Today is the third week of our series looking at the Old Testament lectionary readings for Advent. Hopefully, as we go through this series, you are getting a sense of the expectation, excitement and preparation that surrounded the coming of the Messiah for the people of Israel. It was a time when the people of Israel had to rely on God’s promises, even though many of them never saw His promises fulfilled. God is faithful, and we have to remember that. Last week, we talked about the messenger that would prepare the way for the Lord. In the first century, that promise was fulfilled in John the Baptist, who had a twofold ministry focusing on leading people to repentance and pointing them to Jesus.
The readings today bring us to a place that many of us probably have never been before. I put out an extremely unscientific poll on Facebook this week wondering out loud how many people actually knew where Zephaniah is located in the Bible. And I don’t recall anybody being able to tell me where it was without having to look it up. Now, remember, I have fellow pastors and seminary graduates as friends on Facebook, and nobody really knew where it was without looking it up.
Now, in all fairness, I knew the general location, but not the exact books that came before and after it. I think that’s the great thing about working through an Old Testament series like this, though. We get an opportunity to hear from voices that we don’t normally hear. So, who is this Zephaniah character, and what is this book about?
Not a lot is known about Zephaniah himself. He is not mentioned in any of the historical books like Kings or Chronicles, even though his ministry took place during events that happen in those books. From the first verse of the book, we see that Zephaniah was a descendant of Hezekiah, who was a king of Judah. We can read about Hezekiah in the historical books, as well as in the historical section of Isaiah, Chapters 36-39.
We also learn from the first verse that Zephaniah’s ministry took place during the reign of Josiah, who was basically the last good king of the Israelit people. This puts us in the middle to late 7th century B.C., not long before the Babylonians come into Jerusalem and start the exile. Not surprisingly, in light of where we are historically, the majority of Zephaniah is actually prophecies of judgment. If you were to look at an outline of the book, you would see section on the judgment that is coming against Judah, the coming wrath of God against all people, warnings to individual nations such as the Philistines, the Moabites, the Assyrians and even those in Jerusalem. That is just how the book flows.
The way the book is structured, you would think that it is going to be entirely about judgment against the people. What is interesting is that all of the warnings against other nations are book-ended by warnings to Judah and Jerusalem. In other words, the people of Judah ought not get too excited that God is going to judge their enemies, because God is also going to be judging them.
Now at this point, you may be wondering why this description of Zephaniah doesn’t seem to match up with today’s reading. There is not a whole lot of talk about judgment in today’s passage. Mostly it is about judgment being “taken away,” or rejoicing, or not fearing evil. In fact today’s reading doesn’t seem to match up at all with a people who have just been told that they will be facing God’s wrath. What is going on here? What really sets the stage for what is happening in today’s passage can be found just a few verses before in Zephaniah 3:9-13.
After all of this judgment and warning, something amazing happens. The people return to God. They heed the call to repent and turn back to God. Verse 9 says, “For at that time, I will change the speech of the peoples to a pure speech.” Before, during the time that brought on their judgment, the people’s worship of idols and false gods caused them to have impure speech. But with their speech purified, they “call upon the name of the Lord and serve Him with one accord.”
And what is important to pick up in this section is that it is not the people who brought themselves back to the Lord; it is the Lord who brings the people back to Him. God is the one who removes the shame of rebellion; who humbles us; who gives us refuge and peace. But where does this all start? In repentance, in turning back to God. Now, we talked about the importance of self-examination and repentance last week when we looked at Malachi 3 and the ministry of John the Baptist. What we come to today in the Zephaniah passage is what comes next.
There is a dramatic difference between the words of Zephaniah 1-2 and Zephaniah 3, there is the change that is brought forth in repentance and conversion. In today’s passage, the fruits of repentance are brought forth. You see, we don’t just examine our lives in the light of God’s grace and just go on with our lives as normal. We can’t do that.
If there is something that is not right in our lives; if there is something that is holding us back from being all that God has intended us to be; shouldn’t we do something about it? We know the sins in our lives. Come on, let’s be honest, there is nobody else on this earth that knows our sins as well as we do – I don’t care if we do live in a small town, nobody knows everything about another person. And when it all comes down, all we can really do is confess before God. All we can really do is turn to God with our whole hearts; and that is when we move from being impure to being pure; from being sinful to sinless. And what is our response to such a dramatic life change? That’s what we read about in today’s passage.
We are told to sing aloud, to shout, to rejoice and exult the Lord! There is a party in heaven when just one sinner repents and turns to God. In Luke 15, Jesus tells three parables about things that are lost, but become found. In the first one, it is a lost sheep. A shepherd with 100 sheep rejoices more over the one that had gone astray and was found, than over the 99 that stayed where they were supposed to be. Jesus says that there is more joy in heaven over the one sinner who repents than over the 99 who need not. That’s not to say that the 99 aren’t important, or that they aren’t valuable, but think about it for a moment. What do you think happened to a sheep that went astray and got lost? It probably died. There were all sorts of dangers lurking in the shadows of the wild at that time. The 99 were fine. They were protected and cared for, but the one who wanders away from the flock is the one that is at the most risk.
The next parable is about a lost coin. A woman had 10 silver coins; each one was worth about 10 days’ wages. She loses one, and searches all over the house to find it. You’ve had this experience, right? You need to find something, and you are going absolutely nuts trying to find it. I used to do this all the time when I was a kid. I’d get out my G.I. Joes and start playing with them, but if I couldn’t find Snake Eyes – forget about it. I’d turn my room upside down to find him because everybody knows that Snake Eyes is hands-down the coolest of the G.I. Joes. I would flip out if I couldn’t find him, and when I did find him, I’d run and tell my mom. She didn’t care. She was wondering why I was getting so excited about playing with dice…. Get it? Snake Eyes is a G.I. Joe character, and a term for throwing two ones in dice. Okay, Katie said it was a stretch. Anyway.
What does Jesus say about this lost coin that was found? That there is joy before all the angels of heaven when just one sinner repents. Can you imagine the heavenly chorus that lets loose every time somebody comes back to God after going astray? Don’t get me wrong, I like hearing our choir and all, but give me the heavenly host any day of the week. All of heaven rejoices, do we?
Do we come to an understanding of our sinful state and wallow in self-pity, or do we rejoice in the fact that through Jesus Christ our sins are as good as gone? When we hear of others who have come to faith, do we sing aloud and shout with joy, or do we say, “that’s nice”? You see, there’s something very important for us to learn about in the third parable in Luke 15 that directly relates to what we are talking about here in Zephaniah.
The third parable is the lost son. You’ve probably heard this one in one form or another. A man’s son is lost. And this time, it’s not something that just wandered away from the group like the sheep, or something that was misplaced like the coin; it is a person who chooses to be lost. How many know somebody like that? How many know somebody that just chooses to go away from God? No matter what you say, no matter what you do, they’re gone, and they just don’t care.
At the end of the parable, we see a stark contrast between what heaven does and what we can have a tendency to do if we don’t rejoice in the lost being found, and when we don’t get involved in the process. The father, upon the return of his lost son, throws a great party. He is overjoyed, even doing things that would have made no sense in the culture. The lost son’s brother is angry. He doesn’t understand why it is such a big deal that his brother has returned. And that’s where we are left. There’s no resolution. There’s no happy ending. There’s nothing. All we are left with is an angry brother who is not interested in rejoicing over what was once lost and now found. That should serve as an important warning for all of us.
We can lose sight of what is really important. When people have that conversion experience; when they truly give their lives over to God; we should be celebrating. We should be seeking ways to make it commonplace for people that we know to come to Jesus. It’s never going to get old to see people turn away from their sins and find new life in Christ. We need to take a cue from Zephaniah here and rejoice because of what God has done, and there is no better time to do that than this time of the year, as we await the coming of His Son. God rejoices when those who are far from Him draw closer to Him, and so should we.
As we read through the Zephaniah passage, we need to remember that we have been called to rejoice in what God has done. Do we really understand the magnitude of what is going on when we come to worship? I don’t know about you, but sometimes, I think that I forget. After coming week after week after week, Sunday worship can become just a part of our routine if we let it.
We lose the joy and the excitement that we once had because it becomes something that we are “supposed” to do. Y’all that’s not right. We don’t come to church because that’s what people are supposed to do on Sunday morning. We come because we have been affected by the living God. If God, the angels and all of the heavens rejoice when just a single person returns to the Lord, then how much more should we rejoice that we have the opportunity to gather in His presence each and every week?
God has taken away our judgment. God has removed the sin that fights against us with everything it has. We no longer need to fear anything because if God is for us, who can be against us? The lame, the outcast, those who live in the shame of their sin, and, yes, that is each one of us that is gathered here today – we are all gathered together, the Lord removes our sin from our lives, and there is great rejoicing.
While the majority of the message of Zephaniah is less than pleasant, it ends on this great note of rejoicing and praise. As dark as things look, as locked up as we can get in our sin, as messed up as our lives can get, there is still rejoicing and praise. There is ultimate hope in God. We worship and praise God because of this hope.
As we continue on through this Advent season, let’s not forget the messages of the prophets who spoke to the people expecting their Messiah. Let’s not forget that God has done something so amazing that we celebrate it every single year during the Christmas season. What God has done shouldn’t be approached casually. It shouldn’t be just part of our annual routine. It should be something that we approach with great joy because the God of all creation; let that sink in for a minute – the God of all creation came down at Christmastime so that we could have salvation.
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