Zephaniah 2-3.8 - Everybody’s In Trouble Now

Podcast Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by Apple Podcasts)

Hello, and welcome back to Tabernacle Talk. We are in probably your favorite book of the Bible, Zephaniah. And Zephaniah, as we mentioned last time, Zephaniah is a prophet.

He's a prophet during the final decades of the Kingdom of Judah. And this was the time when there was a king, Josiah, that was trying to bring about some following of God's law and God's rules and reign again, and to get rid of idol worship.

He ended up being ultimately unsuccessful in that.

But during this time period, Zephaniah was prophesying what God was telling him about the future of the kingdom of Judah and what they would go through as a result of their rejection of God and their total embrace of the gods of the nations around

them, of their reliance on other nations to protect them and to save them instead of it being the Lord and them turning to him alone. So yesterday, we looked at the proclamations that God gave in particular against Jerusalem, against Judah, against

that southern kingdom. And then now today, he's going to extend that out. He's gonna say, I'm not just angry with Israel, with Judah, with Jerusalem. I'm not just frustrated with their sin.

I'm against all sin. And so we'll dive in. I'm gonna start from chapter two and verse number one, and then we'll go through.

We read verses one through three last time where God gave at the end of that pronouncement of judgment, he said, hey, come back.

I don't want to destroy everyone, everyone that turns to me, everyone that repents, everyone that has that humility that is seeking for righteousness. I will receive and I will conceal you. I will protect you.

He says, I have no desire to wipe out everyone. He says, whoever turns to me, I will welcome and I will keep safe. So, Zephaniah chapter two, gather yourselves together, gather together, undesirable nation.

Before the decree takes effect, and the day passes like chaff, before the burning of Yahweh's anger overtakes you, before the day of Yahweh's anger overtakes you. Seek Yahweh, all you humble of the earth, who carry out what he commands.

Seek righteousness, seek humility. Perhaps you will be concealed on the day of Yahweh's anger. So now he goes into not just Jerusalem, but all the nations around Judah.

He says, for Gaza will be abandoned, and Ashkelon will become a ruin. Ashdod will be driven out at noon, and Ekron will be uprooted. Woe, inhabitants of the seacoast, nation of the Karathites.

The word of Yahweh is against you, Canaan, land of the Philistines. I will destroy you until there is no one left.

The seacoast will become pasturelands, with caves for shepherds and pens for sheep, the coastland will belong to the remnant of the house of Judah. They will find pasture there.

They will lie down in the evening among the houses of Ashkelon, for Yahweh their God will return to them and restore their fortunes.

So here are these Canaanite people that for hundreds of years now, God has given them space, like he allowed them to continue living.

It wasn't that when Israel came into the land and God said, hey, I want you to meet out justice, just like God's gonna have the Babylonians due to Israel. He had Israel that they were supposed to come in and do this for the Canaanites.

And just like we read that God will protect anyone that turns to him, he did that exact same thing in the Book of Joshua for all of the Canaanites and the Gibeonites and Rahab the harlot and her family, anyone that turned to God, God spared.

But not only that, but because Israel didn't end up fighting all of the battles that they were supposed to, and they kind of allowed the Canaanites to still have some strongholds, have some places where they lived, it became really a thorn in their

side. And you can read about that all throughout the Book of Judges, where it then enticed the people of Israel to worship these false gods who encouraged the people, hey, do whatever you want.

Yeah, you make sacrifices to us, but you can have so much more fun, you can do so much more things. And all these people around are saying, hey, you don't like what's going on with your crops, can we suggest that you worship Baal?

He's the sky god, he's the god of rain, and if you worship him, then you'll get some good crops. Or hey, you don't have kids, maybe you worship this fertility goddess, and then you will have kids.

And so they were constantly a source of idolatry for Israel that they intermarried with them, and it wasn't just oh, you guys aren't from the same race, and so you can't get married.

It was specifically hey, your idolatry, like when you pair your life up with those that do not believe in your god, it will take your heart away. And we can see that over and over and over again.

And you can see it in Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, but who fell in that particular way. It wasn't that God said, I don't want you to intermarry at all. It was a prohibition against idolatry.

You can see that even in the fact that Rahab, the harlot, married one of Jesus's ancestors, one of David's ancestors. And though she was a Philistine, though she was a Canaanite, that God included her in the ancestry of Jesus.

And so here now, hundreds of years later, the Canaanites have been under the condemnation, the judgment of God for a very, very, very long time, at least five, six, 700 years. And here they still have not turned to the Lord.

And so God says, hey, all the stuff that you Canaanites have amassed, the cities that you've built up, this is going to be used for my people because I'm going to forgive them and I'm going to bring them back into the land.

I'm going to restore their fortunes. Then he goes from the Philistines who are right next to Israel. Then he goes to the east, to Moab and Ammon, which were kind of ancestral cousins of the Israelites.

It would be the children of Lot, Abraham's nephew. And he says this about them. He says, I've heard the taunting of Moab and the insults of the Ammonites, who have taunted my people and threatened their territory.

So Moab and Ammon are like, oh yeah, we're gonna take these cities from Judah. We're gonna take this, oh you guys, you're just really going down the tubes. And maybe as soon as Babylon gets in, then we're gonna take everything for ourselves.

So he's hearing that. Verse number nine, therefore, as I live, this is the declaration of Yahweh of Heaven's armies, the God of Israel.

Moab will be like Sodom, and the Ammonites like Gomorrah, a place overgrown with weeds, a salt pit, and a perpetual wasteland. The remnant of my people will plunder them. The remainder of my nation will dispossess them.

This is what they get for their pride because they have taunted and acted arrogantly against the people of Yahweh of Heaven's armies. Yahweh will be terrifying to them when he starves all the gods of the earth.

Then all the distant coasts and islands of the nations will bow in worship to him, each in its own place. So here he says, hey, Moab and Ammon, you guys remember the story of Lot, how he was barely saved from Sodom and Gomorrah.

You all, through your attacks and taunting your pride, your desire to take advantage of God's people, he says, you're going to endure that punishment on you that your great, great ancestor escaped from. Now it's going to be you guys.

Then he said, oh, so I do want to mention, verse number 11 is so cool.

Yahweh will be terrifying to them when he starves all the gods of the earth, that there is a day of reckoning for the spiritual beings that right now, as you would read about in the Book of Daniel, that right now as they oversee the different nations

of the world, as they have dealt treacherously, you can read about in Deuteronomy 32, you can read about, I think I mentioned it in Stephen's sermon in front of the Sanhedrin, in the Book of Acts, that there are these spiritual beings that are over

particular nations. And it's not like a secret society or something, it's not that a demon whispers into the president of the United States ear, whether this one or the last one, he doesn't say, hey, you should do this thing, this would make Satan

very happy. It's that inner working behind the scenes. Much like us, when we have the Holy Spirit, how he works in us, he works in us through God's word, he works in us through the conscience that we have, that he's prompting us, hey, take these

actions. And scripture is very clear about the type of actions that the gods of the nations, what they do.

And it's, they encourage violence, they encourage financial corruption, and they encourage sexual immorality, and advantage being taken of people.

Those are kind of the main things that scripture condemns over and over again, and as God says, hey, this nation is doing this, and so I'm going to crush Baal, I'm gonna crush Milcombe, I'm going to crush, in the Book of Habakkuk, I'm gonna crush the

Canaanite god Tam. He says, I'm going to punish them here, I'm going to starve them, that they will not be able to rule anymore, that they will have all of that taken away. Much could be said about that.

If you have any questions about that, I would encourage you to read The Unseen Realm by Michael Heiser. Dr. Michael Heiser, that's H-E-I-S-E-R.

Great book, talking about just what the Bible says about spiritual beings, and the book actually talks quite a bit about Jesus and the Trinity, and it's wonderful, wonderful work. So, here he has Canaanites, you guys are done.

Moab and Ammon to the east, you guys are done. Then in verse number 12, he says, you Kushites will also be slain by my sword. That is kind of the powerhouse country that was down in Africa, south of Egypt, kind of modern day Ethiopia.

And he says, you guys to the far south, you're going down too. And then he says, he will also stretch out his hand against the north and destroy Assyria, which would be kind of to the north of Israel. So you got Assyria to the north.

You have the Canaanites to the west, near to the Mediterranean Sea. You've got Moab and Ammon to the east, and then you have Kush or Ethiopia to the south. So here goes, he says, you'll make Nineveh a desolate ruin, dry as the desert.

He says, herds will lie down in the middle of it. Every kind of wild animal, both eagle owls and herons, will roost in the capitals of its pillars.

Their calls will sound from the window, but devastation will be on the threshold, for he will expose the cedar work.

He says, this is the jubilant city that lives in security, that thinks to herself, I exist, and there is no one else, which is a statement that is normally reserved for God alone, where he says, hey, I am, and there is no one beside me.

There's no one else. And here Nineveh is saying this about themselves. He says, I exist, and there's no one else.

There's no one like me. I'm the greatest of all nations. He says, what a desolation she has become, a place for wild animals to lie down, everyone who passes by her scoffs and shakes her fist.

And then he continues it with Jerusalem. He says, woe to the city that is rebellious and defiled, the oppressive city. She has not obeyed.

She has not accepted discipline. She has not trusted in Yahweh. She has not drawn near to her God.

The princes within her are roaring lions. Her judges are wolves of the night, which leave nothing for the morning. Her prophets are reckless, treacherous men.

Her priests profane the sanctuary. They do violence to instruction. The righteous Yahweh is in her.

He does no wrong. He applies his justice morning by morning. He does not fail at dawn, yet the one who does wrong knows no shame.

So he says the ones that are in charge of leading Judah and Jerusalem, they're taking advantage of people. They're doing violence. The people, the priests, the prophets, the ones that are supposed to guide them in what God says, they are doing wrong.

They're reckless. They're treacherous. They profane the sanctuary.

He says they are twisting my law. They're saying that I said things that I did not say, and they are not saying the things that I have said. Verse number six, I have cut off nations.

Their corner towers are destroyed. I have laid waste their streets with no one to pass through. Their cities lie devastated without a person, without an inhabitant.

I thought you will certainly fear me and accept correction. Then her dwelling place would not be cut off based on all that I had allocated to her. However, they became more corrupt in all their actions.

God says, I did these other things. I brought these judgements on these other places. And I thought that as a result, that Jerusalem, Judah here would go, okay, well, we don't want that.

We know that our God is the one true God. And so we're gonna follow him and we're gonna obey him. He says, that's not what happened.

And instead, you guys have completely ignored me. You became more wicked after you saw what happened to my justice, my judgment on these other places. He says, therefore, wait for me.

This is Yahweh's declaration.

Until the day I rise up for plunder, for my decision is to gather nations, to assemble kingdoms in order to pour out my indignation on them, all my burning anger for the whole earth will be consumed by the fire of my jealousy.

Here, God says, Jerusalem, like you are no different than any of the ones around you, you are not more righteous. And in fact, you've been given more light. I had no desire to cut off your dwelling place.

He says, I didn't want Babylon to come and destroy you. He says, but you only became more wicked.

So as a result, I'm going to bring all the nations together and I'm going to pour out my indignation, my fury on them that when Babylon came through, no one was exempt, everyone was getting destroyed. That it happened to Cush in the south, in Egypt.

It happened to the Canaanites. It happened to Moab and Ammon. It happened to even Assyria, which was a great global superpower.

And God says, I'm going to pour out this indignation on them. I didn't want to, but they left me no choice. Justice demands that all of those that have been killed, all of those that have been extorted, that there would be justice on their behalf.

And God set up government to give justice. But when a country fails to do justice, then God will often bring the justice from another location, from another place. And he is a righteous God.

He's one that genuinely cares about the poor. He's one that cares about what's being taught in that time, these Jewish believers. And nowadays, God cares about what's being taught in Christian churches.

God's vitally, he cares so much about it. So what's our response? Do we see these and go, man, just God's so mean, I can't believe that he would ever tell us no.

Sometimes I feel like we have the same reaction as my son when he does something wrong.

And I'm like, listen, what do you think is going to happen if you, you know, if you whack your sister, if you, you know, pour, if you dump your drink on the couch? Like, what do you think is going to happen?

Well, nothing, but there has to be justice. There has to be a retribution for wrong. And God cares about each individual person.

He cares about his world. But even in his justice, he promises grace. He promises forgiveness.

And we'll see that in in shocking, beautiful clarity tomorrow as we finish out Zephaniah. But the thought today is you have seen God's justice poured out in history. You can go back and you can look like you can search up the ruins of Assyria.

You can look up the destruction of Jerusalem. If you want to look even further, you can look at how Babylon was destroyed and look at that story. You can see that God has kept his word throughout all of the centuries.

So, the question is, what will your response be to him? Will it be hatred or distrust or fear?

Or will it be what he asked for, which is just a heart of righteousness and a heart of humility that would say, God, I understand who I've been and I don't want to be that anymore. I want to follow you.

And God says, you know, as he gives that declaration to Canaan and their cities, he says, because I'm going to bring back my people and they're going to live in the land.

They're going to live in the cities that you all built because I'm going to look with kindness and favor on them. I'm going to forgive them and I'm going to restore their fortunes.

Maybe today you have felt like you have undergone some punishment, some chastening by God, that chastisement, that correction. And maybe you'd go, hey, God, I know what I did was wrong. I know I've turned back to you now.

God, I am asking you to restore my fortunes. Put me back to a place where, like we'd read about in Psalms a couple days ago, where David's like, hey, your hand was heavy on me. It's crushing me because of my sin.

And so he asks God for just that relief. And maybe that might be something that you ask the Lord for.

I'd say this, realize the state that our nation is in, that we call violence and sexual immorality and murder and going against God's commandments and God's designs, that it puts us in that exact same place of requiring God's justice.

May we, like Abraham, pray that God would stay his justice as he prayed there for Sodom and Gomorrah. Then he said, God, if there's ten righteous people, will you spare the city? And let's have that heart of not wanting to see God destroy our people.

And let's have a heart that would say, God, may the change in the righteousness of America may it start with me. May my words, may my actions, may my business dealings, may it be right in your sight. God, I can't change everyone.

But Lord, through your Holy Spirit, I can change me. And God, I can shine a light. I can't shine it out to everyone, but I can shine it to my family, to my neighbors, to my friends, to my coworkers.

I have a portion of my life that you have given me, a portion of this world that is mine to live in and to enjoy and to have fellowship and friendship in. God, may I bring a light into this portion of my world.

And I think as we do that, we would join with the heart of God that would say, I don't want destruction to happen. I want forgiveness. I want redemption.

I want that concealment and safety in Christ. And I want to remind us again, as we've looked at all of this condemnation today, I want to remind us of Romans 8.1, that there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.

That doesn't mean that we'll never have any correction from God. As Hebrews 13 would state that if we receive no correction from God, then we might not even be His children. And so I'd encourage you to know that God's not punishing you.

If there are circumstances in your life, it could be that God is course correcting you, that maybe you had put your trust in something you shouldn't have and God's bringing you back to a place of trust and confidence in Him alone, or that you were

involved in sin and God corrected you so that you would maybe hate that sin or not want to be a part of it anymore. It could be like Job that there's just so many things going on behind the scenes that you don't know about and God's just bringing you

through it so that you would be made closer to the image of Christ, that the all things that aren't necessarily good would work together for good to those who love God and to those who are called according to His purpose, which is being conformed to

the image of Christ. I just wanted to encourage you with some of those prayers today, some of those thoughts, and I'm looking forward to finishing out Zephaniah tomorrow and then Friday, we're going to be doing Second John, just a little book. We'll

hop back over to the New Testament and then we'll see where we go next week. But I hope that you're enjoying this book of Zephaniah so far.

It's interesting for me to see people that are in the same type of circumstances we are right now in America where, hey, there's wickedness and there are people that are supposed to be for God and proclaiming God and they're not doing it and they're

supposed to be justice and there's not justice in these ways or in these areas. And so as a result, like, yeah, justice will come and may we be faithful to live righteous, to live humbly with God and to live right by people.

Thanks for tuning in and I hope you have a great day.