Tag: Prophecy

Morning Musing: Zephaniah 1:2

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“I will completely sweep away everything from the face of the earth — this is the Lord’s declaration.”
— ‭‭Zephaniah‬ ‭1:2‬‬ (CSB – Read the chapter)

So often, when people think about the prophets, they imagine a bunch of bearded, angry men who sit around condemning everyone and warning all who will listen that God is going to destroy everything in judgment. And as we have been on this journey through the prophets over the last few months, we have mostly discovered this image isn’t at all true. There has certainly been the promise of judgment, but there has been a whole lot more than that. As we come to Zephaniah, though, all that seems to fly out the window. Let’s talk about it.

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Digging in Deeper: Micah 7:6

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“Surely a son considers his father a fool, a daughter opposes her mother, and a daughter-in-law is against her mother-in-law; a man’s enemies are the men of his own household.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Every family has a worldview. It may be a jumbled mess, but every single family has a set of things that they believe together. Children raised in that house assume on that worldview until they are old enough to question it. At that point they may consciously own it, but they might also reject it. Eventually, families often expand by marriage. This introduces new worldviews into the mix. Hopefully the two or more worldviews are similar, but they may not be. The result of all this is often chaos and conflict. Why am I starting with this when it doesn’t at all seem to be Micah’s point? Because it was Jesus’ point a few hundred years later.

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Morning Musing: Micah 7:1

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“How sad for me! For I am like one who — when the summer fruit has been gathered after the gleaning of the grape harvest — finds no grape cluster to eat, no early fig, which I crave.”‬‬ (CSB – Read the chapter)

If there’s any one word that is most often used to describe the Old Testament prophets, what do you think it would be? For me some words like judgmental and mean come to mind. That’s the kind of characterizations I often see them given in the culture at large. If there was a single word that was most used, though, it would be the word angry. That word is common. But is it right? Maybe not. Let’s talk about it.

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Digging in Deeper: Micah 6:5

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“My people, remember what King Balak of Moab proposed, what Balaam son of Beor answered him, and what happened from the Acacia Grove to Gilgal so that you may acknowledge the Lord’s righteous acts.”‬‬ (CSB – Read the chapter)

Have you ever been so angry or perhaps so hurt that you stopped making sense while you were trying to express it? I suspect you have. We all get there from time to time because that’s just how life goes. People we love do things that hurt us, sometimes badly (and, if we’re being honest, we do the same things to them). When we find ourselves in such a place as this it can be difficult to make a single, direct argument that expresses our feelings. It’s easy to jump from idea to idea because our minds are reeling and moving quickly from hurt to hurt. God doesn’t ever lose His mind like that because He’s God and such a loss of control isn’t in His nature. But if there was ever a place in the Scriptures where He seems to come close, this is one of them.

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Digging in Deeper: Micah 5:7

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“Then the remnant of Jacob will be among many peoples like dew from the Lord, like showers on the grass, which do not wait for anyone or linger for mankind.”‬‬ (CSB – Read the chapter)

In English classes growing up, every couple of years we did a unit on poetry. Confessedly, I hated those units. Oh, I did fine in them. But I just don’t care for poetry all that much. Now, that’s not universal. I love the poetry of Shel Silverstein, for instance. But he wrote for kids so… I think the real reason I struggled to like it was that I struggled to understand the imagery being used. That same struggle is why many people—including me—stay away from the prophets in the Old Testament. The imagery is hard to understand. Yet if we’ll do the work to get our minds around it, there are riches to be had; riches like we find right here.

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