Only One Thing Is Wrong

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. How does the love of God, how does it square with the threats of judgment we see in places like Joel? This is how any experience of the painful consequences of our sin before it is too late is God in mercy, in love, trying to wake you up. He's not trying to pay you back for your sin. He's trying to bring you back from your sin. Welcome to Summit Life, the gospel-centered Bible teaching ministry of J.D. Greer, pastor of the Summit Church in Raleigh, Durham, North Carolina.

I'm your host, Molly Vitovich. Okay, so I think there's a question nearly everyone wrestles with from time to time, even Bible-believing Christians, and the question is this. Why would a loving God let so many bad things happen in the world? Well, today, Pastor J.D.

is flipping that question on its head. He's asking us to consider, what if the hard things I'm facing are because God loves me? It's part of our study in the Minor Prophets, titled Come Back to Me, and Pastor J.D.

titled this message Only One Thing is Wrong. Grab your Bible and pen, and let's dive right in. The book of Joel is right after the book of Hosea. We are in a series on the Minor Prophets, which is a set of books that most people skip right over in the Bible. These 12 books are short, but they're really important because they describe how life in Israel went so wrong, and then what they could do to bring about restoration after it had gone wrong.

And that's really good news for us because there's some of us that our lives have gone wrong, and so these books give us instructions about how it got that way and what we can do now that we're in that condition. Joel's book is the second in the Minor Prophets. You may not realize this, but Joel is actually one of the earliest recorded prophets. Most people miss that because Joel's book comes so late in the Old Testament, but your Old Testament is not arranged strictly chronologically.

It's arranged by different schemes. Joel lived and prophesied very early in Israel's history, a little bit after Solomon, but before the exile. Joel was probably, they say, a student of Elijah and Elisha, if you kind of know where they go in the biblical story. Joel's book was written during a time when a lot of things had gone wrong in Israel. They just had a slew of really bad leaders, and they suffered through a national plague, which I will talk about with you here in a moment. There was civil unrest. There were economic problems. Their stock market was down. Foreign trade was low. National confidence was non-existent.

Their FBI director had just gotten fired. Almost everybody believed the country was headed in the wrong direction, and so Joel writes to diagnose the problem, and he tells them there's only one real problem. They feel like a bunch of things are wrong, but Joel says, actually, there's just one thing that is wrong. In fact, the book of Joel reminds me of the story I heard about the guy who went to the doctor and complained that everything on his body hurt. The doctor said, well, show me what you're talking about. So the guy takes his finger, and he points to his head. He said, it hurts right here. Then he takes his finger, and he points to his shoulder, and he says, it hurts right here. Then he points to his leg. He says, and it hurts right here.

The doctor said, you idiot. You have a dislocated finger. That's why it hurts everywhere you touch, not because there's anything wrong. There's something wrong in one place.

You see, many times in our lives, we feel like a host of things are wrong when it's actually only one thing that is wrong. This book is really, really short. It's only three chapters, and we're going to go through the entire book here in our time together. Joel opens the book in chapter one with a description of a gigantic locust plague that has just occurred.

Here it is in verse four, Joel 1. What the cutting locust has left, the swarming locust has eaten. What the swarming locust has left, the hopping locust has eaten. And what the hopping locust has left, the destroying locust has eaten. Now, most of you have probably seen a locust before. They look like kind of supercharged grasshoppers about three inches long, heavily armed grasshoppers.

But thankfully, none of us, at least in the United States, have ever seen the kind of plague that he is talking about here. We have a record of a modern locust plague that occurred in the region of Palestine around 1915. Observers of that event said that in March of that year, swarms of locusts just appeared in the sky. They came from the northeast in clouds so thick that they obscured the sun. Immediately, these locusts began to dig holes in the soil about four inches deep and about a half inch wide, depositing into each hole more than a hundred eggs.

These holes were literally everywhere across the landscape of Israel. After a few weeks, the young locust hatched. When they did, they resembled large ants. They hadn't formed wings yet, so they would just hop around the ground like fleas. They would cover between 400 and 600 feet a day as they did, devouring any and all vegetation in their path. As they grew, they would develop the ability to jump, at which point their range got higher and they would scour the trees and the vines. And a few weeks later, they would develop wings, at which point they would swarm over the areas that they had already devoured to destroy any plant life left within it. The sound of their swarms, they said, is terrifying. Witnesses said that within a few days, there was literally nothing living plant-wise left in the region. As they get more desperate for sustenance, they swarm into houses, eating food and clothes and fabric and wood.

They're like middle school boys at a pizza party. They leave nothing behind. Literally everything is gone. Joel uses this locust plague as both an illustration of Israel's sin, as well as a warning about God's future judgment on their sin.

Let me talk for a few minutes here about the illustration aspect. Like the locust plague, the devastating power of sin, Joel explains, is total. And it gradually destroys everything in its path progressively. The laws that God gave to us, our life, His commandments and His rule in our lives, lead to our flourishing. We probably see this best illustrated in the creation account itself in Genesis 1. When God created the earth, Genesis 1, 2 says that God first created the world as a kind of formless, dark, chaotic mass. And then into that dark, chaotic, disorganized mass, God spoke His word. And out of that dark, chaotic mass came life and beauty and order and design and all the other complexities of creation.

And the reason that God did it that way, He could have just created it all perfect from the beginning, but He did it that way because He was trying to illustrate for us what God's word coming into our lives would be like. Into the dark, chaotic, disorganized chaos of our lives, God's word speaks and out of it comes light and life and order and beauty. Sin, by contrast, unravels creation and plunges our lives back into darkness. And God's judgments throughout Scripture often illustrate that. You might see God's judgments in Scripture as just God zapping down lightning from heaven, but that's not usually what they are.

Usually His judgments are illustrations of the natural consequences of sin. And maybe one of the best illustrations of this is what happened in the 10 plagues. If you're here a few years ago, we walked through the 10 plagues and what we saw then is that the 10 plagues were not like God's ultimate book of practical jokes against Egypt. That's kind of what people think is that God was just, you know, inflicting these plagues or He was just trying to demonstrate to Pharaoh who was really in charge. You remember I explained to you that if that's all that God was trying to show, He could have had Moses walk in and like, you know, turn some of Pharaoh's soldiers into grasshoppers and mash a few of them or put the Darth Vader chokehold on Pharaoh or levitate in front. All these things would have convinced Pharaoh that Moses had God's power, but that's not all God was trying to illustrate.

He was trying to demonstrate to Pharaoh and to Egypt what their rebellion was doing to themselves and to the creation. And so what you see in the plagues is a systematic unraveling of creation. The Nile turns to blood, which causes the frogs to come out. The frogs bring the gnats, the gnats bring the disease, the disease brings the boils, the boils bring the death and then darkness. And it's just illustrating for you creation literally unraveling. We're going to see that same kind of picture again here with the locusts. Creation, our lives unravel and they go into chaos and they're progressively destroyed as we pursue this type of self-centered self-focused lifestyle. You might think the pornography, you might think the flirtation, you might think doing things your way is not really causing that much harm, but it is numbing your soul to the devastating effects that sin is going to have in you. And that's what this locust plague is an illustration of the consuming destructive power of sin.

It's not just an illustration though. It's also for Joel, a warning about a coming judgment. One that Joel says is going to be much more terrible than the locust. Joel says that unless Israel wakes up, God is going to send in the armies of Babylon into Israel like a horde of locusts. So you notice that for the next two chapters he's going to describe this coming invasion of Babylon. If Israel doesn't change their ways, he's going to describe it in terms of the locust horde.

Watch, I'll show you this. For a nation has come up against my land. That's a prophecy about Babylon. Powerful and beyond number like the locust. Its teeth are like lion's teeth like the locust. It has laid waste my vine and splintered my fig tree. It is stripped off their bark. It has thrown it down.

Their branches are made white. The fields are destroyed before them. The ground mourns. The land is like the Garden of Eden before they get there and then behind them is a desperate wilderness. That's just like the locust plague. Nothing escapes them as with the rumbling of chariots. That's the sound of the swarms. They leap on the tops of mountains like the crackling of a flame devouring the stubble. What you're seeing there is God saying your sin caused this kind of destruction in your life.

I sent the locust as an illustration of that and if you don't wake up there's going to be a worse one that comes. The armies of Babylon. What you're seeing there, watch this.

This is a little nerd moment. What you're seeing there is an illustration of what theologians call the passive and the active dimensions of the wrath of God and you're seeing how they work together. Here's your definition. The passive wrath of God is God simply allowing us to suffer the natural consequences of our sin. God says okay that's what you chose.

I'll let you experience that. The active wrath of God is the lightning bolt of judgment from heaven and what you see in stories like this one, listen, is that the passive and active wrath of God work together and the active wrath of God is usually just an affirmation of or an extension of his passive wrath. It is God simply affirming to you the choice that you've already made for yourself.

Give you a few quick examples on this. Genesis chapter three. Adam and Eve in the garden sin and God cast them out of his presence but remember what Adam and Eve had already done? They'd hid themselves from God's presence. So God's active wrath, casting them out of his presence, was simply an affirmation of what they already chosen for themselves.

Or to go back to the plagues for a minute. The scripture says that God's judgment on Pharaoh was to harden his heart so that he would not believe but that was only after it says that Pharaoh hardened his own heart several times. See so what God was doing was he was affirming and solidifying the choice that Pharaoh had already made. In fact the way that Jesus describes hell itself. Hell which is of course the ultimate display of the wrath of God shows hell to be just an extension of his passive wrath and sometimes we can miss that because the Jewish metaphors that Jesus uses to describe hell can be unfamiliar to us. Now I'm not saying these things are only metaphors but you can see in them the metaphor of what he's trying to describe.

For example he says that hell will be a place where the worm does not die, the maggot does not die. That is an image of a conscience that's continually being eaten away by guilt and regret and shame. It is a place of outer darkness. Darkness to Jewish people represented the total absence of God and all of his goodness. It is a place of the gnashing of teeth. That was a Jewish image that meant self-condemnation and self-loathing. It is a place of fire. Fire represented the agony of God's displeasure. Hell is in many ways the full fruition of us telling God to get out of our life and God saying okay.

It's like C.S. Lewis used to say he's like in the end we'll either say to God thy will be done or God will look at us and say thy will be done. Nobody has helped me get my mind around the wrath of God as much as C.S. Lewis and one of the things he explained he said sin is like a cancer. One of the things about cancer is it never stops growing.

It just keeps multiplying and growing and as long as you're alive and or until you kill it it will just keep growing until it consumes the host. He said sin is like that. He said so there's a lot of things in your soul that probably you wouldn't need to worry about if you only were around for 70 or 80 years. But scripture says that God created you to live forever either in heaven or in hell. He says so what is it like when selfishness jealousy unchecked lust materialism cowardice what do those things look like when they've grown unchecked in you for a million years?

He said hell is exactly the technical term for what that state would be. In other words God doesn't destroy sin destroys and when you understand that listen you'll start to see earthly experiences of God's judgment like this plague of locusts you'll start to see them as expressions of God's mercy because God is trying to let you see where sin is taking you before it is too late for you to return. You see a lot of bible readers wonder how the threats of judgment we encounter in the minor prophets could be consistent with God's love right? I mean you know we started with Hosea which is the most mind-blowing illustration of the love of God how God comes after his people like a husband comes back to a cheating wife who scorns his love again and again and again and he says I'm never giving up on you and people see that image of love and they're like well where is that love and in the minor prophet can't we fast forward to Jesus all meek and mild and he comes petting lambs and looking pensively off in the sunset I want that God. You say how does the love of God we see in Hosea how does it square with the threats of judgment we see in places like Joel this is how I'm explaining to you how any experience of the painful consequences of our sin before it is too late is God in mercy in love trying to wake you up he's not trying to pay you back for your sin he's trying to bring you back from your sin then one of the most gripping illustrations I've ever heard of this was from a Christian leader I knew of who got caught up exposed in this Ashley Madison scandal a couple of years ago remember that Ashley Madison was his website that facilitated adulterous relationships and when the you know kind of the email thing broke and and it came out who all these people that whose identities were no longer hidden his was one he was a national leader of a national ministry and he was publicly humiliated and his board asked him to step down and removed him from ministry and five six months later he wrote this article and what he said in the article is he said you know when this thing happened he said and I was exposed he said I thought the judgment of God against me was unusually harsh he said because he says here's the thing I never it was one night I just signed up he said it was it was I never acted on it nobody ever contacted me I never contacted anybody I never met anybody I certainly never followed through with the adultery it was just a moment of weakness where I was kind of living out this fantasy and he said that was it and then now I get publicly exposed humiliated I lose my ministry he said so I thought of it as an unusually harsh demonstration of God's judgment he said now I am here five six months later and I see it as one of the greatest acts of God's mercy he has ever given to me he said because here's what would have happened had it not gone down that way he said I would have done what I always tend to do and that is I wouldn't really have seriously dealt with this sin I would have said a quick prayer of repentance and just swept it under the rug you see what God does in his mercy is he allows you to taste some of these consequences of sin and it's painful it feels like locust but God and mercy is trying to wake you up so let me ask you is something like that happening in your life right now like for example maybe you're trying to save money but God just keeps letting stuff break down and you're like come on God we're trying now we're trying to get back on our feet and you let you let our car break down you let our air conditioner go out come on a little help here or you're trying to be better in your marriage but new issues of conflict keep cropping up you keep trying new strategies to be happy that work for a while but they're like pseudo happiness and they don't make you that happy hey can I tell you something if you got to spend money every single day to keep yourself happy you're not really happy if you're constantly having to find an escape from real life in order to be happy whether that's a tv show or porn or shopping or a hobby or drinking or something like that that means that you are rotten on the inside and God's trying to wake you up and he's going to keep frustrating those strategies no new strategy is going to fix you and that's because the source of your problem isn't horizontal the source of your problem is vertical there's not a lot of things wrong there's one thing that's wrong and here's good news bad news God has more locust than you got solutions so you need to quit pursuing the solutions and deal with the one thing that's actually wrong in order for God to bring you to your senses he has to bring you to the end of yourself you see for some of you he's been calling out to you for years but you haven't yet been ready to listen because you haven't come to the end of yourself yet but see in order for God to make you new he's got to rip out the old that means he's got to tear you down so do not be surprised when your world keeps crumbling again c.s lewis if you'll let me quote him one more time in his book mere christianity he said many people come to God as if and think of it like their house is broken down and they know they need help fixing their house they got a leaky roof and mildew in the walls and the paint's falling off the wall and so they come to God and they're like God my house is a mess help me he says at first what God does in their hearts makes sense to them because God's fixing the roof and God's painting the walls and getting the mildew out he says but then all the sudden God invariably starts to do things that don't make sense to them he'll start to rip out a wall he'll start to rip up the carpet he'll start to you're like I wasn't why are you doing that he says because it hurts it hurts abominably and you suddenly look at God and say what are you doing I came to you for help and you're giving me this see so I'll tell you what he's doing the explanation is that he's building quite a different house from the one you thought of erecting a new wing here he's putting on an extra floor there running up towers making courtyards you thought you were being made into a decent little cottage he's building a palace one intends he intends to come in and live in himself you might be happy with little changes to that little cottage of your life and God's like I don't want a little cottage I want to come I want to live in a palace and that's what I'm going to turn you into you might be just fine with that shag carpet in the living room and Jesus says I ain't living in that we're going to rip out that shag carpet y'all I like the shag carpet I don't like the shag carpet we're getting rid of that shag carpet and all he starts making all these things because he has so much more for you than you ever had for yourself and in order to give you that he's got to send the locust into your life to eat it out and wake you up so where's this happening for you is there something in your life that maybe you've been asking God to take away you've been saying God fix this repair this but instead you need to realize that God is trying through it to send a warning to you to wake you up that's what God was doing with Israel with this locust play so what is it that God says to them what does he want from them chapter 2 verse 12 yet even now declares the Lord return to me with all your heart with fasting with weeping and with mourning and wren that means tear tear your hearts and not your heart that means tear tear your hearts and not your garments the thing to notice here is that what he's describing is a repentance that grows out of love that's the key thing he's not talking about changing your behavior he's talking about a repentance that grows out of a broken heart see the words with all your heart fasting weeping mourning tearing your hearts he's describing repentance that comes from a broken heart not just a bent will but a heart that is heart broken over what its sin did to God because that's the only kind of repentance that actually works and I tell you that not only do I know that from scripture I know that for my own life let's say a little something about me when what bothers me about my sin is that it caused some painful circumstance or it caused me to be embarrassed or I felt guilty or ashamed like I wasn't a great Christian or I wasn't a very good pastor and then I make a change when that's the source of my repentance my resolutions to change are always really short-lived they don't go that deep I've described it to you before like smacking a balloon I've told you the only way to keep a balloon afloat if it's filled with your breath is to continually smack it and I'm like this is the relationship that a lot of us have with God is that God has to smack us from time to time to get us to act right and so you know you come to church and that's what I do is I smack you about something and you change your behavior but it never lasts you kind of hover for a little bit spiritually then you sag back down and God's got to send somebody else to smack you again and I told you that that's not a fun way to God doesn't like it you don't like it there's another way to keep a balloon afloat that's better for everybody and that is you fill it with helium and then it floats on its own no smacking required what God wants to do is he wants a change of heart that leads to a heartbroken repentance in those areas where my heart has been broken over how my sin hurt God how my sin drove out his presence from my life those are the areas of repentance that really changed me God's presence and power flow through a repentance that grows out of love for him so if you can't repent effectively it's most likely because you don't really love God that's a hard reality today on Summit Life with Pastor JD Greer from a message in our new teaching series called come back to me to listen again or to catch up on previous messages go to jdgreer.com jd we often hear you say that we cannot earn God's favor and there's nothing we can do to become more accepted in God's sight but is there a right way to work for God now molly you just asked me a question that could take literally hours to answer in fact I wrote a book on this called gospel and it was on the wrong ways to work for God and the right ways to work for God right but first you should be sure of this God doesn't need you and your work does not make him love you anymore than he does and anything you failed to do doesn't make him love you less the gospel is a gift it's a free gift that he offers but the flip side of that is this even though God doesn't need us and even though our work for him doesn't make him love us more as recipients of his grace we're compelled to give back to him as an act of worship we want to love others the way that he's loved us our greatest joy we find comes when we are giving away ourselves in service to him not because we're working over time to impress him not because we've got to live up to a certain standard to earn his love but because we have such gratitude and devotion and joy in the one who has saved us that we just want other people to know him and we want to do things that delight his heart I've written a little devotional called what is the gospel it's a 20-day devotional and I want you to see in that that there's a difference in working to impress God and working because you love God in response to his love for you it's a difference in weariness and religion and joy and freedom in the Christian life I would love to give you a copy of that if you'll go to jdgrier.com you can find out how you can become a gospel partner with us and access a lot of these resources including this 20-day devotional what is the gospel that'll take you more into the wonder of the free gift that God gave you and what it means to be liberated from religion into the freedom as a son or daughter of God of working for him out of joy and not out of duty when you give we'll send you this 20-day devotional from Pastor JD and for a small additional donation of ten dollars you can also get the book of john scripture notebook as you work through reading the gospel ask for the what is the gospel devotional book when you give today by becoming a gospel partner or with your one-time gift by calling 866-335-5220 that's 866-335-5220 or get online at jdgrier.com i'm molly vidovich inviting you to join us friday as we continue our study in the book of joel on summit life with jd greer today's program was produced and sponsored by jd greer ministries