Zephaniah
3:17 (NLT)
For the
Lord your God is living among you. He is
a mighty savior, He will take delight in you with gladness. With His love, He will calm all your fears. He
will rejoice over you with joyful songs.
I have
gotten to know Pastor OJ Hogan, hospital chaplain in Sun City, AZ who routinely
ministers to people facing their deaths.
While he mentioned several Bible verses he uses to give comfort to these
people, his favorite is Zephaniah 3:17.
It’s a dreadful thought, perhaps, but imagine yourself lying in bed
knowing that you are near death. Read
these words from Zephaniah and try to concentrate on their meaning if you knew
that you were about to die. Oh, indeed,
I am asking a very difficult task!
Only one
time have I thought that I was going to die very soon.
Thus, I am not the expert about facing death like many readers may be. Yet I still want to dig deep into my
imagination and put myself in the place of a person lying in a hospital bed in
and out of consciousness, knowing that I am going to die soon. What do these truths from Zephaniah tell me
as a person saved in Christ?
The
Lord your God is living among you.
God is
living “in your midst”, in your inward part, like the entrails of sacrificed
animals, that’s what the original Hebrew word means. God is spiritual and eternal so His presence
within you is spiritual and eternal and that part of you will never die. There are some wonderful verses of
encouragement for the dying in II Cor 5:1-10 where Paul writes that our earthly
bodies are supposed to decay so that we will put on heavenly bodies that God
has prepared for each of us.
Furthermore, as long as we are in these earthly bodies we are not at
home with the Lord.
He is
a mighty savior
God is
our deliverer and He is strong and mighty at this. He will not leave you as you face your final
days, He will deliver you from the sufferings of this life into the glory of
His eternity.
He
will take delight in you with gladness
Can you
imagine the Creator of all things in the universe, including you personally,
rejoices in you? He is happy that you
will be joining Him in heaven. The
Hebrew word for “gladness” translates “with pleasure”. Think about how you feel when you thank
someone and that person replies to you “with pleasure”. An uplifting phrase, right? That’s what God is saying to you, “I am
simply delighted with you with pleasure”.
Writing these words just now and imaging God saying this to me puts a
smile on my face.
He
will calm all your fears with His love
God
promises to calm all your fears with His love.
You ask, how can His love calm my fears?
Think about the biblical definitions of love found in I Cor 13,
particularly verses 4 through 8---- “Love is patient and kind; it is not
jealous or conceited or proud; love is not ill-mannered or selfish or
irritable; love does not keep a record of wrongs; love is not happy with evil,
but is happy with the truth. Love never
gives up; and its faith, hope, and patience never fail. Love is eternal”. When you meditate over these truths of God’s
love, don’t they make you calm? Don’t
they bring you peace? “There is no fear
in love. But perfect love drives out
fear”(I John 4:18a).
He
will rejoice over you with joyful songs
God
sings! God’s singing represents His joy.
God rejoices over you with His joy.
Think of God singing; that must be the most beautiful sounds you can
imagine. Why is God so joyful over
you? Well, of course, the context of
this verse from Zephaniah is God’s eventual judgment upon all enemies of Israel
when God will establish His kingdom on earth.
God will rejoice with singing over the presence of His beloved
children. Think about when you held your
infant child and sang songs while he/she was going to sleep. As I was writing this, I was reminded of one
of my favorite songs—“Lulluby (Goodnight, My Angel)” by Billy Joel—where he is
singing to his young daughter as she is falling asleep. Beautiful!
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