The scripture tells us these words in Joel chapter number 2, beginning with verse 12 through verse number 17.  “Even now, this is the Lord’s declaration: turn to Me with all your heart with fasting, weeping, mourning.  Tear your hearts, not just your clothes, and return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, rich in faithful love.  And He relents from sending disaster.  Who knows, He may turn and relent and leave the blessing behind so you can offer grain and wine to the Lord your God.” And then if you would please notice what the scripture says, “Blow the horn in Zion, announce a sacred fast, proclaim all an assembly, gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the aged, and gather the children, even those nursing at the breast, and let the bridegroom leave his bedroom, and the bride her honeymoon chamber.  And let the priests, the Lord’s ministers weep before the portico and the alter. And they say have pity on your people Lord, and do not make, do not make your inheritance a disgrace, an object, an object Lord among the nations.  Why should I be sad among the people, or be said among the peoples?  Where is their God?”

On Monday the New York Times carried the story of a 7-year-old Haitian girl who was rescued from the rubble.  She was rescued after being trapped in a small space for 4 days.  Death surrounded her everywhere, but when the rescue workers heard the small voice of this 7 year old girl, they worked endlessly, tirelessly, and urgently to bring her rescue.  It is even within a greater urgency than saving one’s life that Joel writes the words, and pens the words from the Word of God here in Joel chapter 2.  It is with that great urgency and immediacy that it went on.

The phrase, “Even now…” denotes two basic words.  Availability and urgency.  Being available to God now in your life, and urgently responding to God in your life.  In Joel chapter number 1, verse 1 through chapter 2, verse number 11; it shares with us about two judgments.  The first judgment he says is happening now.  And if you will recall, if you were here on that particular Sunday, I talked about and asked the question could it be that America right now is under a very similar judgment?

The judgment that he talks about in chapter 1 is that He has withdrawn His protection from the land.  He has withdrawn His provision from the land.  And He has also withdrawn the joy from the people.  But this same passage moves us into understanding in the end of chapter 1, and in chapter 2 at the beginning that there is not only a judgment that is happening now, but a judgment that is much, much greater that is out here looming before us.

Well the scripture says that not one person will be able to withstand this incredible judgment of God.  Who is able to endure the judgment of God?  Even while judgment is all around, and the promise of judgment is to come, all of a sudden there is a shift in the book of Joel, and the shift is that hope is available.  Hope is on the way.  Hope is revived because Joel chapter 2, verse 12 through 17 says that it’s not too late, even now.  It is not too late for America.  It is not too late for the church.  It is not too late for you.

The Bible tells us in this incredible passage of scripture that we are racing against the clock, and it is not too late!  It is not too late for what?  What is this scripture calling us to today?  The three actions of scripture here that we need to take in our lives; two of these are direct actions; one is the direct action of remembering something that is powerful and life changing.  But action number one he said, in the midst of all the doom and gloom around, he said:

1. Return to God.  Return to God.  The Bible here says that wherever we are at this present moment, that we need to return to God.  We see that written in verse 12, as well as verse 13.  He talks about us repenting of where we are, repenting of our sins, which means to turn from where we are, and turn to God at the very same time.  This is not an option that is submitted here in the text, but it is an imperative.  The imperative is there, return to God.

But God doesn’t leave us there.  God even tells us in the text how to return to Him.  I want you to notice this.  He says return to Me in:

(1) Total surrender.  Total surrender.  Let me ask you today, are you surrendered to God totally in your life?  May I remind you today He is not talking to the Pagan or to the heathen; He’s talking to people who are His people, followers of God!  And He said turn to Me with all of your heart, in total surrender, He says, turn to me.  That turn to me with all of your heart is a statement of conviction.  It means that there is whole-hearted surrender to God that God is calling us to in life.  This is 100% of yourself, giving yourself 100% to God.  It’s you giving God all that you are, all that you’ve ever been, and all that you will ever be.  We’re talking about complete; we’re talking about complete, absolute surrender.  So I ask you today, are you giving yourself to God like that?

Are you 100% surrendered to God?  What is it as a Christian that you hold in your hand that perhaps you are leery about giving to God?  Maybe you’re wondering if whether you should give it to God.  Whatever it is, He says if you’re going to return to Me, you have got to begin with total surrender.  All your heart.

In the last 21 days as we have encouraged you to pray 8 items in your life, those first 3 you were to complete on your own, but you know what my first one was?  Is that I would return to God in my life.  What’s an explanation other than that?  But that I would return to God.  I say that today honestly and humbly before you.  Folks, I get up every morning to be with God, way early.  I spend time with God daily.  I, I live for God.  I, I do work for God.  I, I have no life apart from what I’m talking about.  But even I know that I can be deceived, and I cannot see things clearly.  And there may be something in my life, something that’s going on that maybe I’m not been willing, maybe I can’t see that God doesn’t have it, but I want God to have it!  100%, surrendered to God completely.

How do we return to God?  We return to God in total surrender, but also:

(2) Complete humility.  Complete humility.  He talks about here in Joel chapter 2, He says turn to me with all your heart with fasting and weeping and mourning.  What does that mean?  This is not simply talking about the outward manifestations of fasting and weeping and mourning, even though obviously those are important, but He says those things represent a condition of the human heart that needs to be addressed.  And He says before all that goes on, and while that’s going on in your life, your heart needs to be broken before God.  So fasting and weeping and mourning over your own condition are symbols of something much deeper in your heart and your life, and that is that your own life is broken over your own life.  Broken over your own condition before God.  Seeing the great need to be before God in complete, total humility.

In scripture there is a direct correlation between fasting, and between humility.  God calls us to humble ourselves before Him.  1 Peter chapter 5, verse 6.  That means that we are to take the action of humbling ourselves before Him.  And what Joel is calling us to, really the Holy Spirit through the prophet Joel is calling us to, is to humble our lives before God in total surrender, holding nothing back, completely humbling ourselves before Him.

The most deceitful thing in your heart is pride.  In fact pride is so deceitful pride blinds you from seeing you have pride.  If you have to have constantly the applause of people, it’s pride.  If you have to have constantly the pleasure of people, it’s pride.  If you have a title to make you feel significant, or because you think you are worthy, it’s pride.  Pride is deadly to the Christian life.  Pride is a disease that can absolutely ruin any of us.  Our boasting needs to be about one thing, Christ and Christ alone!  Complete humility.

But he also said we need to come to Him with a:

(3) New attitude. With a new attitude.  He talks about the rending of the garment, the tearing of the garment.  When misfortune would occur, and they learned of that misfortune, perhaps they lost something, perhaps something terrible happened, catastrophic, adverse, trouble came, they would take their garments, and they would tear their garments!  That tearing of the garment was symbolic that conditions have changed, and things are not good.

What he was saying here in the text is that guys it’s not about the rending of your garment, it’s not about the tearing of your garment; you’ve got that part down.  He said you’ve got the external down, but he says listen I want your hearts to be torn and broken over where you are with God!  And that was his message to us.  And he was really calling for a new attitude.  That’s what he was calling for.  Not an attitude of pride, but an attitude of coming to God.  You see he was saying that we just don’t need to tear our garments to demonstrate the sad condition, but we need our own hearts to be broken before God, and grieved over our own condition!  And what this is call, is call to a major call of a whole new attitude.  And the attitude needs to be one of brokenness, and humility before God.

Oh dear friend I ask you today, do you need a new attitude?  Oh I tell you, you live in this country, you can develop an attitude, a bad attitude real quickly.  All you have to do is read, listen, stay on the web, drive down the road, turn the radio on, go to work, come to church at times, and you’re going to find people filled with a bad attitude.  And in the midst of that bad attitude what happens?  It becomes a cancer to you, and you develop a bad attitude in life!  But I want to tell you the bad attitude that needs to be addressed today, and the rest of them will take care of themselves, humble yourself before God, be broken before God about your own spiritual condition as a Christian, and come before Him with complete humility, and in total surrender with a broken heart before God.

He says guys that’s the attitude that I want to see.  If you want to return to Me, you return to Me, you change your attitude.  You change your heart, and you change your attitude.  You know what a bad attitude represents?  It represents the condition of your heart.  That’s all it does.  That’s what it represents, the condition of your heart.  What does Jesus say?  Jesus said as a man thinks it in his heart, he is.  He talked about that over in the book of Proverbs.  And then He talks about over in Matthew whatever comes out of a person’s mouth represents what is in that person’s heart.  We need a new attitude.

But he calls us not only to return to God, but he calls us to remember something that is absolutely something you’ve heard, but you need to embrace brand new again today in your life.  He says remember this:

2. God loves you.  God loves you.  Did you know God loves you today?   Regardless of where you are in your life, God loves you.  He loves you and is willing and able to receive you back unto Himself.  You may feel as if God is a thousand miles away from you today, but God loves you.  You may have not been with God privately in any kind of prayer time, or Bible study time in days or maybe ever in your life, but I want to tell you God loves you.  And you may last night had been involved with people you should not have been involved in, going to places you should not have gone, doing things you should not have done, but God loves you.

You see there is a phrase here in this text that is absolutely powerful.  He says that Christ is rich in faithful love.  That phrase is also translated, “loving kindness.”  It is one of the richest phrases of the entire Old Testament.  It talks about the aspects of God like love, and kindness, and grace, and compassion, and patience, and I want to tell you today God is all those things to you in your life!  He’s put up with us, and He’s put up with us, and He’s put up with us, and He’s put up with us, but I want to tell you today He still loves you!  Right where you are compassionately, He loves you.

So how does God love you?  Well the Bible here talks, he says with:

(1) Grace and compassion.  God loves you.  With grace and compassion, grace covers all of your sins, that’s how much God loves you!  If you are a Christ-follower here today and you know Christ is in your life, I have some great news for you, when you received Christ, grace covered all of your sins!  All of your sins are covered by the grace of God.  And today if you have never received that grace, you’ve never received Jesus into your life, and you’ve never experienced that, that knowledge, and that sense, and that feeling of complete total forgiveness, God loves you!  And He wants to extend to you and give you the greatest gift anyone’s ever given you today, and it’s the gift of grace that you received when you opened your heart to Christ.

That’s what grace is.  But to every one of us as well that know the Lord, we have compassion from God.  Compassion means God knows right where you are, and He’s still coming after you.  He knows your very condition, and He still loves you.  He still receives you.  He still desires you to move onto Him, that’s how much God loves you.  And His love is filled with grace, and with compassion.

What else about His love?  He said I love you so much I am going to be:

(2) Releasing you of judgment.  Oh wow, what a statement.  He uses

the phrase if you’ll notice it, he says, “Who knows, who knows,” in verse number 14, “that He may turn and relent.”  God may turn and relent.  In other words, God may not bring the, the judgment to come for a long, long time.  God may remove the judgment that is going on now.  Who knows?  God is going to do something great in your life, and He wants to do something new and fresh in your life.  Who knows?  God is able to do that.

Well the reason the question, “who knows,” was to remind us of God’s sovereignty.  That God is the one in charge, that He is the one who acts in all situations, and if God moves upon you with grace and with compassion, it’s because of a God who has sovereignly halted all of history for a moment for grace to abound to you, and compassion to abound to you, rather than judgment.  He’s willing to release you of all judgment.

If God sees us changing, He may do that for us.  If God sees us taking a step forward, He might do it for our nation.  Our nation deserves the judgment of God.  This past week we celebrated the horrible event that took place in 1973 in a legal court case called Roe vs. Wade that legalized abortion.  Since that time 47 million babies have been aborted in this country.  We’re talking about 47 million lives.  47 million.  My dear friend you listen to me today, we deserve the judgment of God.

I can give you a litany of other things, a list of many other things about all that literally pictures what I’m talking about today.  Could it be that God may relent, and God may give us a break, and God may get us out, and could He?  Yes!  There’s no question about it!  We deserve it, but who knows, God may release us of judgment.

But the scripture also says how does God love you?  He loves you:

(3) With blessings.  With blessings.  Notice what the Bible says.  He who knows he may relent and he may leave you, give you a blessing.  He may give you a blessing.  Isn’t it just like God to bless us?  Can you imagine God blesses you in the condition you’re in at times?  Can you imagine that God takes you where you are and blesses you in the midst of where you are?  That’s an amazing thing about God and how much He loves you, and how much grace He has extended to your life.  I challenge you this morning in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, understand that He will love you with blessings.

There’s a dynamic principle here in the scripture that I want you to see today about blessings.  And the principle is this:  The material provisions God gives you are to be as much for God’s service as they are for your pleasure or your comfort.  That’s how important these material provisions are.  You see what he said here is who knows what God may bless you and leave you a blessing, why?  What did he tell us here?  So that we can offer grain and wine to the Lord your God.  In other words so that we can give offerings back to God.  Remember in chapter 1 the judgment was so powerful, there had been such a drought, such a famine, there was nothing to give back to God.  And he said who knows the Lord may come and give you a blessing if you will return to Him, and with all of that, He may give back to you blessings so you can once again offer your life to Him, and offer all of your possessions to Him.

Ladies and gentlemen, material possessions are not for your own usage only; material blessings are not simply for you to use.  Material blessings are for you to use for the kingdom of God.  I mean bottom line is we all have to ask ourselves how much is enough?  I mean how much is enough?  How much do we really need?  God wants us to use them for Him.

Well you think about the context of the text again, judgment is being experienced, judgment is looming.  He calls us to repent.  He calls us to action.  He calls us to come to Him with a brand new heart, with the complete change of attitude.  He calls us to all of those things, and then He gives to us a final action that must occur.  What is that action?

3. Respond to God.  That’s what he calls us to.  To respond to God.  Do you realize today the Christian life, the Christian life is not simply about you coming and listening to a sermon, or coming and hearing someone speak, or sing.  It’s not about going to a Bible study only, or being connected with a fellowship group.  Oh my soul folks, it’s much deeper than that.  It’s you responding to God personally but also responding to God as the people of God.

In verse 15 through 17 he talks about that.  You remember the blowing of the horn occurs, which again is a call to urgency, a call to action?  This is the second warning that he’s given them.  It’s the second call from God, and God is saying now listen you need to get it together, and you need to return to me, and who knows if you return to me, I may relent from doing what I ought to do to you which is judge more, but I may change my heart, change my mind, even leave you a blessing whereby your life can be impacted greatly to make offerings back to God.  But He says you’ve got to start by returning to God, and you have to respond to God.

How does he want us to respond to God?  The passage is clear here.  He said we shall respond to God:

(1) Together.  Together.  Isn’t it amazing that with all of this going

on, he not only calls for an individual response, but he calls for a together response.  And he tells us in this section of scripture that together we should fast.  Together we should gather to worship.  Together we should come before God.  Those are the things he tells us to do.  He says together we need to set aside times in our life when, when we abandon the receiving of food for a day, or for a moment, or for a period of time so that we can pursue the God of heaven to do great and mighty things in our lives.  There are times when we need to gather for worship, and we need to come before Him.  He calls us together.

You see we live in desperate times ladies and gentlemen, and desperate times call for desperate measures.  And not only is he calling us to reconnect with Him personally, He is calling the church of Jesus Christ back to Himself to connect with Him again in a brand new, fresh, exciting, powerful way.  Today, we end 21 days of concentrated praying and fasting.  Over 1300 of our people have gone through this at whatever level they’ve gone with us on the journey.  God’s moved in many lives, change has happened upon many occasions, God has answered prayer.

But you know what?  On the first Sunday night of January here in this room, we fulfilled what Joel chapter 2 talks about in calling for a sacred meeting, a solemn assembly.  It was a great night.  Over 1600 people gathered on this campus on a Sunday night to come before God and to hear God speak to us through His Word.  They didn’t come to hear a sermon.  They didn’t come to sing a song, or to hear a song sung.  They came to meet with God.  They came to hear God.  And God spoke, and God moved.  Why?  Because we simply obeyed the scripture.

We need to respond to God together.  But we need to respond to God:

(2) Urgently.  We live in urgent times.  Right now we need to respond to God.  This is not a call to tomorrow.  It’s not a call to next week or next year.  It’s a call to now!  Now is the time!  It is not about something that we should be passive about, but the urgency upon us now!  He looks at the passage and I’m telling you this passage is powerful.  Now it gives an illustration here that is hard for the human mind to comprehend, especially in America.  But listen to this illustration.  He said when you call together, and you come to God, and you return to Me as a people altogether, you tell all the brides, bridegrooms to leave their honeymoon night.  And you tell all the brides to leave their chamber.  Both are ready and moments away from consummating the marriage vows through physical union.

He said things are that urgent.  You stop where you are right now, and you return to Me.  That’s how urgent things were.  Oh my friend we have got to grab a hold of it in our church.  We’ve got to grab a hold of it in our lives.  We’ve got to grab a hold of it in our nation.  We must come to God now!  The urgency is on us now!  And we are racing against the clock, judgment is here, judgment is looming, we must return to God.  And God has said hey I’m giving you hope!  Return to Me!  Give Me all of your heart and I will come upon you with love, and with grace, and I’m going to forget about things where they’ve been, and we’re going to start all over, and I’m going to bless you like you’ve never been blessed before.  And I mean that’s how good God is!  But God expects us to respond to Him!

I’m reminded of the book of James it says draw near to God and He will draw near to you.  You see we’re too sleepy, we’re too passive, and we’re not desperate enough.  What’s our problem?  I think I know our problem.  Jesus identified the problem over in the 2^nd chapter of the Revelation.  Because Jesus told them man you’ve got so many things together as a church, you’ve got so many things together in your own life, you love truth, you love doctrine, you love doing things for God, but you’ve got one big issue in your life Jesus said, until you get this right, things are not going to be right.  And you know what else He said?  Chapter 2, verse 4, “But I have this against you, you have abandoned the love you had at first.  You have left loving Me like you used to love Me.  You used to love Me passionately.  You used to love Me with honeymoon love full of fire, energy, vigor, but you don’t ever, you don’t love Me like that anymore.  And He said you’ve got to start loving Me like that again!  Or else I’m going to come, and I’m going to take the blessing away from your life.

Oh my friend in our relationship with Jesus, personally we need to fall in love with Christ again.  In our relationship with Jesus as a church, we need to fall in love with Christ again.  Do you realize today that our spiritual condition in America and in our own lives is even more desperate than the physical condition that exists in Haiti?  Devastation and ruin surrounds us.  The smell of death is in the air.  But be encouraged hope is on the way.  In fact what we have is better than that, hope is now.  Hope is now and it all begins with us doing one thing, returning to God.  Returning to God.  It begins with you responding to God.

What is it in your life that is not 100% completely surrendered to God?  What is it?  What is it?  What is that one thing you’ve been holding back, that one thing that you’ve been leery of, that one thing you cannot see because you’re too blind to see it, and Satan is hiding it from you?  God wants us in total surrender, with complete humility, humbling ourselves before Him, and surrendering our hearts to Him completely with a new attitude.

What does He say?  Come.  That’s what He says.  Come.  You come to Me, and who knows what I will do.  But I will come to you with grace and compassion, releasing you of judgment, and giving you a blessing.  But it all starts with you and me, with us returning to God.