JY: Welcome to GearTalk, a podcast on biblical theology. Today, Tom and Jason continue our series on the prophets. Last week, we talked about three contexts. The preacher, teacher, or reader needs to consider when reading the prophets. We talked about the close, the continuing, and the complete context. Today, we talk about the close context.

TK: Welcome to GearTalk. I am Tom. I am with Jason, and we are talking about the prophets. We talked about it last week, and we laid a foundation, talking about the major, major spot we were at. Jason was talking about context. So you talked about three contexts.

JD: That’s right, Tom, and we’re going to focus on the first of these, the close context, which is the passage’s immediate historical and literary setting. So I’m a Christian preacher, and I open up a biblical Old Testament prophet, and I find a passage that I want to preach, and I want to propose the first step is to be thinking about the close context. That is, what’s happening historically, and at an even more important level, what does my passage contribute to this book? If I was to take my passage away from this book, what would be lost? What is it contributing to the overall flow and message within the immediate literary setting?

TK: And your assumption there is it does contribute something otherwise it wouldn’t be there, correct?

JD: That’s right. God has given us these words, and every word matters. It’s not just words. He’s communicated texts, thought units that are to be read together, and then he’s placed them in succession within a book, and they’re all tied together with main ideas and supporting ideas, and it’s our responsibility to know with any passage that we’re preaching, what are the historical details and the historical—the function of those details within my passage, and how does my passage fit within its broader setting? What comes before, what comes after? If I have a grand outline of the whole book, what role is my passage playing in the overarching argument? That is, this is a preacher. He’s shaping a sermon or a book that includes many sermons, and God intends us to gain something from this book. And as we preach, we want to have in mind our goal is to preach, as if preaching the very oracles of God, 1 Peter 4:11, to understand what is this, what is the point of this particular prophets message?

TK: I asked you a question last week, and I said, I’m sitting down in my quiet time reading the Bible, and one of the first questions maybe a lot of us have had thoughts like this is, “I don’t get how this applies to me,” and I said, I think you’d say at this point that’s not to be your first question.

JD: That’s right, before we can ask the question of application, we need to be concerned with meaning, and the first step of meaning demands an assessment of the close context.

TK: All right, we’ll get us there. How do you start? And we want to actually have, so I don’t know how much we’ll be able to get into it today, but be able to say, here’s an example, here’s how you would do it. So Zephaniah would be a book that we picked, say, we’re going to use examples from this book. Jason, where do you start looking for the close context of a book in the prophets that you’re preaching?

JD: Well, close context, number one, we want to know that the prophets themselves were operating within history. These are men of their times who are writing in a context with specific problems, perspectives, powers, practices, and they’re engaging them. Every prophet grows up with a superpower. It could be Egypt in the days of Moses, or it could be Assyria in the days of Isaiah. If we’re talking about a non-writing prophet like Elijah, or before him, Samuel, then we’re talking about when Israel was the superpower in the ancient world. Following Isaiah in the days of Assyria, we could jump ahead to the period of Jeremiah, or Zephaniah. When Babylon is on the rise, and Assyria is waning, and then when we come to the final prophets of the Old Testament, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, we’re talking about the age of Persia.

So major superpowers that are informing the prophets from the outside, but what’s also informing them is the state of Israel’s situation within Israel itself. So all the classical writing prophets, the earliest being Jonah, the last being Malachi, they’re writing during a 340-year period. 770 is Jonah, 433 is roughly Malachi, and this is the age where you have the divided kingdom. Northern kingdom of Israel, southern kingdom of Judah, all of them supposed to be Yahweh followers, but certainly the North is going wayward in paths of idolatry. After 723, the northern kingdom gets destroyed. And so while you still have certain impoverished Israelites, among the ancient tribes, the 10 northern tribes, all that’s left after 723 as an institution is Judah in the south, centered in Jerusalem. And these are factors that inform our reading of the prophets. Up to 723, Judah is struggling in poverty and the northern kingdoms surrounding Samaria is experiencing massive wealth, massive international influence. And that informs why books like Hosea and Amos are dealing not simply with materialism, but massive abuse of the poor. And that’s not a major issue in Isaiah and Micah, who are preaching at the exact same time, but they are preaching from Judah, which is—so my point is that the history is indeed influencing these texts.

TK: Where am I going to find that, Jason? I have opened my Bible to a book, and he’s not saying right at verse 1 of that prophecy, “Here’s my historical situation” in as clear of terms as you said it, but there are clues in the book, and then there’s helps outside. So where would you start? If you said, “Yep, I’m kind of starting ground zero with this particular prophet, where do you go?”

TK: Well, first stop would be whatever the book’s heading is. Most of the prophets have a heading. Looking at Zephaniah, the Word of the Lord that came to Zephaniah, and then it gives us a five-person genealogy, the son of Cushi, the son of Gedaliah, the son of Amariah, the son of Hezekiah. That’s king Hezekiah, and Zephaniah is his great, great grandson. But then it says, “In the days of Josiah, the son of Ammon, King of Judah.” And this is informative to us because we can pause it from the book of Kings, when Josiah would have reigned, and not only when he reigned, but what was specifically happening in those days of Josiah, the other king that’s mentioned, Ammon, one of the most wicked kings in Judah’s history. And the son of Manasseh, who was the most wicked king in Judah’s history. So Zephaniah is born during these days, and it tells us he’s got a troubled situation. He’s growing up in a very dark, dark time in Judah’s history. And if we just go seeing the name, Josiah, the son of Ammon, and go look up the story, and it might mean, okay, I’m going to open up the book of Kings, and I’m just going to start paging through. And because I may not even know quite where to find it. But the divided kingdom comes in 2 Kings, because the Second Kings opens with Solomon, overseeing the complete monarchy, and it’s only a punishment that God gives him for his idolatry, that the kingdom gets divided in the first place. So I have only got to look through the book of Second Kings, and I would be coming up to Second Kings 22 when I read the name Josiah. And just the heading in the ESV, Josiah reigns in Judah. Then, next heading, Josiah repairs the temple. Then, Hilkiah finds the book of the Law. And the book of the Law is shorthand. It seems for the book of Deuteronomy. That’s the title that Moses himself gives the book that he writes on a scroll. He calls it the book of the Law. So one of the factors, as I’m entering into Zephaniah, is I’m wondering, okay, during the days of Josiah, the book of the Law is found. And this is the book of Deuteronomy. And I wonder if there’s any instances where Deuteronomy appears to be influencing Zephaniah’s preaching. Because most likely, that book would not have influenced his preaching if he was preaching before the book of the Law was found. Because it had been buried during the reigns of Manasseh and Ammon. And nobody wanted to listen to Moses. Nobody wanted to hear God’s Word. And yet, in the days of Josiah, when he finds that book of the Law, it grips his heart. He realizes, I have sinned against God. All of a sudden, he knows the instructions that God has given for Israel as a nation to live by. And the guidelines that he’s placed for what the king is supposed to do and be. And the detestability of things like idolatry.

And so in a book like Second Kings, in chapter 23, we find out that Hezekiah initiates a massive reform. And many of the sins that he addresses are actually spoken of directly in the book of Zephaniah.

TK: And this didn’t take any language work for you in Hebrew to discover this. You just went to kings.

JD: Right. And so I haven’t looked at a study Bible yet. All I’ve done is looked at verse 1 and said, I want to try to be able to put Zephaniah on the map. Maybe I’d take the time to read these 53 verses. It’ll take about nine minutes to just read through the book out loud in English. So that’s not a big task. You could do that in your morning devotions if you’ve got 30 minutes. Well, you could spend your first morning in Zephaniah reading the book out loud and then saying, I want to know something about this history. Who’s this king, Josiah? And what do we know about him from the book of kings? Because Zephaniah the prophets not mentioned in the book of kings, but Josiah is. And so we begin to fill things out. And one of the elements of something that I might do is say, okay, this book of the Law, it appears that people think that that was Deuteronomy, then I might go back to Zephaniah. And I look at the cross references that are in the margin of my Bible that the translators have placed there. And I might say, are there any cross references that point me to Deuteronomy? And as I’m walking through the book, sure enough, you’re going to find a handful of them that the translators have said, this looks like Deuteronomy is being used. And all of a sudden that could inform my understanding of when Zephaniah may have been preaching, after the book of the Law was found, and yet before the reform movements of Josiah had really taken effect because Zephaniah is preaching against so many of the same sins that Josiah as king was trying to reform the nation from.

TK: I like this, I like that I can look at one, and I can do some homework on my own to just kind of get my bearings. And I also like reading the book, and I’m just thinking a lot of us would read it and think, “Okay, I have whole sections, I’m not quite sure what it’s talking about here.” But the goal here in that first read-through is not complete understanding. It’s just to actually read through the book.

JD: That’s right. And we would only have to get to verse six in chapter one, and we’d see a number of parallels with 2 Kings 23. Zephaniah simply says, I’ll stretch out my hand against Judah and against the inhabitants of Jerusalem. That suggests Zephaniah was a Judean prophet, and even 1:1 said he was preaching during the reign of Josiah king of Judah. So God says, “I’ll stretch out my hand against Judah, against the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and I’ll cut off from this place the remnant of Baal.” And I don’t have to know much to know, okay, well, Baal was a God of idol—that’s an idolatrous God, that was a God of the Canaanites. And clearly, there’s people, people are worshiping. Yes, people are worshiping in Judah, they are worshiping Baal, so that Zephaniah could even call him a remnant of Baal worshipers. And then it says that he’s going to punish, that God’s going to punish priests who are engaged in idolatry. And those who bow down to the host of the heavens, and those who bow down and swear to the Lord and yet swear by Milcom. And I might say, I don’t know who Milcom is, but it sounds like parallel to Yahweh, the Lord, maybe he’s another god.

And as you go into 2 Kings 23, you’d find out that wow, this bowing down on the roost to the host of the heavens, there were star worshipers that Josiah’s house cleaning of Judah targeted, and there were priests that he killed for their idolatry. And the Israelites in his day were worshiping many gods of the nations. And so all of a sudden, I’m getting historical details that are informing my reading, and I’m not gaining them from a Bible dictionary, though you could do that. You just have to remember that the Bible dictionary finds its answers in the very text of Scripture. So even rather than being a second-hander and going to see what someone else in a Bible dictionary or in a study Bible has said, you could be doing your own work by simply following the trail and reading 2 Kings 23 and reading Zephaniah and seeing the two working together with all the prophets. That’s what I would be doing. I’d want to be seeing the historical backdrop that the authors of Scripture, these prophets are expecting us to know. They know the history, and they’re living it out, and God has allowed us to read that history as the inspired interpretation of what was going on in space and time. We’re getting God’s perspective on the days of Josiah in the Book of Second Kings. And we can see that the same God who gives us the prophet Zephaniah, indeed it opens by saying the Word of the Lord that came to Zephaniah. This is God’s inspired Word through the prophet who has a time in history, and we can go to the rest of the Bible to try to figure out what we can learn and what might inform our teaching and preaching, our devotional time in the Book of Zephaniah.

TK: That’s really good. I think as you kind of work through this and that thought of your starting with just hopefully some things though, you could say I already can put some things on the map. I know certain things about what prophets in general do. You mentioned it last week that we should think of them as covenant enforcers, covenant policemen I’ve heard people say that the Mosaic covenant is in their mind, and they are pointing—the prophets in general point towards the Mosaic covenant. So if my category is they’re only prophets only talk about the future, that’s not telling the whole story of what prophets do, it’s not even telling most of what they do.

JD: That’s right. I mean when these prophets were preachers in an age, they were declaring truths and very specifically that the language of covenant enforcer, I’m drawing that from the biblical text itself. Texts like Second King 17 that says the Lord warned Israel in Judah by every prophet and every seer saying, turn from your evil ways and keep my commandments and my statutes in accordance with the law that I commanded your fathers. The law is the covenant law, the commandments and statues of the commandments and statutes of the covenant. It then says, “They despised his statues and his covenant that he made with their fathers and they went after false idols and became false.” This is what the prophets are proclaiming. Or I could go to Jeremiah 23 where God confronts the false prophets and he says, “I didn’t send the prophets yet they ran. I didn’t speak to them yet they prophesied, but if they had stood in my counsel, then they would have proclaimed my words to my people.” That’s how we understand what Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Nahum and Habakkuk were doing. They were individuals who actually got transported as it were into the heavenly counsel where God is seated on the throne and he’s giving instructions to his messengers of what to do or what to proclaim. And that’s what God’s prophets are. And in time when they prophesied short term events like the destruction of Samaria in the north or the destruction of Jerusalem and Judah in the south and those events came to pass all of a sudden, the listeners, the watchers of these prophets grew to know who were the true prophets of Yahweh and who the false prophets were. And I think that’s actually how we got our Bibles Tom, the way that we have retained these 15 prophets from history and we don’t have the words of the false prophets is because the short term prophecies were shown to be true. And so people recognize these, this is indeed the Word of God. And if the short term prophecies were true that were fulfilled during Old Testament days, then the longer term prophecies that are fulfilled in New Testament days, we should believe are also true.

TK: When I’m going through Zephaniah, Zephaniah is not kings. So that could be a temptation is just to almost replicate what you just described in the book of kings. And here’s the situation. Here’s notice, notice there’s a remnant here, whatever, but it’s very different. And there’s a word that people associate with how the prophets speak. The word is an oracle. So can you help us think about that a little bit? What we’re finding in a book?

JD: Yeah.

TK: Because it’s not just straight history and that’s for me, that’s easier to read. So and so did so and so did so and so. But after verse one, that’s not what I’m getting.

JD: That’s right. So if the first step in the close context, assessing the close context is to know that the prophets operated within history, the second step is to know the boundaries and nature of the prophetic speech. So this is why when we go into Scripture, the prophetic word, we’re often reading things like “thus says the Lord” or “the declaration or utterance of Yahweh.” And these statements, these introductory statements set us up for units of thought called oracles that are to be read together. Oracle is simply a word meaning a message from God and an oracle could relate to the present, it could relate to the future, but it’s a specially given message, whether by dream or by vision or by wrestling with earlier Scripture that God gives to be proclaimed as a lasting word for all time. I think of a text like Jeremiah 30 where God says, this is what we read, “The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah from the Lord.” Sorry, “The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord.” So that’s an introductory statement. It tells us, okay, we’re moving into a new, a new part of this book and then it says, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, write in a book, all the words that I have spoken to you.” So all of a sudden, we were seeing a statement about how Scripture was written. The word comes to the prophet first and now God says, I want you to listen to what I’m saying and write it down in a book. All the words that I have spoken to you. And then he gives the reason why, and this is fascinating Tom, he gives the reason why he should write it down. “Write in a book, all the words that I have spoken to you for behold, days are coming declares the Lord when I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel and Judah and I’ll bring them back to the land.” Now what’s amazing in a book like Jeremiah is nobody wanted to listen to Jeremiah.

TK: Right.

JD: he‘s called the whaling prophet because he is suffered so greatly. They don’t want to listen to his words. So the king cuts up his scroll and throws it in the fire. They don’t want to listen to his words. So they take him and throw him into a pit so that nobody has to listen anymore. “Write the words down in a book, Jeremiah, for behold, days are coming when I will restore the fortunes of my people.” That suggests that Jeremiah already knew that his book was less for his day and more for that future restoration community. “Write it in a book today because in the future I’m going to bring a people who will listen.” So, an oracle is this designated sermon, as it were, with a set beginning and ending that were to read as a whole. And as we’re walking through the prophets, one of the key steps for a teacher or preacher would be saying I want to try to identify where the beginning and the end of an oracle is so that when I’m seeking to interpret it, even if it’s too long for me to preach in one message, although that would be ideal if you could do that (if it’s small enough). But even if I’ve got to preach it, you know, over multiple weeks, a single oracle, as would probably be the case with Zephaniah, which is only one specific speech acted appears, not multiple sermons or oracles stitched together, but just one sermon on one oracle. It’s probably too much to preach in a week. I want to be remembering that I’ve got to be thinking about the whole together. It’s like an independent poem in the in the Psalms. You want to be able to understand that that poem that has a beginning and an end and oracle has a beginning and an end and it usually has a signal like “Thus says the Lord.” In the book of Zephaniah, all we read is at the beginning, “The word of the Lord that came to Zephaniah” and then the sermon starts and then we go all the way to the end of the book and it simply says, “The Lord has said,” that’s my translation, “the Lord has said.” So the beginning, “the word of the Lord that came to Zephaniah” and then at the end, “the Lord has said.” That’s what we, so it’s framed and even when we’re going through the book, there’s these punches that we get these, these emphases that says, “declares the Lord, declares the Lord,” but we don’t have any within the book anymore, thus says the Lord. But in a bigger book like Isaiah or Jeremiah, we get those a number of times and they can be signals that, okay, here’s a, here’s a beginning and I need to be aware that everything following this shapes a unit and I need to read it together.

I would add Tom that another key thing to think about when you’re looking at the prophets is not only the oracles, the beginning and the end, but the types of speech within those oracles. And there’s basically four different kinds, and this is where we really get a sense that these prophets were preachers, both proclaiming a word for the present. And predicting a word about the future. Four different types of prophetic speech. Number one indictment: This is where the offenses made clear and those offenses are stated almost always in direct relation to things that Moses had already preached. Like Isaiah or Amos were not coming up with their own rules for right and wrong. They already had a Bible that defined it. Moses had given instruction and so when they confront their audiences on sin, it’s sin that was already laid out in the Law. And so they’re specifically noting covenant stipulations that have been violated.

TK: We have in our developing leaders curriculum. This is the curriculum you can access this on hand still plowed dot or G, but a picture of a prophet and he’s talking to a group of people. We have a way of designating that most of them are not listening in this illustration Mark did. But he’s pointing back to Mount Sinai and the mountain is really clear. Like we have no question that the prophet fully knows what he’s talking about and he’s talking. He’s pointing at something specific talking to the people about it. Later on, he’s going to point forward towards a cross, but the cross is fuzzy in that picture. Jesus hasn’t come yet. So he hasn’t seen the future as clearly as he’s seen the past. But that thought of an indictment there, a statement of the offense. This is what you have done.

JD: Yeah, in a book like Zephaniah you could go to chapter three and he’s talking to Judah and he says, whoa to her who is rebellious and defiled the oppressing city. This is Jerusalem. She listens to no voice. She accepts no correction. She does not trust in the Lord. She does not draw near to her God and then he begins to target the officials. Her officials within her are roaring lions. Her judges are evening wolves that leave nothing till the morning. Elsewhere, the leaders in Israel are called shepherds that are supposed to care for the flock. But now they’re being portrayed as beasts who are feeding on the flock. Zephaniah says, “Her prophets are fickle treacherous men. Her priests profane what is holy. They do violence to the law.” So in Leviticus 10:10 we learn the priests are supposed to distinguish the holy from the common and then they’re supposed to teach God’s statutes in Israel. But instead, Zephaniah confronts them. He indicts them for profaning what is holy and doing violence to the law. So it’s a type of speech.

A second type of speech would be instruction where rather than saying this is what you’ve done wrong, this is what you should be doing. Simply clarifying the expected response and often this comes in the form of simply teaching what Moses had already taught. This is what you should be doing. This is how you should be living. And within this book it comes in the form of “seek the Lord. Seek the Lord all you humble of the land, who have heeded his judgment. Seek righteousness. Seek humility.” Perhaps you may be hidden on the day of the anger of the Lord. So that context of righteousness right order in God’s world as he defines it. Where he’s always at the top. Seek righteousness. Moses is big on righteousness. And what does righteousness look like in the household? What does it look like in the community? What does it look like for administration? And Zephaniah is simply giving the instruction. This is what you should be doing. Seeking the Lord. Seeking righteousness. Turning from arrogance. And seeking humility. This is the second type of speech act.

But then maybe this is the third and fourth types of speeches. This is actually what people often think of when they’re thinking of the prophets. The warnings. And the promises of restoration. That is the declarations of punishment and the declarations of salvation. And here the authors are drawing on both covenant curses from Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28. And then the restoration blessings of what would happen after the days of exile. And after the days of punishment when God would restore his people. And Zephaniah includes both of these warnings of punishment and these promises of restoration. And he packages them. He captures them in the context of what he calls the day of the Lord. The day of the Lord is coming in fiery flames. In punishment. But after the punishment comes a new creation will dawn. And the world will be renewed. And Zephaniah has a framework for both realities. Both punishment and restoration. And in the process he’s drawing on curses and restoration blessings from books like Deuteronomy. And so that helps us see him. And we’re going to have, when we get into the continuing context, we’re going to talk about Zephaniah’s use of Scripture. But right here all we’re doing is saying there’s different parts to books. And we want to be thinking about the structure of these books. And the different types of prophetic speeches that are given so that we can rightly understand what’s happening. And Zephaniah as a whole is principally an exhortation for the audience to seek the Lord together in order to avoid punishment. And then to wait for the Lord to enjoy salvation. Those are the two sides to the day of the Lord. And we would, as we entered into this book of Zephaniah, we’d see that there’s two main areas where he gives commands. And if we could summarize those commands and then consider how those commands are motivated, we would see that he’s principally saying, seek the Lord together. “All you remnant in Judah and from other lands seek the Lord together to avoid punishment and wait for the Lord to enjoy salvation.”

TK: In your Bible, Jason, do you read with a pencil or anything? And are you marking up or passages? So we have a list of types of speech. We talked about four types, indictment, instruction, warning, punishment, or restoration salvation. Are you somehow doing your homework that you can go back and look at it and say, okay, that’s what I was reading here?

JD: Yes, I use a pen in my Bible, and very often I am going through the prophets, and I’ll put a full bracket around an entire paragraph and I’ll say restoration. Or I’ll put a bracket around a paragraph and note punishment. Instruction, I’ll be putting passages from Leviticus or Deuteronomy that I’ll be writing them in my margin, where it seems to me likely there’s an illusion happening or there’s a quotation happening. And so I’m trying to really recognize, as I’m walking through the biblical text, yes, how is Zephaniah talking? Where’s the main thrust of his argument? In Zephaniah, he opens up with this massive portrayal of the day of the Lord, but even the day of the Lord is the basis for the need for Israel to revere God. In verse seven of chapter one, it says, be silent before the Lord God for the day of the Lord is near. So many, many times, Bibles will just have a heading over chapter one that says something like the day of the Lord, but actually chapter one is a call to revere God. That’s the main idea. That’s the main goal. Revere God because of the nearness of the day of the Lord. It is coming, and specifically in chapter one, it’s coming as a day of punishment, so that it’s supposed to even arrest our souls the great day of the Lord is near. “A day of wrath is that day, a day of distress and anguish, a day of ruin and devastation, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness, a day of trumpet blast and battle cry against the fortified cities and against the lofty battlements.” This portrayal of the day of the Lord is supposed to awaken in our souls this sense of dread, and what we dread tomorrow is supposed to change who we are today. And a right preaching would recognize this, and then we would move on in Zephaniah and we’d see, oh, now we’re coming to commands, “gather together, yes, gather, oh, shameless nation, seek the Lord, all you humble of the land, seek righteousness, seek humility,” and as a teacher and a preacher, when I get to these points in a book, I’m saying, okay, now I’m understanding this is the main idea of the book, this is the main exhortation. Everything else—the portrayal of the day of the Lord—is designed to motivate me to seek the Lord now. And then when we get to the end of the book, he’s going to say, wait for the Lord, wait for me for the day when I rise up. And I don’t think he’s saying, wait for me, when I get home, you’re going to get punished. No, he’s talking to the remnant again, wait for me. And then he gives two reasons for I am going to punish the nations. It might seem like everything’s delayed, but I’m going to take sin seriously, keep waiting. And then he says, “Wait for me for at that time, I will change the speech of the peoples to appear speech, that all of them may call upon the name of the Lord and serve him with one accord.” The motivation for waiting on God, patiently trusting in God to act is that the day is coming when he will restore. And the entire end of chapter three is just loaded with one of the most beautiful portrayals of the age of the Messiah, what I believe is the church age, an international people of God gathered around the throne, protected by God the warrior and celebrating their salvation.

So we’ve already began to consider here, Tom, number three. So number one in the close context, studying the close context was know that the prophets operated within history. Number two was know the boundaries and nature of the prophetic speech. Or number three is, know the oracles, the specific units of thought, and then the type of speech that’s being given. And then number four is know the function of the prophetic speech within the flow of the book. And so that’s where I’m highlighting these, like the flow and recognizing that the statements of punishment and the statements of restoration are actually the way they’re functioning within the flow of the book is to serve as motivation for a higher level command that we’re being called to obey. And in 2:1 and 3, the command can be summarized, seek the Lord together. And then what surrounds it is the motivation because of the state and the fate of the rebels from the surrounding nations and the rebels in Jerusalem itself. In light of what God is going to do in taking sin seriously, seek the Lord together, while he still can be found. And then you move to the command, “wait for me, wait for me.” And what’s the motivation there that we are to wait for the Lord? It’s this amazing portrayal of redemption, new creational redemption. And we’re going to talk more about that. But right now my point is, as we’re considering the close context, we’re thinking about these three areas. We’re thinking about history. We’re thinking about the type of oracle and the boundaries of the oracle. And then we’re thinking, well, what’s the function of the specific type of speech within the flow of the book? This is close context. I’m trying to see what comes before the passage that I’m going to preach, what comes after, and what exactly—what role is my passage playing in contributing to the authors overall purposes?

TK: Or to put it an opposite way which you already mentioned. If I took it out, what would be the cost to this book? What do we lose?

JD: That’s right. If we take it out, what would be lost? So as we look at the whole book of Zephaniah, I break it down into these sections. 1:1 is just the heading: as the Savior King invites people through his commands, invites them to a life of satisfaction, saving satisfaction.

JD: And you didn’t know that at the, at the, before you go through the book, you don’t know the, okay, what’s the, how am I going to summarize this? you’re, you’re saying though, I’m seeing, I’m seeing a separate section here and based on what you see further, that’s where you get the saving satisfaction. Yeah, as I’m looking through the book as a whole, I’m seeing that it’s pointing me like the highest level motivation comes at the end of the book and it’s this vision of renewal where God is delighting in his people and his people are delighting in their salvation. So it’s this invitation to satisfaction that Zephania is making. And so I, I begin to shape an outline for this book that is surrounding that theme of the Savior’s invitation to satisfaction. And we’ve got the main heading in 1:1 and then the setting for the invitation. The invitation actually doesn’t start until the commands come in chapter two. And we see commands in two one and three and then another command in chapter three verse eight. So the setting in chapter one that is so focused on the day of the Lord, but not just the day of the Lord. The day of the Lord provides the context for the need to revere God. And so I, I say the setting of the Savior’s invitation to satisfaction is this call to revere God in view of his coming day.

But then we get down into the substance of the Savior’s invitation to satisfaction. That’s the really the body of the book, Tom. It’s chapters two and three and we see it comes in the form of two stages. Stage one is related to the first set of commandments and this appeal to seek the Lord together to avoid punishment. And then from chapter three verse eight and following, you get the appeal to wait for the Lord in order to enjoy salvation. And then at the very end of the book, just that closing little statement “says the Lord,” you get the, the closing to the Savior’s invitation to satisfaction. And I’ve begun to set an understanding of how do I understand all the parts of this book? How do they all fit together? And, and then I can say, well, what’s my particular passage that I’m wanting to preach? What’s it contributing to the whole?

JD: And you, you were saying in Zephaniah, you, you thought, might be, it might be too much to preach in one sermon. So then you’re, you’re deciding where, where to break it. That’s right. Even in a 53 verse book, I’ve preached Zephaniah in 15 sermons, but I’ve also preached Zephaniah in five sermons. And I think five is probably a great way to start. It’s hard in Christianity today to have preachers even preach more than one sermon for each of the 12 Minor Prophets. But I want to propose that we should be thinking more because this is Christian Scripture. Be thinking more about preaching Zephaniah just the same way that we would preach Ephesians. Give it the same type of weight and wrestle hard to understand how is it Christian Scripture? How is it that Zephaniah proclaimed the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow? And the forgiveness that we enjoy today. How is it that, as Paul says in Romans 1, that he was set apart for the gospel of God, the gospel that finds its source in God, which was promised beforehand through the prophets in the sacred writings concerning the Son? Paul proclaimed the gospel that was promised beforehand by the prophets concerning Jesus. And as a preacher, I want to know how do I do that? And so first step, close context, consider the history, consider the oracle and the types of speeches, prophetic speeches, and then consider how do those individual speeches contribute to the overall flow and message of the book? That’s the close context.

But we’ve got two more contexts, Tom—continuing context and complete context—that we’ll consider in future podcasts.

TK: This is really helpful. I’m thinking of myself and so many people, I know whether it’s your reading, your reading the Old Testament, or your preaching through it, your pastor leader, teaching a class, something like that, but that thought of this is too hard and it’s strange. I like your challenge here of we ought to consider this in the same way we would be preaching through Ephesians and say, all of it matters. It’s all important. And we are going to do the best we can to work our way through this book. And I would say that because of God giving us his Spirit and Spirit informed people in the history of the church, the long history of the church, to say this is actually something that we should be able to say we can do this. Not because we’re great in our own light, but because God gave it for the church, he gave it in a way therefore that we can actually get something out of it.

JD: Amen. I hope that this and the coming podcasts will help Christians be less nervous to dive into the prophetic literature. Yes, it takes time. But Paul takes time. I think of Peter saying there’s some things in Paul’s letters that are just hard to understand which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction. And I want to urge Christian ministers to not be ignorant about the prophets and not be unstable in the way that they handle them. But to handle them like Peter calls us to handle Paul: with good wrestling so that we can serve our people as God intended. As Jeremiah was told, write these things in a book for that future day of restoration. And Jeremiah knew, as Peter tells us, these prophets like Jeremiah and Zephaniah knew that they were serving not themselves, but us.

TK: But us.

JD: And that’s how we need to think about, that’s how we need to be thinking about these prophets that this is Christian Scripture. It was written for us. And we want to think about what that would mean.

TK: Beautiful. Well, thank you, Jason. I look forward to our next time together.

JD: Likewise, Tom. Thanks.

JY: Thank you for joining us for GearTalk. Next week, we will consider the continuing context. Make sure to check out our show notes for links related to studying the prophets. For resources connected to biblical theology, visit handstotheplow.org and jasonderouchie.com.