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Malachi – Sermon Manuscript

-This book is a perfect end to this series because Malachi is essentially giving an overview of what all the previous prophets had been talking about and shares what God is going to do when He comes (and keep in mind the 2 futures that we’ve been talking about a few times now throughout this series, 1 future of Jesus’s first coming, and another future of His second coming). We have the advantage of reading this after the first arrival of Jesus, we can read and understand this in some ways that the first readers would have lacked some clarity on. The way God chooses to reveal things isn’t always as clear as we might want them to be, but God does reveal His plans and purposes to us if we’re willing to put in the work to understand what He’s said!

READ/PRAY (pg. 849) 3:1-4

  1. The Message of Malachi:

-Remember last week that the latter half of Zechariah was pronouncements, oracles from the Lord. Now look at the beginning of this book:

-Our translation says pronouncement here, it’s coming from the Lord, some of your translations might say oracle, some might say message. We don’t know much about Malachi, and there’s debate about whether or not that’s even his name because in Hebrew that translates to “my messenger.” I’m going to go with it’s his name because of the 11 other books we’ve looked at in this series that all begin by naming the prophet.

-This book contains a series of 6 “disputations,” think of it like a courtroom where Malachi is taking an accusation from the Lord, then go goes on to present the counterarguments from the people, then he delivers God’s response and verdict. I served in youth ministry for 4 years, so this reads like a teenager rolling their eyes at their parents. And yes, each of the emojis corresponds to one of the books, so now that we’re at the end you can go back through and match them all up!

-Chiasm – symmetry to them with a focus on the middle, which is where the 3 points of this sermon came from! 1&6 go together, 2&5, 3&4, and right in the middle is the section we read together where the Lord is promising to send a messenger to prepare the way for the Lord’s arrival. Let’s take a look at the first and sixth “disputations” (or courtroom scenes) 

  1. The Righteous and the Wicked (1:2-5, 3:13-4:3)

-God begins with His love, which makes sense because we know from the NT that God is love. And the people’s response is HOW? Because they’re not feeling that love right now. Isn’t it amazing how so many modern questions and doubts people have come up in the Bible? It’s almost like God knows exactly how humans work.

-But it’s not just between God and humans that we see this reality. This is true in marriage, in parenting, in working (working is much less so because I’m guessing you’re not told from your boss that they love you, unless you work at a church!) But love has become so convoluted today that when most people today hear of love their mind goes to acceptance, and those are not synonyms! Love means you care for someone else and desire the best for them, regardless of how it makes them feel. That’s why discipline is a part of love. It would be unloving for me to let my kids get away with throwing a fit, or with running out in front of a car, or eating nothing but candy all the time. It’s similar with God, because God loves He will discipline. If there was never any discipline or correction in your life God wouldn’t love you. Hence the people asking God how He loved them.

-God says that He loved Jacob (who was eventually called Israel, who had 12 sons who became the heads of the 12 tribes of Israel), but Jacob was a twin, and not just a twin he was the younger twin. And in that culture, that meant Jacob wasn’t supposed to receive any inheritance or recognition, it was all supposed to go to Esau, but God inverted the normal ordering and gave His love to Jacob, but He hated Esau. 

-That’s another part that grates against our modern sensibilities, and maybe this comes across to you as harsh! What we miss is the judgment God is giving to Esau’s descendants (known as the Edomites) wouldn’t have been seen as overly harsh to them. We talked about this back when we looked at Obad. The prophet there talks about the destruction of the Edomites because of their lack of concern towards their brothers the Israelites. Actions have consequences, and a lack of concern for other humans leads to punishment from the Lord.

-This first disputation tells us that God’s standards aren’t the same as human standards. There’s nothing we can do to earn God’s recognition and favor, but when God blesses us with His favor, then He does expect us to represent Him and live righteous lives (unlike Esau) 

-The 6th scene jumps to 3:13. God begins by saying the people talk harshly against Him, and as we saw previously the people immediately ask “HOW!?” they ask the exact same thing here.

-This time, God says that the way they’re harsh is by assessing their obedience and service to the Lord through a human lens, instead of looking at their lives through the lens of eternity (as the righteous are supposed to do). The people are saying it’s useless to serve God, that they look around at other peoples who don’t even try to obey God and it looks like they’re all prospering and flourishing, that there’s no consequences to someone who ignores or tests God. But they’re not seeing the whole picture. I saw an article that Randy Alcorn wrote this past week (author of the book Heaven that I would encourage you to read!), that was titled “For the Christian, the future is always better.” 

-But maybe you feel the same way as the people here! I know there’s times and seasons where I do! Think back to the parenting issues I talked about earlier, in the short term it’s a LOT easier to just ignore my kids, to not correct them, to let them do whatever they want, but I have a longer goal in mind for them than right now. I want them to become responsible adults who can love God and love other people, which means you have to learn about delayed gratification!

-Just to make sure we get this point, God ends this section in vs. 18 by saying: do you see how you can tell who is righteous or wicked? One serves God, the other does not serve God. What do you do? Do you serve God, or do you refuse to serve Him and just work to serve yourself? That’s our way of looking at it, from God’s perspective the question is: are you righteous or are you wicked?

  • Unacceptable Worship (1:6-2:9, 3:6-12)

-Second and fifth scenes focus on worship, particularly worship that God will not accept. This focus throughout these books has been the biggest surprise to me. I know God cares about worship, I know He wants us to worship Him correctly, but I didn’t realize just how much it came up in even the minor prophets. And we’re not off the hook for this today! God brings up 2 specific issues of incorrect worship: 

-First, the animals. God says that there is honor given to someone in a position of authority, so sons honor their fathers, slaves honor their masters, but God isn’t honored by His people even though He is their father AND their master. What’s even worse is the people know better. In vs. 8 God tells them to try bringing that offering to the governor. They know He wouldn’t accept it, which means they’re treating God even worse than their political leaders. And on top of that (it gets worse!) look at what God says in the beginning of chapt. 2. This gets us to the second issue: not only are the people offering these lame animals, the priests are accepting them! The priests are supposed to be the ones who are telling the people how to live near this holy God and what it means to worship Him, and here they’re taking these unacceptable offerings and offering them to God. Look how God describes these priests in vs. 7-8: The priests are even more culpable because they’re leading people away and have violated God’s commands for them.

-And then God circles back around to worship in chapt. 3. Look at vs. 7: The tenth here is what was expected for the people to give to the Levites and was also used for the poor, that tenth (also referred to as a tithe) is viewed as God’s. He required the people to give it back to Him, so by not paying it they were robbing from God. But there is a level of irony to even marking out 10% as devoted to God because how much does God actually own? Hint: it’s much, much more than 10%, EVERYTHING belongs to God! He created it, it only continues existing because of Him, but by setting aside the 10% to God the people are demonstrating their trust in Him. God even goes on to invite the people to test Him out. If they prove faithful in their tithes, God will respond by opening the floodgates of heaven and pouring out His blessings.

-Because we live in the USA in 2026, this doesn’t mean that you’re guaranteed to live in a mansion and be a multi-millionaire. I hope some of you do get that (or are already there) because the church needs people who are wealthy and people who are poor to work together to show a picture to the world of the different classes of people loving and caring for each other, even though our bank accounts look different. Instead, what God expects from us is that we view everything as His and respond with generosity to those around us (church and others). I preached a series on this last Fall, so I’m not going to go any further on this today, but living obediently to God does affect our wallets. God calls us to respond to Him in faith and obedience, which is what the final 2 scenes are about:

  • Holy Living (2:10-16, 2:17-3:5)

-The middle sections (3&4) are connected to the worship that we just saw, but then God goes on to connect it to the way the people are living. The third one begins with the people crying out to God because He won’t receive their offerings (see how it’s connected to worship?) There are 2 issues that God addresses here: the men are pursuing marriages with women who worship other gods, which means (secondly) some of them are divorcing their wives to chase after these other women.

-The big key is that the horizontal relationships are a reflection of the vertical relationship. That means if we love God, truly love God, it necessarily means that we will love others and treat other humans with dignity, honor, and respect.

-The problem is that God doesn’t receive their offerings anymore, so they ask why, and it’s because they have acted treacherously against their wives. He goes on to say the point of marriage is to create godly offspring. Part of the reality is that just makes sense sociologically. Part of the reason Islams and Mormonism grows is because they have more babies than other religions!

-Vs. 16 has been mistranslated over the years and has led to some pretty big issues in the church. NKJV translates this verse as God saying that He hates divorce, but that’s not in the text, that’s adding a pronoun that’s not in the Hebrew and adjusts the verbal form from what is actually in the text. Our translation gets it right! Contextually, it’s better to think of the husband as the one who hates and divorces his wife as committing injustice against her. He has covenanted with her, and by divorcing her is unjust towards her. The reason this is important is because the church has previously said that God hates divorce, therefore all divorce is wrong, and I’m sorry, but that’s just not true. Moses gives stipulations for divorce, Jesus gives stipulations for divorce, and Paul gives stipulations for divorce. That doesn’t mean it should be the first option (or the second, or third), but it’s also not an unforgiveable sin. There are times where it is (to use the Malachi word) just to pursue divorce. And that’s where we need other people around us to help us navigate the complexities of living in this broken and fallen world, and unfortunately one of the realities of that broken world is divorce. And I know some of you have been affected by divorce, it is messy! And even the no-fault divorce that we have today is such a misnomer, because there’s always fault (and usually from both parties!). Divorce isn’t God’s intent for marriage, but He permits divorce because of the effects of sin today.

-Vs. 17 gives us another aspect of holy living that I don’t think we ponder very often, we get frustrated when people are blessed who aren’t following God, and we can tend to erroneously think that God is blessing their evil pursuits. I’ve shared this example before, but look at Michael Jordan, who I revered when I was growing up (but let’s be honest, what kid growing up in the 90s didn’t) He got to play basketball and hang out with Bugs Bunny. But when he turned 50 (in 2013), ESPN wrote an article titled “Michael Jordan Has Not Left the Building,” and it is heartbreaking. He said he would give up everything to be able to go back and keep playing basketball, which tells you what his god is! It’s wrong for me to look at his life and say I want what he has when I look at the fact that I have Jesus! I don’t need anything else.

-And in response to this accusation, God says “Just wait,” He’s going to send His messenger to prepare the way for the Lord, He’s going to refine and purify them so that they can be acceptable to God once again. But it requires them to live different lives than they had been living.

-The ending of this book is a great summary of the Bible, and it references the previous sections of the Bible! The law that was given to Moses (first 5 books), and then Elijah as representative of the prophets, which the NT tells us is fulfilled in the arrival of John the Baptist. I think the last 2 sentences are talking about the way the family was broken down in the days of Malachi, but with the arrival of Jesus a new family is born that doesn’t depend on us to uphold, but is completely dependent on God. And that’s where we need to think about how we apply what we’ve seen in these books to our lives today:

  • What Does Holy Living Look Like?

-First, Get worship right. Worship is us responding to God with all that we are and all that we have. As Jesus commands us, we’re to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. That’s a way of summarizing our everything. Jesus is quoting the shema there from Deut. 6. The Hebrew word “strength” is may-od which my Hebrew prof in seminary loved to tells us is “much-ness” or “exceedingly” I just love that idea love God with your exceedingly muchness! It doesn’t make a lot of sense in English, which is why our translations say strength, but it’s meant to convey ALL that you have and are. But when I say get worship right, we have to acknowledge that there are ways of getting worship wrong. We can focus on the wrong things, we can have the wrong motivations, we can even use our acts of worship to sin against God (as we’ve seen all over these prophets). We’re commanded to worship God not just on Sundays, but that worship is supposed to spill over into our jobs, our homes, our hobbies. All of those things are gifts and tools that God has given to us for our enjoyment, for our growth and maturation, and to be used to bring honor and glory to Him. 

-Second, Get family right. Malachi focuses on marriage and the overflow into raising godly children, but under the covenant that Jesus ushers in, we’re supposed to focus on a different family: the church family. The nuclear family had a HUGE priority in the 1st century (and rightly so!). You relied on your family to survive, to function, to work, it took everyone contributing. But Jesus begins a new focus in Matt. 12. We saw this reality in 1 Tim. Last Fall too. Paul says we’re supposed to treat older men in the church as fathers, older women as mothers, younger men as brothers, and youngers women as sisters. Friends, this church family has significance in our lives! Paul even goes a step further and refers to the church as the “household of faith” in Gal. 6:10. Do you view this church as your family?

-Third: get hope right. Set your sights in the right direction and on the right person. Friends, these prophets would have given everything they owned to experience what we view as normal and boring. If you have been saved, you have God living in you. That doesn’t mean life suddenly gets easy (in many cases it actually gets harder!), but it does mean that we have a different direction and goal to our lives. God repeatedly called these prophets to continue hoping in Him because He had made promises to His people, and God calls the same thing for us today. Even though we live in between Jesus’s 2 comings doesn’t mean our lives are easier, or that we need the reminders less. Church, God is in control! Nothing catches Him by surprise, nothing can catch Him unprepared or unaware. He has promised that He will return to fix all the brokenness and provide a place for you to live with Him forever. That’s what our hope is in.

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by mikethestrand on May 3, 2026  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on May 3, 2026

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Zechariah – Sermon Manuscript

-God’s people at this point at looking small and insignificant. They were under the rule of a different kingdom, the temple they had was described by God as “nothing” in comparison to the old temple. So the midst of that world, how do you think they were feeling? I would guess pretty discouraged. Things weren’t going their way, and they only had dreams about the way things “used” to be. We saw that last week when we looked at the people pining for the glory days!

-And in the midst of that discouragement, Zechariah gives us a different perspective from the Lord for His people, the message to the people is to hope. God is aware, God sees everything that’s going on, and none of it has caught Him by surprise! It struck me this morning, this is VERY similar to the message of the book of Rev., and not just because John uses all sorts of language and imagery from this book, but because the messages are the same: hope in God because He’s in control! We’re going to read the last chapter together:

READ/PRAY (pg. 848)

  1. The Message of Zechariah 

-Similar to last week, we don’t have a lot on the prophet, but we do have a lot about the timing of this word, dating it to Aug. 29, 520 BC.

-God begins by talking about the way the people’s ancestors angered the Lord. Their ancestors refused to repent, refused to obey God’s commands, and that’s the reason God sent them into exile. So this people now has a choice to make: are they going to obey God now, or will they be like their ancestors? If they repent and return to God, God promises that He will return to them. And we saw this last week in Haggai: even though God swore to Zerubbabel’s grandfather that his descendants wouldn’t sit on the throne, God redeemed and restored the Davidic line, which tells us there’s always the potential to turn back to God. But isn’t it interesting that this book begins with a call for the people to repent? The Lord is setting the tone for the rest of the book with this call. I liked one commentary I read about it that said that repentance always comes before blessing.

-The choice is in front of the people: you have 2 choices before you, either return to the Lord now and receive His blessing or be like their ancestors and face God’s punishment. But just to make the decision a little easier, look at vs. 5-6: where are those ancestors? They’re all dead! And where are God’s words? They’re being spoken over the people right now. God is showing His hand here, no human can last forever, but God is eternal, which means His Words are never fail or stop.

-And reading this from our perspective today, there is a sense of irony to this letter, because while the people repent here and turn to God, it doesn’t take long for them to go back to disobeying and disregarding God’s law. It’s almost as if they can’t help themselves and can’t escape the reality that they’re sinners! And I think we can see that today too. For those of you who are parents, have you ever found yourself saying something and then realizing you just became your parents? So much of who we are is caught by osmosis instead of carefully and intentionally worked through, and that’s true of all of us! That’s where Jesus offers something completely new and unique, where He offers us the Holy Spirit who works to transform us and make us more like Him. But it takes work, it takes a LOT of work! And part of the reason it takes a lot of work is because it means opening yourself up to others and allowing them to speak into your life, including the broken and messy parts of your life that you don’t want others to see. God brings us into a new family to expose us to new ways of living and moving so that we’re not just stuck doing the same old things our ancestors did. With the arrival of Jesus there’s hope that we can change and impact our future descendants, and I think this is why God says He punishes down to the 3rd and 4th generation but blesses to a thousand generations! 

-The point: God doesn’t change, His Words are always faithful and true, so if we trust & obey, we will be blessed by Him and we will be a blessing to others. That’s the starting point of this whole book, and then it gets weird. And I’ll be honest, I’m still not really sure what to do with all these visions he has! I trust God’s plan to have them in here, I believe they’re inspired and authoritative for us, but it was a struggle for me to work to interpret them this week.

  1. Visions (1-6)

-Zechariah is given a total 8 visions and at the end of 6 he’s told to do something that serves as a picture of a point God is trying to make. While this isn’t explicitly apocalyptic literature, it has apocalyptic elements to it, similar to Rev. Apocalyptic writings paint vivid pictures for us of various events that stretch us and force us to view things from a different perspective. Think of the difference between reading something versus seeing it on TV. Apocalyptic is meant to put flesh on the stories.

-One caution is to not try to force meaning onto the text. For example, the first vision includes a list of horses, as well as colors of those horses, but the colors don’t have any significance apart from being able to tell them apart. The point is what the horses do. Thankfully, if you’re confused as you read through it, you’re not alone, because Zechariah struggled to figure out what was going on, too! He repeatedly asks his angel guide what in the world he’s seeing. An overview of these visions is that the 1-5 point to God moving toward His people to bring healing and blessing. Then, 6-8 is God casting out sin and wickedness. Because there’s more to the book than just these, we’ll go through these as quickly as I can so we can get through the rest of the book!

-First vision: a man riding a horse standing in a grove of myrtle trees with 3 other horses nearby. These are sent by the Lord to patrol the earth, and they report to the Lord that everything is currently calm and quiet. And since the horses have returned, the Lord says that it’s time for Him to return to Jerusalem and bring prosperity again.

-Second vision: Zechariah see 4 horns who are a stand in for those nations who have caused God’s people to go into exile. But even though the horns look tough, God sends 4 craftsmen who deal with the horns so that they can’t stand again God’s people any longer. This serves as a reminder that God is more powerful than all the nations of the world, even though they look powerful, they can’t stand against God. 

-Third vision: a surveyor who goes out to measure Jerusalem, but he’s stopped because the restoration of the people isn’t done. Not only is it not done, but they won’t need walls because God will be their protection and their glory. And as we’ve seen multiple times throughout these prophets, God will call people from every tribe, and tongue, and nation to join His people, and He will live among all these people.

-Fourth vision: focuses on the high priest Joshua (we saw him last week), with the introduction of (in the Hebrew) “the accuser” (which is translated as Satan). But notice why Satan is there: to accuse. But He’s never even given the opportunity to speak, God rebukes Satan and then focuses on Joshua (who’s representing all the people here). The angel of the Lord takes his filthy clothes (signifying the removal of the people’s sins) and instead puts celebration clothing on him. This act is a picture that God is going to bring “The Branch,” a way of referring to the descendant of David who would fulfill God’s promises. And look how vs. 9 ends: the sin of the nation will be taken away in 1 day.

-Fifth vision, last one that deals with the blessing: Zechariah see a menorah, which is a lampstand with 7 lamps that is placed between two olive trees. The point of this image is that God will ensure that His plans come to pass, as the angel quotes in vs. 6. God is promising that even though they’ve only placed the foundation of the temple, if they rely on Him, it’s guaranteed to be finished. But Zechariah is still confused, so he asks about the olive trees, which are defined in vs. 14. Some think it’s referring to Joshua and Zerubbabel (civil & religious leaders), some think it’s Haggai and Zechariah, some think it’s Joshua & Zerubbabel who are pointing us forward to the Branch who will unite both roles of king and priest, then the oil that flows from the olive trees to the Menorah is the Holy Spirit who empowers this service, I think some of this is getting into the realm of speculation! The point remains: God will make sure this comes to pass through the means that He has planned. Now, this comes up again in Rev. 11 so we can’t just ignore it, but God could be using themes and patterns to bring about His plans, so I think He’s referring to 2 different people who are used to bring about His plans.

-This is where things shift, and in the sixth vision Zechariah sees a flying scroll that serves as a curse on the evil. Anyone who disobeys the words on this scroll are cursed, even though it may look like they’re going unpunished. This seems to be referring to the book of the law from Moses (Deuteronomy) and specifically Deut. 27:26. 

-The seventh vision: the focus is on a women of wickedness or sin who is in a basket and stuck there with a lid. She is then cast off into Shinar, far away from where God’s people live (think of it like a garbage dump). Shinar is important because it was both the place where God’s people were living in exile and where Babylon is (or Babel, where God confuses the people). This is meant to contrast with the 6th vision because the 6th one tells us each individual will be held responsible for their sin, this one tells us that God will also teach with sin and wickedness itself and cast them far away from where He will live with His people, and not only is it cast off from His people, those who aren’t following Him are going to look to it as their place of worship! There’s only 2 ways to live: either on God’s side or opposed to Him.

-The eighth and final vision is back to horses: chestnut, black, white, dappled horses driving chariots which are the 4 spirits of heaven going to patrol the earth and exert God’s rule over the surrounding nations who had often defeated Israel (Egypt to the south and Assyria to the north). This vision is picked up by John in Rev. 6as God’s continued oversight and judgment over the world at the end of time. Last time they brought reports to God about what was happening, this time He’s sending them out with his authority to accomplish his plans.

-We end this section with a sign-act: a crown (kingly rule) being placed on the high priest. He’s also called Branch (do you see the capital letter there) picking up the Davidic line: build the temple and reign, which most people take to mean that the coming Messiah is going to be both a priest and king (some other Jewish groups even took this to mean that there would be 2 different Messiahs, 1 who would be the priest to fix the religious side, and another who would be the king and rule politically) God’s plans are so much better and He sends Jesus to be both! 

  • Desolation or Restoration? (7-8)

-This section is marked off as distinct from all the previous parts we’ve read by not being about visions, but also because it’s 2 years later. And it begins with a question from the people of Bethel. Now, in order to understand what’s happening here, we need to think back to the very beginning of this series (so sorry if you missed it), but to catch you up, I said God reveals future things to the prophets, but He doesn’t always distinguish between the near future and the far future, so if you’ve ever been to CO you’ve seen the mountains off in the distance, but it’s really hard to tell how far away they are, how many there are, how much space is in between them, that’s the same thing with the prophets. They’re told what God is going to do in the future, but He doesn’t tell them WHEN. So some things God talks about take place, and are fulfilled, in Jesus, other things won’t happen until He comes back again in glory. So as we work through this section, we need to keep that reality in mind! Some of the things brought up are fulfilled in Jesus, other things are waiting for Jesus to return and fix all the brokenness in the world.

-Chapter 7 begins with a question about acts of worship. The people had taken to mourning and fasting on the anniversary of the destruction of the temple, and now that the temple had been rebuilt, they realized that it didn’t make sense to continue mourning the loss of the temple.

-But God knows their hearts, and He asks them a question: why were they fasting? God didn’t demand it, didn’t call them to it, it was something they had decided to do on their own. What’s more important that keeping these rituals they decided was to live lives marked by justice, bringing justice to their nation. God is basically asking the people if they’ve learned the lesson they were supposed to over the 70 years in exile, or if their hearts are still far from Him. 

-In chapter 8, the focus shifts from God asking the people the questions about their motivations to the future when God will bring blessing to the people. He says the cities (which have been laid desolate because of all the invading armies) will become places of peace and prosperity. And how is this blessing going to happen? God says how in 16-17: speak truth to each other, love your neighbor, sounds oddly similar to many of Jesus’s commands, doesn’t it?

-But it gets even better, look at vs. 19: fasts will turn to feasts and parties. Where there previously had been mourning and lamenting about how difficult things were, in this future time there will be nothing but parties! But we still have 1 more section in this book:

  • Two Oracles (9-14)

-You can see just be a quick glance at this text that this begins a new section, even the formatting in our Bibles is different! The first oracle (pronouncement from the Lord) is in 9-11 and focuses on the coming shepherd-king. The Lord begins coming through the way most of the invading armies came to attack Judah: from the north, and just like none of the nations could push back against the invading armies, none of these cities or nations can push back against the Lord. But what’s incredible about God coming in is that even as He comes in judgment against these nations, they will begin to follow after Him!

-And then God says something about how this will happen: the King will come on a donkey, that’s a marker of peace, the opposite of coming in on a horse (that means He’s coming in to fight). Can you think of anyone in the Bible who rode into Jerusalem on a donkey? We’re not that far past Easter; it was Jesus on Palm Sunday!

-In the next 2 chapters, God condemns the leaders of the nations by calling them poor shepherds. God also tells Zechariah to act out this reality by taking a flock and abusing them. At the end of his caring for this flock, he tells the people to pay him for his prophecies, but they only view it worth 30 pieces of silver (what a slave cost according to Ex. 21:32). And once again, this serves as a picture pointing us to Jesus, because Jesus was betrayed by the same amount.

-Second oracle begins in chapt. 12, same wording as we saw previously. This oracle begins with the Lord saying that people will try to destroy Jerusalem, but He will protect them, and then there’s a bit of a weird verse (10) and it’s weird because it seems to say that God Himself will be the one who is pierced. Do you see all the first-person pronouns that are being used? This would be completely unexpected! But it goes even further, look at the beginning of chapt. 13:

-A fountain will be opened that will wash away sin and impurity. If you’re thinking of an old hymn, this was the inspiration for it! “There is a fountain filled with blood, drawn from Immanuel’s veins. And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.”

-And God continues saying that this persecution will continue, and Jesus at the last supper in Matt. 26says this verse is about Him. 

-One last piece from this that points us to Jesus is seen in the last chapter. When “that day” comes, living water will flow out of Jerusalem, which Jesus says in John 4 is once again talking about Him. Friends, do you see how Jesus takes all this promises that God has made and fulfills them in Himself? 

-Now, besides being really cool in seeing how God revealed His plans, what should we do with this book? First, and most significantly is to rest in the promises of God! Nothing stands against His plans, no one can interfere, and He will remain faithful to everything He’s said.

-But secondly, is what do we do as we live in this time in between Jesus’s two comings? From Zechariah’s perspective, it was all in the future, but for us we live after the coming of Jesus, so I think there’s a few passages from 1 Peter that tell us what we’re supposed to do as we live in-between.

  • Living In-Between 

–1 Peter 1:1-2. First, Peter’s introduction tells us how we’re supposed to view ourselves. First as those chosen. It’s not an accident that you’re here today, and Jesus knew exactly what He was doing when He went to the cross for you. It was because He knew exactly what was going to happen.

-How are those chosen living? As exiles who have been dispersed abroad all over the known world. Just as God said in the past that He would draw everyone to be His people in Jerusalem someday, we’re looking forward to the NEW Jerusalem! Where there will be no separation between us and God. And just a reminder of who this God is, Peter says all 3 persons of the Godhead were involved in this: The Father plans, the Spirit indwells and sanctifies, and the Son purifies with the sprinkling (living water and fountain that we saw in Zechariah)

-The second text: 2:11-12 – since we’re strangers and exiles how do we live? We abstain from sinful desires. That is, we work to keep in step with the Holy Spirit who works to daily make us more holy, who daily works to make us more like Jesus.

-Not just do we run away from something, we’re also supposed to run towards something: good works. Our good works do 2 things, they show us as different from the world, so they’ll complain about us, and they serve as a witness to the world of what God is like. I don’t know about you, but every time I think about that reality, I cringe a little bit. I am supposed to represent Jesus will enough that when other people look at me, they see Him. 

-The last text comes from the end of the book: 5:6-9 (if you want, go read this whole chapter this week, the first verses talk about the kind of leadership God wants taking place among His people). First, we start from a position of humility, acknowledging that we’re not God, but He is. Then He will bring us up at the right time, and we do that by casting all our cares on Him because He does care about us. This gives me all sorts of confidence that God’s going to see me through. I can trust Him completely because He does care for me.

-At the same time, that doesn’t mean it’s a passive sit back “let go and let God,” it’s a daily work to be sober-minded and alert. Pay attention to today because we can’t control the future. And the reason we need to pay attention is because the devil never takes a day off, he works his best to fight against everything good that God is doing. But friends, we have the ability to resist him, we can endure any of the temptations that he throws at us, and Peter ends by reminding us we’re not alone. Even if it feels like no one else is chasing after God, we have other brothers and sisters across the world who are in the same fight as us!

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by mikethestrand on April 26, 2026  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, Life, Relationships, Sermon, Theology
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Posted by mikethestrand on April 26, 2026

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2026/04/26/zechariah-sermon-manuscript/

Haggai – Sermon Manuscript

-There was a movie that came out in 2004 that no one expected to take off like it did! It was a classic “coming of age” story of a guy who was trying to figure out life in high school and family dynamics that go along with that. I saw it in theaters and I haven’t been the same since! It was a movie called Napoleon Dynamite, and I feel like it’s one of those movies that only worked in a certain time period, because I know people who have tried introducing it to their kids and the kids thought the parents were crazy. One of the funniest characters is a guy named Uncle Rico, who claimed to be able to (and I quote) “throw the pigskin a quarter mile.” Look at that form! I doubt he could throw that a quarter yard! But part of the reason he was so funny is because we all know someone like him, someone who is always pining for the “glory days” of the past. And what’s craziest is their interpretation of the past doesn’t always line up with reality!

-Haggai is a message of encouragement for God’s people who were discouraged about not living during the “glory days” of Israel. They look around them and are living as a remnant, a shadow of the former glory of the nation. They’re subservient to a different nation, they don’t have a temple to worship in, and they don’t even have enough food to eat! What are they hoping in? Let’s read the first chapter and find out:

READ/PRAY (pg. 839)

  1. The Message of Haggai: The Presence and Blessing of the Lord

-We have more information about what’s leading up to this event in Ezra and Nehemiah. We sometimes miss the connection between books in the OT because of the ordering of them. Ezra & Nehemiah are prophesying and writing at the same time, and some people believe they were the people who compiled the OT together for God’s people. But Ezra tells us that because the people faced opposition to the building of the temple, they stopped working on it, and that stopping remained for 16 years, while the people focused on building homes and raising crops, getting the rest of their lives in order.

-Then the Lord sends Haggai and Zechariah to light a fire under the people and call them to begin building the temple once again, and Ezra 6 tells us the celebration they had at the completion of this new temple. So Haggai tells us the message the Lord gave to get the people going. Just to give some perspective, Ezra 5 also includes these prophets as part of his description of what was going on, and he tells us that Haggai helped rebuild the temple! 

-Not a ton of information about this prophet (apart from the note that he is a prophet!). But we have VERY explicit information about when these words came to him, allowing us to date this book to a 4-month period in the year 520 BC. Here’s where all the dates are listed throughout the book, and what they correspond to in our Gregorian calendar! 

-Who was this word give to? Zerubbabel and Joshua: civil and religious leaders. We’ll learn more about Zerubbabel throughout this book, so for now just note that these are supposed to be the recipients of this prophesy. And right away, we see the problem God is addressing:

-This house is in ruins. The problem is they had stopped building the temple. They had faced some difficulty with it, but instead of persevering, they gave up and focused on building out their own homes.

-God draws attention to these issues by saying “think carefully about your ways” which he repeats 3 other times in the book (1:7, 2:15, 18) It’s a way of telling the people to learn from these things and draw near to God through them. Honestly, I think this is a picture for us of how we’re supposed to respond to difficult seasons in our lives. If God is sovereign (in complete control) than we can trust Him even when things don’t feel like they’re going to work out, or we don’t feel like we’re flourishing. God isn’t the author of evil, but He’ll allow evil in our lives to grow and stretch us, just like any parent has to sometimes let their kids fail in order to help them grow.

-God has prevented His people from flourishing in their work. They’re hungry, they’re thirsty, their clothes are wearing out. And this isn’t an accident or incidental thing, God is still in control, including over the times and the seasons, and He has prevented their crops from flourishing. And why is that? Look at vs. 8-9. The reason the people were living in ruin was because it was meant to be a picture to them of the ruin God’s house was in.

-The answer is: build God’s house, if you do, He will be pleased and glorified. Sounds easy enough, right? Put this building up, be done, and watch the wealth come in! But it’s never that simple, especially (I would think) as the people are struggling.

-I don’t know about you, but if I heard that God was the one that was preventing my flourishing, I don’t think I’d be very happy about it. Think about how many stories you hear or read about people who get angry at God for things not working out how they wanted them to. It’s such a common story! But that’s not how the people responded here! Look at vs. 12.

-The entire remnant obeyed and feared the Lord. This is the description of a revival! A particular season of repentance and turning to the Lord, and many times it comes after particularly difficult seasons.

-Have you ever had a season in your life where it felt like God was intentionally leaving you in a desert place? Where you kept crying out to Him and asking for some level of relief, but it never got better. Where you were reading the Bible, but it felt like it didn’t make sense, where you pray but it feels like you’re praying to the wall, where you go to church but it feels like a waste of time. It doesn’t take long in your journey with Christ to reach some level of crisis. And sometimes it’s God stretching and challenging you to grow through it. It hurts, in the middle of it, it feels like it will never end, but God’s call to His people is to continue trusting Him and persevere.

-And look how God responds to them: “I am with you.” That’s basically a summary of the whole story of Scripture. What is God’s plan from the beginning? To be with His people! That’s why He doesn’t ever give up. Even when the entire world was in rebellion against him (except for the family of Noah), He still moved toward His creation and created a way for them to be redeemed through the floods. Friends, this is the best news in the world! God’s first move is always towards, not running away which is why God came down to Earth.

-So the people obey, and the work on the temple began again.

-God (through Haggai) asks the people who saw the old temple. This new one wasn’t going to be as nice or as beautiful or even as big. Here it even says, “Doesn’t it seem to you like nothing in comparison?” God doesn’t even try to be “MN nice” about it!

-There is a human temptation to live like Uncle Rico in Napoleon Dynamite and pine after your “glory days,” to look to the past with rose colored glasses, and the people of the Lord are no exception. Ezra 3:13 tells us exactly what the response of the people was to this event: half were thrilled and excited that this work had begun, and the other half were weeping because it was so bad in comparison. Even though those former days had idolatry and sin, and there was the impending destruction of the nation coming, they wanted to go back, instead of celebrating what God was doing here and now. We see this today, too! There is a church I drove by in Rochester that has a giant billboard that says, “We sing hymns.” Technically, EVERY church sings hymns, because I’m going to assume that every church is singing songs to God! And there’s nothing wrong with singing hymns, but there’s also FANTSTIC new songs that are being written all the time! If you want to talk about my thoughts on music, send me an email! And it goes beyond music that too, I’ve had people tell me that they wish they could go back to the morality in our country of the 50s. I wasn’t alive then, but I’ve read enough history to know that the 50s was the time of MASSIVE segregation in our country, a time when the color of your skin could have prevented you from voting. Do you really want to live in that time period? That doesn’t mean today is any better! While the color of your skin doesn’t prevent you from voting, our culture is debating what it means to be male or female. Friends, the reality is whatever time you live in: people are still people, sin is still sin, and God is still sovereignly ruling and reigning, so the call for His people hasn’t changed, look at what God goes on to say:

-What’s interesting is this is the same exhortation that Joshua got when they were about to cross into the Promised Land, encouragement to be remain strong and faithful because even though the temple wasn’t done, His Spirit was with them. It’s hard to persevere, it’s hard to remain faithful, so God exhorts His people to continue pushing through, to not give up.

-I will shake: there’s allusions to Ex. 19:18 here that shows that when God comes, the earth can’t stay still. Someday in the future, God will judge the nations, and what will they do? They’ll bring their treasures into this house. And I think we see this in 2 places, first when the wise men “from the east” bring their gifts to Jesus, and second and more explicitly in the new heavens and earth. Rev. 21:24 says the kings of the earth will bring their glory into this new Jerusalem. The external glory of the temple is meant to reflect the inner glory of the Glorious One.

-The final glory will be greater than the first. You haven’t seen ANYTHING yet, because for a Christian, the best is ALWAYS yet to come. One thing I’ve been trying to do more since preaching through Revelation is spend time contemplating heaven, and just how wonderful that will be. I heard someone onetime say he ended his devotions each day thinking about heaven until it brought a smile to his face! One of the most amazing things about heaven is the joy and happiness is unending. Each day is a new opportunity to try something new, to get to know someone in a deeper way, to taste a new food, to go on a new adventure. And each day we’ll grow in our awareness and understanding of God, which will never leave us bored because God is infinite (which is why I think we get eternity to spend with Him). 

-Then Haggai is asked to go to the priests and ask him a couple questions about Levitical law (vs. 10-19), and the summary of these questions is: defiling is contagious, while holiness is not. And you can kind of make sense of that with sickness, you can “catch” a cold (or the flu, or COVID), but you can’t “catch” health, can you? And God says that because the people aren’t holy, even their offerings are defiled by their sin.

-Which is some of what makes Jesus’s arrival so amazing, because the opposite is true with Him. Jesus comes along and sickness flees from Him! So now under Jesus, suddenly holiness is contagious. Mark 1 tells this story of a leper. Under the law, lepers were completely segregated from everyone else, and if anyone got too close to the leper, they were unclean. But do you notice how Jesus heals this leper? Mark is explicit: he reaches out his hand and touches the man, a man who likely hadn’t been touched by another human in YEARS because they didn’t want to catch his leprosy. And what happens when Jesus touches the man? Instead of Jesus becoming unclean, the unclean man is made clean (which Mark explicitly says). God says in Haggai that this is coming, blessing instead of cursing, and it’s dependent on God, not anything the people can do.

-The final word to Haggai comes on the same day with a promise to once again “shake the heavens and the earth.” The purpose of this shaking is to overthrow the Gentile kingdoms, with allusions to the Exodus when they overthrew the Egyptian army (Ex. 14), and the conquest of the promised land, when the Midianites killed each other in their confusion (Judges 7:22).

-Who’s going to be sitting on the throne? It says Zerubbabel, but one of the issues at this time was that Darius was the king, even though Zerubbabel was the descendant of David.

-First, a signet ring is the marker of royal authority, think of it like an official stamp. But the reason that’s significant is because of something God revealed to the prophet Jeremiah about Zerubbabel’s grandfather. In Jer. 22:24 God says that even though Coniah was (past tense) God’s signet ring (that is, bearing God’s authority), God was going to rip him off, cast him away, and the prophesy ends by the Lord saying his offspring will be cast off, which leaves in doubt whether or not David’s line would continue.

-But then we see here at the end of this book that God will renew His covenant with the Davidic line and make Zerubbabel His signet ring, promising that the David’s line would continue. And Zerubbabel comes up again in Matthew 1, do you know why? Because he is the great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandpa to Jesus (yes, I counted). This is just a reminder to us that Jesus is the main point of the whole Bible. It all centers on Him, it all points to Him, and He is the answer to every promise that God makes. Which also means we need to talk about what this future temple is that God tells Haggai about.

  • The Temple of the Lord

-What was God talking about here that could be better than the temple Solomon built? What’s amazing is He’s talking about what we’re doing today. Now, I’m not saying that this building is the new temple, but God is talking about this new temple that exists worldwide, that is too big to fit in one building, and it’s called “the church.” Let me show why I think that.

-First, Jesus literally changes everything! So we need to think about the reason God has his people construct a tabernacle, then the temple to begin with. It was so He could live with His people. In fact, the ordering of the nation while they were traveling through the wilderness put the tabernacle in the middle of them, signifying that God had the primary place among them. But what’s fascinating (at least to me) is that God was living with His people before then too, but He was living with them as a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. My reason for bringing this up is because of the way John describes Jesus in John 1. I don’t usually leave the footnotes in my slides, but it says it right on there: Jesus is the better tabernacle, the place where God’s full glory dwells (Col. 1:19). The reason God had His people build the tabernacle and then temple was because people would die if they were given unmediated access to God’s glory, but that changed with Jesus.

-Next, and a subset of this, is that Jesus says He is building something new with His disciples. So we begin with the reality that Jesus is the new and better tabernacle, but then He goes on to build something brand new which He talks about with Peter (Rocky! If you’ve read or watched Project Hail Mary yet). He affirms Peter’s confession that Jesus is the Messiah, and that confession is the foundation for the church. So Jesus’s new idea for the place where God’s glory will dwell is in the church. But hold on, it gets even better than that!

-Paul continues this idea about what’s being built together in Eph. 2. Building up to this part, he’s been talking about the death we all lived in because of sin, and the separation we had between each other (Jew and Gentile) but how that division has been broken down by Jesus. Then he goes on to say that because of what Jesus has done, we are no longer foreigners and strangers, instead we’re citizens and members of what? God’s household. Turns out this has been God’s plan from the beginning! God living among His people, not in a temple built by human hands (Acts 7:48)

-But it gets even better. Look at what this house is built on: the apostles and the prophets. So we’re supposed to think back to prophets like Haggai as the foundation God was building 600 years before Jesus. And who’s the cornerstone, who’s the one who began the construction? Jesus. Paul is saying there is continuity from the beginning to the end. The tabernacle, then the multiple temples were in place to point to this reality that’s taking place today, because if you are in Christ, you are now a part of His holy temple. 

-And Peter talks about this reality as well. Not only are we the temple, we’re also being built to be the priests, the ones who can approach God to offer spiritual sacrifices through Jesus Christ. Friends, this means ALL of us are priests, this isn’t referring to some special “class” of Christians who act as a mediator between humans and God, there’s only 1 mediator: the God-man Jesus Christ. But Peter continues just a few verses later with a long list of descriptions of the church, all of which are direct quotes from God to Israel in the OT. God’s plan has always been to live among His people, not be constrained by a temple. God’s plan has also been to be the God of every tribe, and tongue, and nation, not just 1 ethnicity. 

-As I was studying this week, a verse from Psalm 27 came to mind. Think of what David asks the Lord here. The one thing he wants is to dwell in the house of the Lord and seek Him in His temple. Friends, we don’t just dwell in the house of the Lord, we ARE the house of the Lord, and where do we go to seek Him in His temple? We go here, because together we make up the temple of God. But just as the people during the time of Haggai had left the temple in ruins, there are ways that we today can leave the church in ruins. 

-An early church father, writing in the 3rd century, Cyprian of Carthage, wrote a treatise titled ‘On the Unity of the Church’ where he said: 

-There are 2 key issues I see today where we can leave the church in ruins. First is by treating it like a consumer, where we sit in judgment on what takes place, or we pick and choose the areas we want to be involved. I’ve seen people who would go to 1 church because they liked the music, then hop in a car when the music was done and drive down to another church because they liked the preaching there. That’s like a husband going over to the neighbor’s house because he doesn’t like his wife’s cooking (or the wife going over, I don’t know all your cooking arrangements). Pick a church and plug yourself in and don’t give up when you get offended or hurt. People are sinners, and when you throw a bunch of people together in close proximity, the sin is going to come out, we can’t help it. I wish I could say the church is immune from that, but until Jesus returns the church will continue being made up of a bunch of sinners. Which gets me to the second key issue:

-Don’t marginalize or belittle the church. The church is the 1 earthly institution that Jesus paid for by shedding His blood, and when you either speak poorly of the church, or complain about the church, or even worse if you just ignore the church completely, you’re dismissing the thing that Jesus loves the most. Picture this: my kids are starting to get a little older, which means they’re getting harder to correct. They’re using logic and reasoning to point out our inconsistencies. But the other thing they’re doing is starting to talk poorly about us, and I’m fine if they’re upset with me, but I don’t have much toleration for talking bad about Cara. When we are upset about the church or complain about it, it’s complaining about Jesus’s bride, and I don’t think He appreciates that. See, the call for all of us who claim to be Christians is in the name, it just means “little Christ.” We’re supposed to work to be like Him in every area of our lives, including the things that we love, and Jesus loves His church with every ounce of His being, so we should love the church with every ounce of our being.

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by mikethestrand on April 19, 2026  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Church, Life, Sermon
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Posted by mikethestrand on April 19, 2026

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2026/04/19/haggai-sermon-manuscript/

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
Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, History, Life, Sermon, Worship
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Posted by mikethestrand on April 12, 2026

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2026/04/12/zephaniah-sermon-manuscript/

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

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

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
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Posted by mikethestrand on February 1, 2026

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

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