Waiting For and Savoring The Savior
Text: Zephaniah 3:1–10 ESV
I want to begin by reminding us where we started. We began in chapter one, to hear of God's global judgment. In chapter one, God started zoomed out, saying He will punish the wicked in all of the world, and he describes some of the devastation that will involve. And then he zoomed in to Judah, and then zoomed in a little bit more to Jerusalem. And then he zoomed out again.
It's like sounding a warning for a hurricane, for example. The news sounds a warning saying when and where this hurricane is going to hit. They then move on and talk about the strength of the wind, rain, floods, everything. And they try to describe the extent of the destruction. They do it all to plead with people, “Flee to safety. You will be destroyed if you don’t.”
In chapter two, we really start to see really clearly how to get to safety. In verse one and verse three. What we see is this call to seek the Lord together. Zephaniah calls the faithful few, the remnant, to gather together and seek the Lord. And today, we're going to see the last part of this safety plan — wait for the Lord.
But before we get there, we will see God clearly say that he plans to judge even Jerusalem. He builds off of chapter two where he described global judgment by using a compass that surrounded Jerusalem — north, south, east, west. The idea was that the faithful few would say, “Hey, if our neighbors are being punished for their sin, we shouldn't think we're getting off the hook. We should flee to safety.”
Now in chapter three, it turns and very directly goes straight for the bull's eye in that compass and says yes, “Jerusalem, even you will be punished.”
Here's where we're going today. Number one, we're going to begin by seeing in verses 1–7 God declares very clearly he will punish even Jerusalem — the wicked in that city. Then in verse 8 we're going to see the next part of the safety plan, which is to wait for the Lord. Finally in verses 8–10, he gives two reasons to wait. Number one, because God will right all the wrongs. Number two, he will transform these faithful few into a community of global worshipers.
Let me just summarize what Zephaniah is trying in a short sentence. Zephaniah is calling God's people wait for your faithful God who never fails. Wait for your faithful God who never fails — specifically he will judge those even in Jerusalem, wait for him, because he will right all wrongs, and he will transform you into a community of worshipers. Wait for your faithful God who never fails.
Point number one is that God will punish, yes, even those in Jerusalem. And here's how he's describing Jerusalem. God's city — where the temple is. All right, look at verse one with me:
“Woe to her who is rebellious and defiled, the oppressing city!” (Zephaniah 3:1 ESV)
He describes their relationship to God — rebellious. Next, their relationship with themselves — defiling themselves with how they treat even holy things. And they're oppressing, they're oppressing others. This acts as a summary describing how God's city is. Then really, verses two through seven just expand upon that by clarifying those realities. Listen to how it expands.
“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.” (Zephaniah 3:2–4 ESV)
They're doing the exact opposite of what they're supposed to do. Their rulers, they're supposed to be those who upheld the law, who brought people in to rightly worship God. Instead they're doing violence to the law, and they're treacherous.
Then God compares himself to this wicked city, and one of the roles it serves is to see how far they have gotten away from the standard. Look at verse 5:
“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.” (Zephaniah 3:5 ESV)
You've got God and his justice in his righteousness, who he is at the core, compared to his city, Jerusalem, that is rebellious. All of this supports God's point, “I will judge even you, Jerusalem. Yes, I will punish even you.”
God wants his people to hear this and turn to him. He is literally doing everything he can to get their attention. He is punishing all these cities around you. He’s sending prophets to warn them, and they won’t listen.
I think of a children's song like Five Little Monkeys. You know, 5 little monkeys jumping on the bed, one fell off and bumped his head, Mom called the doctor and the doctor said, “No more monkeys jumping on the bed.” What happens in the next verse? The monkeys are jumping on the bad, another one falls off the bed, another call to the doctor. Did they listen and learn? No.
I know that is a silly example. But I think we are supposed to feel some exasperation from God as he is sounding the alarm from every direction and his people refuse to list. That’s where it goes in verse 6–7:
“I have cut off nations [think Assyria coming in and destroying the northern kingdom]; their 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.” (Zephaniah 3:6–7 ESV)
The idea: surely they will hear this prophet or they'd see these things and then turn back. They didn't. And then God's verdict. Yes, I will punish even you Jerusalem. You're not getting off the hook. You have chosen to persist in your rebellion.
Zephaniah makes this clear again, that God will punish the wicked. He will punish those who do not seek safety in him. I want to sound that same note. And just like in Zephaniah, we will keep sounding it—over and over. You will not get out of this judgment. Your only hope is to run to God in Christ for safety. If you have never done that, do not wait. Put your trust in God today. Don’t wait. There is no “son or daughter of the principle.” You will stand before a holy God and either receive his just wrath or receive the forgiveness bought by his Son on your behalf.
Okay, so we have now seen Zephaniah address the destruction to Jerusalem. Now he is going to transition and talk to the faithful few who are seeking this safety in God. We are going to look now then at verse 8 where we see this call to wait for the Lord. Then he is going to give two reasons why:
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Because God will right all wrongs.
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Because he will transform his faithful few into a global community of worshipers.
First, let’s look at verse 8, and see the clear call to wait on the Lord:
““Therefore wait for me,” declares the LORD,” (Zephaniah 3:8 ESV)
He's just described the punishment he's going to give to the whole world and then most recently to Jerusalem. And in light of all of that he says “*therefore*”—therefore wait for me.
Let's go back to Zephaniah 2:1–3 where the first parts of the safety plan are listed out. First, verse one. “Gather together.” Gather together, the faithful few who hear Zephaniah's words and come to God gather together. Then verse three, “seek the Lord.” I summarized it, with DeRouchie’s help, as—seek the Lord together.
Now verse three adds this “wait.” Seek the Lord together with patience. Wait for him. Seek him, but don't lose hope. Wait for him. Even as all of this is going on, persevere. Said succinctly, seek him together and be patient knowing he will come through. That's Zephaniah's whole safety plan.
In chapter three, verse eight gives reasons why they should wait and seek the Lord together. He gives two reasons. Let’s look at the first one—he will right all wrongs or he will bring right judgment. Look at the second half of verse 8:
““Therefore wait for me,” declares the LORD, [why wait for the Lord] “for [because] the day when I rise up to seize the prey. For my decision is to gather nations [think back to ch. 1], 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.” (Zephaniah 3:8 ESV)
Why should you wait because God will bring this judgment. And why is that good news? It is good news for those who are seeking God because when they look around, and they see all this wickedness, the wicked prospering, they are benefiting from all the oppression they're giving, or all of this persecution and ridicule, the promise is that God has not turned a blind eye. That is really good news for those who are feeling the oppression.
And it is reassuring when they are literally being mocked for this kind of trust. You see, the wicked of the city are acting like they are getting away with it. They even go to on to mock God in chapter 1 saying:
“those who say in their hearts, ‘The LORD will not do good, nor will he do ill.’” (Zephaniah 1:12 ESV)
They are like little kids who, for example, draw on the wall and think they got away with it. Then you ask if it was them (and there is only one kid in the house), and they tell you no literally thinking they got away with it. But it was only an illusion. In the same way, the wicked prospering and escaping judgement is only an illusion. God sees. This injustice in Jerusalem is not the last word.
God sees what's going on, and he will bring justice.
Look back at verse five with me. Here's what happened right in the middle of all of talking about how wicked Jerusalem is. Here's God describing himself
“The LORD within her is righteous; he does no injustice; every morning he shows forth his justice; each dawn he does not fail;” (Zephaniah 3:5 ESV)
Here's God saying to the faithful few, wait for me, I haven't left you. The Lord within her, I'm still here. And I'm still righteous. You saw all this injustice, I don't do injustice. Every morning I show forth my righteousness.
He says, “you look around and you see all this wickedness, but wait for me, my decision is made, my wrath will be full and complete. But wait for me.”
When you look around and the world is broken. If you don't feel that, just go ahead and open up a Twitter account, and I think you'll get your daily dose. Or just go ahead and download the latest news app and read the headlines. Wickedness seems to be just everywhere. A mass shooting in Atlanta, 10% of Uighurs people in internment camps, wars, theft, the list goes on and on. So much wickedness in the filing.
There are people out there who, when you talk to them about a sovereign God, look at all of that and say: God is either not real, dead, not listening, or blind. So as believers, the temptation might be to say, “Yeah, I'm looking around at all this evil and feeling like, ‘I want wonder where is our God?’” And his answer is, “Wait for me. Wait, I have not forgotten. I see all the injustice. I will punish the wicked. I see all the wrong, I will bring justification. I will bring vindication.”
And it is hard. Like in the world of two day shipping, emails that you can access instantly on your phone, FaceTime, and just all this stuff instant gratification. Waiting is hard. But God is calling us to wait. He has not forgotten.
But this is not just mindlessly waiting. Rather, this is waiting with promises in our mind that God is going to do what he said he's going to do. He is not only going to punish those who have been living wickedly, he has great and precious promises for those who trust in him. These are the kinds of truths we need to get through hard days and moments.
God will act. He has not forgotten. It can be tempting to think he's forgotten, and then to abandon him. He's not forgotten you. Here's how Habakkuk 2:3 puts it:
“For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end—it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay.” (Habakkuk 2:3 ESV)
We feel this right now. The wicked around us who are prospering and who are not being punished rightly. But God's vision still awaits its point in time. If it seems slow, and let's be honest, some days it seems slow, wait for it. It will surely come. It will not delay. He will punish the wicked and restore the righteous.
So, there is reason number one for waiting — God will render his judgment. Now on to number two, finally the happy notes in Zephaniah begin to come out. We're going to have a whole sermon dedicated to a happy ending next week. But we get the foretaste now. He says wait, number one for my decisions is together nations. Now look at verse 9–10 and see this promise that he's gonna transform the faithful few into being a community that is a community of global worshipers.
Therefore wait for me . . . because:
““For 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 Cush my worshipers, the daughter of my dispersed ones, shall bring my offering.” (Zephaniah 3:9–10 ESV)
This is far more beautiful than the rebellious, oppressive city. This is a group of people who have a pure speech. Notice it says God will change their speech to be a pure speech. But to what end? Look at verse nine “that all of them may call upon the name of the Lord.” The goal is worshiping God. They are going to call on God, serving and seeking Him alone, all the way even down to worshipers from Cush.
So let's dig into this and see how beautiful this promise is.
Here is what I mean. I’ll try to make this simple, but it might be a lot to take in, so I’m sorry if I lose some of you here. I think it will be worth it though if you can try to hang in here.
When you begin to think about speech in the Bible — specifically think about pure speech and language — it begins to recall passages like Genesis 11, and the Tower of Babel. There are so many words from Zephaniah 3:9–10 and Genesis 11 and the tower of Babel that are the same: peoples, speech, all, call, name of the Lord, scattered, one.
“Now the whole earth had one language, for example” from Genesis 11:1. But, unfortunately, because of their sin because of their wickedness, God comes down and confuses their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech. And he calls it the place Babel (or Babylon—same Hebrew word). And from there the Lord disperses them all over the face of the earth.
“Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth. And from there the LORD dispersed them over the face of all the earth.” (Genesis 11:9 ESV)
At the tower of Babel, God's people rebelled against Him. God's punishment was to change their speech from one to many and to scatter them. Here in Zephaniah 9 and 10, we have the opposite. God changes their speech from a babel to a pure speech. This doesn't necessarily mean he makes one language. Look at the text in Zephaniah again.
““For 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 Cush my worshipers, the daughter of my dispersed ones, shall bring my offering.” (Zephaniah 3:9–10 ESV)
We have the opposite. God changes their speech from a babel to a pure speech. It doesn't necessarily mean he makes one language, but now he makes a pure speech that they can understand each other as they worship the one God.
Notice in Zephaniah’s reversal that instead of being scattered like they were at Babel, Zephaniah says people from beyond the rivers of Cush will be gathered back and be my worshipers. Zephaniah is promising a reversal of the Tower of Babel. So one of the reasons the people are supposed to wait on God is that the faithful few will be transformed into a global community of worshipers.
Zephaniah’s example of a global community of worshipers is specifically identified with the coming of the people of Cush. This is important for a few reasons. Hang with me here. That's actually Zephaniah's homeland. His dad was a Cushite. It speaks to the global diversity that this transformation is going to bring. Because Cush is way far away in the south. It is what the New Testament calls Ethiopia — which is south of Egypt in the area of modern Sudan and Ethiopia today. The idea is that people from the further south part of the world will be worshiping God.
The listeners are supposed to be picturing this global community of different people from all over worshiping with pure speech I mean, after all this would mean that Zephaniah is at least half black. And these worshipers would be from a nation outside of Jerusalem. They are supposed to picture people of all different skin colors, different languages, all gathered around, worshiping, calling out in the name of the Lord.
Here is how Revelation describes this day:
“After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”” (Revelation 7:9–10 ESV)
I can’t wait for that day. The picture is all these people from all over the world worshiping. So remember that in Zephaniah we usually have a couple lenses we are looking through. The people were supposed to gather together and worship the Lord during Zephaniah’s day. And here, he was promising that on the final day they would be completely transformed to have a pure speech.
But we also see this middle day. This day in between — the life, death, resurrection and work of Christ. The day that Christ comes these future realities mentioned begin to break into the present. Here is what I mean: look how Pentecost is a partial reversal of the Tower of Babel like Zephaniah promised.
What happens at Pentecost? Look at Acts 2:1 there were people from all over gathered together:
“And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.” (Acts 2:2–4 ESV)
All of these people gathered together. Later, in chapter two, it literally starts listing off all these people who have gathering:
“Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia,” (Acts 2:9 ESV)
God pours out His Spirit on them. And what happens is they all, in transformed speech, begin to praise God. And with this Holy Spirit they establish the New Testament Church, which is the very embodied people, the faithful few, who are holding on to God and who are worshiping Him, because they've been transformed. This means that the church is literally a light to the world to declare this reality of all the nations worshiping God.
Let that hit home. It means, in the least, that Christians should be the farthest people away from terms like racism. We should be those who champion global praise to God. We are fighting for global restoration, global togetherness, from all tribes tongues, and nations.
I remember just totally messing this up when my wife and I moved to Nicaragua. We put ourselves above these people we came to serve. There was a season when we didn’t let Nicas in our house. And the Lord, so thankfully, opened our eyes to this racism. He broke us, and when we started treated them like they should have been. It was so great to sit around the table as one.
Christians need to be those who are looking for every way possible to champion global restoration, especially around the throne of God. I'm not pretending that little statement there can solve all of the ways and answers every question about how Table Rock Church should engage in the many things, many conversations, and responses that are going on with race and racism. But I will say that there's every biblical foundation, we need to say there is no such thing as Christ and racism. And we should be those who are weeping when racism crops up anywhere.
Zephaniah really does have a picture of the global church in mind and the New Testament church is supposed to represent that in part. The connections keep going. Let me give you another example of how the New Testament church is this global ingathering kicked off from Christ establishing the new covenant.
Remember that Zephaniah’s example of a global ingathering was Cushites. Well, again, the Greek word or New Testament word for Cush is Ethiopia. Well, just as a way to marvel at the beauty of our God, we read this seemingly random story of an Ethiopian in the beginning of Acts.
In Acts 8, Philip meets a Ethiopian eunuch. This Ethiopian gets saved and baptized, and we don’t hear anything more about it. But put that story in light of what Zephaniah is talking about, and we begin to see the significance. The fact that worshipers are coming from Cush, from Ethiopia to worship God shows that because of the work of his Son God is beginning to fulfill his promise to restore his faithful people.
All of this is building the case, wait for God because he fulfills his promises. He has begun to fulfill them at Pentecost, in the saving of the Ethiopian eunuch, and continually through the New Testament church. God has begun to fulfill his promises, and he will fulfill them to the fullest extent.
That's what Zephaniah wants you to hear. He's calling out to people who are living in the middle of rebellion around them. And he's saying: God is not blind. He will punish that wickedness, and he's saying God has not forgotten you. You might be thinking: Where is our God? All of these bad things are happening. And he's saying, “Oh, he's coming and he will fulfill his promises.” Here's Isaiah 64:4:
“From of old no one has heard or perceived by the ear, no eye has seen a God besides you, who acts for those who wait for him.” (Isaiah 64:4 ESV)
Let’s go back to that short sentence. Wait for your faithful God. He will not fail. Don't lose hope. Hold out to the end. Amid persecution, amid hard headlines. People telling you you're foolish. Wait for him.
Zephaniah is calling his people. He's saying to the remnant, the faithful few, out there to wait. Wait for our faithful, righteous God, who will not fail. And he reminds them. He says, God will punish the wicked, even those in Jerusalem. So wait for him. Wait, because he will answer the injustices, and he will transform the community to global worshipers. And as you wait, display this to the world through this gathering.