CRITICAL NOTES.]
Zephaniah 3:5.] The cause not with God. He is very near, declares his displeasure with sin, and daily brings all things to light. Morning] Lit. in the morning, in the morning. Shame] of penitence and conversion.
Zephaniah 3:6. Cut off] Judgments appealed to as warnings (ch. 2); to consider severity and goodness.
Zephaniah 3:7.] Threatened danger would be averted if the people would turn from evil. But] Instead of repenting, they rose early, became more zealous in wickedness, prepared themselves for it, like parties starting early for a journey. Hence punishment.
HOMILETICS
GOD’S JUSTICE PROVED TO A GUILTY PEOPLE.—Zephaniah 3:5-6
No argument against the righteousness of God can be presented by those who have been warned, spared, and at last condemned. If iniquity be determined, and the sinner becomes incorrigible, the course of justice is clear. God could not rightly be taxed with injustice in punishing Jerusalem with greater suffering than the offence deserved. This is proved—
I. By God’s holy character. “The just Lord is in the midst thereof.” He is essentially holy, eternally just; the primal law of right to all. He is—
1. Just in himself; and
2. Just to others. “He will not do iniquity.” He is in the midst of men who are polluted and oppressive; reproving wrong, and giving an example of right. Hence, if sinners heed not, God cannot connive at their wickedness, and become as one of themselves (Psalms 50:21). “The Lord is upright, and there is no unrighteousness in him.”
II. By God’s righteous administration. God not only dwelt in the temple; but gave clear intimations of duty, bright manifestations of equity, which they heeded not. God’s condemnations of evil practices were—
1. Open. In the day, not in secret.
2. Clear. He brought “his judgment to light.” All secret things, all works of darkness, were exposed and reproved (2 Samuel 12:12).
3. Continual. “Every morning;” morning by morning, day by day, his voice was heard and his judgments conspicuous. “He faileth not” in judgment and mercy; but they knew no shame, were conscious of no sin. “They were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush.”
III. By God’s terrible judgments upon others. “I have cut off the nations,” &c. (Zephaniah 3:6). Judgments upon others had always been set before them as a warning. When about to enter the inheritance (Leviticus 18:24-26; Leviticus 20:23), they were cautioned. When they got possession the ruins of cities were silent preachers of the results of sin (Isaiah 17:9). They had been the instruments of inflicting judgments, and lived in the memories of God’s visitations upon others. Fortified cities had been destroyed, mighty towers levelled to the dust, and nations completely ruined, to admonish them, but all in vains How earnest is God in seeking the sinner, but how terrible the punishment at last! “I said, Surely thou wilt fear me, thou wilt receive instruction; so their dwelling should not be cut off, howsoever I punished them.”
AGGRAVATIONS OF HUMAN GUILT.—Zephaniah 3:5-7
What aggravated their guilt till it became intolerable, and put them beyond all mercy save the “mercy of judgment,” was—
1. That God had given them a pure law of life, and himself administered it among them. In other cities, such as Gaza or Nineveh, the presence and the law of God were but obscurely revealed. Men were left to grope after the Unknown, if haply they might find him; to infer a spiritual presence from the operation of physical laws; to deduce a Divine rule from the imperfect and confused utterances of reason and conscience. In Jerusalem, God and his will were “set in the light;” the history of the chosen race, the services of the temple, the voices and scriptures of the prophets, the national habits of thought, and manner of life, loudly proclaimed God to be their God. Who should know him if they did not? and who do his will if they disobeyed it? But with so pure light of goodness in their midst, they wrapped themselves in darkness, and hated the light which reproved their deeds. “But the unjust know no shame.”
2. That in the destruction inflicted upon neighbouring kingdoms, he had constantly warned them of the inevitable results of violating that law (Zephaniah 3:6). They had seen race after race cut off, their battlements laid waste, their cities battered down, and their streets reduced to such ruinous desolation that no man dwelt in them, nor so much as passed through them. What were these judgments but the law of God “writ large,” and illustrated so impressively as to arrest the attention of the most heedless, and to rouse a saving fear in the stubborn and impenitent? But even these glaring and portentous illustrations of God’s wrath against sin and all who cleave to it, had been wasted. They were unmoved, or moved only for a moment, under shocks and alarms. Only a judgment more severe than any they had seen or known could constrain them to penitence, through penitence to righteousness, and through righteousness to peace. “The nation that did not turn pale” (ch. Zephaniah 2:1).
3. That much as they suffered, they had not accepted correction, nor learned that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord (Zephaniah 3:7). Not only had they seen “a day of the Lord” darken other lands, and judgments desolate heathen cities. They themselves had been visited with judgment, smitten again and again till the whole head was sick, and the whole heart faint. The whole body politic was bruised, and wounded, and sore. Their whole past history was full of Divine chastenings. What was their meaning? what were they sent to say? “Only fear God, accept correction,” let it produce its natural effect upon you, and all will be right. Corrections were sent to them that their land and city might be spared. But if they be rejected, they harden and deprave. Jerusalem had been content to give the day to disobedience and mutiny. Now as if it were not long enough for the sins they were eager to commit, “they rose up early” in the morning “to corrupt all their doings,” so shameless were they, so incorrigible [Preacher’s Lantern. Vol. II. Adapted].
HOMILETIC HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS
Zephaniah 3:5. In the midst. God’s presence with an apostate people will not save from wrath, but will bring it nearer to them. “Is not the Lord among us?” was their boast (Micah 3:11). True, he is, but it is for another end from what ye think [Calvin].
He faileth not.
1. In presence;
2. In promise;
3. In help. He continually sets before us examples of judgment and mercy. “He wakeneth morning by morning” (Isaiah 5:4; Isaiah 1:4). He does not fail to visit at the time looked for, though he may seem to forbear or linger behind (Habakkuk 2:3).
Shame.
1. Many in the Church and in the nation acknowledge God, yet sin against the clear light of the Word.
2. When such are mad in their sin and rush to ruin, it is a presage of their destruction when the Word has no influence upon them; a token that judgment must come, notwithstanding warnings, when “the unjust knoweth no shame” [Hutcheson].
1. The chastisement of others is designed to improve us. The design is benevolent; “so their dwelling should not be cut off.” The method is suitable; “howsoever I punished them.” The results are reasonable; “surely thou wilt fear.”
2. If the warning is unheeded we shall ourselves be punished. “No words could be more simple and direct than these; none could state more plainly the merciful and Divine purpose of judgment; the true function of the miseries men are called to endure. These judgments and miseries come to teach us the fear of the Lord; that is, to save us from all fear. So soon as we accept them as corrections of our sins, their end is answered; henceforth there is no anger in them, no injurious pain, but only a Divine love and goodwill. And if no statement of the meaning and function of suffering can be more plain than this, surely none can be more consolatory. For, according to Zephaniah, it comes only for our good, for our highest good; to teach us the true wisdom, and to make us perfect. When once we ‘accept’ it, its end being reached, there is no reason why it should not either pass away or be changed into the stay and stimulus of our life.”
Long unaffected, undismayed,
In pleasure’s path secure I stray’d
Thou mad’st me feel thy chast’ning rod,
And straight I turn’d unto my God.
Instruction.—Other men’s woes should be our warnings; others’ sufferings our sermons; others’ lashes our lessons; God’s house of correction, a school of instruction where we should hear and fear, and do no more so (Deuteronomy 17:13). He that trembleth not in hearing, shall be crushed to pieces in feeling, said that martyr [Trapp].
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 3
Zephaniah 3:5. Just. If there be one truth that speaks throughout the Bible like the voice of God, and resounds with all the grandeur of the Divine intonation, it is the truth that God does not look with an equal eye upon the evil and the good, that He is a discriminator of character, a lover of that which is right, and a hater of that which is wrong [H. W. Beecher].
Zephaniah 3:6-7. The desolation is complete, within as well as without; ruin itself is hardly so desolate as the empty habitations and forsaken streets, once full of life, where
“The echoes and the empty tread
Would sound like voices from the dead.” [Pusey.]