THE DAY OF THE LORD
The Word of the Lord came to Joel:
Elders, listen! Has anything like this (devastation of the land) happened in Israel before? Tell your children, that they may tell their children, and subsequent generations. The locust will leave nothing behind.
Wake up, you drunkards! Weep because you are being cut off from the wine. The locust have laid waste to the Lord's vine and ruined His fig tree. God calls for Israel to repent.
The day of the Lord is at hand.
COMMENTARY
Joel introduces us to the term: the day of the Lord.
During Joel's time, Israel was experiencing a great locust plague. He told the people to tell their children and so on, that they may know the mighty works of the Lord. Joel had asked the elders if they had seen anything like this before in Israel.
Jesus had asked His followers the same during His Olivet Discourse, in Matthew 24, while speaking of the Great Tribulation Period. He told them there has never been anything like it before, nor will there be anything like it afterward. This is very true. There will never be anything like the Great Tribulation Period.
Joel is explaining that the locust plague is unique to their history because there had never been anything like it; however, there is a day coming, called the day of the Lord, which will open up the Tribulation period, and it will be a frightening time to be alive.
Now, the locust plague in Joel 1 is considered to be a natural plague, not like the plague that the Lord sent upon Egypt, as judgment. But God is using this natural plague to warn the southern kingdom of God's coming judgment. The locust are described as an invading army.
Joel told the people to lament and mourn, "like a bride who has lost her husband..." The people were cut off from making sacrifices because the economy has been severely impeded due to the plague. There are no grapes, olive oil, or grain. Even the land is to mourn the loss.
The people were to be ashamed and "gird themselves. There was no meat or drink offering. Granted, God wanted them to know that it was not the sacrifice itself that He sought -- it was their hearts. This is also what God wants of us: a clean, pure, and right heart attitude. Furthermore, the people were to sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the elders, and cry unto the Lord.
The day of the Lord is coming! Right now we live in the time of the Gentiles, or in man's day. "Humanism abounds!" But the day of the Lord is the day Jesus will take His church out of the world and the church will stand before the judgment seat of Christ. Then begins the period of tribulation, which is a time of darkness, and will open like the locust plague described in Joel (the four horsemen of the Apocalypse). Finally, the day of the Lord will end with the coming of Christ to the earth to establish His kingdom, and His people will enter into His presence, with light and rest.
McGee summarizes:
...there is man's day, the day in which we are living now; the Day of the Lord Jesus Christ, when He will take the church out of this world; then the Day of the Lord beginning with the Great Tribulation Period.
