Year 9, Day 243: Micah 3

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Micah continues his diatribe against the powerful.  He speaks about people who tear the skin off His people and devour their flesh.  God isn’t speaking literally, He is speaking about the leaders who are using their power to take what they want.

God says that He will hide His face from them.  He will fight against them.  He will not listen to them.  God wants no part of people who use what He has given them for their own glory.

Micah doesn’t stop at the powerful, though.  Micah also rails against the prophets.  The people who are supposed to challenge the powerful and remind them what it means to be righteous are turning a blind eye.  They are prophesying peace, not judgment.  They are giving permission to the sinfulness instead of challenging it.  They are not prophets but soothsayers!

God promises that they will become blind.  He will take away their visions.  They will lose their credibility.  Those who use their power for their own gain will simply lose what power they have.

Judgment is coming.  The leadership of the people is dead.  God will hold the people accountable for their choices and their actions.

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Year 9, Day 242: Micah 2

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Micah rails against the Hebrew people once more.  However, he doesn’t have an issue with everyone.  Micah is pretty clear against whom he speaks.  Micah has an issue with the people who have power.

Those who have power are flexing their muscles to take what they want.  They plot.  They scheme.  They don’t even have to do it at night or behind closed doors.  They go out in the light of day and arrogantly throw their weight around.  They take people’s fields.  They take people’s homes.  These are the villains.

This is really interesting, because the world would tend to disagree.  What does the world say?  Those with all the gold make the rules.  If you’ve got it, flaunt it.  Bigger is better.  If you aren’t in first place, you are best the first loser.  There are clichés upon clichés that we can add here.

God, however, is not impressed.  Human beings flaunting their temporal pride is nothing to God.  Why should God be impressed by human beings who claim to be a king of a small corner of the universe God Himself created?

Instead, God comes in judgment.  God will put such people in their place.  To those who destroy community through their gigantic ego and desire to consume, beware.

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Year 9, Day 241: Micah 1

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Micah returns us to the typical lament of the prophets.  God is coming in judgment.  He plans wrath on the people.  The time for reckoning has come.  This is not a new message for those of us familiar with the prophets.

What is it that causes the mountains to melt like wax before the Lord?  The sin of the northern tribe is Samaria.  What was Samaria?  Is was the capitol city where the northern kings lived and where the worship happened.  What is Micah’s point?  The leadership of the northern kingdom is bad.  They people are being led astray as the leaders go.

We know that God is targeting the worship and leadership in the way that he speaks about His wrath.  He says that the idols will be broken to pieces, the temple gifts will be burned with fire, and the gifts in worship will be turned over to prostitutes.  That makes it pretty clear.  God is upset and the religious milieu of the nation.

It gets worse.  God says that the sins of the northern kingdom are infecting Judah.  Samaria is incurable.  I don’t know about anyone else, but hearing God speak about me as incurable is something I hope to never hear.  God is the God of restoration.  It has to be pretty bad for Him to pronounce it as incurable.

What is the proper response?  We are to mourn.  Micah tells the people to shave their heads in acknowledgment of the coming judgment.  God’s judgment cannot be forestalled.  The best the people can do is acknowledge its coming and embrace what God is going to do through it.

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Year 9, Day 240: 2 & 3 John

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2 John is a letter from a man named John to a prominent lady in one of his churches.  There is a single theme running throughout this letter.  The theme is love, much like what was seen in 1 John.

2 John also connects the theme of love to obedience.  We know love when we are obedient to God.  Since God is love, when we are obedient to Him we will demonstrate love in our obedience.

This is a very unique perspective on love.  Most people, when thinking of love, think of things like passion, spontaneity, romance, and intimacy.  When John thinks of love, He thinks of obedience.  True love is not a romantic feeling but an obedient state of mind.  True love is positioning the heart so that it is prepared to listen to God and respond.

In 3 John, we hear a letter from John to a Christian brother named Gaius.  This letter, unlike the two that came before, it is not overtly about love.  Instead, John speaks to Gaius about receiving Christian brothers who have gone out to spread the Gospel of Jesus.  John asks Gaius to receive them.  In fact, he says that in extending hospitality to brothers and sisters in Christ – even unknown brothers and sisters – we are obedient to God and demonstrate our desire to work together.

In a sense, though, this is about love.  What is hospitality except a form of love?  When we embrace fellow followers of Christ, are we not showing God’s love?  When we work together with fellow believers, are we not obedient to God’s will?  This is why John concludes the third letter with a talk about doing good.  When we do good – when we are obedient to God – we demonstrate that we are from God.

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Year 9, Day 239: 1 John 5

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1 John 5 concludes this first letter of John.  It ends on a strong note about worshipping God.  God has overcome the world.  He is deserving of our worship.

What does our worship provide for us?  What does God make available to those who worship Him?  We are given life.  Those who worship Him are in the Son, and those in the Son have everlasting life.  If we have the Son, we also have life.

If we have life from God, then we also know that He hears us.  If He hears us, then we can have confidence that we will receive anything for which we ask so long as it is in His will.  Naturally, this shouldn’t be a problem if we worship Him.  If we are truly worshipping Him, then our hearts should already be inclined to His desires.  This is why John says that we can be confident.  If our hearts are aligned with Him, He should want us to have what He knows we need.

If we have life from God, we also know that He gives us understanding.  This also makes sense.  If we worship Him and He gives us what He knows we need, then we should have understanding!  Why would God give us what we don’t have the understanding to accomplish?  Understanding His truth is fundamental to our being a part of Him.  We worship Him and He invites us into His will.  His understanding comes as a part of His will.

What does all this add up to?  We conclude with the thought that John used to begin this whole chapter.  How do we know we are in His love?  We know we are in His love because we obey Him.  We are able to obey Him because we understand His will and because He equips us to be able to participate in His will.  Our obedience to Him is evidence of His gracious provision in the first place.

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Year 9, Day 238: 1 John 4

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In this chapter, John continues to speak about love.  We know that God is in us when we love our brothers and sisters.  Those who love are showing that god lives within them.  This love started when God sent His Son to die for our sake.

While this is all good, John knows that there are false prophets in the world.  There are people who would like to assert that love is possible without God.  There are people who would love nothing more than to assert that God does not hold a monopoly on love.  There are people out there who would love nothing more than to separate the concept of love from God.

What does John say in response to this?  Anyone who denies Jesus has no part in God.  Those who deny Jesus have no part in true love.  Those who deny Jesus are against Christ.

John then encourages us.  Because we have Christ and we have love, we are more powerful.  We have overcome those who are not in Christ.  This makes sense, because the greatest force in this world is love.  It is love that brought God to create us.  It is love that brought Jesus to save us.  It is love that conquers our humanity.  Of course those of us who are in Christ – and thus in His love – have overcome the world!

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Year 9, Day 237: 1 John 3

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In this chapter, John talks about the world and its opinion of us.  John has some difficult things to say – even more difficult to hear.  After all, we all long for acceptance and approval.  Yet, John tells us that we won’t get what we need from the world.  The world will not understand us.  The world will not approve of us.

This is a difficult teaching!  Who wants to get up every day knowing that if we are following Jesus then we will catch the rebuke of the world?  Who wants to wake up and realize that the world with disapprove of us and perhaps even mock us?  Who wants to go through life being misunderstood and rejected?  John even warns us that the world might just hate us.

What is it about us that the world rejects?  When we live like Christ, we sacrifice ourselves.  We lay down our life for one another.  We stop looking out for ourselves and begin to consider what is best for those around us.  We make decisions that are self-less, not selfish.

At first, it sounds like the world should love us.  After all, isn’t the selfless person the easiest target if you want to take advantage of someone?  Of course it is!  This is why John says that we will feel the hatred of the world.  They will take advantage of us.  They will persecute us.

They will hate us, though, because of what we will do in their midst.  The selfless person bring condemnation to the selfish.  The example of the selfless casts a shadow upon the life of the selfish.  The world hates us because even as they selfishly take from the selfless their lives are judged and exposed to the light.

If we desire to follow Christ, we desire to live a selfless life that trusts God and His ability to meet our needs.  We also live a selfless life that sheds light upon the ways of the world.  We are set apart as we follow our Lord.  We are hated by the world because even as they take advantage of us they expose their condemnation.

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Year 9, Day 236: 1 John 2

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1 John 2 speaks often of love.  There are multiple dimensions of love, however.  In fact, there is a bit of dichotomy with respect to love.  We often hear that love must be inclusive.  John doesn’t teach that way.

What John does say is that we are to love our brother and sister.  If someone is in Christ, then they are our brother or sister.  If they are truly in Christ, then they are living like Him.  What does it say about us if we cannot bring ourselves to love someone who is living like Christ?  John is correct when he teaches that we walk in darkness when we have hatred in our hearts towards a brother or sister in Christ.

We must be careful with love, though.  John warns us to be careful to not love the world.  We shouldn’t love the things of the world.  The lust of our eyes and the lust of our heart – our love for the things of the world – can bring chaos into our life.  Such love is a destructive influence in our life.  It wrestles our love of God away from our focus and replaces it with an inferior love.

Elsewhere in the Bible we hear that God is love.  When we are focused on Him, we truly experience love in that we truly experience Him.  When we allow our focus to shift onto the world, however, our love turns into lust and a great thing is placed with a far inferior thing.  True love – a love unlike any other – comes to us when we are walking in His light.

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Year 9, Day 235: 1 John 1

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John pens a letter to a group of believers with whom he has relationship.  His writing looks to serve a threefold purpose.  First, it verifies the Gospel account.  Second, it speaks to people about deceit.  Third, it speaks to people about truth.

John wants to verify the account.  There are a myriad of reasons for this.  First of all, it is one thing to hear from someone who heard the story from someone else.  However, hearing from someone who was present and can verify the information is far more reassuring.  Second, there has been a fair bit of years since Jesus’ ascension and the writing of this letter.  No doubt John wants to reassure the people that God has neither forgotten them nor changed the plan.  Third, he desires to validate the message and teaching that the people have already received.

Wrapped up in these purposes is John’s desire to refute deceit.  He reminds the people that God is light and He does not permit darkness.  At the same time, we have darkness within our being as we live out the evil within our heart.  If we do not acknowledge the sin within us, we live in darkness and have no part in Him.  This is interesting because we would expect the darkness within to eliminate us from the presence of God.  However, it is actually our refusal to acknowledge the sin within that threatens to remove us from the presence of God.  God can deal with our sin so long as we acknowledge that it needs to be dealt with.

Third, John wishes to speak to truth.  What is truth?  Jesus came to allow us to be in relationship with the Father.  He is the light.  He shatters darkness.  He paves the way to God.  In this fact, we not only have fellowship with God but fellowship with one another.

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Year 9, Day 234: Jonah 3-4

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The last two chapters of Jonah are classic.  They are also often portrayed wrongly.  We teach our children that Jonah happily goes off to Nineveh, preaches, and saves.  He does go.  The people do listen.  God relents.  But Jonah is not happy at all about doing it.  He is obedient, but he’s angry.

What does this tell us?  Again, prophets are human.  Prophets feel anger.  They aren’t robots who obey without emotion, they feel for what they are asked to do.  In the case where they are asked to do something pleasant, they have joy.  In the case where they are asked to do something unpleasant, they can feel anger.

We also learn that a prophet’s humanity can make them wrong.  Jonah feels anger over the fact that the people of Nineveh are saved.  He tells God that he tried to go to Tarshish in the first place because he knew that God would relent and the Assyrians would be spared.  Jonah is angered because God is showing mercy.  We shouldn’t ever be angered by god’s grace and mercy, but as human beings we are.  We want people to get what they deserve, forgetting that we ourselves are only saved because of the mercy God first showed us.

Finally, we do learn that prophets are obedient.  While Jonah is not in the right frame of mind, the job gets done.  The conflict between Jonah and God is left unresolved, but the people of Nineveh are saved.  God is willing to work with us, flaws and all.  While I am sure that God would rather have willing obedience, He can work with any kind of obedience.  Prophets get the job done.

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Year 9, Day 233: Jonah 1-2

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Jonah is a very intriguing story.  It is a fantastical story.  A man runs away from God and is met by a strong storm.  The man asks to be thrown overboard, knowing that the storm will stop.  It does, and Jonah is swallowed by a giant fish.  Instead of seeing this fish as a predator, from within the belly of the fish Jonah knows that the fish is his salvation.  The fish then vomits him upon dry land.  There are so many elements of this story that are fantastical.

Just because it is fantastical doesn’t make it fictional.  The events of this story simply demonstrate the relationship between God and one of His prophets.  A prophet has a very unique relationship with God; why shouldn’t the prophet experience very unique events?  When a prophet rebels, why shouldn’t God use a unique means to bring Him back in line?

There is a question that this story should raise – a question that will not get answered until the last part of this story.  Why didn’t Jonah follow God’s wishes?  Why did Jonah head the complete other way?  Why doesn’t Jonah go to Nineveh and preach against their behavior?  Why is Jonah willing to die in the sea so that he doesn’t have to complete the mission?

The answer will come tomorrow.  Today, though, look at what we can learn.  God’s prophets are not perfect.  They are human beings like us.  They have disobedient streaks.  They have moments when they are told to do things and they do the exact opposite of what they are told.

After all, we are God’s children.  Any parent knows that the children do not always obey.  Sometimes the child exerts independence and goes their own way, thinking they know best.  Sometimes rebellion happens because the child thinks they can get away with it. Either way, though, a prophet is a child of God.  Sin and rebellion are battles they face, too.

What I love about this first half of the story, though, is Jonah’s sanity.  He is more than sane when he runs away.  He is more than sane when he sleeps during the storm.  He is more than sane when he volunteers to be thrown into the sea to save the people.  His sanity is proven when from within the fish He lifts up praise to God.  Jonah has full knowledge about what is happening every step of the way.  Even in his rebellion, he has the clarity of mind and the sanity that we expect when a prophet acts.

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Year 9, Day 232: Obadiah

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Obadiah is a small book.  The focus of Obadiah is Edom, which is the nation of people that grew out of Esau.  The rift between Edom and the Hebrew people runs the whole way back to the twin sons of Isaac: Jacob and Esau.  Jacob stole Esau’s birth right, therefore Esau has no issue trying to steal it back.

The problem is that the people are doing it without asking God’s blessing – not that He would have given it anyway.  The people are seeking after the desires of their own heart.  The people are proud.  They will seek their own way.  They will do things according to their own understanding.

God hates it when we bring violence to other people.  The violence, though, is not the biggest issue.  The issue is where the violence comes from.  The violence stems from the pride of the people.  The violence stems from their humanity and their desire to be the top dog.  God has an issue with the sin in their heart, which leads them to the violence.

This is why Jesus teaches the Pharisees in the New Testament that it is not what we put into our mouth that defiles us but what comes out.  God is offended by the things we do to others and the things we say to others.  He knows, though, that the outward offenses have a deeper core.  Our outward offenses are evidence of an inward problem.  When we fix our heart, the fruit of our heart will be fixed as well.

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Year 9, Day 231: Amos 9

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In this final chapter of Amos, we hear of the proised destruction.  Amos has been told his prophecy isn’t welcome, so he completes his work and goes away.  The people will hear God’s plan, but they won’t benefit from Amos’ gifts any longer.

What does God promise?  First, He promises destruction.  The Hebrew people will be scattered.  He promises to pursue them with destruction.  They won’t beable to hide in the mountains or at the depths of the sea.  The world will serve Him in judgment.

As is typical with prophetic messages, though, the last word isn’t one of judgment.  The last word is one of hope and restoration.  God promises that the Hebrew people will return.  There will be life after judgment.

This is important to remember about prophets.  The prophetic message is always harsh.  After all, who wants to hear that they need to change?  Who wants to hear about the sin in their life that must abandon?  At the same time, it is impossible to be complete without dealing with the sin.  You don’t cure a disease unless you resist against it.  The prophet doesn’t give the harsh message because they enjoy the pain; the prophet gives the harsh message because they know relationship with God leads through the Valley of the Shadow of Death.

The process of dealing with our sin hurts.  It costs.  There is a sacrifice involved every single time.  However, the only way to righteousness is through the fight with our sinfulness.  It is the prophet who leads that charge.

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Year 9, Day 230: Amos 8

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Amos 8 shows the final act of Gods wrath.  Many people think that the end of God’s wrath is some cataclysmic force.  We read passages like the Exodus and how God deals with the Egyptians and think that this is the greatness of God’s wrath.  The truth is, though, that stories like the Exodus or the Flood are not the greatest moment of God’s wrath.  Passages like Amos 8 expose the greatest act of God’s wrath.

In this chapter, God threatens to take His Word away from them.  He threatens to remove Himself from their midst.  He threatens a spiritual famine.  He threatens a time when God will not be able to be found.

Without Him, there is not wisdom, not salvation, no grace, no mercy, no love.  Without Him, there is nothing worth living for.  Without Him, there is no cause for hope.  When God threatens to remove Himself from our midst, that is the greatest act of cataclysm that can happen.

To take this passage where it doesn’t naturally go, I think of this in terms of Hell, too.  What is so awful about judgment into Hell?  Is it the fire?  Is it the torment?  I don’t think so.  I think the worst part about Hell is life without God.  The worst part about judgment is knowing that existence will never be about anything other than human sinfulness.

When push comes to shove, that is exactly why I hold onto faith.  I can’t imagine life without God.  I don’t want a life without God.  I never want to experience life when God removes Himself from my midst.  I never want to feel a famine of His Word.

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Year 9, Day 229: Amos 7

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Amos 7 is an interesting conflux of stories.  It shows us the joy and pain of being a prophet.  As they say, no good deed goes unpunished.

The first half of this chapter is a conversation between Amos and God.  God shows a plan to destroy the land by a famine brought about by locusts.  Amos asks God to repent and He does.  Amos then sees God’s plan to destroy the land by fire.  God relents once more when Amos intervenes.  Finally, God tells Amos that the Hebrew people will be judged.  A plumb line is drawn as a standard. 

Judgment may come, but a remnant will survive.  Amos has intervened.  That’s what prophets do.  Prophets stand in the gap between man and God.

Next comes the second half of the chapter.  Amos is accused.  He is told to get lost.  He is told that he is unwanted.  People don’t want to hear his call to repentance.  They want him to take his messages and go away.

People don’t realize the work that prophets do.  Culture doesn’t realize how important prophets are.  Instead, people only hear the critical nature of the prophet and feel the accusation.  They don’t understand the role that the prophet plays as they speak on behalf of the people to God and speak on behalf of God to the people.

What does Amos get for his trouble?  Amos gets the ire of the people.  They could be dead by starvation or consuming fire.  Instead they are alive and hateful towards the man that argued on their behalf.

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Year 9, Day 228: Amos 6

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Amos 6 is a tremendous prophetic passage.  It challenges us deeply to consider the human condition.  It pushes us until we look in the mirror and recognize what we see.  It causes us to make sure we understand what sin looks like.

Amos’ primary issue – or perhaps it is fairer to say God’s primary issue spoken through Amos – are the people who seem content to let the Hebrew culture slide into unrighteousness.  The first and sixth verses of this chapter sets the tone.  Woe to those who are at ease in Zion, and to those who feel secure on the mountain of Zion ... but are not grieved over the ruin of Zion.  God is bothered that the people are content to live in luxury without caring that their community is sliding into spiritual and ethical disrepair!

There are a couple of ways to think about this passage.  First, look at the human condition.  What do humans want?  We pursue our idols because we think if we can obtain them we will be able to live in ease.  We want a boatload of money because it will mean the cessation of work.  We want fancy things because it will prove our worth to our neighbors.  We want positions of power because it means we give orders and not take them.  Yet, so often we don’t care about the costs of our pursuit.  What are we willing to compromise on our journey to idolatry?

This doesn’t quite reach the full meaning of Amos.  This passage isn’t just a wailing against the human condition.  God says that what troubles Him is that people are not grieved by it.  It’s one thing to do it.  It’s another thing to see it happen.  It’s still another thing to see it and not even feel sorrow for it.

The thing is human beings are human beings.  We cannot force another person into righteousness.  You can lead horses to water, but you cannot make them drink.  Ever human has free will.  While we cannot force society to choose wisely, we can be grieved by a society that chooses poorly.  The Hebrew people are missing this element.  There is no grief for the fall of their society.  They are going along rather happily.  This has God – and Amos – grieved.

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Year 9, Day 227: Amos 5

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Amos 5 gives a great dialogue between judgment and appeal.  It reveals the heart of God as He inclines toward us.  He loves us and wants relationship.  Yet He is righteous, and that demands judgment and atonement.

Tis passage starts with a word of judgment.  “Fallen, no more to rise, is virgin Israel.”  That’s a serious word of judgment.  God plans on wiping Israel off of the map.  The will be decimated, not just judged.

To this, God calls out to seek Him and live!  Here is the rebound towards grace.  God doesn’t desire to destroy us; He desires that we repent so He can forgive!  If God can create the universe, He can restore us.  In doing so, He wants us to realize that it is He who can save us.  Our manmade gods, our idols, the desires of our heart cannot save us.  He alone can save.

God then turns again to the sins of humanity.  We pervert justice.  We make fancy dwellings while others dwell in squalor.  The rich tax the poor.  The unrighteous pervert the righteous by tempting them with bribes.  We turn away the needy because we cannot be bothered.

This is why the Lord says to us to seek good and not evil.  Evil will seek us out.  It will come to our doorstep. It will pursue us.  We need to actively seek good and live.

The world will pervert justice.  We need to let justice roll down like water.  We need to pursue what is true and right in the world rather than let the world dictate what is true and right to us.

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Year 9, Day 226: Amos 4

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Amos 4 gives one of the best descriptions of the rebelliousness of Israel that has ever been written.  Amos speaks of the Hebrew people as cows.  What are cows?  Cows are large, relatively unintelligent, herd animals that honestly are either beasts of burdens or raised for slaughter.  They trample everything that gets underfoot because of their girth.  These are the things to which Amos compares the Hebrew people.

Keep reading.  What does Amos say?  These cows of Bashan oppress the poor.  They crush the needy.  That makes sense.  Heavy beasts of burden are good at crushing things and imposing their will.  If you’ve ever been near a cow that didn’t want to do what it was expected to do, it’s a real force of wills!

What is God saying about the rebellious?  In their rebellion – in their selfish ambitious pursuit of their own dreams – they are crushing the life out of the very people that God has asked them to care about!  They are hording all the resources to themselves and not distributing the as needed.  They are cows in that their own girth is proof of their opulence!

In this context, God delivers His perspective.  He has tried to get their attention.  He started by giving them blessing, but they walked away.  He tried to give them hardship in famine and drought, but they would not pay attention.  He raised up opponents to get them to realize their need for Him, but they refused to humble themselves and rely on God.  He sent plagues of disease and insect upon them to get them to cry out to Him, but they refused to call.  Therefore, God has only one way left to deal with these cows of Bashan.  He will bring the Assyrians down upon them and take away their nation.

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Year 9, Day 225: Amos 3

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“You only have I known of all the families of the earth.”  Normally, those words would be a sign of honor.  Normally, those words would bring joy to the heart, especially when said by God.

Unfortunately, there is a second half of the verse.  “Therefore, I will punish you for all your iniquities.”  That verse sends chills up the spine.  That verse curdles blood.  That verse makes for a serious downer.

God desires to pour out His blessing on those He loves.  When we rebel against Him, though, the wound is more profound because of His love.  It is true what they say.  Those who are closest to us are also able to hurt us the most.  Betrayal by those who are closest to us is the worst kind of betrayal.  In the words of Julius Caesar, “Et tu, Brute?”

God promises to be like the lion who roars with his kill.  He promises to be the snare that captures the bird.  He promises to be the cause of the blown trumpet and the disaster on the horizon.  The Hebrew people have rebelled against God and the time has come to pay back vengeance for rebellion.

Fortunately, though, vengeance is not the final word.  It is a part of the story, but it is not the final word.  God promises to rescue.  As a shepherd rescues their flock out of the mouths of a predator, so will God do to His people.  It’ll be a long time coming, but redemption will come.

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Year 9, Day 224: Amos 2

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Amos 2 continues in the expected manner for a minor prophet.  Amos continues to speak out about the way that human beings mistreat each other and trample on their relationship with God.  From Amos’ perspective, judgment is coming.  It’s time the people make sure they understand why.

Amos keeps his typical tradition against Moab and Judah.  Judgment is coming for them because they are filled with human sinfulness.  However, Amos knows that judgment is still a fair distance off for them.  Their paragraphs are short.  Their descriptions are fairly generic.  The words against Judah do contain a reference to direct offense to God, but they remain quite brief.

The words against Israel, however, are anything but brief.  Compared to the words against the other nations, Amos writes a novella.  Judgment looms closely for the people of the northern kingdom.  Their offenses are personal and grievous.  Amos goes into considerable detail.

What do the people of Israel do?  The people of Israel see one another as a means of economic gain.  They don’t care about the poor.  They are sexually impure.  They corrupt the religious, especially the Nazirites who take vows with God.  They have forgotten that it was God and His power that made them what they are.

What is God going to do?  God plans on removing the strength of the people.  The strong will flee.  The quick will become slow.  The mighty will not be able to stand.  Those with weapons will become timid.

There’s a subtle point here that likely got completely lost by the Israelites who didn’t care.  The Israelites have become so sinful because they are relying upon their own strength and have forgotten God.  God plans to show them the error of their ways.  He will remove His presence and watch the so-called strength of the people evaporate.  We only have strength and greatness when He bestows it upon us.

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Year 9, Day 223: Amos 1

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Amos was a prophet who lived around the time of Isaiah.  This places him among the earliest of the prophets in the Bible who have books named for them.  As with Isaiah, Amos is concerned about the culture of the Hebrew people.  He concerned about the priority of the people.  He’s got quite a bit to say about humans interact – and how that interaction is not the way God wants it to be.

At the beginning of Amos, the prophet is focused on the surrounding nations.  Notice the complaints Amos brings.  He accuses them of expanding the territory – implying that they are forcibly taking what isn’t theirs to take.  He accuses them of tearing the citizens of other nations apart.  He accuses them of taking advantage of the weaknesses of their neighbor and not showing pity.  Amos accuses them of selling each other.  In short, Amos sees how human beings treat each other and is repulsed by it.

What is it about human beings that repulses Amos?  Amos sees the self-centeredness. Why are the people in the lands around Israel behaving they way they are?  They want more for themselves.  They want to use each other to buy off the major power of the Assyrians that are moving in and threatening the area.  Amos sees how our instincts of greed and self-preservation turn us away from what God wants for us.

The reality is that we all have these instincts.  Self-preservation is a good thing in life or death situations.  When used inappropriately, though, it turns into something ugly.  Self-preservation turns into greed, where we oppress others because we want the biggest pile of toys.  After all, the person with the most toys wins, right?  That’s exactly what Amos finds repulsive about the cultures around him.

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Year 9, Day 222: 2 Peter 3

Theological Commentary: Click Here

This final chapter of 2 Peter gives us insight into the culture of the followers of Jesus at the time of the writing.  It shows us that humanity is always present, even among people who want righteousness and God’s peace.  We can’t help it; it’s impossible for us to know the future.

2 Peter is likely written several decades after Jesus’ death.  His promised return has seemed to take a lifetime.  He told His disciples He would come back, and many of the have died for Him and His Gospel.  You can’t fault the followers of Jesus for beginning to doubt.

Here we are, two millennia later.  Jesus still hasn’t come back.  His kingdom continues to be imminent, as it has been to every generation since Jesus called His first disciples.  Everyone has thought they lived in the final days of His return.  Yet, here we remain.

This is why Peter writes this.  He understands the frustration.  We need to put God’s work into perspective.  As Peter writes, a day to the Lord is like a thousand years and a thousand years is like a day.  God’s timing is not our timing.  We think our generation is the important one because our life is limited.

This is where wisdom comes into play.  Remember that the timespan from Abraham to Jesus was likely in the vicinity of two thousand years.  David to Jesus was a thousand years.  We have no idea how many generations it was from Adam and Eve to Jesus.  The point is that from the fall of creation to Jesus was hundreds of generations.  We should not be surprised if the time from Jesus to His return is also hundreds more generations.  It may not be what we want, but it isn’t our plan!

How do we respond?  We put our focus where we should.  Focus on God’s grace and the knowledge of Jesus Christ.  If God is gracious, we can be saved whether we are the last generation or not.  If we have knowledge of God, then we know tat what He has called us to do is be His witness to the world regardless of whether we are the first or the last generation – or more likely, somewhere in between.

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