Summer in the Minors Week 9 | Zephaniah

Let's pray together, family church.

You are our God, you are our Father, you are our Creator, you are our Savior, you are our friend.

We've come today to meet with you.

We meet with you in the name of Jesus Christ, crucified on the cross for our sins and raised from the dead.

And now, God, as we open your word, would you speak to us as your people by your spirit?

Give us hearts that are open.

Let us receive by faith everything that you want to teach us this morning.

And we pledge that we will receive it by faith.

And we receive it in Jesus' name.

And all God's people say, Amen.

You can be seated.

Welcome again to Family Church.

I'm glad all of you are here.

My name is Jimmy Scrogans.

I'm one of the pastors here.

And every Sunday at Family Church, we have a Bible study.

And we're going to have a very serious Bible study this morning.

So I'd invite you to go ahead and open your Bibles if you brought one with you.

I would encourage you to grab a Bible from the pew in front of you.

Open your Bibles on your devices to the book of Zephaniah.

The book of Zephaniah.

I can almost guarantee that you have never read from the book of Zephaniah unless you were doing one of those read through the Bible and in your plans.

And then you read through it as quickly as possible because it doesn't make a lot of sense if you don't understand the context, but we're going to study that today.

I am glad that all of you are here.

I'm glad that you're here with your families.

I'm glad that you're here with your wife or your husband or your significant other.

I'm glad that you're here with your children and your grandchildren and your friends and your coworkers.

It is good to be together with our church family on Sundays.

And I'm so glad that you have chosen to make this a priority in your life and a priority in your schedule.

And it's been so fun already singing about the things that we're singing about.

And it's so fun already getting ready to send.

I mean, we're going to send like a thousand people to camp this week between our middle school and our high school and the volunteers.

I mean, it's going to be a big week.

The biggest thing going on at Family Church this week is student camp.

It is going to be phenomenal.

And I believe that God can speak to the hearts of young people.

Do you guys believe that?

And I believe that He will.

And that's why we give money around here, and that's why we make a priority out of the next generation.

We're doing this series on the minor prophets.

If you haven't been around, that's what we've been doing for the last, I don't know, eight or nine weeks.

I think we have three more after this.

Pastor Christian did an incredible job last Sunday.

I watched via the internet.

Yeah, you give it up for Pastor Christian.

Hey.

I also noticed that Pastor Christian always showing off.

He sang like three times during his sermon.

You know, I can't.

Some people are just too talented.

They should not be allowed to do all these different things.

We do have this series on the minor prophets.

When you go through the minor prophets, they're not called minor because they're unimportant.

They're minor because the books are short, usually two or three chapters, maybe four.

You read through the minor prophets, and what these are, these are collections of sermons or prophecies that were given between about uh between about, I don't know, 800 B.C.

and 400 BC.

So 400 years, these different prophets would show up.

God would raise them up.

And most people don't know a lot about these guys, and Zephaniah is the least known of all of the minor prophets.

But the big idea that we're talking about today from Zephaniah is this that God judges powerfully and loves relentlessly.

God judges powerfully and loves relentlessly.

How can God have powerful, serious justice for sin and at the same time have relentless love and joy for his children?

How can God do it?

How can he be serious about judgment and yet just relentless in his love and his pursuit and his joy over his children?

Well, that's a great question.

How many of you guys have children?

Raise your hands.

If you have children, right?

Yeah.

If you have children, you are trying to do it every day.

How do you do it?

I've been a dad a long time.

I've been a dad for over 30 years.

I will tell you this as a dad, discipline is a serious thing.

It's part of my responsibility.

Christian and I do it together, but some of the heavy lifting, when you have six sons like I do, it eventually falls on debt.

Dads have to do it.

If you're the kind of dad who says, I don't really like to do discipline, step up.

Because that's part of being a dad.

That's why the Bible says in Hebrews chapter 12 that God is treating you as sons when he disciplines you.

Hebrews 12 · chapter mention

And the Bible asks the question: what son is there whom his father does not discipline him?

In other words, if you're not involved in discipline of your children, you're really not doing your job as a dad.

But being a dad is not primarily about discipline.

I don't want my kids to look back and speak at my funeral.

I'll tell you one thing, my dad really disciplined us.

Let's pray.

That's not what I want them to say.

Because I want them to talk about the joy that I have in them.

I mean, I discipline them because I love them so much, and I want to take great joy in them as they grow and as God gives them successes.

I know my children have grown up around here.

They've all played football and basketball and lacrosse.

They've been involved in the fine arts over at the King's Academy, and all of those things give me so much joy.

But fatherly discipline is a component of how you get to the joyful part.

Just this last week, we gathered all of our children in Orlando for the Fourth of July weekend.

We had all of our kids, daughters-in-law, all of our grandkids.

We had a boyfriend, we had a girlfriend, we had all kinds of people.

That's me and all of my sons.

That's me and my adult sons that are that are all gathered, and we were about to fire off about a million dollars worth of fireworks.

I mean, it was like, it was the biggest redneck thing you have ever seen.

It would make family church very proud.

But every good and solid Christian parent, if you want to get to the joy, you're gonna have to do the discipline.

You're gonna have to do both.

You're gonna have to do discipline and you're gonna have to celebrate your kids when they succeed.

And God does that too.

And we can see that clearly in this little book of Zephaniah.

So let's look at our text, Zephaniah chapter 1.

Zephaniah 1 · chapter mention

We'll start where we always start with verse 1.

This is what the word of God says.

The word of the Lord that came to Zephaniah, the son of Kushai, son of Gedaliah, son of Amariah, son of Hezekiah, in the days of Josiah, the son of Amon, the king of Judah.

And I'm gonna have to ask you to pause right there because I just said a mouthful.

And unless you are a serious student of the Bible, I just read a bunch of names, you might have recognized Hezekiah, and you might have recognized Josiah, and you're not, you're you're kind of like Hezekiah.

Was he in stonework?

Was he a king?

Was he a what now?

What was that?

Well, I'm about to tell you.

To understand the world of Zephaniah, to read the prophecy of Zephaniah and understand it, you have to understand a little bit about the world that he was coming from.

You have to understand about his family, the world that he grew up in.

And to understand his world, you would have to read a bunch of chapters from the book of 2 Kings, a bunch of chapters from the book of 2 Chronicles.

You would have to read a bunch from the book of Isaiah and some of the other prophets.

And I've already done all that, so I'm going to sum it up for you.

And here's how I think this whole story fits together.

There's two key names, Hezekiah and Josiah, there in Zephaniah chapter 1, verse 1.

Zephaniah 1:1

Hezekiah is Zephaniah's great, great grandfather.

You can see that, how he laid that out, right?

Son of, son of, son of.

So Hezekiah, Zephaniah's great-great-grandfather.

What do we know about Hezekiah?

Well, Hezekiah was the king of the southern kingdom of Judah.

He was one of the greatest kings.

Hezekiah was an absolute legend for all that he accomplished for the Lord.

He was one of those guys that the nation had drifted from the Lord.

He becomes king, he turns them back to the Lord.

He goes in where they have set up idols, he tears down all of the idols.

Where they have failed to worship faithfully, when they gather every week, he restores faithful worship.

And God blessed Hezekiah.

God blessed him so much, he was king for 29 years.

That 2 Kings chapter 18 sums up Hezekiah's rule like this.

2 Kings 18 · chapter mention

It says, Hezekiah trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel.

So there was none like him among all the kings of Judah after him, nor among those who were before him.

So Hezekiah, great-great-grandfather of Zephaniah, absolute legend.

You with me so far?

Okay.

Well, Hezekiah loved God and did a lot of great things, but the next generation basically dismantled all of the good things that Hezekiah had done.

Hezekiah's son's name was Manasseh.

Everybody say, Manasseh?

Manasseh.

He was a legend too.

But Manasseh was a legend not for godliness.

He was a legend for ungodliness and evil.

Manasseh took apart everything his dad had spent his life building.

Manasseh put the idols back up.

Manasseh practiced witchcraft.

Manasseh worshiped demons.

Manasseh sacrificed one of his own sons to demons.

He was a terrible man.

He had a terrible legacy and he reigned for 55 years.

And at the end of his life, the Bible says that Manasseh actually repented and turned back to the Lord.

But by then it was too late to repair all the damage that he'd done, which just reminds you that no matter what you have done, you can always repent and turn back to the Lord.

You can always repent and turn back to the Lord no matter what you've done.

But I'll just say this too: you can always repent.

You may not always be able to repair.

You can always repent, but you may not always be able to repair.

Well, Manasseh's son was named Ammon.

And Ammon was just like his dad.

He was terrible.

Ammon became king when he was 22, and he was assassinated at the age of 24.

He was terrible, but only two years of terrible.

And then his son Josiah becomes king.

Josiah, now back to the book of Zephaniah.

Zephaniah grew up with Manasseh as king.

Manasseh is one of Zephaniah's great uncles.

It was a terrible time, but somebody, check this out, guys, even in the midst of corruption, somebody in Zephaniah's life was teaching him about the Lord.

And somebody was saying, hey, Manasseh is king now, but Hezekiah is the kind of king that we all wish that we would have.

So when Zephaniah starts the book, he says, I'm a prophet of God, and yes, I am a part of the royal family.

I'm the great grandson of King Hezekiah.

That makes King Josiah one of my cousins.

But I am the king.

I am lining up with King Hezekiah.

And I was sent by God to preach during the reign of Josiah, and God put me in a position to influence Josiah so that Josiah could turn the people back to the Lord just like Hezekiah did.

So what do we know about King Josiah?

I can't read it all for you.

2 Chronicles chapter 34, if you want to check it out for yourself, Josiah became king when he was eight years old.

2 Chronicles 34 · chapter mention

The Bible says he began seeking God when he was 16.

Do you know why this camp this week is so important for middle school and high school kids?

If Josiah can seek God when he was 16, the young people of Family Church can seek God when they're 16 too.

He began to seek God when he was 16.

He began to institute his own wave of reforms when he was 20 years old.

And when part of his reforms, Josiah goes into the temple and he begins to renovate the temple and refurbish the temple.

He tears out all the idols and he says, We've got to upgrade this place.

We've got to modernize this place.

As he renovates the temple, they discover these scrolls that have been tucked away in a corner.

Nobody's been reading them.

They're the scrolls.

It's the law of Moses, it's the word of God.

Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.

He discovers the scrolls.

They get the scrolls out.

This guy named Shaphan, who works in the temple, comes into the king's courtroom and begins to read the word of God to Josiah.

It's the first time he's ever heard the word of God.

And when he hears the word of God, the Bible says he tears his clothes and he weeps because he realizes how far they've gone from the worship of God.

Think about that.

For 50 years during Manasseh's reign, no consistent sacrifices to the Lord, no faithful celebration of the Passover, no consistent reading of the Word of God.

And so Josiah shows up and he says, We're gonna go back, we're gonna do it all.

We're supposed to be, he reads the Bible, he goes, Wait, we're supposed to celebrate the Passover every year, and he begins doing it.

He just starts doing it.

He lines up, he reinstitutes worship and the priesthood and the sacrifices and the Passover, and he becomes a great king, like King Hezekiah was.

And the Bible says about him in 2 Kings chapter 23, just like it did of his great grandfather.

2 Kings 23 · chapter mention

Behold before him there was no king like him who turned to the Lord with all of his heart.

So here's my question.

Hey, family church, tile back in if you've kind of wandered.

How does an eight-year-old boy, whose father and a grandfather were horribly wicked, how does he change so that he becomes a great king who follows the Lord?

What happens in his life?

Well, when you read 2 Chronicles and 2 Kings, there's this constellation of people around King Josiah that influence him.

Jeremiah is a prophet in the Bible.

He had a direct relationship with King Josiah.

There's a woman named Holdah who was a prophetess, and she influenced King Josiah.

Shaphan, the guy who read him the Bible.

Hilkiah was the high priest, he influenced Josiah.

And of course, today's text, Zephaniah was there to influence King Josiah.

Which brings me to point one if you're taking notes, and I hope that you are.

There's a place for you to write some things down on your program.

And here's what I would write down first.

Number one, we're supposed to influence the next generation towards God.

We are supposed to influence the next generation towards God.

And we're very serious about that at Family Church, and I hope you become very serious about this yourself.

If you're a mom or if you're a dad, the number one place you want to influence is your own personal children.

And some of you are a little bit older, you say, Well, I tried, but my children have disappointed me in this area.

And I'm sorry if that has happened.

First of all, I want you to know that you are still here and you still can influence them.

You still have a way and you should not give up on that.

But I also want you to know that it is your job, it is your priority.

You should be praying about it, you should be working towards it, and I want to commend you for having your family here right now in this room.

I want to commend you for having your kids over here in the kids' area.

I want to commend you, even if you have little babies on your lap and it's hard for you to listen.

I'm so glad, mom.

I'm so glad, dad, that you are bringing little children in here because our job as a church family is to influence the next generation towards God.

That's one of our primary missions.

It's one of the reasons we named our church Family Church.

As we want to communicate, we are going after the next generation.

It's obvious that while Manasseh was king, uh, somebody was influencing Zephaniah, and then Zephaniah became an influence on Josiah.

And let's be honest.

Everybody in the world wants the next generation, don't they?

Advertisers want the next generation, the political parties want the next generation.

Social media influencers want the next generation so they can get the clicks from them.

Well, we want the next generation, but we want them for Christ.

We want the next generation for Christ.

We want the next generation to love Christ and live for Christ and to go on an adventure of their life serving Christ.

You can see this constellation of influences around Josiah, all these godly men that God put in his life.

Hey, family church, let me just ask you a question.

And I don't know where you are in your walk with God, but you personally, ma'am.

You personally, sir.

Who are the constellation of influences that God has put around you?

Who are they?

Was it your mom?

Was it your dad?

Is it a pastor?

Is it somebody in the young adult ministry?

Is it somebody that you work with?

Somebody has come around you.

God has put certain people on.

Some of the people who have influenced you have gone to heaven now.

But God put them in their life so that you can learn to walk with God.

God put them there for you.

Who prayed for you?

Who forgave you when you screwed up?

Who stayed with you when you didn't deserve it?

Who taught you the word of God?

Who invited you to church over and over again?

Maybe today you should just send somebody a text.

Maybe today you should send somebody an email.

Maybe you should write them a letter.

Maybe you should give them a call.

And then let me turn it around.

Who are you influencing?

I mean, who is who's God put you in their life so that you could be a Hilkiah, so that you could be a Holdah, so that you could be a Zephaniah in somebody's life.

A few years ago, a man started coming to our church.

His wife and his kids started attending first, and they influenced him to come to church.

He told me that when he first came to family church, he looked around the room and he was shocked to see other men in the room that he recognized.

There were leaders in our community, many had done business with, and many he had seen in the world of politics.

And he said, Wow, there's some serious men in here worshiping Jesus.

And these are men that I respect.

And if these men that I respect are worshiping Jesus, maybe this is something that I should look into.

Some of you guys are in here and you were influencing him just by showing up.

You weren't thinking about it, you were just sitting there with your wife, you were singing the songs, you were opening the Bible, you were taking your notes, and you were influencing somebody for Christ.

Some of you are placed in positions of incredible influence because of who you are or who you work with or who you know or where you attend or the events that you're invited into.

Who knows how God wants to use you?

But once you're committed to this idea of using your God-given influence, especially with the next generation, what are we supposed to be teaching the people that we're influencing?

Number two, on your notes.

Take your sin and God's judgment seriously.

Take your sin and God's judgment seriously.

Now, some of you think, well, Pastor Jimmy, if I try to influence people by talking to them about sin and judgment, they're going to turn me off.

Well, let's get back to our text.

This is what Zephaniah did to influence Josiah.

Zephaniah said, chapter one, look at verse 14 and following.

Zephaniah said, The great day of the Lord is near, near, and hastening fast.

The sound of the day of the Lord is bitter.

The mighty man cries aloud there.

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.

I will bring distress on mankind, so that they shall walk like the blind, because they have sinned against the Lord.

Their blood shall be poured out like dust and their flesh like dung.

Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them on the day of the wrath of the Lord.

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.

Wow.

I don't think he read the book, How to Win Friends and Influence People.

I don't think he heard, you know, let's not emphasize the negative, let's emphasize the positive.

But he's telling them the truth about their sins and about the judgment of God.

When Zephaniah looked at the nation of Judah before Josiah made his reforms, there's all kinds of rebellion against God.

There's idolatry, people putting other things in front of God.

There's corruption.

He he specifically names the politicians who serve themselves.

There's compromise.

He specifically names the religious leaders, the preachers who were there to serve themselves instead of serve the people and they didn't preach the truth.

There's complacency because everybody assumed that in the middle of everything, God wasn't going to do anything about it.

Zephaniah says, You better watch out with all that complacency because the day of the Lord is coming.

The day of the Lord, seven times in the book of Zephaniah, he says this phrase, the day of the Lord.

What is the day of the Lord?

When we think about the day of the Lord, there's layers to it.

First of all, the day of the Lord always refers to some kind of historic catastrophe, an invasion, a natural disaster, something that God uses to get people's attention.

The day of the Lord can be applied to the enemies of God, and God brings them to nothing.

And the day of the Lord can also be God's judgment on his own people who have fallen in to complacency and compromise and idolatry.

The day of the Lord also, when you read the Bible, it also refers to the cross of Christ.

And if you're a Christian, this should be a great comfort to you.

Because the day of the Lord always talks about the wrath of God and the judgment of God being poured out on sinners.

But what happened at the cross of Christ?

Jesus goes to the cross, and the wrath of God is poured out on Jesus on behalf of sins and sinners.

And if you're a Christian, you have turned from your sins and you have received Jesus by faith, and you believe that Jesus was crucified on the cross for you, and Jesus took the judgment of God for you, so you don't have to take it.

And after Jesus died, God raised him from the dead.

So when you think about Christ, Christ is when the day of the Lord came, when he hung on the cross and the wrath of God was poured out on him.

But then there's this other layer.

That the day of the Lord refers to in the Bible, and that is the final return of Christ and the final judgment of all people.

That there is the day of the Lord coming still.

The day of the Lord came and Judah got wiped out.

586.

And the day of the Lord came and Jesus was crucified on the cross for your sins.

But the day of the Lord is still coming.

There is still a judgment day to come.

We as Christians believe that Christ will return and Jesus will make all things right.

Now, some people back then, when they heard Zephaniah preach and others preach, they did not believe that the day of the Lord was real.

And many people today, some of you in here, may not really believe that the day of the Lord is real.

But it is.

God is patient.

God was patient with them, God is patient with you, but God is not passive.

God wasn't passive with them, God won't be passive with you.

Idolatry and corruption and compromise and complacency are as offensive to God today as they were back then.

When you read the book of Zephaniah, some of the people who lived in Judah used to walk with God, but they had turned away from God.

And then some people had refused to ever walk with God in the first place.

Hey, what about us now?

What about us in this room?

Where are you?

Are you aware of sin in your life?

Are you aware of compromise or idolatry?

Are you aware of complacency in your heart?

Because if you are, you ought to take the word of God seriously today.

And the people of Judah that Zephaniah was preaching to, they were they were complacent and they lived corruptly and they were compromised, and they thought God really wasn't going to do anything about it.

But that was very foolish.

And Zephaniah warned them, and now, through the word of God, Zephaniah is warning you.

What does God say they should do?

They shouldn't be complacent, they shouldn't be corrupt, they shouldn't compromise.

What should they do?

Number three on your notes.

It tells us, humble yourself and seek God.

Humble yourself and seek God.

Back to our text.

Look at Zephaniah chapter 2.

Zephaniah 2 · chapter mention

Flip over one page.

Zephaniah chapter 2, starting in verse 1.

Zephaniah 2 · chapter mention

This is what Zephaniah says they should do about.

He says, gather together.

Yes, gather, oh shameless nation.

Before the decree takes effect, before the day passes away like chaff, before there comes upon you the burning anger of the Lord, before there comes upon you the day of the anger of the Lord.

Seek the Lord, all you humble of the land, who do his just commands, seek righteousness, seek humility.

Perhaps you may be hidden on the day of the anger of the Lord.

Amen.

They had an opportunity, didn't they?

They had an opportunity before the judgment of God came, before the day of the Lord came to them.

They had the opportunity to seek the Lord and humble themselves before God and confess their sins and line up with God's design.

And Josiah led them to do that in his lifetime.

And God's warning you too.

One of these days you're going to die.

One of these days you're going to face God.

One of these days you may be alive when Christ comes back and you're going to face God, and the day of the Lord is coming for you.

And you need to seek the Lord before that happens.

And there's no better day than today.

You should humble yourself and seek the Lord now.

And if you've been wrestling with it or thinking about it, or even if you consider yourself a Christian, but there's this part of you that's angry at God, or this part of you that's bitter at someone else, you should seek the Lord and humble yourself now.

In fact, if you want to become a Christian and you're thinking about becoming a Christian, stop listening to this sermon.

And right now in your own heart, turn from your sins, turn to Christ, crucified and raised from the dead, and be saved today.

And if you've wandered away from God, seek the Lord and humble yourself before the day of the Lord comes.

We've sinned greatly against God with our corruption and our compromise and our complacency and our idolatry.

And God's judgment is real.

But we've been warned about that.

And as a Christian, we don't have to fear the judgment of God because Christ has been judged in our place.

That was Zephaniah's message to them then, and it's Zephaniah's message to everyone always, and it's Zephaniah's message to us now.

Seek the Lord while you can.

Why won't people seek the Lord?

We have a natural resistance to seeking the Lord because it requires humility and we don't like to humble ourselves.

We have a natural resistance to humbling ourselves.

And what happens to become a Christian and to live for Christ, you have to constantly admit that you need God to do for you what you cannot do for yourself.

You need God to come into your life and save you from your sins and forgive you.

You need God to empower you to live for Him.

You need God to heal the broken places in your life.

You need God to give you mercy when you deserve judgment.

And hey, I'm in the same boat as you.

I need God to do for me what I cannot do for myself.

So what is God seeking?

What is he wanting to do in our lives?

What does seeking God look like to us in this room?

Well, first of all, you should receive Jesus by faith.

And then if you have received Jesus by faith, you should live the way that Jesus teaches you to live.

Instead of thinking, hey man, I'm here.

I come to church at least once a month.

Sometimes I give money.

I'm super based.

Hey man, it's not enough to just attend.

Attending is good.

It's a good place to start, but at some point you have to actually obey.

It's not enough to just lean in.

Leaning in is where you start, but at some point you've got to line up.

It's not enough to just show up.

Showing up is a good place to start, but at some place, at some point you've got to step up and obey God and live for God and go all in for God.

But even then, even if you do that, things are just not going to be perfect.

Not in your own heart, not in your family, and not in the world around you.

If you're a believer, you're going to see the world going the wrong direction in so many ways.

Nod your head if you think the world's going the wrong direction in a lot of ways.

It is.

And you're still personally dealing with all kinds of heartache and grief and disappointment and betrayal and bitterness.

Because there's difficulties in this life.

What does Zephaniah say to people who are true believers but need hope that better things are coming in the future?

One more bit of text I want to read to you from Zephaniah.

This is Zephaniah chapter 3, the final chapter, starting in verse 17.

Zephaniah 3 · chapter mention

This is what the word of God says.

Zephaniah says, The Lord your God is in your midst.

A mighty one who will save.

He will rejoice over you with gladness.

He will quiet you by his love.

He will exalt.

Check this out.

He will exalt over you with loud singing.

I will gather those of you who mourn for the festival so that you will no longer suffer reproach.

Behold, at that time I will deal with all your oppressors, and I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth.

At that time I will bring you in.

At that time when I gather you together, for I will make you renowned and praised among all the peoples of the earth when I restore your fortunes before your eyes, says the Lord.

And what does that tell us?

Number four, on your notes.

Remember that restoration is coming.

Remember that restoration is coming.

That final day of the Lord, Zephaniah sees the broken things being put back together.

It's the same idea expressed in Revelation chapter 21 when Jesus comes back.

Revelation 21 · chapter mention

And the Bible says, Jesus will wipe every tear from our eyes.

It's so cool at the end of Zephaniah in chapter 3, verse 17, it says, God is exulting over his people.

God is singing over his people.

Man, we come in here, we sing songs to God, but on the day of the Lord, God's going to sing songs over us.

People from all the nations are brought together, and God is dealing with all of our oppressors, and God is taking away our shame and turning our shame into praise.

And the ones who've lived as outcasts in this world are gathered in to the family of God for all time.

And God says, I will bring you in.

Have you ever been left out?

Have you felt pushed out, even by Christians or by churches?

The day of the Lord, the Bible says, God will bring you in.

How can God say all of these wonderful things to people?

He spent the whole book of Zephaniah saying, I'm about to put you guys through some judgment.

I don't know.

I'm a dad.

I've had to do a lot of discipline, man.

I've had to have a lot of hard conversations as a dad.

I've had to implement a lot of difficult consequences over the years.

And you know how it is when you punish your kids, it punishes you.

But even in the midst of all of that, when the lights come on on Friday night at the King's Academy, when that curtain goes up and that fine arts center, when I go to camp and I see my kids serving and raising their hands and worshiping the Lord, there's nobody cheering louder than me.

There's nobody taking more joy than me.

And why is that?

Because the discipline is part of the path to the joy.

I don't discipline my children in spite of my love for them.

I discipline them because I love them.

And God does the same things.

And you think that God loves you because of what you do for him, your sacrifices, your gifts, your songs.

But in the book of Zephaniah, God is the one bringing the sacrifice to you.

Chapter 1, verse 7.

In Zephaniah, God is the one singing over you.

In Zephaniah, God is the one giving a gift to you.

And when you read Zephaniah, he's pointing to Jesus on every page.

I didn't see him mention Jesus.

I know, but look what he says in chapter 1, verse 7.

Jesus is the sacrifice who will bear the wrath of God.

Look at chapter 3, verse 15.

Jesus is the King of Israel in your midst.

Emmanuel, God with us.

Look at chapter 3, verse 17.

Jesus is the one who is mighty to save.

He is the one who changes your shame into praise.

So family, church, person, friend, neighbor, guest, visitor, have you humbled yourself before God?

Are you seeking God right now?

Have you turned from your sins and received Jesus by faith for yourself?

Come to Christ.

Come to Christ.

He'll receive you, He'll gather you in.

If you've wandered away, come back to Christ.

Come back to the Lord.

Turn around, come back to where you came from, where you started.

And you don't have to fear the judgment of God if you're a believer.

Jesus has already been judged in your place.

He is the sacrifice.

And today He is the King in our midst.

Jesus has taken away our shame.

And to help us remember that every Sunday at family church, we take the Lord's Supper.

And we're going to take the Lord's Supper right now.

We eat the bread, it reminds us of the broken body of Jesus.

We drink the cup, it reminds us of the blood of Jesus that was shed to take away our sins.

And we remember that the day of the Lord when Christ was crucified, the day of the Lord when Christ was raised from the dead, that is what that is the mechanism, that is the process that God uses to turn our shame into praise.

And so this morning, I want to remind you that the Lord's Supper is for believers in Jesus.

If you're here today, you're not a believer in Jesus, you should not take the Lord's Supper.

And the Lord's Supper is for people who've been baptized as believers by immersion, and they're a part of a neighborhood church.

You're here today, you say, Well, I'm from somewhere else, or I'm just checking you guys out.

I'm a believer, I've been baptized, but this is not my church.

It's okay.

If you would take the Lord's Supper at your church, take it with us this morning as part of the extended family of Jesus that goes around the world.

But right now, I would invite you to bow your head.

And if it's been a while, why don't right now, as we prepare to take the Lord's Supper, why don't you humble yourself before God in your own heart?

Right now, if it's been a while, why don't you seek God right now in your own heart?

If there's sins that you need to confess, why don't you confess those sins right now in your own heart?

And let's remember Christ crucified and raised from the dead, turning our shame into praise.

The king in our midst.

And in just a moment, we'll eat and drink the Lord's Supper together.