To have glanced down, you’ll see that first word, and you might ask, what’s the therefore? Therefore. It’s always a good question when you see that word in a passage, and ours begins with that word today. Before we read our text this morning, let’s take a quick peek at the back story. Throughout, indeed, our whole series, we have seen both the faithlessness of man contrasted with the faithfulness of God. We’ve seen God’s patience with his children in their rebellion, and we’ve seen his promise of provision. We’ve seen Adam and Eve His failure in the garden and God’s provision for a covering for their shame, and the promise that one day the seed of the woman will crush the head of the serpent. We’ve seen Cains murdering of his brother Abel, and we’ve listened to Abel’s blood, crying out for justice in the field, pointing to a savior, Jesus, whose blood will speak even better. We’ve seen God’s deliverance of Noah from the wicked land and his rainbow promise to never destroy the Earth by water. We’ve heard of God’s faithfulness to Abel Abraham, to Jacob, to Moses, to King David, to King Solomon, each time God calling man to repentance and to obedience, and each time man choosing at some level to do what was right in his own eyes, repeating in some sense the same question, the same charge of the serpent, did God really say?
And now, if God were to ask, Where are you? As he did in the garden, the answer from Zephaniah, from those in his day, would say, Where are we? We’re in a divided kingdom, following after a myriad of false gods involved in corrupted worship. It’s against that backdrop that prophet after prophet has warned the people of God of what would happen if they continue to ignore God’s good laws for their lives. God, in his faithfulness and in his love for his children, has already brought about the scattering and the captivity of the northern kingdom, and he’s about to do the same with the Southern kingdom in Judah. It is in that setting where Zephaniah, under the reign of the last good king, if you will, in Josiah, opens this prophecy. In chapter one, he does so in stunning fashion. God says, I will utterly sweep away everyone from the face of the earth. I will sweep away man and beast, birds and fish, the rubble with the wicked, and I will cut off mankind. I will stretch out my hand against Judah. Zephaniah is prophesying of the coming day of the Lord. In chapter one, verse 15, calls it a day of wrath, a day of distress and anguish, a day of ruin and devastation, darkness and gloom.
Closer to our text, in chapter 3, Zephaniah records God. He’s reflecting back on all of his previous acts of loving discipline and correction. And in verse 7, God says, Surely you will fear me and you will accept correction. And then your dwelling place will not be cut off according to all that I have appointed against you. But they were all the more eager to make all their deeds corrupt. That is the backdrop of our text. And I invite you now to stand as we pray for the reading of God’s word. Let us pray. Most Holy God, we come before you as guilty as our forefathers, and we come to you and we stand before your word. And as it reveals you in your holy glory, we are shamed by our stained lives. And as it shows your faithful love to us, your children, we are comforted beyond measure. Speak to us this morning in our need. Show us this morning what you would have us learn. We may live for your glory and exalt the name of your Son, even Jesus Christ, through whom we pray. Amen. Now, with your Bibles in hand, please turn to Zephaniah 3.
Well, we We’re really looking at verses 8 through the end of the chapter, verse 20. This is God’s holy and inerrant word. Therefore, wait for me, declares the Lord, for the day when I rise up to seize the prey, for my decision is to gather nations, to assemble Kingdoms, to pour out upon them my indignation, all my burning anger, for in the fire of my jealousy, all the earth shall be consumed. For at that time I will change the speech of the peoples to a pure speech, that all of them may call upon the name of the Lord and serve him with one accord. From beyond the rivers of Cush, my worshippers, the daughters of my dispersed ones, shall bring my offering. On that day, you shall not be put to shame because of the deeds by which you have previously rebelled against me. For then I will remove from your midst your proudly exaltant ones, and you shall no longer be haughty in my holy mountain, but I will leave in your midst a people humble and lowly, and they shall seek refuge in the name of the Lord. Those who are left in Israel, they shall do no injustice and speak no lies, nor shall there be They found in their mouth a deceitful tongue, for they shall graze and lie down, and none shall make them afraid.
Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion. Shout, O Israel. Rejoice and exalt with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem. The Lord has taken away the judgments against you. He has cleared away your enemies. The King of Israel is in your midst, or the Lord is in your midst. For the Lord is in your midst, you shall never again fear evil. On that day, it shall be said to Jerusalem, Fear not, O Zion. Let not your hand grow weak. The Lord, your God is in your midst, the mighty one who will save. He will rejoice over you with gladness. He will quiet you with his love. He will exalt over with loud singing. I will gather those of you who mourn for the festival so that you will no longer suffer reproach. Behold, at that time, I will deal with all your oppressors, and I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise and renowned in all the earth. At that time, I will bring you in. At the time when I gather you together, for I will make you renowned and praised among all the peoples of the earth.
When I restore your fortunes before your eyes, says the Lord, the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. Let me pray for the preaching of God’s word. Father, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of the Lord stands forever. Amen. It is against that backdrop of impending doom and the unleashing of God’s wrath that our texts open with a word of hope. Therefore, wait for me, declares the Lord. Wait for me. It’s a word of hope. It communicates relationship. Wait for me. I will come to you and make it right. A relationship with the God most high. But wait for me also communicates a change. Wait for me. It won’t always be like this. Wait. Words of hope. Words of waiting. In Isaiah 30: 18, the Lord puts himself into a period of waiting. The Lord waits to be gracious to you. Therefore, he exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice. Blessed are those who wait for him. Here, he places the waiting on his people. Wait There’s a word of hope, and yet just as this hope, hope of a relationship renewed, hope of a change to come, the verse continues.
It’s not redemption, but judgment that the Lord is bringing. Just as hope is offered, it seems as if it’s dashed because the Lord is gathering the nations. He’s collecting kings, we read in verse 8, to pour on them his indignation, all of his burning anger. And the earth shall all be consumed, not with water as in Noah’s day, but now from the fires of God’s jealousy. And yet even when we reflect on God’s judgment, we, his children, can find hope for in judgment, God’s enemies are wiped away. Here we see in this passage so clearly the truth of the warning that God gave to Adam in that first day that sin brings death. We know this to be true. Our sin destroys relationships. It wrecks families, and it sometimes even ends life. Truly, the wages of sin is death. And yet, if we were honest, at times we might complain, we might question in our spirit when we read of this judgment, we might say, Isn’t that a little harsh, Lord, to punish us so completely? Forgetting all the while that our very sins are what’s bringing about that death. Think about it. Our envy puts our contented hearts to death.
Our gossip kills our neighbor’s honor. Our lust, if allowed to flourish, will choke out our intimacy. We could go on and on. But the point is, our sin is killing us. And sometimes it’s killing our neighbor as well. We are truly and genuinely guilty. And so this punishment, the wrath that God is bringing here, it is fully justified. It is completely deserved. This is the first half of the gospel. Cheer up. You’re not as bad or you’re even worse than you think you are. That’s how it really should go, right? And do not doubt that the day of the Lord is near. O Palmer Robertson, the Old Testament scholar, he warns against that persistent refusal, a refusal to wait for the Lord and to be ready for this day of the Lord. You may hear that phrase and you may wonder, what is the day of the Lord that Zephani is speaking about? When is this judgment coming? Is he foretelling of the final fall of Judah in 586, which would have been just around the corner from him? Or is he referring to the utter destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70? Is he referring to God’s final judgment yet to come?
Robertson says, and most degree, they’re all viewed together. It’s like seeing a mountain range from afar. There’s some lighting or some angles in which you see all the peaks line up, and it’s hard to tell if one and which one is in front or the other. But as you get close or if fog rolls down the front of the face, or a light dusting touches the tops, then you can see which peak is in front and which are further back. Isaiah is not making those distinctions for us in his text. He is viewing the day of the Lord as simply God’s astounding and awesome intervention. And on that day, in that day, all of God’s enemies will perish before him. But God also turns his discipline on his own children as a purifying fire, as a purifying work. And because Judah had resisted every effort of God’s loving discipline to bring her back onto that right path, the day of the Lord is coming. Testament scholar, Walt Kaiser, notes, It’s Almost as if the people could not disengage themselves from a vice grip of sin. It’s a clever picture, concept there. A vice grip of sin.
Kaiser is correct. We cannot disengage ourselves from that grip of sin. Our only hope is in the purifying work of God’s mercy in judgment. And what we can’t do, God does. And he does for us. Look at verse 9, At that time, I will change the speech of the peoples to a pure speech. Isaiah had rightly remarked, Woe is me? I am a man of unclean lips. And there the angel took a coal from the heavenly fire and touched his lips. And here God does a similar cleansing work. Our new Changed speech is pure speech. There seems to be a foreshadowing here of Pentecost, a reversal of Babel. At Babel, the language was confused, but here and at Pentecost, all was in accord. Everyone could understand what was being said in their own tongue. It was pure in that it results in the calling of the name of the Lord, our highest His calling is to glorify God and enjoy him forever and in worship. Here in verse 9, God’s children with one accord, the Hebrew here even speaks to pulling with one shoulder the great burden of the work of the Lord. We are in one accord serving the God of unified praise.
Verse 10 shows us that unifying power of pure praise to God. It attracts God’s people from the ends of the earth. That’s the representative of kush from the beyond the rivers of kush. That’s as far as the known world was, at least it’s referred to in that way. Oh, how pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity, or, oh, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. Here, God’s purifying work is cleansing his children and giving them a new heart of the new covenant, that transformation, that change in verse 9 is resulting in a missionary zeal in verse 10. Worshippers go out, perhaps voluntarily or in the Hebrew text, maybe through dispersions that were forced upon them. But they will come back, drawn to the beauty of God’s praise. When they come back, they’re not coming back empty-handed. Again, the text gives room. Perhaps they’re bringing back people that are also responding to the word of God, or perhaps they’re bringing back an offering of thanks to the Lord. But they are coming, drawn to the beauty of Godly praise. God’s purifying work continues on that day in verse 11, You shall not be put to shame.
Here we see that God removes both the burden of our shame as well as the disgrace and the painful feelings of past sin. Robertson, I’ve quoted him. He says, They will not be ashamed, not because they had no guilt, but because God took it away. He has taken it completely away, and Robertson notes, quote, All the crippling psychological effects of sin are wiped away, end quote. No more shame. What a beautiful reality. No more shame. The thing that cripples so much of it, Peter in 1 Peter 2: 6, Paul in Romans 9: 33, they both cite Isaiah 28: 16, which is a parallel account to this in Zephaniah. I am laying in Zion a stone, a chosen cornerstone, chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame. Not only does he remove the shame from our lives, but verse 11 tells us that He simultaneously removes the proud and the haughty from all around us. Verse 12 shows us who’s left in this new and changed people of God, and it’s a people humble and lowly. It’s a person who seeks refuge in the name of the Lord. One scholar notes three marks of a changed person.
One, meekness, an attitude in life that does not exalt oneself either above God or another person. Two, humility. It’s one who displays a genuine dependence on God, rather, instead of a bold assertion of his own right. And three, one who trusts in the Lord, who takes refuge in his savior. We would be wise to consider these marks in our own life. Are our lives characterized by humility or pride? What are we known for? Is it meekness or is it haughtiness? The question is, are you one of the ones to be removed in verse 12 or kept in verse 13? And if you’re not sure, I urge you to look to Jesus, who both displayed these marks perfectly and taught them masterfully on the sermon of the mount in Matthew 5 or on the sermon in the plain in Mark. There is a way that Christ calls blessed. If that doesn’t describe you. Be warned. The day of the Lord is coming. And even better, embrace Christ and his purifying fire. Simply call on him, admit your guilt, and ask for his work of cleansing in your life. Notice also this remnant, this people changed by God.
They’re humble, they’re meek, but there is no shame. Do do not confuse humility, meekness, and shame. These are people that have strength because God is their refuge. They have hope, they have confidence, and their power. And it’s not in themselves, it’s not in their abilities, it’s not in their accomplishments. That is all wiped away. Their hope is in the Lord, their refuge. This change in their life affects all those around them as well. Notice in verse 13, there is now no injustice. There is no lying. And most stunning of all, when you think that this is being set in a backdrop of God’s judgment all all around. Zephaniah turns the picture back to one of sheep. And he says, When these sheep graze, they lie down and none shall make them afraid. God’s people are the sheep in the pastures of the good shepherd of Psalm 23 or the good shepherd in John 10. They are completely at ease in their shepherd savior’s care. And notice their hope. Their hope in their savior is not misplaced, for not only does it in judgment wipe away their enemies and in purification wipe away both their sin and its effect.
But notice now that also in judgment, restoration comes in the day of the Lord. First, our restoration, our relationship, rather, with the Lord is restored. Verse 14 shows us that our shame is now turned to singing. We are called to sing. We are called to shout, to rejoice, and to exalt with all your hearts. Is that how you praised God, the Lord, in song this morning? It is how changed people ought to worship. Here, the coming of God’s judgment might be caused for despair, but for God’s people, it is an occasion for celebration. In fact, you can see that in the text. If you have your Bibles open, if you noticed in verse one of chapter three, the city Jerusalem is called to woe, woe to her who is rebellious, defiled, and oppressing. But now in verse 14, the same city, because of the day of the Lord, is called the daughter of Zion. A beautiful title. My Israel, the daughter of Jerusalem. What a difference the purifying work of God does in our lives. We can sing because God has taken away all of our judgments against us. You see that in verse 15, Alec Mautier remarks that once sin has been dealt with, there is nothing to alienate the Holy one.
At one meant has been achieved. God has worked that atonement in our lives, and we are restored, and the King of Israel, even our Lord, is in our midst. Most commentators here remark that Zephaniah is looking past the Babylonian captivity to a time in which the King comes, and the King is in their midst. Somewhere is page 4, I found it. A time when David’s son is again seated on the throne. There’s a passage that’s similar in Hosea 3, Afterward, the children of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God and David their King, and they shall come in fear to the Lord and to his goodness in the later days. And along with Hosea, Isaiah, Amos, Micah, all mention in parallel passages that David, the King, they name him, is coming. And yet, curiously, Zephaniah doesn’t call out his name. Instead, he uses a phrase to picture that the Lord, rather God, the Lord, is the King of Israel. He, perhaps, as one writer says, unwittingly prophesies in the God man. It is interesting that in John’s account of the triumphal entry, when the people are gathering to hail the king of the Jews.
Jesus is being hailed, and John, as he records it, he first comes to this passage. Do not be afraid, O daughter of Zion, instead of moving directly to Zechariah 9, as the other Gospels do. God is in their midst, and he is reigning as their king. This is why they will never again fear evil. Verse 16 repeats that theme that for those in Jerusalem, that is for those who have called on the name of the Lord, we know that to be Jesus Christ, there is no fear, and their hands will not grow weak. This is a reference to paralysis that can occur in fear. Arms, hands losing their strength, literally locked and frozen in fear. And yet in Christ, we have no fear. For our champion is in our midst. Verse 17 is thought by many as one of the most moving description of God’s love for his people. Some even call it the John 3: 16 of the Old Testament. For in it, not only do we have a beautiful picture of God as the mighty one, the champion, the warrior who saves us, but he’s also the one who’s rejoicing over us. He’s also the one who quiets us when we need that and who exaltss over us with loud singing.
If it is fitting to sing God’s praises loudly, it ought to be astonishing to see that our champion, the King, is singing over us. If you come to men’s breakfast Wednesday mornings at 6: 30, you’ll know that we had recently talked about this in Hebrews 2: 10-12. It makes a similar point referring to Jesus, that he is not ashamed to call you his brother. And that passage goes on, I will tell of your your name in the midst of the congregation, I will sing your praise. What an extraordinary picture to consider that God, that Jesus, our King, actually sings your name in praise to the congregation. That Jesus would sing about me. That he would sing about you. It’s both simultaneously continuously humbling and encouraging. Not only does God restore our relationship with himself, but he also does the work to restore others as well. Notice in verse 19, God deals with the oppressors. He saves the lame, he gathers the outcast, and he changes their shame into praise. How does he do that? I think the answer is in verse 10 and verse 13. He uses us, the changed people of God, the worshippers who sing of God’s praise with unified voices.
That pure speech which no longer speaks lies and pursues no injustice. That was as stunningly anti or countercultural then as it was today. To push against injustice, to speak truth, to live for another, to sacrifice so that someone else can thrive, to serve another instead of asserting your own right. But this is what we must do if we are to gather the outcasts, if we are to heal the lame, if we are to protect those who are oppressed. As we share the truth of God’s saving work and of the beauty and the goodness that is in obeying him, he uses us to bring others in, and he gathers us in verse 20, all of us in to restore our fortunes in that relationship with himself. And so we can praise God that even in judgment there is hope. For not only are God’s enemies wiped away, but our sin is wiped clean. The effects of our sin are removed and our relationships with God and with man are restored. This is our hope. This is our firm foundation that he has laid for us in his word. What more can he say than to you who he has said, to you who for refuge to Jesus have fled?
That is our hope in the day of the Lord, and it is a hope worth singing about. Let’s pray. Father, we do praise you, and we thank you that you use us to bring about and to restore relationships with others. Beyond the Rivers of Cush, you have sent us, and you have given us your word, and we know that it never returns void. And So whether it is given, as the Gideons do, in a Bible to a neighbor across the street or a stranger staying in a hotel room, or given with missionary zeal in Africa through the training up of pastors or through any of the other ministries of this church. And by that, I mean the ministries of the members of this church, where they live and work and play. You use us and your word to bring about reconciliation and restoration. Lord, we pray that you would continue to use us that we might build your kingdom for your glory. Father, the day of the Lord is coming, and we pray that even in the midst of your enemy is being wiped away, that you will use us to gather your children for your glory.
Work that truth deep in our lives to bring us in repentance to you or to give us encouragement for this day. Pray this through Christ our Lord. Amen. Indeed, I invite you to stand as we.
Discaimer: This sermon text was generated by an automated transcription service.