At the church where I serve, we are in the middle of a
sermon series entitled when God speaks. During this series we are spending our
time together looking at these letters that we
often have a tendency to skip over, which are referred to as the prophets. We
are going to discover who these letters that we have a
tendency to skip over were written to. We are going to discover what these
letters that we have a tendency to skip over reveal about who we are. We are
going to discover what these letters that we have a tendency to skip over
reveal about the nature of God and God’s activity in history.
And as we go through this series,
our hope and prayer is that God would move by the power of the Holy Spirit in
our heads, hearts and hands so that we understand and embrace the timeless and
timely truths that these letters that we often skip over have for our lives. This
week, I would like for us to spend our time together looking at a letter that
is recorded for us in the Old Testament of the Bible called the book of
Zephaniah, which is the next letter that was written by a prophet
chronologically, which is not necessarily the order that they are found in the
Bible, where they are organized by size. So let’s look at the man and the
message of the Book of Zephaniah, beginning in Zephaniah 1:1:
The
word of the LORD which came to Zephaniah son of Cushi, son of Gedaliah, son of
Amariah, son of Hezekiah, in the days of Josiah son of Amon, king of Judah:
Most
scholars and historians believe that the book of Zephaniah was written between
622 and 620 B.C. Like the book of Habakkuk, which we looked
at last week, the book of Zephaniah was written during the decline and fall
of the Southern Kingdom of Judea, which occurred from 626-586 B.C. This letter was written during the times described in a
section of another letter in the Old Testament of the Bible, called the book of
2 Chronicles, in 2
Chronicles 34:1-35:19.
In
the opening verse of this letter, we discover that Zephaniah was the great,
great, grandson of King Hezekiah, who ruled over the Southern Kingdom of Judea
from 715 B.C. to 686 B.C., a little over 60 years prior to the writing of this
letter. As with many of the smaller letters that these messengers of God
proclaimed to the people of God, the book of Zephaniah is dominated by two
major themes. We are introduced to the first major theme beginning in Zephaniah
1:2-14a. Let’s look at it together:
2 "I
will completely remove all things From
the face of the earth," declares the LORD. 3 "I will
remove man and beast; I will remove the birds of the sky And the fish of the
sea, And the ruins along with the wicked; And I will cut off man from the face
of the earth," declares the LORD. 4 "So I will stretch out
My hand against Judah And against all the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And I will
cut off the remnant of Baal from this place, And the names of the idolatrous priests along with the priests. 5
"And those who bow down on the housetops to the host of heaven, And those
who bow down and swear to the
LORD and yet swear by Milcom, 6
And those who have turned back from following the LORD, And those who have not
sought the LORD or inquired of Him." 7 Be silent before the
Lord GOD! For the day of the LORD is near, For the LORD has prepared a
sacrifice, He has consecrated His guests. 8 "Then it will come
about on the day of the LORD'S sacrifice That I will punish the princes, the
king's sons And all who clothe themselves with foreign garments. 9
"And I will punish on that day all who leap on the temple threshold, Who fill the house of their lord with violence
and deceit. 10 "On that day," declares the LORD,
"There will be the sound of a cry from the Fish Gate, A wail from the
Second Quarter, And a loud crash from the hills. 11 "Wail, O
inhabitants of the Mortar, For all the people of Canaan will be silenced; All
who weigh out silver will be cut off. 12 "It will come about at
that time That I will search Jerusalem with lamps, And I will punish the men
Who are stagnant in spirit, Who say in their hearts, 'The LORD will not do good
or evil!' 13 "Moreover, their wealth will become plunder And
their houses desolate; Yes, they will build houses but not inhabit them, And plant vineyards but not
drink their wine." 14 Near is the great day of the LORD, Near
and coming very quickly;
Now to fully understand what Zephaniah is
communicating here, we first need to understand what Zephaniah means when he
uses the phrase “The Day of the Lord”. As we discovered earlier in this series,
in the letters that make up the Bible, the “Day of the Lord” is used in two
different ways. Lord”. In most places in the letters that make up the Bible,
this phrase refers to the time at the end of God’s story here on earth, Jesus will return to earth to
defeat selfishness, sin, and death, and to exercise God’s right and just
response to the wrongdoing and injustice of humanity against God and others
that flowed from their selfishness and rebellion against God and others.
In addition, the “Day of the
Lord” is also the doorway through which those who
are in right relationship with God as a result of responding to all that God
has done to rescue them from their selfishness and rebellion through Jesus
life, death, and resurrection, by believing, trusting, and following Jesus as
Lord and Leader will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. The “Day of the Lord”
began with Jesus entering into humanity to live the life that we were created
to live but refused to live and to die the death that we deserved to die. And
the “Day of the Lord” will conclude when Jesus returns to earth to exercise
God’s right and just response to selfishness and rebellion. Thus, in a very
real sense, we are living in the “Day of the Lord” right now.
And in verses 2-3, we see Zephaniah describe what will
happen at the end of God’s story when the “Day of the Lord” arrives in a global
sense. Upon the “Day of the Lord”, the Lord will remove the wrongdoing and injustice of humanity against God and
others that flows from their selfishness and rebellion against God and others
as He expresses His right and just response to that wrongdoing and injustice.
However, in a few places in the letters that make up
the Bible, the “Day of the Lord” refers to a localized judgment of God against
selfishness and rebellion. God provided the Jewish people with
a “near” circumstance in order that they might better understand a far more
significant event in the future. And it is this sense of that the writer is
using the “Day of the Lord” here. In verses 4-14, we see Zephaniah reveal that
actions that the Day of the Lord would bring upon the Jewish people as a result
of their selfishness and rebellion against the Lord in the relatively near
future.
Zephaniah proclaimed that the Lord would exercise His
right and just response to the selfishness and rebellion of the Jewish people
that led them to commit idolatry by worshiping something other than the Lord
as God. In verse 4, the prophet exposed the idolatry of the priests who led the
people to worship the false god Baal instead of the Lord. In verse 5, the
prophet exposed the idolatry of those who worshiped the sun, moon, and stars
instead of the Lord.
In the second half of verse 5, the prophet exposed the
idolatry of those who worshiped at the spiritual buffet by adding the worship
of the Lord to the worship of false gods in order to create their own religious
system that took what they liked about the Lord and false gods, while ignoring
the parts of the Lord and false gods that they did not like In verse 6, the
prophet exposed the indifference of the Jewish people who turned their back on
the Lord so as to ignore the Lord.
And because of the selfishness and rebellion of the
Jewish people, Zephaniah proclaimed that the Day of the Lord was coming in the
form of the Babylonian Empire. The Babylonian Empire would
be instrument that the Lord would use to exercise justice and judgment against
the Jewish people. Zephaniah painted a word picture of an animal that would be
offered as a sacrificial offering in the Jewish religious system to proclaim
that the Lord was preparing the Jewish people to be a sacrifice that would pay
the penalty of their selfishness and rebellion.
The Babylonian Empire would be the invited guests that
would participate in this sacrificial offering against the rebellion of the
leaders of the Jewish people. The Babylonian Empire would be the invited guests
that would participate in this sacrificial offering against the rebellion of
those who oppressed others by leaping upon them to commit violence and robbery,
only to offer up what had been stolen in worship to false gods. The Babylonian
Empire would be the invited guests that would participate in this sacrificial
offering against the rebellion of the merchants who exploited the Jewish
people.
What is so fascinating is that what Zephaniah
proclaimed in verse 10-11, was fulfilled 40 years later when, in
586 B.C., the Babylonian Emperor Nebuchadnezzar entered Jerusalem through the
“fish gate”. The Babylonian Empire would be the
invited guests that would participate in this sacrificial offering against the
rebellion of the indifference and agnosticism of the Jewish people to the Lord
and the things of the Lord when the Day of the Lord came upon the Jewish people
in the very near future.
Tomorrow, we will see Zephaniah continue to proclaim
what the very near future held for the Jewish people in his day…
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