Several months ago a friend forwarded me an email. I hate forwards...I loved this one. It was someone's discovery of Zephaniah 3:17 painting a beautiful picture of an incredibly loving God. I was moved by it. I had to check it out for myself.
Zephaniah 3:17:
The Lord your God is in your midst,
a mighty one who will save;
He will rejoice over you with gladness;
He will quiet you by His love;
He will exult over you with loud singing.
Language interpretation can be an interesting thing in that it sometimes is not an exactly exact science. The best that can be done sometimes is to find the best words to communicate a concept that can only truly be understood in the the context of the original language. Here are a few examples of some other colorful words that could be possible interpretations to use in this Zephaniah passage:
Rejoice - to leap, to jump up and down
Gladness - joyful cries
Quiet - be speechless
Exult - dance
Loud singing - a ringing cry
So indulge me, if you would, in a paraphrase using some of these other words:
The Lord your God is in your midst,
a mighty One who will save;
He will jump up and down over you with joyful shouts;
He will be struck speechless in His love for you;
He will dance over you with a ringing cry and loud singing.
So a question, can someone like this be trusted with your life?
The ruler of the universe, who is not far away, but right here with you.
The mighty and heroic One who will rescue you.
All this and yet when He thinks of you He:
- can't keep from jumping up and down with joyful shouting
- becomes speechless in His love for you
- dances and sings loudly because of you
Can you trust someone like this with your life?
At first I think the ready answer would be yes, but strangely enough, the process begins with following Him to death. Death?
Jesus said, "If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me." - Luke 9:23
The cross was a Roman execution tool. One would carry their own cross that they were about to be nailed to down a processional for all to see to the place where they were to be executed. It was an effective means used by Roman soldiers to put an end to rebellious types who would fight the ruling Roman government. So, Jesus says to embrace your cross; don't fight submitting to the ruling authority; embrace the giving up of your own life.
What is the ruling authority that Jesus is referring to? God's ruling authority. He is the creator and ruler of the universe. His Kingdom, His rule and reign, is present right now, and we can either fight for our own way, our own life, or we can take up our cross, submitting our very lives to Him.
Why would anyone ever choose to do this? Because Jesus also said, "For whoever would save His life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it." - Luke 9:24. In other words, everyone who is born also dies. you can fight to stay young, fight disease, fight natural and even unnatural disasters, you can kick and scream and fight, but eventually you will die. So Jesus says the only way to save your life is to give up trying to save it. Lose your life for His sake, then your life will be saved...
How does this even make sense? Because of a thing called sin. Sin is a cancer that feeds on life. It consumes life, never satisfied, always needing more and more. The more you feed it, the hungrier it becomes until it consumes your very soul and leaves no trace of your humanity. We see examples of this all throughout history; Jeffery Dommer, Charles Manson, Adolph Hitler, to name a few. Ruined souls with little to no remnants of humanity left in them.
We were designed for life with God, never intended to live solely on our own. We were designed to live in community, in relationship, with God and with each other. Sin is the inherit desire in all of us to look out for #1, to seek my own desires no matter the cost to myself or someone else. When we walk down this road, when we try and rule our own lives, the cancer of sin runs rampant through us feeding on our lives, feeding on our very souls.
The only way to stop sin is to starve it to death. When we embrace dying to our own passions, desires, ways of living, being in charge of our own destiny, then we die to this life and embrace God's new and perfect way of life, and sin starves, the cancer stops spreading.
Jesus, Himself, led the way when He willingly went to the cross when He was already sin free. "For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whosoever believes in Him would not perish, but have eternal life." That word "believes" can literally be translated"to place one's confidence in". So whoever places their confidence in Him, whoever trusts Him, will not be consumed by the cancer of sin and perish, but will have eternal life, God's new kind of life, the kind of life you were intended to live.
You, on your own, are powerless against the spread of the life and soul consuming sin cancer. One writer in the bible says we are in slavery to it. When we choose to place our confidence in Jesus, when we choose to trust Him with our lives, then we die to our own self preservation, our trying to save our lives, our own way of living, and the spread of the sin disease is stopped. We are free. Free to live the lives we were intended to. Lives consumed with the goodness of God.
I don't know about you, but I would call that good news.
What an awesome passage, thanks for sharing...
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