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CHAPTER NINE

COGITATION AND CONSEQUENCE

THE CAST OF LIGHT FROM JOEL

CONTEXT IN POINT FOR JOEL 2:23

In the book of Joel, there are many wonderful items. It tosses up imagery, comes down to the concrete with hammer blows, offers hope, foretells the Age Peter foretold in Pentecost, when people of foreign languages gathered for a special ceremonial season, were of many nations, and of course, before that, in the realm of his predictions from the mouth of the Lord, brings in the Messiah.

This passage is, as not unusually with the Commentaries on the Old Testament, of Keil and Delitizsch, treated brilliantly in background. The point of entry is at Joel 2:23, and it is to this we now look, to do justice to this section of the word of God.

BEFORE the outpouring of the Spirit noted in Joel 2:28ff. for the latter days, that is the end of the Age before the Lord's return becomes a vigorous issue, and following massive judgments on Israel, amidst merciful intentions from the Lord (Joel 2:18-21), there is something else. What is this ? It is found also in a vast, last outpouring of judgment, seen in Habakkuk 3:8-13, when the Lord acts with His Messiah in a way fearful in its trepidatious intensity, a signal event. It is the same Messiah found in Joel 2:23 a will be shown below.

Whether it be the Messiah coming to Jerusalem as in Zechariah 14:5, or the Lord coming with vast judgments in Isaiah 66, or Deuteronomy 32, or with redemptive relief as in Isaiah 59:20, reflected in Romans 11:26, in that panoply of latter end pronouncements: there is a barrier to blatancy, a wisdom before woe, which comes now here, now there. Before noon, there is the dawn. Before final calamities, there is the Lord of mercy, the Messiah of grace.

Of course, the exposure, as with light to a camera for different exposures, the focus on the feature of the Messiah comes in different ways. It may be with rigorous intensity, significant extent, and isolated wonder, as in Isaiah 42,49-55, 61, 66, focussing on the salvation of the Lord, which is the obverse of the judgment. It may come in a flash or almost a flick, as in Nahum.

How illuminating in this context, that Christ in reading from Isaiah 61 at the Nazareth synagogue, and stating that it concerned Himself,did NOT cite the segment about judgment,

as we shall see.

The setting there was this:

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,

Because the LORD has anointed Me

To preach good tidings to the poor;

He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,

To set at liberty those who are oppressed,

And recovery of sight to the blind,

To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD ..."

This Christ cites. However, and most notably, He DOES NOT include in His quotation, these words, for it is not at that point, their time!

What words ? These: "and the day of vengeance of our God ..." He omits that part of the grammatical sentence because it was not that part of the dealings of God with man that He, in a mission of spiritual speciality, had come to fulfil. Later, at the end of the Age, yes; then, now! You don't normally deal with funeral arrangements at the outset of a medical operation. There is a time for things. This was the day of mercy, open and magnificent; and though the results were foreknown, the initiative reflected the open and all-encompassing love of God for mankind as in Titus 2-3, I Timothy 4:10, Colossians 1:19ff..

What then ? As in John 3:17, Christ did NOT come "to judge the world but that the world might be saved." HENCE the part relevant to THAT coming in incarnation for salvation is cited, but that relevant to His second coming, in judgment, is not THERE cited. He kept it to the relevant and remedial aspect to be in force as He secured salvation; so that the other side would have to wait till His coming to judge and to rule. How great was this Age, then, before that came, a nd how prodigious the mercy that waited! (cf. II Peter 3:9).

As He told them, cited in Luke 24, it was foolish of them not to be aware that there were two phases in view for Him, that is His suffering on the one hand, and the glory which was to come on the other.

Often do we find this or that, of these aspects in view, and as in Isaiah 61, they can appear even in the single verse, in sequential overview: both tender mercies and the reality that final judgment remains relevant, when the Messiah is not deemed to be so (cf. John 3:16,19,36)!

So in Joel 2, we have a display of judgment, then of mercy, and within this, that something else. It is an intricate wit in words, and in thought, a dashing statement to arrest and stir understanding; for the Lord does not forget His people, His mercy or the profundity of His desire which led to the incarnation: and that, it was NOT to condemn the world, as He declared, but that the world might be saved.

We turn then to the text of Joel 2:23,which follows the dual outline on first judgment, and then mercy as the prophecy proceeds. In this verse, there is a term mōreh, which comes from a verb of throwing or casting, and can on occasion, be used of a kind of rain, or rather tenderly, of a teacher (who possibly scatters and throws out bountifully the things to be learned and understood). Keil in Volume 1 of the Minor Prophets, gives background for usage of this term, to determine which meaning is here present. This is fine on the verbal and phrase aspects, but we will go further than Keil, in investigation that follows, granted the translation: that is, when the preliminary usage work is first covered.

JOEL 2:23

ITS WELL-FASHIONED PHRASE

Firstly, this Hebrew term is not normally used for early rain. There is another term for that; but it can be so used. Why is it used so here then ? There is a double use of the term in this case. "And He will cause the mōreh to come down for you, the mōreh and the latter rain in the first month ..." It is, Keil conceives, to bear relationship with the first mōreh that the second comes into use as former rain at the end of this statement. The term occurs twice, one with the definite article, but on the other hand, without it. It is wit, a jolt through usage, that occurs, as is often done in impactive eloquence or rhetorical usage. Why use it once WITHOUT and once WITH "the" in front of it. Clearly, there is an intentional jolt, a strange difference if it were twice so used of the same thing. We must work out this play, so similar, and yet so different in impact. It is like saying, Smith is king; or Smith is the King.

Why then is the identical underlying word, unusual but possible for early rain, used twice in this way ? It is because, says Keil in effect, of the message to be conveyed that the unusual meaning is used at the end (here you have the normal early and latter rain combination). What is the message ? It is that the first usage of mōreh is specially signifying some one thing, the teacher, and the second focusses it by contrast, a play on two meanings, in order to the work of impact. It has no 'the' since early rains are common, even if this term for them is not so.

What evidence is there of such usage here ? Firstly, then, the definite article, "the" in front of the first usage is one for which Keil can find no grounds, if it refers to rain. It stands out in singularity like a trumpet blast. It is however wholly accountable if the meaning is the other and more usual one, namely teacher. In that case we are told that the Lord, whose mercy has been singularly focussed in Joel 2:18-22, immediately preceding this verse, receives its conclusive figure, THE TEACHER. Just as early rain in the end of the verse is a common thing, though it has refreshing qualities indeed, so the teacher at the first, is distinguishable, contrary to weather repetitions, as just ONE. Nature has a broad spread for continuity; by CONTRAST the Lord has one vital action for man, one source, one teaching, one set of principles, one singularity in His approach, once made.

Just as you have, shortly after Joel 2:27, such a conclusive feature as that of the outpouring of the Spirit with all the signs and signals, which Peter cited at Pentecost for the Age which with the resurrection of Christ, had then arrived, so there is here a conclusive and singular basis for it. There is a balance.

It is not A teacher. It is THE teacher, the well-known one of Isaiah 2, 11, 49-55, 61, Psalm 16, 22. It is the central feature in Old Testament prophecy here brought in, like a flash in a photograph, revealing but momentary. So in the very midst of a dissertation on the MERCY of the Lord, itself set like a diamond in the surrounds of intensive judgment (just like the end of Isaiah 8, in gloom before the light of the Messiah, as revealed categorically in Isaiah 9), there comes the minister of righteousness and mercy, even THE TEACHER.

Next to the point about the term used, for teacher, Keil deals with the fact that ' teacher' is in a phrase: "the teacher of righteousness." So set, this makes perfect sense in the setting, but it certainly does not if you think in terms of an early rain of righteousness. It would definitely be a rain of MERCY, in that case, where the utterly deserved judgment was on the land, and this by contrast was a blessing. He extends his treatment of that aspect to cover various diffusions. However, the main thrust remains. Indeed, one can add this. NOT ONLY does the teacher OF RIGHTEOUSNESS fit for Christ coming AMID and to invade judgment, as a carrier and centre for mercy, and not only does this give the reason for the use of righteousness as a type for His ministry in this phrase - in that God is always righteous, but specifically in this. There is more nestling in this most apt phrase.

It is to make a GIFT of righteousness that He comes (Romans 5:17, II Corinthians 5:17-21), and He in NO WAY either aborts righteousness or tangles with it. Instead, He upholds it to the uttermost (Matthew 5:17-20), and is full of declaration of its rewards. Indeed, if it were not for His righteous, sin-free life, His death would be useless, a pitiful failure. If that had occurred, there would have been no way for man to escape judgment for the breaches of righteousness laid justly to his account, yes for one and for all (Romans 5, 6:23). There would be no scope for the transference of guilt from repentant and believing man to the guilt-collection site in Christ. He then would have had His own, and nothing of righteousness left for distribution.

There was nothing sleazy about the spiritual world to which Christ invited man, and to fulfil the rigours of absolute righteousness in the midst of a merciful desire, the Messiah suffered death: there was no other way (Luke 22:42). There was nothing of the character of much modern quasi- and indeed pseudo-Christianity, which wants to waive moral restraint and rule, in favour or lust whether mental or spiritual or both, as biblically defined (cf. Romans 1). The sermon on the Mount signifies with vast force, that it is not LESS self-control, godliness and purity that is needed, but in the explosive force of spiritual growth, even more sensitive perception. It is not enough not to commit adultery and the like; the mind itself must be kept free from its miry ministrations! (Matthew 5:28).

Thus the term teacher of righteousness, in marked contrast to the alternative, is highly appropriate and indeed illuminative. Further, it must be noted that this emphasis is far from unusual. Thus in Isaiah 11, this precise configuration for the Messiah appears. Thus, as it surveys in detail some of the features and foci for the Messiah then to come, it declares this.

"He shall not judge by the sight of His eyes,

Nor decide by the hearing of His ears,

But with righteousness He shall judge the poor,

And decide with equity for the meek of the earth.

He shall strike the earth with the rod of His mouth,

And with the earth of His lips He shall slay the wicked."

This resembles in some ways the scope of the Messianic Psalm 72, in some the judgment of Psalm 2, as the Lord brings out the various impacts and phases, to stir to understanding, now isolating features, now conjoining them once they are separately clear.

The term 'teacher of righteousness' then is not only apt, but a strong concept in the Bible, and one with a deeper meaning in the total setting of the prelude to and method of salvation, and the results of its rejection or acceptance. It is even mirrored in the fact that the Great Commission seen in Matthew 28 as it closes, involves the two undivorceable components, to PREACH THE GOSPEL, and to TEACH ALL THINGS WHATEVER He has commanded. In this of course, there is a flat contradiction in much modern queasy or quasi-Christianity, which takes the hammer and seeks to make a new set of commands all from its very own little heart, contradicting Christ, and violating the Great Commission by nothing short of spiritual perfidy to the name of Jesus Christ. Why the term "Jesus Christ" should then be bought up and exported relative to such new religions is alas, not a hard question to answer, for it appears as a kind of spiritual brigandage (cf. II Peter 2:1ff., Jude).

THE IMPACTIVE PARALLEL

What then ? Returning to Joel 2:23, we note that in this way there is inserted into the very midst of the Lord's prelude on mercy, in Joel 2:18-22, the key to it, in rather the sort of sudden way you find in Nahum 1:15. In Joel, first the judgment roars, then the mercy comes like anti-missile missiles, after that. Thrust suddenly into this mercy, there stands its source exposed. This follows the wealth of anterior references to it, in the Bible, and those to follow, even of the Messiah; and of course, it proceeds almost at once in Joel, to the outpouring of the Spirit. This depends for its acme for the Age, at shown at Pentecost, on the coming of the Messiah. It is fashioned on Him who is to be cut off, so that there is nothing for Him (as in Daniel 9:26).Yet in transference, there is everything for those who come to Him (Romans 8:32,5:17ff.), in that epochal foundation for the greatest of transactions between man and God, based on the greatest display of divine love and grace of all time, as in Galatians 6:14.

On the topic of sudden exposure of the Messiah in the midst of revelation, as in Joel and Nahum, Let us see how this later case arises. It is exceedingly conspicuous, and is important to be understood in its place. We trace then Nahum a little, in the lead up to this parallel flash on the Messiah, in that book.

First in Nahum, there is the statement of the vast desire of the Lord for the purity of His people, and the analogy to love, where there is jealousy, here meaning a sense of the ruptured access to His people, which makes Him 'jealous'in this sense of imagery, so that it is almost like being jilted, or replaced despite proper and agreed relationship. With this, the reader is reminded that the LORD is SLOW to anger, and great in power. Not that He will acquit the guilty! (Nahum 1:3). Indeed, again it is in just one verse that He combines the points that He is slow to anger and will not clear the guilty. No, for that there is a provision, and no generality at all.

Guilt has to be DEALT, with not suppressed. We move then through the power and control of the Lord, as basic to understanding, and the question is put realistically:

"Who can stand before Hs indignation,

and who can endure the fierceness of His anger,"

as in Malachi 3 and 4, where also the Messiah is brought in twice, in that prophecy.

These basics being brought to the light, we learn in Nahum 7, that the LORD is GOOD, "a stronghold in the day of trouble," which is magnificently true, and we are reminded that "He knows those who trust in Him," as in John 10:27-28. For ceaseless renegades however there remains the fact that "darkness will pursue His enemies," who forsaking truth, inhabit the lie. Such things He challenges, against them He exhorts and reasons, WHY! He notes the oft-seen figure of the traitor to come against the LORD, and proceeds in Nahum 1:12, to note this, that there comes an end to affliction. How ? He will dispense in His time with the source and course of evil, and look, look up now, here He is:

"Behold, on the mountains

The feet of Him who brings good tidings,

Who proclaims peace! "

How sudden it is, like the arrival of a liner by a wharf, all at once, out of the mist which had been confusing sounds and hiding its bulk till that very moment. This reference to beautiful feet in performing the feat of the Messiah, is the same as that in Isaiah 52:7, where as Isaiah proceeds, it is expanded into the whole doctrine of the atonement and the pain and suffering the LORD HIMSELF would undergo to make it free, without charge, the pangs rung up to Himself, and wrung out in Him.

So the Lord moves in and out, time before or after, like an author with power over all his works, sealing and combining from His own word as He will, making long explanation, making short insertions, nuances at will, as some advertisers for a very different purpose, may do in sudden little images cast across the screen while one watches a sporting event. They may make an impact just because of their suddenness and shortness, in view of the fact that a longer 'treatment' is readily available and known elsewhere!

So, to return to the point, is the case in Joel 2:23. It is after THE teacher of righteousness, then, in due sequence, that we have revealed the famous Joel passage on the outpouring of the Spirit, predicted at length in Joel 2:28ff.. The SOURCE in the Messiah as always, is first logically, and then comes the sequence found spiritually, in the power of the Spirit. As in John 16:7, it is expedient, Christ revealed, that He go so that the Spirit might come convicting of sin (man's), righteousness (His) and judgment (available to man if he insists!), in shown in the following verses.

Thus when we look in Joel, are we led from the central source of the entire domain of mercy, the central operator, in whose love and dealings there is salvation, namely the Messiah: sent from the Father, wrought by the Son, applied by the Spirit. We visit this focus, with relief leaving the vast judgments in the background, which gave it a sharp outline, like trees on the horizon before a sunset. We now see a new light (Isaiah 9), come to earth, amid the configuration of aspects, in the light of the illumination of the word of God. Who is this ? It is the Messiah, lit up for one moment, as in more extensive but equally with a sense of relief, in Psalm 102:15ff.).

It is as if to have in TV a sudden flash at the face of a major character in the midst of action, the Messiah looking upon us, so featuring to the central means for the module of mercy (Joel 2:23),before proceeding to the terminal aspects of the entire symposium, in the nearby verses of Joel 2:28-32, with their indication that "whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved."

How beautifully is wrought this, the word of God, and what depths it reveals, what challenge to indolence, but what rewards for studying it night and day as the Psalmist says. Things of such beauty not only deserve study; they provide great reward from it.

The "whoever calls" word comes from Joel 2, but is presented in Joel 2 also, so near to sight, so graphic is the revelation to the prophet, that it is as if he were there then!

That same word then, was used evangelistically by Peter at Pentecost, on the way to the salvation of thousands of people, right at that time. Indeed, on enquiry HOW to proceed, on the part of some stricken in heart at the time (Acts 2:37), there came the apostolic response, that they repent and coming from the Old Covenant, and so presumably only circumcised, or at most baptised with the preliminary baptism of John, now be baptised in the name of the Lord. In repenting and faith they were to receive the remission of sins ... in that name, which name ? Why it was in that of the Messiah now duly arrived, like the very rain upon the grass. That was what lay back of Joel 2:28ff., namely Joel 2:23. The relationship does not change.

With what result, then ?

THE BROADER SCOPE OF JOEL

IN THE BROADER SCOPE OF THE BIBLE

It is as in Joel 2:28ff., in the famed announcement concerning the widespread outpouring of the Spirit of God, inducing prophetic vision and leading on to the end of the Age, in its terminal thrust, drama and appointments! MANY will be those who are so uninhibited in their reception of vision, of understanding, and severe will be the end of that Age, as Joel 2:31-32 exhibits. Just as the Messiah is at the foundation of mercy, so an unbelieving world is at the foundations of judgment, when its own solidity and order begin to look more and more disordered, just as their unrepentant lives are (cf. Revelation 9:20-21). Surely some come; but the world remains as if witless, seized by an unspiritual giddiness, a godless lust (cf. the amazing use of "godless" in Jude15).

The Spirit does not speak on His own authority, but just as Christ was sent to speak as the Father commanded (John 12:48-50), so the Spirit focusses on Christ, and not on Himself (John 16:13-14). He will not speak on His own authority. Of the Spirit, Christ added,

"He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you.

All things that the Father has are Mine.

Therefore I said that He will take of Mine and declare it to you."

We now can see that Joel 2 is a vast canvas of the judgment, but also of the compassion of the Lord, with sharp and highly impactive mode of displaying the force of judgment and the wonder of respite in the RELIEF that is always associated with the Redeemer, who is also known as the proponent of righteousness, and as in Isaiah 11, the teacher of it. The Essenes appear to have taken this aspect, indeed such a phrase as this, but divorced it from the evangelical force with which it comes as in Isaiah 11, 61, 53-55, and made up some character of their own, as if blindness were the apex and divorce of word from word, the method. Yet it is only, this sort of thing, a method of confusion, at which so many in the day of Christ were so practised that it almost seemed to have become an art form or cultural mode, as Christ exposed it, seen in Matthew 13:15ff.. It became, as Christ noted, as shown in Isaiah 6:9-10, an affliction just as obesity is with our own generation in some lands; but that, it is not physical but mental, spiritual, foundational, fatal unless they repent. There is nothing more.

Judgment, mercy, a sense of blessing in rain, early and later, at the end of Joel 2:23, these are to be found. But just as in Psalm 72:6-7, this reminds one of Messiah who comes down as rain upon the grass before mowing, as it is rendered in the NKJV, " like showers that water the earth." It is, Psalm 73 continues, conspicuous that "In His days the righteous shall flourish, and abundance of peace, until the moon is no more." Such is the millenium to come, foreshadowed in His spiritual enduements of peace to the hearts of the disciples, even now, as attewted by the apostle Paul (Philippians 4).

So does the Messiah and the rain of liberal blessing and refreshing to His people, find this kind of association in the Bible, as a method of exposition, arousing a heightened sense of reality through the imaginative mode of address.

He IS righteous (without which He could never have borne sin vicariously for others), sows righteousness (I John 3:9), both in the new birth and in His own presence through the Spirit (II Corinthians 3:17-18, Romans 8), and satisfies righteousness in the midst of a mercy which reigns like rain, in its constant blessing.

Further features appear in the light of these things, confirming the advent of the Messiah in this sudden exposure in Joel 2:23. Thus in Joel, we find further that the nations are to be awakened, and there is to be a war in which as in Isaiah 66 and Micah 7, Deuteronomy 32, the Lord will personally act decisively as the turning point of evil in its blatant belligerence to all good, seeking to become the acme for man.

It is dashed down instead. It has had its little day, of some millenia! The earth is to be weaned of it in the millenium (cf. Rays of Revelation Ch. 6). War, then, is to be proclaimed among the nations (Joel 3:9). Multitudes are seen in the midst of this very physical battle, for very spiritual reasons, this opening up of the power of God on the hideously domineering dynamics of devilry, that invasive, arrogant, bestially inclined, assertively directive work of evil powers. Astronomical developments will occur (as in the darkening at the time of the crucifixion), and the full dimensions of the work of deity will become obvious (as in Isaiah 2:10ff.). He ALONE will be exalted in that day (Isaiah 2:17-18).

It is in precisely such a setting that the Lord returns (Psalm 2, 110, Isaiah 59, Micah 7 - following the Messianic preludes and operations of Micah 5 and 6).

Here as always,

"the Lord will be a shelter to His people."

Indeed,

"I will acquit them of the guilt of bloodshed whom I had not acquitted,

for the LORD dwells in Zion."

Through the Messiah, though the sins be as scarlet, they will be white as wool (Isaiah 1:18). Yes it is from ZION that He comes (Romans 11:26), and to which He goes as shown in Isaiah 59:20, in His unchanging determination (Isaiah 59:21), and in Zechariah 14:5 in His direct application of rule. That, in turn, is an outcome just as for basis, to masses in Israel there then will have come spiritual repentance and return to the Messiah, (Zechariah 12:10-13:1).

So does Joel 3, following introduction to the Messiah in Joel 2, provide the gust where grace is forsaken. Ye there remains for those who seek Him, the normative surrounds of the Messiah, to be taken or shuffled off like old clothes, though the universe depends on His work (Hebrews 1:1-3). It is He on whom it all hangs (Isaiah 22:21ff.), and who issues continually in the Old Testament, now in this mode, this impact, this long dissertation, that exhortation, the other revelation, in flash mode or in meditative exposure.

It is the pith of the New Testament which He occupies altogether, the very Lord of glory, exposure with precision of the Father (John 14, Hebrews 1, John 5:19ff.), whose are all things, all that the Father has, who enjoyed glory with Him before the world was (John 17:1-3), who is Himself the I AM (John 8:58), in the midst of the infinite intimacy of the Trinity (II Corinthians 13:14, Isaiah 48:12-18. 45:22ff. with Philippians 2:5ff.).