July 1, 2018 Whats The Big Deal by Pastor Josh Sheldon

I'm going to ask a little bit informally before we carry on. Are we safe out there, Ken? All swept up? The door windows, I didn't know that until it broke just about 20 minutes ago, are double paned. The outside pane on the left side window broke a little while ago.

And we've got all the shards of glass cleaned up. But if we could just be a little careful with the children until we're sure that every little bit and sliver, because those teeny little glass slivers, not the big ones that you can just pop out, the little ones that work in, those can be very painful.

But just be aware that we cleaned up as best we can. But it's outside that door. And on the left side as you're facing is the one that broke outside. So let's have a little extra eye on the children and any barefoot hippies.

No, we're good. But seriously, do be a little careful there until we can be very sure that all the little shards have been taken care of. Turn, please, to Zephaniah. And this afternoon, we will look at Zephaniah, now this fourth in this series in this book.

And of course, we've been going through the minor prophets for the last few months here in the afternoon. Let me just read to you verses four through 18. The Lord speaking, the word of God. I will stretch out my hand against Judah and against all the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

And I'll cut off from this place the remnant of Baal and the name of the idolatrous priests along with the priests. Those who bow down on the roofs to the host of the heavens. Those who bow down and swear to the Lord and yet swear to Milcom.

Also known in other places as Molech, the abominable God of the Amorites. Those who have turned back from following the Lord who do not seek the Lord or inquire of him. Be silent before the Lord God, for the day of the Lord is near.

The Lord has prepared a sacrifice and consecrated his guests. And on the day of the Lord's sacrifice, I will punish the officials and the king's sons and all who array themselves in foreign attire. On that day, I will punish everyone who leaps over the threshold and those who fill their master's house with violence and fraud.

On that day, declares the Lord, a cry will be heard from the fish gate, a whale from the second quarter, a loud crash from the heels. Whale, oh inhabitants of mortar, for all the traitors are no more.

All who weigh out silver are cut off. At that time, I will search Jerusalem with lamps and I will punish the men who are complacent. Those who say in their hearts, the Lord will not do good, nor will he do ill.

Their goods shall be plundered and their houses laid waste. Though they build houses, they shall not inhabit them. Though they plant vineyards, they shall not drink wine from them. This is the word of the Lord, spoken by this prophet so many years ago, warning them of the coming of the Babylonians as we studied in not just Zephaniah but other prophets and these arms of judgment, these instruments that God is using, the Babylonians on the one hand and the Assyrians before them even.

Accomplishing God's will, whether they knew it or not, whether they liked it or not, we could say. And then for their own excesses, as they were used to punish Israel and then Judah, they themselves punished.

And all this from the hand of the sovereign God, the one who, as I prayed a few moments ago, in whose hand is the heart of the king and whose heart is directed by that Lord, by that same God as he directs the rivers of water to turn this way or that.

We have here a great deal of doctrine and theology. We could spend a long time just in these verses. We will spend two Sundays, Lord willing. And just so you know, those of you who know this book fairly well know that the day of the Lord is one of the preeminent themes in Zephaniah.

And just so you know that your local preacher here, myself, didn't miss that fact, we will next week speak specifically on the day of the Lord and what that means to us now, what that meant to them then and how we connect those.

This afternoon, I wanna talk about these indictments against Judah. I wanna talk about how Judah came to this point, how this people who stood before Moses heard the law and said, all that the Lord has commanded, that we will do.

And then Moses sprinkled them with the blood of the covenant and said, you are now the people of God. And that covenant made between the people and God, that covenant that they freely entered into, having heard the requirements of God, became the requirement of all the succeeding generations.

And so this people, so many centuries after that people said it to Moses, is just as accountable, just as responsible as were the original people. It says, Theoden says in Lord of the Rings, as you know, one of my favorite movies, and as the orcs are coming in, he says, how did it come to this?

Well, he meant, how did men stop relying upon each other? How did men and elves, of course, in that fantasy movie come to this point where they had no more alliances? Well, it happens just one small step at a time.

And how did this people who said, all that the Lord has commanded, that we will do, how did they come to worship Baal? How did they come to bow down on their rooftop and worship the host of the heavens rather than the maker of the heavens?

Why did they look to the stars and inquire of them and not to he who put those stars in place and inquire of him? The answer is, one little step at a time. It's very incremental. Not long ago, when the sun was in my eyes, I pulled down the visor, as anyone would do.

I was sitting at an intersection, so it didn't matter that the visor covered most of my windshield at my angle I was sitting. And the way I pulled it down, I accidentally flipped up the cover to the mirror.

And I looked in that mirror for a second, and I said, my word, this thing under my lip is almost all gray. And last time I took a good look at it, it wasn't. Now, I'm not a vain man. I have many faults, and we can spend a long time talking about them if you ever get me going on that subject.

One of them is not vanity. And yet, I looked at it and said, when was this? And I noticed when I shave, if I let it go for a couple days, well, yeah, and that. One little hair at a time. Now, this graying process, which many of us are well into, is different than the incremental intrusion of sin into the people of God.

In the gray hairs, says the proverb, are the glory of a man, and should cause respect. And those who are younger should rise when the gray haired enter the room. But still, the illustration works. Because a follicle starts to get gray, so it's really close up here, and it's just a little bit, and you don't notice it, and you shouldn't, and that one's gray, and you just pop it out, and that's pretty good.

Might wake you up a little bit, but it's not a big deal. It's one little step at a time. Something like that happened in Zephaniah's Israel. There's a slow, a constant, a steady, this deadly encroachment.

And what was the encroachment for them? But the same thing we guard ourselves against, is it not, is picking up worldly ways. It's forgetting that the people of God, though we dress the same, and we work in the same places, and we drive the same cars as anyone else, we have no distinctive language within this context where we live.

Most of us don't, we speak English. We drive the same cars, we go to the same places, we live basically the same lives. We don't have a language, or a dress, or a diet that distinguishes us as the people of old did.

And yet, the same God who called them, calls us. The same God also calls us, as he called them, to be a different people, a distinct people. This is an oversimplification, I admit it, but them. It was their dress, their language, their diet, their laws.

Most importantly, their worship, and that law which most predominantly they followed, which was the law of God. And for us, what do we have? Holiness of living, growth in the Lord Jesus Christ, an outer testimony that distinguishes us from the way the rest of the world would live.

And just as in Zephaniah's day, the children of Israel didn't wake up one day, the king didn't wake up one day, nor did a priest and say, yeah, we've been tracking along really well with the law for a lot of centuries, you know what we're gonna do today?

Today, let us go a different direction. Today, let us put up an image to Baal. Today, let us sacrifice children to Molech. We didn't do it yesterday, and we hadn't done it for nine centuries. Today, nobody does that.

Any more than good churches, the pastor, the elder board, whoever, whatever the polity is there, suddenly wakes up and says, you know, today, we're gonna abandon all tradition, we're gonna set aside the confession, we're gonna make Jesus less prominent in our worship, we're just gonna become a popular-type picture.

Nobody does that. It happens over time. The warning here in Zephaniah that I find is we need to guard ourselves. We need to watch ourselves. We need to be sensitive to these intrusions that come in, 1 John 2 .15.

The apostle was concerned about this. He said, do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. A matter of the heart, a matter of self-examination, a matter of where do my loyalties truly lie.

We're not speaking of condemnation here. We're speaking of where am I at right now? Can I look at this? Can I compare what I think of the things of this world, my emotive commitment to them versus God?

And if it's not where it should be, and I don't have a percentage to give you, but if it's not where you should be, we can look and we say, well, do we need to understand how this happened? I think there's some value in that, one little hair at a time.

Be sober-minded, says Peter. Be watchful. He's speaking to believers. He's speaking to those who believe in Jesus Christ 2 ,000 years ago, just as we do today. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour.

He can't have you. The Lord Jesus Christ will not share his sheep with anyone. As John 17 makes so clear, Father, Son, Spirit dwell within the believer, and God will not share his glory with another. So let's not worry about that, but the influence, the tug of the flesh towards those old ways that we left behind, those things from which we were redeemed.

It's just one little step at a time. If we imagine ourselves walking on the narrow path that Jesus talks about in the Beatitudes, the one that few find. We're walking along. It's like a great hike. You know, I used to backpack, and you're just clicking along.

You're at 9, 10 ,000 feet. Your legs are working well. The sun is perfect, and you're just trucking along. It's a narrow path. And then your right foot goes a little bit off on the embankment on the side.

Let's just say a toe. A toe like testing the temperature of water in a pool. You get back up, and you're back on the path. You go, okay, well, nothing happened. And then your left foot does the same thing.

And that other side of the path, you survive. And you say, well, wait, you know, there's something that looks pretty good over there, and you step on it, and you step back up really quickly, and you cover your head, and you look down.

You look up again, and God doesn't smite you with a bolt of lightning from heaven. You see what I'm saying? It's just slowly over time, it's a lack of defensive posture against the yearnings of the old flesh, against the wiles of our adversary, the devil, against the temptations that are still out there that that flesh that enwraps our new heart is still attracted towards.

It's that one little step off the path. And then we get in our mind that God didn't smite me, maybe not because he's merciful to me, not that he lets us get away with things, that's not what I'm saying.

But we forget maybe it was mercy, and we start being slowly and incrementally like this indictment in Zephaniah. Those who say the Lord will not do good or do ill. A practical kind of atheism. We are his workmanship.

Says Paul in Ephesians 2 .10, we are his workmanship, meaning Christ's workmanship. And why did he create us? Created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

There's a purpose to our life. There's a reason for us being in Christ. Primarily, most importantly, what God says is for his glory. And how does he receive the glory? It's as we walk in these works that he prepared beforehand.

And not these others. Not these encroachments that we give into. And brethren, I warn you, just from experience, we all know this. It's when we let ourselves think we got away with something. And we become this practical atheist that Zephaniah indicts here against Judah.

And we think, well, the Lord didn't notice. Well, nobody would say that. The Lord let me get away with something. We know better than that. And yet, each time God, in his decree of will, Deuteronomy 29 .29, we don't know it.

We don't know why he let us slip off the path and get back on without a major rebuke from him. But we begin to think, we begin to behave as if he won't. I only want us to look at these verses as a call to vigilance.

Not as a rebuke. You know your heart, you know your conscience, you know your walk better than I do. We talk plenty as congregant to pastor, so I've got a pretty good knowledge, but not as good as yours.

So this is not a rebuke. This is a call to watchfulness. This is a call to watch out for that one hair at a time. And of course, you can't do anything about your gray hairs. Jesus makes that very plain, doesn't he?

You can't make one hair dark, can't make one hair gray, you can't keep one on your head that God has said is gonna come off. But the slow, steady intrusion makes it a pretty good illustration. God could not have been more clear when the people came into the land.

When you come into the land that the Lord your God has given you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, and that's no-come or Molech.

Anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a wizard or a necromancer. For whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord. And because of these abominations, the Lord your God is driving them out before you.

You shall be blameless before the Lord your God for these nations which you are about to dispossess. Listen to fortune tellers and to diviners. But as for you, as for you, Israel, as for you, Judah, now living with Israel, having long before been conquered by Assyria, as for you, Providence Bible Church, but as for you, the Lord your God has not allowed you to do this.

This is exactly what we found in Moses' day. In a steady, slow drip, one little drip at a time until the whole thing is full. You see, the people of God are supposed to be a reflection of God. Let your light so shine, says Jesus, that men can see your good works.

Give you a great pat on the back? No. And tell you how wonderful you are? What a moral, upstanding, ethical person? Of course not. What does Jesus say to finish that? And give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

And how does he receive glory from us? As we walk in the works that he prepared before, in advance, that we should walk in those works, that we should love the Father better than the things of this world, that we should be sober, that we should be watchful, that we should know that our adversary is out after us, influencing us, tugging us, knocking little pieces off the path so that it bends the wrong way and makes us lose our balance and slip.

Paul says that as God is light, we are light in the Lord, so walk as children of the light. This process I've been talking about, I'll now define for you. It's called syncretism. We've had that word before in some other messages.

I don't know if I've used it in quite a while. Syncretism is simply the incorporation of other practices into your own worship. It's a distinctly religious word. And for us, what would syncretism be? Well, I'm not gonna give you a whole list of examples that I've thought up.

It would be anything that we do that takes our focus away from Christ, which sometimes we can do by accident, by mistake, by inadvertent error, though I don't think we've done that. But it's anything we do to take our focus off of Christ in order to make ourselves more acceptable to those who know nothing of Christ.

We speak commonly and pejoratively of the seeker-sensitive church, and I'm not going to analyze that for you now and give my thoughts on what that is, good or bad or anything like that about it. But the complaint is just what I'm saying, that in order to attract full pews, they take their eyes off of Jesus Christ.

In order that people don't feel poorly about themselves and so stay in those pews, they water down the message of sin and the suffering of Jesus Christ for that sin and the anger and the wrath of God against that sin and all that being poured on one, on Jesus Christ, to redeem the same people that I've been speaking of from those New Testament quotes.

That's syncretism, bringing in, incorporating practices. And how does it happen? It happens one little piece at a time. You all know for my multiple sclerosis, I recently got on a protocol where I get a rituxan infusion at the cancer center.

I don't have cancer, but it was designed for the immune suppressant for cancer patients. And it's interesting, if you've ever had an infusion like that, well, they don't take the big hypodermic and go.

It's one of those bags that they put up there and then they have a machine where they can monitor the level of the drip and it just goes, and then that little bit of drip, then the amount in the vial there goes down just that much.

You think, I'm gonna be here forever. Well, three hours later, you're done. But it's incremental. It's just one at a time. Syncretism is like that. The dimmer switch. You turn the light on, it's going to turn it down just a little bit, a little bit, a little bit, until the next thing you know, there's no more light in the room.

The people in Zephaniah's day carried on a form of worship. It would remind me of what Paul wrote to Timothy about men who have a form of God, but deny its power, deny the power of the gospel. These people went to the rooftop worshiping the starry host.

These people would bow down and swear to the Lord and yet swear by Noakum or any other God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so. In verse six, the prophet kind of wraps this whole thing up.

He says, they have turned back from inquiring of the Lord who do not seek the Lord or inquire of him. You know, in Ezekiel eight, there's this wonderful picture preparing Ezekiel for his vision of the glory of God departing from the temple.

And Ezekiel's shown through a hole in the wall some of the Jews and their leaders, their princes and priests in an inner room. And do you remember what they're doing? Take a look at this this afternoon when you're home and read it.

It's a stunning picture because they're shown worshiping idols and abominable things crawling on the walls and all these things that they have with their back to God. Not inquiring of the Lord, a practical atheism.

God will not do good, God will not do ill. God does not see, I can ask God. And if I don't hear really quickly, I can ask my astrologer, anything like that. We do need to be vigilant. I speak to a people who comes to a church where our worship is simple.

We sing the old hymns of the faith. We incorporate new hymns as the worship team wishes to. We sing hymns, we sing songs that speak of Jesus Christ and lift him up and remind us of what he did for us.

We need to guard that. We begin our service with the word of God, we end our service with the word of God and in between, Lord willing, we preach the word of God. I don't say that as if we can be proud of that.

It's all by the grace of God. We need to protect it. It's something we need to watch for individually and as a body. It's something we all need to be vigilant about. It's something we all need to be concerned enough about when we see something.

If your pastor, who is a soul pastor, so I don't have a lot of consultants, right? Should bring something in here and he just gets you going the wrong way. You just kind of, ugh, that just didn't seem.

Need to come, need to talk, we need to make sure. We need to keep this church on that path. We need to be a church where Christ and Christ only receives the glory and that guards us, does it not? Does that not strengthen us for the walk that we have Monday through Saturday when we're on our own?

To be reminded as we're together as a people worshiping God with one mind, with one accord, with one voice calling out his praises in the same way, having the same understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the scriptures that he's given us.

Does that not strengthen us? Is that not the reason for it? And should we allow a syncretistic thing to intrude in here than just small slice by small slice that can deteriorate, that can be gone just as it did in Judah's day.

We're no better than them. We're men and women with spirits just like theirs were. Simply a call to vigilance this day. Vigilance personally and vigilance corporately. We're all in this together. The king's sons and all those who array themselves in foreign attire, those who are supposed to be an example to the people.

I just read in James White's book Pulpit Crimes. Where he said that there is no standard or required form of dress. And he says, even a preacher, a pastor, doesn't have to wear a suit and tie when he preaches.

He's wrong about that and I'm gonna go to his debate when he debates Iglesia Ni Cristo again. I'm gonna try to go there and if I get a chance to have a cup of coffee, I'll point out that. The rest of the book is really good.

I'm having a little fun with them. King's sons though, in their mode of dress, were for that people then, they were making a statement. Because the Jews then had a particular mode of dress that was part of all that the Lord has said we will do.

And to dress the commentators, the scholars think that they were dressing in accord with Assyrian royalty. To dress like that is making a statement the other way. And so is their condemned. It's not the clothes themselves, it's what they say.

John Gill says, so far were they from seeking him in the first place diligently, zealously, and with their whole heart, that they never sought him at all, nor took any pains to get any knowledge of him or of his mind and will and manner of worship, but were altogether careless about these things and unconcerned for them.

They were practical atheists. Any one of them, if asked, would have affirmed that they worshiped the true and living God. But everything they did, everything they said, every way they lived, said something different.

It just creeps in slowly. And this is my whole message for you this afternoon before we take the table. It just comes in slowly. I'll give you another illustration. There was a made-for-TV movie. I don't know any of the actors in it.

It was pretty good, about Solomon, about King Solomon. And it showed the time, it gave their theatrical interpretation of when he first sacrificed to a foreign god. Now, I'll try and picture this for you very quickly.

Here's Solomon, the king, walking along the way with a small retinue like today with the movie stars and a big retinue, just a few people just walking along and people saying, hello, king, and things like that, and they're acting rightly towards him and him towards them.

And along the road on either side, intermittently, he came to these kiosks where there were these foreign gods, each one manned by priests or priestesses or combinations thereof. And at one particular one, the priestess finally got him to stop.

And she says to him something like, well, king, wouldn't you like to sacrifice to my goddess here? He says, no, I worship the true and living God. And to paraphrase, although this was some time ago, so I can't quote it, she says something to him like, what's the big deal?

If you worship that big a God, what does it matter if you give a sacrifice to this wee little God? Something like that. The title of my message is What's the Big Deal? So they showed in this movie, this made-for-TV movie, he just takes a little pinch of incense and tosses it on the fire in front of this priestess idol.

He just, a little bit of nice smell comes up. He goes, okay. She says, okay, fine, thank you. And he walks on. That was it. That was the big deal. That was when he stood for God. Said, I worship the true God, the true and living God.

Yahweh, the God of Israel who redeemed us from Egypt. That's the God, I can't do this. And she talked him into it. So he didn't take a big, expensive bunch of incense. He didn't take the gold necklace off and all for that.

He just gave a little pinch and tossed it on the fire. And I thought when I saw that, yeah, that's it. It's just that little pinch just to get her to be quiet. All I wanna do is enjoy the rest of my walk.

Maybe he was gonna observe and make some more proverbs about nature and how it relates to our relationship with God. He has something else on his mind. Just wanted to get on. Little pinch. That's it. That's how it begins.

God doesn't smite us with a bolt of lightning immediately from heaven. And we think we've gotten away with it whether we think it consciously or not. I only call us this afternoon to vigilance. The Apostle Paul warns us of the world's constant pull.

Second Timothy three and four is all about the terrible consequences of that. People become lovers of themselves. They have this form of godliness. They dress right, they look right, they say all the right things, they come to all the right meetings, they know all the right people, but they deny the power of true, godly living before the true and living God.

They deny the power of the gospel to change. Man named Demas seems to have been a cohort of Paul's. He loved the world and he returned to it. That's second Timothy four two. It doesn't say there that he departed or deserted because the gospel work was too hard.

It says he departed, he deserted, because he loved the world. Great deal of pressure for the church today to get with the program, support what Al Mohler commonly calls the moral revolution. Same sex marriage legal in all the United States.

So be it. Act 17 says that God placed us in these borders at this time under these laws at his direction, directly under his hand. Churches everywhere are caving in. They're finding all sorts of justification in God's word to agree with something like this.

I don't want to go through them all, but at their core is the idea that God who is love made people as they are and we, the church, should therefore be as accepting and as loving as God and where is the gospel in that?

Right, it's not. I think we're to affirm something like that, we've tossed out the pages of our Bible to the point where we have hardly a chapter left. Yet many who do just that claim Christ as savior and Lord and Zephaniah here would apply directly.

God give us the grace and the courage and the patience to not swear by Milcom and also by God, to not come in here and worship Christ and then give in to ways that are un-Christ-like, worldly ways, enmity with God.

That's James 4 .4. Maybe that's why in the works of the flesh in Galatians 5 .16 to 21, that's what precedes the fruit of the spirit so we know these are the things we need to watch for and these are the things that we need to cultivate.

Grace Training Us for Godliness

Let me just close with Titus 2 .11 through 15 and then we will prepare ourselves for the table. Titus 2 .11 through 15 says, for the grace of God has appeared, now it's Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ is that grace of God as Chris made so clear earlier today.

The grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

Brethren, God laid out the works in advance. They are there for us. God, by Jesus Christ, set us on that path. We can walk it. God, by his spirit, knowing our weaknesses, our fallibilities, keeps us on that path.

God has provided all we need. And what does he have for us? Be vigilant, be sober-minded, be aware. Know that the flesh is going to yearn for these old things and it's gonna come in just one little hair at a time.

It drifts like an infusion, just one drop at a time until the next thing you know, it's emptied and it's all in you. I only call us to vigilance. Declare these things, exhort and rebuke with all authority.

He tells Timothy, let no one disregard you. As I've said before, it's hardly a new practice. For a couple and a half years, we've been taking the table every Sunday. We come, we remember the Lord's sacrifice for these sins that he's redeemed us from, from the lawlessness that he suffered for.

The bread, his broken body, the wine, the grape juice, his blood, his life poured out for us. We do this weekly. I don't remember if it was last week or the week before, I reminded you that one of the strengths of this is because of what it reminds us of.

It reminds us of love. Because God by his spirit works these truths in us. So that as we go through this week, as we go into the world, as we see again those old ways, those old temptations, those old yearnings, perhaps this afternoon when we take this and we declare that we are Christ and he gave himself for us because he loved us as the apostle says in Galatians 2 .20.

Maybe we can stop that one drop from going into the bag and then through the tube into us. Maybe just that one hair will slow down, maybe it would recede a little bit, wouldn't that be wonderful? That's why we come every week, every Sunday to this table, to remind and to strengthen.

That's why we end every day, every Sunday with the apostle's words, for as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death till he comes. And isn't that not exactly what Paul says to Titus?

What are we doing? We are looking for that blessed hope. We are waiting for his appearing. All these things reminding us and by that keeping us strong throughout the week.