Book of Zephaniah - Ch. 1, Vs. 7-13 (09/17/2023)

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Testing, one, two, three, four. Yeah, that's good. All right. All right, thank you,

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Mark. All righty. We're good to go now. So we will pick up right where we left off last week,

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Kings. We've been in Zephaniah for a little bit. We spent a Sunday introducing it.

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And then I think we've spent two lessons going through the first six verses, so we'll be in verse six today.

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Just to give you a really quick snapshot of kind of what this is all about, you can turn that down a little bit.

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This whole book, the whole theme, it's a very short book. It's only three chapters, and the chapters are relatively short.

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But the theme is the day of the Lord. And that particular phrase and phrases related to it are used more times in this little book than in any other.

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And so we're going to be getting there a lot. Coincidentally, we haven't actually gotten to the first time that phrase is used, but we're close.

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I think we're going to be getting there today. But it's used a lot of times, I think a total of 19 times in this little book.

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Now, the interesting part, though, is obviously we normally associate that phrase with the second coming, with the

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Great Tribulation. And that event is certainly talked about in this book. But there are times in the

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Old Testament where the phrase is used for imminent judgment as well. And so an important thing to remember as we go through this is that the prophet

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Zephaniah goes back and forth between talking about a near prophecy regarding Judah's imminent future within a few years of the prophecy taking place and judgment that will happen.

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And then he'll shift without any pause to talking about a far prophecy, which would be the

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Great Tribulation. So the first three verses of the book actually start with universal judgment.

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It talks about the Great Tribulation, the Lord unleashing his vengeance on the entire earth at that time.

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Then at verse four, it shifts and he starts focusing on his people, Israel, Judah, and that's where we've been the past couple of Sundays.

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Again, we've gotten all the way to verse six in three whole lessons.

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That's how far we've gotten. So we're going to pick it up right at verse seven. One last note is that last week we talked about false priests, or idol priests more specifically.

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We talked about the fact that the Levitical priests were working in unison with those idol priests in conducting pagan worship.

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And we talked about idolatrous people, idol worshipers. So we talked about those three groups of people.

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The Lord is rebuking them. Now here we are at verse seven and let's see what he has to say to them at this point.

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It says in Zephaniah one chapter, I'm sorry. Chapter one, verse seven, hold thy peace at the presence of the

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Lord God. Now, oftentimes when you see the word Lord, it'll be in all caps.

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And that is the translation choice used for the term

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Yahweh, God's divine name. In other cases, though, you'll see it in lower cases.

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You'll see capital L and then lower cases. And that is representative of the Hebrew word Adonai, which means

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Lord or master you'll notice here. It uses the term Lord and then

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God in all caps. So the God in all caps is representing that divine name of Yahweh.

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So we have here hold thy peace at the presence of the master of the Lord Yahweh for the day of the

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Lord is at hand. So this right here is the first time that phrase is used. The day of the

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Lord is at hand. We're going to see that somewhere around 19 or 20 times in this book of that phrase or phrases related to it.

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And this is the first time. Interestingly enough, the first time it's used here, what is it referring to?

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It's referring to imminent judgment on Judah, not necessarily the second coming in the great tribulation like is it normally would refer to for the day of the

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Lord is at hand for the Lord has prepared a sacrifice. He hath bid his guests.

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Now we're going to cover a few verses this morning, but we are going to park at verse seven for just a second, because that that phrasing at the second part of verse seven is really, really interesting.

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So what is what's going on here? He addresses our prophet addresses varying groups of idol worshipers, which is what we covered last week.

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He calls out those worshiping the celestial bodies, those worshiping Molech basically those indifferent to religion altogether, you know, atheists, perhaps he calls all of them out.

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But now what is he doing? He's calling for silence before Yahweh. Remember the verse begins, hold by peace at the presence of the

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Lord God. Why is he doing that? Well, keep in mind at this point in our little prophecy here, the eminence of the day of the

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Lord is at hand. It's very much a reality because judgment is coming for the way they've been acting and they need to be, not only are they being made aware of it, but they are basically being told and not so subtle terms.

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They need to get their act together and they need to do it quickly. The day of the

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Lord is at hand. Now this is again, the first of what will be a total of I have here 19 references in this little book to the day is one phrase that is used that day or the day of the

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Lord's wrath and other similar phrases. So we'll see it. We'll see the phrase used slightly differently, kind of variances of that phrase a total of 19 times, but they're all relating to that idea of the day of the

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Lord. First time it's used here. So this is a lot of judgment, obviously, a very severe judgment that has been spoken about being prophesied of.

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And of course, what do you think the natural reaction should be? It ought to evoke some fear in the, the private here is telling them to hold their peace, to be silent.

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Because if the very presence of the Lord, wasn't going to, wasn't going to have them sanctify themselves.

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It wasn't going to evoke that fear already. The judgment of the Lord certainly should on this particular day that the prophet is speaking of, there will be no more calling on bail.

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That was one of the false gods we talked about last week that was being worshiped at this time.

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There's no more calling upon the power of the universe. Again, we talked about that last week as well as harnessed by the stars.

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A lot of God's people this time were literally worshiping the sun, the moon, the stars. There'll be no more of that.

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There'll be no more committing the egregious blasphemy of swearing to both Molech and God together.

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And that was in verse six of last week. Kings, we were talking about the fact that not only were they worshiping

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Molech, which is the false God that requires the sacrifice of little children by the fire, they were worshiping him and God together.

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It's a, it's an idea of worship called syncretism that exists even today where people try to combine these religions and harmonize them.

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So to speak, they were doing that. And you have to imagine how blasphemous it would be to combine those two particular forms of worship into one.

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That's what was happening at this time. There'll be no more of any of those types of false religion because now the

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Lord, the one true God, would act on these actions that his people had been committing.

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And yes, again, just to give you guys a little bit of context, you recall King Josiah.

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He was one of the good ones. He was one of the ones that did good in the sight of the Lord. He actually caused a bit of what we would call maybe a revival in his day as King.

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And it's often looked at as a great example of what a godly man can do, especially one with a lot of influence and power, such as a

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King would have, what one man of God can do to the culture around him. We often think about the story in those terms.

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What's interesting about it is that we learn in this book that revival didn't really do a whole lot inwardly to the people.

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Josiah was an awesome guy, but the people around him that he was trying to have repent and turn back to the

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Lord, they weren't doing that. And so that takes place in second

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Kings chapter 22 and 23. This book of Zephaniah is being written just a few years after that.

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So the revival obviously didn't do too much because you have people worshiping Molech, Baal, the stars, the moon and the sun.

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You have atheistic Jews at this time that were totally indifferent to religion altogether.

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The revival didn't do all that much. So yes, even after such a revival had been enacted by King Josiah, and by the way, who was still alive when this prophecy was taking place, which is another just crazy, crazy reality to me because you have a godly

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King on the throne. And what does that tell us? Does that mean that Josiah was just failing left and right?

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No. I believe that he was doing the best that he could. But what it tells me is that it was, it was not the

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Lord's will that the hearts of the people would be turned around at this point because they had already been gross, sinning in gross ways for decades at this point.

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And they had been told by other prophets to turn and to repent and they ignored those calls.

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And so now you have essentially the prophet Zephaniah letting them know it is too late and here's what's going to happen.

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King Josiah is still sitting on the throne and yet this, this is taking place. These idol worshipers may have forgotten about God, but he certainly did not forget about them.

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And the day of his judgment is at hand is what Zephaniah is telling us. In fact, God prepared Judah like a sacrifice.

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Again, let's look one more time at the end of that verse seven for the Lord has prepared a sacrifice.

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He has bid his guests. What does that mean? It's such a strange way to phrase that impending judgment.

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What is telling us is that God prepared Judah like a sacrifice as we again see in verse seven. It's as if he has prepared his people for a slaughter, much like the sacrificial animals would have been slaughtered and prepared to be eaten the same, the way that these were these

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Hebrew words in this particular phrase is used. It's in the same way that a, a sacrificial animal would be spoken of before the slaughter, before it was cut into pieces and used for whatever its purpose may be.

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Turn over to Isaiah chapter 34 for a second. Because this is obviously some pretty vivid, explicit imagery that the prophet is now, you know, using to really just make the picture as vivid as possible.

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And of course, this is God talking through the prophet. And this is the wording that he chose.

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And again, it's to give us an idea of what on earth these people have coming. We see a parallel package package, a parallel passage here, but with a little bit more detail than what we have, it's talking about the same thing here in Isaiah, but we get a little bit more detail.

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This isn't the first time we've, we've done this in this book already. Chapter 34, we're going to read the first eight verses.

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It says, come near ye nations to hear and hearken ye people, let the earth here and all that is there in the world and all things that come forth of it.

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For the indignation of the Lord is upon all nations and his fury upon all their armies.

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He has utterly destroyed them. He has delivered them to the slaughter. Notice the, the similarities in language here.

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Their slain also shall be cast out and their stink shall come up out of their carcasses and the mountains shall be melted with their blood.

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And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll and all their hope and all their host shall fall down as the leaf falleth off from the vine and as a falling fig from, from the fig tree for thy sword shall be bathed in heaven.

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Behold, it shall come down upon Edomia and upon the people of my curse to judgment.

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I just want to pause really quick at verse five. If you guys may remember our study in Obadiah last year, we talked about the

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Edomites. We talked about the significance of that geographical location of Edomia where essentially the

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Edomites, the remnant of the Edomites were. This is another, this is another passage making, making it known to us that there will be

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Edomites alive even when the second coming has taken place. All the context for that conversation is in that previous study, but I thought

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I found that interesting that Edomia is mentioned specifically there. Verse six, the sword of the

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Lord is filled with blood. It is made fat with fatness, excuse me, and with the blood of lambs and goats.

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Okay, to listen to the language here, he's talking in sacrificial terms. He's using the terminology that is used when an animal is prepared for the sacrificial killing and the sacrifice itself.

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And with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams, for the

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Lord hath a sacrifice in Basra and a great slaughter in the land of Edomia.

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And the unicorn shall come down with them and the bullocks with the bulls and their land shall be soaked with blood and their dust shall be,

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I'm sorry, their dust made fat with fatness for it is the day of the Lord's vengeance in the year of recompenses for the controversy of Zion.

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So our passage here in Zephaniah, it's not the first time that the language of, of sacrificial action, that being the killing of the animals is used to give us that mental picture of what the slaughter will look like on the day of the

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Lord's vengeance. Now I said a second ago, incorrectly that this passage in Isaiah 34 was a parallel of Zephaniah.

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It's not exactly because in Zephaniah here in verse seven, it's talking specifically about Judah before the imminent judgment that is coming by hand at the

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Babylonians. But the same kind of judgment language, if you will, is used in Isaiah 34 when it's talking about his second coming and the judgment and the slaughter that the, the heathen will experience at that time.

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But the language is the same, which I found pretty interesting. Let's see here.

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There it is. Okay. Another verse. I'll just read this one really quick. Jeremiah 46, 10 says, for this is the day of the

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Lord, God of hosts, a day of vengeance that he may avenge him of his adversaries and the sword shall devour.

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And it shall be sick. And it, and it shall be satiate and made drunk with their blood for the

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Lord, God of hosts, have a sacrifice in the North country by the river

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Euphrates. So he's speaking of the Northern army in terms of being a sacrifice by his hand, the slaughter of the

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Lord. Anytime he's using this judgment language, talking about the day of the Lord, whether it is an imminent judgment for Israel or the ultimate great tribulation

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Armageddon, his second coming. He has used this language of sacrifice numerous times, which is really, really fascinating because again, it just gives us that very vivid picture.

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Verse seven also says he has met his guests. That's another phrase that's used at the end of that verse. Who are these guests that he's talking about?

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So now we're back in the context of Zephaniah here. He's not at this particular point.

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He is talking about judgment that is right around the corner for God's people. Who are the guests that he's talking about?

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Well, some people believe that the guests are the, his people themselves that are being prepared for the sacrifice.

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Although that wouldn't really make a lot of sense given the contrast he's made in the preparing of the sacrifice.

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And then the guests implying the guests that are coming to eat the sacrifice. I would,

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I believe that they are none other than the ones for whom the sacrifice was prepared for being the

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Babylonians. That are just a few years from Nebuchadnezzar coming, invading, taking captive, killing many of the people of Judah and Israel, but ultimately exiling them as well.

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The Babylonians, they were the chosen instrument to quote unquote, eat the sacrifice prepared by God himself.

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They had been chosen specifically to be God's agent of judgment. And the prophet here speaks of them in allegory as compared to carefully selected guests for some sort of great

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Royal event. If you can picture it in those terms, normally a sacrifice would be made for special.

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You know, high -class guests that were coming perhaps to eat at the King's table or something of that sort.

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And that's the language that God is using in regard to the rebuke and chastisement and judgment of his people.

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They will be the slaughtered sacrifice. The Babylonians will be the guests that come to eat that sacrifice.

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The Lord certainly isn't shy of using vivid terminology in verbiage, is he?

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All right, let's go to verse eight. It shall come to pass in the day of the Lord's sacrifice that I will punish the princes and the

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King's children and all such as are clothed with strange apparel. Who's the

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King sitting on the throne right now? It's Josiah. And here in verse eight, who was

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Josiah as a godly King here in verse eight, we learned that his kids are involved in this rebuke.

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Isn't that strange? We gleaned some particularly information, interesting information here in my opinion, because we learned that not only are the idolaters in the idol priests pointed out, but here also the

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Royal class are honed in on and rebuked prior to this great judgment that's coming.

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The reason this is interesting to me is because what we just pointed out Josiah's sons are included in this class.

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Of course, it's yet another example of how shallow Josiah's revival really was. What do

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I mean by that? I don't mean that Josiah himself was a shallow man or that his efforts weren't valiant.

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I'm saying the results in the hearts of the people around him, who he was preaching to and whom he was doing all of these godly things to impress and have them turn their hearts back to him.

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It was falling on deaf ears and that included his own sons. Josiah's sons were certainly punished.

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The strange apparel that it talks about in verse eight there is indicative of them having taken on foreign values in addition to the dress, which would make sense given

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Judah's spiritual state at this particular point in history. The Hebrew word for strange, when it says strange apparel could be translated foreign.

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So they were taking on the apparel of the foreign nations around them, taking them on, reforming their own identities.

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Dave talks about often, which I mean, that's a, what is that? That's a sign of drastic differences in where their heart should be and where it's at.

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Certainly not where it should be in terms of God's ordinances. They were taking on the strange apparel.

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Perhaps that's also an implication that their values were being reformed as well to, to kind of emulate these foreign nations, not just in the way they were dressing, but in the way they were acting.

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And that would make sense given their spiritual state right now. Now, additionally, this is interesting.

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I'm just going to go through this really quick. And it's just, it's a coincidence what I'm doing Bible in a year. I happen to be behind right now by about 60 days needed some catching up to do.

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I just went through second Kings that talks about this right here. Josiah's sons, his son, um,

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Joe, Jehovah has was only King for three months before he was captured by the

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Egyptians. So Josiah dies. His first son, the first of many of his sons takes the throne.

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He's King for a total of three months. He's captured and imprisoned by the Egyptians. So he was certainly punished.

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Josiah's other son that then took the throne, Jehovah, Jehovah, Kim, very wicked guy, did a lot of evil inside of the

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Lord. He was King for about 11 months, but I'm sorry, 11 years, but he was eventually defeated by Nebuchadnezzar, which was the very enemy that Zephaniah here in this prophecy was talking about in this book.

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So Josiah's on the throne. His, his sons are adults at this point, at this time in verse eight, as Zephaniah tells us, look, the princes, the

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King's sons will be judged as well. And roughly maybe 12, 13 years after this prophecy,

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Josiah's son was the one on the throne when Nebuchadnezzar came and invaded, conquered, took captive God's people.

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Those are also Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians are the guests that are being, that were talked about in verse seven.

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It's just, it all ties together. This is all again, prophecy of very near historical events that took place.

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And then finally, Judah's last King, the very last King in the line and the succession of Kings from David to this point was

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Zedekiah, another one of Josiah's sons, and he was blinded by Nebuchadnezzar and taken captive.

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So these sons were obviously rebuked, obviously punished as was prophesied in verse eight swiftly.

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Let's go to verse nine. In the same day, also will I punish all those that leap on the threshold, which fill their master's houses with violence and deceit.

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So here we just learned that God's people had become thieves, perhaps even murderous because we learned they're going into people's houses.

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They're committing violence. They're stealing. And you guys, by the time we get to verse nine, we notice a pretty exponential progression in sins.

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At this point, we go from talking about the idol priests, then being rebuked and called upon for judgment.

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Then the idol worshipers themselves being rebuked, then evil royalty in Josiah's own sons in the princes.

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And now we have violence and thievery, an apparent common action done by God's people at this point in time.

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Now there's a little bit of debate in regard to what it means by leap on the threshold. Some commentators believe it's talking about them taking on pagan superstitions.

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It could be referring to that, which would be a reference to superstitious pagan actions talked about in second

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Samuel that also talks about leaping on the threshold. Brother Otis thinks that it's referring to them.

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He believes that because of the context of verse nine, the way it reads all is one sentence in the same day.

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Also, while I punish all those that leap on the threshold, which fill their master's houses with violence and deceit, he believes it's a reference to them literally just going into someone's houses, crossing the threshold of someone else's property and bringing violence, deceit, thievery into their house.

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So it could be either one there. I would agree with Brother Otis that that seems like a pretty natural reading given just being a sentence that flows nicely.

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Right. Yeah. I mean, it's they, they are so degraded at this time that they don't have any fear, not only of God, but not only not, not even fear of what would happen to them in this pagan society when they commit violence in thievery, robbery and things like this, they're not worried about any kind of capital punishment.

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That's for sure. Sounds very familiar. Yes, sir. Sounds like LA.

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It sounds like every major city in California, every major city in Oregon and in Washington, zero fear of the, of the local ordinances, law, law officers, whatever it may be, let alone

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God himself. And that is exactly the state of these people in this particular time. Again, I said it last week, but you read these minor prophets, you slow down a little bit and there's far more parallels to modern society and things we can pull from it.

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Then maybe wouldn't be taken at first glance. Verse 10 says, and it shall come to pass in that day, say at the

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Lord that there shall be noise of a cry from the fish gate and a howling from the second and a great crashing from the hills.

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So we've seen rebuke. We have seen certain individuals, certain groups called out.

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We've already talked about the day of the Lord, but now here at verse 10 we have, we see a little bit of, of the actual judgment and what that looks like.

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That will come upon them. Not too far from this point in their history. The Lord say at the

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Lord that there shall be the noise of a cry from the fish gate and a howling from the second and a great crash from the hills.

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Verse 11, how the inhabitants of MacTish for all the merchant people are cut down.

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All they that bear silver are cut off. Now at this point, the prophet is emphasizing the all encompassing nature of this judgment.

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He's not leaving, leaving anyone out. I mean, he's called out a couple of people. You get to verse 10, um, and it starts talking about, um, a howling from the second, which is referring to a specific, uh, basically the opposite side of, of the city, uh, where the temple was the second quarter, if you will, a great crashing from the hills is talking about the surrounding hills of the city.

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And, uh, then he talks about the merchant people as well. Uh, it's going to fall this particular judgment.

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It's going to fall on every part of Jewish society. The fish gate that it mentions in verse 10 is actually where Nebuchadnezzar's initial invasion will take place.

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Uh, we learned through the histories of Josephus among others that, um, that is actually the singular spot where, where Nebuchadnezzar's army first invades and then ultimately takes over.

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uh, the, it was referred to as the fish gate because you had it down at the docks where a lot of the, uh, um, you know, buying and selling was taking place.

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Um, and so that is where Nebuchadnezzar's initial invasion takes place at the, at some point in Judah's future.

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Um, in addition to that, Judah's trading was totally disrupted. Look at verse 11. Again, all the merchant people are cut down.

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Think about the significance of that for a second. It caused a great howling and a great wailing. What other event comes to mind when you think about trade being disrupted, causing a great wailing?

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Dad? It's like a passage where you get your clothes out of the water, like in my theory,

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New York City being destroyed. Exactly. Revelation 18. Um, the great

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Babylon, when it goes up in smoke during the great tribulation, the merchants will be out in the sea, be wailing her destruction.

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And so this is like a little type of what that will look like on a global scale because mystery

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Babylon, uh, in revelation is referring to something the whole world will wail over. Here we are.

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We're talking about Judah. And when the merchants are cut off, when Nebuchadnezzar comes through the fish gate and, uh, all that bear silver are cut off and the merchants are cut down, it causes a great howling and a great wailing by the people.

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Isn't it interesting when commerce in economy is disrupted, the effect that has on the people.

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And this is, again, this is a type of what that will look like someday. Yeah. It's an interesting type of intervention.

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Silver, Wall Street is the money center of the entire world now.

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So if you wipe out Wall Street, you need to go back to the atmosphere where it destroys all the electronic equipment.

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That is all. Put the silver, that is electronic silver now. It would be all of it and the whole world would be mourning that.

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Absolutely. If y 'all want to do something interesting later, um, read verse 11 again and then go read revelation 18.

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Um, and, and look at the parallel there. Think about the fact that it is talking about two separate events, but the same cause and effect takes place.

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God, um, cuts down their merchants and it causes a moaning, a wailing, a howling.

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And, uh, in revelation 18, the same exact thing happens, except that's something that will happen even in our future.

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That's talking about there. So I found that really, that really popped when, uh, when

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I was, uh, When I came across that verse, because the language is almost exactly the same as well.

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Verse 12, it says in, it shall come to pass at that time that I will search

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Jerusalem with candles and punish the men that are settled on their lease that say in their heart, the

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Lord will not do good. Neither will he do evil. Now, a second ago in verses 10 and 11,

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I mentioned how the prophet is kind of trying to get the idea across that this is going to be all encompassing, right?

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Well, if that had, if that wasn't already crystal clear by verse 12, it says the Lord will search Jerusalem with candles again, to kind of extra emphasize, if you will, the comprehensiveness of this judgment,

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Zephaniah tells us that the Lord will be doing that. He'll literally be putting a spotlight. The Lord himself will be putting a spotlight on anyone trying to hide and none would go unpunished.

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So when the time comes, because this judgment is coming, remember the people have already crossed the point of no return in God's mind.

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This prophecy is a prophecy, letting them know exactly how this is going to go down.

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It's not a return to me. And I will return to you type of prophecy, which the book of Malachi was, if you recall, that was the last study that we did.

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The prophet it's from the human viewpoint. He's giving the people an opportunity to return to the

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Lord. So the Lord will return to them. Not so much in this prophecy. What is being talked about here is going to take place.

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It's already been decided by the determinant council of the Lord. And the, no one will be able to hide because of that reality to the point where God himself will be searching the corners of the cities with candles, with a spotlight, ensuring that none will go unpunished, but notice something.

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Wow. I can't say that word spectacularly is what I have written in my notes here.

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I don't know why it shows that word spectacularly presumptuous. It didn't sound so wordy when

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I was writing it. Oh, that's good. So.

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How many of you recall the great charge against the church of Laodicea?

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What was that charge? The charge that was so gross to the Lord, Jesus himself said,

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I will vomit you out. It was lukewarmness. They were lukewarm.

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This was such a disgrace to Jesus that he said he would vomit them out. And yet here we find a similar charge in verse 12, but from the wicked people toward God, the people are accusing

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God of being lukewarm. It says at the end, those that say in their heart, the

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Lord will not do good or do evil. They're accusing him. They're accusing

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God of complacency of standing idle, perhaps even not being there at all.

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But the accusation is made in the form of lukewarmness, which is very ironic because of course, that is the very thing that puts his people in the state that they're in.

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A lack of concern for anything around him, a lack of fear for anything around them, let alone

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God himself. And yet they're making that accusation to him in their minds. They can get away with whatever they want.

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He's not going to do good. He's not going to do evil if he's even there. But the wording that they use in expressing that attitude is very similar wording to what

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Jesus accuses the church of Laodicea for doing actually, because it's not like God is actually lukewarm.

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It's a total ignorant and arrogant. And as I put presumptuous accusation, it doesn't mean it's true.

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Later on in Revelation, just for one more parallel between Zephaniah and Revelation, God in chapter three accuses

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Laodicea being lukewarm. And he says, I will spew you out of my mouth because of that reality. So the presumptuousness here by the people in their heart to say and accuse

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God of such a thing is pretty spectacular. As I said, verse 13 says, therefore, their goods shall become a booty and their houses, a desolation.

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They also, I'm sorry. They shall also build houses, but not inhabit them.

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And they shall plant vineyards, but not drink the wine thereof. I'm going to stop at verse 13 here because I believe, well,

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I'm not going to get it. I'm not going to get ahead of myself there, but verse 13 is a good stopping point. I'll put it there. But I do want to point out something that's interesting because of their presumptuousness, which was on full display in verse 12.

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They're reminded once again, that God, in fact, is not standing idle. He's not complacent.

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He's not just sitting up there doing nothing like they accused him of in verse 12. Rather, he's actually very near and he's very ready to make them a desolation.

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Now having these enemies take their wealth and destroy their houses was actually predicted by God all the way back in Deuteronomy.

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As a result of them breaking the Mosaic covenant in our study in Malachi, we went to Deuteronomy chapter eight, a number of times because the law was a big theme to the prophet

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Malachi. He kept, he kept bringing them back to that as their standard is the standard they had left is the standard that they were ignoring and reminding them that they need to return to that in order to make things right with God again.

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Of course they didn't do it, but the prophet was concerned with that. So because of that, we were going, we were going to Deuteronomy chapter 28 quite a bit because what's there?

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Well, it starts with a number of verses of blessing for God's people.

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What's the condition though? The condition is if you keep my ordinances, basically it boils down to, if you will obey me, he gives a couple of different variations of what that looks like to obey him, but it boils down to, if you obey me, this great thing will happen to you.

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This great thing, this great thing. And he lists a number of things all the way down to about verse 14.

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So you've got 14 verses of tremendous blessing just right there for them to take.

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It's, it's available to them. It is their right. It is their prerogative to take those blessings as long as they obey.

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Let me word a little bit differently. It's not their prerogative to take the blessings. It is their right to be given those blessings.

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They are, they were a chosen, peculiar people. God had the blessings. He was holding them out on a silver platter, ready for them to just indulge on the condition that they obey him.

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Pretty simple stuff. However, you then have from verses 15 all the way through verses 68 of that same chapter talking about the curses that will come upon them.

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If they don't obey him, one of those curses, let's read one of the verses in Deuteronomy 28, 30, thou shalt betroth the wife and another man shall lie with her.

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Remember, these are the results of, if you disobey me, these are guaranteed to happen.

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Thou shalt betroth the wife. Another man shall lie with her. Thou shalt build a house and thou shalt not dwelt therein.

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Thou shalt plant a vineyard and shalt not gather the grapes thereof. Read Zephaniah 113 one more time.

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Their goods shall become a booty and their houses, a desolation. They shall build houses, but not inhabit them.

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And they shall plant vineyards, but not drink the wine thereof. So here we are in Zephaniah.

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A long while beyond the, the prophecy that God gave in Deuteronomy there.

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Roughly a thousand years, I believe. Maybe about 800 years later.

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Yeah, about 800 years later. In Zephaniah, you have that promise of God taking place.

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You disobey me. You don't follow my ordinances. You break the covenant that I made with you.

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The Mosaic covenant in this particular context, your houses will be a desolation. You will plant vineyards that you do not get to drink the wine from.

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And it's just one more example of God keeping his word. So I'm going to end it in verse 13 there because we have some interest, other interesting stuff we could start getting into around verse 14.

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We'll save that for another time. I don't know if you guys have any questions or thoughts or anything, but feel free to share.

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Yes. One common theme in all three of the minor prophets we've looked at so far, starting with Obadiah, then we did

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Malachi, now Zephaniah. They all show their unbelief and their lack of faithfulness to God in their actions, of course, but typically attitudes as well.

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There's usually a point that the prophet will make a point to actually mention their attitudes, which

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I think is interesting because that takes it a little bit beyond their actions. Obviously it's talking about not having their hearts in the right place.

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And interestingly enough in modern, I don't know if it's modern. I don't know how far back it goes.

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Maybe it's somewhat ancient relative to us, but in Orthodox Judaism today, evil is defined through actions alone.

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In other words, you can be as rotten of a person in your heart as you want to be. You can think the most vile thoughts.

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You can have the grossest attitude toward God. As long as that doesn't manifest itself outwardly and physically you're okay because evil is defined through actions alone.

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At least again, I don't know how far back that goes, but that is how current Orthodox Judaism operates.

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However, you go back to the minor prophets to their scriptures, the

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Old Testament, the Tanakh. And there we learn that the attitudes are, the attitudes are specifically mentioned and brought out by the prophets that are rebuking them and telling them the reasons why they're about to be judged or the reasons why they need to turn their heart back to God quickly.

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But that's a wonderful point there, John, because maybe it started with the attitude, but in these cases, it led to the physical actions taking place where their unfaithfulness was just on full explicit display.

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Yes, sir. Although I have mentioned it, the same way that the

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Israeli people experienced the point of no return, can we in America experience the point of no return today?

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Well, I mean, of course, I mean, there will come a time when God has to put the final enemies under his feet and in that final victory in Armageddon.

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And so you can look at it in a couple of ways. You can look at that as the point of no return. However, I would argue that for many of the wicked that are talked about in revelation, but even in this book, as we go through it in Zephaniah, because remember he goes back and forth between a near prophecy of imminent judgment and a far prophecy of stuff that hasn't even happened in our lives yet.

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I'm talking about global judgment. I believe that from, from you could look at it from God's perspective and say that those people, those wicked people had seared their consciences long before the, the writings that describe the judgment they're going to experience, in which case the point of no return, so to speak was, was even prior to the judgment itself.

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I mean, well, yes, of course. And in hindsight, you can point out where every other civilization in all of history reached a point of no return.

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They may have had a little bit of history left, but there was no turning back at a particular point in time.

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And so, yes, America, if you want to look at it nationally, we'll obviously get to that point. If you want to look at it more specifically in regard to the church, there will come a time, a point of no return where the bride is so gross.

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And in the eyes of, of her bridegroom and needs, needs to be cleansed to such a degree that, you know, again, let's look at it from our perspective for saying

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Jesus can't take it any longer. And we will go through a cleansing period, which will happen during the great tribulation.

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I believe that's one of the greatest purposes of it will be the cleansing of the bride of Christ to get her ready after years of adultery, spiritual adultery, and so anyway,

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I don't know if that answers the question. I do believe for sure we will reach a point of no return, whether you're looking at it from the perspective of the church or as a country, but I believe so you'll have any other thoughts or anything before we dismiss today.

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Alrighty guys. We'll appreciate it. We will go ahead and move on to the next service. Brother John, would you mind dismissing us a prayer this morning?

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Well, we thank you for the ability to gather, especially where it is, to understand how you need for us to live, to seek out, to teach others.

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Thank you for that ability to know that, to just come here and monitor.

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Of course, I don't know.

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That was scary. Still, it was actually sitting in churches.

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Thank you. Thank you. Teachers. Amen.