Insightful Musings on the Scriptures

by

Raymond P. Sparre
Northwest University class of '67

Good evening, dear people.

I spent a good deal of the day applying graphics to a dump truck. Sure glad the customer had a nice shop to work in. It was raining the whole time.

Things worked out different with these little boys. Since Kaden didn’t have Kindergarten today, they are both here. But now we need to return him. I’ll join Becki for that excursion this time…maybe stop at Costco on the way.

Have a great evening.

Love, Dad/Ray.

I see in this chapter another great benefit for reading the Bible. That is, although I am not a Jew, and I’m not living in Israel as a contemporary of Zephaniah, I can gain from this inspired prophet some important insights concerning God’s general attitudes toward me—including all other human attitudes and resulting behaviors.

What general ideas can we glean from the FOCUS VERSES that would inform us of what God likes or dislikes? On the positive side, God clearly likes those who practice “following the LORD” and who “seek the LORD” and “inquire of him.” That sounds like God particularly likes human hearts that like Him—people with HEARTS AFTER GOD. How can these basic concepts be misunderstood or too complicated to grasp? This has to be one of main purposes for His making human hearts in the first place into which He has chosen to invest a portion of His Own Image and Likeness. But on the negative side, God clearly and vehemently dislikes to see humans use that divine investment in the direction of idolatry or in following after and/or worshiping false gods and ideologies. He clearly did not make humans so they could be stupid—and pervert their divine giftings so as to oppose Him—so He could have the pleasure of wiping them out. Come on!—let’s make sure we do better than that with His revelation!

Please accept the fact that you will never ever get God entirely figured out to your perfect question-free satisfaction this side of the grave. If we did or could, He would no longer be God—He would cease to be Sovereign, supernatural, and transcendent. On that basis, we would be more His equals than His subjects. I hope you can see how dangerous and foolish that notion is. All you and I really need to do is to comply with what we can figure out this side of the grave—the simple basic reasonable importance of honoring Him, loving Him, worshiping Him, obeying Him, seeking Him, and trusting Him. When we comply with these simple facts, we win—when we don’t we lose. That seems to be the simple bottom-line message of Zephaniah so far—as well as all the other prophets. Duh! God’s plan for rescuing humans from the NATURAL SIN NATURE and its consequences is really quite simple. Why do so many persist in making it so complicated?