The book of Malachi is famous for (a) being the last book of the Old Testament and (b) predicting the coming of Elijah, the prophet (vs 4.5) and messenger (3.1) who will prepare the way for the coming of the LORD.  It is also known for its distinct format – a series of “disputations” that amount to a question and answer on ways the Israelites have failed to live up to their covenant with God.

The second disputation (verses 1.6-2.9) covers the dishonoring of God with lame (pun intended) offerings. They had polluted the altar with blind, sick, and blemished animals.  Much of the criticism is aimed at the priests who were responsible for guarding the sanctuary and inspecting the potential sacrificial animals.  A positive description of the proper role of the priests is summarized in verse 2.5: “My covenant with him (Levi) was one of life and peace, and I gave them to him.  It was a covenant of fear, and he feared me.  He stood in awe of my name.”

What did this fear and awe look like?  Two parts – truth was on his lips and righteousness in his walk.

• “True instruction was in his mouth, and no wrong was found on his lips” (vs 6) – the priests were to guard the knowledge of God in such a way that the people would seek instruction from them. The priests were not only to understand the law but were to be the messengers of the LORD of hosts (vs 7).
• “He walked with me in peace and uprightness” (vs 6). The combination of his good behavior and teaching “turned many from iniquity.”

The New Testament book of James (verse 3.1) echoes this weighty two-part responsibility for teachers: “we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.” The succeeding verses describe the perils of an uncontrolled tongue (2-12) and unwise conduct (13-16).  Just as God GAVE life and peace to the priests, the James passage reminds that the wisdom from above produces a harvest of righteousness and peace.

Deuteronomy is Moses’ farewell address to the Israelites.  One idea he says over and over is the need to obey the LORD in the land that He will be giving you.  God keeps his promises; it will be hard for the nation (and for us) to keep our promises and vows.

In Chapters 16-17, God describes the way you are to offer sacrifices, and the place you are to do it – the place that He will choose.  Fear the Lord. Don’t fall prey to the worship practices of the people you are replacing, because God hates their fertility rites and Asherah poles and burning their children in the fire.

In Chapters 17-18, God lays out basics for the governance system for the nation.  Take your hard cases to the priests and judges, who are the LORD’s representatives.  Obey the decisions; if you don’t, then you deserve further punishment.

It will be acceptable to have a king, but only one whom God appoints.  Be careful lest the king ignores the LORD; that will be bad for everyone.  The king needs to read the book of the law all the days of his life – this will be the source of his wisdom.  The king also needs to fear the LORD by following His laws.

Make sure the priests and Levites are taken care of.  They get a portion of the sacrifices instead of an allotment of land; they are His chosen ones to teach and conduct worthy worship. Don’t move the land boundaries; always have two witnesses when judging a crime; establish safe havens for those who accidentally kill another.  Make your judgments fit the crime – no more than a tooth for a tooth or an eye for an eye.

Some of the laws seem wacky and foreign to our twenty-first century “sensibilities.” But as Psalm 119 says over and over, these laws are a delight – they are a light unto our path.  At least one lawyer came to saving faith because he could see the justice and benefits for the people in these laws.  The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom.

I have a green t-shirt with yellow printing, obtained from Spartan Christian Fellowship, that says “Pray Like a Farmer” and pictures a corn cob. I always figure farmers pray because they need good weather so their crops will grow. Deuteronomy 11 provides additional context for the wisdom of that shirt.

Moses is recounting the commandments and retracing the history of the Israelites as they prepare to move across the Jordan River and into the Promised Land. He tells them in verses 10-12:  “For the land which you are entering to take possession of it is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you sowed your seed and irrigated it, like a garden of vegetables. But the land that you are going over to possess is a land of hills and valleys, which drinks water by the rain from heaven, a land that the LORD your God cares for. The Eyes of the LORD your God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year. ”

In Egypt, the Nile provided water for planting and irrigation whenever you needed it (except maybe when it turned to blood or was full of frogs or junk).  But the terrain in Canaan requires timely rain from heaven to make the crops flourish.  This fits with the rest of chapter 11, which ties blessings; rain; and abundance with following the LORD but also curses; drought; and famine with following after the gods of the nations they will be displacing.

Most anyone could survive in Canaan, but the people who flourish will be God’s people who meditate on his word and teach it to their children, who obey his commandments, love Him with all their heart, sing praises and offer prayers regularly to Him. They will be blessed; the rain will come in its season, and the harvest of the fields and vineyards will overflow.

God picked this territory for HIS people, because they needed to trust HIM in order to live there.

The book of Deuteronomy is Moses’ farewell speech to the Israelites just before he is taken to heaven and the nation proceeds across the Jordan, into the Promised Land.  He reminds them how forty years prior their parents’ fear of the Canaanites was greater than their trust in God, causing them to sojourn in the wilderness these past four decades.

Moses begins chapter 4 with a strong call to obedience to the ‘statutes and rules’ he is about to repeat.  At the end of his sermon (Chapter 28) he emphasizes the blessings of obedience and the opposite curses of disobedience in relation to the law.

Besides giving a command to obey, he gives reasons for trusting the laws, in verses 5-8: “See, I have taught you statutes and rules, as the LORD my God commanded me, that you should do them in the land that you are entering to take possession of it.  Keep them and do them, for that will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’ For what great nation is there that has a god so near to it as the LORD our God is to us, whenever we call upon him?  And what great nation is there, that has statutes and rules so righteous as all this law that I set before you today?” 

The laws are wise, laying out God’s heart for his people to keep the two great commands – to love their God and to love their neighbor. 

And Moses goes on in verses 9-14 to remind the people HOW the statutes and rules, particularly the Ten Commandments, w ere communicated.  The people had been gathered to the base of Mount Horeb.  They saw that “the mountain burned with fire to the heart of heaven, wrapped in darkness, cloud, and gloom.”  They heard the sound as “the LORD spoke to you out of the midst of the fire.” God “wrote them (Ten Commandments) on two tables of stone.”

The rules themselves are good, they were presented miraculously, you will be blessed if you obey and cursed if you disobey.  Sounds like a no-brainer.  But, the Israelites were just like us – their hearts were prone to wander, their necks were stiff, and they repeatedly disobeyed.

The last verse of the book of Jonah always makes me laugh with the rhetorical question, “And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?”  The description of the people is humorous, and what is it about the cows?

Reading the passage this time, I checked out the ESV study Bible explanation. A little learning is helpful!

The phrase about right and left hands is “an idiom for being morally and spiritually unaware.” That fits the situation – God has relented because the people repented with fasting and sackcloth. But Jonah’s proclamation was just that destruction was coming; there were no indications of teaching on godly living.

On the one hand, Jonah is ticked because the people are not going to be destroyed; he has no patience for them.  On the other hand (pun intended), he is sad because the plant that was providing him shade has withered; he has pity for the poor plant that died. God is asking Jonah if maybe the cows are worth saving, even if the people are not.  The cows are a mid-way step from the plant to the humans!

This is a teaching moment for stubborn Jonah, who may also have trouble with his handedness.

The presentation on Providence at this past week’s New Members class included the statement that every time you roll dice, the Lord has determined the outcome, based on Proverbs 16.33 – “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD.”

Does God really have control over ALL the little things, like EVERY roll of the dice?  Why would he care?

First of all, can he do it?  Yes.  This is the God who created the entire universe, where there are more stars in the heavens than there are grains of sand on the earth.  The cosmos is unimaginably huge and it is still expanding!  On the smaller than tiny end of things, electron microscopes have discovered that the interior of millions of human cells in your body is like a manufacturing plant, with inputs, outputs, storage areas and processing all determined by DNA and messages received.  The God who set up stars and cells can certainly handle a few million dice rolls per second.

Second, does he do it?  The Bible says it is so.  An abundance of passages point to the ongoing work of the One True Creator God in all aspects of nature and our lives.  The Heidelberg Catechism Q&A #1 states that “Not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my father in heaven.”  Every hair, every dice roll; God is in charge.

Third, why does he care?  Romans 8.28 says that God works all things together for our good , for those who believe in him.  Part of God’s nature is to care for his people.  As a result, his people are generally growing in praising and glorifying Him. God cares for His glory and for our good.

Numbers 11-17 covers an awkward period in Israel’s history when they are homesick for their former slave lifestyle and do not yet trust Moses or the God who guides him and them.  The most famous incident involves the twelve spies sent to explore the Promised Land and the fear that ten of them had for the people of the new country.  Their fear touched the Israelites deeply, causing then to disobey God’s direction.  In addition Miriam and Aaron oppose Moses; the people grumble about the food, and the Levites rebel.

God’s responses are all miraculous: Leprosy, plagues, the earth swallows up dissenters, and fire flashes out.  All these underscore the LORD’s might and his intent for the tribes to understand what he claims in Numbers 15.41 – “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt to be your God: I am the LORD your God.”

Possibly the weirdest reaction to the people’s protesting was the quail dinner supplied for those with a craving for meat in chapter 11.  They were already tired of the abundant but just-enough supply of manna and they actually wept when they remembered their former life – just the good parts of fish and vegetables, not the back-breaking brick making. “Give us meat!” sounds like a fraternity anthem.

Moses relayed God’s response that they would have quail to eat ‘until it comes out at your nostrils and becomes loathsome to you, because you have rejected the LORD who is among you and have wept before him, saying, ’Why did we come out of Egypt?’”  When Moses questions the logistics of the fowl endeavor, we hear the famous response “Is the LORD’s hand shortened?”

As promised, God whips up a Westerly wind and brings birds in from the sea, dropping them around the camp to a height of two cubits (about three feet).  But those with the craving were struck with a plague ‘while the meat was yet between their teeth.’  Like all the heavy responses, the offenders were punished, the righteous (?) bystanders were spared and everyone knew the LORD was in charge.

One of the traits that made David a Man After God’s Own Heart was his realization that the strength of his throne and his whole life was the Lord his God.  God actually told him so himself in 1 Chronicles 17.7-8: “Thus says the LORD of hosts,  I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep, to be prince over my people Israel, and I have been with you wherever you have gone and have cut off all your enemies from before you.  And I will make for you a name, like the name of the great ones of the earth.”

The Chronicler had a clear picture of the situation (14.17): “And the fame of David went out into all lands, and the LORD brought the fear of him upon all nations.”

And David knew the favor had been true forever, as he included the following thoughts in his thanksgiving song after the Ark was moved to Jerusalem (16.19-22).  Speaking of the nation of Israel, David sang, “When you were few in number, and of little account, and sojourners in [the land], wandering from nation to nation, from one kingdom to another people, he allowed no one to oppress them; he rebuked kings on their account, saying, ‘touch not my anointed ones, do my prophets no harm!’”

Just as it was true for David, so it is true for us.  Jesus explains in John 15.5: “I am the vine; you are the branches.  Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” Good to know it, and even better to believe it.

Paul Harvey had a famous radio signature where he would tell an often familiar bit of history and then reveal “the rest of the story” – the background that made the initial news even more amazing.  He would have loved to tell (and probably did) two such events that are contained in the book of Daniel.

You probably know that Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego were tossed into the fiery furnace after they refused to bow to King Nebuchadnezzar’s giant idol (Daniel 3). An angel rescued them, and they emerged with unsinged hair, unburned clothes, and no smoky smell.  The poor guards who tossed them in, however, were killed by the flames.  The rest of the story is the aftermath – Nebuchadnezzar issued a proclamation forbidding anyone from speaking against the God of the three unburnable boys.

And you have most likely heard that Daniel was tossed into the lion’s den because he continued to pray to his God (Daniel 6).  Daniel was sealed in overnight but was taken up out of the pit with nary a scratch.  His accusers, however, when cast into the same  hole, were overpowered by the lions so ravenously that all their bones were broken before they hit the bottom.  Again, the rest of the story is the proclamation made by King Darius – not only was God praised abundantly, but all men in the kingdom were to “tremble and fear” before Him.

The story line in John 11 is full of the glory of God.  Jesus knows that he is going to Bethany so that He and His Father in heaven can raise his good friend Lazarus from the dead.  He does several things to make sure all the witnesses understand the significance of this miracle and who Jesus is.

He delays going, so that all will know that Lazarus has truly died – he is so dead that he has been buried. 

Jesus tells Martha that her brother will rise and then makes an astounding claim of deity: “I am the resurrection and the life.  Whoever believes in me, though he dies, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.” Not only can Jesus cause the resurrection, but he IS the embodiment of the resurrected, eternal life in fellowship with God.

Before going to where Lazarus was laid, Jesus has great compassion on the crowd and weeps.  His sorrow is genuine and deep.

When he arrives at the gravesite, he prays aloud so that all can hear, conversing with His Father in heaven and thanking Him for answering.  Everyone gathered there heard this prayer and understood to whom Jesus was speaking.

When Jesus calls Lazarus to come out, many witnesses believe; they know the glorious truth that Jesus is God and the Son of God and that he is also a man, the Son of Man described in Daniel. The awful truth is that some of the witnesses went immediately to tattle on Jesus to the Pharisees; they did not understand who Jesus was.