Be turning with me please to
the book of Zephaniah. That's the fourth book from the
end of the Old Testament. You've got Malachi, Zechariah,
Haggai, and Zephaniah. Those of you that were here Tuesday
may remember Bill Eldridge read this very text and when he began
reading it, I thought, this is going to be good. And the reason
I knew it was going to be good is I had been studying this text
for several weeks, and I feel like that there's some things
here that will bless our hearts. I know it certainly blessed mine
in the study of this text. Zephaniah chapter 3, we'll begin
reading in verse 14. Sing, O daughter of Zion! Shout, O Israel! and be glad
and rejoice with all the heart, O daughter of Jerusalem. The
Lord hath taken away thy judgments. He hath cast out thine enemy,
the king of Israel. Even the Lord is in the midst
of thee. Thou shalt not see evil any more. 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 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 give 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 verse 14, we read, Sing, O
daughter of Zion, shout, O Israel, be glad and rejoice with all
the heart, O daughter of Jerusalem. In verse 14, the people of God
are encouraged to shout and rejoice with all the heart. The King
James Bible contains the word heart 765 times. And the very first time it is
found 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 or woman. Genesis 8.21
tells us that the imagination of a man's heart It is evil from his youth. And
a multitude of times in the book of Exodus, we read of the Lord
hardening the heart of Pharaoh. And of course, it's not speaking
of his physical heart. It's speaking of his inner emotions
and thoughts. But why? What's the big deal
here? What do we have to rejoice over? And we have an answer in
the very next verse. In fact, we're given four reasons
to rejoice. Verse 15. Reason number 1. The Lord hath taken away thy
judgments. That's the title of this message.
The Lord hath taken away thy judgments. Reason number 2. He
hath cast out thine enemy. Reason number 3 to rejoice. The
King of Israel, even the Lord, is in the midst of thee. And
reason number four, thou shalt not see evil anymore. And we know that we're born under
the judgment of God. We are as those that our Lord
described in John 3.26 as having the very wrath of God. abiding on them. Paul told the
Ephesians that we were by nature the children of wrath, even as
others, born deserving God's fierce wrath, born under the
curse of sin. But our Lord hath taken away
the judgments and the punishment that would do our sins. And in
this verse tells us that he hath cast out thine enemy. Reason
number two, 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 hath delivered us is sin. It's an enemy that has plagued
the human race since the fall of our father Adam in the garden.
And it's an enemy so powerful that no man has hope of defeating
it. But there is one who can and
has overcome this enemy and destroyed him, and that is, of course,
the Lord Jesus Christ, who the Psalms tell us is mighty, powerful,
strong in battle, who shall also in the end defeat the last enemy,
an enemy which no man can elude or overcome, that last enemy
which we're told shall be destroyed, which is death. But when we read
that deaths are being 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 wasp, or a hornet knows that it hurts a lot. But we're told in these two verses
that there is no sting, no pain in the death of a believer. Why? Because the stinger has been
removed. Death is to the believer as a worrisome bee buzzing around
your head, but it does not have the ability to sting you. Our
blessed Lord removed that sting at Calvary when He fulfilled
every requirement of the law on our behalf. And as we know
from what we read in Romans 10-4, that Christ is the end of the
law for righteousness to everyone that believe it. So, if the strength
of sin is the law, and the law had been done away with for us
by Christ, then there is no more staying in death for us, only
bliss and rejoicing. And the grave itself can claim
no victory, because as it was not able to hold our Lord, so
it will be unable to hold his people. This body that we possess
will be raised again, as we're told in Corinthians, incorruptible. However, for those still under
the law, meaning those who believe not, Death still has a dreadful
sting. It is the beginning of eternal
sorrows and woe for the lost man or woman. When we read of
how the Lord had taken away our judgments, we need to remember
that He didn't just take them away and hide them. He didn't
just sweep them under the rug. No, He took those judgments which
were due our sins, He took those to Calvary and laid them on His
blessed Son. And since the scripture tells
us that our God will by no means clear the guilty, when no 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 unloaded
wrath on individual sinners, It is a wrath due to that individual's
sins. But if God is angry with the
wicked every day, then it's sure that He was never more angry
than He was the day that He poured out His wrath on His blessed
Son. Because there has never been such a concentration of
wrath of God in one place or on one person than there was
that day. And when the Savior had our sins
laid on Him, He was, by imputation, the most wicked man who had ever
lived. Because every sin that can be
conceived of had been committed by God's elect. All of the wickedness, all of
the violence, all of the filth, that was found in the lives of
God's elect was laid upon the Savior. God fully displayed His
ferocious hostility toward sin and heaped upon our Savior an
eternity's worth of wrath, which should have been ours, which
we should have suffered when in those three hours on Calvary
our Lord hung between heaven and earth. And He exhausted that
anger that was due the sins of His elect So when it comes to
the wrath of God toward his people, the well is dry, bone dry. He
has poured out all his wrath that was due our sins. His people's
sin had been extinguished, the debt had been fully paid. We will never know what it is
to suffer under God's fierce punishment that's reserved for
the damned in hell. We read of the atrocities committed
by men upon other men and women in the torture chambers of old,
and we cringe sometimes at the things that were done when we
think of the absolutely unbearable pain that was inflicted on the
victims. And it certainly is horrendous, but our minds cannot
begin to comprehend even a small percentage of the horrors that we lost men
and women in the pit of the damned. And the reason we will never
know what those damned ones suffered, because of the astonishing mercy
of our God, who could have left the entire race to perish, And he would have been just in
doing so. But instead he chose a number which no man can number,
and gave them to his son who willingly bore the wrath due
to their 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 standing in the middle of a flock of his
sheep, looking over each sheep for any signs of sickness or
distress, ready to spring into action to do whatever is necessary
to protect those sheep, including the laying down of his life. But unlike an earthly shepherd
who might be taken by surprise by a threat to his sheep, our
God is never blindsided, never taken by surprise, because He
has ordained all things from eternity for the good of His
sheep and the glory of His name. The cost of the redemption of
His sheep came at too high a price to have Him lose even one. Christ
promised us that in John 6.39, where we read, And this is the
Father's will which has sent me, and of all which He hath
given me, I should lose nothing, but raise it up again at the
last day. This word, midst, where it says, 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. And Psalm 46.1 tells us that
our God is our refuge and strength. A very present help in trouble. He's very present because He's
in our midst. Ever by our side. to render aid
when aid is needed, which for a bunch of dumb sheep like us
is pretty much 24-7. But we also have friends that
are willing to help in times of need, do we not? We know we
do. And yet, so many times those
friends who are willing to help do not have the means to help.
Not so with our Lord, because we're told in the Scriptures
that not only is He in our midst, but that He is mighty. Mighty
means displaying extraordinary strength, force, or power. Awesome in degrees of ability
or skill. So He's not only willing, but
He's more than able to help. And our Lord is in our midst
when we meet to worship. He promised that in that verse
that we're 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 notice the wording here.
It doesn't say where two or three gather together in my name. It
said where two or three are gathered. When we come together to worship,
there are exactly as many present as we was predetermined by our
God in eternity past to be gathered on that particular day, at that
particular time, in that particular place. It's He and His good providence
that moves our hearts and therefore our feet to gather together in
His name. He gives us the grace to gather
when others do not care to be here with us. But let us never
Look down our noses at those who are not gathered with us.
Because were it not for the grace given us, we would never have
any interest in gathering in His name. He does the gathering as a shepherd
gathers his sheep. And in the last part of verse
15, our God makes us His promise. I'm sorry, in the last part of
verse 12. Reason number four, rejoice. Thou shalt not see evil
anymore. What an amazing, precious promise
this is. Every circumstance, every blessing,
every heartache, every loathe and disease, every single thing
that happens in the believer's life is good because our Lord
uses each and every one of those things to teach us to trust Him,
to do us good. The problem is, we with our unlimited,
or I should say limited understanding, cannot begin to see how any of
these things, or many of them, could possibly work for our good.
I think of Dee and his family, and so many of our friends of
this assembly that we've lost. But eternity will show that our
God makes known to us how very good He was to us in this life,
that there was no more evil after we were brought to Christ. And
as those words come out of my mouth as I stand here in perfect
health, I know that when the day comes for me to suffer some
illness, some disease, some unbearable grief, that I won't be quite
as confident as I am standing here today. I often think of
our folks that are going through so much heartache, so much suffering,
and I know that eventually the well of enthusiasm runs dry.
And if we're honest, we have to begin
to admit that we question the Lord's will, maybe not with our
mouth, but certainly sometimes in our mind. But he promises
us, as he promised Paul, my grace is sufficient. He will not put
a burden on his people that they cannot bear. I want to go back
to reason number one to rejoice. Because the Lord hath taken away
thy judgments. Without that happening, the other
three reasons to rejoice could not possibly take place. The
Scriptures have much to say about the judgment of God, this judgment
that has been taken away from us and 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 may he be king to do
judgment and justice. We know that David is a type
of Christ. So when we read this verse, we
can definitely apply it to our Lord and His Church, His true
Israel. This verse says that the Lord
God delighteth in thee. There are only two things that
I know of in Scripture that the Lord delights in. The first is
showing mercy to unworthy sinners. The second, of course, is His
dear Son. And this verse goes on to say that because our God
delights in His Son, He has set Him on a throne. And unlike David,
who merely sat on the throne of Israel, Christ our Lord sits
on the very throne of the universe. And this verse also tells us
that the Lord loveth Israel forever. Now we know that this does not
and cannot apply to the nation, the physical nation of Israel.
because the scriptures teach us that the true Israel is the
elect, the chosen ones of God, the true church of God. Therefore,
because He loveth Israel forever, He has 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. 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 and 4 tells
us, 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. Does God pervert judgment, or
does the Almighty pervert justice? And in Job 34, 12, he answers
his own question when he says, Yea, surely God will not do wickedly,
neither will the Almighty pervert judgment. We read in Genesis
chapter 18 of Abraham pleading with God for Sodom. And beginning in verse 23, we
read, And Abraham drew near and said, Wilt thou also destroy
the righteous with the wicked? Peradventure there be fifty righteous
within the city, wilt thou also destroy and not spare the place
for the fifty 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. And 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 in Psalm 99 that judgments
of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. We can be sure of
this. Christ will judge the world righteously. In Psalm 9, 7, and 8, we read
that 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, 2-22 tells us, For
the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto
the Son. There is a day coming when Christ,
the same Christ who stood before Pilate and the Jews, and was
unjustly judged by them, he shall be the one who sets in judgment
But unlike the sham justice that was rendered to our Lord before
he was crucified, the justice that will be meted out when our
Lord sets in judgment shall be according to strict righteousness
and truth. Those who have counted on their
own righteousness to carry them to glory will, too late, realize
that there is but one whose righteousness is sufficient to carry a soul
into glory, And that is the righteousness of the one who will be sitting
that day on the throne in judgment. There will be, though, even in
that day, those who are so sure of their good works being meritorious
before God, that they will plead those works before God. We read of this in Matthew 7,
where it says, 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 I will
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 prophesied that they cast out devils and they did
many wonderful works will count for nothing, because they did
not do them according to the Father's will. Rather, those
works, even though looked upon by men as good works, were indeed
iniquity, because they were not done in the name of Christ. We
read in that verse, or in that 21st verse, The only ones who
will enter into heaven are the ones who do the Father's will.
But what exactly is that? What does Christ mean by that?
And He tells us Himself in John 6, verse 40, "...and this is
the will of Him that sent Me, that everyone which seeth the
Son and believeth on Him may have everlasting life, and I
will raise him up at the last day." You have to see the Son
as He is, the only true God or just God and a Savior, and then
you have to believe on Him, which is impossible unless you're given
eyes to see and you're given the gift of faith to believe. Christ made this so clear when
He told the disciples in Matthew 13, one of my favorite verses,
unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom
of heaven, but unto them it is not given." We probably all at
some time have been guilty of saying about unbelievers, how
can they not see this? This is so clear. And indeed
it is clear to those who have been given eyes to see, given
faith to believe. It's like saying about a blind
man, how can he not see the sun? It is so clear. It's because
he's blind. He can't see anything. Now have
you ever thought, and I know you have, because we all have, thought a thought and almost
immediately when it goes through your mind you think, why am I
even thinking something like this? And I know at one time
I thought more than once about my children. How can they not see this? They
have been in church since literally the day they were born. And as soon as you think such
a thought, you just mentally slap yourself upside the head,
because you know it is so ridiculous. And we know the answer to that
question. They cannot see, they cannot believe, because they
have not been given eyes to believe. Therefore, it is impossible.
It is impossible for them to believe. But there is hope that
one day their sight will be given to them to see the Savior, and
faith will be given to them to believe on Him, because He delights
in mercy. 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's true. Sad, but true. In Ezra 7.6 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. whether it be unto
death, or to banishment, or to confiscation of goods, or to
imprisonment. And this verse certainly described
us before we came to faith in Christ. We would not, we could
not, do the law of God. We came forth from the womb speaking
lies, and things went downhill from there. And judgment did indeed fall
on us. when it fell on our great substitute who stood in our place
and endured the judgment due to our sins. We have been in
Christ since eternity past. And since we have been in Christ,
we were in Him when judgment fell upon Him. And since we were
in Him, our judgment has already taken place. The Lord has taken
it away. There will be no future judgment
for us. The punishment for our sins,
which we have now even committed, has already taken place. Now, scoffers, look at the wrath
of God as something that is never going to happen. They're described by Peter in
2 Peter chapter 3, where we read these familiar verses that were
so familiar to us. Knowing this first, that there
shall come in the last day scoffers walking after their own lust
and saying, where is the promise of his coming? For since the
father fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the
beginning. Lost men and women, think and say, you Christians
have been holding this thing of judgment over our head for
thousands of years, this thing of Christ returning to earth.
It's ridiculous. It's not going to happen. And we were once, as they are,
there was no fear of God before their eyes. I remember times
before I knew the Lord, and I'm sure you do too, that I had no
fear of punishment, I had no fear of dread, and I was raised
in a Baptist church and heard about God's wrath my entire young
life, and yet I had no fear whatsoever. But the Lord one day brings us
to a place of conviction, And you see that you are under the
curse of God, lost and undone. And when you see that, you start
singing a whole different tune. I remember reading a story many
years ago by a young man whose name I don't recall. He was raised,
I believe, in maybe Baltimore, Maryland, who came to Kentucky
in the 1780s. And he'd heard about the beauty
of the countryside in Kentucky. And one thing he read about was
the massive herds of American bison that roamed Kentucky at
that time. And he wanted to see these herds
for himself. And he met Daniel Boone, got
to know him a little bit, and talked Boone into taking him
out to see one of these gigantic herds that he had read about
when he was back east. And one of the things he had
read about was an account of how when these Herds begin to
stampede, it's a dreadful sight. How it made the earth to shape
beneath your feet, how it created enormous clouds of dust, and
how it was indeed a fearsome thing to witness. So the story
goes that he and Boone found a huge herd of these buffalo.
And this young man wanted to take a closer look. So against
Boone's better judgment, they began sneaking through the tall
grass toward this herd of bison. And this young man later wrote
in his account of that day of how he was thinking to himself,
these beasts don't look so fearsome, they're just standing here quietly
feeding. But as they got closer to the
herd, something happened which caused this huge herd to be in
a stampede. And they were headed directly
toward Boone and this young man. And he wrote in his account of
this event, how it was the most terrifying thing he had ever
experienced. As hundreds of these one-ton
animals bore down upon him, and he knew death was but a few moments
away. He had nowhere to run, yet he
began running. He had nowhere to hide, but his
instincts took over, his survival instincts, and he began running,
but it wasn't nearly fast enough. And then he wrote as he was running
that suddenly Boone grabbed him by the collar, threw him on the
ground, and after Boone had done this, he dropped to one knee
and put his single-shot muzzleloader to his shoulder. And this young
man wrote that in that moment, with death but a few seconds
away, he's thinking to himself, what is this guy doing? He has
a single-shot rifle and there are hundreds of buffaloes. But
he said that when the first animals were but a few yards away, Boone
fired a headshot in one of the largest males leading the charge,
and it fell a few feet in front of them, and Boone swiftly grabbed
this young man and threw him in behind the buffalo he had
just shot, therefore saving them from certain destruction. Now
when I first read that account many years ago, I thought, The
first thing I thought was this guy Daniel Boone must have had
ice water. Talk about survival instincts.
Nerves of steel. But the more I thought about
this story, I thought it is not a perfect picture of a lost man
or woman before they're awakened to the peril that they're in.
And also how our God led us to suffer a little while under this
terrible conviction before putting us in Christ. We heard about
the wrath of God, many of us our whole lives, but as those
scoffers at Peter spoke of, we had no fear of punishment. We
see the wrath of God, or we saw the wrath of God, as dormant.
We didn't see it being meted out, so we looked at it as something
benign, something that was not going to happen. But when we
were awakened to our undone condition, and we saw the wrath of God charging
our way at lightning speed, we suddenly realized that our doom
and destruction was sure. We were going to die under the
fierce wrath of a holy God, and there was nowhere to run, nowhere
to hide. But at that last minute, when
all hope seemed to be gone, God showed us his son, slain. And
as Boone did to that young man, God put us in Christ, hid us
in the rock of ages, and his judgment and wrath passes us
by. Because we're hidden in that
one slain from the foundation of the world. And as that huge
buffalo had to die in order to give Boone and his young man
a hiding place, so one had to die under the wrath of God, to
give us a hiding place. The Holy Scripture also tells
us that the Lord loveth judgment. That doesn't mean that our Savior
delights in sin and judgment and condemns men and women to
eternal ruin. These two verses I want to read
talk about how God's judgment is directly tied to His goodness
and His love of the elect. The righteousness and judgments
have spoken of here is according to the strict requirements of
God's law. In Psalm 33-5 we read, He loveth
righteousness and judgment. The earth is full of the goodness
of the Lord. And the reason He loveth judgment
is because He condied Himself in the fact that He, by His unimaginable
sacrifice, made it possible for God to be just and the justifier
of those who believe in Christ. Romans tells us in Romans 5-6,
for when we were without strength and due time, Christ died for
the ungodly, which is a reason the psalmist could write in the
second half of that verse, the earth is full of the goodness
of the Lord. And that goodness is demonstrated
every time a lost sinner is brought to faith in Christ. In a second
verse in the Psalms, 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. Again, we read how
the Lord loveth judgment because in the midst of that judgment,
He remembers His saints, whom Christ shed His blood for. And
they are not forsaken, but rather preserved, we're told, forever. Isaiah tells us in chapter 54,
verse 7, For a small moment have I forsaken thee, but with great
mercies will I gather thee. And when our Lord gathers, He
gathers forever. There are many scriptures that
talk about the Lord preserving His saints. I want to read just
three. Psalm 121, verse 7 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, even forevermore. Psalm 40, 11, withhold not thou
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. He will preserve me unto his
heavenly kingdom to whom be glory forever and ever. The last of
what we call the five points of Calvinism is perseverance
of the saints, but it could just as easily be referred to as preservation
of the saints, because the only reason anyone endures to the
end is because we are preserved in Christ, forever preserved,
forever secure. To the lost sinner that may be sitting
here today or in the sound of my voice via the streaming, I
have a parting word for you. And it's not a word of encouragement,
nor a word of hope, but rather a word of warning. There is a judgment coming. It is sure. And it will be dreadful and unimaginably
horrifying for those found outside of Christ In that day, there will be no
mercy. There will be no leniency. The judgment that will be rendered
in that day will be according to the strictest dictates of
God's law. And you can be sure that if God
spared not His own Son, when sin was found upon Him, He will
spare no guilty sinner from the terrifying outpouring of His
fierce wrath. if sin is found on that individual.
The Scripture tells us that today is the day of salvation. Seek
the Lord while He may be found, petition Him for mercy, and take
hope in the promise that Christ made when He said, He that cometh
unto Me, I will in no wise cast out. If you are able, plead with
Him for mercy today. So in closing, dear saint, be
encouraged by the fact that the Lord loveth judgment and that
your judgment has long since taken place. You are not only
found not guilty, you are deemed to be perfect, as perfect as
Christ himself. You are now accepted into the
beloved. And there's only one reason that
that happens. Because the Lord had taken away
that judgment. Jimmy, come lead us in a song,
please.