Advent 3 – Year C
Psalm 85
Zephaniah 3:14-20
Philippians 4:4-9
Luke 3:7-20
Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion; shout, O Israel!
Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem!
This Rejoice Sunday, offering a lightening of tone from where we started Advent two weeks ago.
Rejoice! This season of preparation began with words of warning, with a call to repentance. Today we get to take a deep breath of hope and expectation. Even as we mourn with those devastated by the tornadoes in Kentuck and five other states Friday night, even as we prayerfully watch the covid numbers creeping up, we can rejoice.
Why do we rejoice? Paul calls us to rejoice for the LORD is coming. Yes, there are trials and tribulations all around us, but we can be sure that the LORD is coming. In Philippians 4 we have what may be a favorite passage for many of us.
Yes!
What precedes this wonderful exhortation? “Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice.” Why does Paul tell us to rejoice? Because “the Lord is at hand”! I’d not noticed that before. Why are we not to be anxious even in a pandemic? Why are we to rejoice? Because the Lord is at hand. The Lord is at a hand!
Notice we’re called to rejoice before the expectation is fulfilled. We live in an instant-fulfillment culture, and we only rejoice once we get what we want. Rejoice, I got the latest smartphone or a new car. Rejoice, the Steelers won their game. Rejoice, I got an A on my paper. But Paul calls us to rejoice in advance of the Lord’s coming. It’s an act of trust that God is faithful.
The command to rejoice signals us that we can start cheering for the coming redemption. We’re that much closer to Christmas, to the coming of the Messiah.
We have four very rich passages today, and I would have liked to touch on each. But as this is Rejoice Sunday – and you are not yet acclimated to hear a 45-minute sermon from me – we’ll focus on Zephaniah.
The passage from Zephaniah 3 is a song worthy of our celebration. It is joyful and offers a beautiful comforting promise. What prompted Zephaniah to write these words? What are they speaking to us today?
Why did the Holy Spirit prompt Zephaniah to write these joyful words?
Verse 15: “The Lord has taken away the judgments against you; he has cleared away your enemies.” What judgments? What enemies? I’m ashamed to say that in all my years in the Bible, I cannot recall ever looking at Zephaniah. Let’s put this song in context.
This joyous song in chapter 3 comes after a heavy word of judgment in chapters 1 and 2. A quick overview.
- “The name Zephaniah comes from the Hebrew word meaning ‘… to treasure.’” Zephaniah is a treasured one speaking to God’s treasured ones. As we will see, Zephaniah had to deliver a word of judgment. His name is a reminder that, even in judgment and tribulations, we are God’s treasured ones.
- Zephaniah ministers in the time of Josiah. The northern kingdom of Israel has already been scattered by Assyria. Judah has thus been spared, but a reckoning is coming. Josiah’s grandfather was Manassah, the worst of Judah’s kings. How bad was Manassah? He rebuilt the idols taken down by his father Hezekiah, and he offered his sons as sacrifices to Moloch, a hideous god of fire. Josiah was a reformer like his great-grandfather Hezekiah and walked in the ways of his father David.
Josiah takes down idolatrous altars and cleans out the temple in Jerusalem. Yet, in this time of reform, God declares judgment over Judah. There was still greed and murder, fraud and idolatry. There were syncretists who prayed to false gods as well as Yahweh. There were those who just didn’t bother to engage with God at all and others who didn’t think God cared either way, saying: “The Lord will not do good, nor will he do ill.” They think God is disengaged and unfaithful to his word.
God really hates when we think he doesn’t care. That’s right up there with the lukewarm believers he spits out in Revelation. - God does care and does and will act. Zephaniah warns us that the Day of the Lord, the day of judgment is coming. Zephaniah doesn’t just warn his own people. He also warns the nations that God will judge them for their idolatry and injustice. Remember, as a good Father, God chastises those he loves. God loves the nations as much as he loves Israel, as we will see.
The judgment is severe for both Judah and the nations. Here’s a taste from Zephaniah 1:
14 The great day of the Lord is near,
near and hastening fast;
the sound of the day of the Lord is bitter;
the mighty man cries aloud there.
15 A day of wrath is that day,
a day of distress and anguish,
a day of ruin and devastation …
17 I will bring distress on mankind,
so that they shall walk like the blind,
because they have sinned against the Lord;
their blood shall be poured out like dust,
and their flesh like dung.
18 Neither their silver nor their gold
shall be able to deliver them
on the day of the wrath of the Lord.
In the fire of his jealousy,
all the earth shall be consumed;
for a full and sudden end
he will make of all the inhabitants of the earth.
What does this have to do with Christmas!?
Let us remember that Advent is not just about us anticipating Christmas, the celebration of the Messiah’s first coming as a vulnerable baby. Advent is about looking for the return of Jesus the Messiah with his heavenly host to claim the throne of his father David, to cleanse Jerusalem and all the earth, and rule the nations from his holy mountain. What does Psalm 110 say? “He will shatter kings on the day of his wrath. He will execute judgment among the nations.” Jesus alludes to this passage in his conversation with Pontius Pilate. The writer of the Hebrews also reminds us that Jesus is this judging king-priest in the order of Melchizedek. Jesus, priest and sacrifice, endures the cross, and the Father resurrects him and gives him the right to judge the nations. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
We’re almost back to the song in Zephaniah 3 as we fly over the book of Zephaniah. But there’s something unexpected, perhaps even peculiar just before the song of rejoicing.
For two chapters, God – through Zephaniah – says he will punish all humanity – Jew and Gentile – for their sin. Zephaniah 3:8 says, “For my decision is to gather nations, to assemble kingdoms, to pour out upon them my indignation, all my burning anger; for in the fire of my jealousy all the earth shall be consumed.”
But then verse 9: “For at that time I will change the speech of the peoples to a pure speech, that all of them may call upon the name of the Lord and serve him with one accord.”
What?
God said he’d decided to consume the nations in anger. But he relents. He cleanses the idolatrous, rebellious speech of the nations so that they will call on the name of the Lord, so they will believe in the God of Israel. He replaces our stony, rebellious hearts, with repentant hearts of flesh.
God is an all-consuming fire of holiness that burns up sinners. Yet God’s character is to show mercy, wishing none to perish. To us, this seems a contradiction, but with God all things are possible. God’s holiness demands he judge sin. God’s mercy finds a way to cleanse us from our sin. We see this movement from flaring, justified wrath to softening compassion over and over in the prophets.
God’s compassion has won out, so now we arrive at our song:
“Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem! The Lord has taken away the judgments against you; he has cleared away your enemies.”
The judgments are gone. Israel’s enemies are cleared away, not by destruction, but by redemption and conversion. Israel’s enemies are now her compatriots. Paul explains in Ephesians 2 how the nations are added to the commonwealth of Israel. He uses the metaphor of the cultivated and wild olive trees in Romans 11 to show how followers of Yahweh from the nations are grafted into Israel. This is how you and I – representing nations in the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia – can read this song of Zephaniah 3 for ourselves. We have been adopted into Israel and so can rejoice with Jerusalem, as the prophet exhorts.
Why else can we rejoice?
“The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.”
Did you catch that? The LORD our God, the mighty one who saves us, is in our midst. He is not only here among us, he is rejoicing over us! Today’s readings command us to rejoice. Yet, God is rejoicing over us already!
“He will quiet you by his love, he will exult over you with loud singing.”
I see two pictures here.
- God will quiet you by his love.
If you’ve watched The Big Bang Theory, you know that Sheldon Cooper strives to be purely logical and unemotional, like Spock. He is an exacting scientist with no room for feelings… until he’s sick or scared or sad. Then he needs his mama just like everybody else. And his mom would calm him with her love through a lullaby.
Soft kitty, warm kitty, little ball of fur!
Happy kitty, sleepy kitty, purr purr purr!
That’s how God calms us. The words and melody are different, but God is singing over each one of us, soothing our distressed souls with the peace that passes all understanding. - God also exults over us with singing.
Imagine Frank Sinatra singing:
Yes, Sir, that’s my baby.
No, Sir, don’t mean maybe.
Yes, Sir, that’s my baby now.
That’s how God feels about you. Our sin makes him angry and jealous, but his mercy finds a way for him to cleanse us, dwell with us, and even sing his songs of love over us.
Who is this King of Glory who sings over us? Zephaniah tells us that he is the one who “will save the lame and gather the outcast” and change our shame into praise. That sounds familiar.
The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,
and the day of vengeance of our God;
to comfort all who mourn;
to grant to those who mourn in Zion—
to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit.
That’s Isaiah 61, the passage Jesus reads in his hometown synagogue in Luke 4 and declares himself the LORD’s Anointed, the Messiah. Jesus, the King of Israel, Immanuel, God in our midst, is the one singing over us. He is the king-priest who offers himself as a sacrifice so that he can covert the nations and unite them with his beloved Israel. He is the one who heals our broken hearts and bodies and frees us from our burdens and our prisons.
He is singing, like the lover in Song of Solomon:
You have captivated my heart, beloved.
You have captivated my heart with one glance of your eyes (Song 4:9).
Jesus is coming. Rejoice! Our King is coming! Amen