Zephaniah chapter three, verses 14 through 17. Hear the word of God to you. Sing, O daughter of Zion. Shout, O Israel. Be glad and rejoice with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem. The Lord has taken away your judgments. He has cast out your enemy. The King of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst. You shall see disaster no more. And that day it shall be said to Jerusalem, do not fear. Zion, let not your hands be weak. The Lord your God in your midst, the mighty one will save. He will rejoice over you with gladness. He will quiet you with his love. He will rejoice over you with singing. And all God's people said. Father, we love your word. It is our constant adventure to learn new things about you in your word. And I pray this morning that you would light our hearts on fire as we consider the beautiful gospel that the book of Zephaniah displays before our eyes. Bless us with your presence, with your spirit. Quicken this word to our hearts. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, this tiny book of Zephaniah contains some of the most intense images of both God's wrath and his love that you will find anywhere in the prophets. Just side by side, very stark contrast. After two and a half chapters of God's wrath and his judgments being poured out upon Judah and the nations, you find in the last 12 verses of this book, Judah and the nations drawn into God's bosom and God delighting in them and rejoicing over them. And because of this bold juxtaposition of both justice and God's mercy, I think the book of Zephaniah portrays the gospel in just brilliant colors. I'm gonna start with the gospel conclusion because it is so, so beautiful. Opahmer Robertson and his commentary. calls Zephaniah 317, the John 316 of the Old Testament. God so loved the world, not just Israel, but the world that he gave his only begotten son. It is a marvelous, marvelous verse, and it shows an astonishing love. It's astonishing in many ways. First of all, it's astonishing Because after two and a half chapters of God's wrath and description of the sins of this world, you realize there is nothing lovable in this world that God saves. It is a remarkable love and the intensity of it. The descriptions of God's love over the the the bride of Christ that he has saved are almost If it wasn't inspired scripture, you just couldn't believe it. It's just so intense. It is an amazing Love because it is the same warrior king who wiped Judah and the nations off the face of the map and who is now being married to Judah and the nations. It's just so beautiful the way it describes it. God is going to save this world. He so loved the world, He's going to save this world by casting out Satan and all of the non-elect. Satan is not going to have the privilege of possessing this world forever. And so, Obama Robertson calls that verse the poem of personal love. Let me read his comments on that verse because I think he does a good job of describing how astounding this love is in context to the first two and a half chapters. He says, three parallel lines, each containing three phrases express the deepest inner joy and satisfaction of God himself in his love for his people. Delight, joy, rejoicing, and singing on God's part underscore the mutuality of emotional experience felt by God and the redeemed. That Almighty God should derive delight from His own creation is significant in itself, but that the Holy One should experience ecstasy over the sinner is incomprehensible. God breaking out in singing, God joyful with delight, all because of you. And again, the fact that He loves you and me. at all is astonishing. It is clear from this book that we were deserving. Every one of us was deserving of the same judgments that God pours out in the first two and a half chapters. You see, what God sees as delightful in the nations in the last 12 verses of this book is a righteousness and a beauty that he himself has given to those nations so as to turn ugliness into a beautiful bride without spot or wrinkle. How can a book put such intense wrath and such intense love side by side? Well, he tells us in this little section that we read, according to chapter three, it is only because of the King of Israel, the Lord Jesus Christ. That is the only way that this could happen. Christ, their King and warrior, is said to be in their midst, and that's what makes them beautiful. God looks upon Christ and his beauty in us. And because He bore our judgments, the text says that He took those judgments away from us. So take a look again at chapter 3, verses 14 through 15. He's telling us why this bride can rejoice. Sing, O daughter of Zion. Shout, O Israel. Be glad and rejoice with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem. The Lord has taken away your judgments. He has cast out your enemy. The King of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst. You shall see disaster no more. This is how to keep from being depressed from the judgments in the first two and a half chapters. We know we deserve those judgments, but verse 15 says, the Lord has taken away your judgments. Praise God. I mean, that's the gospel in a nutshell. And in the next phrase, that gospel also gives us victory over the world of flesh and the devil, over our enemies. Having taken away the judgments that were against us. He says he has cast out your enemy So justice and mercy has kissed each other in Jesus the king of Israel and it's by being united to Jesus and faith that we really can study all of the judgments of the minor prophets and rejoicing God's justice rather than getting depressed over that justice and the judge and the mighty warrior who wipes his enemies off the face of the map. And we got to remember, we were once one of those enemies who deserved to be wiped off the face of the map. That same warrior has saved us and is now a loving husband in whom the bride is ultra, ultra secure. That's the message of Zephaniah. That's the whole message of Zephaniah in a nutshell. Now let's do an overview of the book via two structures. The first structure I put into your outlines is a linear structure. It goes through the book in the order of the chapters. And he starts, verse one, by just announcing who he is. the word of the Lord which came to Zephaniah, the son of Cushi, the son of Gedaliah, the son of Amariah, the son of Hezekiah, in the days of Josiah, the son of Ammon, king of Judah. He was a descendant of the godly king Hezekiah, and because he was of royal blood, he would probably have constant access to the royal family, and this, along with a number of other hints, has made several commentators conclude that Zephaniah tag-teamed together with King Josiah to try to bring revival and reformation to the nation of Judah. And I think it's a fairly legitimate hypothesis. But as we learn from this book, Josiah's reformation was pretty short-lived. Though King Josiah made huge strides in, for example, cleansing all of the idols out of the temple and seeking to bring what degree of reformation to the nation that he could, Idolatry was too deeply entrenched for him to be able to completely eradicate it. So this was really amounts to a top-down forced reformation. And we know from other scriptures that political reformations are good. But they tend to be short-lived. They're not sufficient. All it took for Judah to fully revert to the full-blown idolatry that it had previously engaged in was the three-month reign of the next king Jehovah has in 2 Kings chapter 23. That's astonishing. Within three months, everything that Josiah had won was undermined, overturned, and they'd reverted to unbelievable apostasy. And my take home from that is even though the scripture says it's a good thing to try to bring revival any direction you can, from the top down, from the sideways, from the bottom up, top-down revivals, generally speaking, are short-lived. They tend to be somewhat superficial. And so Zephaniah warned the people, unless the populace as a whole engages in full repentance, the nation was doomed to destruction from Babylon. Now here's the thing, it's not just Judah that's in trouble. Just like the books of Habakkuk and Nahum, he points out that the nations all around Judah are also in trouble. They're going to be experiencing this awesome day of the Lord. And I want to spend a little bit of time talking about this day of the Lord concept. It's a very important concept. First two and a half chapters outline a day of the Lord that will happen very, very soon. Now, if you're dealing with dispensationalists who insist that the day of the Lord in the Scripture is always a reference and only a reference to the second coming, I would encourage you to take them to the book of Zephaniah. It will blow them apart, blow them away. Because even the most diehard dispensationalist is going to have a very, very hard time proving that everything in chapters 1 and 2 refers to the second coming. And the reason this is so significant is that Zephaniah refers to the day of the Lord more than any other prophet out there. 21 times this day is referred to. And so if there's any book that defines what the day of the Lord is all about, it would be the book of Zephaniah. I'm not going to go through all 21 references, but let me take you through three or four. Take a look at chapter 1, verse 7. Be silent in the presence of the Lord God for the day of the Lord is at hand. Now the Hebrew word for at hand means it is about to come. It cannot mean, as dispensationalists try to define imminence, that it could possibly happen any time in the next 4,000 years. Even on their system, it cannot mean that. And why do I say that? Because even on their system, the first coming has to occur before the second coming. So it cannot possibly, the second coming cannot possibly be imminent for Zephaniah since there's other stuff that has to happen before the second coming. By definition, it cannot be imminent. So it's a fatal flaw in their theory. And besides the Hebrew word for at hand, karov, means to be nearby, close, at hand, in the near future, about to happen. So this particular day of the Lord could not possibly happen beyond Zephaniah's lifetime. Okay, I'll look at another one. Chapter one, verse 14. The great day of the Lord is near. It is near and hastens quickly. And so that there could be absolutely no confusion, he uses three Hebrew words that indicate the incredible soonness, if that's even a word, the incredible soonness with which this day of the Lord will come. It will not tarry. Now, in contrast to this soon day of the Lord, which will not tarry, chapter three, verse eight speaks of another day of the Lord that will tarry and that you're gonna have to have patience before you will get to that day of the Lord. So my point is that everything in chapter 1, chapter 2, and the first seven verses of chapter 3 refer to 587 BC. It refers to the Babylonian decimation of Judah and the surrounding areas and the absolute decimation of Jerusalem. There was nobody that lived in Jerusalem until after the exile was concluded. Now, this is critical in understanding the eschatology of the day of the Lord. I've given four sub points in your outlines there related to the day of the Lord. In chapter one, we have the very near day of the Lord upon Judah. How devastating. Will Babylon be to the land? we'll take a look at verses 2 through 3 because this is likening what he's going to do to a Decreation and emptying out of everything. God had put in I will utterly consume Everything from the face of the land says the Lord and the word for land there is Adam ah just means ground dust It's the same, you know, it's what Adam was made from right? That's why he's called Adam During the siege that Babylon brought against Jerusalem Nebuchadnezzar used all of the nearby trees and bushes and crops and grass and animals and anything else that was usable and then he burned the rest. That was the region around Jerusalem. Verse 3 says, I will consume man and beast, I will consume the birds of the heavens, the fish of the sea, and the stumbling blocks, along with the wicked. I will cut off man from the face of the land, says the Lord. Now, as the siege went on, the Babylonians ran out of Israelite food, and so they had to hunt, and they had to fish the Sea of Galilee. And they just pretty much destroyed everything around Jerusalem. And God may also have supernaturally made a massive fish kill like you see in your picture there. But the point is that the land around Jerusalem was scrubbed. It was scrubbed. Once Babylon got into the city, they continued their destruction. It says in the next verses he destroyed Baal worship, the idolatrous priests, the syncretistic Jews who mixed Yehovah worship with Milcom worship. In other words, it's referring to stuff that was occurring in Zephaniah's day. Instead of there being sacrifices in the temple on the altar, The Babylonians would engage in human sacrifice, and interestingly, God takes credit for that. He is not ashamed to take credit for those sacrifices. He says in verse 8, this is the day of the Lord's sacrifice. Zephaniah is basically applying a covenant lawsuit, and covenant lawsuits apply God's law to a court condemnation of a nation. And though I don't have time to get into it this morning, I'll put it up on the web. It's astonishing how many times the book of Zephaniah quotes the book of Deuteronomy and applies it to Judah and applies it to the nations. And this is just another example of the minor prophets, how God expects all nations, not just Israel, to be subject to the laws of Deuteronomy. OK, very, very important for us to understand. But the point I wanted to make earlier was that God is not embarrassed to take ownership of this judgment. He uses the evil of man for righteous purposes. But God indicates He is the one bringing Babylon. Babylon is His rod of judgment. Zephaniah also specifies parts of Jerusalem that only existed in Zephaniah's day and would be destroyed. And verses 10 through 13, he assures them that he will use a lamp. And it may be that there were lamps that were used by the Babylonians to search out every nook and cranny of that city so that every human in that city would be eradicated. They would be taken out. No one would successfully hide. The mighty men of Israel would be powerless. And the words of verses 15 through 18 are simply terrifying. That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of devastation and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness, a day of trumpet and alarm against the fortified cities and against the high towers. I will bring distress upon men and they shall walk like blind men because they have sinned against the Lord. Their blood shall be poured out like dust, and their flesh like refuse. Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them in the day of the Lord's wrath. But the whole land shall be devoured by the fire of his jealousy, for he will make speedy riddance of all those who dwell in the land." They were either killed or they were sent into exile. Now, this does not mean that God overlooked the righteous remnant. He did not. And even the name Zephaniah shows that. His name means hidden by Yehoah. So he explicitly excludes the righteous remnant from his earlier description, especially in chapter three. You see this promise that God will hide and preserve his elect during the day of judgment. Now they're not going to be hidden and preserved in Judah. They're going to be carried into exile in Babylon. That's where he's going to preserve them. In fact, Jeremiah uses the image. The bad figs, they're going to stay here and they're going to be ruined. The good figs, I'm going to take to Babylon. And that's where God's going to preserve them. That's from Jeremiah. But here he uses the idea of being hidden and chapter 2 does the same verses 1 through 2 Call upon judah to repent before this day of the lord falls And verse 3 calls upon the righteous remnant to all seek the lord in humility And then says in the last clause it may be that you will be hidden in the day of the lord's anger So he preserves a remnant but chapter 2 goes on to say it wouldn't just be judah being judged in this very soon day of the Lord. The word for at the beginning of chapter two, verse four begins with a four connects the judgments about the fall upon the pagan nations all around Judah to the day of the Lord's anger. This too is near. And he speaks of the destruction coming upon the Philistine cities of Ashkelon, Ashdod and Ekron. And he calls those Philistines Cherithites. But then he goes on and calls the same people Philistines, one and the same, Cherethites, Philistines. And again, this has had to have been fulfilled in the day of Zephaniah because there are no Cherethites today. And as a side note, this helps to define David's bodyguard, was made up of Cherethites and Pelethites. Remember that? These were converted Philistines who served him and were ultra faithful to him and to Yehovah. God has always had a remnant from the Gentiles and a remnant from Israel in every age. I mean, you got your Uriah, the Hittites, you know, and you've got these various people that God has preserved. Well, in verse seven, God spares a remnant of believing Jews who would return from captivity and inhabit those Philistine territories. And so, there's hope in the midst of destruction. In verses 8 through 11, he says that Moab and Ammon would be wiped out, no longer exist as nations. That happened. It cannot happen in our future. Those nations no longer exist. They were wiped out. In verse 12, he speaks of Ethiopians being slain by Babylon's armies. So, you can see this is a very far-reaching day of the Lord. In verse 13, he promises to destroy Assyria and to make Nineveh a desolation. That's not future to us. There is no Nineveh. Okay, that's already happened. In chapter 3 verses 1 through 7, he says that everyone deserved those judgments and it was his righteousness that brought about all of those judgments. Here's the point. All of that was fulfilled to a tee in 587 and the years surrounding 587 BC. But now we come to a second day of the Lord in chapter three and verse eight, where he talks about something that they will have to wait for. It's the Hebrew word Haku. which means to wait, delay, tarry, be patient for a long time. Now here's the thing, even this second day of the Lord is not the last day of history, and the reason I know that for an absolute certainty is because there is a whole bunch of sequence of events that happen in the subsequent verses, so the context dictates that, but even if we didn't have that context, we would know that this is not the last day of history because the New Testament quotes these verses two times, and applies them to AD 70. So one time is Revelation 14 1 and again in chapter 16 where God's bowls of wrath are poured out upon Israel. So God would once again gather the nations against Israel and Zephaniah's distant future in AD 70. Now, he doesn't amplify on this a lot because that 80-70 judgment is going to be very similar to the 587 judgment. And interestingly, Hebrews chapter 10 verse 27 picks up some of the phraseology from the 587 judgment and says, hey, the coming judgment upon Israel is going to be just as devastating as the first one that Zephaniah had talked about. So there are two days of the Lord in the midst of history, one in 587 BC, 1 in 80 70 and this is so important for understanding the book Now here comes the really exciting part of the book of Zephaniah at least to me very exciting verses 9 through 20 Indicate that the 8070 day of the Lord would be different from any previous day of the Lord because Jesus would be present on to begin the reversal of the old covenant pervasive darkness, apostasy, and discouraging times. The word then, at the beginning of verse nine, the Hebrew word az, the word then means from that time forward and afterwards. Just for defining the term, let me give you one example of its usage. In Leviticus 26, 34 it says, then, that's the Hebrew word az, then the land shall enjoy its Sabbath as long as it lies desolate and you are in your enemy's land. So that then began at a certain time and then lasted for 70 years. Well, this then begins in AD 70. And lasts as long as there are new people who need lips to be purified and new people who have divisions that need to be repaired. So Christ is at the heart of chapter 3, verses 9 through 20, bringing constant reversal. Now, let me go on a bit of a rabbit trail. In my discussions with some of you on the subject of tongues, I have misinterpreted verse 9 as applying to the last day of history. I thought it was in eternity, everybody would miraculously be given a new language with a new vocabulary. And I based that on the King James translation here. Plus, unfortunately, I still had in the back of my mind some of my previous premillennial interpretation of this book. And I'm looking at this, and it just doesn't fit. And I'm studying and studying it this past week, and looking it up in the Hebrew, and I said, oh, man. OK, I'm going to have to give a retraction on Sunday. Had misinterpreted this completely many commentators point out that this really should not ever be translated as language here It's lip not tongue number one, but they point out that the purification here is the same kind of purification Isaiah received when his lips were purified in Isaiah chapter 6 remember the coal from off the altar is dealing with sanctification same kind of purification that Hosea 2 verse 17 promises when God would remove from people's mouths the names of idols and other blasphemies that they held to. They would no longer speak in that way. And so verse 19 is speaking of sanctification of speech, not a miracle of speech. I had misunderstood that. Let me read it to you from the New American Standard, very literal rendering here. For then I will give to the peoples purified lips. That's the literal Hebrew purified lips that all of them may call on the name of the Lord to serve him shoulder to shoulder. So it is speaking of sanctification of speech and sanctification of action. So in that second clause there, where division tends to characterize mankind, Christ's work will cause people to work shoulder to shoulder. So that's the literal Hebrew there. So that's the meaning of verse 9. And that's the end of my retraction of my previous teaching on that verse. Now, if you look at your first linear outline, I'm going to show you all of the things that happened or at least began to happen in 80-70. Verse 9 says that it would result in all nations having purified lips and unified service. Now this restoration doesn't happen all at once as I had originally thought. It's an ongoing restoration that begins then and continues as long as there are new people with lips that need to be purified and new people with shoulders that need to be working shoulder to shoulder till the end of history. Verses 10 through 11 says that it will result in all nations having hearts directed towards God. So this too is a radical change of grace. It transforms self-serving nations into worshiping nations. If you look at verses 12 through 13, it tells us the means by which God will begin this process of reversal in AD 70. He's going to use a faithful remnant of Jews. says, I will leave in your midst a meek and humble people, and they shall trust in the name of the Lord. The remnant of Israel shall do no unrighteousness and speak no lies, nor shall a deceitful tongue be found in their mouth, for they shall feed their flocks and lie down, and no one shall make them afraid. Now, if you look in your marginal notes, you will see probably Revelation 14, verse 5 being referenced. And that's because Revelation 14 verse 5 quotes these verses and applies them to the 144,000 Jews who escaped from Jerusalem to Pella during the Roman War against Jerusalem. Most of the church had been completely wiped out throughout the Roman Empire. during that great tribulation, but God spared the lives of exactly 12,000 from each of 12 tribes of Israel. That's what it's speaking of here, the remnant of Israel. So it totaled 144,000. And in our revelation series, we saw that once the war was finished, those 144,000 became the shock troops to evangelize the nations, to establish new churches, to teach them, to ground them in the faith. And this reference here to feeding, it doesn't say their flocks, the there is in italics. Feeding flocks is probably a reference to feeding spiritual sheep, just like Peter was commanded, feed my sheep. Those 144,000 were said by Revelation 14 to have these characteristics to speak no lies, to have no deceit in their mouths, to be righteous saints, to be utterly fearless. They were to be models for the rest of kingdom time. They were utterly fearless in advancing the gospel. And as a result of their gospel, they introduced the nations once again to the King of Israel. And God formed a new Israel once again. It had been almost wiped out, but he formed a new Israel made up of Jew and Gentile, and Israel who loved God and whom God loved. These are the verses that we began the sermon with. The very Judah and nations that God had cast away will be a Judah and nations that God will draw into his bosom and shower his love upon and delight in. And it deeply moves my heart. When I read this whole book, I can't even begin to communicate the emotional impact this book has had upon me of God loving and moving a sin-cursed and a judgment-cursed world into a world that's filled with Christians who love God, delight in God, and are singing praises to God, and God in turn sings praises over them and loves them and delights in them. It's just an astonishing, astonishing gospel that he is presenting here. And what it does for me, it makes me want to be glad in God and cherish him. I want to love him, and I realize how shallow my love is. When I see the kind of love that I'm commanded to have and the kind of delight and the kind of praise that verse 14 Commands me to have to my God Verse 15 gives me every reason to have that gladness. The Lord has taken away my judgments Okay, praise God. I deserve those judgments, but God has taken them away through Christ now in any case this book shows a linear progress over history from judgment to to a remnant being saved, to the growth of the Church among the nations, to eventually all persecutors being dealt with in verses 18-19. And may God hasten the day when there are no more persecutors on planet earth. But he ends the book in verses 18 through 20 saying that all Jews will be joined with all peoples of the earth after the nation of Israel is brought from captivity, is saved from spiritual captivity, and is joined once again to the church. It'll be a world in which nothing but the church exists among men. There will be one people of God who love him because he first loved them. Of course, we're not there yet, are we? Not by a long shot. And that's where I find Dorsey's chiasm of this book to be very, very helpful. With some help from other scholars, I have tweaked his chiasm, and I've included it in your outlines. This is kind of a thematic way of looking at the book, and I'm not going to go over the chiasm because I think I've dealt with the book adequately, but I do want to look at the heart of the chiasm. If Dorsey is correct, the heart of the book is chapter 2, verses 1 through 3, a call to repentance. Repentance, humbling ourselves before God, calling upon Him in prayer, is the key to this world being turned upside down. It's the key to personal revival, family revival, church revival, national revival, eventually all of the nations of the world being ushered into revival and reformation. Now here's the thing, we don't need to know when God's going to convert the nations. We don't need to know that. All we need to do is use the recipe that God is going to use for converting the nation. Why? Because that recipe he's given for the nations is a recipe that's good for our own personal revival, right? And as we personally repent before the Lord, come before him. Humble ourselves cry out to him and begin to see other individuals doing the same thing Eventually there is going to be a movement that will have cultural lasting change that will happen But we start where we can and I'm going to read those three verses with only just a few concluding thoughts. I First, chapter 2, verses 1 through 2, calls upon a hopelessly lost nation to cry out to God. I think that's significant. A hopeless nation should not make us hopeless. Many times it does. We look at America, we say, oh, I'm just going to give up even thinking about revival in America. A hopeless nation should not make us hopeless. We cannot be hopeless in our attitudes about America or any other nation. If Zephaniah was willing to call the nation of his day to repentance, as bad as that nation was, we should offer that key to our nation. What is the key to turning this world around? It's repentance, isn't it? Since Zephaniah was applying the laws of Deuteronomy to pagan nations, true Genuine repentance is not a pietistic repentance. It is a thorough repentance for having abandoned the laws of Deuteronomy and returning to the laws of Deuteronomy. I'm not going to believe any repentance that's anything shy of that. Okay, that's what we're to call them to, to the law of God, to submitting themselves to God's Lordship, telling the nations to repent, trusting God to give the grace to enable that to happen. Okay, so let's read this. Gather yourselves together, yes, gather together, O undesirable nation, before the decree is issued or the day passes like chaff, before the Lord's fierce anger comes upon you, before the day of the Lord's anger comes upon you. Just two things to notice here. It really doesn't matter that the nation of Israel was utterly undesirable to God. We're all undesirable to God, right? Until God puts Christ in us and beautifies us with the Spirit. The key is to repent and to turn to Jesus. That's what makes anyone beautiful. Now, there's one thing that is irresistible to God, and I say that term lightly because it seems almost blasphemous, but it is a biblical concept because God is the one who puts what is irresistible to Him into us, right? But the one thing that makes us irresistible to Him, according to the Scripture, is humble repentance. And you see this throughout the scripture. Psalm 51 verse 17 says, the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart. These, O God, you will not despise. It is impossible for God to despise a broken and a contrite heart because humility is a beautiful gift of his grace, and he loves what his grace produces. Humble repentance makes you irresistible to God because it's a God-given grace that he delights in. But then in verse 3, God focuses upon the righteous remnant within a nation. So even if a nation refuses to repent, which is what happened back then, you start with where you are. At least the remnant can do something. He says, seek the Lord, O you meek of the earth. You who have upheld his justice, seek righteousness, seek humility. It may be you will be hidden in the day of the Lord's anger. Zephaniah means hidden by Yehovah. If you were meek, God sings over you, finds great delight in you, showers you with his love, hides you under the shadow of his wings. And I know exactly what Satan is going to do. He's going to make you ignore everything I've said so far. He said, yeah, but you are so messed up. You are so unhumbled. You are not meek enough yet. You got to be more meek before God's even going to listen to you. No, this verse is still encouraging for you. Even if you say, I'm utterly unmeek, and I still am dominated by sin, what does he say here? He didn't say, have meekness. Have. He says, seek. If you're seeking righteousness, if you're seeking the kingdom, if you're seeking humility, it implies you don't have it right now, right? This is so encouraging. It's the seeking. We're never going to be fully meek, fully righteous, but it's the seeking that brings to our lives the things God considers beautiful because they come from Christ. So, what we need to do when Satan tries to tempt us to be discouraged, oh, you are so unmeek, say, Lord, I seek meekness from you. I want to be a delight to you, and so give me more of Christ. Give me more humility. Give me more of your righteousness. Let me read you from Colossians 3. It says, if then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things of the earth, for you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory. Don't worry about the fact that you haven't found everything in righteousness. You haven't found all the humility and the meekness that you wish that you had. If you are seeking those things which are above, your life is hidden with Christ. in God, and you can be safe with God in the storms. Chapter 3, verse 12, sums up the kind of people God sings over and delights in. They are products of His grace. He says, I will leave in your midst a meek and humble people, and they shall trust in the name of the Lord. That's it, brothers and sisters. Don't trust in your goodness. Trust in the Lord and seek what you need from Him. Don't trust in your self-made worthiness. It is Christ's worthiness in you that makes you worthy of God singing over you. Trust in the Lord and may the God of Zephaniah hide you in the secret place of His pavilion. Amen. Father, thank you that in the midst of darkness, we can have light. Thank you for giving such bold, black picture of the darkness of our hearts apart from Your grace in the first two and a half chapters of Zephaniah. Because, Father, it makes us realize that it is Your grace alone that makes us fit to come to You. It is Your grace alone that enables us to seek You. It is Your grace alone that can achieve anything, since the thoughts and the intents of our hearts from our youth are wickedness apart from grace. And so, Father, we as a people seek humility. We seek righteousness. We seek your kingdom. We want more and more of your presence in our lives. Fill us with your Spirit and enable us, Father, to walk in terms of the realities of heaven. It is heaven that we want to see as a paradigm for our lives, not what's around us. It is heaven that we want to recognize as what is possible upon earth. Too often, Father, our imaginations and our faith is clouded by what is possible with man. But with you, there is nothing that is impossible. So help us to have a faith that clings to your throne and realizes that your throne is mightier than the nations of this world. Father, you can take down all of these nations and their pride and their arrogance with a simple virus. You could take down the pride of the nations economically. There's so many ways you could do so. But Father, in the meantime, I pray that you would hide your humble ones who seek for you and your kingdom, that you would hide them in the secret place under the shadow of your wings. Bless this your people, Father, with a faith that seeks you evermore. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.