Nahum 3:5-7

It is a terrible thing to be out of the will of God…individually and collectively as a nation. Materialism is an idol. Basing decisions on the individual rights of a person or a group of people is a form of idolatry and against everything that Jesus teaches us. We must love and care for all people. When we do that we are fulfilling His command to love God above all and our neighbors as ourselves.

God is the leader of the heavenly armies. Nakedness and exposure to public shame and ridicule was a typical punishment for infidelity or prostitution. Faithlife Bible.

Who could survive the Lord’s opposition?

The Lord described the fate of Nineveh as comparable to a person on whom unspeakable filth was cast. When Nineveh lay in ruins, no one would bemoan her. The nations would be glad that the city was gone. NKJ Bible.

Nahum 3:5–7 (NKJV)

⁵ “Behold, I am against you,” says the Lord of hosts;

“I will lift your skirts over your face,

I will show the nations your nakedness,

And the kingdoms your shame.

⁶ I will cast abominable filth upon you,

Make you vile, 

And make you a spectacle.

⁷ It shall come to pass that all who look upon you

Will flee from you, and say,

‘Nineveh is laid waste!

Who will bemoan her?’

Where shall I seek comforters for you?”

Isaiah 47:3 (NKJV)

³ Your nakedness shall be uncovered,

Yes, your shame will be seen;

I will take vengeance,

And I will not arbitrate with a man.”

Isaiah 51:19 (NKJV)

¹⁹ These two things have come to you;

Who will be sorry for you?—

Desolation and destruction, famine and sword—

By whom will I comfort you?

Mark 6:4-6

Faith alone pleases God. 

In the manner that you believe in the salvation of JESUS CHRIST, the Son of the Father, you can receive from the very hand of the  TRIUNE GODHEAD. for GOD so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son to die in our place.

If you believe in Him nothing is impossible.

A prophet is not without honor except in his own country is a maxim still repeated and still true today. Perhaps others were jealous of Jesus’ popularity and huge following. Their envy even took the form of violence against Christ. NKJ Bible.

Mark 6:4–6 (NKJV)

⁴ But Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own country, among his own relatives, and in his own house.” ⁵ Now He could do no mighty work there, except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them. ⁶ And He marveled because of their unbelief. Then He went about the villages in a circuit, teaching.

Isaiah 59:16 (NKJV)

¹⁶ He saw that there was no man,

And wondered that there was no intercessor;

Therefore His own arm brought salvation for Him;

And His own righteousness, it sustained Him.

Matthew 9:35 (NKJV)

³⁵ Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people.

Acts 22:1-5

Paul thought that by persecuting those who believed in the salvation of Jesus Christ he was preserving and promoting the morals of the Jewish traditions. He thought he was upholding the teachings of God’s chosen people. He thought he was doing the moral thing. He was wrong, dead wrong. We know not what we do.

Let us not make the same mistake calling evil good and good evil.

Paul was well known among the nation’s elite.

Paul explained to the crowd that he understood why they were beating him and wanted him dead. They were zealous for God. Paul was not blaming them for what they had done to him. He pointed out that in his former zeal he would have done the same thing. Paul showed compassion even to his attackers; we should model that same type of compassion for all people who have not yet placed their faith in Jesus. NKJ Bible.

Acts 22:1–5 (NKJV)

22 “Brethren and fathers, hear my defense before you now.” ² And when they heard that he spoke to them in the Hebrew language, they kept all the more silent.

Then he said: ³ “I am indeed a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, taught according to the strictness of our fathers’ law, and was zealous toward God as you all are today. ⁴ I persecuted this Way to the death, binding and delivering into prisons both men and women, ⁵ as also the high priest bears me witness, and all the council of the elders, from whom I also received letters to the brethren, and went to Damascus to bring in chains even those who were there to Jerusalem to be punished.

Romans 10:2 (NKJV)

² For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.

Mark 3:24-25

What a message for the time that we are living in. Division has torn apart the USA. When it has reached the Body of Christ it has reached the very heart of God. Pray for all believers to unite under the teachings of Scripture basing any and all decisions on the very Word of God made flesh.

Love God above anyone or anything and love your neighbor as much as you do yourself.

Jesus confronts the religious leaders with the possibility that, by opposing Him, they might be aligning themselves with evil powers. The defining mark of a disciple of God’s kingdom is allegiance to Jesus and His teaching. Faithlife Bible.

Jesus’ reply in parables was actually a threefold message that contrasted unity and disunity. Nothing—including Satan’s kingdom—can stand if it is divided. NKJ Bible.

Mark 3:24–25 (NKJV)

²⁴ If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. ²⁵ And if a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand.

God, in His holiness,  cannot dwell in a place of sin. Are we not the temple of the Lord? Does the Holy Spirit live inside of us? God will purge the sin from our lives taking the very sin that was meant to destroy us and separate us from Him, replacing it with His values, His love and His mercy. We are a chosen people living in the land of Egypt. We cannot call good evil nor evil good.

Keep your eyes focused on Christ alone!

Provoke indicates willful, stubborn rebellion against God, which roused His anger. NKJ Bible.

Jeremiah 44:7–8 (NKJV)

⁷ “Now therefore, thus says the Lord, the God of hosts, the God of Israel: ‘Why do you commit this great evil against yourselves, to cut off from you man and woman, child and infant, out of Judah, leaving none to remain, ⁸ in that you provoke Me to wrath with the works of your hands, burning incense to other gods in the land of Egypt where you have gone to dwell, that you may cut yourselves off and be a curse and a reproach among all the nations of the earth?

Numbers 16:38 (NKJV)

³⁸ The censers of these men who sinned against their own souls, let them be made into hammered plates as a covering for the altar. Because they presented them before the Lord, therefore they are holy; and they shall be a sign to the children of Israel.”

1 Kings 9:8 (NKJV)

⁸ And as for this house, which is exalted, everyone who passes by it will be astonished and will hiss, and say, ‘Why has the Lord done thus to this land and to this house?’

Micah 1:2-7

All the high places that we have, our self righteousness in our cultural views and mans’ sense of entitlement to people and possessions, will mean nothing when Jesus reigns. The proud will be brought down and the humble lifted up…

until He comes whose right it is to judge the world.

Only by His grace does He delay His Judgement.

Micah’s prophetic oracle is addressed to the entire earth.

The idols of Israel are compared to the wages of a harlot. They had been made from the metal given to the temple by worshipers. Israel had accumulated wealth by engaging in idolatry, an act God regarded as adultery. These same wages will return to pay a harlot—the enemy soldiers who plunder the city will spend their loot on prostitutes. 

Yahweh’s judgment on Samaria was fulfilled in 722 bc when the city was destroyed by the Assyrians. Faithlife Bible.

The faithlessness of the people provoked the Lord God to enter into a judicial dispute with them.

This is the language of epiphany, the dramatic coming of God to earth, here in a solemn procession of judgment. In other texts the language of epiphany is used to describe God’s dramatic acts of deliverance.

Judah’s sins were centered in its capital, Jerusalem. In this verse, the intent of the term high places is made plain. Jerusalem, which was once “beautiful in elevation”, was nothing more than another platform of pagan worship, like the “high places” of the Canaanites.

Idolatry is often described in the Hebrew Bible as spiritual adultery. Israel is pictured as a wife who is unfaithful to her husband. This is not just a metaphor, however; the worship system of Canaan was sexual in nature. The word idols here has the sense of “disgusting images,” probably referring to the explicit sexual nature of these idols. NKJ Bible.

Micah 1:2–7 (NKJV)

² Hear, all you peoples!

Listen, O earth, and all that is in it!

Let the Lord God be a witness against you,

The Lord from His holy temple.

³ For behold, the Lord is coming out of His place;

He will come down

And tread on the high places of the earth.

⁴ The mountains will melt under Him,

And the valleys will split

Like wax before the fire,

Like waters poured down a steep place.

⁵ All this is for the transgression of Jacob

And for the sins of the house of Israel.

What is the transgression of Jacob?

Is it not Samaria?

And what are the high places of Judah?

Are they not Jerusalem?

⁶ “Therefore I will make Samaria a heap of ruins in the field,

Places for planting a vineyard;

I will pour down her stones into the valley,

And I will uncover her foundations.

⁷ All her carved images shall be beaten to pieces,

And all her pay as a harlot shall be burned with the fire;

All her idols I will lay desolate,

For she gathered it from the pay of a harlot,

And they shall return to the pay of a harlot.”

Isaiah 26:21 (NKJV)

²¹ For behold, the Lord comes out of His place

To punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity;

The earth will also disclose her blood,

And will no more cover her slain.

Ezekiel 13:14 (NKJV)

¹⁴ So I will break down the wall you have plastered with untempered mortar, and bring it down to the ground, so that its foundation will be uncovered; it will fall, and you shall be consumed in the midst of it. Then you shall know that I am the Lord.

Micah 2:1-2

Be careful what you do, oh man! God is all seeing, all knowing and all powerful to correct His creation!!

Man with his half baked ideas will never succeed. 

With God’s will in our plans we will not fail.

These wicked individuals lay on their beds at night thinking of evil plots. They cannot sleep because they are consumed with wickedness.These evildoers were powerful, wealthy people with the ability to carry out their schemes and profit by them. Faithlife Bible.

The ethical teaching of the prophets regularly included oracles of judgment against greed, theft, and oppression, actions of the powerful in attacking the weak. NKJ Bible.

Micah 2:1–2 (NKJV)

2  Woe to those who devise iniquity,

And work out evil on their beds!

At morning light they practice it,

Because it is in the power of their hand.

² They covet fields and take them by violence,

Also houses, and seize them.

So they oppress a man and his house,

A man and his inheritance.

Hosea 7:6 (NKJV)

⁶ They prepare their heart like an oven,

While they lie in wait;

Their baker sleeps all night

In the morning it burns like a flaming fire.

Hosea 7:8 (NKJV)

⁸ “Ephraim has mixed himself among the peoples;

Ephraim is a cake unturned.

Micah 1:2-5

Two of the biggest strongholds to growing as a follower of Jesus Christ are pride and arrogance. The Holy Spirit cannot work in us if we believe that we are all that. His first work in you will be to rid you of yourself.

We are in a dangerous place in America. 

God hates pride and arrogance. Until we realize that everything comes from Him and without Him we would have nothing… we will never mature as Christians.

God alone is all powerful.

The Hebrew word used reveals that what follows is an oracle. Micah’s prophetic oracle is addressed to the entire earth. It refers to both the mountains and the cultic high places, the idolatrous centers of pagan worship. Treading upon them indicates Yahweh’s sovereign omnipotence. Faithlife.

All the earth was to know that God was witnessing against His people. This announcement of judgment is based on the people’s breach of covenant. The faithlessness of the people provoked the Lord God to enter into a judicial dispute with them.This is the language of epiphany, the dramatic coming of God to earth, here in a solemn procession of judgment.

The expression high places is ironic. Jerusalem and Samaria were the “high places,” or elevated capitals, of Judah and Israel; but “high places” were also sites of idolatrous worship.Jerusalem, which was once “beautiful in elevation”, was nothing more than another platform of pagan worship, like the “high places” of the Canaanites.

Micah 1:2–5 (NKJV)

² Hear, all you peoples!

Listen, O earth, and all that is in it!

Let the Lord God be a witness against you,

The Lord from His holy temple.

³ For behold, the Lord is coming out of His place;

He will come down

And tread on the high places of the earth.

⁴ The mountains will melt under Him,

And the valleys will split

Like wax before the fire,

Like waters poured down a steep place.

⁵ All this is for the transgression of Jacob

And for the sins of the house of Israel.

What is the transgression of Jacob?

Is it not Samaria?

And what are the high places of Judah?

Are they not Jerusalem?

Psalm 11:4 (NKJV)

⁴ The Lord is in His holy temple,

The Lord’s throne is in heaven;

His eyes behold,

His eyelids test the sons of men.

Acts 7:57-60

Extending mercy and grace to others is a big deal to the Father. He sacrificed himself in the Body of Jesus Christ to put an end to death and suffering in those who choose to accept His sacrifice. In His mercy we are saved.

Those of us who have been forgiven much…love much!

When the Spirit of God moves in everything changes. Every. Little . Thing. Just ask Saul!

In response to what the religious leaders see as the height of blasphemy—exalting Jesus alongside God—the trial becomes a mob scene.Death by stoning was the legal penalty for blaspheming the name of God.

Luke (the narrator) introduces the man who will eventually lead the church’s mission to the Gentiles (non-Jewish people)—he is later called Paul. In the meantime, he stands in approving witness of Stephen’s stoning. Faithlife Bible.

Stephen’s work was done. He was immediately ushered into the presence of Jesus. As Jesus had done, Stephen requested mercy for his killers. NKJ Bible.

Acts 7:57–60 (NKJV)

⁵⁷ Then they cried out with a loud voice, stopped their ears, and ran at him with one accord; ⁵⁸ and they cast him out of the city and stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul. ⁵⁹ And they stoned Stephen as he was calling on God and saying, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” ⁶⁰ Then he knelt down and cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not charge them with this sin.” And when he had said this, he fell asleep.

Matthew 5:44 (NKJV)

⁴⁴ But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you,

Luke 23:34 (NKJV)

³⁴ Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.”

And they divided His garments and cast lots.

Psalm 31:5 (NKJV)

⁵ Into Your hand I commit my spirit;

You have redeemed me, O Lord God of truth.

Matthew 15:12-24

Out of our heart come our words and actions!

In that same manner our actions reveal our heart towards God!

 As a person thinks in his heart, so is he. How do thoughts get into the heart, the seat of reflection? Through the eyes, ears, and other senses. The raw material of our actions is what we take into our mind and allow to settle in our heart. NKJ Bible.

David put it this way: “Your word I have hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against You” Psalm. 119:11.

The other side is seen in Psalm 101:3: “I will set nothing wicked before my eyes.” 

Paul pictured the believer as “bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ”  2 Corinthians 10:5.

Jesus turns the confrontation with the Pharisees into a teaching opportunity for His disciples. He emphasizes the priority of the heart over external matters, such as handwashing and ritual purity. Faithlife Bible.

Matthew 15:12-24

Then His disciples came and said to Him, “Do You know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying?”

But He answered and said, “Every plant which My heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. Let them alone. They are blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind leads the blind, both will fall into a ditch.”

Then Peter answered and said to Him, “Explain this parable to us.”

So Jesus said, “Are you also still without understanding? Do you not yet understand that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and is eliminated? But those things which proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and they defile a man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. These are the things which defile a man, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man.”