The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, majestic, and full of splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him and what came to my heart and mind in 1 Samuel 3:1b,
"In those days the word of the Lord was rare; there were not many visions."
Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share what moved you about him from your Bible reading today. I'd love to hear from you!
If you have someone you would like to receive these ruminations, send me their email address. I'm happy to add them to the list. If you are receiving this and would like to be removed from the list, just respond and let me know.
Trevor Fisk
trevor.fisk@gmail.com
"In those days the word of the Lord was rare; there were not many visions."
Sometimes it is easy to assume that the Lord communicated continuously through his prophets back in the day. It is an easy thing to assume because when we read the Scriptures, we find they were always produced during a time when the Lord did communicate to his people, or shortly afterward.
However, it really isn't the case that there was a continual flow of communication from the Lord in Israel's history. The production of Scripture is best to be thought of as happening in clusters with gaps in between. For instance, there was a lot of time between the account of Joseph and the Israelites moving to Egypt and the accounts of Moses (almost a half millennium), with nothing we know of coming from the Lord. We have the same thing between the prophetic ministry of Malachi and the prophetic ministry of John the Baptist. Again, nothing much from the Lord in the interval (other than the production of Jewish apocryphal writings.) The observation is made in 1 Samuel 3:1b that the word of the Lord was rare, "not many visions." My assumption is that would be in comparison with the prophetic activity of the Lord at other times the writer was aware of. This famine of revelation from the Lord would be at the time of the end of the period of the judges.
lt should be no surprise we have no or little recognized prophetic activity from the Lord in our day, looking back to the close of John's writings. Jesus came as God's premiere revelation of himself, to set the stage for his program of redemption, which he launched, following his death, burial and resurrection, through his apostles. Having provided all we need in the New Testament, little is needed from the Lord as he builds his kingdom through his gospel message.
One thought is clear: God has provided us everything we need to know to join his kingdom, his family. We have all we need and we have received that progressively, where the word of the Lord built upon itself, adding to what had been given at an earlier time.
How wonderful it is that the Lord has communicated with us!
Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share what moved you about him from your Bible reading today. I'd love to hear from you!
If you have someone you would like to receive these ruminations, send me their email address. I'm happy to add them to the list. If you are receiving this and would like to be removed from the list, just respond and let me know.
Trevor Fisk
trevor.fisk@gmail.com
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