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The praise, glory, and honor go to Christ because his power
guarded you and kept you through the hardest years of your life.
Money
can be restored. Property can be restored — broken-down cars, stripped
painting, old houses.
But one
thing that can never be restored is time. Time flies and it does not return.
Years pass and we never get them back.
Yet God
promises the impossible: “I will restore
the years that the locust has eaten” (Joel 2:25).
The
immediate meaning of this promise is clear.
God’s
people had suffered the complete destruction of their entire harvest through
swarms of locusts that marched like an insect army through the fields,
destroying the crops, multiplying their number as they went.
For
four consecutive years, the harvest was completely wiped out.
God’s
people were brought to their knees in more ways than one.
But “the Lord became jealous for his land and
had pity on his people.”
God
said, “Behold I am sending to you grain,
wine and oil, and you will be satisfied (Joel 2:18-19).
In the
coming years, God said, their fields would yield an abundance that would make
up for what had been lost: “The threshing
floor shall be full of grain; the vats shall overflow with wine and oil. . . .
You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied” (Joel 2:24, 26).
This
wonderful promise for those people meant that years of abundant harvests would
follow the years of desolation brought about by the locusts.
But God
has also put this promise in the Bible for us today.
Lost Years of Our Lives
What do
“lost years” look like for us? Lost years (or locust years) are years that you
can’t get back, and they come in many varieties.
Lost
years are fruitless years. A lot of hard work was
done in the years the locusts had eaten.
After
everything was destroyed, the people must have thought, All this work
and what do I have to show for it?
Some of
you know this pain in the world of business — a failed venture, a bad
investment, a misguided policy, and all the effort that you put in day-by-day,
month-by-month, year-by-year led only to massive disappointment.
You
think, What has come of all my time and all my effort?
Lost
years are painful years. I’m thinking of those who
have lost a loved one. You had plans for the future, but now you fear the
coming years may be empty.
I’m
thinking also of those who live with illness in the body or the mind. You
assumed that you would always be able to do what you used to do.
You
have to find a way to live with the disappointment that you cannot.
Lost
years are selfish years. Here’s a story that’s
been repeated thousands of times. There’s a person (let’s call him Jim) who
made a commitment to Christ, but it didn’t run deep.
Faith
in Jesus was a slice of the big pie of his busy life, filled with all the
things that Jim wanted to pursue.
Then
one day, God gets hold of Jim. He is spiritually awakened. He says to
himself, What in the world have I been doing? There’s no substance in
my life. I really want it to count for Christ. I want to live in the power of
the Spirit. I want to make a difference in the world, but the locusts have
eaten half my life! I’ve wasted my years on myself.
Lost
years are loveless years. A division comes to a
family, alienating loved ones. Children grow up, and those years cannot be
recovered.
A
marriage quietly endures in which love has been burning low for many years. You
see a couple who are really in love, and you say, “I wish I could be loved like that.”
Or you
have not yet met the person you would like to meet. It feels like the years are
moving on. You can never get them back. The locusts have eaten them.
Lost
years are rebellious years. Perhaps you grew up with
many blessings, but in your heart you wanted to rebel.
You
didn’t fully understand this urge, but you gave yourself to it. Instead of
bringing you pleasure, rebellion brought you pain.
Now you
look back on those years with regret, the years that the locusts have eaten.
Lost
years are misdirected years. The path you chose
in your career or at college was a dead end. You just didn’t fit.
Often
in your mind, and sometimes in your conversation, you say, “How did I end up here? If only. . . . If only I had made that move. .
. . If only I had taken that opportunity. . . . If only I had chosen a
different path.”
But the
moment has passed. It’s gone. You can’t go back to it. You’re left with locust
years.
Lost
years are Christ-less years. All Christ-less years are
locust years. This point is worth thinking about if you have not yet made a
commitment to Christ.
Ask
anyone who came to faith in Christ later in life, and they will tell you that
they wish they’d come to Christ sooner than they did: “How much foolishness I would have avoided. How much more good might
have been done through my life.”
How God Restores Lost Years
Take
heart! There is hope, because God can restore your lost, locust years. He does
so in three ways.
God can
restore lost years by deepening your communion with Christ. “You shall know that I am in the midst of
Israel, and that I am the Lord your God” (Joel 2:27).
These
people, who have endured so much, enjoy a communion with the Lord that is far
greater than anything they had ever known before in their religious lives.
Christ
can restore lost years by deepening your fellowship with him.
Why not
ask him for this?
Tell
him, “Lord, I have spent too many years
without you, too many years at a distance from you. Fill my heart with love and
gratitude for Christ. Let the loss of these years make my love for Christ
greater than it would ever have been. Restore to me the years the locusts have
eaten. “
God can
restore lost years by multiplying your fruitfulness. The
harvests for these people had been wiped out for four years, but God restored
the years that the locusts had eaten by giving bumper harvests.
This
provision makes me think about the parable where Jesus spoke about a harvest
that could be 30-, 60-, or 100-fold.
There’s
a huge difference between these three harvests. Three years at 100-fold is as
much fruit as a decade at 30-fold.
Why not
ask him for this? “Lord, the locusts have
eaten too many years of our lives. You have called us as your disciples to bear
fruit that will last. Too many fruitless years have passed. Now Lord, we ask of
you, give us some years now in which more lasting fruit will be born than in
all of our years of small harvests.”
God can
restore lost years by bringing long-term gain from short-term loss. The
effect of these great trials in your life will be that “the tested genuineness of your faith . . . may result in praise and
glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:7).
The
praise, glory, and honor go to Christ because his power guarded you and kept
you through the hardest years of your life.
Thinking
about “years that the locust has eaten,”
years that have been taken, I think of something Isaiah said about our Lord
Jesus: “He was cut off out of the land of
the living” (Isaiah 53:8).
Here
was the Lord Jesus in the prime of life. He was three years into his ministry
at 33 years old. You would think that a man launching a new enterprise at the
age of 33 has everything in front of him.
But
Isaiah says, “He was cut off.” He was
cut off because he came under the judgment of God, not for his own sins — because
he had none — but for ours.
Our
sins, our grief, our sorrows, were laid on him. Our judgment fell on him. Our
locusts swarmed all over him. The life of God’s tender shoot was “cut off.”
Then, on the third day, the Son of God rose in the power of an eternal life. He offers himself to you, and he says what no one else can ever say: “I will restore the years that the locusts have eaten.”
Colin Smith (MPhil, London
School of Theology) is senior pastor of , a multi-campus church in the
northwest suburbs of Chicago, and his ministry extends through his radio
program Unlocking
the Bible. He is also committed to mentoring next generation pastors,
missionaries, and church-planters through The Orchard Network.
Colin and his wife, Karen, have two married sons and five granddaughters.
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/god-can-restor-your-lost-years/
