Joel was pleading to his heavenly Father on behalf of faithless Israel. He didn’t want the heathens to make God’s people an object of scorn by asking such questions as, “Where is their God?” (Joel 2:17). Israel professed to be servants of the most high God–the Holy God who was above every god and over every nation. Yet their persistent sins had degraded them. Israel appeared to the heathens as a people who had no God.
Unfortunately, the Lord’s church in many communities is in the same situation today that Israel was in centuries ago. Professing Christians proclaim to know the truth above their fellow man, but when their lives are examined, they are living the same immoral, sinful, ungodly lives as others who don’t pretend to serve God. The ungodly are justified in asking, “Where is their God?”
Some Christians take a firm stand on the teachings of the Bible with their lips, but their lives proclaim a different gospel. These individuals remind us of the story about the Christian who argued with his neighbor about the importance of the Lord’s day and how essential it was to assemble with the saints each Sunday.
His neighbor was silenced by the Christian’s logic and use of the Scripture until they accidentally met again on the lake. It was a beautiful, sunny, Sunday morning during the worship hour when their boats passed one another on the lake. The neighbor yelled to his Christian friend, “I guess I won the argument after all!” Some Christians talk so far above where they live that the world can legitimately ask, “Where is their God?”
Hearing the message of the cross and proclaiming that message is of no value until it is acted upon by faith–a faith that works by love (Gal. 5:6). As a result of a dead faith, the original Israelites who left Egypt died in the desert before reaching the promised land. (Hebrews 3:16-17). The Hebrew writer encourages us not to fall short of God’s promises as Israel did (Heb. 4:11). “For we also have had the gospel preached to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because those who heard did not combine it with faith” (verse 2).
When the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven, “He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus” (2 Thess. 1:8). The end of those who DON’T KNOW God and those who DO NOT OBEY God is the same for both are living in such a way that people ask, “Where is their God?”