I Will Restore the Years Is a Strange Thing for God to Promise

A man in his sixties told me he was not going to bother, and he said it kindly, and he meant it as realism rather than despair.

His reasoning was this: the good part is gone. He had spent it. He had done the things he did in the years a man is supposed to be building something, and there was nothing left of those years to work with, and he was not going to insult God by turning up at the end with an empty box.

I want to be honest about my first reaction, which was that I understood him completely. I have done the same arithmetic. Twenty years chasing and a fraction of that preaching, and there are mornings when the ratio is the loudest thing in the room.

And there is a verse people quote at men like him that I think is often quoted badly, in a way that promises what it does not say. I want to read it properly, because the real version is better than the one people use.

What Joel actually promises, and to whom

Here is the verse.

And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpiller, and the palmerworm, my great army which I sent among you. (Joel 2:25, King James Version)

Read the end of it. My great army which I sent among you. The locusts in Joel are not bad luck. The chapter has been describing them as a judgement, and God takes ownership of them in the same sentence as the promise.

So this is not a verse about a man who was unlucky. It is a verse spoken to people whose loss followed from something, and that is exactly why it is the right verse for a man in his sixties with a box he thinks is empty.

And notice the verb. Restore. Years cannot be handed back; nobody in that field got a decade returned to them. What Joel goes on to describe is a harvest that comes in so full that the shortfall is covered, and then he says something extraordinary about the eating of it: ye shall eat in plenty, and be satisfied, and praise the name of the LORD your God.

The restoring is not a rewind. It is a future that outweighs an arithmetic.

You are being offered something ahead of you rather than a rewind of what is behind. Joel 2:25 promises restoring in a chapter about harvest rather than about time travel. It is His Spirit, Romans 8:23 called the firstfruits, who is named as the down payment on what is ahead.

The parable that offends everybody, on purpose

There is a story Jesus tells that exists for exactly this man, and it is designed to be annoying.

And when they came that were hired about the eleventh hour, they received every man a penny. (Matthew 20:9)

The workers hired at the end of the day get the same as the ones who worked from dawn. The early workers complain, and their complaint is completely reasonable by every standard of fairness anybody has ever used.

And the answer they get is not a defense of the arithmetic. It is a question: Is thine eye evil, because I am good?

He does not argue that it was fair. He says it was generous, and generosity is not required to be proportional, and that is the entire point of the story.

An eleventh hour man in that parable does not get a smaller coin. He does not get a probationary coin. There is one wage and he is handed it, and Jesus told the story that way knowing exactly who would be offended.

You are handed the same wage at the eleventh hour, and the parable was built to make that unmistakable. Matthew 20:9 gives every man a penny regardless of the hour. It is the Holy Spirit, Ephesians 1:14 named as the earnest of the inheritance, who is the down payment on a wage nobody had time to earn.

The latest turn in the Bible got the fastest answer

If a person wants to know how late is too late, Scripture answers it with a case rather than a principle, and the case is not subtle.

A man is dying next to Jesus. He has hours. He has no way to make restitution, no time to build anything, no opportunity to prove a single thing. What he says is about as thin as a prayer can be: Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.

And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise. (Luke 23:43)

To day. No probation. No waiting period. No discussion of the years behind him, which by his own admission had earned him where he was.

That man is the latest turn recorded in the Bible and he received the fastest answer in it. Those two facts sit in the same sentence and Scripture does not treat them as a tension.

You have a case in Scripture that is later than yours and it was answered the same day. Luke 23:43 says to day shalt thou be with me in paradise with hours left, and it is the same Spirit, Titus 3:5 naming the renewing of the Holy Ghost, who does a renewing that has never once needed a runway.

And if the arithmetic about your own years has got heavy enough to sit on your chest at night, say it out loud to somebody: a doctor, a counselor, a sponsor, a pastor you trust, or the 988 crisis line, which answers every hour there is. Men in their sixties do this arithmetic alone and quietly, and it is exactly the sum that should be done with another person in the room.

What Moses asks for, having lost forty years in a desert

Moses spent forty years in the wrong place and then forty more walking people slowly through a wilderness, and near the end he prays something very specific.

O satisfy us early with thy mercy; that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. (Psalm 90:14)

Early. A man at the end of a long life asking to be satisfied early. He is not asking for the years back either; that psalm is the one that counts a life at seventy or eighty and calls it labor and sorrow, and he is completely clear eyed about it.

What he asks for is satisfaction now, and gladness for whatever days remain, and the number of them is not the subject of the request.

That is a prayer a man in his sixties can pray without lying. And Peter gives the reason God waits at all, which turns the whole delay inside out:

The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us ward, not willing that any should perish. (2 Peter 3:9)

The waiting was never Him being slow to receive. The waiting is described as patience, and the patience is aimed at people who have not come yet.

You have been waited for on purpose, and Peter names the delay as longsuffering rather than as slowness. 2 Peter 3:9 says He is not willing that any should perish. It is the Spirit of God, Revelation 22:17 saying come alongside the bride, who has been doing the inviting the whole time a person was late.