According to the prophet
Joel, the “heathen” were to “be wakened” and
“come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat” for the LORD to
“judge all” of them “round about” Judah. In
chapter three and verse thirteen of his prophesy, Joel told the
people of Judah to “put in the sickle” because the
“harvest is ripe” where we read:
Put in the sickle, for
the harvest is ripe: come, get you down;
The
verse begins, “Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe: come,
get you down;” Joel began with the phrase, “Put in the
sickle” which means “send away, let go, extend and stretch
out the reaping hook”, “for the harvest” or “reaping
time” “is ripe” which means “to boil up, done in
cooking, baked and roasted in the sun”: “come get you down”
or “enter in, attain, be enumerated and carried in”. Joel
declared the time of “reaping” was at hand.
The verse continues, “for the press is full, the fats overflow;
for their wickedness is great.” Joel added,
“for the press” or “wine press, a place for treading out
grapes, and a vat for holding grapes in pressing them” “is
full” which means “abundant, filled and satisfied”, “the
fats” or “vats or winepresses” “overflow” which
means “run over and are abundant”; “for their wickedness”
which means “bad, evil, malignancy, unpleasantness and misery”
“is great” or “much, abounding, more numerous and
exceeding”. The time for “harvest” was at hand, and even the
“vats” were full and ready to be crushed.
When
we meditate upon these words of Joel, we see what happens to nations
who are against Judah. They have been called together to the “valley
of decision”, and now they have “filled”
that valley like a “winepress”
and their bodies will be crushed like grapes in the vats. If this be
so with the nations against whom the LORD protects and defends, “what
shall the end be of them that obey not the
gospel of God?” (1 Peter 4:17) May all who read these words
consider their relationship towards Jesus Christ, God's only begotten
Son, before it's too late, and the vat is full.
Next
time Joel shares about the “multitudes, multitudes”,
so read ahead, and we shall join together then.
Until tomorrow…there is more…
Look for the daily devotional book “Equipped for Battle – From Generation to Generation”, the marriage book “So, You Want to Be Married”, and the new devotional “One Year in the Sermon on the Mount” in all major bookstore sites, http://www.amazon.com ; http://www.barnesandnobles.com ; download to e-books, and find it locally at www.mrzlc.com/bookstore.
No comments:
Post a Comment