Let me invite you to open your Bibles one last time to the book of Zephaniah. Zephaniah chapter 3, a book which you're all experts now at finding in your Bibles. It's the fourth to last book in the Old Testament, so if you're still struggling, find the New Testament, book of Matthew, and go to the left a few pages and you will find Zephaniah. Today we will conclude our study of this little prophetic book by looking at Zephaniah and chapter 3. I wanna begin our time by reading from God's word. I'll read the entire passage that we'll look at this morning. It's Zephaniah chapter three, beginning in verse nine, going down to verse 20 at the end of the chapter. So join with me as I read from God's word. Look down at your Bibles. It's Zephaniah chapter three, beginning in verse nine. Let's read from God's word. At that time, I will change the speech of the peoples to a pure speech, that all of them may call upon the name of Yahweh and serve him with one accord. From beyond the rivers of Cush, my worshipers, the daughters of my dispersed ones, shall bring my offering. On that day, you shall not be put to shame because of the deeds by which you have belled against me, for then I will remove from your midst your proudly exalted ones, and you shall no longer be haughty in my holy mountain. But I will leave in your midst a people humble and lowly. They shall seek refuge in the name of Yahweh, and those who are left in Israel, they shall do no injustice and speak no lies, nor shall there be found in their mouth a deceitful tongue. For they shall graze and lie down, and none shall make them afraid. Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion. Shout, O Israel. Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem. For Yahweh has taken away the judgments against you. He has cleared away your enemies. The King of Israel, Yahweh, is in your midst. You shall never again fear evil. On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem, fear not, O Zion, let not your hands grow weak. Yahweh, your God, is in your midst, a mighty one who will save. He will rejoice over you with gladness. He will quiet you by his love. He will exalt over you with loud singing. I will gather those of you who mourn for the festival so that you will no longer suffer reproach. Behold at that time I will deal with all your oppressors and I will save the lame and gather the outcast and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth. that time I will bring you in at that time when I gather you together for I will make you renowned and praised among all the peoples of the earth when I restore your fortunes before your eyes says Yahweh this is the Word of God the world is full of enjoyment Live in a world in which parents enjoy their children, and children enjoy their friends. Athletes enjoy their competition, and spectators enjoy the spectacle. Musicians enjoy composing beautiful music. Listeners enjoy the sound of it. Chefs enjoy creating dishes and their patrons enjoy the taste. God made his world to be a world full of enjoyment and the scriptures reveal that this is because God himself is a fountain of goodness and love and joy. God is himself the happiest being in the universe. He is an infinite, overflowing, never ceasing fountain of joy. What we get in Zephaniah chapter three At the end of this book, we've been studying for the last few weeks, is a window to gaze in at something of what God himself enjoys. The whole book of Zephaniah, we've said, is a summary of the prophetic message of the scriptures. In fact, that's why it's placed where it is in our canon of scripture. It's the ninth of the 12 minor prophets. It's the last of the pre-exilic prophets, not because it was written last, but because it's a summary of the prophetic message. And as we have walked through the first two chapters, we have seen Zephaniah paint for us a picture of God's holiness, sovereignty, and fierce judgment that is so weighty it's hard to even speak. But what we have heard slowly building in the background is a whisper growing and growing. We've seen a dawn that's beginning to break and in chapter three it bursts forth in full strength. This great truth that Zephaniah wants to communicate to us that through God's judgment he intends to redeem for himself a people from all the nations of the earth and that redemption will bring him great, great joy. we discover in the conclusion of Zephaniah's little prophetic book that the God that he worships, the God that he reveals to us is a God of infinite joy. And in Zephaniah 3, what we're given is a window into three great truths about God's own joy. What we see in Zephaniah 3 are three things that God himself enjoys. That's the heading I want to use to study this chapter of Scripture, three things that God enjoys. And we begin to see God's enjoyment from the very beginning in verse 9. and following down to verse 13, this first little section that asserts quite emphatically that God enjoys saving his people. God enjoys saving his people. But before we even begin to study this section, I think it's worth asking this rhetorical question that suggests itself. As soon as we say God saves, we should ask, what does he save from? He enjoys saving his people from what? And the question is, Without any confusion in the book of Zephaniah, Zephaniah clearly communicates to us that God saves his people from his own wrath. He saves his people from his own divine judgment. If you go back up to the beginning of this little book with me for a moment, we'll recall a few of the things we have seen as we studied the first two chapters of Zephaniah. The whole book begins with this emphatic declaration in verse two where God says, I will utterly sweep away everything from the face of the earth, declares Yahweh, I will sweep away Man and beast, I'll sweep away the birds of the heavens and the fish of the sea. God announces He's going to bring divine judgment on the entire creation. And that great judgment day is depicted for us in verse 15. It says it's a day of wrath, 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 blasts and battle cry. It's a day of overwhelming weighty reality when God will bring righteous judgment upon the entire earth. It's summarized in verse 18 that says, 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. That is the entire earth and all of its inhabitants will be held accountable to this fixed day when God will judge the entire creation in righteousness. That's worth remembering when we come to the end of the book, which is going to depict for us God's joy in salvation, because if you don't grasp the weight of God's judgment, you won't grasp the weight of the joy in salvation that's depicted for us in Zephaniah 3. If you don't realize how real, how tremendous, how overwhelming is God's judgment against you, you won't understand how real, how overwhelming, how incomprehensible is God's love for you. We just got done singing. How sweet the sound of saving grace! But if you don't understand that that grace saved you from God's own wrath, you can't sing that song rightly! At best, maybe you would say, mediocre grace, with a kind of, ah, take it or leave it sound that saved a pretty upstanding guy like me. That doesn't produce deep, abounding, everlasting joy, not the kind of joy that's depicted in Zephaniah 3. This kind of joy only comes to those who realize the reality that they stand before the judgment of God and deserve it for their sins, for their perversions, for their, ignoring God, rebelling against God, perverting the good things of God. We deserve the judgment of God and there is nowhere that we can possibly turn except to the holy God himself. which is exactly where we are directed in the book of Zephaniah. Chapter two, verse three says, seek the Lord, perhaps you may be hidden on the day of the anger of the Lord. The only one who can preserve you, protect you, hide you from this day of God's wrath is God himself. Our only hope is the holy God himself, that he would do something to intervene and save us from his own wrath. chapter 3 comes in and announces with trumpet calls that that's exactly what God has done as you read chapter 3 verse 9 through verse 20 closely you discover 19 verbs 19 Describing to us God's action to save his people, God's action to intervene to save his people from their sins and from the wrath those sins deserve. 19 commitments from God to his people, 19 ways that God reveals his joy in saving his people from his own judgment. What we find in Zephaniah chapter 3 is a God of infinite holiness and infinite joy in saving his people from his own divine wrath. The first place we see that is in verses 9 through 13 that describe this basic truth that God in joy is saving his people. I want to begin looking at these verses. The first thing that we see in verses 9 and 10 is this great truth that God Enjoy saving his people and that people is going to be a people from every nation of the earth God is going to save a people from every nation of the earth for himself. Just look at verse 9 Let's look at verse 9 and 10 And just read them together verse 9 says at that time I'll change the speech of the peoples to a pure speech this word for pure is the idea of distinct of clear not confused and that all of them may call upon the name of Yahweh and serve him with one accord. And from beyond the rivers of Cush, and Cush we discovered last week is this region south of Egypt that stands in the prophetic text often to represent the far-flung nations of the earth, far away from Israel. And so it is here, it's the people who are far away, the corners of the earth, God says, my worshipers, the daughters of my dispersed ones, so those far-dispersed nations from all the corners of the earth will bring my offering. So here's the picture. There's dispersed peoples all over the earth. They don't speak clearly. They don't worship Yahweh. They don't desire His name. God's going to change that. He's going to bring them together with one speech to worship one God shoulder to shoulder forever. If you're listening to verses 9 and 10 closely, you will hear distantly in the background distinct echoes of the Tower of Babel. Recall for a second the story in Genesis chapter 11 of the Tower of Babel. What does that story tell us? It says that at that time there was one speech for the people of the earth and with their one speech they worked with one accord to build a city and at the heart of that city a tower that would reach up into heaven so they could make a name a name for themselves and in response to that action God comes down and confuses their language and disperses them to the corners of the earth and And what Zephaniah is doing, he's picking up that exact language and reversing it. And saying that in this day, that God's desire, what God will enjoy doing is gathering those dispersed ones and undoing their rebellion. So now they will work with one accord, but not to make a name for themselves, but to call upon the name of the Lord and to serve Him with one accord. God is going to undo the Tower of Babel and gather for himself a people from every nation. That's what he's going to enjoy. This is everywhere in the Bible. It's God's plan from beginning to end and it's pictured for us so transparently in the book of Revelation where we have this heavenly scene in Revelation chapter 7 where John looks and behold great multitude that no one could number from every nation from all tribes and peoples and languages standing with us before the throne and the Lamb clothed in white robes with palm branches in their hands and crying with a loud voice salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb And then as the angel describes to John what's happening in the scene, the angel says, these are before the throne of God, and they serve him day and night in his temple, and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence. This is what God enjoys, gathering for himself a people from every nation of the earth. God enjoys saving his universal people. And what we get in the rest of this little section, verses 11 through 13, is just a series of descriptions to highlight this reality that God is the one who does this salvation. That God is active from beginning to end to secure, to achieve, to win this salvation for his people. I just wanna look at verses 11 through 13 fairly briefly and notice three actions that God takes to redeem his people. Notice verse 11, it says, on that day you shall not be put to shame, because of the deeds by which you've rebelled against me. So you won't be shamed, neither subjectively nor objectively, because, verse 15, God's taken away the judgments that are against you. That is, God's going to intervene in order to make a way to remove his people's sins and the judgment they consequently deserve for them. He's going to remove their subjective shame and guilt because of the ways they have rebelled against God. God's going to forgive them and purify them. God's going to forgive his people. And then secondly, he's going to make a distinction between his people. That is, he won't miss any of them. He's gonna make sure every single one of his people is gathered, is what we see at the end of verse 11. For then I'll remove from your midst your proudly exultant ones, and you shall no longer be haughty in my holy mountain. That proudly exultant attitude that boasts in oneself and not in God reminds us of what we saw in chapter one, verse 12, where those say, God says, I'll punish those who are complacent, who say in their hearts, Yahweh will not do good, nor will he do ill. Or those in verse 18, who trust in their silver and their gold, which God says will not be able to deliver them. God will remove every heart that trusts in man, that trusts in the materials, and not in God. And instead, verse 12, I will leave in your midst a people humble and lowly, they shall seek refuge in the name of Yahweh." That's the distinction that he will make. He will make sure that every single one of his people has a heart that's humble and lowly and trusts in Yahweh alone, not in himself. And every single one of those people will be gathered. And look at the way they'll live their life in verse 13. Those who are left in Israel shall do no injustice and speak no lies, nor shall there be found in their mouth a deceitful tongue. They'll be purified. They'll be renewed in their spirit. That's the teaching all through the scriptures. From beginning to end. Deuteronomy chapter 30 promises a day when God was going to circumcise the heart of his people. Ezekiel chapter 36 describes a day in which God would remove the heart of stone and in its place give his people a heart of flesh that would love God. He put his own spirit into them so that they would walk in his commandments and love him. Or as Jesus simply says, everyone in the kingdom of God has been born again. This is a people purified by a supernatural act of God to change their very nature, to change their desires so that they see Christ and are humble and lowly before Him and trust in Him alone and desire what He desires and love what He loves. This is a purified, transformed, redeemed people. None of them are missing. It's just a fact of my life as a youth pastor that I do a lot of roll calls. So we take your kids on trips. Went to King's Dominion recently. We had about 120 cats disguised as little teenagers. And we shepherded them all. None of them got lost. And one of the reasons that's the case is that we do roll call. Get on the bus and we do roll call. And so far so good. We haven't lost any kids yet. Occasionally though, it's happened once or twice, we get on the bus, on the way there, not on the way back, but on the way there, and do roll call, and I'll notice that we have some additional kids, and I will look at them and say, who are you and how did you get here? This text teaches that there's no such thing in the roll call in heaven. There's no missing names. There's no additional names because there's only one kind of person that's in heaven. It's the person that God chose before the foundation of the world. He sought them out and he achieved their salvation from beginning to end. He acted on their behalf. to forgive their sins, to change their hearts, to purify them, to glorify them, to justify, regenerate, sanctify and glorify, beginning to end. Your salvation is 100% the work of God, and that's because God enjoys saving His people. It's not dependent on you, it's dependent on God who wills, and He wills to redeem a people for Himself from all the nations. God enjoys saving His people. Not only does he enjoy saving his people, but as we read the rest of the text, what we discover is God enjoys satisfying the people that he saves. I mean, that's even told to us at the end of verse 13, that when God saves his people, they'll graze and lie down and none shall make them afraid. That's just classic Old Testament language to describe secure, enjoyable, prosperous, luxuriant living conditions. That's the kind of life that God will provide for his people. And that's what he calls on his people to recognize in verse 14. You'll notice verse 14 is really the only imperative in the text. The only command is in verse 14 where God turns from describing his action to save his people to addressing his people specifically in verse 14 where he says, Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion! Shout, Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem! The one command is to rejoice in God, to be ecstatically, overwhelmingly, exuberantly happy in God. You'll notice, if you're looking at verse 14 fairly closely, that there's a word in here that we've seen before. Right in the middle of verse 14, it says, rejoice and exult. And you might scratch your head and say, that sounds familiar. I think I've seen something about exulting in this text before. And you have, it's in verse 11. where in the middle of verse 11, God says, I will remove from your midst your exultant ones. And so you should ask, okay, does God want me to exult or not? I mean, in verse 12, where God describes his people, he describes them as humble and lowly. So does God want a humble, lowly people or an exultant people? Which is it? And the answer is yes. But the kind of exalting is what matters. What matters is the object of your exaltation. Imagine with me for a moment a scene that's familiar to me and probably to many of you, a kid's soccer game. We've got two soccer-playing little girls, and when we go to watch their games, it looks like a regular five, six, seven-year-old game. They kick the ball a little bit, they kick each other a little bit, they pick some flowers, they eat some goldfish, they drink their juice boxes. It's great! Based on the nature of it, I mean, the people who are there love it, they really enjoy it, but it's only their parents that are there watching them, cheering them on. So imagine I go to one of my daughter's soccer games, blue team against the green team, a great regional rivalry. And I go to support the blue team because that's the team that my daughters play on. And I get there and I hear, out of my incredible sensory perception, I hear someone exulting loudly and shouting the names of the kids and cheering them on. And I turn and there's a man just out of his mind with excitement, face paint, shirt off, chest paint, shouting, screaming. That'd probably freak you out a little bit. So I walk over to this man, and I ask him, hey man, what's going on? Who's your kid? Maybe that's what I would ask him. Which one is your kid? And suppose he says to me, oh, I don't have a kid on this team. I just love the blue team. Go Sophia, go Zoe! I don't know what you would do, but I would at least have a chit-chat, if not call the police. That's weird. The problem is not that he's excited about something. It's perfectly appropriate to be excited about many things in life, but it's weird to be excited about that. His exalting is, well, it's entirely out of whack. It's distorted, fundamentally distorted. The scriptures suggest to us, the scriptures clearly teach us that all human hearts are prone towards exalting in the wrong things. Our desires are not too weak, they're just distorted. Excuse me, they're not too strong. Our problem is not that we exalt too much, our problem is that we exalt in the wrong things. Our exaltations, our joys, our excitements are distorted. We put them on the wrong objects. He who exalts in man or material things and not in God has distorted joy. And what the scripture promises is that when God redeems his people, he is going to act in such a way to renew their affections, to come into your heart and actually change the nature of your desires so that you stop loving the distorted things of the world and you love Christ and you love God and you see the glory of God and you exult in him. The problem's not too much exulting, it's that it's in the wrong direction. And what God commands His people in verse 14 is to sing loud, exult, rejoice with all your heart in God. because there is no end to the basis upon which you can rejoice in God if He is the object of your joy. Well, that's exactly what we see in verse 15. Verse 15, after calling us to rejoice with all of our hearts, verse 15 gives us three grounds for our exaltation, three reasons to rejoice in God. I wanna look at this verse with you for a moment. If you look at verse 15, we see these three reasons. The first is, Yahweh has taken away the judgments against you. Yahweh has taken away the judgments against you and that's a statement in the Old Testament that's at the heart of the New Testament gospel. That God has judgment against you, a holy decree that you have broken his law and his judgment will fall upon you and this same God has acted in such a way so as to come into the world and bear that judgment on your behalf as your substitute so that he can remove your sins as far as the east is from the west and declare there is no condemnation for you because you are in Christ Jesus. God removed your judgments because he absorbed them himself on the cross. And this text is teaching us that yes, every Christian who comes to grips with the reality that by faith in Christ, God removes my judgment and promises me eternal life. Jesus says, whoever hears my word and believes me does not come into judgment but is passed from death to life. When you grasp the reality that through Christ, death and resurrection, God removes your judgments. Your heart will swell with joy. The reality that this God who should judge you will instead be judged for you so that he can bring you to himself will swell your heart with joy. This text is pointing us to something even better. Right now, we grasp this truth that God has justified us and removed our judgments. We grasp it in part. We see as though through a glass dimly. In this day, we'll see face to face. And when you see this God face to face, and you come to an infinitely greater realization of all that he has done to remove your judgments, your heart will swell with rejoicing, exulting, shouting, overwhelming joy. But you know, that's not all God says in verse 15. In fact, he promises even more. Because there is a sense in which if you understand this reality that God takes away the judgment of his people by enduring it in their place, and he offers it as a free gift through faith, there is a question, well what if somehow this incredible thing that God does for his people is lost? What if they blow it? And God says in the middle of verse 15, that can't happen. Middle of verse 15, the second thing he does for his people, he has cleared away your enemies. Cleared away your enemies. Nothing will intrude on this joy. In fact, this is a really interesting little phrase that in the Hebrew, it's singular. It's cleared away your singular enemy. And there's great discussion in all the commentaries about which particular enemy is this that God's acting to remove. And I think the best answer is just yes. enemy that would intervene that would get in the way between you and your enjoyment of God forever God will remove so what are those enemies well John the Apostle John tells us in the letter 1st John chapter 2 we have a threefold enemy the world the flesh and the devil system of temptations around us of people who would oppress us who would take us away from loving God and temptations that would lure us away, but those temptations really only affect us because we have a heart that, as we know, is prone to wander. God will remove those in this day. He will purify you so that there will be nothing in your heart that does not love Christ. And that third enemy, the world, the flesh, and the devil will have nothing to bring against you. There'll be no charge you can bring against God's elect. As Paul says, who will bring a charge against God's elect if Christ Jesus is he who died, also who is raised, who is at the right hand of God? So who can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus? Tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, or sword? No, through all these things we overwhelmingly conquer because in that day God will clear away your enemy. Nothing will remove you from this love forever. Then that begs a final question. God removes judgment, nothing can undo that, and brings us into heaven. Do you know that it would be far beyond anything we ever could have imagined for God to then get us into heaven and say, oh you're here, I mean, given what I had to work with, this isn't too bad. Why don't you go over there? I have prepared for you a place for you. It's far away from me. And you can stay there till your heart's content. That would be so much more than we deserve. But the scripture emphatically says that's not the way God treats his people. The end of verse 15 says, the king of Israel, Yahweh, is in your midst. When God brings His people to Himself, He wants to be near them. He wants to gather them. He wants to explode with joy over them. He wants to fill their hearts with infinite joy and pleasure forevermore. This God delights in bringing His people near This God is not far, He is not distant, He is in unmediated, unmitigated glory, revealing Himself, disclosing all of His attributes of love and joy. All of His triune perfections are in full display, satisfying the hearts of His people in unmitigated waves of joy and grace after grace after grace. Forever God gathers His people and forever the King of Israel will be in the midst of His people. That's the God who not only enjoys saving, but satisfying them forever. Which all culminates with this incredible reality. All of this text and all of human history, you could say, is building towards this reality that then breaks forward for us in verse 17. That God enjoys saving His people, satisfying His people. And now we even see God enjoys singing over His people. As we get to verse 17, this is an absolutely incredible verse. Verse 17 is God's self-disclosure. It's self-revelation of His own disposition towards His people. How does God feel about His people? Verse 17 tells us how He feels about His people. And he reveals his own disposition towards his own in four parts. I wanna look at verse 17. Look down at your Bibles. Verse 17 says, Yahweh your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save. He will rejoice over you with gladness. He will quiet you by his love. He will exult over you with loud singing. Jesus, man, you got a nice voice. that there's gonna be a day in which our hearts will explode with everlasting, unending joy when we hear the voice of God singing over us. The first thing God says in verse 17 is that he's in your midst. It's repeated, it's from verse 15 and it goes again in verse 17. Yahweh your God is in your midst, which is the undoing of the whole story of the Bible, the whole problem with the human race, shown to us in Genesis chapter three. human race rebelled against God and as a consequence for their sin are cast out of the Garden of Eden. Because of their sin they cannot be in the presence of a holy God. God redeems the people Israel to begin working his work of redemption in the world and he dwells with them in a special way in a temple but even in that temple only the priest can go in and only to offer sacrifices and in the holy of holy places where God's presence especially made known only the high priest and only once a year and only with blood And even then, that people was expelled out of the promised land because of the rebellion, because of their sin. They cannot be in the midst of God, but this is a day in which God will remove every hint of sin, every tarnish of our character, every blemish of our hearts. He will purify and sanctify a people and bring us infinitely near. And the way that God is described in verse 17 is worth noting as well. He's a mighty one who will save. A mighty warrior is the way some translations would render it. A warrior who has just finished trampling all the armies of the earth. And now this absolutely overwhelming, infinite, incomprehensible, powerful being does not look down his nose and say, Well, I guess you can be around me. But instead stoops down and gathers these people near and wants to be with his people. And the way he responds in verse 17 as he gathers his people is rejoicing with gladness. He will rejoice over you with gladness. Which sounds so repetitive in English, it's perfect Hebrew poetry to express this emphatic joy that God has in delighting in his redeemed people. If you chase this language around the Bible, you'll find that it's everywhere. The Bible is loaded with the language of rejoicing. Often it's described, it's used rather, to describe God's people's joy in Him. For example, Psalm in chapter 68 says, the righteous shall be glad, they shall exult before God, they shall be jubilant with joy. God's people are going to be so joyful in His presence. And in that day when God redeems His people and climaxes all of human history, Isaiah actually says that the whole earth The new created world will sing out and shout with great joy over what God has done. Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth. Break forth, O mountains, into singing, for Yahweh has comforted his people and will have compassion on his afflicted. So you have this threefold reality, that God's people are singing with joy, the whole creations, as it were, are resounding with ecstatic gladness, and God himself is in their midst rejoicing with great gladness. This is absolutely overwhelming, the chorus is deafening and then verse 17 pivots and says, and he will quiet you by his love, which conjures up an entirely different picture altogether. It's not only public proclamation, it's not only exuberant gladness, it's also personal intimacy. to quiet you by his love. It's the language of a mother comforting her distressed child. It's a stage of life that we're in that's common for me to see my wife comforting one of our distressed children. That kind of intimacy and love that's unique between a mother and a child is the kind of language God uses to describe the way he will intimately, individually comfort every one of his people forever. Only an infinite God can comfort every one of his redeemed people. It's also not too uncommon for me to see my wife comfort one of our children, put them in bed, and they're just, you know, little baby knocked out. And instead of just leaving, she kind of lingers and just gazes at them, heart swelling with joy. And sometimes you will hear her say something like, I can't take it anymore! And in fact, there's something of that kind of human experience that's expressed in verse 17 to describe the way God feels of his people. Comforts them with his love. And then verse 17, almost as though God says, I can't take it anymore. He'll exult over you with loud singing. He can't contain his infinite joy in the people he's redeemed with his own blood. God delights in his people. can't contain his delight, must shout his delight, must disclose all of his revelation of his glory to the people that he redeemed with his own son. This is a people that will experience infinite, ecstatic, never-ending joy in God forever. That's what verse 17 is all about. And just in case you might get confused and think, Zephaniah 3.17 is a cool verse, but it's kind of a blip on the Bible radar that's mostly doom and gloom, right? Let me read you just a couple verses. This language of God delighting in his people is everywhere in the Bible. Let me just read you a few verses. Isaiah chapter 62, as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you. Isaiah 65, I will rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in my people. Deuteronomy chapter 30, Yahweh will take delight in prospering you. Or Jeremiah 32, where Yahweh says, I'll rejoice in doing them good. I will plant them in this land in faithfulness with all my heart and with all my soul. God is going to rejoice over his people and there is going to be a day when his people see it in full and they will shout back, whom have we in heaven but you? And there is nothing that we desire but you. An ever-flowing, never-ending chorus of joy from God to his people and back. And of course the person who reveals this to us most fully is Jesus himself, who is constantly talking about God's love for his people. The whole of Luke chapter 15 is just a discourse on God's infinite joy in redeeming his people. So Jesus tells story after story in Luke 15. Remember this chapter. First he tells the story of a shepherd who loses a sheep, who goes to find it, and when he finds it, he gathers everyone he can and he says, rejoice with me, I have found my sheep. Then he tells the story of a woman who's lost a coin and turns her house upside down to find it, and when she finds it, she gathers everyone she can and says, rejoice with me, I found my lost coin. And then Jesus tells, of course, the parable of the prodigal son, who when that son comes back, the father is ecstatic. He says, bring quickly the best robe, put it on him, put a ring on his hand, shoes on his feet, bring the fattened calf and kill it and let us eat and celebrate, my son has come home. Have you noticed? And in the story of the prodigal son, the son is really happy to be home, but the father is even more happy. The father is even more joyful. The scripture teaches that you will experience joy you cannot fathom in the presence of God, but God will experience even more joy in your salvation. God enjoys your salvation even more than you do. His heart's bigger than yours. God delights in his people. And of course, Jesus reveals the fullness, the extent to which God loves his people most fully, not just in his stories about God's love, but in his actions to reveal God's love. His action, not just to reveal it, but to secure the salvation that God desires for his people. See, truth is, you cannot have a singing God who's singing over redeemed sinners unless you have a screaming God who's screaming out on the cross, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? On the cross you see the depths of God's love, that this God who is the fullness of the radiance of the glory of God is willing to empty himself by taking on human form and becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. He will, out of the riches of grace and mercy, endure the wrath that we deserve so he can scoop us up from hell and present us to the Father who will sing over us forever and ever and ever. eternal everlasting enjoyment of God in his people, his glory reflected in his people. What you get in the last three verses to conclude this little prophetic book is just a final description of that joy that God's people will share with him forever. Let's just run through these last three verses And what you see are three ways that God describes the kind of joy his people will experience with him. First, in verse 18, you could say it's an undistracted enjoyment. Verse 18 says, I will gather those of you who mourn for the festival, so that you will no longer suffer reproach, and behold, at that time I'll deal with all your oppressors. So what's happening is, in verse 18, God's removing the people who would claim to love Yahweh, take the name of God upon themselves, but they mourn for the festival. That is, they don't rejoice in God. They don't love God. They don't delight in him. They don't love Christ. And God will remove them. And then in verse 19, I'll deal with your oppressors. That's the people outside of the people of God who oppress the people of God. They'll be removed and there'll be nothing left to distract the people of God from unmitigated enjoyment of God. Finally, in verse 19, God says it'll be an inescapable enjoyment where he says, I'll save the lame and gather the outcast. So whether by your own sin or whether by distractions from outside, the one thing that could keep you away from God is being gone, outcast, lame, feeble. God says in that day, absolutely no way that my people will escape enjoying me forever, for I will redeem them and purify them and bring them to me so they will enjoy an undistracted, inescapable enjoyment forever. The last thing in this text. is that this incredible exuberant joy that God describes in his own singing over his people will become a mutual joy between God and his people, and that's described at the very last verse. Notice the end of verse 19. God says, I'll change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth. Catch that little phrase, praise and renown. And at that time, verse 20, I'll bring you in at that time when I gather you together, for I'll make you renowned and praised. There it is again. Among all the peoples of the earth, when I restore your fortunes before your eyes, says Yahweh. That renowned and praised. The word renowned in Hebrew is a name. God says, I'm gonna make my people into a name. That renown is a good translation, but it misses a connection with other biblical texts. It's a refrain in the scriptures that God has a name and praise, and it's emphatic in the scriptures that God does not share his name and praise. You see this summed up in texts like Isaiah 42, where God says, I am Yahweh, that is my name, my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols. But now this text says the end of history is that God is going to work a redemption and the culmination of that redemption is that he will gather his exiled people, he'll gather his scattered people together and he will bestow upon them a name and a praise they will share in the very glory of God forever. This is where the scripture is headed, is in his people's mutual enjoyment of the full disclosure of his glory. All that is exclusively God's becomes the property of his people as they share in his glory. This is the final text that we see in Revelation chapter 22. culmination of God's working in history is that there'll be a day when no longer there's anything accursed but the throne of God and the lamb will be in it and his servants will worship him they will see his face and his name will be on their foreheads and night will be no more they will need no lamp or light or Sun for the Lord God will be their light and they will reign forever and ever God's covenant people sharing his glory forever and ever. That's the destiny of all of God's redeemed. What you have in Zephaniah chapter three is just a picture of what God wants to communicate to his people about his love for them. This is a love that will endure any reproach, overcome any resistance, withhold nothing of his own infinite resources to create an unending, reciprocal, escalating, reverberating explosion of joy between God and his people forever. There's nothing that you can do to earn it. There's nothing that you can do to contribute to it. You can recognize the reality and before the judgment of God and God is offering salvation through His Son and to embrace Christ. Seek the Lord and you may be hidden in the time of judgment. And in fact, find out on the back end of the day of judgment, what is waiting for you is a place of no condemnation, but ever unending, increasing, infinite joy forever. God's one command to his people in this text is in verse 14. Rejoice and exalt with all your heart. Christian God's word to you in Zephaniah is to behold your God, to rest and rejoice in him. He is worthy of all of this. Father, we worship you because of who you are and what you have done. And as we hold something of the incredible nature of who you are in this book. We ask that you would give your spirit to us so that we would be able to perceive spiritual truths. Spiritual truths are perceived by those who are spiritual. Lord, we need you for this. Lord, we ask that you would open the eyes of our heart to gaze in the glory of Christ, the glory of the Father, the glory of the Spirit. In seeing you that you would conform us to yourself You conform us to the likeness of Christ that we would love you as you deserve We would flee from sin and cling to you and Lord that we would experience something of the height and depth and breadth the love of God We pray this in Jesus name. Amen And now, for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson. Thank you for joining us today. If you're in the Washington, D.C. area, I would love to see you at Emanuel Bible Church. Our service times and church information are on our website at ibc.church. For more information about the Master's Seminary and their Washington, D.C. location, go to tms.edu. I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel of Jesus Christ with boldness. May the Lord bless you.