The Savior's Serious Response to Sin

Text: Zephaniah 1:1–18 ESV

Good morning. My name is Don. I'm one of the members here at Table Rock. I'm on staff as well. 

Let me officially welcome you to this mini series on Zephaniah. 

Probably your next question is, “Why Zephaniah?”

I'll be honest, one of the main reasons is because I want to know, and I want you to know, what this book has to say. So many of us are completely unfamiliar with it, but it was not simply written for the people in Zephaniah's day. God preserved it in his word for instruction for us—for our souls. In other words, we don't call Zephaniah a minor prophet because it is of minor importance compared to the major prophets. We call them minor prophets because they are shorter. We believe the whole Bible is inspired. And as a church we want to be preaching the whole counsel of God’s word. 

Second, the book wasn’t completely random because I had a head start with this book. In seminary, I worked for a professor who was writing a commentary on Zephaniah. I proofread his work, and I led a small group through the book. In fact, I emailed him and got his most recent resources and another commentary that he's putting out soon. His name is Jason DeReouchie, and his commentary should be coming out soon. It would be impossible for me to give him all the credit he is due in helping me see truths in this book. A lot of the quotes and cross references come from him. 

But finally, I want to go to Zephaniah because I hope it will make us better Bible readers. It's a hard book; there's no way around it. And we're not going to be able to answer every question on Sunday morning.

If you've got more questions, you can come and ask me and others. We're gonna try to dig into this together in hopes that we can see God's message and be better Bible readers, especially when we sit down and try to tackle a hard book. 

This series is gonna be a four part series. We're gonna do part one today and part two next week. Then we take a break for about six weeks, and we'll come back to it and finish the series. We have titled this series, “Safe and Satisfied”, and here’s why. 

Chapter one is giving us the setting. It's sounding an alarm. Think of it like when a hurricane comes. We were tracking all of the movements of the storm. And then you send out this alarm, “The hurricane, it's going to hit land, and it's going to hit land soon. You need to get out. You need to evacuate because here's what's going to happen.” And we go on to describe the wind speeds, the destruction and devastation. That's kind of what chapter one is doing. It's sounding the alarm. And in the alarm, there is some hope that breaks through about how they can get to safety. And we're gonna see that today. 

But really in chapters two and three is where that becomes very clear. In those chapters we will still see more description of judgment and destruction. But we will also see clearly how you get safe amid the destruction in judgment that God's going to bring against the wicked. Chapters two and three make it clear that we need to seek safety and satisfaction in one place—God alone. Though Zephaniah is a dark and heavy book in many ways, God wants us to read it as a warning that is full of hope and a rescue plan. That’s where we are going, and that is why we called this series “Safe and Satisfied”. 

So let me introduce the context of Zephaniah and then we will dig into Chapter 1. 

Look at Zephaniah 1 with me. 

“The word of the LORD that came to Zephaniah the son of Cushi, son of Gedaliah, son of Amariah, son of Hezekiah, in the days of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah.” (Zephaniah 1:1 ESV)

In those details, we find out that he is sharing his message during the reign of Josiah. Josiah reigned from 640–609 BC. 

Okay, go back to Moses. Moses goes through the wilderness, gets to the promised land, and dies. Joshua takes them in to conquer the promised land. Now God's people have this turf—Israel. But later it's divided under the reign of Solomon into the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom. A couple hundred years go by, and Assyria destroys the northern kingdom.

But the southern kingdom stayed strong for a while. They're destroyed by Babylon a generation or two after Zephaniah. So the Babylonians have not come in to destroy Judah—the southern kingdom. 

This is the context for Zephaniah’s message, which will begin with warnings of coming judgment and destruction. He warns of Judah being destroyed and the people in the capital city of Judah—Jerusalem—being killed. 

Now, you might be thinking, okay, interesting, here in a generation or two, Babylon is going to come in and destroy, literally destroy, the people that Zephaniah is warning.

The question for us then as we get ready to look at chapter one is, “Is Zephaniah only talking about this destruction—this literal, physical destruction of Babylon coming soon to destroy Jerusalem and Judah? Or is he talking about the final judgment on the last day when God is going to punish the wicked?”

I think like so much in the Old Testament, it is both. Zephaniah is warning about a real and present danger that is going to physically happen right before them. But he is also warning of a future, final judgment. And this judgment will be far worse than anything prior. 

When Babylon comes in, it is as if God's judgment breaks into history as a little bit of a foretaste of a coming final, more full judgement. As we read the book of Zephaniah, we are going to see language that clearly connects to the physical destruction by Babylon. But some of the language goes far beyond that conquest. 

We need to see what Zephaniah has to say, his warnings, in the context that he's talking about it, but we also can take that and take them as warnings for us in light of a final coming judgment of God. 

So where does Zephaniah take us in chapter one? Now I know I spent some time giving some background and overview. That means we're not going to have as much time to dig into all the details of the chapter. But here's what we're going to see when we look at chapter one, we are going to see that God takes sin seriously. He will punish the wicked. Our only hope is to fear and trust him. 

Today, in the first section—verses two through six—we're going to see God takes sin seriously. He will punish the wicked. Then in verse seven, we're going to see this call to fear God, to trust God, to come to him for safety. Then we're going to see in the last section, from the second half of verse seven all the way to the end in eighteen, we're gonna see again that God takes sins seriously. He will punish the wicked.

It's a bit repetitive actually, with a kind of call in the middle. Back to our hurricane analogy. He's going to sound a warning. “This is going to hit land. It’s going to hit everywhere including Judea and Jerusalem, and it’s going to be really bad.” This is a bad day.

And in the middle, he says where to go for safety. He says something—“Fear God.” Then he goes back to sounding the alarm—”warning, warning, this is going to be a bad day.” And he begins to describe what the winds and waves are going to do. The alarm parts make us really anxious. We are looking for a way out. And verse 7 gives us the beginning of that rescue plan. 

Warning 1 

Okay, well, let's actually dig into what he says. In verses two to six he starts broadly with the world, and he's going to zoom in to Judah and then to Judah’s capital, Jerusalem. He wants us to see that God takes sin seriously. He will punish the wicked—all of them. Look at verses 2–3 where he talks about global judgment: 

“I will utterly sweep away everything from the face of the earth,” declares the LORD. “I will sweep away man and beast; I will sweep away the birds of the heavens and the fish of the sea, and the rubble with the wicked. I will cut off mankind from the face of the earth,” declares the LORD.” (Zephaniah 1:2–3 ESV)

Can you feel the total, all encompassing nature of this section—“everything on the face of the earth”? Then, in case you missed that no one is off the hook, he even says—“man and beast and birds and fish.” He is going to be gathering all of these things, and it says “sweep away” or “cut off mankind from the face of the earth.” 

De-creation

The sense is that like when you sweep, you begin by gathering up everything, then put it in a pile, grab your dust pan, and throw out the rubble. God will gather everyone for this day of judgment, and then he is going to punish. And in verse three we start getting a clear picture of who will be punished.

Though the language starts broad, as if no one, not even the righteous will be spared, verse 3 starts to make it clear that those who will be punished are a specific group of people in the gathering of the “whole world:” 

“I will sweep away . . . the rubble with the wicked.”

God will punish the wicked, and that becomes only more and more clear as we continue to get into the book of Zephaniah. In fact, we can see from here that it is already going to get more specific on what it means by the wicked—the rebels.

He goes from the world. Now he's going to zoom into Judah, and then Judah’s capital, Jerusalem. Look at verses four through six:

““I will stretch out my hand against Judah and against all the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and I will cut off from this place the remnant of Baal and the name of the idolatrous priests along with the priests, those who bow down on the roofs to the host of the heavens, those who bow down and swear to the LORD and yet swear by Milcom, those who have turned back from following the LORD, who do not seek the LORD or inquire of him.”” (Zephaniah 1:4–6 ESV)

The picture is getting clearer. Here Zephaniah makes sure that Judah, God’s own city, will not be safe on this day. He then goes to introduce us to some of the wicked who dwell in the capital city of Jerusalem. Mainly these wicked are identified as idolaters. Specifically worshipers of Baal, a foreign idol. 

Sadly, the verse clarifies some of these people are priests, idolatrous priests, who were meant to worship and lead all the people to worship the true God of Israel. And instead, they themselves worshipped other gods, probably the god just mentioned, Baal. 

Then you get this picture of these people on their roofs, worshipping the stars “the host of heavens.” 

And then they're bowing down to the Lord saying with their lips, “We love you, Lord.” And then in every way they're actually swearing allegiance to “Milcom.” The idea is that they are swearing allegiance with their actions to someone else besides God.

Finally, in this subset of people are those who have fully turned their back from the Lord; they don't seek God or inquire of him.

Zephaniah's point: God takes sin seriously, and he will punish you, you wicked people who have abandoned him and sought after idols. He is sounding a warning.

Think back to one of the objectives of getting into Zephaniah. I said that this book was not only written for the people of Zephaniah, but for us. And one of the ways you see that is that these themes in the book of Zephaniah, they come up again and again. Here are such similar words coming from the mouth of Jesus. He says this in Matthew 7:21: 

““Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. [Do you hear in there that same idea from Zephaniah that they bow down to the Lord yet swear by Milcom. Just substitute whatever other god or other thing, the king, gold, a home, whatever you want.] On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’” (Matthew 7:21–23 ESV)

Think back to these priests of God in God’s own capital city, Jerusalem—these people who work at the temple. But yet they're really idolaters. They do all these mighty works  and the Lord says, “I will declare to them I never knew you depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.” 

I don’t know about you, but I read that with trembling. I don't want that to be me. How do I know it's not me? I don’t want to hear from the Lord, “Depart from me, Don, you worker of lawlessness.”

I don't want the Lord to stretch out his hand against me, to use the words of Zephaniah. 

So if you’re like me, you start to get nervous. How do I avoid that?

Safety Plan 

Well, look back with me to Zephaniah 1:7. He is moving from the audible part of the alarm to start to declare how to ensure that you can be safe on this day. Here's the first part of verse seven:

“Be silent before the Lord GOD!” (Zephaniah 1:7 ESV)

He's gonna get even more and more clear in chapter two and chapter three about how to find safety. But right here we get the beginning signs that there is an answer to this problem—“Be silent before the Lord your God.” 

To those who had turned their back on him, worshipped idols, walked away from him, the call to be silent before the Lord your God would have been exactly what they needed. It was a call to fear him, to revere him, to come back, and to trust him.

It was a call to put aside the Baal and the other things of that age and come back and worship the living God—to fear him. This is their only hope. Zephaniah has declared that God takes sin seriously. He will punish the wicked. And their only hope is to fear and trust the true and living God.

Now there are hundreds of things that capture our hearts and lead us not to fear God. But this section exposes how we can, in one breath, profess allegiance to God and then walk out and swear allegiance elsewhere. Zephaniah wants us to know that this will not work. Our trust belongs to God. 

We have seen over the past few weeks those who clearly put their trust in politics. That is not where our trust belongs. Some put it in money, others in a comfortable lifestyle. I am often tempted to put my trust in other people’s approval. A Christian’s trust belongs principally to God. God will judge any trust we put elsewhere, whatever that idol’s name happens to be. 

None of those idols will save us on the day God comes to judge the wicked. And Zephaniah is going to make that clear by the end of the chapter.  

So we heard the original warning in verse 2–6. 

We've heard the word in the middle in the first part of verse 7. 

Warning 2 

And now we're going to get back to the warning. And you can see the logic right here in verse seven. Listen to how he transitions:

“Be silent before the Lord GOD! For [because] the day of the LORD is near;” (Zephaniah 1:7 ESV)

And at this moment, Zephaniah gives a name for what he's been describing. He calls it “The Day of the Lord.” That phrase continues throughout the book. 

The day of the Lord, this day on which God is going to judge, is near, so there’s no time to wait to get back. Return to him before it comes. 

Let’s go back to the original context, literally the day is near in which Babylon is going to come in and destroy Jerusalem and Judah; very literally the coming day of judgment is near. But also the Bible is clear that the final judgment, the end of the world, that's actually near too.

The call is to be silent, to fear and revere God. And now Zephaniah gets into more detail. And we're going to resume where we left off. Zephaniah is going to zoom out a little bit to Judah and then it's going to zoom out to the world. So we're kind of going backwards. Here's what he says, 

“the LORD has prepared a sacrifice and consecrated his guests. [Do you want to know who some of them are?] And on the day of the LORD’s sacrifice— “I will punish the officials and the king’s sons and all who array themselves in foreign attire [those in the king’s court will not be safe]. On that day I will punish everyone who leaps over the threshold, and those who fill their master’s house with violence and fraud.” (Zephaniah 1:7–9 ESV)

He will punish people who are doing wicked things—violence and fraud on that day declares the Lord. Flat out, they are being ugly and nasty and rude in all they do. And now he gets into descriptions:

““On that day,” declares the LORD, “a cry will be heard from the Fish Gate [that’s one entrance], a wail from the Second Quarter [that’s another entrance], a loud crash from the hills. Wail, O inhabitants of the Mortar!” (Zephaniah 1:10–11 ESV)

Now we are going to hear some of the extent of the devastation. 

“For all the traders are no more; all who weigh out silver are cut off.

 At that time I will search Jerusalem with lamps, and I will punish the men who are complacent, those who say in their hearts, ‘The LORD will not do good, nor will he do ill.’” (Zephaniah 1:11–12 ESV)

So we're still zoomed in to Jerusalem, and he's giving some concrete examples. This is not going to gather a few people. He is going after every wicked person. It says God is going to actually search through Jerusalem with a lamp. He is going to track them down and punish them.

But it is not just the robbers and the murderers that God is going to destroy. Not even only those who are plainly worshipping idols. 

And one of the ways that he describes the wicked is that they're complacent in their relationship with God. So some of them aren't just outright rebelling against God.

“I will punish the men who are complacent, those who say in their hearts, ‘The LORD will not do good, nor will he do ill.’” (Zephaniah 1:11–12 ESV)

These men were like, “Wahoo, take it easy Zeph. We’re fine. God won’t do any of that stuff you are talking about.”

If you are wondering if Zephaniah has anything to say to Boise, Idaho on January 24, 2021, look no further. I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had with people who believe in a God, but he is just up in the sky not really involved. He’s  just kind of this disinterested, dispassionate judge.

Think of someone who is just monotone, not interested. I always think of those ‘Clear Eyes’ commercials. It was Ben Stein, and he would just say things like, “Clear eyes, remove redness.” No passion. Compare that to the other TV pheno of my day Judge Judy. Now that lady was passionate. But people don’t picture our God as a passionate, involved, opinionated God. 

And they think justice, what real justice looks like, is a judge that is totally impartial. And at the end of the day, he is going to listen to your story of how you tried your best and then let you into paradise. Sure he might have some idea of good and bad, but he is fairly neutral, not involved in day-to-day life and not a harsh or mean judge. 

Zephaniah is at pains to say that is not the case. Our God is not neutral. God will punish the wicked. He takes sin seriously. This is not neutral. Our God, he's not sitting there neutral about sin. He is absolutely 100% against it. 

He is totally biased. He is biased towards righteousness, towards his own glory, and completely against sin. We do not have a neutral God. We have a God who knows who he is, and what righteousness looks like, and he will punish everything that does not meet that standard.

And in verse 13, we get a very clear example of some of the actual present day realities for Zephaniah's listeners that would have really connected with them:

“Their goods shall be plundered, and their houses laid waste. Though they build houses, they shall not inhabit them; though they plant vineyards, they shall not drink wine from them.”” (Zephaniah 1:13 ESV)

This is a reversal of a blessing promised earlier. Now showing the undoing of that blessing replaced with a curse. And then we move to the most distinct part of warning 2. This is like describing the destruction of a hurricane so people get up and move. 

Hear his descriptions in verses 14–16: 

“The great day of the Lord is near,

    near and hastening fast;

the sound of the day of the Lord is bitter;

    the mighty man cries aloud there.

A day of wrath is that day,

    a day of distress and anguish,

a day of ruin and devastation,

    a day of darkness and gloom,

a day of clouds and thick darkness,

    a day of trumpet blast and battle cry

against the fortified cities

    and against the lofty battlements.

(Zephaniah 1:14–16 ESV)

The sound of the day of the Lord is bitter. It's a day of ...

• Wrath

• Distress

• Anguish

• Ruin

• Devastation

• Darkness

• Gloom

• a day of Clouds and thick darkness, 

• trumpet blast

• Battle cry

And if you're still wondering what's going to happen, he says, in verse 17:

“I will bring distress on mankind, so that they shall walk like the blind,” (Zephaniah 1:17 ESV)

Then you get the clearest, most succinct summary of the problem: 

“because they have sinned against the LORD;” (Zephaniah 1:17 ESV)

And he goes on to describe the results: 

“their blood shall be poured out like dust, and their flesh like dung.” (Zephaniah 1:17 ESV)

 He then clarifies:

“Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them on the day of the wrath of the LORD. In the fire of his jealousy, all the earth shall be consumed; for a full and sudden end he will make of all the inhabitants of the earth.” (Zephaniah 1:18 ESV)

And with that, the final siren sounds out. And we are left saying, “What do we do?” 

If neither gold nor silver will save me on this day. If a fortified city cannot rescue me, if I count myself as one of those who sinned against the Lord and none of these safeties will bring me safety, where do I go?

Zephaniah's warning should make us tremble. Because if we're honest, we're part of the list of the rebels.

Here's New Testament language that says this same thing:

 “For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” (Romans 3:22–23 ESV)

Or this a little bit earlier:

“None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” (Romans 3:10–12 ESV)

But Zephaniah, he does have hope for people. But it's not hope in themselves. There is no ability for us to undo our wickedness or this punishment that is meant for us. There is no way we can dig out of this. It won’t work.

 So you go back to verse seven, “be silent before the Lord God.”

We are called to fear the Lord, to revere him, to trust him. And then, I don't think by accident, in verse 7 we find this word sacrifice. 

“For the day of the LORD is near; the LORD has prepared a sacrifice” (Zephaniah 1:7 ESV)

In the flow of Zephaniah, the sacrifice is mainly the wicked—the rebels. They're going to be sacrificed, killed, punished for their sin. In the words of the Bible: 

“For the wages of sin is death,” (Romans 6:23 ESV)

They will be slaughtered. But in that very word—the word sacrifice—is a word chock full of hope. Because even in Zephaniah's day those who have been trusting the Lord have been tracing a promise that God has been promising from the beginning.

It began in a garden with the promised seed—this offspring. You see it in the way Abraham and Issac receive a sacrifice that the Lord provided. You see it in the sacrifice and especially in the Day of Atonement in the way that the Lord provided a sacrifice to cancel sin.

And then we see it so clearly in the New Testament. This sacrifice could be us—the wicked who deserve to be punished. But for those who are silent before the Lord, who would fear him, who would come to him for safety and satisfaction, he would provide a sacrifice, a substitute in their place.

Here's how the Bible talks about it. It says,

“But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:5 ESV)

“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV)

Zephaniah has shown us that God hates sin. God takes sin seriously. He punishes it. And our only hope is to fear and trust God.

This morning, that's you. That is your only hope. If you've never put your hope there, don't wait! The Day of the Lord is near.

If you have put your trust in Jesus, and you're like, “what do I do with this?” Here, two things in closing: 

First,  remind yourself of the wrath you deserve so that the mercy you have looks that much sweeter. Take some time to look at your life and see your sin face-to-face. Then, take a sobering walk down the realities that Zephaniah promised should have been yours. Then, come and remember your only hope—Jesus. Rejoice in that. Remember, as Alistar Begg wrote “It is because God's wrath is real that His mercy is relevant."

I think one of the sweet results of doing that will be an immediate reaction to extend mercy and grace to others because you realize how much grace you have been given. You give a lot of grace because you have been given a lot of grace. 

And then number two, let this be fuel for you to kill sin. One of the reasons that there are warnings throughout the Bible is so that we might flee sin. You think, “oh, if I'm a Christian, if I'm saved, God's never gonna let me go.” 

Yeah, you're right. But one of the ways that he doesn't let you go is by giving you warnings so that you would flee sin. And so, take a serious look at your life. When you see sin in your life, think about this, “If I continue to entertain it, it will lead to destruction. Period. That is absolutely true. 

And whatever your sin is—gossip, gluttony, drunkenness, lust, anger, pride, manipulation, whatever—the Bible is saying, “Do whatever can be done to put it to death.”

This morning, hear this: God takes sin seriously, He will punish the wicked. Our only hope is to fear and trust God. The proper response, as simple as it is: “Repent of your sin and trust in God alone through his Son, Jesus.” And we are going to turn to a very tangible way to recall this great truth. We are going to remember together this great substitute of Christ on our behalf by taking communion together.