Sermon Transcript — September 24, 2005
I don't know how many of you are able to turn in or check in or tune in to the Compass Checks that are presented each Monday morning at the Home Office. You can get those if you have a Real Player by tuning into the ucg.org website. And each Monday morning usually the President, sometimes one of the other operations managers gives a Compass Check. I believe it's an outgrowth from our program at camp each morning where one of the ministers gives about a five or a ten minute redirect for our purpose and our attitude for the day. The Compass Check is a refocus of our direction for the Home Office staff and they do put that on the webpage so that the members worldwide can tune in and see what's going on, the latest announcements.
Last Monday, Mr. Kilough gave a Compass Check entitled, Windows of Opportunity. He said some things in there that spawned some thoughts in my mind, and began my thinking process and then with the arrival of the hurricane this week those thoughts began to germinate and I came up with some thoughts that I want to share with you this afternoon.
I'm not going to entitle my sermon Windows of Opportunity, I would like to entitle my sermon The Teachable Moment. Those of you who are teachers, you will know what I mean by the term, the teachable moment. The teachable moment is the best learning environment. Oliver Wendell Holmes described it this way: "A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience." Oscar Wilde said, "We can have in life but one great experience at best. And the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible."
Experience and learning seems to happen in fits, stops and starts in most of our lives. Sometimes it seems what is going nowhere — even backwards — other times there is a steady plodding progress. And yet, at other times, there seem to be peak moments when everything comes together, the perfect circumstances in which we learn dramatically or intensely. Such crescendos are often very memorable in our lives and many of us remember those as we look back in our lives. These great learning experiences that involve relationships, love, death, achievements, perhaps catastrophic events. Just prior to significant learning moments one sits in the eye of the storm having experienced the ups and downs and the arounds, but there is suddenly only pure curiosity and confidence in flowing with the task or the problem or the challenge ahead. In such moments, we experience what teachers call 'optimal intellectual arousal'. Like the perfect storm, circumstances come together and we then can learn best. In such moments, an individual is prime for discovering and developing new understanding. It is indeed the teachable moment. The teachable moment may not be comfortable. In fact, it is often incredibly uncomfortable and confronting. Unless one confronts bravely leaving the known shore, the moment's learning potential may not be fully realized. Or the event might be quite accidental, fortuitous and often is disguised as bad luck. John Dewey said, "Luck — bad, if not good — will always be with us, but it has the way of favoring the intelligent in showing its back to the stupid." Suzy Gazlay who was nominated to be the 1992 recipient of the Presidential Award for Excellence in science teaching said this about the teachable moment. "The very best teachers of students of all ages know the valuable of the teachable moment. That moment is usually very brief, but it is worth hours of prescribed instruction." Too often, later at another more convenient time, people generally ask questions because something has caught their interest or they just want to deeply understand and know something. The teachable moment, most typically begins with a question. Today, a lot of people are asking questions perhaps like some of us. What's happening to our weather patterns? Is God trying to tell us something? Maybe God's trying to tell ME something. What would it be? These kind of questions are being asked frequently. Out of suffering we often ask the bigger questions of life
Let's go to Ezekiel 33. Ezekiel 33 is oftentimes called the watchman chapter. In this chapter, God commissions the prophet to warn ancient Israel as a watchman. A watchman, traditionally and typically, was an entrusted soldier who stood on the walls of the walled cities and watched for impending disasters whether it was an approaching army, whether it was a bad weather system — whatever it was — he watched on behalf of the citizens of that town. And whenever he saw incoming disaster, he would blare away on his trumpet to awaken the city and to bring them to arms or to an alarm to defend the city or to escape the impending disaster. This was the role of the watchman, physically. In Eze.33, God calls Ezekiel, His prophet, the spiritual watchman. I think we all know the discourse at the beginning of this chapter which describes the watchman who sees the impending disaster from afar away and he has an obligation to call the alarm on his trumpet and if he doesn't call the alarm, the blood is on his shoulders. But if he calls the alarm and the people ignore the signal, God says the blood is on the heads and the shoulders of the citizens because they refused to hear. I'd like to drop down to verse 10.
EZE 33:10 - "Therefore you, O son of man, say to the house of Israel : 'Thus you say, "If our transgressions and our sins lie upon us, and oftentimes this was the message of the prophet. He said, Look, folks, (from a spiritual watchman point of view) our sins have separated us from God. In order to gain that relationship back with God, we need to repent of our sins, turn around and go a different direction. If our transgressions and our sins lie upon us, so they are repeating back now what the prophet has told them about their condition and we pine away in them, how can we then live?" ' They say, "Look, we know the disaster's coming." It's interesting. There's a question being asked here. Remember, the teachable moment most often begins with a question: people asking questions; important, life changing questions. The house of Israel collectively in this account is asking a question.
Verse 11 - God says, "Say to them: see, God's planting his response in the mind of the prophet 'As I live,' says the Lord, 'I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn, turn from your evil ways! For why should you die, O house of Israel ?'
In some of the research I did on this term 'teachable moment', I found that a teachable moment requires three simple ingredients. There are three elements to a teachable moment. One is relationship. In order to have a teachable moment, you have to have a relationship with someone. I'll give you an example. I was talking some time ago with Dr. Karlik, one of our deacons up in the Bakersfield congregation, many of you know John and he was describing to me how graduate programs work because he is a professor and he sometimes has learned at the feet of another professor. He teaches graduate students who come to him and they say, I want to learn from you and they begin this one on one tete-a-tete relationship of teacher/pupil and the pupil has to have confidence in the professor, that's why he asks for that particular professor to be his mentor in the discipline that he is studying in graduate school. "I want this mentor to be my teacher. I want this mentor because I respect him, I want to learn what he knows, I want to understand what he understands, I want to be taught by him." So they develop a relationship and therefore, because of that relationship, the pupil can then ask questions — critical questions. He can enter into critical research with the professor overseeing and guiding and helping and answering those questions. They have a good, close relationship and as a result of that relationship, they can learn — the student learns because of a relationship.
I'd like us to think for a moment about the relationship of the Church with people. Oftentimes, people who are going through severe trials or difficulties or problems or through a traumatic event will reach out to someone they trust and they will ask those critical questions: why is this happening to me, help me understand, why am I suffering this particular trial, why is this grief on me? And I think particularly at the moment of those people who have been displaced and affected by the hurricanes Katrina and Rita. It's rather interesting. I'd like to share with you — I was going to do this a little later in the sermon, but I'll bring it up now. These are some reports that come from Mr. Peter Eddington who is our Media Operations Manager at the Home Office and typically he's reported here that there are certain key words on the Internet that people will queue in and are launched or at least offered the opportunity to come onto our website. And when people are on our website, they order booklets. And it's rather interesting — usual hits — I'll go through the first five just to give you an example of what I'm talking about. People are looking for 'Bible' as a key word, 'free magazine' another key word we have on our website, 'church', ' Israel ', 'God', ' United States ', 'family'. Those are the top seven words that draw people into our website and I suppose most of you know that we actually pay to be on search engines so that when people do a search like on Google, you get to the top of the list by paying and people are able to go into our website and then once they are in our website, then they can be directed because of the word-search they have done to certain booklets they can order. And so, people typically order booklets that line up with those words like "The United States in Prophesy' for example; booklets about the family; booklets about the basic doctrines of the Church; the free magazine, The Good News is offered. There are other key words, this is our normal response. So those are the top seven.
Now, this is a report that came January 1 st . This is the report we have available to us. There is another report that is not out yet that talks about the aftermath of Katrina, but as you may know, January of this year followed the disaster of the tsunami that occurred in December of last year in southeast Asia. It's interesting that suddenly the search words changed on our website. Let me share with you the top seven now in January. You see, typically we get those seven I just described to you. Now, in January, suddenly these are the top search words: 'death', 'end of the world', 'revelation', 'book of Revelation', 'end time prophesy', 'why do people suffer?'. Totally different list of words that suddenly jumps to the top of the list. My point is that people, when they go through traumatic experiences like a disaster, the nature of a hurricane, start asking questions. In other words, the teachable moment is created or generated. They want answers to really hard questions like 'why is this happening to us', 'why are we suffering', 'does this have anything to do with end time prophesy?', does it tie in with the book of Revelation?', and, of course, our webpage directs these people to different booklets that they would normally order in the top seven.
Now, why would they call upon a church? Why would they go to our website? Well, number one, they are directed there because of their word search. But number two, people believe that a church can give them answers to some of these more difficult questions in life — not just our church, but any church. There's a confidence there. So there's a relationship. So, even without knowing us, many people on the Internet expect that there's a safe relationship, a trusting relationship with a church and so they come to our website, they order our literature in search of those answers.
Again, the teachable moment requires three simple ingredients.
• is a relationship
• is you need a catalyst — you need something to bring forward that question to someone with whom this individual has a relationship — the catalyst. The catalyst is an event or an object or a curiosity that brings the question to the forefront and allows the student to ask the question in the relationship.
I'll give you an example. When my second oldest son was quite young, I had taught him how to ride a bicycle. Like most of you who are parents, you teach your children safety first, teach them how to be safe, not to ride in the street. And I remember one day in particular I was in the office looking out the window to the front of our house and I saw my son going down the driveway and into the street. Now, we didn't live in a particularly busy neighborhood traffic-wise, but I was about to get up go and correct him again - he seemed to forget in his exciting play - when I noticed he went out the driveway and a car was coming down the road. And the car slammed on its brakes as my son, on his bicycle, entered the street and my son literally fell over on his bicycle, jumped up and started screaming and running into the house and we met at the front door and he said, "Dad, I've been hit by a car. I've been hit by a car." Of course, I could tell by his demeanor it wasn't bad. So I embraced him and hugged him and tried to calm him down and, of course, the driver of the car was just totally shaken, got out of the car, came over, was profusely apologizing. We went to check the bicycle and we realized that he didn't get hit at all. My son, as he came out of the driveway saw the car, panicked, fell over. Of course, the driver didn't know that. My son didn't know that until we looked around and there was no damage to the bike, there was really no damage to my son except a scraped elbow and there was no damage to the car. I tried to calm the driver down and then I remember taking my son into the living room and we sat down on the couch together and he was "sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff" still kind of in that moment of a close, personal experience with death, and I said, "Now do you understand why it's so important that we have rules about riding your bicycle?" Yes, he understood that at that point. He really understood because he had this experience and the result of the experience was that that became the catalyst for the teachable moment. Then my son was open to teaching. And for the next few days, when he came down the driveway he'd stop at the end of the driveway and look both ways and then proceed into the street. It only lasted for a little while.
What we know about these reports is that after an event of major proportions, like I said, we get a totally different word search on our website. And then about four to six weeks afterwards, things die down, people begin to go back to normal, don't they? The teachable moment is past in many cases and everything is back to normal.
So, in these three simple ingredients you have a relationship, you have a catalyst and thirdly,
3) then you have an opportunity to teach truth. You have an opportunity at least from a church prospective to teach biblical truth, to impart knowledge and understanding.
I'll share with you another example, this is my older son. When he was a senior in high school, he had several friends and he had gone to high school with most of these friends for the better part of six or seven years — high school and junior high school — he didn't stay in high school six years, he was the normal student. And one of his friends, he wasn't a real close friend, he was an acquaintance, was a member of his class, unfortunately committed suicide. And I remember the day my son came home from school and told us, his parents, about the death of his friend. And he asked me, he said, "Dad, why would this happen? How could this happen? How could someone that I've known and is only seventeen years old commit suicide? How does that happen?" He was asking a question at a teachable moment. The catalyst was the unfortunate death of his friend. And so he and I sat down and we had a lengthy discussion about life and death, about the resurrections, about people's mental state, about the importance of good mental health. We talked about a lot of things over the course of — actually, it turned into several days on and off — but it was a teachable moment. The relationship was there, the catalyst was there and then I had an opportunity to teach him truth. And the words sank in because just a few years later after we had moved to San Diego, another one of his friends bought a motorcycle and the first day he owned that motorcycle, he did not understand that a motorcycle accelerates at twice the pace of a car, but it takes twice the distance to stop it and his friend crashed his motorcycle into a wall on the first day he owned it and killed himself. And I remember my son came over to the house. Again he was upset and he talked about this friend who had died in this unfortunate accident with his brand new motorcycle, and he said something that proved to me that he had learned what I had taught him years earlier about a circumstance like this and even though he doesn't attend church my older son said, "You know, Dad, I can't wait for the resurrection because I'm going to go up and I'm going to hit that guy in the face and tell him how stupid he was."
Let's go to Joel, chapter 2. So, the ingredients for the teachable moment are relationship, catalyst and truth. With that as a backdrop and a context, lets go to Joel chapter 2 and verse 10. We, again, probably know that Joel, chapter 2 is talking about the day of the Lord, the time of the end. There are some events that are prophesied that are not very pleasant that include natural disasters that precede the return of Jesus Christ to this earth. If you will, they soften up the population of the earth. There's a purpose for it and I'm going to get to that in just a moment, but let's go to Joel, chapter 2. I'd like to begin reading here in verse 10.
Joel 2:10 - The earth quakes before them, the heavens tremble; the sun and moon grow dark, and the stars diminish their brightness.
Verse 11 - The LORD gives voice before His army, for His camp is very great; for strong is the One who executes His word. For the day of the LORD is great and very terrible; who can endure it?
As I have mentioned earlier in messages that have followed natural disasters both last December and just a few weeks ago, I think God is giving us a glimpse into some of the disasters, some of the reactions, some of the feelings, some of the emotions, some of the calamity that will surround the events that we describe as 'the day of the Lord'. Notice verse 13 because we see here the purpose of such events. The purpose is to create the teachable moment.
Verse 13 - So rend your heart, and not your garments; return to the LORD your God, it's the same message we read earlier for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness; and He relents from doing harm.
Verse 14 - Who knows if He will turn and relent...
There is a very powerful example in the book of Jonah about the prophet, Jonah, the reluctant prophet who went to the city of Nineveh of Assyria . There are many lessons that we could amplify from the book of Jonah, but the one that I would like to focus on here in the context of Joel's message is that those people when the prophesy came from God through God's prophet, those people repented. Remember? They did it universally as a whole city including their animals. Their animals fasted and as a result, God changed His mind. I think this scripture tells us that God can change His mind about what He even intends to do to certain nations, peoples, cities in the future depending on whether or not the teachable moment is grasped and we are motivated as God wants us to be motivated by those events.
Verse 13 - ... for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness; and He relents from doing harm.
Verse 14 - Who knows if He will turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind Him - a grain offering and a drink offering for the LORD your God?
Verse 15 - Blow the trumpet in Zion , consecrate a fast, call a sacred assembly;
Verse 16 - gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children and nursing babes; let the bridegroom go out from his chamber, and the bride from her dressing room. Let people interrupt the course of life and pay attention, He is saying.
Verse 17 - Let the priests, who minister to the LORD, weep between the porch and the altar; let them say, "Spare Your people, O LORD, and do not give Your heritage to reproach, that the nations should rule over them. Why should they say among the peoples, 'Where is their God?' " Where is their God when they see the suffering?
Even the suffering of the terrible day of the Lord is designed to create the teachable moment so that people will see and understand and ask questions and turn to God and repent. We've been studying the book of Revelation in our pastor's study and from reading Rev. 7 and Rev. 14, we know that the hundred and forty-four thousand and the great innumerable multitude were called by God, are called out of the great tribulation. They suffer some of those events that are prophesied and as a result of the suffering they experience, that becomes the catalyst, if you will, for the teachable moment. They enter into that teachable moment and then God can work with them. God can then seal them with His Holy Spirit and protect them from the final part of the day of the Lord.
Let's go to Matthew 23. Here in chapter 23, Christ gives probably the greatest condemnation that we find in the entire scriptures directed to the scribes and Pharisees over in verses 23, 24 and 25. He blasts these people for their hypocritical religion. But then He says something really interesting in verse 37 and that's where I'd like to focus.
Matt. 23:37 "O Jerusalem , Jerusalem , the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you just were not willing!
Does that sound like a familiar theme that we read in Ezekiel and Joel so far, that the only reason God allows calamities — He doesn't cause them. Read Job, the first couple of chapters. He doesn't cause them, He allows them. The reason He allows them is to create the catalyst for the teachable moment so that we and others will observe and will ask the right questions and the teachable moment will exist. That eye of the storm that was described by one of those teachers I was quoting earlier where we can then learn and become most effective. Verse 38 of Matt. 23.
Verse 38 - "See! Your house is left to you desolate;
You know, if I was a resident of New Orleans and I decided to ride out Katrina and my home was flooded and I was forced into the attic as many of those residents were, I was miraculously rescued, was told I had to leave the city, obviously everything I owned was flooded and gone and I happened to be relocated to Galveston, how would you feel? I've thought about that. How would I feel? I might feel like Jonah. "Okay, God, what do you want to tell me here? You said two hurricanes, what's going on?" Now, I'm not suggesting that some of those refugees who ended up in Galveston as some did, or Houston , had already been pinpointed by God particularly. I don't know what God is doing in the lives of any particular person involved in all this, but I will tell you something, if I was involved in all that, I think I would be inclined to ask questions! There was a pretty powerful catalyst there.
Christ said, verse 38 - "See! Your house is left to you desolate, He said to these scribes and Pharisees.
Verse 39 - "for I say to you, you shall see Me no more till you say, 'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!' " He's implied to them you're not going to see me again, these people He has such condemnation for, until the kingdom of God - until the kingdom of God .
God creates opportunities for spiritual learning for all of us. Sometimes it's in a personal experience, sometimes it's the experience of someone else, sometimes it's a general calamity. But there are teachable moments all around us. How often do we ignore them? How often do we stumble over them and then pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and rush on, completely ignoring them?
Let's go to Acts, chapter 3. Many of you and many of the members of the Church have contributed to the Good Works program. That is going to help I know at least three families who have lost their homes — Church families in the New Orleans area. There are others who had severe damage to their homes, others who didn't have flood insurance and need repairs in their homes and the Good Works program has collected, at this point, a little more than $100,000. Do you know, that's a drop in the bucket compared to the multiple hundreds of millions that have been donated by Americans and other governments around the world for these disasters? Just a drop in the bucket. I think we would all confess, we just don't have deep pockets. There's not very many Bill Gates' in our congregations who can make multiple millions of dollars worth of contributions to those in need, but we have something that people can really use. Notice here in Acts chapter 3 and verse 2.
Acts 3:2 - a certain man lame from his mother's womb was carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple which is called Beautiful, to ask alms from those who entered the temple;
Verse 3 - who, seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple, asked for alms.
And fixing his eyes on him, in verse 4, with John, Peter said, "Look at us."
Verse 5 - And so he gave them his attention, expecting to receive a donation.
Then Peter said, in verse 6, "Silver and gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth , rise up and walk." He offered him something of spiritual essence, some understanding of the knowledge of God's plan.
Verse 7 - And he took him by the right hand and lifted him up, and immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength. That's the miracle, that's the catalyst.
Look at the instruction in verse 19. Peter says to the crowd that had gathered,
Verse 19 - "Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord,
Verse 20 - "and that He may send Jesus Christ, who was preached to you before,
Verse 21 - "whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration ... In order to understand 'the times of restoration', we have to understand the plan of God. We have to understand about the Holy days. We have to understand that the events that we will celebrate here in a few days on Trumpets is an introduction. It is an announcement. It is, if you will, a catalyst for the repentance of the nations. Those may come from the presence of God.
The times of restoration mentioned in verse 21, of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began.
You see, the catalyst for this teachable moment was the healing of this lame man, but the real kernel of value, truth was found in verses 19 through 21, not the healing. That was simply the catalyst. It's the truth that comes once you have people's attention. God used Job to teach us this issue. God used Jonah to teach us. What is interesting, I think, about Jonah is that Ninevehites repented and then Jonah got upset. At the end of the book of Jonah, it appears as the book ends, Jonah doesn't learn the lesson about God, about how loving and merciful God is and how God listens to those who use the catalyst of the teaching moment to turn their lives around. Job used the teachable moment. Even though he did not have sin, as God said, Job used the catalyst of a teaching moment to learn about God. He said in Job 42, "Now I see you, God, as never before." He learned through those circumstances. The scripture is not clear, but apparently Jonah did not.
Let's go to Jeremiah 18. I'd like to conclude in Jeremiah and in Zephaniah. In Jeremiah chapter 18 and verse 6, God says to the prophet,
Jer. 18:6 - "O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter?" He says, "Am I not strong enough and powerful enough to do as I will?" You know, when we observe the power of a hurricane, and I remember talking to somebody in the airport on my way back from Cincinnati and we were talking about the power of a hurricane, and the suggestion was — this party was talking about that he had heard that someone made the suggestion, "Why don't we set off a nuclear weapon in the middle of a hurricane? Wouldn't that heat it up? Wouldn't that cause the winds to change direction? Couldn't you do that?" And as I understand it, this person heard from a scientist that no, you wouldn't with a nuclear weapon, you would not phase a hurricane. You could not even make it wobble. It would take many multiple thousands of nuclear weapons to begin to phase the direction of a hurricane. There's that much power there. Besides that, you'd create a big fallout mess if you tried that.
God is bigger than we can ever imagine! He controls all that weather, or He allows it to happen.
Jer. 18:6 - ... "Look, He says, as the clay is in the potter's hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel !
Verse 6 - "The instant I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, to pull down, and to destroy it,
Verse 7 - "if that nation against whom I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I thought to bring upon it.
Could our nation repent and avoid the disasters prophesied to come during the day of the Lord? Absolutely! Yes, it could!
Look in verse 11 - "Now therefore, speak to the men of Judah and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem , saying, 'Thus says the LORD: "Behold, I am fashioning a disaster and devising a plan against you. Return now every one from his evil way, and make your ways and your doings good." ' " and right.
Verse 12 - And they said, "It is hopeless! So we will walk according to our own plans, and we will every one obey the dictates of his own evil heart. It only takes, psychologists tell us, about four weeks and we forget the disaster that gained our attention and we, once again, will miss the teachable moment.
Is there something for us to learn in all this? I believe there's bound to be. You know, personal experience and learning through those personal experiences is not the best way to learn. The best way to learn is what I call O.P.E. - other people's experience. In fact, God said the Bible was written for our admonition. It was O.P.E., other people's experience so we didn't have to go through those experiences to learn that it's a bad way to do things. It says the best way to learn is through other people's experiences. So my question for us today is, can we learn from the events that happen to other people? Is there a catalyst there for us? Are there lessons there for us to learn?
Let's end in Zephaniah. Let's go to Zephaniah chapter 1. Zephaniah 1:14 and if you don't have those little cheater tabs, it's on page 1,273. Zeph. 1, verse 14.
Zeph. 1:14 - The great day of the LORD is near; it is near and hastens quickly. I don't know when the great day of the Lord is going to arrive, but I think God is giving us a glimpse into some of these natural disasters. Now, some people say well these are just cycles and they repeat themselves about every 90 to 100 years. And the greatest, most serious natural disaster ever to happen that we know of on American soil was back around 1900 when an unnamed hurricane hit Galveston and killed somewhere between six and twelve thousand people — destroyed the city. In fact, Galveston was much bigger than Houston at the time and those survivors moved up to Houston and it became a much bigger city than Galveston . Talking about a migration. But I'll tell you this, the day of the Lord and those events that are coming are a day closer than they were yesterday. The noise of the day of the LORD is bitter; there the mighty men shall cry out.
Verse 15 - That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of devastation and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness,
Verse 16 - a day of trumpet and alarm against the fortified cities and against the high towers. It's not like we haven't seen in our lifetimes attacks against high towers in two of the greatest cities in the south of our country, all in the space of five years.
Verse 17 - "I will bring distress upon men, and they shall walk like blind men, because they have sinned against the LORD; their blood shall be poured out like dust, and their flesh like refuse"
Verse 18 - Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them in the day of the Lord's wrath; but the whole land will be devoured by the fire of His jealousy, for He will make speedy riddance of all those who dwell in the land.
The purpose of all of that carnage and disaster is to create the catalyst for the teachable moment in which the hundred and forty-four thousand of Israel and an innumerable multitude will be called.
Chapter 2:1 - Gather yourselves together, yes, gather together, O undesirable nation,
Verse 2 - before the decree is issued, or the day passes like chaff, before the Lord's fierce anger comes upon you, before the day of the Lord's anger comes upon you!
Verse 3 - Please, please, he says, Seek the LORD, all you meek of the earth... Hopefully, that's us. Do you know what meek means? It means 'teachable'. Seek the LORD, all you... who are teachable on ...the earth, who have upheld His justice. Seek righteousness, seek humility. It may be that you will be hidden in the day of the Lord's anger.
God says that there are those He will hide in the day of His anger. Those are the ones who have experienced the catalyst and have seen the teachable moment and have taken advantage and have learned spiritually. Have we learned? Can we learn from these experiences that we see from afar? Yes, I think we can and we should. Brethren, I would encourage all of us never, never, never allow a teachable moment to pass.