7 God's Great Heart of Love toward His Own (Zephaniah)
7
God’s Great Heart of Love toward His Own
Zephaniah
Mike Bullmore
In John Bunyan’s famous book The Pilgrim’s Progress, right from the outset of the book, we are introduced to a man who is deeply troubled and who is also very conspicuously reading from a book. The man, named Christian, explains to his family his distress in reading that their city is doomed to burn with fire from heaven, but his family offers no real comfort. During one of his many walks in the fields, while reading his book Christian bursts out, “What shall I do to be saved?”
A man named Evangelist appears and asks, “Why are you crying out?” The story continues:
He [Christian] answered, “Sir, I understand from reading the book in my hand that I am condemned to die and after that to come to judgment. I am not willing to do the first, nor able to do the second.”
Then Evangelist asked, “Why are you not willing to die, since this life is attended with so many evils?”
The man answered, “Because I am afraid that this burden that is on my back will sink me lower than the grave, and I shall fall into Hell.
“And, sir,” continued the man, “if I am not ready to die, then I am not prepared to go to judgment and from there to execution. Thinking about these things distresses me greatly.”
Then Evangelist said, “If this is your condition, why are you standing still?”
The man responded, “Because I do not know where to go.”
Then Evangelist gave him a parchment and unrolled it so that the man could read, “Flee from the wrath to come.”
When he had read it, the man looked at Evangelist very carefully and said, “Which way should I run?”
Then Evangelist, pointing with his finger to a very wide field asked, “Do you see the distant narrow gate?”
“No,” the man replied.
Then Evangelist asked, “Do you see the distant shining light?”
“I think I do,” the man answered.
Then Evangelist said, “Keep that light in your eye, and go up directly toward it, and soon you will see the narrow gate. And when you finally come to the gate, knock and you will be told what to do.”1
Now I can imagine someone reading that and saying, “Clearly the problem is with that book that he’s reading. What he needs to do is stop reading that book. Just put the book down and move on. That will relieve his distress.”
Christian is saying, “I understand from reading the book in my hand that I am condemned to die and after that to come to judgment.”
Condemned to die!? Come to judgment!? Christian, just put this book down and pick up something a little bit more positive, something that will make you feel better about life and about yourself. I mean, why would you want to read that when there are magazines about celebrities, romance novels, best sellers, and all sorts of fluffy entertaining things to occupy your attention?
Why would you read that book? Unless . . .
Unless what that book says is really true—unless what that book says is what is really going to happen, while all the other stuff is designed and calculated to distract you and keep you in a make-believe world. Why would you read such a book unless it is the one thing speaking about reality, and your only hope is in paying attention to it and doing what that book tells you?
Well, the book that Christian is reading is of course the Bible—God’s Word. And this book of Zephaniah could very easily be the place in God’s Word from which Christian is reading. This book of Zephaniah is this book in miniature. Most of the prophets are like that. In fact, what we’re trying to say with this entire conference is that the entire Old Testament is like that.
The Old Testament is pregnant with the message of the Bible. In other words, we could say the Old Testament is pregnant with the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is round with the gospel; it is great with gospel.
Now, granted, in the earlier stages of salvation history, in the earlier stages of progressive revelation, the gospel is more difficult to detect. But as salvation history progresses, the shape and the promise of the gospel become more evident.
So as we read through the Old Testament, either in its entirety or in its pieces, it is increasingly easy to detect the specific contours and the specific content of the gospel. And that is certainly the case when we get to the prophet Zephaniah.
The gospel is here in utero, but with all its essential parts in place. It begins with a sober assessment, a sober announcement of the condition of mankind sinning against God. It then pronounces God’s righteous judgment on sinful mankind.
But in the midst of the pronouncement of judgment with all its darkness and all of its gloom and distress and anguish, there comes shining through like a bright ray of light, a word of hope from God: the word of the good news of salvation from God, good news for sinful man under the judgment of God. Despite God’s righteous judgment, because of God’s mercy there is hope for sinners like us. And the picture Zephaniah paints of where that all ends up is almost beyond belief. What Zephaniah tells us is that God has provided salvation, and not just as an escape from God’s judgment, but as an entrance into God’s very joy.
I don’t think it is too simplistic to say that Zephaniah proceeds in these three steps:
So let’s follow this prophet Zephaniah as he takes these steps. And let’s hear “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.”
STEP 1:
THERE APPEARS TO BE NO HOPE
Zephaniah 1:2–4a says:
“I will [entirely] 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.
“I will stretch out my hand against Judah
and against all the inhabitants of Jerusalem.”2
These opening verses of Zephaniah have got to be some of the most dramatic and silencing opening verses of any book in the Bible. God says, “I will utterly sweep away everything from the face of the earth.” Why? It is because of how the people of Judah and the people of other nations were posturing themselves toward God.
Let’s see how they were posturing themselves toward God. In verse 5 we read about
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.
It looks like the people of Judah were trying to cover all their bases; they were succumbing to cultural pressure. “How can your God be the only god?” the people around them were saying.
And so they became good religious pluralists. They bowed down to the sun and stars like those around them. They swore allegiance to the Ammonite God Milcom. And oh, they included the Lord, too, so as to cover all their bases and not offend anyone.
And God was very offended.
God had said ever so clearly. “You shall worship the one true God and him only.” Worshiping God and something else is not worshiping God at all. They weren’t worshiping God. They were patronizing God.
Then look at verse 6:
Those who have turned back from following the LORD,
who do not seek the LORD or inquire of him . . .
They were pretending, at least in some ways, to believe in God and yet were living as practical atheists without reference to him at all.
We were made for God. We were made to be in a dependent relationship with God. We were made to trust in him with all our hearts and lean not on our own understanding. In all our ways we are to acknowledge God and seek him and inquire of him.
We are to say in every situation, “God, I want to think about this situation the way you think about this situation. I want to feel about this situation the way you feel about this situation, so that I can act and live in this situation in a way that is pleasing to you—how I spend my time, how I spend my money, how I relate to those around me.” But the people Zephaniah is addressing “do not seek the LORD or inquire of him” at all.
Then look at verse 12.
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.”
Not only were they patronizing God and not only were they neglecting God, but they were trivializing God, marginalizing God, saying, “He’s not really a factor in the equation of our lives. He really doesn’t matter one way or the other. What matters is the bottom line of my business. What matters is my reputation in the community. What matters is my comfort at home. God? If he exists, he’s not involved. He doesn’t really need to be taken into consideration.”
And we see all this posture of heart captured in 3:2. Speaking of Judah and Jerusalem, the prophet says:
She listens to no voice;
she accepts no correction.
She does not trust in the LORD;
she does not draw near to her God.
The people of Judah are proud and self-sufficient. They think they don’t need input from anybody, not even God. And so Zephaniah, the prophet of God, with a word from God, sent by God, comes and says to them:
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. (1:14–16)
A day of wrath is coming. Think of what Christian was reading in his book. God is absolutely just.
He does no injustice;
every morning he shows forth his justice. (3:5)
God is absolutely just and absolutely holy, so when he sees this rebellion and this pride and this blatant idolatry, he is (there is no other way to say it) angry, full of wrath—and he will judge.
You know this happened to Judah. God delivered on this promise. A matter of years after Zephaniah’s prophecy, Jerusalem was utterly destroyed. The Babylonians came. First they attacked and invaded the city and carried away many exiles. Then they came back and destroyed the city—tore down its walls and demolished the great temple Solomon had built. Zephaniah probably witnessed that with his own eyes.
But that now-historical day of God’s judgment on Judah was just a foretaste of the great and terrible day of the Lord that is coming on all unrepentant humanity. What it will be like is described in Scripture. It will be a day of anguish and wailing like nothing mankind has seen. All mankind will be laid bare before the heat of the fire of God’s wrath. Those who think they are safe in their great cities will be absolutely overwhelmed by God.
God is holy and in his holiness he punishes sin. He will bring justice. If there is no turning, he will bring judgment. He will set things right.
All of this judgment is due to one thing. We see it there in the middle of 1:17. “Because they have sinned against the LORD.” This announcement of judgment is in this book for a reason. The very first truth about God to be denied—at least as recorded in Scripture—is the doctrine of God’s judgment. Do you remember what the serpent said to Eve? “You will not surely die” (Gen. 3:4).
We want to think our neglect of God is insignificant; we want to think that our sins are minor, that they are small and that they do not matter and will have no consequences, so that we are free to do whatever we want. But God says judgment is coming. “I will bring distress on mankind.” And this is for all peoples. Look at Zephaniah 3:8:
“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.”
This applies to everybody. God is the greatest reality in the universe—and not just the universe as a whole but in every person’s universe—in your personal world.
So the question is, Where have you put God in your universe? Are you neglecting God? Trusting yourself? Are you patronizing God? Saying, “Okay, I’ll go to church.” Are you trivializing God, saying, “Oh, he doesn’t care what I do or how I live.” There will be judgment for all who have neglected or patronized or trivialized God. Destruction is coming—fearful, burning, wailing. I don’t know how else to say it.
And verse 18 of chapter 1 makes it very clear that neither your riches nor your wealth, neither your accomplishments nor anything else will be able to save you on that day. There will be nothing to hide behind. We tell our children regularly that there is coming a day when they have to stand alone before God. They can’t stand behind Mom and Dad. Everything will be laid bare.
And God’s Word is plain. All the earth, all mankind is under that judgment.
If step 1 doesn’t register for you, if it doesn’t strike you as true, you will never even bother to listen to step 2 and step 3. You’ll just say, “Stop reading that book with all its talk of judgment.” And if you never hear and respond to steps 2 and 3, you will be lost forever.
And if you are a believer, the Bible is regularly calling you to consider how it was for you and how it still would be for you apart from the grace of God: “lost and without hope in this world.”
That’s step 1: there appears to be no hope. All mankind is under the just and certain judgment of God.
STEP 2:
THERE APPEARS A GLIMMER OF HOPE
Do you remember in The Pilgrim’s Progress when Evangelist pointed across a wide field and asked Christian, “Do you see the distant narrow wicket gate?” And Christian said, “No.” And Evangelist asked, “Do you see the distant shining light?” And Christian said, “I think I do.” And Evangelist said, “Keep that light in your eye.” Just a glimmer, but still a light amid all of this dark, thick, gloom.
Now look at Zephaniah 2:1–3:
Gather together, yes, gather,
O shameless nation, [notice this repetition—this relentless repetition]
before the decree takes effect
—before the day passes away like chaff—
before there comes upon you
the burning anger of the LORD,
before there comes upon you
the day of the anger of the LORD.
Seek the LORD, all you humble of the land,
who do his just commands;
seek righteousness; seek humility;
perhaps you may be hidden
on the day of the anger of the LORD.
It seems like such a tiny little glimmer. “Perhaps you may be hidden.” Perhaps you might find refuge. And then as if to heighten and emphasize the narrowness of that ray of hope, the little glimmer is again surrounded by judgment all around, and I mean literally all around.
Earlier in chapter 1 God’s words of judgment were particularly aimed at the people of Judah, but now in chapter 2 that judgment is directed to the nations all around Judah as well.
And as we read those words of judgment in chapter 2 and are at least a little bit familiar with the political geography of the ancient Middle East, we begin to see what God is doing. He is saying, “Yes I am the Lord of all nations and all nations are accountable to me.”
But God is also saying, “Listen, Judah, any way you turn, you will run into judgment. There is no place for you to flee for safety. No way for you to turn. No one to whom to turn.”
That is, except one: only a little glimmer, only a narrow gate, only one place to turn for refuge and salvation. And that is to turn to God himself. “Seek the LORD.” There alone is your hope. Seek the Lord.
Perhaps you’ve heard this said before, “The glory of the gospel is this. The One from whom we need to be saved is the very One who saves us.” It’s true.
When you realize that you really do stand guilty before a holy, righteous God, when that happens, when that registers for you, when you realize that monumental and fundamental truth, right then there is a temptation in every human heart to turn to all sorts of other refuges, other remedies. “I’ll go back to church, God.” “I’ll stop doing such and such, God. I’ll clean up my act.” “I’ll be better, God.”
Listen, there is no hope there. There is only one place to turn, and that is to God himself, who in his mercy provided salvation through Jesus Christ to all who would turn to him and say, “Lord, be merciful to me a sinner. Save me.” That’s not some magic formula. No, that is the humbling of your heart. It is humbly turning to Christ and taking refuge in his death for your sins.
It is God’s intent to rescue and redeem for himself a people, a remnant. Look at 3:12. After speaking about his judgment against the proud he says:
But I will leave in your midst
a people humble and lowly.
They shall seek refuge in the name of the LORD. (v. 12)
Here is hope! And for those who turn there for refuge, step 3 is what then happens.
STEP 3:
THE GLIMMER OF HOPE BURSTS INTO REJOICING
God does save. That glimmer of hope will burst into a great and glorious rejoicing at the consummation of the salvation of God’s own.
Remember, salvation is not just an escape from God’s judgment. Even more, it is an entrance into God’s joy. Look again in chapter 3, verses 14–17.
Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion;
shout, O Israel!
Rejoice and exult with all your heart,
O daughter of Jerusalem!
The LORD has taken away the judgments against you;
he has cleared away your enemies.
The King of Israel, the LORD, is in your midst;
you shall never again fear evil.
On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem:
“Fear not, O Zion;
let not your hands grow weak.
The LORD your God is in your midst,
a mighty one who will save;
he will rejoice over you with gladness;
he will quiet you by his love;
he will exult over you with loud singing.”
Those in view are those who have received God’s salvation by turning to the Lord, by seeking refuge in his name—and it is clear from Scripture that these blessings are not just for the nation of Israel, but are for all of those who through faith in Christ are inheritors of the promises. Remember what Paul says in Galatians 3:29: “If you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring”—Israel—“heirs according to the promise.”
Those who have received God’s salvation, notice here, are called to rejoice, to sing—and this isn’t some kind of tame singing. They are called to sing and shout and rejoice with all their hearts.
And given what’s been done for you, you have every reason to rejoice with all your heart. No experience here on earth that might cause us to shout and rejoice comes anywhere close to what those who have put their trust in Christ will experience. And when that is brought to full consummation, you won’t be able not to rejoice with all your heart.
In this lifetime we grasp the significance of our salvation only partially, only vaguely. Now we see through a glass darkly, but then we shall see him face to face. The full realization of what we have and what God has done will break upon us. And what is it that we will realize then? We will fully realize that there is no judgment for us—no judgment at all.
Look at Zephaniah 3:15: “The LORD has taken away the judgments against you.” What a beautiful statement of the heart of the gospel right here in this little obscure Old Testament, so-called “minor” prophet. What a beautiful statement of justification. The Lord has taken away the judgments against us.
When he endured the wrath of God for us on the cross, Christ drained the cup of God’s wrath bone dry. In him the fullness of the wrath of God was poured out. If we are in Christ, all the judgment for our sins was paid, so there remains no judgment for us. Do the math. And so we sing,
The judgments of your holy law
With me can have nothing to do.
My Savior’s obedience and blood
Hide all my transgressions from view.3
So too we sing, “All my sins are washed away.” And we sing,
My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more.4
And then we say, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1). For those who are in Christ, the Lord has taken away the judgments against them. So, there’s no judgment. We will realize the full significance of that then.
And second, we’ll realize the amazing experience of being in God’s very presence. Look again at the middle of Zephaniah 3:15. The king of Israel, the Lord is in your midst. You shall never again fear evil. On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem,
Fear not, O Zion;
let not your hands grow weak.
The LORD your God is in your midst,
a mighty one who will save. (vv. 16–17)
And third, we will realize that there will no longer be any reason for fear of any kind. I wonder what that’s going to be like. No reason for and no experience of fear. Because there is no judgment and your all-powerful king is right there in your midst, you shall never again fear evil. On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem:
Fear not, O Zion;
let not your hands grow weak.
The LORD your God is in your midst,
a mighty one who will save.
Zephaniah wants the people of God to see these things, to get a glimpse of them so that by getting at least a little glimpse of them we might be strengthened and encouraged as we follow God now.
But clearly, what Zephaniah marvels at the most, and what he holds up for us to marvel at, is the amazing prospect of God rejoicing in love over us on that day. Having rescued and redeemed a people for his very own, when that work of redemption is done and all whom God has saved—people from every tribe and every tongue and every nation—are gathered, God declares,
At that time I will bring you in,
at that time when I gather you together. (v. 20)
When that time comes, what will happen? Will he look out over us and somehow be disappointed in the fruit of his saving work? Will he look at us and think, “Well, given what I had to work with . . . well, it is what it is.” No, he tells us—now don’t miss this, for he put it in this book, so he wants us to know—that on that day he will rejoice over us with gladness. He will exult over us with loud singing.
He will have perfectly completed his purpose to make us spotless and without blemish. So his rejoicing in his work will be right. Do not miss the unrestrained intensity of God’s passion. He will rejoice. He will exult. His singing will be loud. There is an intensity of passion in the heart of God. He will say: “I don’t do this reluctantly. I’m not doing this begrudgingly.” There is no constraint involved here at all. As the prophet Isaiah says,
As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride,
so shall your God rejoice over you. (Isa. 62:5)
Not long ago I was in a conversation with a woman from our church. I wanted to thank her and commend her for her influence in our church, but as I was doing that she kind of grabbed the reins of the conversation and began to commend my wife to me. Now please do not misunderstand; my purpose here is not to call attention to my wife. I just want to illustrate something. This woman was describing my wife to me as she reflected on her conversation with Beverly a few days before. She was describing my wife to me in glowing terms. It wasn’t a token thing; she went on for quite a while and I made absolutely no attempt to stop her. And all the while, as I listened, my heart was full of joy. There was a great gladness in my heart. I wasn’t the least envious: I was delighting, out of love for my wife, in what was being said. My heart was full of joy.
If you are in Christ, that’s how God feels about you.
As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride,
so shall your God rejoice over you.
Only a million times more.
And one day, Zephaniah tells us, one day when he “brings us in,” when he “gathers us together,” that rejoicing that God holds in his heart for you will break forth and you will experience the most incredible thing you’ve ever experienced. I don’t care what you’ve experienced in this lifetime. You might have stood on the summits of the highest mountains of all seven continents. This is going to make all of the moving and thrilling and delightful experiences of this life seem like nothing. God will greatly rejoice over you.
Yes, you will rejoice, but even greater than your joy will be God’s joy. Listen to Spurgeon:
Believer, you are happy when God blesses you, but not as happy as God is! You are glad when you are pardoned, but he who pardons you is more glad! The prodigal son come back to his home was very happy to see his father—but not as delighted as his father was to see him. The father’s heart was more full of joy, because his heart was larger than his son’s.5
God’s heart is bigger than ours. Because of Christ, God’s heart is completely for us and his heart is large. This book of Zephaniah is here to let us know that—as hard as it is for us to fathom this—when God’s work of redemption is done and we are gathered with him, with all of his own, when he has brought us in, God himself will stand and will break forth in singing and will rejoice over us with all his heart.
He will sing, “I have betrothed you to me forever. I have betrothed you to me in righteousness and justice, in steadfast love and mercy. You are mine” (cf. Hos. 2:19). And we will say, “And you are our God.”
He will sing, “I have cleansed you from all guilt and I have forgiven all your sin, and you shall be a joy and a praise and a glory to me” (cf. Jer. 33:8–9). And we will say, “Who is a pardoning God like you?”
He will sing, “I will make you dwell in safety, and you will be my people and I will be your God, and I will rejoice in doing you good with all my heart and soul” (cf. Jer. 32:37–38, 41). And we will say, “Whom have we in heaven but you?”
And he will sing over us again and again, “You are mine, you are mine, you are mine.” And he will rejoice over us with gladness and exult over us with loud singing. And we will be “radiant over the goodness of the LORD”; and we will feast on his abundance, and we will be satisfied in his love (Jer. 31:12–14).
Let me conclude with something of a footnote of pastoral encouragement. You know we have conversations about the exact content of the gospel. What is the gospel? What must it include when we share it? What must it include when we preach it? I believe these have been very helpful and clarifying conversations, and I’m thankful to the men who have led us in them. But may I say this morning that our thoughts of the gospel, our preaching of the gospel, our personal treasuring of the gospel should always include this consummation, including the vision of God’s joy over his people, the end to which it’s all moving. Certainly we can’t leave out the aim, the goal, and the consummation of it all. This is the whole point: being with God and experiencing his joy—to his rightful glory. This is the grand point of it all, isn’t it? And this, I believe, is the great contribution of Zephaniah, this vision of the consummation of the redeeming work of God in Christ.
Sometimes I’m afraid we forget to speak about this great consummation. But it needs to be spoken. It doesn’t work as an unstated assumption. There is something existentially very unsatisfying about that. It must be spoken. And that’s exactly what Zephaniah does. And I am eager that our preaching of the gospel, both our preaching to others and our preaching to ourselves, not leave this out.
May we as God’s people see it and hear it and treasure it until it fills our hearts with eagerness and our souls with an anticipation of all this joy. To Christ’s glory. Amen.
1 John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress: From This World to That Which Is to Come, ed. C. J. Lovik (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2009), 20–22.
2 All Scripture quotations in this chapter are from the English Standard Version.
3 Augustus M. Toplady, “A Debtor to Mercy,” 1771, modified.
4 Horatio G. Spafford, “It Is Well with My Soul,” 1873.
5 C. H. Spurgeon, “The Whole-Heartedness of God in Blessing His People,” Sermon 2036 of Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, July 29, 1888, accessed http://www.spurgeongems.org/vols34-36/chs2036.pdf (p. 5).