June 17, 2018 The Coming Flood by Pastor Josh Sheldon

The prophet of Zephaniah, another of the so-called minor prophets. And as you know, we've been in this series in the afternoon for some time, some months. We've gone through Jonah, Nahum, Habakkuk, and now Zephaniah.

And I hope with me you will begin to question a little bit this title that they have, this attribution given to them, that they are the minor prophets. They're arranged generally in a sequential order, chronologically, and they are shorter than what is called the major prophets.

Zephaniah in the Minor Prophets and the Nearness of Judgment

For example, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, many more words, many more chapters to their books, but nothing minor at all in the message of these minor prophets. We begin today with Zephaniah, and we're only going to look at the first three verses.

I want to introduce you to the prophet. I want to prepare us as we go through his prophecy in coming weeks. This message that he has, and I will read in a moment from it, is much like the other minor prophets that we've been dealing with.

It amounts to a warning to God's people of terrible consequences awaiting them should they not change their ways and return to Yahweh, return to the Lord, to once again fulfill the demands of the covenant that binds Yahweh to them and they to him.

Like the others in this series, where a stubborn refusal meets with a dread judgment, so also the hope of forgiveness is held out to those who will listen, who will repent and return to the Lord their God.

You will notice too in all these minor prophets, and again in Zephaniah, and I think this will continue as we go through the rest of them, as many as we're going to stay with in this afternoon series, that the judgment, the coming punishment by way of men, by way of armies, foreign armies that are going to be sent by the hand of God, whether they acknowledge it or not, which of course they don't, but it's God who's sending them.

And one of the common things with these minor prophets is the judgment is at hand. And if we look at them historically, we can peg many of them to particular dates. We know this is very close to that cataclysmic date of 586 BC, when the Babylonians did break down the walls of Jerusalem and desecrate the temple and carry away exiles and the gold and the silver and the vessels of the temple.

It's right at the doorstep. The Lord is at hand. Repent now. Punishment is coming. It's immediate. It's very much like the Lord Jesus in the Olivet Discourse. If you read the parables, the parables of the ten virgins and so forth, one of the things that you'll see there as a binding motif, one idea that brings them all together is this idea of be ready.

You do not know what is the day or the hour that the Son of Man will return. So you need to live and order your life and most particularly your spiritual self according to these two things, the immediacy and the unknown of it.

But the fact of it, the fact of it is without question. And if we think of the Olivet Discourse and we think of those immediacy kind of parables, that the Lord is coming at a time that you know not, one will be taken and another won't be, the one who is ready, the one who wasn't, the wise virgins, the unwise virgins, and so forth.

If we look at that all together, then we would say that these minor prophets then are sort of forward ping of all that. This idea of immediacy, but they had this one advantage that they knew that immediacy to them was right around the corner because the prophets told them so.

So Zephaniah and the times he lived, the word of the Lord that came to Zephaniah, the son of Cushi, son of Gedalia, the son of Amariah, son of Hezekiah in the days of Josiah, the son of Ammon, king of Judah.

All that being just the first verse. His setting in history is very telling. He prophesied, he ministered, he preached during Josiah's reign. Now this is what we call good King Josiah. We've heard that term before.

He's the one who became king at eight years old after his father Ammon died. This is the grandson of one of the worst kings of Judah, Manasseh, and so the great-grandson of one of the best kings that Judah ever knew, who was Hezekiah.

But here he is in Josiah's reign, and there's some very difficult problems in dating Zephaniah's ministry. One supporting piece of evidence that he came from Hezekiah's line is that he has the longest genealogy of any prophet.

It tells us more about where he came from, and the reason for that seems to be something like, yes, this Hezekiah. That one that you're thinking of. Not just Hezekiah as a common name in ancient Israel.

That Hezekiah. So I like the evidence that Zephaniah was the great-grandson of King Hezekiah. As I said, his ministry is hard to date with great precision. We do know that Josiah reigned from 640 to 609.

Second Chronicles 34 .3 says that it was in the eighth year of his reign, so when he was 16 years old, that Josiah began to seek the Lord. So that would have been around 632 before Christ. And then in Second Chronicles 34 verses 4 to 7, we have the record of Josiah's purge of the high places, the images, and the bales.

And the next verse then tells us that in Josiah's 18th year, so he's what? He's 26 years old now. While the temple was being cleansed and put back in order, having fallen into disrepair physically and spiritually during the long reign of his father and his grandfather, that the book of the law was found.

Do we all remember this famous incident where the ones, the Levites, they're cleansing the temple, they're repurifying the rooms, and they find this book. A sort of a mysterious thing. They send to the king, and they don't say we found the book of Moses, we found the law of God.

They say tell the king a book has been found. This is the one it came to. And it is this Josiah to whom Zephaniah ministered, and during whose reign Zephaniah preached. It was this Josiah upon hearing the word of God, he went from some innate personal distaste for idols, fed perhaps by a general idea of who God is, and that being perhaps a holdover from some part of his upbringing, he goes from there to understanding how awful those high places, and those images, and those battles really were.

And he goes from purging false worship to repentance for the same. He's the one who said now I understand why the anger of the Lord is great upon us. Because of this word of God that I've heard recognized as such by this Josiah who was there when Zephaniah was.

We need to understand is one thing to know that something is wrong. It's quite another to repent and turn from our wicked ways. We might know in our conscience following the dictates of conscience imbued in all men by their Creator that a thing is wicked.

We might even by our own exercise of will and discipline stop the sin for a time. But it can only be by the word of God and the work of the Spirit that repentance can really spring forth. All else is worldly sorrow and not biblical repentance.

So there's nothing in scripture that tells us definitively when Zephaniah came on the scene. But the best fit would be around this time when the law was found. Seems to be the best time for us to assume that Zephaniah came.

The word of God brought with power by the Spirit of God is then explained by a man of God to the king. Just what Romans 10 17 would tell us. So then faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.

So Zephaniah as a descendant of Hezekiah, it really plays into his prophecy. Hezekiah of course is the king under whose leadership Judah was delivered from the Assyrians. Those who invaded him while beaming with their success against Israel to the north.

He is the one who about to die pleaded in prayer for an extension. He was granted 15 more years. He, Hezekiah, Zephaniah's great-grandfather. He is the one who boasted to the Babylonian envoy of his wealth and his accomplishments.

And he, Hezekiah, our prophet's great-grandfather, is the one who's boasting elicited one of the most dreaded oracles of judgment from God. Scripture says after Isaiah came to him and said, who came to you?

He said the Babylonians sent an envoy to me. I'm paraphrasing. And he said what did you show them? There's nothing I didn't show them. And then implied strongly there's a very big parenthetical that we could add there that is virtually unanimously agreed to, I took credit for it all.

It was Hezekiah boasting of what he had done, bragging about his healing, showing off the 175 Assyrians who had invaded Jerusalem or Judah had attacked Jerusalem and God wiped them out overnight. And so Hezekiah says this, then Hezekiah said, excuse me, then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, hear the word of the Lord of hosts.

Behold the days are coming when all that is in your house and that which your fathers have stored up till this day shall be carried to Babylon. Nothing shall be left, says the Lord, and some of your own sons who will come from you whom you will father shall be taken away and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.

And then famously or infamously we get this rather short-sighted response. Hezekiah said to Isaiah, the word of the Lord that you have spoken is good, for he thought there will be peace and security in my days.

That's his great-grandfather, his grandfather Manasseh. Of course we're still speaking of the prophet Zephaniah, trying to get a picture of him and the times in which he lived. Manasseh, one of the worst ever.

The scripture says that the streets of Jerusalem ran in rivers of blood of the innocent people that he had executed. His injustice was so rampant. After Manasseh was another of the terrible kings, Josiah's father Ammon.

So when would the judgment come? The judgment that Hezekiah brought on. Well we know, we're looking back upon it, we know it was 586 BC when Babylon came. But if we put ourselves in the shoes of this original audience, we can actually think, well they must have grown weary of the waiting.

They didn't have Jesus in the Olivet Discourses saying, be ready therefore, this is going to come. You don't know when, but you have to live every day as if that could be the end before it comes. In verse 7 of Zephaniah's first chapter, it says the day of the Lord is at hand.

In verse 12, we read of those who are settled in complacency, who say in their heart, the Lord will not do good, neither will He do evil. So the Lord's patience, rather than being seen as a grace of the Lord, as something for which you need to go to the Lord and say thank you for your patience, thank you for holding back this judgment that is so well deserved and has been so clearly warned of.

Instead they grow complacent and say, I wonder if He even said that. I wonder if He's even coming. I wonder if there's even a God. But they're warned here by Zephaniah, who's preaching during good King Josiah's reign.

They're warned that Isaiah's oracle, which is so long in coming, has not fallen by the wayside. God has not forgotten Hezekiah's sin. He's not forgotten the punishment that that sin brought on. So who are these who don't believe the day of the Lord is at hand, who are settled in complacency, who say the Lord will not do good, neither will He do evil?

Really saying the Lord isn't is what this really means. It's the scoffers like what we have in 2 Peter chapter 3 and verse 4. Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were since the beginning of creation.

This is the milieu in which God sent Zephaniah. To a king whose heart sought a Lord he barely knew. To the last king of Judah whose conduct would be said in scripture to have been right in the eyes of the Lord.

To a people who do need to be snapped out of idle complacency and into a spiritual fervor of trusting God and repentance for their sin. So why do we make such a big deal of Zephaniah's descendancy from Hezekiah?

I think it's because he stands as a bridge of sorts between the oracle of judgment brought on by Hezekiah and it's now in history immediate coming in the time of Josiah. And Zephaniah, a descendant of Hezekiah, and so in some sense a brother to Josiah, is that bridge between the two.

Now Josiah is not going to see this awful judgment come upon Israel or Judah in his reign. Holda the prophetess said to him, thus says the Lord, behold I will gather you to your fathers and you shall be gathered to your grave in peace and your eyes shall not see all the disaster that I will bring upon this place and its inhabitants.

Other eyes will see it though. And this is the great message of the minor prophets in general and I think Zephaniah in particular. Other eyes will see it. Your eyes will see it. If Zephaniah preached as we think up to about 602 BC, remember that it's only 18 years away that Babylon is coming.

Zephaniah’s Flood Language and the Pattern of Divine Judgment

So verse 2, I will utterly sweep away everything from the face of the earth, declares the Lord. I will sweep away man and beast. I will sweep away the birds of the heavens and the fish of the sea and the rubble with the wicked.

I will cut off mankind from the face of the earth, declares the Lord. Now what sort of language is this? We call this Deluvian. Deluvian. And Deluvian simply means flood. And by saying Deluvian and meaning flood, we're referring back to Genesis 6.

Actually Genesis 6 through 10. Genesis chapter 6 and verse 7, which is the first announcement of the Deluvian flood. I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the earth, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.

Very much of course like Zephaniah chapter 1 verse 3. You know there's some things that once they're off, once they're out of kilter, once they're done wrong, they just can't be corrected. In a very simple example, when I tie my tie, I'm a little bit picky about it, but this outer side has to be longer than the inner side.

I would be mortified if I saw a picture of myself and it was shorter. And if you get it right, it should just touch the top of your belt loop. Just come to the belt buckle. And if you get it wrong, if this side is too short or it's come down too long, there's only one way to fix it.

I've done tie the whole thing and start again. If children are playing with Play-Doh and they've mushed it all together to where it becomes one color, kind of a muddy grayish color, but they want to make something with yellow, pink, and green, you can't undo it.

You have to buy a new Play-Doh. There's some things that once they get out of place, they just can't be corrected. You just have to start again. Josiah, this king, who I believe under Zephaniah's preaching was motivated towards keeping up this purge of false worship.

He tried to sweep away the idolatry, the imagery, especially the bow worship. But even Josiah, with all his spiritual fervor, couldn't do it. He couldn't eradicate all that. And so what is God saying here?

In an outburst of judgment and calamity, he was going to do what good king Josiah couldn't. He was going to cleanse the land. So verses two and three aren't to be taken literally, that a flood is actually going to come and clean everything away.

And we can say that because God swore by himself he would never judge the world again by means of flood. And for another thing, we know from history that when this flood described in these couple of verses came, it wasn't a literal water flood.

It was the Babylonian army. So what do we have here? We have here cleansing just like the great flood in Noah's day. We have here cleansing, but not by water. Cleansing by fire, if you will. The next verses, beginning of verse four, which we'll cover next time, they're very specific in the punishment.

Judah is going to be punished for Judah's sins. If before the flood of Genesis 6, God's attention was on the face of the earth, meaning its whole extent, in Zephaniah chapter one, verse four, he says, I will stretch out my hand against Judah.

This doesn't mean that the rest of the world was not in need of or undeserving of judgment. It means only that the Lord's attention was for that moment riveted on his people in Judah. You see, God's justice and the punishment that is demands is very specific.

The prophet Ezekiel makes it clear that each man dies for his own sin. And everywhere the scriptures tell us that God's punishments are measured. They are in exact accord with his nature, and so they precisely, they exactly match the offense.

Even a judgment so wide and so devastating as the flood was not capricious, nor was it indiscriminate. The whole earth was filled with violence, so the whole earth had to be cleansed. The intentions of the thoughts of man's heart was only evil continually.

We read in Genesis 6. So despite sometimes worldly objections, God didn't just take a swipe against man out of anger. The flood, the flood of Genesis 6 was a measured response of punishment for established and individual sin.

Even against Judah, the response as terrible as it was to be conquered and taken away by the Babylonians, as violent and cruel as that nation is or was, it's still a measured and specific punishment meted out to those who heard the prophet, who heard the call for repentance, who heard the promise of God for forgiveness.

It doesn't mean that there aren't consequences. But even that, even that we know from further on in these minor prophets that forgiveness did come, that God's anger was assuaged to an extent, that the people were brought back from exile, and under Ezra and Nehemiah, under the prophets Haggai and Zechariah, the temple was rebuilt and borders were foreign at time and to an extent restored.

God doesn't just capriciously come out in anger and just wipe things out. He doesn't just smite from heaven because he's ticked off at us. It's measured. It's specific. It's against specific established sin and is warned of.

There is a judgment though. There is a judgment where God's wrath was fully discharged. It wasn't the flood in Noah's day. It wasn't the coming of the Assyrians, which we covered in some of these previous minor prophets, where Assyria destroyed the northern nation in 722 BC.

And it wasn't the Babylonian destruction of the temple in 586 BC, some 20, almost 20 years after Zephaniah's time. None of those. One judgment where God's wrath was fully discharged, and only one, was upon our Lord Jesus Christ.

Our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross at Calvary, he bore all of God's wrath for all of his people's sins, for each person and for all the sins of each person. 2 Corinthians 5 21 puts it this way for us, for our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Peter later on quotes Isaiah when he writes, he himself, that's Jesus, bore our sins in his body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. So the Noahic flood, the Assyrian flood, soon to come in Zephaniah's time, the Babylonian flood, all restrained, all a matter of God not exhausting his wrath.

I would venture to describe it as just the slightest fraction of what Christ Jesus endured when God's wrath was not measured, when God's wrath was not held back, when all his anger, all his fury, all his distaste at all the sins that all his people ever committed was fully engaged upon the person of Jesus Christ as he hung helplessly on the cross.

The calamity coming to Jerusalem here just can't compare. Christ bore in himself our curse. So Peter says, quoting Isaiah, he bore our sins in his own body, in himself, in his person, and the Lord held back nothing against him.

No sin was found in him and yet for sin he died. Peter says it this way, no sin was found in him, neither was deceit found in his mouth. The author of the Hebrews says that he was tempted in all ways as we are, yet without sin.

So when you think about the judgment that Zephaniah warns about, as we think about the warnings that Jesus Christ giving, that there's a final judgment yet to come where the whole world will be judged, and this is part of the whole new heavens and earth, the Revelation and the end of Isaiah speak of, as we think of these things, as we prepare ourselves to take the Lord to table in a few moments, think of this.

Think of the cataclysmic acts of God against sin that we have recorded in the scriptures. Just those three, we could come up with others, but just those three are enough to give us months of Sundays to ponder.

Is it not the flood of Genesis 6 through 10, the destruction of Israel by the Assyrians in 722, the destruction of the temple and the exile of Judah in 586. To think of those and as awful as they must have been to endure and to go through, think instead as we approach this table of Jesus Christ who knew no sin, who had nothing to pay for for himself.

He never violated God's holiness, his law, his ethics or anything, and yet upon him, full wrath, he suffered for us. As we consider ourselves before this table, this reminder of his suffering for his people, think hard upon these oracles of judgment that are so common in these minor prophets, because not one of them holds a candle to what this we commemorate, which is the Lord Jesus Christ on that cross, his body broken for us.

We remember with the bread that is broken, his life, his blood poured out for us, the fruit of the vine, the grape juice and the wine that we will serve. Think carefully before the Lord and give great gratitude and rejoicing to him that Jesus Christ bore it all, all to him I owe.

There's nothing left for us to do. So Lord willing, we have a bit of an introduction to Zephaniah, but more importantly, perhaps as we think of the judgment that Zephaniah was warning against and what Jesus Christ endured, we have greater appreciation that we can never fully in our human limitation appreciate it completely, but perhaps just a little bit more than we did prior to this, what Christ went through for us.

Amen. Let's prepare for the table with hymn number 178.