The Saviour’s Demand to Revere Him

Introduction

What does it mean to revere something?

How do you know if you are revering something or someone?

Definition: feel deep respect or admiration for (something)

Originally it meant to fear

Transition: In this next few verses, we see a the Saviours Call to revere Him

The Saviours Call to Revere Him Vs. 7a

Be silent before the Lord God! There is no self defence. You’re quiet because there’s nothing you can say. This is language that causes us to stand there and think about who God is. To be reverent to him.

Why?

Application: It’s easy to think: “yes, God’s going to get all these people the be quiet.” But right here, in this passage, God is talking to his people, not those who aren’t. So what is about to be said here is like having God’s figure pointing right at me and right at you. If you and I walk away from this thinking or talking about all the other people here, we've missed the point.

The Lord has prepared a sacrifice

Transition: The saviour calls us to revere him, to stand silent before him.

The Saviour tells us why he is to be revered Vs. 7b-18

His people are to revere him? Vs. 7b - 13

The day of the Lord is near When we think about it what this day is, it’s pointing to a future point When God will eradicate all evil from the world and all those who rebelled against him

“The Day of The Lord” is an outgrowth of the reality that God is holy and just.

prepared a sacrifice We have to see this. If God is just, then he must judge his sin. God must appease his just wrath, whether on the sinner or on the substitute.

God calls us to revere him as the living God by honouring, obeying, exalting, worshipping, and trusting Him for our salvation.

The big word is: Atonement. What is it?

vs. 9 leaps over the threshold, it is a pagan routine, possibly a Philistine practice (cf. ). Violence and fraud are evil acts in opposition to the healing and truth that come from truly worshiping God. The people where not revering God and it was leading to live a life that was counter to a life that worshipped God.

would God be anymore pleased with what you do on Monday morning or Saturday evenings in a land dotted with Christian churches.

Is the life you portray here on Sunday, the same life you live throughout your week?

Worshiping the Lord meant a great deal more than performing ritual. The prophets could even think that worship could affect relationships with other people and the practices of everyday life.

a few years ago, I remember Steph confronted me about how she felt that the front our family gave on Sunday wasn't the same throughout the week.

Vs. 10 Fish Gates…Second Quarter The geography of the area meant that most trouble would come from the north. This area was a sort of a land bridge. All commerce wold come from the north. God’s judgement of his people would happen right at the heart of what they put their trust in.

Do you hear the wailing as their security is wipped out. Can you imagine It?

Vs. 12 with lamps No sin won't be found out. There is no hiding.

Complacent who are complacent these are the people who saying that there’s a God, but ignore God’s lordship. These are the people who are self-secure and undisturbed.

“Complacent” or are thickening on the dregs It’s a wine-making processes. When fermented wine was poured from one jug to another to separate the wine from the sediment. If the wine sits to long , it gets thick and is ruined. This picture is talking about people who have lived in uninterrupted prosperity and have come complacent.

this is called “practical atheism”

People have deified themselves. They are thinking that their might and what they can do with their own hands have gotten them weathly. They have become so use their their lives that they couldn’t see what they had become. The people don’t revere God and it comes through in their actions.

This is the theme here. God’s people didnt revere him. They didn’t think God won't fulfill his promises of blessing or curse . They ignored the lordship of God.

They recognized the existence of God, but they lived as deists, believing God would never fulfill his promises of blessing or curse, “good” or “ill”.

We stand here and wonder if God will do good or evil all the time. “God when will you do something.”

Instead of leading to deeper humility and gratitude for mercy, God’s delayed punishment had resulted in the people’s failure to fear God’s wrath or to desire his blessing. Yet such practical atheism is foolish (). God’s patience did not mean he would automatically clear the guilty. It means he’s being patient.

Psalm 14:1 ESV

The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds; there is none who does good.

DeRouchie, J. S. (2018). Zephaniah. In I. M. Duguid, J. M. Hamilton Jr., & J. Sklar (Eds.), Daniel–Malachi (Vol. VII, p. 579). Wheaton, IL: Crossway.

how can we think God won't do what he says he will. How can we pray that God bless us when we have been acting in disobedienc?

There’s no such thing as an absentee God. Nothing escapes God’s attention. You see that in

Psalm 139:1 ESV

O Lord, you have searched me and known me!

Vs. 13 everything they have put security in will be destroyed.

Application: God’s judgement starts with where the people's hearts are. God comes and destroys the things we have revered and demands that he is the only one is revered. His people have ignored

Transition: It's not just his people that he calls to revere, but the whole world. There's a shift in scope that happens in verse 14.

The world is to revere him? Vs. 14 - 18

Vs. 14. Great Even thought this is talking about the punishment that came in 586 BC, this is pointing to the final judgement that comes through the return of Jesus. ()

Near and Hastening fast

Vs. 15 -16 A day of wrath is that day with amazing clarity, there are details of the horror of God’s judgement.

against the fortified cities even the most secure stronghold are unable to withstand God’s destructive power.

Vs. 16

Vs. 17 - 18 Distress on mankind the nature of the punishment

walk like the blind a covenant curse () points to the spiritual inability to see God’s beauty and one’s own neediness.

Neither silver nor their gold.

Whether “silver” and “gold” refer to money (v. 11; ) or to the idols shaped from them (, ; ; ), no form of earthly or spiritual power can rescue the rebel from God’s wrath (cf. ). Such salvation comes “not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ” ().

DeRouchie, J. S. (2018). Zephaniah. In I. M. Duguid, J. M. Hamilton Jr., & J. Sklar (Eds.), Daniel–Malachi (Vol. VII, p. 580). Wheaton, IL: Crossway.

1 Peter 1:18–19 ESV

knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.

In the fire of his jealousy Scripture often associates God’s jealousy with his blazing desire to be worshiped as the only God (e.g., ; ; ). Like a just judge committed to what is right, God’s consuming passion for the honour of his name will soon burst forth in unquenchable fires of wrath against the ungodly of the earth. Jealous in the Bible is talking about taking something that God desevers and then giving it to someone or something else. We often think of jealousy as we want something that someone has, but the Bible uses the word differently.

Scripture often associates Yahweh’s jealousy with his blazing desire to be worshiped as the only God (e.g., ; ; ). Like a just judge committed to what is right, Yahweh’s consuming passion for the honor of his name will soon burst forth in unquenchable fires of wrath against the ungodly of the earth

DeRouchie, J. S. (2018). Zephaniah. In I. M. Duguid, J. M. Hamilton Jr., & J. Sklar (Eds.), Daniel–Malachi (Vol. VII, p. 581). Wheaton, IL: Crossway.

Illustration: If a husband sees another man flirting with his wife, he is right to be jealous, for only he has the right to flirt with his wife. This type of jealousy is not sinful. Rather, it is entirely appropriate. Being jealous for something that God declares to belong to you is good and appropriate. Jealousy is a sin when it is a desire for something that does not belong to you. Worship, praise, honor, and adoration belong to God alone, for only He is truly worthy of it. Therefore, God is rightly jealous when worship, praise, honor, or adoration is given to idols. This is precisely the jealousy the apostle Paul described in 2 Corinthians 11:2, “I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy...”

Application: There's a reality that we must point people to the reality of what happens when we don't revere God.

So What?

Let these things move you to revere God.

How aweful would it be to have the source of all power and the upholder of all life working against you. Having learned that the living God is approaching in anger, we must reverently quiet our speech, hearts, and activity before the Sovereign One, and, like Zephaniah, call others to do the same ().

DeRouchie, J. S. (2018). Zephaniah. In I. M. Duguid, J. M. Hamilton Jr., & J. Sklar (Eds.), Daniel–Malachi (Vol. VII, p. 581). Wheaton, IL: Crossway.

I think two things come from reading this: either our hearts become hard(er), maybe shack our fist at God and cry “how dare you” or we become quiet.

Be amazed of God’s gift of a substitute sacrifice

In the book of Leviticus, the sacrifice that was laid out was about God punishing a substitue rather than the sinner. That’s what we see when we look at the cross. Jesus was our substitute. When the Bible say, “Behold the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world,” Jesus, God incarnate stepped down from his thrown to become the sacrifice for us. The cross, God’s war against evil manifested itself in his cursing Christ on behalf of the elect (; ).

Isaiah 53:11 ESV

Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.

Galatians 3:13 ESV

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”—

DeRouchie, J. S. (2018). Zephaniah. In I. M. Duguid, J. M. Hamilton Jr., & J. Sklar (Eds.), Daniel–Malachi (Vol. VII, p. 581). Wheaton, IL: Crossway.

Gospel Move: The Gospel is wrapped in these words, that Christ Died for your sins and rose again.

Christ—the gospel is about the second member of the trinity, Jesus Christ. This long promised Messiah was born of the virgin Mary and lived a sinless life. The last three years of that life were spent doing goo and teaching people about God. (You can read all about that in a place like the Gospel of Mark.)

Died—Jesus, both fully human and fully man, was put to death on a Roman cross. He really died. To the point that when His body was taken down from the cross it was buried in a Jewish tomb. This death of Jesus was not an accident, however.

For—sometimes the most important words in our Bible are the smallest ones. The word, “for” means “in the place of.” The death Jesus died was substitutionary. He was dying in the place of or for someone else. This gets explained further with the next two words.

Our—When Paul wrote to the Corinthians, he was writing to Christians. That is why he tells them that Jesus died for “our” sins. The death that Jesus died was for all those who repent (turn away from sin) and believe (have faith in Jesus alone to save them).

Sins—All of us were born with an inclination to sin. All of us have sinned in real time. God told the first man, Adam, that if he sinned, he would surely die. The penalty for all sin is death. The message of the Gospel is that Jesus came to die in our place. He took our sins on Himself and suffered the punishment of God in our place.

And now the full hand raised.

“….and was raised.”

And Was Raised—God’s giant stamp of approval on what Jesus did for us was raising Him from the dead. Jesus was resurrected on the third day and appeared to many of His disciples to prove it. By being raised from the dead, God made clear that the full price for sins had been paid by His Son. Now, the only thing left is for people like you and me to respond to this good news. For, the message of the Gospel is not information, but a call to obedience. We are supposed to do something when we hear this good news. We are to repent (agree with God that we are sinners, renounce our sins and turn our back on that old way of life) and to believe (put all our confidence in the person of Jesus as our substitute whose death was enough to rescue us from the hell we deserved).

Call others to take sin seriously and to revere God while there’s still hope.

For those identified with Jesus by faith, his future return and the final day of the Lord will bring eternal salvation, not harm (; ; :). But the Bible is clear that, while there is “no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” () and all who have “been justified by his blood” will be “saved by him from the wrath of God” (), this very wrath “remains” on everyone who fails to surrender to Jesus (). It’s for these people that the future day of the Lord is still ominous, for God will at that time destroy his enemies (; ; ; ).

DeRouchie, J. S. (2018). Zephaniah. In I. M. Duguid, J. M. Hamilton Jr., & J. Sklar (Eds.), Daniel–Malachi (Vol. VII, p. 582). Wheaton, IL: Crossway.

So for you an me before “the day of vengeance of our God” (), we the church must proclaim to a needy world the terms of peace and the good news that reconciliation with God is possible through faith in Christ (Rom. 1:16–17; 10:15; 2 Cor. 5:18–20). We must join Zephaniah in calling others to “be silent before the Lord God” (Zeph. 1:7)—to take sin seriously and to revere the One who will come in blazing wrath against his enemies. “Our Savior Christ Jesus … abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Tim. 1:10). He is “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). This is the good news we must proclaim.

Big Idea: God calls us to revere him as the living God by honouring, obeying, exalting, worshipping, and trusting Him for our salvation.

Reflection:

God’s call to follow Him is a call to abandon our own lives and receive His. Have you seen examples in your life of how His life is far more fulfilling than your own?

Have you ever found yourself vacillating between following God and not following Him? Why is it occasionally difficult to make a decision?

Have you ever found yourself vacillating between following God and not following Him? Why is it occasionally difficult to make a decision?

In Zephaniah God removes the things that the people love more than Him. Are there any things in your life that you would be devastated to lose?

Are you guilty of loving those things more than you love God? Have you ever thought of the wrath of God as a good thing? Why can the wrath of God be good?

In Zephaniah the Lord’s judgment was imminent. In the New Testament we are taught that the Lord’s return is imminent. How does this imminence affect the way you approach life?

Fries, Micah. Exalting Jesus in Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi (Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary) (p. 14). B&H Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.