November 24-28
[M] Zechariah 9-11; 1 John 5
[T] Zechariah 12-14; Psalm 94; 2 John 1
[W] Ezra 5-6; Psalm 95; 3 John 1
[T] Esther 1-3; Psalm 139; Revelation 1
[F] Esther 4-6; Revelation 2
Dwell Plan Day 236-240 | CSB | Digital PDF | Printable PDF
Notes from Jon & Chris
Monday
Zechariah 9:1 | For the LORD has an eye on mankind. | The prophet says it so casually, as if to say: of course He does, He knows and sees all things. We can read this first as a theological statement about God’s knowing stuff. It is true that God knows all things. But “keeping an eye” on people is not the same as knowing the details of their lives. This isn’t about data, or accumulating data, or even surveilling your data. Perfectly knowing everything is a baseline idea about an eternal God. It’s assumed and affirmed.
But again, “keeping an eye” on folks is something very different. This means and implies a number of things. First, what we do is important. It might not feel like it to you, and your life may seem boring and irrelevant to you, but it isn’t to God. He is a moral person, and He has moral convictions and standards. The universe exists for His glory; another way to say that is the universe is a personal and moral place. It matters what you say, what you do, what you look at, and what you love. All of it matters and all of your choices about it matter. This might make you feel nervous, which brings up the second implication of “keeping an eye”. If God is paying attention to what you do, then you’re answerable for it. That’s the point about the nations, about Tyre and Sidon in this chapter. We’re all accountable, in a real and personal way, to God. There’s no escape from it. He’s paying attention, and when God pays attention, judgment can’t be far behind. But that brings us to a third implication of this language. Verse 1 goes on to say “and all of the tribes of Israel.” But that’s really odd. Zechariah is preaching after the exile, so to put it bluntly, there are no tribes left to speak of. This is about a bigger promise, which means a bigger fulfillment. We get the details on that bigger fulfillment in Zechariah 9:9, about their king coming in and riding a donkey. And here’s where this expression “keeping an eye” starts to really expand into a new meaning. The “tribes” are now all those that God loves. All of us. This is a commitment to God’s expanding love and plan. This is also a commitment of a lover’s eye for His people, His eye that watches with passion and compassion on those He loves. And that love, in a stunning turn of cosmic proportions, becomes a promise. That our God would actually take on a human pair of eyes in Jesus—and guess what—His eye is on you now.
Zechariah 9:9–17 | Zechariah is speaking to a worn-down people who’ve come home from exile but still feel small, vulnerable, and surrounded by stronger nations. Into that discouragement comes this promise: God himself is sending a King, not the kind of king who rides a war horse to intimidate enemies, but one who comes humble and righteous, bringing real salvation. This King will break the weapons of the world, speak peace that actually lasts, and free His people from every pit they’ve fallen into. And when you follow the thread forward, it lands squarely on Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey—God’s quiet, unexpected King who brings a kingdom bigger than empires and deeper than political power. In Him, prisoners become prisoners of hope, the fearful become safe, and ordinary people shine like jewels in the crown of their God.
1 John 5:6–8 | Even though this passage is confusing on a first pass, John is actually trying to clear up some confusion created by false teachers who were slicing Jesus apart—wanting a “spiritual” Christ who inspired people, but not a crucified Savior who actually paid for sin. So when he says Jesus came “by water and blood,” he’s grounding everything in real history. The water points to Jesus’ baptism, when the Father publicly declared him the beloved Son. The blood points to Jesus’ real, physical death on the cross. The ESV Study Bible notes that some early teachers claimed “the Christ” only came upon Jesus at His baptism and then abandoned Him before the crucifixion. John says absolutely not. Jesus didn’t come by water only, He came by water and blood. The same Son who stepped into the Jordan is the same Son who hung on the cross, and that unbroken unity is the heart of the gospel.
Then John brings in the “three that testify”: the Spirit, the water, and the blood. This is Old Testament courtroom language; truth gets established by two or three witnesses. The NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible explains that the Spirit testifies internally in every believer’s heart, confirming who Jesus really is. The water (His baptism) testifies publicly, marking the beginning of His mission. The blood (His cross) testifies climactically, marking the fulfillment of His mission. And the key is that all three agree. There’s no mixed message. Together they point to one Jesus: the divine Son who came in the flesh, lived for us, died for us, and now gives life to all who trust Him.
Tuesday
Zechariah 12:10| In its original setting, Zechariah is speaking to a people who know their own failure all too well, promising a future day when God will pour out a “spirit of grace” that softens their hearts and leads them to mourn over the One they pierced—a grief that isn’t driven by despair but by awakening. And when the New Testament picks this up, it’s unmistakably pointing us to Jesus on the cross: the Son of God pierced not by accident, but in love, bearing the sins of the very people who rejected Him. The promise is that God’s grace doesn’t just forgive; it opens our eyes. It leads us to look at Jesus crucified and realize, “My sin did that. And His love endured that.” And that kind of seeing—seeing both our guilt and His grace—creates the very repentance and renewal Zechariah longed for, the kind only the pierced Savior can give.
Zechariah 14 | This chapter paints this sweeping, end-of-the-age picture where God steps in, fights for His people, renews creation, and establishes His reign over all nations. In its original context, it’s God promising Israel that the story isn’t going to end with exile, weakness, or fear; there will come a “day of the Lord” when He personally intervenes, defeats the nations that attack Jerusalem, and brings a kind of healing and holiness so thorough that even the cooking pots in the city are “holy to the Lord.”
But like so many prophetic passages, this chapter has layers of fulfillment. The first layer is historical hope: God really did protect and preserve his people after the exile, keeping a remnant and keeping the story alive. The second layer is Messianic: Jesus’ first coming brings the true “living waters” that flow out from Jerusalem (John 7) and begins the universal reign of the Lord as King over all the earth. And the final layer is future and climactic: the ultimate “day of the Lord” when Christ returns, evil is finally judged, creation is restored, and God’s presence fills everything so completely that holiness becomes the air we breathe. Zechariah 14 is like looking at a mountain range from far away—the peaks blur together, but as you get closer you realize they’re different mountains across different ages, all pointing forward to the same thing: the Lord himself coming to rescue, renew, and reign.
Zechariah 14:20 | Let’s do a thought experiment together. Using your imagination, wherever you are right this moment, look around yourself. Do you see any pens? Do you see a phone, or a coffee cup? Maybe a water bottle? Perhaps there are some dishes nearby and some utensils. Right now I can see a small box of staples under my computer monitor. Now, imagine that everything you see has been marked. Every item, no matter how big or small, has been inscribed with a message on it. In fact, imagine that I open my box of staples and empty it on my desk. Then with a magnifying glass I pick them up to look for where the inscription is, and every individual staple is carefully and beautifully inscribed with this message “Holy to the Lord.” Can you imagine such a world? Such a universe? Well you don’t have to, because it’s actually the one you live in! These are the eyes of faith that the prophet is wearing and describing here, and what they see is the total work of God to redeem all things. God is interested in His holiness and glory all the way down to the subatomic level and all the way up to the superclusters of galaxies. And His intention to redeem every bit of it is as expansive and extensive as all the known universe, from stars and planets to bowls and bells. Praise Him!
Wednesday
Psalm 95:7-8 | “Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts” | This warning comes up again and again in the Bible. It’s meant to address spiritual procrastination. It’s a call to action. It’s a call for response. Something about its urgency, the todayness of it, that is so striking. The moment to turn, to repent, to run to God is always right now for His children. It’s always right now and right away with Him. The main implication is: don’t think about it. There’s a figuring we do, an evaluating of options, a study we make of what our costs and benefits are, and we aren’t allowed to do any of that when God tells us to obey and follow Him. Many of us approach God and say, “I want to do Your will, but first I need to know what Your will demands of me.” That’s negotiating with God. God doesn’t negotiate. What this text does is teach us a different response. When God says jump, your only response is how high? Hardening your heart is when you start procrastinating and evaluating the merits and/or liabilities of obedience. Let’s cry out for the Holy Spirit to work in us His repentance, to turn us to Him with soft and pliable and surrendered hearts. We need to walk in the strong joy of this poem, with tons of God’s joyful noise of praise in us!
3 John 1:4 | As pastors, Chris and I feel this verse in our bones, because nothing brings us deeper joy than seeing you folks grow in Jesus—not just knowing things about Him, but actually walking with Him, trusting Him, and finding real joy in Him. There are plenty of hard days in ministry, plenty of moments that stretch us, but seeing Christ formed in you makes every late night, every tough conversation, every ounce of effort absolutely worth it. When we watch you leaning into the truth, taking steps of faith, opening the Bible, praying with hunger, loving people well, it lights us up. That’s the kind of joy that keeps pastors going, and we’re grateful we get to see it in you.
3 John 1:9-10 | Diotrephes is the villain here. He’s one of the early rebels against apostolic authority, and he’s got plenty of friends these days. Everyone wants to reject the authority of the apostles and the Bible. It’s the nature of our sin nature. We want to be our own boss. But notice this: bad teaching creates bad morals. It always does, and that’s why Christ taught us “by their fruit you will know them.” What’s the fruit of not following the apostolic tradition? What evil comes with these lies? A “me first” mentality that results in no hospitality. Wow. In the kingdom of our Savior, we should pay close attention to these patterns, noticing how they cluster together. Folks who reject Biblical teaching will reveal who they really are, and you’ll see it in the need to be the most important person in the room. You’ll see it in self-centered patterns of life. You’ll see it when folks are irritated that they aren’t thanked or acknowledged. And that’s just half of the fruit to look for, because they will also ignore and put others down. They won’t be welcoming of others’ gifts or perspectives or needs, unless they serve their own need to virtual signal to others. That’s what Paul is dealing with in this letter. Why are these very brief letters so important? They give us real application of biblical principles in action. Learn from the apostle about what to expect, and then learn how to respond.
Thursday
Esther 2:7–18 | When you slow down and actually sit with this passage, it’s painfully clear how dark and broken the situation really is. A pagan king is treating young women like possessions, gathering them into a harem, and choosing a queen through what is essentially a state-run beauty and sex contest. Nothing about this is good, godly, or admirable, and the Bible never asks us to sanitize it. This is what sin-soaked power looked like in the ancient world, and it should strike us as disturbing. Esther herself is caught in a system she didn’t choose and couldn’t escape, swept into the machinery of a kingdom where the powerful take what they want and the vulnerable have almost no say at all.
And yet, in the middle of all that mess, God is quietly at work. He doesn’t endorse the king’s behavior; He overrules it. The same harem that reflects everything broken about human power becomes the place where God positions Esther to preserve His people, a people through whom the Messiah will one day come. That’s the strange beauty of Esther: God’s name is never mentioned, but His fingerprints are everywhere. Even in the ugliest circumstances—circumstances we would never call good—His sovereignty is weaving redemption. The story reminds us that God doesn’t need ideal conditions or righteous rulers to accomplish His purposes. He can take the very things that grieve us, confuse us, or offend our sensibilities, and turn them into the stage where His saving plans quietly unfold.
Psalm 139 | Read this every day for a month. Pray through it every time you read it. Or try to memorize it. It’s worth its weight in gold for you and your worship.
Revelation | A lot of Christians feel unsure about the book of Revelation. Some churches basically ignore it because it feels confusing or intimidating, while others swing to the opposite extreme and treat it like a horror movie storyboard—complete with charts, timelines, and end-of-the-world scare tactics. Neither approach actually helps people. Revelation isn’t meant to frighten believers or sit untouched on a shelf. It’s meant to reveal Jesus, steady the church, and help ordinary Christians see their moment in history through God’s eyes.
Revelation is first and foremost an apocalyptic book, which means it communicates through symbols, images, and visions rather than straightforward narrative. It’s the kind of literature that uses numbers, colors, and creatures as theological metaphors, not literal data points. So when we read about “sevens” or “horns” or “144,000,” we’re meant to ask what the symbols mean, not how to plug them into a calculator. That doesn’t make the book confusing, it actually makes it rich. Revelation pulls back the curtain on the spiritual reality behind what God’s people are experiencing, helping ordinary Christians understand the bigger picture of what God is doing in the world. If we miss the symbolic nature of the book, we’ll miss the whole point: this is a vision meant to reveal truth, not hide it.
One of the biggest themes that helps Revelation make sense is the idea of patterns, especially the pattern of Babylon. Babylon is not only a literal empire in Israel’s past but a recurring symbol for human kingdoms that build themselves on violence, corruption, idolatry, and self-exaltation. John shows us Babylon rising again and again in different forms throughout history, whether ancient Rome, modern superpowers, or any cultural system that opposes God. That means Revelation isn’t primarily predicting a tiny sliver of the future right before the end, it’s giving us a set of lenses to understand the whole age between Jesus’ resurrection and His return. The cycles of judgment, persecution, and spiritual conflict aren’t arranged like a timeline, they’re more like repeating waves that show up in every era. And in all of it, God is telling his people: “This isn’t new. I know the script. Stay faithful. I’ve already won.”
There are also several major ways Christians have interpreted Revelation over the centuries. Historicism reads the book as a symbolic overview of church history, though this can become speculative as people try to match every image to a specific event. Futurist historic premillennialism sees much of the book as pointing toward a future period of suffering before Christ returns. Futurist dispensationalism treats Revelation almost like a coded map of end-time events and often separates God’s plan for Israel from his plan for the church—an approach that tends to flatten the book’s imagery and miss its pastoral purpose. Preterism sees most of Revelation as fulfilled in the first-century upheavals surrounding Rome and the fall of Jerusalem. Idealism views the visions as timeless pictures of the ongoing spiritual conflict between the kingdoms of God and the kingdoms of the world. And an eclectic approach brings together the strengths of these perspectives—taking seriously the first-century context, acknowledging future hope, and recognizing that Revelation’s visions often work in repeating cycles that speak to every generation of believers. This approach sees Revelation not as a secret code but as a symbolic, pastoral book that equips the church for faithful endurance in every age.
And that’s really the heart of the book: Revelation is written to encourage God’s people to endure. It’s not about predicting newspaper headlines; it’s about forming a people who follow the Lamb wherever He goes. The saints don’t overcome through violence or political power but through faithfulness, witness, love, and sacrifice. The Lamb conquers by laying down His life, and His army conquers by doing the same. Revelation reminds the church that no matter how loud Babylon gets, no matter how fierce the dragon rages, Jesus has already triumphed and will bring creation to its promised rest. This book isn’t a riddle; it’s a rallying cry. It tells weary believers in every age: You’re on the winning side. Stay faithful. Keep loving. Keep worshiping. The Lamb reigns.
Revelation 1:17 | This is a bit of a formula, but only because it’s what happens every time: you see God you fall down terrified. You don’t take a quick selfie or text your friends what happened. No, you fall on your face and wait for the death blow. And that’s what happens every time. A holy God does not mix well with a fallen and sinful people. But this moment is different from the others in one special way. John wrote about Jesus, and we know the details from his gospel, the book of John. One of those details, a detail that sticks out for many, is John anonymously describing himself in his book as “the disciple that Jesus loved.” And with that moniker, in one memorable moment, he lays his head on Jesus’ chest. It’s at the last supper, at the dinner where Jesus instituted communion. So, John knows Jesus’ voice and what He looks like. They were close friends for years. Yet when John sees Jesus in Revelation, he still does the whole “you see God you fall down” thing. There’s something to learn here, something we’re supposed to see as a revelation of God’s plan for us. Even as God seeks intimacy with us and relationship with us, He does not give up or sacrifice or negate His majesty and transcendence. That’s why the familiar voice sounds like a blaring trumpet. That’s why the familiar eyes are burning. And when all of that glorious and terrifying splendor reaches out and puts His hand tenderly on John and says “don’t be scared,” we can now see the combination of transcendence and immanence—being so far above and yet being so very close—in John’s retelling his story.
Friday
Revelation 2:4 | Jesus isn’t talking to outsiders here; He’s talking to committed, church-going believers who on the surface are doing all kinds of things right. The Ephesian church had great doctrine, solid endurance, and a strong spine against false teaching, but somewhere along the way the fire of their early love faded into a kind of cold dutiful religion. And that warning should land on us with real weight, because it’s so easy to stay busy for Jesus’ church while slowly drifting away from our friend and Savior—Jesus. Leaving our first love doesn’t usually happen in a dramatic moment. It’s a slow leak, a quiet slide, a heart that begins to settle for correct theology without warm affection, or serving without delight, or worship without wonder. This verse calls us back to the simplicity and joy of loving Christ, the love that first awakened us, first changed us, and still holds the power to renew us if we’ll return to Him.
Revelation 2-3 | Seven short letters (more like eternal memos with amazing memes) each with its own punchy promises, sweet encouragements, and stiff exhortations. But don’t miss the forest by staring at the trees. This number seven is symbolic. To say that these seven churches are symbolic is not saying that they aren’t historical. One of the benefits of having a God who talks is that He can arrange symbol and fact so that they’re both true at the same time. But what truth are we to understand from the number seven? It’s meant to be a number of completion, a finished and perfect sort of completion. That’s why the number is used in the creation story: God did it right; that’s the message behind the first seven in the Bible. God made the world completely. So we are the new creation in Him. In one sense, since Christ rose on the first day of the Jewish week, we should see His resurrection as a new startup of all creation. Who is on the ground floor of this startup? Us. So, these seven churches and their problems, issues, contexts, and needs represent the church as a whole. As you read, look for your church experiences in these letters. They’re in there! These then become an inventory for all of us, a kind of spiritual diagnostic tool for the church ever since. Which one do you think is most like Cross and Crown? What would be the implication?