Tomorrow’s Readings:
Amos 1-2
John 11:17-57

Amos 1-2

Amos is a prophet that wasn’t always one. He’s minding his own business out in the shepherds fields in the southern kingdom of Judah, in the time when Isaiah was prophet in Judah, and he suddenly gets called by God to go to the northern kingdom of Israel and denounce their decadence and idolatry.

This is no little thing, not least of which because the prophets were regularly mistreated by the authorities, especially when personally called out, and also because he’s being ripped from the profession he’s used to and thrust into the spotlight of being a prophet. That’s a major career change to say the least.

One of the major themes of this book is that God will judge the gentiles for their sins and crimes against his people, but that Israel is not exempt from judgement just because they’re his people. In fact, they’re more culpable for their sins because they’ve been instructed in right living before God, and they’ve disregarded these instructions and done what was wrong in his eyes.

Also that God isn’t just the God of Israel, but is the creator of all, and so has concern for the gentile nations (like how he sent Jonah to give Nineveh a chance to repent) and he will also judge them too. Israel is his chosen people, but only as far as they were supposed to be a light to the nations and exalt his name, and also that the messiah for all the world would come through them. They weren’t his chosen people because he picked just them to redeem and everyone else was disposed of, but that was how some of the Israelites came to view the gentiles over time. This is why there’s so much resistance to preaching the gospel among the gentiles by some Christians in the early church.

This book starts out with a prophecy against several of Israel’s neighbors and lists their crimes, but also lists both kingdoms of Israel and Judah as nations to be judged. Everyone is held to the same standard and evil deeds will not go unpunished.

John 11:17-57

Lazarus has been in the tomb for four days, and John makes note that Bethany is very close to Jerusalem, so this time gap is intentional and not due to traveling a great distance. Jesus wanted Lazarus to be dead and buried long enough that nobody could say he was just asleep or in a coma, he is dead dead.

Martha approaches Jesus and basically asks why he didn’t come to them sooner because she knows he could’ve healed her brother. But she also holds out hope that he will raise him from the dead, because she knows exactly who Jesus is, and if prophets like Elijah could raise someone then the messiah definitely could too.

Jesus responds with my favorite quote of his, and my favorite line in the entire Bible. It’s the hope that we all have and look forward to, it’s the hope that we will see everyone we’ve lost again, it’s an encapsulation of the entire gospel,

Jesus said to her, ” I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”

John 11:25-26

Jesus tells her that anyone that believes in him will never die. But Lazarus believed in him and he’s dead, so how does that pan out? The second line is the key, and shows that he’s not talking about physical death, he’s talking about eternal life, and anyone that believes in him will have that life with him forever.

This amazing miracle, performed in plain sight of all these people, ha two effects; for some it causes them to believe in Jesus as the Christ, but for others it caused them to run and tell his enemies what happened because they believed he needed to be stopped. The council says if Jesus is allowed to continue, everyone will believe in him and the Romans will come and destroy them, their temple and their entire city. It’s ironic that this exact sequence of events happens about 40 years later, but because they rejected him and didn’t believe.

See this article I wrote on John 11: Do You Believe This?

Tomorrow’s Readings:
Amos 3-5
John 12:1-19