Sermon: Salvation and Judgment on the Day of the Lord

Good evening everyone. I'd like to invite you to take your Bibles and turn to the book of Zephaniah. It's a little minor prophet between Habakkuk and Haggai. So if you find a H prophet, you're very near. We're gonna be reading verses one through 13 of chapter three,

Zephaniah three verses one through 13. Let's pray God's blessing on his word tonight.

Father, we are privileged and delighted to be together tonight with your people redeemed by the blood of Jesus, saved by your love and grace. And we wanna be like those people that you say tremble before your word. Rejoice with trembling and serve you with fear. Lord, we thank you that you love to use the weakness of words through weak people to show your power and strength. And we pray that you would do that tonight,

that you would bring your word home to our hearts. We pray that our hearts would be good soil and we pray that in all of this, father, that you would be glorified in Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. And we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Stef Aniah. Three verse one, woe to her who is rebellious and defiled, the oppressing city. She listens to no voice. She accepts no correction. She does not trust in the Lord.

She does not draw near to her God. Her officials within her are roaring lions. Her judges are evening wolves that leave nothing till the morning. Her prophets are fickle, treacherous men. Her priests profane what is holy. They do violence to the law. The Lord within her is righteous. He does no injustice. Every morning he shows forth his justice. Each dawn he does not fail, but the unjust knows no shame. I have cut off nations there battlements are in ruins.

I have laid waste their streets so that no one walks in them, their cities have been made desolate Without a man, without an inhabitant. I said, surely you will fear me. You will accept correction then your dwelling would not be cut off according to all that I have appointed against you. But all the more they were eager to make all their deeds corrupt. Therefore wait for me, declares the Lord for the day. When I rise up to seize the prey for my decision is

to gather nations, to assemble kingdoms, to pour out upon them my indignation, all my burning anger for in the fire of my jealousy, all the earth shall be consumed for all. At that time I will change the speech of the peoples to a pure speech that all of them may call upon the name of the Lord and serve him with one accord from beyond the rivers of kush. My worshipers, the daughter of my dispersed ones, shall bring my offering on that day.

You shall not be put to shame because of the deeds by which you have rebelled against me. For then I will remove from your midst your proudly exalted ones and you shall no longer be haughty in my holy mountain. But I will leave in your midst to people humble and lowly. They shall seek refuge in the name of the Lord. Those who are left in Israel, they shall do no injustice and speak no lies nor shall there be found in their mouth, a deceitful tongue

for they shall graze and lie down and none shall make them afraid.

Zephaniah three, you notice we didn't go all the way to the end. There's a last section that I think Pastor Nate will preach next week, and you need to be here for that. It is a glorious passage of God's love and gospel grace. So tonight we're kind of warming up to that and I'm sure I'm not the only person who finds interpreting and reading and preaching. The minor prophets challenging. They're challenging because they take place long ago

and far away the times and places are not familiar to us. It's ancient near Eastern history. So we have to, we have to do some digging to find out times and places. You also find that the material is not presented in a linear faction. There's a mixture of narrative stories and prophetic oracles and sometimes strange visions and they just kind of go back and forth. But the main thing that is unusual about these prophetic books

is that they are books about judgment and salvation. Those are two themes in these books. God himself, personally shows up in human history and pronounces ultimate verdicts on people, individuals, and nations. Verdicts of deliverance or destruction, verdicts of commendation or condemnation. And this kind of evaluation or judgment by someone bigger and outside of us is not something we're comfortable with. We are an autonomous, self-obsessed

and superficial age. And so we don't really like the preaching of judgment. Maybe that's not true here in this church, but across the church in general it is. Richard Neber in the last century said that what people want is a God without wrath. Bringing men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the administrations of a Christ without a cross. That's what we're comfortable with, that's what we prefer. But if there is a God, he certainly can

and he certainly will judge each person. And God's final judgment, especially in the Old Testament, is often referred to the day of the Lord or the great day of the Lord. This day of the Lord is a major theme in this book. It's referred to 13 times just in chapter one. It's referred to two times in chapter two and six times in chapter three. So we are coming into the story, into the, into the history of the nation of Judah, the southern

of the two kingdoms, sometime in the last half of the seventh century. And we're coming into this story during the rare reign of a good king. Josiah. Josiah reigned from six 40 to 6 0 6. Josiah became king. Listen to this kids when he was eight years old, eight years old. Can you imagine becoming the king of a nation when you're only eight? He sought the lu Lord passionately and earnestly in his youth and he set about many reformations,

many reforms, and Zephaniah was a great help to him in those reforms. So we're gonna start with chapter three verse one. I'll just remind you that chapters one and two were mostly about God's condemnation of Judah and the neighboring nations. So I've picked five words to kind of hang our thoughts on as we work through verses one through 13 five W words. I'll tell them to you now and then we'll work through them. The first word is, whoa. The second word is why.

The third word is wickedness. The fourth word is weight. And the fifth word is wonder. So chapter three verse one starts with the word wo. Woe to her who is rebellious and defiled. It's not a word we use today, but it would've been, it would've had great meaning to ancient Judah. What is woe? It's an expression of strong condemnation mixed with great sorrow. It's an 11th hour warning. There's no time left. Destruction is imminent.

So let's say like me, you live on the south side of Lansing and it's this fall on a beautiful Saturday and you're gonna have some friends over for a barbecue, friends and family, and then you're gonna enjoy watching MSU on football and you're all together having a good time. When at one o'clock the air raid siren goes off, as it always does. So you don't really pay any attention. But at the same time, there's a voice on a loudspeaker

that's both shouting and weeping. A category five tornado is just touched down near 4 96 and it will reach the south side of Lansing in and then it cuts off not even enough time to tell you how much time you have because you don't have any time. That's whoa.

No one can help us understanding the meaning of this word like our Lord Jesus. In Matthew 23, Jesus pronounces seven woes on the religious leaders. Several times he cries out to them, woe to you, scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites. What he wants to get through to them is that God is holy. And God hates hypocritical religion. Religion that focuses just on external behavior and masks the internal corruption that's motivating that

behavior that blinds people to spiritual reality. So you hear the urgency, you heard that, you hear the condemnation woe to you, but there's also lament and we see that in Luke 19. It says, when he Jesus drew near the city and saw it, he wept over it saying, would the you even you had known on this day the things that make for peace, but now they're hidden from your eyes.

Brothers and sisters. When God says, woe, we need to listen. We need to pay attention. So that's the first word, a very ominous word. Wo. The second W word is why? Why the woe. In verses one and two, we get the answer. Woe to her who is rebellious and defiled, the oppressing city. She listens to no voice. She accepts no instruction or a correction. She does not trust in the Lord. She does not draw near to her God. Her officials within her are roaring lions.

Her judges are evening wolves that leave nothing till the morning.

We see in these verses that God has some very specific charges against his people. First of all, rebellion. A high handed disobedience to God's law. Second defilement, corrupt practices that are degrading and corrupting his temple and his city and his land. Third, oppression, cruel mistreatment of God's people. Fourth, a refusal to listen. A stubborn putting your hands over your ears. Fifth, a refusal to trust as if they're saying to God,

you don't have what we need. And finally, a refusal to draw near Lord, we have better options than you. That's what God is pronouncing woe over. If I could summarize, I would say it was stubborn unbelief, leading to proud rebellion and cruel oppression. So the sin of unbelief, a settled refusal to trust and obey. God is prominent here. John Calvin describes unbelief as the mother of all the evil deeds by which men willfully wrong in an injure one another.

It's always proud. It makes us rebels and deserters, the book of Hebrews, the New Testament warns against unbelief saying how it always leads to disobedience. So what about us? I wanna make just a, a kind of quick application here toward the beginning of the sermon. What about us? We're believers, at least most of us. So it, it's not true that we're just in general resistant and refusing God, but there are areas where we struggle to believe.

Maybe we could call it doubts. We struggle to believe. So we're not talking here about hardened unbelief, but doubts we struggle with. And I wanna share three that I I've come to see are often at the root of many spiritual problems. I wanna share a, a doubt or a a struggle to believe about the Father, about Jesus, the Son and about the Holy Spirit. And then I wanna share for each one briefly what happens when we live into those doubts

and don't struggle against them. And third, just one good reason why we don't need to doubt those things. So the first thing I think we often struggle to believe is that the father's love is enough. We know he loves us, but we struggle to believe that, that that's enough for my identity and my security and my sense of belovedness. And so like the old country song, we go looking for love in all the wrong places and we meet somebody

and maybe we fall in love and we think, I wanna be with this person. So far so good. But what we don't realize is we're putting the crushing weight on them to fill all our insatiable cravings for love and it can ruin the relationship and it just puts an intolerable weight on the other person. The fact is that God's love, the father's love is as Jonathan Edward says, it's an ocean. It's an ocean without a bottom, without ashore,

and even without a surface, it's immeasurable. God's love is enough to secure our identity and our security and our wellbeing and our belovedness. So sometimes we doubt that God, we don't doubt that he loves us, but that his love is enough. Secondly, we doubt that Christ's work is enough. We know that he lived and he died and he rose again. And we know that's essential. But sometimes there's this nagging down. What if that's not enough?

What if I wonder if I need to somehow supplement his work? I need to somehow ensure that I'm gonna be okay with God. So we're kind of trusting in Christ and perhaps our own righteousness, our own efforts, our good works, our successes. And again, it just leaves people in great anxiety. When Jesus died, he did not say, I have done a lot. Now you go and finish it. He said, it is finished. My work, my life, my death, my resurrection, my ascension,

my intercession, my coming back. It connects with every nook and cranny in your life. And it changes everything. So Christ's work is enough. We don't need to add to it for our justification, for our righteousness, for our acceptance with God. And then finally, sometimes we doubt that the spirit's power is enough. We see what God's love is like, and we see what Jesus has done to save us. But somehow we think I, I don't think I have what it takes

to reach that or to receive that. And so we tend to buy a lot of self-help books or we go searching for the latest iteration of the secret key to the Christian life. Now there's a lot of books like that and some of them I'm sure are, are, are helpful, but just be a little cautious when a book says this is the secret. The secret is the gospel. Okay?

The the creed that we confess, the Apostles Creed says the Holy Spirit is the Lord and giver of life. He is perfectly capable. What he loves to do is to reveal to our mind and heart, the beauty of Christ, the glory of Christ, and all the benefits of the gospel. And then apply them to our lives. That doesn't mean there's no effort on our part, but the main lifting is through the Holy Spirit. So I just point those out because I see in my own life

and in the lives of others that when we doubt the Father's love is enough, Christ's work is enough. The spirit's power is enough. We we just complicate things. Alright, so we've looked at woe and why. The third W is in verses five through seven and the word is wickedness.

The Lord within her is righteous. He does no injustice. Every morning he shows forth his justice. Each dawn he does not fail, but the unjust knows no shame. I have cut off nations. Their battlements are in ruins. I have laid waste their streets so that no one live walks in them. Their cities have been made desolate without a man and without inhabitants. I'll stop there for just a second.

Wickedness is what brings the woe. It's the why. It's kind of the big word that that comprehends all the things we just talked about, all the unbelief. It's wickedness, especially of the people of God here. And especially in contrast to God himself. Notice it says the Lord within her is righteous. Every morning he shows justice. The Lord is righteous. In contrast to his people in this passage, he shows righteousness and justice every day by judging wickedness.

He says, I've cut off nations, I've laid waste their streets. Their cities have been made desolate. He's saying, look around and see how I manifest my righteousness and my justice every day. Now, sometimes we can't get the full effect of that by just looking at the evening news. It's too fresh. And those stories are still in process. But maybe we need to look historically, sometimes think about kingdoms, nations, empires, cities

that at one time seemed utterly impregnable. Utterly invincible. Think about the time of of of the, of the people of God in the Old Testament, you know what? There are no Ninevites, there's no city of Nineveh. Nobody lives there. And that would've seemed unthinkable. The same with Babylon. There's no Babylonians, there's no city of Babylon. They were judged by the Lord. All the things that he just said. How about Jerusalem?

Well, that's city by God's grace is still there, but it doesn't have the same honor and power and glory as it did under David and Solomon. Or we can look more recent in history. They used to say that the sun never set on the British empire and London was the greatest city in the world. Well, the sun does set on the British empire because there isn't really a British empire anymore. And during World War ii, London was almost raised

to the ground or on the other side, Berlin and the Third Reich. It was gonna last a thousand years. It didn't even make 50. So there's no excuse for our unbelief. God's holiness is all around us. It's always on display. If we're watching here, we see God pleading with his people to learn from history, to learn from his judgments and to return to him. And we see that God's inclination, his desire in judging the nations was the Judah would

return to him, would see and wise up and repent. And then in verse seven, God says, surely you'll fear me. You will accept correction. We might think, of course you will, Judah. It's the only reasonable thing. It's the only way to avoid destruction. If you do that, you won't be cut off like God threatened. You'll dwell securely. God is arguing with his people. He is reasoning with his people. Dare we dare we say He's pleading with his people.

And this makes what follows in verse seven, incomprehensible and inexcusable. Right after he says, surely you will fear me and accept instruction. It says this, but all the more they were eager to make all their deeds corrupt in light of God's pleading and judging others and showing them that and calling them back through prophet after prophet, they not only went on sinning, they ramped it up all the more. Can you hear the anger

and the grief of God with this stubborn rebellion? Sounds familiar. Maybe it makes you think of toddlers or teenagers. But what about us? God wants us to understand why he hates sin so much. We tend to think of sin as breaking a rule, which it is, but it's so much more than that. The Puritan Stephen Charex says this about sin. Listen, all sin is secret atheism. It's cursing God. It's aiming at the destruction of God. It's setting up your own rule for your own glory.

When we think of sin as that big sins or little sins, it just raises, raises the stakes and we can see why it's so offensive to God. It's so much more than breaking rules. Sin is always personal. It's about God. It's always covenantal. It's always breaking the relationship that he has established. And it's always wicked. Sin is in effect saying, I will not have you rule over me.

So is there any hope for Jerusalem? Is there any hope for anybody? Because left to ourselves, we're all incorrigibly rebellious. Again, the next W word is a surprise. In verse eight, God says, wait, wait. He says, therefore wait for me, says the Lord. We might say, why? What are we waiting for? And the answer is that we're to wait for the day of the Lord. Believe that that day is truly coming on that day. God says, I will seize the prey.

I will pour out my indignation and burning anger and all the earth will be consumed. We see that the Lord has not gone back on his intention to judge evil. He's still going to destroy the nations in his wrath, but he's calling his people again to stop and consider and dare we say it, hope against hope. He's calling them to hope that there may still be hope when he's already told them there's no more hope.

This is truly unexpected that God would say, wait and hope. What does it mean? I think there's a clue if we, if we look back at chapter two, verse three, just take a peek back, chapter two verse three.

It says, seek the Lord all you humble of the land who do his just commands. Seek righteousness, seek humility. Listen to this. Perhaps you may be hidden on the day of the anger of the Lord that that perhaps is a crack. There's hope in that. How could that be? We've just seen that Judah was incorrigibly rebellious. How could there be hope for them? God has just said, this is what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna judge. I'm gonna pour out my wrath.

Well, this may be unexpected in Zephaniah three, but it's not unprecedented. 120 years previously with a different prophet, God had told Israel the same thing. You don't need to turn to it. But I'm gonna read from Hosea chapter 11 verses one through nine. And we're gonna see this same dynamic, God being gracious and saving and Israel just pushing back and rebelling. Listen to what God said to through Hosea. When Israel was a child, I loved him.

And out of Egypt, I called my son. The more they were called, the more they went away. They kept sacrificing to the bales and burning offerings to idols. Yet it was I who taught efraim to walk. I took them up in my arms, but they did not know that I healed them. I led them with cords of kindness, with the bonds of love. And I bent down to them and fed them. They shall not return to the land of Egypt, but assy shall be their king

because they have refused to turn to me. The sword will rage against their cities, consume the bars of their gates and devour them because of their own councils. Because my people are bent on turning away from me. And though they call out to the most high, he shall not raise them up at all. Now I'm stopping there and there's clearly no hope there. God is basically saying, I'm fed up. I've done everything. You absolutely throw it back in my face.

You're gonna be judged. Go back to Zephaniah three verse nine. The last W is wonder, be amazed. God is basically saying in verses nine through 13, for at that time on that day, the day of the Lord, just when he's just promised nothing but wrath and destruction, he basically is saying, I will bring salvation to Gentiles and Jews alike. And after all that we've read in chapter three, what could be more surprising? What could be more striking to the Gentiles?

He says, I'm going to change your impure speech into pure speech. I'm going to move you to call on my name and worship me and bring acceptable offerings and serve me. And we say, what the Gentiles? You're gonna do that. And then to the Jews, he says, I'm gonna take away your shame from your rebellion. I'm gonna remove all the proud and evil and leave a humble and holy and lowly people who will seek refuge in me and will act honestly and justly.

I will make you lie down in fearless peace. And we say, what? How could that be? If I could dare to paraphrase God? He's saying, I'm God, I'm not like you. I've made a covenant which I will not break. And although not one of you deserves it, I will glorify my name by saving those who are lost in sin, both Gentile and Jew. So tonight, are there any gentiles out there? Anyone unconverted, anyone sitting in in one of the pews who knows I,

whatever else I've done, I know I have not truly trusted in Christ alone for my salvation and I have not submitted to his lordship in my life. What does he say to you tonight? He says, be amazed. I'm calling you tonight. You've never called to me, but I want you to be part of my chosen and bless people through faith. I'm calling you tonight. Be amazed. And what would God say to his people, which is most if not everyone here tonight to us.

He would say, be even more amazed. You've outs the pagans. You've spurned my steadfast love. You've defied my authority. You've rebelled against my commands. You've corrupted my land. You've blasphemed my name, you've resisted my prophets. But even as I spoke through Hosea, and now I want to go back to one of the most amazing parts of the Bible, I'm gonna, I'm gonna pick up where I left off in in in Hosea. I left off with my people are bent on turning away from me.

And though they call out to the most high, he shall not raise them up at all. And just about when the curtain's gonna come down, he says, how can I give you up OE fry? How can I hand you over O Israel? How can I make you like edma? How can I treat you like Zee? My heart recoils within me. My compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my burning anger. I will not again destroy efram for I am God and not a man.

The holy one in your midst. And I will not come in wrath.

What do we make of that?

God's grace is always surprising, unexpected, amazing turn of events. Who is this God? We know He's the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us. And who promises to graciously give us all things in him. So as we close here tonight, this God, the God who, who does have wrath, he hates sin. He's promised that that he will, he will judge people according to their sins,

but he's also a God of love. We know it from what Pastor Jason preached today in John four in this is love. Not that we loved God, amen. But that he loved us and he sent his only son into the world to be the propitiation, to take the wrath, to take the woe that we deserve and to give us grace and blessing. He has sent Jesus. There's no more wrath for us. There's only love and life. This God says this to us, turn to me and be saved all the ends of the earth

for I am God. And there is no other to me. Every knee shall bow and every tongue shall say in the Lord shall all be justified and glory. The apostle Paul said it this way, issuing a, a gentle but urgent Command. Romans 10 12, Paul says, there's no distinction

for the same Lord is Lord of all Jew and gentile religious person and utterly hedonistic person bestowing his riches on all who call to him. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

There's times when we feel like I've messed up so bad, I have so little faith. I don't, I don't think I can do anything. But you can call on the name of the Lord. You can do that. So as we go to prayer right now, we're just gonna be quiet for a few moments and I would just invite you, everyone who calls on the name of the Lord Jesus will be saved. Whatever. Whatever your situation,

he is everything you need and has everything you need. Let's go to him right now and then we'll close in prayer and sing. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

Father, you are a God of wrath. You do hate sin because all sin is against you. It is, it is rebellion and unbelief and pride and idolatry. But your wrath is never the last word. Because you delight to save sinners. You delight to surprise us with grace.

And so despite our wickedness, past, maybe some present, you tell us to wait to look up to hope. And then you call us to take a deep, long look at the gospel of the glory of your son who became flesh to be just like us, who lived a sinless life, the life that we owed you, who took you our sins and sufferings and griefs and sorrows and pains. Wherever he went and brought healing who bore your wrath and bore your curse.

In fact, even became a curse on the cross in our place. And then who Rose triumphantly bringing about a new creation and giving us indestructible eternal life.

Lord, we look to that Jesus ascended, interceding for us and promising to come and bring us back. And we call out to you. Save us from the uttermost of sin and misery. Save us to the uttermost of righteousness and peace and ever increasing joy. And we pray all this in the matchless name of Jesus our savior. Amen.