July 15, 2018 A Look Forward by Pastor Josh Sheldon

Zephaniah’s Warning and Promise in the Day of the Lord

The title of this message for this afternoon is from Zephaniah chapters two and three. I've titled it, I Look Forward. I will read to you the entirety of those last two chapters of this prophecy we've been in as we continue through the minor prophets.

And I do hope that as I call them that because that's the common nomenclature for these shorter written prophets that you will with me begin to wonder a bit how anyone can call these messages minor. But of course it's not the message that was ever meant to be called minor but the length of the prophecy.

I'm gonna read all of chapters two and three. So a long reading, please bear with and listen along. And what I want you to listen for as I read these to you is the day of the Lord. The day of the Lord is the core of the message.

The day of the Lord is the overarching theme in Zephaniah. The day of the Lord is what he is warning the people is coming. Pardon me. And in the day of the Lord we have both warning and comfort. We have both dire judgment coming and rescue and salvation and peace and safety.

The message is a look forward. We look back to the day of the Lord that we on this side of it can look forward to this coming one. With those little tidbits let me read to you Zephaniah two and three.

Gather together, yes gather, oh shameless nation before the decree takes effect, before the day passes away like chaff, before there comes upon you the burning anger of the Lord, before there comes upon you the day of the anger of the Lord.

Seek the Lord all you humble of the land who do his just commands. Seek righteousness, seek humility. Perhaps you may be hidden on the day of the anger of the Lord. For Gaza shall be deserted and Ashkelon shall become a desolation.

Ashdod's people shall be driven out at noon and Ekron shall be uprooted. Woe to you inhabitants of the seacoast, you nation of the Cherithites. The word of the Lord is against you, oh Canaan, land of the Philistines, and I will destroy you until no inhabitant is left.

And you, oh seacoast, shall be pastures with meadows for shepherds and folds for flocks. The seacoast shall become the possession of the remnant of the house of Judah on which they shall graze, and in the houses of Ashkelon they shall lie down at evening.

For the Lord their God will be mindful of them and restore their fortunes. I have heard the taunts of Moab and the revilings of the Ammonites, how they taunted my people and made boasts against their territory.

Therefore, as I live, declares the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Moab shall become like Sodom, and the Ammonites like Gomorrah, a land possessed by nettles and salt pits and a waste forever. The remnant of my people shall plunder them, and the survivors of my nation shall possess them.

This shall be their lot in return for their pride, because they taunted and boasted against the people of the Lord of hosts. The Lord will be awesome against them, for he will famish all the gods of the earth, and to him shall bow down each in its place all the lands of the nations.

You also, oh Cushites, shall be slain by the sword, and he will stretch out his hand against the north and destroy Assyria, and he will make Nineveh a desolation, a dry waste like the desert. Herds shall lie down in her midst, all kinds of beasts, even the owl and the hedgehog shall lodge in her capitals.

A voice shall not hoot in the window. Devastation will be on the threshold, for her cedar work will be laid bare. This is the exultant city that lives securely, that said in her heart, I am, and there is no one else.

What a desolation she has become, a lair for wild beasts. Everyone who passes by her hisses and shakes his fist. Woe to her who is rebellious and defiled, the oppressing city. She listens to no voice.

She accepts no correction. She does not trust in the Lord. She does not draw near to her God. Her officials within her are roaring lions. Her judges are evening wolves that leave nothing till the morning.

Her prophets are fickle, treacherous men. Her priests profane what is holy. They do violence to the law. The Lord within her is righteous. He does no injustice. Every morning he shows forth his justice.

Each dawn he does not fail, but the unjust knows no shame. I have cut off nations. Their battlements are in ruins. I have laid waste their streets so that no one walks in them. Their cities have been made desolate, without a man, without an inhabitant.

I said, surely you will fear me. You will accept correction. Then your dwelling would not be cut off, according to all that I have appointed against you. But all the more, they were eager to make their deeds corrupt.

Therefore, wait for me, declares the Lord, for the day when I rise up to seize the prey, for my decision to gather the nations, to assemble kingdoms, to pour out upon them my indignation, all my burning anger, for in the fire of my jealousy, all the earth shall be consumed.

For at that time, I will change the speech of the peoples to a pure speech, that all of them may call upon the name of the Lord and serve him with one accord. From beyond the rivers of Cush, my worshipers, the daughter of my dispersed ones, shall bring my offering.

On that day, you shall not be put to shame because of the deeds by which you have rebelled against me. For then I will remove from your midst your proudly exultant ones, and you shall no longer be haughty in my holy mountain.

But I will leave in your midst the people humble and lowly. They shall seek refuge in the name of the Lord, those who are left in Israel. They shall do no injustice and speak no lies, nor shall there be found in their mouth a deceitful tongue.

For they shall graze and lie down, and none shall make them afraid. Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion. Shout, O Israel. Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem. The Lord has taken away the judgments against you.

He has cleared away your enemies. The King of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst. You shall never again fear evil. On that day, it shall be said to Jerusalem, fear not, O Zion, let not your hands grow weak.

The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save. He will rejoice over you with gladness. He will quiet you by his love. He will exult over you with loud singing. I will gather those of you who mourn for the festival so that you will no longer suffer reproach.

Behold, at that time I will deal with all your oppressors, and I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth. At that time, I will bring you in.

At that time, when I gather you together, for I will make you renowned and praised among all the peoples of the earth when I restore your fortunes before your eyes. Well, you can see here in that rather short reading, though longer than we normally do, but rather short reading, this two-pronged day of the Lord, this day that Zephaniah has been warning the people of.

He preached in the time of King Josiah. I think we established a few weeks ago that he could well have been the prophet who initiated or at least kept going Josiah's great revival, his war against the prophets of Baal and the idols, not the prophets, the prophets were gone, excuse me, his war against the worship of Baal and the idols and those who worshiped the host of Hammond and would swear in the name of the Lord and also swear by Milcom.

And warns them that this day is coming when their goods will be plundered, when all that they have relied upon will be stripped away from them. Here is this coming day of the Lord, which all who read in the scripture and give any respect to the God who gives us this scripture would tremble and say what a horrible day is coming.

What a cataclysm is coming upon mankind to read of this day of the Lord. And that's true. This is the book of, the book of Revelation is largely about this coming day of the Lord, this ultimate day of the Lord, which Zephaniah's day of the Lord, the one that he prophesied, the coming of Babylon against Judah was just a hint, just the slightest picture.

The day of the Lord has to do with our eschatology. Eschatology, from eschaton, the study of last things. Eschaton, the last, ology is a study of, the study of last things and particularly biblically recorded last things.

The wrap up of history, if you will. So not the end of things in general, as though the eschatological fulfillment of a wedding is you may kiss the bride, though that is the end of the wedding, but the end of the world, the end of history.

And the day of the Lord is an important part of that. It means the day when God visits his people in judgment for their sins. In Zephaniah, it came up in chapter one of verse seven, where I'll 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 and those who bow down on the roofs and these others that we alluded to a moment ago.

Verse 14 says the great day of the Lord is hastening fast. It is coming, it is imminent, it is at the door, pounding to get in. And verse 15, this of course I didn't read to you a moment ago, it's back in chapter one.

It's described what is coming. It's a day of wrath, excuse me, a day of wrath is that day, a day of distress, a day of anguish, a day of ruin and devastation, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness.

And so it's a small wonder that the prophet Amos should chastise the people and say, why do you say you look ahead, you look forward to, that you're welcoming this day of the Lord? Because this day of the Lord is coming against you.

To say I welcome this is to disbelieve God. Or if you believe God and to say I would welcome this is to say I happen to know that I am not going to be affected by this. No one would come after me in such a way, even God.

It's stunning to think what it must take to ignore such a word as that. The day of the Lord is usually thought of in those kind of apocalyptic terms, judgment and wrath. And it is that, it's God's fury finally bursting forth from his holiness and making this complete and this terrible end of sinners on the day of the Lord, they get what's coming to them.

You ever think of it that way? You ever read Revelation and think of it that way? There's a lot to be said for it. Just a little bit I read from Zephaniah or alluded to from Amos would support that view.

And many others that would take too long this afternoon to read. But let's not neglect the fact that the day of the Lord is also a time when God's grace is manifest. It is true that the day of the Lord has God doing as he said he would do.

And he comes in covenant fury against those who refuse to keep the covenant and openly sinned against him. It is that. But the day of the Lord is a time of grace. The threatenings of that dread and awesome day are paired, as you heard at the end of Zephaniah, with the hope of rescue.

Where he's calling them to gather together and be the humble ones to whom the earth will then be handed over after this time. Where Zephaniah one warns of devastation and gloom. And Zephaniah two is very specific about those nations, the Philistines and so forth, against whom this violence is coming.

Then the first couple of verses of chapter two that I read offer the hope of delivery. Most of chapter three from verse nine to the end is dedicated to just this idea, the deliverance of a remnant on the day of the Lord.

Let me read to you a quote from Calvin about this. He says, the more severe then God is when he chastises us and makes known our sins and sets before us his wrath, the more clearly he testifies how precious and dear to him is our salvation.

For when he sees us rushing headlong as it were into ruin, he calls us back by threatening and chastisements. Whenever then God condemns us by his holy word, let us know that he will be propitious to us if touched with true repentance we flee to his mercy, for to effect this is the design of all his reproofs and threatenings.

Judgment and Grace in the Day of the Lord

The day of the Lord. How does a Christian respond to reading this day of the Lord? Well, in the one sense, we can look upon this and as we look at this day of the Lord and know that at the end of the Bible there's a greater and final and eternally meaningful day of the Lord coming, we fall down in praise to God.

He's given you faith in Christ Jesus that your sins, which would make you otherwise under the wrathful part, the judgment part of the day of the Lord, puts us on the other side of it. Because the sins that would have deserved that were put on him, put on the Lord Jesus Christ.

Let us remember also that the day of the Lord, as we read it in the scriptures, and remember Romans 15, four from this morning. They were written for us. They were recorded here so that we here today, this day, this afternoon, can read it and take comfort and encouragement and have hope.

We have a forward look also. We have a forward look to that great and final coming day of the Lord from which we will be spared. There's a remnant that's saved by grace. That's Romans 11, one through six.

The day of the Lord is a winnowing. God visits, God judges, and in judging, he separates the wheat from the chaff. Much of that is the whole of Jesus' so-called Olivet Discourse, where he has all those parables.

The 10 foolish virgins distinguished from the 10 who were wise and prudent. He speaks of the two women, one who were taken and the other who was left. God visiting in judgment. The day of the Lord explains the whole exodus, which we spoke a lot about this morning.

There's a separation that comes. You heard this just in the reading of Zephaniah, where there's that remnant, there's that group, there's that faithful few, and they're told to trust in this word and to take measures.

You shall not be put to shame because of the deeds which you have rebelled against me, for then I will remove from you, from your midst, your proudly exalted ones, and you shall no longer be haughty and so forth.

And God will, in his redeeming love, rescue that people. In the exodus, there is a separation. Began with the fourth plague, but on that day I will set apart the land of Goshen, where my people dwell, so that no swarms of flies shall be there, that you may know that I am the Lord in the midst of the earth.

Israel's livestock was spared in the next plague. The seventh plague was the hail that turned to fire, teaching us a responsibility to respond to what God says, because those who feared the word, those who understood it as the word of God, Egyptian and Israelite alike, brought their people in and brought the livestock in, and they were thus spared.

When darkness came over the land in the ninth plague, it was darkness in the land except in Goshen, where God made that separation. He maintained the light there. And then, of course, the death of the firstborn of everyone without the sign of blood on the lintel of their house.

The day of the Lord is God's visitation of his people in judgment and in separation, in judgment of those who refuse his word, who do not turn to him in faith, those who will not obey the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, and also in grace and in assurances given and safety put upon those who have.

It's always the same. Believe God that he will come and order your affairs accordingly. Some people go overboard on this. They examine the headlines, they chart out events, they use computer algorithms and tie all these things into the Bible, and once they figure out who Gog and Magog are, then they've solved all mystery.

There's one thing they get right, though. The day is coming. It was of utmost importance to Jesus that the apostles, and we know this, what does the day of the Lord mean to us today? As so often in the Bible, we're to appreciate what God has done in the past as the basis of our hope in the future.

It's not some fantastic fairytale meant to terrify children and keep them in check like some grims fairytale or anything like that. It's a literal time of the Lord's visitation on earth when he will judge all men.

I think Jesus' question is appropriate to our view of the day of the Lord. He says in Luke 18, eight, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth? Will lanterns be full of oil and their bearers alert?

Or will they be empty, the holders hoping to borrow from others? Which is no more possible than for my faith to save you or your faith to save anyone else. In chapter two and verse nine, which I read a few moments ago, therefore, as I live, declares the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Moab shall become like Sodom and the Ammonites like Gomorrah, a land possessed by nettles and salt pits and a waste forever.

It's interesting how we see in the day of the Lord. Progressively, as you go back to the first ones of them, like in Egypt and the day of the Lord, this repeating cycle, how God resolves things, puts an end to things, brings final judgment.

This reference to Sodom and Gomorrah and Moab and the Ammonites. Do you remember the relationship that those have together? It was when Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed that Lot left with his wife and his daughters.

Remember, the wife looks back, this is Genesis 18, looks back and she's turned to a pillar of salt and Lot goes with his daughters. And from their unholy union, who do we get? The Moabites and the Ammonites.

And here this day of the Lord is gonna put an end to them. The day of the Lord is a reconciling time, a resolving time, a time when God vindicates himself. He refers back to Sodom and Gomorrah to show how final is this judgment because those towns, those cities were destroyed and there are salt pits now and never to recover.

Well, we today, of course, we do not look upon this day with dread because if you're in Christ Jesus, then he has made all the preparation needed for us to be spared on that day. When God judges sin once and for all, the sins that Jesus suffered are over with.

His punishment for you and me satisfied God's demand for justice. But we are prophetically warned here, just as we're Judah of a coming day of the Lord, dreadful, darkness, destruction everywhere, devastation to every turn, the whole book of Revelation is about that coming day.

Jesus, who is the Lord of that day, in the Olivet, he repeated something, a simple word about it. Not when it comes, only the Father knows when it's going to come. Not if it comes because God's word says not only that it will come, but records the many tremors that prove the coming quake, the certainty of it.

You know, there's that traditional Easter greeting where on Easter you say the Lord is risen and the response is he is risen indeed. I wonder if we can play off of that just a little bit. I wonder if we could have a greeting, something like the Lord is coming with an answer, he is coming indeed.

I'm not advocating that, I'm not gonna say at Providence we need to start saying that but it's this level of expectancy that I think might be good for us. I feel a bit like Richard Nixon who says, well, I am not a crook.

Well, I am not a dispensationalist. But you know, there's something about this yearning for that day, this constant looking for it, this intensity of its expectation that I think has a lot to commend it.

If I said to you the Lord is returning, you said he is returning indeed, would that up our expectancy and our hope in that day just a little bit? Would it give us just a little bit of a reminder? It's not a fairy tale.

It's not something God put in here just to scare us. It's a real and literal coming which he has done cyclically throughout history. The ultimate coming of the Lord, of course, in the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, I've been off a lot of scripture and I'm very likely to go back and we'll pick this up in smaller chunks and go through some of the lessons that we can learn from this. I was trying to give us a grand picture of this day of the Lord and what it means to us.

And as we look back, was it not a day of the Lord in Genesis in chapter three? When God visited his people in judgment, said, Adam, where are you? He knew where Adam was. We all know that. He knew what Adam had done.

We all know that God knew that. But is that not a day of the Lord? When God comes in judgment of sin and punishes the sin, did he not close the gate of Eden to Adam and Eve and put the cherubim with the flaming sword to guard a re-entrance into it?

And in that same day of the Lord where sin was judged, where Adam and Eve had to pay the price for what they had done, did not on that day of the Lord God give hope? Genesis 3 .15, he shall bruise his foot but he shall crush his head.

Exodus was a day of the Lord. God's visiting you by the washing and regeneration of the Holy Spirit, Titus 3 .5. God giving you a heart of flesh to believe this gospel was a day of the Lord. Because in that day you were convicted of your sin and you were shown the terrors of hell, the ultimate day of the Lord.

God showed you that you had sinned against a holy God who is real, who is literal, who is your maker, to whom you owe an account. And that account leaves you desperately short. And in that same day of the Lord, for you as an individual, did he not then give you the hope of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and faith to believe it?

We look back on the day of the Lord in order that we can look forward. Because God's history, God has done in time and space, proves what he will do next. The promises, the hopes that the Bible gives us.

I think if we greeted each other, and I'm not saying do this, but just think about it. If we expected it, if we got a little bit more up on our tiptoes, a little bit more excited that he really is coming back, he really might be here before we step out of this place this very afternoon.

I said, the Lord is returning. He is returning indeed. If we said that, how much more would that set our hope on the future? And setting ourselves on the future, ground us in the now. The day of the Lord is not just for those old people then, and those bad people in revelation that are to come.

Living in Light of the Blessed Hope

Titus chapter two, 11 through 14. For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in this present age.

The meaning of that is clear. The imperative upon us is easy to pull out there. Renounce ungodliness, worldly passions, live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives. In other words, live like a Christian.

Live like a converted person. Walk in the light as you are children of the light. But then the next phrase. How are we to do this? What foundation does the apostle give us to live this life this way? And we'd like to say, well, he reminds us, doesn't he?

Right away reminds us that we're not capable of it. We're just lousy sinners saved by grace. And that except by the spirit of God, we can do nothing. And Jesus said that. Without me, you can do nothing at all.

And we know that, and we believe that. We do believe that. But what does he say? Waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, this coming day of the Lord, as an incentive, as a foundation for living this way now.

Our Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify himself for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works. How did he redeem us?

On the day of the Lord, of all days of the Lord. At the cross. At the cross where sin was put on display in a way that will never happen again and never happened before then. At the cross where mercy and truth meet and kiss, as the psalmist says in Psalm 85.

The apostle says there, one way we live rightly now is because we're waiting for the initiation of that day of the Lord, the coming, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.

This expectation is a means of grace to keep us living rightly. Hebrews chapter 10, verses 23 to 25 say much the same thing. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.

And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works. Brethren, that's the church. As we come together and stir each other up to love one another, to good works for one another, to put other's needs as more important as our own, all the one another's of the Bible.

Let's consider how to do that. Not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another. And here's the incentive. And all the more as you see the day drawing near. I mean, love and good works.

What makes them of any use? Well, first the Lord commands them and that's enough, but also they mean something about our faith. When Christ comes, will he find the kind of faith on earth that emanates in love and good works towards each other?

When the Son of Man returns, will he really find faith on earth? These are all so far from the Apostle Paul. And he's looking at this day of the Lord. He says, because that day is coming, live this way.

Not to earn anything, not to save ourselves from the terror of that day. Jesus has done that because we love this Jesus. Because we love this God who sent this Jesus and gave us faith to believe in him and knowing he's coming again.

And the real question here in these passages that I've read is what do we want him to find us doing when he returns? Does that mean if we're doing the wrong thing when he comes back, that we're in big trouble?

No, no. All the big trouble is put on Jesus. It's an incentive. Philippians 4, four through seven. Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand.

Do not be anxious about anything but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving. Let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Let your reasonableness be known. The Lord is at hand. There's a couple of ways that that can be taken. Some think it means that he is with us now by his spirit. He's at hand, he's nearby. Others think this means that he is coming soon.

That is, his day is at hand. So all the more as you see the day approaching would be the sense of that. For those in Christ Jesus, the day of the Lord holds no terror. There will be on that day a great vindication of our faith in God's wisdom.

As we go through more of these prophets, we'll see that the people who were spared when Babylon came, this day of the Lord, this precursor to the great day of the Lord, God in them and by sparing them vindicates himself.

And those people are then vindicated for their faith. For the foolishness of staying or going or fleeing before the Babylonians or in some cases they were supposed to stay. There's different ways that they were commanded to respond to this.

But in the end, on that day of the Lord when they are spared, God's mercy is vindicated. God's judgment, his wisdom, his mercy, all vindicated. When we think this afternoon, we come to the Lord's table once again as we do each Sunday.

And the ultimate vindication of God's justice, God's wisdom, which is of course the cross. On that great day of the Lord, sin was accounted for. Your sin and mine were accounted for when God visited man in Jesus Christ, when God judged man in Jesus Christ.

And when God placed upon him the sins of his people and he suffered and died for those. And in that day of the Lord also, by the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, knowing that our sins have been addressed, they have been resolved, they have been atoned for.

The cross being where steadfast love and faithfulness meet, where righteousness and peace actually kiss one another. The cross is why we can know that when God finalizes all that the cross initiated, that we will be safe in his arms.

The day of the Lord. At the end of our communion, each Sunday, do we not say for as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim the Lord's death, what? Till he comes. Our living Lord, our living Savior is going to return.

And each time we take the table and we look back to the day of the Lord when Jesus died, the bread and the wine, his broken body, his life poured out, we also look ahead that this Jesus who saved us will come back and bring us to himself.

So the day of the Lord must be this forward look. We look back because we know that God did it in history. Therefore, we know he will do it again in his own good timing. And because we can look back on that, we can say we now have this anchor for here and now.

All those passages I read to you from the Apostle Paul, the Lord is at hand, and so forth. And with great faith and hope and serenity and peace of spirit, know that when that final day comes, when these vindications are eternally set, that we, whose faith is in the Lord Jesus Christ, will be with him and see him forever.

Amen?