Zephaniah - The End

An eight-week sermon series on Zephaniah has come to its end. Here are some notes for a sermon from the final three verses of the book on the final Sunday of the church year: Christ the King..

When were you most happy during the past week? Did your moments of joy include times of celebrating what God has done for us? Last week we spoke about the command to rejoice  (Zephaniah 3:14-17).

Here is the reason for our joy in a nutshell: The king of Israel, the LORD, is in our midst. The church year tells us how this happened:

• we long for God’s coming in Advent;
• at Christmas we marvel at God taking on human flesh and being born a baby
• we continue the celebration during Epiphany as God is revealed to us in Christ
• we follow the journey of his earthly life and suffering through Lent and then Passion Week: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday: the king is crowned on the cross but dead.
• but on the third day, Easter Day, he rose again, having conquered death.
• Christ’s ascension is the glorious climax of this journey: "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me," says Christ
• and on Pentecost he pours out God’s Holy Spirit on his people to equip them for this time of implementing God’s rule in Christ.
• Trinity Sunday reminds us that the three are one: God’s kingly rule is in the hands of Christ and implemented by the Holy Spirit.
• We call the Sundays following Trinity Sunday “ordinary time” – our time of growth...
• ...and we conclude the church year reflecting on what has been accomplished already through All the Saints
• and on how it will end: all will bow down and acknowledge Christ as king.

we will all stand before the judgement seat of God. For it is written, "As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall give praise to God." (Romans 14:10c-11)

God ... gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:9-11)

Christ is the way in which The LORD, our God, is in our midst, a warrior who gives victory. This is why he is called Jesus – Saviour, the one who gives victory to his people, Immanuel – God with us, and Christ – the anointed one, i.e. God’s priest-king. We must find moments in our week during which we consciously dwell in that joy and somehow express it.

Now we come to the final three verses of the book. Verse 18 is extremely difficult to translate. In the NRSV footnotes you read “meaning of Hebrew uncertain” for the first line for which the NRSV follows the ancient Greek and Syriac translations rather than the Hebrew text. The next line has a footnote with the abbreviation “Cn” which means “Correction.” In other words, the translators think that the text we have in ancient and medieval manuscripts does not make sense at all and so, assuming that when the text was written it did make sense, they have followed a best guess as to what might have stood in the text originally. Because I am so bold – or foolish – as to try and make sense of the Hebrew text which we have, my translation ends up very different from the one in our NRSV Bibles. But let us ignore this for the moment. If the NRSV is right, we will not thereby lose much because in the NRSV the verse merely amplifies the basic ideas found elsewhere in the text. If I am right, the verse amplifies things said elsewhere in the book - see below.

So let’s go to verse 19. Note 3x “I will” – God is in charge. This is one thing it means to celebrate Christ the King. Right through suffering and death and then resurrection life: God is in charge. It is very much at the heart of the message conveyed in the book of Zephaniah.

• God is in charge of dealing with the present, bringing liberation from oppressors.
• God is in charge of dealing with the past, bringing healing and restoration for the hurts of the past.
• God is in charge of the future: he does more than a repair job, more than bringing things back to how they used to be; he brings glory.

If there is no liberation, God is not yet king.
If there is no healing and restoration, God is not yet king.
If there is only repair, God is not yet king.

Now, there is a sense in which God’s kingship will indeed be fully implemented only in the future when

• all enemies are completely disarmed,
• we see God face to face, fully healed, and
• his and our reputation is unsullied.

But we would have little reason to believe this is ever going to happen, if we did not see it being implemented at least in a preliminary way even now. If you see no signs of this liberation and healing in your life, chances are that you are not living under Christ’s rule. If we see no signs of this liberation and healing in the life of this church, chances are that we are not living under Christ’s rule.

So what does it look like when God is in charge?

(1) We have enemies but they are no longer allowed to oppress us.Are we mindful of having enemies? At each baptism service we address those to be baptised with the words: Fight valiantly as a disciple of Christ against sin, the world and the devil, and remain faithful to Christ to the end of your life. The church here on earth is involved in a struggle against forces within us (sin), pressures around us (world) and non-material personal forces (devil). But none of these are allowed to dominate us.

[Christ] disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it. (Colossians 2:15) 

We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. (Romans 6:6) 

I write to you, young people, because you are strong and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one. (1 John 2:14c)

We are no longer in bondage to sin, the world and the devil; we can no longer be accused before God. We owe no loyalty to forces that stand against God. All those who are loyal to Christ are in a battle but there is an end to oppression; we cannot be dominated by anti-God forces.

(2) Is there healing and restoration?
The prophecy speaks metaphorically about the lame and the outcast - those who have been injured by evil and driven away from God's presence in Jerusalem.

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. (Ephesians 2:13) 

He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. (1 Peter 2:24)

Not fully healed, to be sure, but "free from sins" and no longer separated from God we are in the process of being put right again.

(3) Are we on the road from shame to fame, renown and praise?
NB: verse 20 reads literally “I will make you fame and praise” and leaves it open whether this means “make you famous and praised” (cf. NRSV) or maybe “make you my fame and praise” because God is of course the actor here - He restores. Cf.

Immediately he regained his sight and followed him, glorifying God; and all the people, when they saw it, praised God. (Luke 18:43) 

When this became known to all residents of Ephesus, both Jews and Greeks, everyone was awestruck; and the name of the Lord Jesus was praised. (Acts 19:17)

As we are transformed from shame to praiseworthy, God gets the praise! There are several reasons why this may be less obvious. We may be prevented from seeing or hearing about it because God knows that it would destroy our humility and thus us. Or it may not as readily obvious because we are good at hiding our shame and so our transformation. Nevertheless, someone who lives under the rule of Christ cannot but be transformed for the better and this will not remain altogether hidden, as we become people on fire with love for God and neighbour.

How might all this happen? It is of course God’s work, not something we can do. Verse 18 – in my translation – my offer some hints and in any case allows me to sum up Zephaniah.

Those afflicted on account of the appointment I have removed from you,
they were an offering, upon her a reproach.

Zephaniah's main message is to announce an appointment God has with the whole world (region), with Jerusalem in particular and specifically with the ruling elites - they are those afflicted on account of the appointment. Three things are being said about them here.

(1) God has removed them from his people. God’s judgement is a gathering up and removing of evil from us. Note the use of the same Hebrew verb in 1:2 and 3:8.God's judgement is about separating good and evil.

(2) They were an offering to God, or a tribute gift or, in the language of 1:7, a sacrifice. Everything belongs to God and so the separation is between those who in humility give themselves as a willing, lively sacrifice to God's service in response to his loving call (cf. Romans 12:1) and those whose proud defiance cannot negate that they too are God's property and claimed by him - however unsuitable as a sacrifice or tribute.

(3) They have brought disgrace upon the entity God has chosen. The “her” refers to Jerusalem as an inter-generational entity. God will remove any stain or blemish from the church, the bride of Christ (Ephesians 5:27).

Dare we pray for God’s purifying judgement? Dare we pray that he removes from us  “disaster” (NRSV) – namely everything that hinders God’s rule and our relationship with him, our pride? And do we ask for the joy which will inspire us and help us implement Christ’s rule?