Hope?
Notes
Transcript
It sure is interesting times that we live in.
The corona virus has changed how we live. We are supposed to wear masks if we are out in public.
They are saying we shouldn’t have more then 10 people in our home for Thanksgiving.
The North Star High School is shut down for 1 week.
We here of thousands of new cases each day. The question that I have is why don’t they tell us how many of those are people who may test positive but do not have any symptoms of the disease.
It is so hard to know what to believe when you listen to the news. There are conflicting accounts. They use tiny soundbites to make it sound like someone is a horrible criminal.
This election season has been stressful for so many. The last I looked at the news we are still waiting on the outcome of two states. There have been lawsuits filled to force recounts.
I don’t delve into politics from the pulpit because the Kingdom of God is greater than America politics.
The Bible records Paul’s message to the people of Athens when he said:
26 From one person God created every human nation to live on the whole earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God made the nations so they would seek him, perhaps even reach out to him and find him. In fact, God isn’t far away from any of us. 28 In God we live, move, and exist. As some of your own poets said, ‘We are his offspring.’
God is in control. Is God trying to say something to us through the results of this election? Is God trying to say something to us through the Covid?
Throughout history there have been times of judgment by God on man. When you read the Old Testament you read about the times of God’s judgement on his people.
I grew up hearing that when Jesus came and made the way of for salvation that God changed from this God who judged His people to this God of love.
I always struggled with that concept. Wasn’t God a loving God in the Old Testament?
Didn’t God demonstrate his love for humanity in the Old Testament? Do you remember back in Genesis God said, let us make man in our own image. We read about God coming and walking with Adam and Eve in the garden in the cool of the day. Wasn't that the picture of God's love?
Didn't God demonstrate his love for Abraham, when he gave him a son in his old age?
Didn't God demonstrate his love for his people, the descendents of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? God brought them out of Egypt. He called them to be his own special people. To be priests for the world. God had a plan for them. God was going to use them to introduce the world to himself.
So as I look at the Old Testament, I see a God of love. I see God in action as he continually pursues his people. These people were to be living in obedience to him, but so often, they failed, they pursued their own agendas, they turned their back on God.
Even though they turned their back on God, God still pursued them.
If somehow God changed when Jesus came, then tell me why Jerusalem was destroyed in about A.D. 70, s was prophesied in the Old Testament..
God was still judging his people. And in that judgment that happened not long after the birth of the Church. In that time of the utter destruction of Jerusalem, the members of that fledgling church spread out around the known world. The gospel message was carried like fire through the world.
God use that to spread the gospel message of Jesus Christ. The church went from being just this small group, to being the force of God throughout the world.
If God did that then, couldn't he do that today?
The Church has grown complacent. We've allowed other things to creep into the church and into our lives that usurped the place of God.
Zephaniah brings a message of judgment on the people of Israel. And it's into this situation that the people needed a word of hope. Zephaniah comes with the prophetic message from God. This wasn't Zephaniah's message this was God's word to the people.
In this passage of Scripture Zephaniah informs the people that the day of the Lord is coming.
It is interesting how this message on the day of the Lord begins by Zephaniah. He says there in verse seven:
7 Hush before the Lord God, for the day of the Lord is near! The Lord has established a sacrifice; he has made holy those he has summoned.
He says to the people, hush before the Lord. Other translations say be silent before the sovereign Lord. The old King James version says hold thou peace at the presence of the Lord thy God.
Zephaniah saying something very important is about to be said and you need to be quiet and listen. Don't we often say that the kids? Teachers sometimes say you need to put your listening ears on. The old phrase won't to just shut up and listen.
Is it time for the church here in 2020 to hush and listen to God? Is it time for the church to hush before the Lord God for the day of the Lord is near?
As I studied and prepared for today, I believe that this message from Zephaniah is a message that the church needs to hear today.
We need to hear about judgment. We need to hear how God is displeased with the sin in the world. We need to hear how God is displeased with the church because the church is no longer making impact in the world. Rather than being salt and light, the church sadly, looks no different than the world around.
Zephaniah says hush before the Lord God for the day of the Lord is near! The Lord has established a sacrifice; he has made holy those he has summoned.
We see their in the latter part of verse seven. The Zephaniah says "he has made holy those he has summoned." What that tells me is, now it doesn't tell me, Zephaniah states emphatically, that it is God who makes us holy.
It's interesting to read verses eight and nine. What Zephaniah is saying in these two verses is judgment against three sins that were prevalent not only in leadership in Judah, but also in the lives of everyday ordinary people.
The first sin that Zephaniah says God is going to punish is the princes and the king's sons who wear foreign clothes. We might think, what's the big deal? After all, most of our closer foreign-made. The big deal about wearing for and clothes is that it demonstrated that their loyalty was elsewhere, it was not with Israel.
The leadership people were adopting lifestyles, customs, moral behavior from the nations that surrounded them. They were called to be priests of God, to show God, to those nations. Yet here they are becoming like the nations around them.
The second sin is there in the first part of verse nine. Zephaniah wrote I will punish the one leaping on the threshold on that day. You might be thinking what is that?
Among the people that had lived in the promised land. There were many gods that were worshiped. God repeatedly warned the people to not worship those foreign gods. You'll remember in the 10 Commandments that God had commanded the people to worship him and him only that they were not put other gods before God.
One of the gods was the god Dagon. His temple was at Ashdod. His name may not be familiar to you, but I bet you've heard the Bible story about that god.
1 After the Philistines took God’s chest, they brought it from Ebenezer to Ashdod. 2 Then the Philistines took God’s chest and brought it into Dagon’s temple and set it next to Dagon. 3 But when the citizens of Ashdod got up early the next morning, there was Dagon, fallen facedown on the ground before the Lord’s chest! So they took Dagon and set him back up where he belonged. 4 But when they got up early the next morning, there was Dagon again, fallen facedown on the ground before the Lord’s chest—and this time Dagon’s head along with both his hands were cut off and lying on the doorstep! Only Dagon’s body was left intact. 5 That’s why to this day Dagon’s priests or anyone else who enters his temple in Ashdod doesn’t step on the threshold.
So the Philistines were burning the ark of the covenant.They placed it in the temple of Dagon. In the morning they find that the statue was on the ground and the head and hands of that statue were on the doorstep.
So that lead being that Zephaniah is talking about is the leaping over the threshold of the door to the temple. The people had incorporated those religious superstitions into their worship of God. They were actually demonstrating respect to that god. Again they were violating the 10 Commandments. They were worshiping other gods.
The latter part of verse nine shows the third sin they were bringing all sorts of symbols from the paganism of the people that surrounded them. Again they were violating the commandments of God.
The people deserved punishment, they deserved the judgment from God. They had abandoned God and they were worshiping the gods of the people around them.
We need to take apart the following verses to try to understand was Zephaniah is talking about when he brings the word from God.
On that day, says the Lord. That day is the day of the Lord. And God is laying out what is going to happen.
God says that in two parts of Jerusalem there will be a mighty outcry from the people.
The first part of the city is from the fish gate. Now this gate wasn't shaped like a fish, it was the place where the fish merchants came to sell their catch. It was one of the big financial areas of Jerusalem.
The second part of the city was what is called the second quarter. It was here that the rich, the wealthy built, there are fancy homes.
Is from this second area of the second quarter that God says there will be wailing. This area of Jerusalem was the business district, or the Wall Street of their day. It was here, there was the money brokers.
Zephaniah talks about those who grind the grain will wail, the merchants will be silenced, those who weigh out silver will be eliminated.
To me this sounds like the Great Depression. Wall Street collapsed, banks were closed, thousands upon thousands of people waited in soup lines in the cities. What a horrendous time that must have been for those particularly in the cities.
Look at what a tiny microscopic virus has done. Many of the small businesses that closed down will never open again.
Look at our political world today, there is no civility. The extremists of the far left want to fundamentally change our nation. Is this part of God's judgment on us?
Is this tiny virus, this time of unrest, the extremists in our nation, are these things part of God's judgment upon us?
I can't help but think that the wrath of God is being stirred. How can God be pleased with how the church is living out its calling to be a holy nation, a royal priesthood, as Peter so aptly wrote.
I believe that if God does not stay his hand, that our nation in this world will witness the judgment of God in ways that we couldn't even imagine.
After dealing with the idolatry, the wealthy, the self-satisfied, the comfortable, the well-to-do, the blasphemer, all these will be punished. But then Zephaniah says that God will search Jerusalem with lamps.
The prophet Jeremiah wrote:
1 Search every street in Jerusalem, comb the squares, look far and wide for one person, even one who acts justly and seeks truth that I may pardon her!
God is going to look through all of Jerusalem through all the nooks and crannies to find all those who don't believe that God is God.
God says there in verse 12: I will punish the men growing fad on the sediment of their in their , those saying to themselves the Lord will do good or evil.
Forms a hard crust and the liquid becomes syrupy, bitter and unpalatable. Why is that important? For the winemaker it symbolizes neglect and complacency.
In our treatment of those who are addicted to some substance, we warned them about becoming complacent in their treatment. What that means is that they have to work their treatment plan every day of their lives. If they grow complacent, if they grow self-satisfied, they can arrive on the threshold of relapsing back into their addiction.
Do you remember what Jesus said? Take up your cross daily and follow me.
This is a daily living, if we don't do what Jesus said, we've grown complacent. We become self-satisfied, we think we've got it handled.
In Israel, that's exactly what it happened, they had become complacent, so much so that they said the Lord won't do good or evil.
One of the study Bibles I consulted had these words:
The Apologetics Study Bible: Real Questions, Straight Answers, Stronger Faith The Meaning of Zephaniah’s Message
From Zephaniah we learn that God cannot tolerate the worship of other gods alongside Him, nor can He tolerate violence, fraud, complacency, haughtiness, lying, or deceit. God has absolute power to judge and destroy because He created all things, but He does not use this power in an arbitrary way; He uses it to respond to evil and injustice or to idolatry and false worship. We also learn from Zephaniah that God responds to true and sincere repentance. God loves His people who serve Him humbly.
What happened to these people? There is a surprise in store for them. Look at verse 13.
13 Their wealth will be looted and their houses destroyed. They will rebuild houses, but not live in them; they will plant vineyards, but not drink the wine.
They lose absolutely everything. We know that for Israel that were conquered. They were defeated by their enemies. God allowed the enemies to attack and to defeat Israel because of their disregard for God.
How could God do that? Is it God. God of love? Didn't he promised the people that they would have a land flowing with milk and honey? That God would bless them?
Absolutely, God promised that and so much more. But he also spoke of the curses that would be upon them ff they failed to live up to their part of the covenant.
In Deuteronomy chapter 28 we read those very curses that Zephaniah speaks about in verse 13.
30 You might get engaged to a woman, but another man will have sex with her. You might build a house, but you won’t get to live in it. You might plant a vineyard, but you won’t enjoy it.
39 You might plant lots of vineyards and work hard in them, but you won’t drink any wine or harvest the grapes because worms will devour them.
I think sometimes that people believe that God's just going to wink at their sin. I sometimes think that they believe that God is going to give them a free pass.
That kind of thinking is the same that the people living in Jerusalem thought. They had grown comfortable and how they were living their life. Things were going well for them. They had wealth, homes, money, material resources. And God comes and says you haven't been faithful to me and I'm going to take it all away from you.
This passage is hard because it does speak about the judgment of God. However, God is a faithful and loving God. God desires a relationship with us. There is hope.
There is hope, because God is still on the throne.
What do we take from Zephaniah writing? I believe it presents a challenge to us to look at our own lives. Are we measuring up to God's standards? Are we being faithful in our service to the King?
In the gospel reading this morning. Jesus tells the parable of the talents. Each of those servants was given an incredible amount of money. The master goes away and is gone for some time. When he comes back he asked those servants to give an accounting of what they did with that money that he entrusted to their care. To the servants took the money invested it wisely and created a nice healthy profit for their master. The third servant took that incredible amount of money and he buried it, kept it for safekeeping.
That one servants took that incredible responsibility and he hit it.
We have been given an incredible gift, a gift that almost beyond understanding. This incredible gift of love, this gift of a relationship with the God, the creator of all that is. God has entrusted that into our care. He has entrusted us with the message of the kingdom of God.
What are we doing with it?
Have we grown complacent?
Are we letting the world around us press and shape us into its mold?
Paul wrote that we are
to clothe ourselves with Jesus Christ. What an incredible image that is, that we literally put on Jesus. The people in Zephaniah's time, they had put on the clothing of those foreign nations, representing those false gods.
We are to put on Christ.
Is God bringing judgment upon the church, upon the world? I don't have a clear answer on that, but if he isn't, why isn't he?
This message from Zephaniah is an urgent reminder to us that we are called to be God's holy people, God's royal priesthood. Our home may be temporarily here in this world, but were just travelers on a journey. Our home is in the kingdom of God.
Is there hope? Absolutely!
There is hope, hope for us, our faith, our trust is in the Lord our God. The world around us may be in turmoil, but there is peace in the midst of our storm filled lives.
Hope? Absolutely, and it is found in a daily walk with Jesus Christ.