Hello, My Name Is Restoration

Well good morning everybody. It’s good to be with you. My name is Carlos, I’m our senior pastor. If you’re in the room, how many welcome those who are watching online and our Buda campus this Sunday morning? So glad you are with us live down there in Buda.

You know, as I was thinking about this this week and getting ready for this message, I want you to think about a time where you wish you had something back. Maybe it was stolen, maybe it was lost, or maybe you squandered it. It could be a season where you squandered money, a relationship, an opportunity, or time where you came to a point where you’re like, man, if I just had that back, I would do things maybe a little bit different. If I just had that back, what could my life look like?

And some of us don’t like doing that because it causes us to grieve. I wasted that investment. I made a bad business deal. I should not have been in a relationship with that person. I picked the wrong major and I’m still paying for it. Whatever it is, not everybody gets to go back and do a review. Not everybody gets one second back on the clock. Shoot, for half of you, and that’s totally okay.

However, you look back and you think, man, what did I lose because of that? What did I lose in that season of loss? And maybe, just maybe, some of us are in the middle of that season. We’re waiting to stop losing; we’re waiting for rock bottom to hit. That kind of feeling, that kind of desperation that you might be sensing, is the context for us jumping into the book of Joel today.

We’re not going to dive into the entire book, but contextually understanding what’s happening in this short but very poignant and powerful book where we learn about one of the angles and characters of God. A God who is love and a God who is faithful. As we’ve been reading in this passage and in this series, and we’ll read again today, that formula of love and faithfulness means God is one who restores.

He doesn’t just love for the sake of love, right? And he doesn’t just ask for faithfulness for the sake of holiness, righteousness, and doing everything right. It is, “I love you. We do what’s right because I am a God who wants to restore all things.” That’s what we’re going to jump into, because what’s happening in Joel is the people are losing everything. There’s a swarm of locusts that have taken over the land and destroyed everything.

This is the context that we jump into in Joel chapter one, starting in verse two. We’re going to read a good chunk of the passage today, so follow along. For some of us who maybe have a hard time paying attention, or you read Scripture and you’re like, “I don’t know,” or maybe you’re here and you’ve never read any scripture, that’s totally okay. We’re going to read it together. If you have your favorite Bible, go ahead and take it out.

Here’s how you can really hear Scripture, especially stories like this—as a story. Hear it as it is. We’re not really going into a lot of interpretation because it’s pretty straightforward, and the parts that we do need to interpret, we’ll do that together. All right, so no anxiety about reading this much scripture, okay? Some of you are like, “Well, nobody should have anxiety.” Well, I don’t know about you, but I get anxiety reading a lot of scripture because I want to stop, study, and learn. But together, as we read quite a bit today, I want you to kind of relax, just listen with your ears, and imagine the imagery of what’s happening.

So let’s read together, starting in verse two with the context we know: “Hear this, you elders; listen, all who live in the land. Has anything like this ever happened in your days or in the days of your ancestors? Tell it to your children, and let your children tell it to their children, and their children to the next generation. What the locust swarm has left the great locusts have eaten, and what the great locusts have left the young locusts have eaten, and what the young locusts have left other locusts have eaten.” Everybody’s got their share. All the locusts have destroyed everything. “Wake up, you drunkards, and weep! Wail, all you drinkers of wine; wail because of the new wine, for it has been snatched from your lips. A nation has invaded my land, a mighty army without number; it has the teeth of a lion, the fangs of a lioness. It has laid waste my vines and ruined my fig trees. It has stripped off their bark and thrown it away, leaving their branches white.”

This is somebody who is mourning a lot of loss. The first wave came, the second wave came, the third wave came, and the fourth wave came. Have you ever had a season of life like that, where it was wave after wave eroding everything away?

As you keep reading on your own through chapter one and chapter two, you keep hearing more and more of the destruction. Then we get to chapter two, verse twelve, and here’s what Joel says: “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. Who knows? He may turn and relent and leave behind a blessing—grain offerings and drink offerings for the Lord your God.”

So here we have destruction, and then an inkling of hope. Come before God with all of the mourning, the destruction, and the things that seem to be going wrong. Then it finishes off as we fast forward in the book with a hope, a prophetic word that says here is what God’s desire is. In verses 25 to 29 of chapter two, it says: “I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten—the great locust and the young locust, the other locusts and the locust swarm, my great army that I sent among you. You will have plenty to eat until you are full, and you will praise the name of the Lord your God, who has worked wonders for you; never again will my people be shamed.”

Pause real quick. The other day I was in the grocery store and I had a nostalgic moment. I still do this every once in a while—I make my favorite college meals to remind me of what it was like to be 19 with zero dollars. So we were walking through the grocery aisle, and I told my kids, “Let’s get some ramen.” My kids were like, “No, can we have sushi?” I said, “No, we’re going to have ramen.” They said, “We’d rather not eat.” The Gen X in me said, “Well, then you’re not going to eat.” And guess what? They’d rather not eat!

I said, “What about my other favorite meal: mac and cheese with a third of a pound of beef?” Come on, when you were in college, how many of you had to make things work? My kids asked, “Why are you eating like this?” I said, “How can you not eat this? This is scrumptious.” The thing is, when you’re hungry, your parents told you that you’ll eat anything. So I told my kids, “You’re not hungry enough, so keep not eating.”

But these people in Joel are hungry. These people have lost everything. Then Scripture continues: “Then you will know that I am in Israel, that I am the Lord your God, and that there is no other; never again will my people be shamed. And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days.”

You see the heart of God saying, “This is not where you’re going to stay, and there’s a day coming that you can’t even imagine.” What a book of emotion! Joel helps us understand the heart of God in the middle of destruction. Agriculture in that day was everything, just as it was in our country for a long time. Sometimes we read the Bible and think, “Are these just stories of biblical proportions? Did it really happen?”

Here’s the truth: in 1875, with Albert’s swarm in the United States, this exact thing happened. The lowest estimate is that three trillion to twelve trillion locusts created a dark cloud from the Canadian border all the way to Texas, and from the Rockies through the Midwest. A big cloud of trillions of locusts, just 150 years ago, not thousands of years ago. This thing can happen, and it did happen.

For these people, it was utter devastation. Their livelihoods were gone, the food supply was gone, and the economy was more than wounded. Because worship included bringing forth grains to God, they couldn’t even worship the way they were taught to worship. Everything was discombobulated and confused.

Here’s what Joel is saying: the devastation should awaken the people to the seriousness of their relationship with God. How many times have we faced something devastating, and we quickly run to our favorite ice cream instead of having a moment of prayer with the Lord? When facing true devastation, Joel is saying to be with the God who is for you and with you. Invite him into the process because he is loving and faithful.

He says, in essence, return to God with all your heart. That might be hard to hear because a lot of us have never made a commitment to follow Jesus. You might wonder, “How can I return if I’ve never turned the first time?” God says “return” because the heart of the Father is, “I know you, I made you, I knit you together in your mother’s womb.” You are already known by God, and all he’s asking you to do is come to him, maybe for the very first time.

For those of us who do follow Jesus, we have to return constantly back to the heart of God the Father. God says this because at the beginning of Joel chapter two, he uses this phrase: return, because there will be a “day of the Lord.” It’s like saying a day of reckoning is coming.

Throughout history, theologians have thought different things about the day of the Lord, but there are three common components:

1. God judges evil. He takes care of the immediate crisis.

2. God defeats enemies. He seeks future judgment across generations.

3. God brings renewal, restoration, and hope.

We might say, “Amen, restoration and hope!” But do you pray restoration and hope over your enemies? In our earthly justice, we want God to just take care of the wrong and defeat the enemies. But God’s heart is actually for restoration. That’s the true essence and character of God: there might be destruction, and he’s with us in it, yet destruction is not his heart—his nature is restoration.

How many times in a relationship, with our money, or in a deal do we just want utter devastation? I was at a football game last weekend at the University of Michigan with my sons. I heard people in the stands yelling for the detriment of other players—wishing the opponent’s quarterback would get hurt or sit out. Can I tell you something? That is far from the heart of God. Destruction is not the heart of God; restoration is.

God is described as gracious, compassionate, slow to anger, and abounding in love and faithfulness. He doesn’t delight in destruction. Our grounding passage for this series in Exodus says: “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished.”

God restores. What do we learn in light of this?

1. Yahweh alone restores. The book we’re in is Joel, which literally means “Yahweh is God” (“Jo” for Yahweh, “El” for God). If the subject matter is restoration, we must understand that Yahweh alone restores. There is only one true God, and only he can be the source of restoration.

In Joel, the locusts destroyed crops, but human beings couldn’t command the rains to return. Religious rituals couldn’t manufacture blessing, and false gods couldn’t heal what was broken. Only Yahweh brings ultimate restoration.

So what is our job? Our job is to position ourselves for restoration. Our job isn’t to say, “God, call me when it’s fixed.” Our job is to position our minds, hearts, bodies, finances, and relationships for God to work. You can go to therapy. I love my therapist, but my therapist doesn’t restore me; he helps me figure out my mind and heart. You can join a small group or a Bible study. That positions your heart, but the group itself doesn’t restore you. Working to get out of credit card debt is freeing, but getting debt-free doesn’t mean you restored yourself; you just positioned yourself for God’s alignment.

We control what we can control, but ultimate restoration comes from God. When King David was confronted with his severe sin regarding Bathsheba and Uriah, he prayed in Psalm 51: “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation.” David realized his job was simply to align back to God.

When God restores, his aim is to restore people, not just our stuff. Growing up, my dad was a missionary who gave our money away to help others. We lived in a literal shack on cinder blocks surrounded by overgrown weeds. We had no money for gas, and my dad said, “We’re going to pray for the van.” We prayed for that van for three weeks, never put gas in it, and it never ran out! But even with crazy stories like that, some of us are waiting for a miracle instead of doing the right next step God already gave us.

2. Restoration goes beyond damage control. Imagine if the Israelites only prayed, “God, take away the locusts,” and the locusts left, but the land remained ruined. How often are we so shortsighted that we pray for quick fixes? God doesn’t care about simple damage control; God cares about deep restoration.

Sometimes to restore something, you have to deconstruct parts of it first. When renovating a house, it looks worse before it looks better. God wants to rebuild and restore according to his original intent. He is not into quick fixes; he wants to restore years, not just hours. Don’t be so shortsighted that you eat up your own years through poor choices while God is trying to bring long-term healing.

3. It is a love that reaches generations. Your obedience today could be a gift for your family for generations to come. Verse three says, “Tell it to your children, and let your children tell it to their children, and their children to the next generation.” We often underestimate the generational power of ordinary, daily obedience.

Don’t get caught up in a “TikTok life” where every meal, event, or moment has to be bigger and better than the last. We were made for ordinary obedience and daily faithfulness to God. When we walk in restoration, we become ministers of restoration to others.

4. Promise fulfilled: Pentecost. In Joel, God promises, “I will pour out my Spirit on all people—sons and daughters, men and women.” In that culture, women had no rights, so promising the Spirit to both men and women was revolutionary.

This Old Testament prophecy came to pass in Acts at Pentecost. Jesus lived a sinless life, took our sin and shame to the cross, rose from the dead, and sent the Holy Spirit to fall on all believers—Jew and Gentile, rich and poor, young and old. Joel’s promise became global.

Jesus is God’s definitive answer to brokenness. We bring sin; God brings forgiveness. We bring brokenness; God brings redemption. We bring wasted years; God brings grace and says, “I will restore the years the locusts have stolen.”

What is our response to a God who wants to restore us? It’s not to run, hide, or isolate. It’s to bring our lives—even if they are in pieces—to him.

In Japanese culture, there is an art form of repairing broken pottery. Historically, one early method of clamping broken tea bowls used large metal staples. That specific style was called Bokohan, which translates to “large locust clamp.” The staples resembled locusts holding the broken pieces together, transforming an ugly break into something highly valued and beautiful.

God takes what the locusts meant for destruction and restores it into something more beautiful than before. He wants to do the exact same thing with your life.

Let’s close our eyes. Hear these words again: “I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten… You will have plenty to eat until you are full, and you will praise the name of the Lord your God, who has worked wonders for you; never again will my people be shamed.”

If you have broken pieces in your life—finances, health, family, or personal struggles—offer them to God today for long-term restoration. If you need Jesus as your Savior for the first time, acknowledge your need for his redemption.

Pray with me: God, thank you that you are a God who restores. Thank you for every person yielding their broken pieces to you today. Build something beautiful out of our lives, and help us walk in alignment with your heart. In Jesus’ name, Amen.