Zephaniah – Sermon Manuscript

-I think that stories based on events that happened during WW2 have led to some of the best movies: Fury, Unbroken, Saving Private Ryan, Darkest Hour, Life is Beautiful, Midway, Dunkirk, Hacksaw Ridge, The Pianist all incredible movies of the resiliency of humans, and the destruction of war. But all those movies are from the perspective of the Allies. Where we celebrate the victories, how do all those movies portray the Germans? As the bad guys. We look at those various battles in triumph, but how would the other side view those events? As humiliation, right? Think of D-Day, when the Allies cross the English Channel and began their attack of the Western Front of the Nazis. Do you think the Germans were celebrating that day? Absolutely not! See, every war has 2 sides to it. Similarly, Zephaniah is going to give us 2 sides to the Day of the Lord. We talked about this back in Joel, but this is the book that talks about it the most.

READ/PRAY (pg. 835)

  1. The Message of Zephaniah

-The intro to this book gives us the opposite of what we’ve seen for a while: 4 previous generations of people! Why is this significant? 

-3 names: Cushi, Hezekiah, and Josiah, intending to give us a starting place for Hezekiah

-Cushi: refers to the land of Cush, significant because of what God promises and it would make Zephaniah bi-racial

-Hezekiah is described as the best king of Judah in 2 Kings 18, he destroyed the competing “worship” sites in Judah. One of the most fascinating things about him is in preparation for the Assyrian invasion, he dug a tunnel under Jerusalem to reroute a river and provide water for the city during the siege, and you can go visit “Hezekiah’s tunnel” today!

-The last significant name is Josiah, who led a major reform movement in Judah and became king when he was a child (2 Kings 22). When he was king, he began repairing the temple, and in the repair the book of the law was uncovered (Deuteronomy) which gave the stipulations the people were supposed to follow and obey. And Josiah took this seriously! He re-enacted the covenant ceremony with the people, who recommitted themselves to obeying God’s laws.

-These names are pointing out that Zephaniah is going to be in the same line as his great-great grandpa Hezekiah, one who is faithfully following God and encouraging the people toward obedience of God’s law. There’s debate about how far into Josiah’s reign this takes place, with most people I read saying it’s most likely shortly after he found the book of the law and began enacting it, but it hadn’t yet taken root in the people.

  1. The Day of the Lord in Judgment (1:1–3:8)

-Zechariah mentions “The Day of the Lord” 22 times throughout it, which tells me it’s his primary point in writing! One scholar said, “There is a compelling simplicity about Zephaniah’s message: he has only one topic, and he never digresses from it.” (Alec Motyer)

-We’ve talked about it before, because it’s a theme that’s been running across all these prophets, so just as a refresher, “The Day of the Lord” is a future moment where God would come in judgment to pay back the enemies of His people. Throughout this time period, the Israelites were excited for the day of the Lord because it was viewed in a completely positive light, where the other nations who had attacked God’s people would be judged. But the warning from the prophets is that the judgment would be negative, not positive!

-And that’s where Zephaniah begins his rebuke of the people. Look at this first description from God: He says He’s going to completely sweep away everything! And there’s intentionality in the way this destruction is described. If you think back to Gen. 1 when God created the world, this is the opposite of creation, it’s meant to make us think that the day of the Lord is going to be a de-creation. But it doesn’t take long for Him to remind the people that this isn’t just for people “out there” because right after this promised destruction of the world, look at vs. 4

-God is also angry with Judah, the 1 remaining people of God, and even worse He’ll destroy the promised city of Jerusalem. But notice how God describes the problem: the people are worshipping Baal, a fertility god who was thought to bring rain to them which they needed in order to live. And apparently there’s no difference between the pagan priests and the supposed priests of Yahweh. And if that’s the priests, the one who are supposed to be leading people in the worship of the one true God, what about the rest of the people?

-They’re worshipping the stars instead of the one who made the stars. On the one hand they’re worship God, but at the same time they hedge their bets and also worship Milcom (the false god of the Ammonites). This is called syncretism that is combining the worship of the true God with the worship of all these false gods, and we do the same thing today! We say we trust God completely, but we also make sure we don’t get too sold out to following after Him. Both Baal and Milcom are gods that the surrounding nations worshipped, and as I have read about the Israelites, you can take them out of Egypt, but the rest of their history is working to take the Egypt out of them. And that’s the same journey for all of us in our Christian life: God has taken us out of the world, but the rest of our earthly lives is working to take the world out of us. Unfortunately, the temptation is always there! Also unfortunately, it’s incredibly hard to find those areas that you’re still holding onto worldly ideas, we often don’t even realize them until either someone points them out or we react poorly to those areas being inconvenienced.

-I think I’ve shared this story before, but when one of the idols of my heart that I have to be conscientious of is when I feel dumb, and one of the precipitating reasons that has come to the surface in my life is because we drive older vehicles. Towards the end of me going to seminary, my car started having these weird issues where it would suddenly lose all power and acceleration, so the fastest I could go was like 15 mph. First time it happened, I pulled over, waited about 15 min, and suddenly it started and drove with no issues. But over the next week it KEPT happening and I just got ANGRY. And in one of my angry outbursts, I realized my reaction wasn’t the corresponding to the situation in front of me, and then it hit me: cars aren’t that complicated, I should be able to figure this out, and the fact that I couldn’t made me irate! Now I know you all already know this, but I needed to remind myself that I’m not God! I don’t, can’t, and won’t know everything, which means there’s going to be areas in my life that I am just ignorant about. This is an area where I know that I’m not God, but I don’t want to have to rely on Him, much to my shame and disgrace. And we all have areas like that in our lives, where we need to pray for the strength to fight those idols, those places where we struggle to trust God, where we still want to do our own things and live our own ways. The only consolation is we’re not alone in that! We see it in Zephaniah, which means it was true 3,000 years ago, so humans are still humans.

-Notice that in the very next verse, Zephaniah gives us the right response: be silent. Have you ever noticed that’s the response of people in the Bible who encounter God? Every time they realize that God is so much more holy than they are, so they fall on their faces and acknowledge their sin. Which is why it always make me chuckle to myself when so many songs that we sing in church are asking God to be present here, to reveal Himself to us, to show us His glory, because the Bible shows us that it’s a terrifying thing! With 1 caveat: if we’re covered by the blood of the sacrifice (Jesus) we don’t have to be afraid of approaching God. In fact, the book of Hebrews tells us we should have the opposite approach to God: we come before Him in confidence because of what Jesus has done, which is exactly what Zephaniah is talking about here.

-I think I mentioned him a few months ago, but I watched another interview with former Senator Ben Sasse yesterday where he was asked if he’s ready to die. He was diagnosed with stage 4 terminal pancreatic cancer in December, and you can tell if you watch this interview. But his response was fascinating, and it caused the interviewer to begin to cry, because he said, “I don’t feel ready, but to whom would I go? I have confidence that when Jesus said to the disciples, he didn’t want to be identified as the Messiah yet, keep these crowds away, don’t tell them about the water into wine miracle at the feast, but he says you can’t keep the children from me. And we’re told that we get to approach the Almighty, we get to approach the Divine and call him Daddy, Abba Father, that’s pretty glorious. And I know that that’s what I need.” 

-That’s someone who understands this reality here: we approach God in reverence and silence because He is so far above us, but that same God welcomes us in as His children, with open arms, for those are following Him, but for those who aren’t, it’s a completely different story.

-On that day, there will be punishment from God on those who have been disobedient to Him, but the punishment from God ALWAYS fits the crime. He calls out those who take on the habits and practices of the nations (foreign clothing) instead of living as God has commanded them. He also promises to punish those who take on the superstitions of the nations (skip over the threshold, like “don’t step on a crack or you’ll break your mother’s back”) No one will be left out of this persecution, and the rest of this chapter describes all the ways God will bring about this punishment. And do you remember what I said earlier about the day of the Lord? Look at the warning about this day in vs. 14-15:

-It doesn’t sound like the greatest day in the world, does it? It sounds horrible! But it gets even worse: distress, their blood poured out.

-And this day will also reveal where people are putting their confidence. Look at the beginning of vs. 18: even in Zephaniah’s time people were thinking their riches would save them. Once again, we see that the human heart hasn’t changed, has it?

-The beginning of chapt. 2 is a shift in focus, because in the middle of this promised punishment is a change of tone. Here the call is to repent before all this punishment comes. One of the reasons we have these warnings in the Bible is to prevent people from continuing on in their sin and facing this punishment. 

-And do you see what repentance looks like? It looks like seeking the Lord, AND it looks like seeking righteousness and humility. Another way of saying this is if you seek after the Lord, you will start to look like the Lord (although imperfectly). And this section ends saying PERHAPS you’ll be saved, but we know from the message of the NT that this sparing is guaranteed because we know how to be on the right side of history (which doesn’t mean going along with whatever is trendy in our culture), it means we’re obedient to the Creator and Sustainer of everything. 

-The rest of chapter 2 is God continuing to talk about the punishment coming to the nations, but there’s a specific ordering to this following the 4 points of a compass around Judah: Philistines to the West, Ammonites and Moabites to the east, Cush in the south, and Assyria to the north. And who’s in the center of that compass? Judah, but remember, they’re assuming that the Day of the Lord is going to be the destruction of everyone else, so they would hear this expecting everything to be ok for them! But then God focuses His attention on 1 city, and contextually you would expect this to be something like Ninevah or another one of the Assyrian cities, and look at how terrible this city is: 

-Rebellious, not obeyed God, hasn’t responded to God’s discipline, hasn’t trusted the Lord, and hasn’t sought after God. Not only is the city running away from God, but her leaders are even worse! Princes and judges have become like wild beasts who are looking to exploit other people. The prophets and priests aren’t leading people to follow the Lord, they’re only looking to their own interests (which is a perennial problem in Israel, and as the leaders go, so goes the nation). So remember, I said contextually that it seems like it’s talking about the rest of the nations, but then look at the first line in vs. 5:

-This is talking about Jerusalem, the city where the Lord lives. God’s own people weren’t spared from the punishment, in fact theirs is even worse because they were supposed to be different from all the surrounding nations, but instead they’ve acted exactly like them. But in contradiction to the His own people, God is completely righteous and holy. Even when His people are running away from Him, God stays the same and continues being faithful to Himself and His promises. God never changes, that’s one of the greatest realities about God. 

-The last thing God says in this section is that in that day, there will be people from every tribe and tongue and nation who will stand condemned before Him because they refused to follow Him. This is the reality of life in the world God created, which is why He gives us all these warnings. Follow and obey Him now, because someday it will be too late.

  • The Day of the Lord in Salvation (3:9–20)

-The best news about this book is that while the ending is bad news for those who haven’t followed the one true God, for those who have listened and obeyed Him, the ending is joy and salvation.

-Do you see how great this day will be? The end goal is that everyone will be able to call on the name of the Lord and serve and obey Him perfectly. And it’s interesting that the Lord mentions Cush here, because that would include the family of Zephaniah, the people who were once spread out will come and worship the Lord together from all areas of the world. AND there’s a story in Acts that shows the fulfillment of this promise. 

–Acts 8 tells the story of Phillip who was told to go to a specific place and share the gospel message with an Ethiopian. Ethiopia is the same place that was called Cush during the time of Zechariah. God’s promises always come to pass, as we see here from Zechariah. 

-But that’s not all! Look what God goes on to say:

-The punishment has been changed. Those who trust in God are spared from this suffering because the king has come and lived with them, which changes everything for His people. Now that He is with them, they have nothing to fear. Then God doubles down on this promise, but look at the description He gives: 

-A warrior who saves. This helps us understand some of what the early disciples were expecting when Jesus came, a conquering warrior who would overthrow the shackles of oppression from the Romans. What they didn’t realize was the enemy they were thinking about was too small. The Romans were nothing compared to sin and death. God’s plans are so much bigger than anything we could come up with. And look at how God responds to His people: rejoicing,  quieting us, and delighting in us. Isn’t that amazing? God delights in spending time with His people.

-And the very last verse, God tells us what the last day will look like for those who have followed after Him: He will gather His people together to honor them, to encourage them, and to give them a place in His kingdom forever. And we know this is going to happen because of the last phrase in this verse: if God has spoken, it’s guaranteed to happen.

  • The Day of the Lord for You

-But now that we’ve looked at this book, we’re left with the question: which side are you on? For some, the Day of the Lord is something to get excited for because it means everything we’ve been hoping for will come true! But for others, it’s a day to fear. I heard a pastor onetime say that for those who are following Jesus, this world is the closest to hell we’ll ever live. And the reverse is also true: for those who aren’t following Jesus, this world is the closest to heaven they’ll ever live. 

-The Day of the Lord isn’t just a topic that’s seen in the prophets, we saw it when we looked at Revelation together last year. Look at how John describes that day in Rev. 6: 

-Notice that no ones left out, just like God promises in Zechariah that He’ll be looking EVERYWHERE for those who haven’t followed Him. These people are begging to be buried alive in an earthquake because God is that much more terrifying. When that day comes, if you aren’t walking with the Lord, it’s going to be the worst first day of the rest of your life. But you have a choice, right here and right now to not have that day be terrifying.

-For those of us who are walking with the Lord, we have a different reality, a completely different response to the Day of the Lord. For us, it’s going to be a day of celebrating, rejoicing, and giving thanks for because our faith is now sight. Everything we’ve hoped and prayed for has become real. But in this in between time, where we live between Jesus’ two comings, the book of Hebrews reminds us how we’re supposed to live with an eye on that day. 

-It begins with a reminder of how we’re supposed to follow God: through a confession that Jesus is that Warrior King who conquered Satan, sin, and death through his victorious resurrection, and now provides the way for us to come boldly before the Father. That confession is what saves us and makes us new people. And once we’re new people look what we’re supposed to do: consider one another. This is a way we imitate our God, by looking to other people above and beyond ourselves! But then it gets weird! Because we’re supposed to provoke each other. I don’t know about you, but I can’t think of a situation where it’s positive to “provoke” someone else (this may be a reminder that I have young kids at home because there’s a LOT of provoking that goes on!) but have you ever considered that provoking can be a good thing? According to this text, there’s a way of provoking each other that can lead to love and good works. Now I don’t know about you, but I feel like I could use more of that provoking in my life! Most of the provoking I have around me is to get angry about what’s taking place politically or socially. That doesn’t make me more holy, that doesn’t make me more like Jesus, and that doesn’t help me to represent the one true God to the watching world. And the author doesn’t stop there, do you see the way we provoke each other positively? By gathering together. Friends, this weekly meeting is more than just a social hour, this gathering around the throne of Jesus Christ is a spiritual battle where we provoke each other positively to grow in our love and our good works. This gathering is meant to be the place where we’re encouraged to continue following faithfully after Jesus. Out there, we’re going to be tempted to question, tempted to doubt, tempted to reflect the world instead of the Creator of the world. But in here, we get to encourage (provoke) each other to love and good works. 

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by mikethestrand on April 12, 2026  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on April 12, 2026

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The God of the Garden (John 20) – Sermon Manuscript

-How many of you have seen the Marvel movies? I’m not a big comic book guy, but I still remember when Iron Man came out in theaters. I was in college, wanted to go see a movie, and figured I might as well see this one. It blew my mind! But what was even more amazing was that was just the beginning because they kept building on that movie. And at this point, I’ve given up on trying to see them all because some of them have been pretty bad. Marvel had a good streak, but after Avengers Endgame, I think they lost their way with the story a bit. AND I also feel bad for anyone that’s missed out on the last almost 20 years of Marvel movies, because in order to catch up you’ve got: 37 movies, 32 TV shows, with more coming out regularly!

-What’s most impressive about their run is that each movie tends to be a good story just by itself, but at this point, unless you’ve seen them all I can pretty much guarantee you’re going to miss some callbacks and allusions to previous things.

-That’s a picture of what we get in the Bible, but thankfully there’s no more books being added at this point, and unlike Marvel, the Bible never gets lost in its story. But in order to properly read and interpret the Bible, we need to know the story. The whole thing has allusions and references to previous parts of the story that if we’re unaware of will go right over our heads.

-I’ve titled this sermon ‘The God of the Garden’ because John’s account of the resurrection is FULL of allusions to Genesis, which means in order to understand the resurrection we need to understand creation. As we read through this text, see if you can catch all the allusions to the creation account:

READ/PRAY (pg. 963)

  1. The Garden Tomb (1-10)

-The story begins focusing on Mary, who came very early in the morning to the tomb.

-Where was this tomb located? This part of the story was read at our Good Friday service, it’s found at the end of the previous chapter:

–John 19:41-42. The place where Jesus was crucified was in a garden. John is the only Gospel that has this note. John’s intentionally trying to call our minds back to THE garden in creation. And this garden theme has been building:

-If you look at John 18. I hadn’t noticed before that the text says Jesus OFTEN met there with his disciples. Jesus would take His disciples to a garden, a place where on His last night He prayed to His father asking for this cup to be taken away from Him.

-What’s so important about the place where Jesus was killed, as well as the tomb being in a garden? For that we need to think back to creation, because a garden is where sin entered the world, and John is telling us a garden is where sin met its end. But the garden isn’t the only piece John refers back to. This is why we need to know the WHOLE Bible, don’t just get stuck in 1 part of it, because if we don’t know the whole thing we’re going to miss all these ideas. We need to know the Bible so well our language and daydreams are impacted by it! That’s what we see from all the Bible authors (as I’ve been trying to point out through our 12 angry men series, even the minor prophets were quoting or alluding to so many other passages)

-Honestly, this whole thing as I was reading and studying this week blew my mind! So let’s think about the first garden, which I believe should be viewed as a temple. See, a temple is the place where God comes to meet with humans, and Eden was created as the place where God would come to meet with humans, we know that from Gen. 3:8. Apparently even God has preferences about what time of day is best, He would come walk in the garden in the evening.

-There are 3 components to the creation account that will align with the tabernacle and then the temple later: there’s the earth, the place where the humans dwell, there’s the visible heavens which is the sky above, and there’s the invisible heavens which is the place where God and the angels dwell, and the goal for God was to have no separation between all these things: He wanted His entire creation living and working and playing together. If you then think of the tabernacle, it is also built of 3 different components: the outer court (where humans can go), the Holy place (where some humans can go) and the Most Holy place (where God dwells). And woven into the fabric of the tabernacle and crafted out of gold in the temple are creation motifs, pictures of plants, animals, and angels in and on the walls. So Eden, the tabernacle (and later the temple) are meant to be representatives (stand-ins) for all of creation. God’s plan didn’t change, but the means by which His creation is able to access Him does.

-But there’s another sense piece to this that we can often miss as well. We often call it the Garden OF Eden, but a more precise word would be the Garden IN Eden, the garden was a subset of a bigger place called Eden, and the first humans were tasked with “working and watching” over the garden. Those 2 verbs are also used to describe the role of the priests in the tabernacle and temple, meaning that part of Adam’s role is to be the priest of this garden, who works and watches over it.

-And what’s most amazing to me about this whole process is the way God orchestrates is. In the days of creation 7 times it states, “and God said.” In the building of the tabernacle, it’s structured around 7 times where it states, “The Lord said.” And then when Solomon built the temple, it took 7 years, was dedicated in the 7th month, during a feast of 7 days, and Solomon’s speech is organized around 7 requests of God. All these things are meant to signify the resting place of God. Think of what God did on the 7th day of creation, so all these other acts are pointing to a similar goal: God being in relationship and proximity to His creation (although in the OT it has to be mediated, someone else has to be the go between).

-With all that background from the OT, look at how John begins the resurrection account. What day are we talking about? 

-The first day. As if this is meant to enact a NEW creation account.

-We also should be thinking of creation because of something Pilate (accidentally?) said about Jesus in the previous chapter. Pilate calls Jesus “the man,” which is the same thing God called Adam when he was cast out from the garden. The difference is in that place the judgment was just and right, this time, the judgment is laid on an innocent man. 

-For those of us who grew up in the church, we’ve heard this story so many times that we can miss what’s happening. How many of you would expect to find the body of a dead friend gone? People weren’t dumb in the 1st century, they knew what happened after someone died, they didn’t just get up and walk out of the grave!

-Which is why Mary’s response makes sense: someone took the body! What other option is there? 

-Peter and John (the one Jesus loved) take off immediately, most people think John got their first because he was younger (sorry to those of you who are older). John stopped, Peter went straight in, and what they found wouldn’t make sense if the body had been stolen: linen clothes, with one folded up and placed by itself.

-John is giving us 2 comparisons, 1 that’s immediate and 1 that’s much further back. First is a reference to a previous resurrection account in John’s Gospel where Jesus raises Lazarus from the grave. But Lazarus comes out fully wrapped in linen cloth, Jesus actually tells people to go help unwrap the cloth, he can’t do it by himself.

 -The second comparison is to the priests. Listen to what God commands Aaron to do when he meets with God during the day of atonement, the day where the sins of the people are paid for:    Then when Aaron is done atoning for the sins of the people, look at what he’s supposed to do with the linen cloth:

-By leaving His linen garments, Jesus is signifying that He was acting like Aaron in paying the penalty for the sins of the people. He’s saying that He has entered the Holy place, paid the penalty for the sins of the people, and gone back out. Friends, this is the reason the temple in the curtain was torn in 2! The Holy Place doesn’t need to be curtained off anymore; Jesus has provided a way for everyone to have access to God! 

-This section ends with an interplay between seeing and believing: John’s primary point of writing this story is so that we would believe (as you’ll see at the end!). Here John’s saying that seeing the empty tomb has resulted in a belief.

-But his belief isn’t complete: they did not yet understand what? The Scripture. There’s a reason Paul refers to the gospel message as a mystery, it was hidden, it wasn’t easy to understand! Until everything happened, the disciples didn’t get everything the Bible was saying.

  • The Gardener (11-18)

-This next section has some interesting references to Jesus that are supposed to (once again) remind us that this is a NEW creation.

-After Peter and John had left, John doesn’t tell us how much later this is, so either Mary came running back after them or was with them this whole time. But the text tells us that now Mary looks into the tomb. And there’s even some interesting verbs used to denote the historical reliability of this: it would have been carved into a hillside, where she would have to stoop down to see into the tomb.

-When she peeks in, she sees 2 angels, but why does John denote where they’re sitting? Because it points back to something else in the OT.

-When God gives instructions for building the Ark of the Covenant, on top of which was the mercy seat (where Aaron sprinkled blood while wearing his linen clothes). The mercy seat was called that because it’s the place where mercy was given to the people through the sacrifice of the animals. Where were the cherubim placed? The head and the feet. So God sending 2 angels to sit at both sides of where Jesus was buried is God’s way of saying there’s a new mercy seat, a new place where sins are atoned for! But that’s not all, does anyone know what was stationed at the garden in Eden when Adam and Eve were banished from it? Yep, the cherubim, the angels tasked with guarding the Holy of Holies. Once again, isn’t it amazing how God has woven these themes throughout this story? What once marked separation from God is used to mark that He is now near!

-And Mary’s story isn’t done: the angels ask her a question, this isn’t supposed to be a time for mourning, this is a time of rejoicing, to giving thanks, of dancing and praising God, because of what happens next:

-Jesus arrives, but she doesn’t know it’s Him. (there’s both similarities and differences between Jesus’s pre-resurrection and post-resurrection body, hold on to that thought because it will come up again in a minute). 

-Since she doesn’t recognize Him, who does she think Jesus is? A gardener. What were Adam and Eve tasked with being in the beginning? Gardeners. John is telling us that where Adam failed in his role, Jesus is faithful, and fulfills everything God wants for His creation. 

-Jesus says Mary’s name, and that’s all it takes for her to realize who it is, and she immediately comes running to Him! 

-Doesn’t Jesus’s response seem a bit harsh? Especially when just a few verses later He invites Thomas to come and touch Him. Most likely has a different connotation in both places, here she needs to be reminded to look forward further than the here and now, while Thomas needs the sight to believe. See Jesus is accommodating Himself to the needs of His disciples. No 2 people are the same, no 2 stories of salvation are the same. We’re given these different accounts so that we can understand the multiple ways Jesus draws us to Himself. And that thought continues through the rest of this chapter:

  • The Future Garden (19-31)

-What day does this begin with? John emphasizes what day it is AGAIN, he wants to make sure we understand a new creation motif is taking place!

-Why does Jesus say peace? This is the common Jewish greeting, one that’s still used today when they say “shalom aleichem.” But this is more significant than just peace be with you, this is meant to complement the last word He cried from the cross “It is finished.” Because Jesus said it is finished, there is now peace for His followers. And not just peace, both peace and reconciliation are now possible for humanity because of what Jesus has done. 

-Do you notice what Jesus shows them? His hands and his SIDE. Anyone who survived a crucifixion could show his hands and feet, but in order for them to know it was truly Him, He also showed the place where the spear pierced His side.

-Once again, He says peace to them, but then adds a component to this. Because they have peace with God, peace is now possible with other humans, so these first followers of Jesus are given a job: they are sent. Now, not in the same way as Jesus (because only Jesus can make atonement for sin) but they’re sent on the same mission as Jesus: to proclaim the good news that peace is now possible with God!

-This is the same mission we have today, and this is the reason we say at the end of our services: you are sent, because Jesus has sent us back into the world to represent Him and tell others about Him. It’s not meant to be a casual dismissal, it requires everything from us.

-But then John tells us Jesus does something weird, it says He breathed on them. Ever since COVID, this has made me chuckle, because people are so scared of being breathed on! I sometimes will blow in my kid’s faces, sometimes to have them check my breath! I don’t think that’s what Jesus is doing here. We need to keep thinking about the creation and new creation theme that John is focusing on. This same word that John uses to talk about what Jesus is doing is used in Gen. 2:7 when God breathes into Adam and gives him life. Do you see how Jesus is restoring all things here? I think Micky Klink summarizes what’s taking place here really well in his commentary: 

-Isn’t that an incredible summary of what Jesus enacted? While the OT is a story of humanity failing again and again, Jesus’s arrival means that God’s plan never got off track. He’s recommissioned this new people through this new creation to serve as kings and priests in the world. 

-Unfortunately, one of the disciples isn’t in this locked room with them, and it would stick with him for the rest of history, because people often refer to him as doubting Thomas! And there’s a sense where that’s right, but there’s another sense where I feel bad for him (especially considering I named one of my kids after him, because did you see what his name means in the text? Twin!) 

-Vs. 26 tells us the disciples did the same thing the next week, almost as if they expect Jesus to show up on this day, but this time Thomas wasn’t going to miss it. We’re already starting to see that there’s some new rhythms that are marking these people out, they’re meeting on the first day of the week, the day that Jesus rose from the grave. Friends, that means that EVERY Sunday is resurrection Sunday! This is literally the reason we’re here today! 

-Even though the doors were locked, Jesus comes to be with them. I said this earlier, but once again we see that there’s something different about Jesus’s body. He apparently can walk through walls or just appear at will. And he gives them the same greeting He did last time: peace.

-Then He singles out Thomas, but unlike Mary, Thomas is invited to come near and touch the Jesus’s wounds. And this confirmation leads to Jesus encouraging Thomas to believe. It’s a play on words in the original language: don’t unbelieve, believe!

-And Thomas responds with another component to the resurrection: while it has cosmic and eternal implications, it’s also personal. It’s for each one of us to believe that Jesus is not just the Lord, but He can be MY Lord. 

-And Jesus affirms Thomas’s belief, but He also affirms the belief of the rest of humanity throughout history: there’s going to be some people that don’t get to see His hands and side, but they can still believe, and there’s a special blessing Jesus gives towards people like that. Friends, this blessing that Jesus speaks here is for you and me.

-I was listening to some Rich Mullins this week (if you’ve never heard of him, you’re missing out! A Christian artist in the 80s-90s that died in a car accident in 1997). He had a line in his song ‘Step by Step’ that says “Sometimes I think of Abraham, how one star he saw had been lit for me.” God’s plans and promises are guaranteed to happen, nothing can stand against God, not Satan, not sin, and not death. And definitely not you and me. It’s incredible that God’s plans include a special blessing for us, we can be brought in to be a part of this new creation today! Which is what John says next:

-John concludes this chapter by giving his reason for writing this book: he could have included many more things that Jesus did, and in the next chapter 21:25 he actually says if everything Jesus did was written down, all the books in the world couldn’t contain it (which is why we’ll have eternity to think about it)! But this book was written so that even though we can’t see Jesus with our eyes, we can believe that He is who He said: the Messiah, the Savior, the Son of God, and through that belief we can have life, NEW life. Just like John has been casting the story of Jesus as a new creation, He’s telling us that we too can be a part of this new life creation, just like these first disciples. One of the amazing things about being a Christian, is if you think about it, everyone who becomes a Christian is only 1 generation away from those who saw the risen Christ. We’re reading these eyewitness accounts of people who saw Jesus in His resurrected body, we’re brought back to that very moment where Jesus invites His followers to believe in everything that He said. And that same offer is on the table for all of us today: don’t disbelieve, believe! The resurrection proves that God has followed through on all His promises, that His plans are good and right and true, and that through belief in Jesus we are able to have life, NEW life in His name. 

-If you haven’t yet made that confession, do it today. Jesus invites you to join with Him in restoring His creation. And if you have made that confession, Jesus also invites you to not be unbelieving but believe. Walking with Jesus is a lifelong pursuit where each day we’re invited to take one step closer to Jesus. That’s the invitation to new life that is available to all of us because Jesus is alive!

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by mikethestrand on April 5, 2026  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on April 5, 2026

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2026/04/05/the-god-of-the-garden-john-20-sermon-manuscript/

Habakkuk – Sermon Manuscript

-Many of you know my love for coffee, but my coffee drink of choice took a while to become solidified. It came during seminary where I needed the coffee because I was working in WY and commuting to school south of Denver which was 2 hours away. So I’d get up at 3:30 to get a cup of coffee with Cara (who I was dating) then drive to school and sleep in my car for an hour or 2, then go to class all day. And when I say all day I mean it, I’d schedule all my classes to be on 1 day so I didn’t have to drive down more than 1 a week. But that also meant that by the afternoon I was DRAGGING! And coffee shops don’t keep making fresh coffee all day, so when I’d go to Starbucks in the afternoon to try to stay awake for the later afternoon classes the coffee tasted metallic because it had been sitting in the urn for a while, but when you’re desperate, you’ll drink anything! But my life was changed forever when I went to Starbucks one afternoon with my best friend from seminary. He told me about an Americano, which is called that because Americans can’t handle straight espresso, so we water it down. At the time, it was the same price as buying a regular cup of coffee, AND you could order it with extra shots to get even more caffeine (yet another reason Caribou is superior to Starbucks, Starbucks doesn’t add any more shots of espresso to their bigger drinks). So since that afternoon, my drink of choice has become a grande quad americano with a splash of heavy cream.

-Let me explain what all those words mean: grande at the bucks is a medium, 4 shots is the number of espresso shots (normally they add 2), americano is espresso with hot water, splash means just a little bit, and heavy cream is basically milk with extra fat in it. Nothing super fancy or out of the ordinary, or so I thought. But I have had SO much trouble getting this thing ordered throughout my life that I’ve had to change the way I order it multiple times. 

-I was first introduced to is as a quad Americano, quad being 4 shots, until a fateful day when I had bought a new vehicle in San Diego and was preparing to drive that vehicle back to Colorado through the night. A friend and I made it to Las Vegas and stopped for food and coffee so we could make it through the whole night, stopped at a Starbucks that was PACKED, like so packed that it took 15 minutes to get up to the counter to order. So I went to order my drink at the counter after all this waiting and just wanting to get on the road, I ordered my 2 quad Americanos with a splash of heavy cream, looked at the price and thought “that’s not right” because Starbucks make you pay extra for those additional shots. So I asked “did you get the quad?” And very shortly back, the barista said, “YES, I got it!” clearly she didn’t want to talk! So I moved over to the end of the bar to wait for my drinks, and after waiting ANOTHER 15 min, I heard “I’ve got 2 Americanos for Quad!” Clearly that barista didn’t know what a quad americano was. So from that point forward, I decided to be more explicit: I always ordered a grande 4 shot Americano with a splash of heavy cream. Little did I know that even that had the potential to be misinterpreted!

-The next issue was when I was at a pastor’s conference in Indianapolis. Now if you’ve never been to a pastor’s conference, one of the realities is pastors LOVE coffee, so any break time is a mad rush to the coffee shops where the lines wrap around the block. That means you’re waiting a LONG time to get up to the counter to order your coffee! So once again, after waiting 15 minutes to get to order my drink I ordered my grande 4 shot americano with a splash of heavy cream. The barista didn’t ask any questions, the price of the drink looked right this time, so I moved down the bar to wait for the drink to come out. After waiting another 10 minutes, the grande 4 shot americano came out to the bar. I took my first sip (because sometimes they forget to add the cream) and it tasted like pure sugar, it was GROSS! I thought they messed something up, so I looked at the order sticker on it, and it said grande americano 4 shots, with Splenda. You tell me how splash can sound remotely like Splenda, but I wasn’t going to drink that nonsense, and I couldn’t get the attention of anyone working because the line was so long, so I gave it to my dad and struggled to stay awake during the next session. Which means, in order to ensure I’m getting what I actually want I either order through an app, or else I make sure I say I’m ordering a grande (medium) americano, with a little bit of heavy cream, and I also use my fingers to demonstrate a little just to ensure there’s no misunderstanding!

-Now, what does my coffee debacle have to do with Habakkuk? Habakkuk has to do with the issue of what do we do when it seems like God is misunderstanding us? Or worse, when it seems like the punishment God doles out isn’t fair. Or how can God be good when there’s so much evil in the world? Have you ever wrestled with those questions, or heard people asking those questions? Let’s read chapt. 1 as we hear Habakkuk asking God those exact questions:

READ/PRAY (pg. 832)

  1. The Message of Habakkuk

-As we’ve seen with a number of the prophets, we don’t have a lot of information about Habakkuk! There is an apocryphal account about Habakkuk in the expanded version of the book of Daniel that Roman Catholics use. I’ll read it to you, just so you can hear why historically the Apocrypha wasn’t considered to be on the same level as the other Scriptures: 

-In Judea at that time, there was the prophet Habakkuk. Having prepared a stew and mixed it in a bowl with some bread, he was on his way to take it to the reapers in the field. 34 The angel of the Lord instructed him, “Take the meal you have prepared to Daniel who is in Babylon in the lions’ den. 35 Habakkuk replied, “Sir, I have never been to Babylon, and I do not have any idea where the den is.”36 Thereupon the angel of the Lord grasped him by the crown of his head and, carrying him by his hair, with the speed of the wind, set him down in Babylon above the den.

37 Habakkuk shouted, “Daniel, Daniel, take the food that God has sent to you.”38 Daniel said, “You have remembered me, O God. You have not abandoned those who love you.” 39 He then got up and began to eat. Meanwhile the angel of the Lord immediately carried Habakkuk back to his own country.

-Let’s look at what Habakkuk’s original message is: 

  1. Conversing with God (1-2)

-Most of the book is a look at Habakkuk’s conversation with God, where Habakkuk asks questions of God that at first glance might make us slightly uncomfortable, or at least they should make us slightly uncomfortable if we’ve been paying attention to the rest of these prophets. Remember that much of the work of the prophets is calling people to pursue justice, defined as God defines it: rightly ordered lives and affections that lead to the flourishing of humanity under God’s rule and reign. 

-So Habakkuk’s questions are shocking: he’s asking God why there isn’t justice taking place around him. Even God’s people are marked by violence, injustice, and wrongdoing, and it appears to Habakkuk that God isn’t doing anything about it! But then he risks going even further where he tells God: this is why the law is ineffective. Isn’t the law the thing God gave His people to bring about justice? Isn’t the law the way God’s plans and rule will be carried out among His people? Think of all the Psalms we have that talk about how much David LOVES God’s law, or how many of the prophets are calling people to go back to God’s law to recover their identity as God’s chosen people. But here we see Habakkuk telling God that His plan isn’t working! Quite the claim, isn’t it? A prophet who, instead of speaking on behalf of God to the people is complaining to God on behalf of the people! I actually like the way the ESV translates this verse:

-The law is described as paralyzed or lacking power. It can’t accomplish what it needs to so that the people and the nation are marked by the wrong things instead of being a reflection of God. And because the law is paralyzed, justice is stuck, and the justice that is going out is described as “perverted.” We’ve seen that in our country during the lifetimes of some of you in this room! Think back to some of the civil rights issues that were taking place in 60s. Our nation had police officers, judges, and courts, but was true justice taking place? No! The justice that was going forth was “perverted.” Habakkuk says that the same thing is happening in his day, and he’s asking God to intervene. 

-And God responds that He has a plan, but it’s not something anyone would expect, and definitely not something Habakkuk is going to like! God is going to use an even more unjust nation to punish His people. He warns that the Chaldeans (or the Babylonians, both names refer to the same group) are coming, and He knows they’re not kind, look at how they’re described by God: 

-And that’s just the start of their depravity, God goes on to describe all the ways they look down on others, and He ends by saying their so confident in themselves that they think their god is their strength. Habakkuk wanted justice, but not like this!

-So we get to hear his response, he starts acknowledging who God is: the eternal one, the one who is in charge of justice, who knows nothing of evil and who refuses to tolerate wrongdoing. But in this case, it sure seems like God is tolerating the Chaldeans, doesn’t it? He’s allowing their civilization to rise up and flourish, AND allowing them to “swallow up” God’s own people. And yes, God’s people might be bad, but they’re not THAT bad when you look at how the Chaldeans are treating other people. Surely Habakkuk must have misunderstood something in what God said, right?

-He goes on to compare the Chaldeans to fisherman who fish among the peoples to drag them into the boat, and then empty their nets by killing these people “without mercy.” But Habakkuk knows that God will answer him, so after asking all these questions of God, he decides to wait and watch to see what God determines to do. And God does respond! 

-God tells Habakkuk that he’s going to be like Moses, he’s going to take God’s words and put them on a tablet so that it can be passed down through the generations. And it needs to be written down because it’s going to take a while to come to fruition, so as they’re waiting, they have the promise from the Lord that even though Chaldeans have been chosen to discipline Judah, they will similarly be disciplined someday in the future.

-But one of the keys to this section is the end of vs. 4: the righteous one. Depending on which translation you have may say either faith or faithfulness which gets to the 2 components of what is being described here: first is the reality that we must put our faith in God, secondly it also means we must trust in the faithfulness of God. It is something we have to do and something God does. Part of the reason I think this is the key to this section is because it comes up 3 times in the NT: Paul quotes this verse in Rom. 1:17 and Gal. 3:11 and then the author of Hebrews quotes it in 10:38, and I think all 3 of these quotes are similarly referring to both the faith we need to have in God and the faithfulness that God has extended to His people, even when things are difficult (as they are with Habakkuk).

-And just as God tells Judah the consequences for their lack of justice, He goes on to tell exactly what will happen to the Chaldeans, and this section is referred to as 5 “Woes,” which one commentator said could be read as “Alas” or “How terrible” and each woe is something the Chaldeans do to others, which will eventually come back on them. I took this summary from the ESV Expositor’s Commentary, I think it’s a helpful summary (just as a reminder, I upload these slides after I preach every week, so feel free to go look at them afterwards!)

-And look where these “woes” end up: in contrast to these earthly issues, the Lord is in His holy temple, which means no earthly army can compete with Him, all creation can do is stand in silent awe of God.

  • Habakkuk’s Psalm (3)

-This book then takes what seems to be an abrupt shift and ends on a Psalm (labeled a prayer) by Habakkuk. In fact, some scholars argue that this shouldn’t even be included in this book because it’s SO different from the rest of the book. Remember that we’ve seen Habakkuk questioning God’s oversight of His creation, but this prayer seems more positive, doesn’t it? But I think that those who are saying it doesn’t fit the context of the book don’t understand the way Christians are supposed to respond to God. God invites us to bring our complaints to Him, to realize that this world is difficult, but even in the midst of that difficulty we can still trust in our God. That’s what Habakkuk is doing! He’s acknowledging that he’s shared all his concerns, and now he trusts that God will do what is good and right for him. I’m going to read the whole thing: 

-Did you hear Habakkuk’s response to God’s vision; it starts in vs 16. Just as we’ve read in previous weeks that God’s enemies were terrified, here we see that Habakkuk was terrified. And do you notice that he doesn’t ask to be spared from the persecution? The difficulty, the stress, the persecution is all guaranteed to happen, but the Christian hope isn’t to be removed from the hard things, the Christian hope is to ask God to allow you to persevere through the difficulty. He says that even though the day of distress is coming, he’s going to try to endure.

-This also becomes his hope throughout the difficulty that’s coming, and the end of the book gives us a hopeful note too. Starting in vs. 17 he goes through a list of things that are lacking, they’ll have no food, no jobs, no sheep or cows, everything will be taken away. But in the midst of that poverty he will celebrate in Yahweh and rejoice that God is his salvation because if we have God, then we can be content.

-God will gives strength to His people even in the midst of suffering and persecution. That’s why Paul says we can rejoice always, that’s what Habakkuk is getting at here. Friends, we can trust in God’s provision in our lives. Even when you’re facing a difficult medical diagnosis, or you’re looking for a job, or you’re facing family strife God will help you endure through it, you can trust in Him because He is good.

  • Is God Good?

-There’s a line that I’ve heard from the former director of InterVarsity who said: 

-This is part of the reason church is so important, because we all walk in through those doors each week in different places, and we need the encouragement of our church family to endure when the suffering comes, because I don’t know when or what you’ll face, but something will come up that will incredibly difficult for you that will cause you to ask if God is good.

-And you’re not along in that question, previous generations tended to ask if God is true, but that doesn’t seem to be the case today, today the primary question people ask is: is God good? And if He is good, then how do we deal with evil or bad things happening? I’ve said this for a while, but I just heard it again in a podcast this week: COVID19 was the first national tragedy that didn’t lead to any sort of revival in our country, I think because people were asking this question. 

-Friends, this is one of the biggest questions that we have to deal with in our faith. But don’t forget that this isn’t just a problem for Christians, this is problem for any and everyone to figure out! What do we do with the evil in the world? And I believe beyond reasonable doubt that the Christian answer provides the best answer to that question! Because the Christian answer is that the world doesn’t operate the way it was intended to, and anytime you go to a funeral you see that reality! Death is an enemy to be destroyed, and anytime someone dies, something within us screams out that it’s not right! And thankfully, God is in the business of redeeming and restoring His creation.

-One of the most beautiful things about the Christianity is it’s meant to be a redemption project, where when we’re saved, we get to be a part of God’s plan to renew and restore the broken world. We aren’t saved to just sit back and wait for Jesus to come back, we’re supposed to be at work letting God’s will be done here and now just like it’s taking place in heaven, and that also means we need to walk through difficult seasons in our lives as Christians, knowing that God will bring good out of our struggles. WE are often the means God uses to bring good into His creation.

-This is why it’s so important for us to know who God is and what He’s like! God is so good that He didn’t leave us to our own ways to try to come back to Him, He sent His son to bear the penalty for the sins of the world. Jesus faced eternal injustice so that we wouldn’t have to. That’s the Christian response to evil and injustice: our Creator willingly taking on Himself the consequences for our sin and the evil that we committed to allow us to be made new creations. Suffering is going to come for all of us, that’s why we need to use the times where we’re not suffering to draw near to God so that when we walk through the darkness, we can remember these truths, and have a church family who can help list us up when we’re tired, who can remind us that even when things look difficult, even when we’re facing persecution, God is good. 

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by mikethestrand on March 29, 2026  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on March 29, 2026

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2026/03/29/habakkuk-sermon-manuscript/

Nahum – Sermon Manuscript

-How many of you have seen this picture? It shows a scene that was captured on Aug. 14, 1945 in the midst of the celebration that WW2 was coming to an end with the surrender of Japan. A long a bloody war that included the introduction of the atomic bomb, the attempted annihilation of the Jewish population, and tens of millions of people dead. The Allies celebrated mightily at the end of this war, which apparently included even the kissing of strangers.

-And there’s an element to this that we can understand, because when evil is defeated, celebration is the right response. When Hitler was finally defeated, it led to rejoicing! This week’s angry man tells us of a similar story from the 600s BC. When evil nations are defeated, people celebrate! Nahum tells us the story of the defeat of the Assyrians. They were a brutal civilization who boasted about defeating their enemies and impaling their bodies on spikes in front of the city. Their capital at the time was Nineveh (who we read about a couple weeks ago in Jonah). The repentance that we saw in Jonah was apparently short-lived, Martin Luther stated, “Such are the hearts of men that when the punishment ceased, so did the repentance.” Let’s read 

READ/PRAY (Nahum 1, pg. 829)

  1. The Message of Nahum

-Don’t know much about Nahum either! We know what his message focuses on (Nineveh), and we know he’s from Elkosh, but we don’t even know where that is! If you remember this map, you can see Nahum here on the right, but there’s a question mark next to the city.

-The one thing that can be known is the approximate time that he prophesied because of other historical events that he’s talking about. Here’s the way Eric Tully (professor at TEDS and author of Reading the Prophets as Christian Scripture that I recommended at the beginning) summarizes it: So this was written sometime between 663-612BC.

-I think one of the interesting things about the prophets is the way people summarize the message of these books. I was talking to someone a couple weeks ago about a conversation he was having with a family member who said it must be timely to be preaching through these books right now because it’s all about judgment on God’s people. While it’s true that that’s part of it, I don’t think that’s the best summary. There’s a professor that summarizes the whole message of the Bible with 1 sentence: God’s glory in salvation through judgment.

-I wasn’t convinced the first time I heard it, but as we’ve been going through the prophets the last couple months, I’ll admit that it’s grown on me! The first part is literally the whole purpose of creation: God is jealous for His own glory because if He weren’t He wouldn’t be God! We tend to view jealousy only in negative terms, but there is a right jealousy that can be true, for example I can be jealous for my wife’s affections, and she can be jealous for mine. God can be jealous for his glory because if His creation gave glory to anyone else it would be sin. And the means by which God’s glory is most demonstrated is through salvation. All these stories throughout the OT of God’s deliverance are meant to show a picture of the greater salvation that comes through Jesus. All these nations and civilizations are nothing compared to the ultimate enemy of sin! But it doesn’t stop there, it goes on to say it comes through judgment, which is the part that tends to grate against our Western sensibilities. We don’t like to think or talk about the judgment of God, especially when we all know 1 John 4:8, God is love. How does judgment fit into love? We’ll get there at the end today!

-But where this message is timely for us is if you look around us, I think this summarizes the divide we see in our country today. One side emphasizes salvation (redemption, liberation), the other side emphasizes judgement (personal responsibility, consequences), yet isn’t it amazing that the Bible message doesn’t allow those 2 extremes to exist on their own? It cuts through both of them and offers a radically different way where salvation is offered THROUGH judgment, the judgment is placed on someone else. We need to remember that reality as we work through this book:

  1.  Yahweh Is…

-The first thing Nahum tells us is who God is, and this is at the core of why we need the Bible, of why we need the church, and of why we need the gospel. If we reverse this order and start with humanity our perspective is going to be skewed. Just like in Amos where we saw the plumbline that God holds to judge the world, we don’t get to be the ones who determine the standards, God does. If we start with ourselves, by the time we get up to God we’ll just be looking at Him through a human lens, it’s going to be completely skewed. That’s why plumblines are used in building! If you’ve ever seen someone building something that looks off it’s because they were using the wrong plumbline, the wrong standard of measurement, which threw everything else off. We’re tempted to do the same thing when we talk about God, which is why it’s so important for us to spend time reading books like the minor prophets because they remind us that we need to get God right! That we need to rightly understand who He is so we can go from there to interpret the world rightly.

-Nahum begins saying the Lord is jealous and avenging. He’s beginning in a different place than we’ve seen from the other prophets! Contrast this with Jonah! Isn’t this the side of God that Jonah was hoping for? The avenging God who would destroy the Ninevites! But Jonah didn’t get to see that part of God. 

-Eventually, we get to what Jonah talked about: The Lord is slow to anger, other prophets add to that reality: Joel said He is also gracious and compassionate, abounding in faithful love, and He relents from sending disaster. BUT notice that God isn’t opposed to anger, it says He’s SLOW to anger, but when His anger is kindled there is a reason for it. 

-Our God, who is slow to anger, also takes vengeance against His enemies and remains furious with them. But this anger isn’t like our anger. Even Paul admits that there can be a righteous anger (Eph. 4:26), but God’s anger is ALWAYS righteous. So we shouldn’t read this as someone who’s vindictive and finally snaps, this is a righteous judgment coming down on someone who is completely guilty and deserves punishment.

-And as we also saw in Jonah, God is also in control of nature. The storms obey Him, the clouds obey Him. He can make the sea dry up (like He did during the Exodus), He can make rivers run dry (like He did during Joshua’s reign). He can even destroy mountains and shake the foundations of the earth. None of this is difficult for Him! And sometimes God uses nature as His means of bringing about his judgment on people. Think of the story of the Exodus where God uses all sorts of natural things to lead to the freedom of His people, and then the destruction of the Egyptian army by swallowing them up in the Red Sea. 

-And Nahum asks some rhetorical questions at the end of this section: Who can stand up against God’s wrath? Answer: no one! If God’s anger has been kindled, watch out! Not even rocks can stand up to Him!

-But look at how Nahum ends this whole section: God is good! Even in His wrath, God is good. If we miss that reality, we’ll miss the point of the whole Bible! Even in His wrath there’s the potential for salvation IF you take refuge in Him. No one is too far gone to receive God’s mercy! Friends, this is our God! But that’s not where this book ends:

  •  The Destruction of Ninevah 

-Once we get God right (as Nahum just did) then we can move on to His actions:

-Look at the very next verse! God is good, but sometimes God’s goodness results in destruction where His enemies will be completely destroyed. He tells the king that he will be literally wiped off the face of the earth, that his children will be destroyed and that their gods will also be defeated. God is talking smack talk here! He continues this interplay between Assyria’s defeat and Judah’s provision before going into chapt. 2.

-I’m going to read chpt. 2, listen to all the descriptions of what God’s going to do to them:

-Did you notice that it begins in the present tense, even though it hasn’t happened yet? It’s an amazing choice that increases the tension of this story! It immerses the reader in these events. The attack is devastating, the shields and men are covered in blood, the chariots can’t run in a straight line, the officers are falling down, a flood rips through the city. And look at vs. 9

-The things that the Ninevites had put their hope in had been taken away. All their hopes and dreams were wiped out by this invading army. Then Nahum gives this play on words using 3 Hebrew words that sound similar, our translation does a fantastic job with these words so we get the point: desolation, decimation, devastation, as if Nahum is desperate to communicate how complete this will be. And the people will terrified, both internally and externally.

-The next verses are another play on Assyria’s supposed strength. We have accounts of them referring to themselves as lions who destroy everyone in their wake. We can miss the impact of this because we just see lions in cages at the zoo, in this time lions would have been terrifying! They constantly prowled looking for food, and Assyria viewed themselves as just as terrifying as lion. If you ever get to the British Museum, you can see these stone statues that are kind of creepy but look at the feet of the one on the right, do you see how they’ve incorporated a lion into the theme? This would have been a common way of viewing themselves, as undefeatable as a lion or a bull. But as we all know, pride goes before the fall!

-God says even though they think they’re completely powerful, God is against them. They think they’re lions, that’s fine, but their children will be destroyed.

-This continues in chpt. 3, where God compares them to Thebes, a city in Egypt that the Assyrians had previously destroyed. Thebes was the capital of Egypt and was also viewed as impenetrable. It was surrounded by water, hundreds of miles away from the border, and they had allies nearby to help. But they were overtaken by the Assyrians. So if even Thebes can be taken, Ninevah isn’t quite as secure as they think. In fact, if God is opposed to someone there’s nothing that can stand in their way! God has a tendency of destroying nations that think too highly of themselves. 

-And this book ends with the rest of the nation’s celebrating the destruction of this city. All these people had been subjected to their cruelty and destruction, but now that they’re defeated the rest of the people are thrilled because evil has been destroyed.

-I think there are 2 key takeaways for us today, I’ll do the most important second, but the first one is that no nation is off the hook from facing the potential judgment of God. It’s easy to look back at Assyria as overly primitive and not having the same technological advances we have today and dismiss them, but we’re not immune from experiencing the same temptation as the Assyrians. How often do we look to our military or technology and think that we’re safe and have arrived? Friends, the reality of every human civilization is that they have their rise and fall. No kingdom of earth will last forever (apart from the church). I think we have a very modern example of this reality: when Russia attacked Ukraine, they expected they would be welcomed with open arms, and that those who were opposed to them would be overthrown within a couple days. Some of the generals went into battle with their dress uniforms because they assumed they’d need them within a week! And here we are over 4 YEARS later. Turns out Russia might have thought they were a little stronger than they are. Friends, don’t put your ultimate hope in any nation or civilization. 

-The second takeaway for us just happens to be the second point in the sermon outline:

  • Vengeance is Whose?

-The fact that Assyria was destined to fall because of their pride and sins against humanity shows us that there are always consequences for our sin, and the God who is able to cast our sins as far as the east is from the west is also the God who will punish those who refuse to repent from their sins.

-God has promised that ultimate vengeance belongs to Him, which means we should trust His timing and His plans. If nothing happens outside of His plans then we can trust ourselves to Him, even if it doesn’t feel like things are fair in the moment. And ultimately, don’t we want vengeance, at least when we’re wronged? Anytime we’re hurt, don’t we want there to be some way of bringing justice to the situation?

-Paul picks up this idea when he talks about Christian ethics in Rom. 12. Our job isn’t to pursue our own justice, instead our job is to overcome evil with love. That’s what Jesus did when he willingly went to the cross and took all of God’s vengeance and retribution on Himself. He drank the entire cup of God’s wrath, which means there’s the possibility for us to not face the same vengeance as the Ninevites, IF we have the Lord as our refuge. But before we get to that I want to talk about God’s wrath, because we don’t often hear or think about God’s wrath today, we often hear about God’s love, which isn’t wrong it’s just not complete.

-We have to begin with an understanding of God’s wrath. God’s wrath is retributive justice doled out in response to the creation acting in willful rebellion against the Creator. And how does that interact with the reality that God is love? There are 2 things we need to keep in mind in this discussion: first we need to make sure we know the terms we’re using in light of God’s revelation (which is why I just defined God’s wrath as retributive justice), and second we need to understand that some things that are true of God seem like contradictions to us. I like to think of it like a see-saw. Think of some things we know to be true about God: is God 3 or 1? Yes! Is Jesus God or is Jesus human? Yes! Is God love, or is God wrathful? Yes! 

-I think JI Packer is helpful here where he uses the word antimony: 

-What he’s saying is there are some things in the realm of God that we in our finite human minds can’t completely understand. I had a professor in seminary said we have a “mystery” card that we can pull out when we’re talking about God. At the end of the day, there are truths about God that we don’t completely “get,” any every time we come to one of those cases, it’s a reminder to us that we’re not God, so we should fall on our faces in worship of Him!

-So when we talk about God’s wrath, it’s not in contradiction to His love, it’s the correct response to His love. He loves His creation and He doesn’t want anyone to perish, but when His creation acts in rebellion against Him there are consequences for everyone!

-There’s a Christian apologist named Wes Huff that’s gotten incredibly popular over the past year for some of the ways he’s engaged unbelievers. A couple weeks ago he was on a podcast titled “The Diary of a CEO” which is one of the 10 biggest podcasts in the world. He was asked by the unbelieving host if the host was going to hell, and he responded “yes.” Friends, would you be willing to be that bold? Now, Wes went on to say that “heaven is a place for those who have submitted their lives to Jesus, who are living the identity of what they’re created to be and said, ‘Your will be done, God.’ Hell is a place where God says, ‘You rejected me, your will be done. I’m going to give you what you want.” Friends, eternity is a really, really, really long time! And every person who has ever lived is going to live forever either saying “Your will be done” to God, or having God say to them, “your will be done.”

-So don’t let this moment pass you by! If we’re saved, then we have a job to do to encourage others to live in the reality that Jesus has taken God’s wrath on Himself. Paul earlier in Romans actually quotes from Nahum, in Rom. 10. 

-Everything centers on Jesus! If Jesus is really God (and He is), then all of us who were once God’s enemies have the opportunity to become the adopted children of God. Do you notice the ordering: It begins with the message of Christ that sends us out (like we do every week), it requires someone to preach the truths of the gospel so that people can hear it, and it takes people responding to what they heard through repentance and faith.

-And when that happens, when we’re brought from death to life, the verse that Paul is quoting from in Nahum says that we have peace. The wicked won’t have the same power over us because it’s been defeated, so we respond by celebrating!

-Which is exactly what we do when we celebrate communion.

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by mikethestrand on March 22, 2026  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, Life, Sermon
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Posted by mikethestrand on March 22, 2026

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2026/03/22/nahum-sermon-manuscript/

Jonah – Sermon Manuscript

-If anyone knows any of the minor prophets, it’s probably this one! VeggieTales movie, topic of a host of debates about whether or not this could really happen.

READ/PRAY

  1. Jonah’s Journey

-Fact or fiction: one of the biggest questions about this book is whether or not this really happened. I had a friend in seminary who was convinced this was a myth, written just to teach a story and wasn’t historically true. I’ve read all sorts of commentaries arguing both sides of this, and even saw a video of a kayaker in Patagonia who got swallowed by a humpback whale and then immediately spit out! So apparently it is possible to be swallowed by a fish and spit back out. But the primary reason I believe it’s a true account of a real historical event is because Jesus seemed to think it was, and anytime there’s a debate going on, I want to side with the guy who’s the author of history!

–Matt. 12:39-41 Jesus is asked to perform a sign for the Pharisees, and here’s how He responds: the prophet Jonah is referred to as a real person, and it says not only did it happen in the past, but the people of Ninevah will in the future condemn those asking the question for their lack of repentance!

-Another component to this is we tend to view the world with an anti-supernatural bias, or question whether things we consider miraculous can actually happen. Is anything too hard for God? Think of just a few other things God does in the OT: He makes a donkey talk, He makes food both fall out of the sky and appear on the ground, and walls fall down in response to people shouting. Do you think it’s outside of God’s ability to have a fish swallow a man in the sea? I don’t!

-We also see Jonah appear in 2 Kings 14:25. So with all that evidence, I think we should take this as a real, historical account.

  1. Down to Tarshish (1-2)

-Jonah is an anomaly in these prophets. The other prophets willingly obeyed God, there wasn’t any questioning or doubting of God’s call on their lives, Jonah is literally the opposite of everything else we’ve seen.

-Jonah also has very different content than the rest of the prophets (which is part of the reason we tend to gravitate towards it!) Jonah tells a story, and it’s a story that feels bigger than life, doesn’t it? (theme of “great” throughout) A prophet (who is supposed to represent God to the people) who attempts to flee to the ends of the earth to escape God who gets swallowed by a big fish, then reluctantly preaches the bare minimum of God’s word to his assigned city and leads to a revival. The whole thing it crazy! And pay attention to the way the book intentionally contrasts Jonah with the rest of the characters.

-One of the ways Hebrew builds suspense (and so do we) is through repeated words. Another one of the comparisons in Jonah is down vs. up. The Lord calls to Jonah and calls him to go UP to Tarshish, and he responds by going DOWN to Joppa. And this isn’t just a casual “on the way I accidentally” this is an intentional running away from. He goes down even lower into the boat and stays down while the storm is raging. The captain tells him to come UP to pray, pick me UP throw me DOWN into the sea. But I’m getting slightly ahead of myself! God’s command is 1 thing, but Jonah’s response is another. He’s commanded to go to the northeast, and he goes southwest, and then finds a ship going to what would have been considered the ends of the earth! Jonah’s not only disobeying God, he’s running as far away from God as he possibly can.

-One thing I noted in my sermon scraps for Amos is that the tendency at this time was to view gods as tribal deities, not dissimilar to the way we have NFL teams today. Yahweh was the God of Israel, Baal was the god of the Canaanites, and when they went to war it was seen as a battle of the gods, and whoever won the battle was the superior god. And that also impacted the sea! There was a specific god of the sea people would appeal to for safe travel.

-So when the text goes on to tell us that there was a great wind and a great storm, they all started appealing to any god they could think of for mercy, but it didn’t help. So they continued going on to throw out all the cargo. Compare the sailors to Jonah here. They’re doing everything they can to save the ship, and what’s Jonah’s response? He doesn’t care at all! He’s treating this like a cruise and decided his best course of action was to take a nap.

-So the captain wakes him up. He’s the only one who’s not trying to contribute to the crisis! Even though Jonah’s the main character of this story, he’s taken a completely passive role in this account. The prophet, who’s supposed to be speaking on behalf of the one true God is silent. They decide to do some work to find out which god is upset with them by casting lots. Jonah, as a good prophet, should have seen his chances of escaping getting even smaller. Prov. 16:33 tells us that God is even in control of this seemingly random event.

-This gambling (which God was in charge of, but friends, don’t gamble today! We have the Holy Spirit indwelling us as our guide!), but this gambling leads to Jonah being found as the guilty party. They didn’t know much about him, and if you remember back to our first week, I shared that the role of the prophet is to speak on behalf of God, but Jonah remains completely silent until he’s forced to open up. They’d been calling out to all these random gods, but Jonah is supposed to be worshipping the 1 true God, who even rules over the heavens, the place where they thought all their gods were. Not only is He the God of the heavens, he’s also the one who made the sea and the land, so there’s no where you can escape from Him! But Jonah’s trying to do exactly that and run to the furthest reaches of the earth to try to escape!

-When the men hear it, they’re seized by a “great” fear and realize they’re toast! Remember what I said earlier about the various gods? They assumed that Jonah was just running away from a little land god, not THE God who you can’t escape! Since Jonah is the only one who knows this God, the sailors ask him how to deal with the problem. And Jonah says: it requires a human sacrifice. Do you see how Jonah’s trying to die? He would rather be thrown into the sea in the middle of a hurricane than go to Ninevah to tell them to repent. And not only is Jonah trying to die, he doesn’t even care if the sailors are taken with him! Do you see how even though the sailors know what’s going on, they still try to help him? They worked as hard as they could to save Jonah, who’s still passive.

-And now who cries out to Yahweh? The sailors! Jonah still doesn’t care! Where previously Yahweh was unknown to them, as soon as they learn which God it is, they’re all in. They throw Jonah in and the sea is calm. So what’s their response? They worship the one true God! Do you see how even in Jonah’s sin God is still working? Jonah, the guy who’s trying to escape God’s call on his life just mentions the name of this God, and their entire worship changes. Keep in mind what these sailors do: they offer a sacrifice and make vows (assuming to Yahweh)

-But Jonah can’t catch a break; God STILL won’t even let him die!

-This next chapter needs to be read with a strong level of irony. First, do you hear how much this sounds like the Psalms? Jonah knows the Bible! He knows the truth about God, but it hasn’t transformed his heart. Second, do you see how self-centered it is? Who’s the focus of this “prayer” God or Jonah?

-Look at what he says in vs. 2, he waited until he was in Sheol, the place of the dead to call out to God. Why didn’t he call out to God while he was in the boat with all those pagan sailors? And it gets worse! Look at 3 he says God threw him into the sea! He’s blaming God for his current situation. Just when it feels like it can’t get worse, he keeps going!

-Let’s look at the end of the prayer. He talks about those who cherish or love worthless idols and says they’re terrible and wrong. Who were the ones who cherished worthless idols in this story? Wasn’t it the sailors? But where did we leave them? Offering sacrifices to Yahweh and making vows to Him. Jonah’s saying the sailors are the problem, meanwhile He’s in the right standing before the God! He continues deluding himself! One scholar said, “these are the right words coming out of the wrong mouth!” We don’t see any accounts in this story of Jonah offering a sacrifice of any vows. The final irony is salvation does belong to Yahweh, which is good for Jonah because if it were up to him, no one except him would be saved.

-But God is faithful and shows His complete control once again by commanding this fish to vomit Jonah up. We see this as gross today, but I think it has deeper significance than just the disgust: throughout the OT, this word is used to describe God’s punishment on the Israelites for disobedience, the land vomits them out. This may be a way of saying this is a continuation of God’s punishment on Jonah.

  • Up to Nineveh (3-4)

-Déjà vu here, as God tells Jonah once again to go to Nineveh, but this time he’s learned his lesson and finally obeys.

-Just to catch us up again and understand this, Jonah has spent who knows how long trying to run away from God’s call on his life. He’s been swallowed by a great fish, been vomited out, then recommissioned with the same task, and the journey to Nineveh would have taken him about 30 days of walking to get to. So this story for us is condensed, but how happy do you think Jonah was on this journey? Do you think he spent the time skipping and jumping along to get to Nineveh as quickly as he could? Remember: God wouldn’t even let him die previously! I picture him grumbling the entire way!

-So Jonah finally arrives at Nineveh, and begins proclaiming the incoming destruction of the city. Other prophets had similar tasks warning that the day of the Lord was coming, a day of darkness and destruction. 2 things to note here: first the description of the size of the city: it’s huge! It would take 3 days to walk it! And how far does Jonah walk? 1 day, which means he doesn’t even get to the middle of it! And what is his message? 5 words in Hebrew, 7 in English. He doesn’t mention which god he’s preaching on behalf of; he doesn’t say why they’re going to be destroyed, all he says is destruction is coming. All he does is predict a certain destruction.

-And what’s the response of the city? Immediate repentance! Friends, this has to be the most unbelievable part of this story! This city of people devoted to destroying the nation of Yahweh responds the right way when they’re faced with the realities of their sin. They don’t make excuses, they don’t ignore it, they work to get right with God. And the repentance is universal! It says the greatest to the least: no one is left out! And the king led the way! Here’s the decree he made the everyone:

-Everyone (even the animals, keep that in mind) is to fast and put on sackcloth (a way of grieving), AND begin crying out “earnestly” to God. Do you notice that they’re not even sure which God they’re crying out to? Think back to the sailors, as soon as they heard his name they started crying out to Him, here they’re only told that a god is upset but it’s STILL enough for them repent. Notice the ending here: they’re concerned that it’s too late and they don’t know how God will respond. They don’t know which God, they don’t know how to please Him, but they’re willing to try doing whatever they can!

-And we know God, we’ve seen that He’s slow to anger and quick to forgiveness (we’ve seen that repeatedly through these prophets). So God responds as He always does: he relents. The certain destruction doesn’t happen. And if this were the ending of the book there may be a glimmer of hope still for Jonah. But we’re not done.

-Jonah is now great with displeasure, and contrast this with the question of the king. Who knows what this God will do? And what does Jonah say? I KNEW IT! This was the whole reason he tried running way! God always forgives, God will always relent from sending disaster for those who respond correctly. But that’s not what Jonah wanted. Jonah wanted grace and mercy for himself, but not for his enemies. Keep that in mind, we’ll come back to it in a minute. Jonah here is so upset that he finally just explicitly asks God to kill him. He tried running away, tried sleeping through a hurricane, tried drowning and none of those worked, so he goes straight to the source!

-And God asks him a question in response: but Jonah (as we’ve seen previously) just goes with the silent treatment. He goes to build a little shelter and watch the show. I picture him setting himself up like this:

-And God is once again kind and gracious. Jonah goes from being greatly displeased to greatly pleased because of the shade. Unfortunately the shade turns out to be a lesson for him, and God sends a worm (compare that to the whale!) to kill the plant. AND THEN God throws in some nature to make Jonah even more upset. So how does Jonah respond this time? Once again, he asks God to kill him. And God asks a similar question to His previous one: is it right for you to be angry about this plant?

-YES! I’m angry enough to die! That’s the last word from Jonah in this book. Jonah’s anger keeps bubbling up to the point where he’s so angry he wants to die because of a plant. Doesn’t that seem a little misplaced to you?

-But God gets the last word. Jonah CARED about nothing in the book except a plant. He didn’t plant it or water it; he was just the benefactor of it. If Jonah cares about this little plant, isn’t it even more important for God to care about Nineveh, a place with more than 120,000 people who are all created as the image of God? God’s people are commanded to care for humans above all the rest of the created order, but Jonah’s missed that reality and was only worried about himself.

-Not only is this city full of people, but it’s people who don’t KNOW the right thing to do. Jonah is the only one in this story who knows the right God, the right ways to live, and is the only one who responds with disobedience and sin. Every other character obeys; did you notice that? The sailors believe, the whale obeys God’s command, the Ninevites repent, the plant obeys, the worm obeys, the scorching east wind obeys, meanwhile, Jonah gets angry. The worst prophet in this series!

-And God’s final request is: if you can’t care about the people, would you at least care about the animals? And that question leaves the book unresolved, doesn’t it? We don’t know what happened to Jonah, and the ending of the book is meant to force us to ask that same question: who do you view as outside of the bounds of God’s mercy and grace?

  • Grace for Who?

-The question at the heart of this book is: how do you view your sin? Do you know that you need God to be gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding I faithful love TO YOU, or is that just needed for other people who are worse than you? Isn’t the temptation for all of us to grade ourselves on a sliding scale? We compare our strengths to someone else’s weaknesses and determine they MUST be worse than us.

-You can see this with the whole NIMBY phenomenon, have you heard of it? It stands for not in my backyard. I’ve read it referring to someone that’s pushing for low-income housing, as long as it’s not in my backyard. They want to appear virtuous, but don’t want it to affect them. I think we also saw this during COVID: good for thee not for me, we excuse ourselves but enforce strong rules for everyone else.

-There’s a fantastic quote from a Croatian theologian named Miroslav Volf (who’s a professor at Yale Seminary) who wrote a book on reconciliation where he talked about forgiveness in this way:

-What’s he’s saying is we all place people in 2 different camps: those who are opposed to us (or we view as opposed to us) are less than human, meanwhile we elevate ourselves to the place where we’re more than human. That’s normal! We all do it! But Jesus gives us a different way: He goes on to say that when we look to Jesus our perspective changes. We go from wanting condemnation for our enemy to wanting resolution and reconciliation with them, and we go from pride to realizing that we, too, are in need of God’s grace.

-After all, this is what Paul says in 1 Tim. 1:15-17.

-He’s not saying he’s done the math and he got the worst grade, he’s saying that when you use the right standard, we’re all the worst! When we’re all comparing ourselves to perfection none of us can stand. At the end of the day, we’re all like Jonah, the temptation of the human heart is to give grace to yourself and condemn everyone else. But there’s a second piece to this that I think we also need to look at:

  • When Religiosity is the Problem

-Did you notice how when Jonah finally “prayed” he essentially just quoted the Psalms? He knew the right things to say, but it hadn’t gone the 18” from his head to his heart. Often Jonah is used to preach about ethnocentrism (or racism, if you want to talk about why I prefer the former term let me know), or it’s preached about the need to go into the nations and do cross-cultural missions. But I think that’s missing the purpose of this book. I think the warning is to those of us who are like Jonah, who haven’t let the truths of the gospel trickle down into our hearts and begin to transform us from the inside out. Jesus had some strong words to people like Jonah, who judged other people based on external compliance but didn’t take the time to look at the deeper reality.

-2 examples back-to-back in Matt. 23:

-First is the picture of people who clean the outside of a cup but leave the inside. One of my cousins when we were growing up was a major germophobe. He didn’t want to shake hands, refused to ever share snacks or drinks. But when he was done eating, he would literally lick his plate clean and stick it back in the cupboard. Do you see the inconsistency!? I know he sometimes listens to these sermons, so sorry if you catch this one! The point is: it’s gross, right!?

-The second one is making the exact same point: Jesus is accusing them of whitewashing tombs. Think of a house that looks beautiful on the outside, fresh paint, brand new roof, immaculate lawn, but you walk in and it’s a hoarder’s house. Jesus isn’t asking us to clean up our mess to present to Him, He invites us to come to Him so He can clean up our mess.

-Friends, this is why we need Jesus and not Jonah.

-Jesus, who also slept in a boat during a storm, but then cared more about saving his friends than himself.

-Jesus, who asked NOT to be killed, but willingly went to His death anyway, not because He was angry, but because we were angry.

-Jesus, who knows everything, and asked for God to forgive those who “didn’t know what they were doing,” even as he bore the penalty for every sin on the cross.

-Jesus, who then spent 3 days and nights in the belly of the earth, and then was “vomited” out because the punishment was done. Forever. Aren’t you glad that in a world full of Jonahs, we get Jesus?

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by mikethestrand on March 8, 2026  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, Life, Relationships, Sermon
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Posted by mikethestrand on March 8, 2026

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2026/03/08/jonah-sermon-manuscript/

Obadiah – Sermon Manuscript

-Have you ever noticed the way people seem to react like a pendulum? You look at the White House, and doesn’t it seem to flip to the other party every 4 (or 8) years? People don’t like what’s taking place so they assume the opposite must be better. Maybe you’ve seen it in people dating: you see someone going through a breakup, and the next time you see them dating someone it’s the exact opposite of their ex! Or in churches, I’ve seen a tendency to react to the weaknesses of a previous pastor by only hiring a next pastor who has those strengths (without realizing there are DIFFERENT weaknesses that will come with that).

-A similar thing seems to be taking place throughout these prophets. One prophet talks about one area of focus, and then the next prophet comes along and brings up a different perspective on it. Last week, in Amos, we say the prophet calling out God’s people for their lack of justice. This week, the prophet will be calling out a different nation for their lack of justice.

READ/PRAY (pg. 819)

  1. The Message of Obadiah:

-We need to understand some family history in order to know what Obadiah is talking about. Does anyone know the history of the nation of Edom, where they came from? All the way back in Genesis there are twin boys born who have conflict with each other from the womb to the tomb: Jacob and Esau. We’ve previously studied the beginnings from Gen. 1-11 and Father Abraham in Gen. 12-25, but that’s where we stopped. So Abraham eventually becomes the Father of the Israelite people, but his promised child is Isaac. Isaac becomes the father of Esau and Jacob, the twins who were in conflict with each other, even before they were born! There was so much conflict that Rebekah asked the Lord what was going on and He told her:

-When they’re born, it says Esau came out “red-looking” which sounds like the word for “Edom.” And that theme continues: Jacob is described as a quiet man who stays home, while Esau is the outdoorsman, the successful hunter, Esau is loved by his father while Jacob is loved by his mother. Their lives are continual conflict. One day, while Esau is out hunting, Jacob is at home cooking. Esau comes home “exhausted” and demands that Jacob give him some of the “red stuff” (adom) to eat. Jacob is shrewd and agrees IF Esau will give Jacob his birthright in return. In this culture, the oldest received the inheritance, and no one else did.

-Then, as Isaac is getting old, he realizes he needs to bless Esau, his inheritor, but Rebekah overhears and tricks Isaac by having him bless Jacob instead of Esau. When Esau finds out he’s furious and demands a blessing from Isaac. And look at the blessing Isaac gives:

-Church, don’t miss that the Bible is completely honest about the whole experience of humans! Genesis is basically a case study in family dysfunction! Dishonestly, backstabbing, deception, and abuse are normal!

-There is a bit of a happy ending to this story, at least the last biblical account of their interactions. Jacob runs away from Isaac and Rebekah and goes to live with his uncle Laban, ends up marrying his cousins (plural, and sisters, which is apparently not illegal at this time!), and grows incredibly wealthy. Eventually he leaves his uncle with his whole family and runs into his brother Esau again. But look at how this meeting begins:

-Just as God promised, there would be 2 nations that would come from Rebekah’s womb: Israel and Edom. Edom existed southeast of Israel, not an easy area for agriculture, as you can see in THIS picture, these are the mountains of Seir in Edom (which we just read about). These mountains served as a natural barrier and protection from other invading armies, which led to a misguided pride for the Edomites. They viewed themselves as essentially impenetrable at the time, which will be called out by God in this book!

-But the conflict that started in the womb continues down through their descendants! When Israel is led out from Egypt, they ask the Edomites to let them through and here’s how they reply. And on it goes! King Saul fights them, King David fights them, and then they revolt against King Solomon. But then comes the final straw. The Babylonians attack Judah in 586 BC, and instead of coming to help their brother, the Edomites attack Judean forts near their territory. And this event seems to be what Obadiah is talking about when he brings this prophesy to them. So let’s get to the book:

  1. Judgment on Edom (1-14)

-Same as Joel, we know nothing about Obadiah apart from his name! As I shared at the beginning, the general beginning is the name of the prophet followed by the kings who were on the throne during their ministry which gives us dates for many of the prophets, but Obadiah is one that gives us none of that information!

-Let’s look at what God condemns them for right away: pride. Think of what Prov. 16:18 says (as I heard it from when I was growing up, the KJV)

-Pride is trying to build yourself up, looking down on others so that you can feel superior to any and everyone else. And pride is sinful. At its core it is an anti-god approach to life. CS Lewis wrote an entire chapter of Mere Christianity dedicated to the sin of pride, listen to what he says:

-Here he’s saying that pride leads us so far as to even look down on God. Pride was at the root of the devil’s fall because he was looking down on God! And that same pride that affected the devil affects us today, which is where he continues:

-Since God is so far above and beyond us, it requires us comparing ourselves to the right standard. Think of what we read in Amos 5 last week where Amos sees God standing with a plumbline. A prideful person is the one who accuses God of using the wrong standards! Pride is what leads to Jacob being a trickster and stealing his brother’s birthright, pride is what leads to Esau being careless about his birthright, and friends, humanity hasn’t changed in the last 4,000 years, because pride is still one of the prevailing sins in the world today. Our entire economic system is built on pride: assuming that people will always be wanting more and more and building bigger and bigger. I don’t have any alternative proposals because that has been the root of economics for a LONG time, but I think it’s true.

-But it also runs contrary to the way of Jesus. Look at how Lewis describes a humble person: do you see the contradiction here? He’s not saying you have to think less about yourself, he’s saying true humility is on a completely different plane: it’s someone who is finally able to get beyond themselves and start thinking about and caring about others. Tim Keller (who loved Lewis) summarized this idea this way:

-God’s way is completely different than what the world wants us to pursue. Edom is representing the way of the world which means they stand condemned by God. And this serves as a warning for us too! We can be so prideful that we refuse to admit we need help. If you haven’t heard the name, there’s a former Nebraska senator named Ben Sasse (who’s also a Christian) who in December announced that he had been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. He has enough accolades and worldly success that he announced it through a press release, but I’ve been so edified reading or hearing various interviews he’s conducting as he’s facing his end because he’s shared that it’s causing him to look back on the ways pride affected him and family, and unless we admit that we’re needy people, we won’t ever get to that point. Edom is condemned for the sin of pride, we are still prone to that same sin today unless, through grace-driven effort, we work to shift the focus from ourselves to others.

-Think back to what I shared at the beginning of Edom’s refusal to help when Judah was being attacked. Instead of helping, Obadiah says they stood aloof, they wanted some of the riches, they acted just like the rest of the nations. Which means Edom is included in the punishment that’s coming on the nations:

  • Judgment on the Nations (15-18)

-One of the brilliant ways Obadiah works to get this point across is he uses the word “day” repeatedly building up to this: 8, 11, 12, 13, 14 before landing on THE day. I spent some time when I preached on Joel talking about the day of the Lord, we’ll look at it in more detail in a few weeks, but the short summary is during this time, God’s people were waiting for the day of the Lord because they viewed it as the day God will destroy all their enemies, but Obadiah gives us a different perspective.

-After increasingly building up these various days, we get to the Day of the Lord as being near, and this time instead of being against God’s people it’s against “all the nations.” But Obadiah doesn’t stop there with a warning, he tells them exactly what they can expect here: “as you have done, it will be done to you,” this is the opposite of the golden rule! If they had followed the golden rule they’d be in a different place at THE day. He goes on to talk about drinking, and in many cases throughout the Bible this is referring to drinking a cup of judgment.

-And look at the end of these nations in the next verses:

-Where will deliverance come from? Mount Zion, Jerusalem, from Judah. Everyone who oppressed God’s people will find themselves oppressed, just as Edom pursued the survivors of Judah, they will be pursued, attacked, and will have no one left. And just as we saw last week at the end of Amos, this is guaranteed to happen because the Lord has spoken.

-But unlike last week, that’s not where Obadiah ends!

  • Restoration of God’s People (19-21)

-While Edom mocked Judah when they were destroyed, the irony is Edom is eventually destroyed by the same nation. So as they did to Judah was literally done to them. Once again, Obadiah repeats a word through this section to drive home a point: possess. Just as all these nations were once possessed by others, the day is coming when God’s people will “possess” all these other lands.

-The last verse alludes to the book of Judgeswhere the Lord raises many “saviors” or “deliverers” to help with the various enemies who were fighting against God’s people. But none of them could ever establish a full and lasting dynasty for the people, they all fell short. Even David’s dynasty only lasted through his grandson! But someday David’s descendent will come to Jerusalem to rule over everything. Does anyone have any ideas who that might be?

  • The Inclusion of the Nations

-Friends, this is where God’s guidance of all the events in human history shines the brightest and should give us the most amount of hope! See, here God predicts the complete destruction of the nation of Edom, of Esau. But what does that look like in reality? In 553 BC, Edom was conquered by the Babylonians (remember the 2 mountains: close future and far future). The close future was they had the same punishment as Judah, the FAR future tells a different story, and to understand exactly what’s taking place there, we need to go back to the beginning.

-Adam and Eve are provided everything they need to live a flourishing life. They are in perfect harmony with God, themselves, and the rest of the creation. God gave them 1 boundary: don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. See, when they were created, they only knew good! But pride (as we saw earlier) led to them wanting to take the place of God. Satan tempts them with that reality by telling them God didn’t have their best in mind and if they eat from that forbidden fruit they would become like God. What they failed to realize was they already were!

-Look at what God says: when does God say they would die? In the DAY they eat from it! But do they die? No! Friends, we can’t even begin to comprehend God’s grace toward His creation. Now, some people will say that they spiritually died, and that’s probably a part of it, but God doesn’t stipulate that it would be limited in any way, He says they will die. Period. Instead, what happens? God gives them grace, He clothes them (just like He had done in creating them). Friends, our God is the God of life, not death! He hates death, death is an enemy to be defeated! And we also see that reality with Edom.

-For the far future of Edom, after they were conquered by the Babylonians, there weren’t many descendants left, and the Arabs from the east eventually began encroaching on their territory, so they moved into the land of Judah which became known as Idumea. Now, there’s 1 horrible Idumean that comes up in the Gospels, his name is Herod, and we read about him in Matt. 2. He’s the one who tried to kill Jesus when He was a child. The family conflict between Jacob and Esau carried down all the way to Jesus! Herod slaughters any boy under 2 years old around Bethlehem. One final act of Edom belittling Judah. But Herod dies, and Jesus lives. The way of Esau only offers death, while the way of Jacob leads to life.

-The only time Idumea appears in the Bible is in Mark 3. This is towards the beginning of Jesus’ ministry where he’s starting to preach and share the gospel message with the nations. But look where some of these early followers came from:

-Friends, God’s invitation is to repent and come to Him! Apart from His mercy and grace the only future hope is in judgment. But we see that NO ONE is too far away for Him to save! Everyone is invited to align themselves with God’s family and have a different trajectory for their life. WE, all of us, were once like Edom. We were once enemies who were doing everything we could (willingly or unwillingly) to fight against God’s plans for the world. Paul talks about this reality in Col. 1. Some translations use “enemies” for where this says hostile. God doesn’t save people because He likes the way they look or they somehow clean up their act enough to get His attention. God says at the time when we were his enemies, Jesus still reconciled us to Himself. And now, how does God see us? As holy, faultless, and blameless. Even Esau, Edomites, and Idumeans are welcome to be a part of this new family of God, which means there’s hope for everyone in this room! But it demands a choice, and not just a one-time choice, a daily working to continue following after Jesus every day, which is what Paul goes on to say here: grounded, steadfast, not shifted. Friends cling to Christ!

-And when we are saved, what is the correct way to respond to God?

  • The Response of God’s People

-When God acts, we worship. This has been true since the very beginning of creation! When God brings Eve to Adam he sings a song of praise. When God leads His people out of slavery in Egypt, and then defeats the Egyptian army in the Red Sea, look how they respond:

-“He has become my salvation.” Friends, that’s the song every one of us should be lining up to sing! All these people that we read about in the OT could only dream of what we get to experience every day of our lives! Our habits, our practices, our routines should all be shaped by the reality that the Lord is our salvation. That’s the focus and goal of every Sunday morning. One of the themes that has come up through the prophets already is that we need to get God right, and in order to get God right, we need to get our worship of God right because our worship shapes and informs the way we see God.

-If you pay attention to it, you can see we have a rhythm that guides each Sunday. It’s rooted in historical Christian tradition, which is guided by Scripture, and looks to be acceptable to God. One of the words that drives me NUTS that often gets connected to worship is “authentic.” It was one of the core values of the previous church I was at, and I died a little inside every time I had to say it, because we don’t just come to God as we are, we come to God through the shed blood of Jesus Christ, otherwise God will not accept our worship! Look at how the author of Hebrews puts it: By referring to “consuming fire” he’s talking about an event in the OT where Aaron’s sons offered to God “strange fire” and were killed, so we need to be careful in our worship of the one true and living God.

-The second key comes from Col. 3. We begin seeing the reality that we are 1 body, which tells us this is something we’re supposed to do together, with 1 voice, united together (and by the way, be thankful, even if you don’t like the music. Especially if you don’t like the music!)

-What does Paul say the focus of our worship should be? To let the Word of Christ dwell richly among you. One great question to ask of any church you visit is: how long does it take to have the Bible opened? I had a guy who did NOT like the music we sang at church, and he made sure I knew it! He would stand in the aisles with his arms crossed staring at me anytime we sang a “new” song, and would sing as loud as he could anytime we sand an old song. Instead of only focusing on what we like, we should focus on what the song teaches us about the Bible. AND music is supposed to be a way we can teach and encourage each other (which means we should be able to hear each other singing)

-Do you see the variety Paul talks about too? Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. There isn’t only 1 style of music that can be used to worship God. “And whatever” anything else we do should bring honor and glory to God.

-Friends, our entire worship service is important. We have announcements at the beginning so we can know practical ways to love and care for each other, we have Scripture read to orient our hearts to God, we respond to who God is through singing. We gather to confess our sins because when we confess our sins God is faithful to forgive our sins and cleanse us. We remind each other truths from the Bible in recitations, catechisms, creeds. We corporately pray together for various needs in our body. We have exhortation and teaching from the Word of God, and we respond to that exhortation with more singing. See, part of the reason we sing after the message is because we need to respond together to the truths we’re learning from the Word. I hope those songs give time for the truths that we’ve heard go from our heads to our hearts, and then we end with a benediction from God’s Word before being sent to live out the new reality we’ve learned together with our hands.

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by mikethestrand on March 1, 2026  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on March 1, 2026

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2026/03/01/obadiah-sermon-manuscript/

Amos – Sermon Manuscript

-All these angry men are calling out various ways God’s people aren’t living up to His standards. So last week we saw in Joel a warning about “The day of the Lord,” that idea comes up again this week in Amos, but with a slightly different focus. Amos is all about justice, worship, and God. This was a challenging sermon for me to condense down because there’s SO much in this book! So I’ll be for sure be doing a “Sermon Scraps” (video tomorrow where I talk about what ended up on the cutting room floor) to talk more about it. But as we walk through this book today, pay attention to what this teaches us about true worship of God that He loves, how God defines justice, and how it all goes back to the character of the one true God.

READ/PRAY (Amos 4, pg. 813)

  1. What is Social Justice?

-One of the things we have to talk about when in order to properly understand Amos is social justice. Now, for some of you, your ears may be pricked and you might be nervous about where this is going because those 2 words aren’t supposed to go together, and anytime they do it’s smuggling in a whole host of secular ideologies that are against the Bible. That may be true in some cases, but I’d like us to potentially have some of our thinking related to that term stretched so that we can better understand what Amos’s message is, as well as some of the implications for us today.

-First – by itself, I would hope no one is opposed to the concept of social justice. Justice, after all, is inherently social in its outworkings. There can’t be justice unless there’s at least 2 parties involved in the process (which means it’s social)! Unfortunately, our world has taken this concept, smashed those 2 words together without thinking through how we can get true justice, and forced it to mean something that we wouldn’t. We’re going to wait a few weeks to really dig into what the Bible says about justice (that’s the theme of another minor prophet!), but one of the keys that we need to be aware of is that we don’t get to define justice, justice is determined by the Creator of the universe.

-Second – social justice isn’t something new that just developed in our culture and nation. As you’ll see through our walk through Amos, God cares greatly about social justice, about ensuring that societies (groups of people living together) are marked out by justice as He defines it: care for people who can’t care for themselves.

-A couple thoughts on this from other people to share with you, and why we’re talking about it today. First, from Peter Gentry, whose book I recommended at the beginning of this series:

-We have a number of things like this in our language. Think of the phrase “by and large” or “try and do” they’re referring to the same thing, and if you break the 2 words apart you lose the original intent of what is being said. Similar with the prophets when they use “justice” and “righteousness.”

-I think the key verse from this book is Amos 5:24, and what 2 words are right next to each other. Justice and righteousness! Amos is saying they need to be marked as being a socially just society!

-Jesus talked about this reality, too. Think of what He said when He was asked what the greatest commandment was, His reply in Matt. 22 was:

-Here we see 2 realities that are connected to each other. First, we must love God. But then the love of God has to be made visible in our love for our neighbors (vertical AND horizontal). And do you see that Jesus says this second command is like the first? That is, if you truly love God, you will truly love your neighbor, which means you will care about the society being marked by justice.

-In our denomination, we’ve had this conversation over the last number of years! There are people that have accused the EFCA of being “woke” or “social justice warriors,” so the EFCA responded by writing a statement titled “Where we stand in the EFCA.” And our church offered a class where we walked through each one of the 8 statements on there (you can google it to read all of them if you want, I’m just going to use the first one for today). But friends, these issues matter! We MUST talk about them in the church, AND talk about them carefully, because otherwise we won’t know how to truly love our neighbors. So here’s the statement from the EFCA:

-Did you notice that social justice in this context is in capital letters to signify a specific thing? This is a whole methodology that contradicts Scripture in foundation yet still tries to get at the same goal of what Jesus offers us. For this thinking, everything is condensed down power dynamics between the oppressed or the oppressor, and the goal is to elevate the oppressed while you penalize the oppressor. But think that through to it’s ultimate conclusion: if you just continue penalizing one group and elevating the other, don’t they at some point switch places? Suddenly the formerly oppressed is now the oppressor. What do you do then? Do we just keep bouncing back and forth over time? This isn’t a sustainable way to live!

-The Bible gives us a different picture. It says all of us are responsible people who can be both oppressors and the oppressed, and sometimes at the same time! The Bible gives us a model of redemption where the person who has all the power and influence willingly lowers themselves to identify with the oppressed and then free them and elevate them back to a place of dignity and honor. The Bible argues that the oppressed or oppressor dynamics don’t get to the deeper reality of sin that’s affects all of us! 

-To summarize this point: our God is a God of justice, and He wants His people to be people of justice (who reflect Him to the rest of the world). That means that one of the places that we’re called to pursue justice is social (with no capital letters!). That’s what we say when we pray the Lord’s prayer, where we ask that His kingdom would come on earth the same as it is in heaven (and heaven is the place where perfect justice reigns and sets the direction for everything that takes place). 

-We need to keep this in mind with everything we’ve talked about so far: if you remember Hosea, the focus of that book was justice between us and God (vertical), in Amos the focus shifts to justice between each other (horizontal)

  • The Message of Amos:

-Who was Amos? Amos’s name means “to carry a burden or a load” which once again gets to the purpose of the book where the role of follower of God is to help carry the burdens of others. But his self-description here labels him as a “sheep breeder” (some of your translations may say “shepherd”) the word he uses is not the typical one used of shepherds, in another place it’s used to describe a King, so it’s a shepherd of a LARGE flock. He also describes himself later on as taking care of sycamore figs, and sycamore trees grew near the coast, so it’s likely that Amos was a wealthy man who was able to speak to many of the excesses in the culture because he knew it well. Another reason scholars think Amos was wealthy is because this book is written with a high level of skill. He uses irony throughout to make his point, he also writes very carefully which signifies a high level of education. Finally note that it says the WORDS of Amos, of what he SAW, which is a good way of summarizing the book: words against Israel accompanied by visions for Israel.

-Just to situate ourselves, Amos identifies himself as prophesying during the reigns of Kings Uzziah & Jeroboam, 2 years before the earthquake. No one knows when this earthquake took place, but the first readers would have known exactly what he was talking about. This makes Amos a contemporary of Jonah, Hosea (who we studied earlier), Isaiah, and Micah. Here’s a picture I’ve shared before of where the prophets were stationed, Amos is called to go north to Bethel to prophesy.

  1. Judgment on the Nations (1-2)

-The judgment begins with a note that this is coming from the Lord who is coming from Jerusalem, not Bethel or Dan, the competing religious sites in Israel. 

-There’s some debate about how to summarize the ways God’s indicting the nations, but do you notice that they all begin the same way? 3, then 4. 7 throughout the Bible refers to perfection, so it could be saying they’re perfectly evil. The book of Proverbs also uses this phrase regularly, so it could also be a common phrase that the people would have used and understand that has been lost to time! In Proverbs it always is followed by the correct number, this time it’s not, which just makes it even more confusing! 

-1 thing we DO know is the ordering is significant to communicate a specific point. If you look at this map, you can see how the judgments are handed out. Damasus – Gaza, Tyre – Edom. Who’s in the middle of that X? And then we start circling in from there: Ammonites – Moab – then we get to God’s people at 7. And remember what I just said about 7 referring to completion in the Bible? This is where the people would have expected the Lord to stop! And we know from Amos 7, that Amos also was prophesying in Bethel, which means his journey looked like this: 

-For all these, the people of Israel would have been celebrating! AND surely that would be the end of it, because 3+4 is 7, so obviously Amos was building up to Israel being the one true remaining group. But that’s not where he stops, is it? And not only does it not stop, but Israel gets the longest condemnation!

-And I think this serves as a picture of how we can summarize the reason for God’s judgment: because of a lack of social justice towards other people. Do you see the description here? People who are righteous (morally upright citizens) are being sold to build out wealth, those who are poor are being sold to buy a pair of sandals, and it gets worse! They step on the poor as they pass by, grinding their faces into the ground, and get in the way of the needy for their own self benefit. And this is probably one of the more mild descriptions of the ways people are being treated. 

-I’ve shared these pictures before, but the nation that’s the biggest threat to the people at this time is the Assyrians. I got to visit the British Museum in London a couple years ago and saw some unbelievable treasures, including these doors. You can’t read it, but the plaque on the right side of these doors says, “Enter the palace of the Assyrian king, ruler of the world’s first empire. The sculptures in these rooms are from the royal capitals of Nineveh, Khorsbad and Nimrud.” Wood doesn’t last the few millennia it would take for me to see them, so these are replicas of the originals, but they do have the bronze bars that held them together (those last a little longer). Here’s just 2 of them: on the left you can see a field of people being crucified on stakes, and on the right you can see the slaughtering of children. What do you think seeing that every day on your city gates would do to the psyche of a civilization? And this is the world in which God is calling these civilizations out!

-Compared to this way of living, Israel’s sins seem minor, don’t they? They’re “only” alienating the poor, not murdering them brutally, right? But that’s not how God sees it. Of all the nations, Israel should know better! And that’s where Amos spends the bulk of the rest of this letter:

  • Words to Israel (3-6)

-The difference between Israel (and Judah) and all these other nations is they know better. God’s covenant stipulations and expectations weren’t given to anyone else, just Israel, and how is Israel living? No better than the rest of the nations! And God says He will hold them responsible for it. God says that at Bethel (means “house of the Lord”) He will punish them, the alternative sites of worship have become places of sin, and it’s because they’ve living in luxury while they ignore or take advantage of the poor. See, they’re so wealthy they have both winter and summer houses, their houses are full of beautiful (and expensive) things.

-And this begins the contrast God will make in these chapters between their acts of worship to Him and their lack of lives of worship marked by care for the suffering and marginalized. We’ll talk about this more later, but as we walk through this pay attention to what God expects from His people in regard to the worship of Him. Do you think God cares how we worship Him? 

-The excesses continue in Amos 4, where Amos compares women to cows of Bashan signifying that they are healthy with excess. Meanwhile, these women who live in excess oppress the poor and needy. But it goes on, they not only oppress the poor, they also make demands of their husbands. So God again invites them to come to their places of worship to continue in their sin (insert joke about Bethel here)

-And look at what God says they’re doing at these places of “worship.” All these things listed are things God expects them to do! But not at the expense of the poor and needy. It’s not enough to turn God’s commands into a checklist so that you can ensure you’re “good enough,” God actually expects you to live an entirely different life.

-God’s condemnation continues in chapter 5, but with a twist of irony. I just want to briefly point out the continuity between what we saw in Joel last week and what we see in Amos this week. Remember that topic of “the day of the Lord”? Here it is again! The people are expecting that day to be amazing, but that’s the opposite, and Amos lays some irony on thick to explain: imaging running away from a lion and run straight into a bear! Yikes! Or he finally escapes into his home, leans against a railing and is bitten by a snake! This is supposed to be funny. 

-And this comparison continues through the end of the chapter, and builds to what I think is the primary point of this book. Once again, God is calling out their acts of worship as useless, but it doesn’t just say He’s not happy, it says He HATES them! Their offerings are pointless because He won’t accept them, and He plugs His ears when they’re using music to try to worship Him. 

-Instead the people are supposed to pursue justice and righteousness for everyone in their nation, and only if they pursue those things (which remember can be summarized as social justice). They must care for the poor among them. And that same drumbeat continues through chapter 6.

  • Visions for Israel (7-9:10)

-God then reveals some things to Amos by giving him visions. First locusts sent from God to destroy their crops, but Amos begs God to relent and He does. Then there’s a vision of fire destroying the land, and Amos again begs God to stop and He does. Then there’s a vision of a plumbline, where God hands the plumbline of His standards up to the people and no one can measure up, no one is aligned to God’s perfect expectations (even though He told them how they should live!)

-After these visions come a brief interlude where Amaziah, the priest of Bethel comes out to confront Amos, but Amos continues prophesying and speaking down to Amaziah.

-The visions continue in chapter 8, with a basket of summer fruit. The Hebrew word for “summer fruit” (qayits) sounds similar to the Hebrew word for “end.” (qets) God’s way of saying the end is coming. Finally, the last vision is the Lord standing beside the altar where He promises the destruction of all the people.

  • Restoration (9:11-15)

-But that’s not where this book ends. After chapters of judgment and destruction, the book ends looking far into the future where God promises to completely turn the tides of the destruction, but it only comes about by the repentance of His people.

-He says He will rebuild, restore, repair the house of David. But remember back in the beginning when it seemed like the bad news was going to stop before it got to Israel, now the reverse is true, the blessing won’t stop with Israel, it will go out to ALL the nations! Everyone can become a part of this blessed community where true justice reigns! And look what that day will look like:

-You won’t be able to wait from planting to harvesting, the wine will flow in abundance. God’s telling them they think they’ve seen prosperity now, but they’ve seen nothing. And all this is God’s doing, no one will be able to take them away from their land. And this book ends, appropriately, with God having the final word. He has spoken, this will happen.

  • Amos for Us Today

-What’s the point of worship? Why do we meet here every week? I’ve asked this question before, but it really comes to the front in this book: when we gather as God’s people, as the church, is it for believers or for unbelievers? That’s one of the biggest questions churches ask! But it’s the wrong question, because we gather for God. So then the question becomes: was God honored in our worship today? Unfortunately for many people today the only metric is: did the music emotionally move me? That’s the wrong question to be asking, God says that’s what he hates! Instead, what Amos teaches us is that worship is meant to change us, to make us more like Jesus. That means sometimes you might feel a little uncomfortable here because you’re being stretched to change! That’s not a bad thing! So instead of rating our worship services either on how much you liked it or how much it emotionally moved you, let’s think about whether or not God was honored and glorified through what we did.

-The inclusion of EVERYone. God has commanded His church to go out to the ends of the earth, but what we might miss it that wasn’t a new message! God’s plan from the beginning has been that He would be the God of the entire world, but it requires people who are going out to share that message with others. AND 

-One of the ways we demonstrate that reality, that we’re truly worshipping God is that we care for the poor and marginalized. This is not optional for Christians! The only option is which of the poor and marginalized is God calling you to. I heard someone in a parenting talk say that God told is to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, and every morning when I wake up I have a house full of both of those things, so for those of you with kids, this command is for you every day! AND for all of us, none of us are excluded from the command to love our neighbor, and work to bring God’s true peace and justice to bear in our world today. What is God calling you to do to accomplish that goal? I’ve talked about this before, but one of the best ways for you to care for others is by sponsoring a child. Our denomination supports kids through Global Fingerprints, and they’re doing some really cool things across the world! Maybe it’s coming to help with Project Count on Me on Saturday, maybe it’s creating a “blessing bag” that you keep in your car to hand out to people who are begging on the streets. And maybe it’s as simple as inviting someone over to your house. There’s all sorts of ways we can do this, I’m just beginning to scratch the surface here, but I’d encourage you to take some time to pray and ask how God wants you to carry out His mission of reaching out to EVERYone. 

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by mikethestrand on February 22, 2026  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, Sermon, Worship
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Posted by mikethestrand on February 22, 2026

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2026/02/22/amos-sermon-manuscript/

Joel – Sermon Manuscript

-One of the interesting things about these prophets is that all their names have specific meanings that tend to correlate to their role. Hosea’s name means “salvation” or “deliverance” which shows the way God’s people were saved or delivered from their sins. Joel’s name means Yahweh is God. But did you know the Jesus wasn’t the name of God’s Son? Jesus’s name in Hebrew was actually Joshua, which means “Yahweh is salvation.” So when the angel appears to Mary, he tells her that she should name her son Joshua because He will save His people from their sins. So why do we call Him Jesus?

-When the OT was being translated from Hebrew into Greek, there were some words that were transliterated (moved from Hebrew into Greek without translating, each letter for the corresponding letter in Greek). We saw this last week when our Bible’s transliterated the names of Hosea’s children. So Jeshua in the Hebrew became Iesous in the Greek. Then English came on the scene, and the first English translation put the name as Ihesus, which in the KJV became Iesus. So Jesus comes from a transliteration of a transliteration, and because of the impact of the KJV, we refer to Him as Jesus in all our English Bibles today.

-We’re going to look at the significance of Jesus’s name today, and it may surprise you that it comes up in Joel!

READ/PRAY (pg. 807)

  1. The Day of the Lord

-One of the repeated phrases throughout this book is, “The Day of the Lord,” a future moment where God would come in judgment to pay back the enemies of His people. It’s used in a number of other prophets in the OT, but it also makes some appearances in the NT. Some people call it just “that day” or will refer to it as “the great day of the Lord”

-Talked about in Isaiah, Ezekiel, Amos, Obadiah, and most explicitly in Zephaniah. Now, this gets to one of the biggest questions surrounding Joel. Think back to last week when I talked about the dates of these books. Many of them begin with the name of the prophet, followed by the kings who reigned during their ministries, see here’s the first verse from Hosea. Compare that to the beginning of Joel. So there’s debate about where we should historically locate Joel, since there’s similar themes to some other books, is Joel using terminology from them or are they borrowing language from Joel? If you remember this chart from last week that placed the dates of the various prophets, you can see a question mark next to Joel. The big event in Joel is a famine due to a swarm of locusts, which could place it in any of these centuries.

-We’ll talk about this more thoroughly when we get to Zechariah, but I think we need to build a foundation of this “day” that the prophets are talking about here to help us understand the message of Joel! 

-At the time, the Israelites were anxious for the day of the Lord because it was viewed in a completely positive light, where the other nations who had defeated God’s people would be judged. But the message of the prophets is that the judgment would be negative, not positive! Look how Isaiahdescribes this day:

-And this isn’t just an OT focus, look how Revelation both describes the day and what that day is referred to as. So instead of being a positive thing, the prophets warn us that that the Day of the Lord is going to be terrifying! And where that Revelation passage ends is the question Joel will help us answer: Who can stand?

  • The Message of Joel

-The focus of this book is trying to prepare people for the day of the Lord by using the picture of the current disaster from locusts as a picture of what will someday be coming from an invading army.

-Now, because it’s the Bible and probably the most studied and dissected book in the world, there’s debate about what’s being talked about! The debate is what exactly is Joel talking about, and is it different between chapters 1 & 2, or is he just talking about the same event? Either Joel uses locusts to describe an invading army, or there’s no army he’s just talked about how destructive the locusts are, OR 1 chapter is locusts and 2 is an army of people. Again, it doesn’t help that we can’t specifically date this book, which slightly complicates figuring out what exactly Joel’s talking about. BUT I would take the position that Joel 1 is referring to a real ecological disaster that serves as a picture of what an invading army would do in Joel 2, followed how God will redeem and restore His people in Joel 3. Remember, Joel’s name means “Yahweh is God,” and it fits with his primary message of God’s upcoming judgment of the wicked and restoration of the righteous.

  1. Judgment in the Day of the Lord (1:1-2:17)

-The first reminder is that this event is supposed to be significant for the people, significant enough that it becomes a part of the family story. What’s amazing, to me, about this is that throughout the Bible, God commands His people to repeat stories down through the generations. 

-2 brief examples. My mind has been in Joshua a lot the past few weeks, and one of the amazing stories in that book is that the nation is able to cross the Jordan river on dry ground because God stops the river from flowing (similar to what He did when they left Egypt). Once the whole nation had crossed, God tells Joshua to take 12 stones from the middle of the river and bring them to their camp, and then set up another 12 stone memorial in the middle of the river as a reminder of what God had done for them. And notice how God describes it: 

The nation is supposed to talk about God’s provision for them.

-Second is in Deut. 6, as God tells His people how they’re supposed to live (just so you keep this in mind from last week, don’t miss that the one true God doesn’t leave us in the dark, He tells us how we should live!) And look what God says they’re supposed to do with these words: repeat them to your children. This is God’s way of saying: know your history, know your story, so that you can know how you got where you are today. AND as we see in Joel, don’t just repeat the good stories! Share the difficulties and struggles God has taken you through, don’t just give your kids or your friends the Instagram reel of your life, talk about the times and seasons where you weren’t sure if God was going to show up. 

-I’m not sure if you know this yet, but life is HARD! And one of the things I think we need to teach kids is that it’s possible to navigate and persevere through difficult things. Sometimes the difficulty is because of our own stupidity, and sometimes things just happen to us, but let your kids know that you survived!

-In the case of Joel, what has happened that the people had survived is a plague of locusts. Just a few years ago, locusts were actually in the news because in Kenya they were facing the destruction of their crops from locusts, the BBC called it “The biblical locusts plagues of 2020.” And look just how complete this plague is for Joel 1:4:

-Nothing is left, they’re facing starvation in ways that we can’t begin to comprehend today! And when their entire economy depends on agriculture this is like facing the great depression of 1930s (close enough that we have to specify which century now!) Joel goes on through this chapter to say the grapevines have been ruined, fruit trees are destroyed, even the animals are grieving and groaning. 

-And this was something that God had promised! Remember to last week where I said the primary role of the prophets was to remind the people what God had said and to call them back to uphold their end of the covenant? God always keeps His Word, both for His blessings and His curses. And in Deut. 28, God says:

-And what’s the proper response of the people? They’re supposed to wake up! (5), grieve (8), be ashamed (11), dress in sackcloth and lament (13), announce a sacred fast and a solemn assembly (14) Why? Look at vs. 15. This is the first time that phrase is mentioned. And unfortunately, even though this day is terrible, it’s not THAT day! It’s near, this plague is a picture of the judgment and devastation that will come from God on THAT day, so brace yourself! Look at the way the Lord is spelled out in your Bible, do you see the smaller font, but uppercase letters? In the OT that’s the way our modern Bibles note where the divine name “Yahweh” is being used, you can see it previously in vs. 14, 9, & 1. If the letters aren’t capitalized it’s using a different Hebrew word.

-And that warning continues in chpt. 2, he doubles down on the reality that the day of the Lord is coming, and look at how he describes it in vs. 2, and part of the reason I think this is referring to something in the future is because of his description of something that “never existed in ages past and never will again.” He’s using the plague as a picture of what THAT day is going to look like.

-And to see how complete this destruction is, look at vs. 11. Nothing can stand in the way of this army, nothing can stand against them, leading to God asking the rhetorical question: who can endure it? The answer is no one!

-And friends, apart from God’s miraculous intervention that’s where we’re stuck. Paul in Eph. 2 describes us as dead in our sins. If God hadn’t brought us from death to life no one would be able to stand in His presence. And we know that about God! The fact that we preach a “gospel” which means “good news” means there must be hope in the midst of this destruction, right? Let’s see the way God answers that question, who can endure?

-God’s people can, if they follow through on God’s commands to seek repentance. And do you notice that Joel calls out a false repentance? Friends, how easy is it to act remorseful but not actually be repenting? To grieve that you got caught, not that you were sinning. God invites us to repent and provides a way of dealing with that sin, not just looking the other way and ignoring or penalizing and holding it against you but casting it as far as the East is from the West. And how often do we see a fake response in our world? People apologizing “if you were offended,” or apologizing for hurting you, but not admitting that what they did was wrong. And that’s only if someone actually apologizes! Think of what we’re seeing with the release of all these Epstein files! I’ll be honest, it’s pretty hard for me to take most of the apologies seriously when these people have had years or decades to apologize, but they waited. Is there actual regret for what they participated in, or is it merely posturing – putting on a show so you look good to others. That’s the kind of “repenting” that God is calling out here. He wants true repentance from the heart, not a show of repentance without any inner transformation.

-And notice how it describes God: gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in faithful love. Church – this is why it’s so important for us to have good theology, a good grasp on who God is. Since we know that God is gracious and compassionate we can respond with repentance! If God was malicious or angry we should be afraid to admit we’re sinners, but that’s not our God. Our God is slow to anger and overflowingwith steadfast, faithful love (Hebrew words chesed which is very hard to translate). Sally Lloyd Jones calls it: “Never stopping, never giving up, unbreaking, always and forever love.” Think about that comparison: slow to anger. God’s first reaction isn’t in anger, it takes Him a LONG time to get angry. But God’s first reaction to true repentance is forgiveness. He’s slow to anger but QUICK to forgiveness. And if you think about that, isn’t that exactly what you’d hope for from Him? You don’t want him to be quick to anger and slow to forgiveness because we’re ALWAYS going to sin! If He weren’t slow to anger we’d be toast!

-Then with that reminder of who God is, the priests can call people to a true repentance (vs. 15-17) where once their sins are dealt with, God can be with them again.

  • The Mercy of the Lord (2:18-3:21)

-Now that the people know what God is like and they move to respond in repentance, how does God respond? Just as He promised! He will restore everything they’ve lost. God spares His people because they have responded in repentance. 

-God says He will repay His people for the lean years. God’s blessings will pour out on His people, but even more importantly than the blessings: 

-God will be present with His people. They won’t be looking to idols as their source of comfort anymore. BUT that doesn’t happen on this side of Jesus’s return! Which is what God goes on to predict, and this gets us to those near and far future fulfillments that we talked about last week but hold onto that for just a minute.

-The next key to Joel is that when that day of the Lord comes it will be marked by a revival among the people. Look at what He says in 28-29:

-Previously, God’s Spirit only indwelt people for a short period of time, not permanently, and it was primarily those who were tasked with leading the nation (kings, priests, prophets). But now God says He’ll pour out His Spirit on ALL humanity, and when He says ALL he means it! Sons and daughters (suddenly there’s no gender divisions in salvation), old men and young men (suddenly there’s no age or generational divisions), and male and female slaves (suddenly there’s no class or economic distinctions). God’s Spirit can live in any and every one! I think this is what Paul’s talking about in Gal 3:28 when he says: 

-And back to Joel, that’s what God says too: EVERYONE. 

-The final chapter gives the other perspective of the day of the Lord. There’s a different response from God to those who don’t turn in repentance to God. If you look at the footnote of your Bible, you’ll see that Jehoshaphat means the Lord will judge. God is reminding His people that even if it looks like the nations around them are flourishing in their defeat of them, the end result will be completely different for them. God will respond to their lack of repentance with judgment. But even in the midst of that judgment, look at how God describes Himself for His people: 

-A refuge and stronghold, a place where they can be protected and preserved from the incoming judgment and destruction of the nations. And look how God promises to pour out His blessings on His people:

-In order to understand how we should respond to this book, I think we need to see how the NT writers interpret Joel’s words, so there’s 3 key passages that I think help us understand what God is teaching to His people through all time:

  • The Use of Joel in the New Testament (Acts 2; Romans 10:13; Revelation 9)

-2 key changes that Peter makes:

-Peter says it is IN the last days, where Joel says “After this.” Peter is saying this is the sign you’ve been waiting for! The last days have started NOW, but those last days aren’t fully realized, just like the 2 mountains.

-He also adds in 18 that “they will prophesy.” Peter is saying what is taking place is prophesying, we think it’s just the future, but Peter is showing us that it is speaking in the power of God in unique ways, sometimes speaking to what’s happening right now. 

-More importantly, after quoting from Joel, Peter does a bit of logic building in the Greek to point out exactly how this salvation comes through a name. In the Greek, the word for Lord is kurios (no special marker in our English Bibles), so he begins with a reference to Yahweh from the OT, then he goes on to talk about God raising this Jesus in 32. Then he goes on to equate Jesus with the Lord (this is a key verse Jesus uses to describe Himself in Matt. 22) and lands by saying in vs. 36: God has made this Jesus the kurios, the Lord God. 

-The people are convicted, and they ask what they should do, and what does Peter say? Repent and be baptized (those are connected to each other), in what name? The name of Jesus. The promise that those who call on the correct name will be saved was hidden to Joel, but with the arrival of Jesus has been revealed! We know that name! We know who we should call to if we want to be saved!

-This is exactly the same argument Paul uses in Rom. 10.

-Lastly, just so we can begin to understand the way the day of the Lord works, listen to one of the things John sees in Rev. 9. 

-And there’s more descriptions of these locusts in later verses. In Joel, the locusts are described as lions (1:6), complete destruction in the front and back (2:3) perhaps like a scorpion, like horses specifically war hoses (2:4), their sound is described like chariots (2:5). Do you think there might be some parallels between what God revealed to both Joel and John? I tried emphasizing this point when I preached through Rev. in 2024, but how much of Revelation do we misinterpret because we don’t catch these OT references and allusions? And what if the verses in Revelation are supposed to remind us of what we just talked about as an application from Joel? Unless you call on the name of the Lord, you will be destroyed.

-So friends, as we conclude this sermon, the question before you is: what’s going to happen to you on the Day of the Lord? Today we’ve seen the reminder that unless we repent and believe in the name of Jesus we will not be saved.

-Peter says that there is no other name we should look to for salvation, there’s no hope for salvation from anyone or anything else.

-And because God is slow to anger, Paul tells us in Rom. 2:4 that that trait is God’s kindness and is meant to lead us to repentance. If you repent and believe, then the Day of the Lord is something to get excited for! It’s the day where our faith will be made sight, where the spiritual realm will be visible to us, where we’ll see our Savior and King returning to bring us home!

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by mikethestrand on February 15, 2026  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on February 15, 2026

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2026/02/15/joel-sermon-manuscript/

Hosea – Sermon Manuscript

-I’ve been looking forward to this series for a while! Since I came here I’ve been trying to alternate between OT & NT, trying to cover an assortment of genres and themes. Last time we were in a minor prophet was 2021 when I preached through Amos. This time I’m going to take a different approach, we’re going to look at 1 entire book each week, looking at the themes of the book, see what they teach us about God, and how we are to respond as God’s covenant people today. 

-If you didn’t pick up, I just said a “Minor prophet.” When we hear that we generally think of something like the minor leagues in baseball, we hear it as if they’re “lesser than.” When the Bible was being compiled into parchments, all 12 prophets were put on 1 scroll because they were smaller, it was often referred to as “the book of the 12.” So when you heard minor prophet, if it helps, just replace the word minor with “smaller.”

-One note for you before we read the text, we’d been doing a monthly memory verse, I’m doing something different with this sermon series – instead of a monthly verse, there will be a weekly key verses that I think helps summarize the content of the book. If you want to continue memorizing them, by the end of this series you’ll have a good grasp on this section of Scripture!

READ/PRAY – Hos. 1 (pg. 797)

  1. Why and How Should We Read the Prophets?

-Before we dig into this book, we need to do a little work on the why and how we should go about understanding these books, because there’s some things that to us are confusing, but to the original audience would have been completely understandable. These books recall specific historical events, reference various kings and nations, and address God’s desires for His people in how they’re supposed to behave. If we don’t know those events and kings, we’re going to miss some of what the prophets are trying to teach us. First the why, then the how: 

-The first and most important reason why we should read and study these books is fairly obvious, but I don’t ever want to assume it. These books are a part of God’s Word. We don’t have the right to pick and choose the portions that we read and study and ignore the rest. Yes, these take some more work for us to understand and apply to our lives and context today, but they are all inspired by God, which means according 2 Tim. 3:16, that they are “profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness.” Because they are a part of God’s inspired Word, we read them!

-Now for the how to read them. The first thing we need to do is some history. One of the books I read for this series said there are 2 primary reasons we struggle to interpret these books: One is all the authors assume you know everything that has taken place in Israel’s history, the story of God’s people. The other is that they’re dealing with current events to their day. So we need to know both the story of Israel and the events that happened that the prophets are focusing on. These books were written over the course of 3 centuries: 8-6thcenturies BC. 

-One of the most significant events in Israel’s history was the splitting of the kingdom. The heyday of Israel was under the rule of King David, the shepherd boy and giant slayer. But the glory days only lasted for 2 generations. David’s son Solomon was led to worship false gods by his variety of wives and concubines, which led to God taking tearing the nation apart, but for Solomon’s son, Rehoboam. 10 tribes went to the north and appointed another king (Israel) 2 tribes stayed in the south and were called Judah (if you need help remembering all this, ask the kids, they’ve been learning this story with actions!)

-The king in the north (Israel) was worried that if his citizens traveled to Jerusalem regularly to worship he would lose their allegiance, so he set up 2 alternative worship sites with their own priests and altars, 1 in the far north side of the nation and 1 in the far south side of the nation (1 Kings 12). 

-Because of their idolatry, God punishes the people, first with the Assyrians in the 9th century BC, who eventually destroyed the northern kingdom in 722 BC (hence why most of the prophets focus on Judah), then came the Babylonians, then the Persians, and under the Persians, a group was allowed to return to Jerusalem and begin to rebuild the temple.

-If you want to read about this history, you can find it all in 1 & 2 Kings! So these prophets are writing and preaching during the reigns of various kings. 

-The other important aspect that sits as the backdrop to all the prophets is an assumption that everyone knows about the covenants God has made with His people. I like the way this professor from TEDS defines a covenant:

-A few things to note. See that it’s enduring, that means there is no sunset clause to this covenant. There are no “outs” and no expiration date, it’s eternal.

-Then notice it’s a “binding obligation to specified stipulations” that means there are expectations for how the parties are to behave toward each other. This is why the first 5 books of the Bible (referred to as the Pentateuch) are so important for us to know if we want to understand the prophets. Those books give us the stipulations God had for His people. And with that covenant, God promises His people that if they keep their side, He will bless them, provide everything they need, and protect them from other nations. But it required them to obey.

-Next, it’s taken under oath. Both parties are agreeing to this, and if they break their side of the covenant they will be punished. 

-Ratified, made sure by a visual act. Think of when you buy a house, you sign your life away dozens of times, it’s a visual act with a visible reminder (all those pages with your signature that show you’ll pay off your house in a date that feels incredibly far in the future).

-There are 5 key covenants in the OT: Noah, Abraham, Israel, David, and New. Just so we can see what they look like, we’ll take a look at 2 of them, the first and the last. Noah, after the flood had receded and the earth was dry, walked out and God made this covenant with him. It’s between God and all the earthly creatures, God won’t destroy the world again with a flood, and humans are expected to honor life. And the sign for this covenant is a rainbow.

-Repeatedly throughout the Bible, God’s covenant partner fails to uphold their side of the bargain. So the culmination of the covenants in the Bible is one that God’s people CAN’T break. God says He will literally write His law on their hearts, their desire will be to obey Him and God will forever deal with their sin. Notice God says “The days are coming” So often when we hear the word prophet our minds jump to telling the future, and there is some of that in here, but most of the time the prophets aren’t talking about the future, they’re calling out the ways the people aren’t living up to their end of the covenant and reminding the people what God said the consequences were going to be!

-The way I’ve often heard this said is foretelling vs. forthtelling. Foretelling is talking about the future and forthtelling is speaking out to a group of people. A majority of the prophets are doing a lot of forthtelling and only a little (if any) foretelling.

-One of the things that we need to realize about the foretelling though is that the prophets don’t always distinguish between the near and far future. Some of the future are things that are fulfilled in Jesus, and other future things are things that will be fulfilled at Jesus’s second coming, but from where the prophets are looking they can’t see how long the difference is. I was taught this when I was in CO, so this was the illustration they used to teach me this concept. I lived on the front range, which is the flat part at the base of the Rocky Mountains. From the front range, you look at the mountains (like this) and it looks like just a wall directly in front of you, you can see there’s some smaller hills building up to the big mountains. But what’s harder to see is those aren’t the only mountains. There’s valleys in between, some other hills in between, so if you were to go up closer to that mountain you’d start to see this is a whole lot bigger than it looked like from the plains! So my (pretty rough) attempt to draw this would look like this:

-The prophets predict that something good is coming in the future as 2 distinct future events, but they don’t know the space between those 2 events. The point of the foretelling is for God to tell His people about these 2 realties, a near future hope and a far future hope. This will make more sense as we work our way through the books,

-Another component to the prophets is sometimes God has them do show & tell. They’re commanded to act certain things out as an illustration, a picture of something God wants them to understand, and some of them are kind of weird. In Isa. 20, the prophet Isaiah is commanded to walk naked and barefoot for 3 years to show that the king of Assyria was going to defeat Egypt and Cush and lead the captives out naked and barefoot. In Hosea, the prophet Hosea is commanded to take a wife of promiscuity and marry her as a picture of how Israel is treating their relationship with God. 

-Lastly (after this we’ll FINALLY look at Hosea) we need to understand the job description of a prophet. This is Moses speaking, I know we don’t often think of him this way, but Moses is the model that all future prophets are supposed to emulate. Notice who appoints a prophet? God does! And whose words does this prophet share? God’s! And what’s the consequence? God will hold all those who hear it accountable.

-What’s most amazing about the one true God is we don’t have to guess what He thinks! All the other gods at this time were mysterious, people didn’t know what they expected or how to please them, so they had to continually try different things. The only true and living God doesn’t work like that! He sent prophets to tell His people what God wanted, He sent His Son to tell His people what He wanted, and He left us His Word so that we could know what He wants, and He will hold us accountable to His commands in His Word.

  • A Picture of Love (1-3)

-The first thing we learn is the name of this prophet and the time period he was called to serve. And remember the 2 separate nations, so you’ve got 4 kings of Judah listed and 1 king from Israel. You can read about this in 1 Kings 14-15. This also shows us that Hosea was a prophet at the same time as Jonah, Amos, Isaiah, and Micah. 

-And Hosea’s ministry starts out with a bang! God commands him to marry a woman of promiscuity and have children with her. This is meant to serve as a sign to Israel about how God views the nations lack of commitment to and trust in Him.

-And unfortunately for the kids, they also get to serve as part of the signs to the nation. Up first is Jezreel. This is the location of bloody battle where King Jehu kills the whole house of King Ahab for their wickedness (2 Kings 9). It’s a little bit like being named something like “Iwo Jima” it would remind everyone of a specific battle. But the names get worse.

-Gomer has a daughter and is called to name her “No mercy.” Her whole life her name was supposed to be used as a reminder to the nation that God wouldn’t have mercy on them. And remember what’s distinct about Gomer: promiscuous. Did you notice that for the first child it says that she bore HIM (Hosea) a son, but these next 2 kids it doesn’t mention Hosea, it just says she conceived. Which means it’s possible that these other kids that Hosea is raising aren’t even his!

-The last child is named “Not my people.” God is rejecting them for their lack of faithfulness to the covenant.

-In chapter 2, after explaining the significance of this sign, God explains why He views Israel as an unfaithful spouse, and it begins with a play on the names of Hosea’s children: My people and compassion or mercy (same words!). God will reverse their fortunes if they repent. Israel has looked for their prosperity in other gods expecting them to provide for them. God says they don’t realize that He’s the one who’s provided everything they need. They’re assuming God’s blessings AND trying to get more benefit and wealth from other gods (particularly Baal, the fertility god, who was believed to bring bountiful harvests).

-But God’s not giving up. He knows there will come a day when they won’t look to anyone else, the people will come to God and acknowledge His provision in their lives. 

-In the last chapter of the sign, Hosea has to go buy back Gomer, pull her back out from her promiscuity and be faithful to him. Just like Israel will spend time in exile, but eventually come back to God and pursuing Him.

-Before we take a look at God’s accusations against Israel, I want to think about some ways we need to respond to this. I read a book recently that talked about “main character syndrome” referring to people assuming that they’re the hero and center of every story. If you want to see an example of this, just look at TikTok. People read a story like this and automatically assume they would be Hosea who would faithfully pursue a straying spouse. But friends, if we were in this story, we would be Gomer, playing the harlot. We run to other things instead of God to attempt to find meaning and purpose in our lives. We distract ourselves with devices so we don’t have to sit in silence and wrestle with our sins. See, the point of the Bible is you’re NOT the hero! You CAN’T save yourself! That’s why Jesus had to come. Augustine writing in the 4th century said, “You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” Humans are born to be in relationship with God but because of sin there’s a chasm that separates us, so we look to anything to fill that void that nothing except God can fill it. Which is why we need God to continue pursuing us, which is what God talks about through Hosea next:

  • The Meaning of Love (4-14)

-This whole book is broken down into 3 sections, all starting with the same Hebrew word to begin a new list of indictments from the Lord (2:2 “rebuke” 4:1 “case” 12:1 “dispute). We already looked at some of these things from chpt. 2, and that same pattern continues throughout the book. God lists accusations against the nation, then talks about the judgment that will come as a response to those accusations, and lands on the ultimate restoration. 

-The whole nation is corrupt, even the priests are joining in the sin! (4)

–5 God accuses the people of looking to Assyria, another nation, for help instead of trusting in God to protect and preserve them.

–6 The people refuse to repent from their sin

–7 uses some ridiculous pictures to describe Israel’s trust in political alliances. The first is they’re like a baker who doesn’t know what he’s doing! If you’ve ever made pancakes, it says they’re like a baker who only bakes 1 side of the pancake and doesn’t bother flipping it. Similarly, one side of Israel is being destroyed but they’re refusing to admit it.

-The second picture is like a dove that flies randomly around, running to any nation they think might help them in the moment, so God will catch them in a net

-The last picture is they’re like a faulty bow, imagine a bow that can’t shoot straight. They keep aiming for the wrong things instead of looking to God.

–8 is the closing arguments of this section, God lists out all the ways they’ve sinned against Him, so He will destroy them. 

9-10 God shares how He will destroy the people for their sins, which are exactly like the sins of the previous generations, there’s nothing new, it’s the same old story.

11 but God refuses to give up on His bride! Matt. 2:15 quotes this verse in reference to Jesus, showing us some of the ways that God works in similar patterns throughout Scripture. Hosea’s readers would have heard this referring to the Exodus story, we hear it referring to the New Exodus in Jesus, which shows us that ultimately this story is pointing us to the coming of the Son! And look at how God talks about His relationship!

12 starts a new round of accusations where God compares the nation to their father Jacob, who was a liar and a trickster who selfishly tried to take advantage of others and improve himself

13 God shares the penalties that will be coming for their continued disobedience

14 God shares what redemption will look like for the nation if they return to the Lord in repentance

-So how should we respond to this book? God tells us He is the source of good, the only one who actually loves us and wants us to be blessed. So friends, what else are you tempted to look to for how you should define the “good life”

-Politics. I feel like our political world is being turned upside down right now! It’s hard to know who to trust! I’m completely fine talking about what’s going on in the world, but I’m not interested in either playing the blame game, or playing the justifying game. The 2 things that most trouble me are “they” and “yeah but.” If you ever want to meet and talk about what’s going on in the world, let’s do it (face to face), but don’t lump an entire group of people together and call them “they,” as in “If only they would…” “They” are human beings who are worthy of dignity, honor, respect, and love simply because they’re humans. The other piece that’s off the table is “Yeah, but what about…) (fill in the blank on any issue that you think is worse than what’s being discussed. Friends, if you can’t disagree or find issues with whatever your political party says, then I think your political party is shaping you more than the Bible is.

-Technology. Technology offers us the illusion of control and ease. We can ask ChatGPT to solve problems for us (or even worse, ask to be counseled by it!) We tend to look to technology to usher in a utopian vision where all is right with the world and we can sit in a circle singing kumbaya. How many people are looking to technology for salvation? Most of this is above my head, but I read a lot, so did you know that if it weren’t for AI and the companies making AI the stock market would be in a major recession? There’s our picture of our whole country placing our hopes in technology! 

-We could also talk about financial resources, are you looking to retirement, a house, a car, a trip to bring healing and wholeness to your life? I just talked to my kids about this: if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these things.

-At the end of the day, we either get God and blessing, or we run from God and receive neither Him nor blessing, we get only death

-Even as we are determined to sin and run to earthly things to satisfy us, God is even more determined to redeem and restore us. Did God ever stop pursuing Israel? And will God ever stop pursuing us?

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by mikethestrand on February 8, 2026  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Church, History, Relationships, Sermon
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Posted by mikethestrand on February 8, 2026

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2026/02/08/hosea-sermon-manuscript/

Praying with Paul – Sermon Manuscript

-Last week was an “off” week with my ordination, thank you for your support through that! I’m thankful it’s done, and for the encouragement that came from that whole process. One of the most fascinating things to me about it is how infrequently we look to actively encourage each other! I can guarantee that no one around you is feeling TOO encouraged right now! Which gets us to this week’s topic: the prayers of Paul.

-Final week of this brief series. The first week we looked at the prayerbook of Jesus (the Psalms) and were reminded to use the Bible as a guide to our prayers. The second week, Micah took us through the Lord’s prayer as a helpful template to guide our prayers, but not as the only prayer we’re allowed to pray because no other prayer is exactly like it. Then, we looked at the need to pray honestly, to bring our true requests to God because He already knows them! 

-But there’s more to prayer than what we’ve seen so far because we’ve basically stopped at the Gospels, which is only the first 4 books of the NT. Paul mentions prayer regularly throughout his letters. Another inspiration for this sermon series is this book “A Call to Spiritual Reformation” (now retitled “Praying with Paul”)

-But before we get to those, I want to remind us of another reality about prayer. Friends, God hears your prayers. If you are His child, He hears every single one of your prayers. And how do I know that? Because of Revelation. I was reminded this week of a couple passages from that book (which we studied in detail over 2024, so if you want to hear that series you can find it online). 2 things: Revelation is meant to give us a glimpse of reality from God’s perspective, and it’s meant to be a blessing and encouragement to the church. It’s one of the most comforting books in the Bible, because it tells us that God’s actually in control! But prayer is mentioned in 2 passages, 5, and 8. 5 tells us the same thing that 8 does: that the elders and creatures have golden bowls of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. And look at what chpt. 8 tells us these prayers do: go up into the very presence of God. Remember what I said about this book being a comfort to us? This is what I mean! Our prayers fill the presence of the throne room of God! Keep that image in mind as we continue:

READ/PRAY (1048)

  1. What Does Paul Pray For?

-I did a search of the word “pray” (so it includes prayer and praying) but doesn’t include things like ask or intercede to try to limit a little bit. Paul uses it in 52 verses throughout his 13 letters, the only ones that don’t have the word pray in them are Galatians and Titus. Here’s the breakdown of where Paul uses pray (see the focus in Ephesians?) I’m going to begin by simply reading every single one of these verses, and as I’m reading them (they’ll be on the screens) see if you notice any common themes or ideas popping up throughout them all, and then we’ll go on to talk about 2 things that stood out to me from these texts, and how we should incorporate those ideas into our prayers. I’ve already highlighted each use of pray so you can easily see them on the screen. Are you ready for this? We’re going to go pretty quickly through them!

-Did you notice any themes pop out through them all? What stands out to me is how different this is from so many of my prayers, and the prayers I hear from other people. How many of our prayers are focused either on our prosperity or our physical health? Don’t get me wrong, those aren’t bad things to pray for, James commands us to pray for the sick and Jesus tells us to ask God who will answer us, but what is the percentage of our prayers that are focused on those things instead of the things we see Paul mentioning that he’s praying about?

-Not only that, but Paul seems to assume that his prayers will be answered. There’s no waffling, no giving up, no complaining about a delay to His prayers. He expects that God is going to respond to his requests.

-This is why I began with a couple quotes from Revelation. Friends, do you realize that your prayers are brought before the throne of God like incense? Like imagine it’s summer or fall, the 2 months where it’s tolerable to live in MN. You decide to have a bonfire. You get the grahams, chocolate (only Hershey’s), and mallows ready, build the perfect tee-pee with kindling, and you’re off to the races. When the fire dies down, and you have to douse it with water at the end of the evening, what do you smell like? Smoke! Even after you shower and change your clothes, right? I feel like my beard smells like smoke for at least 2 days after I’m at a bonfire, which is why I’m digging the new smokeless firepits!

-But combine that bonfire reality with the description of our prayers in Revelation: our prayers linger around the throne room of God like smoke on our bodies after a bonfire. Friends, God isn’t distant or aloof! He hears every prayer, and every prayer lingers on Him because He cares for us.

-One of the passages that has been lingering in my mind this week is Rom. 12:15. Within 5 minutes this week, I got 2 different texts, 1 from someone who got a new job offer that we’ve been praying for for 4 years, and another one from someone who was told he would be cut to part-time effective Monday. How do you deal with those 2 bipolar realities? I think I’ve shared this from the pulpit before, but in 2022 Cara had 2 miscarriages before the twins came along. And as she was going through one of those miscarriages, I was walking into church when someone stopped me to share that they were expecting another child. And a part of me was angry and hurting, and at the same time I was grateful that this couple was expanding their family and rejoiced with them. How do we live in those 2 realities, and often at the same time?

-Friends, welcome to the church! God calls all of us together to be a body, to love each other through every circumstance, and to recognize that not everyone is in the same place as us. Some people are coming in excited and thankful, and others are coming in weary and exhausted. And Paul reminds us to pray for everyone! But back to my original question, what things is he praying for? The 2 things that stood out to me this week were thanksgiving and growth or maturity. We could use a number of verses to see these modeled, but for simplicity sake we’ll look at the end of 1 Thess. and the beginning of 2 Thess. (same spot in the pew Bible!)

  • Thanksgiving (1 Thess. 5:16-18)

-I remember reading this in college, when this verse really popped out at me because my friends and I were always trying to figure out God’s will. How do you know which major to pursue, is this girl the right one for me to date, where should I work in the summer? There was 1 person I knew who wouldn’t do anything until she felt like the Lord had prompted her to, so she would skip class if she thought the Lord hadn’t told her to go. It was weird! This verse tells us that God’s will isn’t some mystery that we’re supposed to try to figure out, like a maze where there’s only 1 right path, and if you get off, you’re done. God’s will for all of us is a different way of living, God wants a certain character to mark out His people, we’re not supposed to live in fear of falling out of God’s will for us, we’re supposed to be chasing after Him, taking steps closer to Him each day, and then live a normal human life.

-But in order to understand what we’re supposed to give thanks for; we have to take a look at the larger context of this letter. This exhortation comes at the end of this letter where Paul has written to remind the church to remain faithful in following Jesus. They were worried that those who died would miss Jesus’s return, so he writes them to remind them that they’d know when Jesus comes back, they literally wouldn’t be able to miss it! In addition, because Jesus is coming back, He expects His people to act and behave a certain way. 

-Paul begins with a reminder to respect or honor the leaders of the church. We looked at those last Fall in much more detail in our walk through 1 Timothy. Thessalonians doesn’t articulate what the leadership is, but it shows that Paul expects leaders in every church. If you weren’t here with us last Fall, what Paul lays out in 1 Timothy is 2 church offices: elders and deacons. Elders focus on teaching the Word and praying for the church, deacons focus on the physical and practical needs of the church. You can go back to those sermons to learn more if you’re interested!

-And then included in this section is a reminder to be at peace. Now, I’m not sure how you’re feeling right now, but right now this feels like nonsense to me! How can Paul command the church to be at peace when the world is full of conflict and tension? Is there any way this can match up to reality? The good news is that answer is YES, but the bad news is it’s only in this community of believers called the church, as soon as we walk out those doors and go back into the world we’re not going to see peace. And church – we can be at peace because of what Jesus Christ has done. 

-Paul also tells us how we’re supposed to engage each other as brothers and sisters: warn, comfort, help, and be patient. Anytime we’re interacting with someone, we’re only seeing a glimpse of what’s going on in their lives, and many times people are bringing hurts and insecurities with them wherever they go. So as we talk to fellow Christians, we should be thinking about where they’re at. Do they need a warning to ensure their life is reflecting what God has called? Are they discouraged and in need of comfort? Are they worn down and weak and need some help? And regardless of where they’re at, we’re commanded to be patient. Church – this is how we help each other take 1 step closer to Jesus each day! Growing more like Him takes a lifetime, which is why we need the reminder to be patient with each other. 

-If we’re able to come alongside each other, we’ll be able to ensure that we’re pursuing with is good for others. As Christians, we’re supposed to forgive others as God has forgiven as. In fact, did you notice in the Lord’s prayer that we ask God to forgive us AS we forgive others? So we’re commanded to ask God to only forgive us as much as we forgive others. I hope you’re quick to forgive!

-Then we get to the primary verses for us from this section! Rejoice, pray, and give thanks 24/7/365. This is God’s desire for us; it’s the way we’re able to live out all the previous commands. And Paul goes on to remind us where the battle is really fought: in the spiritual realm.

-Don’t stifle (quench, suppress) the work of the HS. Are there ways you’re doing that? Could be through dismissing promptings in your life, could be living in unrepentant sin, could be from not living in a church community that God has called you to engage in! A way we ensure we’re not stifling the spirit is by giving high regard to the prophecies (words from God) that are tested and true according to the rest of God’s Word! And friends, because we have the Holy Spirit living in us, and God’s Word to guide us, we should be marked by thankfulness on a daily basis.

-Lastly, if you go to the next page of the pew Bibles, we’ll see what else Paul asks for this church, and this will be quicker:

  • Growth (2 Thess. 1:11-12)

-Your theological term for the day is sanctification, that is becoming more holy. Once again, I think we need some broader context to understand why Paul says what he does in these last 2 verses. And if the theme of 1 Thess. is to not worry because they wouldn’t miss Jesus’s second coming because He IS coming, the theme of 2 Thess. is but not that soon! And ironically enough, this section begins with another thanksgiving, hence why I chose thanksgiving as one of the themes to emphasize in Paul’s prayers! But what is he thankful FOR?

-Faith is flourishing, mutual love is increasing, another way of saying that is Paul is giving thanks for their growth in the gospel. Once again, when’s the last time you gave thanks to God for someone’s growth in the gospel? Not only does Paul give thanks to God, he also boasts about them to other churches! 

-All these verses are 1 long run-on sentence in the Greek, so it’s an extended explanation of why from Paul. This church is persevering through persecution, and Paul reminds that that the suffering is worth it, because in the end God’s justice will be delivered to those who opposed God and His people. That’s the summary of vss. 5-10! Some people will bear the penalty, and others have had that penalty paid for by someone else.

-Because God’s justice is coming, Paul’s prayer for this church is that God will make them worthy, and that they will live out their transformed lives by doing good. It’s important for us to note that these good works don’t earn salvation and don’t even earn special recognition from God. We do good works because of our transformed hearts, not as a way to earn special favor from God. But we are supposed to be praying that our transformed hearts would be evident in the ways we live, by doing good works.

-And the last verse is the reason we pray for growth: so that Jesus would be glorified. Friends, prayer is useless if it’s only focused on us. The point of prayer is to align our hearts and minds with God, for Him to be glorified in our lives through our thoughts, words, and deeds. To look for ways for Him to increase as we continually look for ways for us decrease.

-So as we conclude this series what are the things I hope (pray!) you’ve taken away from it?

-First – learn how to pray by using the Bible! Jesus used it as his source of prayers, Christians throughout history have used it to know how to pray, and we should continue that tradition. The book of Psalms is especially helpful!

-Second – in the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus tells us how to have the correct orientation to our prayers. We start with God, acknowledging that He is God and we’re not, and only when we grasp that reality can we move to asking for our daily bread.

-Third – we need to pray honestly. Don’t hide behind walls or pretend like everything is ok when it’s not. God invites you to continually beg Him!

-Finally, this week we saw that Paul models that we should always be thanking God for all the ways He’s continually at work in us, through us, and around us. AND we should ask for continued growth for ourselves and our church body. SO THAT the name of Jesus would be glorified in us. All to His glory alone!

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by mikethestrand on February 1, 2026  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Church, Life, Sermon, Worship
Tagged , , , ,

Posted by mikethestrand on February 1, 2026

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2026/02/01/praying-with-paul-sermon-manuscript/

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