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Tag: prophets

  • You Scoffers Who Rule – a Bed too Short

    You Scoffers Who Rule – a Bed too Short

    Therefore hear the word of the LORD, you scoffers who rule this people…

    Have you ever wanted to say that to those who claim to represent you in this government of the people?

    I have and suspect that most do as we helplessly watch the unraveling of rule which makes much sense or holds hope for our future.

    As lessons of history repeatedly remind us, the rise and fall of nations comes and goes with providential frequency throughout centuries of man’s devouring from the tree of knowledge.

    We’ll look further into the author of this indictment from the LORD and the people who he warns shortly, but first the gist of our controversy.

    לָכֵ֛ן שִׁמְע֥וּ דְבַר־יְהוָ֖ה אַנְשֵׁ֣י לָצֹ֑ון מֹֽשְׁלֵי֙ הָעָ֣ם הַזֶּ֔ה אֲשֶׁ֖ר בִּירוּשָׁלִָֽם׃ :TNIH

    I overheard your conversation

    “We have made a covenant with death

    “with Sheol we have made a pact.

    “The overwhelming punishment of the nation cannot touch US.

    “We have made untruth our refuge.

    “Carefully hidden are our deceitful frauds which we have ourselves concealed.

    Familiar, but not contemporary

    Who has heard such lies and uncovered truths carefully concealed?

    For these are proclaimed against the leaders by a man close to the Source of all truth.

    We know him only from ancient writings, but the evil he exposes cannot be hidden even in this day hundreds of years later.

    He is the Lord’s Prophet Isaiah.

    You may find it helpful to contemporize application of Isaiah’s warnings to leading characters of our own contemporary theatre of the absurd. For as then, even now we ought to see the futility of hiding our sin on a bed too short, under covers too small to wrap up in.

    Isaiah

    1:1 חֲזֹון֙ יְשַֽׁעְיָ֣הוּ בֶן־אָמֹ֔וץ אֲשֶׁ֣ר חָזָ֔ה עַל־יְהוּדָ֖ה וִירוּשָׁלִָ֑ם בִּימֵ֨י עֻזִּיָּ֧הוּ יֹותָ֛ם אָחָ֥ז יְחִזְקִיָּ֖הוּ מַלְכֵ֥י יְהוּדָֽה׃

    The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.

    Isaiah 1:1 NKJV

    So who is this guy accusing many leaders of his day?

    The authors of the Baker Bible Commentary offer a few quick facts about Isaiah which may help.

    • Isaiah meahs: “Yahweh is salvation”
    • He is married and has two sons;
      • Shear-Jashub means: “a remnant will return”
      • Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz means: “quickly to the plunder, swift to the spoil”
      • (We cannot hear take time to dig into how many times the LORD gives names for the children of faithful servants, but later John and Jesus are among these.)
    • The Prophet is respected by Ahaz and Hezekiah shows that he easily moves into and out of the palace and has access to the king. (Perhaps he holds an appointed position serving the leaders of Judah.)
    • Isaiah ministers from 742-700 BC.

    Israel, Rome & other passing Empires

    For those of you not up on chronologies of history this is not, of course, warnings to the US, a young Empire founded in AD 1776 and coming to age in the 20th century as a nation fully escaping devastation.

    Nor is it about a predecessor power which once claimed, “Rule, Britannia! rule the waves” in AD 1740 as they progressed since AD 1066.

    Who is sovereign over these nations today?

    Some purveyors of power idolize Rome, a Roman republic which overthrew a kingdom in 509 BC, only to be taken by force in 27 BC.

    We both know and some leaders admire the Caesars of this era, overlooking their inevitable ends, as well as tyranny over their own people. Rome as an empire divided in AD 180, which marked the descent “from a kingdom of gold to one of rust and iron”

    Rome’s division into east and west impacted the early church, but Isaiah speaks of Israel’s division into north and south – a once United Kingdom of Israel under David which has not returned yet to this day.

    Israel then to Israel now

    I don’t want to make too much of parallels between the time of the prophecies of Isaiah and instability in contemporary world empires.

    Note however, these comparisons of time between the woes of Israel and her neighboring nations and more current woes of world politics (and religion or lack thereof, to some extent).

    • 931 BC – United Kingdom of Israel divided after Solomon’s death
      • AD 1585 – English colonize Roanoke in the new world to the west
    • 722 BC – Israel destroyed by Assyria (from the east) [ ~200 years later]
      • AD 1783 – English colonies granted independence after the American Revolution succeeds [~200 years after Roanoke]
    • 701 BC – Assyria attacks Judah [just 21 years after destruction of Samaria, capital of Israel.]
      • AD 1929 FDR elected Governor of New York, then as America’s only 4-term President, 1933- April, 1945 [~21 yrs]
      • United States emerges as the dominant world power
      • In 1947, the United Nations (UN) adopted a Partition Plan for Palestine recommending the creation of independent Arab and Jewish states and an internationalized Jerusalem.[source]

    Returning to the Jerusalem of Isaiah

    Truly the scene is not Jerusalem; nor Judah then and later a Judea, Samaria and Galilee of Jesus. Israel is not the land defeated or Jacob from their seed.

    The scene Isaiah, son of Amoz, son of Abraham presents emanates from the Throne of the Lord God.

    Here we find an indictment which the Prophet Isaiah must read before leaders of the lands. He begins:

    Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth!
    For the LORD has spoken:

    Isaiah 1:2a NKJV

    Isaiah 1:

    1:2 ἄκουε οὐρανέ καὶ ἐνωτίζου γῆ ὅτι κύριος ἐλάλησεν υἱοὺς ἐγέννησα καὶ ὕψωσα αὐτοὶ δέ με ἠθέτησαν

    LXX Septuagint

    You will not likely hear this read today or indeed at any time in a temple or synagogue of jewish cultural worship. Yet it is “the word of the LORD!”

    יְהֹוָה

    “I have nourished and brought up children,
    And they have rebelled against Me;

    Isa 1:3 The ox knows its owner
    And the donkey its master’s crib;
    But Israel does not know,
    My people do not consider.”

    Isa 1:4 Alas, sinful nation,
    A people laden with iniquity,
    A brood of evildoers,
    Children who are corrupters!
    They have forsaken the LORD,
    They have provoked to anger
    The Holy One of Israel,
    They have turned away backward.

    The LORD has much more to say to these rulers. Read it for yourself.

    We hear all-too-frequent accusation and condemnation of opposing leaders of men and women. Yet you will not hear these harsh words of the LORD in the halls of your nation, temples of worship or message in the palm of your hand.

    Isaiah rebukes them:

    9 Unless the Lord of hosts
    Had left to us a very small remnant,
    We would have become like Sodom,
    We would have been made like Gomorrah.

    10 Hear the word of the Lord,
    You rulers of Sodom;
    Give ear to the law of our God,
    You people of Gomorrah:

    Do you hear the Lord your God?

    1:20 וְאִם־תְּמָאֲנוּ וּמְרִיתֶם חֶרֶב תְּאֻכְּלוּ כִּי פִּי יְהוָה דִּבֵּֽר׃ ס

    But if you refuse and rebel,
    You shall be devoured by the sword”;
    For the mouth of the LORD has spoken.

    Isaiah 1:20 Masoretic Text; NKJV

    And while we consider our more contemporary dilemmas of the nations, let us consider the word of the LORD, through His Prophet Isaiah.

    Do the leaders of the nations listen to the Lord God?

    Why, they don’t even listen to their own advisors, let alone a godly advisor like Isaiah.

    Isa 2:2 Now it shall come to pass in the latter days
    That the mountain of the Lord’s house
    Shall be established on the top of the mountains,
    And shall be exalted above the hills;
    And all nations shall flow to it.

    For the day will come unexpectedly, even as a contemporary remnant found temporary solace in this from a “United Nations.”

    3 Many people shall come and say,
    “Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
    To the house of the God of Jacob;
    He will teach us His ways,
    And we shall walk in His paths.”

    Yet do those who stop up their ears against the word of the Lord and dim their eyes to scripture spoken through the Prophets even realize the long-standing prediction of Isaiah?

    For out of Zion shall go forth the law,
    And the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
    4 He shall judge between the nations,
    And rebuke many people;
    They shall beat their swords into plowshares,
    And their spears into pruning hooks;
    Nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
    Neither shall they learn war anymore.

    Isaiah 2:3b-4 NKJV

    “There is no peace,” says the LORD, “for the wicked.”

    Isaiah 48:22 NKJV
    To be continued...
  • The Beginning of the End – A Burden of the Prophets – 4

    The Beginning of the End – A Burden of the Prophets – 4

    Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.”

    Remember the predictions of the holy prophets

    Previously: Part 1; Part 2; Part 3

    The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. 2 Peter 3:9

    Think back beyond your years and perhaps you may recall an event  just two generations past in the days of your grandfather. But who can understand the times a hundred generations before us, even the lives of those living when Christ was born.

    Even before Christ the impatience of man questioned the patience of the Lord. Early Prophets like Amos had been long forgotten by the time some promises had been fulfilled by the birth of a Messiah.

    Just as now the unexplored landscape of our new world would have been completely unimaginable to Columbus, men in the days of the first century did not remember Moses or David or the Prophets with any contemporary context of understanding. Yet in each generation before Christ men and women of those days could hardly imagine the promise of the Messiah to come.

    Each century between the Prophets and Christ would have seemed unmeasurable with the century’s beginning unfamiliar to the generations of its completion. Think about each hundred years of history as if today you looked back upon the just ending World War I [November 11, 1918], then multiply our forgetfulness of the promise by 21 centuries since the manger of Bethlehem.

    Promise of a Messiah a long time away

    How far away could you imagine the promise of hope spoken by a Prophet of the LORD in each of these centuries, so many generations ‘Before Christ?’

    A thousand years, ten centuries, uncountable generations from the success of Solomon to the hope of a Savior.

    Challenge: Scroll slowly through the centuries between David and the Son of David, the promised Messiah.
             
           
    * Date estimates by Roger Harned http://talkofJesus.co
    		       Source: TOW
           
       Period / Century

    		 Northern Kings – Israel (Samaria)

    		 Northern Prophets Israel Sararia

    		 Southern Kings – Judah (Judea)

    		 Southern Prophets Judah 
    United kingdom under Saul, David, Solomon, c. 1030 – 931
    10th c. B.C.
    Divided kingdom Jeroboam (931-910) Rehoboam (931-913)
    Nadab (910-909) Abijah (913)
    Baasha (909-886) Asa (911-870)
    9th c. B.C.
    Elah (886)
    Zimri (885)
    Omri (885-874)
    Ahab (874-853) Elijah
    Jehoshaphat (873-848)
    Jehoram (852-841) Jehoram (853-841)
    Jehu (841-814) Elisha Queen Athaliah (841-835) Obadiah
    Jehoahaz (814-798) Joash (835-796)
    8th c. B.C.
    Jehoash (798-782) Amaziah (796-767)
    Jeroboam II (793-753) Amos
    Zechariah (753-752) Jonah Isaiah (760-700)
    Shallum (752)
    Menahem 752-742)
    Pekahiah (742-740) Hosea (c. 792-740 B.C.) Uzziah (790-740)  Joel
    Pekah (752-732) Jotham (750-731)
     Israel ruled by other nations Hoshea (732-722) Ahaz (735-715) Nahum
      Hezekiah (715-686) Micah
    7th c. B.C.
    Manasseh (695-642)
    Amon (642-640)
    Josiah (640-609) Jeremiah
    Zephaniah
    Jehoahaz (609) Huldah
    Jehoiakim (609-597) Nahum
    6th c. B.C.
    		 Habakkuk
    Judah ruled by other nations – Babylonian exile (597 – 538 BC) Jehoiachin (597)
    Zedekiah (597-586) Ezekiel
    Persian Period (539-322 BC) Zerubbabel, governor {538-520 BC) Daniel
    Post-exilic prophets Haggai
    5th c. B.C. Darius I (521-486), king of Persia Zechariah (520-???)
    Nehemiah, governor (445-425) Malachi
    4th c B.C. Artaxerxes II, king of Persia (404-358 BC)
    Hellenistic Period (332-141 BC)
    Alexander the Great Macedonian Greek empire 356 – 323 BC
    Ptolemaic (Egyptian) Seleucid rule in Jerusalem
    Seleucos I (Persian) 321-215
    3rd c. B.C.
    Antiochos III inherited in 223 BCE
    2nd c. B.C.
    1st c. B.C. Herod the Great, Roman appointed king of Judea 37–4 BC

    John the Baptist

    c. 5 BC – AD30
    * Period summary source

    Prophets Predicted Christ

    How long did you consider the generations between the time of David, 3000 years ago and the thousand years until the birth of the Messiah?

    The LORD saved and redeemed a people who in every generation believed that God had forgotten them.

    “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old..

    Luke 1:68-70 ESV

    A short list of Prophecies: Promises of many generations

    Joel 1:

    15 Alas for the day!
    For the day of the Lord is near,
    and as destruction from the Almighty it comes.

    19 To you, O Lord, I call.
    For fire has devoured
    the pastures of the wilderness,
    and flame has burned
    all the trees of the field.

    Joel 2:28  “And it shall come to pass afterward,
    that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh;
    your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
    your old men shall dream dreams,
    and your young men shall see visions.
    29 Even on the male and female servants
    in those days I will pour out my Spirit.

    Joel lived about eight centuries before fulfillment of his prophecies.

    Micah 1:

    2 Hear, you peoples, all of you;
    pay attention, O earth, and all that is in it,
    and let the Lord God be a witness against you,
    the Lord from his holy temple.

    Speaking of ‘Peace’

    Micah 3:
    5 Thus says the Lord concerning the prophets
    who lead my people astray,
    who cry “Peace”
    when they have something to eat,
    but declare war against him
    who puts nothing into their mouths.

    Micah 4:

    (Some may recognize this scripture forgotten from the charter of the United Nations at a time Israel was reborn as a nation in 1947.)

    “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
    to the house of the God of Jacob,
    that he may teach us his ways
    and that we may walk in his paths.”
    For out of Zion shall go forth the law,
    and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

    3 He shall judge between many peoples,
    and shall decide disputes for strong nations far away;
    and they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
    and their spears into pruning hooks;
    nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
    neither shall they learn war anymore;

    4 but they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree,
    and no one shall make them afraid,
    for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken.

    The Place of Birth of the Messiah

    Micah 5:

    But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah,
    who are too little to be among the clans of Judah,
    from you shall come forth for me
    one who is to be ruler in Israel,
    whose coming forth is from of old,
    from ancient days.
    3 Therefore he shall give them up until the time
    when she who is in labor has given birth;
    then the rest of his brothers shall return
    to the people of Israel.
    4 And he shall stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord,
    in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God.
    And they shall dwell secure, for now he shall be great
    to the ends of the earth.
    5 And he shall be their peace.

    Micah’s promise of the birth of Christ would not be fulfilled for about 700 years.

    Zephaniah 3:

    16 On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem:
    “Fear not, O Zion;
    let not your hands grow weak.
    17 The Lord your God is in your midst,
    a mighty one who will save;
    he will rejoice over you with gladness;
    he will quiet you by his love;
    he will exult over you with loud singing.

    Zephaniah is the great-great grandson of Judah’s King Hezekiah from the time Micah prophesied. He prophesied during the time of a successful and good King Josiah ( 640 to 609 BC). Zephaniah saw in the day of the Lord the destruction of his country, his neighbors, and eventually the whole earth. Source.

    Malachi 1:

    2 “I have loved you,” says the Lord…

    Should this not be sufficient for worship of the Lord our God?

    Over the centuries and generations Israel repeatedly has turned from the Lord, rejecting God’s love. Yet the Lord is merciful and promises a Messiah, the Savior of the faithful.

    The Messenger of the Lord

    Malachi 2:

    17 You have wearied the Lord with your words.

    But you say, “How have we wearied him?”

    By saying, “Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and he delights in them.” Or by asking, “Where is the God of justice?”

    Are we so different, even in these last days? Has Christ not promised an eternal redemption for our sin? Yet we remain impatient with mortal life.

    Malachi was a late messenger among the Prophets, one after whom a great silence from the Lord would follow until another messenger of the Messiah would appear to announce the onslaught of these last days.

    Malachi 3:

    “Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts.

    The Book of Remembrance

    16 Then those who feared the Lord spoke with one another. The Lord paid attention and heard them, and a book of remembrance was written before him of those who feared the Lord and esteemed his name.

    17 “They shall be mine, says the Lord of hosts, in the day when I make up my treasured possession, and I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him. 18 Then once more you shall see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve him.

    Malachi likely delivered his message many years after the Israelites rebuilt the temple in 515 BC. The prophet’s concerns mirror those of Nehemiah’s, suggesting that Malachi prophesied to the people while Nehemiah left the city for several years, beginning in 432 BC. Source.

    Generations of silence without prophecy, then the LORD sends a messenger to the wilderness and a Messiah to a manger in Bethlehem.

    Judgment and mercy will be in His right hand. He will be a Savior of the Remnant and Hope to the Nations.

    A messenger will announce the Son of David, the Promised One…

    In the LORD’s time… the Messiah of Israel and Savior of the Nations; predicted by the Prophets, proclaimed by angels, born in a manger, worshiped by shepherds and kings: Jesus, Son of God, Son of man!

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  • The Beginning of the End – A Burden of the Prophets – 3

    The Beginning of the End – A Burden of the Prophets – 3

    I don’t understand what is going on. Who will tell us?

    Earthquakes, fires, famines, rulers we never thought would come to power… What is going on?

    It’s an age-old question. A king’s messengers may proclaim his threats, but who can the faithful believe? Only a true prophet of the Lord. And many have claimed their own messages falsely. Even now lies live in the deceitful hearts of evil men.

    In case you missed the beginning of our Advent series:

https://talkofjesus.com/beginning-end-prophets-1/ ‎
https://talkofjesus.com/beginning-end-prophets-2/ ‎

    We have only briefly spoken of the Prophets, so far focusing on Jeremiah in the 7th century before Christ; however now we return to the 8th century B.C. during a specific time at the beginning of the end of Israel and later Judah. Many have only heard of Isaiah, whose prophesies confirm Christ as part of our annual Gospel readings of the births of John the Baptist and Jesus, the Messiah.

    The prophesies of Amos warn the shaken residents of lands facing destruction around 1750 B.C., including Israel and its neighboring countries.

    Amos 1:

    The words of Amos, who was among the shepherds 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.

    You have heard of it from this same proximity:

    And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. – Luke 2:8 KJV

    Only Amos, a keeper of sheep in these same hills lived not only prior to the nativity of Christ, but even before the fall of Israel and Judah.

    The LORD gave the prophet Amos powerful words which accurately predicted the fates of Israel and her neighbors.

    Yet even as in these last days, only a remnant of the faithful would listen and be saved.

    A true Prophet is no popular leader, only a messenger of the LORD

    Amos 7:

    12 And Amaziah said to Amos, “O seer, go, flee away to the land of Judah, and eat bread there, and prophesy there, 13 but never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king’s sanctuary, and it is a temple of the kingdom.”

    14 Then Amos answered and said to Amaziah, “I was no prophet, nor a prophet’s son, but I was a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore figs.

    15 But the Lord took me from following the flock, and the Lord said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’ 16 Now therefore hear the word of the Lord.

    The Destruction of Israel

    As messenger of the LORD, Amos continues warnings through his unpopular visions [Chapter 9]:

    I saw the Lord standing beside the altar, and he said:

    “Strike the capitals until the thresholds shake,
    and shatter them on the heads of all the people;
    and those who are left of them I will kill with the sword;
    not one of them shall flee away;
    not one of them shall escape…

    8 Behold, the eyes of the Lord God are upon the sinful kingdom,
    and I will destroy it from the surface of the ground,
    except that I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob,”
    declares the Lord.
    9 “For behold, I will command,
    and shake the house of Israel among all the nations
    as one shakes with a sieve,
    but no pebble shall fall to the earth.
    10 All the sinners of my people shall die by the sword,
    who say, ‘Disaster shall not overtake or meet us.’

    In the two years preceding the earthquake (around 750 B.C.) Amos warns kings of Israel and Judah of the consequences of their sin. He speaks against their surrounding kingdoms as well. The coming disasters are the judgment of the Lord. It will surely come.

    Did it happen?

    Look to the timeline of Prophets and you will see that it did. A century before Amos, Elijah and Elisha had challenged evil kings and queens like Ahab and Jezebel of the northern kingdom. By the close of the 7th century B.C. Israel would exist no more. Only Judah would survive; and that, only for a brief time.

    Is there no hope?

    “The Lord roars from Zion,” we hear not only from Amos, but also the prophet Joel in Judah. The destruction would seem to be both certain and complete.

    And yet, the Lord always speaks hope to those who will listen to His true Prophets.

    Amos 9:

    11 “In that day I will raise up the booth of David that is fallen and repair its breaches, and raise up its ruins and rebuild it as in the days of old…

    A booth is a temporary shelter, rather than the golden palatial place of worship built by Solomon. Here the Lord promises repair after punishment. Yet from the house of David generations will pass, hundreds of years until the promised king is born into a manger in a captive Judea.

    Amos 9:

    14 I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel,
    and they shall rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them;
    they shall plant vineyards and drink their wine,
    and they shall make gardens and eat their fruit.

    15 I will plant them on their land,
    and they shall never again be uprooted
    out of the land that I have given them,”
    says the Lord your God.

    Amos: His name means “Burden,” and he is called the prophet of righteousness. His home was at Tokea, a small town of Judea about twelve miles south of Jerusalem…

    Generations, the voices of many prophets, centuries and even a time of silence would all pass before the coming of the Messiah and hope of Israel.

    To be continued..

     

    Until He comes