Nahum and Zephaniah – God’s Purifying Judgment and Promised Restoration

Readings: Nahum and Zephaniah

History is a glossary of failed social and political experiments on  human stewardship and governance. The prophets Nahum and Zephaniah remind us that as much as the empires of man can be good, they’re woefully broken and corrupt at their core, doing much more damage to countless numbers of people than we rightly understand. This point is often easy to miss when most of us are enjoying the middle class life busy in our consumptive lifestyles. Nahum and Zephaniah are a reality check for their times and ours and point to God’s covenantal promises of His perfect Kingdom established under the Messiah’s rule established forever.

Micah - God's Justice and Mercy as Our Standard

Micah’s name means “Who is like Yahweh?” which is significant in that Micah’s ministry tries to explain what God is like to a people who are busy enjoying the world and have long since abandoned an interest in the ways of God for their lives.

Micah prophesied during the reigns of the Judean kings Jotham (750-732 B.C.), Ahaz (732-715 B.C.), and Hezekiah (715-686 B.C.). This was a period of plenty and prosperity but also a time of rampant social injustice, decadence, and wanton moral license in Israel and Judah. It's the way of this world and the lifestyles we have adopted that we unwittingly get embroiled in a system of life that undermines and takes advantage of others.

Micah speaks into this unreflected life that professes interest in the spiritual things but always so superficially, it makes no difference. Remember that these kings were more interested in keeping up with the nations around them in their evil than about being true to their mission and purpose before God, and that’s even Hezekiah who, if you recall, instead of being a spiritual witness of proper worship and adoration of God for the miraculous sign He gave him to the visiting Chaldeans/Babylonians, he instead decided to show off how much wealth he had in his treasury (2 Kings 20:12-21)

Like all the prophets, Micah prophesied against both Samaria and Judah of their broken vow to the covenant they had with God. The covenant was for them to display a spiritual power and glory to the nations by properly worshiping God and being a nation of priests to the nations of the world. Instead they continued to profane their holy calling by persistently following the world’s depraved cultural, social, and religious practices.

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Why Suffering: God's Handiwork in the Hard Seasons of Life

BSF Lesson 22 has us reflect on the presence of suffering in our lives. Why does God allow suffering and why do good people suffer? What is the purpose of suffering and how should we as Christians live with suffering in our lives?

Nobody asks for suffering, but suffering comes. Suffering reveals things we had not been aware of. My college roommate wisely said to me once: you don’t know what’s in your cup until you’re bumped. That image stuck with me. You see, most of the time, we see a pretty decent person on the outside and we possess very flattering views of who we are, our character, integrity, and faith. But it’s only when we’re put through the wringer, through trials, under stress and suffering that the real person inside shows most clearly. That’s also when we in our transparent weakness and awareness of our utter dependence on God, we come to God humbly for His rescue.

Because we live so much of our lives on autopilot most of the time, suffering offers a time of reckoning with ourselves to do some serious evaluation. Don't we live most of our lives very naive and self-deluded? Suffering makes us see we don’t have ultimate control even with nice bank accounts, pleasures and diversions, nor knowledge, skills, or expertise. We need help of a kind no human can provide. Suffering makes us realize we need to look up. He tells us this world is not the full story.

Isaiah  Part4: The Suffering Servant and His Coming Glory

Passage: Isaiah 49-66

The book of Isaiah speaks long, frequently and repeatedly about the reasons for exile, judgment, and the coming deliverance. The final chapters talk about the great Hope of God that they can look forward to. Isaiah speaks triumphantly about God’s deliverance with words like “Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save." What does this mean? "The Arm of the Lord” is the image of the efficacious and powerful will of God.

But His powerful "Arm" - His Messiah - will not be like any human deliverer we look to. Chapter 53 describes the Messiah in a different way: "He grew up before him like a render shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was rejected and we esteemed him not. Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we were healed.”

In the balance sheet of all the universe and before the throne of God’s justice, there was a mountain of sin piling up against humanity and someone had to pay in order that those who sinned and infected with this spiritual disease could be restored, made new, and have new life. Isaiah is talking about substitution and substitution is the key doctrine word for all of us to think and meditate on this week. Which is very timely as many of us observe the period of Lent, the 40 days of sacred meditation, prayer, fasting, worship leading up to the Saturday before Resurrection Sunday.

Isaiah, part 3  Chapters 40-48

The Deliverance of God's People

It is said that you can learn a lot about a person by asking them about their view of God. What they think and know about God will affect their understanding about themselves, their self worth, their life purpose and reason for existence, and their future. It is with this understanding that western academic traditions centered their learning around a theology department. The knowing of God enabled the architecture for life. A person’s theology will inevitably involve their view of Christ, the Messiah, the study of which is called Christology. The study of God’s Central Character in His Covenant will be the basis for everything in the new life we have in Christ and the universal reality of the new age to come. This extraordinary message is where we are in our study of Isaiah- who is teaching us to better understand the promised Messiah, God’s Covenant Deliverer who will be arriving into the world can leading His people into Kingdom of God in the ages to come.

Our guest lecturer today is Hollie Roberts, the President of Bible Study Fellowship (since 6/2021).

We're continuing in our study of Isaiah, reviewing chps 1-39. Isaiah is referenced or alluded to over 400 times in the New Testament, and has 21 direct quotations. Jesus teaches directly from the Book of Isaiah when speaking of His identity as the promised Messiah described by the prophet. The name of Isaiah, son of Amoz, is the online one connected with the authorship of this book and is one of the key ancient texts found completely intact among the Dead Sea scrolls in the Qumran cave excavations in 1948. That scroll predates the birth of Christ by at least 100 years and verified for scholars the amazing nature of textual preservation. This older copy was found to be an exact copy (except for very minor spelling changes of words) of the previous oldest manuscript which dated to around 1000 AD. 

During days leading up to Judah's exile into Babylon, God sent various prophets who lived concurrently with each other to alert them of the reasons for God's coming judgment, what it would entail, and how God will continue to keep His promise to the patriarchs to send the Messiah. Along with Micah and others who spoke God's warnings to Judah, Isaiah delivered his prophetic message over various times during the lives of the Judean kings Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah.

Today, we'll review the core message of God's judgment and understand how in the middle of needful judgment, God will keep His promise of a true King, who would lead rightly, the increase of whose government and peace there will be no end (vs 9:7).  

Isaiah: Mission and Message. Part 1 in the Study of the Book of Isaiah

We know Jesus held the book of Isaiah in high esteem because Isaiah taught the Jews about Himself. In this lesson, we'll explore Isaiah and his calling. We'll look Isaiah's holy vision of God sovereign and greatly lifted up. We'll also look at the broken and defiled nation he was prophesying into.

Isaiah’s ministry took place under four Judean kings - in the final years leading up to the prophesied judgment on Judah in their exile into Babylon. Isaiah laments the failure of leaders. Have you given some thought to how important the theme of leadership figures so importantly in our study so far? Why does so much of Israel hinge on its leaders? We'll look at this in light of God's sovereign attribute of Holiness. the attribute God’s Seraphims proclaim worshipfully around His throne.

Judah's Path into Exile / covering Manasseh, Amon, Josiah

2 Kings 21-25 and 2 Chronicles 33-36

Judah's exile did not happen by some sudden judgment of God; it was years and generations in the making with many warnings given by God through many many different prophets by various means of illustrating an idolatrous and rebellious people. God has shown mercy to Israel and Judah time and again but both divided nations showed that even with prosperity, protection, and pleasures they enjoyed, their hearts continuously wandered from God.

In this lesson, we'll take a look at the events that led up the exile in the life of King Josiah. Josiah was a good king who tried to put to right the spiritual ordinances that were described in God's Covenant. So why did God allow them to go into exile anyway? We'll discuss this as well as look at how God accomplishes His promises even when things don't look like they are going the way we had expected or hoped.

Israel’s Exile and Judah’s Reforms

2 Kings 15–20; 2 Chronicles 26–32

In order to grow up, we have to clean up. In this lecture talk, we're looking at the period of the kings right before Israel's exile into the Assyrian Empire, and King Hezekiah's dramatic spiritual reform in Judah during which God rescues them from a similar fate. We see bad kings who lead into bad worship or defiled worship of idols, falling eagerly into the pagan practices of the nations around them. Good kings were unwilling or unable to correct the people’s derelict and false notions of God. They continue to see God as a deity of power to be manipulated, persuaded by ritualistic sacrifices, rites, and hilltop mystical practices and not relate to Him as the only true God who made them purposefully for Himself - who insists on a real relationship that actually takes us somewhere progressively better and better, not a fake one that continues to mislead us into a pit of lies, damaging distortions, and spiritual traps..

Lies and distance from God destroys our sacred human identity and our worth. Let's see how God's plan for our regenerative growth in Him relies on knowing what true worship is as He has taught us in His Word.

Hosea - God's Redemptive Love

The Prophet Hosea is very unique mission among the prophets as he was called to marry a woman prone to adultery. The unfolding drama of Hosea's marriage to his promiscuous wife would become a living witness - a heartbreaking drama - to God's people of their abandonment of God’s love.

Hosea's prophetic message was lived out as a public exhibition that will break his own heart. This life of heart-break would give him access to peer into the broken heart of God, also into the wisdom of God in ways few other prophets except perhaps Abraham or David had the privilege to see.

As you study Hosea, you will noticed the rich imagery and his expressive language which is unique again to Hosea not found in the other prophetic books. Among the many descriptions and analogies Hosea uses, he describes God as the unrequited Lover of our souls, the jilted and faithful husband, the sacrificial and forgiving God who says, You may have prostituted yourself with other idols, but I will not forsake you nor abandon my covenant with you. God as a faithful husband is a dominant theme arising throughout the Scriptures that helps us draw close to the heart of God.

Hosea 2:19 Israel, I will make you my wife; I will be true and faithful; I will show you constant love and mercy and make you mine forever

Isaiah 54:5 For your Maker is your husband— the LORD Almighty is his name— the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; he is called the God of all the earth.

Out-tro: Anne Murray You Needed Me