Thy Strong Word reveals the light of our salvation in Christ through study of God’s Word, breaking our darkness with His redeeming light. Each weekday, two pastors fix our eyes on Jesus by considering Holy Scripture, verse by verse, in order to be strengthened in the Word and be equipped to faithfully serve in our daily vocations. Thy Strong Word is hosted by Rev. Dr. Phil Booe, pastor of St. John Lutheran Church of Luverne, MN, and graciously underwritten by the Lutheran Heritage Foundation.
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“Gather together, O shameless nation, before the decree takes effect, before the day passes like chaff.” Zephaniah pleads with Judah to seek the LORD while there is still time. To seek righteousness, seek humility. Why? “Perhaps you may be hidden on the day of the LORD's anger.” Then the oracle sweeps the compass, Philistia to the west, Moab and Ammon to the east, Cush to the south, and at last…
"I will utterly sweep away everything from the face of the earth," declares the LORD. In the days King Josiah, Zephaniah speaks God's Word of judgement. Focusing on Judah, he admonishes the worshipers on rooftops bowing to the stars, priests swearing to the YHWH in one breath and by Milcom in the next. His prophecy is clear: the great day of the LORD is near, near and hastening fast, a day of…
Woe to the bloody city, all full of lies and plunder! Nahum's last chapter moves like the assault itself, the crack of the whip, the rattle of the wheel, the galloping horse and bounding chariot, and then a question: are you better than Thebes? That Egyptian city sat secure behind her waters, and Assyria herself dragged the people of Thebes (No’ ‘Amon) into exile. For Nineveh there is no easing of…
Nahum walks Judah through the fall of Nineveh before it happens: red shields at the wall, chariots flashing through the squares, the river gates thrown open, the palace melting away. Assyria styled her kings as lions and their capital as the den where the prey was dragged home; Nahum asks where the lions' den is now. Behind all the poetry stands the one sentence that decides the outcome: "Behold,…
Nineveh heard Jonah preach and they repented, but over a century later the cruelty was back in force. So Nahum opens with who God is: jealous and avenging, slow to anger and great in power, one who will by no means clear the guilty, whose way is in whirlwind and storm. In the middle of the storm stands verse 7: the LORD is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble, and He knows those who take…
God gathers the nations into the valley of Jehoshaphat and reads the charges: they scattered His people, divided His land, cast lots for captives, traded a boy for a prostitute, and sold a girl for wine. Then a line every listener knows arrives in reverse: beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears. The LORD roars from Zion, the heavens and the earth quake, and in the same…
Verse 18 reveals, “The LORD became jealous for His land and had pity on His people.” Grain, wine, and oil come back, and with them God’s promise that He will restore the years that the swarming locust has eaten along with the fields. The promise then expands: “I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy; and everyone who calls on the name of the LORD shall…
Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound an alarm on my holy mountain. The army Joel saw in chapter 1 now darkens the whole horizon, and at the head of it the LORD utters His voice; the swarm turns out to be His. That is what makes the appeal in verse 12 possible: return to me with all your heart. Rend your hearts and not your garments, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in…
The book of Joel begins in a year everyone in Judah would remember. Locusts had come through in wave after wave and eaten the harvest down to nothing, and the priests had no grain and no wine left to bring to the altar. Joel summons the land group by group: drunkards to wake and weep, farmers to wail over the wheat, priests to spend the night in sackcloth. Then he calls all of them to the house of…
Obadiah addresses Edom, the nation descended from Esau. When Babylon sacked Jerusalem, Edom stood at the crossroads and watched his brother burn, then gloated, looted, and cut down the refugees who ran. Safe on the high rock, Edom asked, "Who will bring me down to the ground?" God, through the prophet Obadiah, answers him. The answer widens past Edom to every nation and ends on Mount Zion, where…
Edom stands at the crossroads and watches his brother Judah dragged off in chains, and Obadiah announces that the day of the LORD is coming for the bystander, too. Joel sees a locust swarm strip a nation bare in a single season, calls the people to rend their hearts and not their garments, and promises a Spirit poured out on all flesh. Nahum returns to Nineveh a century after Jonah's revival, and…
On this Free-Text First Friday we take up translation and the teaching of Scripture, with Nehemiah 8 as our guide. Ezra reads the Torah aloud, and thirteen Levites go out into the crowd to give the sense so the people understand. That same work continues today through the Lutheran Heritage Foundation, which puts the books of our confession into the languages people actually pray in. And all of it…
In this last chapter of Acts, Paul comes ashore on Malta and is bitten by a viper while putting wood on a fire, and the islanders conclude he is a murderer getting what he deserves. When he does not die they decide he is a god. He winters on the island, heals the father of the leading man there, and sails for Italy in the spring. He reaches Rome in custody and spends two years in a rented house at…
