December 10

Are you really smarter than God?
Obadiah 1-Jonah 1-4/Luke 5-8

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OT

Obadiah 1:15 “The day is near when I, the Lord, will judge all godless nations! As you have done to Israel, so it will be done to you. All your evil deeds will fall back on your own heads.

Jonah 1:15-16 Then the sailors picked Jonah up and threw him into the raging sea, and the storm stopped at once! The sailors were awestruck by the LORD’s great power, and they offered him a sacrifice and vowed to serve him.

NT

5:31-32 Jesus answered them, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor–sick people do. I have come to call sinners to turn from their sins, not to spend my time with those who think they are already good enough.”

:36-39 Then Jesus gave them this illustration: “No one tears a piece of cloth from a new garment and uses it to patch an old garment. For then the new garment would be torn, and the patch wouldn’t even match the old garment. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. The new wine would burst the old skins, spilling the wine and ruining the skins. New wine must be put into new wineskins. But no one who drinks the old wine seems to want the fresh and the new. ‘The old is better,’ they say.”  Jesus Words


OT Flash Points

Edom, Israel’s relatives will be punished for their treatment of their family.
Oh, why did you have to do that?!
Jonah lost all hope, which is inevitable when you run from God
It causes indigestion too!
His message was short: God is going to destroy you
They believed it, a true miracle of the Spirit’s power

NT Flash Points

Everything Jesus said and did, challenged the cultural religious perception, exposing its destructive and irrational basis
Old wine is better than the new
It is futile to try to patch with men’s ideas the fabric of God’s ways
Do figs grow on a grapevine?
Seed planted in good soil causes deep roots and much fruit
Where is your faith?


Perspective

Our natural lives & minds will always mock the wisdom of God, thinking ourselves clever and fresh
By pampering our natural self-sovereignty, we spoil the vessel and neutralize the gift God made us to be
Sacrifice and discipline, the natural to the spiritual
Set aside your clever plan and discover the better one
God’s

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