Zephaniah chapter three, I think
it's one of the last three or four books of the Bible if you
haven't found it yet. Chapter three, verse 17. It says, the Lord your God in
your midst, the mighty one will save. He will rejoice over you
with gladness. He will quiet you with his love.
He will rejoice over you with singing. And the Lord God Almighty, creator
of the heavens and the earth, the savior of his people rejoices
over his people with singing, with singing. Now, our God who
loves his people eternally, not just for a moment, but eternally.
He saw how their race had fallen and set about rescuing some of
them. And his plan of salvation that
we know, that we know and have been taught, that plan has not
violated justice. That plan has not violated his
righteousness. And he sent his son whom he also
loved. to make intercession for them
by his blood. And in that blood, salvation
was assured forever. And God knows whom he loves. And when he has rescued them,
he shouts with joy. And I can imagine, I don't know
what to call him anymore, members of false Christianity, we'll
just call it that. I imagine they love this passage
since the focus of man-derived, you know, teachings and stuff
like that. They seek to promote their own
praise. They want to make you feel good,
basically. They want to make you feel good. And any verse
that they can twist to show them, to show those members of that
church that God is happy with them, with them all. You walk
in that door, he's happy with you. If you don't walk in that
door, he's still happy with you. But any one of those verses they
can do that with will be utilized. And they do it to invoke a reaction. They want that reaction. and
it is a carefully packaged enticement delivered with joyful oration
for the purpose of soothing that gnawing doubt in the soul that
wonders if everything really will work out in the end. And
people eat that stuff up. We're emotional, we're emotional,
we can't help it. Everyone's emotional to some
degree I don't know if this is a surprise to you all or not.
I was, still am, very, very emotional. I was an utter mess through elementary
and junior high. I know the younger you are, the
more you are prone to emotional reaction. But I was bad. I would just cry over anything. If they were choosing teams and
I wasn't chosen, I'd cry. probably one reason they didn't
choose me. Or if a friend said something
cruel, or at least I thought was cruel, I'd cry. Everything
was just emotion, emotion. But then I noticed this, ever
since God saved me, or I realized it, right? Much of the Bible,
I have an emotional response to much of the Bible, it makes
me cry. I mean, if I don't hold it together
at the pulpit, I won't get through. And I don't know any believer
who is emotionally unresponsive. I don't know how else to put
that. Every believer responds to this with an emotion, whatever
that emotion will be. Now, I'm not equating emotion
as like proof of faith. It's not. It's not. Our emotions,
they'll vary by the minute. You know, one day to the next,
we'll feel like, I'm not anywhere near close to God. How can he
love me? And then the next day, oh, I'm so close to God. I see, I have faith now. But it's not the guide by which
we measure the strength of our faith. But the truth is that
a person sees everything differently once God has revealed himself. He starts to see the pictures
of Christ in the Old Testament everywhere, which is what the
Holy Spirit guides you to. And he sees the great depths
of his love for not only his people while he dwelled on earth,
while Jesus dwelled on earth, but also for his people across
all of time. You know, you can go back and
look in Genesis and see what he did, not just for Abraham,
not just for Jacob. It was for us. It was for us. For me, the most emotional, I guess, passages,
it's like seeing the acts of Ruth's kinsmen redeemer. That whole, it starts in Ruth
2 all the way to the end. It's, you know, he's the main
player on stage. Or I watch as Jesus pauses on
his journey and he turns aside for a blind man. Or I see the blood at the foot
of the cross, which is proof that his body was broken. And
that cry he says, my father, why have you forsaken me? showing
by that the punishment that was meant for me. You know, I should
be forsaken. But it's a fact, we're emotional
and we respond to emotion in others and that's just the basics
of marketing and human psychology. If you can create an emotional
investment in something you're trying to sell, you can get people
to buy. They will respond. Don't lie. It works on you. It's
worked on me. It works. They use the same tricks, though,
in false Christianity, because emotion is a very powerful compeller. And that's what they do. They
look for faith in the response. They need that outward showing. And there is no better way to
evoke an outward response from the congregation than an emotion. If you were just robotic preaching,
even if it was a great message, right? They need that emotion. That's what they feed on. So
they use shame and joy, guilt, exhilaration, or as Tim James
says, they use whips and biscuits. But in our passage, man's emotions
and his actions are not The focus. They aren't the focus. The focus
of this verse is God's emotions and actions. He's the one singing. Now, who is he singing to? He's
singing to his people, whom he calls Israel. It's his people. It would be the devil's work
to present this passage as the truth of everyone's eternal status
before Almighty God. Everyone is Israel. Everyone
is Jerusalem. God does not rejoice over everyone
with singing. And that's a shock if you tell
that to people. Or they just dismiss it. Even though this truth isn't
hidden. It's not hidden in the Bible. It's there to see. And
it doesn't require a great mental leap to get there. It's actually
the opposite. It takes an enormous twisting,
in my view, of scripture to arrive at the belief that God loves
everyone, wants to save everyone, but he can't make it happen because
he's waiting on man to decide it. My dad once preached a message,
it's on Sermon Audio, it's like, it's August, yeah, it's August
20, 2006 is when it was posted anyway. He preached it prompted by an
experience he had at a Bible camp where he was a counselor
in the early 70s for elementary school children, or aged. And at the time, my dad was a
believer in free will, free will. He was a free willer, called
himself. And free willer, you know, someone who believes that
God loves everyone who has ever lived, who ever will live, and
that the salvation is dependent on man's decision to believe
God, to accept that salvation. Well, the children at this camp
where my dad was counselor, they were also raised in that same
doctrine, right? Like for like. And after devotion
or during devotionals, my dad would ask, you know, if any one
of the children, I guess, fourth grade, fifth grade, sixth grade,
wanted to pray. And this one little boy, he stood
up to pray. And he was praying that God would
save, you know, various people. And then he said that he prayed
that God would save the devil. This little boy. And so my dad took the boy aside
and told him he should not pray, or we should not pray for God
to save the devil. because God is not going to save
him, right? He's the devil. And the boy said,
why? Why? And my dad didn't have a
good answer. You know, if it's true that God
loves everyone, that means God loves the devil too. So my dad could only reply, well,
because he's not. He's not. But the truth is that God loves
some people and he hates others. Which is the outcome of the good
pleasure of his will as it says in Ephesians. He adopted some
people. He adopted them as sons and some
he did not adopt. His singing is for the adopted
ones. Now how do we know this? You
just step back a verse, it's not too far. Verse 16, and that
day it shall be said to Jerusalem, do not fear. Zion, let not your
hands be weak. He's in the midst of Jerusalem
singing over her, not the physical city, but the name by which he often
refers to his people in the singular sense. Israel, Jerusalem, Zion. Revelations 21 verse nine through
13, you don't have to turn there, but it refers to Jerusalem as
the bride, the lamb's wife. It's not old Jerusalem, which
has got political borders. He's in the midst of new Jerusalem
and he's singing. Now I ask you is it, because
I had this feeling I guess, is it not a surprising thing that
God sings? Like out of all the attributes
of God that you think about, when you think on what God has
done, what God does, is singing on that list? And I'm not trying
to put God in a box. I'm not trying to put you in
a box. I'm just genuinely curious. It's singing something you think
of when you think of God. His singing. Because I, I mean up until this
point, I just didn't imagine it. I didn't. Instead, when I
think of God, I think of his works, all those miracles he
did as Christ, all those things he did in the Old Testament,
the New Testament. I think of his, you know, like
David said, his just commandments. I think of his loving words toward
his people. And with myself, especially the
patience he has, or his faithfulness toward him. I believe that's, I don't remember
what chapter, but that's in Lamentations, thy faithfulness. And faced with all that, if anyone
should be singing, shouldn't it be us? We're the recipients, right?
We should be singing about him, not the other way around. But if the Bible says God sings
over his people, then he sings over his people. And here God sings with joy,
joy, gladness. This is no song of lament. Oh,
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, alas. If only they had come to me that
I might save them. It's not sad. He's not fretting,
he's not sorrowing over his poor lost Jerusalem. What an ineffectual
God that would be. On the contrary, just look around,
verse 17. Go to verse 15. The Lord has
taken away your judgments, oh Jerusalem. He has cast out your
enemy, Jerusalem. Verse 19, I will deal with all
who afflict you. I will save the lame. Those I
wills of God lined up. Verse 20, at that time I will
bring you back. This is joyful. And he's not
bashful about anyone knowing who he is singing about. You
know, that joke goes around, there's always one family member
that you're ashamed of. He's not ashamed of the ones
he's saved. And he's not singing with a quiet
voice or from far away. He wants it known that he will
save his people, whom he loves, by the way, and that his singing
is for them. It's for them. It's not for anything,
it's for them. And he wants his people to know
who he sings over, see where he is while he sings. It says there in verse 17, the
Lord God in your midst, he's not far away. And he's not so far we can't
hear him. He is always so close, so close to his people. And often,
I don't know how many preachers I've heard say this exact same
thing. When God wants us to pay attention
to something, he repeats it. He repeats it. And of course,
repetition helps us notice and remember some things. You guys
remember those, I guess they used to be late night TV commercials,
and that, you know, the announcer guy would tell you, There's this
great deal on a magazine subscription. But if you call in the next 15
minutes, they'll double it, they'll throw on something, a knife,
you know, something extra, but you gotta call. And then they
will repeat that number three or four times, and it works,
because an hour later, that number's still in your head, and you can't
get it out. Repetition works. The fact that Hebrew poetry in
the Old Testament was a language less interested in rhyming sounds
and syllables like English is, is more interested in creating
what's called parallelism of idea or thought. That is something
I would call God's providence. This was the Old Testament written
in the Hebrew language. And they would write things. They would say, write a poem,
and it would have multiple verses saying the same thing. That's
for us. The repetition is built in. And
it's everywhere in the Old Testament, and especially from people like
King David, that sweet psalmist of Israel. In 2 Samuel 23 to
David says, the spirit of the Lord spoke by me and his word
was on my tongue. That's the same thing, spoken
two different ways, but it's the same thing. The Lord spoke by David and the
Lord's word was on David's tongue. And in Psalm 3.7, David says,
for you have struck all my enemies on the cheekbone. You have broken
the teeth of the ungodly. Again, same idea, same idea.
It's just saying it a little bit differently the second time.
Now back in our text, we have the same repetition, which tells
us that we should take notice. It says, If you, in mine, it's
lined out, and this is lines three and five, I believe. But it's like the third one and
the last one. It says, he will rejoice over
you with gladness, he will rejoice over you with singing. It mentions rejoicing twice.
And then two ways of rejoicing, with gladness and with singing.
Take notice that God rejoices over you if you are one of his,
and it's a glad song. Now the New King James Version
that I read out of, it's apparently a very literal translation. Basically exactly what it was
written in the Hebrew and the Greek, that's what they wrote
down in this one. The King James gets a little
more, they try to instead translate
the meaning. The NIV is the same way. But just to give you a sense
of our passage here, allow me to read these last three lines
of this verse to you from some of the other translations. And
I know some people have the King James, the NIV and others, but
I pulled four more out of here. So the NIV says, he will take
great delight in you. In his love, he will no longer
rebuke you. but will rejoice over you with
singing." The King James says, he will rejoice over thee with
joy. He will rest in his love. He
will joy over thee with singing. The Amplified says, he will rejoice
over you with joy. He will be quiet in his love,
making no mention of your past sins. He will rejoice over you
with shouts of joy. The New American Standard Bible
says, he will rejoice over you with joy. He will be quiet in
his love. He will rejoice over you with
shouts of joy. Now, the idea here is that God
concerning his children is so glad with them, feels such a
strong love toward them, that he will rejoice and he will sing
over them. Now most songs, unless they're
instrumentals, they have lyrics. What do you suppose the words
of this song is? Are. Not trying to put you on the
spot. It's the Bible. It's cover to
cover. The entire Bible is God's love
song, a joyous love song from God to his people. Those are the lyrics. And we shouldn't wonder why God
rejoices over his children. We do, but we shouldn't. It makes perfect sense if you
consider all that he has done for them. Weren't they wayward
and are now on the straight path? Weren't they slaves to sin, but
are now set free? Weren't they lost and are now
found? Weren't they bought with a price? Weren't they fatherless and are
now adopted? Those are all causes for rejoicing
and a reason for singing. I mean, Jesus told that parable
about having a hundred sheep. One got lost. And what he said,
what I'm going to paraphrase, what rejoicing there was in that
one found sheep. With his voice, with his voice,
he called creation into existence. And with that same voice, he
also calls believers to himself. He proclaims curses on the wicked
and blessings on the righteous. And his voice, it says, is like
the sound of many waters. It is loud. It is loud. So know this, that when you open
scripture, God is singing. Listen for it, listen for it. Matt, would you close us please?