Old Testament Archives - Page 103 of 143

Surveying the Text: Obadiah

Joe Harby on May 10, 2015

Introduction

God has two ways of destroying His enemies. One might be considered the old school method—with the fire coming down out of the sky. This is the method that leaves a smoking crater. But the other is a far more glorious method, and that is His method of destroying enemies by turning them into friends. That is a far more wonderful destruction indeed. In order to accomplish the former, all He had to do was exercise His Almighty power. But to accomplish the latter, His Son had to die.

The Text

“The vision of Obadiah. Thus saith the Lord God concerning Edom; We have heard a rumour from the Lord, And an ambassador is sent among the heathen, Arise ye, and let us rise up against her in battle. Behold, I have made thee small among the heathen: Thou art greatly despised. The pride of thine heart hath deceived thee . . .” (Obadiah 1-21).

Background of the Text

The most likely setting for this book is after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 B.C. and before Babylon’s campaign against Edom in 553 B.C. Edom was a mountainous region, due south of the Dead Sea. Just to get you oriented, this was the era when Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) was born in Nepal, King Croesus ruled in Lydia, and when the temple of Artemis was built in Ephesus. The Edomites were descended from Esau, and godliness was not unknown among them (e.g. Job). But in this instance, they had rejoiced in an ungodly way during Judah’s Babylonian crisis, and Obadiah pronounces a judgment upon them as a consequence. At the same time, the ramifications of this prophecy extend far beyond the immediate fulfillment.

Summary of the Text

The small book begins with a “vision” concerning Edom (v. 1). Armies are already gathering against her. As they had held Judah in contempt, so they were going to be held in contempt (v. 2). They were a small nation, misled by their pride and apparently invulnerable mountain fortresses (vv. 3-4). Who will bring Edom down? God will. Ordinary thieves would usually leave something behind—but not here, not now. Esau will be stripped completely bare (vv. 5-6). Just as Edom betrayed Judah, so also will Edom’s allies betray them (v. 7). Just as they “cut off ” Judah’s refugees (v. 14), so also will they themselves be cut off (vv. 8-9). Mount Esau is a way of referring to Edom, and Teman was a chief city of theirs, named after Esau’s grandson (Gen. 36:9-11). They failed to help their brother Jacob in the day of violence (hamas), and will be judged for this sin of omission (vv. 10-11). Failing to intervene led them into even worse sin— gloating, rejoicing, boasting, looting, and even capturing and turning over refugees (vv. 12-14). The day of the Lord, the day of recompense, was upon them (v. 15). To drink sin is to drink wrath, and destruction is the result (v. 16). But deliverance will come to Zion, and everything will then be restored (v. 17). The house of Jacob will be on fire, and the house of Esau will be fields of stubble (v. 18), with predictable results. People from all over will possess Edom (vv. 19-20). Deliverance will come, and Zion will judge Edom, and the kingdom will be the Lord’s (v. 21).

Learning to Read

The Bible teaches us—comparing passage to passage—that you all are part of the fulfillment of Obadiah’s prophecy. In Obadiah 18-20, the prophet quotes Amos 9:11-12. And the prophet Joel quotes Obadiah 17 in Joel 2:28-32. The phrases in question are these: “that they may possess the remnant of Edom” and “in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, as the Lord has said.” This is significant because that very section of Amos is then quoted by James, the Lord’s brother, at the Council of Jerusalem, referring to the inclusion of the Gentiles through the gospel (Acts 15:12-21). And the relevant passage in Joel is quoted by Peter on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:16), with the claim that it was all fulfilled on that day. So though neither James nor Peter mention Obadiah by name, they do tell us what he is talking about by direct implication, by good and necessary consequence. So in what day will Mt. Zion rule over Edom? What day will that be? It will be the day the Tabernacle of David is reestablished. And what will be the day of escape for those in Jerusalem? It will be the day of Pentecost. Where are you from? “I am from northern Idaho.” And what are you doing here at Christ Church today? “I am possessing Mt. Esau” (vv. 19-20).

The Sin of Schadenfreude

This is the sin of delighting in the misfortune of others with a vindictive spirit. Take care. Remember the deadly progress of malice in vv. 12-14. It is a small step from rejoicing when someone falls to kicking them as long as they are down. God hates it, and the sin of Edom in this regard was quite striking. It is rebuked in Ps. 137:7 and again in Lamentations 4:21. Remember this perverse tendency of the human heart—once you have wronged someone significantly like this, you might never be able to forgive them. Be angry and sin not. Do not rejoice over your enemy’s failure, even if he is your lawful enemy (Prov. 24:17-18). Indignation, even at its best, is like manna—it will rot overnight. Remember that Judah deserved her destruction (as Jeremiah was telling them), but Edom added an ungodly amen. Do not be like those who do not know what spirit they are of (Luke 9:55). But the way to avoid this sin is not to search out some sort of room temperature tepidity.

Men of Fire

John Chrysostom once said something striking about the apostle Peter. “Peter was a man made all of fire, walking among stubble.” This is the image that we have at the end of Obadiah. The house of Jacob (that’s you) will be a fire and a flame (v. 18), and the house of Esau (the unbelieving world) will be fields of dry stubble. God’s people are called to be a fiery people—fire came down upon our heads at Pentecost (Acts 2), and fire comes out of the mouths of the two witnesses (Rev. 11:5). Our spirits are supposed to be on the boil (Rom. 12:11). We are a fiery people in a combustible world. This is not surprising, for our God is a consuming fire, and we are in Him (Heb. 12:29).

Surveying the Text: Amos

Joe Harby on May 3, 2015

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Introduction

Now let us consider the prophecy of Amos. Apart from what is revealed in the course of his writing here, we know nothing about the man. Among the minor prophets, he occupies the vanguard in this period of Israel’s history, even though he is placed third in the canonical order. He is very much a prophet.

The Text

“The words of Amos, who was among the herdmen of Tekoa, which he saw concerning Israel in the days of Uzziah king of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash king of Israel, two years before the earthquake. And he said, The LORD will roar from Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem; and the habitations of the shepherds shall mourn, and the top of Carmel shall wither” (Amos 1:1-2).

Overview

Tekoa was about ten miles south of Jerusalem, and this small town in Judah is where Amos was from (v. 1). But Amos was a prophet to the northern kingdom of Israel, and so it was that he conducted that ministry as a satiric outsider. He prophesied two years before “the earthquake,” a notable event remembered in Zechariah 14:5. The most likely date for his ministry is between 760 and 755 B.C., right near the end of Jeroboam II’s reign. The earthquake serves as a great metaphor for Amos’ message of impending judgment. As mentioned at the first, Amos was a shepherd, and if there is anything that a shepherd dreads, it is the sound of a lion’s roar (v. 2). The Lord, who had been Israel’s shepherd, had now become Israel’s predator. In the prophecy of Amos, the Lord was roaring. Moreover, He was doing this from Zion, and His voice was from Jerusalem. That was where God had established His name, and yet the northern kingdom had established false worship at Dan and Bethel. As a result of God’s predation, the pastureland of Carmel was going to wither, and the habitations of the shepherds would wither.

A Host of Sevens

Amos is from an obscure place because God loves to rebuke the sleek and fat of this world with those who are little in the eyes of the world (1 Cor. 4: 9). But Amos is far from being some kind of hick or cornpone. This is a book of magnificent poetic force, and the literary abilities exhibited by the prophet are considerable. He is no court flatterer, but his abilities are not at all beneath the task of rebuking a corrupt aristocracy.

One of his favorite literary and structuring devices is that of the organizing power of seven. There are at least twenty-three places where Amos relies on the number seven to organize his material, which you can find throughout the book. He asks seven rhetorical questions (3:3-6), there are seven empty rituals that Israel performs (5:21-23), there are seven plagues (4:6-11), seven verbs of exhortation (5:14-15), and so on. Moreover, the entire book is structured in a seven-fold chiasm.

a Judgment coming toward Israel and her neighboring countries (1:1-2:16)
b Destruction of Israel and Bethel’s cultic worship (3:1-15)
c Condemnation of fat cat women (4:1-13)
d Call to repentance (5:1-17)
c’ Condemnation of fat cat men (5:18-6:14)
b’ Destruction of Bethel’s cultic worship (7:1-8:3)
a’ Judgment coming toward Israel and promised deliverance (8:4-9:15)

The Great Themes

The book of Amos is a book of rebuke and denunciation. According to Amos, the two great sins committed by Israel were, first, compromised and corrupt worship, and second, a resultant abuse of power. The same thing comes up in the book of James, a New Testament book with a strong similarity to the book of Amos. What is pure and undefiled religion? The answer to that question is two-fold, not solitary. The famous part of the answer is to visit widows and orphans in their affliction (1:27). But James also says that pure and undefiled religion keeps itself “unspotted from the world” (v. 27).

It is not the case that good deeds stand alone. Good deeds cannot justify a sinner, as we all know (Eph. 2:8-9). But good deeds cannot even justify themselves. All true living flows from true worship. Any one who worships at Dan and Bethel will inevitably grind the poor. And any one who tries to implement a syncretistic alliance between Zion and Bethel will do the same. Wisdom says that all who hate her love death (Prov. 8:36).

This is why the great order of the day today is reformation of the Church, and restoration of true worship. This is not because we want to bottle true worship up to hide it from the world, but rather because we want unspotted religion to be what visits the widow and the orphan. To skip over the question of right worship, discarding the question of immoralities and heresies, for the sake of the poor and oppressed, is extremely short- sighted. To say, as one evangelical leader (Jim Wallis) has done, that we should not be that concerned about sodomy in the church because we mustn’t get distracted by secondary issues when the question of global poverty is so pressing, is to fly in the face of the message of Amos. To argue this way is to assume that Amos would agree that so long as we quit grinding the poor, worship at Dan and Bethel would be fine with God. It is to assume that it would be fine with James to be corrupted by the world so long as we visited widows and orphans. But not only is it not fine, we need to flip this around. So long as you worship at Dan and Bethel, no matter what you say, or how eloquently you say it, the poor are going to catch it in the neck. False worshippers always stand up for the poor . . . the way that Judas did.

The Engine and Drive Train

To say that worship is the center of everything, is not to say that worship is everything. In our worship of God, we have our names and identities established. Once we are named by God, we are then commissioned to go out into the world, and to represent Him there. One of the central tasks that God has assigned to the Church in this regard is the task of mercy ministry—which in recent years we have been doing more and more. But this is just like everything else we do. We worship God on the Lord’s Day. Everything else we do—art, literature, education, business, politics, economics, and mercy ministry—must be connected to this worship. The drive train has to be connected to the engine, which is true and faithful worship.

Promise Fulfilled

Amos is a fierce and biting book, and our generation needs to hear and heed its message. We need to be ready to be convicted, prodded, encouraged, and rebuked. But the book drives inexorably toward a glorious conclusion, one where the promised salvation of God does come into the world. As we allow the unbending righteousness of God to speak to us, we must constantly fix our eyes on the promise fulfilled in Christ.

Surveying The Text: Joel

Joe Harby on April 26, 2015

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Introduction

The occasion of this prophecy was a swarm of locusts that devastated the land of Judah. That was a true disaster that was a portent of another follow-up disaster, an invading Gentile army. Joel calls upon the people of God to repent, and promises them true restoration if they do so. Part of his description of all this contains a prophecy of the day of Pentecost, which shows that God will in fact bring that repentance about. God invites Israel to repent, and promises that same repentance.

The Text

“And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the LORD shall be delivered: For in mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, As the LORD hath said, And in the remnant whom the LORD shall call” (Joel 2:32).

Summary of the Text

The reason for this great judgment was that the religious life of Judah had become external only, and therefore degenerate. The judgment falls on their ability to worship God ( Joel 1:9, 13-14, 16). They are called to worship God in response ( Joel 2:15-16), but they are pointedly told to refrain from mere externalism. “And rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the LORD your God: For he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil” ( Joel 2:13).

Judgment comes on Judah in waves. The first is the locust swarm ( Joel 1). The second chapter may be a particularly vivid description of that same locust swarm, or it may be that the locusts were a precursor to an advancing army. In other words, in the expression of one sage, the first chapter was a statement that things were going to get a whole lot worse before they got worse.

But in the middle of the second chapter, God invited His people to repent, and by the end of that same chapter, He promised that they would in fact do so. In the third chapter, God promised vengeance on the nations that had come against His people, and He declared that He would then bless His people with great prosperity.

Decreation Language

The New Testament teaches us how to understand and interpret the language of the Old. In this passage of Joel (2:28-32), we are told that the restoration of God’s people is going to be striking—when the Spirit is poured out on all flesh, their sons and daughters will prophesy. Old men will dream dreams. Young men will see visions. But this is described in language that seems to go far beyond people speaking in tongues in the street. No, there will be wonders in the heavens. On the earth, there will be blood and fire and billows of smoke. The sun will be turned to darkness, and the moon will become blood.

All this will happen before the great and dreadful day of the Lord.

So when the inhabitants of Jerusalem were wondered if the first disciples had been drinking too much, Peter gives them a reason for doubting that—it was too early in the morning for it—and then goes on to say that this whole section of Joel was talking about the day of Pentecost. The New Testament tells us that this apocalyptic vision was fulfilled then, there.

But everywhere else such language occurs (Is. 13: 10; 34:4; Ez. 32:7; Amos 8:9), some kind of cataclysmic judgment is in view, which means that the 70 A.D. judgment on Jerusalem by the Romans may be lumped together with the prophecy about Pentecost. This is particularly the case if you couple Paul’s citation in Rom. 10:11 with his use of Is. 28:11 in 1 Cor. 14:21. Tongues were a precursor, a foretaste of what was to come, and it was a sign of judgment for unbelievers. If you will not understand precept on precept, then maybe you will understand when your streets are filled with soldiers speaking another language.

The passage concludes with the promise that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved, and so Peter goes on to invite them all to do just that.

Jesus is Jehovah

But much more is involved than learning how to interpret current events with a set of apocalyptic glasses. All of this is ultimately about who Jesus is. Jesus was declared with power to be the Son of God by His resurrection from the dead (Rom. 1:4), and after His ascension into Heaven, He was granted universal rule and authority. He was given an iron rod, and the first city He smashed with it was the city of Jerusalem (Ps. 2:9). This meant that the men who condemned Him would see this judgment with their eyes (Mark 14:61-64).

In the Hebrew of Joel 2:32, we are told that everyone who calls on the name of YHWH will be saved. YHWH was the covenant name of Almighty God, Maker of Heaven and earth. God had revealed Himself to Moses in a special use of YHWH (Ex. 6:2-3). In that passage, He is God Almighty, but He also has the name YHWH. So according to Joel everyone who calls on the name of YHWH will be saved.

Our pronunciation of Yahweh comes from the use of the consonants of YHWH, and the vowels of Adonai, another name for God. Our English Jehovah comes to us via a similar route. Somewhere along the line, the Jews became wary of saying this name for God, and so no one really knows how the name was originally pronounced. Fortunately, it does not matter because the translators of the Septuagint rendered YHWH as kurios, and the apostle Paul does the same thing in Romans 10. This shows that God is not particular about His name in translation.

More important is the identity of this God. In Romans 10, Paul insists that the fundamental Christian confession is that Jesus is Lord (Rom. 10:9). Everyone who trusts in Him will never be put to shame (Rom. 10:11; Is. 2816). Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord [kurios] will be saved. This is our faith; this is our life.

Surveying the Text: Hosea

Joe Harby on April 19, 2015

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Introduction

Apart from what we can glean from the book itself, we do not know a lot about the prophet Hosea. He was a prophet from the north, and the hard date we can gather from Hosea 1:4 means that his ministry was around 743 B.C. The theme of the book is Israel’s unfaithfulness to YHWH as typified by Gomer’s infidelity to Hosea. The problem, simply stated, was that Israel did not know their God (Hos. 4:1, 6, 14; 8:2-3). We have, in turn, vivid descriptions of infidelity, consequences, and restoration.

The Text

“Come, and let us return unto the LORD: For he hath torn, and he will heal us; He hath smitten, and he will bind us up. After two days will he revive us: In the third day he will raise us up, And we shall live in his sight. Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the LORD: His going forth is prepared as the morning; And he shall come unto us as the rain, As the latter and former rain unto the earth” (Hosea 6:1–3).

Summary of the Text

The sin that is expressly dealt with elsewhere in Hosea is assumed here. In order to return to the Lord, you have to have departed from Him (v. 1). And when we depart from the Lord, He chastises. Here it is expressed as a tearing or smiting. Where He has torn, He will heal. Where He has smitten, He will bind up (v. 1). There is then a glimpse of the coming resurrection. Christ was raised on the third day, and so also will we be raised on the third day (v. 2). Having been raised, we will live in His sight. In that condition of having been raised to life again, we will follow on to know the Lord. The blessing will be like morning, and like lifegiving rain to the earth (v. 3).

A Key Note of Scripture

“For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings” (Hos. 6:6). When Jesus was ministering to IRS men and courtesans, He was challenged on the point by the fussers (Matt. 9:11). When you consider how biblical His adversaries wanted to be, His response had a really sharp edge. “But go and learn what this means” (Matt. 9:13). Wanting to be teachers of the law, the Lord’s adversaries had missed the foundational rudiments—the deep footings for God’s building are made entirely out of mercy. He says something similar a few chapters later when the Pharisees were being persnickety about the disciples picking grain on the Sabbath (Matt. 12:7). There He says something like if you only knew what you were talking about . . .

The problem with hardliners is not that they see the hard edge of God’s judgment on sin. There are plenty of passages in Hosea that could be culled to create a portrait of an unsympathetic God. But this would be to miss the whole point of the whole thing. “I desired mercy . . .” Hardliners separate truth from mercy, which becomes untrue.

Sentimental saps separate mercy from truth, which becomes hard and unkind.

“By mercy and truth iniquity is purged: And by the fear of the LORD men depart from evil” (Prov. 16:6).

New Testament Commentary

We see in a number of places how the New Testament writers are drawn to this book.

The judgment pronounced on the rulers of Samaria (Hos. 10:7) is taken up by the Lord and applied as a lament for the residents of Jerusalem (Luke 23:30). Hosea then describes the Exodus in a way that shows us that Christ is the true Israel (Hos. 11:1; Matt. 2:15), the final Israel, the complete Israel.

Near the conclusion of the book, Hosea gives us a great promise of redemption and his language is picked up by the apostle Paul in his great chapter on the resurrection (1 Cor. 15:55). “I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death: O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction: Repentance shall be hid from mine eyes” (Hos. 13:14).

If you put these three passages together, you can see the trajectory of all of redemptive history. The apostate nation of the northern kingdom of Israel was a stand-in for all the infidelity throughout the time of the old covenant, culminating in the destruction of Old Israel. We see that God does in fact judge sin, and that He plays hard ball. At the same time, we see that God does not level Old Israel without creating, in a glorious way, a New Israel. That New Israel is the Lord Jesus Himself. He comes up out of Egypt as a baby, He is baptized, He is in the wilderness for forty days, He invades the land of Canaan. And, at the end of the process, just like Israel, He dies. But, unlike Israel, He comes to life again. And this is the last of these three prophecies. Death, where is your victory? Grave, what destruction can you have?

Not My Kid

Hosea had a son, a daughter, and then another son. They were given names that indicated the deep trouble Israel was in. Jezreel meant God will scatter. Lo-Ruhamah meant no compassion, and Lo-Ammi meant not my people. But however deep the trouble Israel was in, God’s mercy ran deeper still. Paul quotes Hosea 2:23 to show God’s kindness to the Gentiles, and then quotes Hosea 1:10 to show His kindness to the Jews.

“What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory, Even us, whom he hath called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles? As he saith also in [Hosea], I will call them my people, which were not my people; and her beloved, which was not beloved” (Rom. 9:22–25).

There are in fact vessels of wrath. There are in fact vessels of mercy. But go and learn what this means . . .

On Christian Disobedience #1

Joe Harby on April 12, 2015

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Introduction

The state is the great idol of modernity, and so of course Christians have to think through what things are lawful to render to Caesar and what things are not. This week we will consider the nature of our problem—the corruption of the system and the corruptions of those who oppose it. The next installment will address civil resistance in the Bible (Ehud, Gideon, Paul, Peter, David, el al.). But we must also remember civil submission in the Bible, and so passages like Romans 13 will be considered after that. Next, we will review an aspect of this subject infrequently considered, which is the nature of “established authorities” and the meaning of common law. The week after we will address common problems of conscience among Christians—Social Security taxes, registering for the draft, building inspectors, EPA regulations, licenses, and so forth. And last, we will look at the only possible solution to our civil woes, which is the genuine reformation of the Church. Any call for societal transformation must begin in the household of God.

The Text

“O Lord God, to whom vengeance belongs—O God, to whom vengeance belongs, shine forth! Rise up, O Judge of the earth; render punishment to the proud. Lord, how long will the wicked, how long will the wicked triumph?. . . Shall the throne of iniquity, which devises evil by law, have fellowship with You? They gather together against the life of the righteous, and condemn innocent blood” (Ps. 94:1-3, 20-22).

The Corrupt System

The Bible does recognize what we might call de facto rule. But the Bible also teaches the concept ofmoral legitimacy. “It is an abomination for kings to commit wickedness, for a throne is established by righteousness” (Pr. 16:12 : cf. 20:28; 25:5; 29:14). And so where do we stand? Here is just a brief review.

Abortion—since Roe v. Wade, we as a nation have maintained, for a full generation, that the dismemberment of an infant in the womb is morally legitimate. But the Bible says that murder is evil and defiles a land (Ex. 20:13; Num. 35:33- 34), and that the unborn in a just society are to have full legal protection (Ex. 21:22-25).

Moral filth exalted—from pornographic and federally-funded “art,” to twisted sex ed courses, to sodomite “marriages,” to vile behavior tolerated by our leaders, our culture defies God (Rom. 1:28-32 ). And so we as Christians must defy the culture.
Hatred of the truth—from the central lie of our government school systems—that the living God is, at best, irrelevant— to the lying ways in which we handle the law, wanting it to be as slippery as our hearts, we have turned from truth. “How can you say, ‘We are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us’? Look, the false pen of the scribe certainly works falsehood. The wise men are ashamed, they are dismayed and taken. Behold, they have rejected the word of the Lord; so what wisdom do they have?” (Jer. 8:8-9)

Bogus crusades—because we will not learn our morality from the law of God, we find ourselves inventing our own lists of things to be indignant about, including, but not limited to, tobacco, sexism, wine and beer, climate change, and the history of western Europe. But remember the words of Mark 7:9.

In summary, our modern rulers cannot be dismayed when we deny that they have moral legitimacy, because they want to insist that in the final analysis, there is no such thing a moral legitimacy. And so the preachers of the Word of God can have only one thing to say to such wickedness in high places (Is. 5:20-21).

The Corrupted Opposition

It would be wonderful to be able to say that the corruption in our centers of power has nothing to do with us, but God gives rulers in order to chastise a people. “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people” (Pr. 14:34).
The state of the church—how can we expect the civil magistrate to conduct his affairs according to the Word of God when the church won’t conduct her affairs according to the Word of God? Consider the importance of salt in Matt. 5:13-16.

The idol of personal comfort—why do we yell when they want us to pay for the privileges we greedily accept? “I spoke to you in your prosperity, but you said, ‘I will not hear.’ This has been your manner from your youth, that you did not obey My voice” (Jer. 22:21). If you hear the word of righteousness when you are not afflicted, you do well. Lack of preparedness—when we are finally provoked to action, it is foolish and ill- considered action because of our prior sloth (1 Chr. 12:32). The school of resistance to lawless thrones is the same as the school of submission to the Lordship of Christ within the church. And this school is not a three-week course.

Judgment or Mercy

We serve the living God, the Holy One of Israel. He never changes; His attitude toward sinful nations is always the same. His wrath is visited upon all who defy Him, those who walk along spitting at the very clouds. The only way to flee from God is to flee to God. The only way to flee to God is through His Christ, our Lord Jesus.