Prepare For War! (Joel 3:9)


 

Tuesday, October 1, 2024


Psalm 74

Joel 3:9-21

Colossians 1:9-20


Prepare For War! (Joel 3:9)


One of the many benefits of regular Bible reading is that we learn to avoid the trap of the mondegreen. A mondegreen is when you mis-hear or mis-remember a line from, say, a song or a poem. One example comes from today’s reading: “Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears.” (Joel 3:10) Doesn’t that sound a little off? Isn’t it the other way around? If so, you may be remembering Isaiah 2:4, which reads: “They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.”


Pulling this part of Joel together with that part of Isaiah makes one realise that, between the two, we are getting a fuller picture of how God relates to humanity. In Joel, there are people turning their tools into weapons, and coming into the valley of God’s judgement. Isaiah, meanwhile, turns the camera towards those who are turning their weapons into tools, and ascending the holy mountain of God’s loving mercy.


Prepare for war! Rouse the warriors! The cry has gone out to all the nations. Does anyone wish to stand against the Lord? Let them come into the valley of decision, where God sits waiting for them. Meanwhile, should any wish to stand with the Lord, let them ascend his holy mountain, which drips with new wine, above the hills flowing with milk, down which the ravines run with water, flowing from the fountain in the Lord’s house.


We all were once enemies of God, but when we were far off, God met us in Jesus and brought us into his friendship. There are still many enemies of God; yet the gospel is going out to the ends of the earth, bearing fruit, turning those enemies into friends every passing moment as we draw ever closer to the final Day of the Lord. What once were weapons we used against the Lord are now tools we use to enjoy his blessing. Meanwhile, we can see many people who are still trying to fight against the Lord with weapons that should be used as tools for the blessing of his kingdom.


Where are the weapons of war against the Lord in your circle of relationships? How might you encourage the people wielding them to use them instead as tools of God’s blessing?


Lord Christ Jesus, you turned the weapon of the cross into the tool of our salvation. Change the weapons around us into tools to build your kingdom.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Knowing The Difference (2 Chronicles 12:8)

Image
  Wednesday, June 26, 2024 Psalms 137; 138 2 Chronicles 12 James 2:8-26 Knowing The Difference (2 Chronicles 12:8) Let’s be honest for a moment. It is all too easy to look around ourselves, at the world around us, to see how non-Christians are living their lives, and wonder if the grass over there might be greener. Our Lord’s commands often seem confusing, or burdensome, and if we were to pack it all in and go our own way, might not things be easier? Becoming lords of our own destiny is the ongoing temptation of the human race. From the fruit in the Garden of Eden, to today’s mantra of “be all you can be”, we have been trapped in this to-and-fro between the intentions of our Creator and the desires of our own hearts. And why not, thought Rehoboam? Why shouldn’t I look at the success of my own rule, and abandon the law of the Lord? Or perhaps he justified his apostasy not from his success, but from his failure to bring the northern kingdom back in line. P
Read more

Anxiety For All The Churches

  Tuesday, June 18, 2024 Psalm 107:1-22 2 Chronicles 6:32-7:6 2 Corinthians 11:16-29 Anxiety For All The Churches (2 Corinthians 11:28) A phrase I often come across when talking with people about life is “I can’t complain; others have got it much worse.” I appreciate the sentiment; when life turns around and smacks you about, one of the most difficult problems to solve is trying to figure out how to deal with it on a spiritual level. For Australian Christians, it seems like an easy lifeline to consider how good our life is from an overall perspective compared to many other people around the world. But then I read this passage from St Paul and I wonder: is that attitude good enough? What if things get really bad – I mean, really bad – will I be able to say “I can’t complain; others have got it much worse”? Because the apostle had it worse than most: beatings, imprisonment, starvation, homelessness, shipwrecks, he had it all. Who could say they had it wor
Read more

The Lord’s Plumb Line (Amos 7:7)

Image
  Tuesday, July 23, 2024 Psalms 54; 55:1-12 Amos 6:8-7:9 Romans 2:1-11 The Lord’s Plumb Line (Amos 7:7) For all these terrifying words about death and destruction, can we find any positive words about God’s judgement? First, there is a vision of locusts devouring a harvest. This seems pretty bad; and Amos intercedes for the people, and God says that “this will not happen”. Then there is an enormous fire that devours everything, a supernatural nuclear holocaust. Again, Amos intercedes, and God replies that “this will not happen either”. But God is coming to pass judgement. And it is not a judgement of a capricious or arbitrary type. It is a fair judgement. It is the judgement of the eye of the careful builder. God sets a plumb line against his people. We use something similar, and we call it a “level”; that small capsule filled with water, with a single bubble within, set on a straight piece of metal or timber. Line it up against whatever you
Read more