ZEPHANIAH 3:16

      " On that day they will say to Jerusalem, 'Do not fear, O Zion: Do not let your hands hang limp.  The Lord your God is with you. He is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you. He will quiet you with His love.  He will rejoice over you with singing."  (NIV)

my photo, sunrise over Jerusalem

     The prophet Zechariah wrote this short book of the Bible in which he summarizes God's plan for Israel and the world. (God had a "Plan A"; and, when that didn't work out, He presented the world with "Plan B".)  I will attempt to write an extremely abbreviated version of the plan, the results, etc., as follows:
     Israel - the Jewish people - are God's chosen people.  No one knows why this small nation was chosen to be God's "evangelists", and it really doesn't matter... God did the choosing;  only He needs to know the reasons. God formed an eternal covenant with Abraham, the father of the Jewish nation.  This was a blood covenant - unalterable and eternal.
  

my photo, Israel countryside

         But, the people of Israel refused to be God's "missionaries".  They disobeyed. (For any of my regular readers - there's that pesky obedience word again!)  Much like us today, the people were comfortable with the status quo.  They liked life as they knew it.  The familiar was easier than the unknown. Well, the status quo is just not going to get it with God!  Not then;  not now.  Remember, the covenant between God and Abraham was eternal. Thus, it extends to all mankind.  In Deuteronomy we can read the scriptures that describe that covenant:
     "See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction.  For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, and to keep His commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you... But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed... this day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses.  Now choose life."  (Deuteronomy 30:15-20  NIV)
  

there is only one way to choose life

   You might be asking yourself, "What does this ancient story have to do with me?"  The answer: Everything!  God loves people so much that when Israel refused to be His evangelists, He promptly went to "Plan B".  He hasn't given up on "Plan A", mind you... He will get back to that in the latter days.  But, for now, He went to "Plan B" wherein the gospel spread to the Gentiles. God accomplished this by sending His only Son, Jesus, who came to us in human form to be our Savior.  Jesus died for the sins of all mankind - the ultimate blood covenant - unalterable and eternal.
     So, once again, God is saying to each person on this earth, "I set before you life and death, blessings and curses... Now choose life..."
     Jesus said, "I am the way and the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me."
(John 14:6  NIV)
     Choose life.

ECCLESIASTES 3:16

     " And I saw something else under the sun: In the place of judgement - wickedness was there, in the place of justice - wickedness was there."     (NIV)

     This verse, along with several before and after it, is an expression of utter emptiness and negativity.  The author is Solomon.  If the readers continue further into Ecclesiastes they will discover that Solomon not only expressed how empty the world is; but, also that satisfaction comes only from knowing the Lord.  Earlier  in Solomon's life,  God asked him what he gift he would like.  Solomon answered that he would like to have wisdom.  God was so pleased at Solomon's answer that He granted him not only wisdom, but also, wealth, fame, power, and prestige.
     But looking back on his own life, Solomon realized that the only meaningful experience he'd had was in knowing God;  all else was nothing.  So Solomon wrote Ecclesiastes to teach his people that while success and prosperity are nice during our short stay on earth, they are meaningless when compared with eternal values.





 In  chapter 17 of Deuteronomy God gave certain commands for future kings.  One such command was that each king must write a copy of the Torah (the first five books of the Bible).  Writing the Torah included, of course, the specific "do's and don'ts" for a king of Israel.  Part of this reads: "Only he shall not multiply horses to himself... Neither shall he multiply wives to himself, that his heart not turn away; neither silver and gold."  (Deuteronomy 17: 16-17)  But Solomon, when he wrote his copy of the Torah, changed one letter.  One letter!  In the original language of the Bible- Hebrew- the word was "yarbeh", meaning "he shall not multiply".  But, Solomon changed it to "arbeh", which means "I will multiply".  Solomon thought that he was wise enough that he could increase all these things in his life, and not give in to temptation.

depiction of Solomon worshiping false god

The reason God said,  "Neither shall he multiply wives unto himself," was to prevent the many wives' different pagan practices from creeping into Solomon's beliefs and practices, pulling him away from the One True God.  Solomon thought that his insight would prevent this...  But, here is what the scriptures say: "For it came to pass, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned away his heart to other gods".  (I Kings 11:3)  To paraphrase Ecclesiastes 2:12,  Solomon ended up saying: " Because I thought of myself as wiser than Torah, because I persuaded myself that I fully understood Torah, and because I thought I could change the words of Torah,  all my understanding and knowledge turned out to be folly."

  



      Nowadays we have so many evil influences in our lives... TV, movies, the news, magazines... almost all the media is telling us that sin is okay.  Our legal system often seems to protect the bad guy and punish the good guy. It seems as if justice has lost out to wickedness.  But we, like Solomon, need to look at the larger picture.  We need to look back to Torah.  God has the perfect plan, and He gave us a copy of it!  We do not and can not have the vision He has... Eternity is a long time.
     Are you living with eternal values in mind?