Be Silent Before the Lord

Be Silent Before The Lord

Zephaniah 1

August 6, 2017

Last Sunday afternoon, Brooke and Josh came over with our granddaughter, Ellie. Ellie is thirteen months old and is a delight. She has a wonderful personality, a heart-melting giggle, and a curious disposition. It is one of the great blessings of life to be able to share time with her. She changes each time we see her. So, Brooke and Josh wanted to do some shopping out in Eastlake. They asked if we would be willing to watch Ellie while they were running those errands. Of course, yes. We will take whatever opportunities we can to enjoy her.

Like I said, Ellie is thirteen months old. That means she has learned how to walk. Learning how to walk is a bit of a game-changer. Where we used to be able to hang out in the family room and have a clear line of sight to what she was doing, now she is more adventurous and capable. I know you are all able to picture us running after her as she explores the kitchen and gets into the pantry; or hustling over to protect her as she boldly climbs the stairs.

Although she understands the concept of “no”; it is not always authoritative. Her will – her desire to do whatever impulse has driven her to action – sometimes (many times) supersedes her desire to have our approval. Thus, we had to physically pick her up and redirect her attention from the kibble in the dog food bowls that fascinated her. Thus, we (well, Jen) had to go up and down the stairs multiple times as Ellie wanted to explore the sensation of stepping – not crawling – up and down. Ellie was experiencing the tension between her ability to be in control of her own circumstances and being subject to the authority being exercised over her.

Ellie did not want to simply accept the boundaries we had set for her. She did not like limits and at times looked at us as if we were mean for setting them. However, we set them – not because we want to limit her experience of life or discourage her from exploring the blessings of her newly developing skills – we set them for her own safety and to help her experience life in a way that is good. What she experiences as anger and consequences is an expression of our love for her.

Let me use that as an introduction for what we encounter in Zephaniah 1. The scale and scope are dramatically different; but the principle is the same: God intervened in order to re-establish boundaries on his wayward children who were pursuing a path of harmful self-destruction. We need to hear it that way because, otherwise, this is going to come across like a fire and brimstone Old Testament prophet – and that just seems to put everyone off.Every time we hear something like this, it is like we put up a wall to buffer against it, or put our hands over our ears and start singing to ourselves in order to not hear it. We know we need to hear it, but it is just such a downer. If we understand that God is imposing judgment based on his heartfor his children and not against them; what Judah experienced as God’s wrath and judgment, we can see was an expression of God’s correcting love for his children.

Zephaniah wasactive in approximately the same time frame as Nahum and Habakkuk. The first chapter of Zephaniah sounds harsh (and it is harsh) because we hear God’s judgment and wrath. It is the sound of God’s sovereign power being exercised over his creation.

Read Zephaniah 1

Do you get the picture? This is the Scriptural version of a parent barking, “Enough! I. Have. Had. Enough! No more!”Again, the scale and scope are dramatically different and the punishment is markedly more permanent and devastating, but the principle is really the same.

How many of you have ever experienced that kind of exasperation? I am willing to presume that anyone who has ever parented a child has had this experience at some time or another. Children are like that – mine were and I am sure I was. It is not so difficult to picture: the child is intent on pursuing things in their own narrow view of things: this is pleasing to me now, so it does not matter that my dad is saying, “stop.” I do not want to stop, so I am not going to stop. I know what is pleasing to me, so that ought to be pleasing to everyone.

The petulance and irascibility of children is amusing briefly; then it is annoying until it is finally exasperating and that is when we get to “Enough! I. Have. Had. Enough! No more!”

What follows will be unpleasant for the child – no doubt about it. Punishment is imminent and authority is going to be exercised to curtail the child’s free expression of their own will. Whether consequences are immediate or “wait until your father gets home…,” whatever is going to happen is going to be imposed without regard to the feelings of the child. Oh, it is foreseeable that the child is not going to like it. They are going to cry and complain. They will protest how it is not fair, how the disciplinary process was flawed, how they did not know…and they will go on and on until, “Be silent before the Lord God!”

Whether we call it judgment day or a come-to-Jesus moment, there is a point where we are confronted with the reality that God is God and we are not.

Judah had gotten to that point.

Historical Background

We do not have the specific date of Zephaniah’s receiving the word of the LORD; however, he ascribed it to taking place during the days of King Josiah of Judah. King Josiah ruled over Judah for thirty-one (31) years, beginning when he was eight (8) years old. 2 Kings 21 records the history this way:

Manasseh was twelve years old when he began to reign; he reigned fifty-five years in Jerusalem. …He did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, following the abominable practices of the nations that the LORD drove out before the people of Israel. For he rebuilt the high places that his father Hezekiah had destroyed; he erected altars for Baal, made a sacred pole, as King Ahab of Israel had done, worshiped all the host of heaven, and served them. (And it goes on…)

Moreover Manasseh shed very much innocent blood, until he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another, beside the sin that he caused Judah to sin so that they did what was evil in the sight of the LORD. …

His son Amon succeeded him. Amon was twenty-two years old when he began to reign; he reigned two years in Jerusalem. …He did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, as his father Manasseh had done. He walked in all the way in which his father walked, served the idols that his father served, and worshiped them; he abandoned the LORD, the God of his ancestors, and did not walk in the way of the LORD. The servants of Amon conspired against him, and killed the king in his house. But the people of the land killed all those who had conspired against King Amon, and the people of the land made his son Josiah king in place of him.

Josiah, by comparison, is remembered as one of the very few good kings of Judah. The reason he is remembered favorably is because – during a remodeling project in his eighteenth-year reigning – the book of Deuteronomy was discovered in the temple. Josiah was so convicted by the reading of Deuteronomy – Moses’ farewell sermon to the people of Israel just prior to their entering the Promised Land – that he undertook massive reform. His last thirteen years were among the only times in Judah’s history pleasing in the sight of the LORD.

Most scholars believe that Zephaniah’s prophesy was uttered and delivered prior to the discovery of the book of Deuteronomy in the Temple. If that is accurate, it means Zephaniah prophesied during the period of time when Josiah was between the ages of 8 and 26 – which would make sense. During those years as Josiah grew up in his grandfather’s house and then with his father’s advisors, who do you think was really ruling Israel? How powerful, then, must have been the reading of God’s word in Deuteronomy. That gives a broader picture; but remember, Zephaniah was prophesying in the context of the legacy of Manasseh and Amon.

Zephaniah’s Prophesy

Zephaniah’s prophesy began with a cataclysmic picture of flood-like proportion, “’I will utterly sweep away everything from the face of the earth,’ says the LORD.” The stain of sin had utterly pervaded all of creation to the extent that God would execute his judgment well beyond humankind and culture, but would include nature and all living things. It focused on humanity; but note that all of creation would suffer.

Next, the LORD turned his attention to Judah. There was no call for repentance; that time was gone.“’I will stretch out my hand against Judah, and against all the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and I will cut off from this place every remnant of Baal and the name of the idolatrous priests; those who bow down on the roofs to the host of the heavens…” and so on. As you heard, the coming judgment was complete and severe.

What is amazing about this is that it was necessary. The people of Judah blindly persisted in the ways they should have known were unpleasing to God after Israel – the Northern Kingdom – had been defeated and carted off by the Assyrians. The people were lulled into complacency by leadership that was comfortable in the status quo. How quickly they dismissed or forgot the consequences of not heeding God’s call to return to him! How quickly they dismissed or forgot that God’s commands were not “best practices” or “suggestions” to be evaluated among the claims of the gods of the nations around Judah. God was not a luxury to be attended when convenient or to be consulted only when the normal day-to-day life gods were not performing to their satisfaction. “And on the day of the LORD’S sacrificeI will punish the officials and the king’s sonsand all who dress themselves in foreign attire.On that day I will punishall who leap over the threshold, who fill their master’s housewith violence and fraud.” (Zephaniah 1:8-9)

And this really gets to the heart of the matter. Punishment was merited for the refusal to love the LORD their God with all their heart, soul, mind and strength; and their neighbor as self. The leaders and people saw no need to change because things were as they always had been; at least, it seemed that way to them. The Temple system was still in place, as it had been for hundreds of years. Leaders were doing what generations of leaders had done before them, and everything was fine. Yes, there were blips and hardships occasionally, but that was just life. What happened outside of Jerusalem would never impact what happened in Jerusalem because God was in his Temple: God was too powerful, too strong, and – because nothing really bad had happened yet – God must have been fine with how things were going – right? Wrong.

Clearly, they misjudged God.

What we read is the horrible consequences of the people persisting in patterns of behavior and choices that were knowingly displeasing to the LORD. None of Chapter 1 is pleasant. None of it is pleasing in the sight of the people upon whom judgment is coming. None of it is good.

The Lord’s power is not something to be taken lightly. Rebellion against God is never life-giving. The LORD’s judgment is not something to be tested. The LORD’s commands are not suggestions. It becomes a question of sovereignty – and every time humankind comes up against God’s sovereignty, it leaves a mark. Pharaoh learned of God’s sovereignty the hard way. Through the plagues, all of the false gods of Egypt were shown to be powerless against the one true God. God drove out the people of the Promised land with their gods ahead of the Israelites. The Jews knew that history and yet tested God’s patience by tolerating, encouraging, participating, and enabling the return of the idol worship of those gods into the land.

Clearly, they misjudged God.God’s patience has a limit. God has patience for a period of time with us. It is sobering to think that God’s patience is limited.

Part of our worship each Sunday is a prayer of confession in which we acknowledge our sin to God. We ask God for forgiveness as a community and personally. Then, we hear an “assurance of pardon” – some statement of God’s grace – each Sunday. We talk about God’s mercy being from everlasting and to everlasting. What we forget is the opening phrase, “When we turn from our sin and trust in the mercy of God through Jesus Christ,…”

This is not perfunctory. It is essential. We gloss over it or coast our way through it at our own peril. Simply following the worship order or sitting still while someone else prays does not resolve the problem of sin. God is not fooled or mocked by ritual; our repetition of these phrases without a broken and contrite heart is empty. Paul wrote it this way in Romans 2:

Do you imagine, whoever you are, that when you judge those who do such things and yet do them yourself, you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you despise the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience? Do you not realize that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But by your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath, when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed. For he will repay according to each one’s deeds: to those who by patiently doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; while for those who are self-seeking and who obey not the truth but wickedness, there will be wrath and fury. There will be anguish and distress for everyone who does evil, … but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, ... For God shows no partiality.

Friends, if you have never directly addressed or considered your own sin and repented, I exhort you to do so. God does not gloss over your sin; neither should you. The same is true for our community and nation.We should not be fooled: though it seems like the LORD has forgotten all about the world as we look around and see the shape it is in, we should not be so naïve as to think that God is not going to impose his will on things. We need to look with clear vision at our own situation and heed God’s word. In 2 Timothy 3, we read this:

You must understand this, that in the last days distressing times will come. For people will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, brutes, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to the outward form of godliness but denying its power. Avoid them! … Indeed, all who want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. But wicked people and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving others and being deceived. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.

So, why read and study the Bible (all of it – including the Old Testament prophets)? Why worship regularly? Why engage with other believers? We do these things “so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.”

Then, how is Zephaniah 1 good news?

First, although there was no call to repentance, God responded to Josiah’s repentance. In Scripture, in 2 Kings 22, the prophetess Hulda confirmed that the day of Yahweh – understood as the Babylonian invasion that we talked about last week in Habakkuk – would be delayed because of Josiah’s humility before God. Zephaniah’s prophesy would be fulfilled; it just would not happen within Josiah’s lifetime.[1]

Second, Zephaniah 1 is good news for believers for the same reason Habakkuk was good news: it means that God is sovereign. Justice will come to all creation. “I will punish the peoplewho rest complacently on their dregs, those who say in their hearts,“The Lord will not do good,nor will he do harm.”God was declaring what was about to happen; and when God says, “Be silent before the LORD God,” all creation will be silent. His word is sure.