Sermon: Zephaniah (Part Two): God's Wrath on the Whole World
A Global Punishment for Sin
#1616
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Given 11-Sep-21; 71 minutes
description: (hide)
transcript:
I began the previous sermon on Zephaniah with some comments about both the ancient axial period between 800 and 200 BC, which focused on Israel and Judah, and also what I believe is the modern iteration of it over the past few decades as the Pax Americana disintegrates. My comments stressed that we can learn a great deal about our current situation and the crumbling road ahead from the types God has preserved for us in the Old Testament. So when we look in the prophets and see their comments on this period of time, we can take principles from that that will help in our own current situation. The correspondence may not be complete, but it is close enough that we can garner principles that are useful, that will aid us as we try to navigate the road ahead.
My introduction centered on the troubles we are facing in America. Now, my audience is mostly American, and the responses we get on the Internet to the Berean and all those things, they are predominantly American, so it is a natural thing to do to concentrate on American problems. Twenty years ago, we thought Islamic terrorism would be the scourge of the age, and it has been in its own way. But we now realize that something far worse happened. The totalitarian progressivism that has sprung up over the past decade or two has done far worse damage, I think, striking at our principal core. We can regret and mourn what happened on 9/11/2001 (twenty years ago), but the enemy is among us, and it is us—the way we think, and the things that we do.
But people from other countries do listen in, quite a few of them, and some of them consider themselves to be members of this little far-flung flock. Sometimes American concerns and circumstances do not quite resonate with them because they are not here on the ground with us, and do not have to go through it. But we should not leave them out of this axial period discussion because non-Americans are facing it too, perhaps not in the same ways or to the same intensity. But if they are not already, they will be drawn into the coming downfall of modern Israel in their own time. It will happen. It will eventually distress the entire world. It just starts with Israel and goes from there.
On certain fronts some of our Israelite cousins are actually farther down the slippery slope than we are. Consider Australia and the COVID-19 restrictions that they have to face over there. It is not an exaggeration to say that, because of coronavirus, Australia has become a virtual prison state. Certainly, compared to America, we still have all kinds of freedoms that they do not have under this COVID-19 regime. An article in the Sydney Morning Herald recently announced "the freedoms" Australians will enjoy once 70% of them 16 years old and over are fully vaccinated. This is the major paper down there in New South Wales, letting them know that in a little bit of time the Australian government is going to let you out. These are the things you will be able to enjoy. And it is expected that Australia will be 70% fully vaccinated sometime in late October, so they still have a month and a half or so to wait. Until then, they will continue serving time in a far more restrictive lockdown state than we are, by far.
Now, here are some of their upcoming freedoms that they will get in late October:
Five visitors will be allowed in a home where all adults are fully vaccinated, not including children that are 12 and under, and up to twenty fully vaccinated people can gather in an outdoor setting. Hospitality venues can reopen, subject to a four square meter rule indoors and a two square meter rule outside. (These meter rules are how many people can be in a store or other other establishment based on their square footage. So the four square meter rule is one person for every four square meters, and the two square meter rule is one person for every two square meters.) But this is only for vaccinated patrons.
Retail stores can reopen to the fully vaccinated. Those who are not fully vaccinated can still access critical retail. I guess that is like food stores. Hairdressers and nail salons can reopen with a five client cap, provided clients are fully vaccinated. Gyms and indoor recreation can reopen with a four square meter capacity rule for the fully vaccinated. Sporting facilities, including swimming pools, can reopen to the, you guessed it, fully vaccinated. Stadiums, racecourses, theme parks, and zoos can reopen to the fully vaccinated with a four square meter cap. Fully vaccinated people can attend ticketed and seated outdoor events with a 500-person cap. Cinemas, theaters, music halls, museums, and galleries can reopen to the fully vaccinated with a four square meter rule, or 75% seated capacity.
Weddings can go ahead (Are they not nice?) with 50 fully vaccinated guests. Dancing is allowed (nice of them), but drinking must occur while sitting down. Evidently, if you stand up, you are probably going to get Covid when you drink. Fifty fully vaccinated guests can attend funerals. Churches and places of worship can open to the fully vaccinated with a four square meter rule in place. Travel can occur with caravan or RV parks and camping grounds open, but only to the fully vaccinated. Carpooling is permitted. Children under 16 can access all outdoor settings, but visit indoor venues only with members of their own household. Masks will remain compulsory in all public indoor settings. In outdoor hospitality venues, only hospitality staff will be required to wear a mask.
Australians are having to face all this, but they are also having to face their own crises of things like immigration, social justice, LGBT issues, and Chinese influence. They are closer to China than we are, just over the curve of the earth there to the north. The UK has similar problems, as do the Canadians, the French, the South Africans, and so many more. And not just Israelite nations, either. Nations of the earth are being impacted greatly by what is happening here in America and in other Israelite countries, and it is starting to spread out to them.
The whole world is changing and not for the better. An objective assessment sees little hope the conditions will improve at all in this age or even return to normal—whatever we think normal is. Yes, we thought things were bad after 9-11. I remember writing some articles and such that prophesied the end of the age back way back then. The 9-11 terrorists killed people and destroyed buildings. But anti-God, leftist totalitarian ideology has carved out the hearts of the people settled into the nations. It has just taken them a short time.
Zephaniah 2, which is the actual subject of today's sermon, can provide some clarity and help on facing and overcoming the issues of the day as Israel's downfall looms. Now, we are going to cover things a little bit differently than we have before when we go through these books. Normally we go straight through, chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, or chapter 1, verse 1,2,3,4 and we go straight through and we hit each verse. But this time, because of the way Zephaniah is set up, and because the purposes of my sermon is to leave you with a stir to action at the end, I am going to reverse things a little bit and do the last three-quarters of Zephaniah 2 first and then go back and we will pick up the first three verses because that is where the stir to action is.
I do this because when Zephaniah wrote this, he was trying to be a cheerleader for Judah and saying," Hey, let's go!" So after he told all the things in chapter 1 about what God is going to do when He brings down His wrath against Judah, he answers the question, "Well, what should we do now?" Because this is prophesied to happen. And then he goes on and he speaks about the other nations around them and how they are going through various problems, and God is going to judge them, too.
But I want to go first to those other nations and their various problems and what God says about them, and then come back and give a general overview of what we can do as Christians. And I think you will see this better once I do it, because it helps us. We are not physical Israel, necessarily, we ae spiritual Israel, and we have to face these problems a little bit differently. And as I will mention as we go forward, we are actually the only ones that can really do anything about it in terms of ourselves. People of physical Israel, the physical people of the earth, they do not have what it takes, actually, to make the changes. They have not been called by God. They have not been given His Spirit. So these instructions apply probably better to us than it does even to the Israelites that are out there.
But at some point there will be a time when the physical Israelites, when God is pounding them down, will say, "I need to change" and some of them will repent. So this will be for them. But it is for us now because we have the foresight from God to be able to do this. So since God has people in both modern Israel and in Gentile nations, we will consider then what is most applicable to Christians everywhere at the end time.
This means we are going to start at Zephaniah 2:4, not in Zephaniah 2:1. The section that runs all the way through the end of the chapter, Zephaniah 2:4-15, imitates an element that is very common to the prophets. Most of the other prophets in the Old Testament have a section like this, where they give God's judgments on the non-Israelite nations. Jeremiah does this, Isaiah does it, Ezekiel does it, of course Amos does it, and I think one of the only outliers to that is Hosea. I do not think he has a chapter devoted to the other nations around Israel. But it is something very common in the books of prophecy. It is not done very much for prophets after the exile, either. But the ones in this time, when God's wrath is starting to come down on Israel and on Judah, have those sections.
But Zephaniah's is most like Amos 1. For three sins and for four, three transgressions and for four, I will do this upon Ammon or I will do this upon Moab. This and that and the other things, for all these terrible things that you did to others and to My people. Well, Zephaniah does not use that same formula but he does use the same method, if you will, in how he chooses the nations to show God's judgment upon. Amos circles around Israel and you always know that he is going to finally come back and hit Israel and Judah because they are the actual target.
So he goes to these ones that are round about and I would imagine the Israelites at the time are saying, "Yeah, these nations are terrible! Look at them, sinners all of them. God should wipe them off the face of the earth." And then, he says, for three transgressions of Israel and for four, and then for three transgressions of Judah and for four, and it hits them like a ton of bricks—they are actually more sinful than these ones that are around them.
Well, Zechariah does the same thing, except he uses the points of the compass—west, east, north, south—and he picks out the nations that are at those compass points and uses them as a representative of the various nations in the region and their sins, what God is going to do to them in terms of His wrath. Now, another thing he did that was different from Amos is is that he gave Judah and Israel's indictment first. And so what it does, is it makes it seem like, yeah, Judah's bad. Israel's bad. God is going to wipe you guys from the face of the earth. But look, here is a little glimmer of hope. Maybe it will boost your attitude a little bit. He is going to do this to Philistia too. Are you not glad you are part of the group? It is just a little bit of "you're not in this alone" type of thing. It probably did not raise their spirits a whole lot. But at least they could feel like their enemies were getting theirs, too.
Now, before we go into it more specifically, there are a few interesting omissions from this list that we might have thought God would have included. And those interesting omissions are: There is no judgment against Edom. You would think that Edom, being the big enemy of Israel from the time back to the Patriarchs, essentially, certainly back to Moses, they would have gotten a mention. But no, they are not mentioned. Neither is Tyre or Sidon where Jezebel came from. You know, those wicked, cruel people there in Lebanon. He does not mention them. And to me, the biggest omission here is Babylon. Babylon is not mentioned at all. And Babylon is the one that would crush Judah.
Let us go ahead and read chapter 2, of course, verses 4-7. We will get the first of these nations that God says He is going to judge.
Zephaniah 2:4-7 "For Gaza shall be forsaken, and Ashkelon desolate; they shall drive out Ashdod at noonday, and Ekron shall be uprooted. Woe to the inhabitants of the seacoast, the nation of the Cherethites! The word of the Lord is against you, O Canaan, land of the Philistines: I will destroy you; so there shall be no inhabitant." The seacoast shall be pastures, with shelters for shepherds and folds for flocks. The coast shall be for the remnant of the house of Judah; they shall feed their flocks there; in the houses of Ashkelon they shall lie down at evening. For the Lord their God will intervene for them, and return their captives.
We need to look upon these, certainly. By starting with Philistia, we can see that all of these nations are what we could call the traditional enemies of either Israel or Judah, or both. The Philistines were a big bugaboo all the way up to the time of David. And there were constant skirmishes and fights between them and Israel. They are likely intended to communicate to the Jews, especially (not just the Philistines, but all of the ones that he chooses here), that God has more than just His people in mind. He is upset at everyone—the whole earth. They have all gone against Him. And like I said, this would be probably far from comforting to the Jews, except under the idea that misery loves company. That is the only way that they could really get any pleasure out of it.
The most positive aspect is that God promises that the remnant of Israel or the remnant of Judah will one day possess those territories. The problem will be solved. They will not have to deal with these nations any longer.
Now, the key idea in the prophecy against Philistia is that it will be so devastated by God that there will not be any sign of civilization. He almost literally wipes the Philistines off the face of the earth. He does not kill them all, but they are no longer there. They are no longer living in any kind of organized culture in that area by the sea. By the way, this is the western one that he picked out. The Philistines were to the west of Judea, so he uses them for the western direction. Its people will be slain or removed, and the countryside will be pasturage for sheep.
There is little here to remark on because, with a few exceptions, the prophecies are pretty straightforward. Zephaniah just tells it like it is. He is a fairly plain speaker and he just says, "Well, people are going to die. God's going to do it. And hey, you could take your flocks down there, wide open spaces." But there are a few things that I could explain here. Now, verse 4 is probably the most interesting of the four verses here. I want to read it again because it is not noticeable in English, but I want you to get the flavor of it again.
Zephaniah 2:4 "For Gaza shall be forsaken, and Ashkelon desolate; they shall drive out Ashdod at noonday, and Ekron shall be uprooted."
These are four lines in this stanza, and each one of them contains a play on words. A pun, if you will, in Hebrew. So you do not get it in English very much because the names of the cities and their punishment sounds similar in Hebrew. So it sounds like he is making a pun on their misfortune. He probably is and has a good chuckle out of it, like I would. But the word for forsaken in Hebrew sounds a little bit like Gaza. The word for desolate in Hebrew sounds a little bit like Ashkelon. The word for drive out sounds like the Hebrew word for Ashdod. And the final one, Ekron and uprooted sound quite a bit alike.
I want to give you the flavor of this in English, but I am going to use American cities instead of these Philistine ones so you get an idea of what this sounded like to the people who were being affected. So I wrote a poem. It goes like this:
Rich Charlotte's blast towers will be shattered at a stroke, and the high plains of Denver dented and desolate. But Portland's protestors will be deported as slaves, the proud of Chicago as cargo to work the mines.
Do you hear the similarity between words like Charlotte and shattered, and Denver and dented, and Portland and deported, and Chicago and cargo? They are approximate. But they give you an idea, make it kind of memorable, of about what is going to happen to those cities. (Please do not take my little poem as a prophecy. I was just working with words. That is what I do.) But that is the feeling of what it would be like if you were to hear Zephaniah giving his prophecy aloud. It would have come across like that. And any Philistines in the audience would probably say, "Bah" but they would remember it and few years on they would feel it, definitely. So that is kind of the way this prophecy works, especially here in verse 4. We miss so much not being able to read and understand Hebrew to any extent, but it is neat to see those every once in a while.
Verse 5 names the Cherethites. They are an ethnic branch, you could call them, of the Philistines. One of the the various ones that came from Crete, down to that area on the southeast corner of the Mediterranean, southwest part of Israel. But the Cherethites, he picks them out for a particular reason among the various ethnic groups of Philistines because their name means "those who cut off." Here is what he is saying in a modern translation. "The nation of the killers! Woe to the inhabitants of the seacoast, the nation of the killers" Those who cut off. That is what happens when you cut somebody off—not in your car, but in terms of of warfare or whatever, you kill them. And so he makes another play on words here saying that they are named properly. They killed lots of Israelites, and God says at the end of the verse, "I will destroy you so there shall be no inhabitants." He is going to give them their due, a life for a life. So that is a pretty good indication of what God has against them.
There is nothing really to show you in verse 6 except perhaps the way the English put it in the English translation here in the New King James. Listen to the alliteration: "The seacoast shall be pastures, with shelters for shepherds and folds for flocks." I think they did a pretty good job of giving a literary idea of how that would flow. Verse 7, however, let us read this.
Zephaniah 2:7 The coast shall be for the remnant of the house of Judah; they shall feed their flocks there; in the houses of Ashkelon they shall lie down at evening. For the Lord their God will intervene for them, and return their captives.
Now, if you go to the commentaries, they almost invariably say this is when Babylon came through. They pretty much wiped everybody off the face of Canaan. And then when the Jews came back from Babylon, they inhabited many of these areas, so they have a very near prophecy. But, knowing what we know, this probably refers to the Second Exodus. Not the first, the return from Babylon, but when the remnant of Israel returns after Christ returns. That is ultimately when the Lord intervenes for Israel and He returns the captives or, as the ESV says, returns or reverses their fortunes. That is the ultimate antitype of the prophecy. But that is when that is going to occur.
We have no indication whatsoever, as far as I can remember from Scripture, that the Philistines are going to be anywhere near that area in the Millennium, or any of their descendants or what have you. That whole area is going to be Israelite for miles and miles and miles around. So, that is when the remnant of Judah will inhabit the seacoast there. There is a little bit of that happening now, but those Philistine areas in the State of Israel are hotbeds of terrorism, and maybe the ancient Philistines are still. . . I am not saying, but it could be.
Zephaniah 2:8-11 "I have heard the reproach of Moab, and the insults of the people of Ammon, with which they have reproached My people, and made arrogant threats against their borders. Therefore, as I live [that is God making an oath here]," says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, "Surely Moab shall be like Sodom, and the people of Ammon like Gomorrah—overrun with weeds and salt pits, and a perpetual desolation. The residue of My people shall plunder them, and the remnant of My people shall possess them." This they shall have for their pride, because they have reproached and made arrogant threats against the people of the Lord of hosts. The Lord will be awesome to them, for He will reduce to nothing all the gods of the earth; people shall worship Him, each one from his place, indeed all the shores of the nations."
We need to remember that Moab and Ammon descended from Lot and his two daughters as they were fleeing from Sodom and Gomorrah. The destruction that happened there and making their way to Zoar and then saying, "Oh, no, this is too close!" and moving out further. They are often treated together in Scripture as they are here in verses 8 through 11.
Now, the insults and the taunts that he mentions in verse 8 are probably not any specific taunts or insults that they made against Israel or Judah. But probably God just bundles them all together because we have, if we look back through Old Testament history, that they were nagging at Israel and Judah from the very beginning. They were some of the nations that would not let them pass through on their way to the Promised Land. And there were constant fights, off and on but, it was more on than off in terms of their conflict. I think they always felt jealous of Judah and Israel. They were bigger states, had more power, and of course, they eventually had a lot more wealth and a bigger footprint on the world. But God said, "Hey, I've had enough of you guys. You've done this for for centuries and it's got to stop."
It is ironic, I think, that God compares them with Sodom and Gomorrah. Were they not the ones in the loins of their father that were fleeing from Sodom and Gomorrah? But God makes us go back and think about all that, that these are products of the zeitgeist or the way of life of Sodom and Gomorrah. They were children of incest, and it is evident that God thinks that they carried this taint with them all the way from Sodom and Gomorrah until this time. It is something that never went away, and probably it is because their mothers and their father taught them these things. I cannot think that it is any other way that it became part of their lifestyle, and they just carried it to the lands of what became Moab and Ammon.
So he said, because their sins are like Sodom and Gomorrah, God is going to treat them like Sodom and Gomorrah. They are going to be desolate with all these pits, as he called them, overrun with weeds and salt pits and a perpetual desolation. It is like Sodom and Gomorrah. So, God promises them that their fate will be like those wicked cities which they had carried with them, the zeitgeist of which they carried with them. And he also mentions that His people will take their wealth and their land too and of course, Israel will, in the Millennium, spill over into those areas, too, as they are just south of Bashan, which was part of Manasseh during those days of Israel. We always were told to remember it as B game. So you had Bashan and Gilead there, Ammon, Moab. They were all there on the eastern side of the River Jordan. So that area, which is basically the middle part of the highlands, the plateaus on the east side of Jordan, will become Israelite territory. Right now I think it is still in the hands of Jordan, part of it. So he says that at one point they will possess those lands.
Again, in verse 11, it hints at the end time Day of the Lord, not just the one that happened back there in the 6th century. It is when He destroys, he says, all foreign gods with terrifying fury, where he says there, He is going to be awesome against them. That is a great way to put it. "I am just going to be My awesome self and destroy all the gods of the earth." It also kind of hints at the Millennium, too, because that is the only time when all nations will worship Him. It has not happened yet, so this must be projecting into the time of the end and then into the Millennium itself.
Let us pick up verse 12 here. That is all that the Ethiopians get, one verse.
Zephaniah 2:12 "You Ethiopians also, you shall be slain by My sword."
That is kind of insulting, is it not? "Hey you! You guys way down south, you are going to get it too," and that is about basically all that is said there. Now he does say "You Ethiopians also" so we could assume that what He said about Ammon and Moab applies to them as well. I do not know how far we can take that, but that is kind of the way it sounds. This word under Ethiopia or Ethiopians is Kushites, or Kush, the people of Kush, which has traditionally been understood to be Ethiopia.
Now, normally Ethiopia is a nation in the area of the Upper Nile. That is way south of Egypt, where the Nile begins. The Nile flows north, so the Upper Nile is in the south and the Lower Nile is in the north. You almost have to have a shot or two to understand that, but that is the way it works. So they are down below Egypt. But they had become strong and they had taken over Egypt. The dynasty that was in Egypt at the time was an Ethiopian dynasty so that is why they are closer than they would normally have been. They would have been a far-flung country if it were not for the fact that they were actually ruling in Egypt, which was very close. So this is the southern one that he is mentioning of all the compass points—Kush.
They must have been a thorn in Judah's side during this time, much like the Moabites and Ammonites proved. So God says you are going to get it too. I am going to send the sword against you. And the sword he sent were Nebuchadnezzar's Babylonians and they crushed that dynasty in Egypt a few decades later, after this. He does not mention the Babylonians, but there is a hint that the Babylonian's are in mind in the future.
Let us read the final verses here of Zephaniah 2. Finally, he gets to Assyria.
Zephaniah 2:13-15 And He will stretch out His hand against the north [he tells us which direction we are supposed to look at], destroy Assyria, and make Nineveh a desolation, as dry as the wilderness. The herds shall lie down in their midst, every beast of the nation. Both the pelican and the bittern shall lodge in the capitals of her pillars; their voice shall sing in the windows; desolation shall be at the threshold; for He will lay bare the cedar work. This is the rejoicing city that dwelt securely, that said in her heart, "I am it [That is actually a very bad translation. It should be, "I AM."], and there is none besides me." How has she become a desolation, a place for beasts to lie down! Everyone who passes by her shall hiss and shake his fist.
Here he gets to Assyria and he focuses in on the capital city of Nineveh. What makes this so important here is that Assyria was the dominant empire at the time. It held sway over that whole area. It actually had some sway even down as far as Egypt. And the thought that it would be destroyed and desolate would have sounded idiotic to anybody living in that time. What do you mean? Assyria is the most powerful empire this world has ever seen and you are saying it is going to be desolate, ruined, and all that is going to live there are wild animals, birds? The same could be said, that it was idiotic, against God's prophecy that huge Nineveh, it says here, will be dry as the wilderness. That is right at the end of verse 13, meaning as dry as the desert.
Now that does not surprise us, because we realize that Nineveh was right in the middle of the desert. But the people of the time understood Nineveh to be well-watered because someone had devised a very intricate and remarkable, actually, irrigation system for the whole city. It drew water right out of the river, put it through the whole city, and they lived like kings there. But God says it will not be long before that city will be dry and in ruins and only birds and the wild animals live there. And it happened. It happened very quickly. I think it was in 612 BC when Nineveh was destroyed by the Babylonians. It was somewhere right around there. But this is before then. Remember, I said this was probably in the 620s time that he wrote it. So it was only about a decade or so later that Nineveh lay in ruins.
As we go through this, especially as we get to verse 15 which tells us what the Ninevites problem was. And their problem combines careless abandon (that is kind of what the meaning of that is: the rejoicing city. They are they are always looking for a good time), complacency (that is with this that they dwelt securely. They were very complacent that they could not be defeated.), self-sufficiency (that is saying in her heart, I AM and there is none beside me. I can do everything myself. I am strong.), and all of these at once gives us the fourth one which is overweening pride (just huge, huge amounts of pride), so much that they make themselves to be gods because they are speaking the words that God alone can say, "I AM, and there is none beside Me."
Let us go to Isaiah the 43rd chapter. This is something God claims for Himself, and it is no wonder that He destroyed Nineveh for thinking like this. We will just pick up one or two verses through the next three chapters here.
Isaiah 43:11 [God speaking] "I, even I, am the Lord, and besides Me there is no Savior."
Isaiah 44:6 "Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts: 'I am the First and I am the Last; besides Me there is no God.'"
Isaiah 45:5-7 "I am the Lord, and there is no other; there is no God besides Me. I will gird you [He is speaking of Cyrus], though you have not known Me, that they may know from the rising of the sun to its setting that there is none besides Me. I am the Lord, and there is no other; I form the light and create darkness, I make peace and create calamity; I, the Lord, do all these things."
Which is, we are supposed to understand, "I alone do all these things. No one else can do them."
So, He struck Nineveh down because they got way, way too big for their britches. They were very powerful. They were very cruel. They thought themselves to be on top of the world, and they started to think so much of themselves that they became gods in their own mind and He had to do something about that.
This same self-sufficient and proud attitude was repeated by Babylon. They did the same thing. If you want to check out Isaiah 47:7, Babylon is shown there saying something very similar. This is carried forward into the New Testament about Babylon the Great, where she says, "I am a queen and I will not suffer." That is Revelation 18:7. Now the one we have to worry about in terms of this particular attitude like the Ninevites were showing, is the one that is found in Revelation 3. That should clue you in. These are the letters to the seven churches, and this is the particular one said to Laodicea and notice the similarity to what the Ninevites said.
Revelation 3:17 [Jesus says here] "Because you say, 'I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing' [not even God]—and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked."
Despite all the proofs to the contrary, they still consider themselves wealthy and self-sufficient. So this is where it hits us right between the eyes that, hey, we could have the same attitude, too. And we need to be very careful because we can see from Zephaniah's prophecy and the actual history of the times that God does not take kindly to that. This is just something to remember from this prophecy in Zephaniah 2.
Now, this is where we jump way back to the first part of the chapter. What we have seen so far is that the Day of the Lord is a worldwide phenomenon. It is not just going to happen to Israel and Judah, but they are at its center. God's eyes are still focused on them, but because He has to punish Israel, He also has to punish everybody, especially at the time of the end, in preparation for His Son's coming. It has got to happen and so we see that no one escapes God's wrath. Sin is sin. God is a God of justice, and He must punish for unrepentant sin. And He does. It may take a long, long time for it to come, but at some point it boils over, and He has to punish, not only His people, but everybody else, because He is equitable, He is fair in the way He dispenses His judgment.
So the Gentile nations will be punished for their sins, just as the Israelites will. But, as Amos says in Amos 3:2, among all the earth's nations, only the Israelites had a relationship with God. You, of all the families of the earth, have I known," He says. And so He has to punish them more severely because they should have known better. They said "yes" to the covenant. It was sprinkled in blood. They were circumcised, so they had entered it, and they were accountable. But they failed. And so, in their failing, God has to hold them more accountable. This is the very same principle where it says in James 3, the teachers are more accountable than others in the church. Well, in this case, it is a whole nation is more accountable because of what they understand about God's way.
And because God's judgment will fall, it is a certainty and it cannot be stopped at this point because the people have overrun the tipping point. There is no going back. There will be an accounting for their sins. The question has to be asked, then, if this is the case, what should God's people do? God's answer here in Zephaniah 2:1-3 applies to His spiritual people best and the reason for that is because they know more and have been given His Spirit and so they can respond to it. But on the surface, it also applies to the physical nation. But, I will repeat, only God's spiritual people have what it takes to do what needs to be done now, at the present time.
The physical Israelites will only begin to return to God once His wrath against them begins. So right now they think they are fine. They are blind. There are small pockets of people who think that things are not going well, but they certainly do not think of it in apocalyptic terms like this, that God is angry with them and He is going to punish them to within an inch of their life. Or maybe He will take the inch, too, because He is angry they have gone so far from Him. But then, at that point, like I said, in the Great Tribulation, there will be some who turn. There will be some to heed the warning here, take the advice of Zephaniah in chapter 2. I want to read this whole short section first, then go through it like we did the other other sections.
Zephaniah 2:1-3 Gather yourselves together, yes, gather together, O undesirable nation, before the decree is issued, before the day passes like chaff, before the Lord's fierce anger comes upon you, before the day of the Lord's anger comes upon you! Seek the Lord, all you meek of the earth, who have upheld His justice. Seek righteousness, seek humility. It may be that you will be hidden in the day of the Lord's anger.
Very interesting section. That is why I left it for now (and left myself 18 minutes).
This is right in the middle of the whole book, and I think it is the high point other than the good news that he gives in Zephaniah 3. But I think this is the high point of his rhetoric, if you will.
Let us just start with the first word, "Gather." This is Hebrew uasas. This is the word that the Hebrews would have used when they were talking about gathering sticks, stubble for burning. It is very interesting he uses it for people here. It is like they are being gathered for a funeral pyre or for death by fire. What is also interesting is that the word uasas, is used twice. "Gather, yes, . . . gather," he says. This makes the command intensive. It is very urgent. He said. "Gather and assemble now!" "Gather! Gather! Come on! Come on! Let's go! Gather!" You understand what I am talking about here? There is no time to waste.
However, it is a gathering of doomed people about to be thrown in the fire so it carries this passionate urgency. "Doing this is your last hope before God's wrath descends like a hammer," or like a lightning bolt or a ball of fire, however you want to look at it. "Look, you don't have time. God has already given you the indictment" there in chapter 1. "He's seen your sins. You've been found out. You're not in a good position. Gather together!"
He also calls them here an "undesirable nation," undesirable to God at the time. But shameless might be a better translation. That is what the English Standard Version has here, "Oh, shameless nation." Because the root of this word really means "foolish" or "stupid." And he calls them that, foolish or stupid, for so brazenly breaking their covenant with their own God. "What a bunch of dumb heads you are," he says. "You're worse than the Gentiles that you would break with your own God." "Dummies! Don't you have a brain in your head?"
It emphasizes here how low they have fallen. If the gods were true gods, which god would want them? They broke their trust with their their own God. How stupid can you get? So no one likes them because they are foolish and stupid. They do not want to hang around them. They want nothing to do with them. And by the way, the word nation here, "O undesirable nation," that is goy. Can you believe that? He calls his own people goy, meaning, "You guys are a pagan, Gentile nation. You're foreigners to Me." He is really laying it on them here. He is insulting them down to their underwear, if you want to put it that way. (I just did.) But he is letting them know that they are just a foolish, stupid people. They did not see the benefit of having a relationship with God.
Let us go to Joel 1. He tells us what the gathering is all about.
Joel 1:13-14 [he says] Gird yourselves and lament, you priests; wail, you who minister before the altar; come, lie all night in sackcloth, you who ministered to my God; for the grain offering and the drink offering are withheld from the house of your God. Consecrate a fast, call a sacred assembly; gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land into the house of the Lord your God, and cry out to the Lord.
Joel 2:12-17 "Now, therefore," says the Lord, "Turn to Me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning." So rend your heart, and not your garments; return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness; and He relents from doing harm. Who knows if He will turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind Him—a grain offering and a drink offering for the Lord your God? Blow the trumpet in Zion, consecrate a fast, call a sacred assembly; gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the altars, gather the children and the nursing babes; let the bridegroom go out from his chamber, and the bride from her dressing room. Let the priests, who ministered to the Lord, weep between the porch and the altar; let them say, "Spare your people, O Lord, and do not give Your heritage to reproach, that the nations should rule over them. Why should they say among the peoples, 'Where is their God?'"
This is the kind of thing that Zephaniah is urging the people to do. He is urging them, shouting at them, insulting them, trying to get them to move, to return to God with weeping and repentance and fasting, to seek God's forgiveness. Whatever it takes to get them to be motivated to do any of these things, he was willing to do it.
In using the term, "O undesirable nation," specifically the word nation there, Zephaniah implies not just individual wholehearted repentance, but the whole nation repenting. This is interesting because, in the end time, when this actually happens, those who repent come back to the land, and He gives it to them. Those who do not repent, die. They get chewed up in the Great Tribulation and the Day of the Lord. So both prophets call on all the people. Notice how he went through the different categories of people. He wants all of them to turn back to God, or at least a majority of them, or the effort is doomed.
What will happen? The nation will just kick the can down the road, and God will have to fall on the next generation. That is what they did during Josiah's time. We cannot forget the context here. Zephaniah was probably already seeing that even if they did do a revival there in Judah, it would only last for a short time because the king's sons would succeed Josiah and it would go back to the way it was, and doom would have to fall on the nation then.
So he is using this experience to show that the whole nation needs to turn. This has to be a corporate effort. Everybody needs to do it. It is a call for the entire country to get its act together, pronto. Go! Meet God at His Temple and seek forgiveness and change. That is what he tells them to do. Joel repeats it.
Zephaniah 2:2 Before the decree is issued, or the day passes like chaff, before the Lord's fierce anger comes upon you, before the day of the Lord's anger comes upon you!
This is the timing of the gathering. We can use one word: Now! Because it is coming. If you are going to do it before all of this happens and it is right there—Christ is right about to step over the threshold and fulfill His wrath upon the people—then we better get busy. There is no time to waste, so the reaction, the gathering must be immediate. As soon as we see the need, do it. Like I said, there is no time to waste and procrastination is fatal.
His reference to chaff there in the second line is an intimation of, "before you are blown away as worthless by the hot wind of God's wrath." He says, "You're the chaff." That is what is blown away when you throw the grain in the air, you get rid of all this unnecessary stuff. You will be that unnecessary stuff that God destroys if you do not change. I mean, the hits just keep on coming. He calls them every name in the book to try to get them to see their state.
Zephaniah 2:3 Seek the Lord, all you meek of the earth, who have upheld His justice. Seek righteousness, seek humility. It may be that you will be hidden in the day of the Lord's anger.
I do not know if you noticed this, but going through these three verses Zephaniah does a lot of repeating of words. Here he repeats seek. Seek, seek, seek. He says that three times, and he wants to make it the unmistakable focal point of his advice. Seek! Seek the Lord, especially.
In verse 1, he used gather twice. He says, gather, gather stupid nation. And then in verse 2, he uses before four times: before, before, before, before the Day of God's wrath. Then here in verse 3, he says, seek, seek, seek a relationship with God in righteousness and humility. He is giving you the theme of each verse, and it all piles together as this urgent call to repent. He has to do this because he is speaking to a stupid, mentally deficient people, as he called them in the first verse. We have got to make things simple, like you are a little child and you do not understand. So he has to make it really simple. Just remember these words. Gather, before, and seek, and you will remember the instructions.
Seek the Lord is Old Testament shorthand for obey and serve God. To do this properly you need to also seek righteousness, which he mentions there. Righteousness is instruction in right doing or godly living. And then, he also mentioned seek humility; that is, knowing our place of dependence before God. So when you say seek, it is a very active word. It implies practice or movement or effort or pursuit of something, whatever it is that you are seeking. It is not just knowledge. There are millions of Americans who know a lot about the Bible, but they are not seeking. Not really. They are not doing anything with it. It is certainly not changing their character. That is what God wants His knowledge to do. He wants us to take it in and allow it to motivate us to have a relationship with Him, primarily.
So what it means here, in terms of the Old Testament and the New as well, is actively fulfilling our part in the New Covenant or in the covenant, let us just put it that way. It means actively fulfilling our part in the covenant, thus being dynamically involved in our relationship with God. Not being passive, not just knowing, not being an intellectual about it. It means being wholeheartedly for God and with God, and doing the things that God would want us to do. So he instructs us to make God our priority and wholeheartedly draw closer to Him. And if we do this, we will demonstrate that we are the meek of the earth. Notice he said that: "Seek the Lord, all you meek of the earth." If you seek the Lord, then you will be showing that you actually are one of the meek of the earth.
The same thing goes with upholding His justice. If we uphold His justice or if we seek the Lord, we will end up upholding His justice in our families, in the church, in our communities, what have you. It is interesting here. Just to go back to the idea of the meek of the earth. Jesus draws upon this in His Beatitudes. The first three Beatitudes can be seen to have this idea behind it. Let us go ahead and read them.
Matthew 5:3-5 "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth."
So this is the attitude you have to have in order to turn properly and seek God.
In a way, verse 3 kind of ends with a whimper when you think it would be something more bombastic. But Zephaniah writes, "It may be that you will be hidden in the day of the Lord." It is conditional. "It may be." I think ESV has "perhaps" there. It means that being hidden in the Day of the Lord is not a promise, but it is a possibility. Baptist theologian John D. W. Watts puts it this way. "There is no promise, but it is a chance worth taking, since no other option offers a possibility of survival."
It is their only hope. They have got to gather. They have got to do it before the Lord's anger comes, and they must seek the Lord. They need to do it now. It is the only way that any good will occur. Now, Zephaniah alludes to the meaning of his own name here. Remember, I said Zephaniah's name means "Ya has hidden." "Ya has concealed." The word's root means to hide oneself or others for the sake of protection from life-threatening situations. It is not total escape. It is shelter amidst the carnage. It is kind of like the Israelites in Egypt when they were sheltered from the Death Angel's work. He passed over them if they were covered by the blood. And so there was a bit of deliverance there, but they were hidden behind the door. That is kind of the idea here.
This also may be an allusion to the sealed of Israel during the time of the end in Revelation 7 or even the innumerable multitude. Hard to say where these people will land, in which group, maybe both. I do not know. But this is an idea that God will hide them. He will put them in a secret place of some sort, or He will make it so that the devastations of the time pass over.
Let us conclude in Colossians 3 where the apostle Paul tells us something very similar, but it is more hopeful for us than it will be for the children of Israel. He says,
Colossians 3:1-4 If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. For you died [meaning in baptism], and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, then you will also appear with Him in glory.
Zephaniah's instructions are primarily aimed at the physical nation, for the people of his time, and of course, in antitype for the people of this time, with the Day of the Lord approaching. But we need to take our cue from them, too. The apostle Paul puts it in New Testament terms for us, but the instruction is the same. Seek God, seek heavenly, spiritual things, things of eternal value. Fix your mind, he says. Make it your goal that you would never sway from. Fix your mind on things over the sun, not under the sun. Fix your minds on those things where Jesus is, on the principles and values of God Himself.
If we do, the apostle Paul makes it very clear what our reward is. We will appear with Christ in eternal glory at His second coming. And is that not a wonderful thing to work for?
RTR/aws/drm