minor prophets: joel

yesturday i had the priveledge of preaching again. i am really liking to preach (and to prepare the sermons even more). this was the second in my 11 sermon series on the 12 minor prophets. (i am skipping jonah since we covered him recently in depth) joel was up this time, being the second oldest according to most theologians and jewish scholars.

i learned a lot while looking into joel. for starters, just reading through it the first time in years i was struck by how many well-known verses are rooted in this short book... some of the good psalms and even a long passage that peter quoted.. reading it felt familiar. and some of my favorite verses are also in joel, about God restoring the years the locusts had eaten.

what i didn't know in advance was the whole situation of judah at the time. i've read kings and chronicles (ok, kings quite a lot and chronicles at least once through) but i never have really been good at remembering who ruled when, where, why, how long.. its all kind of jumbled. so looking into the time of joel surprised me.. i had no recollection of the boy-king and the high-priest uncle who ruled until he was old enough. if someone has one of those convenient time lines or a book about the kings and things that they want to send my way...

and i also didn't know a thing about locusts. i took my research over to youtube and watched some videos of swarms. man! thats really destructive. for good measure i added one to my sermon to illustrate the seriousness of the disaster after which joel spoke. if you're interested, click the title to this post, i linked it.

the book of joel actually has perfect application to us today. i'd encourage a study of it. or, if you don't feel like looking for the themes yourself, leave a comment and i will post my sermon notes or the link to the mp3 (if you know german). although, i got kind of hijaked while preaching.. i got off into the heart message and dropped a few notecards on structure and analysis off the end.. oh well. i think it is what God was wanting to say. melly came up to me afterwards and hugged me and said thank you. she isn't a huggy person.