Locusts are proverbial for the destruction they cause – as when Pharaoh was refusing to let the Children of Israel go free from bondage in Egypt and God punished him for his intransigence. In a later age, Joel prophesied of locusts that would devour his land – probably referring, figuratively, to the hosts of Assyrians and Chaldeans that would sweep into Israel and Judah and lay these countries waste. And as we look around us today, do we not see many nations devoured by hosts of spiritual locusts – such as false religions, secularism, professedly-Christian heretics and those who have rejected the absolute accuracy of Scripture teaching? Why is true religion so weak? Why is God’s authority so much rejected? Why do so few profess biblical Christianity? It is because of the devastating power of these spiritual locusts.
How can the situation be retrieved? The Lord answers the question: “I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten” (Joel 2:25). He will change the situation; He will remove these spiritual locusts. Not only will He do so, but He will bring about such spiritual prosperity that it will be as if the locusts had never swept over God’s Church. As Matthew Henry expresses it: “You shall be comforted according to the time that you have been afflicted, and shall have years of plenty to balance the years of famine”.
The situation today seems dire, leaving some to fear that the ordinary means of the reading and the preaching of the Word are insufficient to turn the tide. So they look forward to a time when the Saviour will return bodily and set up His throne in Jerusalem. But for Christ to return to earth could not increase His power; people should remember that He already has infinite power as He reigns from His throne in glory. And, when He so pleases, He can use that power to restore the years that the locusts have eaten – working through the Word and Spirit. There is no need for His physical presence in the world to improve its spiritual condition.
When Jesus was about to ascend to heaven, having finished the work He came into the world to accomplish, He directed His disciples: “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mk 16:15). That was how sinners would be converted, how the Church would be built up – through,
in the first instance, Christ’s disciples preaching the good news about Him: that He had come into the world to save sinners. These are the human means that God has purposed to use, and the Holy Spirit applies the truth proclaimed. The power of the preached Word to change the hearts of sinners was markedly and repeatedly demonstrated in the early years of the Christian Church, from Pentecost onwards.
In every generation, the preached Word remains the appointed means for the salvation of sinners, and the power of the Spirit to bless it remains unchanged also. But as year followed year in the Apostolic age, one after another of the original disciples, and their fellow labourers such as Barnabas, Silas, Timothy and Titus, passed to their everlasting reward. Where would another generation of preachers come from? Paul told Timothy, his own son in the faith, “The things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also” (2 Tim 2:2). Timothy and others like him were to pass on to men of the next generation the teachings that Paul had passed on to him.
But these must be faithful men: reliable, believing men who had teaching gifts. Yet it was not for Timothy to look around a congregation and choose those whom he felt would best fit such criteria; they must be men sent out by God Himself. Paul asked, “How shall they preach, except they be sent?” (Rom 10:15). Men may be ordained to the ministry; they may act as ministers; but they do not have real authority unless God has called them. If not called, they cannot represent the King of kings as ambassadors, for He has not commissioned them; they may speak the truth, but they do not have the King’s authority when they do so.
So if the various parts of the world are to hear the glorious message of the gospel proclaimed authoritatively, it is God who must send out preachers. But where will He find them? God is able to call men who, at this point in time, have already been brought into His kingdom, whose hearts the Lord has already opened to receive the word of salvation. But John the Baptist pointed out that “God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham” (Mt 3:9). David Brown comments on this verse: though John “may have pointed, as he spake, to the pebbles of the bare clay hills that lay around, it was clearly the calling of the Gentiles – at that time stone-dead in their sins, and quite as unconscious of it – into the room of unbelieving and disinherited Israel that he meant thus to indicate”. So those whom it may please the Lord, in coming years, to send out as ambassadors may as yet be stone-dead in their sins; they may now have no Christian sympathies whatever.
At the time when Saul of Tarsus was persecuting Christ’s followers, none of them might have expected that this self-righteous, blinded, stone-dead
Pharisee – strenuously rejecting the claims of Jesus of Nazareth to be the divine Messiah – would soon be sent out by the God of heaven as an ambassador to proclaim His name to the Gentiles particularly. But that was God’s sovereign choice. One thing is clear: the Lord will never lack instruments to carry out His work in this world. When the Lord wills to send “faithful men” to follow the “faithful men” of this generation in teaching the truths of His Word to people where the Church has already been established, He will call out ambassadors, perhaps from among the “stones” – saving them and preparing them in His gracious providence. And similarly when the Lord wills to send “faithful men” to bring the gospel to others also, who do not now have it, He will work in grace and in providence to prepare them, wherever in His sovereignty He has purposed to find them.
But the Saviour has laid the duty of prayer on His people in all ages; He told His disciples: “The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few; pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He will send forth labourers into His harvest” (Mt 9:37,38), and so He directs His people today. Matthew Henry comments: “All that love Christ and souls should show it by their earnest prayers to God . . . that He would send forth more skilful, faithful, wise and industrious labourers into His harvest; that He would raise up such as He will own in the conversion of sinners and the edification of saints, would give them a spirit for the work, call them to it and succeed them [that is, give them success] in it. . . . Note, it is a good sign God is about to bestow some special mercy upon a people when He stirs up those that have an interest at the throne of grace to pray for it.”
As the locusts of various kinds continue to do great damage to the cause of Christ – and to the souls of those who ignore the true God and His revelation – we should be concerned not only for this generation, but for the generation which is to follow. How can the next generation be delivered from even greater ungodliness and from doing even greater damage to itself than the present one? It is, first, through God providing a multitude of men who would bring the gospel to their attention, and making them willing to listen to it; otherwise the vast majority of people will either go on deceiving themselves into thinking that there is no God, or following a god that is only the product of the human imagination. And just as we are to pray for labourers to be sent out to work in all parts of the spiritual harvest field which is this world, so we are to pray that the Holy Spirit will be powerfully poured out to apply the preached Word to large numbers of sinners.
Then the locusts will lose their power to destroy, according to the promise: “I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten”. But let God’s children pray for this and seek grace to do so perseveringly.