Introduction to Zephaniah - Revival By God's Hand Alone (08/06/2023)

Park Meadows Church

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:00

All righty. Well, I'm technically covering for Dave today.

00:09

So because of that, I decided to change it up a little bit. As a means of introduction, because we do have a new book we'll be starting, as a means of introducing that next book,

00:22

I actually want to cover a topic today that I believe will kind of contextualize our study a little bit, give us a little bit of the historical background behind the next book we're going to start.

00:37

I think it will give us some context, even though it's not a direct theme of the book we're going to be doing.

00:45

The topic we're going to be talking about today is revival by God's hand alone.

00:54

So that'll be our topic. And if you want to turn to 2 Kings chapter 23, that is where we are going to be for the most part today.

01:06

So turn to 2 Kings chapter 23. And I am just going to read the first 25 verses or so.

01:21

Let's see here. OK. I hope that's Winston or Adekrine, but I think someone's got him.

01:30

All right, 2 Kings 23. It says, and the king sent.

01:36

Now, OK, just for a little bit of context here, Josiah is the king, all right? And he was a king that feared the

01:45

Lord, and unlike his father and grandfather, was going to do what was right in the

01:52

Lord's eyes as opposed to what was evil in the sight of the Lord. So this is the king we're talking about.

01:57

And the king sent, and they gathered into him all the elders of Judah and of Jerusalem.

02:03

And the king went up into the house of the Lord and all the men of Judah and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem with him and the priests and the prophets and all the people, both small and great.

02:13

And he read in their ears all the words of the book of the covenant, which was found in the house of the

02:19

Lord. So you all recall what this book was that was discovered. It was the first five books of the

02:25

Bible. It was the books of Moses that the servant of Josiah, I believe his name was

02:31

Hilka, discovered and shared them with Josiah.

02:37

And he got all freaked out. He's like, whoa, we haven't been doing any of this stuff. And so this is what's happening here.

02:45

Verse three says, and the king stood by a pillar and made a covenant before the Lord to walk after the

02:50

Lord and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all their heart, with all their soul to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book.

03:02

And all the people stood to the covenant. And the king commanded

03:09

Hilka, the high priest, or Hilkiah, the high priest. Matt, will you go check the chat on that back computer and just make sure everyone can hear.

03:17

And the king commanded Hilkiah, the high priest and the priests of the second order and the keepers of the door to bring forth out of the temple of the

03:25

Lord all the vessels that were made for Baal and for the grove and for all the host of heaven. And he burned them without Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron and carried the ashes of them to Bethel.

03:38

Does that look good, Matt? All right, verse five. And he put down the idolatrous priests whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense in the high places in the cities of Judah and in the places round about Jerusalem.

03:51

Them also that burned incense into Baal, to the sun and to the moon and to the planets and to all the host of heaven.

03:57

Pop up, we're in 2 Kings 23 and I'm reading the first 25 verses.

04:04

I'm in verse six right now. And he brought out the grove from the house of the Lord without Jerusalem and to the brook

04:10

Kidron and burned it at the brook Kidron and stamped it into small powder and cast the powder there upon the graves of the children of the people.

04:19

And he break down the houses of the Sodomites that were by the house of the Lord where the women wove hangings for the grove.

04:26

Do y 'all remember the significance of the brook Kidron from that series that dad did not that long ago? Verse eight, and he brought all the priests out of the cities of Judah and defiled the high places where the priests had burned incense from Jeba to Beersheba and break down the high places of the gates that were in the entering of the gate of Joshua, the governor of the city, which were on a man's left hand at the gate of the city.

04:55

Nevertheless, the priests of the high places came not up to the altar of the Lord in Jerusalem. Could have been in that for later, but they did eat of the unleavened bread among their brethren.

05:05

And he defiled Topath, which is in the valley of the children of Hinnom. And no man might make his son or his daughter to pass through the fire to Molech.

05:15

And he took away the horses that the kings of Judah had given to the son at the entering in of the house of the

05:20

Lord by the chamber of Nathan Molech and the Chamberlain, which was in the suburbs and burned the chariots of the son with fire.

05:27

And the altars that were on the top of the upper chamber of Ahaz, which the kings of Judah had made and the altars which

05:35

Manasseh had made in the two courts of the house of the Lord, did the king beat down and break them down from this and cast the dust of them into the brook

05:42

Gedron. And the high places that were before Jerusalem, which were on the right hand of the Mount Corruption, the

05:49

Mount of Corruption, which Solomon, the king of Israel had builted for Ashtoreth, the abomination of the

05:55

Zidians, and for Chemosh, the abomination of the Moabites, and for Milcom, the abomination of the children of Ammon, did the king defile.

06:04

It's interesting that that note is in there reminding us of Solomon's shortcomings at the end of his life.

06:11

So Josiah here is burning the wrongs, the wrongdoings of Solomon.

06:17

So that's just an interesting note. Verse 14, and he break in pieces the images and cut down the groves and filled their places with the bones of men.

06:25

As we read through this, y 'all keep in mind who is doing these things, who is accomplishing this defilement of the pagan worship, all right?

06:34

Moreover, the altar that was at Bethel in the high place, which Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who made

06:39

Israel to sin, had made both the altar, both that altar in the high place, he break down and burn the high place and stamped it into small powder and burned the grove.

06:50

And as Josiah turned himself, he spied the sepulchers that were in the mount and sent and took the bones out of the sepulchers and burned them upon the altar and polluted it according to the word of the

07:00

Lord, which the man of God proclaimed, who proclaimed these words. Then he said, what title is that that I see?

07:07

And the men of the city told him, is the sepulcher of the man of God, which came from Judah and proclaimed these things that thou has done against the altar of Bethel.

07:16

And he said, leave them alone, let no man move those bones. So they let the bones alone and the bones of the prophet that came out of Samaria and all the houses also of the high places that were in the cities of Samaria, which the king of Israel had made to provoke the

07:31

Lord to anger, Josiah took away. And he did that to them according to all the acts that he had done in Bethel.

07:39

And he slew all the priests of the high places that were there upon the altars and burned men's bones upon them and returned to Jerusalem.

07:48

And the king commanded all the people saying, keep the Passover into the Lord your God, as it is written in the book of the covenant.

07:55

Surely there was not hold in such a Passover from the days of the judges that judged Israel, nor in all the days of the kings of Israel, nor the kings of Judah, but in the 18th year of King Josiah, wherein this

08:06

Passover was hold into the Lord in Jerusalem. Moreover, the workers with familiar spirits and the wizards in the images and the idols in all the abominations that were spied in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, did

08:19

Josiah put away that he might perform these words of the law, which were written in the book that Hilkiah the priest found in the house of the

08:27

Lord. In our final verse here, and like unto him was there no king before him that turned to the

08:36

Lord with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses, neither after him arose there any like him.

08:47

Okay, so Josiah, upon hearing the words of the Lord, the law of Moses for the first time in his life, after already having a fear for God that his dad didn't have, his grandfather, many kings of Judah before him did not have, he already had that in his heart in the moment he heard the laws of Moses and realized the position they were in, he turned things around fast.

09:11

And one important note here is to note the fact that while Josiah, while he had a sincere heart, and he was genuinely attempting to turn things around, he was the one doing a lot of the work.

09:26

So just for those of you that may have walked in a little bit late, I was saying that before, that kind of as an introduction to the next book we're gonna cover, we're actually covering a topic today, and that topic is revival by God's hand alone.

09:39

Now, we're all aware that it's possible to have a truly life -changing, reforming revival.

09:47

And of course, we have some amazing examples of it. This example here in 2 Kings is

09:53

Josiah, an all -artist working toward accomplishing that, creating an awakening among his people, as we would call it in our terms, a revival, and turning them away from all of their egregious sins.

10:09

I mean, you heard of some of the things that were just listed from wizardry, witchcraft, the sodomites that were living right next to the temple, all of these sins that were happening, the worship of Baal, of Astaroth, of Molech, they were offering their children to Molech, all of this was happening.

10:27

So Josiah was doing everything in his power, and he did quite a bit to crush these things, but as the cause of the ultimate effect that he was shooting for, which was a national revival.

10:43

So again, we are aware that it is possible for that to happen. And again, we have some amazing examples of it all throughout church history.

10:52

You can look at some examples in the Old Testament. You can start at the day of Pentecost. That's a pretty good starting point in terms of what revival, true revival can look like in the

11:01

New Testament. But we have amazing things from even prior to the Reformation.

11:08

You had guys like Wycliffe and Hus that were going against the grain of what

11:14

Rome had established in the Catholic church, and were doing everything they could to revive the people around them to eventually be burned at the stake themselves.

11:24

Then you have the Reformation itself, of course, led by Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Beza, these guys that actually turned the world around.

11:34

And I've been reading this amazing book by Francis Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live?

11:40

And he talks about the contrast between the Renaissance and the Reformation, because they were happening in tandem.

11:46

And a lot of times we attribute the amazing progress that occurred during that time to the

11:51

Renaissance, but he poses them in parallel and shows that actually it was the

11:58

Reformation that caused the ultimate change that the world experienced at that time.

12:06

There was a lot of amazing things that came from the Renaissance as well, but most of them were derived from a humanist, non -sustainable foundation, whereas the

12:18

Reformation, as we know, was the exact opposite of that. And the Reformation was, in fact, in some cases, the antithesis of it.

12:26

So we had the Reformation, we had the Great Awakening, of course, in the early years of this country, led by Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards.

12:34

Then we had a second Great Awakening later. We had a revival that I didn't know much about until I Googled what were some of the most impactful revivals in church history.

12:46

And one of the ones that was listed was the Layman's Prayer Revival, led by D .L. Moody. I've never heard of that one, but it was in the 1800s, and apparently it had a lasting impact on multiple generations.

12:56

And of course, we had the World War II Revival. It was led by Billy Graham and a number of other people in the late 30s all the way through the 50s.

13:04

So we can see examples throughout history of revival happening and it having not only an impact on the immediate group of people involved, but a lasting impact in the lives of that generation, and in some cases, generations after that.

13:21

But we also know, however, that revivals without God's hand of blessing on it aren't really revivals at all when you start digging into it.

13:31

Even when there is a lot of emotion and a lot of excitement happening around a particular revival without God's hand upon it, it's really nothing more than that, just emotion.

13:43

In some cases, that may manifest itself as a short -lived kind of attention grabber, if you will, for whoever is behind that quote -unquote revival.

13:54

Or in some cases, you may have a revival like that where the intentions aren't great, but you still can see and witness some real change happening on the outside.

14:08

In other words, people kind of turning course, so to speak, but when you witness the lives of those people, not too long after that quote -unquote revival takes place, the inside hadn't changed very much, and in many cases, they will revert, that the populace reverts to the same way they were living prior to the quote -unquote revival.

14:35

So we have some examples of really great revivals that happened, but we have even more examples of revivals that didn't actually amount to anything because they weren't true revivals.

14:46

How do you determine that? Well, number one, you can go listen to a topical sermon Dad did just last year on how to determine true revival, the symptoms of a true revival, but it ultimately boils down to whether or not

14:58

God's hand was on it. That's how you can determine it. Now, there are some things which

15:03

Dad covered in that topical that you can kind of see in real time to get an idea, is this happening, is it not, and obviously, in hindsight, you can definitely know whether God's hand was on a revival or not.

15:16

Now, here in 2 Kings, we have a man in Josiah whose heart was genuinely turned toward God.

15:24

He had a genuine fear of God, and after he discovered the book, which, as we know, was the law of Moses, he reinstated the

15:32

Passover, he reinstated all the laws of Moses, he made a concerted effort to break down the idol worship of the day in his land.

15:40

I mean, we just read it. He was burning it all. He was crushing the houses of the

15:45

Sodomites. He was burning the bones of the false priests that had already died and scattering their ashes on their children's grave, and then, of course, dumping all of it into the

15:58

Brook Kidron, which is a picture of a cleansing, and so he was making a concerted effort to break all this down and to start over the right way.

16:09

Would you guys agree that Josiah's intentions were in all the right places, that he was a genuine man of God with a mission?

16:19

And yet, we have to ask, was God's hand of blessing on this, as we might put it, revival?

16:26

What do you guys think? Well, we're not there yet.

16:33

Y 'all aren't allowed to read verse 26 yet. No, but it's a question we'd have to ask in any case, whether it is a contemporary revival led by the godliest men that we have on the planet, or Josiah himself, is

16:47

God's hand of blessing going to be on this revival? Did he desire, did God desire, with all the best intentions of Josiah or whoever would be leading it aside, does he desire for there to be a revival at all or for there to be a long -lasting impact to reform his people in the long term?

17:05

And again, it comes back to true revival only happens when it's his will for it to happen in the first place.

17:11

Now, let's put a pin in that idea for just a minute. And let's go ahead and turn to our next book that will be our next verse -by -verse study.

17:20

And y 'all turn over, if you can find it, to the book of Zephaniah. This is where our next verse -by -verse study will be.

17:35

Let's see if I can find it. I'm almost there. Zechariah, Zephaniah, okay.

17:54

So, Zephaniah 1 .1. The word of the Lord, which came to Zephaniah, the son of Cushi, the son of Gedaliah, I think that's how you pronounce it, the son of Amariah, the son of Hezekiah, in the days of Josiah, the son of Ammon, king of Judah.

18:16

You guys notice something interesting here. Zephaniah was a contemporary of the

18:23

King Josiah. The time of this prophecy in Zephaniah that we're gonna be reading verse -by -verse through over the next several years, just kidding, it coincides with the reign of King Josiah.

18:38

But why is that important to know? Because again, the book we're about to start reading has nothing to do with a revival or anything like that.

18:46

This is just a particular topical that I think will set the stage really well for what the themes of the book of Zephaniah are.

18:57

Well, let's first take a look at some of the evidence that indicates that the prophecy of Zephaniah happened after the revival that King Josiah initiated.

19:08

So we know without a shadow of a doubt that Zephaniah lived during Josiah's reign. But how do we know that this prophecy that we're about to read over the next several weeks happened after the revival that we just read about took place?

19:22

Well, number one, let's take a look at Zephaniah 4, the first chapter.

19:28

It says, I will also stretch out my hand upon Judah and upon all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and I will cut off the remnant of Baal from this place in the name of the cherims with the priests.

19:41

Now, when we read verse four, it says that God will cut off the remnant of Baal.

19:47

The language here, in both the English and the Hebrew, it implies that a revival had at a minimum already started or possibly even had already taken place because the worship of Baal at this point, while it was still present, it was less pervasive than it was at the time that King Josiah began his reformation, if you will.

20:09

So there was a remnant of Baal worshipers at the time of Zephaniah here. When Josiah began his reign, it was prominent.

20:18

It was a very pervasive pagan worship at that time. So there's one reason to believe perhaps this prophecy took place after the revival or at least during it, at a minimum.

20:29

Well, let's look at some other evidence, though. In verse eight, we learn that the king's sons were clothed in strange apparel.

20:36

Strange can also be translated as foreign. It says, it shall come to pass in the day of the Lord's sacrifice that I will punish the princes and the king's children and all such as are clothed with strange apparel.

20:48

Okay, well, this implies that King Josiah's children were already old enough to make their own choices and to go out and take part in foreign pagan things that were not of the ordinances of Israel, of Judah at that time, which would date the prophecy of Zephaniah well after the revival because Josiah was only 18 when it happened.

21:13

So maybe he had some little kids already at that time, but this implies that his kids were already older by the time that the prophecy of Zephaniah took place.

21:22

Some other evidence, though. Throughout the book of Zephaniah, as we'll see throughout the study that we're gonna do, the prophet frequently quotes the law.

21:31

Well, that's interesting because that implies that he had access to the book, that Zephaniah had access to the law that was found by Hilkiah at the beginning, or right before the revival took place in 2

21:45

Kings that we just read. And of course, that book, the law of Moses, is what spurred the revival in the first place.

21:52

And then fourthly, the themes of Zephaniah, which include warnings of impending judgment on the nation, would only make sense if the nation had just been, quote unquote, awakened to the moral, to the judicial, and to the civil laws of God through the books of Moses.

22:10

In other words, after the revival is when they had the standards to be judged by again.

22:17

Now, I realize, as we learn in Romans 1, it's not like a person needs to have the laws of Moses to have a standard to be judged by God.

22:27

They have the creation, that's enough for a person to be held without excuse. But in the context of Zephaniah, as we'll go through it, and in the context of the way of the people of Israel and Judah at the time of Josiah's revival, there were decades of silence because of the pagan worship, because of the things that were happening.

22:49

Then the revival takes place, then judgment comes is kind of the idea there.

22:56

So if this prophecy takes place after the revival of Josiah, what can we learn about that revival based upon the themes that are covered in the prophecy of Zephaniah?

23:12

What are some of the things that are gonna be drawn out of Zephaniah that will teach us a little something, something about the inner man, of all the people during the revival?

23:28

Well, let's take a look at the themes that are talked about in this prophecy that we're about to read verse by verse through.

23:34

The main theme of this little book, it's barely three chapters, is the day of the

23:41

Lord. Now that phrase is used more times in Zephaniah, a little three chapter book, than any other

23:48

Old Testament book in the entire Bible. The day of the Lord, we're gonna hear it over and over again.

23:54

This phrase being used magnifies the severity of the warning from the mouth of the prophet toward his people.

24:02

We're gonna talk more about that a lot as we progress throughout the study. But judgment was near, but there was a cause for this judgment.

24:11

What was that cause? The cause of the judgment, which again is gonna be fleshed out in explicit detail as we go throughout

24:18

Zephaniah, is the continual sinning against the Lord. And we learned that in Zephaniah 1 .17.

24:25

And for that reason, the Lord will rain wrath on his people in the form of the

24:30

Babylonian invasion, Nebuchadnezzar, and ultimately the exile that will follow the invasion.

24:40

But again, that's not going to happen without fair warning from God to his people, which was the main duty of the prophet,

24:51

Zephaniah. He was here to warn and to prepare them and let them know the judgment was coming because of the sinning that continued even after the revival.

25:05

The revival took place. Everything we just read 2 Kings, which was phenomenal stuff.

25:11

I mean, Josiah was a hero to all of us and he did everything in his power to bring reformation to the entire land of Israel, to God's people.

25:23

And even in his best efforts and with his heart being in all the best places and with all of the links that he went to, with even burning the bones of the false priests that came before him that led in a lot of the pagan worship that took place, even with all that, it was not

25:41

God's will for that revival to have any lasting impact. His hand wasn't on it, even with a man of God doing everything he can to bring that revival about.

25:54

Just think about that in the context for any revival that we may find ourselves witnessing in our contemporary times today.

26:01

We're going to have a lot of people trying to bring a lot of revivals and you hear people constantly talk about, I just think revival's coming.

26:08

Well, obviously we all want it, but it doesn't matter how much we want it. We have to remember the reality that God's hand has to be on it.

26:16

And I would venture to say, how do you reconcile the desire for revival?

26:23

Because again, there's not a single person among the elect of God that would not love to see a national revival, like a true one.

26:32

So how do you reconcile that with, well, if God's hand isn't on it, then it's not going to be his will.

26:38

And in that case, what's going to come out of it? A lot of easy believism, a lot of people with a false profession of faith that now think they got their ticket stamped for heaven and are going to continue living a life of sin covered by grace.

26:55

So how do you reconcile those things? Well, I would say the way you do it is by either collectively or individually.

27:02

Of course, if you're a man of great influence, that individual prayer would probably have even more effect, but collectively pray for the

27:11

Lord's guidance on whether or not to go forward with something like that, with attempting to initiate a revival.

27:18

I think he will lead his people when he wants his hand to be on it. So what's the connection between Josiah's revival and 2

27:25

Kings 23 in the book of Zephaniah? Well, I kind of already alluded to it a little bit.

27:31

The connection is that despite a genuine effort made by a God -fearing king, true internal, that's a key word there, internal meaning within each and every individual involved in the revival, true internal reforming revival can only occur by the hand of God, no matter how good our efforts are.

27:51

Now, why is this a pertinent topic not only to introduce the book, but just right now? How's this applicable to us?

27:58

It's interesting, but there's a growing movement in American Christianity right now led predominantly by reformed believers.

28:11

Just to put it frankly, what I mean by that is people that have a Calvinistic underpinning to their theology, which we would think, which we would agree with that aspect of it.

28:22

The doctrines of the reformation, the doctrines of grace, the five solas, faith alone, by grace alone, all to the glory of God alone, we would agree with the underpinnings of a lot of these people's doctrine.

28:37

However, it branches off into a lot of weird stuff I am discovering. And there is a leading movement right now, which is basically a derivative of post -millennialism.

28:49

We don't talk about that a whole lot. We talk about pre -tribbers a lot here, but we haven't talked a lot about post -millennialism, which is a totally different thing.

28:59

It's essentially people that believe that Jesus is gonna come, just to put it in the simplest terms as possible, he's gonna come after the millennial kingdom.

29:07

And you guys might be thinking, well, how does that work? I thought he was supposed to be sitting on the throne of David during the millennial kingdom.

29:13

So it's a view of the end times that greatly differs from ours.

29:22

And we don't have time to get into all that right now, but this movement is a derivative of that. It's a derivative of post -millennialism.

29:28

And it's called Christian nationalism. You guys may have heard of it. It's, I mean, it's been popping up in the news.

29:35

A lot of big news anchors are starting to talk about it because of its prominence. A lot of well -known leaders, a lot of well -known pastors and theologians are leading this movement.

29:45

Doug Wilson, Douglas Wilson, Stephen Wolfe, quite a few guys.

29:53

Those are some of the more prominent ones, but there's a lot of lesser known pastors that have decent followings in pockets all throughout the country that are really fired up about this idea of Christian nationalism right now.

30:07

And at its core, what is it? Again, I'm putting it in very simple terms for the sake of time, but at its core, the desire of that movement, and you can kind of tell how this is a derivative of post -millennialism here, the desire of that movement is to bring nationwide repentance and a return to God's law in a moral sense.

30:30

They don't believe in like, you know, going back to God's sacrificial system and stuff.

30:35

I'm talking about in a moral sense, like 10 commandments kind of stuff, thou shalt not kill, you know, like God's moral law, bringing that into politics as well as church.

30:48

Basically every sphere of influence you have, God's law in repentance needs to be there.

30:54

Now, again, does that sound bad on its face? No, but it's the way they are going about trying to accomplish that, and it's a little bit bizarre to me because it carries a connotation of trying to force a revival, essentially.

31:12

They don't even call it revival. They basically call it, you know, the need for a national call to repentance and a return to God's moral law and so on and so forth.

31:20

But the point being is that despite their best efforts, nothing of the sort is going to happen if the

31:26

Lord's hand isn't directly on it. And to a degree, only time will tell whether a new great awakening is even possible in this country again.

31:39

Or on the flip side of it, if we will be delivered a judgment analogous to that of what

31:46

Zephaniah is about to go into in the explicit detail. And so, again, it's not that we're a foe of revival here, not by any means.

32:00

It's just that you have to remember that you have to put God's will first.

32:07

And what I mean by that is asking Him to direct our steps, to lead us in everything we do, and whether or not

32:15

He wants us attempting to take part in such a reformation of our society, of our culture.

32:26

Otherwise, it's not gonna go anywhere because Josiah had all the best intentions. And I'm not saying the intentions of these

32:32

Christian nationalists aren't good. They're probably good. It's just that it is very much a we're taking this into our own hands kind of approach.

32:40

Y 'all get where I'm going with this? It does not feel like it is a God -led movement.

32:47

And I've been keeping track of it for a long time now. And even guys that I respect a lot who were involved with it,

32:53

I do not get the feeling that it is a God -led movement. It feels like they are trying to force something.

32:59

Now, maybe there's something I'm missing. I don't know, but it's beside the point because really what we're looking at here is what happened in Josiah's time and what followed, which is this prophecy of Zephaniah.

33:13

And it could happen to us as well in this country. Now, there's a cycle of degradation of nations throughout time.

33:21

And it's a cycle that no nation is immune to, I would say, especially the

33:27

United States. And this comes directly back to the historical context leading into what

33:35

Zephaniah is about to prophesy against or prophesy for because the people of Israel were experiencing the cycle that I'm about to reference here.

33:49

But I'm about to read a quote from a great commentator, profound commentator by the name of Otis Fisher that speaks directly to this reality.

34:01

But I want you to listen really closely because this quote is applicable to the time of Zephaniah, but listen to some of the things that Brother Otis says in this quote.

34:13

It's a lengthy one. The first step, quote, the first step in a nation's decline is religious apostasy, a turning from the living and true

34:23

God. The second step downward, excuse me, the second step downward for the nation is moral awfulness.

34:34

I like the way he worded that. That's a great, succinct way of putting exactly what's happening around us if I've ever heard.

34:42

Moral awfulness is the second step downward. Quote continues, the third step is political anarchy.

34:52

Now that one doesn't sound quite as applicable to us in this small geographical area that we live in, but think about what's happening in states not so far from us in many cases.

35:07

Literal anarchy. Now it's on a local government scale. I'm thinking of Portland, I'm thinking of cities that have been overtaken by literal anarchy because of a lot of the things that happened in 2020, whether it be pandemic related or civil activist, social justice, quote unquote, movements that began, that spurred up and just expanded like crazy, like wildfire in 2020.

35:34

There's literal anarchy that has been happening in local ordinances all around our country.

35:42

So that, we've seen that. So again, thirdly, political anarchy.

35:48

I'll continue the quote here. A great many people in this United States think that the problems are in the government in Washington, D .C.

35:58

I don't think so. Another group of people feel that if people could just be reformed, if they wouldn't steal, if they just treat everybody nice, we'd raise our moral standards.

36:12

That would solve our problems. Again, I don't think so. Very frankly,

36:18

I believe the problem in this country is religious apostasy. The problem is out there and it's in here.

36:27

The problem is that the church has failed to give God's message. I'm not talking about your church or the churches of others you know, necessarily.

36:38

There's many Bible teaching churches that have wonderful pastors who are standing for God and I thank

36:43

God for them. But the great denominations by and large have now departed from the faith.

36:50

They have come to a place where they no longer give an effective message to the nation.

36:57

The results that follow this religious apostasy, moral awfulness, I'm sorry, there are results that follow this religious apostasy, moral awfulness, and political anarchy.

37:10

If you think these things are just the wild ravings of a fundamentalist, you're wrong.

37:16

And then he went on to quote an editorial from a major newspaper in the 90s saying that the move from Christ and his teachings is the cause of this country's moral decay today.

37:28

So he was quoting from a newspaper, one of the more prominent newspapers, basically to prove his point.

37:36

This isn't just the ravings of a fundamentalist. This is happening before our eyes. That quote was from March 31st, 2002.

37:46

So Brother Otis already saw the writing on the wall and felt that we were experiencing a great apostasy, a moving away from the one true

37:53

God. And really we could track back to the 50s and start seeing that happening, unraveling.

38:00

By the time we get to 2002, Brother Otis was like, it's in full swing. I thank the Lord all the time that neither he nor Papa and even

38:06

Miss B to some degree did not have to see the things that we're seeing right now. So the people of Israel and Judah at the time of this prophecy, they were in a state of religious apostasy, which led to moral awfulness, which again, we're going to, it's gonna be founded upon throughout the book of Zephaniah, which would eventually lead to the downfall of their government, political anarchy, and the exile from their promised land.

38:38

And this book will lay out God's plan for his people in this regard as a response to their degradation.

38:47

So now let's read verse 26 of 2 Kings 23. Right after the 25 verses of all of the awesome stuff that Josiah just did, all of the breaking and burning of the groves, the burning of the bones of the false priests, the breaking down of the houses of the

39:06

Sodomites, throwing it into the brook of Kidron to cleanse the land from all of this sin, what happens immediately following the end of that verse 25 that says, no king before or after, no king after from this time, like Josiah had a heart turned toward God like he did.

39:26

Verse 26 says, notwithstanding everything we just read about, the

39:32

Lord turned not from the fierceness of his wrath, of his great wrath, wherewith his anger was kindled against Judah because of all the provocations that Manasseh had provoked him withal.

39:47

That was Josiah's grandfather. And the Lord said, I will remove

39:52

Judah out of my sight as I have removed Israel and will cast off this city

39:58

Jerusalem which I have chosen in the house which I said my name shall be there. Think about how angry he would have to be to do that.

40:07

The Hebrew word for provocations there is cahaz, where it says, because of the provocations of Manasseh, you could translate that as spite, as vexation, or as grief, so you could read that, because of all the grief that they have provoked me to, because of all the vexation, because of all the spite,

40:29

I will cast off the very house that I said my name will be there. So then we might ask, what about all of the provocations that we have provoked

40:39

God with over all these years? Again, you could go back as far as you want, but certainly starting around the 60s, although fast forwarding to today to the point where you have

40:48

Brother Otis in 2002 saying that we were experiencing a great apostasy, and now 21 years later, we have what we have.

40:56

It's interesting because some of what he listed, the steps, you have the great apostasy, then moral awfulness, then political anarchy.

41:07

We have reached maybe the beginning of that third leg of the cycle, because again, we have seen political anarchy in numerous cities throughout the country.

41:16

Isn't it interesting? So Brother Otis' prophecy, so to speak, is coming true. The moral decay has been there for quite some time.

41:25

The apostasy started way back when, and now here we are nearing political anarchy, perhaps on a grand scale.

41:31

What about all the provocations that we have provoked God with? Will a revival turn him from his fierce wrath, or is it too late like it was at the time of Josiah?

41:44

He did all he could. He dedicated his life to turning his nation back to God, but it was too late.

41:51

The revival of Josiah wasn't gonna do anything because it wasn't the Lord's will and his hand wasn't on that revival, and what will follow is what we're about to read throughout the study of Zephaniah.

42:03

As we'll discover throughout this study, this small book is far more applicable to us today than it may appear at quick glance, because Zephaniah is a little bit, is one of those slightly more obscure minor prophets.

42:17

As we read through it, though, I think we'll see that it's clearer than it may appear, again, at a quick glance.

42:25

And by the way, not all that long ago, as dad was going through Romans, there was a series that he did on the two candlesticks.

42:34

I don't know if you guys remember that, which was talking about the, in reference to the two witnesses prior to Jesus' second coming.

42:43

And Zephaniah was quoted there. Dad used a couple of passages from there. And so I think we're gonna see that this is a pretty applicable, be a pretty applicable study to us, even today.

42:58

So I'm excited to get into it. Do you guys have any thoughts or comments before we dismiss for today? My question.

43:04

Mm -hmm? Is Zephaniah wrong in time? Is he a good prophet? I don't think he was.

43:10

In fact, he was blessed as an individual. And that goes back to the point I was gonna make. Oh, so go ahead, dad.

43:16

You wanna throw something in there? Go ahead.

43:26

Okay. Yes. And I would say he was blessed while he was alive because it says in one of the passages that the

43:41

Lord's heart was turned toward him. But to dad's point, he, unfortunately, his life was ended in gruesome fashion on the battlefield because it was not

43:54

God's will for Israel to be reformed. So the one king they had whose heart was turned toward God, in the middle of countless kings before him who did evil on the side of the

44:06

Lord and countless kings after him that did evil on the side of the Lord, you have one beacon of light, and God took him out early, so to speak.

44:14

He was young when he died. So what's that about? If it were the Lord's will to have a man of God lead his people out, do you think he would have taken

44:23

Josiah out on the battlefield at a young age? Yes, sir. It's interesting, in my lifetime, when

44:46

Dr. Rocky Freeman was in seminary, he was going to school to be a evangelist, which is what someone's supposed to call this revival of churches, right?

44:57

So he had over 60 other young men and he graduated. By the time he passed away, there were only him and two others left, still evangelists.

45:10

And he was taken out at a very young age. He was 64, about as young by today's standards.

45:20

And I wondered at the time, why did the Lord do this? Why did he take him out? Lester Roloff was one of the most real evangelists in the middle of the country.

45:31

He died in a plane crash in 1865. And Billy Graham is gone.

45:37

There hasn't been anyone that raised up like him once he was gone. There's no replacement.

45:44

Arthur is the only one left and he's gonna be gone any time now. So you see the same thing.

45:50

I mean, you see the Lord removing the evangelists.

45:56

So that's it. There's one other person, Keith Green. I know he was a singer -songwriter, but he didn't tour to play music.

46:06

He toured to bring revival to the place he was going. He preached. And he was taken at the age of 26.

46:14

He was two years younger than me when he died in a plane crash. We've had a huge movement in the last decade of homosexuals coming into churches and wanting to be pastors.

46:44

Lesbians wanting to be pastors and the churches accepting that. Even whole denominations, like the

46:50

Methodist Church is split over this very issue. Like you said, then the mainline denominations are already gone.

46:58

I mean, even Otis. The way, that's what Otis said, yeah. It was gone by that time.

47:03

The Baptist, other Baptist are still going on for a little while, but they're gone now. And so,

47:10

I think, I remember Dr. Freeman used to say that if the government ever condones homosexuality, that'll be the end of America.

47:19

That's long since happened. The Supreme Court is sort of pushing against it a little bit, which is a good thing.

47:30

But the White House doesn't. Congress doesn't have a say in it. They can do it. So I think that when you get to the point where the

47:39

Lord just says enough's enough and you're not gonna, it's by end of effort, you're not gonna cause a revival, it's obvious.

47:46

Did you have a thought, Mimi? Were you raising your hand? I'm praying that it's not gonna cause a revival. Yeah, I'm thinking, I don't think we need to get the, you know, we pray for things all the time that are not

48:01

God's will. Because we don't know about what we don't stop praying. And I think the reason we're seeing so much falsehood in the revivals that do occur, or you quote, revivals that do occur, goes back to believing that moral compass is forgetting what

48:22

God taught. And those who do seek trying to lead congregations into a revival, who don't have their theology correct, are gonna see it's a false revival.

48:37

And we see this all the time. We see it a lot happening. There are hundreds of thousands of people walking to, because they want something.

48:46

They want something. They want something and they're calling it a revival. But if you don't know what you believe, you don't believe anything.

48:55

And so, when you take God's true gospel and the truth of the scriptures out of the mix, then they're just looking for whatever makes them feel good.

49:12

Well. Do we continue praying for it and seeking God? I think we do, even though we know that it might not be

49:20

God's will we're in heaven right now. Well, let me speak to everything that was said. And I know we're going late, but this is the end of this topic because the book of Zephaniah has nothing to do with revival.

49:29

So I want to button this up. I'll go in reverse. So Mimi, first of all,

49:35

I would agree to not, I don't think we should stop praying for the Lord to turn the hearts of our political leaders in the country around.

49:43

But there is a way that 100 % of the time our prayer can be in the Lord's will.

49:49

And that is by ending it by saying, nevertheless, thy will be done. And so we can pray as fervently as we want, as fervently as Jesus prayed for this cup to pass from him in the garden.

50:00

As long as for it, we can pray as fervently as we want for national global revival. The post -millennialist scheme sounds lovely.

50:10

The majority of the world are followers of Christ. It sounds great. Why not pray for that?

50:16

But unless you end it with nevertheless, thy will be done, we're going to be disappointed a lot because we don't know the

50:22

Lord's will. Everything has to be within his will. Let me say just a really quick thing before I forget,

50:27

Dad. To Dad's point a second ago, I already forgot it. Man, hold on a second.

50:33

To Dad's point a second ago, I had it two seconds ago and now it's gone. Let me go to Dave's thing really quick.

50:39

For Dave, yes, I do believe that Josiah was blessed on his time on earth.

50:45

And I think that he as an individual was, I think he was right.

50:51

I think that he saw sodomites around the Lord's temple. He saw false priests surrounding him.

50:59

He saw his own people worshiping the groves. Why wouldn't he be right as king to go and burn it all down, which is what he did.

51:04

I think he was right. But the Lord had a different grand scheme in his plans.

51:12

It was already too late. He wasn't going to allow, to put it in human terms, for a long lasting revival to take place.

51:22

So I believe Josiah received a lot of rewards for what he did, but it didn't amount to anything on earth because it wasn't the

51:30

Lord's will. And to Dad's point, he was taken out early anyway. The one beacon of light you had in the kingship at this time in history, hundreds of years, he was taken out.

51:38

And I don't know how old he was, but very young. So I don't know if that addresses that question or not, but, and it comes back to like, would it be right for us to want revival?

51:50

I say, as long as we let the Lord lead and to follow him the best we can, then that's the best we can do there.

51:59

And there may even be times where locally a revival is appropriate.

52:06

I mean, revival can be on multiple scales. It can be in a single local body of a church. I think we have that more often than we may even realize.

52:15

Anytime Myron comes into town, we have a mini revival here. Then there is revival in communities where I forgot who it was,

52:22

Dad. Billy Sunday, who would go into a town and that town, that single town, wouldn't be the country, but that single town, all the bars would be shut down, all the strip clubs, everything would be shut down for a period of time when

52:35

Brother Rocky would ride into town, into Mahea. He'd be there for four weeks or whatever it was. There was revival happening, true revival in a local context.

52:43

As far as national, on a national scale, that's where it gets a little bit different and where I think what we are reading about in Kings and what followed is pertinent to our situation in history because of what

53:00

Dad said a second ago. The Sodomites were living around the house of God.

53:07

And at this point in our country, they are within it, quote unquote, worshiping. God doesn't forget those things.

53:15

And so we might ask, Lord, bring revival, but nevertheless, thy will be done.

53:21

So that's how we'd have to approach that. I'm sorry, Dad, what was your other thought a second ago? I forgot.

53:27

Okay, okay. No, we should learn from chapter eight greater, only greater things, there are only greater things we should pray for.

53:40

Yes, of course. Back in the 80s, when our church started, I grew up with my little nephews.

53:47

And I can remember scores of times, our leader back then, I don't know if it's his name, but he took us to Dallas, where there'd be a huge church praying for revival.

53:58

Next day, they wanted the preachers to stay up all night and pray because that's what you do. And I would try that and I would just sense there's nothing here.

54:08

The Spirit of God's not even here. I mean, there's nothing. There's nothing happening here. And I was not led to pray for revival.

54:17

And nothing happened, you know, out of any of that. And I've never had a time in my ministry where I was led to pray for revival.

54:27

Other than like you're talking about in our own church that our people can be revived, and that doesn't happen, you know, quite often throughout time.

54:36

Even on some Sundays, you know. So, I think you covered it really well today.

54:43

It really got me thinking, certainly got me thinking about this country. And I guess,

54:48

I don't know why, but I have noticed how the Sodomites lived around the temple and then the women that were living there making the sewing things.

55:03

Well, they were probably temple prostitutes. All that was going on.

55:10

And I agree with all of you that said it was a good thing that he, that Josiah, walked with the

55:17

Lord and tried to clean it up. And I agree with you that he, I have reports now, had all of the

55:23

Christianity spread about his life ever since. I think it's a great example, honestly, of the responsibility of man and the sovereignty of God.

55:30

It was destined that it was too late. God was bringing Babylon.

55:36

But Josiah had a individual responsibility and mandate to fix what he could.

55:43

He was king for crying out loud. So he could do more than we could. Or that the remnant, because remember there was a remnant of Israel alive there too.

55:50

He could do more than they could because he was king. If we were president of the United States right now, would we not try to, to the best of our ability, do some things to turn the ship around?

56:04

The important thing about what Trump did with Roe v. Wade. You can't tell me that was not a good thing, even if it's the

56:12

Lord's will that we have already reached the point of no return. So Katie, did you have a thought?

56:18

Well, just the whole idea of some kind of value, you know, the 99 % we want. Right. While it didn't accomplish what

56:27

Josiah hoped that it would as a man, how many countless individuals and archived churches are changed by them.

56:38

Think about the unspoken remnant at the time of Josiah, how refreshed they must have felt after being in the dark, experiencing the gross culture around them for hundreds of years.

56:50

It was multiple generations of kings that did evil in the sight of the Lord before this. There was always a remnant there.

56:56

They weren't spoken about, but Josiah was talking about. So for a time, as brief as it was, that remnant was refreshed and reminded the

57:04

Lord is still with us. He will still bring us a man to lead us and to do these things.

57:11

So there's that too. Go ahead,

57:16

Mimi. Might as well. Life is not, life is cleansing. Yeah.

57:22

Not always providing, but it is cleansing. Very true. And in his own situation, it was cleansing.

57:32

And if you don't have cleansing, it's a revival. Well, let's think about this.

57:38

It's always happening. In a congregation, revival can happen. Few people at a time turn it on down a lot.

57:43

Well, let's think about this, and I'll leave it at this. This will be our last thought. But there was light shone on all of the evils of God's people at that time.

57:52

All of their deeds were out in the open as if they weren't before. They were out in the open like never before.

57:58

And as soon as they were, judgment came or is coming. And that's what our study will be about.

58:06

So we'll leave it at that for now since we're about seven minutes over. Actually, 17 minutes over technically from when

58:12

I was supposed to stop. Dear Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this wonderful day, for bringing us all together and allowing us to be together, to edify ourselves and to be able to have the possibility of revival within our local church body just so that we can experience the strength and the refreshing nature of being among the saints, among brothers and sisters in the

58:41

Lord, and to be able to take that into the world afterwards so that when we see the darkness around us, we can get through it so that we can have what we need to get through it a little while longer.

58:55

Until the ultimate day that you do crush all of it once and for all. Lord, we thank you so much for, again, just the fellowship we have.

59:03

We ask you to be with the remainder of the services today and to bless this day. And we ask all these things in your name, amen.