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Surveying the Text: Micah

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Introduction

Micah was a younger contemporary to the prophet Isaiah, and ministered across the reigns of Jotham (c. 740 B.C.) and Hezekiah of Judah (who died 687 B.C.). Other contemporaries would be Amos and Hosea, which accounts for similar themes—they were all confronting the same kinds of cultural problems. The two great ones were idolatry and social injustice. The name Micah is a shortened form of a name that means “who is like YHWH?”

The Text

“He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; And what doth the Lord require of thee, But to do justly, and to love mercy, And to walk humbly with thy God?” (Micah 6:8 ).

Summary of the Text

In our text, we find a succinct treatment of what true religion looks like. Is God impressed with high pomp or pretentious sacrifices? What could I give that would earn God’s favor? The answer is nothing, nothing whatever, which men of understanding have always understood since the world began. If salvation is not all of grace, then there is no such thing as salvation.

The book of Micah is not long, and is a collection of oracles, bundled loosely according to this recurring pattern—warning, oracle of judgment, and promise of salvation. Each of three sections is begun with the call to hear/listen (Mic. 1:2; 3:1; 6:1). The first cycle begins with warning (1:2-16), moves to judgment (2:1-11), and concludes with the first word of hope (2:12-13). The second cycle begins with warning and declared judgment (3:1-12), but then turns to hope (4:1-5:15). The third cycle begins with warning (6:1-16), moves to a lament over judgment (7:1-7), and concludes with a promise of hope (7:8-20). As it turns out Micah should be credited with saving Jeremiah’s life, even though he lived a century earlier. Jeremiah was accused because he had prophesied destruction for Jerusalem, which was considered as treason by some, but certain elders of the land defended Jeremiah by pointing out that Micah had done the same thing (3:12), and Hezekiah had not put him to death (Jer. 26: 17-19).

Your Best Apocalypse Now

The better days of Uzziah are now in the rear view mirror, and the shabbiness of decadence and decay are definitely starting to show. False teachers are willing to start showing their true colors. “If a man walking in the spirit and falsehood do lie, saying, I will prophesy unto thee of wine and of strong drink; He shall even be the prophet of this people” (Mic. 2:11 ). As things get worse and worse, the fulfillment of earlier dire

warnings are entirely missed. When judicial stupor visits a people, the more manifest it is, the harder it is to see. “Therefore night shall be unto you, that ye shall not have a vision; And it shall be dark unto you, that ye shall not divine; And the sun shall go down over the prophets, And the day shall be dark over them” (Mic. 3:6 ).

Gospel Tension

Micah alternates between fierce Deuteronomic denunciations and glorious kingdom promises. This gospel is going to conquer the world, but an essential part of the gospel message is found in the key word repent. Repent and believe. Before we ask what we are to believe, we must first ask what we are to repent of. We are to repent of great wickedness, as defined by Scripture, and our views of how high salvation goes will be shaped by how deep we believe the sin went. In the book of Micah, he calls the mountains to witness (Mic. 6:2 )—may we do the same. As the Lord taught us, the one who loves much is the one who was forgiven much.

This tension stretches from Genesis to Revelation. God is not mocked—a man reaps what he sows,and yet through the death of Jesus Christ, a man does not reap what he sows at all. The curse runs through it all, and yet the grace of God runs as bedrock underneath that.

So Turn to the Promise

The judgments in the mouth of Micah were judgments that applied to Samaria and Jerusalem, to Israel and to Judah. But the promises were for the whole world. “But thou, Beth-lehem Ephratah, Though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, Yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; Whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting” (Mic. 5:2).

“But in the last days it shall come to pass, That the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established in the top of the mountains, And it shall be exalted above the hills; And people shall flow unto it. And many nations shall come, and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, And to the house of the God of Jacob; And he will teach us of his ways, And we will walk in his paths: For the law shall go forth of Zion, And the word of the Lord from Jerusalem” (Mic. 4:1–2).

And Back to the Text

In this world, what is the consequence of having our sins washed away? What does it look like when God comes down and the mountains of our religiosity melt under His feet (1:3-4)? When God interferes with us, when He saves us, when He fixes us up, what does that look like? What we could not do with burnt offerings, what we could not do with rivers of oil, what we could not accomplish by giving our firstborn for our transgression, God did by sending His Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And when He did so, the result in our lives tastes like this. He has shown us what is good. He has taught what He requires.

He says three things. First, do justly. Second, love mercy. And third, walk humbly with your God. And I can only do this when I come to the cross. Only there can I do what is just. Only there can I love the mercy of God. Only there can I behold the humility of God. In Jesus I can do justly, in Jesus I can love mercy, and in Jesus I can walk with humility. Only there.

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Surveying the Text: Jonah

Joe Harby on

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Introduction

Jonah is a short book that records the famous story of a message being given to the prophet Jonah by God, and he rebels against the idea of delivering it. His motive for rebellion was that he despised Nineveh, and he knew that God was far more merciful than Jonah was disposed to be. So he fled in the opposite direction, and his goal was to get a long way in the opposite direction.

The Text

“Then certain of the scribes and of the Pharisees answered, saying, Master, we would see a sign from thee. But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas: For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here” (Matt. 12:38–41).

Summary of the Text

The scribes, the ordained men, and the Pharisees, the devout laymen, demanded that Jesus perform for them a sign. Jesus said that to hunt for a sign is an indication of an evil and adulterous generation. So the Lord went on to refuse them, but the refusal was a strange one. He said that no sign would be given to that evil generation except for the sign of Jonah—no sign but the very greatest sign. Resurrection is the sign beyond all signs. As Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of theketos (sea monster) so also the Son of man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. After Jonah “rose,” the men of Nineveh repented, and the contrasting implication is that the men of Jerusalem will not repent after the resurrection of Jesus.

Background of the Text

We don’t know a lot about the prophet Jonah. We know that he ministered during the time of Jeroboam II (2 Kings 14 25), and we know—given the fact that he had to be the source of the information recorded in the book of Jonah—that he had to have a highly developed sense of irony. The prophet Jonah is the butt of the story told here, but we should not forget that it this is, in some way or another, Jonah’s account of it.

The Basic Story

The book has only four chapters. In the first, Jonah is told to preach to Nineveh. He rebels because he knows how gracious God can be. They might repent, and Jonah didn’t want to risk that. He takes passage on a ship going the opposite direction, heading for

Tarshish. Some locate this in Spain, while the Vulgate and the Septuagint render it as Carthage. In any case, it was a long way from Nineveh, in the neighborhood of two thousand miles away. The Lord sent a tempest (Jon. 1:4), and Jonah tells the sailors to throw him overboard. They reluctantly do this, and Jonah is swallowed by a great monster of some sort (Jon. 1:17), a monster prepared by the Lord. The second chapter records Jonah’s prayer for deliverance, and concludes with the fish vomiting Jonah onto dry land. My suggestion here is that Jonah actually died—in 2:2 it says that he cried out to the Lord from the belly of Sheol, the place of the dead. When he comes back to life, he is still in the fish, and then he prays. And then in chapter 3 God suggested that “we try this again.” This time, Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, preaching a message of destruction—“Yet forty days, and Nineveh will be overthrown.” The message was heard with real repentance, from the king down to the livestock. Jonah was furious, and tells God that this is why he fled to Tarshish. He knew that God needed very little excuse to forgive sinners. God was just like that—incorrigibly low standards. God gave Jonah a plant to shade him from the heat, and then sent a worm to destroy the plant. When the heat struck Jonah to the point of fainting, so that he was ready to die, God compared Jonah’s greater pity for the plant than he had for the many thousands of the inhabitants of Nineveh. And there the story ends.

The Presence of the Lord

Jonah sought to flee from “the presence of the Lord” (Jon. 1:3 ,10 ); And so this is lesson number one. It cannot be done. The Lord is as present on the way to Tarshish as He was when He first spoke to Jonah. No doctrine is more self-evident than the omnipresence of God and no doctrine is easier—when in the grip of temptation—to forget.

All Except for Jonah

This is a book in which absolutely everyone and everything obeys, except for Jonah. God gives Jonah his mission, and so he heads due west (Jon. 1:3). So the Lord sent out a great wind over the sea, and the wind obeys (Jon. 1:4). The prophet tells the sailors to do a hard thing, and they do it (Jon. 1:16). The Lord prepared a great sea monster, and the sea monster was there, right on time (Jon. 1:17). Jonah preaches the Word of God, and the people of Nineveh believe God and obey (Jon. 3:5). The Lord prepared the gourd plant to shade Jonah, and it obeyed (Jon. 4:6). The Lord prepared a strong east wind to destroy the gourd plant, and it obeyed (Jon. 4:8). Everybody honors God in this book except for Jonah.

Greater than Jonah

The prophet Jonah slept in the boat in a storm (Jon. 1:5), and so did the prophet Jesus (Mark 4:38). In both instances, the winds and the waves were obedient. In one instance, the prophet slept the sleep of disobedience and in the other He slept the sleep of the righteous. One was supposed to go to a city that would repent, and the other to a city that would not. Both Jonah and Jesus died, and went to Sheol/Hades. Both of them were brought back, one in a type and the other in the great antitype.

And in the final contrast, the greater Jonah is delighted with our repentance, not furious. There is joy in the presence of the angels over just one sinner who repents (Luke 15:10). Who is this referring to? What is God actually like? We call it the Parable of the Prodigal Son, and some who want to be able to condemn somebody, call it the Parable of the Elder Brother. We really ought to call it the Parable of the Running Father, or the Father Who Jumps Fences.

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Surveying the Text: Obadiah

Joe Harby on

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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).

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Surveying the Text: Amos

Joe Harby on

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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.

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Surveying The Text: Joel

Joe Harby on

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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.

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