Server Outage Notice: TheSeed.info is transfering to a new Server on Tuesday April 13th
| > Sermon Archive > Sermons by Author > Rev. Sjirk Bajema > God Has No Grandchildren! | Previous Next Print |
| Order Of Worship (Liturgy) |
ZEPHANIAH 2:8-11
(Scripture: Genesis 19:30-38; Deuteronomy 2:1-25)
God Has No Grandchildren!
Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ…
We have moved, in this passage, from the west to the east.
From the Philistines on the coast, in the verses 4 till 7, we turn now to the Moabites and Ammonites in the inland higher regions.
But it is a difference not just in terms of where it is.
It was a difference also in terms of past affinity, for if there were any nations which you would have thought had close connections with the Hebrews it would have to be Moab and Ammon.
This was because they were closely related, as their forefathers, Moab and Ben-Ammi, were sons of Lot, Abraham’s nephew.
That is a bond recognised by the Lord when he speaks to Moses about how the Israelites are to treat those two nations on their way to the Promised Land.
We read of that in Deuteronomy chapter 2.
There it is clear that they weren’t to harass them or provoke them to war because God has given their land to them as a possession.
It was a situation quite different than the Canaanite nations which Philistine represented.
For with those people the Lord had made it quite clear that they had no right to the land they were living in.
In fact, because of the depth of their depravity, and because that land was the Promised Land, they had to be completely wiped out.
Despite this gracious provision by the Lord, however, it did not stop the Moabites and the Ammonites from being just as zealous in opposing God’s people as those in Canaan.
In Numbers 22 we have the fascinating account of these people hiring a diviner-spiritist-medium named Balaam.
He was obviously well-known for the power of his curses upon others, and the Moabites were ruthless in pursuing him to do the same.
But while he could only bless Israel, the Moabite women soon had turned the heads of many of the Israelite men.
They got them to join in their sensuous pagan worship, with its blatant immorality.
And ever since that time the Moabites and the Ammonites were often at war with Israel.
You have times such as when Eglon, King of Moab, oppressed Israel for 18 years during the time of the judges.
Saul and David fought against them.
And after Solomon’s reign they again rebelled.
As they did at various times following that.
In a way, their attitude to Israel isn’t entirely unexpected.
As we read in Genesis 19, their forefathers were children by an incestuous relationship, because they were sons born to Lot by his two daughters.
They may have got him drunk to do it but it doesn’t change how starting off on the wrong foot has continued to show itself right throughout their history.
For all that there comes a reckoning from the Lord.
The coming great Day of the Lord will take in those who are closely related to God’s people as well.
No one gets into heaven by who they’re related to, rather, it is by how they are related to the Lord.
There is a saying that goes, “God has no grandchildren.”
It’s true, isn’t it?
Unless you are God’s child, by faith in Jesus Christ, you don’t get to be part of his family.
It doesn’t matter how many of your relatives have been in church.
It’s no use counting the number of ministers in your family line, if you don’t personally believe you are as lost as the vilest pagan.
It doesn’t even matter how often you’ve been to church or all those Bible studies you’ve attended.
You can see the message for God’s people here, can’t you?
They who were the ones hearing this prophecy.
Because don’t think that Zephaniah’s going to trek out to Moab and Ammon to tell them these words.
This is for Israel, which then had come down to Judah.
And it’s for them because it’s exactly about them!
Let’s see that.
Making our way through this passage, let’s bring it home for those in God’s family.
Let’s see if we’re children – or grandchildren!
The first aspect we note here in relation to Moab and Ammon is that … THEY ARE SO FULL OF THEMSELVES.
Verse 8 is clear about this.
The Lord says there, “I have heard the taunts of Moab and the revilings of the Ammonites, how they have taunted my people and made boasts against their territory.”
You might be wondering how verse 8 shows the Moabites and Ammonites to be full of themselves.
Well, to be full of yourself shows you up to be very proud and boastful.
There is no humility in such people.
Everything then becomes a self-justification of who they are and what they do.
Such people never stop going on about themselves.
And along with that is a delight in the downfall of any who don’t do things quite as they do.
The history between these nations and Israel shows clearly that they’ve got this thing about Israel.
There is an inbuilt animosity in them which pervades everything to do with Israel.
This is something which is particularly seen in close family who don’t get along.
In one migrant church community you could see it with the way two brothers just couldn’t work together.
At every possible occasion one would be getting at the other.
It seems that as soon as the one said ‘yes’ the other had to say, ‘no’.
You should have seen them at bible studies!
And didn’t it disrupt that fellowship!
I mean, they should have been so close.
Together they would have been the most positive power for good.
But for forty years that church had to be careful to have a non-related chairman of Session.
For four decades they could never be on Session together.
Just as well it was a Reformed church – imagine what it would have been like in a Presbyterian church with life eldership!
Now that situation could be worked through, to a degree.
Both men served faithfully and well in the Lord’s service – if not so much doing that together.
But with the Moabites and Ammonites it was a constant and bitter hostility.
There was no break in it.
They who should have known the ways of the Lord took a perverse thrill in going against it in the most extreme ways.
In Isaiah 16:6 we read of their overweening pride, conceit and insolence.
In 1st Kings 11:7 we read of their idolatry.
And 2nd Kings 3:27 tells of their appalling inhumanity, as the Moabite king even resorts to offering his firstborn son as a sacrifice for rescue.
Each of these two nations had their own god.
Moab had Chemosh and the Ammonites had Molech.
Some have tried to claim they are just different names for the same god but there seems no doubt they are different.
Both gods demanded human sacrifice, however.
Something completely abhorrent to the true follower of the Lord God, as his Word spells out.
But there you get an idea of how ‘in your face’ these two nations were.
And added to this is the thrill they got out of Israel’s calamities.
Whenever those distant cousins of theirs had another defeat, they rejoiced in it.
In fact, they even made use of it for their own ends.
The phrase ending verse 8, “made boasts against their territory” shows that at such times they seized what they could from Israel, even land which was belonged to the Hebrews by divine decree.
We read of this in a number of places.
Amos 1:13 describes how Ammon ripped open the pregnant women of Gilead in order to extend his borders.
And then right at the end, after the fall of Jerusalem, who was there causing more trouble?
It was Baalis, the king of the Ammonites, who sent a man to assassinate the Jewish Governor appointed by the Babylonians.
And what a terrible butchery that was!
It was certainly true to say of the Moabites and the Ammonites, THEY ARE SO FULL OF THEMSELVES.
But that only means one possible outcome.
And that is what we now consider in the second aspect to this text.
For in verse 9 we turn to see … THEY WILL BECOME ABSOLUTELY WORTHLESS.
We can immediately notice this with the solemn declaration this verse begins with.
When the Lord says, “Therefore, as I live,” something very serious is going to take place to those people.
There is a divine power in these words – judgment ringing out from heaven!
This is certainly shown with the name for God here.
In fact it’s two names for God, and each of those names is itself made up of two separate names which say it all.
With the expression ‘the LORD of hosts’ we are told of the almighty God.
This emphasises God’s nature as the Divine Warrior.
It brings out his universal power.
He is no small regional God but the God!
He is the One who controls all things.
And the expression “the God of Israel” proclaims his special relationship.
He has an individual relationship with his own covenant people.
A relationship Moab and Ammon know very well about – and have feared!
And something else those nations would have known well enough about is the simile that the Lord draws out next.
Because now we see that the serious pronouncement against them is a curse.
And it is a curse which casts upon them the same punishment experienced by Sodom and Gomorrah.
Oh, they would have known that story alright.
For not only did they live near where those cities had been, their origin as nations was as a result of the Lord saving their ancestor from those utterly wicked cities.
Apparently, they have found the ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah in recent years.
There was always a general area where they were believed to be but lately it seems to be confirmed that they are now in what is the Dead Sea.
The Dead Sea is known as the saltiest sea in the world.
In fact, so thick is that salt that you can easily float on top of the water there.
But, as we know from what’s happening with many Australian agricultural areas, salt is not conducive to growing anything.
In fact, it does the opposite.
It has the effect of turning once valuable land into waste land.
When the Lord in verse 9 speaks of Moab and Ammon becoming “a land possessed by nettles and salt pits, and a waste forever”, he draws the closest possible parallel to what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah.
As those cities were punished then in that devastating way so now he would do to Moab and Ammon.
You might wonder here about the place of nettles.
Surely nothing at all would be able to grow there after that!
But this refers to the stinging nettle.
It is the only plant which flourishes in waste places.
It proves just how much of a total desert this land will become – because it’s the only plant that will be there!
As for the ‘salt pits’, that is perhaps the only worthwhile object in that place now.
Because this area has an almost inexhaustible supply of rock salt.
What a wasteland this will be!
Not good for much at all.
And then we hear again of the remnant of God’s people.
Not God’s people as they were then, which is an unfaithful nation, but what will be left, later in church history.
Those whom Moab and Ammon had so much scorned will have all that they once valued so much.
And they will have it forever!
But that might get us scurrying through the history books.
There we could note that there seem to be glimpses of this after the exile.
And maybe you could say this happened under the Maccabees.
But they were only temporary situations.
There was nothing permanent about them.
And if you were to say that today the nation of Israel fulfils that prophecy then there would be no spiritual dimension to this at all.
And that’s where the fulfilment lies.
As Martin Bucer points out, the physical wars then were a symbol of what was to be fulfilled in spirit and in faith with the coming of the kingdom of Christ.
And, he adds, this is only fully fulfilled in the future age.
So, we still await the completion of the Day of the Lord.
Then justice will be completely executed.
Next, the prophet turns to speaking himself.
In the verses 10 and 11 he sums up what’s going on.
And Zephaniah does that by bringing out that … THEY TOO WILL BE ULTIMATELY HUMBLED.
This is the third aspect.
Verse 10 confirms that Moab and Ammon are getting what they deserve.
Repeating what has been said in verses 8 and 9, the prophet personally speaks about deserved punishment for their pride and the One who is going to do that – the only One who can do that, the LORD of hosts.
Until the eventual restoration of Israel, Philistia will remain an uninhabited shepherd’s pasture, and the land of the Moabites and Ammonites will be the possession of nettles – weeds!
And during that same time the land of Israel will be crushed by the Gentiles.
And notice who their pride was especially set against.
Zephaniah specifies that “they taunted and boasted against the people of the LORD of hosts.”
For this is no act of favouritism on the Lord’s part.
He cannot be like we are.
So when he acts it is always in opposition to sin and so against guilty sinners.
Those two nations were going to get what they deserved.
And, yet, isn’t it such a precious truth that God does act on behalf of his people?
Don’t we take comfort in knowing he’s looking in particular after us?
This is a judgment against Moab and Ammon that won’t be removed until the completion of the kingdom of God on this earth.
And that will be the time that verse 11 now declares to us.
Here the prophet tells us that the Lord God is terrible when he reveals himself as Judge of the world.
This oracle closes with stepping back from the particular geographical and historical focus on Moab and Ammon to draw in the whole world of all the ages.
Because now the declaration is that this God will destroy all the gods everywhere.
What is going to happen is that the Lord will expose the fundamental flaw in all those gods.
He’s going to expose them so terribly they will be left absolutely gutless!
And that includes all those gods around us today too!
And you know how he’s going to do that?
The LORD of hosts will cause those gods to disappear by wiping out those nations and kingdoms who so much depended upon them!
Then mankind will have no choice.
They will all then come down to worship the Lord, the God of Israel.
The nations on every shore, those from the most far away places, will bow before him exactly where they are.
It could mean they flock to Jerusalem, or it could mean that worship of the Lord won’t be tied any longer geographically or ethnically to one place and people.
But all will recognise him!
The question we need to ask now, however, is this: How will those people recognise him then?
On that great and coming Day of the Lord will it be because of fear or faith?
You see, this fear is not the attitude of utmost respect for the Lord God – this is not the fear you often read about in the Old Testament.
Rather this is the fear when you are very much afraid.
This is the fear where there is no faith.
This is the fear when you got caught out!
Dear friend, make sure you are God’s child – not his grandchild.
Because he doesn’t have any of those!
Then on the Day when he is the Judge he will say he doesn’t know you, despite all the good you think you may have done.
For none of what you did was done unto him!
You’re not his son, or his daughter.
You weren’t his child so you can’t be in his family.
Consider carefully who or what it is you worship.
Remember that anyone or anything that doesn’t bring you to the Lord, will be shown up for what it truly is – absolutely nothing.
It was be as worthless as the land of the Moabites and Ammonites became.
Instead, be one of those who believe.
Have faith in Jesus Christ as your only Lord and Saviour, and you won’t be scared.
You see, then you’re born of the Spirit.
Then you are adopted into God’s family through what Jesus has done.
As Romans 8 declares in verse 15, “For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received a spirit of sonship.
“And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’”
Dear Christian, then you won’t get caught out.
Because then you’ve been expecting him every day!
Amen.
PRAYER:
Let’s pray…
Almighty God, we too in the warfare of the cross are tried and tested.
We are taunted and teased and threatened.
And so please comfort us in the precious gospel, that we will recall all those times in the past you delivered your people.
Especially keep us looking to the doing and dying and rising again of our Lord Jesus Christ.
But help us even more to look to the ultimate triumph which you will do in the return of your Son on the clouds of glory.
Lift us up above this world that we will glorify you in this world.
For this we pray in the Name of the One who has gone ahead of us, who now is seated at your right hand, and who is coming back soon, our Saviour and Lord, Jesus Christ.
Amen.
* As a matter of courtesy please advise Rev. Sjirk Bajema, if you plan to use this sermon in a worship service. Thank-you.
(c) Copyright 2019, Rev. Sjirk Bajema
Please direct any comments to the Webmaster
