Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
September 9, 2026 |Donna Gaines introduces the God Speaks study of four Old Testament prophets and encourages women to wrestle through their questions to trust God.
Welcome to Bellevue Women, a ministry of Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, TN. Find out more about us by going to www.bellevue.org/women today!
The last line of each verse, and each one so beautifully lines up with the four prophets that we're studying, it's pretty amazing, but that Christ is our wisdom, and He is. And we find His wisdom in His Word and through His Holy Spirit. But at the end of each of those verses, it says, you are God and we are not. Good thing for us to remember, isn't it? Enables us to let it all go and trust that He is absolutely sovereign. You are God and we are loved. We can let go, understanding He's sovereign, but also knowing we are His beloved. He loves us. You are God and we are yours. We are His and He is ours. You are God forever praised. Now I'm going off script here, and I'm looking for a quote from something that I'm sharing in a couple of weeks with someone else. I'm going to be speaking in a couple of weeks on Isaiah 61, verses 10 and 11. It's all about delight. The fact that God delights in us, we are to delight in Him. It's a women's conference, and I'm doing two sessions. But in verses 10 and 11, at the beginning, Isaiah 61, 1 and 2 is what Jesus read when He was in the synagogue in Nazareth, and He was telling them, these scriptures are being fulfilled. I came to preach good news to the poor. I mean, all the beautiful things that the Messiah came to do. But there is, when it gets to verse 10, something, the voice changes, and it's the redeemed. It's us saying, we exalt in the Lord, we delight in the Lord. But there were several commentators that say, no, because it remains singular. So that means that it is still the Messiah speaking, and the Messiah is saying, I exalt in God, and I am wearing the bridegroom's robe and the crown and the jewels of the bride, and He is rejoicing in us. And listen to what this commentator said. His name is Alec Motyer. He says, how blithely we read that for the joy that was set before Him, He endured the cross. And many have been heard to say that the joy in question was the crown that awaited Him. Very likely so. But Isaiah says it was the joy of saving us. We think of the intended humiliation and actual pain of the crown of thorns. But to the Lord, Jesus, it was His bridegroom's priestly headdress. We picture the bedraggled and bloodstained seamless robe that He wore to Calvary. But to Him, it was a wedding garment. Listen to this. This is the statement they got me. His Calvary joy was wedding day joy. He was winning His bride. Can we trust Him? Absolutely. Anybody who would die for us, we can trust Him. And as we look at God speaking to us, He speaks to us primarily through His Word. He speaks to us through His Holy Spirit, but He also speaks to us through His prophets. And He has done so throughout history. And we're going to do just a little bit of a recap of the 14 eras, time periods of Scripture so that we can put our prophets in their time period and you can understand what's going on, what's happened before, what they're living in the midst of, and what's about to happen as we look at them. Okay? So you're going to see on the screen the 14 eras or time periods. The Bible is a metanarrative, they call it. It's the big story of God, of creation, the fall, redemption, and restoration divided up for us into 14 time periods. So the very first square represents creation and the fall. And that's Genesis 1 through 11. So we know in the beginning, God created everything good, but we know in Genesis chapter 3, Eve listened to the voice of the serpent instead of the command of God. And she looked at the fruit. And it looked good. And if it would make her wise and she could be God, yes. She wanted to promote self, just exactly what the enemy did that caused him to be cast out of heaven. So we know that when the fall took place, death entered our narrative. We know that death is unnatural. Everything in us fights against death because we know we were created for life. And yes, we were. Which is the beautiful promise that God gives in Genesis 3.15 that through the seed of woman, he would send one who would crush the head of the serpent. He was going to redeem us. So we go through chapter 11 and then 12, we move into the second time period, which is the era of the patriarchs. That's when God chooses Abraham and tells him, you're going to be the father of many descendants. In fact, if you could count the stars, they're going to outnumber the stars, Abraham. And he promised him a son at 75. We know it would be 25 years before he actually saw that promise fulfilled. And it was fulfilled in the birth of Isaac through his 90-year-old wife, Sarah. And they began the era of the patriarchs. So we have Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. So from Genesis 12 to the end of Genesis, we're looking at the period of the patriarchs. And we know that God uses one of Jacob's sons, Joseph, to get them to Egypt. Because in Genesis 15, obviously, Abraham was not a large enough number of people to possess the land that God had promised at this point. So he told him, your descendants are going to go to Egypt. They will be there for 400 years. And then I will bring them back to take possession of the land that I have promised you. And he caused a deep sleep to come upon him. And God committed through covenant with Abraham that this would take place and that God would not break the covenant. So we get to the period of the exodus. 400 years have passed. A Pharaoh arose who did not know Joseph. And he begins to mistreat the people of God because they had grown so numerous. They became a threat to him. So he puts taskmasters over them. And they begin to cry out to the Lord. And what does God do? God sends Moses, born during that time period, and raises him up supernaturally, as we know, because all the babies were being thrown into the Nile. And his mom put him in a little ark in the Nile. And, of course, Pharaoh's daughter just happened to find him. And her heart was moved when she opened the basket, and that baby began to cry. And then Miriam, who had been hiding to watch and tell everybody what happened—doesn't that sound just like us? Let's see what happened. What's going to happen? Jumps out and said, oh, would you like me to get a Hebrew woman to nurse him for you? Sure. So she'd given up her son only for God to give him back. And I can't even imagine the training that she must have given that little one until she weaned him and then given to Pharaoh's home to be raised by Pharaoh's daughter, to learn the language of the nation, to be able to write the first five books of the Bible, and to be God's deliverer for his people, to bring them out. And we know they didn't get to go straight into the Promised Land because of unbelief. We don't have time for all of that. They wandered around for 40 years before they finally went in. And then we move into the era of the conquest. They're finally going in to take possession of the land that God had promised them. And Moses has died. God buries him on top of Mount Nebo, and then Joshua is leading the people. And what does God say to Joshua? Just as I was with Moses, I will be with you. Be strong and courageous. In those first few verses of Joshua, he says to him three times, be strong and courageous, be strong and courageous. I can't even imagine trying to follow somebody like Moses. And then to take this people as unruly and unbelieving as they had been in to take possession of what they had been waiting so long for, the land that God had promised them. But that's exactly what Joshua did. The sad news is Joshua did not train a mentor like Moses had trained him. And Judges 2 verse 10 says, all that generation, the generation of Joshua, also were gathered to their fathers. And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord, nor yet the work with which he had done for Israel. They had not obeyed the word of God, or the instructions and example of Moses and Joshua. They allowed the culture to shape them instead of God's word. And they would reap what they had sown. We know Judges. It's a disaster. They start out with a couple of good Judges. There are 12 Judges in all. Some of them overlap. But they get worse as you work through the book of Judges. And in fact, so bad that some of the things happen that are so horrific you can't even believe you're reading them. That people can become that depraved. And there's seven sin cycles in the book of Judges which we stand back and look at them and go, how could they do that? How could they go back to pagan idolatry knowing God is going to send somebody in to oppress them? Why would they not just worship the Lord? And yet we do the same thing individually. What they did corporately, we also do individually. Because when life is easy and we're not having to work too hard at it, we kind of slack up on our Bible reading and get behind and maybe don't spend quite as much time in prayer. And it's certainly not as desperate as when a crisis hits. But boy, when a crisis hits, what are we doing? We're digging back into that word. We are recruiting prayer warriors. We are serious now, right? We're going to get through this crisis. And the moment we get through the crisis, what happens? We start taking it easy again, right? That is the sin cycle of Israel in our own individual lives. And we get to the end of that period of the Judges, and what did the people do? I always said they sounded like a spoiled teenager. They said, we want a king like everybody else. And God says, okay, I'll give you what you want. So the people's choice, we know, was Saul, who did not have the character that he needed to be the king of the people. And then God gives them a king that he chooses, David, a man after his own heart. Not perfect.
who pursued God, one who repented big when he sinned big, and even after his sin, God says, that's a man after my own heart. Is that not good news for all of us? Hallelujah. That's the beauty of the gospel. That's the good news. That is the God who pursues us. And all we have to do is turn back to him. All we have to do is cry out to him, and he is immediately there for us. He is the father of the prodigal running to meet us as we turn back to him. So then after we get David, we have Solomon who starts out great and ends up really bad. Solomon's son Rehoboam is when we move into the next era of the divided kingdom. Now our first two prophets live at the end of the divided kingdom. The kingdom divides. There's northern, the kingdom which is Israel, the southern kingdom which is Judah. Ten tribes break off and form the northern kingdom. Benjamin and Judah stay in the southern kingdom, and they have Jerusalem and the temple. So the northern kingdom builds their own place to worship and creates their own idols to worship, and they do not have one good king. So consequently, they are taken off into captivity before the southern kingdom. God had told them. He gave them Deuteronomy. He gave them Leviticus. He told them, this is what you're to do, and if you do this, you obey me. All these blessings will follow you, but if you do not, then all these curses will follow you. And exactly what he said would happen is exactly what they're walking into. And even though they saw the northern kingdom taken captive by the Assyrians, the southern kingdom did not repent. Now under Josiah, they did. They had a few good kings, which is why they lasted longer than the northern kingdom. Josiah was the last good king, and it was under his reign that they replenished the temple, they reinstituted worship, and he got rid of all the pagan altars, and the people were turning back to God. Habakkuk lived during that time period. Habakkuk lived during part of the time of King Josiah, and then as he was seeing the Assyrians lose power and the Babylonians, or the Chaldeans as they're sometimes called, coming to power, Habakkuk is worried because he knows what's happened to the northern kingdom. He knows how evil they still are, even after all of the restoration that had taken place, because as soon as Josiah dies, guess what happens? His son is just as evil as any of the other evil kings they've had. The people turn back to their wicked ways, and he knows that judgment is coming. So Zephaniah and Habakkuk lived during the end of the divided kingdom, just before the era of the captivity. Their contemporaries were Jeremiah, Huldah, and Nahum. So good company, right? For profits. God promised judgment if his people did not repent and turn back to him, but we see over and over how patient and long-suffering he is, not wishing that any should perish. God also promised restoration and even told them how long they would be in captivity. In fact, that's what Habakkuk is so upset about that we're going to see as we get into the book next week, is he realizes God is bringing judgment on the people, rightfully so, but God, how could you use an even more wicked nation to punish your not-quite-so-wicked people? Jeremiah tells them they're going to be in captivity for 70 years. And then Haggai and Malachi lived during the return era. So we go from the end of the divided kingdom to captivity, where they are for 70 years, and then at end of captivity, after that 70 years, the Medo-Persian conquer the Babylonians, and Cyrus, the ruler, tells them they can go back and rebuild Jerusalem and sends all the articles of the temple and tabernacle back with them and even foots the bill for them to go back and rebuild. And Isaiah had prophesied just that over a hundred years before it actually happened. So Haggai and Malachi lived during that return and rebuilding era. Their contemporaries were Zerubbabel, Ezra, and Nehemiah. Those names are probably familiar to you. You know, as we step back and look at this, we too can look at just how harsh the punishment seems to be, the judgment, the wrath of God, and we can struggle with it. I know there are people that sometimes say, I don't really like to read the Old Testament because there's a wrathful God in the Old Testament and a loving God in the New. Oh, no, no. The wrath of God was poured out on sin on his son in the New Testament. Our debt was paid through Christ, a debt we could never pay. I've got a great quote for you out of The Good and Beautiful God by James Bryan Smith, and he's talking about wrath and the biblical view of it. He said, in the same way that God's love is not a silly, sappy feeling but rather a consistent desire for the good of his people, so also the wrath of God is not a crazed rage but rather a consistent opposition to sin and evil. God is not indecisive when it comes to evil. God is fiercely and forcefully opposed to the things that destroy his precious people, which I'm grateful for. It is a sign of God's love. God's wrath must be understood in relation to his love. Now, listen to this. Wrath is not a permanent attribute of God, whereas love and holiness are part of his essential nature. Wrath is contingent upon human sin. If there were no sin, there would be no wrath. Think about that. While it is correct to say God is holy, it is not correct to say God is wrathful. Wrath is the just act of a holy God towards sin. He went on to say holiness is essentially wholeness, W-H-O-L-E, a life that works. Sin is dysfunction or sickness. In fact, it's much like cancer. If it's not cut out and destroyed, it takes over. God is against sin because sin destroys. God's laws are for our well-being and human flourishing. He fights for us, not for our comfort but for our conformity to Christ. I want to encourage you this semester, take your questions to him just like our prophets did. Wrestle through until you get an answer from him through his word in prayer. Isn't it amazing when you're seeking God about something specific how often he'll draw you to it in his word or he'll allow you to listen to a teaching and you're just like, how did I even find this? Or you'll pick up a book and it just jumps off the page at you because God is speaking to you. It's amazing how the Lord speaks to us when we reach out to him. I want to encourage you, wrestle through to trust. Wrestle through to trust. He is our only sure foundation. I know if you will wrestle through, you will find that he is that very present help in our time of need. In fact, that's what we see in the lives of our prophets, especially Habakkuk because he's the one I've been immersed with and in lately. But he ends his little three-chapter book with this glorious psalm of praise even though he knows judgment is coming. But why does his questions turn into praise? How does his wrestling turn into trust? It's because he knows God. He has seen him and he knows his goodness. He knows he can be trusted. He knows he's sovereign and so he surrenders. And that's my desire for all of us.