The Years that the Locusts Have Eaten
The Korean people have an interesting tradition. You’ve heard the expression “Go fly a kite?” Well on New Years Day in Korea, that’s exactly what they do. Everybody goes and flies a kite.
Each Korean person decides what bad habits he wants to get rid of, or what past deeds he wants forgiven in the New Year. Then he writes these things on his kite and flies it high in the air. When the kite is so high that it is almost out of sight, he cuts the string. The kite disappears, symbolically taking with it all those bad things, leaving him with a clean slate for the New Year.
Have you heard about New Year’s Eve in Italy? As the clock approaches midnight on New Year’s Eve, the streets get deserted. There’s no traffic, no pedestrians. Even the policemen take cover.
That is because, at the stroke of midnight, the windows of all the houses fly open. With a great clatter and crash, each family member pitches out old dishes, ornaments, unwanted furniture, and a whole catalog of personal possessions - anything which remind them of something bad about the old year that they want to forget in the new. That’s how the Italians bring in the New Year.
If you’ve been watching television over the past few days, you’ll have seen one of our American New Year’s traditions. As the old year draws to a close, the news media likes to review all the significant news stories of the previous year—a montage of memories of the great and the small that have gone into the drama of life.
I’d like you to imagine this morning that a news director and a camera crew were assigned to do that for your life. Their job would be to put together a highlight film of your life in 1994 - a video that would include the bad times as well as the good times; the small moments as well as the great.
You would appear at your best, but also at your worst. The camera crew would have access to the film archives of your memory as well as those of the people whose lives your life touched in 1994.
How would you feel about watching that program when they got done? Would you feel a sense of satisfaction and fulfilment as you viewed the flow of events in your life over the past year? Or would you cringe with regret as you relived some very painful moments… moments that were better forgotten?
Somehow I feel that for most of us, such an exercise would not be a terribly rewarding experience. We all sense with the passing of time that we would like to have done things differently.
The prophet Joel challenges the people of Israel with just such a review. He looks back at their past years with the cold, hard objectivity of a video camera, and he finds them wanting.
The people have gone their own way, they have forgotten God. For years they have been living in the rut of sin. And Joel concludes that the time has come for God to discipline them. Joel announces that way God would judge His people would be to send a plague of locusts upon their land.
Now when we read that, we say “Big Deal! How bad can a few insects be?” But when Joel talks about locusts, he’s talking about the scourge of the Middle East. He’s talking about a natural catastrophe that we here in North America have no conception of.
Middle Eastern locusts look a lot like our grasshoppers, except they’re bigger. And there’s another significant difference in their behavior from our cute little grasshoppers. Locusts are gregarious—they like to be together. Boy, do they like to be together!
They gather together in swarms which become so large they boggle the mind. In 1889, we have records of a locust swarm which appeared over the Red Sea which was estimated to cover 200 square miles. That’s a lot of locusts!
Just how many was estimated by National Geographic in an article which described a locust swarm that hit Palestine in 1915. It was estimated that that particular swarm contained 24.4 billion insects. It’s no wonder that a locust swarm blocks out the sun, giving the same impression as a total eclipse.
If you have the bad luck to be around when a locust swarm hits, you can expect to find locusts inside your clothing, in your mouth and in your ears, in every nook and cranny of your house, including your sheets and blankets and your food.
These locusts are relentless in their search for anything edible. When a locust swarm passes through, there is not one green plant left anywhere. I have a picture of a fig tree in full leaf, taken just before a locust swarm hit. Five minutes later, the tree is completely naked, with not a leaf on it. Locusts are the piranhas of the insect world.
And Joel said that the locusts were coming… coming to eat up the grain, and the fruit of the vine, coming to strip all the good off the land and leave scorched earth in their wake… coming because God’s people have sinned.
Now what does all this have to do with you and me on New Year’s Day, 1995?
Well, it seems to me that there can be locusts in our lives too. When we lose our spiritual focus, when we get our eyes off God, He sometimes sends the locusts to discipline us. And these locusts eat up everything that is good in our lives and reduce us to spiritual poverty. And it is only then that we realize how far we have wandered from God.
In Joel 1:4, the prophet describes four different types of locusts, using four different Hebrew words to do so. I’d like to consider four modern-day locusts that can attack our lives when we wander away from God.
1. the locust of busyness
2. the locust of laziness
3. the locust of selfishness
4. the locust of failure
1. the locust of busyness
If there is one common refrain I keep hearing from people today, it is that we are all too busy. Like hamsters in a cage, we run and run and run in our little round wheel of busyness, and we never really get anywhere. The busier we get, the less we seem to accomplish that is of truly lasting value.
Everyone is in a hurry. Everyone is under stress. No time for this… No time for that… Gotta run, run, run!
Medical research has shown that it is possible for us to become addicted to our own adrenalin. We unconsciously structure our lives so as to live them under maximum pressure. When our adrenalin kicks in to carry us through, we get a “high” that workaholics know all about.
But we pay the piper in the currency of high blood pressure, ulcers, and heart attacks. There’s a price to pay for living this way.
As you look back on the year just completed, was it a year of busyness or a year of true productivity? What did you really accomplish for having lived your life above the redline of the tachometer?
Someone has said that “much of our activity is nothing more than a cheap anesthetic to deaden the pain of an empty life.” If we were really honest with ourselves, we’d have to admit that we often fill our lives with busyness to fool ourselves into thinking that what we are doing is meaningful.
But when we stand before the judgment seat of Christ, He isn’t going to ask us how busy we were, He’s going to ask us what we did that was truly of lasting value for Him.
A year of busyness is a year that the locusts have eaten.
2. the locust of laziness
Laziness is the opposite of busyness. Laziness is letting things slide. Laziness is when you let yourself become a couch potato socially, mentally, and spiritually.
The locust of laziness eats away your incentive and gobbles up your gumption. It whispers in your ear the seductive message of mañana — Why do today what you can get around to doing tomorrow?
The locust of laziness can take many forms, from putting off reading your Bible and going to church, to just letting your marriage drift along without really working at it, to spending endless hours watching movies, or soap operas, or football games.
There are some beautiful beaches over on Long Island where we used to live. Some of the rich folks from Manhattan have built magnificent beachfront homes on the shores of Eastern Long Island.
But there’s a problem. The ocean has been attacking those beaches. Day after day, as the waves roll in, a little more beach rolls out, and many of those beautiful homes have had to be condemned. Some of them have simply collapsed into heaps of rubble.
Just like those beaches, our souls, our minds, and our characters can be eroded by the relentless attacks of the locust of laziness until one day, our lives are nothing but a heap of rubble - a chaos of broken dreams and unfulfilled potential.
A year of laziness is a year that the locusts have eaten.
3. the locust of selfishness
We live in a nation where 9 out of 10 people have been seduced by the goddess of success. Most Americans subscribe to the the theory that if one is good, two is better, and three is better yet. And so most people are consumed by the locust of selfishness — the desire to get more: more money, more things, more fame, and more power.
And don’t think that just because you are a Christian, you automatically possess an insect repellent to keep the locust of selfishness from going after you. As a matter of fact, Christians, of all people, can be especially prone to the locust of selfishness.
You see, we Christians often equate success and prosperity with the blessing of God. We say that if we have a big house and two cars in the garage and money in the bank that God has blessed us.
But has He really? Or did we simply go out and get those things ourselves? Are they merely the product of our selfishness? How much of God’s real blessing did we sacrifice on our way to the new car showroom, or to the realtor’s office?
There is a proverb in the Jewish Talmud to the effect that, as a baby, man is born with his hands clenched, but he dies with them wide open. The locust of selfishness makes us want to clench our hands, to grasp for everything we can get, only to lose it all when we die.
Next time you see a funeral procession on the way to a cemetery, have a look and see if there’s a U-Haul trailer attached to the hearse. You won’t see one, because you can’t take anything with you when you die.
One by one God took them from me,
All the things I valued most,
Till I was empty handed;
Every glittering toy was lost.
And I walked earth’s highway grieving,
In my rags and poverty,
Till I heard His voice inviting
“Lift your empty hands to me”
So I turned my hands toward heaven,
And He filled them with a store
Of His own transcendent riches
Till they could contain no more
And at last I comprehended
With my stupid mind and dull
That God could not pour His riches
Into hands already full
A year of selfishness is a year that the locusts have eaten.
4. the locust of failure
Every one of us has felt the sting of this locust. Some of us, more than others, have suffered the lingering after-effects of his bite. Failure can induce a creeping paralysis into your life. It can infect you with fear: the fear of starting over; the fear of beginning anew; and the fear of failing again.
Perhaps as you review your own personal video of 1994, you can see the giant shadow of failure across the events of your life.
Perhaps you have experienced the failure of a relationship; maybe the failure to achieve some plan or goal that you had set for yourself. Perhaps your failure was in the area of your dreams and your expectations. Maybe, in this past year, things just didn’t turn out the way you hoped they would.
Maybe the locust of failure stung you in your walk with God. You started out the year by promising yourself that you would try to be more faithful to Him, only to find at year’s end that your iron resolve was covered with rust. The acid rain of life has a way of taking the luster off our walk with God. And that can leave you with a sense of shame and defeat.
A year of failure is a year that the locusts have eaten.
But in spite of the devastation caused by these locusts, there are tremendously encouraging words for us in the book of Joel. After cataloging this chronicle of doom, the prophet turns a page and speaks of blessing and restoration. The key:
Joel 2:12-13 “Even now,” declares the LORD, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.” Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the LORD your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity.
The key to experiencing God’s restoration is repentance. It is simply turning back to God. It is simply putting God back in His rightful place in our lives.
And notice how true repentance is expressed: it is when we rend our hearts and not our garments. God is not impressed when we make a loud show of coming back to Him; He is impressed by the quiet, heartbroken prayer of a contrite soul.
God delights in giving us a fresh start; a new beginning. He specializes in taking our wrongs and making them right. Someone has said with regard to the grace of God “No matter what a man’s past may have been, his future is spotless.” And the great message of hope in the book of Joel is found in Joel 2:25, where God says
Joel 2:25 “I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten”
What a message of hope that is on New Years Day 1995! As we look back upon years that may have been eaten up by busyness, or laziness, squandered on selfishness, or consumed by failure, God says that if we will but return to Him, He will make up the loss of those years for us.
In the hands of God, our losses will become profits, our liabilities will become assets. And in the grace of God, the years that the locusts have eaten will become lessons to guide us in the days to come.
Six and a half years ago, in the summer of 1988, Yellowstone National Park was devastated by forest fires. Huge areas of that beautiful forest simply went up in flames. Left behind were the charred and blackened stumps of once mighty trees.
Many people were outraged that the U.S. Forest Service didn’t do more to prevent the catastrophe from happening. They felt that this was a tragedy, a disaster that forever destroyed that wonderful forest. But they were wrong. They didn’t understand the ways of God’s creation.
When you go to Yellowstone now, you can still see large areas of the park that were untouched by the fires, still as magnificent as ever. But that’s not where the miracle is taking place. In the blackened areas, new growth is coming in. Saplings are sprouting, wild-flowers will bloom in the spring in a riot of color. Young trees are taking hold and growing rapidly, out from the shadow of the older trees that were destroyed.
And in a few years, the portions of the forest that were devastated by the fire will actually be healthier than the areas that escaped.
There’s a lesson there for us about the grace of God. We all have burned over areas of our lives. Areas that have been ravaged by the locusts or by the fire of God’s discipline. But God can bring new growth in those very places if we let Him. And what were once weaknesses can become strengths under His healing hand.
A woman named Kathleen Wheeler, who I believe must have been a school teacher, wrote a poem to illustrate the grace of God:
He came to my desk with quivering lip - the lesson was done
“Dear teacher, I want a new page,” he said. “I have spoiled this one.”
I took the old page, stained and blotted, and gave him a new one all unspotted.
And into his sad eyes smiled, “Do better now my child.”
I went to the throne with a quivering soul - the old year was done.
“Dear Father, have you a new page for me? I have spoiled this one.”
He took the old page stained and blotted, and gave me a new one all unspotted.
And into my sad heart smiled, “Do better now my child.”
God never tires of our new beginnings. In His grace, He stands ready to pick us up when we fall. That is because in God’s eyes there are no losers. In heaven’s eyes no hopeless cause. Only people like you with feelings like me, amazed by the grace we can find in heaven’s eyes.