The next character in God’s Word that we want to look at is Josiah. As the verse above tells us, he became king over God’s people, and he was actually one of the few who had a heart after the Lord. But his reign came after several years of neglect. A lot of rebuilding had to happen, starting with the Temple. It was in shambles, so Josiah initiated a program to restore the Temple to its former glory.

As the workmen began to clear away the debris that had collected, they came across a copy of the scriptures that had been disregarded over the years. They dusted it off and started to read it to King Josiah. As God’s Word was being shared, Josiah became aware of how far he and his people had strayed from the Lord’s ways (2 Kings 22).

The king was so convicted by this that he did what so many kings before him failed to do. He made a thorough sweep through the kingdom and ended the practices that were contrary to God’s ways. He cleaned house! And then, he saw to it that the entire kingdom celebrated the Passover Feast. He pulled out all the stops to make sure God was being honored as He deserved to be (2 Chronicles 35).

Everything in the kingdom changed dramatically, and it was all because of the discovery of God’s Word. The scriptures had a radical effect on Josiah, and once they were taken into his heart and mind, he was never the same again.

God’s Word ought to change our lives, as well. It should convict us to the core, cause us to take sin seriously, and “clean house.” It should also inspire us to pull out all the stops as we remember and celebrate who God is and all that He’s done for us.

Tragedy struck as David brought the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem. Along the way, the oxen pulling it stumbled, and Uzzah, a man standing nearby, reached out to steady it. God instantly struck Uzzah dead.

Understand that God didn’t do this haphazardly or happily. The Ark represented the Lord’s holy presence among His people, and they weren’t permitted to touch it. They were supposed to carry it another way on poles, so God reminded them of the sacredness of His presence through Uzzah. At that point, David saw the Ark in a whole new way. It was sacred; it was even somewhat dangerous. So instead of bringing it to his dwelling, David sent it to the home of Obed-Edom.

Now, imagine you’re Obed-Edom and the Ark is in your home! It would have dictated every thought, conversation, and action in the house. “We don’t just do whatever we feel like in that room anymore – that’s where the Ark is! Be careful how you move around over there – that’s where the Ark is! No running in that part of the house – that’s where the Ark is!” The Ark represented God’s presence, so of course it was going to impact everything else in the house. But watch what happened: “And the ark of the LORD continued in the house of Obededom the Gittite three months: and the LORD blessed Obededom, and all his household.” (2 Samuel 6:11)

God placed a special blessing upon Obed-Edom’s home because the Ark was there. When Obed-Edom opened his front door to that representation of God’s presence, it opened his household to divine favor.

The same holds true for everyone who welcomes the Lord into his or her home. When He’s invited in and brought into the center of one’s dwelling, it becomes a blessed place. Make the conscious decision to welcome God’s presence into your home, because His special favor will rest upon you and yours, just as it did for Obed-Edom.

Baruch is one of those characters in the Bible who’s often overlooked. He doesn’t have a book named after him. He is rarely noticed – much less mentioned – unless you happen to come across him in Scripture. And when was the last time you met someone named “Baruch”?

But Baruch’s obscurity is no reflection on his importance. Just ask Jeremiah. Baruch was a God-send who helped the unpopular prophet fulfill the divine calling placed upon his life. When everyone else turned against Jeremiah, Baruch stood by his side, risking his personal reputation and safety in the process. He even put his scribal skills into Jeremiah’s service by painstakingly writing down his prophecies (Jeremiah 36).

Though lacking notoriety, Baruch is one of those unsung heroes God has a way of sending at just the right time. If you’re in a situation where you’re feeling all alone and in need of an ally like Baruch, be encouraged by this: What God has done before, God can do again.

Interestingly, the name “Baruch” means blessed, and God is faithful to bless us with Baruchs when we need them. When we’re committed to fulfilling the call the Lord has placed on our lives, when we’re walking in His will and not just our own, He’s faithful to bring authentic friends and reinforcements alongside us.

You might feel forsaken and despised, like Jeremiah was. But be certain of this: God is going to provide the support you need when you’re being obedient to His plan for your life. He will not leave you nor forsake you. Not only is He always with you by the power of His Holy Spirit, but He’s also the Master of matching us up with the people who will help us finish our race of faith.

“God setteth the solitary in families:…” God sets the solitary in families… (Psalms 68:6)

Of all the books of prophecy in the Bible, Jeremiah’s is the most personal. Large sections of Jeremiah are descriptive of what was happening in this prophet’s heart as he follows through with the task that God had called him to…and it was one of the most difficult tasks the Lord had ever assigned to someone.

From the start, God told Jeremiah his audience wouldn’t receive him, and his ministry wouldn’t appear successful to outward eyes (Jeremiah 1:18). That didn’t matter, however. Jeremiah was to speak for the Lord, no matter how unreceptive the people were. And he did. He faithfully carried out his duties as a prophet of the Lord for more than forty years.

But as hard as Jeremiah’s ministry was, he had a secret weapon. He had something that always overcame the adversity he faced. He had an uninhibited connection with God. Over and over again, the Book of Jeremiah gives us snapshots of the back-and-forth between the prophet and the Lord. And what we see is a man who was real with God when he was truly suffering. Here’s just a small sampling: “Righteous art thou, O LORD, when I plead with thee: yet let me talk with thee of thy judgments: Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper? wherefore are all they happy that deal very treacherously? Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth! I have neither lent on usury, nor men have lent to me on usury; yet every one of them doth curse me. Why is my pain perpetual, and my wound incurable, which refuseth to be healed? wilt thou be altogether unto me as a liar, and as waters that fail?” (Jeremiah 12:1, 15:10, 18) Do you see how real and raw Jeremiah is with the Lord? He doesn’t approach God in a detached or cold way but speaks to Him like a real person…because He is.

Sadly, a lot of people don’t have that kind of connection with the Lord. Even many Christians never feel the freedom to be this honest when they pray to Him. Don’t let that be true of you. Be respectful and reverent towards God, but at the same time be as real with Him as Jeremiah was.

God honors faith. When a person makes the conscious decision to invest their trust in who the Lord is and what He’s said, He honors and blesses them. And here’s the amazing thing: This holds true for absolutely everyone. A person’s background doesn’t disqualify them from being honored. A person’s past – who they were and what they’ve done – is irrelevant in God’s eyes once faith enters the equation.

We need look no further than the story of Rahab to see positive proof of this. She arrived on the scene in Joshua Chapter 2. The Israelites were on the verge of destroying her city, Jericho, which stood in their way. Two Israeli spies crossed paths with her, and because she had heard how God was with their people, she vowed allegiance to them in hopes of being saved.

Keep all of this in context. Rahab was a “pagan” woman who had no connection whatsoever to the special covenant God established with the Israelites. She was also a harlot, a woman who sold her body for a living. Rahab was further outside of God’s program than just about anyone.

But she believed the God of Israel was real, she believed her life needed to be aligned with Him, and she believed she could be saved by being on His side. The Lord saw and honored her belief, and she was miraculously saved while the rest of her city and its inhabitants perished. God honored Rahab even further by orchestrating events so she would be the grandmother of King David and an ancestor of Jesus Christ (Matthew 1:5)! That’s a lot of honor for a pagan prostitute! But it all happened by virtue of the fact that God honors faith in Him, no matter who or where it comes from.

The next time you doubt that God loves you and accepts you, remember Rahab. Her story shows the extent of God’s amazing grace toward all who believe.

Ezekiel is among the most interesting characters in the Bible that you’ll ever come across. The book that bears his name is filled with some of the oddest passages in scripture.

For starters, it begins with a vision of God’s throne descending from Heaven, and the details involved in this vision are hard for the human mind to comprehend. Creatures with four different faces, multiple sets of wings and arms, enormous wheels that are covered with eyes…it’s strange, to say the very least!

That sort of sets the tone for the Book of Ezekiel – and for his ministry in serving the Lord, for that matter. God called this man to do some things that we’d find bizarre. For example, He told him to eat a scroll (Ezekiel 3:1), He told him to go and shut himself up in his house for a prolonged period of time (Ezekiel 3:24), and He told him to act out the siege of Jerusalem by laying on his side for several days (Ezekiel 4:1-6). Let’s be honest: That’s not the type of stuff we’d necessarily volunteer for because it all seems rather odd.

Yet, Ezekiel didn’t let that stop him from being obedient. True, God was calling him into some strange territory. But Ezekiel wasn’t concerned with staying in his comfort zone; he desired to put the Lord’s will ahead of his own.

Now, it’s safe to say that God isn’t going to tell us to do the sort of things He told Ezekiel to do. However, you can be sure He’s going to call us beyond the boundaries of our comfort zone. And when He does, it’s this character named Ezekiel who ought to inspire us to step out in new directions that might seem strange and uncomfortable to us.

Put God’s will ahead of your own. When you do, you’ll share in the perspective Ezekiel had – as well as the honor of being used by the Lord.

In Genesis Chapter 15, Abram (who would eventually come to be known as Abraham) drops an interesting detail. He mentions that his chief servant was a man named Eliezer. In and of itself, that’s not too significant. But then we get to Genesis Chapter 24, where Eliezer takes center stage.

In that chapter, Abraham sends his trusted servant to a far-off land to find and woo a bride for his son Isaac. Eliezer fulfills Abraham’s wishes and comes across Rebekah. He tells her about Abraham and his son, and reveals some of their wealth and riches to her. She listens to the words of Eliezer, and decides to join her life to Isaac’s even though she has never personally seen or met him. Eliezer leads Rebekah all the way to Isaac, and she becomes his bride.

When you look at Eliezer’s role in Genesis 24, there are some incredible similarities to the Holy Spirit’s role in the New Testament. The Father, God, sends forth His Spirit into the world to draw out a bride for His Son. The Spirit testifies of the Father and the Son and reveals the riches and glories of their Kingdom. Once a person decides to be joined with the Son in faith, the Spirit abides with them and remains with them until he or she is in the actual presence of the Father and Son (John 16:15, Ephesians 1:13-14). Sound familiar?

As if those similarities weren’t striking enough, the name Eliezer literally means “helper” in Hebrew, which is the exact same title Jesus applies to the Holy Spirit as He helps us (John 14:26).

Eliezer is one of those Old Testament characters that God uses to foretell what He did and is doing in these New Testament times. Quite literally, Eliezer is our “helper” who helps us see the Spirit’s work in our lives and our world.

Yesterday we looked at the life of James, the half-brother of Jesus. Today, we’ll fix our focus on yet another half-brother of Jesus…Jude.

Jude’s identity as a half-sibling is well established because the crowds refer to Jesus having a brother named Juda, which is a common transliteration of Jude, in Mark 6:3. “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended at him.”

Here’s what’s especially interesting about Jude and his letter: He tells his readers that he originally intended to write to them about one thing but decided to switch gears and write about something else: “Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.” (Jude 1:3)

So we can picture Jude, poised and ready to encourage a group of Christians about their salvation in Jesus. He’s setting out to comfort and console, but then something grabs hold of his heart – he recognizes that there’s a more important matter at hand. More and more fake followers are infiltrating the Body of Christ and infecting it with unrighteousness. What’s needed is a word of warning, which is what Jude proceeds to pen for his original audience and for us.

We can’t help but appreciate Jude’s sensitivity to the situation and for stepping up and doing what had to be done. It would have been easy to elaborate on the good news of salvation. But he was willing to warn, which can often be an unpopular and difficult thing to do.

Oftentimes, God will call us to do something that’s more difficult than we originally intended. When He does, we need to remember Jude’s willingness to warn, and we need to be just as willing to obey the Lord’s leading on our lives instead of rigidly clinging to our original plans. Be sensitive, be flexible, and be willing to do what’s difficult.

We can’t help but wonder what it was like to grow up in the same household as Jesus-to watch Him grow and mature from a small child to a teenager and finally to a young adult. We know that Mary would have been witness to this as well as Joseph for a certain extent of time. But the Bible tells us that there were other half-siblings who grew up alongside Jesus, and they included four half-brothers and at least two half-sisters (Mark 6:3).

One of those half-brothers, James, went on to become the leader of the Jerusalem Church, and he also authored an epistle that bears his name. Notice how he began his epistle in the verse above, “James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ…”

It’s interesting that James doesn’t make it a point to identify himself as one of the few who got to grow up alongside Jesus. He didn’t write, “James, a special someone who had an inside track on who Jesus is so you better pay special attention to me.” Instead, he put himself in with everyone else, calling himself a “servant.”

This title tells us something significant about James. It speaks to his humility and his desire to be known as a servant and not a master. He didn’t want to use his unique vantage point as a means of climbing over others, because he understood that we’re all essentially equal in Christ’s eyes. Whether you grew up under same roof with Jesus or not, He doesn’t play favorites. We all have equal access to the privileges of knowing Jesus, and the greatest privilege of all is to serve Him.

James doesn’t elaborate on what it was like to grow up alongside Jesus. Instead, he reminds us that at the end of the day the greatest honor we can ever attain or experience in this life is to be servants of the King of kings, and that is true for absolutely everyone.

It was a pivotal turning point in the early Church. The apostles had just begun to proclaim the good news about Jesus and had started to cause quite a stir in the city of Jerusalem. This new movement of Jesus followers was becoming a force the Jewish authorities had to reckon with as it threatened their religious grip over the people. So they used their political power to arrest the apostles and commanded them to stop talking about Jesus.

Of course, the apostles refused to obey, forcing the Jewish rulers into a difficult decision. They would either have to release them and run the risk of their message spreading, or they would have to kill them. Again, this was a critical moment in the Church’s existence, and an unlikely character emerged to play an important role.

One of the most respected Jewish leaders, a man named Gamaliel, stepped forward and spoke his mind on the matter. Basically, he advised the other rulers to step back and let the apostles run their course. His logic was simple yet very profound: If their movement was based on human effort, it would come to nothing in the end. But if it was a genuine work of God, then it would prevail despite their efforts to stamp it out (Acts 5:35-39).

Gamaliel was so revered by the Jews that they consented to his counsel. The apostles were released, and the gospel continued to spread like wildfire throughout Jerusalem, the surrounding region, and even to the ends of the known world. Although Gamaliel wasn’t a Christian, God still used him to advance the mission of His Church.

Sometimes God will use the unexpected in order to accomplish His agenda. In our own lives, this can come in the form of a unbelieving family member, neighbor, or co-worker that He might use to help steer us in the right direction. Divine intervention can come through unlikely channels, so be alert and discerning in all of your interactions.