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Zephaniah |
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| Chapter 1 | Prayer | Devotional | Chapter 3 | Prayer | Devotional | |
| Chapter 2 | Prayer | Devotional |
Prayers
Zephaniah 1
Lord of Hosts, a great Day of Destruction is coming against the world. You have warned us that judgment begins with Your household. You will purify Your church. How will we stand when You bring distress upon mankind? Please forgive us, for we have violated Your commandments. Will we be safe if we worship You and also worship false gods? Our money will not deliver us from Your hand. Your Son is our only hope. Please have mercy upon us.
Zephaniah 2
Sovereign Lord, we are ashamed of our sin. We should seek You and obey Your commandments. We pray that You would grant to us both righteousness and humility. Father, You will make a distinction between Your people and their enemies. You love Your church. Your Son gave His blood for us. You will bring a devastating judgment upon the world. We must be found by You in mercy, and kept by Your steadfast love, or we will be destroyed with the wicked.
Zephaniah 3
Father God, we hear Your Word of correction and fear. Speak to us day by day and grant us a new heart by Your Holy Spirit. Will we be cut off with the world? By Your grace, we will turn from our iniquities. We will wait for You. When You pour out Your indignation, You will keep us as Your people. We will be with You on Your holy mountain. Our sin will be removed far from us, and we will rejoice with all our hearts. You have taken away the judgments that were against us. You will be in our midst. You will save us. You will rejoice over us with singing. This is our glorious hope. You will heal us and restore our fortunes according to the promises that You have made to us in Your Son Jesus Christ who is our Mediator and our Atoning Sacrifice. Teach us to walk in this faith today, for You will surely do these things.
Devotionals
The prophet Zephaniah ministered in the days of the remarkable king Josiah. Josiah was the son of Amon and the grandson of Manasseh, both of whom did much evil in the sight of the Lord, and brought much trouble upon Jerusalem. Josiah’s grandfather Manasseh apparently repented later in life. His father Amon was only 22 years old when he began to reign, and there is nothing particularly good said about him in the Scriptures. He reigned for only two years, and his servants conspired against him and put him to death in his own house. 2 Kings 21:22 plainly says of Amon, “He abandoned the LORD, the God of his fathers, and did not walk in the way of the LORD.” 2 Chronicles 33:23 adds this regarding Amon, “He did not humble himself before the LORD, as Manasseh his father had humbled himself, but this Amon incurred guilt more and more.”
Josiah was only eight years old when his father was murdered and he became King of Judah. The Bible tells us that it was the people of the land who made young Josiah king after they put to death the conspirators who had killed his father. Josiah reigned for 31 years, and he instituted great reforms in Judah, reforms which seem to coincide with the indictments of the prophet Zephaniah against the people of Judah. His reign was the final positive moment in the history of the Davidic kings prior to the birth of Jesus, the final promised king in the line of David born some 600 years after the death of Josiah. With the sons and grandsons of Josiah we have the sad conclusion to the recognized monarchy in the Promised Land as the nation is brought into exile, a conclusion that demands yet another future chapter in order for the Lord’s promises to David to be fulfilled.
Despite the ways in which this small book of prophesy fits so tightly into the history of Judah, the message of the prophet goes far beyond the time and place in which he lived. God has a Day of Judgment that is coming upon the entire earth. Even the birds of the air and the fish of the sea will be swept away, and all mankind will be cut off from the face of the earth. It seems plain that nothing but the final judgment that is coming upon the entire earth at the return of Christ will have a sufficient scope so as to capture the plain meaning of the words given to us in the opening and closing sections of this chapter.
It is within this context of final judgment that the particular wrath of the Lord against Judah is to be understood. The description of the Lord’s devastating discipline of His covenant people and their rulers borrows language and imagery from the Lord’s final judgment of the entire earth. The inhabitants of Jerusalem and the larger region of Judah are plainly guilty before the Lord. Though they are the covenant people of God, they are guilty. They even have idolatrous priests who lead people in the worship of Baal. There are others who swear by the Lord and by Milcom, an Ammonite god who was supposedly honored through the death of small children. Others within their number have entirely turned away from seeking the Lord. Many were simply complacent about the most significant questions of the Lord’s engagement in their lives, concluding that God would not do anything to them one way or another. The situation was one that apparently demanded divine action.
We are all capable of much talk. We have many opinions, and we can move quickly in various directions that are mutually inconsistent. We claim to be part of the people who have been chosen by God, and we may even have truly called upon His Name. Yet somehow we have become ensnared in deadly thinking, foolish ritual, and immoral murder and thievery. There is a day coming when we will stop all our talk, for we will see the imminence of the Lord’s judgment in our own lives or in the lives of those near to us. Divine judgment, as it is specifically expressed in this place of mortal life that we call earth, has its limit in the loss of our lives. This is the place and age of mortality, and the ultimate sanction here is death. This is no small sanction, for the lives that we live now in the covenant community have been given to us on this earth, and they are given with God’s commandments and God’s purpose. As those who confess that our hope is in the Lord, our lives here are His. Of what use are they when we deny Him by our words, our worship, and our lives? It is a serious thing for our lives here to be brought to an end.
Yet there is something more dangerous still that we must consider. Where do we stand concerning the eternal purposes of Almighty God beyond this present earth? Has the atoning blood of the Lamb of God been shed for us? In what company shall we spend the ages and ages of eternity to come? Jesus took the fullness of the Day of Judgment upon Himself in His death on the cross. That bitter day came swiftly upon the greatest King of the covenant people of God. His life was very short and very difficult. The horror of His death is beyond our ability to fully understand. It was a day of the greatest distress and anguish when He poured out His blood on the dust of this earth for His elect who were formed from that dust. He faced the fire of His Father’s jealous wrath and justice, so that we could know the blessings of God’s jealous love for His children. The wrath of Almighty God against us was consumed. Let us consider well what Jesus Christ has done with His brief life, and let us use our few moments here in this important place of testing with a more earnest and sincere recognition that we must use these days well, for it is in the power of our God to determine when the time of our service here has no further purpose.
God has shown kindness to Israel and Judah over many centuries. Like a father who has taken care of his children in their every need, the Lord has provided well for the descendants of Jacob. Their rebellion against Him is a shameful thing. Like the betrayal of Jesus by His friend Judas, there is nothing that can be said on behalf of this betrayer Judah that could even remotely justify the nation’s sad attack against the love of God. They should be very ashamed, yet here the Lord calls them a shameless nation.
They must come to their senses if they wish to continue to serve God according to His generous covenant arrangement established through Moses, and later through David. They must gather together in the presence of their divine Benefactor and seek His mercy before the devastation that He has spoken of through his prophet takes effect. This is not a new situation. This is a road they have travelled before. There is no secret knowledge that they need which has not already been revealed to them many times over. They should seek the Lord. They should pursue righteousness in all godliness and humility, acknowledging their guilt before God and humbly requesting that He put off once again the day of their national demise.
Their help will not come from any of the nations around them. The Lord of all the earth is uprooting all the nations of that time and place. The Philistines will face destruction as well. Is it possible that their lands will one day come to Judah, as the prophet here announces? There will be more on this theme in the final chapter of this book as the Lord describes a coming restoration for His people. In these few verses against some of the neighbors of the Israelites we have some hint that there will come a day when the Lord’s people will have a new beginning, a new time of greatly restored fortunes.
Through all of His terrifying acts of discipline against the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, there has always been a strong sense that the Lord has a full plan of grace for His people that can never be stopped. Even when God is full of righteous indignation for the rebellion of His beloved children, He can never break loose from the chords of love that draw Him to them in eternal covenant faithfulness. They are not like Moab, the Ammonites, or the residents of Sodom and Gomorrah to Him. Whatever else He might say to show forth His holiness and to shake them from their deadly lethargy and foolishness, He will never give up on the love that He has for them, for they are His children, and He is their Father. When He hears the taunting of other nations against them, He remembers His special love for His people. The Lord simply must be against those who are against His children.
Zephaniah announces that the Lord will soon destroy even the dreaded Assyrians, that powerful empire that He used against His people for a time. They defeated Israel in the north, and harassed Judah in the south, especially during the days of Hezekiah, Josiah’s great-grandfather. He was a king of Judah who knew how to mourn before God. He knew how to call out for help and to be heard. God used the Assyrians for His purposes, but they were never His special covenant people. Nineveh would become a desolation. Wild animals would take over lands that were once the proud possessions of a very mighty host. The city that was the emblem of power and pride would be laid bare.
Who can win a battle against the Lord? Who dares to stand against Him and against His people? He is God over all gods. There is no one else in His league. By His own power He created the heavens and the earth. He is working out His mysterious sovereign will. Other nations He uses for a season, but He keeps His promises to Israel.
But now a new way of peace with God has been revealed that does not require one to be a descendant of Jacob by natural birth. A way of righteousness and salvation from the Almighty has been discovered through the Messiah Jesus Christ. Through faith in Him, there is now the hope of participation in God’s holy people for those who were once far off among the nations of the world who were strangers to His covenant promises. That new way into the household of God is through adoption, rather than through natural birth. Even some of the sons of Jacob have been removed from the glories of Israel for a time and have made way for Gentile sinners to be considered full sons of God, and joint-heirs with Jesus Christ.
This plan of the Lord’s favor for God’s elect among the nations of the world helps us to make sense of His forbearance with His Old Covenant people over the course of many centuries. Why did He speak of their restoration, when by the strict standards of His justice they should have been gone from the land forever? Why would He speak against the enemies that attacked His people or who simply made fun of them, when He Himself knew that they simply could never achieve His holy standards of righteousness? It would be only through the provision of a substitute in the life and death of Jesus that sinners would soon find hope for communion with God; not only from among the Jews, but even from the Gentiles, who for so many centuries had no way to come to His family table. This great plan is being accomplished even now. For this reason we join with the angels in heaven in rejoicing when one of the sons of Jacob comes home to Yahweh through Jesus Christ; and it is for this reason that we similarly celebrate when people who had no connection with Abraham or Moses in the story of their natural heritage have now been justified by Israel’s God, and are guaranteed a place in heaven among the sons of light.
God has loved His people with an everlasting love. When He looks at us now, He sees us as His dearly loved children through Jesus Christ our Lord. The righteousness of Christ has been credited to us, and the death of Christ has taken away the tremendous debt that we owed to the Lord because of our sin. This does not change the fact that the Lord has always known the truth about His people. Here in this final chapter of Zephaniah we begin with God’s forthright assessment of Jerusalem. They are called a rebellious, defiled, and oppressing city. They should have closely attended to the prophetic Word and to the Law of Moses, but amazingly, during the early years of good King Josiah, the written Word of God seemed to be completely unknown. It was actually discovered inside a wall by workers doing repairs in the temple. It had probably been hidden there for safe-keeping in an age when this precious Word was so deeply despised. The people did not trust God. They would not draw near to Him with the sincerity of true worship. Those in certain positions of judicial authority abused the people they should have been helping. Those who represented God in speech, and who represented the people in prayer and in sacrifice were treacherous and ungodly men.
That was the Lord’s honest assessment of the nation. It was an amazing fact that God had at this late date provided such an excellent king as the young Josiah. Though the Lord’s people were plainly very wicked, God was still said to be within the holy city of Jerusalem. Though the greatest reformers in history would have been supremely frustrated with the sad condition of God’s stubborn people and with many of their leaders, the Lord Himself continued to be there with them, dispensing His justice in all kinds of situations. When the sun came up every morning He was still their righteous and holy God, though the people had become shameless in their strange acts of disobedience.
Through Zephaniah the Lord presents Himself as eagerly anticipating that His people will do the right thing, though God certainly knows what will happen. He speaks this way to make it clear to us that He did not want to see the day of disaster come against this city. If He disciplined them strongly it was to correct them and to lead them to true repentance. Instead of moving in the right direction, at the end of this book they seemed to be eagerly increasing in their evil ways.
Yes, the Lord would now have to discipline His people even more severely. This we know from many other prophetic books and from the events of history that are described in other biblical writings. But this is not the subject that fills the closing verses of Zephaniah. Instead the Lord speaks of a greater judgment as He did earlier in this book. His people are worthy of His righteous wrath, but He will one day judge all the nations, and the earth shall be consumed in the fire of His righteous jealousy. Nonetheless, the conclusion of this current age will not be the end of the story of God, of His people, or even of the earth. The current age will end with the renewal of the earth and the beginning of a great age of resurrection glory.
One of the features of our current age is the challenge of unrighteous speech. In the coming time of resurrection, the Lord will give all of His people pure speech and pure hearts, and they will serve Him in perfect harmony and joy. God speaks here of those who would have reason to be ashamed of their deeds, those who rebelled against Him. While proud enemies of the Lord will have been removed far from this place of blessing, other humble sinners will find refuge in the name of the Lord. This place of unity in the Lord Jesus Christ described here must ultimately be more that some period of relative gospel success or eminent holiness in this age. In that day there will be no injustice and no lies. There will be perfect provision and no fear. This is something wonderfully new.
In that day we will know the presence of Christ among us in a perfectly renewed and unified heaven and earth. There we will sing for joy. It will not seem extreme to anyone in that place to sing with the fullest heart of rejoicing, for the Lord Jesus Christ Himself will rejoice over us with singing. He will be with us in such a way that we could never fear any evil again. This future life of blessing for sinners could only have been accomplished through the grace of the cross. His atoning death has quieted the righteous wrath of the Almighty, and has also quieted our consciences which were overwhelmed with any honest consideration of our present sin and our coming death. This cross love of Christ, the greatest love ever known, will give us the most wonderful peace and quiet and the loudest and purest expressions of joy.
Until that new day dawns, we are being gathered through the proclamation of these extravagant promises. Our God knows how to restrain those who would oppress and destroy His people. He knows how to bring back His elect who are too weak to walk, and too ashamed to feel included. Our fortunes were reduced to nothing because of the sentence of doom that stood against us. Because of our Savior’s death, our future hope has been more than fully restored, a fact made obvious in the resurrection of the One who has accomplished our salvation.