¹ The word of the Lord that came to Joel, the son of Pethuel: ² Hear this, you elders; give ear, all inhabitants of the land! Has such a thing happened in your days, or in the days of your fathers? ³ Tell your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children to another generation. ⁴ What the cutting locust left, the swarming locust has eaten. What the swarming locust left, the hopping locust has eaten, and what the hopping locust left, the destroying locust has eaten.⁵ Awake, you drunkards, and weep, and wail, all you drinkers of wine, because of the sweet wine, for it is cut off from your mouth. ⁶ For a nation has come up against my land, powerful and beyond number; its teeth are lions’ teeth, and it has the fangs of a lioness. ⁷ It has laid waste my vine and splintered my fig tree; it has stripped off their bark and thrown it down; their branches are made white. ⁸ Lament like a virgin wearing sackcloth for the bridegroom of her youth. ⁹ The grain offering and the drink offering are cut off from the house of the Lord. The priests mourn, the ministers of the Lord. ¹⁰ The fields are destroyed, the ground mourns, because the grain is destroyed, the wine dries up, the oil languishes. ¹¹ Be ashamed, O tillers of the soil; wail, O vinedressers, for the wheat and the barley, because the harvest of the field has perished. ¹² The vine dries up; the fig tree languishes. Pomegranate, palm, and apple, all the trees of the field are dried up, and gladness dries up from the children of man. ¹³ Put on sackcloth and lament, O priests; wail, O ministers of the altar. Go in, pass the night in sackcloth, O ministers of my God! Because grain offering and drink offering are withheld from the house of your God. ¹⁴ Consecrate a fast; call a solemn assembly. Gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land to the house of the Lord your God, and cry out to the Lord. ¹⁵ Alas for the day! For the day of the Lord is near, and as destruction from the Almighty it comes.¹⁶ Is not the food cut off before our eyes, joy and gladness from the house of our God? ¹⁷ The seed shrivels under the clods; the storehouses are desolate; the granaries are torn down because the grain has dried up. ¹⁸ How the beasts groan! The herds of cattle are perplexed because there is no pasture for them; even the flocks of sheep suffer. ¹⁹ To you, O Lord, I call. For fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness, and flame has burned all the trees of the field. ²⁰ Even the beasts of the field pant for you because the water brooks are dried up, and fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness.

In his book, The Hidden Face of God, Michael Card reflects on the biblical idea of lament. He begins the book by speaking of Vincent Van Gogh and of the great artist’s troubled mind and troubled relationship with his own pain and grief. Van Gogh’s troubles are well known, but his last words might not be. His brother Theo wrote of his final moments in a letter to their sister. Van Gogh died in Ravoux Inn on July 27, 1890, two days after shooting himself in the chest. His brother was with him. His brother, Theo, reported that he had told Van Gogh that he could get better, that they could get him better, that he could move past his troubles. It was at this point that Van Gogh uttered his final words: “La tristesse durera toujours,” which translated means, “The sadness will last forever.”[1]

I wonder if you have ever felt like that?

I wonder if somehow the church has contributed to this feeling of despair?

Here is what I mean: why does it seem like the only options open to us in times of tragedy are these:

1. Pietistic stoicism: the suppression of our pain under the guise of religious platitudes.
2. Despair: Van Gogh’s “La tristesse durera toujours.”

There is another option, and one that is thoroughly biblical. I am talking about lament. What does it mean to lament? How should we define this? Mark Vroegop writes, “Lament is the honest cry of a hurting heart wrestling with the paradox of pain and the promise of God’s goodness.” And later, more concisely: “Lament is a prayer in pain that leads to trust.”[2]

In chapter 1, we see a picture of a devastating calamity: an invasion of locusts that destroy everything. And God calls Israel to lament and cry out to Him. I agree with Tchavdar S. Hadjiev’s argument that “lamentation caused by harvest failure” is “the major theme of this chapter.”[3]

This is a chapter for those who say, “La tristesse durera toujours,” “The sadness will last forever.”

What calamity looks like.

We begin with calamity. Something terrible has happened. And the marks of this calamity are the same as the marks of the calamities that befall us today. This locust infestation was brutal.

¹ The word of the Lord that came to Joel, the son of Pethuel: ² Hear this, you elders; give ear, all inhabitants of the land! Has such a thing happened in your days, or in the days of your fathers? ³ Tell your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children to another generation.

In those first three verses we see the sheer shock of what has happened: “Has such a thing happened in your days, or in the days of the fathers?” In other words, this tragedy is without precedence. It is stunning and surprising and inconceivable. And this fact is bolstered by the call in verse 3 to report it to the children and grandchildren and, indeed, the coming generations. They will need to know of this.

And what is the nature of this calamity? Listen:

⁴ What the cutting locust left, the swarming locust has eaten. What the swarming locust left, the hopping locust has eaten, and what the hopping locust left, the destroying locust has eaten.

There are four kinds of locusts spoken of here, and Old Testament scholars are uncertain as to the exact nature and implications of these four images:

• The cutting locust
• The swarming locust
• The hopping locust
• The destroying locust

Are these references to different points in the locust’s life cycle? Are they, as some propose, hints of the differing regions of Israel upon which the locusts fell? Or are these indeed different kinds of locusts? We cannot know for certain. Even so, everybody agrees with this: these pictures and their accompanying verbs paint a picture of complete and total devastation! Nothing is left! This calamity is exhaustive in its destructive power!

Then we see differing groups in society who are called upon to lament this destruction. First are the drunkards, those given to much wine. To these, the Lord says:

⁵ Awake, you drunkards, and weep, and wail, all you drinkers of wine, because of the sweet wine, for it is cut off from your mouth.

Let us be clear that the scriptures certainly condemn drunkenness. Yet the emphasis of this particular text is not so much on the evils of drunkenness as on the extent of the devastation of this calamity of locusts. In other words, those given to drink will suddenly find themselves with nothing at all to drink! Why? Because the vineyards have been destroyed. Because:

⁶ For a nation has come up against my land, powerful and beyond number; its teeth are lions’ teeth, and it has the fangs of a lioness. ⁷ It has laid waste my vine and splintered my fig tree; it has stripped off their bark and thrown it down; their branches are made white. ⁸ Lament like a virgin wearing sackcloth for the bridegroom of her youth.

The locusts are likened to an army, “powerful and beyond.” This is almost certainly metaphorical. They strip the land and the vines the trees. This will lead to great grief, grief “like a virgin wearing sackcloth for the bridegroom of her youth.” This is heart-rending grief. This is agony.

Likewise, worship has been disrupted and so the priests also grieve and mourn.

⁹ The grain offering and the drink offering are cut off from the house of the Lord. The priests mourn, the ministers of the Lord. ¹⁰ The fields are destroyed, the ground mourns, because the grain is destroyed, the wine dries up, the oil languishes.

It is not just the reveler who will suffer for the lack of wine. More importantly, the priests will suffer for they will be unable to offer the drink and grain offerings. All of Israel’s life was tied to the land. So too is ours in ways we may not fully appreciate.

There is another group that will lament: farmers. The reasons for this are as obvious as they are tragic.

¹¹ Be ashamed, O tillers of the soil; wail, O vinedressers, for the wheat and the barley, because the harvest of the field has perished. ¹² The vine dries up; the fig tree languishes. Pomegranate, palm, and apple, all the trees of the field are dried up, and gladness dries up from the children of man.

It may sound odd that the farmers are told to “be ashamed.” This is likely just a way of highlighting the fact that they will have nothing to offer, no yield, no harvest, so they will be ashamed. If their joy is in their offering the fruits of the land, their shame will be in their inability to do so because of this attack of locusts.

The last line of verse 12 is telling: “and gladness dries up from the children of man.” There is a crippling sense of woe here. We are back at Van Gogh’s “La tristesse durera toujours,” “The sadness will last forever.”

And so I ask you: Have you ever experienced this kind of sorrow? This kind of tragedy? The locusts enter your life and leave nothing behind but sorrow and agony. Have you seen the trees stripped bare, the vines decimated, the fruit of your life consumed? Have you? Are you seeing this right now? Are you living through this right now? Do you know this kind of sorrow?

What then are we to do?

What lament looks like.

We are to lament. Do you remember Mark Vroegop’s definition? “Lament is the honest cry of a hurting heart wrestling with the paradox of pain and the promise of God’s goodness…Lament is a prayer in pain that leads to trust”?[4]

What does lament look like? What are we to do when the locusts leave nothing in our lives? I would like to offer a number of principles from our text beginning in verse 13. These words are addressed first to the priests, but then to all the people. So these words are for us.

First, let your lament be a painful prayer instead of a buried denial.

There is a verb here that we do not quite know what to do with: wail.

¹³ Put on sackcloth and lament, O priests; wail, O ministers of the altar. Go in, pass the night in sackcloth, O ministers of my God! Because grain offering and drink offering are withheld from the house of your God.

There is in much middle to upper-middle-class Evangelicalism in North America a pietistic suppression of emotion, of the true inner condition. We wish to grieve but to do so with dignity.

As a seminary student I pastored a church in rural south Oklahoma. I recall the very first funeral I ever did as a pastor. I recall my sense of surprise and confusion about what to do when the deceased man’s son came forward to the casket. He was a farmer most likely like his father. I recall his overalls and his work boots and his face streaming with tears. I recall my surprise when he loudly cried out “Daddy!” and fell upon the casket with loud sobs while the ladies of the family tried to comfort him. I thought the casket was going to be tipped over. I did not know what to do. And, to my shame, I felt a degree of embarrassment as I stood there and put my hand on his shoulder in a timid effort to help.

But I ask you: What did that man do wrong? Nothing. Nothing at all. He was open about his pain. He was not playing games. He did not care what anybody thought.

In the face of Israel’s great tragedy the priests are told to dress in the mourning garments of sackcloth and to “lament…wail.” But this is no mere howl into the night. It is rather a prayer. And here is the nature of lament: the honest and broken heart crying out to the God of glory for help, for comfort!

Do not deny the reality of your pain. To do so is to risk bitterness down the road and a hidden despair in the present. Rather, be honest with God, be demonstrative with God: lament.

Second, embrace the revelatory power of self-denial instead of the emptiness of numbing distractions.

When the locusts come, we are tempted to self-medicate with distractions. I am convinced that our obsessive pursuit of creature comforts is, in part, an attempt to assuage the agony of our souls. But the priests are told next to:

^14a Consecrate a fast

What might this look like? It might look like intentionally fasting from food, yes, but there might be other things that would humble us and bring our hearts to a place where we could hear God more effectively than even food.

Are you grieving but trying to distract yourself from the grief? Are you numb with your efforts to not face reality? Then stop. Fast. Fast from whatever! Set aside whatever it is that you need to set aside to do business with God in this crucial moment. In the aftermath of the locusts, we do not help ourselves by playing silly games in an effort not to hurt. Rather, we should set aside our games and be still before the Lord.

Third, reject the siren call of isolation and limp into the assembly of God’s people.

As a pastor it has grieved me how often I hear folks says, “I was going through a terrible season so I stayed away from church.” But listen to what God says in the ruins of this attack:

¹⁴ Consecrate a fast; call a solemn assembly. Gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land to the house of the Lord your God, and cry out to the Lord. ¹⁵ Alas for the day! For the day of the Lord is near, and as destruction from the Almighty it comes. ¹⁶ Is not the food cut off before our eyes, joy and gladness from the house of our God? ¹⁷ The seed shrivels under the clods; the storehouses are desolate; the granaries are torn down because the grain has dried up. ¹⁸ How the beasts groan! The herds of cattle are perplexed because there is no pasture for them; even the flocks of sheep suffer.

Consecrate [set apart as holy]…call…gather…cry out.

All of us! Together! Wounded, battered, lamenting, limping, crawling, we come. Together! We need the gift of each other. It is true! But we need too the gift of corporate lament, of crying out together, of sharing our pain with each other.

Fourth, call out to the Lord…and keep calling out!

Do not stop calling on the Lord! Watch:

¹⁹ To you, O Lord, I call. For fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness, and flame has burned all the trees of the field. ²⁰ Even the beasts of the field pant for you because the water brooks are dried up, and fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness.

Don’t quit.

Don’t stop.

Keep praying! Keep praying! Keep praying!

Do not let despair have the last word. Let your “last word” be a cry to the God you refuse to walk away from and, more importantly, to the God who refuses to walk away from you!

John Piper has written a beautiful line in his long poem about Job. Here, Job has come to the altar of worship after the death of his children. Piper envisions Job crying out to God and saying:

O God, I cling
With feeble fingers to the ledge
Of your great grace, yet feel the wedge
Of this calamity struck hard
Between my chest and this deep-scarred
And granite precipice of love.[5]

That line is one I have not forgotten and one that I share frequently with Christians who are suffering: “O God, I cling with feeble fingers to the ledge of your great grace…”

There is lament here. There is also faith here. There is a dogged determination to come to the altar even the heart is shattered beneath the pain of the world.

“O God, I cling with feeble fingers to the ledge of your grace…”

And this raises the great question: can suffering and lament and actual genuine worship really coexist? And here the Christian has a great advantage over all other faiths: the cross of Jesus Christ. Do the last words of Jesus not show that suffering and lament and worship can coexist in the same heart? For among those seven last words we find:

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” [worship]

“Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani? My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” [lament]

“I thirst.” [suffering]

“It is finished.” [worship]

“Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” [worship]

Our Savior, Jesus, is the God who knows suffering, who knows lament, and yet who does not walk away from the Father.

Let us follow His example.

 

[1] Card, Michael. The Hidden Face of God. (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2007), p.14.

[2] Vroegop, Mark. Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2019. Google books version.

[3] Hadjiev, Tchavdar S. Joel and Amos. Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries. Vol. 25 (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2020), p.22.

[4] Vroegop, Mark. Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2019. Google books version.

[5] https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/job-part-2