Any new year is invested with much expectation, even more so for 2021. There are many expressions of hope that this year will witness recovery from our troubled condition in 2020. There are of course positive things that we can take with us from our experience. Yet some things that many people hope in proved especially vulnerable during the past year. There is, however, one source of unshakable strength and hope. It is especially against such times that the Lord reveals Himself as the ultimate solid hope of His people.
As David Dickson points out, the Lord’s people strengthen themselves in believing the promises of God’s Word concerning the care of His people. They look to past experience of deliverance to guard their heart against the fear of all possible trouble in time to come. So they can say “God is our refuge and strength” (Psalm 46:1). Although the Lord will not exempt His people from trouble, He will be near them in trouble. When they are made conscious of their weakness, He will not delay “a very present help in trouble”. This guards their heart against fear as well as making it fixed and settled through faith. Who faith is fixed on God, it can look at the greatest dangers and troubles that can be imagined with a resolution to adhere to God and His truth whatever may happen. Although the whole earth is shaken, faith finds footing and ground to stand upon in God Himself (Psalm 46:1-3).
Joel prophesied during troubled times for God’s people, days not only of desolation but of confusion and terror. Yet there are rich promises in the midst of this such as the promise of Joel 3:16 “the heavens and the earth shall shake: but the LORD will be the hope of his people, and the strength of the children of Israel”. Pastor George Hutcheson (1615-1674) helps us apply the truths that can be drawn from this in the following updated extract.
1. GOD MAY SOMETIMES REQUIRE A TIME OF SHAKING
As God is powerfully able to overturn heaven and earth when He pleases; in subduing His enemies He may bring great alterations and overturnings in the world. For, when he shall roar, “the heavens and the earth shall shake”, which, together with what is said (v. 15), makes a complete parallel with the condition of the Church (Joel 2:10), and it implies such an alteration of affairs, as if there were a dissolution of the world and overturning of the course of nature. And it is no wonder if those who are so well rooted in the world and so universally spread through the earth, cause it to shake through general commotions before they are cast out of it.
2. GOD’S PEOPLE MAY HAVE MANY FEARS IN A TIME OF SHAKING
When God is shaking the earth to overturn enemies, God’s people may be exercised by many fears and apprehensions that the storm will break upon them; therefore they need a promise to secure them against this.
3. GOD IS THE ONLY SECURITY IN A TIME OF SHAKING
Nothing will be able to secure the hearts of God’s people against the terrors of a time of great commotions, except God alone and what they find in Him and from Him. The promise therefore points them to what “the Lord will be” to them.
In times of great confusion, the Lord’s people may expect that He will be a place of refuge in which they may hide. He will provide those who come to Him, with grounds of hope for the future and with strength and courage to bear it until the accomplishment comes. It is “hope”, or “a refuge” and “strength”, which is extended here and God undertakes not to disappoint them of these. The “Lord will be the hope of his people”, He will take them under His protection, He will let them see grounds for hope in Himself, and furnish them with hope to lay hold on it and with strength to bear it all.
4. GOD PROMISES THIS FOR ALL HIS PEOPLE
What the Lord has been or will be at any time to His people Israel, in performing spiritual promises, He will be to all who are truly His people. The promise is generally both to “his people” whoever they may be, and “to the children of Israel”.
