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“I will utterly sweep away everything from the face of the earth, says the LORD. I will sweep away humans and animals, the birds of the air, the fish of the sea.” (Zephaniah 1:2-3) Here are the first words we get from the ninth of our Minor Prophets. There is no preamble. No icebreaker. From the first breath the prophet takes, there is undoing. We see Genesis 1 happening in reverse. At the word of God, creation is folding back…

In the Minor Prophets, what we mostly encounter is a word from God to the people of God. But Habakkuk is more conversational. Before God can offer his own word, the prophet jumps in. “O LORD, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen?” (Habakkuk 1:2) The prophet looks around and sees insidious violence done to God’s people when they are at their weakest. The people are praying, praying to the God who sees the downtrodden,…

Nahum is the book Jonah wished he could have written. While Jonah was called to wrestle with the abundant mercy of God toward the wicked city of Nineveh, Nahum is the one to prophetically announce Nineveh’s impending downfall. “Concerning Nineveh… the LORD takes vengeance on his adversaries… they will be cut off and pass away.” (Nahum 1:1, 2, 12) “The LORD is slow to anger” was Jonah’s complaint (Jonah 4:2), taken from a famous poem in Exodus 34. Nahum draws…

In true prophetic fashion, Micah takes our imagination, what we consider to be possible, and stretches it – not to its limits, but far past its limits. In Micah’s day, there is immense corruption among Israel’s power structures. The monarchy, the priesthood, the royally appointed prophets (of which Micah is not one) – they all carry out their work for the highest bidder. “Hear this, you rulers of the house of Jacob… who build Zion with blood and Jerusalem with…

In the story of Jonah, we meet our most reluctant prophet – so reluctant that he hops on a boat and sails across the sea in the opposite direction of what God is calling him to do. Jonah is called to go to Nineveh and declare to them that their abundant wickedness has gotten God’s attention. Nineveh is the capital city of Assyria, a monstrous empire who is a plague to the Israelites. Jonah is appointed by God to bring…

The prophet Obadiah has some harsh words for the nation of Edom, an ancient people we may not be familiar with, although they are actually mentioned a great deal throughout the Old Testament. Israel and Edom both have their roots in the same family, the twin brothers Jacob and Esau. These brothers’ relationship to each other is wrought from the beginning (literally before they’re even born!) with conflict, deception and resentment. Their mother, Rebekah, is told by God in her…

“Now Elijah the Tishbite, of Tishbe in Gilead, said to Ahab, “As the LORD the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word.” (1 Kings 17:1) If you work your way through Israel’s story in the Old Testament, you eventually get to know Elijah. He’s impossible to miss. So important to Israel is Elijah that the prophet Malachi sees him returning in the future to prepare Israel…

Amos, the third of the Minor Prophets, not only speaks a word from God to the people of Israel, but also gives us a glimpse into the mind of a prophet and into the kind of reception the prophet receives. The word from God through Amos is harsh, leading many in Israel to respond with skepticism that the chosen people of God should be subject to such judgment. But Amos assures them that they do indeed need to hear a…

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…