“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,
so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” 2 Timothy 3:16-17
When Paul says “All Scripture … is useful for teaching … for every good work,” he means All Scripture. Hence, my long and winding trek through the Bible searching for its teaching about doing God’s good works.
I have to admit, though, at first blush I have found very little about doing God’s good works in the minor prophets. Truth be told, these books are incredibly depressing. At least the major prophets have long sections on the future hope for the Jews after their coming judgement, not to mention several sections — seven to be exact — about doing communal good works.
But the minor prophets? They have some positive sections too, but not to the degree that the major prophets do. But this lack of positive teaching on good works does not mean we can ignore these books. The reason is because they have an important lesson to teach us about how to deal with things that keep us from doing God’s good works.
The pre-exilic and exilic minor prophets teach us that being sensitive to God’s rebuke is a precondition for doing every good work
The problem is that, when referring to 2 Timothy 3:16-17, we tend to do what I just did above: ignore the difficult part, “rebuking.” “All Scripture is profitable for … rebuking.” Indeed, the minor prophets are all about rebuking. And unless we come to grips with God’s rebuking of us, as well as God’s command for us to rebuke others, our training in doing God’s good works will never be complete. We must submit to Scripture’s rebuking power, for we cannot do God’s good works unless we stop doing our bad works and help others stop doing theirs.
Therefore, our understanding of the good works God wants us to do must include the importance of rebuke. This means we must not only be willing to receive rebuke, but also to give rebuke, as Paul commands Titus to do in Titus 1:12-16:
“One of Crete’s own prophets has said it: “Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons.” This saying is true. Therefore rebuke them sharply, so that they will be sound in the faith and will pay no attention to Jewish myths or to the merely human commands of those who reject the truth. To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure. In fact, both their minds and consciences are corrupted. They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him. They are detestable, disobedient and unfit for doing any good work.”
Only after Paul emphasizes the importance of rebuke the Cretans to Timothy in chapter one does he go on to talk about the importance of Cretans doing good works in chapters two and three (He mentions good works five times in those two chapters: Titus 2:7, 14; 3:1, 8, 14).
Hence, just as Christian leaders who are unwilling to receive rebuke cannot accomplish the good works God saved them to do, so also Christian leaders who are unwilling to give rebuke will not see their congregants succeed in doing the good work God saved them to do.
So maybe we can learn a few pointers from the minor prophets when it comes to receiving and giving Scriptural rebuke.
The pre-exilic and exilic minor prophets give us important principles about the place of rebuke in our lives
Let us examine, then, what each of these books teach us about proper rebuke.
Hosea – Proper rebuke involves having empathy for what God feels when we sin
“When the Lord began to speak through Hosea, the Lord said to him,
“Go, marry a promiscuous woman and have children with her,
for like an adulterous wife this land is guilty of unfaithfulness to the Lord.” Hosea 1:2
God commanded Hosea to marry a promiscuous woman and have children of uncertain paternity by her. Why did he want his prophet to do this outrageous act? Because God wanted Hosea to feel what it is like to be betrayed by someone you love dearly and with whom you are in a covenant relationship. For God’s part, the people he loved and felt betrayed by comprised the Nation of Israel and their betrayal consisted of them worshipping other Gods. When we sin against God, it grieves him severely and God wanted Hosea to feel that grief for himself.
To rebuke properly, then, we must have a compassionate understanding of God’s heart for his people and how sin affects God when we break his heart.
Joel – Proper rebuke involves remembering that “the Day of the Lord’s judgement” is always near for any individual and any nation
“Alas for that day!
For the day of the Lord is near;
it will come like destruction from the Almighty.” Joel 1:15
Only a thin veil of death separates all of us as individuals from God’s judgement. And while God will also judge all nations corporately at the end of the world, God has, does, and will judge individual nations in human history as well.
When it comes to personal judgement, here is an illustration of how Jesus emphasized its nearness in Luke 13:1-5, (I have replaced “the 18 who died when the tower of Siloam fell on them” with a modern reference to a recent tragedy in California).
“Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. [Or those twenty-five who died in the Los Angeles fires when ninety mile an hour Santa Anna winds came down, fanned the flames, and burned thousands of homes to ashes—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Los Angeles?] I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”
With respect to individual national judgement in human history, here is an illustration of how how Joel emphasized its nearness in Joel 3:19.
“Egypt will be desolate, Edom a desert waste, because of violence done to the people of Judah, in whose land they shed innocent blood.”
Proper rebuke not only involves an understanding about how God feels when we sin, but it also involves a sense of urgency because of impending judgement for both individuals and nations.
Amos – Proper rebuke happens when people sin egregiously
“This is what the Lord says:
“For three sins of Judah,
even for four, I will not relent.
Because they have rejected the law of the Lord
and have not kept his decrees,
because they have been led astray by false gods,
the gods their ancestors followed, I will send fire on Judah
that will consume the fortresses of Jerusalem.” Joel 2:4, 5
In the Book of Amos, God repeatedly refers to several nations with the phrase, “For three sins of [nation], even for four, I will not relent. Because…” The number three symbolizes fullness in Hebrew literature, and the number four symbolizes overflowing. God is saying that their sins are overflowing. Amos shows us that God waits until a nation sins repeatedly before he judges them.
When God rebukes us, he waits until our sin is egregious and then he tells us exactly why he is rebuking us. When we rebuke others, we need to exercise patience before we do so, so that the rebuke is necessary and obvious to all who experience it.
Obadiah – Proper rebuke is always based on clear and indisputable facts
“In that day,” declares the Lord,
“will I not destroy the wise men of Edom,
those of understanding in the mountains of Esau?
Because of the violence against your brother Jacob,
you will be covered with shame;
you will be destroyed forever.
On the day you stood aloof
while strangers carried off his wealth
and foreigners entered his gates
and cast lots for Jerusalem,
you were like one of them.
You should not gloat over your brother
in the day of his misfortune,
nor rejoice over the people of Judah
in the day of their destruction,
nor boast so much
in the day of their trouble.
You should not march through the gates of my people
in the day of their disaster,
nor gloat over them in their calamity
in the day of their disaster,
nor seize their wealth
in the day of their disaster.
14 You should not wait at the crossroads
to cut down their fugitives,
nor hand over their survivors
in the day of their trouble.” Obadiah 1:8, 10-14
Obadiah rebuked the people of Edom, related to the Jews through their ancestor Esau, for standing “aloof” while Babylon destroyed Jerusalem. In his one and only chapter, Obadiah gives clear facts about how calloused the Edomites were toward their brethren:
- They gloated, rejoiced and boasted over Judah’s misfortune. 1:12
- They raided the city of Jerusalem along with the Babylonian invaders. 1:13
- They cut down the Jewish fugitives fleeing the calamity and handed over survivors. 1:14
Like Obadiah, proper rebuke involves making sure we have our facts straight and then communicating them clearly to the person or people being rebuked.
Jonah – Proper rebuke involves sharing a gospel that saves people from judgement, some of whom we may privately wish would go to hell
“The Word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai:
“Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.”
But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish.
He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port.
After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord.” Jonah 1:1-3
I often ask myself this question, “Have I fully and completely forgiven everyone who has ever hurt me in some way? And have I forgiven them the way God has forgiven me?”
I usually answer that in the affirmative, but there is one person I have a problem with. He’s the man who faked his car breaking down and then, when my eighty-something year old father stopped to help him, he asked my dad for a ride to the car parts store to get a part. While in the car, the man pulled out a gun, robbed my dad and then slugged him in the cheek, crushing his cheekbone.
Would I share the gospel with that man if I ever saw him? I probably would, but it wouldn’t be easy not to think, “He deserves the judgement he’s getting.”
Well, apart from faith in Christ’s atoning work, we all deserve God’s judgement. Do we not?
Like Jonah, God may ask us to forgive a person who has deeply wounded us and then share the gospel with them. We need to be ready when he does.
Micah – Proper rebuke always keeps the goal of good works in mind
“He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.” Micah 6:8
Why is rebuke necessary? It is necessary because it removes whatever sin is keeping us from doing the good works that God wants to accomplish through us.
Micah had a message of judgement for Judea and Samaria, but he did not lose sight of the end goal: “what is good,” namely, to be just, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.
Imagine you have a house in the woods and as you are driving home you come across a huge pine tree that has fallen across the road. Now imagine someone coming with a chainsaw, cutting the section that blocks the road and removing it, allowing you to proceed home. What that person did with his chainsaw is what rebuke does for someone struggling with sin. It removes the sin that is blocking the way home where good things happen. If we are unwilling to give or receive proper rebuke, then those good things will never happen.
The goal of rebuke is to produce a just, loving and humble Christian who goes on to do the amazing good works God saved them to do.
Nahum – Proper rebuke leaves retribution in the Lord’s hands
“The Lord is a jealous and avenging God;
the Lord takes vengeance and is filled with wrath.
The Lord takes vengeance on his foes
and vents his wrath against his enemies.” Nahum 1:2
Sometimes rebuke can be used as a form of retribution. That is, we may rebuke someone in order to embarrass and humiliate them. Proper rebuke speaks the truth in love, seeking honest repentance while leaving vengeance in God’s hands.
Waiting patiently for God’s justice is the lesson of the short book of Nahum. Judah and Israel had been victimized terribly by Nineveh, the capitol of the Assyrian empire. Assyria was notorious for its warfare tactics, which included mass siege warfare, deportations, public executions, impalings, and exorbitant taxation of their conquered people. One of God’s prophets, Jonah, famously refused God’s command for him to go to Nineveh and warn them of their coming judgement. No wonder, then, that Nahum ends his prophecy to Nineveh with this question: “Who has not felt your endless cruelty?” Nahum 3:19
As Christians, there are times when it is proper to rebuke someone, but not in such a way that we are taking revenge. As Paul says in Romans 12:19, “Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord.
Habakkuk – God will not rebuke us for asking hard, honest questions
Habakkuk was flummoxed. Babylon was on the rise. The nation of Judah was unraveling and riddled with apostacy and crime. It was only natural for him to express his despair to God:
“How long, Lord, must I call for help,
but you do not listen?
Or cry out to you, “Violence!”
but you do not save?
Why do you make me look at injustice?
Why do you tolerate wrongdoing?
Destruction and violence are before me;
there is strife, and conflict abounds.
Therefore the law is paralyzed,
and justice never prevails.
The wicked hem in the righteous,
so that justice is perverted.” Habakkuk 1:2-4
These are serious accusations Habakkuk is making about God: “you do not listen,” “you do not save,” “you tolerate wrongdoing,” “conflict abounds,” “justice never prevails,” “justice is perverted.”
I am not going to deal with how God answered Habakkuk and how he eventually came to a time of praise and worship. I simply want to point out that God never rebuked Habakkuk for his impertinence. God understood his problem and let him vent. He patiently let him complain and then responded appropriately with love and understanding. We see God doing this very same thing with Moses when he became frustrated (Numbers 11:10-15), with David when he was pursued by Saul and became distressed (Psalm 13), and with Elijah when Queen Jezebel threatened his life and he became suicidal (1 Kings 18-19).
God’s plan for us, while ultimately good, can at times be very frustrating. Therefore, we must remember at these times that God loves it when we express our genuine feelings to him, even our negative ones. God will not rebuke us for being honest with him. And just as he met the needs of these godly biblical figures, so, too, he will met our needs and not rebuke us.
Zephaniah – Proper rebuke works…sometimes, and sometimes it doesn’t
Does rebuking a person or a group of people properly always work? Are we failures if they fail to repent? We know from our own experience as well as from the Word of God that the answer to both questions is no. Proper rebuke works sometimes, but sometimes it doesn’t. The result depends on whether the people or persons being rebuked have a repentant spirit and take action to correct their sin.
Here are some examples from the time of the major and minor prophets of people being rebuked who responded positively:
“Seek the Lord, all you humble of the land,
you who do what he commands.
Seek righteousness, seek humility;
perhaps you will be sheltered
on the day of the Lord’s anger.” Zephaniah 2:3
- Isaiah – Isaiah 6:1-7
Isaiah repented when God rebuked him about his speech.
- Nineveh – Jonah 3:6-9
The people of Nineveh repented “in sackcloth and ashes” when Jonah finally showed up and proclaimed God’s judgement.
- King Josiah of Judah – 2 Kings 22
Josiah repented when the Book of the Law was found during repairs in the temple.
On the other hand, here are some examples of people being rebuked who did not respond positively:
“She obeys no one, she accepts no correction.
She does not trust in the Lord, she does not draw near to her God.” Zephaniah 3:2
- King Jeroboam I of Israel – 1 Kings 12:25-13:34
A “man of God” rebuked Jeroboam for establishing an idolatrous religion in Samaria, but he did not repent.
- King Ahab and Queen Jezebel of Israel – 1 Kings 16:29-22:40; 2 Chronicles 18
Ahab and Jezebel promoted the worship of Baal and conspired to murder Naboth so they could seize his vineyard. Ahab at first repented when confronted by Elijah, but then rejected his counsel and died in battle.
- King Jehoiakim of Judah – 2 Kings 23:36–24:7; Jeremiah 22; 36
Jeremiah warned Jehoiakim to repent and submit to the Babylonian invasion. But he did not and died as a result.
- King Zedekiah of Judah – 2 Kings 24:17–20; 25:1–7; Jeremiah 37–38
Zedekiah rejected Jeremiah’s counsel to submit to Babylon during its third invasion and died as a result.
- King Ahaz of Judah – 2 Kings 16:1–4; 2 Chronicles 28; Isaiah 7
Ahaz chose to align Judah with foreign powers rather than trust in God for protection. Isaiah rebuked him for it, but he did not repent and instead introduced idolatry and closed the temple.
In the case of these negative responses to rebuke, the response often resulted in persecution for the prophets giving it, which can be discouraging.
“Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you.”
When I was a young pastor, I thought that if I just did everything right, everyone would like me.
Of course, I didn’t do everything right. We are frail and imperfect vessels of Almighty God’s amazing truth and we often give people good reasons not to like us.
On the other hand, when we do speak God’s truth with power and clarity, the Bible says we are guaranteed to make enemies. This is what Jesus meant when he warned us, “Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you.” The Gospel of salvation through faith in Christ begins with God’s love for us, true. But it also rebukes us for our sin and people do not like to hear that.
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