Zephaniah 2:1-3 “Seeking God in Days of Judgment” Aug. 7th, 2011 p.m.
A couple of days before we went to Houston for The Response last Saturday, I was reading in the Book of Zephaniah in my quiet time, and my reading began that day at Chapter 2. I marveled at how what I read there was so applicable to our times: Zephaniah 1 concludes with a prophecy of impending judgment. It was to be a judgment on the nation of Judah, but I also believe that this scripture is a foreshadowing of the larger judgment to come at the end of the age, for the chapter ends by saying: “For He will make a complete end, indeed a terrifying one, of all the inhabitants of the earth.” Many of us believe that last day of God’s wrath may be soon approaching. If not, then at minimum there is coming for our nation a time of that same type of wrath which Judah endured 2600 years ago — and for the very same type of sins.
It is in that context, then, that we find the opening words of Chapter 2. It calls the people of God together before His anger comes. These words just jumped off the page when I read them; they could have been written as much for us today as they were for the people of God in Zechariah’s time. I believe that indeed they were!
THE IMPORTANCE OF ACTING “BEFORE” JUDGMENT COMES
There is a 3-fold “before” here in Verse 2:
— “before the decree takes effect”
— “before the burning anger of the Lord comes upon you”
— “before the day of the Lord’s anger comes upon you.”
The repeated emphasis here is “BEFORE, BEFORE, BEFORE.” It is important to act BEFORE. God’s judgment is coming, and if there is to be any hope for you, you need to believe it, and do whatever you are going to do BEFORE it happens.
We see an example of this in the days of Noah. God had declared that judgment was coming upon the earth; Noah preached righteousness, the New Testament tells us; and the people of the earth had the opportunity to respond, BEFORE the flood came. When the door of the ark closed, it was too late. When the flood waters came, it was too late. They had to believe God’s word, and respond BEFORE.
And of course it will be the same way at the end of the age. People have an opportunity to hear the word of God, and repent of their sins, and trust Jesus as their Savior, BEFORE the judgment of the end comes. But they must make that decision beforehand. If they wait until they see Jesus coming “on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory” (Matt. 24:30), it is too late. Judgment will have come for them. They must repent and put their faith in Him BEFORE that happens.
It is like it is with most immunizations. Cheryl took Michael in for some “back-to-school” shots the other day, and he had to have 3. As you can imagine, he was overjoyed! But it is important to get immunizations, and it is important to have them BEFORE you get the disease; that is the whole point; you want to get it BEFOREHAND so that it will protect you from the disease that might be about to come upon you.
And in the same way, it is vital for us as God’s people to prepare ourselves BEFORE what is about to happen in these next days. Whether we are at the very end of days, or we are about to experience days of judgment for our nation, it is important for us to act before that judgment comes. As I Peter 4:17 says, “it is time for judgment to begin with the household of God”, and we need to get ready for what is about to come. And if we want to experience the best we can through this, we had better get ready NOW – BEFORE all of this happens. I truly believe that God is calling His people today to prepare themselves, to get ready, BEFORE something big is about to happen. Isaiah 55:6 says: “Seek the Lord while He may be found” – and that time He may be found is NOW, BEFORE what is about to come.
Now what about you? What is your attitude about what is going on right now? Are you preparing yourself spiritually for some climactic days ahead? Or are you just “coasting along”, as if nothing were going to happen, living the same way you have always lived? God pronounced “woe” upon those in Isaiah who said “tomorrow will be like today, only more so”! (Isaiah 56:12)
–And woe to YOU, if you do not recognize the signs of the times;
–woe to YOU if you do not recognize that God is up to something;
–woe to YOU if you do not prepare your life BEFOREHAND for what is about to happen.
When it happens, it will be too late. God is very clear about it here; He says “BEFORE, BEFORE, BEFORE”! – you must prepare yourself BEFORE!
THE IMPORTANCE OF SEEKING
Just as there is a 3-fold repetition of the word “before”, there is another 3-fold repetition here – you may have noticed it – and it is the command to “seek.” If verse 2 is the call to act beforehand, verse 3 tells us what it is that we are to do beforehand: it says, “SEEK the LORD … SEEK righteousness, SEEK humility.” There is that 3-fold repetition, “SEEK, SEEK, SEEK.”
Many of you know that in Hebrew, repetition is used for emphasis. When something is repeated twice, it is a means of emphasis; when it is repeated 3 times, it is emphasizing it in an even greater fashion. The great example, of course, is found in Isaiah 6, where the angels are calling out, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts”. They are saying God is holy, holier, holiest – the 3-fold emphasis means that He is the most holy. So when God says here 3 times that we had better act BEFORE, then that means that we had REALLY, really, better act in advance of what is coming! And when He says here 3 times that we should seek, then He means that seeking is of ultimate importance to us in these times!
But what is it that we are to be seeking in these crucial times? God lists 3 things here:
A. Seek the LORD
The first and most important object of our seeking is the Lord Himself. “Seek the LORD, all ye humble of the earth.” We are just to seek HIM.
The greatest single object of our searching is always to be God. The first and greatest commandment is to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul”. (Matt. 22:37) David, the “man after God’s own heart”, sought God Himself more than anything else. He said, “One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after: to behold the beauty of the Lord …”. (Psalm 27:4) Just as David sought God Himself more than anything else, nothing is to be more important to us than seeking God every day. But the leading problem of our time is that God’s people have not done that.
It is instructive to us that among the sins that God had mentioned to Zephaniah that brought about the coming judgment was NOT seeking the Lord. Look at Chapter 1:4-6:
“So I will stretch out My hand against Judah and against all the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And I will cut off the remnant of Baal from this place, and the names of the idolatrous priests along with the priests. And those who bow down on the housetops to the host of heaven, and those who bow down and swear to the LORD and yet swear by Milcom, and those who have turned back from following the Lord, and those who have NOT SOUGHT the Lord or inquired of Him.”
There is another whole message here in Zephaniah 1, but just quickly look at what God says He is going to judge Judah for:
1) He says He will judge those who were involved in outright idolatry: “the remnant of Baal … Those who bow down to the hosts of heaven” – that is, He will judge outright idolatry.
2) He says He will also judge “Those who bow down and swear to YHWH and yet swear by Milcom” – these were trying to “sit on the fence”; to have it both ways; they tried to worship both God and Milcom – and God said He would have none of it – they would be judged.
3) Finally He says He will also judge “those who have turned back from following the LORD, and those who have NOT SOUGHT the Lord or inquired of Him.” When we think of sins that God will condemn, we might not typically list “not seeking God” among them. And yet God says there that NOT SEEKING Him is a sin that He will judge. But it makes sense: if loving God is the Greatest Commandment, then NOT loving HIM and NOT seeking Him would be the worst thing that we could do. In fact, the heart of many of our problems, as we saw this morning, is that we have sought other things in the place of God. Our first and greatest need is that we must seek HIM.
Psalm 16 says “Yahweh is the portion of my inheritance” — if we lose everything we have in an impending economic disaster, it matters not. If we have the Lord, then we have an inheritance which cannot be taken away: the LORD is our inheritance! At least He is if you are really seeking Him. This is where many of us will be tested. Make Him your greatest desire, make Him your inheritance, make Him your treasure — and you will have the greatest inheritance, and one which you cannot lose, no matter what the stock market does, or what happens to the economy.
But seeking Him involves commitment and effort.
–Exodus 33:7 “everyone who sought the LORD would go out to the tent of meeting which was outside the camp.” Seeking the Lord involved EFFORT in the days of Moses. So it does for us. If you want to really seek the Lord, it will involve effort on your part. It will involve a putting away of known sins. It will mean time with Him in worship and prayer, and in His word. It may involve fasting and seeking Him in special ways.
–Deuteronomy 4:29 says: “But from there you will seek the LORD your God, and you will find Him if you search for Him with all your heart and all your soul.” Here is an important point: God will not be found half-heartedly. God will not be found in mundane, religious ritual. God will not be found just because you “show up at church” or “do your Bible reading.” He will be found if you SEEK Him in worship, and SEEK Him in His word; He will be found by you if SEEK Him with all your heart and all your soul.
Some of us would have to admit tonight that you have not really been seeking God with all your heart. Maybe you have not been seeking Him at all. Maybe you have been “seeking” Him in a sense – you’ve come to church; you’ve read your Bible, you’ve “said your prayers” – but you have not really been seeking Him wholeheartedly. Admit that tonight; and ask Him to help you make an all-out effort to really seek Him.
The first and most important thing we can do in days like these is to seek the Lord Himself — not even “revival” — but HIM. I had a pastor friend once who was really encouraging his church to seek revival, and I told him, just be careful, because sometimes I think people end up seeking “revival” more than they do seeking God. That is, they are looking for certain “signs”, or experiences, or certain manifestations, or numbers of decisions, or certain responses from people. I am afraid that for many people, seeking “revival” can become a substitute for seeking GOD HIMSELF!
–We are to seek HIM; not His “hand”;
— HIM: not what He might do;
— HIM : not numbers of decisions or certain types of responses.
JUST SEEK HIM! That was the cry of Moses in Exodus 33; he said, “If Your presence does not go with us, do not lead us up from here!” He was saying, God, I don’t just want your angels and Your miracles and Your power, I want YOU with us; we must have YOU! THAT must be OUR heart’s cry in these days too: God, we just want YOU, YOUR presence. Let us seek HIM.
Seeking the Lord Himself is absolutely the most important thing we can do in these days. In fact, the next two things God tells us in this passage that we are to seek, are really admonitions which will help us seek Him better:
B. Seek righteousness
One of the things that keeps us from God is a lack of righteousness. Sin separates us from fellowship with God. Isaiah said, “Your iniquities have caused a separation between you and your God.” (Isaiah 59:2) So if you are really going to seek God, then one of the ways in which you must make an effort to seek Him is through personal holiness. You must cleanse yourself from sin in order to truly seek Him.
Psalm 24 is a key passage in this regard. Psalm 24:3 says, “Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord, and who may stand in His holy place?” In other words, who can have fellowship with the Lord? It gives the answer: “He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who has not lifted up his soul to falsehood and has not sworn deceitfully.” And then verse 6 says: “THIS is the generation of those who seek Him, who seek Your face, O God of Jacob.” WHO is the generation; WHO is the person who “seeks” Him? The one who has clean hands and a pure heart. When you are serious about seeking God, then you seek righteousness.
As we touched on briefly last Sunday, to be righteous means to fulfill your obligations in a relationship; to be “right” with a person. Now, we need to understand that righteousness has two different aspects to it. Righteousness means to have right standing, both with God and men. I love the picture of the MasterLife “Disciples Cross”, because it portrays Christianity as being lived towards both God and men: the vertical bar of the cross pictures your relationship with God: you speak to Him in prayer & worship, and He speaks to you in His word. But your relationship with God is not the only one you are responsible for; just as on the cross there is a horizontal bar, so you have relationships with people: those in the church, and those in the world. To be righteous means that you are “right” in both sets of relationships: you are “right” with God, and you are “right” with other people too; in other words, you are practicing holiness towards God, and practicing holiness towards other people. Both are important. It is not enough to be “holy” towards God – spending time in worship and prayer and reading His word. You must also be holy in your relationships with other people: pure morally, pure in your speech to others, and about others; pure in your business practices – and with all of your dealing with other people.
In what ways are you not holy? I am not going to spend a lot of time tonight listing various sins; the Holy Spirit of God has come to “convict … of sin and righteousness and judgment”. If you are a Christian, God’s Spirit has undoubtedly already convicted you of sin; you know where it exists in your life – you are not ignorant of that. You may have even tried to “shove it back” into your subconscious somewhere, because you don’t want to deal with it – but God is not going to leave it alone. Being convicted of sin is not “comfortable”, but in a way it is actually one of the comforts of assurance: the conviction of the Spirit is one way you can know that you really do belong to God. You cannot continue in sin and be comfortable. He will not let you. So … what are those areas of your life, towards God, and towards other people, that God is convicting you about? Confess those to Him tonight, and ask Him to cleanse you – and to help you live differently from now on. Seek righteousness.
Isaiah said: “Your iniquities have caused a separation between you and your God.” Our God is a holy God; if you would really seek God, then you must seek righteousness.
C. Seek humility
This is the same Hebrew word that is used in Psalm 37:11, “The humble will inherit the land” – the same verse that Jesus basically quotes in the 3rd Beatitude: “The meek will inherit the earth.” (Matthew 5:5) We saw in our study of Psalm 37 a year ago that this word means to humbly submit to God, to “trust in the Lord and do what is right” no matter what others around you may be doing. This means that if we would really seek God in the troubled times ahead, we must trust Him; we must trust that He is in charge, and that He is good, and wise, and we must humbly submit to His sovereign plan.
It is also very instructive to us that this word was already used in the first verse of this chapter, when God called the people together. He called for the “humble” of the land – the same Hebrew word. So the people He is addressing are already the humble, or meek, those who care for God and His ways. But then God tells them here to seek Him, and seek righteousness — and to even seek MORE of that humility and meekness that they already had. This is an important point. They already had a degree of humility and meekness – but in these crucial days, they were to seek MORE. They were not to be content where they were, but were to seek more of God’s grace, and to become more of what He wanted them to be.
This is vital if we are to have real days of revival and renewal. We must not, any of us, be content just remaining where we are spiritually. This is easy to do, especially for those of us who have been Christians for some time. Many of us have experienced God’s working in our lives before, and we have a certain level of Bible knowledge, and of basic holiness – and it is easy to become “content” with where you are, and just “settle in” there.
But listen: the truth is, you are NOT just going to settle in there. The old saying is, “If you are not growing, you are dying” – and that is certainly true in the Christian life.
You see that sometimes in churches’ Sunday School workers. One of the most dangerous attitude that workers can have is: “Oh, we’ve heard all that before.” We know it all; we’ve experienced it all; we don’t need any training; we don’t need to grow; we’re pretty good just like we are. That is a poisonous attitude, and can lead to the spiritual death of a Sunday School class – or a whole church’s Sunday School. We who have been given much grace need to do our utmost to continue growing in that grace. Don’t rest on your strengths, but advance in them. (May I say as an aside, I hope that the Sunday School “Discover” Conference that Bro. David is putting together for the end of this month will be packed full of preschool, children, youth & adult workers who are not content where they are, but who want to grow! I think that would be a tremendous sign of the kind of attitude that this passage is talking about: of seeking to grow in that grace that God has given us.)
That is one very specific example, but it applies to all of us, in many different ways. One of the most poisonous attitudes for any Christian life is that of just being comfortable where you are. The truth is, you will NOT “stay where you are” – you will either continue growing, or you will begin to die. If some of you are honest with yourselves tonight, you would admit that you have NOT been “staying where you are”; you have been dying – very slowly dying spiritually. If you think about it, you have probably stopped some spiritual disciplines or ministry habits that you never thought you would. You have fallen back and neglected some areas in which you used to be pretty strong spiritually just a few years ago. In truth, you have not been advancing in the Lord recently –and you have not been staying the same, either. You have been falling back; slowly falling back …. and tonight, the Lord is giving you this word: “seek humility; seek meekness” – don’t be content where you are;, but seek to advance in the grace that God has given you. For the truth is, you will not stay where you are: you will either begin to grow, or you will begin to die. It will be one or the other. God is calling you anew tonight, as you seek Him, to seek to grow.
CONCLUSION:
I think it is instructive to us that of all the things that God tells His people to seek during a time of judgment and difficulty, that He does NOT tell them to “seek to avoid suffering.” We are to seek HIM, and righteousness, and humility – not to avoid discomfort and suffering. And yet that is exactly what most people DO seek – more than anything else they just want to avoid suffering. But that is not what God tells us to seek.
God does give hope at the end of the passage; He says: “Perhaps you will be hidden in the day of the Lord’s anger.” God can do that; He knows how to protect His people in times of tribulation – He protected His people from the plagues in Egypt, and saved Noah and his family from the flood in the ark. But He does not always do that. There have been times when God’s people have suffered in evil times. We saw that in Hebrews 11 last week, “they experienced mockings and scourgings, yes also chains and imprisonment.” The idea that all of God’s people are going to escape all difficulty is a 20th-century American imagination, not a Biblical doctrine!
That is why we must be ready either way. The important thing to remember is that our goal is NOT to avoid suffering. Our most important goal is to seek God — more than anything else – SEEK GOD — and seek the righteousness and humility and spiritual growth which will enable us to find Him, the One whom we desperately need in these wicked days.
shawnethomas 