The Locust Years
Stories
Lectionary Tales for the Pulpit
Series VI, Cycle C
Object:
Do you like bugs? Yes, they are a part of God's good creation and they have a function within it. But I would be just as content if they went about whatever work they have to do without my ever seeing them. I know I'm not alone. A feeling like that is almost ingrained in us from the time we learn:
Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet
Eating her curds and whey.
Along came a spider and sat down beside her
And frightened Miss Muffet away.1
I don't know if Israel had a nursery rhyme to describe their feelings about bugs. If they did, it might have been about locusts rather than spiders. In Palestine, locusts have always been a problem. They are much more than a creepy inconvenience. They can devastate an entire area with all the horror of an Alfred Hitchcock movie.
To say the least, an invasion like that would be calamitous, and indeed it was calamitous in the days of the prophet Joel, about 400 years before Christ. His was a message of hope in the face of disaster. It was a message that said God is in control no matter what the situation. It was a message of restoration after repentance. "I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten" (Joel 2:25).
Those were comforting words to the people who heard the prophet speak. The land of Israel had been devastated by a plague of locusts. They had swarmed over the countryside destroying everything in their path as no human army had ever done before them. They had eaten every bit of vegetation, clipped off every blade of grass, and stripped the bark from the trees. The grain harvest was gone. There was no food for the livestock so they starved to death. There was famine in the land. To make it worse, the plague came in the midst of a drought -- no rain. The trees and bushes the locusts had killed caught fire in the hot desert sun and there was no water to put the fires out.
In the midst of all this, Joel came to the steps of the temple and thundered out, "This is no accident!" He made it plain that what was happening was the judgment of God upon a rebellious people. It pained Joel to note that the famine was so complete that there were not even any animals left for sacrifice in worship, but he was wise enough to realize that some blood on an altar was not nearly so important as a true spirit of repentance. "Rend your heart and not your garments" (Joel 2:13), he had cried. Then came those words of hope: "If you do it, I will repay you for the years which the locust has eaten" (Joel 2:25). The words are no different today.
We can all look back over our lives and see locust years, years in which we were perfectly content to go our own way, years in which the faith of our fathers may as well have been a fairy tale for all it meant to us, years in which we ignored God.
Why do they happen? There are probably any number of reasons. Self-centeredness is one. We come to a stage in life where we decide that all we have been taught is utterly worthless. We think that the views of our parents and teachers are hopelessly rooted in the Dark Ages and are therefore not worth listening to. We begin to feel that no one has a right to tell us what to do because we are old enough to make decisions on our own. To fall lockstep into a system of morality and ethics just because society at large says we should is a denial of our own intellect and our own freedom. That kind of thinking sounds like it might be reserved to teenagers, but unfortunately, when it comes to some things, too many people never grow up.
The years we spend like that are locust years. Humanity was never designed to operate effectively like that. The apostle Paul says, "For none of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone" (Romans 14:7). When we ignore that thought, we tell the locusts to come in and feast on all this we consider not worth having for ourselves, all this that would even hint of any form of self-giving, any kind of sacrifice. Then as we grow older and look back on our lives, we see the emptiness of years without concern, without sharing, without caring, years without any memory of having done anything really worthwhile, years that may as well have been eaten by bugs for all they mean now.
Spiritual immaturity is another cause of lost years. Too many Christians are perfectly content to take the great truths of God's word to heart that they learned by the age of nine and neglect any further growth. There are Bibles in the home, but they sit gathering dust until the preacher says he is coming to call. They are content to get all their spiritual food in the course of an hour on Sunday morning. No wonder there is no growth there. If we were to offer our children a one-hour, once-a-week meal to sustain them physically, the courts would step in and charge us with child abuse. It is stark testimony to the power of God's word that so many have seemed to survive so long in spite of providing only that kind of diet for their souls. Certainly, they are spiritually immature, and because of that, are in no position to serve the Lord in as meaningful a way as they might. If they have been persisting like that for years, then those are locust years, years that may as well never have been lived.
Hear the word of the Lord from Joel: "I will repay you for the years the locust has eaten" (Joel 2:25). The God of love is not content to just get rid of the locusts; this God wants to give us all the blessings we missed while we were feeding them.
The world knows the story of John Newton, an English seaman in the eighteenth century. He got involved in the West Indian slave trade and eventually sank so low as to become the slave of a slave. On one voyage, his ship was caught in such a violent storm that all on board thought the end had come. But, miraculously, they were preserved, and John Newton's life was forever changed. He had hit bottom, the locusts had eaten everything. But now, by repentance and faith, all was about to be restored. John Newton returned to England and entered a ministry that was to last 44 years. They say he was a good preacher -- very plain spoken, understandable, and with a wealth of illustrative material from his years at sea. But God had given John Newton one very special talent, and one that blesses the church even today. Among other memorable hymns, Newton wrote,
Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me;
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind but now I see.2
Is God more faithful to John Newton than to you or me? No! Was God willing to use John Newton in divine service any more than you or me? Certainly not! Can our locust years be restored, our wasted years, our years lost to self-centeredness, to poor judgment, to sin? God has promised to do it: "I will repay you for the years the locust has eaten. I will repay...."
____________
1. Mother Goose Rhymes, "Little Miss Muffet."
2. "Amazing Grace," words by John Newton, ca. 1772. In the public domain.
Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet
Eating her curds and whey.
Along came a spider and sat down beside her
And frightened Miss Muffet away.1
I don't know if Israel had a nursery rhyme to describe their feelings about bugs. If they did, it might have been about locusts rather than spiders. In Palestine, locusts have always been a problem. They are much more than a creepy inconvenience. They can devastate an entire area with all the horror of an Alfred Hitchcock movie.
To say the least, an invasion like that would be calamitous, and indeed it was calamitous in the days of the prophet Joel, about 400 years before Christ. His was a message of hope in the face of disaster. It was a message that said God is in control no matter what the situation. It was a message of restoration after repentance. "I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten" (Joel 2:25).
Those were comforting words to the people who heard the prophet speak. The land of Israel had been devastated by a plague of locusts. They had swarmed over the countryside destroying everything in their path as no human army had ever done before them. They had eaten every bit of vegetation, clipped off every blade of grass, and stripped the bark from the trees. The grain harvest was gone. There was no food for the livestock so they starved to death. There was famine in the land. To make it worse, the plague came in the midst of a drought -- no rain. The trees and bushes the locusts had killed caught fire in the hot desert sun and there was no water to put the fires out.
In the midst of all this, Joel came to the steps of the temple and thundered out, "This is no accident!" He made it plain that what was happening was the judgment of God upon a rebellious people. It pained Joel to note that the famine was so complete that there were not even any animals left for sacrifice in worship, but he was wise enough to realize that some blood on an altar was not nearly so important as a true spirit of repentance. "Rend your heart and not your garments" (Joel 2:13), he had cried. Then came those words of hope: "If you do it, I will repay you for the years which the locust has eaten" (Joel 2:25). The words are no different today.
We can all look back over our lives and see locust years, years in which we were perfectly content to go our own way, years in which the faith of our fathers may as well have been a fairy tale for all it meant to us, years in which we ignored God.
Why do they happen? There are probably any number of reasons. Self-centeredness is one. We come to a stage in life where we decide that all we have been taught is utterly worthless. We think that the views of our parents and teachers are hopelessly rooted in the Dark Ages and are therefore not worth listening to. We begin to feel that no one has a right to tell us what to do because we are old enough to make decisions on our own. To fall lockstep into a system of morality and ethics just because society at large says we should is a denial of our own intellect and our own freedom. That kind of thinking sounds like it might be reserved to teenagers, but unfortunately, when it comes to some things, too many people never grow up.
The years we spend like that are locust years. Humanity was never designed to operate effectively like that. The apostle Paul says, "For none of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone" (Romans 14:7). When we ignore that thought, we tell the locusts to come in and feast on all this we consider not worth having for ourselves, all this that would even hint of any form of self-giving, any kind of sacrifice. Then as we grow older and look back on our lives, we see the emptiness of years without concern, without sharing, without caring, years without any memory of having done anything really worthwhile, years that may as well have been eaten by bugs for all they mean now.
Spiritual immaturity is another cause of lost years. Too many Christians are perfectly content to take the great truths of God's word to heart that they learned by the age of nine and neglect any further growth. There are Bibles in the home, but they sit gathering dust until the preacher says he is coming to call. They are content to get all their spiritual food in the course of an hour on Sunday morning. No wonder there is no growth there. If we were to offer our children a one-hour, once-a-week meal to sustain them physically, the courts would step in and charge us with child abuse. It is stark testimony to the power of God's word that so many have seemed to survive so long in spite of providing only that kind of diet for their souls. Certainly, they are spiritually immature, and because of that, are in no position to serve the Lord in as meaningful a way as they might. If they have been persisting like that for years, then those are locust years, years that may as well never have been lived.
Hear the word of the Lord from Joel: "I will repay you for the years the locust has eaten" (Joel 2:25). The God of love is not content to just get rid of the locusts; this God wants to give us all the blessings we missed while we were feeding them.
The world knows the story of John Newton, an English seaman in the eighteenth century. He got involved in the West Indian slave trade and eventually sank so low as to become the slave of a slave. On one voyage, his ship was caught in such a violent storm that all on board thought the end had come. But, miraculously, they were preserved, and John Newton's life was forever changed. He had hit bottom, the locusts had eaten everything. But now, by repentance and faith, all was about to be restored. John Newton returned to England and entered a ministry that was to last 44 years. They say he was a good preacher -- very plain spoken, understandable, and with a wealth of illustrative material from his years at sea. But God had given John Newton one very special talent, and one that blesses the church even today. Among other memorable hymns, Newton wrote,
Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me;
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind but now I see.2
Is God more faithful to John Newton than to you or me? No! Was God willing to use John Newton in divine service any more than you or me? Certainly not! Can our locust years be restored, our wasted years, our years lost to self-centeredness, to poor judgment, to sin? God has promised to do it: "I will repay you for the years the locust has eaten. I will repay...."
____________
1. Mother Goose Rhymes, "Little Miss Muffet."
2. "Amazing Grace," words by John Newton, ca. 1772. In the public domain.
