“Sanctify ye a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land into the house of the LORD your God, and cry unto the LORD.”
–Joel 1:14
Joel has declared the judgement of the Lord is upon the people. He has called the people to repent of their sins. Now, as a part of that call to repentance he gives practical advice explaining how they must seek the Lord once more.
He has four points here. Firstly he declares, “Sanctify a fast”. Fasting has never been a popular subject. It is one of those areas of our spiritual life that we would like to declare an “optional extra”. We may have fasted once or twice when the church called a specific day of fasting for an outreach meeting, but for the most part we neglect this important area.
Jesus ranked fasting as equally important as prayer. We can also see from church history that all the great men and women of God had grasped this truth. In today’s church we see few people willing to fast, and few great people of God. I wonder sometimes if there might be a connection there.
Of course, the fast in Joel was in response to the aspect of repentance. The people found themselves far from God and thus they needed to repent, and they needed to fast. When Christ was with his disciples we read (in Matthew 9) that Jesus said to those who asked why his disciples were not fasting “Can the children of the bride- chamber mourn when the bridegroom is with them?”
But the bridegroom is not amongst us. Nor is His Spirit present in His Church in power. If He were then we would not need to fast, but we must fast because everywhere there is the travesty of the lifeless church on the one hand and the soul-less church on the other.
Joel’s second point was the need to call a solemn assembly. This, I think, would translate to a prayer meeting today. Not a happy-clappy and exuberant praise “party”, but a solemn assembly calling God in His infinite grace to have mercy upon His people. Praise, of course, is never absent from prayer. What I am trying to say is that we can often get lost in an exuberant excitement which obscures our real purpose which is to wrestle with God over the state of the church, and to ask Him in His mercy to send forth His Spirit once more.
But is prayer alone enough? This brings us to Joel’s third point: “gather … all the inhabitants of the land into the house of the LORD”.
You see, the people of Judah had neglected their attendance at the temple, and in so doing they had neither prayed, nor had they heard the word of God. Because they had not heard the word of God they knew not the law, and thus they sinned.
God has given us the Bible that we might know the right way to go. He has given us a light to our path. Shall we do less then follow it?
One man was asked why he constantly read his Bible. “To know all God’s commandments to me, that I may follow them.” He replied.
Christ set us free from the bondage of the law, but the royal law of scripture is still there for all of us to follow, only out of love for our Lord, and not in order to earn our salvation. Scripture tells us how God wants us to live our lives.
Before Joshua and the people of Israel could cross the Jordan they had to consecrate themselves. When they were consecrated, and they had made real effort to change and to conform to God’s will for them, then they were able to cross into the promised land.
Lastly Joel calls us to weep. I sincerely believe that weeping should be an integral part of our prayer lives. We should weep over the injustice in the church. We should cry over the lack of God’s presence amongst us and we should mourn for those people who are lost and dying without Christ.
Our Christianity needs to get beyond our heads and our lips and touch our hearts. Our souls should be zealous for God and our hearts should be broken over the fact that we know so little of Him.
