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Zephaniah
Chapter One
Zephaniah 1
Chapter Contents
Threatenings against sinners. (1-6) More threatenings.
(7-13) Distress from the approaching judgments. (14-18)
Commentary on Zephaniah 1:1-6
(Read Zephaniah 1:1-6)
Ruin is coming
utter ruin; destruction from the
Almighty. The servants of God all proclaim
There is no peace for the wicked.
The expressions are figurative
speaking every where desolation; the land shall
be left without inhabitants. The sinners to be consumed are
the professed
idolaters
and those that worship Jehovah and idols
or swear to the Lord
and
to Malcham. Those that think to divide their affections and worship between God
and idols
will come short of acceptance with God; for what communion can there
be between light and darkness? If Satan have half
he will have all; if the
Lord have but half
he will have none. Neglect of God shows impiety and
contempt. May none of us be among those who draw back unto perdition
but of
those who believe to the saving of the soul.
Commentary on Zephaniah 1:7-13
(Read Zephaniah 1:7-13)
God's day is at hand; the punishment of presumptuous
sinners is a sacrifice to the justice of God. The Jewish royal family shall be
reckoned with for their pride and vanity; and those that leap on the threshold
invading their neighbours' rights
and seizing their possessions. The trading
people and the rich merchants are called to account. Secure and careless people
are reckoned with. They are secure and easy; they say in their heart
the Lord
will not do good
neither will he do evil; that is
they deny his dispensing
rewards and punishments. But in the day of the Lord's judgment
it will clearly
appear that those who perish
fall a sacrifice to Divine justice for breaking
God's law
and because they have no interest by faith in the Redeemer's atoning
sacrifice.
Commentary on Zephaniah 1:14-18
(Read Zephaniah 1:14-18)
This warning of approaching destruction
is enough to
make the sinners in Zion tremble; it refers to the great day of the Lord
the
day in which he will show himself by taking vengeance on them. This day of the
Lord is very near; it is a day of God's wrath
wrath to the utmost. It will be
a day of trouble and distress to sinners. Let them not be laid asleep by the
patience of God. What is a man profited if he gain the whole world
and lose
his own soul? And what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? Let us flee
from the wrath to come
and choose the good part that shall never be taken from
us; then we shall be prepared for every event; nothing shall separate us from
the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
── Matthew Henry《Concise Commentary on Zephaniah》
Zephaniah 1
Verse 1
[1] The
word of the LORD which came unto Zephaniah the son of Cushi
the son of
Gedaliah
the son of Amariah
the son of Hizkiah
in the days of Josiah the son
of Amon
king of Judah.
Zephaniah — He
is thought to have been the great-grandson of king Hezekiah.
In the days of Josiah — So he was cotemporary with Jeremiah and Ezekiel
and foretells what
Jeremiah and Ezekiel did.
Verse 4
[4] I will also stretch out mine hand upon Judah
and upon all the inhabitants
of Jerusalem; and I will cut off the remnant of Baal from this place
and the
name of the Chemarims with the priests;
The remnant —
Whatsoever remains of the idolatry of Baal.
This place —
Jerusalem.
The name —
Both the persons
and the memory of them.
The Chemarims —
Either called so from their black garments they went in
or
from their swarthy
colour occasioned by the black smoak of incense: they were door-keepers
and
sextons of Baal.
The priests —
The priests of Baal.
Verse 5
[5] And
them that worship the host of heaven upon the housetops; and them that worship
and that swear by the LORD
and that swear by Malcham;
House-tops — On
the flat roofs of their houses.
And that swear —
That mixt idol-worship
and the worship of the true God; that devote themselves
to God
and Baal
or Malchim
that is
Moloch.
Verse 7
[7] Hold
thy peace at the presence of the Lord GOD: for the day of the LORD is at hand:
for the LORD hath prepared a sacrifice
he hath bid his guests.
Hold thy peace — Thou
that murmurest against God
stand in awe.
The day — A
day of vengeance from the Lord.
A sacrifice —
The wicked Jews
whom he will sacrifice by the sword.
His guests —
summoned the beasts of the field
and the fowls of the air
to eat the flesh
and drink the blood.
Verse 8
[8] And it shall come to pass in the day of the LORD's sacrifice
that I will
punish the princes
and the king's children
and all such as are clothed with
strange apparel.
The princes —
The great ones
who dreamed of shifting better than others
but fell with the
first
2 Kings 25:19-21.
Children —
Sons and grand-children
Josiah: Jehoahaz died a captive in Egypt
2 Kings 23:34
Jehoakim died in Babylon
and was
buried with the burial of an ass
Jeremiah 22:18
19
Jeconiah died a captive: and
Zedekiah and his children
fared still worse.
Strange apparel —
The garb of foreigners
imitated by the wanton Jews.
Verse 9
[9] In
the same day also will I punish all those that leap on the threshold
which
fill their masters' houses with violence and deceit.
In the same day — At
the same time.
Their masters houses — Either the oppressing kings
whose officers these were
or publick
officers and judges
whose servants thus spoiled the poor.
Violence —
Goods taken by force
by false accusations
or by suborned evidence.
Verse 10
[10] And
it shall come to pass in that day
saith the LORD
that there shall be the
noise of a cry from the fish gate
and an howling from the second
and a great
crashing from the hills.
The noise —
The great out-cry and lamentation.
The fish gate — At
which gate the Babylonians first entered into the city.
The second —
This gate was in the second wall of Jerusalem
which on that side was fortified
with three walls.
Crashing — Of
things broken into shivers; possibly the noise of doors
windows
closets
and
chests broken up.
The hills — On
which the city stood.
Verse 11
[11]
Howl
ye inhabitants of Maktesh
for all the merchant people are cut down; all
they that bear silver are cut off.
Howl —
Cry aloud
and bitterly.
Maktesh —
The lower town.
Merchant people —
Who were wont to lodge in this place.
That bear silver —
That brought it with them to pay for what they bought.
Verse 12
[12] And
it shall come to pass at that time
that I will search Jerusalem with candles
and punish the men that are settled on their lees: that say in their heart
The
LORD will not do good
neither will he do evil.
I will search —
God speaks after the manner of men
who searches dark places with candles. He
will fully discover and punish.
Their lees — In
allusion to liquors
which not being poured out from vessel to vessel to refine
them
grow thick and foul.
Verse 14
[14] The
great day of the LORD is near
it is near
and hasteth greatly
even the voice
of the day of the LORD: the mighty man shall cry there bitterly.
The voice if the day — The day which will come with a great noise.
Verse 15
[15] That
day is a day of wrath
a day of trouble and distress
a day of wasteness and
desolation
a day of darkness and gloominess
a day of clouds and thick
darkness
A day — Of
unparalleled calamities.
Verse 17
[17] And
I will bring distress upon men
that they shall walk like blind men
because
they have sinned against the LORD: and their blood shall be poured out as dust
and their flesh as the dung.
Like blind men —
Not knowing where to go.
As dust — As
abundantly
and as carelessly as dust in the highway.
Verse 18
[18]
Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them in the day of
the LORD's wrath; but the whole land shall be devoured by the fire of his
jealousy: for he shall make even a speedy riddance of all them that dwell in
the land.
In the land —
Therefore let not sinners be laid asleep by the patience of God; for when the
measure of their iniquity is full
his justice will both overtake and overcome
them
will make quick and thorough work.
── John Wesley《Explanatory Notes on Zephaniah》
01 Chapter 1
Verses 1-18
The
word of the Lord which came unto Zephaniah.
The Word
I. THE DISTINGUISHING CAPACITY OF MAN
AND THE WONDERFUL
CONDESCENSION OF GOD.
1. The distinguishing capacity of man. To receive the word of
Jehovah. To receive a word from another is to appreciate its meaning. The word
of the Lord comes to every man at times
--comes in visions of the night
comes
in the intuitions of conscience
comes in the impressions that nature makes on
the heart.
2. The wonderful condescension of God. Even to speak to man. “The
Lord hath respect unto the humble.”
II. The moral corruption of man and the exclusive prerogative of God.
1. The moral corruption of man. There are three great moral evils
indicated in these verses.
2. The exclusive prerogative of God. What is that? To destroy. “I
will utterly consume all things from off the land
saith the Lord. I will
consume man and beast; I will consume the fowls of the heaven
and the fishes
of the sea
and the stumbling blocks with the wicked; and I will cut off man
from off the land
saith the Lord.”
Verse
2-3
I will utterly consume all things from off the land.
The menace of Zephaniah
It would not be easy to find words more fully charged and
surcharged with terror than these. Nor do they grow less sombre and dreadful as
we consider either the men against whom they are launched
or the occasion that
gave them form.
In the time of Zephaniah the Jews were incredibly corrupt. The occasion of
Zephaniah’s writing was the invasion of Asia by the Scyths. As he looked out
from the walls of Jerusalem and saw the goodly land stripped and devoured
before them
and recalled the havoc they had carried through neigh-bouring
kingdoms
he found the very symbol of judgment which would best express his
thought. Jehovah would sweep everything from the face of the whole earth
even
as the Scythians
with fire and sword in their train
were sweeping away the
fruits and the wealth of the East. The conception which the passage suggests is
that
angered beyond endurance by the sins of men
Jehovah is about to storm
through the earth like a mighty Scythian chieftain destroying empire after
empire
sweeping the whole world bare and empty. But these words
when rightly
understood
are found to breathe a most catholic charity
a most tender
humanity
and a mercy wholly divine.
I. A most catholic charity.
His view extended over the
whole civilised world
over the whole world the prophet knew. We commonly
conceive of the Hebrew prophets as the most narrow and exclusive of men
as devoted solely to the
affairs and interests of the Hebrew race. And in so conceiving of them we do
them a grave wrong. They were patriots
indeed
and patriots of the sincerest
and noblest strain. Instead of being the most exclusive
they were really the
most catholic of men. There is no one of them who does not look beyond the
limits of his own country and desire the welfare of the world. And men ought to
rejoice that the judgments of man are abroad in the whole earth
especially
when they can see that Divine judgments veil purposes of mercy. This is the
true catholicity
which desires not only the good of all men
but the highest
good of all.
II. A most noble and tender
humanity. They exalt man
and yet they take thought for beasts. They are at
once human and humane. It is now too much the fashion to regard man as the mere
creature of the vast natural and cosmic forces amid which he stands and moves.
It is assumed that physical laws govern his whole being. The Hebrew prophets
breathed another
and surely a higher spirit.” “To them it seemed that man was
the lord of natural forces and laws
though himself “under authority.” This
high conception of man
as standing with only God above him
and the whole
world beneath his feet
though it was the conception of a pre-scientific age
accords with the profoundest intuitions
and satisfies the deepest cravings of
our hearts.
III. A mercy wholly Divine.
Though the words of the text sound so stem and judicial
all the Hebrew
prophets are rooted and grounded in the conviction that the meaning of judgment
is mercy
that all the sorrows and calamities of human life are designed to
reach an end of compassion and love. That it was the mercy of judgment which
Zephaniah had in mind when he rejoiced that “their offences” were to be swept
away with the sinners of his time
that men were to suffer in order that man
might be saved
is evident so soon as we permit him to interpret himself. In
passages of an exquisite tenderness and beauty he expands his opening words.
See Zephaniah 2:11; Zephaniah 3:9. It was because the
Hebrew prophets were so strong in this conviction of the beneficent uses of
“judgments” that they could dwell on them
and even exult in them
as they
undoubtedly do. Let us learn of Zephaniah the mercy of the Divine judgments.
They simply sheathe and convey the saving health of the Divine compassion and
love. With Zephaniah let us welcome and rely on the conviction that
when God
sweeps the face of the earth
it is that He may renew the heart of the world
and gladden us with larger disclosures of His grace. (Samuel Cox
D. D.)
I will consume man and beast; I will consume
the fowls of the heaven
and the fishes of the sea.
Animals sharing the punishments of man
Why did God turn His wrath against fishes and other
animals? This
seems to have been a hasty and unreasonable infliction. But let this rule be
first borne in mind
that it is preposterous in us to estimate God’s dealings
according to our judgment
as froward and proud men do in our day; for they are
disposed to judge of God’s works with such presumption that whatever they do
not approve they think it right wholly to condemn. But it behoves us to judge
modestly and soberly
and to confess that God’s judgments are a deep abyss; and
when a reason for them does not appear we ought reverently and with due
humility to look for the day of their full revelation. This is one thing. Then
it is meet at the same time to remember that as animals were created for man’s
use
they must under
go a lot in common with him; for God made subservient to
man both the birds of heaven and the fishes of the sea
and all other animals.
It is
then
no matter of wonder that the condemnation of him who enjoys
sovereignty over the whole earth should reach to animals. The reason is
sufficiently plain. Why
the prophet speaks here of the beasts of the earth
the fishes of the sea
and the birds of heaven; for we find that men grow
torpid
or rather stupid in their own indifference
except as they are forcibly
roused. It was therefore necessary for the prophet
when he saw the people so hardened in their
wickedness
and that he had to do with men past recovery
to set clearly before
them these judgments of God. (John Calvin.)
Verse 4-5
And that swear by the Lord
and that swear by Malcham
The demonstrativeness of true religion
In this text it is a sort of mixed religion that the Lord declares
He will not tolerate.
Impress t he necessity of decision in religion. What is the lowest amount of
faith in Jesus Christ which will avail to save a man’s soul?
1. What definition the Scripture gives us of true Christianity. Mark
the distinction between coming to Christ and following Christ. Coming to Christ
costs a man nothing; but following Christ and remaining with Christ involve the
taking up the cross and the exercise of stern self-denial. True Christianity
demands an entire surrender of the heart to God
a thorough abandonment of
wilful sin
an unceasing vigilance against the wiles of the devil.
2. If a man has cordially embraced
with a living faith
the truth as
it is in Jesus
will he--can he--be undemonstrative? By demonstrativeness is
not meant talkativeness
nor can it be explained by formalism. When forms are
allowed to usurp the place of the heart
they demonstrate too much. Nor is it
being charitable
or regularly attending worship. By demonstrativeness is meant
a quiet earnestness
which will show itself as much by what it does not as by
what it does. A man cannot
in a proper sense
be undemonstrative if he has
embraced
with a living faith
the “truth as it is in Jesus.”
3. To what is the undemonstrativeness of the mere professor of
religion traceable? Is it not that he makes God the offering of half his heart
while he gives the other half to the world?
4. Are we to call the undemonstrative true Christians
and the
demonstrative advanced Christians? Let God answer. See the text. He who readeth
the heart will not be mocked and trifled with. God will cut off the undecided.
In the last great assize those who in their lives have halted between two
opinions shall find no mercy. (W. I. Chapman
M. A.)
Double-hearted people
A little while ago I was with some friends
going through Her
Majesty’s State apartments in Windsor Castle. At the end of the great
banquet-hall we were shown
in a gallery above our heads
a fine organ. Now
this organ
I found
was just like one of the double-hearted people; for the
old man who was taking us round explained carefully that it performed double
duty
having two finger-boards. At the sides from which we saw it it was played
on the occasion of a royal banquet
to the delight and pleasure of those who
feasted below. But on the side which we could not see it had another
finger-board
and performed a wholly different service
for it was in the royal
chapel
and pealed forth strains of sacred music to help the worship of those
who gathered there. Well
I despised that organ for its double-dealing
though
of course
you know the organ could not help itself. It was only what it had
been made
but it seemed to me like “a double-minded man
unstable in all his
ways.” God keep us from having two finger-beards. Do you understand what I
mean. Do you see that we
who are blood-bought and made nigh to God
have the
blessed privilege of being brought as worshippers into the holiest? That there
we may be as beautiful instruments
in full tune for the Master’s hand
that
when He strikes the chords
there may rise rich swelling notes of worship and
praise to His ear and heart. Having
then
a finger-board in the holiest
in
the place of worship
let us be very jealous that there be none to which the
revellers of this world can have access
that no note of sympathy may be ever
struck from our hearts by the world
that has rejected Christ
the David whom
we own as Lord. (A. J. Gordon
D. D.)
There ought to be continuity in our religious life
There should be continuity in our religious life. Some people are
pious by fits and starts. They are with God in the sanctuary
but not in the
shop; they drink the cup of the Lord on Sunday
and the cup of the devil on Monday.
At the mouths of certain large rivers are formed what geologists call lagoons.
A lagoon is a small lake separated from the sea by a bar of sand
and is filled
with fresh and salt water by turns. Often a lagoon communicates exclusively
with the river for months
and during this period its water is fresh. Then a
breach is made in the bar of sand and there is an eruption of salt water
which
for a season holds undisputed sway. In these lagoons we may find an
illustration of not a few people connected with all our churches. For a time
they are seemingly in communication with God and spiritual things
and these
are the forces that shape and mould and colour their life. But suddenly that
communication seems to break off
to be interrupted; the world rushes in
through some breach of their own making
and for a season
at least
the things
that are seen and temporal gain complete mastery over them. The change in their
life and conduct is no less marked than the change in the waters of the lagoon.
This type of Christian
this religious Reuben
will never attain to spiritual
strength and ripeness
the stature of the perfect man Christ Jesus. The true
follower of the Son of Man finds his illustration not in the lagoon
but in the
glory of the Shechinah which shone continuously and with unabated splendour in
the temple. (W. B. Sproule.)
The
day of the Lord is at hand.
The day of war
the day of horrors
The
war day is represented here--
I. As a day of enormous sacrifice.
1. Sacrifice of life. Among several classes.
2. Sacrifice of property.
II. As a day of Divine retribution. All the horrors of war are here
represented as judgments from the Almighty. In using war as a punishment for
sin it may be observed--
1. That all who perish in war righteously deserve their fate.
2. That warriors
in executing the Divine justice
demonstrate the
enormity of the evil requiring punishment.
3. War
as an officer of Divine justice
reveals the amazing freedom
allowed to the sinner in this world
and God’s controlling power over hostile
forces. (Homilist.)
Verse 8
I will punish . . . all
such as are clothed with strange apparel
The sinfulness of strange
apparel
I.
The criminals. Consider
the principals
and the accessaries.
II. The
crime. Either wearing exotic and foreign apparel
or such as they had newly
invented among themselves.
III. The
punishment. This is indefinitely expressed. How
in what way
degree
or
measure
He will punish
He reserves to Himself. (Vincent Alsop
A. M.)
Verse
12
At that time.
At that time
The day of the Lord is any season in which He reveals
Himself in a special manner. Of the dealings of God with His visible Church on
that day the text presents a striking description.
I. The party here spoken
of--jerusalem.
1. In the day of the Lord the visible Church is not exempted from His
special notice and appropriate dealings.
2. The grounds of God’s procedure towards His Church may be the
following. To whom much is given
of them shall much be required. With the
visible Church the interests of the world are entrusted. With the visible
Church
in a sense
the honour and glory of God’s name are entrusted. God
having loved His Church
is jealous of His Church’s love.
3. These views not only satisfy as to God’s procedure
but furnish
strong inducements to faithfulness to the Church.
4. When God shall come
it will be to His Church specially
II. The peculiar aspect of the
Day of the Lord towards Jerusalem. That is
the particular character of His
dealings towards His Church--He shall “search with candles.”
1. This expression proves the existence of suspicion.
2. It shows that the Church has hidden her sin.
3. It teaches that the search is close and narrow and prying.
Illustration--The woman seeking her lost piece of silver
candle in hand.
4. It teaches that God Himself will search His Church. Not to satisfy
Himself
but to indicate His complete knowledge
and to lead the Church to seek
knowledge.
5. God searches by various means or agencies.
1. Ministers of the Gospel.
2. Individuals or churches.
3. Events of providence.
4. All these by the candle of His Word. Are you prepared to be
searched by God?
III. the result of this search
in Jerusalem is the discovery of the men that are “settled on their lees.”
1. The class described (Jeremiah 48:11).
2. The cause of this feature of their character. Quiescence of one
and another class of feeling.
3. This is infidelity of heart.
4. There is not necessarily a quiescence of worldly feelings.
IV. The Divine treatment of
this class. Their punishment may be judicial blindness. In eternity it will be
God’s wrath. (James Stewart.)
I will search Jerusalem
with candles.
Searching with candles
The Lord threatens
in the taking of the city
to take order with
all atheists and epicures
who
abounding in wealth
lay secure and at ease
(like wine on its dregs when it is not removed)
in their heart denying God’s
providence
or that He took any care of things beneath
to reward good or
punish evil; and therefore neither loved nor believed His promises
that they
might walk in His way
nor feared His justice
so as to abandon sin. Concerning
these the Lord threatens
that as a man searcheth what is hid or lost with a
candle
so He would narrowly search out their sins
and themselves so as to
punish them for their sins
so as none should escape; and their goods to give
them for a spoil; whereby their houses should become desolate
and they should
be disappointed of all their expectations from their enjoyments
according to
His sentence pronounced of old in His law (Deuteronomy 28:30; Deuteronomy 28:39). Doctrine--
1. Ease and prosperity slayeth the fool
and breeds such distempers
of security
and settling on the earth
as justly provokes God to smite.
2. Prosperity and want of exercise
by vicissitudes of dispensations
is a great feeder of atheism
and an enemy to the observation and making use of
Divine providence; and this again doth embolden and harden men yet more in
their secure and wicked courses.
3. Secure atheists and contemners of God and His providence may
expect that God will refute them in a language which they will understand
and
make them know His providence at their own expense.
4. When the Lord strips a sinful person or people of any mercies
which they enjoyed they will find upon narrow search that their enjoyment
thereof hath been a snare to them
to lead them into sin; and they should read
this in the stroke.
5. The holy justice of God is to be adored in disappointing men of
any happiness or contentment they expected in these things for which they
hazard their souls
and so rendering them twice losers who will not serve Him.
(George Hutcheson.)
Soul searching
It seems to be commonly thought that the one fear and the one foe in these days is
infidelity. Two things only have to be remembered by those who preach against
infidelity to ordinary congregations
--the one is
that they do not
in
furnishing answers
suggest the doubt with them; the other is
that they he
careful to deal fairly and charitably with opponents in a place where
of
course
there can be no reply.
I. Indifference is practical
infidelity. Without disparaging the prevalence in these days of an intellectual
and specu lative infidelity
we must feel that there are other dangers and
other impediments to the life of souls which may make less demand upon the
logic or the rhetoric of preachers
but which are at least as serious in their
nature
and even more likely to be found in an assembly of worshippers. There
is indifference. Indifference and infidelity have a closer affinity than is
implied in their natures. For one person who is made sceptical by thinking or
reading
twenty and a hundred persons are made sceptics by indifference. They
“care for none of these things
” and therefore they can amuse themselves by
playing with those edge-tools of sarcasm over things sacred which they would rather
die than do
if they knew what may be the consequences to others now
and some
day to themselves. The figure of the text is taken from the experience of
vintners and wine merchants who have suffered some of the necessary processes
of their business to be too long delayed
with the effect of making the wine
what the margin represents the Hebrew original to call curded or thickened. The
general idea seems to be that of the Psalm
“Because they have no changings
therefore they fear not.” It may be the sad
remorseful feeling of some one
whom I address
that there is gradually sinking down upon him something of the
dull
drowsy
stupid indifference towards the three paramount realities--God
the soul
and eternity
which
if it should become permanent
if it should
become inveterate
will be in the most terrible of senses the very sleep of
death.
II. Causes of spiritual
decline. This state has many histories. It is a dangerous thing
dangerous even
for the soul
to live always on one spot
in one society
a life of routine
whether that routine be of pleasure or of business. The life of what is called
society not only lays a heavy weight on the soul
of weariness
of depression
of simple worldliness; it has a dissipating
it has an enfeebling action upon the
vigorous energy
upon the sturdy independence
upon the pure affection of mind
and heart. There is a wonderful inequality in this matter of human experience.
One life has its even tenor from year to year
another life is lacerated by a
succession of sorrows. There is nothing of fatalism in saying that the never
being emptied by providential
discipline from vessel to vessel
the never going into captivity under a
chastisement not joyous but grievous
is a less advantageous treatment
morally
and spiritually
than the opposite. How graphic the description of the man who is “settled on
his lees”; the man who has lost all freshness and liveliness of feeling
in the
monotony of comfort and luxury
of health and habit
of regular alternation and
unbroken routine! They say in their heart
“The Lord will not do good
neither
will He do evil.” This is the Nemesis of long forgetfulness. God
the living
acting God
disappears at last from the scene of being Then let us try
earnestly to bring God back into our lives; let us try to do or forbear each
day some one thing quite definitely and quite expressly because of God; because
He wills
and it will please Him; or because He wills not
and therefore we
will forbear. It is wonderful how this kind of self-treatment will spread and
grow
till at last the blessed habit has become ours of setting God always
before us
and doing all things as in His sight. (Dean Vaughan.)
Divine judgments
To the Hebrew prophets the world was without meaning if it was not
moral. Righteousness--the desire for it
the endeavour after it
was at the
heart of things. We may thank Matthew Arnold for the phrase “The power that
makes for righteousness” as a definition of God. The Hebrew prophet was a moral
philosopher
a statesman
a preacher of righteousness
a declarer of God’s will
as expressed in the laws and tendencies of human history. He was a scientist as
well as a seer
discerning the face of the sky and the signs of the times
and
predicting the rise and fall of states. It was the fate of Zephaniah to fall on
evil times.
I. The subject of Divine
judgments.
1. They embrace the whole earth. God’s moral law is co-extensive with
the whole world. God’s commandments are one and the same all the world over.
2. It is just as true that
though universal
God’s judgments are
sometimes particular and special. “I will search Jerusalem.”. God begins at
home. When God comes to make inquisition for sin He begins at the sanctuary.
3. The prophet leads us into yet inner circles--“I will punish the
men that are settled on their lees.” The metaphor is drawn from the
manufacture. By the expression two classes are intended--
The man who settles down upon the sediment that is in him takes
his tone and standard from the worse and not from the better part of his nature.
3. The innermost circle of all is occupied by those who say “in their
heart
the Lord will not do good
neither will He do evil
”--the practical
atheists of the Church who swear by the Lord
but relegate Him to a distant
corner of His domain.
II. The method of god’s
judgments. “Search with candles.” No
half-measures
no compromise with evil will satisfy Jehovah.
III. The purpose of God’s
judgments is not simply penal
but purifying and remedial. Our God is just to
forgive
loving to punish. Let the Lord work His gracious fatherly will in your
life. (J. D. Thompson.)
Punish the men that are
settled on their lees.--
Religious indifferentism
We have it here--
I. Divinely portrayed. It is
marked by two elements.
1. Carnality. “The men that are settled on their lees.” The image is
taken from the crust that is formed on the bottom of wines that have been long
left undisturbed. It is marked by--
2. Atheism. “They say in their heart
The Lord will not do good
neither will He do evil.” This atheism is--
II. Divinely detected. “I will
search Jerusalem with candles
” or lamps. The language
of course
is highly
figurative. Omniscience does not require lamps to light Him
or to employ any
effort to discover. He sees all things. “There is not a word on my tongue but lo
O Lord
Thou knowest it altogether.” The language means
God’s complete
knowledge of this religious indifferentism wherever it exists. He sees it.--
1. He sees it though it may not reveal itself in any palpable forms
to men. Though it may conform to all the rules of social morality and popular
religion
He sees it.
2. He sees it though it may be robed in the forms of religious
devotion. It may attend churches
join in liturgies
sing psalms
--yet He sees
it.
III. Divinely punished. I Will
“punish the men that are settled on their lees.” “Though they hide themselves
in the top of Carmel
I will search and take them out” (Amos 9:3). The religiously
indifferent must be punished sooner or later. How? By burning moral
convictions. Convictions--
1. As to the absurdity of their conduct. They will one day have the
miserable god of their own hearts and the God of the universe brought into
contact within them.
2. As to the wickedness of their conduct.
3. As to the ruinousness of their conduct. “Because I called and ye
refused
I stretched out My hand and ye would not; therefore I will laugh when
your fear cometh
and mock at your day of calamity.” (Homilist.)
Stagnant upon their lees
This starts questions for ourselves. Here is evidently the same
public temper which at all periods provokes alike the despair of the reformer
and the indignation of the prophet
the criminal apathy of the well-to-do
classes sunk in ease and religious indifference. We have to-day the same mass
of obscure nameless persons
who oppose their almost unconquerable inertia to
every movement of reform
and are the drag upon all vital and progressive
religion. The great causes of God and humanity are not defeated by the hot assaults
of the devil
but by the slow
crushing
glacier-like mass of thousands and
thousands of indifferent nobodies. God’s causes are never destroyed by being
blown up
but by being sat upon. It is not the violent and anarchical whom we
have to fear in the war for human progress
but the slow
the staid
and the
respectable. And the danger of these does not lie in their stupidity. Notwithstanding all
their religious profession
it lies in their real scepticism. Respectability
may be the precipitate of unbelief. Nay
it is that
however religious its
mask
wherever it is mere comfort
decorousness
and conventionality; where
though it would abhor articulately confessing that God does nothing
it
virtually means so--“says so” (as Zephaniah puts it) “in its heart
” by
refusing to share manifest opportunities of serving Him
and covers its sloth
and its fear by sneering that God is not with the great crusades for freedom
and purity to which it is summoned. In these ways respectability is the
precipitate which unbelief naturally forms in the selfish ease and stillness of
so much of our middle-class life. And that is what makes mere respectability so
dangerous. Like the unshaken
unstrained wine to which the prophet compares its
obscure and muddy comfort
it tends to decay. To some extent our respectable
classes are just the dregs and lees of our national life; like all dregs
they
are subject to corruption. A great sermon could be preached on the putrescence
of respectability
--how the ignoble comfort of our respectable classes and
their indifference to holy causes lead to sensuality
and poison the very
institutions of the home and family
on which they]pride themselves. A large
amount of the licentiousness of the present day is not that of outlaw and
disordered lives
but is bred from the settled ease and indifference of many of our middle-class
families. It is perhaps the chief part of the sin of the obscure units
which
form these great masses of indifference
that they think they escape notice and
cover their individual responsibility. At all times many have sought obscurity
not because they are humble
but because they are slothful
cowardly
or indifferent.
Obviously it is this temper which is met by the words
“I will search out
Jerusalem with lights.” (Geo. Adam Smith
D. D.)
The danger of uninterrupted prosperity
God is omniscient. Why
then
should He represent Himself
as searching Jerusalem with candles
as though there were the remotest
possibility of any acts escaping His detection? These representations are
simply intended to work powerfully on our minds. For whom is it that the
Almighty institutes this close and piercing search? Not the perpetrators of any
very secret and hidden sin; but men who are “settled on their lees
” whom
prosperity has lulled into a kind of practical atheism
so that they deny the
providence of God or His interference in human affairs. God would not employ
this strong figure if there may not be a great deal of this sensual
indifference
this haughty indolence
even in those in whom prosperity may not
seem to us to have acted injuriously.
I. The natural tendencies of
a state in which there is no adverse change. Take the case of a man on whom
from his youth up
everything has seemed to smile. When there is not unbroken
prosperity there is often a sudden tide of success. This may apply to both
public and private life. To these the description “settled on their lees” may
apply. Prosperity is really far harder to bear than adversity. It is a great
touchstone
and marvellously exposes the weakness of man’s virtues. There is a
direct tendency in prosperity to the fostering and strengthening the
corruptions of our nature. The more a man obtains
the more will he desire. The
bent of our dispositions being towards the earth
if nothing ever happen to
turn them from earth there is little ground for expecting that they will centre
themselves on heaven. Prosperity has a tendency to keep men at a distance from
God. A religious man may be prosperous
and prosperity not prove the grave of
his religion; but the prosperous man who is yet a stranger to religion is
amongst the moot unpromising of subjects for moral attack.
II. What advantages follow
upon uncertainties and reverses of fortune.
1. Change admonishes us of the transitory nature of terrestrial good.
Every change
but yet more a succession of changes
speaks
saying
“Arise ye
and depart hence
for this is not your rest.” It is a gracious appointment of
Providence for most of us that we are not permitted to “settle on our lees.”
The great practical
personal truth is
the necessity
the paramount necessity
of moral renewal. To disciples the Lord presented the necessity of being
converted. Regeneration is no argument against the need for conversion. (Henry
Melvill
B. D.)
That say in their heart
The Lord will not do good
neither will He do evil.--
The unheeding God
There was widespread apathy and unresponsiveness
a temper which
seemed to make the judgments preached by Zephaniah inevitable. Even those who had
a theoretical faith in the supremacy of Jehovah looked upon Him as of little
practical account in history. This apathetic temper miserably disqualified both
for worship and reform. Zephaniah
like others of his goodly fellowship
demanded not only formal allegiance to the authority of Jehovah
but a thousand
loyalties of the secret and the solitary thought.
I. The prophet reminds us of
the habit of life out of which this distorted view of the Divine character
often grows--gross indolence. This condition of character is described by an
Eastern metaphor that has become one of the commonplaces of religious speech
“settled upon their lees.” The figure brings before us one of the progresses of
the Jewish vintage. The fermented wine was poured back upon the thick sediment
of the grapes from which it had been pressed
and in this way the wine gathered
to itself greater strength. But the process needed care and watch fulness
for
if left upon the lees for an undue length of time the wine became highly
intoxicating
and incurably harsh in flavour. It needed to be separated
by
careful and repeated strainings
from the husk and sediment with which it had
been mixed for a time. The man whose soul has sunk into moral and religious
stupor is just like that. In his daily life and consciousness the coarse and
the fine
the earthly and the spiritual
the brutish and the God-like
lie
mixed together in contiguous layers. There are the base deposits of animalism
within the man
and not far off there are likewise elements of purity.
reverence
and righteousness. In those who are godly and zealous for the things
of God an effectual separation between these opposing qualities has been
brought about. The soul is no longer touched
inflamed
stupefied by the
grossness of the blood. On the other hand
one who is careless of God and the
things of God derives the dominating tone of his thought and life from the
things that address the senses. A man
of course
is compounded of flesh and
blood
and there are legitimate needs that must be satisfied. He is
providentially placed in social relations
and he may rightly feel pleasure in
the warmth and sunshine of those relation ships
But the type of man described
in this Jewish metaphor finds in mean and sensuous things the satisfactions
that fix the qualities of his personality. No separating crisis has come to
save the man from his dregs and his animalisms. These words imply that men of
the inert and careless type are accustomed to make the pleasant monotony of
their outward lives an occasion for encouraging themselves in apathetic tempers
and traditions. Intellectual and moral life stagnates in the race that is cut
off by some high dividing wall from surrounding nations. We have the highest
possible securities for our temporal happiness and well-being. Our national
habit tends to become more and more luxurious
self-contented
imperturbable.
We build ourselves up in our sleek and well-insured respectability. Nations
themselves play the rich fool
saying
“Soul
take thine ease.” All such things
tend to beget the temper of a lethargic materialism within us
and to favour
our unconfessed belief that God is just as apathetic as ourselves. That
of
course
applies to the individual as well as to the nation. For some in our
midst life is comparatively even
although as a rule Providence sooner or later
provides us with many sharp antidotes to the coma which steals upon us. Few
changes may have come since the first position in business was attained. It is
only at rare intervals that death creeps into our homes. Life is genial and soul-satisfying
and we should like to keep things as they are for generations to come. We
discountenance new movements
because they might disturb the regime that
has worked so smoothly in the past. Men settle down into a refined sensuousness
that is fatal to stern conviction
keen consciousness of spiritual facts
and
consuming zeal for righteousness. No wonder that the children of elegant and
not entirely godless somnambulists should grow up apathetic and come to believe
in an apathetic God
if indeed they hold to any figment of a God at all. And
this description applies too often to the man who was once religious after the
best pattern. In the earlier stages of his history many things combined to keep
him active
prayerful
strenuous. His life was one of struggle
sacrifice
hardness
disappointment. But smoother and more prosperous days came to him
and he met the temptation that deteri orated the best fibres in his character.
He is nominally religious still
but a model Laodicean. The danger of this
condition is great
and perhaps no surer sign of it is to be found than in the
change it makes in a man’s view of God. A self-contented Laodicean is always
under the temptation to believe that God must be more or less like himself
since he has ceased to feel any necessity to become like God.
II. The prophet ventures to
put into articulate speech vague laodicean creed of the heart. “The Lord will
not do good
neither will He do evil.” Men sometimes hold contradictory and
antagonistic creeds at one and the same period of their history
and the creed
fenced in with whispered reserves is often the more significant and decisive of
the two. There is a sceptic and a believer
a pagan and a theist in most of us
and a depraved will sometimes imposes itself on a sound and healthy creed. All
that is a part of the dualism of human nature Those supine and well-to-do
citizens of Jerusalem denounced by the prophet may have had reserves of
orthodoxy and of pious patriotism behind their time-serving expediency and
supineness. God does not interfere even for the nation supposed to be under His
special protection. He lets Hezekiah and Manasseh
Amen and Josiah
do as they
like
and neither frowns nor smiles upon the national fortunes. The pains and
pleasures of human life have no fine correspondence to character. Good and evil
befall men without any special relation to the kind of lives they live. It is
not easy to see any sign of God’s judicial dealings with the children of men.
We need not stay
to discuss the question whether it is the habit of life or a dishonouring idea
of God against which the prophet threatens sharp and discerning penalty. The
two things are inseparable. A careless life always fosters an irreverent creed
and an irreverent creed is formulated as excuse or sanction for a careless and
self-indulgent life
and makes the carnal sleep doubly sound. It is something
in the character which is to be punished
but a vice which shows itself in
twofold form
disabling from all reforming enterprise on the one hand
and
turning the creed into a blasphemy on the other. The wickedness of a supine and
self-indulgent temper culminates when it engenders a base conception of the
Most High. Sometimes a man may make God in the image of an ideal that is far
loftier than anything to be found in his own character
but in the case of the
man who is “settled upon his lees” such ideals are extinct. We cannot be tepid
in our moral sensibilities without making God tepid also. The strenuous man
will believe in a strenuous God
and will turn atheist if asked to do homage to
an Olympian dilletante who lounges on a couch of ivory with cupbearers at his
side. It is perhaps a more insulting thing to make God a Laodicean like
ourselves than to think of Him as a fiction of the imagination. A denial of His
existence may be better than wholesale misrepresentation. If God seems slow to
act
it is because He is waiting for our repentance. Natural law is so
widespread and inexorable that there is no room for moral interpositions. We
can understand a being who never concerns himself with human affairs because of
the limitations of his intelligence
but to concede intelligence and deny the
will or the capacity for moral interest in human affairs looks like an insult
of supreme shamefulness. We refuse to the Being behind and above and within the
universe that which is greatest and most honourable in ourselves. We accept the
broad dogma of a God
for the universe would be too much of a tangle without
that
and then make His sway theoretical
secretly questioning whether He cares
to exercise retributive power over the realms subject to His sway. That
compromise is necessary to our mental comfort. It is often said that in
comparison with the universe
man is such an insignificant atom that
even
assuming the existence of a God
it would not be worth God’s while either to
reward or punish him. Is it too much to say that the least thing in the world
of animate is greater than the sum of all things in the world of inanimate
life? The ant
after all
is more wonderful than the sun with its unfathomable
marvel of brightness. Mere magnitude cannot become a true standard of value for
the estimate of that which is moral and intellectual. Most of us have come to
learn that there is an arithmetic which deals with quality as well as quantity
and it is perhaps the more important of the two. There is a power and
possibility of feeling in God to which no conceivable term can be put. He does
care even for ants
and has shown that by bestowing upon them a wonderful
talent for caring for themselves and their kind. He does think about me
and it
is rank blasphemy to say He cares about every side of my nature but its moral
side. History teems with the rewards and punishments He never fails to
administer for our encouragement and warning. If His kingship is living
competent
righteous
it is impossible He should forget His duties to those
whom He governs. If we accept the message of modern science
evolution itself
in its higher ethical stages is a sufficient refutation of this Laodicean travesty
of God. We are told that the so-called sense of right and wrong has been slowly
awakened within men
and that it has its primitive roots in an
elementary susceptibility to pleasure and pain. That theory implies that
through the untold cycles of the past
retributive activities have been playing
upon the sense of pleasure and pain
till at last
when the animal emerged into
the human
this complex and marvellous faculty appeared. For ages upon ages
some unseen power has been patiently reading into the consciousness of mankind
the blessings and curses of the law
and enforcing the message with lavish
bounty on the one hand and strokes of the rod on the other
till at last
mind-stuff quivered into the Divine thing we call conscience. That looks as
though God had intervened in the past times without number
and as though His
righteousness were always unresting in asserting itself. The analogies of our
imperfectly ordered social life often give some kind of colour to these false
and insulting estimates of God and His ways. It is said that the passing age
has been one of exaggerated individualism. Men have been so much occupied in
asserting the sacredness of the individual and his separate fights that they
have forgotten the responsibilities of each member of the community to the
organic whole. They repudiate the duties of citizenship. “They will not do
good
neither will they do evil.” For those in authority over us to pursue a
policy of masterly inaction in times of national peril and demoralisation would
be a capital crime
and can it be accounted less shameful in Him whom we assume
to be King of kings and Lord of lords? A man may sometimes excuse him self from
taking part in public affairs
because he trusts the aggregate good sense and
virtue of his fellow-citizens
and assumes things will not go very far wrong.
But God cannot abstain from intervening in human history on the ground that the
course of affairs will move on in the same way
whether He come upon the scene or not. We
loathe the wretch for whose arrest the Poor Guardians offer a reward because he
has deserted his family
and that kind of man as well as the man brought to
book by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children is punished. God
would be just as guilty and shameless if He were to show no concern for our
moral discipline and upbringing
and abstain from all interposition in our
lives; and His greatness would aggravate and not excuse the misdemeanour. If we
believe in a God we must believe in His moral earnestness. Is it not possible
that this tendency to attenuate God’s moral earnestness may underlie the half
beliefs and the limp
amiable theology of the hour? If it be true that the God
in whom we have come to believe would satisfy the Laodicean ideal
the call to repentance
loses its urgency
and sin neither needs specific forgiveness upon a basis of
righteousness nor will the sinner have to dread an awaiting punishment
keen
overwhelming
irremediable. We can disburden ourselves of the rigid and
uncomfortable doctrines of the past. He will not trouble Himself about our
peccadilloes. Those thoughts concerning God to which we lean in our silent
meditations
and which influence us in the critical and tempted moments of
life
will be subject-matter of Divine judgment. We cannot separate this
whispered creed of the heart from selfish and neglectful courses of conduct
for it is that by which we excuse ourselves. The fluid creed within us
crystallises into a superstructure of character. The creed of the heart
more
over
must be judged because we belong to invisible more essentially than to
visible spheres. The man who says
“I believe in a Laodicean God
” is not only
inert and selfish himself
but is bent on making his own characteristic vice
dominant on the throne of the supreme sovereignty.
III. We are reminded of the
far-reaching and inevitable judgment that will one day over take those who are
lethargic in character. “I will search Jerusalem with candles
and punish the
men who are settled on their lees.” These lethargic souls had said God was
slack to fulfil His promise
and careless as to the chastise ment of every hind
of transgression. God will answer the libel by inexorable punishment. Their
evil creed had been cherished in secret
but God will bring wrath upon them for
their half-formulated aspersions upon His holy zeal
and will find them out in
the dim places to which they have fled. This half-articulate murmur which makes
God magnificently inert may have a power of mischief in it sufficient to wreck
a universe. These minute blasphemies and scepticisms God will search out with
an illuminating severity nothing can escape. This sin was more or less veiled
for at one time Jerusalem had been religious to the verge of fanaticism. And in one party in the
state there was still enough of zeal to make it expedient for unbelief to be
wary and reticent. With the spread of religion and the growth of a strong
public opinion there is always a danger lest men should be driven into secret
irreligion and unbelief. Pagan contaminations are sometimes latent where there
is a devout and zealous exterior. (T. G. Selby.)
Practical atheism in denying the agency of Divine Providence
exposed
Practical atheism brought the judgments of God upon the Jews.
These were “fully executed in the Babylonish Captivity. By being
“settled on their lees” we may understand their riches; for wine grows rich by
being kept on the lees. So
by a long scene of peace and prosperity
the
inhabitants of Jerusalem were arriving at very great riches. Or it may signify
a state of security; like wine settled on the lees
they have been undisturbed.
I will punish” should be “I will visit.” The charge here brought against the
Jews amounts to this--that their temper and practice were such as would not at
all agree to the practical belief of a Providence. They thought and acted as if
it were their real and professed belief that the Lord would do neither good nor
evil
nor meddle with human affairs. This atheistical affectation of
independency
and secret or practical renunciation of Divine Providence
is the
fatal thing that generally overturned the empires
and impoverished
enslaved
and ruined the nations of the earth.
I. The doctrine of a Divine
providence. Maybe you already speculatively believe this doctrine
but the
grand defect lies in the efficacy of this belief on your hearts and lives. We
may argue from the perfections of God
and His relations to us. We may argue
from our confessed obligations to religion and the worship of God. The
testimony of Scripture is plain. New and unexpected witnesses may be found in
the heathen
--such as Nebuchadnezzar
Cyrus
Plato
Horace
Cicero
and various
poets and philosophers.
II. Things in temper and
conduct which argue a secret and practical disbelief of the doctrine of
providence.
1. Would there be so little prayer among us
if we were generally
affected with this truth?
2. Is not the general indulgence of vice
and neglect of religion
a plain
evidence of the general disbelief of a Divine providence over the country?
3. Is not the general impenitence
notwithstanding the many public
calamities under which our country has groaned
a melancholy evidence of this
practical atheism?
4. Is not the general ingratitude a plain evidence of the general
disbelief of a providential government over the world?
5. How little serious and humble acknowledgment of the providence of
God in our disappointments and mortifications is to be found among us.
III. The wickedness of this
atheistical temper and conduct. To deny the agency of providence is the most
daring rebellion against the King of heaven; it is to abjure His government in
His own territories
in His own world which He has made. What unnatural
ingratitude! What intolerable pride and arrogance! What impiety and insolence!
This atheistical spirit is the source of all vice and irreligion. (S.
Davies
A. M.)
Moral scepticism
Beyond a doubt there is a great deal of moral scepticism in our
own time and in regard to our own lives. And there is excuse enough
explanation enough
of this sort of moral scepticism when we look round at
national and political life. We think of the Armenians
of a nation massacred.
It passes by
it is half-forgotten
and God is silent. Where is the God of
Judgment? Surely He does not care! “The Lord will not do good
neither will He
do evil.” And from a number of other sources we may feel inclined to draw that
same lesson. Of course
those who look deeper will tell us the reasoning is
shallow. Look
they will say
at the very empire of the Sultan. It is
by the
confession of all men
on its way to ruin. It cannot stand
simply because it
is corrupt and vicious and cruel. The mill of God grinds slowly
but it grinds
at last
sure and small. Yes
it is certainly true
if you look at any section
of human life in the political field you may draw the conclusion that there is
no judgment and no moral God governing the nation. It is not so if you take a
long enough view of history down its long region. Where there is a luxury and
an undue love of pleasure there you sap the roots of steadfast industry
and
where industry fails the nation fails. Where commercial dishonesty goes beyond
a certain point
there the reputation and therefore the position of the nation
suffers
Certainly there is always in national vice a tendency
an inevitable
tendency
towards national decay. It is sin that is first the reproach and then
the disaster of any nation. There is a tendency towards judgment
a tendency
very imperfect at present in its manifestation
but even in the great national
regions the tendency is there. You cannot
unless you are shallow-hearted
say
that the Lord doth not good
neither doth He do evil. But let us leave the wide
sphere of national life and think of this moral scepticism as it touches
individual lives only. Here
too
the excuse for it is apparent enough. It is
only sometimes that honesty appears to be the best policy. There are men whom
we would not trust
because we believe they are hard-hearted. And yet they come
to no abrupt or signal ruin; they seem to flourish as well as anybody else.
There are moral collapses
disgraceful
disgusting to our moral sense
and yet
a little while
and without any appearance of repentance
simply by lapse of
time
the subjects of them seem to creep back into respectability or even
credit. There are struggles
persevering as it seems
against vice and sin
which never seem to become effectual or to succeed. The Lord in the region of
our own lives
as we watch human life in experience
the Lord surely doth not in fact do good
neither doth He do evil. But
once again
the scepticism is shallow. You cannot
take this as a complete account of human life. There is that in all human
consciousness and in all-human experience which rebels against the conclusion.
Call no man’s life happy till you have seen the whole; watch the life to the
end. Even cautious sin is found to ruin persons and families. And sin--is it
not true?--is very seldom always cautious. So it is that we look around
and in
all classes
in our own experience
we see the victims
the manifest victims
of
lust and gambling and drunkenness. But these
you say
are the disreputable
vices; nobody ever doubted that these open and disreputable and reckless vices
brought ruin. Ay
but short of these
in respectable lives! Why are so many
marriages failures
moral failures T Inquire
and you will find
because those
marriages were rooted in worldliness and selfishness; there was no moral and
spiritual discipline behind them. After a little time the temporary attraction
wears off
and there is nothing left there but the conflict of two rival
selfishnesses and the discrepant traits of divergent characters to make the
bond. And what is that? It is but the mark of the Divine judgment upon
selfishness. Or
look at this and that and the other individual Wilfulness is one
of the commonest of human
qualities--wilfulness which comes from being spoilt when one is young
or from
having the opportunity to do just as one -pleases in somewhat later life
but
the sort of wilfulness that will not bend itself to the Divine requirements
sooner or later brings more or less of ruin or misery. God’s judgment is in
this and that and the other life which comes under our experience: God’s
judgment is upon wilfulness. These are facts. But
we say
there is no complete
picture of Divine judgment. No
that is the fact
no complete picture here
certainly. This world
certainly
is no sphere in which a Divine judgment works
itself out full and satisfactorily. We walk by faith
certainly not by
sight
--if we believe in the reality of Divine judgment--certainly by faith.
But what there is is this
surely a tendency
an indication of Divine judgment
which checks anybody who thinks at all. If he takes the sceptical
conclusion--“The Lord does not do good
neither does He do evil
” there is
something rooted alike in men’s moral consciences and in their experiences
which assures them
in spite of its imperfect manifestation here and now
that
those who are on the side of righteousness are in harmony with the system of
things
and those who are neglectful are walking upon a volcano. He will render
to every man according to his works
by no arbitrary judgment from which there
can be any possible exemption
but by an inevitable moral law which works as
securely as the physical laws of growth and decay
of life and destruction.
There is no chance of escape
not for a single sin. “There is the difference
between moral scepticism and moral belief. “The Lord will not do good
neither
will He do evil
” therefore “I will not be righteous over-much
nor will I be
over-much wicked.” It does not really at the bottom so very much matter; there
is no such very searching sieve through which my life has to be passed. That is
the scepticism
that is the shallowness
that is the lie. On the other hand
there is the tendency
now the tendency pointing to its perfect realisation
afterward. The Lord judges every man according to his works. He is the God of
knowledge; He sifts thoroughly. There is no escape for a single sin. That is
the point. Therefore awake to righteousness and sin not. Other prophets may
have other topics in store for us. Let Zephaniah take this and that moral
scepticism which tolerates sin because the Divine judgment
after all
does not
seem to act
because it believes your hopes
it believes that the Lord does not
do good
neither does He do evil. That moral scepticism is shallowness and a
lie at the bottom. God is a living God; God is a God of judgment; God trieth
the heart. The Lord will do good
and the Lord will do evil. Everything depends
on what you are trying after
what you are tolerating
and what you are not
tolerating; whether you are simply smoothing over the surface of your life
and
leaving its real moral contents at the bottom
unsifted
unexamined
unresisted. (Bishop Gore.)
Verse 14
The great day of the Lord
is near
and hasteth greatly
even the voice of the day of the Lord.
The comings of the Lord
The times of King Josiah
about 606 years before Christ
were times of much religious awakening
like our
own. The Book of the Lord had been found and studied
the idols had been
destroyed
the bones of false prophets and idolatrous priests publicly burnt.
But under the outside
external improvement there remained an inner and
obstinate corruption which resisted cure
and threatened ere long to break out
in renewed acts of idolatry and profligacy. Against this the prophet Zephaniah
was sent to raise a warning voice--to protest that the Mighty Lord was in the midst
of His people
watching not only their public acts
but their private ways and
thoughts. In the seemingly purged Holy City there were men who
in their heart
of hearts
were practical atheists
men really careless about serving God
living secure in ease and plenty
not having God in all their thoughts
persuading themselves that the Great Ruler would take no notice of good or
evil
and that a watchful
rewarding
and punishing providence was but an empty
dream. The prophet denounces and warns all such. But alas! the prophet’s voice
was disregarded. So Judah went into captivity
and the coming of the Lord was
with awful vengeance. Bitter woe descended on the insensate people who wickedly despised
their day of grace and warning. These things are written for our admonition.
May we all profit by the Church’s faithful warnings! There is a tendency in
manor of us to sink the future in the present
and to lull ourselves with the
delusive notion that it will be all right at last; that God is love
and love
will cover all our sins. Nevertheless it is our duty to proclaim in word and
deed our faith in the Lord’s coming
in its nearness and its greatness. He who
once came in the flesh will come again as our Judge. Yet men’s lives are often
a practical denial of this elementary foundation doctrine of Christianity. Some
men say
No doubt there is a judgment
but it is going on continually from day
to day now. The Judge is now at every man’s door; He comes quickly indeed
for
every action brings at once its immediate reward or immediate punishment. No
doubt
in the main
this is true
but
brethren
the voice of conscience and
the voice of God in His Word agree in telling us that the present judgments are
but heralds of the future final one. When they are judgments now of pain and
punishment
they are merciful judgments to turn sinners to repentance. But the
future judgment will have still higher aim and purpose. To vindicate the ways
of God to men
to finally put a stop to sin
and bring in everlasting
righteousness. We Who really believe in the second coming of our Lord in glory
to judgment
as we believe in His first coming as Man to live on earth in great
humility for our sakes
should “be diligent that we be found of Him in peace
without spot and blameless.” (Canon Emery
B. D.)
Verse 17
They shall walk like blind men.
The sinner a blind traveller
The sinner is on a journey
step by step he is moving on to a
destination. But how does he walk? The text tells us as a blind man. How does
the blind man walk?
I. Unnaturally.
Though a few men may be born blind
vision is one of the chief attributes of
humanity. Without the human eye all the beauties of nature would go for
nothing. Blindness is unnatural. So is sin. The life of sin is a life of
unnaturalness.
II. Privationally.
What does the blind lose? The great world of beauty and sublimity
the great
firmament of burning worlds
and all the exquisite and exhilarating sensations
of vision are excluded from him. What does the sinner lose? Peace of
conscience--harmony of feeling--fellowship with the Infinite--power over
death--a blessed hope of heaven
etc.
III. Servilely. The
blind man must slavishly depend on others to guide him on his way. We have seen
him feeling his way with a stick
led by a little child
and sometimes dependent
even on a dog. The sinner
however he may boast of his independence
is a slave
to the world. He is the servant of sin
a tyrant. He has no true independence.
IV. Perilously. The
blind man always feels himself in danger when alone. The sinner’s walk is
perilous indeed. His danger is great--ever accumulating
and ever approaching.
Such then is the walk of the sinner. But moral blindness is worse far than
corporeal.
1. The one is a calamity
the other is a crime.
2. The one is to be pitied
the other is to be condemned.
3. The one can be turned to a good account
the other cannot. (Homilist.)
──《The Biblical Illustrator》