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 (Music Playing)

[01:00:13:03 - 01:00:17:12]
Chris
 That's why we've got to know God's word. And my theology really, truly does matter.

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Chris
 Why I love to preach God's word and why I try to do it so passionately, because it's not just facts or things that don't really matter to the day-to-day of our lives. They literally matter in everything we do, every environment we live, every relationship that we are in.

[01:00:42:19 - 01:00:55:01]
Paul
 All right, welcome back to Further. My name is Paul Fischbach. I'm the pastor of discipleship here at Harmony. And I'm filling in today as host for Brent and Grim. And with me today is Pastor Chris again. Pastor Chris, how you doing?

[01:00:55:01 - 01:01:01:18]
Chris
 Great. I'm glad to have you back with us. This is kind of being another special gig for you, I guess.

[01:01:02:18 - 01:01:04:16]
Chris
 A recurring guest host.

[01:01:04:16 - 01:01:09:15]
Paul
 Well, I must not have done too bad the last time that I got invited back. So glad to fill in again.

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Chris
 We are the place of second chances Paul.

[01:01:13:11 - 01:01:14:23]
Paul
 Glad this is a grace-filled place.

[01:01:14:23 - 01:01:15:12]
Chris
 Yeah.

[01:01:15:12 - 01:01:43:07]
Paul
 Yeah. Well, it's kind of exciting as we've started our new summer sermon series this past week. And Chris, you introduced our sermon series, Return to Me, the Minor Prophets. I was just wondering maybe as we get started here, if you could peel back the curtain a little bit and share about how sermon series are developed. Can you share like how did the Lord lead you to choose this portion of the Old Testament for the summer?

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Chris
 Yeah. I do have to say before we get into it, I'm refraining from chuckling right now because there's literally seems like an air raid siren going off right now. I don't know if everybody can hear that or not, but it's just kind of funny given how we talked about that on Sunday. Yeah, you talked about that tornado. Yeah. So I don't know what it is if it's the fire station on the road or what it is. Hopefully it's just a test. Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully there's no tornado coming. But yeah. So there's a number of different things that I kind of think through in terms of selecting sermon series. For one,

[01:02:24:16 - 01:02:52:14]
Chris
 we want to be a church where we preach the whole counsel of God. So Paul tells pastors that's what we're supposed to do. And so we don't want to just kind of stay in the place where we are most comfortable and we get in like we're always in the New Testament or always in the epistles or even in the gospels. But we definitely-- or we're just in the Old Testament narratives. And so we're going to be covering

[01:02:54:02 - 01:03:01:05]
Chris
 over a period of time, a long period of time, we're going to be covering a lot, if not all, of the Bible or at least all of the different parts of the Bible.

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Chris
 So we tend to go back and forth between the Old Testament and New Testament, try to regularly come back

[01:03:10:10 - 01:03:22:10]
Chris
 to the gospels because we want to focus on Jesus as always and his teaching and then obviously all the different events of his life culminating in the crucifixion and the resurrection.

[01:03:23:18 - 01:03:27:12]
Chris
 When it comes to this particular series,

[01:03:29:01 - 01:04:03:14]
Chris
 I wanted to get into the Old Testament because it's been a while, especially since we've been in the Gospel of John. We've been doing our all in series where we've had a message or two or maybe a handful of messages from the Old Testament, but we really haven't had a steady diet of the Old Testament for quite some time. The minor prophecies I've talked about already are just a place that we're pretty unfamiliar with. And we've heard some sermons probably, most of us occasional sermons, but not like an overall series where we get kind of the big picture of it.

[01:04:04:17 - 01:04:36:23]
Chris
 They have a lot for us as I think we've already begun to see just one message in, and we're going to see it even more in the days ahead. And it also can expand just our knowledge of the scriptures as a whole and God's story as a whole. And we're going to learn more about the Old Testament as we walk through some of these books because they happen at different times in Israel's history, and there's different circumstances that we're going on in situations. And so it'll help us to just be better students of the Bible at home.

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Paul
 Well, as I've been interacting with people leading up to the series, and as you had announced it, I know there was a lot of excitement from the people that I talked with. So I think even though the Minor Prophets might be a little bit unfamiliar to a lot of people, I think people are excited to learn. Yeah.

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Chris
 Well, we want to help people to understand also as well, how do you read your Bible, how do you study your Bible? And I think this part of the Bible is pretty daunting to people. It was like, how do we even begin to tackle-- I mean, there's some pretty wild things that we see the prophets saying and talking about, and how are we supposed to understand that, how does this really fit in, and what differences it make to us today. And what we really want to see--

[01:05:22:15 - 01:05:47:13]
Chris
 and one of my goals for whenever I'm done here and the Lord moves me on, whether that's to glory or something else, that our people have come to understand every part of the Bible has relevance for us today. And we're not going to get through every book of the Bible during my tenure, I'm quite sure. But we're going to get through, by God's grace, every different part of it.

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Chris
 And I just want everybody to be able to see, this all does have something relevant for us. And ultimately, I want to show everybody how it all points to Jesus.

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Paul
 Well, it took a little over a year and a half to get through John. So at that pace, we're not going to get through every book in the Bible. Right.

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Chris
 Well, it's not as long-- when I first came, and quite a few people maybe still remember this, but we preached through the gospel of Matthew, it was two and a half years. And yeah, so--

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Paul
 Matthew is a little bit longer book.

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Chris
 It is a little bit longer book, but yeah.

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Paul
 Last summer, we did a sermon series in the Psalms, and we did some selected Psalms. This summer, obviously, we're doing the minor prophets. But it's an eight-week series, and there's 12 minor prophets. So I was just curious how you came to choose the ones that we were covering.

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Chris
 Yeah, I was wondering if anybody would catch this.

[01:06:38:20 - 01:06:40:07]
 (Laughter)

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Chris
 Well, partly, it's we only have eight weeks before we get back into what the Lord has for us for the fall,

[01:06:51:03 - 01:07:25:15]
Chris
 really the next ministry year. And the other part of it is we're not doing Hosea and Jonah. We've done those before, certainly Jonah. And we definitely hit on Hosea, I think, on a number of occasions. The other two that we're not doing are Nahum and Obadiah. Nahum's closely tied to Jonah. Actually follows on the heels of Jonah. Obadiah is one chapter, and it really has pretty much the same message you find in a number of the other minor prophets. And so that's kind of-- I mean,

[01:07:26:22 - 01:07:32:01]
Chris
 there's no necessarily specific science to it, but that's kind of how we came about with that.

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Paul
 For those of us who'd like to check all our boxes, we might wonder why this is for them.

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Chris
 I probably should have talked about it this past Sunday, because I'm sure the question was out there. But Hosea would have been great to talk about. But again, it really is the-- we're only doing one message on a book, and I've already done the message on the book of Hosea and not too distant past. And Jonah, we've actually preached on twice in my time here.

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Paul
 I remember one of those. Well, that's great. Well, this week we started with the book of Joel, which opens with a description of an invasion of locusts, and you pointed that out, and then a call of repentance. And I was struck by the fact, as I've been kind of looking at some of the other minor prophets, that Joel didn't mention any specific sins for which Israel is being judged here. But he does give a call to repent. So I was just kind of curious, do you have any thoughts about why that might be?

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Chris
 Yeah, you know, there's so much with Joel that we really don't know. Like I point out, we hardly know anything about him.

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Chris
 And there's a lot of debate as to exactly when the book was written. You can target the other ones relatively close, the other 11.

[01:08:48:07 - 01:08:56:21]
Chris
 But Joel, it ranges from 900 BC to 400 BC. And you're right.

[01:08:57:23 - 01:09:39:05]
Chris
 And I would argue, and most commentators argue for a post-exilic view, so somewhere between 500 to 400 BC. That's what it seems like most of the evidence is. But you can't be conclusive on that. And so I think, though, what can be really helpful with Joel is it kind of gives us-- and it's kind of the anchor for the whole 12. And it kind of gives us, here's the big picture without getting into the weeds of all the different-- like Amos, we're going to talk about this week. There are some very specific things that God calls out, and almost all the rest of them very specific, like these sins, these sins, this is what's going wrong. Joel's just kind of the big picture.

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Chris
 Things have gone wrong. Judgment is coming. Here's how you need to respond. And so that's one of the reasons to start there, too, is like this is where-- this is the message of the 12, the big picture, and where we're going to go. And then we can get into the weeds, so to speak, a little bit more in the days ahead. That's great. Yeah, I mean, it's just-- if we actually knew what the specific sins were, we'd actually be able to date the book probably a little more accurately.

[01:10:06:10 - 01:10:12:14]
Paul
 But anyway-- Very interesting. Appreciate the background, historical background there. I know when we were putting together the reading plan,

[01:10:14:10 - 01:10:24:04]
Paul
 people may notice that on a number of the books that we're going to be going through, we did give a passage to try to give some historical background for people. We did not have one for this because it

[01:10:24:04 - 01:10:35:14]
Chris
 wasn't-- Yeah, there's just no-- it's just not-- Well, and it really can speak to pretty much every day in Israel's history almost from the time that they entered the Promised Land.

[01:10:37:00 - 01:10:43:03]
Chris
 It really could be-- and now, it's not-- we know it would be probably--

[01:10:44:05 - 01:10:57:15]
Chris
 certainly 900-ish would be the latest, so to speak, or the earliest, I guess, on the other hand, that it was written. But it could speak to pretty much any time in their history post entering the Promised Land.

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Paul
 Yeah, that's good. Well, you pointed out the central theme in Joel is the day of the Lord.

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Paul
 And that-- both then and now, they're both little d-days of God's judgment and a coming big d-day of God's judgment and final judgment. You gave a few modern day examples of little d-days,

[01:11:19:11 - 01:11:37:10]
Paul
 things like 9-11 and financial crisis and COVID and things like that. So how do we, as believers, recognize instances of God's judgment as they come up in our lives, like the examples you gave? And what would be a God-honoring response by us when we recognize those moments?

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Chris
 Yeah.

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Chris
 First of all, I want to point out when it talks about God's judgment, what we were talking about certainly in Joel and what I was talking about when it was mentioned these specific times in recent American history, we're talking about judgment on a national or a corporate judgment. I wasn't specifically talking about individual judgment. I mean, one of the things I understand here is that God is in the process of judging the world. The fall is God's judgment.

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Chris
 Like it is coming about that. So we can look at almost anything that goes wrong in the world and extend that to as coming from the hand of God's judgment on sin. And I'm talking about sin in general.

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Chris
 And so yeah, I just think that we

[01:12:42:07 - 01:14:42:07]
Chris
 need to really look at everything that goes wrong in our world. And we can see this is the reason for it ultimately. It's not even God's judgment. It's human sin and what sin has done to the world, really the cosmos, not just to people, but even to creation and how we have natural disasters and all of those things. And wars come about, yes, because of evil people. But that's also, God gives people over to the desires of their heart. We see in that throughout scripture and Romans 1 as well. So with all that said, I do think it would be good because I've gotten some questions about this, especially in terms of my comment about 9-11 being God's judgment a day of the Lord on our nation. And why did I say that? And how is the case? That is the case. And so feel free to interact with me. You've been a pastor a long time as well. But I just began-- the Bible repeatedly describes disasters as days of the Lord. So I just begin there. I'm just going to the scriptures and what it says. And not just on Israel, but on all the nations. And we're actually going to see that this week in Amos. It actually begins not with judgment on Israel and Judah, but on the surrounding nations from that. And we're going to see that again throughout, that God's calling and He's bringing judgment. And these are days of the Lord. And what happens is we have natural disasters that God brings. And we also have the judgment of being defeated by their enemies, the enemies attacking them. So there's that Amos 3.6 actually says, asked there's a question, a rhetorical question. Does disaster come to a city unless God has done it?

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Chris
 And the question is the form is no. Like if we see disaster, that means that God has brought that about. Now does that mean that God is the cause of evil?

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Chris
 No. It just means that God is sovereign over evil. Because of sin, we live in a broken and fallen world with natural consequences, disasters, tsunamis, earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, all of those things. That's just a consequence of the fall. But another consequence of the fall is we live in a world where there's evil people who do evil things.

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Chris
 And God's not the author of evil, but there are people who do evil things. And God uses both the natural disasters and evil people to accomplish His purposes. And His purposes in judging,

[01:15:32:00 - 01:16:07:12]
Chris
 but as we have already seen, God brings things as a wake up call to lead people to repentance, to say, hey, your pride has brought you to this point. You're not self sufficient. You can't rely on yourself. You're not as capable as you think you are. You are more sinful than you realize. And it ends a wake up. And again, here's the guy's grace in this. And I think we'll get to this a little bit more later. It's like an opportunity for grace. So I don't know, I've got more to say there, but I'll pause and let you jump in.

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Paul
 Yeah, let's talk about that a little bit more because I think maybe a counter argument or wondering how do we determine those things would come from the example in scripture where we see the disciples come to Jesus and there's a man who's born blind and they ask him, well, who sin? Did he sin or did his parents sin? And Jesus's answer is, well, neither one. He was born that way for God's glory so that God could glorify himself. So not every thing is necessarily a judgment for sin.

[01:16:37:22 - 01:16:51:19]
Paul
 And yet we see over and over again in scripture, there's all these examples of when these calamities come upon Israel and God's people. Oftentimes it is because of sin and judgment because of that. So maybe you can interrupt with that a little bit.

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Chris
 No, I think that's a really great point. I'm so glad you wrote up. That's John chapter nine. We covered that passage.

[01:16:59:16 - 01:17:19:07]
Chris
 There's a difference between a judgment of sin and a consequence of sin. The man being born blind is a consequence of sin, but Jesus actually clear. That isn't actually his sin. That was the error that was being made there. It's like, it's his fault. Or his parents, really, his parents fault. And you say, no, no, no, no, that's not true.

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Chris
 I'm gonna use this to bring glory to myself and for God's glory.

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Chris
 But it was, if we have eyes to see and understand, have our biblical theology correct, like it is a consequence of Adam's sin. The fall. And the fall and all of that.

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Chris
 Maybe an even better place to go is Luke 13. I'll just read this passage. So just a few verses. It says, "There were some present at that very time who told him," that's Jesus, "about the Galileans whose blood pilot had mingle with their sacrifices. And he answered them, do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered in this way? No, I would tell you, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Are those 18 on whom the Talmud and Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who live in Jerusalem? No, I tell you, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish." And so it's wrong to say this is happening to these people because of their sin. Now, that may be the case. Sometimes we do suffer because of our sin,

[01:18:36:05 - 01:18:55:15]
Chris
 but that's not always the case. And we just can't say, in every instance where someone is suffering, it's because they've done something wrong. And that actually can be very harmful to people. And we gotta be really, really careful with that. So when I'm saying that 9-11 was God's judgment on our nation, I'm not saying that those people died

[01:18:57:03 - 01:19:01:07]
Chris
 that day because of their sin. That was God's judgment on them specifically.

[01:19:03:08 - 01:20:02:16]
Chris
 But what we can say in that instance, and this is the consistent theme of the Old Testament and the minor prophets, and what Jesus is telling us here is like, this is a consequence of the fall. It's God's judgment on sin in the big picture. But these people aren't any worse than I am. And the point is, is unless I repent, you likewise will perish. In other words, we talked, there's little D days, and those little D days are meant to point us to the fact that we need to repent of our sin, our personal sin, so that we don't face the ultimate D day judgment of God. And so I wanna be really, really clear that there are people who suffer at the hands of evil people. They experience abuse. There are people who suffer physically cancer,

[01:20:04:05 - 01:20:15:19]
Chris
 all kinds of diseases. And I don't have any special revelation, no, any authority to say to anyone, well, that's happening to you because of your sin.

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Chris
 And in fact, that actually would be incorrect. I would be wrong to say that.

[01:20:22:01 - 01:20:25:01]
Paul
 But I- Although we do see personalities on TV do that.

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Chris
 Yeah, but that's just,

[01:20:28:09 - 01:20:30:22]
Chris
 that's going way beyond what scripture would say and is even,

[01:20:32:09 - 01:20:45:15]
Chris
 can be very, very, very harmful. And like Jesus is saying here, like you're saying like that happened to them, this tower fell on them because of their sin. As you say, that's not what he's saying. He's saying this thing happened

[01:20:47:04 - 01:20:58:22]
Chris
 and God's allowing it to happen because he wants to point out to you and give you a wake up call that you need to repent. So my whole point in all of that,

[01:21:00:02 - 01:21:36:07]
Chris
 whether it's 9-11, the financial crisis or COVID, or we could look at other things in our world, literally almost seem to happen now on a day by day basis. Like, no, I don't know personally what that means for everyone who experiences or hurt by that. That's beyond what I can speak into. But what I can say, I think based on scripture, Old and New Testament is that this is God's pointing out to us and we need to wake up. And if we go back to 9-11 and in the aftermath of it, you were pastoring then as I was.

[01:21:38:00 - 01:21:44:17]
Chris
 What we saw is there was somewhat of an awakening in our nation where like the churches were full the next weekend.

[01:21:45:23 - 01:22:01:05]
Chris
 And for some extended period of time, there was like this seriousness of like, okay, I need to, like, what's going on here? And God seemed to work through some of that. Now, unfortunately that died out relatively quickly.

[01:22:02:15 - 01:22:11:01]
Chris
 And in God's grace and mercy, he actually allows, gives us more and more opportunity to repent. Yeah.

[01:22:11:01 - 01:22:44:21]
Paul
 So I hear you saying, you know, instances like this happen, it's a good opportunity for us to examine our own selves, examine our lives, see where God might be calling us to repent, to turn back to Him. That might be personal sin, it may not be, it could be corporate as well. And I just wondered if you have any comments on that too, because I think a lot of times in our culture, we think about repentance in an individualistic way where a lot of these prophets are talking about the nation as a whole and corporate repentance. So any comments or thoughts about that?

[01:22:44:21 - 01:22:51:14]
Chris
 Yeah, so let's just talk about a contemporary of some of these minor prophets, Nehemiah.

[01:22:53:11 - 01:23:00:06]
Chris
 Chapter one, Nehemiah gets word that the walls of Jerusalem are in ruins and you know, the people, it's again, it's the same old story.

[01:23:01:12 - 01:23:05:11]
Chris
 Okay, and when he hears the word, he gets report from Jerusalem.

[01:23:07:00 - 01:23:08:22]
Chris
 He's like probably maybe the prime minister.

[01:23:10:13 - 01:23:16:14]
Chris
 And it says that he just begins to basically fast and cry out to God and his prayers like,

[01:23:18:11 - 01:23:22:11]
Chris
 we and our Father, we have sinned. It's a corporate,

[01:23:23:13 - 01:23:32:15]
Chris
 he's, now he's concluding himself and he's not saying it's them, it's we. And I think that with this,

[01:23:33:17 - 01:23:42:01]
Chris
 even when we're talking about the different things that have happened in our nation, we understand that there's kind of a corporate solidarity of humanity.

[01:23:43:06 - 01:23:50:13]
Chris
 Like we wanna separate ourselves, but we're in this together. And Paul actually makes this argument of like, we're bound together with Adam,

[01:23:51:18 - 01:24:31:10]
Chris
 right? Like is there in Adam, we all sinned. And the great thing is, is now we can be bound to Christ. And so that the consequences of Adam's sin come to us, but now the blessings of Christ can come to us through faith in him. And so yeah, all that to say is like, there is a room certainly, and then really I think the scripture calls us to this for a corporate and we should cry out for God for our nation, for our church, for our community, for our nation, but not looks like just they need to, like no, we, we, we, we are not together. So.

[01:24:32:10 - 01:24:37:22]
Paul
 That's good, I appreciate that. And I'm sure we'll have plenty of opportunity in the coming weeks to dive into that a little bit more.

[01:24:40:03 - 01:24:42:06]
Paul
 Well, for those of us who are followers of Jesus,

[01:24:43:15 - 01:25:03:20]
Paul
 what we have obviously forgiveness in Christ, he's forgiven us of our sins, we have salvation through him. What does the ongoing practice of repentance look like in the life of a believer in light of Christ's finished work? When we read these prophets and they call us to return, what role does that play?

[01:25:03:20 - 01:25:05:13]
Chris
 Mm-hmm, yeah.

[01:25:07:13 - 01:25:16:14]
Chris
 I'd be interested with what you have to say here. I think repentance is simple but hard.

[01:25:18:16 - 01:26:09:04]
Chris
 In other words, it's this just a regular, you know, Martin Luther talked about the life of a Christian, the whole life of a Christian is a life of repentance. That was, in fact, if I'm remembering correctly, it's first theses, you know, there's 95 theses he nailed and the first one was the life of a Christian is a life of repentance. And so it's just a, because we continually turn away from the Lord and turn to things like self-sufficiency and self-centeredness and self-salvation and all of those kind of things. And we never get to the place where we stop doing that until we're with him. Now sanctification, we can, you know, it's less and less, but part of our sanctification is actually learning to repent. And there's an old term you're familiar with it, like keeping short accounts, right? It's like, I'm just regularly,

[01:26:10:05 - 01:26:16:19]
Chris
 I'm submitting, yielding to the Holy Spirit and his conviction and I'm gonna, you know, when the Holy Spirit convicts us, what do we do?

[01:26:18:04 - 01:26:21:02]
Chris
 What we're gonna, and what's he calling to do is to repent. Right.

[01:26:22:08 - 01:26:31:18]
Chris
 And the more that we do that, really, the more we actually grow and the less we find that we actually have to or need to repent.

[01:26:31:18 - 01:26:35:09]
Paul
 Right, yeah. Yeah, I know what you-- I think within the Christian life,

[01:26:36:14 - 01:26:41:11]
Paul
 one of God's mercies to us is, sanctification we know is an ongoing process.

[01:26:42:19 - 01:26:55:08]
Paul
 And one of God's mercies to us is that we're not aware of all of our sin all at once. Like we learn that and God exposes things to us as we continue to progress in our sanctification.

[01:26:56:08 - 01:27:04:01]
Paul
 And I think as we become aware of more sin in our life and seek to surrender that to Christ,

[01:27:05:11 - 01:27:14:02]
Paul
 that is an opportunity to repent. And it doesn't mean that God doesn't, God knows all of our sin, but in his mercy, he doesn't reveal all of that to us. I think he'd crush us.

[01:27:15:12 - 01:27:23:13]
Paul
 But we then continue to surrender to him in that sanctification process, repenting of our sin, turning to him, and continuing to grow.

[01:27:23:13 - 01:27:51:20]
Chris
 Let me ask you this, see if this has been your experience, either personally or pastorally or both. But it's been said by a number of people that the further you grow in your sanctification, the more you recognize how much of a sinner you are. You don't become less of a sinner in a sense, you actually become more of a sinner. It's not actually true, but you just become more aware of it.

[01:27:51:20 - 01:28:11:21]
Paul
 Yes. I've talked to a number of older saints who would agree with that process and would say, yes, I'm far more aware of my sin. I think the more aware we become of our sin in our life, the more should humble us. And that should be our response, that we become more and more proud that we are now more and more perfect.

[01:28:11:21 - 01:28:12:17]
Chris
 Yeah.

[01:28:13:23 - 01:28:19:03]
Chris
 For me, it's always the more children I had, the less I knew about parenting.

[01:28:20:09 - 01:28:22:14]
Chris
 You start off with no kids, you know everything.

[01:28:23:23 - 01:28:29:11]
Chris
 And then one, okay, maybe I don't know everything. By the time you're at five, it's like, Lord help me now, I know nothing.

[01:28:31:02 - 01:28:31:03]
 (Both Laughing)

[01:28:31:03 - 01:28:39:22]
Chris
 So that's kind of a joke, but I think it really is, is the more that you're sent open to the Spirit and grow, the more you just realize,

[01:28:41:10 - 01:28:55:04]
Chris
 the more you see God's glory and you see who He truly is and how holy He is, the more the light of the gospel kind of shines on your heart, the darker you see that your heart truly is.

[01:28:57:04 - 01:29:17:05]
Paul
 Well, that's a good transition to this next question here. A lot of people could casually read the prophets and see a lot of doom and gloom, God's judgment, and get the impression like God's just this angry God, and He's looking to punish people all the time, punish them into submission until they do what He wants them to.

[01:29:18:23 - 01:29:26:23]
Paul
 What do you think about that caricature of God? And do we see God's love, grace, and mercy like we do in the New Testament? Do we see that in the Old Testament? Do we see that in the prophets?

[01:29:28:04 - 01:29:29:11]
Chris
 One of the greatest misconceptions,

[01:29:31:00 - 01:29:34:02]
Chris
 I think in the entire Bible, is what you just laid out,

[01:29:36:05 - 01:30:19:21]
Chris
 is that God's just an angry God sitting up there ready to just hammer away at us. Like that old whack-a-mole game, ready for us to stick our head up so He can whack it back down. And along with that is like God is different in the Old Testament than He is in the New Testament. It's all grace and mercy in the New Testament, all judgment in the Old Testament. And that fails to understand a number of critical things that I think, I hope, that minor prophets are gonna help us to understand in a deeper way. And that one is that there's just, God's judgment is actually the natural consequences of our sin against the holy God. Yeah.

[01:30:21:01 - 01:30:23:19]
Chris
 It's actually necessary

[01:30:25:03 - 01:30:29:13]
Chris
 because if God doesn't judge sin, then He's not holy.

[01:30:30:14 - 01:30:37:01]
Chris
 And we might just want a loving God, but an actual loving God is actually gonna punish sin. Yes. Right?

[01:30:38:05 - 01:30:55:09]
Chris
 And so when we understand it in that way we can also see that God loves us enough that He wants to do something about our sin and about this sin that is killing us. And in His love for us, He hates what is harming His creation.

[01:30:56:20 - 01:30:58:17]
Chris
 And to go back to the parent analogy,

[01:31:00:08 - 01:31:35:01]
Chris
 if your kid gets addicted to drugs or pornography or whatever, you hate what that sin is doing to your child. If you really are a loving parent, you hate it and you want to do everything that you can to help see them free from it. And that very well may mean punishment, judgment, or we're gonna have to do this, restrict this, or take your phone away. We could go into all of that. And God's a holy and perfect God who's much better parent than any of us are.

[01:31:36:08 - 01:31:53:05]
Chris
 And then at the same time, I even pointed this out, I just hope that we get this as like God brings or allows the judgment to come into place and our lives because He wants to give us an opportunity to repent and to be restored and to be healed.

[01:31:55:06 - 01:32:09:13]
Chris
 And if God's, let's think about God's love, if God's holiness and judgment against sin was just, there was no love or grace there, the moment we sinned the first time we'd be done, like we'd be wiped out, that's actually what we deserve.

[01:32:11:03 - 01:32:18:15]
Chris
 But in His love and grace for us, He brings little judgments and sometimes they don't seem like little judgments,

[01:32:20:02 - 01:32:21:22]
Chris
 but it's much better to,

[01:32:23:01 - 01:32:36:14]
Chris
 like for the nation of Israel, it's much better for them to have all, everything, like all the fields to be wiped out than for them to be consumed by the holiness of God's wrath for eternity.

[01:32:38:04 - 01:32:50:12]
Chris
 Like one's bad and one is unspeakably horrific, there's nothing worse. And we should view our lives in the same way.

[01:32:51:21 - 01:33:04:12]
Paul
 I think about the prophets themselves are a gift of grace that God would send prophets to warn the people and to give them an opportunity to repent. That's showing His love and grace right there.

[01:33:04:12 - 01:33:12:21]
Chris
 Yeah, I mean, we can go to the New Testament too, maybe we can wrap up with this unless you got something else, but like Jesus,

[01:33:14:12 - 01:33:19:20]
Chris
 as He's headed across, He's actually a prophet, He's prophesying, like and He's saying there's a day coming

[01:33:20:20 - 01:33:42:04]
Chris
 where Jerusalem's like, and He's weeping over Jerusalem because they just are refusing to receive Him and accept Him and accept Him and He's weeping over them and He's crying out to them and all of this. And tragically then we know in 70 AD, the judgment did come upon them and it was horrific for them. But in His love and grace and mercy,

[01:33:43:11 - 01:33:48:08]
Chris
 even as He's going to the cross, He's just really pleading, anyway, pleading with people.

[01:33:49:08 - 01:33:52:21]
Chris
 And all of this in the scriptures meant for our instruction.

[01:33:54:17 - 01:34:07:12]
Chris
 So that by the endurance and encouragement of the scripture, we might have hope. So we have such a benefit if we're willing to see it as like we can learn from their mistakes,

[01:34:09:03 - 01:34:09:08]
Chris
 hopefully.

[01:34:10:15 - 01:34:21:01]
Paul
 And I think you pointed that out this week in Joel chapter two, God's love, grace and mercy that was promised to come and would be extended to those who repent.

[01:34:21:01 - 01:34:42:21]
Chris
 Yeah, it's just that in our world and tragically I think even the church, we want the grace and mercy without the, without like having for us anything changing in our life. No suffering. Like well, there's no repentance. It's like just God accepting me and loving me the way that I am. Don't tell me that what I'm doing is wrong.

[01:34:44:16 - 01:35:08:00]
Chris
 And that's the message. And even in the church just being preached and this week in Amos, Amos says, "One of the judgments come in, "so there's gonna be a famine of the word of the Lord." And that's the worst famine that there can be. There's no preaching of the word of the Lord of the gospel. And that comes when we just harden our hearts and refuse to repent and believe.

[01:35:09:10 - 01:35:29:14]
Paul
 Well, it's a great start to the sermon series. Excited to see what is yet to come. And for those of you listening, if you have any questions about Sunday's message or upcoming messages, we invite you to send them to ask at furtherpodcast.com. And we hope you'll tune in again next week when Chris and Bretton's familiar voice will be back. And we'll see you then.

[01:35:29:14 - 01:35:31:13]
Chris
 Yeah, thanks Paul. Thank you.

[01:35:32:17 - 01:35:37:01]
 (Upbeat Music)