Posts from September 2024

The prophecy and poetry of Joel is sparked by a devastating event in Judah’s recent memory – a plague of locusts that utterly destroyed Judah’s agriculture, and therefore Judah’s economy, all at once. “What the cutting locust has left, the swarming locust has eaten. What the swarming locust has left, the hopping locust has eaten. What the hopping locust has left, the destroying locust has eaten.” (Joel 1:4) It was like being invaded by foreign army with the teeth of…

The book of Hosea contains one of the strangest love stories in all of literature. God tells his prophet to marry a promiscuous woman, named Gomer, who will make no effort to be faithful to him in their marriage. And when they have children, they give them names that are codewords for things like “punishment” and “no mercy” and “you don’t belong to me.” God directs Hosea into this marriage so that, as Hosea speaks to Israel on God’s behalf,…

Paul doesn’t write his letters just because it’s a nice hobby. His letters always come in response to questions, updates, and crises. And he waits until the close of his letter to the Philippian church to finally address the concrete reason for writing the letter. The church in Philippi has commissioned one of their own, a man named Epaphroditus, to find Paul and deliver to him a monetary gift (churches have been sending money to missionaries since the beginning). In…

The peace of God will guard your hearts (Philippians 4:7), and the God of peace will be with you. (4:9). Paul repeatedly calls the Philippian church to experience joy because it is a church in need of joy. And we see here in chapter 4 that it is also a church in need of peace. This gospel of the peace of God and God of peace is exactly what would have drawn the Philippians away from their pagan roots and…