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From Locust Plague to Pentecost: Walking Through the Book of Joel

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From Locust Plague to Pentecost: Walking Through the Book of Joel A ruined harvest, a call to return, and a promise of the Spirit that would wait centuries for its morning. Walk through the book of Joel, from a devastating locust plague to the Day of the LORD and the promise of the Holy Spirit fulfilled at Pentecost. When the Locusts Came: Why the Book of Joel Still Speaks Imagine walking out to your fields in the morning and finding nothing. The wheat is gone. The vines are stripped to bare wood. The bark has been peeled from the fig trees until the branches gleam white in the sun. Overnight, a living cloud of insects has eaten your year, and maybe your future. That is where the book of Joel begins. A catastrophic locust plague has swept through Judah, and the prophet Joel stands among the ruins and asks a question every generation eventually has to face: what is God saying to us in this? "Hear this, you elders; give ear, all inhabitants of the land! Has such a thing happened in ...
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The Prophet Who Married an Unfaithful Wife: What Hosea Reveals About God's Relentless Love

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The Prophet Who Married an Unfaithful Wife: What Hosea Reveals About God's Relentless Love A prophet's broken marriage becomes a living sermon on the steadfast love of God. Why would God tell Hosea to marry an unfaithful wife? Walk through the book of Hosea and discover the covenant love that pursues, redeems, and restores. Why Would God Tell a Prophet to Marry an Unfaithful Wife? Most prophets received a message. Hosea received a marriage. Somewhere in the northern kingdom of Israel, in the eighth century before Christ, the word of the LORD came to Hosea son of Beeri with an instruction that still makes readers flinch: "When the LORD first spoke through Hosea, the LORD said to Hosea, 'Go, take to yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the LORD.'" (Hosea 1:2) Read that slowly and the shock settles in. God asked his prophet to marry a woman who would betray him, to raise children whose names a...
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Understanding the Book of Daniel: How He Saw the Son of Man

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The Book of Daniel Explained How four young exiles kept faith in a hostile empire... and how Daniel saw, centuries early, the Son of Man who would receive an everlasting kingdom. Explore the book of Daniel: faithful exiles, the fiery furnace, the lions' den, dreams of falling kingdoms, and the Son of Man who reigns in Christ. A Young Exile in Babylon The book of Daniel begins with a defeat. In 605 BC, Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon marched on Jerusalem, and among the young men he carried off were four from Judah's noble families. They were teenagers, likely, chosen for their intelligence and promise, and they were about to be reprogrammed. New names, a new language, a new curriculum in Babylonian wisdom, a new diet from the king's own table. The empire's strategy was total: take the best of a conquered people and remake them into Babylonians. Daniel had other ideas. In the very first chapter, before any dream or vision, the book plants its flag on a quiet act of conviction. ...
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