And who's given us the curriculum, you are the master and we are the students. We ask, Lord, that we would respond to your curriculum and honor you as the one who has given us life and life eternal. Indeed, we ask that you bless this time and may we take these truths and relish them and think about them and be conformed and transformed by the renewing of our mind unto the likeness of Christ Jesus and whose name we pray. Amen. All right, let me get this fired up. We're working in the Old Testament and hardly anyone works in the Old Testament anymore today. But that is a great tragedy because the New Testament presupposes, you know, the Old Testament. People today think, well, I'm a New Testament Christian, therefore I don't really need the Old Testament. But if you are really a student of the New Testament, then you discover that it quotes the Old Testament over and over and over. And so clearly, Jesus and the apostles built their understanding of the New Testament events on the Old Testament. And therefore, if you don't know the Old Testament, then I really have to question whether you understand what you're reading in the New Testament. Now, the Old Testament book that we're working with is called Zephaniah. And if you turn there, Zephaniah, as I said in the prayer, is just as much a part of the word of God as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. And therefore, Zephaniah is just as important as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. And we have to realize that and really come to grips with that truth, because many Christians throughout the course of church history have created a mini canon within the canon and given more authority to their mini canon than the rest of the books, whether consciously or unconsciously, they have done this and teared the Bible. And yet each and every book in the Bible is an essential part of the canon. Each and every book is essential to a life of godliness. Each and every book is essential to seeing the plan of God correctly, and each and every book is essential to seeing who God is correctly. So that's why we try to teach the whole counsel of God here, as the Apostle Paul declared was his mission in Acts chapter 20. Now, so it may not all be written to us, but it certainly is all written for us. And there is always something from every book in the Word of God to learn about God. Now, the primary thing you will learn about God from Zephaniah is that he is holy. That word fundamentally means he's set apart, and many theologians have claimed that this is the essential or core central attribute of who God is, that is, he's set apart. He's the creator and we're the creature. Now, this is an aspect of God, nevertheless, that is not very well understood today. In fact, I would venture to say that at least in Christianity in the West, it is the least well understood of all the attributes of God. Got much is said about God's love and much wrong is said about God's love and what that actually means, but God is holy, and this means that his character is the unchanging standard for what is right and what is wrong. And when he judges. It doesn't matter who is involved. He judges equally. There are no favorites. And when we are weak on God's holiness, as I think that we are in the West, the practical outworking of that is that we trivialize sin. We define sin as. Immoral behavior. You know, lust or drunkenness or Lying or drug use those things now, while those things are sins, friend, those are only the tip of the iceberg. Sin is epistemological, that is, it is the processes, you know, you reason with sin is in there. How do we know and how do we conclude what we know is true? Sin is ontological in the ultimate, and this is the worst aspect that you can perhaps ever fathom, and that is who we are. Sin is who we are by nature. We are rebels against our creator by nature, and this is the dark side of sin that no one wants to talk about. This is stepping on people's toes. But the prophets didn't care what the people's toes felt like. It was their job to step on people's toes. And because man tends to trivialize sin, just as an example, they argued that rebellion against the authority of God is as the sin of witchcraft. So just to rebel against a single command of God, according to God's holiness, is the equivalent of sorcery. But the point we want to make here is that we are very weak on the holiness of God. And it is a book like Zephaniah. that presents God's holiness with such power and such splendor that it exposes the utter vile nature of our sin. And it is shocking, of course, to see the depths of depravity in our own hearts and to realize how utterly offensive we are to him. So as we work through, keep God's holiness in mind and that way you'll understand his wrath and his anger. Tonight, what we want to do is start. I want to start with a systematic overview of the theme of Zephaniah, which is the day of the Lord. Then we will come back and look at the day of the Lord from the standpoint of the Israelites and Zephaniah's day. And finally, we'll ask the what impact should it have had upon them and what impact should it have upon us to realize these truths about the day of the Lord. So, first of all, a treatment of the day of the Lord. Taking into account all Scripture, which we now have with the closure of the book of Revelation, the theme that is central to Zephaniah is first mentioned in chapter one, verse seven. Be silent before the Lord God, for the day of the Lord is near. Now, the day of the Lord, which is the theme or the day of Yahweh, is a major theme of Scripture mentioned over 80 times in the Old and New Testament. I give a whole series of examples here on the slide, nearly a third of those reference references. Twenty four are by Zephaniah and within three chapters, he refers to it as, quote, the day of the Lord and one seven and fourteen as a day in one fifteen and sixteen as the day in two two and three eight as that day in one nine one ten one fifteen three eleven and three sixteen as the time and three twenty that time and one twelve three nineteen and twenty. The day of the Lord's sacrifice in one eight, the day of the Lord's wrath in one eighteen and the day of the Lord's anger in chapter two, verse two and three. And some of those verses have multiple references. So that's why if you add them up, you don't get 24. Now, being that we have come to verse seven, we wanted to find what the day of the Lord is, so we know what we're talking about, first of all, because for the last few weeks, I've been talking about it in general terms. as a day that stands in contrast to what we might call the day of man. So you already know that history unfolds as a sequence of rather long periods of boredom, which might be called the day of man, because man is seemingly in control of what's happening, seemingly followed by rather short periods of stark terror where the Lord is obviously in control of what's happening. But we want to be more precise, and I want to give you the background of the day of the Lord. The background of the term the day of the Lord seems to have arisen from the popular concept in the ancient Near East of a warrior king who was so great, he could consummate an entire military campaign in a single day. So the secular, just profane use of the phrase is simply that you have a great king, that he is a military genius, that he has a well-trained army, and in a single day he could go out and defeat his enemy. Now, that's the basic idea, and it came in Scripture to refer to Yahweh, who is a great warrior king who could consummate an entire military campaign against his enemies in a single day and in some cases deliver his own people. OK, so there's both the judgment and salvation involved in the theme of the Day of the Lord as it's presented in Scripture. Now, when we study the use of the expression Day of the Lord, and its abbreviated forms, as you see here on the prior slide we went through, you will find that they fall in four different uses that I'm going to categorize two ways. OK, the first category is past days of the Lord, and the second will be future day of the future day of the Lord. So when I say past day of the Lord, I mean, of course, from our perspective today in 2011. I don't mean from the scriptural standpoint of maybe someone like Zephaniah or Noah. OK, so first, let's look at the past days of some past days of the Lord, meaning past from where we are today, and we'll turn to Amos 518. Amos was a rancher, this man was chosen by God to prophesy to the northern kingdom of Israel, even though he was from the southern kingdom of Judah. And there's a reason for that, basically. They had executed all the prophets in the northern kingdom, so God chose somebody from the southern kingdom to go and to. Tell them the word of God, and I'm sure they got a lot of. Oranges and apples thrown at him, but this man had a way of communicating just like a lot of ranchers do. Sometimes rougher in the car, but let me tell you something that communicates. And these people definitely needed to have the word of God communicated to them real rough. The only way that God can get through to these people. So in verse 18, he says, Alas, you who are longing for the day of the Lord, what purpose will the day of the Lord be to you? It will be darkness and not light. As when a man flees from a lion and a bear meets him or goes home, leans his hand against the wall and a snake bites him. Will not the day of the Lord be darkness instead of light? Even gloom with no brightness in it? No. Amos is predicting the destruction of the capital of Israel, which was in the city called Samaria. And this eventually came in 721 B.C. when the Assyrians were going around and and the northern kingdom had rebelled against them. So they surrounded them and they defeated them. And of course, we already know from Nechum and other studies that the Assyrians were inventors of evil. They invented some of the nastiest ways of killing people. And some of the things they did were just frightened to be jeebers out of you, which, by the way, is why Jonah didn't want to go preach the word of God to him. See, he didn't want those people to repent. He wanted God to slaughter them because what they did to others was slaughter them. But this prophecy of the day of the Lord here in verse 18 is that there's going to be a day of the Lord for Israel, a day of darkness. And notice how he addresses certain Israelis. He's addressing them as if If they wanted the day of the Lord to come, I mean, if you didn't know the scriptures, you'd wonder, you know, why would Israel want the day of the Lord to come? And the answer is because these Israelis in a Moses day, they thought from Obadiah that the day of the Lord was a day that would only come upon the Gentiles. And it was a day for Israel to be saved. And most is saying you concluded wrongly. Just because Obadiah did teach that the day of the Lord would be bad for Gentile nations did not mean somehow that Jews were excluded from it altogether. So he he reveals that there's another dimension to the day of the Lord, and that is that Jews are going to have a day of the Lord and it's going to be a disaster. See, there's no escaping it. I mean, you run in your house and you get bit by a snake, you know, these kind of things. So Jews are also going to have a day of the Lord and you can't run. OK, and you can't hide. But this is a past day of the Lord, because almost five was fulfilled in 721 B.C. And we could show other days of the Lord. We'll be looking at one later, the second example here, and that's Judas exiled to Babylon, which will be in Zephaniah, our passage for tonight. But the point is simply to demonstrate that this is one category of the day of the Lord passage. And in those days, the Lord judged. And the reason that he's done that in history is to preview the future judgment that is coming to preview the future day of the Lord. So whenever God says, I judge in history and we see that he's saying, I am righteous and I am just and I do judge. I let evil develop for a while because I'm very patient. But finally, I do judge because I am holy. And for us as believers, this is an encouraging thing, isn't it? Just like First Thessalonians one teaches. We should be encouraged when we're being persecuted. Why? Because those who persecute us will be judged. God is not overlooking these things. Now, the second category is the future day of the Lord, and this use has three phases. The first phase is judgment, and this is the most common use or context in which the day of the Lord is found in the Bible. To see this one, I want you to turn all the way to First Thessalonians five. The reason I want to jump all the way to the New Testament is to assure you that we are clearing the air of past days of the Lord that have been fulfilled. There are a lot of uses of this future day of the Lord in the Old Testament, but I want to accelerate down through history in order to get past all that so we can show, hey, here is a passage that has not you cannot say was fulfilled by the Babylonians. You cannot say was fulfilled by the Persians or anything like that. You could argue that theoretically from Isaiah or Zephaniah. But by turning here, you can't say that because what's described here is still future as of the time Paul wrote this first Thessalonians 5 1. This has never happened. Now, as to the times and the ethics, brethren, now that that's a change in kingdoms. I don't have time to take you to Daniel 220 and so forth, but what this means is that there is a change. In national supremacy on earth. There's a change in who is the greatest superpower in the world. Now, I would argue that every major change and who is the supreme kingdom on earth at any given time, that those changes took place, those are classified under my understanding of biblical thought as days of the Lord. that he is the one who brought about those alterations in times and ethics. And he says, you have no need of anything to be written to you. That is, all Christians should know what is coming in world history ultimately. And what is coming ultimately is that the Gentiles are going to be removed from world supremacy and Israel is going to regain world supremacy. Verse two, what initiates this change? For you yourselves know full well that the day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night. So what what always brings a change in kingdoms, a change in supremacy? A day of the Lord and verse two discusses one discusses how it will come. Paul says it's going to come just like a thief in the night. That is, it comes when you least expect it. When the world least expects it. Verse three, while they are saying that's the world, peace and safety, Then and literally in the Greek, it says at that very moment. Now, this is not a cry for peace and safety. People all over the world right now are crying for peace and safety, right? We want security. We want peace. No, this this is a statement of the conditions on Earth at the time. They're stating we have achieved world peace and world security at that time, Paul says. Destruction will fall upon them suddenly, like labor pains fall upon a woman with child. They will not escape just as a woman who has her birth pains will not escape. Having the baby, there's no turning back at that point, and the reason that there is no turning back, the reason that there's no escape is versus four and five, and that is that the only escape that could be. Enjoyed has already taken place. And that escape is the rapture. OK, there's no question believers will be snatched away from the earth before this time, this future day of the Lord comes. And most people would call what Paul is talking about is the day of the Lord, this judgment phase. They would call that the tribulation. So first, we have seen that, number one, there are past days of the Lord. These occur on a local scale and God intervenes to change kingdoms and so forth. And these are all a preview to the future day of the Lord when God is going to catastrophically judge Gentile nations and restore supremacy to Israel. OK, and the first phase of that is is the judgment phase we've seen. The second phase in the future day of the Lord is called the blessing phase, and this is the most controversial use of the expression day of the Lord or its its abbreviated forms. In other words, some people, some theologians claim this doesn't even exist. OK, but I think it does. And we'll turn to Zephaniah chapter three to see that. Zephaniah three, and I'll show you several here at the end of the chapter and starting in verse eleven. In that day, and see that that's an abbreviated expression for the day of the Lord. In that day, that is the day of the Lord. You that's Israel, you will feel no shame because of all your deeds by which you have rebelled against me. For then I will remove from your midst your proud, exulting ones, and you will never again be haughty on my holy mountain. You know, it is going to be a nice day just as an application when we're not We're not bothered by sin in our lives anymore. At least it's going to be a nice day for me. Maybe you don't have that. But this passage is saying that there's going to be a judgment and following that's going to be blessing. No sin, you don't have to deal with that anymore. Verse 16, another one. It's a period of blessing in that day. OK, so another shortened, abbreviated expression reference to the day of the Lord. And that day it will be said to Jerusalem, Don't be afraid, O Zion, don't let your hands fall limp. You know, for fear of military invasion, you know, so there's peace at this time, there's security for God's city, Jerusalem, it's a day of blessing. Verse 19. Behold, I'm going to deal at that time, and that, again, is another expression, OK? for the day of the Lord. At that time, I'm going to deal with all your oppressors. I will save the lame and gather the outcasts and I will turn their shame into praise and renown in all the earth. At that time, I will bring you in, even at the time when I gather you together. Indeed, I will give you renown and praise among all the peoples of the earth. Notice it keeps repeating that all the peoples of the earth. That's to emphasize the global scope of the judgment and the resulting blessing on the other side. When I restore your fortunes before your eyes, says the Lord. So again, it is a time when supremacy, so far as kingdoms are concerned, shifts from Gentile to Jewish. So and it'll be a day of blessing. They'll be at the center of the world stage. So we would identify this blessing phase, phase two under the future day of the Lord as the millennial kingdom. That's what it's a reference to. Finally, the third phase in the future day of the Lord, is the second coming itself, Joel 2, 31, which we'll turn to. But of course, let me clarify something here. If you're an Old Testament saint, you're not reading your Old Testament saying, oh, this is the first coming passage and this is the second coming passage. Now, it was all for them blended together. OK, it wasn't clear to them. OK, we're looking from hindsight. Now we understand what was the mystery to the prophets in which they searched out. How could he both suffer and be glorified? How can you have a crucified messiah who's reigning as a king? This was a contradiction to them. We now know that the contradiction was never a contradiction. But what it was is some passages refer to the first coming and some referred to a second coming. They tried to solve it by saying there were two messiahs, right? That there was a messiah, Ben Joseph. He was Joseph suffered and there was a suffering messiah. And then there would be a messiah, Ben David. David was a glorious king. And so they said, well, there's two messiahs, but we know now it's two comings of one messiah, not two messiahs. So so this is of the second coming. And this is a this is a 24 hour period this day. OK, whereas the other uses on here, they're all more than a day or longer than 24 hour period. OK, this is a day of judgment. Indeed, this 24 hour period is the greatest single day of judgment so far as earth history is concerned. So to see this, hopefully you're already on Joel 2, but I'll give you some time. Joel is really the first book in the Bible to give a systematic treatment of the Day of the Lord. Joel and Zephaniah are kind of like brothers in that both of them, their theme is the Day of the Lord. And they give us the greatest insight in the Old Testament so far as this day is concerned. When we look at this passage, you're going to see that the day of the Lord is prefaced in some cases by two adjectives, great and awesome or great and terrible. Those two adjectives single out that the reference is to the actual day that the Messiah comes. So that's what we're interested in seeing here. And just as an example, in Joel 2, verse one, not 31, but one, we see what? You see the day of the Lord. there, and yet you don't see any adjectives there. It's just this is just the day of the Lord judgment phase. That's what that is, what most people call the tribulation. But if you come down to verse 28, let's start there and pick up. It will come about after this. Now, watch his timing words. Here's an after. OK, now, if you go back in the context, you'll discover that that's after the Messiah's return and he's going to switch back and forth. So you really have to follow his his prepositions. In the Hebrew, those are prepositions after, before and so forth. It will come about after this, that is, after the Messiah's return. That I will pour out my spirit on all mankind and your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions, even on the male and female servants, I will pour out my spirit in those days, that is, after the Messiah has come. OK, so this is all in the blessing phase, right? I mean, this is all blessing. He's pouring out the spirit. I mean, people say, well, this is the age of the spirit. Oh, you haven't seen anything, by the way. OK, the ultimate age of the spirit is the millennial kingdom to come. This is an age of the spirit, but it's not the greatest one that we have seen. His dominance in the believer's life in the kingdom will be so great that the Jewish believers won't even sin. OK, now, I don't think he dominates our lives to that extent, does he? Maybe yours again, but not mine. So this is all blessing. This is the blessing phase of the day of the Lord. Then he says in verse 30. And watch the timing word again, I will display wonders in the sky and on the earth, blood, fire, columns of smoke. That doesn't sound like much blessing. The sun will be turned into darkness and the moon into blood before. So this is before before what day? Well, before the day of the second coming, before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. So before. And we're saying the day of the second coming is referred referred to there. Before that, there are going to be massive judgments cosmic in scale before the day of the second coming. That is the great and awesome day of the Lord. That is the day that he comes back to Earth. And prior to that, we know from the book of Revelation, there will be tremendous judgments. Right. So the day of his second coming to Earth, that is the culmination of the judgment phase, and it is indeed the greatest day of judgment that Earth will ever see. So let me put this together on a chart for you that I think is helpful. And remember, all of what I'm explaining to you is from our vantage point with the canon of Scripture completed and not from Zephaniah's day. OK, we'll look at it from their standpoint in a moment to see what God intended for them to understand. First of all, this is a review and to put this together. There have been past days of the Lord on the far left of this chart. They are local in scale. There are days of darkness so far as judgment, their judgments. And we gave one example of Syria defeating Israel and sending them into exile in 721 B.C. Now, they all took more than one day for these judgments. They often extended even for years. But these are four views, so they're just previews of the future day of the Lord and the future day of the Lord, as you see on the right side, is global in scale. It begins with the judgment phase that lasts for a little bit more than seven years. It culminates with the day of the second coming, and then it is followed by a long period of blessing on a global scale, a thousand years. OK. This is why Zephaniah has been called a compendium of the prophets. I'm just trying to show you he basically you'll see all these kinds of references in his book. I danced around to show you this is all over the word of God. OK. Now, having said that, that is a systematic analysis of the day of the Lord. After all this data of scripture has come in, but like we said, that that's not all the scripture that Zephaniah he didn't have everything we had in his day. That data was still in the process of coming. So now what we want to try to do is to get in their shoes. Try to look at it from their vantage point. They had Obadiah. They had Joel. They had Amos. They had Isaiah. But this doctrine of the day of the Lord was still in development. Now that is what we call, does anybody know what that's called? Progressive revelation. That is, the Bible, this book, did not just drop out of heaven one day. complete. OK, it came in parts across many centuries by many different authors and so forth. So if you lived in Zephaniah's day, you say, hey, did you bring your Bible to synagogue today? Well, what would the Bible have been? Well, it would have been everything written up to Zephaniah's day. It would not have included things like Daniel, Ezekiel, Zechariah, Haggai, Malachi, Of course, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, none of that stuff would have been in their Bible, but that was their completed Bible. It was a shortened version of ours. And so we're just trying to understand from their vantage point what they were supposed to understand from this prophecy in chapter one. And if we understand that, then we will understand how it was supposed to impact them. And then we can have a question about how does it apply to us. So here they are. In Zephaniah's day, they have some revelation in the word of God about the day of the Lord. OK, they have Obadiah. And here's what Obadiah taught. Obadiah taught that the day of the Lord was coming upon Gentile nations and that Jews would be rescued in that day. So if that's all you had and you're a Jew, bring it on, get rid of them. So the Jews thought they would be rescued, but are most denied. that and told the northern kingdom of Israel that they would also have to face the day of the Lord and that that happened in 721 B.C. when the Assyrians came in. We already know that. Now, when you come down to Zephaniah's day and this is addressed to the southern kingdom of Israel, because remember, they've been divided, right? The northern kingdom is now in exile. So now we're just dealing with the southern kingdom of Judah. Well, what would have been the thinking of the average Judean on the streets, say, of Jerusalem? Well, first of all, they're pretty stupid spiritually, OK, because remember, we just studied a few weeks ago that they had just found the word of God. It had been in a trash pile in the back of the temple for 80 to 90 years, and a scribe found that they brought it before Josiah and Josiah began to make reforms. So maybe they had some of the word of God, but not very much. The other factor to consider is that this is the tribe of Judah. I mean, they're the true tribe that had the house of David in it. So surely, you know, we're going to be protected from any of the day of the Lord judgments. I mean, we're Judah. We got the Davidic dynasty. Now, that was their mentality, as you'll see in Zephaniah. They were a bunch of they were first of all, they're a bunch of spiritual morons. And secondly, they believe that God would never do that to Judah. OK, we're special. OK, we're the central headquarters of Jerusalem and all that. But now Zephaniah says, no, you're mistaken in everything you're thinking. Verse seven. Be silent before the Lord God, for the day of the Lord is near, for the Lord has prepared a sacrifice. He has consecrated his guests. Then it will come about on the day of the Lord's sacrifice that I will punish the princes, the king's sons and all who clothe themselves with foreign garments. And I will punish on that day all who leap on threshold. who fill the house of their Lord with violence and deceit. On that day, declares the Lord, there will be the sound of a cry from the fish gate, a wail from the second quarter and a loud crash from the hills. In other words, verse 10, I bring you there because to this point, because it's just chock full of clear references to Jerusalem. OK, so it's obvious that the Lord has a day of judgment for Judah in Jerusalem. OK, but here is the question. In verse 14, a little bit later. You will see the great day of the Lord mentioned, you see that. And it also says in verse 14 that it's near near is the great day of the Lord. And you also did you notice the word near in verse seven and verse seven, it says the day of the Lord is near. Verse 14. Near is the great day of the Lord, near and coming very quickly, near always the same Hebrew word and all these references. Now, you're you're a Judean. You walk in the streets of Jerusalem. Zephaniah is given his prophecy or so forth. How do you think the average Judean saw this passage? Let me ask. This is the question I'm asking you. Do you think that he saw this chapter? As one event, or do you think he saw it as two events? One. They're probably not able to dissect that there are two events here. OK, from a Judean perspective, it would appear at first just to be one event. Now, that's a very important observation as far as understanding the text in the way they would have understood it. I think it would have been really hard for them to separate out verses seven through 13, that section as the day of the Lord that was just going to come upon Judah from the day of the Lord in verses 14 through 18. It's going to come upon the whole earth. So let me point out some things about prophecy. One thing about prophecy, prophecy is strange. In some cases, prophecy in the way it unfolds is very odd. OK, sometimes you will read a prophecy and it will appear to be a single picture. I could take I'll give you an example, I won't take you there, but I'll give you an example for your own study. Zechariah 9, 9 and 10. That's another example of the exact same kind of thing that we're looking at right here. It looks like a single picture when you read the prophecy, but as history unfolds, you see that after the fact, hey, there was a gap of time between those two verses. Thousands of years, even not even discussed, so therefore, it's not one event prophesied. There's two events prophesied, and if we look close, In hindsight, now that after the fact, yeah, hindsight is always 20 20. Right. We can see that if we look close at the text now, we may say, well, you know, maybe if I'd studied closely back then, I could have seen that there were some indications that there's really two days of the Lord being spoken of here, not just one. Maybe I would have seen that there was a day of the Lord coming upon Judah, but then the text moved over to a day of the Lord coming upon the whole world. Now, So what we really do have here is two prophecies in verses seven through 13. That's a prophecy of the day of the Lord coming on Judah. But when you get to 14 through 18, that is a prophecy of the future day of the Lord. OK, so some that are classified under heading one, you got another one classified under heading two. Now, one of the observations that I would have have loved to have made, if I've been a great Bible student, or you in Zephaniah's day, is that, look, in verse 7, it just says, the day of the Lord. See that? But if you read verse 14, it says what? The great day of the Lord. So there's an adjective there. You know, all this stuff is important, OK? I mean, God doesn't like mince words. Everything is there for a purpose. Another observation, if you're a really good Bible student back then, probably you have to be the best one in the land, is that Jerusalem is clearly in view in verses seven through 13. But not in verses 14 through 18, there what's in view is the whole earth and all the inhabitants of the earth, as you can see from verse 18. Now. They may have been able to reconcile, well, verse 18, that's just it says the whole earth and all the inhabitants of the earth, they could say, well, The Hebrew word for earth is the same Hebrew word for land, so maybe it's just talking about the land of Israel. I mean, they could have tried to reconcile that, but. But a third observation is that the overall impression you get from verses seven through 13 is that it's Jewish. While the impression of verses seven, 14 through 18 is not Jewish, it seems to mean all men, including Gentiles. So if you look really close, you might be able to see that there is a break. in time between verses 13 and 14. In fact, there is a break in time. At this point, it stands over 2,500 years or between verse 13 and 14. But if you were a Jew living in Zephaniah's day, I don't think you'd likely see that. OK, history had to unfold for us to see this. Unless we were great, great Bible students. Now, so after the fact, we see that there are actually two prophecies here, and we know that from hindsight. Now, we have chosen to observe the text very closely and look for those things. But that leaves us with a problem. This does create a problem. And I want to talk about this problem. That problem is this. In verse seven, it says the day of the Lord is near. In verse 14, it says near is the great day of the Lord. That's the whole world. And yet, how can both be near? If one happened 2,500 years ago and the other one hasn't even happened yet. Now, that introduces one of the most difficult Bible problems that exist down to our own day. And the difficulty is this. What does near mean? How can you say something is near in time and yet 2,500 years has passed and it still hasn't happened when the other thing that said is near? happened over 2,500 years ago. Now, there have been several solutions to this by Bible scholars. One is to say that all this passage, as we mentioned before, is just as a Judean would have seen it in Zephaniah's day. It's all just referring to one event, and it was all fulfilled in 586 B.C. when the Babylonians came in and stomped the Jews. Now, the problem with that is, there's a problem with that, and that is that verses 14 through 18 seem to be describing something that's global. all the inhabitants of the old earth and has nothing to do with Jews, it sounds like it's talking about Gentiles. So that doesn't seem to work. So while it does solve the nearness problem in that this would have been fulfilled near in time. Right. Within 40 years, as Zephaniah is writing, it does not solve those other problems. So other scholars come along and they said, well, near refers to the manner of it coming. Let me try to explain that. Not when in time it will come, not like looking soon, not in the sense of soon, but when it does come, whenever that might be, it's going to come rapidly. It's going to come quickly. OK, so they'd say the term doesn't have anything to do with when it might happen in with respect to where you are in history, like soon, you know, as from, say, 2011 soon of, you know, in the next five years, they'd say, no, it can occur anytime. But when it does come, what the word means is it's going to happen very rapidly. And you could get that like a bolt of lightning. And you could get that idea possibly from verse 14. Verse 14 might give you that idea because it says near is the great day of the Lord, near and coming how? Very quickly. And they say, well, those are both words, actually, that they are describing this quick motion, this rapidity of the event. And he's repeating that twice near and quickly, those two terms. to emphasize how rapidly it will come whenever it comes. But it doesn't have to happen near in time to when we are. Now, that's a second solution, and that's valid, okay? You could easily argue that. And from that, it doesn't violate any grammar or anything. That's a proper use of the term. And from that, you could say, well, see, there are two events spoken of here. One of them happened close to when this was written. And it happened very rapidly. And the other one has yet to come. But when it does, it's going to come rapidly, too. But there's a third idea, and this is the one this is the one I think is the best. Both these words in verse 14 are referring to to imminency. OK, that is the idea. The idea that both words communicate is an event that is imminent. You say, what do you mean by that? I mean, there are no signs preceding it. OK, now here we see two Old Testament words in verse 14 and in the New Testament Greek. There are two corollary words to these and these same two words used in the New Testament for translated soon and quickly are the exact same two words used in the Septuagint. Now, how many of you know? I'm not asking for a raise of hands. It's rhetorical. How many of you know what the Septuagint is? Well, the Septuagint. is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament. See, if you are a Jew and you lived about 250 years before Christ, not many of them spoke Hebrew. Now, the scholars did. So what did the scholars do for the people? Well, they gave them a translation of their Bible in Greek so that people could read it. Right. So when we come to the Septuagint and we look at the two Greek words used to translate these two Hebrew words, they're the same two words used in our Greek New Testament. OK, over and over, and I'd like to show you several of those, but we're not going to have time. But the two words here. That are underlying these Hebrew words in Greek are egus and Takis, egus and Takis, I call these the eggs and tacos passages, and they're all over the New Testament, OK? And I don't mean that to be flippant, but that's just my fun way of talking about it. Before we go into all that in a few weeks, I want you to understand this passage. OK, these words, wherever they are used in these kind of contexts, they always refer to imminency. Now, God is saying, in effect, I am not going to ever tell you when these things are coming. I do not want you to know that they may come today. They may come tomorrow. They may come next week. They may come a thousand years from now. The point is not to give you any indication at all when they come. I don't want you to know that the point that I want you to get human beings is that they can come at any moment. And therefore, the application is what? You better be ready right now to be prepared. To have gotten right with God before it comes. In other words, this is an urgency to right now get right with God. OK, and we're going to see that is exactly the point in Zephaniah's text. So the point of verse seven and the point of verse 14 is not to give the Judeans any kind of indication at all when these things might happen, but they are to get them to respond to God immediately. to get them to repent right now. OK, so they probably could not get these passages split apart as I've done, OK, to show you what they really are saying. But what they would have gotten, no doubt, was an appeal of urgency to get ready to get right with God immediately. Now, that is why verse seven starts off not so nice in the Hebrew language. Shut up. before Adonai Yahweh. Shut up, because I have a very important announcement to make, and that is that the day of the Lord is upon you, and it could fall at any moment. Why? For the Lord has prepared a sacrifice. Look at that. Does it say the Lord is preparing a sacrifice? Or will prepare? Has prepared. It's done. That is, there's no time. Sacrifice is ready. And not only that, look at the guests, he has consecrated his guests again. Are they getting consecrated or are they going to be? No, they are already. The guests are ready to sit down and eat. So there is an urgency in the text to get right with God right now to not put it off another minute, because another minute from now may be too late. You may be dinner on the plate. And then chapter two is the same idea, and I'm showing you these to impress upon you the urgency of the Hebrew text. These ideas are deeply rooted in how God has structured history and how he has structured man. Man was built. He is designed to respond as creator today, not tomorrow, not next week, right now. Notice how he says it in chapter two, verse one. Gather yourselves together. Yes, gather, O nation. What nation? The nation Israel, right? Gather, he says, without shame. Now, what does that mean without shame? Having repented so that you have nothing to be ashamed about, right, gather, repent, so you have no shame, then verse two, the timing before the decree takes effect. You know, I'm not going to tell you when it's going to happen. The point is, you better get your butts in gear today. Before, he says, the day passes like the chaff before the burning anger of the Lord comes upon you, before the day of the Lord's anger comes upon you. See all those befores, you know, before, before, before, you know, he's saying, I'm not going to tell you when, but I am going to tell you this. You better get your rear in gear before this decree happens. I'm not telling you when that means you better do it now. See, God, he does. He just decided that the way to work with man is not to tell man all the details of the timing, some of the things he's told us, but not everything. OK, this is part and parcel of the way that he works with us. He just says, I'm not going to tell you everything. What I'm going to tell you, though, is this. Trust me. OK, verse three. Seek the Lord, all you humble of the earth who have carried out his ordinances. Seek righteousness. Seek humility. Perhaps you will be hidden. That word right there, setar, hidden is the name is the word, the root from which Zephaniah's name comes. And we think his name means hidden, you know, hopefully in the day when that decree comes to pass, you'll be hidden. You'll be kept safe. You will be secured. You will be a part of the remnant because you will have repented. You will have sought after the Lord. You will have humbled humbled yourself before him, before he comes in this judgment. So he says, perhaps you will be hidden in the day of the Lord's anger. So the whole point is to understand the imminency of these things and to get right with God immediately. And If I were in Israelite hearing this in Zephaniah's day, I'd probably be so scared out of my socks. I wouldn't be able to sit down calmly and do a careful Bible study of this passage like I've tried to do. But I would get the point that I got to get my rear in gear, because at any moment, God is going to disrupt. He's going to enter into history, disrupt the whole course of our lives. And do do I want to get smashed or do I want to be hidden? Say I want to be kept safe. Now, with that background, look quickly at verse seven. Be silent before the Lord God. OK, now I just got through talking about three groups of people in verse four, five and six. OK, we looked at them last week. We said some of them are full scale idolatry. They just totally rejected the word of God. We said some of them got one foot in the world and one foot in the word of God. They're in verse five B. You know, we worship Moloch, but we also go down to the temple and then we've got the complacent people in verse six, you know. Uh, you know, they've turned, they never follow the Lord or they turn back from following the Lord. They just really don't care. And in verse seven, he tells them all just to shut their big fat mouth. Okay. Now this is not nice talk, but this communicates. And let me explain to you what, why this is there and the way it is. Okay. It's like a little kid and a little kid, uh, say that let's say the parent is angry at the kid. What is the last thing that little kid needs to do with an angry parent in front of him? Start flapping his jaws. That is the last thing any angry parent wants out of his kid. That kid, the number one thing that kid can do is shut his mouth. Now, God is angry at this point. He is really angry. If you don't think God can get angry, you don't worship the same God of the Bible that I'm worshiping. The God of the Bible can get angry. He can get jealous and he at times acts out of wrath. And if you don't believe me, read the rest of the book. OK, so verse seven. Be silent, shut your mouth before the Lord God explanation why the day of the Lord is near, and that's the day of his anger. OK, and it's imminent. OK, it can come at any moment. And then he explains the imminency for the Lord has prepared a sacrifice. We already dealt with this. It's already prepared. It's ready to be offered. Everything's on the table and the guests are already prepared. He has consecrated his guests. See, they're ready to sit down and eat the sacrifice. That's the picture. And you say, well, who's the sacrifice and who are the guests who are going to eat it? Answer? The sacrifice is who? Judah. The guests are who? The Babylonian armies. And they're going to sit down and eat Judean flesh. That's the picture. Verse eight. And in these verses, we have three groups that are going to fall under the judgment. Let me just mention who they are, and we'll stop because we only have a couple of minutes left. There are three groups here that are going to be mentioned, and one of the groups, it might surprise you to know, are the politicians. Another one, which might surprise you again, like the corporations and the big businessmen, probably surprises you. And the last one are just the complacent people, the people who are like building their own little kingdoms, you know. That kind of person. OK, OK. Most of the people in this world, right? Rather than start with them. Let me conclude, because I'm what I'm hoping that you'll you'll grasp. Is that the Lord, the Lord is really serious about human beings listening to him. And he doesn't he doesn't pay too kindly. Obviously, to people who just outright reject him. He's also not very happy at all with people who like to play the Bible plus game. Well, you know, the Bible, that's good. And Jesus, that's nice. And I go to church. But, you know, every time you hear that, but it's already you're into the plus game. OK, it's the Bible plus game. And these are the kind of people that like to diversify their portfolio so far as their security. concern. Oh, yeah, Jesus is good and the cross. That's nice. Pretty story. But we just want to make sure that we're, you know, covering all our bases in case Jesus falls through. And then you have the people that really could care less. They've been in churches all their lives, but they're just going through the motions. And this is most this is a lot of people. They really don't care. They're just there because, well, my dad went here and my granddaddy went here and his granddaddy went here. And this is just where we go. And the church has changed like so much since great, great granddaddy went here. But, you know, who cares about that? They just do the same old thing. They really don't care. And God doesn't like those kind of people either. Because human beings were built for one thing. That's it. One thing. and that is to be in a relationship with their Creator. Did you know human beings are only secondarily designed to be with other human beings? Every relationship that you have on earth is secondary to one that you have with your Creator. And no human relationship can ever satisfy you. None. There's only one relationship that will ever satisfy you. Do you know why that is? Because the preacher in Ecclesiastes said what? He said that God has said eternity in their hearts yet, so they should not find him. That is, you have been created. Such that you have an eternal gap in your life now, if that's the case. I'm telling you, there's no other human being that's eternal. They can feel that no finite individual, no finite created thing. With our house, money, whatever, job, power can fill an eternal hole. Only an eternal being can do that. And that is what God is wanting us to do, to get right with him today, to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, if we have not, and be saved and to walk with him and to hold him as the relationship that's ultimate in our life. They didn't do that, and we're going to learn next week what happened to him because they did not. And it's a day that goes down in Jewish history is one of the most memorable days in all of Jewish life. And to this day, any Jew on the planet can tell you what happened because they violated what I just told you. So learn the lesson and get right with him today, because we live in a time in which the day of the Lord is near. We likewise live on the brink of the end of history, and we do not know when it will end when Christ will return in these judgments will fall. Let's close with a word of prayer. Dear gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord, that you have saved us. Those of us who trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ has finished work is perfect. It's complete. It's total. It has done everything that is necessary to satisfy your righteous and just standards. And we thank you for that, that we bring nothing to the equation, even by the act of faith. But even that is something that is only a receptive instrument. An instrument or channel through which your salvation is given to us, through which the righteousness of Christ is imputed to our account, through which we are regenerated instantaneously, being born of God, becoming children of God, being adopted into your royal family. And to think of all that you've accomplished for us, all that you are presently accomplishing for us and all that you shall accomplish for us in resurrection. You alone are to get the glory and the praise and honor, because you are so holy we could never do anything to please you. So we thank you for Christ. We thank you that he has done everything. And we thank you, Lord, that we stand in him, being clothed with his righteousness. And we ask, Lord, that we would never forget how gracious and merciful you've been to us. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.