You need to read the book of Zephaniah because when you get to heaven and he comes up to you and says SO, did you read my book? What did you think of it? You’ll have something to say.
The Problem with the book of Zephaniah is that it is really missable. There’s no cool quotes in it, it never appears in the Christmas Carol service. IF Zephaniah never made it into the Bible, I’m not sure that anyone would notice, would miss it. That seems a terrible thing to say.
And if Zephaniah was the Only bit of the bible that you had then on a first read, you could come away feeling a bit scared – Chapter 1 says Jerusalem is Doomed, Ch 2 says everyone else is doomed and Jerusalem is still doomed, Ch3 is where we find the hope.
So I’ve been reading Zephaniah again and again this week trying to see if I can get one sermon out of it. And I think that this is it – IF I am to tell you that everything will be fine – it will all work out – you will start off by thinking – Clearly you don’t understand how bad the situation is.
So when I preach, Oh it will be fine – you the listener, you’re well placed to say You don’t know what you’re talking about. You have no idea how bad it is. Your hope is fluffy nonsense.
But When I say – This is really bad, this is really bad. But you know everything will be alright – Then you’re allowed to say – Okay so he does know how bad the situation is But still he is preaching hope. And then that hope starts to have real weight and meaning.
And that’s what we’ve got. Zephaniah comes in a long line of prophets. He is speaking sometime after the ten northern tribes have been invaded and carried off into exile and slavery. And whilst Zephaniah doesn’t know it, he is speaking really the Last proper king of Jerusalem, to Josiah, – after Josiah comes three little kings – Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, – but by that stage the enemy have arrived and its just a question of how long can they hold out, until they too are starved, killed, dragged off to slavery, a small remnant remaining in the ruins of Jerusalem, 586bc.
So Zephaniah’s book starts off with God saying – I’m basically going to do the Flood again. I’m going to wipe the earth clean, people , animals, birds, fish.
And of course because you’re a good bible reading Christian you’re thinking – that’s wrong – God promised – that’s why he hung up his war bow, that’s why we have the rainbow.
So instead we get details. Zephaniah, we’re told in verse 1 is a son of son of a son of King Hezekiah, so he is distant royalty – and I think that that’s why Zephaniah mostly speaks to the institutions, to the Crown and Court, to the Judges and Priests – even the schools of prophets –
and God is upset that even though Josiah is a good king, and has recently rediscovered the lost torah, and recently reinstated Passover and started on a scheme of clearing the land of the idol worship, there’s still too much Baal worship, too much Molech worship going on, (they were into child sacrifice – yes there was a time when even in Jerusalem they went seriously off the rails and down the dark path of child sacrifices) and Not Enough seeking the Lord.
The problem boils down to Complacency. Its summed up in a horrible phrase – the Lord will not do good, nor will he harm. There’s a benign impotency to this God. He’s not really worth obeying, not worth serving, not worth worshipping nor loving. Ch1v12.
Of course you’re thinking Well there’s plenty of people who go about their lives and sometimes they seem to believe in God and most of the time they don’t.
But the challenge is always there for us – we who boldly say we love Jesus and come to Church, tune in, Does faith in God ever impinge on any aspect of our lives? – our shopping, our jobs, our giving our serving, our loving our neighbours as ourselves.
This is the key question that the crowd ask John the Baptist. They go to him to turn over a new leaf, to start again, and their first question is How do I live this out – I’m a soldier so killing and guarding is in the job description and John says Okay but don’t oppress, and Tax Collectors – you would have thought that John’s advice would be Don’t be a collaborator, just don’t do it, but John says Don’t steal. Do your job, with honesty and integrity, but just because everyone else is fiddling their expenses form, and just because there’s no law that says you can’t claim for that, when deep down, you know you shouldn’t be, so don’t.
Chapter two, Zephaniah starts with what looks like a tirade against everyone else. When you write OT essays at college you study a thing called O.A.N. – short for Oracles Against the Nations. Pretty much every prophet has a section in which the surrounding nations are given a piece of God’s mind.
Gaza, Ashekelon, Ashdod, Ekron, Cherethites, Canaanites, Philistines, Ethiopians, Assyrians – we’re all doomed!
But God’s point is the same as it was against Jerusalem – there we saw the warning about being comfortable and complacent – here its phrased differently but its still about your own pride, scoffing against others, there’s that I’m alright Jack attitude that allows evil and injustice to thrive and go unchecked or challenged.
So again the take home point for us is the call to be humble, to seek the Lord, to trust in the Lord, to draw near to God.
But what I notice in reading Zephaniah is the constant promise of the busyness of God. I will do this, I will do that. This is the sovereign God of all the earth, who cares about all the nations, who cares about even us, who will not let us build our own little private hells but who will come with us even in our own self-destruction and then comes the restoration.
So as we get into chapter 3 we see the fulfilment of the original promise of God to Abraham that he would be a blessing to All Nations – God will gather all the nations to Him, and now instead of the threat of flood we have the promise of a reversal of the tower of Babel, ch3v9 – so that everyone can communicate with each other and worship God and serve Him.
What are we supposed to do? We’re supposed to Rejoice, to sing, to be humble, to serve each other, to fear no more – and it is because God is in our midst. Or to put it another way Immanuel.
And so here we have something that would be worthy of a Carol Service the promise that God is in our midst – and that all people, the lame, the outcast, the shame filled, will be gathered into God’s Home, – God will take away the disasters and the reproach and the oppressors and God will sing. God will sing over us.
The phrase that I keep coming back to is Zeph 3.17 – God will renew you in his love. Different translations put this differently. God will quiet you with his love, God will take delight in you in his love.
And it is because of God and because God is in our midst. So you see how our faith is not a philosophy but a relationship. In which God calls us to be who He has made us to be, calls us to be a blessing to others, that calls for a life well lived that bears good fruit and that calls for humility and a heart that will seek the Lord,
But it also requires us to allow God to renew us, renew you, to soak in His love, to receive His love – and perhaps the first step there for us is to rejoice. To sing, to be glad, because God cares, because God is in our midst, because God is not finished with us, because God is renewing us in His Love. Amen. //