Sunday, 09 September 2007

Sunday School Class Proverbs 25:1-5 You who are in leadership must search out truth and truthfulness, weeding out the detrimental or else the value of leadership is corrupted - nobody will do it for you. Choruses: From the rising of the sun (F); turn your eyes upon Jesus (F); where the Spirit of the Lord is (F)

Scripture reading: #678       

Sunday evening - The life of Christ chronologically in a 'harmony' of the Gospels. Luke 12:1 How to follow Jesus' teaching and example - and NOT win friends while influencing people!

Wednesday Study Class 7-8 p.m. Developing a Biblically consistent world-view.  'Idealism' and idealistic goals vs realistic goals. Having a practical and workable world-view.

The 'day of the Lord.'

Zephaniah 1.7.  Be silent before the Sovereign LORD, for the day of the LORD is near. The LORD has prepared a sacrifice; he has consecrated those he has invited.

8.  On the day of the LORD's sacrifice I will punish the princes and the king's sons and all those clad in foreign clothes.

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. 

There are those folks who appear so pious that they won't even 'step on a threshold.'

(These old wives tales were known around the east Africa/central, west and southwest Asia regions thousands of years ago and are still known, particularly in the mid-Asian countries such as Uzbekistan and the other ‘stans.)

·        you were to step into and out of a room with your right foot

·        you were never to shake hands or carry on a conversation through a doorway

But unfortunately, God saw that those pious people accomplished their pious purposes with violence and deceit...draw your own parallels to our world today.

These are the folks who Zephaniah is addressing as people who are dressed in "foreign clothes." The foreign clothes are those which are incongruous with the 'clothing' of people who profess to be righteous.

We are to be 'clothed' with truth! That's the basic requirement of anyone who calls himself a child of God. Anything other than truth is not appropriate or fitting attire.

Jesus said that

·        He is the Truth

·        that we should know truth and

·        truth would set us free.

A brilliant mental health practitioner, Dr. M. Scott Peck, wrote a book entitled "People of the Lie." He clearly delineates the problem of evil and the association of 'people of the lie' with 'evil.'

I believe it can be stated that wherever you find evil you will find deceit, and wherever you find deceit you will find violence - anything from bombs and armies to emotional and verbal abuse (violence).

Zephaniah said to (vs. 7) "Be silent before the Sovereign LORD, for the day of the LORD is near."

The 'day of the Lord' is what old-timers when I was a kid used to call, "...a day of reckoning."

God will judge ‘people of deceit.’ It is time to be humbly silent and stand in repentance before the Sovereign Lord because His day of reckoning for everyone, great and small, is very near.