Turn with me please then to the
book of Zephaniah. That is the fourth book from
the end of the Old Testament. I think you have Malachi, Zechariah,
Haggai, and then Zephaniah. I'll give you a minute to find
it. When we get there, we're going
to begin our reading in verse 14 of Zephaniah 3. Sing, O daughter of Zion. Shout,
O Israel. Be glad and rejoice with all
the heart, O daughter of Jerusalem. The Lord hath taken away thy
judgments. He has cast out thine enemy, the King of Israel. Even the Lord is in the midst
of thee. Thou shalt not see evil anymore. In that day it shall
be said to Jerusalem, fear thou not, And to Zion, let not thine
hands be slack. The Lord thy God is in the midst
of thee is mighty. He will save. He will rejoice
over thee with joy. He will rest in his love. He
will joy over thee with singing. I will gather them that are sorrowful
for the solemn assembly, who are of thee to whom the reproach
of it was a burden. Behold, at that time, I will
undo all that afflict thee, and I will save her that halteth,
and gather her that was driven out, and I will get them praise
and fame in every land where they have been put to shame.
At that time will I bring you again, even in the time that
I gather you, for I will make you a name and a praise among
all people of the earth when I turn back your captivity before
your eyes, saith the Lord. In that 14th verse, it says,
Sing, O daughter of Zion, shout, O Israel, and be glad and rejoice
with all the heart. In that 14th verse, the people
of God are encouraged to shout and rejoice with all the heart.
In the King James Bible, the word heart is found 765 times.
In the very first time, that we find it, it is in the
book of Genesis, in Genesis 6-5, where we read, And God saw that
the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every
imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And in the very next verse we
read concerning God himself, And it repented the Lord that
he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.
Now, we know that the heart is not where thoughts occur. Obviously,
they occur in the mind. But most times when the word
heart is used in God's word, it refers to the seed of emotions,
desires, and thoughts, the innermost being of a man. And Genesis 8.21
tells us that the imagination of man's heart is evil from his
youth. In a multitude of times in the
book of Exodus, we read where God hardened Pharaoh's heart.
And of course, it's not speaking of his physical heart. It's speaking
of his mind and his emotions. So when we read here in our text
that we are to rejoice with all the heart, it's simply telling
us that we are to praise God with every inner emotion and
thought that we have. But why? What's the big deal? What's all the rejoicing about?
And we have the answer to that question in the very next verse,
in verse 15. In fact, we're given four reasons.
And I want to look at each of these individually. Verse 15
of our text. Reason number one. The Lord has
taken away thy judgments. That is the message, or I should
say the title of this message. The Lord has taken away thy judgments. Reason number two. He has cast
out thine enemy. Reason number three, the King
of Israel, even the Lord is in the midst of thee. Reason number
four, thou shall not see evil anymore. And we're born under
the judgment of God. We are as those that John the
Baptist described in John 3, 36 as having the wrath of God
abiding on them. Born deserving the fierce wrath
of God. Paul told the Ephesians, that
we were by nature the children of wrath. But our Lord hath taken
away the judgment and the punishment that was due our sins. And this
verse tells us that he has cast out thine enemy, reason number
two, to rejoice. In Psalm 89, it speaks of how
the Lord blessed David, but it also applies to his elect when
it says, the enemy shall not exact upon him, nor the son of
wickedness afflict him. Psalm 18 tells us that the Lord
delivered me from my strong enemy and from them which hated me
for they were too strong for me. Our strong enemy from whom
the Lord has delivered us is sin. It's an enemy that has plagued
the human race since the fall of our father Adam in the garden. It's an enemy so powerful that
no man can defeat it. But there is one who can and
has overcome this enemy, and that, of course, is our Lord
Jesus Christ, who the Psalms tell us is mighty, strong in
battle, who shall in the end also defeat the last enemy, an
enemy which no man can elude or overcome, the enemy of death. But when we read that death shall
be destroyed, what exactly does that mean? We read in 1 Corinthians
15 verses 55 and 56, O death, where is thy sting? O grave,
where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin, and
the strength of sin is the law. Now death has no more sting for
the believer. Any of you that have ever been
stung by a hornet or a wasp knows that it's a very unpleasant experience. It hurts a lot. But we're told
in these two verses that there is no more sting, no more pain
in death for the believer. The stinger has been removed. Death is but like a worrisome
bee. We have wood bees around our
house, and they're kind of scary looking. They buzz around you,
but they cannot sting. They're just a worrisome annoyance. And our blessed Lord removed
that sting at Calvary when he fulfilled every requirement of
the law on our behalf. And we know from what we're told
in Romans 10, 4, that Christ is the end of the law for everyone
that believeth. The end of the law for righteousness.
So if the strength of sin is the law, and the law has been
done away with for us by Christ, then there is no more sting and
death. for the believer, only bliss and rejoicing. And the grave can claim no victory
either, because as it was not able to hold our Lord, so it
will be unable to hold his people. This body that we are sitting
here in today will be raised again, as we're told in Corinthians,
incorruptible. However, for those still under
the law, meaning those who do not believe, death still has
A dreadful sting. It's the beginning of eternal
sorrows and woe for the lost man or woman. Now, when we read
of how the Lord has taken away our judgments, we need to remember
and we need to understand that He just didn't take them away
and hide them. He didn't sweep them under the rug. No, He took
those judgments that were due our sins, and He took those to
Calvary. and laid them on his blessed
son. And since the scriptures tell us that our God will by
no means clear the guilty, when those sins were laid on Christ,
he bore the full brunt of the fierce, undiluted wrath of an
angry God. We're told in Psalm 711 that
God is angry with the wicked every day. When God unloads his
wrath on individual sinners, that is the wrath due to the
sins of that particular person's iniquities. And if God is angry
with the wicked every day as He is, then He has never been
more angry than He was on that day when He poured out His wrath
on His blessed Son, because there has never been such a concentration
of the wrath of God in one place or upon one person than there
was that day. And when the Savior had our sins
laid upon Him, He was, by imputation, the most wicked individual who
had ever lived, because every sin that can be imagined had
been committed by God's elect. All of that wickedness, all of
that violence, all of that filth that was found in the lives of
God's people was laid upon the Savior. And God fully displayed
His ferocious hostility towards sin when He heaped upon our Savior
an eternity's worth of wrath, which should have been ours,
which should have been suffered by us in those three hours that
our Lord hung between heaven and earth. And He exhausted that
anger that was due our sins. So when it comes to the wrath
of God, For God's people, for God's elect, the well is dry,
bone dry. All of the wrath has been poured
out. We will never know what it is
to suffer under God's ferocious punishment that's reserved for
the damned in hell. We read of the atrocities committed
in the torture chambers of old, and we cringe at what was done,
at the pain inflicted, the unbearable pain but that is but a scratch
of the surface of what those who will be doomed for eternity
will suffer. And we know our God is merciful,
astonishingly merciful, because He could have left this entire
race to perish, but He chose a number which no man can number
and gave them to His Son who willingly, willingly bore the
wrath for those sins. And verse 15 gives us a third
reason to rejoice when it tells us that the Lord is in our midst. Like a good shepherd looking
over his flock of sheep for any sign of illness or distress for
his sheep. Like a good shepherd on the lookout
for any threat to his sheep that might harm them, ready to spring
into action do whatever is necessary, including the laying down of
his life to protect those sheep. But unlike an earthly shepherd
who might be taken by surprise by a threat to his sheep, our
God is never taken by surprise because he has ordained all things
from the foundation of this world to do his people good. The cost
of the redemption of those sheep came at too high a price for
him to lose even one. Christ promised us in John 6.39
where we read, And this is the Father's will which hath sent
me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing,
but should raise it up again at the last day. And this word
midst, when we read where it says that the Lord is in our
midst, It means a position of close proximity, right up next
to something or someone, the condition of being surrounded.
Psalm 46.1 tells us that our God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble. And the reason he's very present
is because he is in our midst. ready to do us good, ready to
render aid, which for a bunch of dumb sheep like us is pretty
much 24-7. But we also have friends that
are willing to help us, do we not? And of course, the answer
to that is absolutely. But here's the difference. Many
times, those friends have the desire to help, but they do not
have the means. Not so with our Lord, because
we are told in the scriptures that He is not only in our midst,
but that He is mighty. Mighty, this word mighty means
displaying extraordinary strength, force, or power. Awesome in degrees
of ability and skill. So He's not only willing to help,
He's fully able to help. And our Lord is in our midst
whenever we gather to worship Him. He promised this in that
verse that we're all so familiar with in Matthew 18-20. For where
two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the
midst of them. Now look at the wording here. It doesn't say where two or three
gather in My name. It says where two or three are
gathered. And when we come together to
worship, there are exactly as many present as were predetermined
by our God in eternity past to be gathered in this particular
place, on this particular day, at this particular time. It is
He and His good providence that moves our hearts and therefore
moves our feet to gather in His name. He is the one that gives
us grace to gather when others do not care to be in our midst. But let us never look down our
noses at those who do not gather with us Because was it for naught
for the grace given us, we would have no interest in ever gathering
to worship our Lord. He does the gathering like a
shepherd gathers his sheep. And in the last part of verse
15, our God makes us this promise, which is reason number four,
to rejoice. Thou shalt not see evil anymore. What an amazing, precious promise
this is. Everything that happens to the
believer after he or she comes to faith in Christ is good. The very opposite of evil. Every circumstance, every blessing,
every heartache, every loathsome disease, every single thing that
happens in the believer's life is good. Because our Lord uses
each and every one of these things that come our way to do us good. The problem is we, with our limited
understanding, cannot possibly see how these things can do us
good. I know this church is going through
heartbreak at the moment. There's many in our church as
well who are suffering different illnesses, different ailments.
Some come with aging and some come for other reasons. But eternity will show us, as
our God makes known to us, His goodness toward us, why all these
things happened. And He'll show us that there
was no more evil in our lives once we were born into the Kingdom
of God. And as I stand here and those
words come out of my mouth, I know that when my time comes to suffer
grief, heartache, illness, that I probably, well, know probably
about it. I won't be quite as sure of those
things I'm saying as I am standing here in perfect health. I will probably find myself complaining
to the Lord, if not with my mouth, then probably with my mind, as
to how any of this could be good for me. And I know with what this church
is going through, That thought no doubt has entered your mind.
It has mine. I'll be honest with you. And
I know that eventually that well of enthusiasm runs dry. But our God promises, as he promised
Paul, my grace is sufficient for thee. He will not put a burden
on his people that they cannot bear. Now, I want to go back
to reason number one that we're given to rejoice. because the
Lord hath taken away thy judgments." Without that happening, the other
three reasons to rejoice could not take place. The Scriptures
have much to say about the judgment of God, this judgment that has
been taken away from us, this judgment that has been taken
away for us. In the book of 1 Kings 10, verse
9, we read of King David, "'Blessed be the Lord thy God, which delighteth
in thee, to set thee on the throne of Israel, because the Lord loveth
Israel forever. Therefore made he the king to
do judgment and justice." Now, we know that David is a type
of Christ, so when we read this verse, we can definitely apply
it to our Lord in His church, the true Israel of God. And this
verse says that the Lord delighteth in thee. There are only three
things that I know of that the Lord delights in. First, in His blessed Son. Second,
in showing mercy. And third, He delights in His
people. And this verse goes on to say that because our God delights
in His Son, He has set Him on the throne. And unlike David,
who merely sat on the throne in Israel, our blessed Savior
sits on the throne of the universe. And that verse also tells us
that the Lord loveth Israel forever. Now we know that this cannot
apply to the physical nation of Israel because the scriptures
teach us that the true Israel of God is the elect, the true
church of God. Therefore, because he loveth
Israel forever, he hath made Christ king of kings and Lord
of lords. And the last words of this verse
tell us why Christ was made king, to do judgment and justice. Now, without doing justice, our
Lord cannot be said to do judgment. And without doing judgment, he
cannot be said to do justice. Deuteronomy 32, 3 says, Ascribe
ye greatness unto our God. He is the rock. His work is perfect. For all his ways are judgment. A God of truth and without iniquity,
just and right is he. There is no injustice in God's
court of law. His justice is right, as is everything
He does. Job asked a question in Job 8.3. He asked, Does God pervert judgment
or does the Almighty pervert justice? And in Job 34.12, he
seems to answer his own question where we read, Yea, surely God
will not do wickedly, neither will the Almighty pervert judgment. Now we read in Genesis chapter
18 of Abraham pleading with God over the fate of Sodom. And it
says, as Abraham drew near and said, wilt thou also destroy
the righteous with the wicked? Peradventure there be 50 righteous
within the city. Wilt thou also destroy and not
spare the place for the 50 righteous that are therein? That be far
from thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the
wicked. and that the righteous should be as the wicked, that
be far from thee. Then he asked the question, shall
not the judge of all the earth do right? And we know the answer
to that question because we're told the answer in Psalm 19,
9. The judgments of the Lord are
true and righteous all together. We can be sure of this one thing.
Christ will judge this world rightly. He will judge this world
in righteousness. Psalm 9, 7 and 8 says, But the
Lord shall endure forever. He hath prepared his throne for
judgment, and he shall judge the world in righteousness. He
shall minister judgment to the people in uprightness. And John
5 tells us, For the Father judges no man, but hath committed all
judgment unto the Son. There is a day coming When that
same Christ who stood before Pilate and before the Jews and
was unjustly judged by them, he will be that same one who
sets in judgment. But unlike the sham justice that
was administered to our Lord before he was crucified, the
justice that will be meted out on that day, on the day our Lord
sets in judgment, shall be according to the strictest righteousness
and truth. And those who have counted on
their own righteousness to carry them into glory shall, too late,
realize that there is but one whose righteousness is able to
carry men into glory. And that, of course, is our blessed
Lord. There will be even in the day of judgment, ironically enough,
those who are so sure of their good works being meritorious
before God, that they will plead those works in the day of judgment.
And as I read this, I really don't know if these men are so
confident in their good works or if they're so sure of their
judgment that they are begging and pleading anything that they
can to stay out of hell. But in the day of judgment, we
read in Matthew 7, 21 through 23, not everyone that saith unto
me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he
that doeth the will of my Father, which is in heaven, Many will
say to me in that day, have we not prophesied in thy name, and
in thy name cast out devils, and in thy name done many wonderful
works? And then will I profess unto
them, I never knew you. Depart from me, ye that work
iniquity. Now notice that the Lord does
not dispute the fact that these men did indeed perform miracles.
But the fact that they did prophesy and that they did cast out devils
and that they did do many what they considered wonderful works
will count for nothing because they did not do them according
to the Father's will. Rather, those works, even though
they're looked upon by men as good works, were indeed iniquity
because they were not done in the name of Christ. We just read
in that verse 21 that the only ones who will enter heaven are
the ones who do the Father's will. But what exactly is that
will? Christ himself tells us in John 6, 40. And this is the
will of Him that sent me, the Father, that everyone which seeth
the Son and believeth on Him may have everlasting life, and
I will raise Him up at the last day. First, you have to see the
Son as He is, the only true God. a just God and a Savior, and
then you have to believe on Him, which is impossible unless it
is given you to have eyes to see, and unless faith, which
is the gift of God, is bestowed upon you. Christ made this so
clear when He told His disciples in Matthew 13, 11. This is a
verse that I try to remember constantly. Unto you it is given
to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them
it is not given. Lost men are left in their unbelief
simply because our God, for reasons known to himself, wishes it to
be so. And we have probably at all time,
at one time or another, I should say, been guilty of thinking
about unbelievers How can they possibly not see this? It's so
crystal clear. And the reason that they can't
see is they have not been given eyes to see nor faith to believe. It's kind of like saying about
a blind man, how can he not see the sun? It is so clear. And
yet he's blind. He can see nothing. Have you
ever, and I'm sure, before I even ask the question, because I know
we all have, perhaps about unbelievers, and immediately, when that thought
goes through your mind, you think, how can I think something quite
so stupid? And I've thought a time or two
about my children, who literally were raised in church from the
moment they were born. How can they not believe on Christ?
They've heard the gospel since they were infants, since they
could understand spoken language. And my own heart condemns me
for even thinking something so ridiculous because I know that
to them it has not been given to believe. Therefore, it's impossible. It is impossible for them to
believe. But there is hope for my children,
for yours, for my grandchildren, for yours, for those that we
love that believe not. But that hope is not in them.
Hope is in the God who delights in mercy that we so willingly
worship. And as we look at this thing
of judgment, we know this for a fact. Judgment is sure. One of the old Puritans once
said, if there is justice in heaven or fire in hell, sinners
shall not go unpunished. And that is true. Sad, but true. In Ezra 7.26 we read, And whosoever
will not do the law of thy God, and the law of the king, let
judgment be executed speedily upon him. This verse certainly
describes us before we came to faith in Christ. We would not,
we could not do the law of God. The scriptures tell us that we
came forth from the womb, speaking lies, and things went downhill
from there. We've been in Christ, our Great
Substitute, since the beginning of time,
since what we call eternity past. And judgment did indeed fall
upon us when it fell upon our Great Substitute. We've been
in Him. And when we're in Him, when that
judgment took place, therefore that judgment that was due our
sins took place upon us. But scoffers look at the wrath
of God as something that's never going to happen. There is those
that Peter describes in second Peter chapter three, where we
read starting in verse three, those verses that are so familiar.
Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers
walking after their own lust and saying, where is the promise
of his coming? For since the fathers fell asleep,
all things continue as they were from the beginning." Lost men
and women say, you Christians have been holding this thing
of Christ coming to earth and judging the earth over our heads
for thousands of years. And we think it's completely
ridiculous. It's simply not ever going to happen. And we were
once like that. I know I can speak for myself
and more than likely speak for you. There was a time when I
had no fear of God. I was raised in a Baptist church
and heard about hellfire and brimstone my whole time growing
up, and yet none of it had any effect. I simply had no reverence for
God. I simply had no dread of any
punishment. But when the Lord brings you
to the place of dreadful conviction, where you see clearly that you
are under the curse of God, that you're lost and undone, you sing
a different tune. I remember years ago reading
a story about a young man, I don't recall his name, who came to
Kentucky in the 1780s. He had heard about the beauty
of the countryside, but one of the things that intrigued him
which he had heard about the massive herds of bison, American
buffalo, that roamed the huge grasslands of Kentucky. And he
wanted to see these herds for himself. And the story goes that
he met Daniel Boone and got to know him, and he talked Boone
into taking him out to see one of these gigantic herds of buffalo. One of these herds that he had
heard about and read about when he lived back east. And one of
the things that he read was an account of how when these herds
begin to stampede, it's indeed a fearful, dreadful thing to
behold. So the story goes that he and
Boone found a herd, and this young man wanted to get a little
closer, wanted to see these beasts up close. And against Boone's
better judgment, they began to sneak across this huge, open
area, tall grass toward this herd. And this young man later
wrote in the account of that day how he was thinking to himself,
these creatures don't look so fearsome to me. I don't see anything
except them standing there quietly feeding. But as they got closer,
something caused this huge herd of bison to stampede. And they
were headed directly for Boone and this young man. And this
young man wrote in his account that it was the most terrifying
thing he had ever experienced. as hundreds of these one-ton
animals charged their way. So he did the only thing he knew
to do. He began running, even though there was no place to
run, nowhere to hide. And as he was running, he said,
suddenly Boone grabbed him by the shirt collar, threw him on
the ground, dropped to one knee, and aimed his flintlock rifle
at this huge herd of stampeding buffalo that was heading directly
for them. And this young man wrote that at that moment, he
thought to himself, what is this guy doing? He has a single shot
rifle and there's hundreds of buffalo. But he said, as the
first animals were just but a few yards away and death was sure,
that Boone fired a shot into the head of one of the lead buffalo,
which fell just a couple of feet in front of them. And this young
man said, Boone grabbed him. Threw him in behind that buffalo
we just shot and saved him from certain destruction. Now, when
I first read that account years ago, my first thought was this
guy Daniel Boone apparently had ice water in his veins because
I would have never thought to do that. But the more I thought
about this story, I thought, is this not a perfect picture
of the lost man or woman before we're awakened to the peril that
we're in. And about how God lets us suffer a while under the conviction
that our doom is sure. But as this young man experiences, he suddenly realized that it
was indeed a fearsome thing to behold. are taught by our God
that His wrath is impending, His wrath is charging toward
us at lightning speed, and our doom is sure, we begin to understand. And at the last moment, when
we're as sure of being in hell as if we were already there,
our God shows us that one slain from the foundation of the world,
and He puts us in Christ at rock of ages. hide us from His judgment
and wrath. And as that huge buffalo had
to die in order to provide Boone and this young man with a place
of refuge, so one had to die to provide us with a hiding place.
And we never look at the wrath of God the same ever again because
we have been taught that it is indeed a fearful and terrifying
thing. And the Scriptures also tell
us that the Lord loves judgment Now that doesn't mean that our
God sits and says, who do I get to send to hell today? That's
not at all what it means. It's very opposite. These two
verses that I'm going to read talk about God's judgment being
directly tied to His goodness and love of His elect. The first
verse that we read in Psalm 33.5 says, The Lord loveth righteousness
and judgment. And then it says, The earth is
full of the goodness of the Lord. This righteousness and judgment
spoken of here is according to the strict requirements of God's
law. And the reason that he loveth
judgment is because he can delight himself in the fact that he,
by his unimaginable sacrifice, made it possible for God to be
just and justify the ungodly. As we read in Romans 5, 6, for
when we were yet without strength, In due time, Christ died for
the ungodly, which is a reason the psalmist could write in the
second half of this verse, the earth is full of the goodness
of the Lord, and that goodness is demonstrated every time a
lost man or woman is brought to faith in Christ, because our
God delights in mercy. In the second verse, Psalm 37,
28 tells us, For the Lord loveth judgment, and forsaketh not his
saints, They are preserved forever, but the seed of the wicked shall
be cut off. Now again, we read how the Lord
loveth judgment, because He is in the midst of that judgment,
because He is in our midst, that judgment, when it comes, He remembers
that His saints are in Christ, the one who shed His blood for
them. And they're not forsaken. Rather, it says they are preserved
forever. Isaiah tells us in chapter 54
verse 7, For a small moment have I forsaken thee, but with great
mercies I will gather thee. And when our Lord gathers, He
gathers forever. There are many scriptures in
which our Lord talks of preserving the saints. Let me read just
three. Psalm 121, 7 and 8 says, The Lord shall preserve thee
from all evil. He shall preserve thy soul. The Lord shall preserve thy going
out and thy coming in from this time forth and evermore. Psalm 40, 11. Withhold not thy
tender mercy from me, O Lord. Let thy loving kindness and thy
truth continually preserve me. And Paul wrote to Timothy in
2 Timothy 4, 18. And the Lord shall deliver me
from every evil work and will preserve me unto his heavenly
kingdom to whom be glory forever. Now the last of what we call
the five points of Calvinism is perseverance of the saints. But it could very well be called
preservation of the saints. Because the only reason that
any of us will ever persevere is because we're preserved in
Christ forever preserved, forever secure. So Law Center, who may be sitting
here today, I have a parting word for you. And it's not a
word of hope, but rather a word of warning. There is a judgment
coming, it is sure. And it will be more dreadful
and unimaginably horrible than anyone can imagine for those
to be found outside of Christ. In that day, there will be no
mercy. There will be no leniency. The
judgment that will be rendered on that day will be in accordance
with the strictest dictates of God's holy law. And you can be
sure of one thing, that if God spared not His own Son when sin
was found upon Him, He will not spare a guilty sinner. The Scriptures tell us that today
is the day of salvation. So I encourage you to seek the
Lord while He may be found. Petition Him for mercy if you're
able, if He's given you grace to do so. And take hope in the
promise that Christ made when He said, He that cometh unto
Me, I will in no wise cast out. And dear saint, be encouraged
by the fact that the Lord has taken away your judgment. It
has long since taken place. It's been taken away. And you're
not only found not guilty, you are deemed to be perfect. And
if you know yourself in the least, you know that is miraculous. You know that's impossible, except
that our God is able to take that which is unjust and make
us as perfect as Christ himself. We are now accepted in the beloved. And the reason that we are is
that the Lord has taken away by judgments. Thank you for your
attention.