Insightful Musings on the Scriptures

by

Raymond P. Sparre
Northwest University class of '67

Greetings, dear ones.

There was a huge amount of rain that fell last night. It was still dropping some during our WOG too. I got wet…Becki stayed dry…under her umbrella.

While on our WOG Dandy DOG decided to grab a LOG and begged us to throw it. It was so big that his hind legs were off the ground when he carried it. Just kidding. But it took some muscle to throw it very far. I guess it all adds up to exercise. At least he was able to combine some of his passion with the excursion.

Blessings on your day.

Love, Dad/Ray.

OK, “perhaps they will listen”—but most likely they won’t—if the track record is considered.

Selective hearing is a phenomenon we’re all familiar with. It happens all around us—between husbands and wives, parents and children, teachers and students, politicians and opponents, people and their dogs, and, most seriously, between God and man. This last combination is most serious because no other relationship has SOVEREIGNTY as a counterpart. To be sure, selectively hearing the Word of God does not allow the human side of the relationship to select the consequences of their selective listening—causing a huge pain for both God and man.

People who insist on selectively hearing God’s Word love to condemn and ridicule the narrow “turn or burn” preaching and rhetoric of prophets like Jeremiah of the past—as well as prophets like Jeremiah of the present who bear the same basic message. So people can scream and yell and condemn and ridicule and get angry and persecute all they want to—but this still remains the basic two options presented by a Holy God to a sinful man—TURN OR BURN! Like it or lump it! Accept it or fight it! Believe it or reject it! Submit to it or just “Get drunk (One may as well resort to some form of mind-altering denial—and have as much defiant self-centered fun as they can—while they can!) and vomit, and fall to rise no more because of the sword I will send among you” (25:27). Add to this the message of Peter given hundreds of years later—“Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? (We should at least be listening.) You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire (Did you hear that?—FIRE!—doesn’t that sound like BURNING?), and the elements will melt in the heat” (2 Peter 3:11-12).

Wow! That’s offensive! Let’s turn off that stupid radio! Click. Whew! Silence. Do you hear that?—deathly silence. (And that’s exactly what it is—the certain result of selective hearing.) But wait—there’s more than one station on this radio. Click. Let’s try this one—“The LORD says: You will have peace…No harm will come to you” (23:17). There, that’s better, isn’t it?

So which “word of the LORD” is the “word of the LORD?” Sorry—but not everyone will get the answer right. Only those with a HEART AFTER GOD can discern the difference. “The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14).

“Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, claiming, 'I am the Christ, ' and will deceive many” (Matthew 24:4-6).

“Then Jesus said, ‘He who has ears to hear, let him hear’” (Mark 4:9. Also Revelation 2:7).