Years that the Locusts have Eaten

"What the cutting locust left, the swarming locust has eaten, what the swarming locust left the hopping locust has eaten. What the hopping locust left the destroying locust has eaten" (Joel 1.4 RSV). A sad and sorry tale indeed. To an agricultural and pastoral people such as Israel it was tragedy. All their labours of the past gone for nothing, their crops destroyed, their pastures barren, their flocks and herds perishing for lack of food. These four ruthlessly destructive forces, the Lord's great army that He had sent amongst them, had completed their mission and become the instrument of Divine judgment on Israel. The nation had forsaken the covenant, renounced its belief in the true faith, and gone after other gods. Therefore the Lord had done according to His Word and brought blight, mildew and decay upon all their goods and leanness into their souls. The land that once had been so goodly a land, rich in vines and fig-trees, flowing with milk and honey, had become a sun-scorched and barren waste, offering no sustenance to man or beast. All the work of years and all the achievements of the past were as nothing, for God had hidden His face and the glory of Israel was departed.

It is easy to dismiss all this as the penalty of Israel's unfaithfulness and to leave it so, but the problem is not so simple as that. Israel was not wholly unfaithful and not all her people were apostates. There were many faithful hearts in each generation, men and women who truly loved God and sought, so far as in them lay, to honour and keep the covenant made with their fathers. Even of those who turned aside from the way and served other gods there were many who repented and turned back again to renew their vows to the Lord of hosts. Israel was not wholly bad and the light of God's truth was never entirely extinguished. In even the darkest times there was a Samuel or an Elijah to hold aloft the sacred standards and seven thousand beside who had not bowed the knee to Baal. Yet in spite of all this the calamity was all embracing and complete. The good as well as the bad were included in the common ruin. All alike looked up to the heavens that were as brass and upon an earth that was dry and barren. All alike beheld their enemies invade their land, capture their cities and spoil their goods. All alike at the last went into captivity and saw their land no more. And although the bitterness of loss was no sharper in the hearts of the righteous than in the hearts of the evil, the righteous did have the added realization that their suffering was not of their own making. Nothing they had done deserved the fate that was theirs and all the work they had done for God in past years was now as though it had never been. The Temple was destroyed and no more would the sweet singers of Israel beautify the holy days with the strains of sacred song and the notes of harp and trumpet. The priests had been slain and no longer would holy sacrifices be offered that the people be cleansed from sin. The young men had been taken into captivity and never again would the schools of the prophets attract the fervour and enthusiasm of youth. No more would pupils sit at the feet of some saintly prophet or teacher that they might in their turn go forth and keep the faith of the one true God alive in the land. All these things had gone and it must have seemed to Joel, as it did to so many of his contemporaries, that God had forsaken His people. That He had made null and void all the glorious things that had been done in His Name and all the triumphs that had been achieved in years that were past. Like a swarm of all-devouring locusts, the judgments of God had visited Israel and left them nothing but desolation and the bitterness of memories.

But God always delivers at the end. His wrath does not endure forever, lest the spirit should fail from before him and the souls that He hath made (Isa. 57.16). In wrath He remembers mercy, as Habakkuk pleaded with him. So it comes about that Joel was not only a prophet of judgment but also a prophet of deliverance. The dark night would eventually pass and the fair morning would come. They would see the brightness of the day when God would re-gather His people and pour out His spirit upon all flesh. He waits only for the repentance of those that have strayed from Him and so brought His judgment upon themselves. So we have it that when the priests and the people obeyed Joel's fervent summons to assemble before the Lord, to weep between the porch and the altar, to acknowledge their sin and beseech the Lord for the deliverance that only He can give, God delivered. He removed far from them the great army of judgment that had destroyed their land. He promised peace and plenty for the future, and a wiping out of all the sorrows of this time of trouble. "I will restore to you the years that the locust has eaten" He told them. The work and achievement of past years, so ruthlessly destroyed by the invaders, was not lost after all. God would restore it and set all things that are good in their former places. What a heart-cheering message that must have been for those in Israel who had laboured long and faithfully in the Lord's service only to see their life's work vanish like smoke in the troubles and desolation brought about by the judgements that came upon the nation.

A parable for our own times! We too, the Lord's ambassadors in the world, may have seen much of our life's work wither and die in these last times. We look back to earlier days in the way of the Lord, to the fervour and enthusiasm with which we preached the message. Many listened to our presentations and we enjoyed the meetings, the activities, the joyous gathering together for study and worship, the convocations and conventions and the many-sided aspects of our fellowship together. To-day we sadly write "Ichabod" across that colourful page of our lives' experience, for the glory has departed. The more thoughtful must surely at times ask themselves "Has it all been wasted? Was it all really so important as we believed? What has become of all that was said and done in those halcyon days? Has it all vanished into oblivion as though those things had never been? Has God made no use of all that was done after all?" To all those questions that thus intrude themselves from time to time, there is one answer, "I will restore to you the years that the locust has eaten." It matters not that the increasing apathy toward Christian faith and teaching so characteristic of this generation makes a work of the dimensions known in times past quite out of the question. It matters not that increasing age and failure of a younger generation to pick up the flaming torch from failing hands gives small hope of any such work being done again in our time. It matters not that our own failure to measure up to the tremendous concept of a Christian brotherhood, illumined by a knowledge of God's Plan, standing before the world as a living witness to the coming Kingdom, has found us out at the last. We have not done all that we might have done; we have done many things that we ought not to have done; but we have at least tried to manifest the Kingdom in measure. Nothing of all that has been done is wasted. We are living in the time of Divine judgment on the world for its evil and we cannot help but be involved in those judgments. The locusts are abroad in the earth and our own work must be affected by that fact. But we have the promise, "I will restore to you the years that the locust has eaten". In that confidence we can wait quietly for the deliverance that the Lord has promised, knowing that when it comes it will mean the outpouring of the Divine Spirit upon all flesh.

Holy men of old knew this experience. It was the lot of most of the heroes of faith of Old Testament times to see their life's work vanish away and to die in comparative obscurity if not disappointment. Elijah converted the nation and wrought a mighty work in Israel. Kings quailed before him, courtiers and priests were silent in his presence, the common people adored him. Yet at the close of his life, spectacular as it was to Elisha, the only onlooker, the nation had already in great measure relapsed into idolatry. Samuel the uncrowned king, the last of the Judges, at the height of his career went from place to place every year administering justice, and all Israel hung on his words. But the last we see of him is an old man living obscurely in a country village teaching the ways of God to a few young lads while another reigns as king over Israel. Moses led Israel forty years in the wilderness and nurtured a virile and unconquerable generation in the desert preparatory to the victorious assault on the Promised Land which gave Israel a land they could call their own. But Moses was destined not to enter that land himself. He died, alone, upon a mountaintop under conditions of such obscurity that no one knows of his grave to this day. John the Baptist had kings and people paying him court; to his desert retreat there came Jerusalem and Judea, hanging upon his words and being baptized of him. It is probable that his short ministry of six months was more successful outwardly than that of any other of the prophets. Yet he ended his days in prison under the hand of the executioner. Jeremiah strove hard to preserve a remnant who retained faith at a time when the whole nation was going to pieces, but he spent his last days an exile in Egypt. The Apostle Paul, the greatest of them all, and perhaps the man who had done the greatest works for God, suffered more than any for the sake of his mission. He knew that most certainly his work would be corrupted after his death by "grievous wolves, entering in among you, not sparing the flock". When, on that spring morning in A.D.68 he walked out of Rome along the Appian Way to the place of execution to bend his head to the executioner's axe, he knew that the glory of Christianity as he had preached it was already overshadowed by superstition, error, faithlessness and fanatical hatred that was to endure for so many centuries. But to all of these faithful stalwarts the promise holds good "I will restore to you the years that the locust has eaten". In a time yet to come the real fruitage of all that they have done will be manifest to the glory of God and the blessing of redeemed humanity. These are our examples and the stories of their lives should give us courage. No matter what discouragement and disappointment this present "day of small things" brings to us we have always to remember that the day is still to come when God arises to pour out His Spirit on all flesh, and in that day we ourselves will have restored to us "the years that the locust hath eaten".