Fortify the place of reconciliation
Nehemiah 1-3/Revelation 10-12
How to get the most out of Hungry Bible
OT
1:8-11 Please remember what you told your servant Moses: “If you sin, I will scatter you among the nations. But if you return to me and obey my commands, even if you are exiled to the ends of the earth, I will bring you back to the place I have chosen for my name to be honored.” We are your servants, the people you rescued by your great power and might. O Lord, please hear my prayer! Listen to the prayers of those of us who delight in honoring you. Please grant me success now as I go to ask the king for a great favor. Put it into his heart to be kind to me. In those days I was the king’s cup-bearer.
NT
10:10-11 So I took the little scroll from the hands of the angel, and I ate it! It was sweet in my mouth, but it made my stomach sour. Then he said to me, “You must prophesy again about many peoples, nations, languages, and kings.”
OT Flash Points
God gives each of us a platform from which to do our part in the process of gathering, reconciliation, restoration, and fortification
NT Flash Points
It is truly rapturous to receive/swallow the Word but then when it is digested, it becomes a message that burns, demands to be spoken
Perspective
To resist evil = display the disposition of Jesus
We can’t imitate that, it must be genuinely Him
To insist on my rights hurts the Son of God
I prevent Him from being hurt if I take the blow myself
Note: “Resist the Devil…” speaks of temptations
We fall into the trap of arrogant superiority if we succumb to making scriptural arguments on the basis of second-hand English translations. We must go beyond our study and do the diligent work of meditation before God, which gets to the bottom of the meaning in God’s mind and the humility to have applied and practiced before presuming to the lofty teacher’s podium. “Not many teachers…“