Be Glad

Introduction

If you have your Bibles please turn to

Zephaniah 3:14–20 (NIV)

Sing, Daughter Zion;

shout aloud, Israel!

Be glad and rejoice with all your heart,

Daughter Jerusalem!

The Lord has taken away your punishment,

he has turned back your enemy.

The Lord, the King of Israel, is with you;

never again will you fear any harm.

On that day

they will say to Jerusalem,

“Do not fear, Zion;

do not let your hands hang limp.

The Lord your God is with you,

the Mighty Warrior who saves.

He will take great delight in you;

in his love he will no longer rebuke you,

but will rejoice over you with singing.”

“I will remove from you

all who mourn over the loss of your appointed festivals,

which is a burden and reproach for you.

At that time I will deal

with all who oppressed you.

I will rescue the lame;

I will gather the exiles.

I will give them praise and honor

in every land where they have suffered shame.

At that time I will gather you;

at that time I will bring you home.

I will give you honor and praise

among all the peoples of the earth

when I restore your fortunes

before your very eyes,”

says the Lord.

When Zephaniah gave this prophecy to the Isralites , the country was going through a tough time and a time of reform. Zephaniah was the prophet during the reign of King Josiah. It was King Josiah who found the book of God’s commands and it was Josiah who was attempting to reform the country back away from idolatry. However we can change all the exterior things that we want to but if there isn’t an internal change, a heart change then all the exterior changes won’t matter one bit.

In a few of our small groups we talked about this but I have really been thinking about this a lot of the past few days. I think Christmas time more than any other time of the year we can put forth the appearance of having a good life. We can buy people presents, we can go to company Christmas parties, if your company still does them. You may even attend church on Christmas eve. Maybe your car radio is stuck on christmas music. It is so easy to put on all the appreances of this time of year and yet we can be spiritually dead. Presents are fun, everyone loves giving and recieving presents, but Jesus is the real reason we are here. He is the reason we are here each and every week. He is the hope that we have.

The hope and the heart change is what really matters when following Jesus. It is through the cross and it is through His blood that we are cleansed. The true joy of the season is the Son of God leaving that throne room to come to us.

The other thing that I have been really thinking about is not having Jesus in my life. I can’t go back to not having Him in my life. I am not strong enough to do that because then my hope would be gone. I talk about the culture a lot, while there are things that are upsetting, most of the time I am just sad for people that do not believe in a Soverign God that sent His Son, born in a manger and would go to die for our sins. I don’t know what they have hope in. The broken world that we live in is tough, it can be down right difficult. Yet every morning I wake up, I know that God is there with me, Jesus is in my heart. I know that Jesus will return one day. That is where my hope comes from every single day. Jesus is the only source of sustained hope in this world.

So we are going to look at 3 points this morning from these verses:

Be Glad and Rejoice

The Lord is with you

The Reward

Zephaniah 3:14–15 (NIV)

Sing, Daughter Zion;

shout aloud, Israel!

Be glad and rejoice with all your heart,

Daughter Jerusalem!

The Lord has taken away your punishment,

he has turned back your enemy.

The Lord, the King of Israel, is with you;

never again will you fear any harm.

Be glad and rejoice! Sing and shout aloud. Especially when it comes to the Old testament people have a tendacy to look at God as this kind of angry God , handing out punishments but nothing could be further from the truth. God is a gracious God and a merciful God. We often keep our eyes pointed toward heaven which we should but God wants us to have a full life here. He wants us to rejoice in Him.

Leviticus 23 describes the Sabbath together with seven feasts, namely the Feast of Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Feast of Firstfruits, the Feast of the Harvest, the Feast of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement and the Feast of Tabernacles.

7 feasts, 7 times to get together and celebrate the Lord. I want to share with you a scripture about King David.

1 Chronicles 15:16 (NIV)

David told the leaders of the Levites to appoint their fellow Levites as musicians to make a joyful sound with musical instruments: lyres, harps and cymbals.

After they had returned the Ark back to where Israel, David has a huge party celebrating the return of the Lord. You know what is even cooler is that the musicians are listed in the Biblical record. Now Why would God wants us to know that information? Because we should rejoice, and here are the people that rejoiced. David even dances. The dance because the ark of the Lord was back in their possesion, Lord was with them. There was no reason to fear. When the Lord is with you, we no longer need to fear anything in this world. So let us look at our next point

Zephaniah 3:17–19 (NIV)

The Lord your God is with you,

the Mighty Warrior who saves.

He will take great delight in you;

in his love he will no longer rebuke you,

but will rejoice over you with singing.”

“I will remove from you

all who mourn over the loss of your appointed festivals,

which is a burden and reproach for you.

At that time I will deal

with all who oppressed you.

I will rescue the lame;

I will gather the exiles.

I will give them praise and honor

in every land where they have suffered shame.

If these verses do not fill your heart with hope, then I don’t know what will. The Mighty Warrior saves, Jesus Christ saves. Jesus Christ is the might warrior that goes to the cross for us. He has victory over sin. He wins the war that we cannot. He finishes what satan started all the way back in Genesis 3 with the fall.

God will rescue us. This is the greatest part of the hope we have in Jesus. Jesus is the one that recuses us from the enemy, from ourselves, from sin. We look for someone or something to rescue us. It won't come from the natural world. The only thing that can rescue us is God and he's already executed that plan

The appointed festivals, the loss of those. This was dealing with the Israelites that were spread out in the ancient world, however it has modern day implactions as well. There are places in this world that Christians cannot celebrate Christmas. In America, you can see the start of it, Christmas is replaced with holiday. Easter is less of a holiday than it used to be even just a few years ago nevermind 50 years ago.

God takes care of all of this, God will deal with those, as we see with the tributilations but God will rescue us and He gathers all of His people.

Which brings us to the reward

Zephaniah 3:20 (NIV)

At that time I will gather you;

at that time I will bring you home.

I will give you honor and praise

among all the peoples of the earth

when I restore your fortunes

before your very eyes,”

says the Lord.

God will always restore those that are faithful to Him. No matter what is happening in the world. No matter what society has started to allow, no matter how far people stray from God , there is always a remnant and that remnant is always restored. This is the hope that we need to hang on to as we learn to navigate this modern world. This is especially the hope that we need to instill in our kids

Revelation 21:2–4 (NIV)

I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

John sees this at the end. God gathers all His people but not just a gathering of believers. God will be with His eople. Again we go back to where a person’s hope lies. This is what hope is, but it isn’t just blind hope. People say that you must have blind faith but I don’t necessarliy believe that. Sure, I haven’t seen God or Jesus so physically speaking it is blind faith. But God has given us the Bible that is full of prophecy that has come to pass and is full of what God has done. So when we look at Zephaniah’s prophecy we can trust it because Jesus fulfills them. So it isn’t just a blind faith, it is actually a well informed faith and hope that is built on the foundation of Jesus, God is with us and we just need to open our eyes.

Conclusion

Zephaniah gave the Israelites a picture of what was to come. For us, it gives verification to what happened with Jesus and what is to come when God gathers us with Him once again. It is a verification of hope. God does not leave us out here on a limb, no He gave us the Bible. What we have to do is open our eyes , open our hearts to what the Lord is doing in the world around us but also in our lives.

Let us pray