SESSION 38: HOSEA, JOEL, AMOS

INTRODUCTION

Prophetic Communication

The prophet spoke in place of God. A true prophet could say, “Thus says the Lord.” The ‘pro’ in prophet does not mean that the prophet is a ‘predictor’ of coming events. His primary purpose was to warn the people of impending judgments, and encourage the people with coming blessings. The prophet was not inspired. His message from God was inspired. The prophet served God alongside the Priests, Levites, Judges, and Kings. The prophet appeared when the people fell into ritually obeying the Law, or when they turned away from it.

In several of the messages God gave the Minor Prophets, the prophets directed the Israelites to the coming “Anointed One”, who Himself would not destroy the Law, but would fulfill it.

MINOR PROPHETS

When viewing all sixteen Major and Minor prophets according to their messages, they fit together as follows:

Two to Israel:	Amos, Hosea
One to Israel and Judah:	Micah
Two to Nineveh:	Jonah, Nahum
One to Exiled Jews:	Ezekiel
One to Babylon:	Daniel
One to Edom:	Obadiah
Eight to Judah:	Joel, Isaiah, Micah, Jeremiah, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi

Pre-exilic, Post-exilic

Nine of the twelve Minor Prophets are ‘pre-exilic’. They lived and wrote before King Nebuchadnezzar exiled the people of Judah to Babylon. The other three prophets lived and wrote after a remnant of Jews returned to Judah. They are called ‘post-exilic’. We’ve already learned that Ezekiel and Daniel are known as ‘exilic’ prophets, because they lived and wrote during the exile.

HOSEA

Contemporaries

His ministry was during the reign of seven kings of Israel:

• Jeroboam II (13)
• Zechariah (14)
• Shallum (15)
• Menahem (16)
• Pekahiah (17)
• Pekah (18)
• Hoshea (19)

His ministry was during the reign of four kings of Judah:

• Uzziah (10)
• Jotham (11)
• Ahaz (12)
• Hezekiah (13)

Sharing:

• Hosea’s time covered seven kings of Israel, and five kings of Judah. They were short reigns, showing that evil literally sucked the life out of them.
• His relationship to other prophets:
  A few years before Amos concluded his ministry in Israel.Fifteen years before Isaiah’s ministry to Judah.Concluded his ministry by overlapping with Micah’s ministry to Judah.

His ministry was to Israel during the time of oppression under the Assyrian Empire (753-715 B.C.).

Summary

Hosea preached in the northern kingdom of Israel, after the prophet Amos, during the troubled times before the fall of Samaria in 721 B.C. He was concerned about the idolatry of the people and their faithlessness toward God. Hosea boldly pictured this faithlessness in terms of his own disastrous marriage to an unfaithful woman. Just as his wife Gomer turned out to be unfaithful to him, so God’s people had deserted the Lord. Judgment was the result on Israel. Yet, in the end God’s constant love for His people would prevail, and he would win the nation back to Himself and restore their relationship. This love is expressed in the words: “How can I give you up, Israel? How can I abandon you?... My heart will not let me do it! My love for you is too strong” (Hosea 11:8, GNT).

Ponder

·         The extent to which God will go in dealing with unfaithfulness among His people.

Sharing:

• Hosea was a prophet to Israel, after Amos, but before Israel was kicked out of its own country. They ended up not being exiled, but scattered, never to return.
• It is a good reminder that prophesying has more to do with ‘forth-telling’ than ‘fore-telling’. It never came to say that people were good, but rather to tell them to leave their sin.
• Hosea’s story is the same as that of Ezekiel all over again. It is about God’s totally unconditional love.
• Was Hosea’s wife a prostitute when they married? Probably not, because he wouldn’t have married one. Her behavior impacted the children, as it always does.
• Israel is an unfaithful wife to the Lord. God commanded Hosea to take an unfaithful wife, and in doing so, enter into a love relationship that He will be cheated on again and again.
• What kind of husband is God? Remember this question, because it will let us know our God as we listen to the story of Hosea.
• Hosea 2:5-8: God will take away His gifts, and His wife, Israel, will go to her lovers because she will never acknowledge that it was God who gave her food and water and gifts to make her beautiful, and love to make her strong. She runs to her lovers and they have nothing to give her. They only take. God even blocks her way so that she can’t find them. He takes everything from her that He gave so that she could no longer give His gifts to her lovers. It was God who gave her everything, so He takes everything away and leaves her broken and starving in punishment. What an awful, cruel God! He sounds so mean if you stop there. He appears so jealous and petty. But as the story continues, the very next verse (v.8) shows the reason God was so harsh.
• Hosea 2:14-17: God has a scary depth of love for us. He gives because He loves and He takes away because He loves.
• Hosea chapter 3: God tells Hosea to buy back his unfaithful wife. She has run off with so many men she’s become ugly and broken. One of her so-called lovers has sold her into slavery. God tells Hosea to love his unfaithful wife like He unfaithful Israel.
• The idols we face are ‘things’, but God always leaves a way back from idols.
• God’s loyalty is shown throughout the book. “The pursuing love of God is the greatest wonder of the universe” (Donald Barnhouse).
• Hosea’s children’s names reflect how the people felt – not loved and not God’s people.
• Hosea chapters 4-10 lays it out that the people had no one else to blame, and no excuse for not knowing the truth.
• It seems Israel chose to be ignorant and reject what they knew was right, thinking this would make them feel that they were not sinning.
• God doesn’t leave sin unaddressed with those He loves. Israel has been told their sin over and over. Our God will painfully and unmistakably show us our sin and leave us facing a choice: repent and change to live in freedom from sin; or ignore and rationalize your sin.
• We can see the results again and again in God’s story of choosing to overlook our sin. Or even not choosing, and trying to be lovers of God and lovers of self. It will destroy the soul and drain the peace and joy from your life.
• Hosea 4:12-13: What’s wrong with loving nature and appreciation the land under the shade of a tall tree? Underneath all of the peace that the relativity philosophy appears to bring, no comfort is found. There is only pain and hurt and loss of goodness and hope. God blames the parents, and especially the priests, for much of this. Parents, how do our children see God in us? No matter what we would like to think, our behavior and involvement mean more spiritually than we could ever know.
• Does the way we live and love our spouse show God’s love to people around us, especially our children?
• God continues to expose the priests, parents and children, and all the countries around them, for their evil. He keeps telling them how awful they have made themselves and how terrible their punishment will be.
• Just when we want to close our Bibles in disgust and hopelessness, or maybe even with guilt for recognizing a part of us in all this sin and evil, God reveals to us what kind of Husband and Father He is!
• Hosea chapter 11 shows that we don’t have a choice whether God will love us or not!
• God’s story with Hosea ends with a challenge: listen and get your knowledge puffed up, or know God more and love others more. We can respond and take God’s Word and become different, or we can ignore His Word and stumble through life, because we refuse to look inwardly and apply the truth we hear to our hearts.

JOEL

Contemporaries

• His exact date of ministry is uncertain. If his ministry was around 835 B.C., then Jehu was the king of Israel (10).
• His ministry was during the reign of queen Athaliah of Judah (7 in succession of kings), and Joash of Judah (8).
• His relationship was with the prophet Elisha.

Summary

Little is known about the prophet Joel, and it is not clear just when he lived. It is generally accepted that it was around 835 B.C., although some suggest it was during the fifth or fourth century B.C., at the time of the Persian Empire. Joel describes a terrible invasion of locusts and a devastating drought in Palestine. In these events he sees a sign of the coming day of the Lord, a time when the Lord will punish those who oppose his righteous will. The prophet conveys the Lord’s call to the people to repent, and His promise of restoration and blessing for His people.

Ponder

·         The extent to which God will go to motivate the sensitive ear to listen to His words.

Sharing:

• The same theme of consequences, punishment and hope is continues throughout the prophets.
• Joel is a short, honest, convicting book. Once again, he is a prophet of warning. God will not take it easy on those He loves. In fact, He will hold those who know Him to a higher standard. He will allow them to go through punishment and consequences that will open their eyes to their sin.
• Note the difference of times: then and now; things happened then, versus now.
• The day of the Lord is mentioned several times in Joel as a frightening time of justice (Joel  2:11). Who can endure the day of the Lord?
• Throughout the Bible we are faced with the truth that there is no way to serve God without His help. This is the theme of the Bible. Joshua told the Israelites: “You cannot serve a Holy and Righteous God.” When the Israelites heard the unrestrained voice of God, they knew that if they heard it again they would die. When Moses was faced with the one true God, his first response was to fall on his face in fear.
• What is our response to our Holy, Righteous God? I’m afraid I resemble the Israelites Joel is talking to more than I want to believe. When faced with the truth about myself, my basic, natural reaction is to avoid it. I want to rationalize it. If I could somehow deflect the proof of my selfishness with an excuse or appease it with a good deed, I won’t have to change. But Joel says, the Bible says, God says, we are a dirtied creation unable to stand in the presence of Holiness. It is absolutely hopeless for us. But not for God. The only way we can receive the gift of drawing near to God is the next two verses in Joel - verses 12-13. Rend your heart, not your clothes. Change your life, not your appearance. Act love, don’t just talk love and God will forgive and accept you. This is because He is a terrifying, holy, just God, and at the same time He is also a loving, gracious, and compassionate God. He loves to forgive. Like any relationship, your words and appearance mean nothing at all, if they’re not accompanied by a desire to love. God knows our hearts; there is no deceiving Him with our words, actions or appearance. He desires a real, genuine, heartfelt relationship, and nothing else will do. He will not be an acquaintance. He will not have half your heart. This is because He will not reside with the sin we naturally have in our hearts.
• Israel in Joel’s time enjoyed incredible prosperity, and while they appeared to worship God, He sent Joel to tell them He knew the lies in their worship. They could very well have been doing everything right, and yet that is not good enough. It’s all about their hearts. They did many things right, like their temple worship, but it was not about what they did. Samuel said to Saul long before this, “God desires obedience more than sacrifice.” Remember David, when he did not sacrifice, but repented. This is what make him a man of God. Israel wanted all the benefits of God’s blessing, while still being able to live selfishly. They wanted everything God could get them, and everything they could get for themselves. Prophet after prophet is sent to them, telling them to forget all the sacrifices and rituals and traditions. They are worthless if you haven’t given your heart to God. That’s what God desires. It is the only thing, and yet everything. They had to trust that He knew how to take care of their hearts.
• The Lord gave hope to His people in Joel 2:28, which continues to the end of chapter 2. God will be with you. You will call and He will answer. His Spirit will be poured out on all His children – young and old, man and woman. He is the same God now as He was then. We cannot get away with living for ourselves while confessing to be one of His children. He still wants only our hearts. We still have to trust that our God knows more than we do. He knows how to take care of us. And He will.Joel 3:14 shows that God can use us as a tool to try and help others know of eternity and make a choice.
• Joel 3:17 says that the people will know (all Israelites and Egyptians). The whole world will know that there is one true God. Israel sinned more than the foreigners in that they knew more.
• Joel ends with an undeserved pardon. We’re all born with guilt, and all we can do is make more guilt, until we give it up. What we need is freedom from that bloodguilt. And God will pardon, and has pardoned a guilty people, and made them a saved, redeemed people. God requires a heart that is open to Him and voluntarily vulnerable. If we give our hearts to God and are willing to face the punishment and conviction we deserve, we will receive forgiveness and mercy instead.

AMOS

Contemporaries

• His ministry was during the reign of Jeroboam II of Israel (13).
• His ministry was during the reign of Uzziah of Judah (10).
• His relationship to other prophets:
• Jonah would have been in Nineveh at the beginning of the time of Amos.
• Hosea began his ministry to Israel toward the end of the time of Amos.
• His ministry was to Israel and Judah, with strong words of judgment against six surrounding nations (760-753 B.C.): Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, Edom, Ammon, and Moab.

Summary

Although he came from a town in Judah, Amos preached to the people of the northern kingdom of Israel. It was a time of great prosperity, notable religious piety, and apparent security. But Amos saw that prosperity was limited to the wealthy, and that it thrived on injustice and oppression of the poor. Religious observance was insincere, and security more apparent than real. With passion and courage he preached that God would punish the nation. He called for justice to “flow like a stream,” and said, “Perhaps the Lord will be merciful to the people of the nation who are still left alive” (Amos 5:15, GNT).

Ponder

• God will use evil nations to judge His own people, and yet He will not excuse them of their evil.
• The extent to which God will go to call His people to justice and righteousness.

Sharing:

• Amos was a poor, uneducated man (a shepherd and ‘apple-picker’) before he was a prophet.
• It is similar to the times of Jonah and Hosea. There are lots of prophets because Israel was not doing well and need to hear the prophets’ messages of repentance. Confession is easy; repentance is hard.
• The prophet Amos was given the judgments of the surrounding nations. We’re finally seeing the results of the nations sinning for so long. They will receive judgment and punishment for their sin. These warnings should be an example to Israel of the results of following other gods. But they seem to have the mentality of: “As long as it’s not me.”
• God is showing that all nations are accountable to Him. Everyone will experience the consequences of sin. Israel and Judah knew so much more about God than other people, and yet they tried to use Him, instead of trying to love Him.
• Israel and Judah are not left out of the punishment. But it seems to be human nature to ignore what you’re doing wrong until you’re punished, and then act guilty until the consequences go away.
• Amos 7:10-15: Amos goes to Bethel and prophesies the punishment of Israel. He is confronted by Amaziah, the priest of Bethel. He tells the King of Amos’s negative prophecies. Then He tells Amos to go back to Judah and get his money for prophesying there. True prophets were not paid because no one wanted to hear their messages. The mindset at that time was to keep paying until you get what you want. Amos 7:14 shows that true prophets do not prophesy for pay; they prophesy because God told them to. So here was Amos, trying to tell Israel about the coming punishment so that they would turn from their evil and be saved. He’s told by a priest in Bethel to do his tricks somewhere else. False prophets were so numerous in Israel that all prophets were assumed to be out for money. They had stopped testing the prophets for truth, and the result was they trusted none of them. Let’s not be like that with our teachers. They are meant to be checked and held accountable for their words. Otherwise we are letting ourselves be led astray.
• ‘Beth’ itself means ‘House of’, or ‘town’, and ‘El’ means ‘God’. So here in the City of God, His own prophet is not welcome.
• By the time Israel falls, the prophets of God are calling it Beth-aven. ‘Aven’ means ‘evil’ or ‘wickedness’. So men had turned the City of God into the City of Wickedness. We so easily turn what God made good, into something self-serving and eventually wicked. By the actions of Adam and Eve, a good, perfect world of God, was turned into a world where sin reigns in the hearts of men. We can do that with prayer, or public worship, or teaching. It so easy to get up in front of people for the good feelings it gives us, or to look spiritual or sound spiritual, and in doing so, changing the good thing God has given us into something evil. God desires authenticity; He desires the heart to match the words. Israel went through so much to look repentant, when all they had to do was repent, and their sins would be forgiven. The way back to God is simple. Pretending obedience is complex, and guilty, and impossible.
• Amos 8:9-12: God tells Israel He will remove His voice from the nation. They will search for His voice but they won’t find it. What did they do when they did have His voice?
• Amos 9:9-10: There are God’s people and there are sinners among them, especially during prosperous times. But the God that we worship tells us here that He will bring hard times to His people to separate the good from the bad, to purify and protect His loved ones. This is very different from how we as humans view hard times.
• Amos 9:11-15: God promises to restore His broken people. He calls David’s house a house of ruins. But from the ruins, God promises to bring His people back and give them the land again. God never blesses a proud people, or a mighty people. He blesses the low, the ruined, the humbled, and He loves to do it. We turn beauty into ruin, and He takes our ruin and makes it beautiful. It is the low and humbled spirit that admits self-ruin. It has always been the only way to come to God. He will not accept a prideful heart because pride doesn’t belong with salvation. We should beg for the pride in our lives to be continually broken and ruined. Then we can be happy no matter the circumstances. We have a God to be proud of, and His Son who loves us as we are. The table is meant for us to praise God as we are, for who He is and for what He’s done. He is the God of Salvation and He loves to save.

SESSION 37: Daniel

INTRODUCTION

God sends Isaiah to Judah before Israel’s fall to Assyria (740 B.C.).

God sends Jeremiah to Judah before and during Judah’s fall to Babylon (627 B.C.).

God sends Ezekiel to Judah in exile in Babylon (593 B.C.).

God sends Daniel to Judah in exile in Persia (553 B.C.).

Setting

The Book of Daniel clearly belongs to that period among God's covenant people known as the Babylonian Captivity. Nebuchadnezzar took captives from Judah on three separate occasions, beginning in 605 B.C. Among this first group taken were Daniel and his companions.

Historical Context

Daniel had his first vision forty years after Ezekiel became a prophet. Ezekiel referred to Daniel three times as an example of righteousness and wisdom.

Babylon rebelled against the Assyrian Empire in 626 B.C., and then overthrew the Assyrian capital of Nineveh in 612 BC. Babylon became master of the world when it defeated Egypt at the battle of Carchemish in 605 B.C. Later that year, the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar took control of Jerusalem and took many of its citizens as hostages to Babylon, a group that included the young Daniel.

Daniel served for the entire Babylonian captivity as a prophet and government official. He continued on after the Medes and Persians overcame Babylon in 539 B.C. Zerubbabel led a return of the Jews to Jerusalem in the first year of Cyrus, and Daniel lived and ministered at least until the third year of Cyrus (536 B.C.).

Sharing:

• Could anyone in Israel say that God was not with them? That He had abandoned them
• He was there when they were a great nation. He was there when they began to crumble and the nation split into two nations. He sent His prophets to call His people back to His love and protection. He was rejected over and over, but He sent prophets to His people all the way up to their exile.
• This was the last straw. They were facing the full penalty for how awful they had been towards the poor, the foreigners, and even their own children. But more than that, they had ignored and mocked the God who loves them.
• So what happened? Did He leave them? Were they forsaken in their exile?
• In whatever situation, no matter how bad God is there. He’s there in our sin, in our failure, in our success, in this time of uncertainty. We CAN trust God, He IS and will always be with us and lead us where HE wants us to go. We can trust Him and have our doubts lead us to His strength and to prayer.  

Political Context

Kings of Judah

• Jehoiakim (Eliakim), for eleven years.
• Jehoiachin (Jeconiah, Coniah), for three months.
• Zedekiah (Mattaniah), for eleven years.

Prophets

The contemporary prophets of Daniel are:

• Jeremiah, in Jerusalem, and finally in Egypt.
• Ezekiel, living about fifty miles from Babylon on the River Chebar.

When you think of the prophet Isaiah, think of the Messianic prophet. When you think of the prophet Jeremiah, think of the prophet of judgment. When you think of the prophet Ezekiel, think of the prophet of restoration. While the prophet Ezekiel wrote as a priest, Daniel served as the political prophet of the exile. Ezekiel referred to Daniel three times as an example of righteousness and wisdom. Even before he became a writer, his life reflected faith, prayer, courage, and consistency and never did he compromise.

Sharing:

• Daniel was a man of God. How do we know? He prayed, even when there was a risk to do so. He was good looking and intelligent (chapter 1). He was humble. If he was asked, he probably would say he wasn’t great, but rather God was. He was fearless, committed to God and to his friends, and untouchable because of God.
• In Daniel 6:5 the king admits that Daniel is above reproach. This is a challenge to us: will our lives bring the same reaction from the world?

Generally speaking, the prophets of Israel were primarily concerned with the religious and social circumstances confronting their contemporaries, rather than with predicting events in the distant future. When the prophets did predict future events, it was normally of incidents in near term, such as Jeremiah’s prophecies about the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians.

Empires

·         Babylon

Under King Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel, along with his three friends, were given a place of service in the king’s court. The king ended up having a dream that his magicians could not give or interpret, so all the wise men, including Daniel and his friends, were to be destroyed.  But God enabled Daniel to tell the king his dream, and also to interpret it.  Before he revealed it to the king in his presence, Daniel gave all the glory to God.

The image the king had in his dream stood for four world empires: Babylon, Medo-Persian, Greek, and Roman. At the time Nebuchadnezzar dreamed his dream, the Persian Empire did not exist. It was just a Babylonian province. Only wandering tribes inhabited the Grecian states. The city of Rome was only a little town on the banks of the Tiber River.

Babylon fell to the Persian Empire twenty-three years after the death of Nebuchadnezzar. Daniel was in his eighties when Cyrus was king of Persia. Darius was ‘sub-king’ of the Babylonian region now under Persia.

·         Medo-Persian

Daniel was in his eighties when Cyrus was king of Persia. The confusion between King Cyrus and Darius is usually settled by understanding that Darius was a ‘sub-king’ under Cyrus. He is described as king over the realm of the Chaldeans (Daniel 9:1), whereas Cyrus is referred to as king of Persia (Daniel 10:1).

Daniel still had enemies, but they still could not fault him. The king’s one hundred governors probably knew that he would not stop praying to his God, so they had the king sign a decree that no one would be permitted to request anything from any god, or from any man, except the king for thirty days. Daniel continued to pray with thanksgiving, as was his custom (Daniel 6:10). Without checking the reason behind the request of his officials, the king made a bad promise. Daniel was thrown into a den of lions, but he fell into the hands of the living God! He was as safe as his friends had been in the furnace. The king, who had fasted and mourned all night for Daniel, found him unhurt in the morning, because he believed in his God (Daniel 6:23). This experience brought King Darius into the light of the knowledge of Daniel’s God.

Sharing:

• The lions were hungry. Life sends hungry lions our way too. The lions must have been female because God had to shut their mouths

Under Cyrus the Persian, the elderly Daniel continued in his high office as one of three presidents, with one hundred and twenty princes under them. He was most likely one of the king’s counselors responsible for sending the Jews and their temple treasures back to Jerusalem.

Ezra 1:1-4 indicates that when Cyrus the Persian captured Babylon in 539 B.C., the way was opened for the Jews to return to their homeland. This was sixty-seven years after Jeremiah had prophesied the return.

Literary Style

The book of Daniel was originally written in two languages. Chapters 1:1-2:4 and chapters 8-12 were written in Hebrew, the language of God’s covenant people, Israel. The message largely shows God’s future plan for His people. Chapters 2:4 (end of verse)-7:28 were written in Aramaic, the language of the Gentile world in Daniel’s day. The message of these chapters is largely historical, showing God’s dealing with the Gentile empires.

MESSAGE

The content of Daniel’s historical narratives is not a connected historical discourse, but is separate units placed together for a specific purpose. The narratives do not give a history of Israel under Babylonian or Persian rule, nor do they give a biographical history of Daniel and his friends.

God’s Story through Daniel is an Old Testament book that emphasizes the truth that God is in control of world history. The book falls naturally into three main sections:

• Introductory information about Daniel (chapter 1).
• Narratives about Daniel and his friends during their days of captivity among the Babylonians and the Persians (chapters 2-7).
• Daniel's dreams and visions concerning the future of Israel and the end of time (chapters 8-12).

The common thread is an emphasis on the way the absolute sovereignty of God operates in the affairs of all nations. This is demonstrated in the promotion of Daniel and his friends in the court of King Nebuchadnezzar; how they are saved in the fiery furnace; in Nebuchadnezzar’s humiliation; in Belshazzar’s feast and fall; and Daniel in the lion’s den.

Jerusalem may be destroyed with its temple in ruins. God’s people may be in exile, and wicked rulers may seem victorious, but God remains supreme. God is greater than all circumstances, and His people should be true to Him in whatever situation they find themselves.

History is not under the control of other gods, nor can its mystery be discovered by human manipulation. God is totally free to direct and reveal history as He pleases. According to His sovereign pleasure He will intervene among the kingdoms of this world and establish a universal kingdom that will endure forever.

  

Daniel chapter 1 sets the stage for the rest of the book by introducing Daniel and his three friends, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. These four young Hebrew men were taken captive in one of the Babylonian raids against Judah in 605 B.C. Intelligent and promising, they were placed in special training as servants in the court of King Nebuchadnezzar. Then their names and diets were changed to reflect Babylonian culture in an attempt to take away their Jewish identity. But Daniel and his friends rose to the challenge, proving their Jewish food was superior to the diet of the Babylonians. The young men increased in wisdom and knowledge, gaining favour in the king's court.

Sharing:

• Daniel’s friends were given pagan names and lived in a pagan culture. Can we honor God like them? We live in a very pagan culture with many ‘gods’ like them. It is easier to live according to the cultural patterns.
• The friends faced death and still said, “God is able.” They still trusted Him even if the results were not as desired. It takes a huge amount of faith to trust in God’s control and the bigger picture in those circumstances.
• Nebuchadnezzar was a secular humanist: “Look at the city that I built!”

In Daniel chapters 2-7 Daniel and his friends met several additional tests to prove that although they were being held by a foreign empire, the God whom they worshiped was still in control. Daniel's three friends refused to worship the pagan Babylonian gods. Cast into the fiery furnace, they emerged unharmed through God's miraculous protection. Daniel, refusing to bow down and worship Darius, the king of Persia, was also thrown into a den of lions. But he was also preserved through God's direct intervention.

This second section also establishes Daniel as a skilled interpreter of dreams through God’s intervention. He interpreted several visions and dreams for King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, and his successor Belshazzar. As he revealed the meaning of the mysterious “handwriting on the wall”, he made it plain that the Medes and the Persians would defeat the Babylonian Empire. This happened exactly as Daniel predicted (Daniel 5:13-31). He continued as a servant in the court of the conquering Persian king.

Daniel chapters 8-12 contain predictions of times in the future that will be of particular importance for God’s people. Although the Jews were persecuted during the time of their subjection to Babylonian and Persian rulers, there was no widespread and systematic attempt to abolish their faith. This did not happen until the time of Antiochus IV, who named himself “Epiphanes”, and ruled in the Greek (Seleucid) Empire from 175-164 B.C. Antiochus tried to force the Jews to accept the Greek culture and to abandon their religious practices. Many Jews submitted, but others refused and suffered severe persecution. One of the major reasons for writing the Book of Daniel was to prepare God’s people for the time of Antiochus Epiphanes and to give them encouragement for this period of persecution. At the same time the book looks to the coming of the “Anointed One” (Daniel 9:25) – sometimes translated “Messiah”. It is this King who will destroy all human kingdoms and establish His eternal kingdom of righteousness and peace.

Sharing:

• All the prophecies of Daniel are meant to show the power of God over nations and time.
• Some of the more specific prophecies are to the Israelites during the time of Antiochus Epiphanes. He was an emperor who hated the Jews and destroyed the temple after he drove a pig into the Holy of Holies. God spoke through time to warn and comfort His people.
• He is the God of all ages and Ruler over events in this world. All things meant for evil will be turned to God’s purposes for His glory.
• God is with us. He gave us His Word to reveal Himself to us.
• And the God of Daniel is strong and loving, all-knowing and kind. He warns and loves His children, and even in punishment, He reaches out to them.

‘Apocalyptic’ Prophecy

A major contribution of Daniel’s message arises from its nature as ‘apocalyptic’ prophecy. Highly symbolic in language, the prophecy was related to the events of Daniel's near future. An ‘apocalypse’ is a form of literature. It has a particular written structure and form. The prophets were told to speak what they were told or had seen. Apocalyptic literature is presented in the form of visions and dreams and its language has hidden meanings and is symbolic. The images of apocalyptic literature are often in the form of fantasy, rather than of reality. Most of the apocalypses are in written form, so they were very formal. There was a strong tendency to divide time and events into neat packages. There was also a great fondness for the symbolic use of numbers. There are different views regarding the use of these numbers, so we should be careful when thinking through the symbolic use. Any reference to numbers, like “Seventy sevens [weeks]” in Daniel 9:24, may or may not be a continuous sequence or as having time intervals between them.

In apocalyptic prophecy, these close-at-hand and further-removed dimensions of the future, often blend into each other. An example of this is the figure of Antiochus Epiphanes, prominent in chapters 8 and 11 of Daniel’s message. In these passages the prophet Daniel moves from the nearer figure, who was to desecrate the Jewish temple in 168 B.C., to his appearance at a remote time in the future as a stubborn, vicious, and deceitful king (Daniel 8:23, GNT). This interplay between the near future and the distant future makes it difficult to interpret the book accurately.

In addition to its prophetic contribution, the Book of Daniel portrays a time in biblical history when miracles were abundant. Other periods when miracles were commonplace included the times of Moses, Elijah, and Elisha. In each of these periods, God was working in a spectacular manner to show His power and bring about a new era in His saving relationship to mankind.

We should not be disheartened if we cannot accurately put together God’s entire message through Daniel. Daniel’s struggle with the message and the answer of Michael, the great prince (Daniel 12:1) seems to satisfy the prophet:

Although I heard, I did not understand. Then I said, “My lord, what shall be the end of these things?”

And he said, “Go your way, Daniel, for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end. Many shall be purified, made white, and refined, but the wicked shall do wickedly; and none of the wicked shall understand, but the wise shall understand” (Daniel 12:8-9).

When the time is right, the righteous shall understand what is going on! Until then, let us avoid speculating and be encouraged with the closing words in Daniel 12:13 (GNT): “And you, Daniel, be faithful to the end. Then you will die, but you will rise to receive your reward at the end of time.”

NEXT SESSION

Our next two sessions takes us into God’s messages through the twelve Minor Prophets. Prepare to share about the first three: Hosea, Joel, and Amos.

SESSION 36: Ezekiel

INTRODUCTION

God sends Isaiah to Judah before Israel’s fall to Assyria (740 B.C.).

God sends Jeremiah to Judah before and during Judah’s fall to Babylon (627 B.C.).
God sends Ezekiel to Judah in exile in Babylon (593 B.C.).

Remember, our focus is two-fold:

• Learning about how God related to people during the time of each prophet, which requires we know about the historical record of the time, and reading the message of the prophet during that time. This gives us insight into God’s attributes.
• Understanding something of what it was like to live in the time of the prophet. We do this by giving attention to the religious, political, and social climate of the time. By thinking about what our response would be like while living in that time, we get closer to appreciating how our life story fits into God’s Story.

Setting
Ezekiel was in Babylon, while Jeremiah was in Jerusalem. Jeremiah ministered for forty years. Ezekiel ministered for at least twenty-three years until he was fifty years old. He witnessed much of the decline and fall of the Assyrian Empire. In place of the Assyrians, the armies of Babylon under King Nebuchadnezzar emerged as the world power in the region of Chaldea (the entire Babylonian area). Ezekiel settled with a colony of Jewish captives near Tel Abib, on the River Chebar, a canal flowing into the Euphrates River southeast of Babylon.

Sharing:

• In Ezekiel, God makes it personal. Not that it wasn’t before, but He takes His love to a depth that should almost make us afraid of how much He loves us. His love is powerful! He is unshakeable in the pursuit of the one He loves.
• Repetitive sin should hurt us with the knowledge of how it hurts our God. Israel was called out for mistreating the poor, for their slander, gossip, lies, sinning in the dark, and worshipping themselves and saying its God they worship.

Historical Context

Ezekiel faced the reality of the hearts of the people of Judah:

• Ezekiel 12:1-2: “Son of man, you dwell in the midst of a rebellious house, which has eyes to see but does not see, and ears to hear but does not hear…”
• Ezekiel 14:1-3: “Son of man, these men have set up their idols in their hearts…”

Yet, God’s mercy shows forth:

• Ezekiel 2:4-5: “I am sending you to them, and you shall say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God.’ As for them, whether they hear or whether they refuse – for they are rebellious house – yet they will know that a prophet has been among them.”
• Ezekiel 11:16: “Although I have cast them far off among the Gentiles, and although I have scattered them among the countries, yet I shall be a little sanctuary for them in the countries where they have gone.
• Ezekiel 33:11: “Tell them that as surely as I, the Sovereign Lord, am the living God, I do not enjoy seeing a sinner die. I would rather see him stop sinning and live.”

Political Context

In place of the Assyrians the armies of Babylon under King Nebuchadnezzar emerged as the dominant power in the region of Chaldea. The names ‘Chaldeans’ and “Babylonians” are used interchangeably by biblical writers. The Babylonians and the armies of Pharaoh Necho of Egypt periodically fought over the territory formerly subject to the Assyrians along the coast of Syria and Israel. The kings of Judah in Jerusalem were caught in the middle.

While Ezekiel was in captivity with much of the population of Jerusalem, Nebuchadnezzar installed Zedekiah as ruler of Judah. He ruled until the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.

The exiles and many of those remaining in Jerusalem hoped that the Exile would be short, that those who had been deported would soon be returned to the city, and that Jerusalem would be spared further disaster. There were false prophets who wrongly encouraged this belief. Ezekiel had to warn the exiles that a worse end was yet in store for Jerusalem.

Kings

• Jehoiakim was placed on the throne of Jerusalem by Pharaoh Necho. After the Egyptians were defeated by the Babylonians, Jehoiakim switched his allegiance and became subject to Nebuchadnezzar. He remained a Babylonian subject for three years and then switched has allegiance back to Egypt. Jehoiakim died in the same month Nebuchadnezzar set out on an expedition to punish him.
• Jehoiachin, son of Jehoiakim, was left to face Nebuchadnezzar’s wrath. He succeeded his father as king. After a brief siege, Jehoiachin was taken into captivity with much of the population of Jerusalem, including Ezekiel.
• Zedekiah, Jehoiachin’s uncle, was installed as ruler of Judah by Nebuchadnezzar. He ruled until the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. Though in this way Zedekiah became the last king of Judah, Jehoiachin was considered the last legitimate ruler from the Davidic line. David’s line ended after twenty-one kings ruled for 514 years, including Saul’s twenty-year reign.

MESSAGE
The Divine name used by Ezekiel is not “Jehovah Elohim” (Lord God), but “the Sovereign Yahweh” (2:4). It occurs over two hundred times in the Book, thus showing Ezekiel’s concept of the sovereign majesty of the God of Israel.

Names & Titles of God
Hebrew	Reference	Meaning
Adonai	Psalm 2:4	Lord, Master
El-Berith	Judges 9:46	God of the Covenant
El Elyon	Genesis 14:18-20	Most High God/Exalted One
El Olam	Genesis 21:33	The Eternal God
El Shaddai	Genesis 17:1-2	All Powerful God
Qedosh Yisra’el	Isaiah 1:4	The Holy One of Israel
Shapat	Genesis 18:25	Judge/Ruler
Yahweh-jereh	Genesis 22:14	Yahweh Provides
Yahweh-seba’ot	1 Samuel 1:3	Yahweh of Armies
Yahweh-shalom	Judges 6:24	Yahweh is Peace
Yahweh-tsidkenu	Jeremiah 23:6	Yahweh Our Righteousness
Aramaic
Attiq yomin	Daniel 7:9	Ancient of Days
Illaya	Daniel 7:25	Most High

More than ninety times God addresses Ezekiel as the son of man (see Ezekiel 2:1). The phrase means “person”, human being”, and emphasizes the humanity and frailty of the prophet, especially as it stands in contrast to a vision of God’s glory.

Ezekiel’s message may be divided into three parts after the introduction in the first three chapters:

• Announcement of judgment on Jerusalem (chs. 4-24).
• Announcement of judgment on foreign nations (chs. 25-32).
• The promise of restoration and mercy for the future (chs. 33-48). After a messenger arrived reporting the destruction of Jerusalem, Ezekiel gives the message of hope.

Ezekiel is the only prophetic book that is entirely autobiographical, written in the first person from the vantage point of the prophet himself.  He describes more symbolic actions than any other prophetic book. These are object lessons for the people. For example, Ezekiel was married to a woman who was "the desire of his eyes" (Ezekiel 24:16). One of the saddest notes of his life was the death of his wife. In Ezekiel 24:1-2 and 18 the prophet was told that on the very day he received the revelation that Babylon would lay siege against the holy city of Jerusalem, his wife would die. Ezekiel's sadness at the death of his wife was to match the grief of God over the sin of Jerusalem. Ezekiel was commanded not to grieve her death; he was to prepare himself for this tragedy even as God had prepared Himself for the death of His beloved city (Ezekiel 24:15-22). Perhaps no other event in the lives of the Old Testament prophets is as touching as this. The harshness of God's command to His prophet emphasizes the Lord's grief over the fate and sufferings of His rebellious people.

Sharing:

• God tells Ezekiel that He will take his wife, so that he would know God’s pain as Israel is taken. His wife!!!  I love my wife a lot, and can see that love all around me, but to know that God loves us like that and so much more should break us down to a life that desires HIS love, not our pleasures.
• To bring us deeper into His heart, God tells Ezekiel a story about Israel and how He views His people. He compares Israel with three sisters. How He found Israel bloody and crying in the desert. He picked her up and wrapped a blanket around her and carried her home to His palace. She had no wants that weren’t fulfilled. Her every need was tended to. God delighted in giving her gifts. He made her beautiful and surrounded her with every good thing, because He loves her and delights in her happiness. But she began to look at her sisters, and how they had many men that loved them. She began to give the gifts that God gave her out of love to these men to get their love too. As she did this, she felt farther from her true love so she gave more of herself to these other men. She gave and gave to the many men until she had no more of God’s gifts to give. They began to grumble and complain, so in desperation she gave all of herself to them. But they didn’t want her anymore. She wasn’t beautiful like she was when she was surrounded by God’s gift and her eyes were bright with the sure knowledge of being loved. So she became worse than a prostitute and gave herself for nothing at all. And all the while, God was there, telling her how precious she was, calling out to her. Telling her what was happening and what would happen if she kept running to other men who could never love her like Him. Until finally she was back in the desert, beaten and bloody and crying. And God picked her up, and said, “Come home, I love you, I forgive you, I’ll never leave you no matter what.”
  
  We are that precious to God, the Old Testament is God’s pursuit of His bride, of His loved ones. He loves relentlessly. He will never stop calling out and giving mankind a chance to repent and find rest and hope and a home.

The message of the book of Ezekiel is one of judgment and restoration based on the covenant relationship between God and His people. Judgment came because of a double tragedy: the people’s rebellion against the will of God, and their false belief that they enjoyed protection regardless of their behavior. False prophets felt sure that even if they failed to keep the terms of the covenant, God was obliged to rescue them because of His covenant with Israel, and more specifically with the house of David.

God’s covenant people needed to learn that they had to keep their covenant obligations if they were to continue to enjoy God’s blessing. But Ezekiel made it clear that Yahweh would judge the nations that had rejoiced at and contributed to the fall of Israel. Yahweh was not only the covenant God of Israel, but also the Sovereign Lord of the universe. Ezekiel’s message deals with the purpose and nature of the judgments of God, as well as individual responsibility.

One of the greatest insights of the Book of Ezekiel is its teaching of individual responsibility. This prophet proclaimed the truth that every person is responsible for his own sin, as he stands exposed before God. In Ezekiel's time the Jewish people had such a strong sense of group identity as God's covenant people that they tended to overlook their need as individuals to follow God and His will. Some even believed that future generations were held accountable for the sins of their ancestors. They misapplied Exodus 20:5 and Numbers 14:18. But Ezekiel declared: “The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not bear the guilt of the father, nor the father bear the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself” (Ezekiel 18:20). This underscores the responsibility of every person before the Lord.

Ezekiel also paints a beautiful picture of the future age in which God will rule triumphantly among His people. Although God's people were suffering at the hands of a pagan nation when Ezekiel prophesied, better days were assured. God would establish His universal rule among His people through a descendant of David (Ezekiel 24-25).

Isaiah told of the coming redemption, which would be accomplished by the righteous Servant of the Lord, suffering for His people and making atonement for their sin. Jeremiah declared that a new covenant would secure it. Ezekiel reveals that all this would result in the establishment of a new Israel. Salvation would be realized in a new spiritual system, of which the old Mosaic system was but a shadow.

Through the use of parables, Ezekiel portrayed God's covenant people as a helpless new-born child (Ezekiel 16:1-6), as a lioness who cared carefully for her cubs (Ezekiel 19:1-9), as a sturdy cedar (Ezekiel 17:1-10), and as a doomed and useless vine (Ezekiel 15). He also used a clay tablet to portray the Babylonian siege against the city of Jerusalem (Ezekiel 4:1-2), ate his bread "with quaking" and drank his water "with trembling and anxiety" (Ezekiel 12:18). He used these to symbolize God's wrath. He also carried his belongings about to show that God would allow His people to be carried into exile by the Babylonians (Ezekiel 12:1-16).

Never did God ever forsake His faithfulness in justice and mercy in all of Judah’s rebellion. Here are portions of Ezekiel’s message:

• Ezekiel 2:4-5: “I am sending you to them, and you shall say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God.’ As for them, whether they hear or whether they refuse – for they are rebellious house – yet they will know that a prophet has been among them.”
• Ezekiel 3:8-9 (GNB): “Now I will make you as stubborn and as tough as they are. I will make you as firm as a rock, as hard as a diamond; don’t be afraid of those rebels.”
• Ezekiel 3:17: “Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel…”
• Ezekiel 14:14: “Even if these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it [the land], they would deliver only themselves by their righteousness,” says the Lord God.

NEXT SESSION

Daniel is another person who lived during the time of Judah’s exile.  As you read and think, consider how God related to this statesman and prophet, and how you would respond to his message.