Levi Lusko - Scared to Life

If you have a Bible, we’re going to be in Joel chapter 2. We’re in a series of messages, a collection that we began last week called «It’s Going to Be All Right.» I don’t say that flippantly; I don’t say that glibly; I don’t say that like a fortune cookie. I say it as if I could sit down with you, spend a moment, and hear what you’re going through and how hard life is for you right now, especially those of you who have been plunged into loss unexpectedly, without advance notification, which is often how it works. Trials seldom call ahead, and if you’re in one of those seasons right now, and I could sit down with you, I would want to say that to you. I would want to say it to you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. I would want to say to you, «It’s going to be all right.»

By that, I wouldn’t mean it’s going to be easy; I wouldn’t mean it’s not going to be messy; and I wouldn’t mean it’s not going to be difficult-there’s not going to be sleepless nights involved. But I would want to steady you with what the Holy Spirit has steadied me with, like rebar and concrete. I’m talking slab-on- grade that can withstand storms and wind and raging seas, and I would want to say to you, like an anchor for the soul, «It’s going to be all right.» And that’s what we’re discovering in these messages.

The title of this one is «Scared to Life.» Our alarm system freaked out this week. It’s the worst possible night for it to happen; Jenny had a 5 a.m. flight the next morning because the devil is a liar, and sometimes Delta Airlines cooperates. So, of course, you know we’re doing the mental math-it’s like, «Ah gosh, I’ve got to be up at 3:30.» When it’s me doing that, I’m like, «Doesn’t matter what’s going on; I’m going to sleep.» Jenny’s trying to make sure everybody’s sorted and settled, and so we finally all wind down, and literally, we have this sweet little moment — a family Bible study.

We always have some touchpoint around the awareness of the fact that we’re about to be separated, right? Mom’s going to be gone, and we’re always thinking about, okay, so there are times when I’ll be in one place and Jess in another, and the kids are here. Then we’ll say, «Hey,» and «What’s with Jesus?» So we’re all disconnected right now, but our plan for reuniting is ultimately heaven. We always have this light touch on our plan to come back together, of course, but we’re aware of life happening and not wanting to miss one of those moments of goodbye without it turning somber, while also being real.

So we’re having one of those moments, and literally, it’s beautiful, and right then the alarm system just starts blaring: «Trial! Trial! You’re all going to die!» It was just so scary. I was like, «What’s next happening?» It wasn’t the fire alarm-that’s happened before, right? You’ve got to change those batteries out. It was like the «Someone’s breaking into our house» alarm, which is much worse, much scarier. We had to make sure every door is shut, every window’s shut, look on the app-like something’s malfunctioning in the system, because everything’s working as it should, but it is telling us, «Intruder alert! Intruder alert!»

I cannot get this thing to stop. I successfully got it to tell the company not to send the SWAT team, but I couldn’t get the thing to stop screaming at me, right? We’re all confused and in our pajamas, and I finally figure out it’s this one box, so I just unplug every cable from it, every cord from it, and it’s unplugged, but still screaming! Now I think it has a demon. I’ve got to cast a demon out of it, but I got a screwdriver instead because there was obviously a battery in there somewhere. You had to take out these different screws to get the battery out, right? Finally, I get this battery out, and it is finally quiet. We can go to bed.

Then I thought, «The first thing tomorrow morning, I’ll get this thing activated again because I’ve got to have an alarm system on the house.» As I fell asleep, my thoughts drifted to how grateful I am that it was a false positive, not a false negative. How much better to have the box telling me there was danger when there was none than an alarm that never goes off when there is a serious incident, right? We know what that looks like in this country because of Pearl Harbor.

Think about the fact that we got no advance notification. Our naval base in Oahu had air raid sirens- they just never sounded-not once when the Japanese Imperial Navy came across to dive bomb and try to take out our entire Pacific Fleet. By God’s grace, none of our aircraft carriers were at Pearl Harbor when that happened, and yeah, they dinged us — eight battleships were either damaged or destroyed-but it could have been much, much worse as we really relied on the aircraft carriers for the coming war that followed.

To think of the serenity of that Sunday morning when everyone was either sleeping in or getting ready to go to church or whatever they were doing, when all of a sudden you have explosions. Here’s a photo we have of a battleship going up in flames, and just this peaceful Hawaiian beautiful morning, all of a sudden plunged into chaos. But an alarm never sounded; there was never any siren that went off, there was never any intruder alert, and all of a sudden, bang! We were at war and we never even saw it coming.

Bring that exact emotional tone with you to Joel chapter 2, because notice you’ll see in the first verse that exact idea: «Blow the trumpet in Zion and sound, say it with me, an alarm in my holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for underline it if you would: the day of the Lord is coming, for it is at hand-a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness, like the morning clouds spread over the mountains. A people come, great and strong, the like of whom has never been, nor will there ever be any such after them, even for many successive generations. A fire devours before them, and behind them a flame burns. The land is like…» Here we go, the Garden of Eden.

I always tell my kids to pay attention during our Bible study to any callback or reference to a previous part of scripture. What does that make me think of? What is he referencing here? What scripture is on the author’s mind here? Okay, so that one is pretty charged, going all the way back to the very beginning, right? Agreed. And behind them, it’s a desolate wilderness; surely nothing shall escape them. Their appearance is like the appearance of horses and like swift steeds, so they run with a noise like chariots over mountaintops; they leap like the noise of a flaming fire that devours the stubble, like a strong people set in battle array. Before them, the people writhe in pain, all faces drained of color. They run like mighty men; they climb the walls like men of war.

Everyone marches in formation; they do not break ranks; they do not push one another. Everyone marches in his own column. Incredibly organized, well-led, obviously, is what he’s saying, though they lunge between the weapons; they’re not cut down. They run to and from the city; they run on the wall; they climb into the houses. This is invasion at its finest, correct? And then he describes it with this phrase: they enter the windows like a thief. Interesting; we’ll come back to that. The earth quakes before them; the heavens tremble; the sun and the moon grow dark, and the stars diminish their brightness. The Lord gives voice before his army, for his camp is very great, for strong is the one who executes his word; for the day of the Lord-there’s that phrase again-is great and very terrible. Who can endure it?

And if you’re feeling incredibly depressed now, thinking to yourself, «Please stop; it can’t go on anymore; I can’t take it,» good news! Verse 12: «Now therefore,» says the Lord, «turn to me with all your heart.» I like how Eugene Peterson renders that phrase. He says, «But there’s also this: it’s not too late.» Yes, that’s bad, but your attention please! It’s time to return to the Lord. But you’ve got to turn with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning. So rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness — not just kindness, mega kindness, not just kindness, but super-sized awesome sauce; it’s great kindness. And he relents from doing harm. And who knows? Who knows if he will relent and turn and leave a blessing behind him: a grain offering and a drink offering for the Lord your God?

Blow the trumpet in Zion-there’s that repetition: we begin and end with a trumpet. Do you see? Blow the trumpet again, but this one’s not in alarm; this is for those who have heeded the alarm. When this trumpet blows, consecrate a fast, call a sacred assembly, gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children, even nursing babies. He’s saying, «Old ladies, little babies, get everybody out here! Get everybody out here! Let the bridegroom go out from his chamber and the bride from her dressing room. Let the priests who minister to the Lord weep between the porch and the altar; let them say, „Spare your people, O Lord, and do not give your heritage to reproach, that the nations should rule over them.“ Why should they say among the peoples, „Where is their God?“

It was 5:12 a.m. on April 18th, the year was 1906, and in the stillness and quiet of that early morning in San Francisco, California, the worst natural disaster to ever take place in North America shook the ground beneath the city. The Great San Francisco earthquake opened up fissures in the streets, literally shaking the ground. I had a landlord at one point who had lived through the San Francisco earthquake, and I asked him how it was. He said, „It was like the end of the world.“

To be shaken from your sleeping bed, thrown to the floor, houses demolished, tenements- there were people from all over the world that had come to San Francisco, to the West Coast, seeking the promise of wealth, the Gold Rush, all of that. You had people from all over the world, different sorts of conditions of living, and all of a sudden just chaos. You have the San Andreas fault right below the city, and of course, the brunt of it was borne by San Francisco, but that was by no means the extent of it. For 200 miles ringing out from San Francisco along this fault line, the Earth’s crust slipped by as much as 21 feet.

Think about it. They estimate that it was over a thousand times more powerful than the nuclear bomb that was dropped at Hiroshima. Approximately 12 million tons of dynamite would be required to come up with the same amount of explosive force as this single earthquake that rocked the city. You have all of the normal fear and „Are my loved ones okay?“ which took place: 3,000 died in total. Isn’t it crazy? I mean, honestly, in church, who had no idea this was a thing-that this bad of an earthquake took place? You guys are the educated ones. Last service, half the room raised their hands! You all are very well-read and well — studied; you were totally aware 3,000 people died in an earthquake in San Francisco in 1906 because that’s why you’re here at the 11 and not the 9: you were brushing up on your history early this morning.

I was not aware of this at one point. I stumbled upon this. I did some ministry in San Francisco this week, and I was amazed because I was looking at a big plaque at the Golden Gate Bridge that talked about how it was built to withstand earthquakes. I sat there looking at how overbuilt it was, that the Golden Gate Bridge could literally be shaken to and fro, and it would still stay standing, right? At least that’s what the engineers say. You can send letters to them if in the event that it doesn’t.

So I began brushing up on it and just realizing how devastating this was. But the amazing thing to me is that it wasn’t the earthquake that caused the most damage; it was the fires that followed. The earthquake snapped all the gas lines, so you have just gas venting, and then it’s a tinderbox for any match that’s lit. One of the most damaging of the hundred fires that broke out in the city in the coming two days was called the „ham and eggs fire,“ because after the earthquake, a family didn’t know their chimney didn’t line up right anymore. This fire eventually went backward and had no way to escape the heat, and the house went up. It just took the house next to it, and then the house next to it, and the house next to it. By the end of the two days following the earthquake, 30,000 buildings had been destroyed, either by the shaking of the Earth or by the fires that followed.

When you look at the skyline of San Francisco from afar in the immediate days after the earthquake, it was pretty much leveled to the ground. We have a photo taken from afar that gives you a sense of this. If we could just zoom in on one building, like City Hall, you can see City Hall before the fire and then see it after the fact. It looked like this all throughout the city. And of course, in addition to the 3,000 people losing their lives, you have over 250,000 people who were instantly homeless because they no longer had any place to live. There was no way to communicate with the outside world; telegram lines in and out of the city were snapped, and it was absolute chaos-just chaos: „Where do I get food? Am I alive? What’s going on? Who’s in charge?“

And so looting began to happen. The mayor basically put martial law into effect, saying anyone caught looting can be shot on the spot. He thought that would deter it, and then they brought in all these special soldiers whose job was to stop the looting. Most accounts, as you look into this, say that the majority of the looting was done by the soldiers brought in to stop the looting, by the way. It’s a whole different talk. But basically, it was absolute hell on Earth. You get a sense for that when you look at some of the newspaper headlines from that period. I have a couple that I pulled: „People burned alive: St. Francis Hotel destroyed.“ And another: „An awful furnace of seething flames.“ That could be the subtitle of Joel chapter 2, right?

Then you have this one: „Dogs are eating the dead bodies“ as Oakland was finding out what was going on in San Francisco. Well, we’re glad to have you at church. Thanks for being here today! What is going on? All right, let me first give you my outline. As we move through this text, we’re going to see and understand that there’s first revelation, and then there’s a need for reprioritization, and then finally we can find great hope in our hard times if we will practice the art of recognition.

Okay, so if you write down those three headings, we’re going to move our way through and put our content and our comments into that outline. For each of those, there will be a phrase that will help us understand what we’re to do in all of that. But if you are like me and you’re reading Joel chapter 2, think to yourself, „What exactly is he talking about?“ Right? Did that cross anybody’s mind as you were reading that chapter? No? Just nobody? Man, I hate preaching to people like this, right? It’s all fake people live! No one wants to raise their hand; they all fully understand Joel chapter 2! Should I give the microwave? Are you ready to come? Okay, yeah, clearly.

Here’s the deal: when we read Joel chapter 2, I am highly confused through most of it, and I’ve spent maybe 50 hours this week doing nothing but trying to make sense of Joel chapter 2! Okay? So if you read this and you’re like, „I completely understand all of that,“ we need you to leave because we can’t have you and your holiness infecting all of us sinners, okay? So run for the door, lest you get defiled!

Okay, so here’s the deal: Joel chapter 2 is incredibly confusing, because if you were here last week, I thought we were talking about a locust invasion, right? Well then what’s the deal with all the horses? And then just when we get used to the fact that, wait, this isn’t locusts; it’s horses with soldiers who are invading a city, then immediately we’re like, „Yeah, but God’s in charge, and he’s the one bringing an attack against the world,“ right? So if you are confused a little bit when you read this, you’re in good company, and know you’re not crazy. All right?

This is why we need help with revelation. Okay, revelation, revelation, revelation means insight. You know that great line from The Princess Bride, „That word does not mean what you think it means“? Like, the guy just keeps saying „inconceivable“ inappropriately, right? Revelation-when you hear the word „revelation,“ you’re like, „Oh no, oh no!“

Listen, listen, listen-that word doesn’t mean what you think it means! Right? You think revelation just means a bunch of confusing stuff that you don’t understand, right? The truth is, the word revelation means insight. So what the word means is the exact opposite of what you associate it with. If you turn to the last book of the Bible, you’re going to find the revelation of Jesus Christ. Everything that follows isn’t there to obscure, isn’t there to scare you, isn’t there to haunt your dreams, isn’t there to make you confused-it’s there to help you see Jesus!

So as you read the book, you’re just trying to get a glimpse of who Jesus is, and knowing that helps you because then you understand your goal, and you don’t ever bury the lead; you don’t miss the forest for the trees. So what is revelation singular about? It’s about us seeing who Jesus is-not Sunday school Jesus, not stained glass Jesus, not that deacon who used to yell at kids for running in the sanctuary but was beating his wife, right?

That scarred you out of thinking religion has anything for anybody from your childhood. I’m talking about Jesus Christ, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who’s going to return in power and glory and will reign forever. His name is salvation, life, light, and power, and he stands as King forever right now, now enthroned in glory, able to save, mighty to reign- Jesus who died, took his life back, and with his nail-scarred hands, offers that life to you and me! That’s what the Book of Revelation is about, and in Joel, we’re in need of revelation as well.

It’s only through difficulty that Joel received it. What am I trying to say? I’m trying to say last week, when I told you all about these locusts that came in and ate all the crops-there were so many of them they blocked out the sun. They ate the garden; they ate everything, and only a drought could take the locusts out! Throughout this series, the locusts represent grief. They’re a good representation for grief because grief is debilitating. It feels like it steals your oxygen when you’re grieving. It causes colors to lose their brightness and makes you feel off-kilter, like you’ll never be able to get your bearings back again.

Grief is confusing and disorienting; it affects your mood, your body, your ability to function and keep going. Like the locusts, there are different kinds of grief. You know this-the grief of this friend, the grief of that loss, the grief of having your innocence taken from you, the grief of losing your mobility, now you’re in a wheelchair. There’s grief, and it’s personal and unique, and just like there are thousands of different kinds of locusts- I mean, he names four of them: swarming, chewing, crawling, consuming-right? So I’m going to face grief, and it’s going to look differently in my life than in your life, even if we’re grieving the same loss.

Do you see that? We could be grieving the same person, but my relationship with them was unique to yours, and so my grief process is not going to be quite like yours. We have to give each other patience as we move and maneuver through the stages of grief. Joel, who wrote this whole book, had to endure it to be writing about it. Do you understand that means he lost things? He lost loved ones; he lost his livelihood. And then when the drought came in and wiped the locusts out-because the only cure for locusts, apparently, is drought-he would have had to deal with the difficulty of life without water and fires that showed up on the heels of the drought. But amazingly, he obviously didn’t turn away from God and go, „Oh, God’s not good; why would he let this happen?“ He turned to God, and as a result, we got the Book of Joel. You see what I’m saying? God gave revelation to Joel in the midst of crisis when he turned his eyes to God in the midst of the ground shaking under his feet, like the city of San Francisco in 1906.

In point of fact, the Book of Revelation came to us through John, who had third-degree burns over his entire body because he was boiled in hot oil, but God kept him alive miraculously. So he was banished to a penal colony, like Alcatraz, on an island called Patmos. And what happened there? It was Sunday; he’s like, „Wait a minute! I’m here on Friday; it’s been two days; oh, I need to worship Jesus!“ Can you imagine? He’s in a prison cell with pain head to toe, but he says, „I’m going to choose to get myself in the spirit on the Lord’s day; I’m worshiping Jesus.“ Right? You can keep him from church, but you can’t keep him from being church. He’s with God’s people as he glorifies Jesus, the resurrected King. And what does God give him? A greater vision or understanding of who Jesus is. He got revelation because in his suffering he chose to turn to God, not away from him. That’s what God wants for you as well.

The right question to ask in pain isn’t the tempting one, „Why? Why? Why?“ but in fact, I dare say it’s, „What? What are you trying to say to me through this?“ So hear me loud and clear: your current crisis can unlock rich spiritual understanding. Your current crisis-jot it down-that’s the takeaway truth from revelation. Your current crisis can unlock rich spiritual understanding, which is why if I could get a one-on-one with you, I would tell you, in your crisis, make sure you’re taking inventory of everything God’s teaching you.

Because down the road, you’ll take it for granted that we know it, we won’t know it, but God’s going to speak unique things to you. He’s going to impart to you; you’re going to see Jesus in a unique way, and we badly need and are going to need what you’re going to get in our future trial. That’s how the whole Corinthians text says we shall be comforted in any difficulty, so that we may give that comfort out to those who are going through other difficult things. The God of all comfort, when your life’s on fire or you’re getting chomped at by your consuming locusts or your chewing locusts or your swarming locusts or your crawling locusts, right? And you’re in the stages of grief, and then you have a good day, but then you feel bad, don’t you? Because if I really loved him, I wouldn’t be having a good day.

Now, you’re not having a good day anymore, are you? This locust got me, and all of a sudden, I’m plunged back into it, and I’m dizzy again. A couple of years go by, and I think I’m through all of it; I’ve done all my healing. Then, out of nowhere, sucker locust just jumps up and sucker punches me in the jaw! What the heck? Time delay, back at F! I feel like I took ten steps forward, but now it’s 20 steps back!

That’s how grief is, you know? Locusts lay eggs that can be almost forgotten and be dormant for a while. We’re hearing all this crap about this cicadas and all that stuff, right? We know they’re weird how they choose to come out and don’t come out, and locusts are like that, by the way. The Italian word for the locust family is „cavaletti,“ which also speaks of the horse family. So there is a connection to horses and locusts, which kind of leads me to the next point, and that is that Joel saw the locusts, but he also saw through the locusts. He saw through the locusts to what they represented, to what they meant for the nation of Israel. Because the nation of Israel wasn’t just facing an actual crisis, but a far more difficult thing was on the horizon. If they could even look past that, there was something way more important they needed to comprehend-that God was speaking to them through both of those phases.

What am I trying to say? Really important-make sure you get this: whenever we look at prophecy anywhere in the Bible-this is Daniel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Revelation, any book that’s prophetic-we always need to keep this in mind: there’s always an immediate, an imminent, and an ultimate aspect to it. There’s always an immediate, an imminent, and an ultimate aspect to it.

So whenever you feel that confusion of „What am I reading? Why does it not make any sense? Is it locust? Is it horses? Is it Jesus returning?“ the answer actually would be yes because it has an immediate, an imminent, and an ultimate component. So the immediate problem was, „Oh hi, grieving here! Locust ate my house! That sucks, bro. That sounds terrible. Yeah, then a fire came, and oh man, that’s terrible!“ Okay, but notice it also gives me a chance to talk about, hey, this is also on the horizon; difficult days are coming. Now, that was referring to an enemy invading-an army that the locusts were only a picture of.

Of course, that was fulfilled a number of different times; we can’t pinpoint conclusively which one he was talking about because Israel was-and has been-invaded so many times. I mean, think about the events that are commemorated every year at Hanukkah and Judas Maccabeus and the Maccabean revolt and Antiochus Epiphanes and the abomination of desolation-him storming into Israel after invading and putting a pig to death on the altar in the holy of holies, the most unclean animal. He declared himself to be God; this is one of the successors of eventually Alexander the Great.

So you have invasion and abomination happening; that could be what is on the mind of the prophet here. But flashing forward to even 40 years after Jesus Christ ascended to Heaven, what do you have? You have the Roman sacking of Jerusalem, which Jesus predicted, and he said it would not have happened had the Jewish people accepted him as their Messiah. If they had accepted him, John the Baptist would have been the Elijah figure to come, fulfilling that prophecy that Malachi says: „Before the great and terrible day of the Lord, Elijah will come.“

But because the nation, by and large, rejected Jesus and crucified their Messiah, he said, „Now Elijah has not yet come; he doesn’t fulfill that prophecy,“ and that’s pushed off into the future. There would be difficult days, and what did Jesus prophesy? That the whole temple would be torn down-not one stone left standing upon another-prophecy fulfilled! Look into it! Look into what happened in 70 A.D. with Josephus and Titus and the Romans coming in because the Jews wanted to keep their own autonomy, keep their own nation. They eventually barricaded themselves in the city, and Titus-they besieged. They brought their catapults; they brought their battering rams in, and eventually, they wanted to get the gold. They literally tore stone from stone, not leaving one stone upon another to get all the gold that was in the temple compound, fulfilled exactly as Jesus said it! It sounds a lot to me like what Joel’s describing-you have soldiers marching in formation-the Roman phalanxes, the way they would hold their shields. Haven’t you not watched Gladiator recently? If not, I question your judgment!

You have a fulfillment literally — this army under Caesar marched like locusts in formation. So you have not just the immediate but the imminent fulfillment, which is why when the women were crying for Jesus as he carried the cross on the way to Calvary, he said, „Don’t weep for me; weep for your kids because they’re going to be alive dealing with all of this in Israel.“ But lest we let ourselves off the hook seeing all of Joel chapter 2 as passed, oh, that’s interesting, oh, and those dumb Jews, they didn’t listen, right? Or whatever we might think to ourselves, „Had I been there, I would have embraced Jesus for sure!“ This is the same sort of mentality that says, „It’s all Adam and Eve’s fault because if I’d been one in the garden, I never would have eaten that fruit. Fool! You would have probably eaten it sooner!“

Okay, the third aspect of prophetic literature is that it is still ultimately going to be fulfilled by an event that Jesus said would be like a thief in the night. And the alarm system, which any thieves listening, is back up and running, will not sound an air raid siren. Jesus said it’ll be „peace and safety, peace and safety,“ until the coming of the Son of Man comes. He said it’ll be like it was in the days of Noah-people getting drunk and getting married and giving in marriage; they’ll be laughing and saying how stupid this boat was until it starts to rain. There will be a great sense of our progress as a civilization, and we evolved past all that. So shall the coming of the Son of Man be! There will be two lying in bed; one will be taken, one will be left. Think about that-maybe the spouse always trying to get their husband or wife to come to church, to read the Bible, to trust Jesus, and then one day, when it’s too late, they’ll realize the truth they knew with their head but didn’t accept with their heart.

Two men working in the field; one taken, one left. So shall the coming of the Son of Man be! So Jesus will come; ultimately, that’s what Joel’s pointing towards-the day of the Lord, a phrase used 26 times in the New Testament, five of them by Joel, five of them by Joel! We have great insight- I would say revelation- that’s been unlocked for us that he received by leaning into God in a period of tremendous difficulty, and so it always is! I’m not saying you’re going to write us a new prophetic book of the Bible, but what I am saying is that when you’re on fire, when you’re grieving, if you will lean into God, God will open up for you and give you beautiful gifts because he is always near to those with a broken heart, and the secret of the Lord is given to those who fear him and choose to honor him, even when everything in the world is screaming for you to deny him.

So thank you, Joel, for going through what you did, loving God and being so generous to share with us what we need to know about Jesus' return and how to live in light of it. For as Peter put it (and this is 2 Peter chapter 3), „The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat. Both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up. Therefore, church, since all these things will be dissolved, what manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness? You should be looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, which because of which the heavens will be dissolved, being on fire, and the elements will melt with fervent heat.“

All right, so what is needed then? Peter’s kind of alluding to it -it’s a reprioritization, okay? A reprioritization. That’s where you go back to your list and you go, „Hold on a second; I have some things in the wrong order because there’s a more important thing that didn’t get the right spot.“ What are we trying to say in reprioritization? Jot this down: „Until God is first in your soul, nothing else in your life is safe.“ Until God is first in your soul, nothing else in your life is safe.

Now, the children of Israel at the time of the writing of the Book of Joel-we know from other literature from that same period, the Second Temple period, the time when Nehemiah was trying to build the wall and Zerubbabel was trying to rebuild the temple- during this period of time, we can read Malachi; we can read Haggai; we can read Zechariah. We can piece together the fact that they were neglecting the Sabbath, working seven days a week instead of six, trying to get ahead-prioritizing money over honoring God. We also know from Malachi that they were being really lax on their marriage vows; as soon as the „I feel like I love you“ kind of wore off, it was easy and tempting to stop loving well. „I just fell out of love; I don’t feel it anymore.“ When the truth is, love is never meant to be an emotion or a feeling but a verb. Love’s a choice you make!

„Husbands, love your wives,“ Paul doesn’t say „husbands, feel like loving your wives.“ In fact, when you don’t feel it or you feel it the least, that’s when it’s the most important to choose to do it! What if we only worshiped God when we felt like it? Worshiping God is not an emotion expressed through an action; it’s an act of obedience we often have to do in faith that often develops feelings on the back end. But the Bible spends very little time — read it-the Bible spends very little time worrying about or wondering how you feel. We’re at a disadvantage in our feelings-obsessed era where everything is, „If I don’t feel it, I don’t do it; that wouldn’t be real. That’s not my truth!“ Right? Listen, if you don’t feel like worshiping God, worship him anyway! And when I don’t feel like loving my wife, listen, I can love her anyway, and God will often bless me with feelings on the back end I didn’t expect.

A big ratty response to that, right? For some of you, the reason you are so stunted in your spiritual progress is because you won’t do anything unless you feel it. So newsflash: you’ll never do it because we’re never going to feel like being generous, which, by the way, they weren’t doing then either. Malachi says they weren’t even tithing, much less giving generous offerings! So God says, „I’ve got a full Heaven of blessing I want to pour on your house, but all your windows are shut.“ Haggai says, „You’re all building your own houses, buying new houses on Zillow. What about my house? What about advancing my kingdom? All these things you’re building are all going to be destroyed when the world gets destroyed! My kingdom has no end.“

We know from other literature what was going on here, and Joel is telling them part of why God allowed this is to get your attention and wake you up to the truth of eternity and how much you’re obsessed with only this life. You have no plan for eternal life. You’ve bought -you’ve invested in gold; you’ve invested in dirt and land. Oh wow! Big strong man-listen, there’s forever, and you have nothing invested that’s going to actually bring you a return on investment there! For everything we give to God, everything we do for God’s kingdom, it will be rewarded a hundredfold in eternal life, pressed down, shaken together- good measure! All of these things shall be added to you. We have the wisdom or the folly of living now for this life or the next one, and so what he’s saying is you need to reprioritize some things because obviously, we have an idol, an idol that’s crept into God’s place in your life.

Have you ever had someone in your seat when you get on an airplane? Someone’s sitting in the seat that’s assigned to you? Such an awkward thing! None of us want to be that guy like, „Excuse me?“ Some of you do, and that’s a different problem; like, you’re like, „This is my day! I’ve been waiting for this,“ right? You love confrontation! Right? So we had to do it yesterday. We had booked a tennis court; we were going to play tennis, and someone was on the court. I confirmed like three times; it was ours because the worst would be like, „You’re wrong,“ and you confront them, right? So I call the front desk: „Which one do we have? How long do we have?“ Okay, so we tell the guy, and he kind of stands his ground. „Oh no, no, it’s ours. Must be double booked.“ I’m sure the system double booked this court; I’m sure she’s wrong when I just called her.

I was so happy because it said racquetball court. I was like, „Oh, here’s what happened, sir: you booked a racquetball court; it’s right over there! Please, have at it!“ But it’s so awkward! Idolatry is the awkwardness of you letting someone else sit in Jesus’s seat in your life! What’s the first commandment? You shall have no other gods before me! Prioritization- the next nine are really, if you think about it, just ways to break the first one over and over again! Why would you break your marriage vows? Because you prioritize sex above God. Power above God. Your ego, your identity, your flex. You’re-you’re-if something’s more important than God, why would you break the Sabbath? Because you put money ahead of God, or your kids' comfort, control over the future ahead of God, right? Why would we do any of the subse-why would you kill someone? Right? Any of the things you would do are just different ways of breaking the first commandment.

So in truth, what Joel’s trying to say when he goes, „Hey, hey, come on, it’s not too late! Turn back to God! Turn around! Come on, turn around!“ What he’s saying is, „Get the thing that’s in Jesus’s seat in your heart off the throne! Get the idol out of your-“ which is easier said than done. Why? Because our heart craves Eden! Why does he reference the Garden of Eden?

All week long, I just kept saying, „That’s interesting,“ because it’s on behalf of the people. They’re saying, „Before those locusts came we were living in the Garden of Eden.“ Oh, no you weren’t! We were cut off from Eden in Genesis 3! I mean, if you want to be like specific about it, there was a flaming sword in Genesis 3:24. So God drove out man and placed cherubim at the east of the Garden of Eden. So we went out on the east side of Eden, okay? And a flaming sword, which turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. We had access to Eden, got to walk with God in the garden in the cool of the day, got to experience his glory and not be melted by it, got to work, and enjoy the beauty of rest-all of that was there!

We haven’t had access to Eden since Genesis 3! But the heart of man so longs for what we had that was cut off that we will make anything we can that’s perfect in our eyes into a counterfeit Eden. Lot did it! Remember Abraham and Lot? Abraham’s the one of faith; Lot’s his nephew who only cares about money and getting ahead. Lot just cares about Lot, and they were getting into arguments because there wasn’t enough land for both of them to graze their cattle.

So Abraham came up with a magnanimous solution. He said, „Man, just you pick; you go anywhere you want, and wherever you go, I’ll go somewhere else other than that.“ What did Lot do? Lot picked Sodom and Gomorrah, which was not only the city that was wicked and all this, but it also was well-watered. When he looked at it-Genesis 13:10–he lifted his eyes and saw the plain of Jordan, that it was well-watered everywhere before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. So it was great, right up until the end! He says, „Like the garden of the Lord!“ He thought, „If I could just get that land, I’ll be back in Eden.“

„I’ll have that final piece that’s missing from my life.“ It’s a false Garden of the Lord! It’s-it’s a counterfeit garden! And that’s what they had clearly done. That’s why they neglected God’s house to build their own. That’s why they were dropping their spouse for a younger, newer, fitter model. That’s why they were working on the Sabbath instead of worshiping God because they had something in their heart that if they could get it, they’d be back in the garden. They just know they would be!

And so God allowed that to be torched-to show it was a false garden! We started talking about San Francisco, 1906, fire, earthquake, the whole deal. What’s fascinating to me also is that Teddy Roosevelt, while President, visited San Fran in 1903. Fifty thousand school children lined the streets to cheer him on and see a sitting president! It was the first time that I’m aware of a sitting president going that far west. He was excited about it; he went with John Muir to see some of the redwoods, and he camped and ditched his secret service.

Roosevelt, right? But what’s interesting about it? After seeing Santa Barbara, and seeing Santa Cruz, and Mono, and then San Francisco, he was blown away by it. You know what he said? He said, „It’s like the garden of the Lord! It’s the west of the west!“ Because we were driven out east of Eden, and ever since then, we’ve been trying to go west, young man, to get back and recapture that! But what’s also fascinating to me about the city of San Francisco being identified as the garden of the Lord is the fact that when the fire broke out, it was also thought by many that the city was safe from fires because it had burned to the ground five different times in its history!

This last time, when they rebuilt it, they used every modern technology available! Almost every building in the city was sprinkled; there were hydrants everywhere! San Francisco had, at the time of the earthquake and the fire, one of the most famous firefighting forces on the planet, and it was thought it was the safest place you could possibly be! In fact, the night before the fire, there was an opera singer singing at the Palace Hotel who had traveled with 54 steamer trunks. All of his worldly possessions were with him there, and he thought he was completely safe.

No one thought any of these buildings-including City Hall- could ever burn down! So you say to yourself, „Levi, how did the city burn? How did the garden of the Lord turn out to be a false paradise and burn so quickly when it had sprinkler systems and all the buildings and fire hydrants everywhere?“ Oh, they were all great! The problem was when the earthquake happened, it severed every water main going into the city! So the sprinkler systems were there, the fire hydrants were there; they were just bone dry! The city had no water! Jesus said, „My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me-the fountain of living water- and they have built for themselves false paradises, false oases. They have built for themselves false sprinkler systems and fire hydrants to guard their expensive houses they think will satisfy the hole inside their heart.“

You just got to get more square footage; you just got to figure it out! If I could just have that boat, if I could just have the-that many followers, if I could just have this girlfriend, if I could just have front-row seats at Taylor’s next concert, whatever it is you identify, if I just had that, I’d surely be good. He says, „You’ve built for yourself a broken system that can’t hold water!“ Because whatever you would have on this Earth, moths and rust can break in and steal, and thieves can break in and steal. But Jesus said, „Lay up for yourselves treasures in Heaven that can’t be taken away from you.“

So the heart of man craves Eden, and until we’re back in Eden, there will always be the temptation to look to other things and have them be our counterfeit gods! So what do we need to do? We need to turn from our idols and clear the seat-the throne of our heart-for the one who alone is worthy of sitting on it. That’s why he says, „Turn back to God! Turn back to God! Weep and mourn! Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom! Cleanse your hands, you sinners; purify your hearts, you double- minded.“ Then he says, showing how urgent and serious he is, „Go into the bridal chambers! Get the brides out here! Go into the dressing room for the grooms! Get the grooms out here. They need to come be a part of this church service!“ Then he goes, „Get the old people!“ And then he said, „I love this part: gather the children!“

Jesus is speaking a fresh life. He’s telling us, „Gather the children! Come on, we’re going to do it! We’re going to gather the children! We’re going to fight for young people; we’re going to reach, we’re going to be a youthful movement! We’re going to gather the children; everyone needs to know! Everyone needs to know to turn to God, and the church will never be the church if we don’t see the old and the young at the exact same time being called to love and to serve and honor God.“ And so he says, „Get the brides and the grooms!“ You’re like, „That’s just poetic.“ No, no, it’s not poetic! Deuteronomy 24:5, you were given one year after you got married; you had no responsibilities. Do you wish we could go back to that year-long honeymoon? You couldn’t get jury duty; you couldn’t get drafted in war! That’s how seriously they took propagation in the next generation! Take a whole year, right? The mom would say, „We want grandbabies! We have one year-just call us when it’s done!“

He’s saying this is more serious than that! Cancel that year! That year of honeymoon, get in here! Get in here and repent with us! All of us need to hear this! It’s basically the Old Testament equivalent of Jesus, who said, „If anyone loves mother or father, sister or brother, husband or wife, even son or daughter more than me, he is not worthy of me.“ We must come to him singularly as Lord, putting everything as lesser importance in our heart to him! So much so that our love for God would be so much in love and in pure devotion that our love for anyone else would look like hate when compared to him! And for some of you, your idol is not your car; your idol is not your bank account; your idol is your son; it’s your daughter; it’s your spouse. But idolatry doesn’t just hurt you; it damages the object you put in God’s place too! So the greatest thing you can do for that person that’s your idol is to love God more!

So he says, „Reprioritization based on the revelation of the day of the Lord.“ And then lastly, and we will end with what? Recognition! I told you it was coming, so you should have been ready with that. It’s been written down for like five minutes! All right, so recognition! What does that mean? Like, who are you? Like when I was a kid, I got lost in a grocery store, and I found my leg to a pant that looked like my mom’s and looked up-ah! Not my mom! You know? So scary. Properly identifying who you’re dealing with is what recognition is all about. Here’s my last point: the more you understand God’s character, the easier it is to trust him in tragedy. The more you understand God’s character, the easier it is to trust him in tragedy.

So my question to you is, who is God? Who is God? Theology 101: who is God? If you don’t have in your heart that God is number one and God is good, you’re not talking about the same God that I am! You’re not talking about the same God that this book’s talking about because his entire appeal to a people devastated by crisis, whose city had been burnt down to rubble, and he’s saying, „But fortunately, a much worse storm is coming,"-this is like the biblical equivalent of «Cheer up, Wesley; I’ll most likely kill you in the morning!» Right? It’s like, «Oh, you’re so sad about the locust! Well, there are soldiers coming!» But he says, and he has the audacity to say, «Turn to God! Turn to God! I know your life’s on fire. Turn to God!»

Why? He bases and predicates his argument on the same thing that God declared over Moses in Exodus 34: «The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and great in kindness.» God is good! If you’ve got that, you’re going to be fine! If you don’t have that, you will not withstand the suffering you will face in this world with your belief system intact! Crisis will wipe you out! Crisis will take your house down! You’ll walk away and throw your hands up! But if you truly believe that God is, and God is good, that he’s not just great, he’s great in kindness-that’s the one attribute singled out of the list to be amplified- gracious, merciful, slow to anger, willing to relent, but great in kindness.

Let’s not bury the lead! This is a God who, when we were lost, was willing to plunder heaven and send his son to be pierced for us. That’s great in kindness! I don’t know how God is so kind to me-he’s far kinder to me than I am to me! The moment I fail me, I’m like, «Dude, I don’t even know you!» Like, I want to disown myself and walk away, but I’m stuck in the same body with me. But not God; God’s so good! Listen to me, take your greatest failure-he already knew it was going to happen and already currently has a plan to redeem it that you don’t even know about! Can I prove it to you? This whole locust invasion? God predicted it and then told them before it ever happened what to do about it!

You know that famous verse; you’ve heard it before-if my people. We always bring it out every election year, right? «If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and call on me, then I’ll hear from heaven; I’ll heal their land,» right? We love that verse. Did you know it’s about locusts? Oh, you did? You’re the holy 11 o’clock service; you did-you did! I got, I got, I got it! You got 2 Chronicles 7 committed to memory; I had to look it up! It’s fine. The context for that often misquoted, misapplied verse is when I shut up heaven and there is no rain, or I command the locust to devour the land. Do you realize God is taking responsibility for the locust? You don’t even mad at some; they mad at me! I sent them! I both command the locust army; I command the soldiers, and I’m the one, that if you will come to me, I will fix you as well!

So when I shut off the rain, when I send the drought, when I allow the earthquake, when I allow this to happen, and I have a plan to use it for good, and there’s pestilence among my people, «If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and heal their land.» Solomon said those words at the dedication of the temple he built that would be torn down and rebuilt, and in the process of rebuilding it, they would turn from God again. Joel, picking up on the same theme from Solomon from a previous dispensation, would tell him God meant business back then. If you turn to him, he really will heal you because he really is that kind!

I want to close with my favorite romance in history-this one right here: Churchill and FDR. December 7th, 1941-Pearl Harbor. We began here. The next morning, Churchill went to write in his journal about his emotions about the day before. Context- wise, Britain had endured the entire Battle of Britain. Hitler was dropping bombs trying to destroy London; there was a fear of invasion every single day. France had already been wiped out, and it felt like Winston Churchill and his country were like the only thing holding back Hitler from completely wiping the European map.

Churchill knew what America was not willing to admit, and that is that he would have come here next! We would have had swastikas raised up over America today had it not been for Churchill standing in the gap, fighting a very unpopular war against a tyrant. He tried to convince his friend FDR that America needed to-this was their problem. America was like, «La la la la la! We didn’t like World War I! We had a bad experience! We were triggered by the thought of another war!» «So I’m with you, bro! I’ll do anything I can! Give you some ghetto broken old chips and stuff, but I can’t officially help you until the country’s ready and willing.»

Well, guess what? We became ready and willing on December 7th when we realized we were at war and there was evil that needed to be stopped! The next morning, Churchill set pen to paper in his journal and wrote these words, knowing now that America would have to come on board. He says, «No American will think it wrong of me if I proclaim that to have the United States at our side was, to me, the greatest joy; though, of course, he took no pleasure in the circumstances of that joy.» Do you see? «So we had one after all,» was his conclusion, one day after Pearl Harbor! He’s already declaring victory over Hitler. One day he says it’s done; it might as well be done because I got the U.S.A. on our side.

So we had one after all! Yes, after Dunkirk, after the fall of France, after the threat of invasion; we had one! The war-England would live! Britain would live! Once again in our long history, we should emerge however mauled or mutilated, safe and victorious; we should not be wiped out! Our history would not come to an end! And then he shows his math, why he believed that is the case, by saying, «The United States is kind of like a gigantic boiler. Once the fire is lighted under it, there is no limit to the power it can generate.» Being saturated and satiated with emotion and sensation, I went to bed last night and slept the sleep of the saved and thankful.

How could he say that? How could he, after all the stress of the air raid sirens going off again and again and again, and all of the blitzkrieg bombs raining down, and seeing the fury of the Führer- and now to realize Japan was just as much of a problem in the Pacific theater, and — but he’s already declaring, «This sucker’s over!» when he didn’t know anything about Douglas MacArthur and didn’t know how D-Day was going to work yet and didn’t have any clue what Eisenhower was going to plan! And all the many wars; how is he already saying it’s done? Therefore, I can go to sleep! He didn’t know what it was all going to look like, but he knew who was fighting for him!

Once he knew the U.S.A. was involved-hey, England remembered the Revolutionary War! He apparently remembered what happens when America sets her mind to something! So he didn’t know what it was all going to take, but he knew who! Now Uncle Sam had his back, and so he already knew it was a foregone conclusion that the war was won. A tiny illustration of what should be a gigantic theological revelation for you, and that is the fact that the God of angel armies is always at our side! We don’t need to know what he’s doing! We don’t need to know what with the loss; we don’t need to know what with the locust; we don’t need to know what with the cancer; we don’t need to know what with the crime! But we need to know who! If he is for us, who can be against us? George Churchill knew America. He had been to 28 of the 48 states already. He loved and was fascinated, and simultaneously repulsed by America. But he knew if we set our mind to it, it was going to get done!

So, once he knew he was not alone, he could go to sleep and sleep the sleep that you need to sleep tonight-the sleep of the saved and the thankful! The saved and the thankful! Thank you, God! We thank you, and we rest in you. We trust, God, that if we know your character, then we can trust you in tragedy. And so we do that, God! We place once again our allegiance in your kingdom; we say to you, we want you to increase, that we’re willing to decrease. As we’re praying, if some of us would be honest enough to say there are some things in my life that have crept into what should be God’s spot, I am struggling with idolatry today. If that’s you, I’m describing, could I just ask you to raise a hand up saying, «God, I want you to come first; I want you to come first in my life and my soul»? Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Lord. Thank you for the honesty and the vulnerability. God, I’m right there struggling with so many things that are wanting to pretend counterfeit Edens in my heart! And we say we want to make room for you, for you to have our devotion. Thank you, God! Bless everyone at church online responding to this invitation. Thank you, Lord! Thank you, Lord! May you empower them with your spirit to live for you and bless them as they do! You can put your hands down.

I want to now invite some who have heard this and would say, «I want to be scared to life today! I don’t want to be in hell; I want to be in heaven! I don’t want to be outside of God’s plan; I want to be in it! I’m scared to life today-the fear of the Lord is going to prevent me from walking into destruction!» If that’s you, and you would say, «I want to trust Jesus for salvation today!» I want to invite you, and if that’s you I’m describing, I want you to pray this prayer with me. Church, pray it with us! Dear God, thank you for sending Jesus to die in my place and to rise from the dead! I give my life to you! Be my Savior, my King, my Lord, and my friend! In Jesus' name!