This episode takes a reflective turn as our host shares personal insights from his Bible reading journals spanning over three decades. Through vivid journal entries, the complexities of obedience, suffering, and divine blessing are laid bare. Furthermore, listeners will hear how a miraculous car accident in the host’s youth initiated his lifelong journey into daily Bible reading. These reflections on the book of Joel offer both spiritual insights and a powerful testament to personal transformation.
Welcome to ADDBIBLE, an audio daily devotion from the Ezra Project. We join Allen J. Huth as he shares Bible passages and comments from over 30 years of his personal Bible reading journals.
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Today we begin the book of Joel. I will look at my English Standard Version Study Bible book introduction to help us understand the book of Joel. The book of Joel is named after its author, Joel, which means Yahweh is God. Not much is known about Joel. He may have been from Jerusalem. He addresses priests and the elders, so he probably is not a member of either group. Joel may have written his book after the exile of Jews to Babylon because he mentions it as a past event in chapter 3. Joel calls Jews in Judah and Jerusalem to lament and return to the Lord during a time of national calamity, a locust plague that destroys both wine and grain, threatening the people’s ability to present offerings to God. The theme of Joel is the Day of the Lord. Judgment, repentance, but also hope and restoration. The words day of the Lord are found five times in Joel and 13 times in other prophetic books. The day refers not only to final judgment, but also the ongoing judgment of Israel, both past and future. The day of the Lord is not only a time of judgment, but also a time of deliverance, blessing, and salvation as a result of judgment. Let’s look for a few famous passages out of the book of Joel, like, I will pour out my spirit on all flesh. Your sons and daughters shall prophesy. Your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. And another passage. And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. That’s not only Romans 10, 13, but it’s also in the book of Joel. The book of Joel has three chapters. I will read chapters 1 and 3 and will listen to Faith Comes By Hearing’s reading of chapter 2. So let’s begin. Joel chapter 1. The word of the Lord that came to Joel, the son of Bethuel. Hear this, you elders. Give ear, all inhabitants of the land. Has such a thing happened in your days or in the days of your fathers? Tell your children of it, and let your children tell their children and their children to another generation. What the cutting locust left, the swarming locust has eaten. What the swarming locust left, the hopping locust has eaten. And what the hopping locust left, the destroying locust has eaten. Awake, you drunkards, and weep, and wail, all you drinkers of wine, because of the sweet wine, for it is cut off from your mouth. For a nation has come up against my land, powerful and beyond number. Its teeth are lion’s teeth, and it has the fangs of a lioness. It has laid waste my vine and splintered my fig tree. It has stripped off their bark and thrown it down. Their branches are made white. Lament like a virgin wearing sackcloth for the bridegroom of her youth. The grain offering and the drink offering are cut off from the house of the Lord. The priests mourn. The ministers of the Lord. The fields are destroyed. The grounds mourn. Because the grain is destroyed, the wine dries up. The oil languishes. be ashamed o tillers of the soil wail o vine dressers for the wheat and the barley because the harvest of the field has perished the vine dries up the fig-tree languishes pomegranate palm and apple all the trees of the field are dried up and gladness dries up from the children of man. Put on sackcloth and lament, O priests. Wail, O ministers of the altar. Go in, pass the night in sackcloth, O ministers of my God, because grain offering and drink offering are withheld from the house of your God. consecrate a fast call a solemn assembly gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land to the house of the lord your god and cry out to the lord alas for the day for the day of the lord is near and as destruction from the almighty it comes Is not the food cut off before our eyes, joy and gladness from the house of our God? The seed shrivels under the clods, the storehouses are desolate, the granaries are torn down because the grain has dried up. How the beasts groan! The herds of cattle are perplexed because there is no pasture for them. Even the flocks of sheep suffer. To you, O Lord, I call. For fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness, and flame has burned all the trees of the field. Even the beasts of the field pant for you, because the water brooks are dried up, and fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness. To guide us through the book of Joel, I have selected three of my personal Bible reading journals. The first one is in 1991 when I read the Old Testament. The next one is 10 years later in 2001 when I read the whole Bible in the same year. And then the last one is another 10 years later in 2011. when again I read the whole Bible. In 1991, I read all of Joel in one day and I wrote in my journal, from locusts to AIDS, God can place plagues on a nation or a people. God allows destruction, which is the natural course of events from a sin nature in a land cursed by sin. He alone stands in the way of nature or us destroying ourselves. Obedience to God causes his blessings. Ignoring him allows the natural course of destruction. In 2001, I read the book of Joel all in one day again, and I wrote Pass It On. Tell your children so they can tell their children and down to generations about God’s judgment and his restoration. Joel is like most prophetic books. It’s bad when a people disobey and walk away from God. Blessings are lost. Pain is found. God is always there begging us to return to him. And when we return, he returns his blessings. Why do we walk away and suffer so? And in 2011, I read the whole Bible that year, and I was reading Old Testament and New Testament passages on the same day. And on this day, I read all of the book of Joel together with a passage out of Revelation. Here is what I wrote concerning Joel chapter 1. As things go from bad to worse, consecrate a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the elders, and cry out to the Lord. Chapter 1 of the book of Joel opens with an invasion of locusts which causes a national disaster. I never knew there were so many kinds of locusts as described in verse 4. What the cutting locust left, the swarming locust has eaten. What the swarming locust left, the hopping locust has eaten. What the hopping locust left, the destroying locust has eaten. I never looked that carefully at a locust. Have you? Next time you see one, see if you can identify it as a cutting locust, a swarming locust, a hopping locust, or a destroying locust. Now, because of the locust, the wine and the grain have dried up. In verse 5, the sweet wine has been cut off from your mouth. In verse 10, the fields are destroyed. The ground mourns because the grain is destroyed. The wine dries up. The oil languishes. Because of this, according to verse 9, the grain offering and the drink offering are cut off from the house of the Lord. Is that what happens to you? When your job changes, you get laid off, the economy suffers, does your offering to the Lord also suffer? Our offerings, our wine offerings, our grain offerings, or today our tithes or our financial gifts to the house of the Lord should always be proportional to our economic circumstances. In other words, if you believe in the tithe, 10% is 10% regardless of what you make. Here in Joel chapter 1, the people are suffering. They’re suffering under their sinfulness. Verse 15 says, God is the one who’s putting economic pressure on Israel. Is he putting economic pressure on you? From Joel chapter 1, we can get the connection. God’s blessings come to those who obey him. God’s punishment and judgment comes to those who do not. Joel’s instruction to his people is the same as the word of God’s instruction to us today. It’s in verse 14. Consecrate a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land, To the house of the Lord your God and cry out to the Lord. Are you suffering today? If so, gather some Christians around you. Cry out to the Lord. We don’t just read the scriptures for the sake of reading. We apply it to our daily lives. I’m surely not saying that every listener of this podcast is suffering economically. But if you are, you might want to connect the dots. You may want to ponder these things today. Are you suffering economically because of your sinfulness, because of your disobedience to God? Though it’s not always true, but sometimes that is the reason. Only you can determine that. In Joel chapter 1, it was certainly the case. The children of Israel are suffering because of sinfulness and disobedience. Father, we thank you for the message in the first chapter of the book of Joel. Often we just come to the word to see what you have to say and we’ll get surprised that it touches us directly, that it challenges us in our daily lives, that it may even apply directly to my circumstances. We thank you that your word is living and active and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing between soul and spirit. It has the power to pierce our hearts today. And so, Lord, I pray for any who are suffering economically, if it’s related to sinfulness or disobedience, that they spend time today crying out to you. You are a God who calls us to return to you. You are a God who will forgive. And you are a God who will restore. Thank you that through the book of Joel, through chapters like this, you call us back to you. Might we hear your voice. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen. Thanks for listening to AdBible today. You might wonder how I became a daily Bible reader. When I was 15 years old, a buddy and me stole his father’s car. We could steal his father’s car because his father was in Vietnam, serving in the war. So he was never home. So we took the car that day. Neither one of us with a driver’s license. And we took off out east of Colorado Springs on a dirt road. We were flying down this dirt road at 60 miles an hour. And he lost control of the car. We began to spin and we were going down the road, fishtailing, and he spun the wheel of the car, 60 miles an hour. The car tumbled, crushed the top, tucked the wheels under, totaled the car. I was on a dirt road. I don’t know if I was thrown out of the car or crawled out of the car, but I looked at that car and I thought, am I even alive? Am I broken? Am I bleeding everywhere? And I began to pat myself down, and I felt like I was okay. So I stood up, and I was uninjured, amazingly. The sheriff came to draw up the accident. He said, it’s a miracle you guys are alive. I got home that night, went down into my bedroom. My mother came to me and said, you ought to thank God you’re alive. I was laying on my bed, and I was thinking about the day’s activities. And I just thought, wow, I could have been dead today. I wasn’t the driver. I was the passenger. I wasn’t in control. But God was. At that moment, I figured out at 15 years old, God could take my life any time. He could have that day. So as I laid there, I thought, okay, you could take my life any day. So you saved my life today for a reason. For whatever reason that is, I’m going to live for you and that reason. As I said that, I heard a voice say to me, there’s a Bible on your bookshelf, get it down and read it. I must have heard something, because I got up, I went over to the bookshelf, and I pulled down a Bible. I opened it to the first page, just like I would any other book, and I began to read God’s Word. I read Genesis chapter 1. The next day I read Genesis chapter 2. The next day I read Genesis chapter 3. And a chapter a day, I began to read God’s Word at 15 years old. If you do that, by the way, it’ll take you about three and a half years to finish reading the Bible a chapter a day. And that’s a good plan. So that’s how I became a daily Bible reader. And when I finished going through the Bible the first time, at 18 years or so, I just started over because I thought that’s what Christians did, was read their Bibles every day. So that’s how I became a daily Bible reader.
This episode takes a reflective turn as our host shares personal insights from his Bible reading journals spanning over three decades. Through vivid journal entries, the complexities of obedience, suffering, and divine blessing are laid bare. Furthermore, listeners will hear how a miraculous car accident in the host’s youth initiated his lifelong journey into daily Bible reading. These reflections on the book of Joel offer both spiritual insights and a powerful testament to personal transformation.
