Failure after failure, set back after set back. Do you know what it feels like to think you will never win?
In our march through the Minor Prophets this fall, we have seen stirring images of God, but a dismal view into the faithlessness of his people. In mercy God sends his spokesman, his prophets, to call his people back to covenant faithfulness. Yet they continue to rebel against him, to violate the dignity of others, and even to violate their own dignity. As God warned, their refusal to live out their mission as his covenant people meant the destruction of their nation by foreign powers. In 722 BC the Assyrian army crushed the northern Kingdom of Israel and those ten tribes of Israel were lost to history. Tragically, the southern Kingdom of Judah followed the same path. After generations of repeated warnings, God allows the Babylonians to destroy the northern Kingdom and God sends his remnant people into exile.
The book of Obadiah, likely written after the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC, announces God’s judgment against Edom, a neighboring nation to Judah. Edom delighted in the destruction of God’s people, refused aid to Judah’s refuges, and even handed those refuges over to the Babylonians.
Failure after failure, set back after set back. Is there any hope for God’s people as they suffer under the weight of their self-inflicted tragedy?
God commissions Obadiah to speak into this shadow with a message of hope. God wins and so do you if you are on his side. Those who hurt you are not going to get away with it. Take heart. All is not lost.
God wins.
I look forward to worshipping together this Sunday.
Pastor David
Portraits from the Prophets: Obadiah
October 27, 2013 • Rev. David Juelfs
Life Together
June 9, 2013 • Rev. David Juelfs
Is church membership biblical? Is it necessary? Last week we saw that God created the church, that the church is the family of God, his household, his people. Embracing this identity means that we embrace a new leader (King Jesus), a new lifestyle (the kingdom lifestyle), and a new mission (the mission of the king to renew all his good creation). As the church, together as his people, we follow Christ in all of life for the glory of God and the renewal of our neighborhoods. Here is the rub. All that identity and mission of the church stuff can sound great when it is general. However, that identity and mission is not meant to stay in the abstract, in the realm of ideas. It is meant to touch down into real life, with real people; real people that you commit to, submit to and love in all their (and your) messiness. Membership in the local church, where we rub shoulders with real people, is where this happens. The local church is where the people of God take shape and form. In preparation for Sunday, please read and pray through 1Corinthians 12:12-27. I can’t wait to worship together this Sunday. Pastor David “The visible Church, which is also catholic or universal under the Gospel (not confined to one nation, as before under the law), consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion, and of their children, and is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation” (Westminster Confession of Faith 25.5).
Portraits from the Prophets: Hosea
September 15, 2013 • Rev. David Juelfs
We all know the sound of these words whispered in the darkest parts of our minds, “I don’t belong, I am not good enough, I have failed so badly this time I will never be able to recover.” What do you do to cope?
Portraits from the Prophets: Micah
September 22, 2013 • Rev. David Juelfs
I knew what I should say. I knew what I should do. I knew what I should feel. But I had to fake it. I wanted to get what I wanted, so I had to do what needed to be done, but my heart was not in it. Do you know the feeling? If we are honest we can all tell stories about doing things on the outside that seem good and right, all the while our motives are a mess.