Daily Bible Study

September 22, 2018 Bible Study — Setting Aside Our Personal Interests To Come Together and Serve God

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Joel 1-3.

    The Book of Joel is unique in two ways. Joel is the only prophet whose message is solely about a natural disaster. He is also the only prophet whose message is a call to repent after a disaster rather than before. Here we have a good lesson on what we should do when hard times strike. We tend to think of calls to righteousness being about avoiding disasters which will result from our sinfulness, but sometimes disaster strikes to call us to righteousness. I just realized that I missed an important point which Joel makes. In addition to calling people to return to God in prayer and fasting, he called them to unity. He called on the people to pray and fast in unity, to put aside their individual interests to join with everyone else.

    Joel gives us the promise that, if we come together to turn to God after disaster strikes, God will do great things for and among us. First, He will make things better in a way that more than makes up for what we lost in the disaster. Then He will pour out His Spirit upon all of the people, men and women, young and old, rich and poor. Joel tells us that all of this is important because the disaster is a reminder that the great and terrible day of the Lord is coming. On that day, only those who call on the name of the Lord will be spared.
    I think we need to look at the timeline as Joel tells us it should work.

  1. Disaster strikes.
  2. people come together to return to God with prayer and fasting, setting aside their own interests.
  3. God makes things as good or better than they were before the disaster (at least part of this results from people putting aside their own interests to come together).
  4. God pours out His Spirit on the people, causing them to make the world a better place.
  5. People are inspired/drawn to call on the name of the Lord (and work to make the world a better place by sharing God’s love).
  6. Sometime later, the terrible day of the Lord arrives.
  7. Those who call on the name of the Lord are spared.

Our focus should be on steps 2 through 5.