EMMAUS SCHOOL OF BIBLICAL STUDIES

After reading through Jeremiah and Lamentations I feel like I understand the life of an Old Testament Prophet so much better. I saw a man who was honest about being a mess. Jeremiah was struggling through so many emotions and so much heartache that he even confronted God. To which God promptly put him back in line. This first bothered me, how could Jeremiah think such things about God? The answer is he lived 40 years preaching a message that made every body he came in contact with furious at him. He had a moment of breakdown. He’s human. I guess the beauty of this situation is not to glorify the wrong, but to see that God worked in him and met him in this fault and continued to use him.

Jeremiah began to realize that God is good and sometimes that is all that he is able to grasp when he is faced with the brutal facts of his current reality.

Nahum does not offer a lot of hope in his prophecy. The book describes the arrogant posture of the Assyrian’s and their cruelty to all the known world. They were a terrible group of people and were even given a chance to repent, and at one point they did as seen in Jonah. But as is evident in Nahum they did not carry on a long path of obedience, Nahum describes the character of God and remids the people of Nineveh that God indeed will judge.

Understanding God’s justice makes it easier to face the future. The fact that we serve a God that does indeed hold us to a standard of Righteousness gives us peace in the respect that he will make all things wrong right. I do not find it difficult for people to agree that a rapist should go to hell, but many struggle with the good people who do not believe that Christ is the only way to heaven, will God judge them. Yes he has to if he has a standard of Righteousness, and it is this standard that allows us to operate with some kind of hope in a sin filled world.  

The prophetic narrative of Jonah is unique in its class of literature found in this section of the Old Testament. The beauty of the story is that there are really two things going on the whole time, the first is God’s work through the reluctant Jonah as he goes to the people of Nineveh and the second is seen in the patient hand of God in Jonah’s life. I believe the latter drives the narrative and that as Jonah related this story in the future it was more about the work of God in his heart than it ever was about the Assyrians.

An application I took from Jonah’s life was the understanding that God’s grace violates every faculty of the human mind. Everything inside of us desires to call down the verdict on those we deem as terrible and unworthy of grace, but what is seen is that God chooses instead to save some that we have already deemed dead. My heart broke as I realized that God’s agenda is much greater than my understanding of justice.

What hit me about this book had less to do with the experience staining the barn, but instead was centered around this idea of how we treat our enemies. The reality is we live in the world where there are good guys and bad guys, this I have no problem defining based on the absolute truth of God’s word, I am just realizing that we the United States are not always the good guys. I love this country and I really don’t want to be a citizen any where else. But on a national level I struggle with this idea of vilifying the Muslim population. I watched the movie the Kingdom and saw at the end of  it that they Terrorist operate out of as strong of conviction as we do, but they simply are basing that conviction on the wrong things. They are human they are just wrong. Death should never bring me pleasure, yet we watch movies that bring great joy to the idea of the bad guy dying. I do not think this is right.

Joel is a difficult book to place historically, but the beauty of the message is that it transcends all time. The message of Joel is repent.

Not a warm message for the American population, that prides ourselves on being the “right” people in a world full of wrong. We are right in so many ways, we hold justice to a higher standard than much of the world and we give vast amounts of aid to foreign countries, but we are still sinners, and the message of Joel pertains as much to us as it did to the Judean’s many years ago.

Why is repentance so good? I noticed that as Joel called the people to repent and to come back to God he called them to do it quickly, and to press into God in their time of sin. It seems kind of backwards to a work oriented culture like ours, to think that the time I need to run in closest to God is when I am doing exactly the thing he hates. This is sobering, to realize that he accepts me at this point, and the only way I can ever find freedom from that sin is to find true repentance every time I sin…every time.

Isaiah’s thesis is simple in a respect. He is calling the people to trust Yahweh, not military might, not idols, but to turn from all of that and simply trust Him. He uses two case studies within his prophecy to depict this action. The first is Ahaz an example of a godless king who chooses to trust in his military and political powers. The result… they are actually oppressed by the Assyrians the ones he went to for help. The second king is Hezekiah who when faced with the exact same circumstances turns and chooses to seek God and trust him.

From this teaching I took the application point that we as well are called to seek God and trust him.

What does this look like in daily life? It has to do with security. We as Americans can take an put money on the top of most of our lists in that we often look to the almighty dollar or even the ability to make the dollar as our source of trust. Do we need to trust God when our 401k matures and we have 750,000 to live on for the next 10 years? The truth is that we do need to trust God but many of us choose to trust God and Money.  

Greed is an American dream. We live in a society that sees problems with stealing, and lust and murder, but our consumer, capitalist mentality sees incredible value in greed. The business model I was taught through business college not in textbooks, but in practice was that you used people like you use products. The ultimate goal is to keep them complacent so you can produce the greatest amount of product for the least cost of money, therefore, reaping the “benefit” of your hard work. I realize now how wrong we are…

Micah attacks the Injustice of the leadership in Israel by describing their land hungry, money grubbing techniques as that of cannibalism. Tearing off the flesh of the people, chopping them up like meat in a kettle. The figure of speech used is gruesome, but it is true. I do not see an issue with working hard to accumulate “enough” for me to live on, while others, whom I deem to be lazy, do not deserve what I have worked for.  

Am I really in touch with the man who is sleeping outside tonight, rummaging through a trash can to eat? Am I in touch with the man who has had to run from his home to keep from being wiped out in a mass genocide. I am out of touch.

Hosea is a beautiful story of the covenant faithfulness of God to a people who don’t really care about him. Hosea is called by God to marry a woman that is a prostitute and then later he has to go back and buy her from a pimp, because she has gone to satisfy herself with “lovers less wild.” This enacted symbol serves as an example of God’s love for his unfaithful wife Israel, and also translates into our lives as New Testament believers. We often times play the prostitute, running after lovers less wild.

The judgment of Hosea is pretty intense, he attacks the leadership of Israel for their role in leading the people into Baal worship. Once there the people no longer view sin against God as any kind of issue. They are still religious, but they begin to attribute the blessing of God to Baal. So Hosea predicts the coming judgment, but the judgment can only be properly understood in light of God’s covenant faithfulness. His love requires the removal of sin, because it is perfect, and so his judgment is love, not hate, or scorn. The judgment is coming from a God that has been in a relationship with an unfaithful people for hundreds of years.

The application point I expounded on was the idea of growing in understanding of this perfect love. The more we press into God the more we understand that his love satisfies and it will begin to remove the sin and mess from our lives.

  

C.S. Lewis – Perfect love, loves in spite of sin, but cannot cease to will its removal.

Amos prophesied to the people of Israel concerning the judgment of God. The main points of reproof in life of the Israelites are their treatment of the poor, their idolatry, and their pride. Amos calls the people to repent, to seek God and live, but they do not listen. They live in a time of opulence and comfort and they simply have no need for a God that cramps their style. This is seen best in his interaction with Priest Amaziah who asks him to no longer speak the truth, but to return to Judah, because his words are too hard to hear. The people have walked in the path of disobedience for so long they have become deaf, to the messengers of God. The worst part of the story is that they never failed to be “religious” they simply failed to find the Living God behind the sacrifices. 

An application point I found in this short prophecy has to do with our treatment of the poor, the outcast, and undesirable. This is a good indicator of our relationship with God. The reason is because if we press into God his very nature forces us to see him and we are faced with our own selfishness and his grace and mercy; a grace and mercy that produces change. So the contrary is true as well, that as we drift farther and farther from God, we begin to care less and less about the things that are close to his heart, and we become more selfish and the outcast, those that are hard to love no longer seem that important. Until finally we have marginalized all of society that does not support our own selfish world-view.

How do we walk in obedience? Seek him and live.

The author of Chronicles draws a interesting parallel to the book of kings, he demonstrates to the reader that when the Kings were obedient to the things of God they received blessing. The things the author centered on were the temple, the priests, and Levites, and obedience to the commands of God. The idea established was that those kings drew close to God were seen by their obedience to adhere to these religious practices.

As I studied and did several biographies on the kings, I began to see that the issue was trust. Those that didn’t trust God but chose to trust in their ability to buy off enemies and use political maneuvering, quickly began to slip down hill. Personally for me I see how I attempt to make the world work around me by my abilities. I see that if I can manipulate circumstances in different ways I typically can get the results I desire. The conviction sets home when I do not get the desired results and I become frustrated, at this point my reaction reveals my motives. I am learning to seek God first in what happens next in my life and to spend time knowing him and understanding his heart in order to make decisions. This has been a sweet journey.

What really struck me was the conclusion of the book. I believe the main point he was trying to make, is that all of the bad stuff in the middle of the book came from small sins that were in the beginning of the book. It was small decisions that sent them to the complete moral bankruptcy that is depicted in the last few chapters. What the reader sees is that these people truly believe what they are doing is right. Micah believes he will be blessed by God by setting up an idol and having a priest. People left to themselves will not choose God There is a cycle throughout this book that shows this principle to be true, but O’ how true it is in my life. I often times choose the temporary gods of this world over God. Especially the god of my own self. I have had a good walk with the LORD over the last couple of years, but it never ceases to amaze me as to how I am self-deceived in some ways. My idols are small hidden things that still continue to pull me from God. Search me O God…

The book of Joshua depicts God’s faithfulness to the promise he made. Joshua shows the reader that time and time again God was the cause of military success, the people of Israel did not obtain the promised land as a result of their hard work, but as a result of God’s faithfulness. This book records this faithfulness for generations to come, so they might never become complacent and comfortable and forget the God that saved them from slavery.

One of the main points that I saw throughout the book was that we as Christians suffer sin as a community. We live in the western Christianity where it is alright if you sin as long as you don’t get caught, and on the other end of the spectrum are those living in abuse of grace.

Both are equally far from what God wants for his people, and both are killing the church of Christ’s members. I have been a part of Christian communities that do not see the benefit of calling people out in their sin. This is never done for prideful selfish arrogant judgmental reasons, but because I truly love my brother and I want the best for him. And if truth be told I want him to do the same for me. My sin affects the whole body, but the worst thing is that I do not know where it is at times in my own life.

Christ took the wrath of God for us so we no longer live in a conditional covenant, but my secret and not so secret sins still hurt me as much now as they did back then.

This lead me to get real with some of my friends up here and to implore of them to help me see my failures.

Deuteronomy was written to the second generation of Israelites to come out of the promised land. They had watched their parents die as a result of unbelief and I truly believe they wanted to avoid this and do the right thing.

As Moses nears the end of his life he pens Deuteronomy and paints all throughout the covenant narrative the faithfulness of God and the idea of remembrance. In order for the people to maintain the covenant and keep the land they have to remember the covenant and remember their God.

God renews the conditional suzerainty covenant with the second generation and part of this renewal is to show them the blessings for obedience and the curses for disobedience. At first read it appears as God is simply in his trite anger he is punishing the innocent people. Upon closer examination I saw that God’s purpose in the curses were to draw them back to him. No matter how far away the people strayed when they relented and turned to him he would reestablish them. Sin is killing humanity and we blame God for being so cruel. On which side of the table does the cruelty really lie?
We live in a society that teaches quite the opposite. The society that does not see the true state of humanity and our need for a savior. The church needs to embrace the understanding that God’s purposes in our lives are not to make us rich and happy, it’s to make us righteous and his law is for our good.  

Moses wrote the book of Leviticus as a priest’s handbook. The main idea conveyed throughout the book is that a holy God makes a way to dwell with an unclean unholy man. Man is then called to “Be holy as I am Holy.” The holiness and many other characteristics of God are seen through the giving of the law throughout Leviticus. All of the sacrificial system and the feasts also serve the purpose of establishing a paradigm through which to understand and atonement and the need for blood shed in the remission of sins.
The truth seen throughout the Pentateuch is that man lost the proper relationship with God as a result of the fall, and God gives the law not as a means of being righteous but as a means of seeing ones need for atonement. It was not about works with out a heart condition. I was reading in A.W. Tozer’s Pursuit  of God this week and one of the chapters discussed that in the fall man altered his relationship with God and thus destroyed the “proper Creator-creature relation in which, unknown to him, his true happiness lay.”
God’s purpose in reaching down to mankind was to restore this relationship. The problem most of us have is that we do not believe that God’s best is our best. We are not willing to exalt God above all else, and thus escape from the faulty understanding of the world. The reason we have a relationship that is dead with God is because we approach him through our carnal desires, and understanding. Tozer summed it up best when he said, “Much of our difficult as seeking Christians stems from our unwillingness to take God as He is and adjust our lives accordingly”

The major theme of Exodus was that the Israelites were redeemed for a relationship.

God rescues Israel out of a hopeless situation of slavery and brings them out into the wilderness, which is a place of his great provision. The wilderness is an incubator where God continues the work of building a nation and changing the minds of the people so that they understand he alone is God. Moses depicts this journey to the reader which demonstrates a God that is experienced and cannot be labeled or put in a box. The journey from slavery to sons and daughters is the story of Exodus. Their identity as a nation comes from who dwelt among them, not what they could do.

This is demonstrated best in the tabernacle system. The word tabernacle means dwell, and this was God’s purpose for humanity all along, sin simply messed it up. So the only way a holy God can dwell with an unholy man is if his sins are covered by the atoning sacrifice. The blood of lambs finds its value in the lamb that was slain and made atonement once and for all.

People often search for purpose and wonder how they are to live their lives. Purpose is found in your creator, so in order to find your purpose shouldn’t you learn to know you creator better?