Ezekiel 5
Okay, this is the second chapter in a row where God has asked Ezekiel to do something that, as a priest, he “shouldn’t” do: “Now, son of man, take a sharp sword and use it as a barber’s razor to shave your head and your beard. Then take a set of scales and divide up the hair. When the days of your siege come to an end, burn a third of the hair inside the city. Take a third and strike it with the sword all around the city. And scatter a third to the wind.” (vs 1-2)
Jeremiah 44
Once again, the people of Israel have (1) promised to follow everything God says to a T, then (2) done the exact opposite of what He says. In our last chapter, God not only warned them that things wouldn’t go well for them if they moved to Egypt, but also promised that they would have a good life if they stayed in occupied Israel. But, the people didn’t listen. They were determined to substitute true security for perceived security.
Jeremiah 39
So once again, we read about the fate that befell poor old Zedekiah. If only he had listened to God—perhaps he would have lived out the rest of his years with his sons in relative Babylonian comfort. Alas, the last thing he ever saw (before his eyes were gouged out) was his sons being killed by those Babylonians: “There at Riblah the king of Babylon slaughtered the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes and also killed all the nobles of Judah. Then he put out Zedekiah’s eyes and bound him with bronze shackles to take him to Babylon.” (vs 6-7)
Jeremiah 38
Well, in this chapter, Jeremiah found himself stuck in the mud because people didn’t quite like what he’d been saying: “This is what the Lord says: ‘Whoever stays in this city will die by the sword, famine or plague, but whoever goes over to the Babylonians will live. They will escape with their lives; they will live.’ And this is what the Lord says: “This city will certainly be given into the hands of the army of the king of Babylon, who will capture it.”‘” (vs 2-3)
Jeremiah 37
Poor Zedekiah. He was so deceived. He thought that making a military alliance with Pharaoh would help him. It didn’t. He thought if he asked Jeremiah to talk to God for him, he might get some good news. He didn’t. Somehow, in his mind, he thought there still might be a way out of his predicament. There wasn’t.
Jeremiah 11
There is a church in town that operates under the slogan, God is still speaking. I like that. A lot. I think it’s so easy for church organizations (denominations) to become set in their ways, stagnant, and no longer open to the progressive understanding of truth. It’s easier for us to believe that we “know all the truth” than it is to believe that God is still speaking.
Isaiah 65
Many years ago, the Christian band Newsboys released a song titled, “God is Not a Secret to Be Kept.” And there’s a lot of truth to that. Those of us who know and love God shouldn’t keep Him to ourselves, and frankly, it would be quite hard to do so. When you’ve found something awesome, you want to share it with others!
Isaiah 48
In this chapter of Isaiah, God rails against the Israelites who have either been slow to respond or have not responded at all to His personal revelation in their lives: “I foretold the former things long ago, my mouth announced them and I made them known; then suddenly I acted, and they came to pass. For I knew how stubborn you were; your neck muscles were iron, your forehead was bronze. Therefore I told you these things long ago; before they happened I announced them to you so that you could not say, ‘My images brought them about; my wooden image and metal god ordained them.’ You have heard these things; look at them all. Will you not admit them?” (vs 3-6)
Isaiah 23
And now, to the laundry list of nations that will fall at the command of God, Isaiah adds Canaan—specifically the port cities of Tyre and Sidon: “Who was it that planned to bring all this on Tyre, that imperial city, whose merchant princes were the most honored men on earth? The Lord Almighty planned it. He planned it in order to put an end to their pride in what they had done and to humiliate their honored ones.” (vs 8-9)
Isaiah 9
No, I’m not talking about convicting you of a crime! I’m talking about convicting you of truth, helping you to see and understand when you’re on the wrong path. Could Isaiah have said it any more clearly? “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.” (vs 2)
Proverbs 24
I love it when Bible verses make me laugh out loud. This one caught my fancy today: “Don’t rejoice when your enemies fall; don’t be happy when they stumble. For the Lord will be displeased with you and will turn his anger away from them.” (vs 17-18) I just had to laugh right out loud. A call to not gloat over your enemies—not because it’s the right thing to do, but so you can keep your enemies in their troubles longer!
Proverbs 21
For a long time now, I have believed that the only thing God requires for salvation is a willingness to listen. Why? Because, as Paul said in Philippians 1:6, “He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it.” The good work is God’s, and He will complete it in us in His time—as long as we are willing. He won’t force Himself on us, so we have the ultimate say-so over whether we will allow God to do His good work in our lives.
Psalm 145
I wrestled for a long time over the title of this blog post. I wanted to be blunt and just title it God destroys the wicked. But I was afraid that might turn some people off before they even read what I had written, so I decided to leave it as a question and, hopefully, invite investigation.
Psalm 105
If you read this psalm in your Bible today, you discovered that it is a recitation of the history of God’s acts in Israel—including a long passage about the ten plagues of Egypt. So, even though this is Psalms, I decided to reiterate a great lesson about God that we learn from the Egyptian plagues: God is a light. Just imagine what it must have been like to be Pharaoh. He was “the” god in a land of gods. The ancient Egyptians had a god for everything—and I do mean everything. They worshiped over 2,000 gods that they believed controlled everything—from the sky to the River Nile to childbirth.
Psalm 62
Ex-trem’ ist, n. One who advocates or resorts to measures beyond the norm.
We usually don’t think of extremism as a good thing. If you’ve done much paying attention to politics—especially American politics—you’ve probably heard the phrases far-left loons and right-wing nutjobs before. Those terms describe people who are thought of as extremists, as being out on the fringe of political thought.
Psalm 44
There is nothing else in the world like being a parent. Especially when you have a baby, you realize how children are constantly changing. Nothing much stays the same. They are always growing, learning, and maturing. It’s an amazing process. In our view, maturity has a lot to do with age. While this isn’t always the case, the older a person is, usually the more mature he is. So, the job of parents is to raise their children from infancy to adulthood, guiding them through the process of maturity.
Psalm 43
God has an agenda. It’s a simple one—to draw us ever closer to Him in relationship. I believe He does this even with His perfect creatures—those who have never fallen into sin. Why? Because no creature—even a perfect one—can ever fully understand the mind of the Creator. There will always be more to learn, more to be revealed. And so God is in the business of personal revelation.
