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Joel 1:13-14

Lesson # Joel 1:13-14 Study Material - Joel 1:13-14 You must be in fellowship prior to your Bible study, so that the spiritual information you receive can become a source, of blessing to your soul and produce spiritual growth. Joel 1:13-14 13 Gird [chagar] yourselves, and lament [caphad] , ye priests [kohen] : howl [yalal] , ye ministers [sharath] of the altar [mizbeach] : come [bow'] , lie all night [luwn] in sackcloth [saq] , ye ministers [sharath] of my God [elohiym] : for the meat offering [minchah] and the drink offering [necek] is withholden [mana] from the house [bayith] of your God [elohiym] . 14 Sanctify [qadash] ye a fast [tsowm] , call [qara] a solemn assembly [atsarah] , gather [acaph] the elders [zaqen] and all the inhabitants [yashab] of the land ['erets] into the house [bayith] of the LORD [Yahovah] your God [elohiym] , and cry [za`aq] unto the LORD [Yahovah] , KJV-Interlinear 13 Gird yourselves with sackcloth, And lament, O priests; Wail, O ministers of the altar! Come, spend the night in sackcloth, O ministers of my God, For the grain offering and the libation Are withheld from the house of your God. 14 Consecrate a fast, Proclaim 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. NASB Where is the heart of the people? Where is their first love? Where is their intent and motivation in life? Is it for God to whom they give lip service on occasion, or is it to themselves because their worship is tainted with compromise and fraud? Zech. 7:5-6 5 'Say to all the people of the land and to the priests, 'When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months these seventy years, was it actually for Me that you fasted? 6 'And when you eat and drink, do you not eat for yourselves and do you not drink for yourselves? NASB Here the land has been devastated. This is a bit of history from which we have an opportunity to learn and thus by learning the root cause of the disaster, then we have the opportunity to avoid having the same disaster in our lives. But do we learn? Or, do we merely give the usual lip service and read the story for just that - a story for entertainment. Now Joel addresses those that are employed in holy things of God - the priests. They should be even more worried concerning the state of the nation, because as priests they are supposedly closer to God than the common man (who is not a priest). The priests attend the services of God on a daily basis. They perform the services and rituals required by God. And when the required tools (the food and the wine) for performing that service, are now in short supply, or in this case, are non-existent, then they cannot do their duties. Society has failed, the priests (that position which acts as a direct contact and thus an intermediary between God and man) have failed. So there is a severed relationship with God. God is the source of all support in life. When that support is gone, then there is no one else to call upon for help. Man cannot support himself. Who among us can keep the sun shining? Who among us can keep gravity functioning? Who among us can control the weather? Who among us can control the productivity of simple seeds for food? Who among us can prevent our own heart from just stopping? Of course the answer is that none of us can do any of these things. So when the relationship with God is severed, then the service becomes null, and the hope turns to extreme terror. The crops and the vines failed, therefore there was no food and drink, therefore there was no offering. All relationship with God is stopped. In extreme poverty then a ray of hope sometimes peeks through. But it takes a humble re-beginning and a definite change in attitude. The call now if for fasting. The priests (those closest to God) are to call for a fasting from the people. That should be easy since there is nothing to eat anyway. But this fasting is one of the soul, not an abstinence from the dinner table. Fasting is a separation from something. People can learn the principle by separating themselves from food and drink, but those are just teaching aids. True fasting is the separation of ones self from the worldly ways (ie. living under the power of the sin natures) and committing themselves to the ways of God (residing in fellowship). Gods command now is to abstain from food and drink (totally), and then to call on the name of the Lord. What does that mean? Skip breakfast and call God on the phone? No, we abstain from the worldly life (life while out of fellowship) and we place ourselves back in fellowship (that requires confession to God the Father in order to re-attain fellowship) and then once inside fellowship, we pray, and we pray, and we get back into a daily cycle and habit of Bible study, and we keep on keeping ourselves inside of fellowship and we keep on studying and we begin to grow. Then, God will re-establish the flow of blessings through His pipeline of grace, for that is the only thing which keeps us on this earth. If everyone responds then the blessings will be phenomenal. Now for our individual lives. We are believers in Christ. When we look out at the world and see the tremendous growth in anti-God sentiment, the tremendous growth in liberal thinking, the tremendous growth in indifference toward God, then we as positive believers are closest to God (negative believers and unbelievers are further away from God on the spiritual ladder), then we have reason to be concerned. The priests were to mourn because of the state of the nation, the spiritual state of the nation. So too, we need to be concerned because disaster in on the horizon unless attendance to the spiritual health of the nation is corrected. We are closer, and thus should be able to read the signs of the times. We understand that negative attitudes breeds trouble and disaster. Therefore all the more reason to reach out to teach others to change their ways. This doesn't mean that you do the teaching, but you can support the teaching and the spread of Gods Word in some way. Certainly if you have children you should teach them. But you need to learn yourself first, before you can teach others. If there is a failure in the nation, then there will be poverty. Who among us wants to live in deep poverty? Really deep poverty. Of course none of us want that. So, we now understand the course of history. All things depend on the nations collective attitude toward Christ, and toward His word. Salvation first, spiritual growth next. Both are required in order to have a healthy and complete life. Lacking either or both, then the nation will suffer, prosperity will cease, poverty will abound and there won't be anything for offerings and gifts. Greed bears no fruit, and so God removes all productiveness from the life. We have been studying the Tribulation. And with this same lesson, we now should understand that once the Rapture occurs, when all believers vanish from the face of the earth, then only unbelievers exist alive on earth. Disaster begins to set in quickly. Now these are all people, those that remain (billions of them) who have resisted Christ. Two witnesses will come along with a very remarkable ministry. Some will believe, but the greater masses will continue to resist Christ. By the way, I just placed a new poster on the web, in our Country Store, which pictures what we are studying. You can visit the store and glance at the poster. Anyway, problems will abound, and people will remain stubborn in their defiance. God will intensify the disasters, and continue to intensify them, yet people in large numbers will still reject Him. Now everything is going wrong in the world. People are dying all around and you would think that most would fall down on their knees and beg God for forgiveness and for relief. But that is not to be. Things just keep getting worse until Armageddon and then Christ has to return to stop it all, and save the small remaining remnant of believers. In the future human history will have a dramatic conclusion. In our current day, there have been some pretty remarkable changes since World War II. But what is really important to each of us is our personal lives. We should all want that overflowing cup of blessing (which comes from God) and have a great life, as opposed to an empty cup and a life of misery. Only one things stands in between those two outcomes in your life - your attitude toward God, your daily study, and your obedience to His Word. These all comprise your spiritual function. As goes your spiritual life, so goes your life. End of lesson. Study to show thyself approved (mature) unto God, a workman that needs not to be ashamed, rightly dividing (studying/discerning), the Word of truth.

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