Zephaniah 3:14-17
The Lord, Our Joy-Bringer
Sing, O Daughter of Zion; shout aloud, O Israel! Be glad and rejoice with all your heart, O Daughter of Jerusalem! The Lord has taken away your punishment, he has turned back your enemy. The Lord, the King of Israel, is with you; never again will you fear any harm. On that day they will say to Jerusalem, “Do not fear, O Zion; do not let your hands hang limp. The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.”
Those must have been difficult days for believers at the time of Zephaniah. The people who were faithful to the Lord’s covenant in Judah, were compelled to live along side of their fellow Jews who rejected or ignored the Lord at every turn. Much to their horror and disgust, these unbelievers adopted lives of sin with no concern for God’s will.
They disregarded proper worship at the Temple in Jerusalem and worshipped false gods set up in high places. Lawlessness and lovelessness ruled in the land. As a result of persistent and never-ending sin, punishment would fall upon Judah, a nation chosen and richly blessed by the Lord. Already the vicious Scythians were approaching from the north, and Babylonians from the east were not far behind.
The country would be overrun and destroyed. Cities and farms would be laid waste. The population would be scattered. Some would flee, others would be taken away in exile. And the Temple, the place where God graciously met with his people, would be leveled. The sins of some in the nation would bring severe punishment upon the entire nation. The future looked bleak. Believers, in particular, were in turmoil.
What were they to think? How were they supposed to feel? Were they to assume that the Lord had deserted them, that he was going back on all the promises he’d made over the centuries? Should deep sorrow reign over them? Were they hopeless in the face of coming events? These are the people to whom the Lord sent Zephaniah. He is to deliver his message to them at this crucial time. He would answer their questions.
How were they to feel? Sing, O Daughter of Zion; shout aloud, O Israel! Be glad and rejoice with all your heart, O Daughter of Jerusalem! The Lord addresses them with terms of endearment – Daughter of Zion, Israel, Daughter of Jerusalem. His love for them hadn’t cooled. He loved them still! He would not abandon them – he can’t, he won’t leave them comfortless.
And this is their reason to rejoice and be comforted: The Lord has taken away your punishment, he has turned back your enemy. The Lord, the King of Israel, is with you; never again will you fear any harm. These are words that might easily confuse the reader who does not remember to whom they were spoken!
These words may seem to be directed to the entire nation of Judah – unbelievers and believers alike. It seems to offer them comfort that the threatened destruction would not take place after all, that the Lord had changed his mind about their conquest and exile by fierce enemies. But these words are not addressed to everyone. The punishment foretold by numerous prophets would come to pass.
Instead, the Lord is speaking to his faithful people, alone. He is not saying that Judah’s national chastisement is called off. That wasn’t the main concern of God’s people, anyway. They were primarily concerned with Judah’s future as it related to God’s promises about their Savior from sin. The two were so intertwined as to be inseparable.
If there were no Judah, there could be no Savior. After all, in very plain language, the Lord declared that the Savior would be born in Judah, that he would be a descendant of King David, that he would carry out his ministry at the Temple in Jerusalem. The thought that none of those things could take place, brought believers doom and gloom. That’s what led them into despair and hopelessness. But that was not at all the way for them to feel.
No, they were to rejoice, sing, shout aloud and be glad. The punishment on Judah would not hinder the Lord in keeping his promises. The approach of deadly enemies would not delay the plans the Lord had made. All was proceeding as the Lord knew it would. Soon, in his own time and in his own way, the Lord would keep his covenant of love with them and the Savior would arrive among them.
On that day they will say to Jerusalem, “Do not fear, O Zion; do not let your hands hang limp. The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.” This is not a scene of sorrow and sadness for God’s people. It is one of incredible joy.
There is no need to fear, or to fall into despair – no matter how bad things may seem. The Lord is coming! In his almighty power, he will defeat all spiritual enemies – sin, the power of death, and the threat of hell. This won’t be a chore for him, an burdensome task he must force himself to undertake. It will be something he does with boundless joy!
His presence among his people would be an occasion of great rejoicing for all concerned – not only for the saved, but also for the Lord, the Savior! For every believer the Lord’s coming is one of pure joy, be that as the Babe of Bethlehem, as the Redeemer who lives in believer’s hearts, or as the Judge of the living and dead who comes to take his people home to himself in heaven. Joy predominates!
And that’s the way it should be for us in this Advent season. You see, our world isn’t all that different from Zephaniah’s. We, too, live in a nation richly blessed by God. True, we aren’t the people chosen to be the nation from whom the Savior will be born. But no one can deny that the Lord blessed our founding and our continued existence so that we might be an agent of his mercy to this world.
We are a homeland for religious freedom which Christians have enjoyed for hundreds of years. The Lord has blessed us with material wealth so that we can support the spread of the saving Gospel into many areas of the world where it wouldn’t be otherwise. The Lord has blessed us with peace and an orderly society as long as we cling to his commandments. Now, that all seems to be going away.
Disrespect for parents and authority begins in the earliest school years and is sometimes seen as a virtue! We legally take innocent human life, while failing to punish those who kill outside the law. Terrorism, in many forms, is the new order. We tolerate, even promote, sexual deviation from God’s plan. Contempt for others runs rampant in our social media.
And so much of our economy and commerce preys on the covetous hearts of the consumer. All this sin is piled high upon a steady erosion of even the barest acknowledgment of God’s role in our country. If world history is any indicator, then we can expect to see God’s punishment upon us as our nation disintegrates. Some say it has already begun.
It often seems as if Christians suffer the most in this kind of world. Even in our free country, Christians are marginalized, ridiculed, and silenced. We have not experienced the outright persecution faced by Christians in other parts of the world, but persecution of American Christians will steadily progress! We may wonder how much more we, or our children, can take. When it will it end, we may ask, fearful of the answer.
But our Savior comes to us with this comfort: The Lord has taken away your punishment, he has turned back your enemy. No, he’s not telling us that the wrath of God our nation deserves will not come to pass. But he does put things into perspective. Our spiritual enemies have already been defeated. His promises about our relationship to him and our future in heaven will all be kept.
The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing. The power of sin over our lives has been removed. Christ Jesus took them all as his own so they no longer can oppress us. The guilt which Satan employs to claim us as his own, has disappeared, replaced by Jesus’ life of holiness and righteousness – which are the characteristics of those in God’s family. Even death, which can scare us, has been tamed! It is now correctly seen as a portal by which we enter the fullness of life!
The result is joy, pure joy. As much as we rejoice in our new life, the Lord rejoices to bring it to us. As glad as we are to be reconciled to him, he is gladder still to be with us. The sweetest sound we will ever hear will be the joyous song on his lips when he comes to take us home. Until then, his love quiets our every fear and soothes all our anxieties.
We rejoice that he has come into our hearts by faith. There he resides as a constant reminder that our God loves us and is always with us. We know that with him, we have the ability to live a life that pleases him and shows others that the joy of salvation can be theirs.
We rejoice to know that he will soon come in the clouds in judgment. Then he separate those who are his own from those who are not. We live in the certainty that no matter how bad things may get in our lives or in this world, they will soon pass and eternal bliss will be ours.
We rejoice this Christmas time knowing that the Baby lying in that manger is no mere human infant, but the Lord of all in human flesh so he can live and suffer and die in our place so that our place can be with him forever and ever. We rejoice that our Lord rejoices with us and delights in us. We will always be with him! Our joy will never end! Amen.