Year 6, Day 213: Joel 1

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Identity

• Identity: Our true identity comes from the Father.  Only when our identity comes from God can we be obedient in ways that satisfy our person to our core.

Joel 1 casts us into a highly symbolic and allegorical world.  That isn’t to say that Joel isn’t writing about very real and historical events.  However, those events cast he shadows of symbolism into our life.

Joel talks about the case of the people.  Hordes of locusts have come among the land.  They’ve stripped the land bare.  When farmers dig into the earth, they find that they are discovering that the seeds that they planted haven’t germinated and instead it has shriveled.  Because of the lack of seed production and the incoming locust plague, there is no harvest.  Since there is no harvest, the storehouses and granaries are empty.  There is no hope.  All is lost.  The people are with harvest: food and wine alike.

That’s the very real circumstance in which Joel finds his people.  However, there is an incredible spiritual analogy.  Let’s trace this backwards.  There is no harvest because the seeds don’t germinate.  In other words, when the seed – that is, faith – does not germinate it cannot produce a harvest.  When the faith that God plants within us is not allowed to germinate, it does not grow and produce any sort of harvest whatsoever!  God can plant faith into each of us, and He does!  But if we give that seed of faith no room to grow and change who we are, we should not expect a harvest within or without!

We can do this same line of thinking with the locust plague.  Why did the locusts come?  The people were faithless.  The people had turned against God, so god removed His hand of protection against them.  Without God’s hand to protect them, the land was free for the taking by the locusts.

In the end, the problem for Joel really does come down to the issue of faithlessness.  For me, this is an issue of identity.  When we are faithless, it is because our identity is rooted in ourselves and our own desires.  When we turn away from God and get our identity from ourselves, we can expect problems internal to ourselves (the seed won’t germinate to make a harvest) as well as external (the locusts come and devour what good was there).

However, when our identity is rooted in God and His will for our life, we can be faithful.  When we are faithful, we will live under His protection and provision.  When we are faithful we can expect a harvest within and outside of ourselves.

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