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

Revival by God's Hand Alone and the Lesson of Josiah

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

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. The topic we're going to be talking about today is revival by God's hand alone. 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. So turn to 2 Kings chapter 23. And I am just going to read the first 25 verses or so. Let's see here.

OK. I can't tell if that's Winston or Ada Crine, but I think someone's got them. All right, 2 Kings 23. It says, and the king sent. Now, OK, just for a little bit of context here, Josiah is the king, all right?

And he was a king that feared the Lord, and unlike his father and grandfather, was going to do what was right in the Lord's eyes as opposed to what was evil in the sight of the Lord. So this is the king we're talking about.

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

And he read in their ears all the words of the book of the covenant, which was found in the house of the Lord. So you all recall what this book was that was discovered. It was the first five books of the Bible.

It was the books of Moses that the servant of Josiah, I believe his name was Hilka, discovered and shared them with Josiah. 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. Verse 3 says, and the king stood by a pillar and made a covenant before the Lord to walk after the 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.

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

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 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. Does that look good, Matt? Yeah. Verse 5, 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.

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

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. 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, the gate of the city.

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. 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.

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

In the high places that were before Jerusalem, which were on the right hand of the Mount Corruption, the Mount of Corruption, which Solomon the king of Israel had builded for Astereth the abomination of the Zidians and for Chemosh the abomination of the Moabites and for Milcom the abomination of the children of Ammon did the king defile.

It's interesting that they put that, that that note is in there reminding us of Solomon's shortcomings at the end of his life. So Josiah here is burning the wrongs, the wrongdoings of Solomon. 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. 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?

Moreover, the altar that was at Bethel in the high place, which Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin, had made both the altar, both that altar and the high place, he break down and burn the high place and stamped it into small powder and burned the grove.

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 Lord, which the man of God proclaimed, who proclaimed these words.

Then he said, what title is that that I see? And the men of the city told him, it 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.

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 Lord to anger, Josiah took away.

And he did that to them according to all the acts that he had done in Bethel. 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.

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. 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 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 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 Lord.

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

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.

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. 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.

Now, we're all aware that it's possible to have a truly life-changing, reforming revival. And of course, we have some amazing examples of it. This example here in 2 Kings is 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.

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 Ashtoreth, of Molech, they were offering their children to Molech, all of this was happening.

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. 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. 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 New Testament.

But we have amazing things from even prior to the Reformation. You had guys like Wycliffe and Hus that were going against the grain of what 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.

Then you have the Reformation itself, of course, led by Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Beza, these guys that actually turned the world around. And I've been reading this amazing book by Francis Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live?

And he talks about the contrast between the Renaissance and the Reformation, because they were happening in tandem. And a lot of times we attribute the amazing progress that occurred during that time to the Renaissance, but he poses them in parallel and shows that actually it was the Reformation that caused the ultimate change that the world experienced at that time.

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 Reformation, as we know, was the exact opposite of that.

And the Reformation was, in fact, in some cases, the antithesis of it. 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.

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. 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. 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.

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.

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. 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.

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. 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.

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. 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.

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 God's hand was on it.

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

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

I mean, we just read it. He was burning it all. He was crushing the houses of the 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 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. 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? And yet, we have to ask, was God's hand of blessing on this, as we might put it, revival? What do you guys think? Well, we're not there yet. 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 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 long lasting impact to reform his people in the long term?

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

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

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

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. 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.

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

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 cherubs, the cherims with the priests.

Now, when we read verse four, it says that God will cut off the remnant of Baal. The language here in both 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.

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

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

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.

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. 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.

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 Kings that we just read.

And of course, that book, the law of Moses is what spurred the revival in the first place. 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, into the civil laws of God through the books of Moses.

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

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.

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

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? 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.

The main theme of this little book, it's barely three chapters, is the day of the Lord. Now that phrase is used more times in Zephaniah, a little three chapter book than any other Old Testament book in the entire Bible.

The day of the Lord, we're gonna hear it over and over again. This phrase being used magnifies the severity of the warning from the mouth of the prophet toward his people. 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. What was that cause? The cause of the judgment, which again is gonna be fleshed out in explicit detail as we go throughout Zephaniah, is the continual sinning against the Lord.

And we learned that in Zephaniah 1 .17. And for that reason, the Lord will rain wrath on his people in the form of the Babylonian invasion, Nebuchadnezzar, and ultimately the exile that will follow the invasion.

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

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

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

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

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. 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.

So how do you reconcile those things? Well, I would say the way you do it is by either collectively or individually. Of course, if you're a man of great influence, that individual prayer would probably have even more effect, but collectively pray for the Lord's guidance on whether or not to go forward with something like that, with attempting to initiate a revival.

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

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.

Now, why is this a pertinent topic not only to introduce the book, but just right now? How's this applicable to us? It's interesting, but there's a growing movement in American Christianity right now led predominantly by reformed believers.

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. 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. 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.

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. 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.

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

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. 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. 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.

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

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.

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

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

They don't even call it revival. They basically call it, you know, the need for a national call to repentance and return to God's moral law and so on and so forth. But the point being is that despite their best efforts, nothing of the sort is going to happen if the 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. Or on the flip side of it, if we will be delivered a judgment analogous to that of what 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. It's just that you have to remember that you have to put God's will first. And what I mean by that is asking him to direct our steps, to lead us in everything we do, and whether or not he wants us attempting to take part in such a reformation of our society, of our culture.

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

Y 'all get where I'm going with this? It does not feel like it is a God-led movement. And I've been keeping track of it for a long time now. And even guys that I respect a lot who are involved with it, I do not get the feeling that it is a God-led movement.

It feels like they are trying to force something. 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.

And it could happen to us as well in this country. Now, there's a cycle of degradation of nations throughout time. And it's a cycle that no nation is immune to, I would say, especially the United States.

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

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. 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.

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 God. "'The second step downward for the nation "'is moral awfulness.'".

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. Moral awfulness, that's the second step downward. Quote continues, "'The third step is political anarchy.'".

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. 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 spurred up and just expanded like crazy, like wildfire in 2020.

There's literal anarchy that has been happening in local ordinances all around our country. So that, we've seen that. So again, thirdly, political anarchy. 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.

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

Again, I don't think so. Very frankly, I believe the problem in this country is religious apostasy. The problem is out there, and it's in here. 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. There's many Bible-teaching churches that have wonderful pastors who are standing for God, and I thank God for them.

But the great denominations by and large have now departed from the faith. They have come to a place where they no longer give an effective message to the nation. 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.