September 22-26
[M] Habakkuk 1-3; 2 Corinthians 7
[T] Zephaniah 1-3; Psalm 74; 2 Cor 8
[W] Jeremiah 1-4; Psalm 130; 2 Cor 9
[T] Jer 5-7; Psalm 75; 2 Cor 10
[F] Jer 8-10; 2 Cor 11
Dwell Plan Day 191-195 | CSB | Digital PDF | Printable PDF
Notes from Jon & Chris
Monday
Habakkuk | Habakkuk is a rare glimpse into the back-and-forth between a prophet and God. It begins with the prophet crying out in frustration: “How long, O Lord?” He looks around at the violence and injustice of his day and cannot understand why God seems silent. And in a very real sense, the whole book is God patiently listening to one of His kids complain. That’s good news for us: our Father really does listen when we pour out our hearts to Him. But the harder truth is that He doesn’t always answer the way we want. God tells Habakkuk that He will bring judgment through the Babylonians, which is not at all the solution Habakkuk had in mind. Yet even in that unwelcome answer, God is showing His justice and His faithfulness.
The book moves in three steps. First, Habakkuk voices his complaint about injustice. Second, God answers with His plan, declaring that “the righteous shall live by faith.” Third, Habakkuk responds in chapter 3 with one of the most beautiful prayers of trust in all of Scripture: though everything around him may collapse, yet he will rejoice in the God of his salvation.
That is where his complaining leads—not to despair but to faith. And that’s the invitation of this little book: when God’s answers don’t fit our expectations, we can still cling to Him with confidence, because He is always good and always listening.
Habakkuk 1:3, 13 | In these two verses, the prophet asks God why He is idle, why He isn’t taking action and responding to wickedness. The tone and words are stunning. But this isn’t an accusation from unbelief. This is someone asking these tough questions because the Holy Spirit is asking these questions. We’re confronted with a living faith here, an intense intimacy with God that won’t shy away from the difficult questions and at the same time is absolutely sure that God will answer. He’s so sure that God will answer he actually schedules his waiting for God’s response in 2:1. And God does. This aggressive “wrestling” with God’s justice gets even more startling in this little book. The prophet commits himself utterly to God at the end and to the joy of God’s salvation. In 3:16-19 he poetically recounts the extent of his resolve to worship and trust God. Even if his own heart is rotten with fear, even if every data point in his life is negative, without harvest or success, he will still worship God. The accusations that began in chapter 1 are coming from a sold out heart. And in the end, in the final verse, the prophet can navigate the hard geography of his life and God’s judgments, because God makes him surefooted like a mountain deer. Praise Him.
2 Corinthians 7:3 | Just how committed are we to each other? Is it like this? Statements like these from Paul about his affection and love for the churches that he planted reveal a work of God’s Spirit in him. It’s a passion and connection that we should pray for, that we should seek God to build in us, and that we should strive to live in. It reveals the true depths of what God is building in His church and what is possible in our intimacy and friendship together in Him.
Tuesday
Zephaniah 1-3 | This little prophetic book is best to read in one sitting, so you can trace the path of the book from beginning to end. That path starts in judgment and horror, and then ends in glory and promise. This combination of mercy and judgment is all over the prophets, but in Zephaniah we get the extremes compacted into three short chapters.
It begins with a vision of total judgment, personal and complete: “I will sweep away everything from the face of the earth.” The prophet begins with the final judgment of God. It’s absolute and terrible, including us and all of nature itself. The judgment on Jerusalem in verse 4 is just one part of the larger scene, as the following verses become a tour of suffering and punishment for sin. The list of their crimes is blistering in its attack, matched only by a description of desolation and destruction for every nation around them too. But then it changes at the end. As bitter and horrible as the descriptions of God’s anger have been so far, we’re suddenly confronted with God’s joyful singing over those He saves. It breaks out with a prophecy of new worship and obedience created by God. The darkness turns to exuberance and the dread becomes delight. This journey through Zephaniah captures the Biblical tension in our salvation, inviting us again and again to consider the goodness and severity of God.
Zephaniah | In the book of Zephaniah, God announces a sweeping day of judgment that will fall on all nations, including His own people, justice that is fierce and unavoidable. Yet woven into those warnings are tender promises: God will gather the humble, purify their lips, and rejoice over them with singing. The tension between God’s holy justice and His steadfast love pulses through the book, unresolved within its own pages. But at the cross of Christ that tension is finally satisfied—where justice against sin is carried out fully and love for sinners is poured out completely, securing salvation for all who trust in Him.
2 Corinthians 8:9 | Paul motivates the Corinthians to give not by guilt or pressure but by pointing them to the gospel itself. His appeal is rooted in love, not law. Generosity flows naturally when we grasp the sheer wonder of what Christ has done—He emptied Himself, taking on poverty, weakness, and even death, to make us rich in mercy and eternal life. Paul is showing that true giving isn’t about meeting a quota or avoiding shame, but about hearts so captivated by Jesus’ sacrifice that we can’t help but give freely and joyfully.
Wednesday
Jeremiah 2:4 | “The worth and excellency of a soul is to be measured by the object of its love. He who loveth mean and sordid things doth thereby become base and vile, but a noble and well-placed affection doth advance and improve the spirit into a conformity with the perfections which it loves.” Henry Scougal, The Life of God in the Soul of Man.
It’s worth reading this wonderful little old book. His whole argument is that what you love and focus on is what makes you who you are. If you go after worthlessness, you will become worthless yourself. If you chase after God, you will become more and more like Him.
Psalm 130:4 | This verse shows that even the forgiveness we receive is ultimately about God’s glory. The psalmist reminds us that the end goal of mercy is not simply our relief, but reverence for God. That ties directly to what we saw a few weeks ago in my (Jon) sermon on Isaiah 37: salvation and deliverance are not mainly about us, but about God’s name being exalted. When God forgives, He is putting His glory on display—His holiness is upheld and His grace is magnified. The cross makes this crystal clear: Jesus bore our guilt so that we could be forgiven, and that forgiveness moves us to awe, worship, and lives oriented toward the glory of God.
Jeremiah 2:13 | In the ancient world, a cistern was a man-made pit lined with plaster to store rainwater. Unlike a fresh flowing spring, a cistern was stagnant at best. And if it developed even the smallest crack, the water would slowly seep out, leaving nothing but mud. That’s what idols are like. We turn to them hoping they’ll hold the weight of our hope—success, romance, money, approval—but they cannot satisfy, and they always leak. They promise fullness, but they leave us dry.
Tim Keller, in Counterfeit Gods, captures this truth: “When you lose the ultimate source of your meaning or hope, the thing you have put your trust in, it drives you to despair. The cisterns always crack.” The gospel confronts our cracked cisterns by inviting us back to the fountain of living waters—Christ Himself. Only He can give what our idols never deliver: joy that doesn’t run out, love that doesn’t fade, and hope that doesn’t crumble. The choice Jeremiah put before Israel is still before us today: cling to broken cisterns or come to the living God who alone can satisfy our thirsty souls.
Thursday
Jeremiah 5:12, 6:14 | In Jeremiah’s day, false prophets comforted the people with a picture of God that was only half true. They promised safety and blessing while denying His judgment. God calls this out as a lie He hates, because it misrepresents His character and leaves people unprepared for the reality of their sin. The same danger exists today whenever God is reduced to “only love” in a sentimental sense, as if He would never confront evil or hold anyone accountable. That’s not the God of the Bible. His love is holy love—a love that is strong enough to deal with sin, and just enough to bring judgment. The cross proves both: judgment fell on Jesus so that forgiveness could be real, and His glory would shine in both justice and mercy. Any teaching that strips God of His holiness or His justice is the same “peace, peace” Jeremiah condemned—and it robs people of the true hope found only in Christ.
Jeremiah 7 | Jeremiah stood at the temple gates and shattered Judah’s false security. The people thought the building guaranteed their safety: “This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord” (Jer. 7:4). But God reminded them of Shiloh—once His dwelling place, now in ruins. If His people lived in injustice and idolatry, the temple would not protect them. Worship without repentance is empty.
Centuries later, Jesus echoed Jeremiah’s words when He drove money changers from the temple: “Has this house… become a den of robbers?” (Jer. 7:11; Matt. 21:13). Like Jeremiah, He exposed religion used as cover for sin. But Jesus went further: He offered Himself fulfillment of the temple system. In His body, God’s presence would dwell forever, and through His death and resurrection, He would provide the cleansing the old sacrifices never could.
The warning of Jeremiah 7 still stands. It’s possible to be around the things of God while far from Him in heart. But the good news is that Christ is our temple, our place of forgiveness, and our secure dwelling with God. Don’t trust in outward religion, but rest in the Savior who was torn down and raised up so you might be safe in Him forever.
Jeremiah 7:31 | If God knows everything, then how can He say to His people that they had done something that He says had “never entered My mind”? We know it’s a turn of phrase, but it sounds odd coming from God. Here the prophet is talking about sacrificing kids for worship; he uses this “never entered My mind” expression for God again in Jer. 19:5 and Jer. 32:35 about the same horrific worship. The logic of pagan sacrifice was that only something of incredible value can please the deity, and so parents would throw their babies into the fire to please their gods. It was a common practice among those cultures in those days. So when God uses this expression that it never even entered His mind, He’s making a point about how different He has always been from the false religions of the world. But the expression goes further when we’re speaking of God’s character. Since it’s impossible for God not to know something, this expression is actually cashing in on the absurdity of the idea. It’s a way of saying this is antithetical to God, it’s His opposite. It opposes everything that He is and all that He has said and revealed about Himself.
Friday
Jeremiah 8:11 | God’s idea of fake news is to be too quick to speak peace. There is a peace that we can look for, that we can offer each other, that we can use to help others—but it isn’t God’s peace. Peace with sin is not God’s peace. Peace with your own disobedience or with the evil of others is not God’s peace. Peace that comes from accepting all religions and gods as acceptable worship is not God’s peace. Peace that comes from lots of abundance and superficial religious ritual is not God’s peace. God wants the peace that produces repentance and acknowledgement of sin, that seeks Him and His holiness and obeys His voice.
Jeremiah 9:6 | When God condemns His people here, He doesn’t just say that they oppress and deceive, He goes deeper. He shows the root issue: “they refuse to know me.” That’s profound. The opposite of oppression is not simply avoiding cruelty or injustice; it is knowing God. To know Him is to be transformed by His character. Where His people had chosen lies and self-interest, He calls them back to the source of truth and love—Himself. Their social sins are not random; they flow directly out of their refusal to truly know the Lord.
This is what James later echoes when he insists that faith without works is dead. The Sermon on the Mount says the same: those who know God as Father will love enemies, give generously, and live with purity of heart. When your heart is close to Him, your life begins to reflect His compassion, His justice, and His truth. Knowing God is never just head knowledge, it reshapes how you treat those made in His image.
So Jeremiah 9:6 is both a warning and an invitation. It warns us that oppression and deceit always trace back to a heart turned away from God. But it also invites us to know Him deeply, because the more we know Him, the more our lives will mirror His character. In Christ, this is made possible: He is the One who reveals the Father to us, and by His Spirit we are changed from the inside out. True justice mercy and love flow from knowing Him.