This morning we begin a series that will carry us through to the last Sunday of the year on the minor profits.

There are 12 of them. We will interrupt for Mission's conference at the end of October.

Hope you're planning on that, October 17 and 24,

and that leaves us 12 Sundays for 12 prophets.

And this morning we begin with the Prophet Joel.

And what I want to do is weave the scripture reading into the message because some of the prophets are short and some of the prophets are long.

Joel is short and therefore I want to present the whole thing, basically, this morning and

see what its message is for us today.

Joel falls into two halves.

The dividing point comes between 227 and 228. In the first half of the book of 27 and 2 28.

In the first half of the Book of Joel, which by the way is found on page 786 in your pew Bible,

if you're hustling around there's

a looking for those three pages. In the first half of the book of Joel, there's a locust plague that came over Israel as a judgment from the Lord,

and then as a result the people repented for their half-heartedness and God restored their fortunes.

That's the first half up through 227.

The second half of the book of Joel begins with

228 and the prophet lifts his eyes to the future

and sees that at some future time there's going to be a great

outpouring of the Holy Spirit described in

228 following and that then all the nations are going to be gathered together in

the Valley of Jehoi

or to describe the two halves in a different way.

...