Category: Old Testament – Prophets

Go Your Way

old man on the beach
~ MD Harris Institute ~ Leave a comment

Memorial Baptist Church, Beckley, WV,

Wildwood Cemetery Resurrection Service

Brass Prelude – Trombone and Horn in F, Christ the Lord is Risen Today.

Congregational singing – Up from the Grave He Arose

Read Daniel 12:8-13

The Story

An old man sat on a rock by a river and said to himself, “The superpower is dead.”

“More than 70 years ago, the mightiest nation in the land destroyed my tiny country. Then they moved me hundreds of miles away from my homeland,” the old man remembered.

Now, that superpower was destroyed, hacked to pieces by an enemy younger and more vicious than itself. The old man had seen great and terrifying things in his years.

He knew that his death was near, so he asked God, the One he had served so faithfully for so many years, what would happen in the future.

“Go your way,” came the divine reply. “You are not to know what will happen after you.”

“Many will suffer, but I will purify and refine them through their suffering”, says the Lord.

“The wicked will not cease their wickedness, and they will not understand what I am doing. Worship as you know it will end, and terrible times will come,” the Lord concluded.

But the Old Man knew that he would not live to see it. God repeated His command.

“Go your way to your end. Then you will sleep with your fathers and rise again into eternal life. You will receive what God has allotted for you…forever.”

The Application in Our Lives

The Lord calls us to do the same thing.  Our world seems more unstable than the old man’s world. But we know what the old man did not. Jesus Christ rose from the dead. He has secured our future, both in this life and the next.

We can ask God about anything, but we should not always expect an answer. What we need to know is Christ. God commands us to follow Him and go your way.

We serve Him, we love Him, we worship Him, and we enjoy Him.

God says to us…Go your way, and you will rise again in Christ and receive the portion allotted to you in eternity.

Go your way.

Prayer

 

Up From the Grave He Arose                  Robert Lowry, 1874 [Key: F]

Verse 1
Low in the grave He lay,
Jesus my Savior,
Waiting the coming day,
Jesus my Lord!

Chorus
Up from the grave He arose,
With a mighty triumph o’er His foes,
He arose a Victor from the dark domain,
And He lives forever,
With His saints to reign.
He arose! He arose!
Hallelujah! Christ arose!

Verse 2
Vainly they watch His bed,
Jesus my Savior;
Vainly they seal the dead,
Jesus my Lord!

Chorus
Up from the grave He arose,
With a mighty triumph o’er His foes,
He arose a Victor from the dark domain,
And He lives forever,
With His saints to reign.
He arose! He arose!
Hallelujah! Christ arose!

Verse 3
Death cannot keep its Prey,
Jesus my Savior;
He tore the bars away,
Jesus my Lord!

Chorus
Up from the grave He arose,
With a mighty triumph o’er His foes,
He arose a Victor from the dark domain,
And He lives forever,
With His saints to reign.
He arose! He arose!
Hallelujah! Christ arose!

 

 

Zedekiah – Discontent, Disobedient, and Destroyed

~ MD Harris Institute ~ 1 Comment

The last king of Judah, Zedekiah, was discontent and disobedient to his God. It destroyed him and his whole nation with him. How does his tragic experience inform and challenge us today?

By Mark D. Harris

Few Christians look at Jeremiah or the Old Testament prophets for guidance in modern life. Fewer still look at the wicked kings of Israel and Judah. But their folly and failure contain powerful lessons for followers of Christ today. Zedekiah is a good place to start.

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Who was the Child in Isaiah 7:14?

child in Isaiah
~ MD Harris Institute ~ 1 Comment

God uses normal means to accomplish wonderous effects, and He does so for now, for the future, and for eternity. Who was the child in Isaiah 7:14?

By Mark D. Harris

Judah was in desperate straits.  The strength and prosperity of King Uzziah had given way to the weakness and poverty of King Ahaz.  Tilgath Pileser III, the ascendant ruler of Assyria, was expanding with a mighty army and his neighbors, Syria and Israel, had attacked Judah to force it to ally with them against Assyria.  Judah had suffered a severe defeat, and at that moment, Ahaz was not thinking about something that was going to happen 730 years later.  Probably, Isaiah wasn’t either.  Therefore the child promised in Isaiah 7:14 was not, at least in Ahaz’ mind, the future Messiah.  Isaiah had promised him a sign that God would deliver him and his nation from the combined might of Israel and Syria and the child was to be the sign.  The sign was not that a young woman would bear a child; this is an ordinary part of human experience.  Rather it was that the birth of this child would begin the countdown to destruction for Judah’s enemies.  Specifically, the kings that Ahaz feared would be destroyed before the child reached preadolescence.

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Interpreting Biblical Prophecy – the Transparency, Translucency and Fulfillment of Isaiah 2:1-4

Biblical prophecy
~ MD Harris Institute ~ 1 Comment

How can we understand biblical prophecy? What did it mean to those who first received it? What does this, and other Biblical prophecy, mean to us today?

By Mark Harris

Biblical prophecies are transparent in that they clearly demonstrate the victory of God over all those who oppose Him, human and demonic. Additionally, all mankind will obtain the just consequences for their deeds in the final judgment. They are translucent in that the specific details of how the Lord will achieve victory is often obscured, sometimes by misunderstandings of time, geography, and culture, other times by the prophet’s use of figurative language, and always compounded by the confusion characteristic of the minds of sinful humanity. We will examine the meaning, transparency, translucency, and fulfillment of Isaiah 2:1-4.

Isaiah’s imagery in Isaiah 2:1-4 refers to God’s universal reign in the end times, probably during the thousand year reign of Christ on earth, possibly during His final reign on the new earth, or possibly both. It is very similar in content and thought to the prophecy of the last days written by Isaiah’s contemporary, Micah (Micah 4:1-3). Verse one identifies the speaker and the audience, the people of Judah and Jerusalem.

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The Old Testament Prophets – What Did They Do?

~ MD Harris Institute ~ 3 Comments

Prophets seem strange to us, but they also seemed strange to their contemporaries. Who were they, and what did they do? What did the Old Testament prophets do?

By Mark D. Harris

Some Christians believe that the Old Testament (OT) prophets were men who predicted a distant future revealed to them by God.  Either the coming of Christ or the book of Revelation and the end times (or both) are seen as the main message of the Old Testament prophet.  Some critical scholars in the past have seen OT prophecy as unique or even fictitious; their messages brand new without any connection to Israel’s past and with no relevance for the future.  In reality, the primary mission of the prophets was to proclaim God’s truth to the people of their time and place, just like pastors and teachers today are called to do.

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The Messiah, Who Did the Jews Expect Him to Be?

The Messiah, preview with Samuel anointing David
~ MD Harris Institute ~ 6 Comments

The Messiah was supposed to deliver Israel from all oppressors and lead them into a new golden age. A rabbi from Galilee was not what they had in mind. Who did the Jews expect the Messiah to be?

By Mark D. Harris

“Messiah”, “Anointed One,” and “Christ” are some of the most common names used by Christians (“Christ followers”).  We understand that Jesus (the) Christ is the anointed Son of God, Creator, and Lord of the Universe who came to earth once to suffer, die, and be raised again to save us from our sins. One day He will come again to establish His perfect kingdom in the universe. We see Him as a suffering servant, and a conquering hero. Given the full text of the Bible and our knowledge of what Jesus actually did, this is entirely reasonable. But the picture of the Messiah was far different to Jews in the first century.

Like America in 2011, Palestine in the first century AD was a diverse place, with Jews, Romans, Greeks, Persians, Arabs, Egyptians, and Africans..  Religions were aplenty, especially in Galilee, Samaria, and Perea, and political intrigue and violence was the norm.  Many Jews longed for a return to the glorious days of King David, when Israel was the greatest power in the Near East.  They also chafed under Roman domination, oppressive taxes, and the rule of an outsider, Herod.  Spiritually, the Jews had been bereft of the prophetic voice of God for 400 years, and they hoped for another prophet to show the way.

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