JY: Welcome to GearTalk. Today, we’ll listen to the first of three lectures Jason gave as this year’s W.H. Griffith Thomas Lectureship Speaker at Dallas Theological Seminary. This particular lecture focuses on Zephaniah 1:2-18. Jason’s theme for the lecture is “Rejoicing in Hope: Understanding and Applying Zephaniah.”

Speaker: In 1921, Dr. William henry Griffith Thomas, outstanding Anglican scholar and professor of Old Testament exegesis, met with Dr. Lewis Sperry Chafer to consider and pray about creating a new seminary. In 1924, those prayers were answered when the Evangelical Theological College, later to be called Dallas Theological Seminary, was born. Unfortunately, W.H. Griffith Thomas died that same year. But this lectureship is a memorial to his commitment to the ideals of Dallas Theological Seminary.

Each year, qualified lecturers are selected by each of the divisions of the seminary: biblical studies, theological studies, and ministering communications. The lectures consist of a presentation of scholarly papers in more of a lecture format on topics not normally covered in the seminary curriculum or at the same depth. This year’s speaker was selected by the Old Testament Department. These annual lectures are generally published in Bibliotheca Sacra, the seminary’s quarterly theological journal. Over the years, many noted scholars have presented the W.H. Griffith Thomas Lectures, speakers such as henry Ironside, Francis Schaeffer, J.I. Packer, F.F. Bruce, Bruce Metzger, and even our own Dr. Howard Hendricks.

This year, it’s our privilege to hear from Dr. Jason DeRouchie, who continues that excellent tradition. Dr. Jason DeRouchie received his PhD in Old Testament from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and he presently serves as Research Professor of Old Testament and Biblical Theology at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and as content developer and global trainer with the mission organization Hands to the Plow Ministries. He celebrates how the whole Bible progresses, integrates, and climaxes in Christ, and he is committed to training church leaders both at home and abroad to cherish Christ in his Word. He and his wife Teresa have six children, and we’re blessed to have Ezra here as one of his sons to travel down here as well, two sons-in-law and one grandchild. So please join me in welcoming Dr. Jason DeRouchie.

JD: Grace to you, brothers and sisters. It is truly a delight to supply this year’s Griffith Thomas Memorial lectures. I thank the DTS administration for inviting me here. Our God is worthy of deep thought. Our Christ is worthy of exalted praise. My overarching theme for these three lectures is “Rejoicing in Hope: Understanding and Applying Zephaniah.” I encourage you to open up your Bibles to this brief 53-verse book, which some scholars regard as the climax of the Minor Prophets.

Of Zephaniah, Martin Luther declared, “Among the Minor Prophets, he makes the clearest prophecies about the kingdom of Christ.” Far before Luther, the apostle Peter said that “God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets that the Christ would suffer and that all the prophets proclaimed these days of the church” (Acts 3). Zephaniah was one of these prophets, and his overarching message was to seek the Lord together to avoid punishment and wait for the Lord to enjoy satisfying salvation.

I’ve titled this first lecture “Revering God: Punishment on the Day of the Lord—Zephaniah 1:2-18.” This book portrays the day of the Lord in furious fire that both consumes God’s enemies and purifies a multiethnic community of worshippers for a transformed Zion. Yahweh’s day both punishes and renews. And over the next three chapels, we will consider this book’s message. To that end, let’s pray.

Sovereign Savior of the world, who overcomes night with light and satisfies the humble with abundant life in your presence, meet us in these hours. For the sake of your name, Lord Christ, open your word that we may behold dreadful, glorious things that can help us seek you together and wait for you to act. We praise you for our great salvation. We praise you for the hope that is ours in Christ alone. Amen.

As an introduction to this book, let’s look first at the superscription in Zephaniah 1:1: “The word of the LORD that came to Zephaniah the son of Cushi, son of Gedaliah, son of Amariah, son of hezekiah, in the days of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah.”

We first learn of the prophecy’s nature. It’s a word, a living and authoritative word, because its source is Yahweh. In this book, Yahweh is king over all things. He stands as a mighty warrior who commands armies, who will famish all the gods of the earth, whose just jealousy for the world’s allegiance blazes like fire and will consume all things.

Next, we’re told that the prophecy’s messenger is a certain Zephaniah, whose five-person genealogy shows that his royal lineage reaches all the way back to his great-great-grandfather, the reformer king hezekiah. Furthermore, because his father was Cushi, Zephaniah the prophet was likely biracial. Indeed, Cush was ancient Black Africa, and Zephaniah’s grandmother was likely African, married into the Jewish royal line, and then named her son “My Blackie,” celebrating her ethnic heritage.

Support for this view comes in the fact that Zephaniah shows a keen interest in this land of Cush, for it’s the only region he uses as an example of the multiethnic transformation and restoration that God will bring at the end of the age (3:9–10). So as a biracial prophet, Zephaniah displayed in his life the hope of a diversified people of God in fulfillment of Yahweh’s promises to Abraham to bless all the nations of the world.

Finally, the prophecy’s historical backdrop: right there in 1:1, we learn that it was during the reign of King Josiah of Judah, whom Yahweh redeemed from the darkness of his father Amon’s reign, and who instituted a spiritual reform that Zephaniah’s preaching served to propagate.

We come to the context of the call to revere God, verses 2 through 6. Zephaniah 1:2-18 provides the setting for the book’s main exhortations that follow. It calls readers to revere Yahweh in view of the nearness and nature of his impending wrath on not only Judah but the whole world. Verses 2 through 6 provide the context for this call to revere God; verses 7 through 18 provide the content of the call.

We start in verses two and three. Look with me there: “I will utterly sweep away everything from the face of the earth,” declares the LORD. “I will sweep away man and beast; I will sweep away the birds of the heavens and the fish of the sea, and the rubble with the wicked. I will cut off mankind from the face of the earth,” declares the LORD.

You might hear in these words echoes of the flood judgment, and that would be correct (Genesis 6). You may also notice how Yahweh’s judicial assessment moves from man to beast to birds to fish, in direct opposite order from how they were created in Genesis 1. Thus, Zephaniah paints the coming punishment as a de-creation back toward chaos.

The rubble mentioned in this text that God will destroy with the wicked most likely are idols. But lest those in Judah think that they will escape from this global destruction, Yahweh moves from this catastrophe to local destruction in verses 4 through 6. Look at verse 4: “I will stretch out my hand against Judah and against all the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and I will cut off from this place the remnant of Baal.”

Yahweh’s earthly residence was Jerusalem, yet at the very location of his temple palace dwelt a holdout of Judeans worshipping the Canaanites’ false storm and fertility deity, Baal. While English translations vary, the hebrew suggests that the remnant of Baal included four overlapping subgroups. Look with me at the text. Verse 4, number 1: the idolatrous priests along with the priests. That is, the illegitimate non-Levitical clergy who led in worshipping idols and who served alongside the legitimate priests, who, according to this book, fail to teach God’s Law, guard knowledge, and preserve what is holy.

Second, verse 5: “those who bow down on the roofs to the host of the heavens.” In Judah, there were star worshippers. Third: “those who bow down and swear to the LORD and yet swear by their king.” That is, those who pay lip service to Yahweh. Look at the text: they swear to the LORD, yet they give highest allegiance to another god; they swear by their king.

Finally, verse 6: “those who have turned back from following the LORD, who do not seek the LORD or inquire of him.” That is, those living self-ruled, self-dependent lives. Elsewhere, we learn that Josiah’s reform sought to eradicate all instruments and individuals associated with these activities (2 Kings 23).

What’s clear is that Yahweh is no respecter of persons. Hear that, student? hear that, faculty? Whether priest or commoner, if you choose to turn away from God, if you refuse to seek him and pray to him, God will justly condemn you.

The content of the call to revere God, verses 7 through 18. This is the heart of this introductory section of the book. Like a herald preparing courtiers for a king’s arrival, Zephaniah urges his audience now to revere the Lord. Why? Because of the temporal nearness and sacrificial nature of Yahweh’s punishment against both Jerusalem and the world.

Look at verse 7 with me: “Be silent before the Lord GOD! For the day of the LORD is near.” Notice how the impending nature of Yahweh’s day is not the main point of Zephaniah’s message within this book. Every image of darkness and light, devastation and delight, serves to motivate the prophet’s exhortations. In 1:7a, the exhortation comes not in the form of the hebrew imperative, but in the form of the hebrew exclamatory interjection: “Be silent!” Revere God! For the day of Yahweh is near.

Throughout the prophets, the phrase “the day of Yahweh” and its abbreviated parallels “the day,” “this day,” “that day” refer to God’s final and decisive move to execute justice and to reestablish right order in this world. But it’s not only the final day. The day of the Lord is also the numerous historical foretastes of this end-time by which God restores peace by judging wickedness, not only among the broad world but even among Judah and Israel. Zephaniah anticipates the Lord’s day in both of these respects: the great end-time, ultimate day and the historical intrusions that anticipate it.

With the statement “the day of the LORD is near” in verse 7, he introduces a unit that runs to verse 13, all of which is focused on the imminent and localized punishment that the unnamed Babylon will bring upon Jerusalem, culminating in 586. First, he directs his punishment on Jerusalem’s leaders. Look with me at the text. Verse 8, he rebukes the political elite: “‘On that day,” declares the LORD, “I will punish the officials and the king’s sons and all who array themselves in foreign attire.’”

Verse 9, he then targets the religious leaders: “On that day I will punish everyone who leaps over the threshold, and those who fill their master’s house with violence and fraud.” In 1:7, God was called Lord Yahweh. Now that same term is applied to their “lord’s house,” suggesting that we’re likely referring here to the temple, and therefore the priests.

Next, in verse 10, the prophet identifies specific locations in Jerusalem, most likely the spheres in which these leaders were residing and having their greatest influence: “On that day, a cry will be heard from the fish gate, a wail from the second quarter, a loud crash from the hills.”

He then moves beyond the leaders to the common man. Look at verse 12: “At that time I will search Jerusalem with lamps.” he’s going to come like a thief in the night—unexpected. And I will punish the men who are complacent, those who say in their hearts, ‘The LORD will not do good, nor will he do ill.'” The complacent are those who neither fear God’s wrath nor desire God’s blessings. They’re like deists, practical atheists, acting as though Yahweh is not really watching and does not really care. He’s from a distance.

Yet Yahweh’s day of wrath was near against Jerusalem. And because of this, Zephaniah’s audience needed to revere the living God. But this localized punishment was to be matched by a more ultimate global punishment. Compare with me the opening of 1:7, “the day of the LORD is near,” with the opening of 1:14, “The great day of the LORD is near.” At 1:14, we switch from a localized punishment in Jerusalem in 586 to the global eschatological coming of fire on the whole world at the end of the age.

Note the broader scope in verses 17 and 18: “I will bring distress on mankind… In the fire of his jealousy, all the earth shall be consumed; for a full and sudden end he will make of all the inhabitants of the earth.” Those listening to Zephaniah—are you listening today? Those listening need to revere God. Let your hearts just be hushed in his presence. The typological day already came upon Jerusalem, bringing devastation and destruction. Therefore, we can be sure that the greater fury that the sovereign Yahweh promises is indeed coming.

God takes sin seriously. He must because he is just. He will pour out his fury against all forms of rebellion. Thus, he declares in 1:17, “I will bring distress on mankind, so that they shall walk like the blind, because they have sinned against Yahweh.” There it is. Where there is sin, there will be retribution. Because God is just, he must hate and identify and punish every failure. And believe me, we want a universe overseen by a just God.

Within this book, the objects of Yahweh’s wrath include the idolatrous and self-led, the Scripture-less and prayerless, the conceited and oppressive, the apathetic and passionless, the deaf and unresponsive, the trustless and self-dependent. Yahweh’s enemies sit indifferent and self-righteous, with neither concern for God’s judgment nor a longing for his blessing.

Chaff is chaff regardless of where it is found. And though Zephaniah’s Judah included a holdout of faithful who were mixed with the majority of rabble, on the day of wrath, God will, in Jesus’s words, “clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire” (Matthew 3). He will eradicate all forms of iniquity, whether idolatry, syncretism or self-rule, violence, deception or complacency, pride, vain boasts or taunting, rebellion, defilement or oppression, resistance, unresponsiveness, or shamelessness, treachery and abuse—all those focused on in this book of Zephaniah.

The warrior king will act decisively, removing arrogance from his city and eliminating those who afflicted her. He will cleanse the earth and reconstitute the mountain of his holiness for his presence, says Zephaniah. And when he comes, the day will be unexpected, filled with cataclysm, conquest, and sacrifice. Let’s consider each of these characteristics of punishment that Zephaniah associates with the day of the Lord.

First, the day of the Lord as cataclysm. With echoes of Yahweh God’s encounter with Adam and Eve following their sin, and of his appearance before Israel at Mount Sinai to establish the old covenant, Zephaniah and the other biblical prophets often associate Yahweh’s day of wrath with darkness, wind, earthquake, and clouds. So Zephaniah says in verse 15, “A day of wrath is that day, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness.”

The foreboding images of tempest and shadow, gloom and quaking display Yahweh’s fierce and impending presence, and they highlight the nearness of his day of destruction against both individuals and nations, including Israel/Judah. Whereas many in Israel envisioned the day of the Lord to be one of light, the prophets stressed that for all the unrepentant, it would be night. So it is that Amos 5 says, “Woe to you who desire the day of the LORD! It is darkness, and not light.”

When God enters into space and time, the natural forces get altered. Storms awaken, the ground quakes. “You will be visited by the LORD,” says Isaiah, “the LORD of hosts, with thunder and with earthquake and great noise, with whirlwind and tempest, and the flame of a devouring fire” (Isaiah 29). Such depictions of Yahweh’s day should cause our hearts to tremble. In Zephaniah’s words from 1:7, “Be silent before the Lord GOD! For the day of the LORD is near.”

The day of the Lord as conquest. The darkness of Yahweh’s day of fury may at times refer not to a storm, but to the sensory experience of dying as a victim of war. On the day of the Lord, the lights of life indeed go out for the enemies of God. Thus, Zephaniah portrayed the day as one of “distress and anguish, ruin and devastation, darkness and gloom, clouds and thick darkness.” And then, he adds, “a day of trumpet blast and battle cry against the fortified cities and against the lofty battlements.”

Such images—fortified cities, lofty battlements—the very same language used of Yahweh’s conquest of Canaan—they portray his day of wrath as a more ultimate conquest, wherein God reestablishes a new people in a transformed land. Consider, for example, two facets of Yahweh’s day as Zephaniah describes it. First, Zephaniah 1:13 declares of the rebels in Judah, “Though they build houses, they shall not inhabit them; though they plant vineyards, they shall not drink wine from them.”

Here Zephaniah applies Yahweh’s language of curse against the Canaanites to those who are in Jerusalem. Moses had told the Israelites that God would bring them into the promised land “with great and good cities that you did not build, vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant” (Deuteronomy 6). Yet he also noted that upon the people’s failure to heed the covenant precepts, “You shall build a house, but you shall not dwell in it. You shall plant a vineyard, but you shall not enjoy its fruit” (Deuteronomy 28). Those from Judah following Baal were now the object of divine curse, just as the Canaanites had been in the initial conquest.

But there is more. Not only is Yahweh bringing curse through his day of wrath, Yahweh is also fighting to claim a new global promised land in which he will settle the faithful remnant. Thus, we read in Zephaniah 2:7 in his declaration of punishment against the Philistines, “The seacoast shall become the possession of the remnant of the house of Judah, on which they shall graze, and in the houses of Ashkelon they shall lie down at evening.” Why? “For the LORD their God will be mindful of them and restore their fortunes.”

Then with respect to the Moabites and Edomites in 2:9, “The remnant of my people shall plunder them, and the survivors of my nation shall possess them.” Zephaniah adds in 2:11, “The LORD will be awesome against them; for he will famish all the gods of the earth, and to him shall bow down, each in its place, all the lands of the nations.” The faithful remnant would survive Yahweh’s day of wrath and experience the blessings of a global conquest.

The day of the Lord as sacrifice. After highlighting the nearness of Yahweh’s day, Zephaniah grounds his declaration in the reality that God had already prepared a sacrifice. Look at verse 7 of chapter 1. Atonement reestablishes right order in God’s world. And it accomplishes this by killing the sinner or the substitute. In Zephaniah 3:2, we learn that a key problem in Zephaniah’s Jerusalem was that the city had failed to draw near to God, using the very same language as Leviticus of the people drawing near to God with their offerings. And having failed to draw near to God through his provision of substitute, those in Jerusalem and beyond were preparing themselves to be the sacrifice.

Sacrificial fires are nothing less than a divine war against wickedness. Hence, after describing the day with cataclysmic and conquest imagery, God stressed in verse 17, “I will bring distress on mankind so that they shall walk like the blind, because they have sinned against the LORD.” Then he uses images of sacrifice to describe what he would do against his enemies: “Their blood shall be poured out like dust, and their flesh like dung.” Then at the end of verse 18, “In the fire of his jealousy all the earth shall be consumed.”

Zephaniah and other prophets commonly associate fire with the day of the Lord. And it aligns well with the images of cataclysm, conquest, and sacrifice. With this, both Jeremiah and Ezekiel used the same language of sacrifice in association with God’s eschatological punishment. The blended images of war and sacrifice depict how Yahweh justly secures atonement and reestablishes a state of right order in which the redeemed celebrate him as supreme and value those made in his image. Such is the goal of the day of the Lord.

So we must now ask this: How is Christ related to Zephaniah’s anticipations of Yahweh’s day? And I’m going to consider two aspects: Christ as the agent of Yahweh’s day of wrath, and Christ as the object of Yahweh’s day of wrath.

Zephaniah associates the day of the Lord with Yahweh’s great in-gathering at the end of the age to punish the wicked and renew the righteous. Yahweh declares in Zephaniah 1:2-3, “I will utterly sweep away everything from the face of the earth,” declares the LORD. “I will sweep away man and beast; I will sweep away the birds of the heavens and the fish of the sea, and the rubble with the wicked. I will cut off mankind from the face of the earth,” declares the LORD.

Jesus spoke of the future day of judgment, wherein God would judge all people in accord with their deeds (Matthew 12). Jesus says that all those on earth “will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.” And at this time, Jesus says, recalling the words of Zephaniah, “he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds.” Jesus associates Zephaniah’s great day of in-gathering directly with his second coming and with the future resurrection, which would be unexpected for all those who were living in darkness.

As Zephaniah foresaw, at this time, Christ will gather all nations to himself, separating the wicked from the righteous. He will punish the former with unquenchable fire. Yet he will welcome and feast with the latter, and they will know him for who he is. John called the culminating battle of the ages “the great day of God the Almighty” (Revelation 16). He called it “the great day of their wrath,” of which he asked, “who can stand?” (Revelation 6). John also envisioned that this final war would be led by the warrior called Faithful and True riding on his white horse. And then he notes that the results of this final war against evil would be a sacrificial feast for the birds (Revelation 19).

Christ’s second coming fulfills, in part, Zephaniah’s vision of global destruction at the end of the age. At that time, Christ will operate as the agent of God’s wrath. Brothers and sisters, the Lord takes sin seriously. And so should we.

Yet there’s more. Peter declared that all the prophets foretold Christ’s sufferings and the subsequent glories (Acts 3:18, 24). Zephaniah never explicitly mentions the Messiah. Yet his portrait of the day of Yahweh as cataclysm, conquest, and sacrifice likely foreshadows Christ’s tribulation unto triumph. I’ll speak more of this in my lecture on Zephaniah 3:8-10. But there are many features that support the idea that Christ’s saving work initiated the day of Yahweh as both punishment and renewal.

Scripture portrays the cross event with images of cataclysm, conquest, and sacrifice, thus suggesting that the biblical authors viewed Christ’s death as inaugurating the day of the Lord. Each of the synoptic gospels apply cataclysmic phenomena typically associated with the day of Yahweh to Christ’s death. Thus, we read in Matthew 27, “Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split.”

These images of darkness and destruction recall Zephaniah’s vision of the day as punishment. Furthermore, when Luke depicts the rise of the church at Pentecost, saying “so it is being fulfilled,” he highlights numerous cosmological signs, including darkness that would occur before the day of the Lord comes. I will argue in my next lecture that Pentecost initially fulfills the day of the Lord’s renewal, and this suggests that Luke views the darkness associated with the cross event as fulfilling the Old Testament’s anticipations of cosmological disturbance at Yahweh’s day of wrath.

Second, fulfilling Malachi’s predictions, John the Baptizer’s ministry prepared the way for the Lord, the messenger of the covenant, to return to his temple on his day of anger. The baptizer anticipated that a fiery display of divine fury would distinguish the righteous from the wicked in Yahweh’s day, and he saw Jesus as both the sacrificial lamb who takes away the sin of the world and as the warrior agent of God’s wrath, through whom God would destroy and deliver.

In Christ Jesus, “the kingdom of God has come upon you.” At the cross, God already judged the world’s ruler. He killed the hostility between God and his elect, and he disarmed the rulers and authorities that once held us captive.

Zephaniah portrays Yahweh’s day as cataclysm, conquest, and sacrifice, and this predictively foreshadows not only Christ’s second coming when he will operate as the agent of God’s wrath against all the wicked, but also Christ’s first coming when he stood as the object of God’s wrath on behalf of those God would save. Christ became sin and a curse for those who would believe in him (2 Corinthians 5, Galatians 3). This results in those who were once God’s enemies being “justified by his blood” and then “saved… from the wrath of God,” thus securing peace (Romans 5). “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed” (1 Peter 2).

In conclusion, I urge you today: Allow the seriousness of the day of the Lord to move you to revere our God. Zephaniah 1 portrays a God who demands reverence, whose just jealousy judges with flames of wrath, who confronts all affronts to his holiness, whose justice shows no prejudice, and whose punishment is both terrible and complete. Whereas some of us may be prone to minimize our sin, Zephaniah simply asserts that any sin demands the full rage of Yahweh’s wrath. And that’s what Christ bore for us.

The words the prophet uses to describe the outbreak of divine anger are breathtaking. It’s a day of wrath, distress, anguish, ruin, devastation, darkness, gloom, clouds, thick darkness, trumpet blast, battle cry. Does it get any more ominous? Paul asserted Christ “will come in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might” (2 Thessalonians 1).

How dreadful to have the source of all power and the upholder of all life fighting against you. I urge you, men and women: heed Zephaniah’s plea in 1:7. Revere God. Let’s pray.

Your prophet Isaiah said, “It is these to whom you will look: those who are humble and contrite of heart and tremble at your word.” you said you would make an everlasting covenant with us, that you would not turn from doing good to us, you would put the fear of you in our hearts so that we would not turn from you. Dear God, help us revere you. And I pray this through the risen, triumphant, hope-bringing Son of God. Amen. Go in peace.

JY: Thanks for joining us for GearTalk. If you have questions about biblical theology you’d like us to address on future episodes, email us at [email protected]. Also check out handstotheplow.org for resources designed to help you understand the Bible and its teachings.