Micah's prophetic career is situated in a time when there is
increasing pressure put on Judah/Israel by the expanding Assyrian empire. He speaks to both the northern and southern
kingdoms, Judah is southern and Samaria is the northern kingdom. He sees that the Lord is coming against both
kingdoms, that the places they worship have become idolatrous high places. Micah sees Israel as hopelessly corrupt and
now is deeply saddened and angry that their apostasy has now come to the gate
of the city of God, Jerusalem.
The centurion sent Jewish elders to see Jesus and ask Him to
come and heal his child. Their plea was
that the centurion was worthy of Jesus' visit to heal, that he loves the nation
and built the synagogue. The centurion,
however, sends emissaries to Jesus pleading that he was unworthy for Jesus to
come under his roof, but that his faith was such that if Jesus simply spoke the
word of healing the child would be healed.
In his faith, Jesus finds him worthy of praise. What was the reaction of the people to Jesus
raising the widow's son? Fear seized
them all, an appropriate reaction to such a display of power. When was the last time you experienced fear
in your worship, either public or private?
To encounter Jesus and apprehend Him is to understand that God, as the
beavers said of Aslan in The Lion, Witch and Wardrobe, isn't safe but He's
good.
I wonder if these men who would kill Paul kept their vow to
neither eat nor drink until they had done so.
If so, he outlived them all. It is
difficult to understand why they were so rabidly anxious to kill him but their
sense of betrayal by Paul in particular would have been acute. He was one of them the chief persecutor of
this Jesus movement, and now he, of all people, was going to the Gentiles and
preaching this Jesus and also 'against' Judaism. I see this same attitude in the church
sometimes when someone breaks with a particular tradition and they are accused
of the worst sort of apostasy and sin, tradition has been elevated above the
mission of the church. When the practice
of religion supplants true faith, all is lost.
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