There is a low-key debate about the television show Ted Lasso over which season is best. There's only been two seasons, so some people think season one is better, some people think season two is better. And I have an opinion on that, but what I find interesting about the two seasons is that each of them has a different villain in them. The first season, the villain is Jamie Tartt, one of the soccer players. The second season is, I'm sorry if I'm ruining this, but it's Nate, Nate the Great, the equipment manager. And what makes them both villains is the same thing. It's their pride. And they have interesting, different and opposite trajectories. Jamie starts out prideful, but becomes humble, is humbled. Whereas Nate starts out humble, but becomes entitled and arrogant. And I think it's pretty universal to see that as a key characteristic of a villain, is pride, right? None of us likes arrogant pride when we see it in other people. But it's often a lot harder to see it in ourselves, isn't it? When I was in college, I worked at the game room at the university student center, and that meant I played a lot of pool. And one day, there was a guy that came in, and he was dressed kind of shabbily, and he was just by himself, so he asked me if I wanted to play a couple games of pool, and I said, sure. And so he racked the balls, and I broke. And I immediately made three balls off the break. I was kind of, you know, doing the head strut. I'm like, I'm the pool guy around here. But then I missed the next shot. And then it was his turn. And he had not missed a shot for about two games. just running shot after shot, make after make. And I quickly realized I am not as good as I think I am. Well, in Zephaniah 2, we see God call out pride. And he calls out some of the most notorious villains of the Old Testament. And he calls them out for what they have done to his people, Israel, and tells them about how they are going to get what they deserve. Now, last week we talked about this concept of the day of the Lord, which is so prominent in the book of Zephaniah, which we're studying this whole month. And we saw how the day of the Lord for Zephaniah's audience was, first and foremost, an upcoming invasion by the Babylonian army and the subsequent exile to Babylon. But we also saw how the day of the Lord is also would have been future for them. And in one sense, it was a day of judgment when Christ died for our sins. But there is also a future day of the Lord. for us, in which the Lord will come back. Jesus will return and judge the living and the dead. And Zephaniah 2, as we get into this chapter, is now a further description of what will happen on this day of the Lord, and how God will not just bring judgment on His covenant people, as He talked about in chapter 1, but also judge the nations. And so, if you are able, would you please stand as we read Zephaniah chapter two, starting in verse three. Seek the Lord, all you humble of the land, who do his just commands. Seek righteousness, seek humility. Perhaps you may be hidden on the day of the anger of the Lord. For Gaza shall be deserted, and Ashkelon shall become a desolation. Ashdod's people shall be driven out at noon, and Ekron shall be uprooted. Woe to you, inhabitants of the seacoast, you nation of the Cherethites. The word of the Lord is against you, O Canaan, land of the Philistines, and I will destroy you until no inhabitant is left. And you, O seacoast, shall be pastures, with meadows for shepherds and folds for flocks. The seacoast shall become the possession of the remnant of the house of Judah, on which they shall graze. And in the houses of Ashkelon they shall lie down at evening. For the Lord their God will be mindful of them and restore their fortunes. I've heard the taunts of Moab, the revilings of the Ammonites, how they have taunted my people and made boasts against their territory. Therefore, as I lives declares the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Moab shall become like Sodom and the Ammonites like Gomorrah, a land possessed by nettles and salt pits and a waste forever. The remnant of my people shall plunder them. The survivors of my nation shall possess them. This shall be their lot in return for their pride because they taunted and boasted against the people of the Lord of hosts. The Lord will be awesome against them, for he will famish all the gods of the earth, and to him shall bow down each in its place all the lands of the nations. You also, O Cushites, shall be slain by my sword. And he will stretch out his hand against the north and destroy Assyria. And he will make Nineveh a desolation, a dry waste, like the desert." This is God's word for God's people and for the good of the world. Please be seated. Zephaniah makes clear here what many other prophets in the Old Testament also declare, which is that the enemies of God will not always prosper. Now, the nation of Israel in Zephaniah's time was a relatively small nation living right in the middle of some of the most powerful nations on earth. And there were almost constant threats of invasion by the surrounding nations, the surrounding armies. In fact, it's a constant theme throughout the book of Psalms. King David crying out to the Lord, saying, Lord, my enemies are all around me. They're threatening to subdue me and to destroy me. And not only that, they're taunting me, saying, where is your God? He's not gonna be able to help you. He's no help. He's crying out, Lord, will you save me? And here, God says that in time, he will. Now, he mainly directs his warnings to four of the most well-known enemies of Israel, the Philistines, the Moabites, the Ammonites, and the Assyrians. So starting in verse 4, we read about four cities. Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, and Ekron. These are the four principal cities of the Philistines. They were all right along the southeastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. And in those cities, the Philistines ruled, and they were a strong, militarily-minded people. They had advanced technology. They were always ready to go to war. You remember Goliath. He was a Philistine, right? And you read all through the Old Testament historical books, especially Judges and Joshua about the Philistines and the constant threat to Israel. And God says in verse five, I will destroy you until no inhabitant is left. And then he talks about the Moabites and Ammonites starting in verse eight. The Moabites lived just east of the Dead Sea and the Ammonites right above them. And they were a continual thorn in the side of Israel. And God says in verse eight, I've heard how you've taunted my people. And then he says, you remember Sodom and Gomorrah? You remember how I destroyed them? You're gonna get you some of that. That's not a direct quote. That's basically what he says. And then in verses 13 to 15, he addresses Assyria, maybe the most powerful of all those nations at that time. They were living in what is now Iraq and Syria and Jordan. They were a very cruel people. who showed little mercy to the people that they conquered, including Israel. And God says in verse 13, I will stretch out my hand against you and make you as desolate as the desert. Now, why? Why is God making these threats? Why is he seemingly so angry with the nations? Well, the first reason is because of their pride, right? prideful people. Constantly thinking that their military conquests and their amount of land and their prosperity is what makes them great. And throughout the Bible, God makes it clear that He hates, if there's one thing that He hates, it is pride. And the reason He hates pride so much is because it is foolish in the bigger picture. After all, We think we're so smart, but are you really that smart in the presence of an all-knowing God, a God who knows everything that has happened in the past, knows everything that's happening in the present, and even knows everything that will happen in the future? And are you really so strong compared to an all-powerful God who created the mountains and the seas and the universe. See, God hates pride because it's foolish, but also because it keeps people from coming to Him for what they really need, which is grace and forgiveness. But the second reason that God is angry is that these nations have not just boasted about themselves, they have also boasted and taunted God's people. And God does not take kindly to those who threaten his people. Because God was not just, you know, a fan of the team called Israel. No. God calls Israel, his people, my beloved. The metaphor we get over and over in the Old Testament is that of a wife. He says, Israel, I have taken you as my bride. I've made an eternal covenant with you. And when you mess with a man's wife, you mess with him, don't you? Now, certainly God gave many opportunities for the people in these nations. Philistia, Moab, and Ammon, and Assyria. Gave them many opportunities to repent. And in fact, some did. We read about some of the heroes even of the Old Testament. Ruth, who was a Moabite. And the king of Nineveh, which was the capital of Assyria, when Jonah came and preached and prophesied to the city of Nineveh, the king heard it, and he repented, and he called all of his people to repent before the Lord. But in the long run, most of the people of these nations didn't repent. And as Zephaniah says in chapter three, woe to the oppressing city. She listens to no voice. She accepts no correction. She does not trust in the Lord. She does not draw near to God. It is a hard truth for us to hear today, but one that is crystal clear in the Bible that those who do not trust in the Lord, who will not humble themselves before Him, will perish apart from Him. But one of the interesting things about this passage is that we don't just see that the nations are going to be destroyed. We also see that someone will take possession of what they leave behind. Now this goes along with what Jesus tells us in the Sermon on the Mount when he says that the meek will inherit the earth. We see it here in verse seven. After he says he's gonna destroy the Philistines, he then says the seacoast, they lived, the seacoast shall be the possession of the remnant of the house of Judah. And Judah was a part of Israel, God's people. This is the remnant, those who are faithful to me will possess that land. And then when he says that Moab and the Ammonites will become like Sodom and Gomorrah, he also, he follows up that in verse nine by saying, the remnant of my people shall plunder them, and the survivors of my nation shall possess them. This is really interesting. This is a theme throughout the Bible that theologians and even philosophers talk about called the plundering of the Egyptians. And it's a reference to when the people of Israel, under Moses, were leaving Egypt. After the 10 plagues, you know, Egypt had been, the Pharaoh had enslaved the people, but Moses had brought the people, and God had brought them out of Egypt. And before they left, though, the people of Egypt actually came, and they gave silver and gold and clothing to the Israelites before they left to go on their wilderness wanderings. And this idea of plundering of the Egyptians can mean a lot of different things. Some take it to mean that we, it's sort of a philosophical term, that we, means we can take the best of even non-Christian, pagan cultures. We can plunder what is good there. This is, by another name, some of you may have heard, is what we call common grace. That all truth is God's truth, no matter where we find it. And so we can learn from anyone, anywhere in whatever nation they're from. But here, God is basically saying that in the end, when all is accounted for, is my people are going to win. And they're going to inherit everything on earth. Those who have followed him, those who are humble, have endured persecution from the wicked, will ultimately be rewarded. You see, in the new heavens and the new earth, there will be no prideful people, only the meek. Only those who have surrendered to God, who've humbled themselves before Him, and they will inherit everything. Everything that God brings into the next life that is good will be our inheritance, the inheritance of God's people. Now, I want to answer an objection, because I can kind of hear it, which is something that sounds like this, well, this, Pastor, this sounds pretty triumphalistic. Right? Kind of triumphous. I don't know, is that the right word? Triumphous. Triumphalistic. That's probably the right word. Talking about how good people who trust in God, right? Religious people, Christians, they're gonna win. And how the bad secular people are gonna be destroyed. Isn't that how the Crusades got started? Isn't that how a lot of damage has been done in God's name? Well, first of all, let's look again at what these threatenings are all about, because it is not, the warnings are not just for these secular nations and people groups. God has plenty of warnings for His people, those who claim to follow Him, but aren't actually living in line with how he wants them to live. And this is what chapter one was all about. Warnings against God's people for their idolatry. But secondly, we need to realize that really the thrust of this chapter is a call, it's a comfort, not a call to arms. This is about God's justice based on human actions. It's not a call to take up arms to destroy those who are not like us. Again, the emphasis, we see it here in verse 11. The Lord will be awesome against them, for he will famish all the gods of the earth. Vengeance belongs to the Lord, not to us. We need to also recognize a really important change that happens in biblical language between the Old Testament and the New Testament. Because in the Old Testament, we see that God speaks very much of nations, and identifies nations, especially Israel, as his one covenant people, and then all the other nations as essentially not his covenant people, unless they come into covenant with Israel. But when Jesus comes, He changes that language. He sets up a new community of God's people. And the new people of God, the new Israel, as they're called in the New Testament, is what? His church. And His church is not identified with one nation or people group. It is, the church moves, it's a spiritual entity that moves freely across national boundaries. In other words, in the Old Testament, the people of God were marked by circumcision and inclusion in the nation of Israel, but in the New Testament, the people of God are marked by baptism and inclusion into the church, which is everywhere in the world. And this has huge implications, doesn't it? For one, it means that we can no longer speak of nations monolithically, like the prophets so often did in the Old Testament. We can't say, right, that God is gonna bless America and judge Russia, that God's gonna bless South Korea and judge China. because God no longer works at those national levels. He works on the individual and on the spiritual level. His judgments are no longer about good nation of faithful and bad nation of pagans. They're about believer and unbeliever, regardless of where you live. And so, for instance, in Jesus' parable about the sheep and the goats in the Book of Matthew, the Gospel of Matthew, He doesn't identify the sheep as a specific nation like Zephaniah does here and the goats like other nations. He identifies the sheep as those who know and love Jesus and love their neighbors and the goats are not the Philistines or the Ammonites. They're the unsaved who don't know Jesus, don't love their neighbor. And both the sheep and the goats come from every language, tribe, and people. And so our job as believers in Jesus is not to necessarily back one nationality over another, but it is to preach the gospel and to spread the gospel to every nation on earth. And it is to love our enemies and pray for them. And to also recognize that there is hope for the nations. And we will get to that. We even see that in Zephaniah's prophecy. We're going to look at that next week in chapter 3. But in the end, Zephaniah 2 warns, if people do not repent, they will face the wrath of God. And their taunts and persecutions will be silenced forever. And that sounds harsh to our modern ears because so many of us don't, we don't live in the presence of dangerous enemies, do we? But it would have been a huge comfort to the Israelites in Zephaniah's day who were constantly living with the threat of invasion. And it's been a sense of comfort to people in all ages. We look at our own history and see how the Old Testament prophets were a great source of comfort to those who were enslaved or living in the Jim Crow South. The expectation that one day God would let justice roll down like a river was sometimes the only hope enslaved people could hold on to. The human heart needs justice. It's been interesting. There's been a whole slate, slew of television shows this past year that are about new tech startups. and about how they have gone sideways. And so shows like The Dropout and Super Pump, The Battle for Uber, they show these ambitious leaders getting power and inevitably stepping over people to get to the top. And as you're watching them, inevitably we're waiting for these prideful, abusive people to get caught. to get punished, and we're waiting for the people who've been victims of these toxic cultures to be able to tell their stories and to be able to see justice done. The scales of God's justice are right, and they're true, and even though it often seems like the wicked only prosper in this life, and the two often win, there will come an end to their wickedness, God promises, and there will be a reward for your faithfulness, if not in this life, then in the next. Let's pray. Father, These are hard doctrines to talk about, to think through, judgment, and your wrath, and yet they're here all through the Bible. And so they are part of the whole counsel of God. We pray that you would help us to see what is true, to take to praise your goodness and your justice and to find hope in that and to continue to develop an eternal perspective on life and on the way that we live now in the light of eternity. Father, thank you that you are good and that you will protect your people. and one day give them all good things in Jesus. In his name we pray, amen.