From Zephaniah 1 (NIV) 1The word of the LORD which came to Zephaniah son of Cushi, son of Gedaliah, son of Amariah, son of Hezekiah, in the days of Josiah son of Amon, king of Judah: 7 Be silent before the Sovereign LORD, for the day of the LORD is near. 9 On that day I will punish all who avoid stepping on the threshold, who fill the temple of their gods with violence and deceit. 14 The great day of the LORD is near—near and coming quickly.
From Zephaniah 3 (NIV) 8 Therefore wait for me,” declares the LORD, “for the day I will stand up to testify. 11 On that day you, Jerusalem, will not be put to shame for all the wrongs you have done to me, because I will remove from you your arrogant boasters. Never again will you be haughty on my holy hill. 12 But I will leave within you the meek and humble. The remnant of Israel will trust in the name of the LORD.
What does the future hold for you? Will it be a dream come true – to finish school, find the right person to marry, becomes a success, reach retirement? As you look to the days ahead, does the future look promising and bright? Or do you see a lot of doom and gloom? Whatever we believe about the future has a profound effect on the way we think and feel and behave here and now.
The prophets in general and Zephaniah in particular spoke of the future as that day. The early church literally lived for the next thing God would do to accomplish His will and purpose for them and for His lost world. The words they spoke, the deeds they did, the prayers they prayed were all charged by a sense of God expectancy.
How do we view the future, and how does that view shape our life here and now? The most obvious way this belief shapes our life is to give us a sense of deep and abiding gratitude. We have a reason to believe that God will intervene in the future, because the intervention has already come in Jesus Christ. If you want to know what the future looks like, look at Jesus. Every time He makes a twisted body whole, opens the eyes of the blind, restores a relationship with forgiveness, confronts bigotry, breathes life into a dying body, the future is present. A preview is given that says, stay tuned and trust.
And the evidence given then is given now. A heart is touched, a life is changed, our self-centeredness is frustrated, the veil that hides God from our experience is temporarily lifted and the truth dawns on us. We see the future in events. We feel the future within and we know that day is a sure thing. The moment of seeing and experiencing a small bit of that day keeps us going through the moments when everything in us and around us say that any hope we may have had for the future is now null and void. Those moments and evidence of that day await us now and in the days ahead.
From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope February 21, 1993
© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell Broyles
No comments:
Post a Comment