Finished the book of Amos this morning in my reading. I was reminded how powerful, by God’s grace and providence, intercession can be! Ch 7 - The Lord showed Amos the judgment He was about to bring. Amos cried out, “Lord God, please forgive! How will Jacob survive since he is...
so small?” THEN “The Lord relented concerning this. ‘It will not happen,’ He said.” The Lord AGAIN shows Amos a call for judgment. “Then I said, ‘Lord God, please stop! How will Jacob survive since he’s so small?’ The Lord relented concerning this. ‘This will not happen either.’”
When the rebellion refuses to relent after numerous warnings, God does ultimately bring calamitous consequences but God heard & honored Amos’s prayers & delayed judgment & significant suffering. Satan is enormously invested in you continuing to think your prayers don’t matter.
THEY DO.
Saint, PRAY. Nothing you can possibly say to another human being carries the weight of what you can say at the throne of grace because Jesus tore open the veil.
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Jonah 1-2 today. Word of the Lord comes to Jonah: “GET UP! Go to Nineveh.” Next verse: “So Jonah GOT UP (way to hop to it, bro!) to flee to Tarshish (bro, wrong way!) from the Lord’s presence (um, tough gig).” Gets on a ship. Furious squall. Sailors: “GET UP! Call to your god!”
1. Sometimes God says GET UP & GO. 2. So we get up & flee. 3. A lot of running from God is running from obedience. I mean, we want to do things for God and all but not THAT thing. We want to work with people we like. People like us. 4. The thing about winds & waves is they obey.
One of the best parts of chapter 1 is when Jonah, having confessed to causing the storm, says to the sailors, “Pick me up & throw me in.” Dude, you could jump in. Jonah’s obviously holding on for dear life because they’re unable to bring themselves to do it. So they try rowing.
Finished up 1st & 2nd Thess in my morning reading & turned back to the OT. (I go back & forth between the two) In Amos today. Remember, 1 reason among many to read the OT prophets is the enormous insight they lend into what greatly pleases & displeases our very attentive God.
Amos 4 lists a series of circumstances God brought upon His people so they’d look to him. In each case, he repeats the words “yet you did not return to me.” (5X) So he says the chilling words, “Israel, prepare to meet your God! He is here: the one who forms the mountains, creates
the wind, & reveals his thoughts to man, the one who makes the dawn out of darkness and strides on the heights of the earth. The Lord, the God of armies, is his name...Seek Me and live!” Listen carefully: God is not just calling them back to church! He’s calling them back to HIM.
Isaiah 61 today. I’ll never be able to read it without turning to Luke 4. Jesus returns from the wilderness of temptation in the power of the Spirit (that’ll preach right there) and heads to Nazareth where he grew up. Enters synagogue as usual on the Sabbath. Stood up to read.
Now, several practices would’ve already taken place in the order of synagogue service by this time. The congregation would’ve recited the Shema then a set of prayers including the 18 Benedictions. Someone then would’ve read from the Torah (the Law) in Hebrew translated to Aramaic
THEN would’ve come a reading from the Prophets followed by an exposition ordinarily connecting that day’s section from the Law & Prophets. This is where Jesus takes center stage. He’s standing, as was the practice for the reading. Scroll of Isaiah is handed to him. He unrolls it
Do not even try to make me unhappy this morning. It is 56° on a cloudless morning in my corner of Houston Texas and I have greeted every tree, every vine, 2 dogs, 1 hawk, 1 owl, 8 cows and 1 fine donkey in the happy name of Jesus on my before-work walk in the country already.
Of course, some of you don’t think Jesus is happy. You’re gonna be shocked 1 of these days when you enter into your Master’s happiness. We’ve never once been miserable enough to wreck his day. This is the day the Lord has made. This 1 right here.I’m gonna rejoice & be glad in it.
And, anyway, if this calf does nothing for you, I can’t help you.
Isaiah 53 this morning. 1st chapter of Scripture I ever memorized. Recited it in the 6th grade in a church service as part of the completion of a girls’ missions course. Didn’t fully understand it, of course, but this I knew: the OT foretold Christ’s suffering in alarming detail.
This masterpiece actually begins in Is 52:13. That section’s needed because the poem contrasts the Servant’s exaltation & humiliation. There we are told he would be “successful” & greatly exalted but only after grotesque disfigurement. Think of Is.52:13-53:12 as the OT’s Phil 2.
Shelves of books are written about this poem. I’ll stop at quoting some verbal phrases this AM.
He, our Christ, our one and only, was
...so disfigured he did not look like a man...despised & rejected by men... pierced because of our rebellion, crushed because of our iniquities.
A word to Jesus-followers this morning. I’m not talking to those who’d simply check the Christian box on a questionnaire about religious beliefs. I’m talking today to people who regularly seek to walk in obedience to Jesus Christ. We are in colossal need of wisdom from above.
A thick cloud of confusion, chaos, deception & seduction has settled on this nation. We need to be able to see through it & we cannot do so without seeking the Lord urgently & diligently. It’s election season when “we the people” notoriously beg to be bought, flattered & lied to.
Behold the madness of the situation before us when gospel people -followers of the same Jesus Christ revealed by the Spirit in the canonical Gospels- are faced with choosing between the unborn & the born. It’s absurd. We value ALL life or we are utterly clueless about the gospel.