“Take notice and pass it on!”
Tell ye your children of it. —Joel 1:3
Read Joel 1:1-12
Information and ideas passed on from parents to children can be very important. For primitive tribes, this was often the only way to endure in their continual battle to survive.
As representatives of the nation, the Jewish leaders were called to pass on a message in the book of Joel. The message was not good! In Joel 1:4 and following we read a description of the total destruction that was going to spread over the land by way of four successive attacks by an army of locusts. The people were called by their leaders to express much grief because of the great distress that would envelop their nation (vv.5,8). The relationship the people had to the Lord was not right. The Lord would make this clear by sending the locust plague. This plague would be incredibly devastating, greater than their forefathers had ever before experienced.
Israel would have no animals to sacrifice because of the destruction of the harvests through the locust plague. Today as well, the Lord sometimes speaks through forces of nature such as famine and natural disasters. The Lord speaks and also calls to us: “Hear this, ye old men, and give ear, all ye inhabitants of the land. Hath this been in your days, or even in the days of your fathers?” (v.2).
What purpose do God’s judgments serve?