2007 picture of Ray Sparre

Insightful Musings on the Scriptures

by

Raymond P. Sparre
Northwest University class of '67


February 23, 2013

Good morning, dear ones.

There’s some snow on the ground. Much of it came last evening in the form of a blasting hail storm. Becki and I plan to do a walk/jog about 8am. We will do so with a new dog on a leash. I may have bit off more than I can chew with this critter. He’s less than a year old. The ad said he needed to be re-homed fast…and that he was a Boxer/Lab mix. I don’t now agree with his description. I think he’s more of some kind of bird dog/Pit Bull mix. He is clearly addicted to human presence…and if left alone, as in tied up for a while, he goes bonkers…won’t shut up and can turn destructive.

I have a lot on the agenda for the day…besides this challenging dog.

May the Lord bless this segment of our wandering through the wilderness.

Love, Dad/Ray.

23 February
Passage: Deuteronomy 7-9
Focus: “After the LORD your God has driven them out before you, do not say to yourself, ‘The LORD has brought me here to take possession of this land because of my righteousness.’ No, it is on account of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is going to drive them out before you.” Deuteronomy 9:4.

There are an awful lot of nice sinners out there. Some even seem nicer than many saints. So there is a part of me that wishes I could comply with the popular pride and self-righteousness of these nice people. They firmly presume (granted, this is a paradox) that eternal rewards are distributed and assigned by God in degrees on the basis of a ratio between nice and not nice. The measure of “heaven” they earn, therefore, is proportional—so the priority quest in life within this pervasive religion of self-worship is simply to try to make sure that their quota of nice is greater than their quota of not nice. That self-righteous confidence makes them presume, “I’ll be OK.” Am I getting it about right?

Taking into account the whole of Biblical revelation, let’s get this straight: Jesus did not come to make not nice people nice, but to make dead people live—by conquering and overturning the curse of sin and death (Ephesians 2:1-7). Moses, in parallel fashion is speaking with impassioned urgency to Israel that they get a few things straight too—that they understand at heart level that the “covenant of love” (7:9) in which they have been privileged to participate is anything but unconditional. In short, Moses says up one side and down the other, “If you love and follow the LORD your God, you will be incredibly blessed. But if you don’t, you will be incredibly destroyed.” He implies that the nations they are ordered to wipe out should serve as a sober warning—that is, if they have resisted their revival opportunities and opted for rejecting God (“wickedness,” 9:4-5) over seeking Him (righteousness), and now face the LORD’S judgment of destruction, Israel too will most certainly face the same fate.

Whereas Moses is so repetitious in stressing the core essential of a HEART AFTER GOD, I guess I shouldn’t be shy about the same repetition.


“Often I am still listening when the song is over.” - Jean Francois Saint-Lambert