Job may have been the first book of the Bible to have been written down. It is certainly one of the earliest. It deals with a universal theme: the problem of suffering. Is suffering always a punishment for sin? Can we know why we suffer? Will justice triumph in the end? How should we deal with suffering? Consider these questions and others that come to your mind as you study this passage.
The birth and naming of John the Baptist and the prophecy of Zecharias
We live in a day when we have all of the resources we need to be a good Christian. We have multiple Bibles in each home, a church on every corner, Bible teachers and material at our disposal 24 hours a day. There has never been a day when there were so many different ways to serve the Lord by practice, preaching and publishing. Yet we have allowed the spirit of Laodicea to deaden us. We like the Laodiceans are “lukewarm”, growing cold on the things of God. May we use this service to survey our relationship with God and the things of God
These chapters look prophetically to the day of the Lord. This will be a day when God will come in wrath and will judge the wicked. However, all is not lost. Those who fear the Lord will be remembered and will be spared. To them, the Sun of righteousness will rise will healing and will care for them as calves that are brought up in the stall. In closing, they are told to look backward to the law of Moses and forward to the coming of Elijah as the herald of the day of the Lord and the Messianic Kingdom to follow.
The people had agreed to build the wall, but now the work had to be done. Nehemiah organizes his workers around the wall of the city and they begin to work. However, they had not gotten far before opposition came. Sanballat and Tobiah mocked them and when that did not work, they planned a surprise attack on the workers. When Nehemiah heard of their plans, he organized the people to fight. But the work did not stop for long. Soon, the people went back to work with weapons ready in case they needed to fight. The wall would be finished.
