Paul’s letter to the Romans has a lot in it. You can profitably spend weeks on it. Among other things, it is one of our major sources of information about the atonement. That is, God working through Jesus Christ to bring about reconciliation between Himself and us.

The essence of the atonement is distilled into these few verses. Look at what is here:

• All of us are sinners, therefore all of us need help.
• The Law bears witness, but is not the source of true righteousness.
• Justification (acquittal, being declared not guilty) comes by grace, as a gift.
• This is styled as a “redemption”, that is, buying back something. God lost us to sin, but went looking for us in order to buy us back.
• The blood of Jesus is a “propitiation” (or “expiation” in some versions), that is, a conciliation, a bringing together of two parties that are at odds.
• This has to be received by faith. We do have a part to play! It took God’s grace, it took Jesus’ sacrifice, but it also takes our faith. All three ingredients are necessary.
• The effect is that former sins are treated as though they did not exist.
• All of this declares the righteousness of God.

It would be possible to spend considerable time on each of these aspects. But we’ll focus on just one: God’s righteousness being declared.

God was righteous in condemning mankind to death, due to sin. In fact, He would have been unrighteous not to do so! He Himself is absolutely righteous, and cannot share His immortal nature with beings that are not also righteous.

But God had a purpose in creating mankind. He wanted a race of beings who loved Him and obeyed Him voluntarily. He wanted fellowship with us. Our sin has made complete fellowship impossible. So then, has our sin thwarted the purpose of God? It would not be righteous of God to allow sinners to overthrow His purpose! So it was righteous of God to provide a way of reconciliation.

However, it would not be righteous for God to just say “Oh, that’s OK” to sin. Sin must be condemned, and must be seen to be condemned. The sinful nature itself must be condemned. Hence, the provision of Jesus. In him, we have a man who bore the sinful nature, but never sinned. Sin was defeated completely. But Jesus was still afflicted with the sinful nature. So he was put to death. At first this seems unrighteous of God. If the wages of sin is death, then righteousness shouldn’t also result in death. But digging deeper, we see that the death of Jesus destroyed the devil, the sinful nature. (Hebrews 2:14) It would have been unrighteous for God to let Jesus remain in the grave (Acts 2:24), so He raised him up, now freed forever from the sinful nature. Sin was condemned in the life of Jesus, the sinful nature was destroyed in his death, and death was defeated in his resurrection.

In Jesus, all the barriers are destroyed! There can now be reconciliation, without compromise of God’s righteousness. If fact, not only was His righteousness not compromised, it was displayed for all to see! The redemption in Jesus Christ is the perfect, the only way to save us and still demonstrate to all mankind that God is unalterably righteous.

Of course “new” isn’t the only goal. Being reminded of things we know is a good thing by itself. But if there isn’t something fresh to make us take notice, the reminder may not do us any good. To help us avoid the inattention caused by familiarity, we sometimes have to deliberately do something different.

What can we do? Well, one trick that sometimes works is to read it out loud—and try to put emphasis and inflection into it. This works especially well when you can read it out loud with someone else. All of a sudden, it seems different, fresher.

Another approach is to try to put yourself into the account, as if you are there. If it’s history: what would it look like, smell like, feel like to be there? What are the emotions people are feeling? For poetry, as here, we can try to get into the mind of the writer. What would cause this poet/songwriter to compose this piece?

In Psalm 1, can we imagine the poet having experienced following the advice of someone who turned out to be wicked? Having spent time in the company of sinful people? Having been a scoffer himself? Or perhaps it was someone he loved who had gotten off on a bad path, hung out with the wrong people, and made a wreck of their life. Anyone like that in your life?

In contrast, he seems to have experience with the opposite as well—spending high-quality time with his Bible, finding (maybe to his surprise!) that there is genuine delight to be found there. He has found this to be a dependable source of “water” in dry times, such as a tree by a stream finds. Have you experienced this? If not, have you given it a chance? Are you willing to try?

And this figure of the tree by the stream gives us an opportunity to explore another way to avoid inattention. Are you familiar with cross-references? Many Bibles have a column of cross-references in the middle of the page, or running down one side. These are tremendously valuable, although they require a bit of work to use. When you find yourself not getting anything new out of a familiar passage, try following up the cross-references.

Here in the verse about the tree, most Bibles will have a cross-reference to Jeremiah 17:8. Whenever you follow up a cross-reference, it almost always pays to read a bit of context around the verse you are sent to. In this case, we find verses 5-8 are an expansion by Jeremiah on this figure. He contrasts the shrub in the desert, with a tree by a streambed. Even if there’s no water flowing, there’s water down in the ground, and the tree finds it.

Ever had any “dry” times in your life? Felt like you were withering, emotionally or spiritually? Where can you find “water” to sustain you? It comes from God’s word, the psalmist tells us. It’s a deep resource, in other words it has to have been absorbed when times weren’t dry.

Now these people were real scholars. Without question they knew the passage he was referring to, and they could have quoted the commentaries of the rabbis. But Jesus was suggesting that they had not yet truly discerned the prophet’s meaning. No doubt some of those listening simply dismissed this upstart rabbi (he had no rabbinical training!), but Jesus gave a scholar’s clue to a group of scholars, hoping that some at least would think about it, and perhaps have their minds enlarged as a result.

From our perspective, knowing all the teaching of the New Testament, we can discern the point of Hosea’s statement. He was teaching that the letter of the Law (the rituals of sacrifice) wasn’t nearly as important to God as the spirit of the Law. It’s the same point Jesus made when he accused the Pharisees of neglecting the “weightier matters” of the Law—justice, mercy, and truth—by paying so much attention to the technical details of tithing.

How did the audience react to this challenge? We aren’t told directly. The language in Hosea is really pretty clear. God says He isn’t nearly as interested in the externals as he is in the internals. Carrying this thought to its conclusion was a place the lawyers didn’t want to go. A few chapters later, Jesus said to the same audience, “If you had known what these words mean, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent.” (Matthew 12:7) This seems to indicate that they had not given Hosea’s words the thought that Jesus urged them to.

Of course, we don’t do sacrifices in the temple today. But the point can have the same force for us if we change the wording a little. What if Jesus said to us, “I desire mercy, not going to church on Sunday”? Would we understand him to say that going to church is unimportant? No, just as neither Hosea nor Jesus was saying that the sacrifices under the Law were worthless. The point is that an outward observance, with the heart far from God’s heart, is not going to save us.

God is the God of mercy, as He points out over any over throughout the Old Testament, as well as the New. The Law itself was filled with mercy. Israelites were not to muzzle the ox treading the grain. If they found something that was lost, they had to return it. If they saw their enemy’s beast collapsed under its burden, they had to help him to get it back up. And many, many more instances where they were to show mercy, even to the lowest classes, and even to their enemies.

The teaching of the Lord Jesus is likewise full of mercy. From the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the merciful,” and “If you do not forgive, neither will your Father forgive you.” (Matthew 5:7, 6:14-15) And there are many more.

When we trace the later history of the 12 tribes, we see how many of Jacob’s prophecies are fulfilled. (We get so little information about some of the tribes later on, that we can’t point to a specific passage that records a fulfillment. For many of them we can, and so I’m confident that the others were fulfilled as well.) One of the longest prophecies is about Judah, and we have a great deal of information about what happened with Judah later on. Let’s look at what Jacob, by the Spirit, saw for Judah’s future.

In the first part of the prophecy, Judah is told that he would control his enemies, and that his brothers would praise him and bow to him. The book of 1 Samuel records the end of the judges era and the establishment of the monarchy. The first king, Saul, was from Benjamin – God gave Israel the kind of king they wanted, and he was a disaster. God takes the kingdom from Saul, and gives it to “a man after My own heart”. That man was David, from the tribe of Judah. After Saul’s death, first Judah and then all Israel come to David and ask him to be king over them. They praise him, and they bow to him.

The next part of the prophecy is where the lions come in. Judah is likened to a lion – a fierce and powerful predator. And so David proved to be toward the enemies of Israel. Saul made a start, but it was David who put Israel on the map, made them a regional power to be reckoned with.

Because of David’s great faithfulness, God made tremendous promises to him, including an eternal kingdom that would be established with one of David’s offspring on the throne. In the shorter term, God promised that there would always be a son of David on the throne, as long as they continued to be obedient to God, as David was. This is a reflection of Jacob’s prophecy of the scepter not departing from Judah. After the rest of Israel split from Judah, the northern kingdom had a succession of dynasties, many assassinations and civil wars. But in Judah, there was just one dynasty – that of David.

Note that God attached a condition to the promise of there always being a son of David on the throne: they had to continue to be faithful. Well, they failed. This too is anticipated in Jacob’s prophecy, in the word “until”. The Hebrew is apparently unclear for “until Shiloh comes” or “until he comes to whom it belongs” or “until tribute comes to him” (all ways this phrase is rendered in respected translations). This phrase therefore has some questions. But there’s no dispute that there is an “until”. A temporariness is indicated. And if the phrase is “until he to whom it belongs shall come”, then we have our first inkling that in the longer term this is Messiah.

The next phrase is “the obedience of the nations shall be his “. In the short term, there were Gentile nations which David ruled, and they obeyed him and then Solomon. The fulfillment will be much greater in the longer term, as David himself expresses in Psalm 2 about the rule of Messiah over all nations.

The last section of the prophecy links the royal heir of Judah to the colt of a donkey, and a vine. We know of course that these are both applied directly to Jesus in the New Testament. Then Jacob talks about Judah washing his garments in wine, in the “blood of grapes”. And now we are brought back to Revelation, where this figure appears in 7:14, 14:18-20 and especially in 19:13.

Genesis is the book of beginnings (the meaning of the word). By this point, we’ve already seen the very first promise of God, to provide a seed of the woman to crush the snake (sin). And we’ve seen God choosing Abraham, and making “exceedingly great and precious promises” to him (to borrow Peter’s phrase), promises that include eternal life, living forever in the land God promised. We’ve seen those promises extended to Isaac and Jacob, and we’ve also seen the rejection of the sons who weren’t the sons of promise, Ishmael and Esau. Here at the end of this book of beginnings, we now see the selection of Judah as the royal house.

Since Jesus and the apostles considered the flood account to be history, let’s follow their lead and see what we might learn.

In Genesis 7:19-20, we see that the waters return to cover the land, undoing God’s creative act on the third day, when He caused the dry land to emerge from the seas (1:9-10). This caused the earth to be “without form” or “unformed”, as it was in 1:2. We go on to read in 7:21-23 that everything died, undoing part of the work of the 5th day, and all the work of the 6th day. This resulted in the earth being “void” or “empty”, once again as it was in 1:2.

Then in 8:1, God made the “wind” blow over the waters. In Hebrew, the same word is used for “wind” and “breath” and “spirit”. So 8:1 is a deliberate echo of the final sentence of 1:2, where the Spirit moved over the face of the waters. Then what happened? First, the waters receded from the earth. Then plants appeared. Then birds were sent out & didn’t return. Finally the animals and the people were again on the earth. And God commanded them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (9:1) – exactly what he said to the man and woman in 1:28.

So, very deliberately, we have a picture of the undoing of creation, then a redoing. Which is precisely the point Peter makes in his second letter, chapter 3. And guess what? He predicts that there will be people who deliberately treat the account of the Genesis flood as fiction! He talks about the world that existed from the initial creation as perishing, and a new heavens and new earth replace the old. Well, that’s just exactly the process Moses describes in Genesis 7-9. Peter then goes on to say that the current “heavens and earth” (that is, the current world order) are in for another world-wide catastrophic purging, this time by fire. And out of that, there will be “new heavens and a new earth” – not brand-new planet & stars, but a re-creation just as happened with the flood.

Peter says that righteousness will dwell in the new heavens and earth. Finally! It wasn’t so before the flood (Genesis 6:5 & 11-13), and it isn’t so in the current age either, as Jesus points out when he refers to the flood. Many times both Old Testament and New Testament prophecies associate fire with the “Day of the Lord”, and with the return of Jesus. This purging will be necessary, in order that “the meek will inherit the earth”, and that “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven”. The Christian hope is wrapped up in the “new heavens and new earth” – it’s what we are promised!

So, to cast doubt on Jesus’s and Peter’s belief in God’s judgment by a flood, is to cast doubt on their prophecies that there is another judgment yet to come. And also cast doubt on God’s promise to again refresh the creation, and give it as His eternal blessing to all the faithful.

Most Bible reading plans, including the one we’re using here, finish up the year with Revelation. A lot of folks are intimidated by Revelation, and some other folks aren’t as afraid of it as they should be! The intimidated shouldn’t be – because it’s not beyond us, or Jesus wouldn’t have given it to us! On the other hand, unfortunately there are some students who don’t understand that all the imagery and all the themes of Revelation come from the rest of the Bible, primarily from the Old Testament prophets. They impose their own thinking on the book, and that’s something Jesus strongly cautions against in the final chapter.

Revelation does contain a lot of figurative language (as mentioned, derived from the OT prophets). I’m not saying it isn’t tough. But there’s quite a bit that’s given in plain language. Let’s look at the passage quoted above from chapter 11.

Does the “last trumpet” ring a bell? (Kind of mixing the musical metaphors there, I guess.) Paul talks about the “last trumpet” in his great prophecies of the return of Jesus and the resurrection of the dead. See 1 Corinthians 15:52 and 1 Thessalonians 4:16 – and be sure to read the whole passages, not just the individual verses. Jesus also included a “loud trumpet call” in his prophecy of his own coming and gathering his people (Matthew 24:31).There are 7 trumpets blown in Revelation. However we may understand the first 6, there is no doubt at all about the significance of the seventh one!

Look at what the passage tells us. “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.” This is language right out of Daniel 2:44-45, and Daniel 7:13-14. However we understand the 24 elders, they sing a song, which reflects the promise of Psalm 2, and also strongly echoes Paul’s description of Christ’s return as a conqueror, and the resurrection of the dead, in 1 Corinthians 15:20-28. With the resurrection and gathering come the judgment, and giving eternal life to the faithful – the subject of many of Jesus’s parables.

There just isn’t any question what this trumpet announces. The Lord Jesus Christ has returned! The dead are raised and the living are gathered! The faithful are given eternal life! Messiah is seated on the throne of David in Jerusalem! The rule of Jesus over the Kingdom of God has begun!

And one more thing, which I could hope would sober the leaders and the citizens of every nation, but I know does not. The destroyers of the earth are to be destroyed. The conquerors and oppressors, certainly. But we should not necessarily let ourselves off the hook, if we give no thought to our own actions that damage the beautiful world God has given us.

Think you can’t grasp “last days” Bible prophecy for yourself? I disagree! Take about 20 minutes and read Zechariah chapters 7 through 14. It is not hard to figure out, providing you are willing to read carefully.

Zechariah was among the Jews who returned from Babylon, as Jeremiah foretold would happen after 70 years of captivity. They were back in the land, but things weren’t real good. Chapters 7-14 present 4 prophecies, which have such strong linkages that we have to take them as views of the same set of events. Ready? Let’s dive in.

Prophecy 1: Chapters 7-8-9 – In chapter 7, God reviews why the Jews were sent into exile—because of their refusal to obey Him. Chapter 8 then begins with God saying He is very jealous for Zion (the hill Jerusalem is built on), and He says, “I have returned to Zion, and I will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem”. A past tense and a future tense. The prophecy goes on to detail a scene of peacefulness and prosperity in the city. God says He will (future) save His people out of the east & west countries—although at this point they had been sent only to the east, and they had already been regathered from there. Peace and blessing would characterize this time. Now in Zechariah’s time, there was serious opposition coming from the Arabs, and people were barely scraping along. God says that as He determined to bring disaster on them, and did so, He now determines to bring good in these days (present). But a condition is attached: speak truth, render justice, don’t devise evil. The chapter concludes with a prophecy of people from many nations coming to Jerusalem to seek the favor of the Lord, and people seeking out Jews to guide them, because the Lord is with the Jews. This last is plainly prophetic of the Kingdom of God on the earth, and dovetails with other prophecies of the Kingdom from other prophets, notably Isaiah and Micah.

Clearly there are two scenarios here, somewhat mingled together because they are to be alike. There is a present restoration, which the contemporary generation did recognize as a blessing from God—but no one would have looked around them and thought that all of it was fulfilled in their own time. They would have made the connections with Isaiah and Micah, and realized that the ultimate fulfillment would be when Messiah comes and reigns, not only over Israel but over the whole world, because only then will the nations of the world seek guidance from the Jews and come to Jerusalem to seek the favor of God. There is a mix of present tense and future tense. It was impossible to miss the point, that the present regathering was a small scale, preliminary fulfillment, and that a greater fulfillment was to come. And in both cases there was a condition of repentance, embracing God’s ways.

Flowing directly from the end of chapter 8, chapter 9 goes on to foretell judgments on Israel’s enemies, and the coronation of Messiah on his throne in Jerusalem. This is to be accompanied by the ultimate salvation of God’s people.

Prophecy 2: Chapter 10 – This prophecy counsels the people (that is, the Jews) to seek God and ask Him for deliverance, and repudiate all false gods. God says he will punish the bad spiritual leaders, and then regather and strengthen His people, pulling them from various nations, and they would then walk in His name. In Zechariah’s time, they have been regathered from one nation, Babylon, which isn’t mentioned here. So this has to be another, future, call to repent, and another, future, regathering.

Prophecy 3: Chapters 11-12-13:1-6 – In chapter 11 Zechariah is told to become a shepherd, and enacts a scene whose meaning is explained: God foretells worthless shepherds (spiritual leaders) are coming who will not care for the flock, and He will judge those shepherds. Then in chapter 12 God says He will make Jerusalem a “cup of staggering” for all the surrounding nations, who will besiege Jerusalem. All the nations will wage war against Jerusalem, then God will strengthen Judah and will give them David their king (i.e. Messiah, the Son of David), and Israel will recognize the one they pierced, and mourn over him. On into chapter 13, idolatry will be permanently eradicated at last. (The chapter breaks are artificial, and don’t do us a favor here. This prophecy concludes in verse 6 of chapter 13.)

Prophecy 4: Chapters 13:7-9 & 14 – Beginning at 13:7 there is a prophecy of God’s good shepherd being struck down, and the sheep scattered. This is quoted in the New Testament as applying to the betrayal and execution of Jesus. (Matthew 26:31) Two thirds of the people are to perish, and the final third to be refined by fire, after which they acknowledge God as truly their God, and He embraces them as His people. Into chapter 14, all the nations are gathered against Jerusalem, and they conquer it—but then God goes forth and fights against those enemies. “His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives”, a prophecy of Jesus returning to the place where he left – compare Acts 1:11-12. There is a tremendous earthquake, Jerusalem is exalted as the capital of the world, the Lord is king over all the earth, and all nations are required to go up to Jerusalem to worship.

It is really not hard to put it all together. There is a preliminary, partial fulfillment of a number of prophecies in the then-present-day regathering, but with clear indications that there is something much greater for the future. There is repeated statement that the final gathering is conditional on spiritual reformation, which will follow spiritual decline and a resulting catastrophe. Specifically, Messiah would be rejected and sent again only when they turn back to God, and then even in their deliverance they would mourn to see what their ancestors had done. There will be a final, desperate time for Israel & Jerusalem, and a final regathering, conditional on national repentance. When that occurs, the next step is the coming of Messiah and establishment of God’s Kingdom throughout the earth.

But precisely what animal swallowed Jonah doesn’t matter much. A much more critical question is: How did Jonah stay alive? The answer, I think, is that he didn’t.

Jonah’s prayer, quoted above, seems to clearly indicate that he died. But before he died, he prayed for deliverance, and made a vow to complete his mission if he was saved out of death. Jonah had a conviction that God could raise the dead.

Have you ever wondered why the citizens of Nineveh repented when Jonah preached to them? They were so hardened in sin that the Lord had determined to destroy them all. But they turned around immediately at the preaching of Jonah. Jesus told his own enemies that they would have no sign but the sign of Jonah, referring to his resurrection. The sign that changed the Ninevites was a resurrected man.

The point of the parable of the rich man and Lazarus is in the last line: “If they won’t believe Moses, neither will they believe if one should rise from the dead.” (Luke 16:31) Of course this proved true. Jesus said to those who opposed him, “The men of Nineveh will arise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.” (Luke 11:32) The wicked Gentiles of Nineveh did believe when they heard the preaching of a resurrected man, and they changed their ways as a result. Similarly, many Gentiles in the first century embraced Christianity, while most Jews did not. As Jesus said, a heart that rejects the written Word will also reject the greatest sign imaginable.

We don’t have the opportunity to see the risen Christ with our own eyes. But the point of what Jesus said is surely that it doesn’t matter! If we believe the Word, then that’s sufficient. If we don’t, then we would find a way to disbelieve the sign as well. So we need not feel cheated that we don’t have the visible sign. We have the Word, and that’s the most powerful testimony of all.
 

In his second letter to Corinth, written not long before, he summarized the trials he endured—the beatings, imprisonments, shipwrecks, and lack of basics like food and shelter. And now, he knows he’s facing further imprisonment and unspecified “afflictions”. And, he thinks it quite possible he will be killed.

I don’t believe it was just words, when he said it didn’t matter. He truly was content to accept whatever came, as long as he finished the course the Lord had set for him. Right now, that course included going to Jerusalem—something he was actually very eager to do, as we learn elsewhere. His eagerness was undiminished by the prospect of the suffering that was certain to come.

It’s been my observation that not many believers can tell you what their course is. We tend to think along these lines: “Well, I haven’t had the Lord Jesus appear to me in person like Paul did. Of course he would know better than I do.” But as you read the Acts, it becomes clear that he didn’t have much advantage over us in terms of where he should go, what he should do, or what would happen. Often he found his direction by trying things and failing, and then trying something else—just like us. (For example, take a look at Acts 16:6-10.) In the passage we’re looking at, Paul knew trials awaited him, but he didn’t know in exactly what form, other than some more jail time. When he set out on his travels, he often didn’t know exactly where he would be going.

Paul’s “course” wasn’t a prescribed set of activities. Jesus didn’t hand him an itinerary. In the verses above, he tells us what his course was: “to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.”

Is that a course we can identify with? I think it’s exactly the same kind of course we can have. Ours might not be the course of a preacher. Instead, it might be to visit brothers and sisters who need companionship, or to provide for people in need of daily necessities, or to minister to the children in the Sunday School. Any one of these is testifying to the gospel of the grace of God.

Remember too that after his conversion, even Paul (still called Saul) didn’t know right away what his course was. He spent 14 years doing not much, as far as we know, until Barnabas went and got him to help out in Antioch. It may take us time to know what our course is. This doesn’t mean the time is wasted. During that time the Lord is developing us.

It’s apparent Paul’s calling was far more spectacular than anything we’ll ever have. But it’s also true that every one of us does have a calling. The Lord has a course for us. He may provide us with a Barnabas to get us started, or may not need to. Almost certainly, like Paul we’ll have to try this and that to find exactly where and how the Lord wants us to work. But we can be assured that the course will involve work, so if we’re doing nothing…well, we’re not on the course!

James says: “You see something you want, so you grab for it yourself.” There’s lots of ways we do it—and most of them the world encourages us to do. The world advises us to set goals for ourselves, in particular financial goals, and to work hard to achieve them. Nobody is going to give us what we want, so it’s up to us to take it. So we’re told.

But James says, don’t forget that all good gifts come from God. The things that we need should be matters of prayer to Him. Not grabbing it for ourselves. Not competing with others for it. And he reminds us that money and pleasure are very inappropriate prayers. Selfish prayer isn’t going to get a favorable answer.

The bottom line is that if you want what the world wants, you declare yourself to be an enemy of God! Astoundingly strong language! Of course you would never say it in so many words, but James says the fact is there nevertheless. Paul uses similarly astonishing language about this subject: “Covetousness is idolatry!” (Ephesians 5:5, Colossians 3:5) When you covet (want stuff to satisfy yourself) then you are repudiating the living God, and worshipping your own desires instead.

James goes on in verse 7: “Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil [your own desires—see verse 1 and chap 1:14-15] and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.” God is always ready to be found by us. If you do what seems hard, and resist your own desire, it’s really true that the desire will quickly fade away. It really, truly works! And when you draw near to God, you can feel it in your life, that He is right there next to you.