He Will Rejoice Over You – Zephaniah, Scott Wesley Brown and David Hampton

What’s it like to preach utter destruction to a wayward people, and then follow that up with a promise that divine redemption is also coming? This 7th Century B.C. prophet named Zephaniah warned those who would listen, including probably the highest authorities of his land, while also reassuring them that “He Will Rejoice Over You” – with singing. (See the 18th Century image of the prophet here [a Russian Orthodox icon, in the Kizhi Monastery in Karelia, Russia]). Could it be those last two words of the verse (Zephaniah 3:17) especially captured the attention of two songwriters – Scott Wesely Brown and David Hampton, two guys who obviously loved music themselves -- some 27 centuries later? Listen for God to sing, that’s quite a thing to say! Zephaniah must have felt this was a great way to conclude what he had to say, after beginning his message to his hearers with the opposite. Is the roller-coaster of human experience different today? We might surmise that Scott and David didn’t think so when they reprised in 1996 what Zephaniah said so long ago.

Zephaniah travelled in pretty elevated circles and had a pedigree that seemed to match his environment; so, did that give him some special license to deliver a message from God? Zephaniah was the great-great grandson of King Hezekiah (715-686 B.C), one of the very best kings of Judah following the split of the kingdom some two or three centuries earlier (around 930 B.C.), and this prophet does seem to hint at this by mentioning his bloodlines in the first few words of his message. It also had to be a source of encouragement to Zephaniah that another good king, Josiah (640-609 B.C.), had ascended to Judah’s throne, and at such a young age (eight years old, 2 Kings 22:1) seemed impressionable and eventually willing to redirect the kingdom toward the true God once again. Perhaps Josiah’s father and grandfather (Amon and Manasseh) had strayed too far even for a grandson to respect what evil they had done – worshipping idols of the surrounding nations, an utter abomination to the real God. Could one say that Josiah’s mother, Jedidah, might also have coaxed him in this direction? But, at first Zephaniah had to issue a severe forecast – that God’s judgement would crush not only Judah and Jerusalem, but the surrounding peoples in Philistia, Moab, Ammon, Ethiopia, Assyria, and Nineveh. Repent. That was a directive that Josiah evidently heeded by 621 B.C., finding in his 18th year of rule the Book of the Law, and subsequently renewing the covenant and doing what he could to eliminate the influence of foreign gods in the land (2 Kings 22 and 23). Zephaniah’s words must have resounded in Josiah’s ears --- destruction if you don’t set things on a renewed trajectory toward God (the first 2.5 chapters of his three-chapter message), and God’s vision of a people who have sought Him once again and are being blessed (Zephaniah 3:9-20). Perhaps 3:17 is perhaps the most personal and tender of what God says to them through the prophet – all contained in the few words of ‘He Will Rejoice Over You’.   

Zephaniah, and Scott Brown and David Hampton must have all felt the same thing, even if they were more than two-dozen centuries apart. God wants to embrace his people, inside ‘His (great) love’ and because of His ‘great delight’ in us when we cling to Him only. If you can imagine feeling safe and calm, cared for, possessing an utter sense of protection and belonging, then you have experienced what Zephaniah could foresee. Then you might also hear the Great One singing, something that sounds like a lullaby and a celebration all at once – rejoicing at a Divine level. What’s ‘His voice’ sound like? Almost unimaginable, don’t you think? What if we could engage all of the senses He’s given us to discover Him today? Can you ponder for a moment touching, smelling, and tasting (Psalm 34:8) Him, in addition to hearing and seeing Him? Someday, you and I will get to use all of ourselves to experience Him.  

See NIV Study Bible introduction to the book of Zephaniah for background on the primary author-poet. Also see here for information on the prophet-poet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zephaniah

See here some information about one of the 20^th Century author-songwriters: Scott Wesley Brown - Wikipedia

See the official website of one of the 20^th Century songwriters here: Professional Addiction Recovery Coach | Brentwood |David Hampton (davidhamptoncprc.com)

Listen to a rendition of the song here:  Bing Videos

 

See here for information on the image of Zephaniah: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Zephaniah.jpg This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 70 years or fewer. {{PD-US}} – US work that is in the public domain in the US for an unspecified reason, but presumably because it was published in the US before 1929.

Love Come Down -- Casey Darnell, Heath Balltzglier, Ross King, Todd Fields

It’s an invitation to ‘do-si-do’! That’s what he said. Was it perhaps a square-dancin’ affair, or just generally a celebration that Casey Darnell and his friends in the North Point Worship band (Heath Balltzglier, Ross King, and Todd Fields) were thinking when they co-wrote “Love Come Down” in 2014? The atmosphere these four envisioned and wanted to promote was swayed by their location – in the Atlanta suburb of Alpharetta where the North Point Community Church is located (see the map-image of Fulton County, Georgia here) – a region where country-western music prevails, though their song is more closely categorized as country-rock. ‘Just celebrate that God has done something awesome for you!’ That’s really the simplest way to paraphrase what these four band members were saying…it’s the same attitude that we’ll have in His everlasting presence, one day. Everything that has dimmed our vision of Him will be in the rearview mirror, and all that’s in front of you and me will be summed up in one word: Praise.

They were looking for a ‘foot-stompin’ song, and that’s another way of describing what Casey, Heath, Ross, and Todd produced. Casey says you might even feel like grabbing the crook of someone’s elbow with your own elbow and giving the other person a swing. Too few pure praise songs made this quartet reach for something to add to the celebratory repertoire they felt would capture the young adult teenager audience at the North Point church where they were in 2014. It’s a high-energy group whom the band was coaxing to temporarily block out the challenges and the lows in their young lives. Casey says he’s written lots of the slower, more contemplative lyrics for songs this worship band has produced, but felt ‘Love Come Down’ offered something ‘fresh’. Singing to ‘shout Your praises loud’, ‘forever’, because He’s ‘pulled me out’ of the gloomy darkness (chorus) – that’s all that’s in the repeated focus here. Someone might have been ‘blind’, with ‘chains of sin’ about the body (v.1), feeling like a condemned prisoner who has a ‘debt’ (v.2) and ultimately a ‘grave’ (v.3) awaiting. But, these songwriters have conjured up something that hearers cannot escape – that there’s more reason to revel than wallow. The song’s beat and its lyrical reminders cannot be denied. Jesus has ‘rescued me’ (v.1, 2, and 3), and the ‘grace’ and ‘hope’ (v.2); the ‘home beyond the sky’, and the ‘song’ we’ll sing there (v.3) are too powerful for its opponents to withstand.

Casey and the others remind their 21st Century audience of something he repeats in the video description of the song, something that was written by a poet centuries ago – Psalm 100. Entering God’s presence, His dwelling place, means that you and I inhabit that place with thanksgiving and praise. His place might be called ‘courts’, according to what that psalmist said, but I go there not with a sense of dread about judgement, but with an assurance of belonging – to Him. I am one of His creations, in His image. And, He is good, lives forever, and invites me into His embrace. Yes, there will be judgement, but if I capture and keep what Casey, Heath, Ross, and Todd have pictured for me, then I can rejoice that His grace, His love-nature, is always present to draw me, too. He came once, has gone home temporarily, has left me a divine helper, and is planning to come Himself again. Are you rejoicing that His love (has already) come down, or are you still looking? Look around. There’s plenty of us already at His party! Come on in, and find a dance partner!      

 

See here some comments by one of the songwriters re: purpose of the song (from appx 3:30 to end of video): Love Come Down (how to play by Casey Darnell) (youtube.com)

See here for a few brief comments by the songwriters (at appx 0:42 of the video) about the song and their performance of it: Bing Videos

See here for information about the church/worship band where the song was written: North Point Worship - Wikipedia

See here for information about the image-graphic file for Fulton County, and its public domain status: File:Map of Georgia highlighting Fulton County.svg - Wikimedia Commons.  I, the copyright holder of this work, release this work into the public domain. This applies worldwide. In some countries this may not be legally possible; if so: I grant anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law.

He Knows My Name – Tommy Walker

 He wasn’t thrilled with the topic, and really needed someone else to push him into it. What if Tommy Walker’s Divine Maker had felt that way in the beginning, if He had pursued half-heartedly the man-making project, if He had even decided that “He Knows My Name” was just a momentary and insignificant cerebral fragment? Instead, Tommy decided, eventually, that God’s inspiration wasn’t just whimsical, and that an upcoming sermon by a minister in a Los Angeles church (see the seal of Los Angeles here) was the stimulant he could not ignore. After all, he was a worship minister, and this was his role – to write a song when so directed. God is creative in His very nature. So, when someone tells you to mimic that characteristic, what’s that say about you if you refuse? Tommy had already decided that God’s work in his human-ness wasn’t an accident, so he answered with what this minister was expecting. Just flip the switch, and say ‘OK, I’m ready; you’ve got me, God. Use me to say what You want’.

Actually, Tommy Walker’s Los Angeles preacher who asked him for a song in 1996 probably deserves some notable credit for ‘He Knows…’, because that was the title of the sermon that he’d already chosen. You can almost see Tommy sighing as this minister (Mark Pickerill) pitched the idea at him; what had stirred this minister’s thoughts, anyway? Tommy admits he needed ‘sheer discipline’ to agree to this, because he really didn’t feel motivated, even as the poetry began to develop and ink flowed from his pen. Tommy was initially convinced this would be only an average-quality song, but he stuck with it nevertheless.  Perhaps it was the simplicity of the concept that helped Tommy finally feel that something special was in work. Just go with the idea that this Creator made me, and scope out how He expressed Himself in that process. He doesn’t just know ‘my name’, He knows my ‘thoughts’. He gave me a ‘heart’, and my ‘tears’ are ones He gives me. And, He listens when I ‘call’, because He knows what’s going on inside this person He made. It’s all about intimacy with this God and me, Tommy must have decided, as he continued to write. It started in the very first few moments, ‘before even time began’, that I became His. ‘In His hands…’, and ‘…His own’, are words that Tommy used to confess that he could not exist, even as a thought, if God had not first been who He is. And, despite my ability to leave or try to ignore Him, He won’t ‘leave me’. Perhaps that’s because something is more true of God than even His created humans understand at times: that He cannot remove Himself from those He made, since we’re in His image. A human may decide to run away from Him when he really doesn’t want to be part of His Creator. How long can that really persist, one might ask? How much sadness does that engender in God when that happens? Jonah ran the other way, and a whole generation snubbed their noses in Noah’s day. They didn’t have God in human likeness to change their minds. What excuse do you and I have?

Tommy includes a lot of scriptural reminders that God does indeed see each of us intimately (see the link below that show what many writers have said – John [John and 1 John), Isaiah, Jeremiah, David [in Ps. 56, 139], and Moses [in Exodus]). He does feel what we feel, cries over those He made, as the bible’s shortest verse relates (John 11:35).  Why’d He create, if the result has pained Him so? That He’s inscrutable is also who He is, but not when it comes to reaching out for me. It’s a lifelong education, this knowing Him. He already knows me, and yet I cannot help feeling the frustration that there’s always a deficit on my end of this understanding. But, I cannot deny the link is there, and that to fight Him is vain. He knows you and me. Tommy thought at first that this was a ‘so what?’ Then, he thought about it some more. Keep thinking, he says.      

Information on the story behind “He Knows My Name” can be found in Tommy Walker’s book Songs from Heaven, written with Phil Kassel in 2005, published by Regal Books.

Also see the story here: https://www.tommywalkerministries.org/media/song-of-the-week-2019-16-he-knows-my-name

See information on the seal of Los Angeles here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Seal_of_Los_Angeles.svg . The seal  is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 100 years or fewer. This work was created by a government unit (including state, county, city, and municipal government agencies) that derives its powers from the laws of the State of California and is subject to disclosure under the California Public Records Act (Government Code § 6250 et seq.). It is a public record that was not created by an agency which state law has allowed to claim copyright, and is therefore in the public domain in the United States.

My Life Is In You -- Daniel Gardner

 It was a Sunday afternoon, but Dan Gardner certainly wouldn’t have called it a ‘lazy Sunday afternoon’. This guy had plenty on his plate in Troy, Michigan in the mid-1980s (See the seal of Troy, Michigan here.), but he realized he needed a few moments of peace and quiet so that he could recapture some gusto for the rest of the day, including an evening worship service that he would be conducting in just a few hours. Dan could have declared implicitly to his Creator “My Life Is In You” on many occasions, given how his life looked from week-to-week; this particular Sunday afternoon was probably not too different from many others, packed with duties and assignments he needed to address. There had been other times when he’d used a specific method in a similar setting to re-center himself. He says this habit was all about waiting on God, and so he allowed his fingers to travel across a piano keyboard, seemingly in an aimless way, as he listened for a voice inside himself. In the next few moments, he heard His response, one that Dan recorded so that those precious few moments could be preserved. His words say take a few moments, shut out everything else, and connect with Him only.

Spontaneity was probably not something foreign to Dan in his connection to God through music. He grew up in a home with parents who evidently encouraged all four of their children musically, while raising them to become Christians. So, some thirty years from when this nurturing environment began, Dan, along with his own family (a wife and two daughters), were in this same home while theirs was being completed. His college education was ongoing, as was his full-time worship ministry at the church (Zion Christian Church) that his parents had helped establish in Troy. Thus, there were lots of familiar surroundings in Dan Gardner’s world, even if they were in a crowded space. He must have known deep inside of himself that the lyrics and the music for ‘My Life…’ were already being sung, in a way. He just needed to access a few quiet moments to harvest the fruit of this, musically. Just a few minutes of playing and singing brought the song to the surface, very naturally, with hardly any struggle to find the right words and music to fit together, as he recalls. Dan says he recognized immediately what a blessing the song was for himself, as a guy trying to complete assignments in his college curriculum, in between ministering to a church body as their worship minister and raising a growing family. Dan had, as someone has said, plenty of ‘irons in the fire’. How did his life stay even-keeled? Dan’s poetry indicates he felt his ‘life’, ‘strength’, and ‘hope’ were ‘in You, Lord’ -- like three legs of a Divine platform, providing a very sturdy support for Dan, and a resulting reason for ‘praise’. He admits today that abandoning himself to God’s Spirit for even just a few moments is still a discipline he hasn’t completely mastered. So, ‘My Life…’ is a special reminder for Dan of what a few uncluttered moments in his otherwise hurly-burly life could produce.  

With just a handful of words – ‘My life’, ‘strength’, ‘hope’, ‘praise’, and ‘is in you, Lord’ – Dan Gardner found a way to express what was apparently lying just beneath the surface in the hustle and bustle where he lived in Troy, Michigan in the mid-1980s. Dan says his wife should get plenty of credit for the way he and his family endured this period! Indeed, Dan must have had plenty of people – from parents, siblings, church members, college class members, and his own family – reminding him how any of us survive and stay oriented in a turbulent set of circumstances. When isn’t there too much going on in the life of a 30-something, or in the lives of the rest of us from day to day, for that matter? It feels more like real life to me when it’s busy; indeed, who wants the alternative -- boredom? I can turn to Him in either circumstance, but it’s really energizing when lots is ongoing and I can sense He’s at work. Feel strong, have hope, He’s watching your life. That’s Dan Gardner talking from Troy.          


The song story was found in the following book: I Could Sing of Your Love Forever: The Stories Behind 100 of the World’s Most Popular Worship Songs, by Lindsay Terry, Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2008.

See information on the seal of Troy Michigan image, including its public domain status here: File:Seal of Troy, Michigan.svg - Wikimedia Commons . This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published in the United States between 1928 and 1977, inclusive, without a copyright notice. For further explanation, see Commons:Hirtle chart as well as a detailed definition of "publication" for public art. Note that it may still be copyrighted in jurisdictions that do not apply the rule of the shorter term for US works (depending on the date of the author's death), such as Canada (50 p.m.a.), Mainland China (50 p.m.a., not Hong Kong or Macao), Germany (70 p.m.a.), Mexico (100 p.m.a.), Switzerland (70 p.m.a.), and other countries with individual treaties.