Joel 2:12–23 - Return to the Lord with All Your Heart (Session 4)

This is a verse-by-verse episode of Joel 2:12-23, exploring the historical context, meaning, and faithful application of the passage within the Christian faith. 

What if the path from wreckage to renewal is closer than you think? Joel chapter 2 opens with the ache of judgment and turns toward a fierce, tender mercy: “Return to me with all your heart.” We walk through that turning point with open Bibles and clear eyes, tracing how God’s character—gracious, compassionate, slow to anger—reshapes a people who have run out of excuses and into hope.

We read Joel 2:12–27 and press into the difference between outward show and inward change. “Rend your heart, not your garments” becomes a call to real repentance that rejects lip service and chooses love-driven obedience. We unpack fasting without the myths: it doesn’t earn points with God, but it does sharpen focus, tie prayer to daily hunger, and train the will against destructive desires. Then we widen the lens to leadership and community. Elders, children, newlyweds—everyone is summoned, and leaders are charged to intercede because authority without prayer drifts into pride.

If you’re longing for a reset—personally, as a family, or as a leader—this conversation offers a practical path back: honest repentance, focused prayer, humble intercession, and confidence in God’s covenant faithfulness. Listen, share with a friend who needs courage to return, and leave a review to help others find this study. Ready to come back with all your heart?

Transcript

Reading Joel 2:12–17

SPEAKER_01 0:53

In human relations, when we've been wronged, sometimes we have trouble forgiving other people. The Bible commands we should, but sometimes our hearts are damaged. The good news is that our Lord God always is forgiving, and he always will welcome people that genuinely turn to him. And today, on reasoning through the Bible, we're going to see that as we get into the second chapter of the book of Joel. As we've seen up to now in the book, God is prophesying that he's sending a great army to destroy the nation Israel because of their sin. Let's go ahead and dive in. If you have your copy of the Word of God, open it to the Old Testament prophet of Joel, chapter 2, and we're going to start at verse 12. Steve, can you start there and read down to verse 17? We're going to see God's heart for forgiveness.

God’s Character: Gracious And Compassionate

SPEAKER_00 1:46

Yet even now, declares the Lord, return to me with all your heart, and with fasting, weeping, and mourning, and rend your heart and not your garments. Now return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in loving kindness, and relenting of evil. Who knows whether he will not turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind him, even a grain offering and a drink offering for the Lord your God, blow a trumpet in Zion, consecrate a fast, proclaim a solemn assembly, gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children and the nursing infants, let the bridegroom come out of his room and the bride out of her bridal chamber, let the priests, the Lord ministers, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, Spare your people, O Lord, and do not make your inheritance a reproach, a byword among the nations. Why should they among the people say, Where is their God?

SPEAKER_01 2:59

So in the midst of this book, Steve, if we take into account the flow so far, what is God trying to do in this section?

SPEAKER_00 3:06

He's juxtaposing his discipline in the first part, and now he's talking about restoration and how the people can have that through returning to him. And he's asking them, he's not commanding them, he's saying, return to me. And he's giving a description of how he is, slow to anger, full of loving kindness. So this is who God is in his character and the benefit that they have if they will only return to God. He wants them to do that. He wants to have a relationship with them.

SPEAKER_01 3:42

And he gives a few specifics in here. He he asked people to change their heart to fast and to come back to him. So I find this interesting simply because of the great emotional language that's here. He's saying, Rend your heart, not your garments. He also, up to now in the book, had this great descriptive language of this severe judgment that's going to come, these gnawing locusts, wave after wave, that chew up everything in sight, eat the bark, chew the fig trees and the vines down to the stubble, the ground is dry and parched. But yet here he turns a corner and asks, Come back to me and get forgiveness. After declaring that the day of the Lord will come with great destruction, why is the Lord asking now for people to repent and come back to him? What is it about the nature of God that he would ask this at this point?

Love, Obedience, And Genuine Repentance

SPEAKER_00 4:40

It says there in verse 13, for he is gracious and compassionate among other things, slow to anger. That's what is great about his nature. And as I mentioned before, he wants to have a relationship with his people, with the ones who want to worship him. What is one of the things he tells them at the very beginning as they come out of slavery from Egypt, as they're encamped at the bottom of Mount Sinai, while Moses is up there on the mount conversing with God, receiving the commandments and the law? One of the things he says, You shall not worship any other gods. He tells them, I am a jealous God, meaning that he is the one who has created everything. He is the one true God. There are no other gods that are above him. Therefore, he's jealous whenever people go off and worship false gods, ones that aren't gods at all. Therefore, he wants to have a relationship with the people and he wants them to worship him. And I think that's the only fair thing to ask.

SPEAKER_01 5:52

God wants a loving relationship. Love is the highest ethic. If you remember over in the Gospels, when they asked Jesus, what is the greatest commandment? What was his answer? His greatest commandment was to love. Love God and love your neighbor. Those are the highest commandments. And Jesus said all of the law and the prophets fit under this. So these verses are telling us that God wants a love relationship. He says, tear your heart, not your garments. You were hard-hearted in your disobedience. And the disobedience of God demonstrates a lack of love. Instead, he wants us to be genuine, not just lip service. If we love God, then we're not going to do something harmful to the person we love. Since we love God, we'll never disobey intentionally to hurt him. That's what he's saying. And in the middle of verse 13, he is gracious and compassionate. In the midst of a book that is about the most devastatingly severe judgment in all of human history, the day of the Lord, God is telling us that he is gracious and compassionate to anyone who genuinely turns back to him in repentance. Verse 14 is talking about the possibility of God relenting and blessing people that come back to him. Do you find it interesting, Steve, that God can be both greatly forgiving and also administer great justice at the same time?

Why Fasting Matters

SPEAKER_00 7:24

No, I don't find that surprising. And for those of us who had great fathers, we have an example through them that there was discipline when we did things that were wrong. And even though we might not admit it at the time, we can surely look back and say, yes, I needed to be disciplined because of what I did. But we also knew that our parents were loving to us. So while we were getting disciplined, we also understood that they were doing it for our benefit and for our good. And that for us to stay out of trouble was to obey them and do what they wanted us to do and to have that loving relationship with them. That is one way that we would show love to our parents is by obeying them and not being rebellious. If they said you need to be home by midnight, then the way you stayed out of trouble was to be home by midnight. Through that, you showed your love, honor, and respect of them. So, no, I don't find it surprising that God can be disciplinary through his wrath, but yet at the same time have loving kindness for people who truly want to have a relationship with him.

SPEAKER_01 8:41

One of the things God mentions here in verse 15 is fasting. Come back to me with fasting. So, Steve, what is the purpose of fasting?

SPEAKER_00 8:51

Fasting is to focus our minds on God and to take away the pleasures that we have through eating or drinking. The fullness and satisfaction that we get from having a very good meal is something that is pleasing to us. It satiates our senses. And when we take stuff like that away, what do we do? We are left to concentrate on God, what he has given us, what he has done for us, who he is. That is the purpose of a fast, to not show a dedication to him, but for us to work things out of our mind and out of our daily routine so that we can focus on his word, so that we can focus on him and really get to a relationship type atmosphere with him to discover a little bit deeper who he is, block the world out, you might say, to focus in on him. It's something that we should do whenever we want to get to a closer relationship with God. In this particular instance, that's what he's talking about. Fast, consecrate yourself, return to me and worship me because I'm the one that's going to get you out of these types of situations. I'm bringing the discipline. That also means I'm the one that can relieve the discipline as well.

Everyone Gathered, Leaders Intercede

SPEAKER_01 10:26

When I think of fasting, I think personally of two main areas or two main benefits to fasting. One is just a very simple one, which is when you're hungry, it reminds you to pray. When your stomach says, feed me, then that is a reminder to pray. Oftentimes in scripture, you'll see the two put together, prayer and fasting. So if you have a need or something that you need to pray for, then oftentimes fasting is just a good reminder that throughout the day that you'll remind it to pray about whatever it is that's on your heart. Secondly, if you can deny your stomach, then you can deny the other fleshly desires that are drawing us into sin. If I can control my hunger, then I can transfer that power of control to the other factors, the other things, the other desires that are pulling me away. What does not happen with fasting is that we somehow earn points with God or somehow earn some kind of favor with God. Somebody fast more so they're more holy. No, no, it might be the other way around. Might be they have so much sin in their lives that they need to fast more in order to get that under control. So fasting does not earn points with God. It doesn't make us more holy. It's just one, a reminder to pray, and two, a method of trying to get the flesh under control. Then in verse 16, it mentions a host of people from all walks of society. God is saying he needs everyone's attention. God is interested in loving everyone, not just the quote-unquote religious people or the higher people in society or not just the lower people in society. He's interested in everyone. He does not hold priests and pastors as more holy than the average Christian. We then see in verse 17, the Lord does want the leaders to approach him and intercede on behalf of the people. Steve, should leaders be praying with the people that are under them?

SPEAKER_00 12:33

I think that they should, and they should also be worshiping the one and only true God. Main reason is because they're going to be held to a higher standard. They need to realize that they're there because God has put them in that situation to rule over the people, to govern them. And they have a great responsibility in that, and they will answer to God for the way that they govern. So, yes, I think that that's a way of showing responsibility and compassion to the people that you are ruling over is to pray for them and to ask God to bless them, because as God blesses them, then the area that they live will be blessed. And the government that governs them will be blessed. And there will be peace, there won't be chaos, there won't be upsetting situations that are going on. So, yes, I think it is appropriate for the leadership to pray to the one and only true God on behalf of the people that He governs.

Reading Joel 2:18–27

SPEAKER_01 13:37

Again, verse 16, gather the people, the entire congregation, the elders, the children, the nursing infant, the bridegroom. God wants everyone. He wants everybody from all walks of society to come to him. If you think you're busy, you've got something going on, he's saying, No, there's nothing that is more important than coming back to me and tearing your heart and asking for forgiveness. He specifically says in verse 17, let the priest, the Lord's ministers, weep between the porch and the altar. That's right at the center of the temple and the tabernacle where the sacrifices occurred. And let them say, and here's the prayer that he is telling them to pray, quote, spare your people, O Lord, and do not make your inheritance a reproach, a byword among the nations, unquote. That quote reminds me of Moses in the book of Exodus, when the people had worshiped the golden calf, they were showing a disregard for the Lord God. And Moses prayed a very similar prayer in Exodus 32, 13. He appealed to God, he interceded for the people before God and said, God, please remember these people. Don't let them be a reproach. You had made promises to these people. So we have here again a similar prayer that God, through the prophet Joel, is saying, leaders, pray for the people that are under you, intercede for them. So I submit to you today, if you're a leader of a family, if you're a leader of a congregation, any kind of teacher, then pray for them, intercede for them before the Lord. That is what the Lord God wants. He wants to hear us come and ask for forgiveness. And oftentimes we should be praying for those around us. And then if we're leaders, we need to pray for the people under us. In the next section, we have God responding to the repentance of his people. We see what blessings the Lord has for repentant people. Steve, can you start at verse 18 and read down to verse 27?

Zeal For The Land And The Covenant

SPEAKER_00 15:45

Then the Lord will be zealous for his land and will have pity on his people. The Lord will answer and say to his people, Behold, I am going to send you grain, dew wine, and oil, and you will be satisfied and full with them. And I will never again make you a reproach among the nations, but I will remove the northern army far from you, and I will drive it into a parched and desolate land, and its vanguard into the eastern sea, and its rearguard into the western sea, and its stench will arise, and its foul smell will come up, for it has done great things. Do not fear, O land, rejoice and be glad, for the Lord has done great things. Do not fear, beasts of the field, for the pastures of the wilderness have turned green, for the tree has borne its fruit, the fig tree and the vine have yielded in full. So rejoice, O sons of Zion, and be glad in the Lord your God, for he has given you the early rain for your vindication, and he has poured down for you the rain, the early and lighter rain as before. The threshing floors will be full of grain, and the vats will overflow with the new wine and oil. Then I will make up to you for the years that the swarming locusts has eaten, and the creeping locust, the stripping locust, and the gnawing locust. My great army, which I sent among you, you will have plenty to eat and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord your God, who has dealt wondrously with you. Then my people will never be put to shame. Thus you will know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I am the Lord your God, and there is no other, and my people will never be put to shame.

SPEAKER_01 17:46

In verse 18, at the beginning of what we just read, it says, The Lord will be zealous. What does it say he will be zealous for, Steve?

SPEAKER_00 17:54

It says that he's going to be zealous for his land. This harkens back to the first verse in chapter two where he says, Blow a warning for Zion and for his holy mountain. The land is his. Jerusalem is his. And as I mentioned in the last session, we should be aware of that and we should be very wary of trying to do any type of disruption in God's land. It's his land to give, also his land to take, but we need to acknowledge that it's his land and that when we're tampering with it, we're trying to drive his people, the nation of Israel, out of his land. Then we're going up against God because it's his land. And it says here that at this time, the people, if they return to him, that he's going to be zealous for his land, that he's going to restore it, both in livestock and also in crops.

Blessings After Repentance

SPEAKER_01 18:53

This is probably a good place to remind our listeners why God is so zealous for this land and why the book of Joel here keeps mentioning the land. It's because of a promise that God made way back in Genesis to Abraham. And he repeated this promise to Abraham's son Isaac. He repeated it to Jacob. He repeated it in Moses' day. He repeated it even after the Babylonian captivity, that this land would be given to the nation Israel forever. I mean, read uh Genesis 17, eight or nine times in as many verses, God says, I will, I will, I will do these things. So the Lord here says he is zealous for this land. And what's interesting in many of these places, such as in Joel, what is he just saying? He's saying there's a great punishment, the worst punishment that's ever going to come upon the nation. Why? Because of their sin. Ezekiel repeated it, Isaiah repeats it, Zechariah repeats it over and over again. The prophets were sent because of Israel's disobedience. The day of the Lord is going to come because of Israel's disobedience. God doesn't hold them because of their righteousness, he holds them in spite of it. And we're going to see here in Joel, he's going to restore them. He's going to come to their rescue and restore them. Why? Because he made a unilateral promise back in Genesis. God walked through the animals with Abraham. Abraham didn't. The covenant was unilateral on God's part. Therefore, here in Joel, God can say, I'm going to send the worst disaster that's ever been in the history of mankind and ever will be, yet I'm going to rescue my nation, Israel. The reason we emphasize that is because there are people today that say that God has cut off his people because of their disobedience and rejection of Christ. Well, my friend, they rejected God at every step of the way. They rejected God at the golden calf. They rejected God in the Babylonian captivity. They rejected God here in Joel. And yet he's going to say in a few verses that he's going to bring them back to the land. Why? Verse 18, the Lord will be zealous for his land and will have pity on his people. The Lord will answer and say to his people, I am going to send you grain. And he goes on for this wonderful blessing. Next, look at verse 19. It says, The Lord will answer and say to his people, Steve, what is he answering?

SPEAKER_00 21:33

He says that he's going to send them new wine. He's going to send them grain, that they're going to be satisfied and full with that new grain and wine. And that he will never again make them a reproach among the nations. So that speaks that the land itself is going to be one that's going to be so prosperous and giving forth its fruit, so to speak, of both grain and wine or grapes, that it's never going to be again looked upon, that the land of the nation of Israel is going to be one that the other nations look to and look to them as being cursed under God, so to speak.

The Northern Army Removed

SPEAKER_01 22:15

Remember, earlier in the chapter, he had called on his people to rend their hearts, not their garments, to come to him in fasting and prayer and ask forgiveness. And with that call, the Lord will answer that repentance with all these blessings that it mentions there. God always responds. To repentance with blessings and forgiveness. He always responds to rejection and hard-heartedness with judgment and wrath. That's no different here. We have a loving God that is always loving towards repentance and a wrathful God that is always wrathful towards disobedience and rejection. Starting in verse 20, God speaks here in military terms. He promises to remove the military invasion of Israel. This is key because, yes, there's the judgment in the day of the Lord, but he's going to remove that judgment. The pattern is the same going all the way back to Judges. When Israel disobeys, God allows the enemies to invade. And when they come back in repentance, God drives out the enemies. When Israel repents and obeys God, drives out the enemies, blesses the people in the land. Same thing here. So we have the exact same people that were being judged in the day of the Lord, repenting and being blessed. That is the pattern. So the nation Israel will indeed, as it says in Romans, they will all believe at some point in the future. And when that happens, then God is going to bless them, drive out the nations from before them, and all Israel will be saved, it says in Romans. Verse 20, he is removing this northern military invasion and driving out the invaders. And that did not happen in the first century. Rome came in in 70 AD and leveled Jerusalem. 60 years after Rome leveled Jerusalem, they killed more Jews and scattered them from the land. We can't even spiritualize this into something with the church because the Christians were then persecuted by Rome for the next 250 years, using Christians as entertainment to be killed by beasts and soldiers in the Colosseum. Joel 220 was not fulfilled in the first century because God allowed the invading army to kill both Jews and Christians, and he did not remove the northern army from the city, as it says in Joel 220. And Steve, I find it very interesting that if we just go through this verse by verse, then we're going to find out the answer to how to interpret the book.

SPEAKER_00 25:13

Not only did he not remove it, but he certainly didn't do it in the way that's depicted here. He says the vanguard or the first portion of the army, he's going to drive them to the eastern sea, which is the Dead Sea, and that the rear guard, he's going to drive them to the Mediterranean Sea. So he certainly didn't do that with the Empire of Rome, as we've talked about before. They still occupied the area. And they also had the Barkopa revolt from the Jews and completely utterly destroyed Jerusalem because they didn't want it to exist anymore. So that certainly doesn't describe this time here. Talking about the Israelite nation, because it's talking about the land and the people, a reproach among the nations. Well, most certainly in the first century AD, the nation of Israel, what was left of it there around the Jerusalem area and the province of Judah was a reproach. It was looked down upon. It was looked as being something that was problematic for the Roman Empire. And since then, the Jewish people and the nation itself has been a reproach. The reconstitution of the nation of Israel since the mid-20th century has nothing but been a reproach by the other nations condemning it for the various actions it takes whenever it defends itself against attack. So I don't see how anybody can say that verses 19 and 20 have been fulfilled. Whenever to me it's very clear that this time frame that it's talking about has not happened yet with the nation of Israel.

Land Restored And Joy Returned

Early And Latter Rains In Context

SPEAKER_01 27:07

In verse 21, he turns a corner because of the repentance of the people, then do not fear, O land, rejoice and be glad, for the Lord has done great things. And then starting in verse 22, he lists off all these blessings of, again, the land that will be restored. Whereas earlier in the book, we had the land being destroyed by the invading locust. Here the pastures of the wilderness have turned green, the tree has borne its fruit, the fig tree and the vine have yielded in full. Whereas earlier the fig tree and the vine were destroyed, here they are restored. So God says specifically he's going to restore the land itself to fruitfulness. Every plant died initially, now the trees and vines produce to their fullness. Now that the land is restored, the people also can shout for joy. Note that they rejoice in the Lord, not merely because of the wealth of the land. Now I want to make one small rabbit trail here. Verse 23 at the end of the verse says, the early and latter reigns. And we have to remember the context here. He's talking about the restoration after the judgment. The immediate context is that early and latter reigns, he's going to bring seasonal physical reigns to the land. It's also symbolic of God restoring the fortunes of Israel and those who turned to him. However, that phrase, the early and latter reigns, was taken up many years ago by a group called the Latter Rain Movement, which held that God was pouring out a new blessing of the Holy Spirit. And the people that followed the Latter Rain believed they could get new messages from God. And they had a lot of prophesying and saying, Thus saith the Lord, saying things that supposedly came from God that are not in the Bible. And they also held that God was going to empower his church to ultimately take over the world through this movement, the Latter Rain movement. The Latter Rain movement was excommunicated by the assemblies of God. And today you don't hear that word anymore. You're not going to find hardly anyone out there that would even hear of the Latter Rain movement. What you do know is that the movement never really died. It just dispersed into many churches that still today believe that the Holy Spirit can give them messages that aren't in the Bible, that there's this pouring out of the Holy Spirit that's going to empower people to overcome the world, that the latter reign of the Holy Spirit is going to cause the church to be victorious and usher in God's kingdom on earth. My friend, I don't think they've read the rest of Joel. The rest of the book says the day of the Lord is going to be the greatest disaster in the history of Israel, lead to total destruction, and God is going to have to step in and rescue the nation. I just find that it's a poor exegesis to turn over to one verse and pull it out and make a movement out of it.

SPEAKER_00 30:24

I certainly agree with that, Glenn. To put it in context, as you mentioned, this is all talking about the restoration of the land itself and the produce that's going to come from it, that's going to be restored and not just the land, but the creatures as well, and that they're going to rejoice because this devastation is going to be over with. The former rain softened the soil for the planting of winter wheat. And the latter rain fell in the spring and ensured a hearty harvest because towards the end, close to harvest time, the rain would make the crops full because of the rain. The rain was considered a blessing from God. It's a farmer's best friend. So to take that and spiritualize it into something else, I just don't see it being the case when you take the context of what's being talking about here in Joel.

SPEAKER_01 31:22

We better pause here because of time, but we still have some great blessings to cover in the book of Joel. So be back with us next time as we continue to reason through the Bible.

SPEAKER_00 31:34

Thank you so much for watching and listening. And as always, may God bless you.