joe 2:25
I will restore to you the years that the locusts ate.
the great restorer
Lobsters are blissfully unknown in England. Here we only have the harmless grasshopper. Where plagues of locusts are known, no one could be surprised that the author of this book represents them as a veritable army, leaving in their wake the desolations of war, a desolation that would naturally take years to repair. Here is a picture of some years in the life of mankind. A German philosopher has summed up our earthly state in the words: “Man has two and a half minutes down here: one to smile, one to sigh, and half a minute to love; because in the middle of this minute he dies.” He is so far from God. He is the only Restorer. He denies God, and the locusts will be victorious forever; the desolation is final and complete. Some years in some lives, and some lives as a whole, seem to have fallen prey to locusts. We all know when we are wronged. And most of us deeply feel the wrongs suffered by others. The words of the text are addressed to a repentant nation. “I will restore.” God is committed to doing it for his own being. To that He must be faithful. So great is this need that God, may I say, does not bother to be consistent on any lower plane. He is always true to that name, which means much more than anything we know under the name Love. Years can apparently be eaten by locusts that really aren’t. When the beyond of God is recognized, what possibilities of restoration appear! The Incarnate Word came to do the work of restoration of sin, and of the miseries that he has caused and causes. (WA Cornaby.)
Lost years
Lost years can never be literally restored. Time once past is gone forever. The locusts did not eat the years, the locusts ate the fruit of the labor of the years, the crops of the field: so the meaning of the restoration of the years must be the restoration of those fruits and those crops that the locusts consumed. . You can’t get your time back; but there is a strange and wonderful way that God can return to you the wasted blessings, the unripe fruits of years you have mourned. The fruits of wasted years can still be yours. By giving his repentant people larger harvests than the earth could naturally produce, God could return to them, as it were, all that they would have had if the locusts had never come; and God, giving you greater grace in the present and in the future, may make the life that has hitherto been ruined and devoured by the locust, caterpillar, and caterpillar of sin, and self, and Satan, yet, be a complete, blessed and useful life for his praise and glory. Reflect on this mystery of love. Imagine the spirits of evil, year after year taking from the fields of human life all its crops. Where have the precious products led? The fruits of wasted years are gone, gone beyond all hope. However, the Lord will bring life out of the grave; those long lost spells will be restored. Is there anything too difficult for the Lord? Does not the very difficulty, if not the impossibility, of the undertaking make it more worthy of the Almighty? For the one who believes all things are possible. (CH Spurgeon.)
the canker years
The moral, not the picturesque aspect of the locusts’ visit, is foremost in the prophet’s mind. He proclaims it as punishment for the people’s sin and as a call to repentance. If they repent, he promises a boon that will amply atone for past suffering. Wasted and cursed years are a fact of most human lives. The frightening thing is the years that have been devoured by small, barely noticeable organisms, like a caterpillar or an aphid. Years that are gone, wasted, we don’t know how, and of which we have nothing to show, years devoured in trifles; years that passed, like on the wings of a hurricane, in the wild outburst of dissipation, and of which only the broken chords of old songs remain, and some dry leaves of withered garlands. The exquisitely bitter thought in this vision of wasted years is that of our own share in the desolation; and when our eyes are wide open to waste, our first impulse is to look for some method of restoration. How does God deal with facts like these? Does your economy of him include any law of restoration? It is evident that any restoration economy must not only be based on superhuman wisdom, but must also include superhuman compassion. “Whatever a man sows, that he will also reap”, is a law that God violates in morality only in the fields. Viewed simply as a matter of law, wasted years cannot be restored. The atonement element only sidesteps the difficulty. It does not comply. Suffering is not a fair equivalent of the results of negligence or willful wrong. How contrition can affect one’s moral relations with God is one thing; how it affects the results of his misdeed or his idleness is quite another thing. An ocean of tears will not give life or innocence. Repentance is a great power, but there are some things that repentance cannot do. On this side, the truth is terrible in its inflexibility. I pity the materialist when it comes to the question of repairing moral waste. I pity the positivist at the frantic plea of a repentant soul. If God does not ignore the action of physical law, which is nonetheless his law, that law must at least be assumed and somehow brought within the scope of a higher law. Perhaps it is not possible to formulate that higher law. In any case, it is not necessary, as desirable as it may be. We want to know how it touches a penitent standing man at the sight of the years eaten from him. Some things can give us comfort and hope.
1. We have the general promise of God. “I will restore the years eaten. We could confidently resort to that alone. Restoration, according to the divine ideal, is a possibility and a fact in the divine economy. And some features of the process that we know. For example, God completely separates man from the thought and work of literal restoration. He does not ask her to repair, in the sense of a literal equivalent, the waste of the past. His concern is with the present and the future, not with the past. Whatever God can do with the wrong past, a penitent soul can only leave it in the hands of God. His work now is not to repair the past, but to give himself to the development of his new life as a new creature in Christ Jesus. The self-examination of a repentant and forgiven man must be directed not to what he has been, but to what he is. Still, it is not restoration, that a man should simply put the past behind him. God gives certain things that were lost in the wasted years of sin. God does not allow the darkness of a man’s past to arise like a cloud between man and the manifestation of his Divine tenderness. The wrong past can, and often does, poison human affection. Human nature is hesitantly forgiving, and there is an undertone of suspicion behind restored trust. But God believes in the possibility of genuine repentance and frankly accepts it. Repentance is a factor of immense significance in God’s restoration economy. When God heals a man’s rebellions, he freely loves him. The restoration is included in the restored sonship. There are certain incidents along the lines of royal restoration that are worth noting. God has a wonderful power to bring good out of evil and to draw interest even from the evil of wasted years. In manufacturing communities, vast fortunes are sometimes made from what is technically called “waste.” God discerns facts and possibilities in the waste that we cannot see and cannot trust ourselves to see. Illustrate from the story of John B. Gough. God strikes down evil, but saves power from the remains, and man brings mature power to the side of the kingdom of God, and makes it an instrument of victory and spiritual conquest. We do not know nor can we know what God does with the irrevocable and the irremediable in the bad past of men; but we do know that He causes those barren and ruined heirlooms to flourish again, and bring forth thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold. Both the Bible and Christian history are filled with the great fruitful work of restored men, men with great stretches of cursed years behind them. The best thing about restoration is going back to God. Renewal, fertility, peace, are not in our new resolutions, not in our turning to new duties; they are in his presence, his touch upon us, his guidance. The promise of restoration will have a greater fulfillment little by little. “In God are found all lost things, and those who habitually immerse themselves in God and abide in Him never become too rich. No, they find more things than they can lose. However, let us not presume on all this to neglect our heritage. Let us not be tempted by this revelation of God’s amazing goodness and restoring power to think lightly of ruin and nakedness. God’s promise of restoration does not encourage presumption. It does not make the plague and cancer that are due to our neglect or waste any less terrible. God help us all! These lives of ours have been so flawed, so irregular, so unproductive. What will we do? Surely He will not unduly grieve over the past, when He says, “I will restore.” (M.R. Vincent, DD)
double restoration
These words refer to a double restoration.
Me. The restoration of lost material mercies. “I will restore to you the years that the locust ate.” Restoration is the peculiar work of God. Who but He can restore the earth? An insect can destroy a giant; but only God can restore life to a dying flower. Restoration is the constant work of God. From death He gives life to all of nature. Spring is the great annual illustration of it. God restores lost temporal blessings to his people in two ways:
1. Returning the same in kind, as in the case of Job; Y
two. Restoring that which serves the same purpose.
II. The restoration of lost religious privileges. What are these?
1. Worship. “And you shall eat abundantly, and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord your God, who has done wonders for you, and my people will never be put to shame.”
two. Communion. “And you will know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I am the Lord your God, and no one else.” (Homily.)