Zephaniah Week 1
Today we start a new book! Zephaniah.
1:1
Two important things to notice here. 1st - This book is written in the time of Josiah who reigned for nearly 30 years. So scholars guess Zephaniah’s ministry is about 630 BC.
2nd thing is that Zephaniah is the great great grandson of King Hezekiah. Which means Zephaniah is part of the royal family. King Josiah is Hezekiah’s great grandson, so they are “second cousins once removed”.
History lesson!
Hezekiah was a good king
Assyria destroys Israel, wants to destroy Judah
Hezekiah prays and Assyria is defeated and retreats
His son, Manasseh was a horrible king
Reigned 55 years - longest of any king Israel or Judah
Brought back all of the idolatry Hezekiah removed - child sacrifice, idols in the temple courtyards, etc.
Very violent in general
2 Chronicles does tell of him repenting and turning to God in his final years, but that’s short-lived.
His son, Amon was also a horrible king
He only reigns 2 years before his own servants kill him
Enter Josiah
Josiah will be the last good king of Israel, three of his sons and one of his grandsons will be the final kings before Judah is destroyed by Babylon
Let’s read some of his story - 2 Kings 22:3-11
Josiah is king at 8 and it says he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord. In his twenties, he decides they should fix up the temple because it’s been trashed. They discover the book of the law! Potential Deuteronomy, potentially the whole Torah.
They go ask Huldah what to do. She says, Judah will be destroyed, but not while Josiah is king
Read 2 Kings 23:1-3. He undoes all the things Manasseh had done, even undoing high places made all the way back in the time of Solomon and burning down the altar of Jeroboam. He even goes north to Samaria to remove high places and shrines and kills their pagan priests.
He keeps the passover according to all the law which hadn’t been done since the days of the judges.
Read 2 Kings 23:26-27 - God is concerned about his name and is fighting to glorify it so Jerusalem will still be destroyed.
As an interesting side note, another prophet prophesying at this same time in this same place is Jeremiah
This is the environment that Zephaniah shows up in. Here is the outline for the book of Zephaniah -
1:1-18 Judgment on Jerusalem
2:1-3 Hope for the remnant
2:4-3:8 Judgment on the nations
3:9-20 Hope for the nations
You’ll notice that familiar pattern of judgment followed by hope.
God’s glory in salvation through judgment - is potentially the theme of the whole Bible and the minor prophets strongly highlight it.
Before we jump into the text, let me mention that Jerusalem is probably in a similar position as you are right now. Zephaniah is the 7th minor prophet we’ve covered. It feels like we’re hearing the same thing over and over. Judgment, repent, salvation. The people have been hearing this message for 300 years. They are beginning to think that God talks a lot, but doesn’t actually do anything. And for us it’s easy to think of Jesus’ return as something that yes, we hear about this all the time, but it won’t be happening anytime soon. For most of those Zephaniah preaches to, however, God’s arrival of judgment through Babylon happens in their lifetime. When he says the day is near, it’s not something they should ignore.
1:2-6
This chapter is supposed to be about judgment on Jerusalem, but you see how he opens very strongly with “I’m going to destroy the whole earth”
Underline I will sweep away in vs 2-2
VS 2-3 In his destruction he is seen as “decreating” the earth by undoing what he made. It’s Genesis 1 but backwards. We see this in a couple places rather obviously in the Bible.
First in Noah and the flood. God created a beautiful blessing of earth and sin ruins it, so he says “So the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.” - Genesis 6:7 B
But in undoing all of his creation, he graciously sets aside some to save - Noah and his family.
The second most obvious decreation account is in Revelation. 7 seals, trumpets, bowls. They systematically destroy the things God created in Genesis 1. You see judgments that destroy all the creatures in the sea, that darken the sun, moon, and stars, that dry up the waters of the sea or turn them to blood, that burn up all the vegetation, the cause the sky to vanish, and even one that destroys light by plunging the earth into darkness. Sin has tarnished God’s beautiful blessed earth and so he undoes his creation.
But again in Revelation he graciously sets aside some to save - the saints.
So Zephaniah is telling the people that the immediate destruction they are about to see of their city, Jerusalem, is a precursor to the final decreation and destruction ahead
VS 4-6 We also see that despite Josiah’s sweeping reforms there are still those who worship Baal in vs 4 and those who worship Milcom (god of the Ammorites). He clean up A LOT but idolatry persists
Underline I will cut off in vs 3 and 4
ILLUSTRATE - the first apartment Silvi and I lived in - Louisville KY. We paid like $300 a month for it. It was nice, but partial underground - not sealed well. Mold crept in. We did everything we could to remove mold, but it kept returning. Once mold gets in fabric it can be cleansed but the spores still lie dormant, ready to grow as soon as opportunity strikes. It might even appear it’s cleansed entirely, but deep beneath the surface it’s just waiting. We had to move out of that apartment. We got rid of a lot of our stuff.
Despite Josiah’s cleansing of Judah, idolatry and sin still were dormant. The only way to completely eradicate it is to burn the creation to the ground and recreate it. In this way, he destroys even the “remnant” of Baal.
So God “sweeps away” everything in order to “cut off” the sin that remains hidden. But he saves those who seek the Lord and inquire of him.
Vs 7-13
Put a box around the Day of the Lord is near. It’s the return of the Day of the Lord! We haven’t seen it since Joel and Amos.
As a reminder, the day of the Lord is the day that God arrives. He arrives to judge and to save. And remember it is not only one single day, the Day of the Lord predicted here rightly refers to the day that Babylon came and judged Judah.
Zephaniah highlights how there is no exemption here, even up to the king’s sons and officials will be punished - people who typically think they’re above the law.
VS 9 - It mentions people who leap over the threshold. This likely is a pagan superstition. There’s a story in 1 Samuel 5 - where the Philistines capture the ark and Dagon is broken. So they no longer step on the threshold. It’s a superstitious practice that they likely didn’t think about, but it just became cultural.
The closest example I could think of is throwing salt over your shoulder. Spilling the salt is “bad luck” throwing salt over your left shoulder was originally seen as a way of warding off evil spirits because salt was protective. But it sometimes makes its way into our culture as a cultural superstitious practice we don’t think about.
I think God is suggesting, again, an absolute removal of everything so that any traces of sin is lost even from subconscious memory.
VS 12 This could be seen as the crux of this section. Circle from the “And I will punish to the end of the verse” As mentioned, people are thinking - “I’ve heard the prophecies before” They might outwardly acknowledge them as true, but inwardly they think and act as if God just doesn’t do anything. He’s not helping. He’s not hurting. Functionally, they are atheists. “The Lord will not do good, nor will he do ill.”
This is a temptation for us because we have such short attention spans. If God doesn’t act as quick as we think he ought to, we tend to think “he probably won’t do anything at all” But Zephaniah points out that to think this way is to completely forget all of the stuff he has done in the past
VS 13, “Though they build house, they shall not inhabit them; though they plant vineyards they shall not drink wine from them” Let me read to you Deuteronomy 6:10-12.
READ DEUT 6:10-12
They have forgotten what God did. The reason they are in Jerusalem at all is because God brought them in, The Lord did something good. So when they say he won’t do good or ill, they are forgetting that he has already done good.
So God promises to undo that good in reverse. Now they will be the ones who build and plant, but don’t get to enjoy the fruit of their labors. He’s undoing the blessings just like he was undoing creation.
If you are tempted to think God doesn’t act, he won’t act in the future or do anything, consider what he has done in your past. Did he act then either for good or for ill? He will act again
Vs. 14-18
Start by putting a box around our repeated phrase - The great day of the Lord is near
VS 14-15 - he hits rapid fire with a bunch of descriptions of the day of the Lord and clearly it’s pretty bad. I don’t know how you feel about hellfire and brimstone preaching, but that seems a lot like what is going on here. But he’s trying to shake people out of their complacency by giving a sense of urgency. “Afflict the comfortable” Distress and anguish is near, ruin and devastation are near, darkness and gloom are hastening fast. There’s a place for this kind of preaching.
VS 18 concludes saying “A full and sudden end he will make of all the inhabitants of the earth” this returns us to the global level of God’s judgment. We started there in the beginning of the chapter and have come back to it at the end.
In this last section after trying to shake them out of complacency and awaken them to the reality of God’s anger against their sin, he reminds them that there is still a chance to repent. Put a line underneath verse 18. This next section provides hope in the midst of the judgment.
2:1-3
Notice how many times he repeats the word before in verse 2 - underline all 4. It highlights how the time to repent is fleeting, but it is not yet too late.
The 4 befores are followed by 3 seeks in verse 3. Circle all three seeks. Seek the Lord. Seek righteousness. Seek humility.
And what will the result be, perhaps you may be hidden on the day of the Lord.
ILLUSTRATE - I think a good comparison here is considering a town that experiences frequent tornadoes. Zephaniah sees himself as the tornado siren going off. He does everything he can to highlight the fact that a storm is coming and it will destroy everything. But the people are complacent. They’ve heard warnings before. The storm doesn’t come, this time will be no different they think. So he cranks up the volume to say, DON’T BE COMPLACENT! DON’T IGNORE THE WARNINGS! Instead seek shelter. There is still time. The tornado has not yet arrived. Before the tornado arrives, get into a storm shelter, into a storm cellar. And it’s going to take humility to do so. Others might not join you. But if you seek out the shelter, you can be saved on the day of trouble