Through the gospel of Luke up to this point, the author has been developing an answer to the crucial question: Who is this Nazarene? Just before the verses we will study today, we get an astounding answer from Peter: Jesus is “God’s Messiah” (9:20). This confession is followed by an exploration of what it takes to follow this Messiah: unashamed dedication and absolute surrender.

Through the gospel of Luke, up to this point, the author has been developing an answer to the crucial question: Who is this Nazarene? Just before the verses, we will study today, we get an astounding response from Peter: Jesus is “God’s Messiah” (9:20). This confession is followed by an exploration of what it takes to follow this Messiah: unashamed dedication and absolute surrender.

Through the gospel of Luke, up to this point, the author has been developing an answer to the crucial question: Who is this Nazarene? Just before the verses, we will study today, we get an astounding response from Peter: Jesus is “God’s Messiah” (9:20). This confession is followed by an exploration of what it takes to follow this Messiah: unashamed dedication and absolute surrender.

The last words that Israel heard from God before a period of deafening silence were scathing, to say the least. The Priesthood had blasphemed the altar of the Lord for the final time, securing the period of silence that followed. But before God gave them the silence they deserved, He made a promise: the Messiah was coming, and there was going to be a man before Him, clearing a path for Him to walk through. In today’s passage, at long last, we get to see both of those men: John the Baptizer, and Jesus, who is the Messiah.

Even though we don’t know much about the author of Malachi, we do know whose message it is, for God is the speaker in 47 of the 55 verses it contains. After the Temple was rebuilt in 515 B.C., proper worship of Yahweh had resumed. But by

the time that the Word God delivered through Malachi came, worship had also stagnated and become corrupt. In today’s passage we are going to see how the Lord views corrupt worship and discover how we can avoid letting our worship of the King of Kings stagnate.

After Nehemiah came to Jerusalem and aided in the completion of the wall, he knew that the next order of business was to ensure the Word of God was being preached. He called on Ezra, who had come from Babylon with a passion for learning and teaching the Word of God, to come and teach it to the recently returned Jewish captives. In this passage, we see how crucial breaking the Word of God down in a smaller group of people is to helping them discover and respond to it.

After Nehemiah came to Jerusalem and aided in the completion of the wall, he knew that the next order of business was to ensure the Word of God was being preached. He called on Ezra, who had come from Babylon with a passion for learning and teaching the Word of God, to come and teach it to the recently returned Jewish captives. In this passage, we see how crucial breaking the Word of God down in a smaller group of people is to helping them discover and respond to it.

Walls are important both physically and symbolically: they physically provide security from incoming attacks and symbolically unite all of the people living inside of them together. Nehemiah, who was the cupbearer to Artaxerxes, learned of the destruction of Jerusalem and of its walls and expressed his concern to the king.

He was given a leave of absence and a generous amount of support, as guided by God, and commenced building the walls back up. As with any work of the Lord, however, Nehemiah and the builders did not stop facing daunting opposition— which we will see them face and overcome today.

Esther is one of the most intriguing books in the Old Testament. In many ways, it reads like a spy thiller filled with romance, drama, and murder. It and Ruth are the only two books whose central characters are women, and, perhaps most surprisingly, God’s name is not mentioned even once. However, as we will see today, He is all over it.

Leading up to today’s passage, Esther, a young Jewish woman, has been selected to become a Persian queen. But throughout her stay at the king’s palace, she uncovers a plot by a man named Haman to exterminate the Jewish people of the region. So Esther must make a decision: should she preserve her own safety and stay silent or should she use her position for God’s glory?

Daniel and his friends had already experienced some adversity in Babylon, but the most famous one in the book was still to come. Today’s passage sets the scene

for what led Daniel to be thrown into the lion’s den, and it shows us something important about him: his faithfulness didn’t start when the challenge came. It was a lifelong pattern that he practiced regularly.