Faithful Fridays Two - Matthew

 Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

400 years after Malachi penned his words, Gabriel appeared to Zechariah as he was going about his priestly duties, announcing the coming of John, and the timetable for the most amazing era of all history...when God took on flesh and walked among mankind...was set into motion.

Matthew doesn't record any of that bit, though.  He's not as interested in the forerunner of Jesus as he is in Jesus himself, laying argument after argument that Jesus was the one foretold.  He begins his narrative with an extensive genealogy, starting with Abraham, showing the lineage of Jesus.  

Several passages caught my eye as I read through, but one kicked up the prickles so that is the selection for today:

"At that time, many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people.  Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved." Matt. 24:10 - 13

This is, of course, from the Olivet Discourse, which was an answer to the disciples' questions about the end times.  It's all pretty familiar, but this time as I was reading this particular snippet struck me differently than before.

Always before, I had read the  'false prophets will appear and deceive many' as, well, clearly false prophets, with false doctrines...cults and the like.  But this time, it hit me as people who weren't necessarily proclaiming a different gospel...but are, nonetheless, false prophets.  People claiming to have a revelation from God who actually don't. Maybe their objectives are personal...there's money to be had doing that, if you're good at it.  Maybe their objectives are political...and I don't have to go down that rabbit trail; it's been pretty obvious.  Maybe they are genuinely confusing the aftermath of eating a pepperoni pizza with a revelation.  But the end result is the same.  Someone says, 'Thus says the Lord,  yadda yadda yadda,' and the Lord didn't say any of it.  It's a shame, because I really believe there ARE people who have prophetic giftings, but the actual prophets aren't getting heard because of the noise level coming from the bogus ones.

Which might be a better strategy of the enemy than just straight up creating cults.  It's harder to recognize the truth when there's so much almost-truth being proclaimed.  Or, as in Jeremiah's day, when the true prophets were proclaiming the opposite of what the false ones said.

There's a lot more in that passage that also rings true today...many turning away from the faith; hatred, increase of wickedness, love growing cold and indifferent, which is all very sad.  But false prophecy...that's dangerous...

Friday Faithfuls Two: Malachi

 Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

The final book in the Prophets...Malachi.

It is an interesting read; God  is admonishing his people to serve him whole heartedly.  Repeatedly, he states an area in which they have fallen short, only to have them respond, 'What?  How did we do that?'

They were clueless.

Not recognizing the Lord's love for them. Bringing offerings that were cast-offs, not sacrifices.  Worshiping out of obligation and not relationship. Leaders who taught what they thought instead of what God had said.  Not being impartial in matters of law.  Intermarriage with foreigners who followed other gods.  Marital unfaithfulness and divorce.  Believing they were entitled to good things from God even though they continually failed to abide by his laws, decrees and statutes. Not returning to God the tithe as he instructed.  And, finally, they even declared it was futile to serve God as it appeared that the wicked were blessed.

And yet, when God pointed these things out, they were all, like, "Um, when did we do that?" 

Keep in mind, all those things were being done/not done by the very people who considered themselves to be God's Own.  They were not considering their ways.  All of those things kind of lump together as 1) God owes me something and 2) I can do what I want...what seems best to me.

This gives me prickles, because I think many folks who consider themselves God's Own today are just as clueless.  And I don't think it will go any better for people today than it did for the folks then.

This was the last word from God to the nation for something like 400 years...until John came preaching in the wilderness.  They lost their intimacy, so they substituted legalism...and didn't even recognize when God himself came to them.   

So here's a warning that is just as valid today as it was then...

"So I will come near to you for judgment.  I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive aliens of justice, but do not fear me," says the LORD Almighty.  -- Mal. 3:5

Friday Faithfuls Two-- Zechariah

 Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi 

Back in the day, when I was teaching youth Sunday School and the curriculum kinda sorta covered the whole Bible every six years, the book that I struggled the most to teach was Zechariah.  So much specific prophecy that was full of crazy imagery.

But for all of that, it is an encouraging book...a book about restoration.  And the bit that caught my eye as I read through it this week was in chapter two:

"Shout and be glad, O Daughter of Zion.  For I am coming, and I will live among you," declares the LORD.  "Many nations will be joined with the LORD in that day and will become my people.  I will live among you and you will know that the LORD Almighty has sent me to you."   - Zech. 2:10 - 11.

One of those verses that is rather vague in its time reference...it clearly could be speaking of the earthly ministry of Jesus, but it could also be talking about the world after his return.  In any case, as someone whose roots are largely Celtic and not at all Jewish, I find great comfort in the  promise to 'many nations', a concept that Paul will later develop in his writings.

Even in the Prophets, 'many nations' are included....

Friday Faithfuls Two - Haggai

 Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

Three little chapters on the rebuilding of the temple...a project that had languished when the Jews returned to Jerusalem from the Babylonian exile.

There is a repeated phrase in Haggai that I hadn't caught before.

Give careful thought.

If I were doing a study of Haggai, I would take some time and look over that, but that's not the object of today's post.  But...have a look yourself.  It's only three chapters.

No, today's post is looking for a verse that resonates when I read it, and what caught my eye today was the verse that is probably the best known passage in Haggai:

"The glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house," says the Lord Almighty.   "And in this place I will grant peace," declares the Lord Almighty. -- Hag. 2:9

"This present house" was, of course, the second temple that was being constructed.  The one that made people weep who remembered Solomon's temple and saw that 'the present house' was not as magnificent.

No matter, God told them.  The glory of this house will be greater than the glory of the former house. In later years,  Herod worked it over and expanded it, but the physical beauty of the place wasn't the glory implied here.

The Desired of All Nations would come to THAT house.  This was the temple that Jesus would teach in, would cleanse, the fall of which he would both prophesy and lament.

There is no greater glory that any house could be granted than his presence.

Give careful thought to that.

Friday Faithfuls Two: Zephaniah

 Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

Well, well, our little flying skim through the books of the Bible has brought us to the little book of Zephaniah, proclaiming imminent judgement against Judah and paralleling it with the distant 'day of the LORD' judgement of the whole earth.

This verse jumped out at me...

"At that time I will search Jerusalem with lamps and punish those who are complacent, who are like wine left on its dregs, who think, 'The LORD will do nothing, either good or bad.' "  - Zeph. 1:12

What struck me here is that the offense of the ones punished is...complacency. It's not raging evil.  It's just a 'ho-hum, life will go on as it has and God won't do anything' attitude.

That's not describing folks who deny God's existence, by the way.  This was God, talking about the attitude of his own people.  The ones who were to live according to his statutes and commandments.  Who had been delivered again and again in their history.  They were the ones who chose to behave as if it were all just bedtime stories for kids, go through the motions of devotion, but who didn't really believe God would do anything.  Notice...it's not those who SAID 'The LORD will do nothing...' , it's folks who THINK 'The LORD will do nothing.'

That gets down to the bone, there.

What do we really believe about God?  Do we believe that he acts, that he's involved? Or do we think he just watches?  Or forgets?  

Because if we truly believe God doesn't care,  won't act...then we give up, give in, go through the motions.

Not a good place to be.  Not at all.

Friday Faithfuls Two: Habakkuk

 Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

Y'know, Habakkuk has to be one of my favorites.

Even if I STILL have to look at it every. single. time. to make sure I've spelled it right.

It's a short little book...only three chapters long, and begins with Habakkuk's (imagine hearing me spelling that out to myself as I type it) honest questioning of his faith...and ends with one of the most profound declarations of faith anywhere in the scripture, 3: 17-19, which I selected as the passage from this book the LAST time I did the fly-through-looking-for-the-verse-of-the-week  eleven years ago. So I can't pick that this time, lol.

But what hit me this week was a different verse anyway, God's immediate response to Habakkuk's question

"Look at the nations and watch -- and be utterly amazed.  For I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told." - Hab. 1:5, NIV84

As I read that verse, I thought about how much the whole world has changed since 2011...specifically, how it has changed since the fall of 2019, when we first heard rumors of a new illness breaking out in Wuhan.

Would we have believed, even if we were told, what events were headed our way? I'm not sure I would have...the massive quarantine I think I might have believed, but the continued supply chain issues and the crazy inflation (no political comments, please, that's not the point here) reminds me of the doom-and-gloom Y2K predictions I read back in 1999. How much of that is directly related to the epidemic vs. how much might have happened anyway is nearly impossible to tell.

But I don't know that I would have believed that we would have such confusion over gender, or such mean-spirited political and ideological division (and the mean spirit is on BOTH sides).

I could ask, like Habakkuk, "How long, O LORD...why do you tolerate wrong?  Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and conflict abounds.  Therefore...justice is perverted..."  (from 1: 2- 4), but I think I would get the same answer.  Except...we have been told what God is going to do in the last days. 

IF this is the last days....and, with the threats before us, it certainly seems possible.  If what I have read is true, the only thing that really stands between life and death on the planet is the bee population...and they're threatened. That doesn't even take into account the threat of a pandemic more deadly than the current one, or nuclear attacks, or EMBs.

We are more fragile than we want to believe.

In Habakkuk's day, God was raising up a conquering army to execute judgment on people who had rejected him, even his own people.  He allowed the temple that housed his Name to be robbed and destroyed, which the folks of that time were certain would NEVER happen. 

But it did.

So, what is our take away?  It needs the whole book of Habakkuk...all the way through to the ringing declaration that God is faithful, even through his judgment, to those who trust him.

So hang on.

Friday Faithfuls Two: Nahum

 Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

Nahum...the sequel to the book of Jonah, which foretells the downfall of Nineveh and, by extension, the Assyrian empire.  The respite earned by the response to Jonah's preaching has come to an end because the people have returned to their wickedness, and now there is no reprieve.

But as I read through, one verse jumped out at me as something that echoes through the centuries beyond Nineveh

Woe to the city of blood, full of lies, full of plunder, never without victims!  Nah. 3:1

This smacks of political corruption, violence, injustice...and it really could describe any number of cities.  I mean, it's one thing to see the pronouncement of woe upon the ancient pagan city, but it's entirely another to realize that a description of Nineveh also applies to contemporary locations.  

Have we learned nothing?

For all that we have become so technologically advanced, and can peer deep into the heavens and see wonders unknown to previous generations...we still have cities that are full of lies, plunder, victims and blood.  Innocent people who suffer. 

People have not changed much over the centuries.

But...we are not without hope.

Look, there on the mountains, the feet of one who brings good news, who proclaims peace! Nah. 1:15a