1. "The true God speaks. The true God reveals who He is. He thinks, He loves, He hates, He communicates. The truth about himself and about us. The most important of his actions is his speaking. But the false gods, the idols, they cannot speak."

2. "Maybe you're going through a trial right now, one of life's deep troughs. It may seem like a 40-foot wave about to crest above your little boat, and you're desperate. But friends, can I remind you that in the stormy seas, it is so often the time when we see who it is that must save us."

3. "It's funny how sometimes in the darkest night, the sky is most clear in its glory with the shining of the stars. Friends, it's the same way in our lives. The promises of God show glorious splendor against some of the worst circumstances."

4. "He will not have His people's affections divided. To partly worship God shows you don't understand who he really is. You're not worshiping him at all."

5. "Friends, any society that views killing a child like clipping a fingernail is not a society awaiting the judgment of God. It's a society that is under the judgment of God."

6. "It's possible for you to like some of the things of God, for you to like the people of God. It's impossible for you to like a lot of things about the worship of God and have a distinct disinterest in God himself."

7. "Friend, don't be deceived by having power into thinking that it makes you invisible to God or unaccountable to him. You cannot write a check large enough. You cannot make a decision significant enough. You cannot help enough other people to erase your own sins against God."

8. "To think that you could actually be so awed by something, by Someone, that your best, your most natural, your most appropriate, your most compelling response is complete, immediate, abject, and utter silence."

9. "We silence ourselves exactly because God has not kept silent. The word of the Lord has come, and we silence ourselves in order to hear God speak in his word."

10. "Turn our eyes and hearts to you. Take all of us, we pray, use us all up for you. Every year, unwasted, every day and every word for your glory."

Observation Questions

1. According to Zephaniah 1:1, what four-generation genealogy is given for the prophet, and during whose reign did the word of the Lord come to him?

2. In Zephaniah 1:2-3, what specific categories of creation does the Lord say He will sweep away from the face of the earth?

3. What specific forms of idolatrous worship does God condemn in Zephaniah 1:4-5, including the objects of worship and the locations where worship occurred?

4. How does Zephaniah 1:6 describe those who will face God's judgment in terms of their relationship to following the Lord?

5. In Zephaniah 1:7, what command does the Lord give, and what two things does He say He has done in preparation for the day of the Lord?

6. According to Zephaniah 1:8-9, who specifically will be punished on the day of the Lord's sacrifice, and what sins are mentioned as filling their master's house?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why is it significant that God's judgment in Zephaniah 1:2-3 lists creation in reverse order from Genesis 1 (man, beast, birds, fish), and what does this "de-creation" imagery communicate about the nature and severity of divine judgment?

2. What does the combination of worshiping Yahweh while also swearing by Milcom (Zephaniah 1:5) reveal about the spiritual condition of God's people, and why would God find this syncretistic worship particularly offensive?

3. How does the description of God preparing a sacrifice and consecrating His guests (Zephaniah 1:7) differ from the typical understanding of sacrifice, and what shocking reality does this imagery communicate to God's people?

4. Why does the command to "be silent before the Lord God" (Zephaniah 1:7) serve as an appropriate response to the announcement of coming judgment, and what attitudes does such silence reflect?

5. How does Deuteronomy 6:4-5, which Jesus identified as the greatest commandment, connect to Zephaniah's condemnation of divided loyalties, and what does this reveal about God's expectations for His people across Scripture?

Application Questions

1. Zephaniah condemns those who "bow down and swear to the Lord and yet swear by Milcom" (1:5). What are specific ways you might be tempted to combine genuine Christian practices with trust in other sources of security, meaning, or identity—and how can you identify and address these divided loyalties this week?

2. The sermon noted that idolatry isn't just any sin, but something that challenges for "the controlling wheel of the ship of your life." What person, pursuit, or priority currently competes most strongly with God for that central place in your decision-making and affections, and what concrete step could you take to dethrone it?

3. God promises judgment on leaders who "fill their master's house with violence and fraud" (1:9). In whatever areas of responsibility or influence you have—at work, home, church, or community—how can you ensure you are stewarding that trust for others' good rather than your own enrichment?

4. The command to "be silent before the Lord God" (1:7) stands in contrast to our noisy, distracted culture. What specific practices of silence and reflection could you build into your daily routine or weekly worship to cultivate genuine awe and attentiveness to God?

5. Jim Elliot prayed that his life would "be an exhibit to the value of knowing God" rather than achieving high station. How would your decisions about time, money, and relationships look different this week if you measured success by that standard rather than by cultural definitions of achievement?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Deuteronomy 6:1-15 — This passage contains the Shema that Jesus called the greatest commandment, establishing the foundational call to wholehearted love for God alone that Zephaniah's prophecy reinforces.

2. 2 Kings 22:1-20 — This account of King Josiah's discovery of the Book of the Law and his response provides the historical context for understanding when and why Zephaniah's prophecy was given.

3. 2 Kings 23:1-25 — This passage details Josiah's reformation in response to God's word, showing how he removed the very idolatries that Zephaniah condemned.

4. Habakkuk 2:18-20 — This prophecy contrasts worthless idols that cannot speak with the Lord in His holy temple before whom all the earth should be silent, reinforcing Zephaniah's themes.

5. Revelation 20:11-15 — This passage depicts the final judgment that Zephaniah's prophecy foreshadows, when all people will stand before God and be judged, with no one escaping His righteous verdict.

Sermon Main Topics

I. Jim Elliot's Legacy of Total Devotion to God

II. The Historical Context of Zephaniah's Prophecy

III. God Speaks to His People in Trouble

IV. God Promises Judgment on Idolatry

V. God Commands Silence Before Him

VI. The Silence of Completed Devotion

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Detailed Sermon Outline

Really, there could not have been a more appropriate hymn than we rest on for what I've been thinking about in Zephaniah. So thank you for that. If you look at the condemnation that Zephaniah makes of idolatry, and you contrast that with the plaque on the way in to our parking lot from Fifth Street, you know that plaque? It's that wonderful saying, I wonder if you've noticed it, He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep. To gain that which he cannot lose.

What a great statement. And then the attribution, Jim Elliott. Jim Elliott actually wrote that in his journal on October 28, 1949. He was a preacher's son from Portland, Oregon, born in 1927, the same year as my dad. I think George MacMillan told me that he knew him when he was in Chicago.

A little bit. George was on staff here when I came, and his son Peter is still one of our supported workers. Jim Elliott became fascinated with the need for the gospel of Jesus Christ among the indigenous peoples of Ecuador. So he traveled there and worked there. There in Quito he married Elizabeth Howard.

He gathered around him a whole team of friends to reach the Aukka or the Huarani Indians. Along the Kure River with the good news of Jesus. You may have heard of some of these friends: Nate Saint, Ed McCully, Peter Fleming, Roger Youderian. In that sense, Jim clearly lived out what he said in that quotation that we have on the pillar there from 5th Street coming into the parking lot. He said other things, too, in his journals that were published and that have inspired many.

Simple statements of earnest, youthful piety. Wherever you are, be all there. And that, he said prophetically, before the Internet or iPhones.

Jim Elliot's journals, as I say, have been published full of excerpts like this prayer, Forgive me for being so ordinary while claiming to know an extraordinary God. Or, Live to the hilt in every situation you believe to be God's will. He had even simpler statements. Time to get into the Word for a little defrosting. Said like a young man who spent some time in Chicago.

I believe you can find recorded messages of his online. One more quotation. He was 20 when he wrote this one. Lord, make my life prosperous. Not that I achieve high station, but that my life may be an exhibit to the value of knowing God.

So many people, when they're 16 or 18 or 20, are lost in a sea of small-minded self-centeredness. It has to be said. It's a human challenge. You're just beginning to have a life as an adult, to have freedoms and abilities, and so the possibilities of your future seem endless. What an illusion that is.

But time will show that soon enough. But to be able to think as godly as Jim Elliot did about his life, to have that kind of ambition at that young an age is to really show wisdom beyond his years. I bring up Jim Elliot as I say because As a young man in his 20s, by many of his choices, he exemplifies the Bible's call to give our entire lives and all glory to the one and only true God. Loyalty to God is a paramount virtue in the Bible, Old Testament and New, and implies an entirety of devotion to Him alone. The fact that there is only one true God means that this God has no rivals.

There are not any other real gods out there to challenge Him. He is the only God. Do you remember what Jesus said was the greatest commandment? You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and all your strength. Friends, Jesus was not quoting one of the Ten Commandments from Mount Sinai.

But He was quoting from Deuteronomy 6:4 and 5, the Lord's instructions through Moses to the children of that Exodus generation as they were about and finally come into the Promised Land. And as they did so, the Lord both instructed and warned them, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall have the Lord your God, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. Did you realize that right at the core of the Bible's teaching, there is this imperative to love?

And it's the love of God to love Him uniquely, supremely, completely, comprehensively for all the devotion, all the glory in our life to go only to Him.

And that brings us to our study this month. In this first part of the book of Zephaniah. Please turn there in your Bibles. If you're using the Bible provided, you'll find Zephaniah's prophecy on page 788.

Zephaniah is one of the Reformation preachers in the Old Testament. What I mean is it seems a pattern of God's would be to bring along a good king, like say Hezekiah, at the end of the 700s and beginning of the 600s, he would bring along a prophet at the same time to preach as a good king. So like Moses had been a kind of king and prophet, and David had really been a kind of king and prophet, after that we see Hezekiah coming along. When the Assyrians took the northern kingdom of Israel and 20 years later besieged Jerusalem, but God delivered them, Isaiah was the preacher of that reformation. Under Hezekiah, along with Amos, Hosea, and Micah, who'd prophesied around the same time of the fall of the northern tribes of Israel in judgment for their sins.

That's a century before Zephaniah. A century afterwards, Haggai and Zechariah would preach. When the inhabitants of Jerusalem and Judah had been captured and exiled by the Babylonians and then returned by the Persians, God raised up those two prophets to exhort the people to renew their covenant with God and to rebuild the temple. Zephaniah and Jeremiah are the reformation preachers between these two events. So if Isaiah is associated with the late 700s and Haggai and Zechariah with the late 500s, Zephaniah is associated with the late 600s, around 630 or 620 B.C.

when King Josiah worked to reform his people from the idolatry that they had been led into by his father Amon and his grandfather Manasseh. You can read the depressing story of that idolatry as I did during preparation again in 2 Kings 21. And you'll see there what King Josiah inherited when he became king as an eight-year-old boy. About ten years into that reign when the temple was being repaired, the book of the Law of Moses was rediscovered. And listen to what happened.

I'm going to go back to 2 Kings for this. 22, beginning at verse 10. You don't need to turn there, but here's the account in God's Word of what happened. 2 Kings 22, beginning at verse 10.

Then Shaphan the secretary told the king, Hilkiah the priest has given me a book. And Shaphan read it before the king. When the king heard the words of the book of the law, he tore his clothes. This king is Josiah. And the king commanded Hilkiah the priest and Ahikam, the son of Shaphan, and Achbor, the son of Micaiah, and Shaphan the secretary, and Asaiah, the king's servant, saying, Go inquire of the Lord for me, for the people, and for all Judah, concerning the words of this book.

Concerning the words of this book that has been found. For great is the wrath of the Lord that is kindled against us, because our fathers have not obeyed the words of this book to do according to all that is written concerning us. So Hilkiah the priest and Ahikam and Akbar and Shaphan and Asaiah went to Huldah the prophetess, the wife of Shallum son of Tikvah, son of Harhas, keeper of the wardrobe. Now she lived in Jerusalem in the second quarter, and they talked with her. And she said to them, 'Thus says the Lord the God of Israel, 'Tell the men who sent you to me, 'Thus says the Lord, 'Behold, I will bring disaster upon this place and upon its inhabitants, all the words of the book that the king of Judah has read.

Because they have forsaken Me and have made foreign offerings to other gods, and that they might provoke Me to anger with all the work of their hands, therefore My wrath will be kindled against this place and it will not be quenched. '

But to the King of Judah who sent you to inquire of the Lord, 'Thus shall you say to him, 'Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, regarding the words that you have heard. 'Because your heart was penitent, and you humbled yourself before the Lord, when you heard how I spoke against this place and against its inhabitants, that they should become a desolation and a curse, and you have torn your clothes and wept before me. I also have heard you, declares the Lord. Therefore 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 they brought back word to the king.

Well back to Zephaniah. This was when God's Spirit inspired a great, great grandson of the good King Hezekiah to speak during the reign of this other good King Josiah. And what he prophesied, Zephaniah is in line with what God had said to His people As they prepared to go again into the Promised Land, the Lord is the only true God and He should be the only God the Israelites served. But by the time Josiah came to the throne, there had been a half century of misrule and misworship led by his grandfather Manasseh and his father Amon. And when he realized this as a teenager, upon hearing the words of this freshly rediscovered book of the Law, Josiah knew that he must lead in a reformation of God's people.

And that's when God inspired the king's distant cousin, Zephaniah, with these words. Zephaniah chapter 1, beginning at verse 1. The word of the Lord that came to Zephaniah, the son of Cushi, son of Gedaliah, son of Amariah, son of Hezekiah, in the days of Josiah, the son of Ammon, king of Judah. I will utterly sweep away everything from the face of the earth.

I will sweep away man and beast. I will sweep away the birds of the heaven 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. I will stretch out my hand against Judah and against all the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And I will 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 heavens, those who bow down and swear to the Lord and yet swear by Milkom, 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, those who fill their master's house with violence and fraud. Friends, following Zephaniah would come Jeremiah and Nahum and Habakkuk and Daniel and Ezekiel, all prophesying of the exile of God's people to Babylon.

And the meaning of it. Note this pattern you find in Scripture. God in his kindness sends prophets first to explain what's about to happen, and then he does it, and then he sends prophets to explain what happened. He does this again and again. And here he's sending Zephaniah as the first sound, the trumpet blast, of this judgment that He's about to bring on even His people for their idolatry.

Here in Zephaniah, God came to His people when they were pressed and pushed and compromised and confused. And what would God do? When God's people are in trouble, what does God do? There are three things I want us to notice and consider this morning. God speaks, God promises, God commands.

Very simple, God speaks, God promises, and God commands.

I pray that in your troubles and in your trials at the beginning of this new year, God will speak to you through His Word this morning. When God's people are in trouble, what does God do? Friends, the first thing to notice is that God speaks. The very first words of this book are the word of the Lord came. The word of the Lord came.

You see how it starts there in verse 1, the word of the Lord that came to Zephaniah, the son of Cushi, the son of Gedaliah, son of Amariah, son of Hezekiah, in the days of Josiah, son of Amon, king of Judah. So much information packed into that. One verse. In that last phrase we see when this prophecy came. Doesn't give a year, but he gives a reign in the days of Josiah, son of Amon, king of Judah.

Josiah was born in 648 B.C. He came to the throne at age eight in 640. He reigned for 30 years until his death in 609. And it was around 622 that Josiah's men rediscovered the book of the law, probably Deuteronomy, in the temple. They were doing some repairs.

And there they found a scroll. Zephaniah's prophecy reinforces the teaching of that book. And so after two of Judah's most wicked kings, Manasseh and Ammon, Josiah is the king when this prophecy is sent through Zephaniah. We also learn here the prophet's name, Zephaniah, and this verse contains all the information we have about Zephaniah. You can study the whole of the Bible and this verse has all of it.

This is what we know about Zephaniah. His name means hidden of the Lord. Maybe a reference to the eclipse of the worship of Yahweh. When you see a name in the Old Testament with I-A-H at the end, that's short for Yahweh, the Lord. So Yahweh.

So he is hidden of Yahweh. He is perhaps his name perhaps refers to the fact that the worship of Yahweh had been suffering, had been eclipsed even in Jerusalem, and that now through the rediscovery of the Scriptures and through this prophecy, now God's promises would be uncovered and renewed. But the most significant thing in this first verse is the word of the Lord came. You know, Jeremiah who a few years later would be raised up and would would have a long prophetic ministry as Jerusalem falls. Jeremiah said of the idols, They cannot speak.

That's what marked them out as being false gods. They cannot speak. The true God speaks. The true God reveals who He is. He thinks, He loves, He hates, He communicates.

The truth about himself and about us. The most important of his actions is his speaking. But the false gods, the idols, they cannot speak. But the true God, the Word is the Lord's, the wisdom is the Lord's, the knowledge is the Lord's, the prophetic predictions is the Lord's, the initiative is the Lord's, it's the Lord who will choose what to say and when. and when.

What a contrast with the conversation a few of us were having yesterday with a Young woman who's into crystals. She and her friends all use crystals and she has a relative who's a Christian and who said, like, get those things out of my house. And we were talking about it and say, well, what's going on here? And she was saying, is it wrong for me to use crystals put my energy in and get things from. And her godmother said, Yes, out of the house.

But she was asking me about it. I was saying, yeah, it is, because there's a God who made those crystals. And those crystals are just minerals, but God made the minerals. Those minerals aren't gonna do anything other than you imagine they're saying something back to you that you thought yourself first. God is the one who really speaks.

He made them. He made you. He is the one who speaks to us. So here Zephaniah could no more have summoned the word of the Lord than you or I could summon to move the planets to shift or the mountains to move. Zephaniah's situation was like the situation of the whole people of Judah.

They were entirely dependent upon God to save them. Maybe you're going through a trial right now, one of life's deep troughs. It may seem like a 40-foot wave. It's about to crest above your little boat, and you're desperate. But friends, can I remind you that in the stormy seas, it is so often the time when we see who it is that must save us.

Do you remember Ben's sermon from just a few weeks ago? Jonah chapter 2? When Jonah was in the darkness of the fish's belly, he could see most clearly who it is that would save him.

It's funny how sometimes in the darkest night, the sky is most clear in its glory with the shining of the stars. Friends, it's the same way in our lives. The promises of God show glorious splendor against some of the worst circumstances.

Perhaps you'll feel like Jonah, salvation belongs to the Lord in the midst of the trial you're in today.

What are the hopes today for the millions of people in Bangladesh? Or Morocco, apart from this news of salvation of our Lord Jesus Christ. What are the hopes of the people you know who don't yet know of the accounting they'll have to give before God one day? The people you know. Their hopes are all in God, the God who saves, the one who calls you and me to tell them about God.

The Word of the Lord is what they need. It's what we need. If you're here today and you're not a Christian, I hope that this new year will show you that there is a real God and that this real God has spoken, and that He has revealed Himself in His Word and supremely in the Lord Jesus Christ. In the Lord Jesus Christ, God has brought to us not only His claims of justice to be satisfied, but also His extension of mercy to those who are most in need of it. Does that include you today?

Are you aware of having done anything or lived in such a way that would require mercy from a truly good God? Or is that only other people, bad people, who are like that? Oh, friend, if you know that that's you, pursue your Christian friend that brought you. Talk to me at the door afterwards, one of the other pastors. Let us help you understand what that would mean for you.

How you could come to trust in the Son of God, Jesus Christ, that God sent as a substitute to take on the punishment that we deserve for our sins. And then He raised Him from the dead. He presented His sacrifice to His heavenly Father who accepted it. He calls us all now to repent from our sins and to trust in Him and will be forgiven and given new life with Him. Is that the life you want this year?

Learn more about what it would mean for you to have that very life. Brothers and sisters, all our hope is in God. That's why you must give yourself to reading and studying and sharing His Word. That's why we give ourselves as a church to the expositional preaching like we do in our times together as we preach through not only the New Testament but also the Old. And we listen.

I work to write these sermons and you work to listen to them. And we mean to do that. So when God's people are in trouble, what does God do? He speaks. But second, God promises.

And this is what most of this passage is about. God promises judgment. We see this judgment presented in its various aspects. First, in verses 2 and 3, we see God's judgment on the whole world. There's the vision of that final day that the Lord depicts in Revelation 20.

When this world, the first heaven and earth, pass away, as it says in Revelation 21:1, the day on which all people are judged, all men, including all the wicked there in verse 3, no one escapes. Look at 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. What an extraordinary account. Men and animals, birds, fish. It's interesting, if you go back to Genesis 1, these are the things that are created in days 5 and 6, and He's presenting them in the opposite order. It's as if He's uncreating or de-creating in judgment.

The Creator, in judging wrath, sets to uncreating His world.

He is unraveling the fabric that he himself wove. But as we look more carefully, we see that he's not merely foretelling unraveling his creation, he's doing something else too. He is clearly and specifically setting about judging his own people. The chosen people of Judah, even the people of Jerusalem itself, the home of his own temple. You look there in verse 4 and Zephaniah's vision hones in on a more specific event that was to happen.

It's a kind of bringing forward of this final cataclysm in part. The Lord uses the widespread destruction and dislocation of that final day to describe another day that was coming upon Judah and Jerusalem specifically. Friends, our God is a jealous God, jealous that we not be deceived by those wrongly claiming our worship. He will not have His people's affections divided. We read in the second commandment, you, shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in the heaven above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth.

You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God. And from that second line in Zephaniah 1:4 through verse 6, Zephaniah specifically condemns the idolaters of all places in Jerusalem. Look there, verse 4, I will cut off from this place, he's referring to Jerusalem, 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 heavens, those who bow down and swear to the Lord, and yet swear by Milkom, those who have turned back from following the Lord and who do not seek the Lord or inquire of Him. This quick depiction of idolatry persisting in Josiah's Jerusalem is there in all its various forms, and the Lord is making it clear that He will not accept the syncretistic worship of other gods hidden beneath a hypocritical appearance of devotion to Him.

Some kind of astrology is mentioned there in verse 5, the worship of the hosts of the heavens. You can go back and read Joshua. The Canaanites had always been fascinated by the heavenly bodies. It's interesting to note that even in the middle of synagogues in Palestine before the time of Christ, there have been found stones to the zodiac inside the ruins of synagogues, just a reminder of the wandering worshipers that these people of Judah were. That they would combine such starry worship with other devotions, like the devotion to Baal.

The devotion to Baal is mentioned, the Canaanite god of fertility, of rain and storms that the farmers so depended on. So two centuries before Zephaniah, around 850 B.C., Elijah had had his famous confrontation with the many priests of Baal recorded in 1 Kings 18. It seems that devotion to him was a struggle in the southern kingdom of Judah as well. We read of King Manasseh in 2 Kings 21. He rebuilt the high places that Hezekiah, his father, had destroyed, and he erected altars for Baal and made an Asherah as Ahab, king of Israel, had done, and worshiped all the hosts of heaven and served them.

Note that association of the worship of Baal and the worship of the hosts of heaven. King Josiah seemed to hear and believe this very warning in Zephaniah. We read in 2 Kings 23 of what Josiah did. 23:4, and the king commanded Hezekiah, no, Hilkiah, the high priest, and the priests of the second order, and the keepers of the threshold, to bring out of the temple of the Lord all the vessels made for Baal, for Asherah, and for all the hosts of heaven.

So there were vessels made for Baal, and all the hosts of heaven, that were being kept in the temple of the Lord.

We keep reading, He burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron and carried their ashes to Bethel. And he deposed the priests whom the kings of Judah had ordained to make offerings in the high places at the cities of Judah and around Jerusalem. Those also who burned incense to Baal, to the sun and the moon and the constellation and all the host of the heavens. Again, we see this Baal worship combined with worship to the heavenly bodies in general. And all of this Josiah had read of being condemned in the rediscovered Law of God, and he had heard it condemned in this message of Zephaniah.

It also mentions oaths to Milcom. It's another name for the Ammonite deity Molech.

And those oaths were added to oaths to Yahweh, the Lord.

This worship of Molech was associated with the sacrifice of children. In fact, if you go back and you read this gross account in 2 Kings 21, you find that King Manasseh had sacrificed one of Josiah's uncles as a child to Molech. 2 Kings 21:6, He burned his son as an offering. Friends, any society that views killing a child like clipping a fingernail, is not a society awaiting the judgment of God. It's a society that is under the judgment of God.

And yet their sin would provoke God to even more immediate temporal judgments. Josiah would heed the words of the book of the law in this teaching of Zephaniah's. We read in 2 Kings 23 of Josiah's actions in reforming 23:10 He defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom. That's where we get Gehenna, it's this valley right outside of Jerusalem where burnings were done. He defiled it, that no one might burn his son or his daughter as an offering to Molech.

And the king defiled the high places that were east of Jerusalem to the south of the Mount of Corruption, which Solomon the king of Israel had built for Milcom, the abomination of the Ammonites.

In the ironic providence of God, We finally have an end to this child sacrifice of Moloch through the Babylonian exile. There's no account of it after they returned from Babylon.

Of course, Josiah does all of this over the next few decades. And friends, I think to us, these words of idolatry, these sharp words in verses four and five and six of Zephaniah chapter one, warn us not to try to combine worshiping God with any other worship. He will not tolerate any rivals. He is not about being a partly worshiped God, because to partly worship God shows you don't understand who he really is. You're not worshiping him at all.

Now you have to be very careful with this. It's very popular to use idolatry as a synonym just for all sin. None of us are perfect, all of us sin, therefore all of us are idolaters. Friends, be very careful with that. The Lord here in Zephaniah is talking about people whose lives are typified by idolatry.

These are idolaters who do not repent. We can talk about every sin we ever struggle with as the idol of this or the idol of that, and it can actually become a little confusing to us. So when you hear the word idol in something like Zephaniah, you want to think not just a passing temptation or a sin that you committed. You want to think, is there something that is challenging you for literally for the controlling wheel of the ship of your life? Is there something other than God that is trying to grab hold and turn you and tear you away from the Lord?

Verse 6 reminds us that God will judge those who have turned back from following the Lord, who do not seek the Lord or inquire of Him. God knows that syncretism, that mixing of various religions together, is usually only the means of unbelief in the true God showing itself in a more acceptable manner. And so we read in verse 6 that he will judge those who turn back from following the Lord and neither seek the Lord nor inquire of him. It's a gross image he uses here in verse 6. His words mean that these people he's envisioning, these Israelites, repent.

That's literally what it is. They turn around from following the Lord. They repent of following the Lord and they turn to follow something else. Oh, friends, that's a repentance you and I never want to have any part of. That's a repentance that is condemned here as they head the other way, they neither seek Him nor inquire.

Friends, it's possible for you to like some of the things of God, for you to like the people of God, maybe the If you like the hymn singing, maybe you like Christian t-shirts and slogans. You know, it's impossible for you to like a lot of things about the worship of God and have a distinct disinterest in God himself.

Be very careful about thinking that religious observances that are meant to encourage you in your affection for and allegiance to the true God become a substitute for that true relationship of trust and joy in God. The Lord will tolerate no rivals. Jesus taught this. He taught that He was the one way to the one true God. He taught that He was that one true God come to seek and to save His own.

If you've seen Me, you've seen the Father. He taught He came to be a ransom for many. Pray for us to be clear on this hard truth in our inclusive age. Pray that we as a church will be clear that salvation comes through Christ alone. This happens in our life both as God's Word is preached and as it is lived out.

In our preaching we must be clear and unashamed. We must not back down from this precious truth. Also in our living we have to be clear that as Christians we can have no other Lord, no unrepentant sin characterizing our lives and so compromising our witness.

As a congregation, we must commit ourselves to clear preaching and to clear membership, which is only for sinners. Again, if you hear this and there's nothing that quakes in your heart and you think you have no sin, then Christianity is just not the religion for you. All the other religions in the world will do for you quite nicely. But if you think, no, it's not just other people bother me and do stupid things. I am a sinner.

I have done what's wrong. Ah, now you're in the neighborhood of Jesus. Now we as Christians have some really good news for you. This church is only for people like you. It is only for sinners.

But beware, it's not for all sinners. It's a very exclusive group. It's really only for sinners who repent. And who are always repenting until the Lord calls us home. That's the work that we do as Christians.

That's what it means for us to continue to inquire of the Lord, continue to seek the Lord. So, Christian, your loyalty should not be divided. You're not to follow the bad example of God's people of old in Jerusalem as they mixed their worship of God with the worship of other claimed deities. God wouldn't tolerate that kind of wrong religion in connection with his name. So we read in verse 7, what did he do?

He prepared a sacrifice. Look at verse 7. For the day of the Lord is near. The Lord has prepared a sacrifice and consecrated his guests.

We Christians are used to thinking about sacrifice in this sense. Only as substitutionary because of Christ. Christ is obviously prominent to us. That is not what this primarily means here.

Zephaniah is not threatening a substitutionary sacrifice. The Lord through Zephaniah is threatening to make them the sacrifice, that they will die because of their own sins. They will be hung, they will be electrocuted. That's exactly what the shocking statement is that the Lord is making here to His own people. We who do not repent become the sacrifice we deserve to be.

This is the coming sacrifice of the guilty themselves and their own persons for their own sins. That's what Zephaniah is prophesying here. And God consecrated His guests, those He had invited in the sense He had set them apart to take part in this special sacrifice, meaning either those who would be surviving witnesses to the destruction He was about to work, or the Babylonians who would do the destroying work.

God will cut off the wicked and those who will mix right and wrong worship, even from among His own people.

Along with his judgment on idolaters, here in verses 4 to 6, and backsliders, verse 6, would come God's judgment, we see in verses 8 and 9, on the officials and the king's sons. Now I want to just quickly say there are a couple of things we don't really understand in these verses. So if you've been mulling over this, I know a few of you have, let me just tell you. That in verse 9 you see the mention of punishing everyone who leaps over the threshold. And I could present to you four compelling ideas on what that means and not tell you there are three other ideas and let you have the satisfaction of thinking you know what that means.

But because I've read four different ideas and people really aren't sure, it seems like it was something bad.

Beyond that, we're in a little speculation, a little looking for some more knowledge. But the people of the time knew. And then there's verse 8, the foreign attire. I'm not convinced he was mainly concerned about fashion. I think he was concerned about fashion as it indicated loyalty.

So if Assyria is the big guy in the region, had eaten up the northern kingdom, was threatening the southern kingdom again, and now it's the Babylonians who've taken over the Assyrians, then what fashion might be going on at court right now among the powerful? Egyptian. The other power, the balancing superpower. So maybe they're Egyptian fashions, maybe literally clothes, but maybe it comes along with that customs, maybe it comes along with that worship of foreign gods. These things are not to be.

What's clear here is that there were those who we read in verse 9 fill their master's house with violence and fraud. People who live and work in privilege in the master's house need a Savior too.

Priests and princes, leaders and lords are accountable for their use of the privileges they are called to steward. Friend, don't be deceived by having power into thinking that it makes you invisible to God. Or unaccountable to him. You cannot write a check large enough. You cannot make a decision significant enough.

You cannot help enough other people to erase your own sins against God.

Having been descended from a great king, perhaps Zephaniah had a little more knowledge of privilege and power than the average Israelite, maybe even than the average prophet. Perhaps he had witnessed firsthand authority entrusted by God to people for the good of His people being used to enrich themselves, even at the expense of the people they were to serve. Perhaps this is why his genealogy is recorded in verse 1. Brothers and sisters, pray for those of us in authority here in this church and those who have other stations of authority. God here in these verses seems to show a special concern for the priests and for the princes, for those who would not only sin themselves, but lead others into sin and make sin acceptable and even fashionable.

Friends, leadership brings accountability. With public trust comes public responsibility. You can see that in God's particular concern in this message through Zephaniah to address those who are in positions of leadership in public life and religious life. Pray that God help us all to remember and to live in light of the fact that God God alone is our final judge. We know that He has promised to be our judge.

When God's people are in trouble, what does God do? First, God speaks. Second, God promises judgment, justice. Third, God commands silence. Look there at the beginning of verse 7.

You'll find the only command in our passage.

Be silent before the Lord God. Be silent, he said, the Hebrew imperative is a great one, Hus! Hus!

Yes.

This is kind of like the all rise before the judge enters his courtroom. A time of special significance is about to begin. Your very lives could be at stake. Stop your chattering. Show respect.

Awe if you're capable of it. Ever feel that kind of awe? Maybe you know, maybe you have some out-of-town friends who come to visit you in D.C. and just in a tiny way, as they walk around the Capitol, or first walk inside the Library of Congress, or see the vast expanse of Union Station.

They are left in awe.

For more of us, I think we've felt it when we've first seen the ocean, or the vista from some high mountain, or stood on the edge of the Grand Canyon.

There is not loud, casual silliness. There is quiet before an immensity that reminds us of our own smallness. This morning when we assemble as the church, we deliberately encourage such quiet seriousness before God. Friends, there's nothing wrong with joy. There's nothing wrong with loud, expressive joy.

And Lord willing, we have that in our conversations afterwards and in many of the songs that we sing.

Happy emotions are a good gift of God, encouraging us, giving us heart to go on. But so are emotions of awe, and they seem to be as rare as hens' teeth in this international capital of cynicism. To think that you could actually be so awed by something, by Someone that your best, your most natural, your most appropriate, your most compelling response is complete, immediate, abject, and utter silence.

And so here the Lord enjoins such silence, silence to greet the promise of God's judgment that He will stretch out His hand to cut off and to punish.

Do you know when I stand at the door back there after service at Capitol Hill Baptist Church and visitors comment on things in the service, for 27 years I can tell you without doubt, the most commented upon thing to me is not my sermon. I think that might come in number two or three. The singing would be two or three, but number one without doubt are the moments of silence. People are shocked by them. They act as if they've never seen them before.

They wonder what on earth they are. And some of them think they're kind of magical. What is this strange power? Stop talking.

I have conversations at the door again and again about exactly this, this doing nothing together, our moments of silence. There's silence between various aspects of the service. So I encourage service leaders not to do the no Dead Airspace TV standard of busyness. Friends, at this church we like dead airspace. Dead airspace gives us the time to reflect, to collect our thoughts, to consider what we've just heard or read or sung.

The silence amplifies the words or music we just heard. It allows us time to take it all in and to pray.

We have silence to prepare ourselves. We have silence after the announcements before the scriptural call to worship. Bobby gave us a nice long silence this morning. We even have a moment of silence after the service. I pronounce the benediction from the end of 2 Corinthians and invite the congregation to be seated.

And then there is about a minute of silence. And then we start to hear the last hymn we just sang quietly played as if to help our memory and remind us of what we've just been captivated by and in. And during those few moments, Between the benediction and our beginning to talk to others, we reflect and we prepare to speak to others and depart. We do business with God. We prepare ourselves for the week ahead.

And friends, this is all coming to you from an absolute sound addict. I promise, I wrote these words with Bach or Handel or Vivaldi blasting in my study. In my study, there is always a soundtrack to my life. It's going on constantly, unendingly, and yet even I, maybe especially I, can appreciate the power of silence. One morning, you know, I was sitting there during a church service during one of our silences, and for the first time I think I became aware of what a corporate labor such public silence is.

It's like we're all working on some vast quilt together. Everyone works to be quiet. People want to check something in the bulletin, but they just wait for a moment. They don't wanna make any noise. Someone wonders if they brought something in their purse, but they don't check now.

There's no movement. But we together hear the noise of babies, But even that is enveloped by a surrounding silence. They're all our children. We're so glad they're here. The silence engulfs us.

It enhances our unity. It's something we all do together. Together we consider what we've just heard. Together we contribute to each other's space to think. Why has the church forgotten this?

Our culture knows it. At the most solemn moments we have a minute of silence. Everyone listens to the silence. They think about why they're being silent. Why isn't this more common in our churches?

In the last century, E. M. Forster in a passage to India referred to poor little talkative Christianity.

And perhaps there was a day when all Christians did was gather to listen to the Bible read and preached and then to prayers, but that day is long gone in most evangelical churches. These days we gather more to watch than to listen. But in all the noise of our choirs and drums and electric guitars and organs and praise bands, where is the solemnity? Where is the dignity and majesty that is so often indicated in the Bible by a stupefied silence, soaked in awe and covered with wonder?

Ecclesiastes 3:7 tells us that there is a time to speak and a time to be silent, but we seem to have forgotten today that there is a time for silence.

God calls his people before him in Habakkuk 2, the Lord is in his holy temple. Let all the earth be silent before him. Friends, don't misunderstand me. Of course, as Christians, we have so much to rejoice over, loudly and joyfully and expectantly. But is no part of our regular assemblies to reflect the weightiness of our sinful selves before a holy God?

The silence of conviction even of sorrow as we think most fundamentally not of somebody else's sin, as bad as that was, but of our own sin. And as shocking as it is for us to appear before this God, is no part of our assemblies to reflect the stunning weightiness of our forgiveness in Christ. The stunned silence of marvel. Really? He's going to forgive me of that?

I mean, really forgive the humility of some incomprehension?

We silence ourselves exactly because God has not kept silent. The word of the Lord has come, and we silence ourselves in order to hear God speak in his word. We silence ourselves to show our assent to God's charges against us. We silence ourselves to show our respect and obedience and humility and restraint. We silence ourselves to search our hearts.

We silence ourselves in our own times of prayer, reading, meditation on God's word. And we also silence ourselves in our periods of corporate worship, making silence together builds and unifies the church and witnesses to the majesty of God and tacitly proclaims his greatness to all who hear our silence.

This silence the Lord commands here is a silence of respect, of fear, of honor. It's a silence of submission. We do not contest. God in His judgments. All His words are true.

And it is the silence of satisfaction knowing that justice will be done finally and fully.

But among those who repent and believe and who have faith in the offered sacrifice of Christ as our substitute, this silence is also a silence of wonder and awe. And finally, this is a silence of delight as we receive what we have most desired. Disputations stop. Counterarguments cease. Objections evaporate.

Instead we stand in awe and reverence of the Lord God, omniscient and omnipotent holy, just, and true. We humble ourselves under His mighty hand. We know that He is God and we are silent.

We should conclude.

There is another silence to consider, the silence that comes when a task is completed.

When a message is delivered and a messenger's work is done. Here's another prayer of Jim Eliot's. Help us not to seek a long life, but a full one, like you, Lord Jesus.

We mentioned at the beginning the plaque on Fifth Street and the saying of Jim Eliot's, He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.

Around 1955, Elliot decided to move on from working with the Kichwa Indians and to work with a tribe further inland and more isolated that the Kichwa described as the Aukas, the savages. They called themselves the Huarani. Elliot and friends were warned that these people were suspicious and violent. Much was unknown about them. But what Jim Elliot and his friends did know was that the Huarani didn't know about Jesus.

And so they made preparations to visit them with the good news. The only way in was with a seaplane landing on a river. They found a place near where they lived with a nice smooth bank where they could land near it and people could gather.

They for several days came and dropped packages in that place, things that they would appreciate so they would know that they were coming in friendship. And so after much preparation on January the 8th, 1956, 66 years ago yesterday, Nate Saint, Ed McCully, Peter Fleming, Roger Youderian, and Jim Elliot finally made contact. The people they had worked and prayed for for so long. The plane touched down, skimming the river, and came to a stop. They got out of their plane, they made their way to the riverbank.

But as they waded ashore, all five men were speared to death by those they came to tell the good news to.

All five young men were killed.

The evangelists were all silent now.

Their lips were still.

The task of evangelizing these people wasn't completed, but their task was.

Their work was done.

This is the silence of completion when all has been done, all has been given.

This is the devotion, the love that God's people are called to have for God, all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, all your strength, all your words.

Like the complete devotion shown on the still lips of the incarnate Word of God Himself, just after He had said, It is finished. This is the silence of work completed.

Nothing more to be done.

All the glory given to the true God.

May God use each of us our years, our days, our every word, until they are all used up for Him.

Let's pray.

Lord God, we pray that yout would embarrass us out of our sins. Show us the poor nature of those things we would spend our lips on.

Those silly things we would give our lives away for.

Turn our eyes and hearts to youo. Take all of us, we pray, use us all up for your. Every year, unwasted, every day and every word for your glory. We pray in Christ's name. Amen.