian joy is a leaky cistern. It will eventually run dry. God has engineered this crisis to force them to ask where true joy can be found.
The Locusts and the Cross
This entire chapter is a portrait of the law. The law comes and shows us our sin, and it strips us bare. It leaves us desolate, ashamed, and without recourse. The law is the buzzsaw of God that cuts away all of our self-righteousness and self-sufficiency, leaving our branches white and bare. The law always ends with "rejoicing dries up."
If the book of Joel ended here, it would be a book of utter despair. But this is only the diagnosis. The cure will be prescribed in the next chapter, a call to repentance. And the ultimate cure is found in the one who endured a far greater swarm of locusts on our behalf.
On the cross, Jesus Christ was made a desolation. He was stripped bare and cast away. The wrath of God, a judgment infinitely more terrifying than a cloud of insects, descended upon Him. He endured the ultimate drought, crying out, "I thirst." The rejoicing of heaven was cut off from Him so that it would never be cut off from us. He became the ruined vineyard so that we could become the garden of God.
The call to "Awake, drunkards" is therefore a gospel call. It is a call to wake up from the stupor of sin and self-reliance. It is a call to see the devastation that our sin has wrought. It is a call to mourn and to wail over it. But we do not mourn as those who have no hope. We mourn because the very judgment that Joel describes is the judgment that Christ absorbed for us. The locusts of our sin consumed Him, so that we might be brought into a harvest of righteousness that can never fail, and a joy that will never, ever dry up.