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Introduction to the Prophets

The first seventeen books of the Bible are historical in nature. They detail the history of God working through and with Israel. The next five books that we just covered are poetic in nature. They speak from various emotional states and are intended to be timeless. The next section of the Bible is a mixture of these two kinds of books; the prophets.

The prophets are largely poetic but are firmly rooted in specific points in history. These are the books that contain a message for a specific group of people at a specific time, but the messages themselves are typically poetic. This is one reason the prophets are largely ignored in our churches.

Why Are the Prophets So Tricky?

The first reason why so many Christians avoid the prophets is identical to why they avoid books like Song of Songs or the majority Job; poetry. We simply don't know how to deal with Hebrew poetry. This isn't surprising since poetry is culture based. The metaphors, analogies, and extremes we would use in our poetry aren't the same for ancient Israel. This is something that takes time to learn, but produces immense benefits.

The other reason the prophets are largely avoided is the subject matter. A very large chunk of the prophetic writings have to do with impending judgment. We, very simply, don't like that. We prefer to think of God as a loving father, all while forgetting that the best fathers know when to discipline their children. 

The prophets more than any other books in the Bible show us exactly what God thinks of our sin. They put on full display just how much he hates sin and just how far he is willing to go to be rid of it. This makes us uncomfortable because, admit it or not, most of us have come to terms and made peace with the sin in our lives.

How many times have we attributed our sins to personality quirks? "That's just the way God made me" and "That's just who he/she is" are repeated far too often in our churches today. There are certain sins in our life that we simply refuse to change. We have come to terms with it. 

The prophets show us that there is no such thing as brokering a peace between righteousness and sin. They paint the world in very absolute terms; right and wrong, black and white, with God or against God. This makes us uneasy because it shines a light on the darkness that we still hold onto. 

Conclusion

I am very excited to get into the prophets. I think one of the biggest problems we have in churches today is a failure to recognize the seriousness of sin. Studying the prophets would go a long way to help rectify that situation. They reveal to us a very important fact about God; his holiness is no joke.

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