Introduction to Zephaniah

Well, grab your Bibles, and if you need to, go to Matthew.

And then for Matthew, go back four books to the left, all right? To the old part of the book, to the prophet Zephaniah. One of the minor prophets is we will give the introduction to Zephaniah this morning. We've already looked at understanding Old Testament prophecy last week, and we're going to advance forward now to particularly talk about this prophet of Judah, who was sent by God after, I suppose, one of the most ungodly seasons in all the history of ancient Israel. Anyway, Zephaniah chapter one, verse one. In the days of Josiah, son of Amon, king of Judah.

Now, I want to ask you this question to get going. What was God to do? Just what was God to do? We see some of the most severe denouncements and pronouncements against the people. From the pen of Zephaniah, severe, great judgment. For example, just a few of the verses we'll pull out for our introduction. Zephaniah chapter one, verses two and three. God says, I will completely remove all things from the face of the earth, declares the Lord.

I will remove man and beast. I will remove the birds of the sky and the fish of the sea and the ruins along with the wicked. And I will cut off man from the face of the earth, declares the Lord. So here we have this universal judgment predicted for all the earth, man and beast.

Zephaniah one, eight. Then we'll come out on the day of the Lord's sacrifice that I will punish the princes, the king's sons, and all who clothe themselves with foreign garments. And in their country and in their clamoring after the wicked religions of the surrounding nations, they would wear their clothing. They would put on the clothing of the wicked. That's a word for us today, is it not? We should be careful.

We don't clothe ourselves like the world clothes themselves. Zephaniah chapter one, verse 13. Moreover, their wealth will be come plunder and their houses desolate.

Yes, they will build houses, but not inhabit them and plant vineyards, but not drink their wine. Zephaniah one, 15. A day of wrath is that day, a day of trouble and distress, a day of destruction and desolation, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness. Zephaniah two, nine. Therefore, as I live, declares the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, surely Moab will become like Sodom and the sons of Ammon like Gomorrah, a place possessed by nettles and salt pits and perpetual desolation. The remnant of my people will plunder them and the remainder of my nation will inherit them.

And then Zephaniah three, six. I have cut off nations. Their corner towers are in ruins.

I have made their streets desolate with no one passing by. Their cities are laid waste without a man and without an inhabitant. My mind came often as I was studying Zephaniah and these awful prophecies of judgment and condemnation, retribution from a holy God. I thought of what Ruth Graham Bell said one time, Billy Graham's wife. She said that if God does not judge America, he will have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah. So we can see a lot of ourselves in these prophecies. So God is pronouncing and declaring severe and awful retribution and judgment on ancient Judah, including the Northern Kingdom of Israel, and even including surrounding nations.

Well, as we saw in our text, even the entire earth. But why shouldn't he? Why shouldn't he? I mean, what more could God do? This is one of the reasons why we spend, I think it's safe to say, hundreds of hours of teaching our children and our small group curriculum the attributes of God.

You know why? Because folks don't know who God is anymore. We make God out to be a little higher, cleaner version of ourselves. But he is not. He's radically contrary to us in every good and right way. His holiness means that in every way he made us like himself, he's infinitely superior to us. And in more ways than we can count, he's radically unlike us. He's holy. We can't quite grasp him. Matter of fact, we can't get close at all to fully grasping and embracing who this holy God is.

But we should know enough to know these top judgments on the ungodly are the right thing to do. It's a just thing because he is a holy and righteous God. Righteous meaning that in every way, in every relation, he would do what is just in those relations.

But man does not. I mean, what more could God do? He had given the blessings of Father Abraham to all of Israel. He had given them priests to guide and oversee their religious life. He had given them godly prophets to correct them and show them the right path to walk on. He had delivered them from Egyptian bondage and brought them safely through the exodus through Moses. He had given them the blessings of the law through Moses on Mount Sinai. He had given them the tabernacle and the temple to teach them and to bless them and encourage them. He had given them the promised land through the work of Joshua and allowed them to inherit it.

And all of these and many, many more, this was all grace. They didn't earn one bit of it. They were no better than any other people on the earth. It was the sovereign elect grace of God that reached down and called Abraham from Ur the Chaldees.

And God said, go, Abraham, and I'm going to make of you a great nation. They plundered it. They squandered these blessings, these gifts, all this grace. They denied it. They ignored it. And they blasphemed and sinned against God. You see, they did not respond to grace. And those who will not have grace will have judgment.

Mark that down. Grace is all around us. Jesus, the last time earth saw Jesus, his hands were stretched out on the cross. He appeared to his followers, but the last time the world saw Jesus, his hands were spread out wide.

And they still are. Hands of grace, hands of mercy, hands of love, hands of forgiveness. But if you will not have his love, his mercy, his grace and forgiveness, then you will have judgment. So as we look at these awful pronouncements of judgment, we ask ourselves afresh, what more could God do? You see, for God to just overlook and say, well, it's okay that you're in wickedness. It's okay that you deny me.

It's okay that you in spiritual adultery lust after the pagan idols of the surrounding nations and indulge in all kinds of gross and perverse and immoral acts. God can't just say that's okay, because for God to do that, God would have to deny his very holiness. And he can't do that. God can't be who he is or cannot be who he is, I should say. He's who he is. He's holy. For him to change his holiness would be for him to sin against himself.

And that's not going to happen. Now, Zephaniah the prophet is the ninth in the order of the minor prophets, twelve in all. And again, the minor prophets just means their writings are shorter than some of the others. So first of all, the date of Zephaniah, we do know that he foretells of the fall or the doom rather of Nineveh in 625 BC. And so we do know he preached during the reign of Josiah.

So we put that about 642 to 611 BC. The author, Zephaniah, we don't know very much about him, but we do know his name means Jehovah the Protector, or the one who hides, the idea of hiding you from danger and harm. So in his very name, this prophet's name, they're reminded that God is who you should look to, and God is the one you should honor, and God is the one you should obey and find refuge in. Now, the book of Zephaniah, like the other Old Testament prophecy books, does not contain Zephaniah's literal message or messages.

It contains a condensing of them, the essence, the gist of the message, but not the entire message. Now, very interesting, something that's very unique here in verse one of chapter one, as Zephaniah is being introduced, he gives four generations, Cushiah, then grandfather Gedaliah, then grandfather Amoriah, then grandfather Hezekiah, and during the days of Josiah son of Ammon. So here we have four generations mentioned, and scholars speculate as to why. I believe the reason why is these were likely prominent and notable men in the history of Israel, or Judah in particular, and the name Hezekiah jumps out there, because Hezekiah was a great king and a godly and good king. We'll talk more about him in a moment, but I don't think it's likely that this is King Hezekiah, because every time he's mentioned, he's called King Hezekiah, but not here. That was a fairly common name of the day. I don't think it's the king, but I do think it probably means that Zephaniah was a man of notable distinction due to his genealogy, his heritage.

Probably a man of prominence, and probably a man of wealth, and that's why these notable names are mentioned. Now isn't that interesting of God to do that, because we preached through Amos a while back, and Amos was right the opposite. Amos was an absolute nobody, no family lineage that we know anything about, and he was from a very small rule. I mean, Amos was a hick from the sticks, and he went up to a sophisticated, cosmopolitan, cultured, elitist Bethel, where they had syncretized Jehovah worship with Baal worship, and really just had the label of Jehovah worship on them, but actually they indulged in the sensual immoralities of Baal worship. And old little Amos from nowhere walked in, who knows what kind of old boots he might have had on from plowing with the mules that morning. Cries out against Bethel and calls him to repentance.

But here the opposite. A man of all likelihood, of means, and of prominence, from a lineage that was noble, if you will, in the lineage, our heritage of Israel, and now he's God's man to come and preach. God just calls his own, amen? Don't try to figure it out by the time you think, well, I know the kind of man God calls. He won't call that kind of man. I know who God might use. If you had polled my peers in high school and said, who is the least likely guy in this whole high school to be a preacher, my name would have been at the top of the pole.

You just don't know what God's going to do. So here Zephaniah is likely a man of wealth, likely a man of some notable ancestry there, and called of God to be God's prophet. And basically, that's all we know. Now let's talk about the setting, Roman number three, the setting. We know that King, or rather, prophet Zephaniah prophesied during the reign of godly king Josiah. Now, it is likely that Zephaniah, God's prophet, discipled young king Josiah when he became king, because he became king at the age of eight. And just a few years later, he's leading radical reforms in the nation to bring the nation back to Jehovah and rid the land of pagan idol worship and all kinds of paganism that was permeated throughout the culture of Judea in that day. So it is very likely that Zephaniah has been personally discipling young king Josiah, again, came to the throne at the age of eight, and then Josiah, this godly king, reigned for 31 years. And matter of fact, Jeremiah is a contemporary.

Well, that's a double-barreled shotgun right there. Zephaniah and Jeremiah crying the truth of God and calling the nation to repentance with the aid of godly Josiah, the king, working alongside them. Powerful picture comes to your mind. In 2 Chronicles 34, verse 2, in the, you know, Chronicles and Kings sort of gives you the historical context of these books. It says that Josiah, he did right in the sight of the Lord and walked in the ways of his father David and did not turn aside to the right or to the left. He followed the straight and narrow, didn't turn aside to follow this sinful indulgence or over here to that sinful indulgence. And isn't that just like Satan?

He wants to get you off to one side or the other. But here we have King Josiah known to be faithful in his reign before Israel. 2 Kings 23, 25, speaking of Josiah, this godly king who was king while Zephaniah was the prophet. Before him there was no king like him who turned to the Lord with all of his heart and with all of his soul and with all of his might. According to all the law of Moses, nor did any like him arise after him.

So that's part of the setting. But moving on, let's go back three kings. Ammon, Manasseh, back to Hezekiah. This is King Hezekiah now. King Hezekiah reigned in Judah from 729 to 695, or 29 total years. And with the aid of the prophet Isaiah, he brought about a great religious revival and reformation to the country. But following godly King Hezekiah, we have King Manasseh.

He reigned for 55 years, but unlike Hezekiah, Manasseh was a wicked king. 2 Chronicles 33, 9 says, he made Jerusalem and Judah worse than the heathen nations. What a testimony. I mean, his father was a great and godly reformer. And by the way, just as an application for us, throughout church history, throughout biblical history, you're either on one of two teams. You're either reforming the church and continuing to reform the church to biblical health, or you are in rebellion. There's no standing still, because we never arrive, amen? And if we're striving to please the Lord, we're always continually reforming.

As some people say, where do y'all stand at Grace Life Church of the Shoals? We ought to say we're reformed and always reforming. We're always trying to, maybe a number of major things are on track, took some decades to get there, amen, but maybe some major things are on track.

I believe that's true, but there's always tweaking of other things. So Hezekiah was a great reformer, and then his evidently spoiled, rotten, worldly and ungodly son, Manasseh becomes king, he's king for 55 years, and then his son Ammon becomes king for two more years, and they just plunged Israel into wickedness, sin and idolatry, and they waxed worse and worse and worse. So that's what's been happening. Hezekiah godly, Manasseh followed him, Ammon followed him, very ungodly, the land is full of paganism, idolatry and wickedness. Matter of fact, the Bible says in 2 Kings 21, 9, But they did not listen, and Manasseh seduced them to do evil more than the nations whom the Lord destroyed before the sons of Israel. And then 2 Kings 21, 16, Moreover, Manasseh shed very much innocent blood until he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another, besides his sin, which he made due to sin, and doing evil in the sight of the Lord. What a testimony. What a shame to have your name recorded in sacred scripture for all time, recording the evil that you did for the people of God. I've often said when somebody will talk to me about a pastor here, a pastor there, and they'll say, Can you believe what he's doing?

Can you believe what he's doing? And here's what I often say, here I am, almost 65 years of age, I would hate to know that I put my head on the pillow at night. He said, Lord, I've played games with your bride, I've played games with your church, and have it striven to lead the people to righteousness and truth and holiness. And I've failed a lot, but I can lay my pillow, my head on that pillow with a clear conscience that we have striven together to try to please the Lord and honor Him. Failing a lot, yes, having to repent at times, certainly, but we've been on a trajectory of wanting to be reformers and please the Lord. So Zephaniah is called as a prophet during the early reign of godly Josiah.

So now you're going, let's get it chronological again. Hezekiah, godly, 29 years, wicked Manasseh, wicked his son Ammon, and then a reformer comes, Josiah, but he's only eight years old. And then as Josiah comes on the scene, God has a plan, so he gives him Zephaniah the prophet, and he is against, preaching against, denouncing, condemning the wickedness that's been left over from previous king Manasseh, previous king Ammon, and then there's that lingering of sin even after Josiah and Zephaniah's reforms are carried out throughout the land. So the reign of the good king Josiah was accompanied by the prophets Jeremiah and Zephaniah, and they were God's last call of the nation of Judah and Israel to repent. Even though there were thorough and aggressive reforms by king Josiah and by the strong preaching of Zephaniah and Jeremiah, still many were unrepentant. Still there was lingering clinging to idolatries and sins in the nation, and these reforms carried out by godly Josiah and by Zephaniah and Jeremiah were not sufficient to remove all the wickedness that came through the combined 57 years of wicked king Manasseh and wicked king Ammon. So, conclusion of this setting, it is assured that Zephaniah received strong support and promotion from godly king Josiah.

I think back to Great Britain, Western Europe, practically all of the countries being a theocratic state at one time, and I think about seasons and times in the history of Western Europe when there were godly kings and godly preachers in the land. What an encouragement that would be. Wouldn't it be something if Donald Trump got gloriously, truly regenerate of the Holy Spirit and pulled around himself strong and faithful and godly preachers and teachers? Some of that is happening. Well, I'd like to see a whole lot more of it.

So you can kind of get in your mind, and brothers and sisters, I'm talking about, and we're going to unpack all of this as we go through there. I mean, there are such devastating evils in the land in this day. And so Josiah and the prophets Zephaniah and Jeremiah had a great task on their hands. And it shows us once again, we should do all we can to clear up the abject common practice of evil in the earth, but only God can change the heart. A lot of these folks' hearts were not changed, even though Zephaniah had strong support from his godly king, Josiah.

So Zephaniah was the righteous prophet, aided by Josiah, a righteous king. That's the setting. Now let's talk about the outline. It's not precise. And some of us maybe who've done some graduate school studies in the text and all, and maybe Dr. Seal, pick on him a little bit. We want to be quite academic about things, but over and over, the Bible keeps bringing us to conclude that everything does not just fall into our structures and graphs and outlines. Amen?

That's good for us. By the time we think we've got it figured out, God blows our little system up. I don't understand the absolute free will of man and that man is held accountable for to repent and believe in Christ. I preach it, I believe it. I don't understand that in balance with the absolute sovereign election of God. But I preach both of them, as Spurgeon said. They said, well, how do you get those two to unite? That man is free and he's responsible to repent and believe, but at the same time, God is sovereign and those he's predestined to elect will turn to Christ.

I don't ever try to bring together two old friends. That's the way God's ordained it to work. And one day, as they said, it's kind of like two rails on a train track.

One day they'll come together in a unity that we can't understand with our little puny minds right now. Chasing a rabbit a little bit here, but we are definitely not hyper-Calvinist. If I don't find those glasses, I can't preach anymore. Oh, they fell in the pulpit.

Sorry about that. We're not hyper-Calvinist. We believe that all men everywhere should be confronted with the gospel and urged to repent and believe. And the word of faith is, if you will repent and believe, you will be saved. Can I get an Amen right there? We believe that. Then right after they get saved, we open up the Bible, we start exegeting the script. Oh, my goodness, I was foreknown from the foundation of the world.

Yeah, you were, but you didn't know that back then. Don't you love God's Word? Well, the outline, that's what I was starting on, wasn't it?

The outline. It's not just precise, but generally speaking, chapter 1, verses 2 and 3, you have the judgment on the whole world. That's picked up again also over in chapter 3, verse 8. Then secondly, in chapters 1, verses 4 through chapter 2, verse 3, you have judgment on Judah and Jerusalem. And what a powerful thing this is, as God goes from talking about the pagan nations to saying, but my own people deserve judgment, even the holy city, Jerusalem. And also chapter 3, verses 1 through 7 has more judgments against Judah and Jerusalem. And then you have chapter 2, verses 9 through 15, judgment on the surrounding nations. Then glory, glory, glory. We'll camp here and we'll just have a spell when we get here.

Chapter 3, verses 12 through 20, the preservation of the elect remnant. Let me just point this out at this point. God is the problem. Figure of speech, OK?

He's never a problem. God is the one bringing these pronouncements and these impending judgments. And then God turns right around and says, and God is the one who will save you from God. God's judgment is coming, but God's preservation and redemption and restoration is coming.

And they both come through God. You see, if you're a sinner and you all are, hell's not your problem. Satan's not your chief problem. God is your problem.

You will face him in judgment. As I've told you before, God goes to hell. God isn't. You can't make God not omnipresent. He's present everywhere there is. God is present in hell, but he's present in his wrath, in his judgment and in his retribution. He's present in heaven and his grace and his love and his mercy.

Hey, I'll take that one. Amen. Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner. That's the only ones that get righteous are the ones that realize that they deserve wrath.

Oh, chasing some rabbits, but those are pretty good rabbits to chase. The purpose of the book, Roman number five, always, always, always the glory of God. If you missed this, I don't care where you are in the Bible. Are you listening to your pastor? I don't care where you are in the Bible. What verse?

What phrase? You should look at that verse or phrase through the lens of the priority of God's glory, the preeminence of God's son and all of his work and the centrality of God's church. Everything points to that. The priority of God's glory and God's glory is most achieved through the preeminence of his son, the work of his son and the preeminent work of his son is gathering the church and securing the church for time and eternity.

Those three are always true. That's a good outline of what we call biblical theology. What's the broad overarching purpose of it all? We've had some very popular pastors and I thank God for the good that they did, but I think they were very off course that they would go to the Bible and always find some sort of instruction for how you can have a better life here and there and raise your kids better. There's a lot of that in there, but always for the glory of God, always to show the preeminence of the son and always for the benefit of his church.

So don't look at the Bible as a self-help manual. Certainly it helps us greatly, but to the end that it glorifies him, promotes his son and benefits his church. All right, glory of God always and he is glorified and he will vindicate his holiness, first of all by judging rebellious Israel, Judah in particular here and all the nations.

That's the purpose. Judging rebellious Israel and Judah and all the nations. Secondly, he will glorify himself and vindicate his own holiness by righteously preserving his elect remnant.

You'll see that in chapter 3. And he will glorify his own name by fulfilling the types that he foretells in this book of Christ, the coming Savior, Messiah, the church and his second coming also called the Lord's day. So I think those aspects fill up the purpose of this prophetic book.

Matter of fact, you could probably apply this to every prophetic book. Every one I've ever looked at or studied, read through all of them, but read through or studied, you see God glorifying his own name, God punishing his own people and the surrounding nations as they need it, but his preserving of the elect and all of that foreshadowing what he's going to do at the end of the age. We're living at the end of the age, you understand that? We're living in the last days. This is God's last work before Jesus comes, the church, the church age. We're living the last days and everything points to those last days beginning when Jesus came, gave himself on the cross, redeemed the children, goes into heaven, intercedes for us. The church age is working with the power of the Holy Spirit to build churches all over the world to the end of the earth. And then he returns and he comes in his wrath and retribution against sin and to establish his elect church in the new heavens and new earth. Now, in conclusion, what word is here for us today? Now, I begin by asking you the question, what more could God do? Is there a word for us today?

Well, yes, there is. Because I say to you on this side of Calvary, on this side of our Lord's death for sin, the awesome display of this love and mercy and grace through giving himself for us is teaching and discipling and commissioning of the disciples to lead the effort to go into all the world and make disciples of all the nations. And by the way, that's the same thing as saying planting churches, teaching them to serve all things whatsoever I've commanded you. When I was a young Christian, they used to talk about discipleship could be separate from the church.

No, it can't. Because you're to baptize them, gather them together and teach them. That's got to be a church. There's nothing else that fits that.

A Thursday night discipleship group with some guys at college might be okay, but it's not a church. And it's not the primary way. It's okay. It's good.

It's helpful. But not the primary way God's ordained for his work to be accomplished. Going to all the world, make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them that's ongoing. That means you've got to collect them together after their baptism.

Those are local churches. So he died on the cross. He commissioned his disciples.

He had trained them well. He ascends back up into heaven, where he intercedes. And I believe like the last time the world looked at him, he's still like this. He's still got his hands stretched out. As if to say, what more can I do? What more can I do? You see the nail prints.

End review of that before we close. In Jesus, God did not send an angel, an angel with a message or a promise. He did not send some envoy of any other kind to communicate a new covenant or new agreement with man. In Jesus, God sent himself. God sent his only unique one and only Son, born of a meek and lowly Virgin Mary, born in a no way place in a cattle stall, laid in a feed trough, in fulfillment of prophecy, Bethlehem it was. He grew up in meekness and in humility, the son of a common carpenter, which I like because his hands were rough, calloused. In the physical sense, Jesus was masculine.

That's good. He was a man's man. But a man knows how to be compassionate and meek.

You know why? Because he's really strong on the inside. He just has it under control. But you know not to mess with him because he can turn off that meekness and turn on that masculinity when he needs to, when it's just to do so. Ladies, you don't want a church and you don't want the men in your church to be a bunch of little whiny, wimpy, Casper milk toast. You want to know we've got some men when we need them. But until then, we'll keep them in their place.

No, ladies, don't do that. Back to my outline. Jesus was raised in meekness and humility, the son of a lowly carpenter. He began his ministry being baptized by John in Galilee of the Gentiles.

He preached, he taught, he fed the hungry, he healed the sick, he raised the dead, he called a group of common men to be his disciples, his inner circle. Then at the appointed time, according to his father's will, he was despised and rejected and arrested, though innocent, falsely accused in a sham trial. They beat him and they pummeled him in his face with their fists. They stretched him over a pole and lashed his back with what's called a cat of nine tails, which is nine leather strands with rock and bone and steel tied into it. He was whipped with the cat of nine tails until his back was ripped open and exposing literally the ribs.

He was forced to carry the cross beam down the Via Dolorosa toward Golgotha. They nailed him to a cross there, lifted him up, and as he was lifting up, the nails tore through some of his flesh. There he was suspended between heaven and earth. God. God.

What more can he do to merit your attention? He was crushed and abandoned there. That was the most agonizing part. That it was his father's will that he would bear the wrath, be the vicarious atonement, the substitution for sinners, and part of bearing the wrath being abandoned by the father. And there he was abandoned by man, by friend, by his father. As the wrath of God came upon him, as Isaiah 53, 10 reminds us, that the Lord, speaking of the father in this case, was pleased to crush him, putting him to grief, if he would render himself as a guilt offering.

That's what he was saying. Now put your name there. Father, I come to this agony to replace Jeff Noblitt. I am his guilt offering.

Put your name in there. I hang here for more as his guilt offering. My question to you is what more could God do? As he died on the cross to cleanse us of our sin and redeem us from the slave market of sin, then on the third day he was raised from the dead, having finished all that's required for the redemption of the children, fully having paid the redemption price. After his resurrection, he commissioned those followers to go to the ends of the earth proclaiming this good news that men can be forgiven and men could become the children of God. Then he ascended back into heaven, where he sits at the right hand of God to faithfully intercede for his own.

And the last the world saw of him was whosoever will. You may come. You can come. Preacher, you don't know how I think. There's vile things in my mind. Preacher, you don't know things I do.

There's wicked things in my life. I don't have to know. I don't have to know because I know the sufficiency of the one who gave his life for you.

That's what I do know. And he knows you. Up and down, right and left, inside and out, every motive of your heart, every evil motive you will ever have and every evil action you will ever perform for the rest of your life. He knew it when he died on the cross and paid for it completely. Acts 2 21 says, everyone that calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. A misused verse, but it is true.

Those who will quit looking to all of the things and begin to be a caller on Jesus can know they are saved and forgiven. All of this is grace, is it not? Grace meaning the God's sovereign choice.

Sovereign means nobody can act on him or manipulate him or persuade him. It's his sovereign choice to cast favor and good on those of us, all of us, who don't deserve favor or good. That's grace. Jesus is the grace of God. All grace. This grace, this love is freely offered. But now what can we learn on this side of Calvary from this?

Are you listening? If you will not have grace, you will have judgment. If you will not respond to grace, you will face judgment.

There are degrees of punishment and you will be judged and punished according to the light you've rejected. When Jonah goes out to preach to Nineveh, he was very resistant. You remember that? He runs, gets in a boat, goes down in the bottom and says, maybe I can hide from God down here. You know what the real primary motive was of Jonah running?

It was this. If I've got to go declare that Assyria and her prime city Nineveh is going to be violently and completely destroyed for sin, here's what Jonah's thinking. Then how much more is God going to destroy my people Israel?

Because we had far more light. We had Moses. We have the law. We have the temple. We have the tabernacle. We have the priest. We have the prophets.

And we're wicked. So if God's going to destroy Nineveh with almost no light, how much more will he judge us? What does the Bible say about those of us this side of Calvary?

I think it'd be on the screen. Hebrews 10, 23, the book of Hebrews is written to professing Christians who come from a Jewish background. I say professing because it's very obvious in the text that most of these had, let's say, leaned out to Jesus, been interested in Jesus, were learning that Jesus had a, had sort of a half commitment to Jesus, but many of them were starting to fall away because it wasn't really solid.

And here's what the writer says. Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, don't go back to the other for he who promises faithful. And then like a prophet out of the Old Testament, Hebrews 10, 26 through 31. For if we go on sinning willfully, moving back away from Christ, moving back into religion that fits us, that's comfortable to us, all this foolish, blasphemous nonsense today of finding a church that fits you, finding a church that makes you happy or you won't go to it. You better find a church that makes Jesus happy.

Find a church that fits Jesus and say, God, get my heart in line with Jesus and make me happy in a church that's happy with you. Because if you go on sinning willfully, if you Jews who've tasted of Jesus, looked at Jesus, learned of Jesus, taken steps toward Jesus, but turned back, oh me, you're sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth and there no longer remains a sacrifice for sin. There's nowhere else in the universe you can find a cleansing from your sin other than Jesus. But instead, since you rejected grace, you must have judgment, verse 27, but a terrifying expectation of judgment and the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries. Anyone who set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses, but how much severe punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled underfoot the Son of God and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified and has insulted the spirit of grace? If you're not converted this morning and you've listened to the words of Jeff Noblin and you leave and say, I might look at it later, you've trampled under your feet the blood of Christ.

So I have nothing to do with it today. That was part of the sin that Jeff and I is gonna address, people that just say, well, God's not gonna do good for us, God's not gonna do bad for us, we're just gonna leave God out. You can't leave God out.

He has spoken through his Son. If you will not have grace, you will have judgment. Verse 34, we know him who said, vengeance is mine, I will repay, and it is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God. All you sinners, seek his grace, whose wrath you cannot bear. Flee to the shelter of the cross. You might have been involved in the blackest, vilest sin a few hours before church this morning that any man can imagine, but if you will turn to Jesus from your heart this morning and say, oh, Christ, I'm a sinner and I can't do better. Would you take me? You know what Jesus is gonna say? You're just who I'm looking for.

Those who don't believe they can clean themselves up and know I have to do the cleaning. Amen. Praise his name. Come, you sinners. Seek his grace, whose wrath you cannot bear. Flee to the shelter of his cross and find salvation there.