Tag: Prophet

Digging in Deeper: Micah 6:5

Leave a comment

“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.

Read the rest…

Digging in Deeper: Hosea 1:2

1 Comment

“When the Lord first spoke to Hosea, he said this to him: Go and marry a woman of promiscuity, and have children of promiscuity, for the land is committing blatant acts of promiscuity by abandoning the Lord.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Have you ever been asked to do something you knew from the get-go was crazy? Not only was it not going to work, you were going to be hurt in the process. But, the one asking was in a position of authority over you and so you didn’t really have much choice but to do it. If you have experienced that, you know just a bit about what it would have been like to be Hosea. Starting this morning, I want to spend some time with you looking at Hosea, and in turn, all the other Minor Prophets (called “Minor” because their books tended to be shorter than Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel’s). I’ll talk more about why in just a minute—and stick around for that because it’ll be important. For now, let’s look at this crazy thing God asked Hosea to do. 

Read the rest…

Morning Musings: Ezekiel 1:1-3

2 Comments

“In the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month, as I was among the exiles by the Chebar canal, the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God.  On the fifth day of the month (it was the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin), the word of the Lord came to Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans by the Chebar canal, and the hand of the Lord was upon him there.”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

Ezekiel is a wild book.  Of all of the prophets, much of his work has always been some of the hardest to understand for me.  With that in mind, these first three verses are really important.  You see, as wild as some of Ezekiel’s visions were (and as you read the rest of this chapter, they start out pretty wild), they really happened to him.  They may have stretched the limits of what he was able to mentally process, much less try and explain to someone else, but there was a clear and firm historical context to them. Read the rest…