The Road to Certain Destruction

NKJ Zephaniah 1

1 The word of the LORD which came to Zephaniah the son of Cushi, the son of Gedaliah, the son of Amariah, the son of Hezekiah, in the days of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah.
2 " I will utterly consume everything From the face of the land," Says the LORD;
3 "I will consume man and beast; I will consume the birds of the heavens, The fish of the sea, And the stumbling blocks along with the wicked. I will cut off man from the face of the land," Says the LORD.
4 "I will stretch out My hand against Judah, And against all the inhabitants of Jerusalem. I will cut off every trace of Baal from this place, The names of the idolatrous priests with the pagan priests --
5 Those who worship the host of heaven on the housetops; Those who worship and swear oaths by the LORD, But who also swear by Milcom;
6 Those who have turned back from following the LORD, And have not sought the LORD, nor inquired of Him."
7 Be silent in the presence of the Lord GOD; For the day of the LORD is at hand, For the LORD has prepared a sacrifice; He has invited His guests.
8 "And it shall be, In the day of the LORD's sacrifice, That I will punish the princes and the king's children, And all such as are clothed with foreign apparel.
9 In the same day I will punish All those who leap over the threshold, Who fill their masters' houses with violence and deceit.
10 "And there shall be on that day," says the LORD, "The sound of a mournful cry from the Fish Gate, A wailing from the Second Quarter, And a loud crashing from the hills.
11 Wail, you inhabitants of Maktesh! For all the merchant people are cut down; All those who handle money are cut off.
12 "And it shall come to pass at that time That I will search Jerusalem with lamps, And punish the men Who are settled in complacency, Who say in their heart, 'The LORD will not do good, Nor will He do evil.'
13 Therefore their goods shall become booty, And their houses a desolation; They shall build houses, but not inhabit them; They shall plant vineyards, but not drink their wine."
14 The great day of the LORD is near; It is near and hastens quickly. The noise of the day of the LORD is bitter; There the mighty men shall cry out.
15 That day is a day of wrath, A day of trouble and distress, A day of devastation and desolation, A day of darkness and gloominess, A day of clouds and thick darkness,
16 A day of trumpet and alarm Against the fortified cities And against the high towers.
17 "I will bring distress upon men, And they shall walk like blind men, Because they have sinned against the LORD; Their blood shall be poured out like dust, And their flesh like refuse."
18 Neither their silver nor their gold Shall be able to deliver them In the day of the LORD's wrath; But the whole land shall be devoured By the fire of His jealousy, For He will make speedy riddance Of all those who dwell in the land.

During the American civil war, General Sherman made what was to be known as his march to the sea through Georgia. As he marched through the state, his forces left a 50 mile wide swath of total destruction. They burned farms and homesteads, tore up rails, confiscated or killed livestock, and destroyed crops. Foragers ranged out from the main body of the army and ensured that nothing of value to the Southern armies or people was left for them. One contemporary witness said that Sherman’s forces did not leave enough to fill the belly of a grasshopper in their wake. Sherman was waging what we call today "Total War". His purpose was not merely to beat the Confederates militarily; it was to break the will of the Southern people to continue fighting. Sherman was sending a clear and unmistakable message, that if they would not give up their struggle, they would be utterly destroyed. In the end, that was almost what happened. Five years of terrible war left the south devastated and once grand southern cities like Richmond and Atlanta were reduced to wastelands.

We often view this kind of "total war" as a relatively modern thing. Many people tend to believe that wars in which a nation is almost entirely obliterated are a fairly recent occurrence. But that isn’t the case at all. In 601 B.C. Jehoiakim, the King of Judah rebelled against the Babylonians who controlled the Kingdom. From that time until the fall of Jerusalem in 597, Babylonian armies and raiding bands from the surrounding nations swept through Judah killing, raping, and pillaging, so that by the time of the fall of the city, it was very nearly destroyed. The treasures of the temple were looted, the King, his wives, his officers, the mighty men of valor and all of Judah’s artisans, craftsmen, and upper classes were carried off into captivity so that as the Bible puts it "only the poorest kind of people remained". Despite this terrible devastation, the King that Nebuchadnezzar put in place of Jehoiakim also rebelled and in 588 the Babylonians invaded again. In 586 B.C. after a terrible siege of almost two years, the city of Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians. When the city finally fell, the citizens of Jerusalem were starving and disease-ridden. The King and his army attempted to flee but they were caught and scattered, the King, Zedekiah, was captured and his sons were put to death in front of him and then his eyes were put out. This time the Babylonians totally destroyed Jerusalem, burning the temple, the palace, and all the houses, and throwing down the walls. Virtually every citizen of Judah who had not been killed in the wars was then taken into captivity in Babylonia. The Babylonians only left behind a few farmers and vinedressers as caretakers.

The chapter we just read was written several years before the events I just related, but in it the prophet Zephaniah is delivering to Judah God’s promise that these events would certainly come to pass. He also tells them why this judgment was going to be visited upon them.

You see, ever since the Covenant made with father Abraham way back in Genesis thousands of years before Zephaniah wrote this book. God had covenanted with his people the Jews to be their God to bless them if they would be faithful to him. And ever since that time the history of the people had been marked by cycles of Apostasy, where they would turn away from the worship of the only true God and go after the false gods of the surrounding nations. There had also been a cycle of God and bad Kings. A good king was a man like David, a humble and faithful servant of the Lord. Someone who encouraged and defended the faithful worship of the only true God. A bad king was a faithless man who encouraged the apostasy of the people and broke the righteous laws that the Lord had given to his people.

After the death of Solomon, the nation of Israel had been split in to two parts, the Northern Kingdom of Israel under Jeroboam, and the Southern kingdom of Judah under Rehoboam. The Northern Kingdom had become totally apostate, they worshipped Golden Calves created by the evil king Jeroboam, and they never returned to the right worship of God in the temple of Jerusalem. It’s worth commenting that part of the reason the people of the Northern kingdom abandoned the worship of God was for political reasons, the Kings of Israel did not want their people to go south to worship in the temple as they should have because that would have weakened their power over them.

There is a lesson there for us in this age. It is not politically correct in this day and age to be an evangelical Christian, or to believe the word of God. These days it is Bible believing and practicing Christians who are the non-conformists and rebels of this age, we should never allow politics to dictate to us what we may or may not believe. Only the word of the Living God can do that. We should remember the counsel of the Apostles in Acts 5:29 that "We must obey God rather than men!" If the commands of men, be they kings or congressmen, high priests or presidents, tell you to go against the Word of God, you have a duty to disobey them.

The people of the Northern Kingdom did not do so. They willingly followed their kings into apostasy and for their faithlessness they were visited with judgment. Time and time again God sent them prophets, men like Elijah and Elisha to warn them, to plead with them to set aside their idols, to repent and to return to him in faith and be forgiven. They ignored the warnings, and eventually God used the Assyrians as his instrument of earthly judgment upon this faithless people. They had made themselves accursed in his sight and as a result the Northern Kingdom was completely wiped out in other "total war". The ten tribes of the Northern Kingdom, thus became the "lost tribes of Israel" never to be restored.

The amazing thing is that even the total destruction of the Northern Kingdom of Israel did not cause the Southern Kingdom of Judah to repent in sackcloth and ashes. True they had a few good kings, men like Hezekiah and Josiah who attempted to restore the right worship of God, and lead the people in humble repentance. Let’s look at the last of these great reforms under King Josiah, the king mentioned in the beginning of Zephaniah’s letter.

Please turn with me to 2^nd Kings Chapter 23:1-14:

1Then the king called together all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem.
2He went up to the temple of the LORD with the men of Judah, the people of Jerusalem, the priests and the prophets--all the people from the least to the greatest. He read in their hearing all the words of the Book of the Covenant, which had been found in the temple of the LORD.
3The king stood by the pillar and renewed the covenant in the presence of the LORD--to follow the LORD and keep his commands, regulations and decrees with all his heart and all his soul, thus confirming the words of the covenant written in this book. Then all the people pledged themselves to the covenant.
4The king ordered Hilkiah the high priest, the priests next in rank and the doorkeepers to remove from the temple of the LORD all the articles made for Baal and Asherah and all the starry hosts. He burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron Valley and took the ashes to Bethel.
5He did away with the pagan priests appointed by the kings of Judah to burn incense on the high places of the towns of Judah and on those around Jerusalem--those who burned incense to Baal, to the sun and moon, to the constellations and to all the starry hosts.
6He took the Asherah pole from the temple of the LORD to the Kidron Valley outside Jerusalem and burned it there. He ground it to powder and scattered the dust over the graves of the common people.
7He also tore down the quarters of the male shrine prostitutes, which were in the temple of the LORD and where women did weaving for Asherah.
8Josiah brought all the priests from the towns of Judah and desecrated the high places, from Geba to Beersheba, where the priests had burned incense. He broke down the shrines at the gates--at the entrance to the Gate of Joshua, the city governor, which is on the left of the city gate.
9Although the priests of the high places did not serve at the altar of the LORD in Jerusalem, they ate unleavened bread with their fellow priests.
10He desecrated Topheth, which was in the Valley of Ben Hinnom, so no one could use it to sacrifice his son or daughter in the fire to Molech.
11He removed from the entrance to the temple of the LORD the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun. They were in the court near the room of an official named Nathan-Melech. Josiah then burned the chariots dedicated to the sun.
12He pulled down the altars the kings of Judah had erected on the roof near the upper room of Ahaz, and the altars Manasseh had built in the two courts of the temple of the LORD. He removed them from there, smashed them to pieces and threw the rubble into the Kidron Valley.
13The king also desecrated the high places that were east of Jerusalem on the south of the Hill of Corruption--the ones Solomon king of Israel had built for Ashtoreth the vile goddess of the Sidonians, for Chemosh the vile god of Moab, and for Molech the detestable god of the people of Ammon.
14Josiah smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles and covered the sites with human bones.

But still, after kings like Josiah were dead and gone, like a dog returning to it’s vomit, the kings who followed and the people, returned to their former ways of idolatry, syncretism, sexual immorality, evil, and injustice for in their hearts they never gave them up. God had warned that if this happened it would be the cause of their destruction. The Lord is long-suffering and patient. Our God is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness. For literally thousands of years he endured the endless cycles of apostasy and temporary reform amongst the people of Israel. They would forsake Him and go after the false idols of the people around them, or worse yet they would pervert his worship and mix it with the worship of other peoples swearing their oaths both in his name and in the name of some false god. Or they would simply dismiss him becoming practical atheists and saying, "The LORD will do nothing, either good or bad" and trusting in themselves. He sent them prophet after prophet to plead with them. He gave these prophets miracles to prove their authority and yet the people would not listen. He set before them his promises to bless them and forgive them if they turned to Him. They killed his prophets, they stopped up their ears, and they would not listen. The Word of God offended them. Instead they turned to false prophets and priests who said soothing words to them. They chose to take their counsel from the daytime talk show hosts of their age, who counseled them that they were just fine as they were.

And for this reason they were to become the sacrifice that was spoken of in Zephaniah 1:7. The invited and consecrated guest, were God’s instrument of judgment, the Babylonians.

But what of us? Are we as a culture, as a people, any different? We have seen what happens to a people who forsake the Lord and His word time and again. We have seen the practical results of apostasy in the nihilism of our pop culture, and we have seen the terrible harvest of that nihilism in events like the Columbine massacre.

Will we turn from our ways as a nation? I hope so. Grant O God that we would do so. For if we do not, like Judah we are on the road to certain destruction in the day of the Lord. Many have convinced themselves that God of the New Testament is a different God from the "wrathful" God of the Old Testament. Our God they maintain is an indulgent Grandfather, a God of Love, Love, Love. But the God of Old and New Testament is the same. He is a loving and compassionate God, but He is holy, holy, holy. And we make a terrible mistake if we fool ourselves that there will not be a final Day of Judgment. Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ warned us of this again and again:

John 12:48

48There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; that very word which I spoke will condemn him at the last day.

John 5:22-29

22Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son,
23that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent him.
24"I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life.
25I tell you the truth, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live.
26For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son to have life in himself.
27And he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man.
28"Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice
29and come out--those who have done good will rise to live, and those who have done evil will rise to be condemned.

Matthew 10:32-37

32Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven.
33But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven.
34"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.
35For I have come to turn "`a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law--
36a man's enemies will be the members of his own household.' [5]
37"Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me;

Matthew 10:15

15I tell you the truth, it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.

Matthew 11:22

22But I tell you, it will be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you.

Matthew 11:24

24But I tell you that it will be more bearable for Sodom on the day of judgment than for you."

Matthew 12:36

36But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken.

That’s just examining some of the references to the day of judgment that exist in the Gospels, we have not even looked at the myriad that exist in the rest of the New Testament, or particularly the book of revelation which is an extended reflection on the events surrounding the coming judgment of mankind.

The warnings or should I say promises of certain judgment to the unrepentant are not in the Bible to try to frighten you into the kingdom, you can’t be frightened into the kingdom of God. The Lord sets before you the what Peter calls His "very great and precious promises". The Lord is warning you of what will certainly befall you if you do not turn to His Son in faith, but God the father doesn’t merely put a placard in front of you saying "turn or burn", he is not pleased in your judgment and condemnation. Heaven does not rejoice when a sinner continues on the broad path to damnation. Heaven rejoices when the prodigal returns home. Heaven rejoices when you humble yourself like Manasseh, who formerly did evil, and embrace the great and free salvation that God has set before you in the person of His Son Jesus Christ. When you abandon pride, stop deluding yourself and refusing him, and say God have mercy upon me a sinner!

I stand before you a man who himself sinned horribly before the Lord, prior to my conversion, I was a pagan, someone caught up in the occult, a prideful fool who trusted in himself and who convinced himself that evil of his ways was good, and that he had no need of a redeemer. But God in his grace showed me the evil of my own heart, he brought me to the end of myself, turned my heart of stone into a heart of flesh and thanks only to Him I embraced those precious promises that he extended. I turned to Jesus Christ as my redeemer for I knew that without him I was lost and had nothing to hope for except judgment. And in Christ I have obtained an inheritance beyond compare, certainly beyond what I deserved which was nothing but judgment. Peace, consolation, eternal life, and God’s certain assurances in His word that I am his adopted Son and that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate me from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Those precious promises are extended to you too, they are extended to each and every one of you. Will you instead choose judgment, choose condemnation? Will you follow the foolish example of Judah? Or will you embrace the love and forgiveness that is offered to you in the Lion of the Tribe of Judah? Choose Christ, O people, choose Christ. For in him all the precious promises of God to us are yea and amen.