The Family Bible Journey Podcast

When God told Jonah to go east, Jonah literally went in the opposite direction, hopping a ship to go west on the Mediterranean. When that landed him in the depth of the ocean and in the belly of a great fish, he got a divine redirect.

Obadiah is a prophet against the enemies of God's people and against those who gloat at the demise of others. God shows love and mercy to all. taking Obadiah's warnings to heart, let us lift-up the downtrodden and show mercy even to our enemies.

This difficult chapter of the Bible prophecies much suffering and death that the saints will experience for the cause of Christ. This life is hard on God's followers, so we wait patiently on our ultimate deliverance when Christ returns in glory.

Israel had it so good, they no longer felt they needed to listen to the Lord. Living in lax luxury, they were ripe for the picking because their greed and self-rightouesness grew to Biblical proportions. Let us not grow lax or weary of doing good, knowing that when our minds are set on earthly things, the eternal may escape our grasp.

Sadly, people tend to love evil and hate what's good. Why else would it be so easy for us to do evil and so hard to do good? We learn here not to trust our natural inclinations, but to listen to the Lord in faith and walk in His Way.

Powerful prophecy of the spiritual war between good and evil, satan and the Church, plays out in this chapter. Even though the woman appears weak, and the dragon looks like he will swallow her up, she is preserved and he is destroyed!

Israel is here described as a bunch of fat, lazy cows. Spoken by a shepherd, Amos's words were not kindly received. Yet, he persistently warned Israel of their demise, because he was sent by God to encourage these people towards repentence.

Amos was a blue collar lay preacher sent from Judah to Israel to warn God's people of the corrosive greed, pride and lax luxury they enjoyed. His words ring as true today as they ever have. May we learn his lessons, and repent of our own sin, that we would not ourselves be wiped-out by God's righteous judgment.

Only two men in all of human history did not die a natural death. Enoch and Elijah were taken straight to heaven. Does this chapter show us that they will physically return as the two faithful witnesses, who will be slain for their testimony, only to rise again?

God shows His mighty power to redeem even calamity and disaster when He restores His Old Testament people. As the New Testament people of God, we receive His Spirit, to sense His work even when we are faced with loss. But Joel ends not with an earthly deliverance, but the promised eternal deliverance through Christ our Savior, Who has tread the winepress of God's wrath for us.