Zephaniah. We come to Zephaniah chapter 2.
We'll look at verses 12 through 15 as we continue under the theme, when God pays a visit. You've heard that phrase. I've used it before.
You've probably used it before. I'm going to pay him a visit or I'm going to pay her a visit. Now, in my context, that usually meant something negative.
Might have been one of my parents. Maybe we were out somewhere and one of them says, we get home, I'm going to pay you a visit. And that's just more of the context I remember, but it can be very positive. And that's what God literally says in his Word here, that he will visit with his people and care for them, minister to them, but also God is visiting the nations around his people, Judah, Judea, and he's bringing his wrath to bear upon them.
Let's look at it together again as we continue under this theme. Verses 12 through 15 of Zephaniah chapter 2. And you also, O Ethiopians, will be slain by my sword, and he will stretch out his hand against the north and destroy Assyria, and he will make Nineveh a desolation.
Now, Nineveh is the capital city of Assyria, parched like the wilderness. Flocks will lie down in her midst, and beasts will range in herds. Both the pelican, or the desert owl, and the hedgehog will lodge in the tops of her pillars.
Birds will sing in the window. Desolation will be on the threshold, for he has laid bare the cedar work. This, referring to Nineveh again, this is the exaltant city, which dwells in security, who says in her heart, I am, and there's no one besides me.
Well, that's arrogant, isn't it? How she has become a desolation, a resting place for beasts, and everyone who passes by her will hiss and wave his hand in contempt. Now, Judah is the elect remnant of God, and we've since learned that within the elect remnant, there's really a true remnant of God. God had ordained that his blessing would be on Judah, but Judah has rebelled.
She has begun to clamor after the idols and the sins of the surrounding nations and corrupted the land. King Josiah has come to reign under Zephaniah's tutelage, I'm convinced, and has begun a reformation in the land of clearing the land of these idols and these shrines and the overall outward wickedness of the land, but you can't change a person's heart, at least a king can't, unless it's King Jesus. So Josiah the king did all he could do for Judah, but it was too little too late, and God's judgment is coming to bear against her. So Judah is badly backslidden. God has predicted through the prophet Zephaniah, and of course Jeremiah, who's also a contemporary of Zephaniah, that he's going to judge her, but he has also woven in here, we've seen some of it already, that he's offering her grace and hope if that godly remnant within Judah that's supposed to all be the remnant will turn to him in repentance and honor his ways. Then God moves and he begins to pronounce judgment on Judah's enemies.
That's the nations here that surround Judah, to the north, to the south, to the east, and to the west. We've already seen his pronouncements of judgment on the Philistines and on Moab and on Ammon. That was last week, and now we're going to see his judgment on Egypt.
And on Assyria. And why is God doing this? Well, first of all, he does this pronouncing this judgment because the divine judgment he's bringing on these nations is just.
It's the right thing to do for their sin and for their wickedness. And secondly, and probably even a higher priority if you wanted to measure it that way, is he's using his judgment of the surrounding pagan nations to provoke Judah to repentance and to return to God and receive his counsel and his instruction. Matter of fact, go to Zephaniah chapter 3, probably one page over for you, and go to verse 7. I believe the first two lines of Zephaniah chapter 3, verse 7 is really the cornerstone of understanding what Zephaniah is all about. Matter of fact, one could argue that the truth of Zephaniah 3-7 is the basic cornerstone for all that God wants to accomplish through all of the Old Testament prophets. Now, he's accomplishing several things, but you might say his primary goal is revealed in verse 7. It's the truth of Zephaniah 3-7. His primary goal is revealed in verse 7. It's the first person here, the prophet is speaking as if he were God, he's speaking for God, and God says, I said, surely you will revere me except instruction. Surely you will revere me in all that I'm doing, in all the ways I've blessed you, in all the ways I've benefited you, and in all the ways you're seeing me now bring judgments and absolute condemnation on these pagan nations around you. Surely, Judah, you will look at all of that and you will begin to revere me again. You will begin to accept my instruction. The word instruction can mean correction, discipline.
Most often it's translated instruction, but it kind of encompasses all the above. Maybe that's a word for you this morning. Maybe you need to look at God's goodness, God's blessings. I mean, you woke up this morning, that's a grace you don't deserve, and we have a million more things to be thankful for, so surely you'll revere God.
Surely you'll receive instruction. So we see this pronouncement of judgment that's already been pronounced again on the Philistines, on Moab, and on Ammon. These are ungodly nations to the east and the west of Judah, but now the prophet turns to Egypt to the south and then to, I'm sorry, to the north rather, and then Assyria to the south to judge these two nations.
Now, I got it wrong again because I got it wrong in my notes. Egypt is to the south, Assyria, rather, is to the north. Now, the prophet turns to these two great nations to pronounce great judgments upon them.
Let's hurry on. Roman number one, let's see that God pays a visit to the Egyptians. God pays a visit to the Egyptians. Look at it there, if you will, in chapter two, the first part of verse 12.
Matter of fact, it's just one simple verse. You also, O Ethiopians, yours could say Cushite, same people, will be slain by my sword. Now, we know that the Ethiopian dynasty actually ruled Egypt for some time in the ancient world, and I take that in balance with the Old Testament teaching about Egypt, that this is really referring to Egypt, even though the people called the Ethiopians for this period of time were ruling in Egypt. So, we just can call it the Ethiopians, or you can call it Egypt, the same thing, but I'm going to use Egypt.
Egypt was a mighty nation in ancient times, and Egypt was a powerful nation, and Egypt was a nation that God used as his instrument of judgment on others, including his own people. We see in Isaiah, for example, chapter seven, verse 18. In that day the Lord will whistle for the fly that is in the remotest part of the rivers of Egypt, and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria. Figurative language here as he talks about how he's going to whistle, like whistling for a dog to come, so you can give it instructions or a command.
He said, I'm going to whistle for my instruments. Now, they're wicked, they're ungodly, but in God's sovereignty he uses all things and all people for his own purposes, and he's going to use these nations as tools in his hands to bring judgment. So, Egypt and Assyria are coming now to judge, and Judah is God's object so often in this time as she has been in so much sin.
But God says, in the midst of that I'm going to make sure that even those I bring against you, will they themselves be judged. Now, two reasons the Egyptians are probably mentioned here. Number one, to the people of this day Egypt was on the far edge of the world.
I mean, they were so far away most people didn't even think about them much other than when they went on the war path and traveled to destroy and conquer other kingdoms. So, I think the point was that even those in the remotest parts of the earth will not escape God's judgment. Everyone is accountable to God. He will judge all because he is Lord of all. And also, I think this must mean Egypt because that parallels with the Assyrians who are going to be mentioned in the next verse, the next several verses 13 through 15 actually, as God picks out the two most powerful nations of the earth and he's going to judge them as an illustration for Judah.
Assyria to the north and the Egyptians to the south. I believe the point again is no one, no matter how mighty they are, no matter how remote they might be, no one is going to escape God's judgment. These nations are to the north of Judah, they're to the south of Judah, they're all the way out to the edge of the earth, but we must understand something as the prophet is teaching us here.
Listen friend, God's judgment has a no escape clause. All will stand before God in judgment. God says quite specifically there in verse 13, you O Ethiopians, or Egypt, will be slain by my sword.
He will bring a country against Egypt and bear the sword against them and bring them to nothing. Now we go to Roman numeral two. There's only two Roman numerals, but as you can see from our text, the remainder of the text deals with the Assyrians.
So we'll try to unpack this phrase by phrase. As we see now, God pays the visit to Assyria. It's powerful that in one sense, of course, in a very real sense, of course, God is ruling over all, He's sovereign over all, He's involved in all, but then there are times when He personally pays a visit, and that's what we're seeing here. Now we see there in the first part of verse 13, He will stretch out His hand against the north and destroy Assyria and make Nineveh, the capital city of Assyria, a desolation. Perhaps no country of the ancient world struck fear in the surrounding nations as much as mighty Assyria did. They possessed a massive army, a well-armed army, a well-trained army. I remember when Miss Pam and I went to Greece.
You so graciously sent us on that for our anniversary, and how it impacted my life. And I read about the ancient Assyrian army and how they were so mighty and so fierce, the whole world was terrified of them. They were just as mighty in ferocity as they were in size. Matter of fact, the glorious, exalted city Nineveh of the Assyrians was built on the spoils of war from all of their conquering of all these other nations and kingdoms. Their army, for example, had 120,000 soldiers made up of infantry, charioteers, and mounted archers.
All kinds of warriors coming against you. And when the Assyrian army formed a front across a broad plain, it could stretch several miles. Very intimidating when the Assyrian army came up.
They could strike deep and strike deep and strike hard into any territory. No one could match the Assyrian army. No one could defeat much less tiny Judah, the Assyrian army, but God. And that's what the prophet's pointing out.
That's why these countries are pointed out. Matter of fact, scriptural and sacred history records that Assyria was actually conquered in 612 BC, not long after Zephaniah gave these prophecies. So we read again in verse 12, and he will stretch out his hand against the north and destroy Assyria, and he will make Nineveh a desolation. Now again, the idea of stretching out his hand means that God is personally involved. He's actively involved in this judgment, and he is bringing his almighty power to bear against these people in judgment. So not only is Israel's God the almighty God, he is the God who is personally active in all aspects of human history.
Can I say this again, kind of jumping off our line of thinking, but onto our reality? Everything God has done, everything God is doing now, and everything God is going to do is for the good of his people. He's personally orchestrating all the events of planet earth to that end. He's doing the things he's doing here to speak to Judah. Now, surely they deserve the judgment they're receiving, but God wants to use it to provoke Judah to repentance and return.
It is God who directs the rise of all nations, including mighty Assyria, and it is God who will personally bring her down for all her sins. He created everything that there is by the word of his power. For example, he called Abraham to begin the great nation called Israel. He brought them out of Egyptian bondage. He parted the Red Sea and let them walk through on dry land, then brought it back together to drown the Egyptian forces. He settled them then in the special land through Joshua, called the promised land, and then he judged the northern kingdom for their wickedness and rebellion, and now Judah, the southern kingdom, is in the focus of his judgment, if you will.
And he's also going to mildly and personally judge this mighty nation of Assyria as well. The Bible says in verse 13, the last part, leaving her parched like the wilderness. She'll be parched like the wilderness. Now, when you and I think of the word wilderness, at least in my thinking growing up, wilderness meant a vast area, densely forested, bushes, and weeds, and bramble, and it's just so thick and so grown if you can't get through it. That's just what wilderness means in my mind. But in this day, wilderness most of the time meant a dry, arid, desolate, dead place where almost nothing could live.
A few creatures that God made to live in that kind of environment, but most things could not live there. So that's the wilderness spoken of here, a dry desert land. And how ironic that he's going to turn mighty Nineveh, the glorious and mightiest city in the whole earth in this day, he's going to turn her into a wilderness, a desert land. Now, that's very ironic because mighty Nineveh, the city Nineveh, was on the banks of the Tigris River, and they had ample engineers who had built various canals off the Tigris into their city. So they had abundance of water, which was a key factor in this day, in this region of the world.
This is northern Africa. And so all of this water and all of this fertility, they had lush gardens and vegetation and crops, and God said, I'm going to bring it down to a barren desert. God did that on purpose.
I'm going to so utterly destroy it, it's going to be dry like a desert. Moitre says in his commentary, creation always sides with the Creator against the rebel. God who brings the sun to shine on the just and the unjust, God who brings the rain on the just and the unjust, will not always do so.
There's a time when he might cut it off and will cut it off. Moitre says again, quote, God's world will not forever support God's enemies. Wow, that's something to remember. You know, it seems that our farmers seem to understand that best as they live in a humble reliance on creation. Years ago, we had a dear brother who was a part of our church, some of you will remember him, his family will, Hollis Morgan. Brother Hollis was a simple man, he was a farming man, didn't say a whole lot, but many Sundays when he would leave, Hollis would walk out the door and take my hand and say, preacher, pray for the farmers, we need rain.
He didn't say anything else, he just walked on. And I've never forgotten that because that struck me because he was humbly dependent on God. He reverenced God, he knew God was in charge of all of creation. Now that's not like the people of Nineveh, that's not like the country of Assyria. In fact, they were right the opposite, they didn't look to God in any way, they didn't thank God at all, they thought nothing of all the abundant provisions that Yahweh had allowed to come on them.
They were neither humble nor thankful. They were so full of pride. In their pride, Nineveh was the world's largest city, it was considered impregnable, nobody can conquer us, they thought. The walls of Nineveh spanned for eight miles.
Can you imagine that in a day of all hand labor? Eight miles and the top of the walls were so thick you could put three chariots on top of the walls of Nineveh and race those chariots around, never touching each other. The king had 456 acres set aside that contained his armory, his chariots, and his horses. A lot of fighting machines and many, many magnificent structures and palaces, most of them his, within the walls of Nineveh. That's why Jonah and Jonah 112 called Nineveh, quote, the great city. Yet God is going to make it a desolation. I think he uses that word three times in these three verses, like a desert. Xenophon was a Greek scholar, a military commander, and a historian. And Xenophon records in his books of history that when he visited the area that was once the great city of Nineveh, he did not find a trace of a city, only a barren desert. He's not a Christian. He had no reason to write that unless it was true.
My friend, God's word never returns void. You know, I would have loved to see Nineveh in all of her glory. I love stuff like that, kind of odd. I could go to a museum and stay for days. I just love looking at that stuff and thinking on it.
They had some stuff in the museum in Memphis, Tennessee, years ago from the the days of the pharaohs of Egypt. Great pillars and stones and engravings and just to think back when you know the Bible story and think back about it, it's just fascinating. I would have loved to see Nineveh in all of her glory, but I will see God in all of his glory. And by the way, Nineveh's glory is gone. His glory stands forever. So just like the judgment on the Philistines, just like the judgment on Moab and Ammon that we talked about last week, this once mighty Nineveh will become a wasteland occupied by flocks and beasts.
Let's look at there together. Look at verse 14. Flocks will lie down in her midst.
And this is where there was once a mighty, mighty city. And the flocks will lie down in her midst. All beasts which range in herds. And then the wild beasts, both the pelican and the hedgehog, will lodge in the top of her pillars. Birds will sing in the window. Desolation will be on the threshold, for he has laid bare the work of cedar, or the cedar work. So now it's a place for flocks and it's a place for beasts.
The occupants are the pelican or the hedgehog. Actually, the word pelican is a word that could be translated desert owl. And the point is, instead of human voices in the bustle of commerce in this once great city, now what moves across it is the eerie echo of the desert owl. The metaphor, the picture the prophet wants you to get in your mind.
But all of these things speak of a barrenness and a lack of human occupation. Think about ancient Judah. They're hearing the prophet teach all this and say all this, and it wasn't just one time. And they have to be thinking about how they were backslidden, how they had not revered God, how they had not received God's instruction.
And yet these people with almost no light at all, and we Judeans, had received much light from God, much understanding, much revealed to us about him, how much more must God be going to judge us. He talks about these creatures, these wild creatures, quote verse 14, will lodge in the tops of the pillars. That must mean that as these giant corner pillars of the wall are torn to the ground, it would leave all kind of little caverns and cavities where wild animals would ledge or nest inside of it. Walls once thought to be impregnable now are inhabited by wild beasts.
Birds that are not city dwellers will inhabit the ruins. One man said, humans possess the material things of God's earth only by divine permission. Can I say to you, sir, can I say to you, ma'am, what you have God has ordained to allow you to have it. You better revere him.
You need to humble yourself before him and be full of gratitude to him. They called themselves, or Jonah called them the exultant city. Bailey quotes Berlin as saying that Nineveh had a glorious palace, actually many glorious palaces with beams, paneling of cedar, and that day paneling of cedar was only for the very wealthy, huge statues of winged bulls and lions, massive carvings or reliefs that depicted various campaigns and all their victories, hunting scenes and many animals that have been carved and engraved all over their palaces. All this stuff we're seeing about these wild beasts and flocks now living where the city was, it's almost as if God says, oh, Assyria, you like animals?
One day that's all that will be fit to live where you're living now in these palatial magnificent structures. That's kind of common if you're a hunter around here these days. Matter of fact, many of times I've been hunting about in the middle of nowhere and I come across what was once the foundation of someone's house. There was one place that I hunted that you don't realize it, but you're kind of on a road bed and there's several foundations and an old wall there and you deer hunt right in the middle of all of it.
What was once a structure and a building and people living there is now just the wilderness where wild beasts dwell. Looking at verse 15, if you will, this is the exaltant city which dwells securely, who says in her heart, I am and there's no one besides me. That was her major sin. That was a serious foundational sin. And matter of fact, that's mankind's foundational sin.
Pride. I'm fixed. I've got it made. I'm secure. And Nineveh literally said, quote verse 15, I am and there's no one beside me.
What is that? That's a violation of the first commandment. Exodus 20 verse 3 says, you have no other gods before me. God is to be honored in praise and not we ourselves. Nineveh claimed this honor for herself. I am God, Nineveh said.
There's no one besides me. And I guess if you've had the decades and decades, centuries, I guess you could say, of just, excuse me, traveling over and conquering over everyone who gets in your way, you begin to think, well, this is the way it's supposed to be. You know, it's really amazing to me.
You'll get a little practical application here. It's amazing to me how simple life is about right and wrong, good and bad. If you raise a child and you let that child learn, if they cause a big enough ruckus, they will get their way. Moms and dads win that battle.
Win that battle. Because if that little boy, that little girl learns, if I just teach a big enough ruckus, I'll get what I want. Then they get to be preteens and teenagers.
They begin to get in your face and tell you how it's going to be. That's the way the Assyrians were. Nobody's ever stopped us. Nobody's ever corrected us. Nobody's ever conquered us. We conquer everybody we want. We get anything we want.
We destroy everything we want. That's the way it's supposed to be. And that's the way a child thinks it's supposed to be, if you raise them as a permissive parent, which means being a non-parent.
We live in a day when a lot of people want children, but nobody wants to be a parent. Well, we'll get off that application. Get back to my notes. But it's real simple, is it not?
Deuteronomy 4 35 reminds us, the Lord, He is God, and there's no other besides Him. And God is saying, Nineveh, I'm tired of it. I've been long-suffering. I've been patient. But Nineveh, the great city of Assyria, and all of Assyria, you're not going to be a parent.
You're not going to be a parent. Nineveh, the great city of Assyria, and all of Assyria, you're going to become a desolation. That's mentioned again in verse 15, right toward the middle there, how she has become a desolation.
That's the third time this word is used. And what you see here, the prophet speaking in the first person, as if God is speaking, the prophet seems to be speaking with amazement that such a great city that for generations terrorized the entire world has now come to ruin. Which is, if the Lord God himself is saying, you mean Nineveh? Nineveh? I mean, Nineveh's going to come to total ruin.
You and I can't really grasp that. It'd be kind of like overnight almost seeing the great cities of our world come to complete standstill and complete destruction. And by the way, God can do that too. And if He doesn't do it to some of our cities, He'll have to apologize to Nineveh one day. Wickedness, vileness, ungodliness, false worship, and no fear of God is rampant in our land. Like Berlin said in his commentary, because this nation exalted itself to the highest heaven, it must be brought to the lowest hell. God is opposed to the proud, the Bible says.
Remember what we said about that? It literally means God says, okay, I'm planting my feet and I'm coming at you. It doesn't mean I'm planting my feet and waiting on you. It means I'm planting my feet and I'm actively coming to bring you to an end.
I'm opposed. The word opposed means I'm opposed to the proud. And then verse 15 again, if you will look at it, last two phrases in the New American Standard translation. Everyone who passes by her will hiss and wave his hand in contempt. These gestures in this day meant the scorn, the contempt, the shock that such a thing could happen to such a mighty city. The hand is used here. They will raise their hand.
The text says here, wave his hand. So, we begin by God stretching His hand out against Assyria. That's God's hand, metaphorically, anthropomorphically speaking. God's hands come against her personally and powerfully. And now, we end with humans raising their hand to say, oh, you thought you were so great. You thought you couldn't fall.
How shocking it is, how amazing it is that you've been brought to nothing. So, God says, I'm personally against you and men will personally mock you about the ruin that's coming against you. Proverbs 16 18 tells us, I'm not against you. Proverbs 16 18 tells us, pride goes before destruction. You could potentially say, pride goes before the fall. You know, pride is just the foundation of all evil. You know what pride is? Pride is what makes you jealous when somebody else is the big noise at the party. Pride is always concerned of, what's my angle?
What play can I put on this? How can I get a head in this situation for myself? Pride is the complete anti-God state of mind. Pride is what made the devil the devil. Pride is what made Assyria Assyria. And pride is what made the capital city of Assyria, the wicked kingdom that it was, pride.
As Octomyr says in his commentary, Assyria had the pride of wealth. We're so strong. We're so mighty. We're so wealthy. We've conquered so many countries, and we've taken all their wealth.
Nobody can touch us. Pride of wealth. Maybe God's blessed you. Maybe you're 401k.
For preachers, it's a 403b. Maybe it's in really good shape. Maybe you need to look at it after these last two weeks. Might not be as good a shape as you thought. And you think, you know what?
I'm okay. You remind me of a man that the Bible calls a fool. The pride of wealth. And they also had the pride of independence and sovereignty. We are free from all restraints and all dependence on all peoples. We're sovereign over our own destiny. And the pride of security.
Again, no one can harm us. Brothers and sisters, as an application for us, we must be humble individuals. We must be a humble church.
And oh, God help us to live in a humble nation. Let me say something about that sort of an application thing here. There's nothing wrong with acknowledging and knowing you may have special goods. There's nothing wrong with acknowledging and knowing you may have special gifts, special abilities. You may have even achieved greatness in some ways.
There's nothing wrong with knowing that, but there's something wrong with outward boasting about it. The Bible says in Psalms 27, verse 2, let another praise you and not yourself. A very simple transaction.
A very simple guidance, if you will. When you are aware that God's blessed you, gifted you, helped you accomplish certain things, whatever it is, certain talents, certain gifts, it's okay to acknowledge that, but immediately upon acknowledging that from your heart, you should lift your heart toward heaven and say, but oh God, these are gifts from you. And you can remove them today if you choose. You can be brought to nothing today if God wants to. I don't know why God pricks my heart a lot about that. I've told you before, when I started in the ministry, you could not have had more of nothing than I had. When I started here, my salary was $50 a week. You've tried to live on $50 a week?
I was single, that helped. Now you take better care of me than that. But I try to bring my heart before God and say, God, I started with nothing.
I may end up with nothing. If so, blessed be the name of the Lord. I want to walk in. I enjoy what God's done. I enjoy the blessings and the goodnesses, the kindnesses, the common graces. Can I get an amen?
But I want to live with an ever present. Oh God, these are from you and they may be gone tomorrow. Don't be like Sennacherib, Tiglath-Pileser and the other Assyrian leaders who would not humble themselves before God. And in the back of all of this, these nations mistreated God's people.
And we see that coming out as we go through Zephaniah. And as we said last week, when you harm God's people, when you damage God's people, when you slander God's people, God takes it personally. As Paul said, as he in his faithful ministry spoke of boasting, he said, I'll only boast in the Lord.
Romans 5, 17, Paul said, therefore in Christ Jesus I have found reason for boasting in the things pertaining to God. That's all of God. Now, Roman numeral three, and this won't take long at all, I want you to turn back over to Zephaniah, and I want you to turn back over to Zephaniah, chapter three, and look again at verse seven. Two simple parts there in this grand point, and again, I think this is a grand point that really makes all of Zephaniah make sense. And actually, it could be used as a guide for understanding all of the Old Testament prophets, and that is God's purposing and judging the nations other than the fact they deserve the judgment.
That's true. It was for provoking his people. And that's why I want you to turn back over to Zephaniah, because it was for provoking his people to return to him. So God says, after all that he's doing, and all the wrath, and all the judgment, and all the desolation, and all the expressions of his wisdom, and his power, and his authority against those nations, God says, here he is speaking in verse seven, so surely now you will revere me. Surely you'll revere me.
And secondly, you'll accept instruction. You'll come humbly and walk in line with my will, my ordinances. If God's going to so thoroughly judge Egypt and then Assyria, then how much more he's going to judge Judah, who had all this light. And in closing, can I challenge you to think how much more light do we have than Judah had? Judah had the truth, but not much of it compared to what we have, this side of the cross, this side of the completion of the biblical canon.
How much more abundantly guilty we are today if we are proud, if we're not looking to God, if we're not striving to honor God with all that we have and with all of our lives. 1 Corinthians 10-11, looking back to God's dealings with ancient Israel, including Judah, Paul said right into the Corinthians, now these things happened to them, that's ancient Israel, as an example. They were written for our instruction. These things are happening for our instruction upon whom the ends of the ages have come. For example, we have the completed revelation of scripture. They only had the law of Moses. We have the appearance of Jesus himself. Judah had comparatively little, just shadows and types and images of this coming Savior, but not like we have. We have the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.
They only had the animal sacrificial system. We have the Son of God, the Lamb of God that we know has come and died for us. And then his resurrection, and they have nothing to parallel that, or they had nothing. We have the New Testament epistles, which thoroughly lays out the grace that saves us through the work of Jesus. Judah only had bits and pieces and shadows and types of this coming grace that would come through the Savior, the Messiah. We have the active work of the Holy Spirit that regenerates our hearts, that convicts of sin. Now, they had the work of the Holy Spirit, but not the full canon of scripture, not the full understanding of the gospel for the Spirit to use, to teach us, to humble us, to bring us to Christ. We have the church, our local churches, with all the blessings and all the gifts. They had a nation, but nothing in comparison to what we have as God's New Testament church. We have pastor teachers to teach us and proclaim to us the whole counsel of God, Old Testament and New Testament, and how it all comes together as one, culminates in promoting and honoring Jesus and culminates in the centrality in the building of God's church, his people. Judah had only the teachings of Moses.
True light, but little light in comparison to what we have. So what's God think about that? What's God going to say to us if he's being so firm about Judah?
What's he going to say to us if we're not faithful? Well, he's made it very clear in his word, 1 Peter 1, verses 10 and 11. As to this salvation, the prophets, including Zephaniah, who prophesied of the grace that would come to you, made careful searches and inquiries. In other words, they're looking for all that's there, but they don't have the full revelation you and I have on this side of Calvary. Verse 11, seeking to know what person or time the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating as he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow. It was revealed to them, those Old Testament writers, that they were not serving themselves, but you, that's us. They were serving us in these things which now have been announced to you through those who preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things to which angels long to look in. His picture there is the angels themselves, until Jesus came, did not know how it was all going to work out. They probably knew a little bit. They were looking through a glass dimly, if you will, and they were stooped over heaven looking as Jesus came, as Jesus was born, as he went to the cross and looked at each other.
Can you believe this? This is glorious what God is doing through his Son, Jesus Christ. And so the prophet says, what a gift you've been given.
All of these things we now know clearly. They've been unveiled to us in the brilliant light of the Son of God, Jesus Christ. Hebrews 10 26. After we've known these things, seen these things, heard these things, for if we go on sinning willfully, that's primarily the sin of apostasy, or at least you might say it's the sin of not taking God seriously.
Making God a part of your life and not your life. If we go on sinning willfully after having received the knowledge of the truth, we know it all. There no longer remains a sacrifice for sin in Hebrews 10 27-31, but a terrifying expectation of judgment and the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses.
Now that's serious. If you just have the law of Moses and you violate it, two or three witnesses could have you killed. Verse 29, well how much severe punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled in the foot the Son of God and regarded as an unclean thing the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified and has insulted the spirit of grace? For we know him who said, vengeance is mine, I will repay, and again the Lord will judge his people. It's a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of living God. Now the context of Hebrews, again, is Paul is writing, I believe Paul wrote it, to Hebrew people, many of which were converted, but a lot of them were just seekers.
They were exploring. They were kind of looking to Jesus, but not really, and some of them were kind of trying to pull away. My friend, if you're in no man's land, if you're kind of in neutral zone about Jesus, about giving your life to him and living for him, you're under the most severe rags and you're under the most severe wrath, far greater than God poured out on Philistia, than God poured out on Ammon or Moab, than God poured out on Egypt, or than God poured out on Assyria.
How much more, the text says, are we guilty? So knowing all of this, I come to this grand point. God's thinking this through. That's the kind of the way the prophets put it together.
God's thinking about this and God is saying, now surely you'll revere me. Surely you'll receive instruction. For some of you that instruction is, repent and believe the gospel. Place your faith today in Jesus. For some of you that instruction is, you believed, professing publicly, be a part of the church by believer's baptism. For many of us, there's a lot of other things that means in our own lives.
