RESTORATION

Joel 2:25 “And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpillar, and the palmerworm, my great army which I sent among you.”

Joel was a prophet to the southern kingdom of Judah between 835-796 B.C. about the same time Elisha was prophesying to the Northern Kingdom, Israel in 848 BC. Joel speaks to people who had become very complacent and self centered. They took God for granted and worshiped idols. They had become insensitive to the condition of their spiritual lives. Joel warned them that sooner or later their sinful lifestyle would bring down the judgment of God, yet their physical and moral senses were dulled to the point that they seemed oblivious to their need. Why did they need God? Up to this time they had been experiencing a great abundance agriculturally--they had plenty of grain, corn and wine and oil. They didn’t want for a thing. Occasionally they would go to the temple to offer the sacrifices that were required and go through the outward religious motions. But it didn’t really mean much to them. As they continued on this downward spiral, a crisis occurred that stopped them right in their tracks. A terrible plague of locust swarmed into the land and nothing was left in the fields--once overflowing, they are now empty of crops. It affected the animals as well as the agriculture of the area. The magnitude of the destruction was so devastating that it would take a long time to recover from it.

Joel comes on the scene at this time to speak not only a message of judgment to these wayward people, but also a message of hope. I wonder how these people felt as they looked around at the devastation in their lives. Maybe they felt hopeless that they could do nothing to change the way things were. Maybe they felt depressed. Maybe they felt like giving up completely. Some may have felt like working very hard to do something to change things.

How do you feel when things hit your life like a destructive swarm of locust? Scripture points out here that what the swarming locusts didn’t ruin the other types did. In the King James Version the four types mentioned are: the locust, the cankerworm, the palmerworm, and the caterpillar. These represent destruction of different types--stripping, cutting, swarming, and hopping. It is like when things hit us we might say, “well when one problem gets taken care of I was hit from a different direction.” What each of the locust groups had left behind, the others had eaten. Problems came in from all directions and just devoured everything.

There are seasons in our life that involve famine and devastation and then there are times of restoration. The seasons of famine have a divine purpose in our lives and they accomplish things that only these hard places can accomplish. Sometimes God can’t get our attention when everything is going along fine. Sometimes we wonder where the bad things come from. What is their source? Is it God’s judgment? Is it just natural circumstances? Does it come from our own bad choices? Or does it happen just because we are in the wrong place at the wrong time? We can probably answer, “All of the above.”

Hope is found in the fact that no matter how devastating things seem, God desires to restore us. Restoration can come to us even when it looks impossible--even after devastation of long standing. God says, “I will restore to you the years...” Sometimes when devastation comes it seems to eat away years of blessing. There are times when it is the result of personal sin or of fortuitous circumstances.

Restoration has some prerequisites that can’t be overlooked. There has to be a genuine turning to God and repentance. Not just an outward ritual. He will give you a new spiritual perception to recognize what God is really doing for you. God wants each of us to know that there is a time when he will restore in order to demonstrate his hand in our lives. If God has taken you through some lean times, know that he is the restorer of what the locusts have eaten and acknowledge him and praise him for doing it for you too.