Do Not Hit Snooze
The Urgency of Joel’s Message
Have you ever set an alarm to wake you in the morning?
Children may not have programmed the clock themselves, but they know the voice that travels down the hallway and through the bedroom door when a parent says it is time to get up. Whether we are young or old, we all share the same impulse when an alarm sounds. The alarm exists to awaken us to our responsibilities, yet our hand reaches instinctively for the snooze button because we would rather cling to comfort than face what the day requires of us.
Children (and parents) know the exchange well. A parent says, “It’s time to get up,” and the reply comes almost automatically: “One more minute.”
As an adult, you learn quickly the dangerous game that this request really is, because what begins as five additional minutes of sleep easily becomes twenty, and then you are late for work or school.
The alarm clock itself is not designed to irritate us, though it may feel that way. It exists to wake us because something important is happening, and the refusal to rise does not stop the day from arriving and moving on without us.
The prophecy of Joel functions in precisely that way. Joel is not background noise in the canon, nor is he a minor footnote tucked away among the Twelve. Joel is an alarm sounding from Zion, and his message refuses to let the people of God remain spiritually drowsy while judgment approaches.
The Context of Joel
Joel ministered to Judah in the aftermath of a devastating locust plague that had stripped the land bare. Though the precise date of the prophecy is debated, it likely occurred either shortly before Judah’s exile to Babylon or sometime after their return, but the theological weight of the book does not depend on settling the date. Leslie C. Allen notes that Joel interprets the plague not as a random ecological disaster but as covenantal judgment from the LORD within Israel’s covenant relationship.¹ The devastation of the land is not merely agricultural; it is theological.
Joel does not provide an explicit list of Judah’s sins, yet the covenantal framework makes the meaning plain. Israel’s history had already proven that exile was the curse of disobedience, and even restoration from Babylon had not cured the deeper disease of the heart.
As chapter one moves to chapter two, the imagery shifts from description to declaration. What began as an account of destruction becomes the blast of a trumpet. “Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound an alarm in my holy mountain: let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: for the day of the LORD cometh, for it is nigh at hand” (Joel 2:1).
Joel is sounding an alarm because the day of the LORD is near.
The Call to See the Coming Day of the LORD
When our alarm rings at home, it usually coincides with dawn, when light begins to stretch across the sky, but Joel takes that image and inverts it. The dawn that spreads over the mountains in his vision is not a sunrise but a thick darkness rolling across the hills. “A day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness, as the morning spread upon the mountains” (Joel 2:2).
Anyone who has watched a sunrise has seen how color slowly fills the sky. Joel borrows that picture but replaces the brightness with blackness. This is not a dawn that brings warmth and promise but one that signals reckoning.
Joel continues with military imagery, speaking of “a great people and a strong; there hath not been ever the like” (Joel 2:2). Whether the prophet is describing an invading army, using the locust imagery, or projecting forward, the point is that what is coming is both unprecedented and unstoppable.
“The land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness” (Joel 2:3). Eden represents the place of God’s presence, the original dwelling of humanity with the LORD. The land of Canaan was meant to echo that reality, functioning as a typological Eden where God would dwell among His covenant people. Yet in Joel’s vision, the coming judgment reverses that blessing. What was once a garden becomes wasteland, and the place of the presence of God becomes the barren wilderness of exile.
From verses eight through eleven, Joel continues to give a sense of the inevitability. The invading force does not break ranks; they climb walls, they run through the city, and they enter houses through the windows like thieves. The imagery communicates one clear reality: there is nowhere to hide. The final question of this first movement drives the point home. “For the day of the LORD is great and very terrible; and who can abide it?” (Joel 2:11).
If God arises in judgment, who can endure? Left to ourselves, none of us can stand.
The Call to Repent from the Heart
At this point, one might expect the alarm to continue without pause, but Joel introduces a turn. “Therefore also now, saith the LORD, turn ye even to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning” (Joel 2:12). The alarm does not exist merely to awaken the people but as an invitation to them.
Further, this call to return is grounded in the character of God Himself. “For he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil” (Joel 2:13). Joel is echoing the covenant revelation of Exodus 34, where the LORD revealed His own name as merciful and gracious. The prophet does not threaten the people into repentance by presenting God as unpredictable or unhinged with anger. Instead, he calls them to return because God’s character is inclined toward mercy.
Yet Joel immediately clarifies the nature of that return by commanding them to “Rend your heart, and not your garments” (Joel 2:13). In Israel, tearing garments was an outward expression of grief or repentance, but outward demonstrations can be faked. God is not interested in religious shows; He demands the heart. He requires a genuine turning that flows from within.
Joel intensifies this by asking, “Who knoweth if he will return and repent, and leave a blessing behind him?” To be clear, this is not skepticism about God’s goodness but a reminder that mercy cannot be manipulated. Repentance does not place God in our debt, and the only hope of averting judgment rests entirely in His gracious character.
Notice that the call to repentance is also corporate. “Blow the trumpet in Zion, sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly: gather the people” (Joel 2:15–16). Elders, children, nursing infants, bridegrooms, and brides are all summoned. No stage of life exempts anyone from the need to return.
The Call to Return While There Is Time
The repetition of the trumpet in this chapter emphasizes that there is no space for delay. The first blast announces the coming judgment, and the second summons the people to repentance. Joel leaves no room for spiritual snoozing.
The urgency of the call arises from two certainties: judgment is real, and mercy is available. Throughout Scripture, the day of the LORD carries a dual aspect. It brings judgment upon the wicked and deliverance for the righteous. For those reconciled to God, it is vindication. For those hardened in rebellion, it is darkness. Joel’s audience, having drifted from covenant faithfulness, would experience that day as gloom unless they returned.
The question “Who can abide it?” finds its answer not within Joel 2 itself but within the broader sweep of redemptive history. We cannot endure by outward reform, by religious performance, or by attempting to balance our moral accounts. The New Testament reveals that endurance comes only through the provision God Himself supplies in Christ.
When we read Joel through the lens of the gospel, we see that the ultimate intercession for God’s people is not offered by fallible priests but by Jesus Christ. At Calvary, He faced the darkness that Joel described as the day of the LORD, in all its judgment dimension fell upon Him.
The call, therefore, is not to self-atonement but to faith. We are summoned to trust in the finished work of Christ and to allow that trust to bear fruit in lives marked by repentance.
Do Not Silence the Alarm
Alarms irritate us because they interrupt comfort and demand action. Joel’s prophecy interrupts spiritual complacency and confronts us with the certainty of divine judgment. Scripture does not permit us to treat judgment as something that only happened in the days of Joel; it presents it as a fixed reality toward which history moves.
First, we must acknowledge that judgment is certain. We cannot evade it by ignoring it, just as we cannot prevent morning by silencing an alarm.
Second, we must repent. The apostles summarized their preaching as “repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 20:21). True repentance is understood to be a return to God through the person and work of Jesus.
Third, we must rest in the character of God. Joel reminds us that the LORD is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. AsPaul explains, “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8).
Finally, we must fix our gaze upon Christ. He is the One who endured the darkness of the day of the LORD on our behalf. He is the refuge for those who heed the alarm and return.
The Final Trumpet
Alarms do not ring indefinitely. Joel’s trumpet warned of impending judgment in his own day, but Scripture speaks of another trumpet that will sound at the close of history, when “the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ” (Rev. 11:15).
The day of the LORD is nearer than we imagine. Yet the same God who warns of that day extends mercy and calls, “Return unto me.”
The alarm is currently the gracious interruption of a God who refuses to let His people sleep through their own destruction.
If you hear the alarm today, do not reach for the snooze button. Do not postpone repentance under the illusion that there will always be another warning.
Rise, return, and take shelter in Christ, who has already endured the darkness so that those who trust in Him may be brought into the kingdom of light.
¹ Leslie C. Allen, The Books of Joel, Obadiah, Jonah and Micah, New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976), 13.