Huge Hope: Major Power in the Minor Prophets

Scripture: Hosea 14:1-9

Welcome to Huge Hope. Over the next twelve days we’re going to look at some passages in the collection of Old Testament books known as “minor prophets,” even though they aren’t minor at all. They may be short books, but they’re still brimming with life-giving hope.

Today we’re starting with the first of the minor prophets, Hosea. In this book, God tells the prophet Hosea to marry a prostitute as a way of literalizing the way His people had turned against Him.

Hosea, being a man of God, obeyed, even to the point of having a couple of children. Such was their transgression that God told Hosea to give them names that embodied their outsider status. God was fed up!

And yet, even in the first chapter, we see that God was ready to restore them, saying in Hosea 1:10, “Yet the number of people of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which can neither be measured nor numbered, and in the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ it shall be said to them, ‘Children of the Living God.’”

God’s plan was always to bring restoration. All it takes is a return.

In today’s reading, the book of Hosea reaches its culmination in a restorative word of mercy and grace. We read in verses 2-3: “Take words with you and return to the Lord; say to him, ‘Take away all guilt; accept that which is good, and we will offer the fruit of our lips. Assyria shall not save us; we will not ride upon horses; we will say no more, “Our God” to the work of our hands. In you the orphan finds mercy.”

No matter how far away you’ve run from God; no matter what you’ve done or what you’ve left undone, you’ve never fallen so far that you are unreachable by His grace. In Hosea, an entire nation is told to “take words” and return to the Lord. They didn’t have to make a sacrifice, they didn’t have to tear their garments or pull out their hair. They just needed to return with the right heart.

That’s it. That’s all. Healing is available. Ask for it.

Scripture: Joel 2:1-27

In today’s passage, we read from the prophet Joel about a nation that was being besieged by an occupying force, and how God goes about rescuing His people.

Basically, in this passage, it gets worse before it gets better. It’s fire. It’s desolation. It’s darkness. It’s total domination.

But then…

There’s grain, there’s wine, there’s oil. There’s satisfaction at long last.

There’s a promise that all that has been lost will be given back. Everything that has been stolen will be returned. There are words of peace and calm spoken not just to people but to animals and to the land itself. It is a complete and total restoration from the ground up.

And finally, there is this everlasting promise in verse 27: “…[M]y people shall never again be put to shame.”

The roller coaster ride will end. The cycle of hope and dismay will be over. We will get off the merry-go-round and stand once more on solid ground.

This is the kind of hope we can find if we just care to open our eyes long enough to see it.

Scripture: Amos 5:4-24

The Lord is inescapable, and your feelings about how to interpret that sentence will vary greatly depending on your feelings about God in general. 

In today’s passage, the prophet Amos describes a period of judgment he calls “The day of the Lord,” and within that description he uses language of inescapability and inevitability. Let’s check out verses 18-20: 

“Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord! Why do you want the day of the Lord? It is darkness, not light, as if someone fled from a lion and was met by a bear or went into a house and rested a hand against the wall and was bitten by a snake. Is not the day of the Lord darkness, not light, and gloom with no brightness in it?” 

Seems pretty relentless, doesn’t it? Especially so if you’re trying to hold onto your life as your own, to live your own way and keep God out of it. 

But He is inevitable. He wants you—all of you—and He will do everything He can to cut off your escape routes so that you eventually surrender to His will. 

If you see God as an adversary, then you’ll always live in fear of the day when He eventually gets you. 

If you see God as a loving parent who wants nothing but the best for you and your life, then this imagery of predator and prey, of all-encompassing nighttime, takes on a different meaning. 

God is for you. God wants you. God will pursue you to the ends of the earth and until time itself expires. 

So what will you do with that? 

Let justice roll down like water and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

Scripture: Obadiah 1:1-21

God’s justice doesn’t always look like what we think justice should look like. That plays out in lots of ways, but in the book of Obadiah it plays out in the prideful being brought down to size.

Not everyone is equal, but in Obadiah we see a nation get brought low because they lorded their military might over a weaker opponent. First, they did nothing but watch while someone else did the dirty work. Then they made fun of those who were being oppressed. Then they helped do the oppressing.

It was a slippery slope of pride and they fell all the way down it. They got drunk on their own power and God made sure they hit rock bottom.

In Obadiah, God reveals Himself as one who is on the side of the downcast, who will bring about justice in His own time, to save and redeem those who call on Him, and bring them up out of their dire circumstances to live with Him.

The final verse offers this interesting tidbit: “Those who have been saved shall go up to Mount Zion to rule Mount Esau, and the kingdom shall be the Lord’s.”

Who’s doing the ruling here? The saved, or the Lord Himself? Even in this single verse, we see the way God does things: He saves us, He sets us up, and He makes sure we have the opportunity to remember who is God and who is not.

That’s God’s justice. Let it roll.

Scriptures: Jonah 3:1-10, Jonah 4:1-11

Have you ever been mad at God? 

Sure, who hasn’t? 

Have you ever been mad at God because He did what He said He would do after you obeyed Him and blessed a whole city by bringing them to redemption? 

Jonah was. 

Most of us know the story of Jonah and the whale (though in scripture it’s referred to as a “great fish”), but have you ever learned it past the point where Jonah repents, the fish spits him out onto dry land, and he goes to do what God told him to do in the first place? 

Jonah gets mad! 

He preaches the message of repentance to the city of Nineveh, and they listen to him and turn away from their wickedness! They repent and return to God! And Jonah is MAD about it! SO MAD that he wants God to KILL HIM. 

“I knew that you were a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from punishment. And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” (Jonah 4:2b-3) 

Imagine being so mad about someone else’s good fortune that you want to die. Actually, maybe you’ve been there. Maybe you’ve seen unfairness in seeing other people prosper when, to you, it feels like they don’t deserve it. Maybe you can relate to Jonah. 

But when we take on this kind of posture, we aren’t doing anything other than poisoning ourselves. God is going to do what God wants to do, and we can either join Him on the ride or petulantly stick our heels into the mud and pout. 

Let’s just trust God and rejoice. He knows what He’s doing, and all things will be made right in His time. 

Don’t get mad. Get on God’s timeline!

Scriptures: Micah 6:1-16, Micah 7:18-20

Sometimes we try too hard to get back into God’s good graces.

This is a figure of speech, of course. We are never outside God’s grace, but sometimes it feels as though we haven’t quite lived our lives up to par, that we’re falling short of God’s standards for us. And so we overreact and go all out and really try to DO something to earn God’s love again.

But as we’ll read today in the prophet Micah, a lot of times our DOING is the wrong kind of action we should be taking.

“With what shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before God on high?” the prophet writes in verse 6. “Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”

These are all very typical sacrifices, escalating in the amount of sacrifice they require. But they’re not the kind of sacrifice God’s looking for. Let’s look at verse 8.

“He has told you, O mortal, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?”

From what we read today, God is much more interested in the ways we go through His world than He is in what material things we can give Him.

Admittedly, it would be so much easier to just have a checklist of things that please God. Just sacrifice this amount of rams, bring this amount of oil, offer this number of your children. It would hurt, but we would KNOW that we’re doing the “right thing.”

Instead, God calls us to a gentler way of doing. A way that requires us to learn His character, His way of being, so that we can bring it into our everyday world. How can we “do justice” if we don’t know what God’s justice looks like? How can we love kindness if we haven’t spent time with God to understand the ways He exhibits kindness? How can we “walk humbly” if we’re too proud to take those first steps with Him?

Striving isn’t always the answer. Sometimes we have to stop trying to DO and just BE with God instead. Then let that BEING overflow into the rest of our lives.

Scripture: Nahum 1:2-15

God is bigger.

That’s it. That’s the lesson. God is bigger.

What in your life seems daunting? What is the thing (or things) that feel like they’re going to tear you down or crush you under their feet?

God is bigger.

In today’s reading, we learn all about how big God really is, as the prophet Nahum borrows all kinds of metaphors from nature to drive home the point. Mountains quake, seas are dried up, hills melt, rocks are pulverized.

But in the middle of it all is this passage in verses 7 and 8:

“The Lord is good, a stronghold in a day of trouble; he protects those who take refuge in him, even in a rushing flood.”

God is bigger. But God is also GOOD.

He isn’t just bigger than everything! He’s good! He’s BETTER than everything!

Which means there’s no evil, no adversary, no obstacle, no hindrance, no ANYTHING that can outdo the bigness or goodness of God. It just isn’t possible.

What big thing is looming in your life? God is bigger.

Rest in that truth today.

Scripture: Habakkuk 3:1-19

“And yet.”

This is one of the most powerful phrases a follower of God can have in their back pockets. It’s certainly a concept we see Habakkuk employ to close out his three-chapter book of the Bible.

The final chapter of Habakkuk is a prayer that lasts 18 verses. It seems as though Habakkuk and his nation are under oppression by a mightier military power (referred to as the “Chaldeans” earlier in the book), and Habakkuk is praying for God to deliver them. He implores God to save them, and sets his own heart to waiting for that deliverance.

And then he wraps it all up with a big “And yet” kind of idea, which we read in verses 17 and 18:

“Though the fig tree does not blossom and no fruit is on the vines; though the produce of the olive fails and the fields yield no food; though the flock is cut off from the fold and there is no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the God of my salvation.”

Habakkuk refuses to look at his current circumstances and see anything other than hope. He sees the material conditions that all indicate that things are bad, but he says, “Nope, I refuse. I will still rejoice in the Lord.”

“And yet.”

Things are never what they seem, and God is never not in control. We can still rejoice in the Lord, no matter what.

What will you rejoice in today… and yet?

Scripture: Zephaniah 3:1-20

If there’s one thing God loves more than anything else, it’s demonstrating His redemption. Okay, God loves lots of things, but you get the idea. He absolutely loves to showcase His mercy and grace—especially to people who’ve done nothing to earn it (i.e. all of us).

In today’s passage, we see God being God in this way. It starts off as a bummer, with desolate cities and deceitful rulers. But then, God works.

“You shall fear disaster no more,” the prophet says.

“[God] will rejoice over you with gladness; he will renew you in His love,” the prophet says.

“I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth,” the prophet says, relaying God’s words to those who need to hear them.

This is who God is. God is a God who calms our fears, who renews us in His love, who gathers and encourages and eradicates shame.

Whatever you’re feeling, wherever you’re inadequate, however you got here—know that this is who God is. God is the one who restores.

Scripture: Haggai 2:1-9

It’s all God’s. Everything in this earth. Every ounce of gold, every sliver of silver. Every pebble on every mountain and every kernel of grain in every field. All of it: His.

How does your heart respond to that truth? Does it fill you with joy? Does it do anything to soothe the poverty-laden worries that wander through your mind (or that maybe live there)? Does it cause you to walk a little straighter, step a little more confidently, knowing that everywhere you go belongs to your Father in Heaven?

In today’s scripture reading, the prophet Haggai imparts this wisdom from God: “I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land, and I will shake all the nations, so that the treasure of all nations will come, and I will fill this house with splendor… The silver is mine, and the gold is mine.”

Haggai is encouraging his listeners to rebuild a temple to God, and God is letting them know that, when their work is done, He’ll take care of the splendor part.

Our job is not to try to create splendor—our job is just to do what God has put in front of us and to let Him take care of the rest. Because it’s all His anyway. We’re just participating in building His kingdom because He likes it that way.

It’s all God’s. What will you do with it?

Scriptures: Zechariah 9:9-17, Zechariah 10:1-12

Kings don’t ride donkeys.

They ride horses. And not just plain old horses, either. They ride STEEDS. War horses. Massive beasts that are imposing, that strike fear in the hearts of their enemies.

But not in today’s scripture passage. In Zechariah 9:9, we read about a king who enters humbly, riding on a donkey.

Because this King comes in peace.

This King doesn’t need war. This King doesn’t need to strike fear into the hearts of anyone, because this King loves everyone.

This King restores instead of destroying. This King gathers instead of spreading. This King redeems instead of condemning.

This King is Jesus, and He will change the way you think about… everything. If you’ll swap your steed out for a donkey and let Him.

Scripture: Malachi 3:1-7

Malachi isn’t really the kind of book you want your inspirational scripture reading plan to end on. It’s not a rousing bit of encouragement and it doesn’t really have any inspiring monologues to close out the show and send the audience out of the theater ready to take on the world.

But it does provide us with a very important reminder, right there in chapter 3, verse 6:

God doesn’t change.

God is faithful. God is steadfast. God is stable.

We humans can be a little flighty. Even the most solid of us can, at times, become unmoored. Our tempers get the best of us, our negative self-talk becomes deafening, our worries overtake us in the dark hours of the night.

But not God. He is rock-solid.

God is God. God has always been God. God will never not be God. There will never be a time on this earth or any other when God will not be God.

That’s just the plain and simple truth. And so we can either embrace it—and embrace God in the process—or we can kick against it until God eventually overtakes us anyway.

So that’s how we can close out this Huge Hope reading plan. By remembering that God is God, we are not, and He is going to do what He wants to do.

Let’s go along for the ride. It’s going to be HUGE.