1. "Repentance is meant to precede judgment. Friend, when you or I repent, the sins we are confessing are of far less moment than the judgment we are avoiding. Don't dread thoughts of repentance. Pray, God, cultivate your heart to welcome them as sweet elixir of mercy."

2. "Beware, money confuses us. Money can do so much in this life. And so little in the next."

3. "Every time you write a check to a good cause, you're signing a little declaration of independence from Lord Mammon. Be careful that your money is mastering you when you think you're mastering it."

4. "Our repeated besetting sins are the sort of owner's tags that various gods try to leave on us. We are marked out as theirs by our loves and our lusts. This one craves power. This one loves pleasure. This one must have reputation and respect. That one wants ease and wealth above all."

5. "The way some people work in Washington, you would figure they think they can be too busy to die. I don't have time for it this week. Perhaps next."

6. "A complacent people begin to imagine a complacent God."

7. "The irony of complacent people suggesting that God was as inactive as they themselves were when God, in fact, was just about to judge them."

8. "Common sense would say the way to escape danger is by fleeing from it. The message of the gospel is that the way to escape the danger of certain judgment is to flee to its source. To find mercy, to seek the Lord."

9. "If the only way you can recover shame is to turn off your social media, turn off your social media. Shame is your friend when it's accurately calibrated by the word of God. Shamelessness is what marks those who are lost."

10. "Tomorrow, he says, is the day of judgment. But today is the day of salvation. Do not be so distracted by the fact that tomorrow is the day of judgment that you do not hear me say that today is the day of salvation."

Observation Questions

1. According to Zephaniah 1:14-16, what specific descriptions does the prophet give of "the great day of the Lord"? List at least four characteristics mentioned in these verses.

2. In Zephaniah 1:12, what does God say He will do to Jerusalem, and what attitude does He identify in the people He will punish? What do these complacent people say "in their hearts"?

3. What does Zephaniah 1:17 give as the reason why God will bring distress on mankind, and what imagery does verse 18 use to describe what will happen to people's silver and gold on that day?

4. In Zephaniah 1:18, what attribute of God is described as being like "fire," and what will be the extent of the judgment described at the end of this verse?

5. According to Zephaniah 2:1-2, what urgent timeframe does the prophet emphasize by his repeated use of the word "before"? What is coming that the people must act before?

6. In Zephaniah 2:3, who is called to seek the Lord, what three things are they told to seek, and what is the hoped-for outcome described at the end of the verse?

Interpretation Questions

1. The sermon emphasizes that God's judgment will come upon His own people, not just the surrounding nations. Why is it significant that Zephaniah uses the word "goy" (nation, typically used for Gentiles) to describe Judah in 2:1, and what does this reveal about their spiritual condition?

2. In Zephaniah 1:12, the complacent say, "The Lord will not do good, nor will He do ill." How does this statement reflect a form of practical atheism, and why does the sermon suggest that complacent people tend to remake God in their own image?

3. The sermon points out that God's jealousy (1:18) is the root of His judgment. How does the Bible present divine jealousy as a positive attribute rather than a sinful one, and what does this reveal about God's relationship with His people?

4. Zephaniah 2:3 offers the hope that the humble "may be hidden" on the day of the Lord's anger. How does the sermon connect this to the meaning of Zephaniah's name ("Hidden of Yahweh") and to the New Testament teaching about being "in Christ"?

5. The sermon describes the Babylonian invasion as a "preview" of the final Day of the Lord. Why does Scripture often blend near-future judgments with the ultimate final judgment, and what does this pattern teach us about how God warns His people?

Application Questions

1. The sermon warns against being a "practical atheist"—someone who talks as if there's a God but lives as if there isn't. In what specific area of your life (finances, relationships, time, decisions) might your actions suggest that you don't really believe God is watching or that He will act? What would change if you lived as though God's judgment were truly near?

2. Zephaniah identifies complacency as a serious spiritual danger. What routines, comforts, or distractions in your current life might be lulling you into spiritual indifference? What concrete step could you take this week to "seek the Lord" more intentionally?

3. The sermon challenged listeners about the danger of wealth and prosperity deceiving us about spiritual reality. How might your financial security or material comfort be affecting your sense of dependence on God? What practice could help you cultivate generosity and break the grip of "Lord Mammon"?

4. The preacher asked whether people could disagree with you on political or social issues and still truly serve God, warning against over-identifying allegiance to God with particular ideological commitments. How can you examine your own heart to ensure that Christ—not a political cause or cultural position—holds your ultimate loyalty?

5. Zephaniah 2:3 calls us to "seek humility." The sermon noted that shame, when rightly calibrated by God's Word, is our friend. Is there a sin you have grown comfortable with or stopped blushing about? What would it look like to bring that specific sin before God in honest confession this week, trusting in Christ's righteousness rather than your own?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Deuteronomy 28:15-29 — This passage contains the covenant curses Moses pronounced, which Zephaniah's prophecy directly echoes, showing that God's judgment on Jerusalem was the fulfillment of long-standing warnings.

2. Amos 5:18-24 — The prophet Amos describes the Day of the Lord as darkness rather than light for complacent Israel, reinforcing Zephaniah's warning that religious observance without true repentance invites judgment.

3. 2 Peter 3:3-13 — Peter addresses scoffers who doubt the Lord's return and describes the coming Day of the Lord, connecting Old Testament warnings to New Testament expectation of final judgment and new creation.

4. Hebrews 2:1-4 — This passage warns believers not to drift away from what they have heard, echoing Zephaniah's call to the complacent and foreshadowing the sermon series the preacher planned to begin.

5. Romans 3:21-26 — Paul explains how righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ, providing the theological foundation for how sinners can be "hidden" from God's wrath through Christ's substitutionary sacrifice.

Sermon Main Topics

I. The Question of Confidence in Survival and the Reality of Final Judgment

II. Introduction to Zephaniah's Prophecy and Its Context

III. The World Will Be Judged (Zephaniah 1:14-18)

IV. You Will Be Judged (Zephaniah 1:10-13)

V. Seek the Lord (Zephaniah 2:1-3)

VI. The Gospel Hope of Being Hidden in Christ

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Detailed Sermon Outline

What gives you the confidence that you have that you will survive?

Living here on Capitol Hill as we enter a new election season, we've survived multiple times when parties have controlled the House or the Senate. That some people were concerned might destroy our country. And yet, here we are, decades after I personally heard some of those warnings uttered.

Regardless of all the predictions to the contrary, nothing from World Wars to the Cold War, nothing from Y2K to COVID has caused the end of the world to come yet.

For some of you within the sound of my voice, does that make you wonder if the end of the world will ever come?

You may not say so, but do you live your life in such a way as to deny the reality of the final judgment that Christians speak of. Everything goes on as it always has, you think, and I guess it just kind of always will.

But, friend, what if you became utterly convinced that the God who made this world is going to take it apart bit by bit, that the Creator really will judge us all, that every person He's made will have to appear before Him to give an account.

Even if you deny some final cosmic apocalypse, certainly you agree that you yourself will meet your end in death.

What can we do to stand before God should He call us at that point to give an account? Is there any kind of insurance we can take out any way to assure our eternal safety in the face of the great change that is coming?

I guess one thing we can do is go to church, right? I mean, certainly if we attend regularly and even join, then we must be doing okay. That's really all God wants of us, isn't it? He wants us to endorse Him publicly, to publicly identify ourselves as His supporters, maybe to donate even to His campaign. God may judge the people outside the church, but surely those of us who have publicly identified ourselves with the people of God, we are not subject to God's judgment, are we?

What do you think?

These are the matters that are dealt with in the words of this rarely considered book, the words of the prophet Zephaniah. We went there last Sunday morning. Let's turn there again. You find it toward the end of your Old Testament on page 788 in the Bible's provided. If you don't have a Bible you can understand very well, feel free and take this one home as a gift from our congregation to you.

A century earlier, other prophets, Amos, Hosea, Micah, Isaiah especially had prophesied the fall of the northern tribes of Israel in judgment on their sins. And now after decades of silence, the heavens spoke again and Zephaniah was the chosen instrument of God to the question, Will God judge His people? The answer of the Lord crackled out through Zephaniah with remarkable power. And in the passage we consider this morning, the Lord would get His people's Following Zephaniah would come Jeremiah and Nahum, Habakkuk, Daniel, Ezekiel, all prophesying of the exile of God's people to Babylon and explaining the meaning of it. Again, God, as He always seems to have done, began giving His people warning first before He acted so that they would understand what He was doing and would repent before His judgment came.

Repentance is meant to precede judgment. Friend, when you or I repent, the sins we are confessing are of far less moment than the judgment we are avoiding.

Don't dread thoughts of repentance. Pray, God, cultivate your heart to welcome them as sweet elixir of mercy.

Before we dive into this, we need to notice a couple of things. Just once again, whose words were these? They were Zephaniah's. We see that in verse 1. Verse 1 is all we know about Zephaniah.

We don't know anything else. We know that he is the great-great-grandson of the last righteous king of Judah, King Hezekiah. He is the only prophet I think we're certain of that had actually royal blood. He's a prophet because his words were understood to be ultimately not his own, but the Lord's. As it says here in the very first phrase in chapter 1, verse 1, the word of the Lord.

And that's the substance of these brief chapters. This morning we're only getting a little bit into chapter 2. We're doing 1:10-2:3. If you want to pick up the rest of Zephaniah, You can go online and find an earlier series that was preached here on Zephaniah. We're going to get on to Hebrews where I hope to spend the rest of the year.

But I wanted to begin this year looking carefully at these foundational words. Listen as we hear these words from Zephaniah chapter 1 beginning at verse 10.

On that day, declares the Lord, a cry will be heard from the fish gate. A wail from the second quarter, a loud crash from the hills. Wail, O inhabitants of the mortar, for all of the traders are no more. All who weigh out silver are cut off. At that time I will search Jerusalem with lamps, and I will punish the men who are complacent.

Those who say in their hearts, 'The Lord will not do good, nor will He do ill.' Their goods shall be plundered, and their houses laid waste. Though they build houses, they shall not inhabit them; though they plant vineyards, they shall not drink wine from them. The great day of the Lord is near, near and hastening fast. The sound of the day of the Lord is bitter. The mighty man cries aloud there.

A day of wrath is that day, a day of distress and anguish, a day of ruin and devastation, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness, a day of trumpet blast and battle cry against the fortified cities and against the lofty battlements. I will bring distress on mankind, so that they shall walk like the blind, because they have sinned against the Lord. Their blood shall be poured out like dust, their flesh like dung. Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them on the day of the wrath of the Lord. In the fire of His jealousy all the earth shall be consumed, for a full and sudden end.

He will make of all the inhabitants of the earth. Gather together, yes, gather, O 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 in the day of the anger of the Lord.

In this passage, the Lord arraigns His people before the bar of His unerring justice, giving them a brief but vivid description of His judgment and explanation for it.

All interspersed with these crisp, direct commands. And this morning we want to learn three simple facts about God's judgment. Three simple facts. Number one, the world will be judged.

Number two, you will be judged. And number three, therefore, seek the Lord. Therefore, seek the Lord. All of this we can see as God sets before us this scene of His coming judgment. First, the world will be judged.

This is what we see here in the verses about the great day of the Lord, verses 14 to 18. Here we see the inescapable power of God's judging wrath that would one day come on the whole world. We see here in verse 14, this judgment is near. Look at verse 14. The great day of the Lord is near, near and hastening fast.

Zephaniah is letting us know that the great day is inevitable. It is unstoppable. Many of the prophets tell us about this day of the Lord. It's the culmination of God's sovereign purposes in creation. There's coming a day when God will fully and finally reassert His sovereign control over His rebellious, straying world.

And no power on earth can prevent this from happening or even delay it in any way. But of course our question is, what will this coming day be like? Well let's keep looking at verse 14. The sound of the day of the Lord is bitter. The mighty man cries aloud there, so even the warriors and the fittest soldiers are not ready for this day.

They cry out in torment. Why? What could make this day so terrible? Look at verses 15 and 16. This is the judgment filled with God's wrath.

A day of wrath is that day. A day of distress and anguish. A day of ruin and devastation. A day of darkness and gloom. A day of clouds and thick darkness.

A day of trumpet blast and battle cry against the fortified cities and against the lofty battlements. There will be no protection from God and His justice on that day. The invading Babylonian troops that would come in just a decade or two after this prediction would be a powerful foreshadowing of that grim truth. The Jerusalem defenders will be Powerless. Friends, these verses, verses 15 and 16, are the basis for the medieval Latin poem Dies Irae, Day of Wrath.

Some of you will know from the Roman Catholic requiem masses that are composed by Mozart or Berlioz or Verdi or others. It's been translated into our hymnals by the work of John Newton, who rendered one version of it in his hymn Day of Judgment. Day of wonders. Hark! the trumpet's awful sound, Louder than a thousand thunders, Shakes the vast creation round.

How the summons will the sinner's heart confound. Newton picked up on what we see there in verse 17, this judgment will be because of their sin, because they are sinners. Verse 17, I will bring distress on mankind, so that they shall walk like the blind, because they have sinned sinned against the Lord. So here is the reason for God's judgment. Sin brings judgment.

Consider some of the sins that Zephaniah had already mentioned in this book that we thought about last week, the people's idolatries, with the Baals, with Molech and child sacrifice, with the worshiping the starry host of heaven, or they're just ignoring God. And His ways. Here in verses 17 and 18 we see the price of their sins in their blood, paid in their flesh, in their wealth, in their land. See there in verse 17, Their blood shall be poured out like dust, and their flesh like dung. Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them.

Friends, beware, money confuses us. Money can do so much in this life. And so little in the next.

That's so much like all the attributes and power and prosperity in this world.

Friends, money is not denounced as evil in Scripture. The love of money is, but money is warned about. And friends, even though you are young, you are a prosperous congregation. Now that doesn't mean every single one of you is rolling in dough, but it does mean that compared to the average meeting of Christians, this Lord's Day, around the world, we have at our disposal more income, more ability to make choices about what we want to do, when and how, than most people have. And those choices act like mirages that can confuse us about the reality of the world that we're in and especially about our own hearts.

So as your loving pastor, I'm just telling you, be careful. Be careful. Every time you write a check to a good cause, you're signing a little declaration of independence from Lord Mammon. Be careful that your money is mastering you when you think you're mastering it. There's very little it will do for you.

Its reports, its results rather, on that day will be poor and disappointing. Money and power are full of deceptions and lies. And all of that will be revealed, he says here in verse 18, on the day of the wrath of the Lord. This is the theme of so many of the prophets, the day. This day was prophesied.

I went back and read Deuteronomy 27, 28, 29 while I was working on this. Just to look at the great statement that Moses had made, the Lord had made through Moses when the people were first going into the Promised Land, and he warned of this very day, this day that would come before they ever entered the Promised Land. Verse 18, you see, this judgment is rooted in God's jealousy. If we would understand God's judgment, we have to not just understand our sin from verse 17, And again, if you're here and you're not a member of this church, you're not a Christian, we would just tell you we understand that's what characterizes not all of you bad people out there, but all of us here. We are here because we have realized that we sin against God.

We are liable to His judgment. We need a Savior. But we won't understand His judgment if we just think about our sin. We have to also think about what this God is like.

And here we see that so clearly in verse 18. You see what it says there, In the fire of his jealousy. Did you know that God is jealous? We so often use that word jealous as a negative thing, as an attribute of selfishness and wrong control between humans. But friends, even among humans we know that there are good jealousies.

There are things that it's appropriate for us to be jealous of. Jealous for the truth. Jealous for someone else's good. Jealous for faithfulness to our spouse. These are good jealousies.

These are not bad jealousies. So God Himself, when He looks out at the creation that He's made, He is jealous that none of those creatures made in His image will worship the fake gods. But none of them will sell themselves into bondage to gods that are no gods. He is jealous that we not do that. He tells us He's jealous in the Ten Commandments.

He says it very openly, I am a jealous God. He would not have any of His creatures follow these fake gods. He permits no rivals. Our repeated besetting sins are the sort of owner's tags that various gods try to leave on us. We are marked out as theirs by our loves and our lusts.

This one craves power. This one loves pleasure. This one must have reputation and respect. That one wants ease and wealth above all. And God in his liberating love will permit none of these rebellions to stand among his own.

He is what we must fear and must love above all else.

I wonder if the source of divisions in churches today is because people have identified loving and serving God with their best understanding of goodness or justice for us as a nation or as a world.

How are you in danger of over identifying allegiance to God with allegiance to your particular political or social justice conclusions? Can people disagree with you on these matters and still truly serve God? Do you think you're more likely to be wrong about your responses to the government's handling of COVID or about Jesus Christ?

Which are you more certain of?

Which do you care more about?

Would that be what people around you would say from what's filled your speech in the last month?

If we could survey them.

Friends, God is a jealous God. He will not have rivals, not national loyalties, not ideological commitments, not commitments to your own family's prosperity. None of them. Are to be more important to us than God Himself.

Thus is the coming day of the Lord when we read here at the end of verse 18, All the earth shall be consumed, for a full and sudden end He will make of all the inhabitants of the earth. This prophetic denunciation presumes that people generally and as a whole have become depraved and wicked. Have done what God has told us not to do, have loved what God has told us not to love. And thus God is good and just to give justice to all of us. In fact, He would be wrong not to.

From verses 7 to 18, We've seen the promise of God's judgment descending rapidly and unstoppably on the world like some great storm or like some great tsunami that will carry all before it. The description of this judgment for sin is terrible and it's meant to be. You know, there's been a move among some in recent years to try to make, you might say, hell less hot. Essentially by saying that it's of a shorter duration than it had been thought to be, that it's not eternal. Or perhaps even that it doesn't exist at all, that for those who fall under God's judgment for sin, there's only the punishment of annihilation, snuffing out beyond the grave.

I remember years ago walking around the streets of Oxford with a student having a conversation with an earnest young Christian, and after he had pressed on me for some length the virtues of such thinking, I turned and I said to him, what possible motivation could I have for trying to make God's judgment seem less horrible? On the one hand, we can so lessen it that people have no objections. Really? Can we do that? On the other, do we want people to fear dying in their sins less?

All the knowledge we have of hell, and that would not be from your preferences or mine, but from God's revelation, all this knowledge only encourages us to use the worst images we can imagine in order to begin to grasp it. Friends, throughout the Bible there is a vigorous image represented of the day of the Lord. This is the day when God finally says, Enough! And comes to his own creation to bring full and final justice. From the verses we considered last Sunday, we saw it in those phrases.

You can see them in verse 7, the day of the Lord is near, or verse 8, on the day of the Lord's sacrifice, I will punish. On verse 9, on that day I will punish. And now here in our passage in verse 10, Zephaniah is enlisting our ears to imagine its horror. Verse 10, On that day declares the Lord, a cry will go up.

You can imagine it. Friends, I'm not trying to be grotesque. I'm just saying, what did you think of the last day would be like?

Did you think it would be as silent as Michelangelo's painting?

Or as mechanical and impersonal as some apocalyptic disaster movie?

Did you never before think of the sounds of the last day, at least according to Scripture?

The sounds that your ears will hear?

Verse 14, the cry on the day of the Lord will be bitter.

Zephaniah is not the first one to enunciate the idea of such terrible judgment of God bringing disaster on the land.

To the point that the people would be, as he says here, walking around like blind men. Remember what the Lord had promised through Moses back in Deuteronomy 28? If you do not obey the Lord your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I'm giving you today, all these curses will come upon you and overtake you. The Lord will afflict you with madness, blindness, and confusion of mind. At midday you will grope about like a blind man in the dark.

Friend, could the Lord be any more emphatic about the depth and the extent of the woe of that day?

This passage is a description of doom, complete with doleful shrieks and bitter cries. This is the great and awe-inspiring day. So listen. In your imagination as you read these Scriptures, and begin to imagine the sounds of the last judgment, and take heed to them that those sounds are now only in your imagination.

There's a day coming when they will be there for real. This is the message of Zephaniah. Now such universal images of God's judgment Actually, the people of Jerusalem had been accustomed to for years. If you've read the early chapters of Isaiah, or you read Amos, our early other prophets, you'll see they were actually quite accustomed to hearing the prophets foretell God's destruction in judgment of the nations around them. Tyre and Sidon, Egypt and Cush, Assyria and Babylon.

They were used to hearing those nations warned and threatened like this. But friends, we shouldn't miss another part of Zephaniah's prophecy of the coming day of the Lord in the middle of chapter 1. This is my second point. You look there in verses 10 to 13.

This is where God's people learn a second truth about God's judgment. You will be judged.

It's not just the world.

It's God's people too.

He's using both the image of the final day of judgment and this coming invasion by Babylon and teaching them from both. I've used before the image of the Rocky Mountains out in Colorado. When you're coming across the flat part, the mountains are in front of you, it looks like there's just one range with them just lined up like that.

But what happens as you go into them, you find that, oh, that one was really 50 miles in front of this one, further east, and you keep going and you find more and more mountains and space between them. The prophecies of God that you'll find in the Second Coming in Matthew 24 and Luke 22 and Mark 13 in Jesus' own teaching, they're like that. Jesus mixes in this teaching of this apocalyptic final day along with the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. That he was predicting. And he was using images of one to inform the other.

That's the exact same thing Zephaniah is doing here. This day of wrath that we've been considering in verses 14 to 18, he also here in verses 10 to 13 very clearly is talking about, he's predicting the Babylonian invasion and destruction of Jerusalem particularly, which would be beginning just 10 or 15 years. From the time Zephaniah prophesied. The coming day of the Lord at the end of time in which the world is to be judged is predicted by Zephaniah, but so too is its preview in the coming soon invasion of Jerusalem by Babylon. So just to place this in history for you for a moment, if King Josiah rediscovered the Law in the temple around 622 BC, Then that was just 17 years before the first, really, of three Babylonian invasions of Jerusalem.

First in 605 B.C. Josiah's son, King Jehoiakim, became a vassal of Babylon and many of Judah's best young men, like the priest Ezekiel, were carried into exile. Then a few years later in 597 B.C. Judah's king was Jehoiakim and Jerusalem was again besieged by Nebuchadnezzar and fell. And Jehoiakim and 10,000 Jews, we read, were deported to Babylon along with all the treasures of the house of the Lord, all the craftsmen and the smiths.

None remained except the poorest people of the land, we read in 2 Kings 24. And then finally in 586 B.C. During the reign of Judah's King Zedekiah, the city was besieged by Nebuchadnezzar again and fell this time and was burned and destroyed in the summer of 586 B.C. That's how you can be reading the prophecy of Ezekiel when he himself was taken as a captive and he's in Babylon. But then during midway through his book he tells you about Jerusalem falling.

You think, well, what? I thought Jerusalem fell when Ezekiel was captured. No, there were two earlier invasions, 605, 597, and then there was a final besieging and taking and destroying of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. where we read described in 2 Kings 25, he burned the house of the Lord and the king's house and all the houses of Jerusalem, every great house he burned down. He broke down the walls that were around Jerusalem, so Judah was taken into exile out of its land.

He's just harkening back, repeating some of the phrases that had been threatened by the Lord in Deuteronomy 28 when they had first gone into the land. Jerusalem had seemed filled with those who were more interested in wealth than worship, interested in more God, more money than in God. Verse 10, On that day, declares the Lord, and then He has these three reinforcing phrases that follow that show that all parts of the city of Jerusalem will be judged. God's judgment will not be the kind of judgment you can avoid simply by going to another part of the city and changing your address. You can't lose Him like that.

No coveted address or gated community will keep you from God's judgment. Death enters into the penthouse of the rich as easily as into the apartment of the poor. A cry will be heard from the fish gate. It's in the northern part of Jerusalem. That's where Nebuchadnezzar would enter through his troops.

A wail from the second quarter. That's a newer part in the northwest part of the city. A loud crash from the hills. It's kind of all around in Jerusalem. So you hear all the sounds described in verse 10 and throughout the rest of this chapter.

These were the sounds of the Babylonian invasions which were themselves the preview of the sounds of wailing and regret at the last day by all the unrepentant. All of this reporting on the terror of the coming day is meant to repel us. The graphic nature of the sights and sounds of the day are to reveal to us the end of our sins unrepented of, and so dissuade self-sufficiency and religious complacency. We see here that if you claim to be one of God's people, Your judgment will be painful if you are unrepentant in your sin. Look at verse 11: Wail, O inhabitants of the mortar, for all the traders are no more; all who weigh out silver are cut off.

Even the markets will be hit. The markets will be wiped out. And those in them. The way some people work in Washington, You would figure they think they can be too busy to die.

I don't have time for it this week. Perhaps next.

At that time, he says in verse 12, I will search Jerusalem with lamps. The images are of God taking probably a little pottery lamp. Imagine a little bowl pinched at one end with the wick there and the oil burning. And going around and searching through the hidden parts of the city, searching down literally in tunnels and sewers, because that's exactly what the Babylonian troops did, with people who tried to hide from them. And they went and searched them out and found them.

God was saying that His judgment of His own people would be searching and that He would miss nothing. It would take the form of those searching Babylonian Prisoners, friend, do not assume that you can hide from God's scrutiny in your life, your actions, even your most secret loves. Confess them to the Lord. Turn from all sin before you are found out. We read here in verse 12, I will punish the men who are complacent.

As I mentioned a moment ago, later this month we hope to turn to studying the book that we'll be engaged in, Lord willing, for the rest of the year, the New Testament book of Hebrews. And in it we find warnings of God's people. One of them in Hebrews 2 is this: We must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. Zephaniah's warning is coming to those who had heard the prophecies, heard the law of the Lord, but were adrift, unconcerned, taken up with other matters more. Maybe not outright deniers, but simply not focusing on that part of their life right now.

You see Zephaniah's description of these nominal believers in the Lord. He exposes them, their real thoughts there in verse 12, those who say in their hearts, the Lord will not do good, nor will he do ill. You understand what they're basically saying? The Lord's not going to do anything. I've been a Christian for years. He's never judged me for that sin.

No, it's small potatoes. He doesn't really care about that. As long as nobody finds out, everything's going to be fine. I'm going to stop in a little while. No, nobody's going to find out.

Friends, if in the verses before we see that God would judge His people for believing too much in the idolatry of the Baals, and the Molechs and the Starry Host worshiping, foolishly putting their faith in wood and stone. Here in verse 10, it becomes clear that God will judge his people for believing too little. If last week we see that God will judge his people for syncretism, here we see that God will judge his people for skepticism. This sounds like the scoffers over in 2 Peter 3:4, or the ones we can read about in Micah 3 or Malachi later. In chapter Malachi chapter 2.

Friends, Israel had a long history of scoffing. The people living in Jerusalem itself, the very place where the Lord decided to set His name, are apathetic about the Lord. They are unconcerned, really unconvinced. A plague of indifference had broken out among them and it seemed largely unopposed. What would it mean to be so complacent?

Well, Zephaniah is referring to those who are self-satisfied, who are tolerably pleased with themselves and their lot, feeling well able to understand and even pardon their own faults, who know how to put everything in perspective. These people are unmoved. Finally, they're spiritually apathetic. And worst of all, they think that this reflects what God is really like. Because God obviously hadn't done anything about it, so He must not really care that much.

You see what they're doing? They believe their own complacency to be a reflection of God's. That's why that last phrase in verse 12 is meaning really. They're thinking the Lord won't do anything, good or bad. And it's so often the case with those who are most ignorant of true religion, they're the ones who are most certain about it.

Certain that God is just like them. The irony of complacent people suggesting that God was as inactive as they themselves were when God, in fact, was just about to judge them. But then complacent people tend to remake their ideas of God over in their own image. A complacent people begin to imagine a complacent God.

Have you wondered how you might be beginning to try to remake God over into your own image?

I remember teaching a class once years ago down at Beeson. It was a graduate study in theology. I was there on the day when they were doing theology proper, Doctrine of God. Gave a lecture, and then it was a small class, like 10 or 12, it was a seminar. And then we had a discussion, and one guy, we'll call him Bill, he put up his hand and he said, you know, I like to think of God like this.

And he gave two or three attributes of ways he likes to think about God. And I thought, you know, we're in a graduate school of theology here, surely I can handle this man appropriately. And so I just said, after he went on for a couple of minutes, I just said, Bill, thank you for telling us so much about yourself. That's how you like to think of God. We're just curious here in this class about what God is really like.

Whether or not you or I happen to like it, that's not really material. What is God like? What has he told us about himself? What do we know about the God that really exists? Zephaniah?

Is presenting that unflattering portrayal of ourselves and an accurate portrayal of God. Friend, you may not be as brazen as Bill in that theology class, but I just wonder, does your prayer life suggest that you think God is really unconcerned about most things, most people, resigned to most situations? Are there other markers in your life that suggest perhaps you've misunderstood what God cares about? We see another thing about God's judgment of those people claiming to be His in verse 13. It will include even that which may be the source of your wrong satisfaction with things as they are.

It includes even your wealth. Verse 13, Their goods shall be plundered, and their houses laid waste. Though they build houses, they shall not inhabit them; though they plant vineyards, they shall not drink wine from them. Again, this is the promised fulfillment of the threats in Deuteronomy 28 if God's people would finally prove to be unfaithful to Him. They were skeptical that God either could or would do anything about this, either good or bad, he says.

God was perhaps an object of veneration for those disenchanted with this world, but for those who knew how to get along and go along to get along, God was just there passively watching, they thought. So, friend, about yourself, ask about your own house, your own business. How do you weigh your job? How do you weigh your financial security?

And I'm particularly addressing that to the religious here among us. And let me just say, if you're sitting here in a church in the middle of DC that is known for having long sermons and does things like preaches on Zephaniah and has strikingly poor parking and all of that on a three-day weekend during a mask mandate, I'm guessing pretty religious covers most of you.

You're the ones who need to think about this. Does your religion have much to do with your life? Or are you a practical atheist? Someone who talks as if there's a God, but who lives as if there isn't. There are apparently a lot of such people in Jerusalem.

Can you imagine that? People in many ways may have seemed good and upstanding, going by the temple, doing their sacrifices, avoiding the unclean foods, but quietly, consistently, they were indifferent to God and His concerns amidst the press of their busy lives. It was Martin Luther King Jr. who said that we shall have to repent in this generation not so much for the evil deeds of the wicked people, but for the appalling silence of good people. Now King meant that of practices of racial segregation and discrimination that were unjust and that people who called themselves Christians didn't comment on. That was an apt comment for the time.

But it's also true more widely as well. There are things that we should speak about that we don't. And that silence can be something that we're accountable for as well. My religious friend, do you really believe in God? Do you really believe that He has an agenda, a will, concerns?

Does it concern you to know what it is? Does ignoring His concerns worry you at all?

Friends, God will judge His people, whether they tend to gullibility of idol worshippers or the cynicism of the complacent here. He will judge you even if you claim to be His and are numbered among His people and attend long services of a sound church. He will judge anything and anyone that distorts the truth about Himself, particularly those that claim to specially represent Him like ancient Jerusalem did with the temple there and like our church does today.

That's point number two. Finally, let's make sure we don't miss the heart of Zephaniah's appeal. Number three, we see it there in the first three verses of chapter 2, Seek the Lord.

Seek the Lord.

If you've sinned, like everyone else, he says there in chapter 2 verse 1, gather together, yes, gather, O shameless nation. Gather. Interesting, this verb here for gather is never used elsewhere of gathering humans. This isn't, Hey, come to church, y'all. Let's have a prayer meeting.

No. No, this is gather like you gather stubble or sticks to burn them. That's how this word is used everywhere else in the Bible that it's used. It's like He's calling them to prepare themselves for their own execution.

So you can put this down as your memory verse for reminding you to get to church on Sunday morning.

That's not what Stephan and I is talking about.

Even the choice to call them a nation, you see how shameless, nation, that's goy. It's a word they used usually to talk about those around them outside of them, the goyim, the Gentiles.

Even the fact He calls them a nation may be significant. Having become like the nations around them, they will be treated like the nations around them. And even that last little bit of verse 1 is significant. Judah is to be gathered, that's not good. As a nation, that's not good.

And described simply as shameless. Literally, it's the nation that would sin but not blush about it.

Friends, if the only way you can recover shame is to turn off your social media, turn off your social media. Shame is your friend when it's accurately calibrated by the word of God. Shamelessness is what marks those who are lost, whose hearts and minds have been cut off from the Lord and his love. All this desperate sounding description of chapter 1 and now even verse 1 here in chapter 2 turns in verse 2 before, look at 2:2, before the decree takes effect, before the day passes away like the 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, the emphasis on the when is before, before God's long patience ends and his just anger comes.

The Lord is sending them a warning just in time. He's sending them a helping hand to avoid judgment. Tomorrow, he says, is the day of judgment. But today is the day of salvation.

Do not be so distracted by the fact that tomorrow is the day of judgment. That you do not hear me say that today is the day of salvation. As Matthew Henry put it, Zephaniah's purpose here is not to scare them out of their wits, but to scare them out of their sins. That's why at this church we try to faithfully present sermons that teach us what the Bible says on everything, even the great day of the Lord's approaching wrath.

And so the prophet issues this beautiful invitation in verse 3: Seek the Lord that you may be saved. Seek the Lord all you humble of the land. Come, be a part of the remnant that gathers here to seek the Lord, so that your future is a time of rejoicing. Friend, your future will never be a time of rejoicing through your own sinlessness. That ship has sailed for every single one of us.

So don't fail to heed God's warnings and so open yourself up to being the object of His justice. Seek the Lord. When you think about it, given what Zephaniah said, you can be forgiven for thinking that's very odd advice. Seek the Lord. Isn't the Lord the one who's perfectly righteous?

Isn't the Lord the one who knows all? Isn't the Lord the one who's coming after me for my disobedience?

That's a good point. I mean, would you have guessed that the answer should come from the one you may think is your problem? One writer put it like this, Common sense would say the way to escape danger is by fleeing from it. The message of the gospel is that the way to escape the danger of certain judgment is to flee to its source. To find mercy, to seek the Lord.

Friends, where else would mercy come from? Their money won't help them, he said. Their ethnicity, their special history with God won't help them. If anything, they just seem to make them more accountable to God for the wrong they've done. So it's the source of the wrath that's coming that threatens, that's the only possible source where there could be any mercy that would save them.

So they should seek the Lord.

Friend, if you're here and you're not a Christian, this is the great truth this church has held out for over a hundred years here. Seek the Lord. The truth is there is a God and that you have disappointed him, to say the least. And this is not mainly a psychological problem. You need to have sorted out through counseling or medicine.

No, this is a moral problem because of what you've done. You've been made in the image of God specifically to be like Him. But the number of people here who have fulfilled that image as they should have is zero. And that includes you. And your only hope of surviving this day is because of the righteousness of Christ.

What God has given Himself when He sent His only Son to live among us a life of perfect righteousness, to die on the cross as a substitutionary sacrifice, taking the penalty, deserved by all of us who have sinned, who will trust in Him, God has declared His Son to be that righteous sacrifice. He raised Him from the dead and accepted that sacrifice when offered, and He calls us all now to turn from our sins and to trust in this one, to take on His righteousness as our own. Friend, that's your only hope, and that's a great hope. This church is full of people who can sing those songs about the afterlife like we did earlier this morning in full hope and joy because of our confidence in Jesus Christ and what He has done for us.

So that's what we see here. Remember what the Lord Jesus said in John 6:37, Whoever comes to Me I will never cast out. I will never cast out whoever comes to Me. Oh, friend, how can you seek the Lord? We see here that seeking the Lord involves your heart and your hands.

Your heart, He's addressing the humble of the land, there must be conviction and confession of your own sins first. And then your hands, it says, who do His just commands. God's people are told to do His commands because we do love Him and fear Him and serve Him supremely before all, thus before they enter the Promised Land, the people vowed, Cursed be anyone who does not confirm the words of this law by doing them. The people called down that curse on themselves. So we are those who seek righteousness.

Friends, we need a better righteousness than we can cobble together ourselves. We seek righteousness. We try to do what is right, but we realize, as the Bible says, our best works are as filthy rags, because they're compromised and tainted with our other works that are not our best works, even that are our wrong works. The pivotal statement in our own church's statement of faith is Article 5. It's all about this righteousness.

Article 5 of Justification reads, We believe that the great gospel blessing which Christ secures to such as believe in Him is justification. That justification includes the pardon of sin and the promises of eternal life on principles of righteousness. That it is bestowed not in consideration of any works of righteousness which we have done, but solely through faith in the Redeemer's blood, by virtue of which faith His perfect righteousness is freely imputed to us, accounted to us by God, that it brings us into a state of most blessed peace and favor with God, and secures every other blessing. Needful for time and eternity. The great wrath that we have deserved for our sins has all been swallowed up by the sacrifice of the sinless Son of God at the cross.

As Christ Himself said at the end of His cross work, it is done.

For those here who are not Christians, that means, friends, that today you should repent of your sins, turn from them, and trust in Christ as one sacrificed for you in your place. Take His righteousness as your own. If you want to know more about what that means, talk to the person who brought you today, talk to any of us at the doors afterwards. We would love to help you. Understand more of what that would look like in your own life.

And for those of us here who are Christians, well friends for us we must continue to seek Him, to rely on Him every Sunday like this as we gather and sing and pray and listen and wait.

You see there In chapter 2, Zephaniah also says that we're to seek humility. You see that there in verse 3. You have to realize your own bankruptcy. You can't safely stand in judgment of another. You need to seek humility.

Such humble people who have taken on the righteousness of another and whose hands and hearts reflect it imperfectly, but really. We may be saved. You see how Zephaniah finishes, verse 3, Perhaps you may be hidden in the day of the Lord. Don't misunderstand that. Perhaps doesn't mean it's dicey.

It's like, maybe there's a chance you can be forgiven in all this. That's not what Zephaniah is saying at all. He's saying, Perhaps because this word is going out to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem and beyond, and not all of them will trust. Some of them will fall under the judgment of God, but some will hear and believe. That's where the perhaps is.

So friends, perhaps you may be hidden in the day of the anger of the Lord. Who will escape punishment? Only those who find shelter in the rock and the rock is Christ. Only those who are concealed in Him. How much love must God have for a people to say this to them when they had sinned so horribly against Him.

And yet He pursues them, even here saying this, There is salvation for the righteous, and that will mean for all of us unrighteous who take shelter and hide ourselves in the righteousness of Christ. This call to repentance is really the center of Zephaniah's prophecy. You know, His name is the Hidden of Yahweh, Zephaniah. That's His message too. We can be hidden in the righteousness of Christ.

We can be hidden from Yahweh's coming wrath.

Newton continued in that hymn, Day of Judgment, Day of Wonders, See the Judge our nature wearing, clothed in majesty divine. You who long for His appearing, then shall say, this God is mine. Gracious Savior, own me in that day as thine. At His call the dead awaken, rise to life from earth and sea, all the powers of nature shaken by His looks prepare to flee, careless sinner. What will then become of thee?

But to those who have confessed, loved, and served the Lord below, He will say, Come near, ye blessed, see the kingdom I bestow, you, forever shall my love and glory know.

In God, the God of holiness and justice, there is hope for mercy and grace. Friends, let us heed the words of Zephaniah and seek the Lord. May God give us each humility to know our need and to accept the righteousness of another. And look to it, friend, that you not be at this day of judgment and appear unprepared, because you have been warned. Perhaps you may be sheltered from God's just wrath toward you for your sins.

On that day. The glorious news of Jesus Christ is that you may be, if you will be, in Christ.

Let's pray.

Lord God, what a message of hope youe have entrusted to us. Even as our hearts quake at the thought of youf justice, our hearts leap at the thought of youf merciful love. Instruct us, savingly, we pray. Holy Spirit, do youo work now, we ask, in Jesus' name, Amen.