Hear this, you elders, and give ear, all you inhabitants of the land! Has anything like this happened in
your days, or even in the days of your fathers? Tell your children about it, let your children tell their
children, and their children another generation. (Joel 1:2-3)
I. HEAR AND LISTEN
Hear this, you elders, and give ear, all you inhabitants of the land! (Joel 1:2)
A. The first exhortation is to pay close attention to the Joel 2 end-time message. The overall message of Joel is that
the glory of God in revival is coming along with the crisis of the antichrist and the Great Tribulation and that wholeheartedness
(fasted lifestyle) can make a difference because God is kind and releases blessing in the midst of crisis (Joel 2:12-14).
B. The call to “hear and give ear” is the call to study the Book of Joel. It is the call to hear God’s heart as we prepare
for future disruptions. It takes the work of the Holy Spirit for our hearts to really get the message.
1. Jesus made this same appeal to the seven churches in Revelation, saying, “Let him who has ears, let him hear”
(Revelation 2:7, 3:6). Jesus was saying, “Pay close attention because it takes God’s help to really hear God’s word.”
It takes the grace of God to fully hear God’s message with clarity. Be careful with the information you receive because
if God does not help us hear it, then we will end up explaining it away or just soon forget it. If we experience an initial
stirring by the end-time message, we must pursue it until our hearts are gripped with revelation. Just as the disciples
on the road to Emmaus, we want our hearts to burn within us at the opening of the scriptures (Luke 24:32).
2. God’s call to hear or to cultivate understanding is essential because the message is offensive to our flesh; we
naturally resist what challenges our comfort zone.
C. This listening does not come automatically because we love God. It requires an intentional, deliberate cultivating
of revelation of the Joel 2 end-time message of the Day of the Lord. This process of revelation begins with diligently
studying the Book of Joel. We cannot settle for the initial stirring of our minds. That instruction must become a living
understanding in our heart. Another way to say it is that we must “eat the scroll”, digesting its truth until it becomes part
of us (Ezekiel 3;1; Revelation 10:9). If we do not feed our spirits on the message, the initial inspiration we experience by
hearing it will quickly evaporate away. We pray, “Lord, I will not be content until my heart is burning with revelation so
that I live differently!”
II. THE COMING CRISIS IS VERY UNFAMILIAR TO OUR MINDS
Has anything like this happened in your days, or even in the days of your fathers? (Joel 1:2)
A. Joel begins by emphasizing the unprecedented magnitude of what was happening in their day. He asks, in
essence, ‘have you seen anything like this? Do you think this is normal?
B. The significance of this is the very fact that the message is unprecedented, makes it unfamiliarly and, thus, easy
to hear. We are entering a new season on the divine calendar that will result in much change on the earth. His glory
and judgments will shake everything that can be shaken. We are in a unique time period which we have no frame of
reference for. Its very unfamiliarity is part of the difficulty of being prepared for it. Most people do not really think above
living through the events recorded in the Book of Revelation. As of today, the great crisis has not begun. We only see
small tokens of what is ahead.
C. We must not yield to a scoffing spirit of unbelief about Jesus’ coming.
Knowing this first: that scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts, and
saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they
were from the beginning of creation”. (2 Peter 3:3-4)
1. These scoffers that Peter foresaw will be both inside the church and outside of it. Their worldview will not come
from the revelation of scripture but according to their lusts or their wishful thinking. Not wanting their money, pleasure
or power to be disrupted, they will deem the lifestyle God prescribed in his Word to be extreme and unnecessary, and
the message of the end times as false or unbiblical.
2. They will say, “Where is the promise of His coming?” In other words, “Where is the coming revival or where is the
coming judgment?” Peter said, in essence, “They will be motivated by their own lusts, by their own agendas instead of
God’s”.
3. These scoffers will perpetuate the lie that everything will continue as it always has. They willfully forget that God
rules His kingdom and the universe by his Word (2 Peter 3:5). In other words, what His Word says will surely come to pass.
D. The church in the western world is not yet convinced of what is coming. We have what is called the ostrich
syndrome – putting our heads in the ground and hoping it will all just go away. We hope God will change it all if we
remain ignorant. What is written in the Word of God is not going to go away. It will come to pass whether we are prepared
for it to or not. If the locust plague of Joel 1 and the military crisis of Joel 2 is unfamiliar, what about the Book of
Revelation? The things that are approaching the globe, as recorded in Revelation, are so unfamiliar to us. Has
anything like this ever happened? It is totally new ground for all of us. The greatest revival and the greatest disaster
that the world has ever known are around the corner. Our best days and our worst days are swiftly approaching.
E. Noah is one of the greatest examples of embracing a prophetic message that was totally unprecedented and
unfamiliar to him. God told him it would rain for forty days. However, it had never rained in history at that point. Up
until that time, God watered the ground from below not from water (rain) descending from the sky. When Noah told people
that water would come from the sky, the undoubtedly laughed as they informed him, as everyone knew, that the water
came upwards from the ground not downwards from the sky. However, when Noah heard this strange message from God
he was ‘moved with godly fear’ (Hebrews 11:7). Noah followed through with a radical lifestyle change in giving his time
and energy to cutting wood and building an ark – for over one hundred years. Over one hundred years! Imagine, eighty
years into building his boat, his friends must have said, “Noah, are you sure you heard right?” Noah was so convinced
of the word of the Lord that it changed everything about his life. The way he spent time, money and energy was never
the same. Like Noah, we are in the generation when something unprecedented is coming; and it also must dramatically
change the way that we live today. Jesus likened the last days to the generation of Noah (Matthew 24:37-39).
III. THE LEADERS MUST LEAD – PEOPLE FOLLOW WHAT LEADERS DO
Hear this, you elders, and give ear, all you inhabitants of the land! (Joel 1:2)
A. The mandate to “hear” begins with spiritual leadership. Joel challenges them to hear, which means lead by a lifestyle
that enhances hearing. Leaders must “give ear” or give themselves to this message! It is not enough for leaders to get
together and write papers about a particular crisis in the nation. They themselves must get on their knees before God
with an open bible and begin to study what the prophets say will happen in the generation that the Lord returns. Then
they must go to the next stage of cultivating the grace of prayer and fasting.
B. When leaders enter into fasting and prayer, leading by example, “the inhabitants of the land” tune in (Joel 1:2).
The blessing of God arises when leaders lead.
C. The greatest gift that God can give a nation is to raise up men and women in leadership with a spirit of revelation
and the grace of fasting and prayer. One of the greatest crises in the tragedy of September 11, 2001 was that the body
of Christ was not being led by many leaders with the spirit of revelation and fasting and prayer. America’s greatest crisis
is not what is happening in Washington, DC. It is not what is happening in the sin centers of our major cities. It is not
what is happening in Hollywood.
1. As horrifying as abortion is, that is not the major problem in this country. The major problem is that the church is
being led by leaders without a spirit of revelation and without a spirit of fasting and prayer.
2. When the problem is answered, all of the other things will be addressed by leaders who walk in the anointing of God.
IV. TELLING THE MESSAGE – THE NEED TO PROCLAIM THE MESSAGE
Tell your children about it, let your children tell their children (Joel 1:3)
A. We must not only hear and be gripped by this message, we must also proclaim it (Joel 1:3). The price we will pay
for boldly standing for the truth can be seen in the persecutions that the Old Testament prophets received. They were
criticized, ostracized, imprisoned and killed.
B. God will give us more revelation and authority if we faithfully use what He entrusts to us. The Lord honors the
courage and faith that it takes to proclaim the Joel 2 end-time message.
If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.” Then he said to them, “Take heed what you hear. With the same measure
you use, it will be measured to you; and to you who hear, more will be given. For whoever has, to him more will be given;
but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him.” (Mark 4:23-25)
V. TELL THE CHILDREN – ESTABLISHING A DYNAMIC SPIRITUAL CULTURE
Tell your children about it, let your children tell their children, and their children another generation.
(Joel 1:3)
A. Prayer and fasting is to be the permanent spiritual culture of the end-time church.
B. After calling the elders to hear and all the inhabitants of the land to listen, Joel says, “Tell your children about it.” Joel
gives a four-generation mandate expressing the necessity of making this part of what the children learn and understand.
Every child must hear this message continually so as to understand end-time realities. It should be as “normal” for them
to hear about the end of the age as it was for Noah’s children to hear that a flood is coming. We must tell the children
about the coming Day that is both great and terrible and how we participate with a kind God in it through lifestyles of
prayer with fasting. We do not want our children to grow up dumbfounded at what is coming, or indifferent to it.
C. A child’s spirit is like wet cement, that is moldable and teachable. Whatever we write on these open spirits, this wet
cement, they will receive as true and normal. One reason adults struggle for years with wrong paradigms of God is that
they were taught them in their youth. Then thirty years later, we still struggle to get free from wrong paradigms because
the cement dried long ago, locking lies into our understanding. We want the pliable hearts of our children to be cement
that dries with truth in it. They will consider as true both the great glory and crisis coming to the earth. They will believe
fasting and prayer is normal for God’s people. After all, every believer they knew while growing up embraced these truths
and lifestyle. They will remember what their moms and dads did – they gathered together for fasting and prayer. We tell
the children that God is very kind and may relent of judgment if His people will cry out to Him (Joel 2;13, 14). Children will
learn to confidently approach a God of kindness to change their city.
D. There is a spiritual environment, a spiritual culture, that God wants to use to establish in the midst of the church. It is
best formed when we “tell” our children and they tell their children. When four generations understand this, a new spiritual
environment emerges that believes in the normality of this kind of lifestyle and message. They consider it normal to believe
and to act in the ways the Word of God says.
E. Establishing a dynamic spiritual culture according to the Joel 2 message drives out the scoffing spirit that is filled with
complacency (2 Peter 3:3-4). This will not take root in our children.
F. The spiritual culture in the body of Christ is filled with a scoffing and complacent spirit. The complacent spirit has
so taken root in the leadership of the church today that it is considered strange and bizarre to actually believe the Word
of God for the end-times. We must in faith take what God says in His word at face value. God said it and I believe it, that
settles it for me!
G. We want to raise children in the midst of a spiritual atmosphere of faith and wholeheartedness. This is what God
is after in commanding all to, “Tell the children…” (Joel 1:3). He wants a spiritual culture established where the children
are raised up in believing faith according to the Word of God. Imagine how different a day of calamity would look if the
young and old together were filled with understanding and might in the inner man!
H. Prayer and fasting is to be the permanent spiritual culture of the end time church.