JOY!

[This was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, yesterday morning.]

Zephaniah 3:14-20

The theme for this Third Sunday of Advent is Joy. And there may be no better Old Testament lesson to focus us on this theme than Zephaniah 3:14-20.

The passage is chock-full of joy, brimming with joy, running over with joy! 

• It begins with the prophet calling the people of God to sing and shout with joy in anticipation of the fulfillment of the promises that God was giving to them, promises God was giving to them despite their past idolatries and other sins. 
• In verse 17, the prophet says that there will come a time when God Himself will be so filled with joy that He will “rejoice over [them] with singing.” (To hear God sing must be something amazing!) 
• And it culminates with the joy all of God’s people will experience when God brings them home to Him. 

Joy fills every word of this lesson!

What’s all this joy about anyway? 

To answer that question, a little background is needed.

Zephaniah prophesied during the reign of Josiah, who became the king of Judah as a boy and went on to become one of Judah’s greatest kings, not because of his military prowess, but because of his faithfulness to God. Josiah instituted reforms in Judah that encouraged the people to turn back to God. Josiah did this after he’d become a man and taken control of the kingdom. And some people believe, Josiah was encouraged in these reforms by prophets like Zephaniah.

But when Zephaniah began prophesying somewhere around 640 BC, Judah was mired in idol worship of all kinds. 

And, as always happens when people turn to anything or anyone other than god to be of ultimate importance in their lives, sin became rife among God’s people. 

They were prosperous but refused to acknowledge that their ability to amass wealth came from God. 

They were unjust to the very people God says His people are to treat with love and care--viewing them in Martin Luther’s phrase “like little Christs”: widows, orphans, the poor, the lame, the migrant. 

Because the people of Judah were descendants of Abraham and Sarah, they thought they were safe from God’s condemnation for their sins, just as today, some Christians figure they’re good with God simply because they’re baptized and confirmed and have a place on some congregation’s roster, even though they refuse to live in their baptismal covenants and make gods of themselves, or their money, or their status, or their pleasure.

Judah wasn’t the only nation that God warned of His impending punishment for constant, unrepentant sin through Zephaniah. 

That's why Zephaniah's book that ends with the joy that we see in our first lesson today begins with the words, 

• “'I will sweep away everything from the face of the earth,'” declares the Lord. I will sweep away both man and beast; I will sweep away the birds in the sky and the fish in the sea—and the idols that cause the wicked to stumble.'” (Zephaniah 1:1-3) 
• “I will bring such distress on all people that they will grope about like those who are blind, because they have sinned against the Lord. Their blood will be poured out like dust and their entrails like dung. Neither their silver nor their gold will be able to save them on the day of the Lord’s wrath.” (Zephaniah 1:17-18)

If we insist on unrepentantly violating God’s will--failing to trust in God, failing to love our neighbor, there are consequences. “The wages of sin is death,” Paul reminds us in Romans 6:23. 

But God’s Word also reminds us (in many places) that He is “compassionate and gracious...slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness” (Exodus 34:6). In Ezekiel 18:23, we’re given God’s attitude of love for us: “Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? declares the Sovereign LORD. Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways [that is, repent and trust in God] and live?”

God sent prophets like Zephaniah to call all the people of the world to turn to Him and live (Isaiah 45:22, Joel 2:12, Zechariah 1:3, Amos 5:4). 

When we turn to the God now revealed to we non-Jews (we Gentiles) as well as to Jews through Jesus Christ, it doesn’t mean that all the bad stuff of this world will go away. But there will still be reason for joy. 

Take a look at our lesson then, Zephaniah 3:14-20.

It begins: “Sing, Daughter Zion; shout aloud, Israel! Be glad and rejoice with all your heart, Daughter Jerusalem! The Lord has taken away your punishment, he has turned back your enemy. The Lord, the King of Israel, is with you; never again will you fear any harm. On that day they will say to Jerusalem, Do not fear, Zion; do not let your hands hang limp. The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.”

Whenever an Old Testament prophet spoke, his words spoke to multiple situations, their words telescoping multiple times. Through Zephaniah, God addressed three audiences:

• (1) Here, Zephaniah speaks to his own people in the seventh-century BC who were looking for a Messiah Who would bring forgiveness of sins and restoration. 
• (2) He speaks also to the New Testament Church which witnessed Jesus the Messiah’s death for human sin and His resurrection bringing forgiveness and new life to all who believe in Jesus. But that first-century church still waited, often impatiently, for the final restoration of God’s reign over His people on Jesus’ return. 
• (3) Finally, Zephaniah speaks also to us--to you and me, as we wrestle with this life’s often hard realities: sin (our own and others’), disease, death, relational discord, wars, and hardships. Through the prophet, God speaks to us today and He says, “Don’t be overwhelmed by the things of this world because I have overcome it all--sin and death, suffering and disappointment.” 

Twice in the first few verses of this passage from Zephaniah, those who trust in God are told: “The Lord, your God, is with you!”

We might have reason to doubt that promise if it weren’t for Jesus. 

When “the Word,” God the Son, “became flesh and lived among us,” He demonstrated the lengths God is willing to go to be with us. 

When God the Son, truly God, became simultaneously, truly human, He was born in a cave kept for cattle. 

Jesus grew up in poverty and early on, made His living by manual labor, while later He and His band of disciples lived off the contributions of some who craved His teaching. (Even then, some of the contributions were raked off the top by Judas.) 

Jesus lived a perfect, sinless life beyond condemnation. 

Yet the whole world, Jews and Gentiles, condemned Him, beating Him savagely, nailing Him to a cross, and watching while He suffered and died. 

God has drunk from the cup of human experience and human suffering to the full. Jesus’ life and death is the guarantee that God’s promise to be with us is the most reliable promise we can receive, one Jesus reiterated following His resurrection and before His ascension, He told His disciples, including you and me, “I am with you always even to the close of the age” (Matthew 28:20).

But God is more than an understanding Friend. This God Who is with us is also, the first verses of our lesson tell us, “the Mighty Warrior who saves.” In Holy Baptism, the apostle Peter tells us, we are saved. And the apostle Paul writes, “If you declare with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” 

A friend once asked me, “Saved from what?” 

• In Jesus, God saves us from sin, death, futility. He saves us from shame and self-recrimination. 
• He saves us from worry over our eternal destiny. 
• He saves us from the arrogance, pride, and thoughtlessness that lead us away from God into the very sins that caused Judah so much pain and cause so much pain even today. 
• As you’ve heard me before, Jesus, above all, saves us from ourselves! 

Without Him, we are lost, as a funeral with any unbelieving family will prove.

Our lesson continues: “‘I will remove from you all who mourn over the loss of your appointed festivals, which is a burden and reproach for you. At that time I will deal with all who oppressed you. I will rescue the lame; I will gather the exiles. I will give them praise and honor in every land where they have suffered shame. At that time I will gather you; at that time I will bring you home. I will give you honor and praise among all the peoples of the earth when I restore your fortunes before your very eyes,’ says the Lord.”

Did you notice the change of narrators? In the first part of the lesspm, Zephaniah speaks on behalf of God, conveying God’s promises to those who turn from sin and turn to Him for life. But here, God speaks to us personally, intimately. He speaks to you. 

And He gives seven promises. God promises He will: remove the sorrow over our idolatries; deal with all who have hurt us (dealing with them is His job, not ours, after all); rescue the lame; give dignity and a place with Him to those who have trusted in Him; gather us to Himself; bring us home (remember that Jesus says that He has gone to prepare a place for us with God); and restore our fortunes, by which I think God means He will restore to us our intended places as heirs of His grace, just like the father in Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son.

This passage is filled with joy, with the certainty that God can turn disciples’ “mourning into dancing” (Psalm 30:11) and that in God’s consummated kingdom, God “will wipe every tear from [our] eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things [will have] passed away.” (Revelation 21:4) 

It’s to make all of this possible that Jesus was born at Christmas. 

In light of this comforting reality, is it any wonder that Zephaniah, at the outset of today’s lesson tells us to sing? What else is there to do in consideration of God’s grace and salvation but to sing? So, today, instead of the Nicene Creed, I invite you to confess your joyful faith in these words, sung to the melody of Joy to the World:

We Sing in Joy Made Full
Zephaniah 3:14-20
(sung to Antioch, the melody of Joy to the World)

Sing to the Lord, rejoice, shout praise
Our God has met our need

The King of all creation
Chooses with us to be

And comes to set us free

And comes to set us free

And comes, and comes, to set us free

This mighty God Who dies to save
Now with His people lives

Rejoicing over us
His promises He gives

And through His grace forgives

And through His grace forgives

And through, and through, His grace forgives

Gathered by God, we mourn no more
For sin’s reproach is gone
The lame, oppressed, outcast
Live under the new dawn

Of Christ, God’s only Son

Of Christ, God’s only Son
Of Christ, of Christ, God’s only Son

From every land, disciples come
Made new, forever whole
At home with our King,

Restorer of the soul

We sing in joy made full

We sing in joy made full

We sing, we sing, in joy made full!

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Making Our Relationships Work: Empowerment

[This is the third and final installment of midweek Advent sermons inspired by ones written by Pastor Roger Sonnenberg.]

Zephaniah 3:14-20
Ephesians 1:3-12
Luke 7:18-28

A colleague of mine, now retired, once told me how he came to be a pastor. It all went back to when he was about thirteen at his home church in a small town here in Ohio. He was a great student and a great athlete. But he hadn’t really found the thing in life that “floated his boat.”

He was acolyting on a particular Sunday. He was in the sacristy, where both he and his pastor were getting ready for the start of the service. “You know,” his pastor said, “as he put on his alb, cross, and stole, “you should probably be doing this when you grow up.”

“That was it,” my colleague says. God used those simple words to empower him toward the goal of becoming a pastor. He knew from that exchange in the sacristy that God had called him to be a pastor.

I can assure you as a pastor who has sometimes encouraged young people to consider going to seminary that although my colleague’s pastor probably made that statement in as casual a tone as he could muster, it wasn’t an off-the cuff comment. God had empowered him to empower that young acolyte to contemplate a future in which he would first, complete his high school education, then get his Bachelor’s degree after four years of college or university, and finally, undertake another four years, including a one-year internship, to go to seminary.

Two weeks ago, we began this Advent series looking at Biblical counsel for cultivating and developing positive, joyful relationships by saying that they begin with covenants, promises or commitments, which only God can help us keep. Last week, we said that those covenants are maintained through grace, the charitable forgiveness, acceptance, and understanding we afford one another, also only possible as a gift from a gracious God.

Today, we move onto a third ingredient: Empowerment. Empowerment too, is a gift from the God of promises who is charitable in His dealings with us.

Being empowering in our relationships, according to the authors of a recent book on family living, is “the process of helping another recognize strengths and potentials within, as well as encouraging and guiding the development of these qualities…” Of course, our strengths and potentials are among the “good and perfect” gifts which the Bible says that our good and perfect God gives to all people.

God empowers us to do things that we cannot otherwise do. I knew a woman who had just learned that a friend of hers had lost her job. “What should I say?” the woman asked me. “I don’t know,” I told her sagely. “But listen to her and while you’re listening, ask God to give you the words you need to speak when it’s time to speak.” “I barely said a word,” the woman told me later. “But my friend kept telling me that I must have been sent by God. She told me everything I said stuck with her.” That woman had been empowered by God and so had I in my advice to her.

A man I know was in his thirties, without any clear direction for his life. He had long ago dropped out of college and was working as the manager of a fast food restaurant. His older brother, an overachiever with a deep and abiding faith in Christ, died, after a long battle with a terrible disease. Added now to the younger brother’s uncertainty about life was uncertainty about God. “What's the point?” he asked people with cynical resignation.

Finally, a friend approached that man. “Do you think your brother would want you to continue floating like a rudderless boat all your life? If you want to stay in the fast food business, do your best at it. But if that’s what you’re going to do, quit complaining and start living. Otherwise find a new direction!”

That conversation set off changes in the younger brother’s life. He went back to school and, through prayer and the grace of God, found his niche. Today, he counsels grieving families. Through his friend’s tough love, God empowered him to find his gifts. But his friend would say that it was God Who empowered him to have that tough conversation in the first place.

Pastor Roger Sonnenberg would hear about this incident and say, as he does in a sermon on the very same Bible lessons at which we’re looking tonight, that “such empowering is the very essence of what Jesus came to earth to do.” After all, Jesus says that He became human, died, and rose for us so that we might have "life, and have it to the full." And in the preface to his gospel, part of one of the lessons that we’ll consider on Christmas Eve, John the evangelist writes that "to all who received Christ, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of humankind, but of God."

The God and Savior Who came to earth at Christmas to empower us to be God’s children also empowers us to help others become their best selves.

All three of our Bible lessons for tonight deal with this same subject.

The Old Testament prophet Zephaniah, whose ministry happened between 640 and 621 BC, during the reign of one of the most faithful of Old Testament kings, Josiah, promises those who faithfully follow God a “day of joy” beyond judgment. “The Lord, your God,” he says, “is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory; he will rejoice with you in gladness, he will renew you in his love.”

God empowers us for living, God sends others into our lives to spark God’s empowerment within us, AND God sends you and me to empower others. We empower others whenever we offer to pray for them, actually do pray for them, point out their gifts, and, at times, lovingly (and figuratively, not actually) kick them in the duffs, reminding them that they are children of God with God’s imprint on their design, talents, and personalities.

In our second lesson, drawn from the New Testament book of Ephesians, we’re reminded that when we set our hope on Jesus Christ, we’re empowered to live lives that bring God glory.

Our Gospel lesson reminds us that Jesus Christ has come to set us free from anything that prevents us from being the joyous, fulfilled, purposeful people God made us to be.

In the lesson, John the Baptizer is in prison. In his mind, the Messiah was going to be a vengeful king who punished people and didn’t even bother with asking questions later. But Jesus wasn’t like that at all. So, John sent some of his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the one we’ve been looking for or should we look for somebody else?”

Jesus didn’t bother defending himself. He just told the disciples and John to consider the evidence. Through His ministry, Jesus said, “the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them…” And, Jesus adds, people who take no offense at Him are blessed. Consider my ministry of empowerment, Jesus says, a ministry in which I do all the things that the Old Testament prophecies said that the Messiah would do and tell me whether you think I’m the Messiah or not.

I have people of all ages ask me all the time, “What’s my purpose in life? What am I here for?” Let me assure you that as long as you’re living, whether you’re two or one-hundred-and-two, God has a purpose for your living. And if you’re earnest about doing God’s will, your purpose in life will always revolve around Jesus’ great commandment that we love God and we love our neighbor. God will empower us to do that in our own unique ways.

Often, that will unfold as we take the time to empower others to become their better-selves, what I call their God-selves.

Last week, I asked you to skip making a financial offering and to instead, make an offering of grace and acceptance to someone with whom you may not always get along. This week, I ask you to make a different offering and to offer it not just for the coming week. Instead, I ask you to make it for throughout the coming year.

It’s this: Pick a person, maybe the same person you picked last week. In the coming year, commit yourself to being the instrument by whom God empowers them to become their best selves. Pray for them. Ask them about their dreams in life. Encourage them in pursuing them. Send them notes of encouragement from time to time. Be willing, when necessary, to show them some of that “tough love” that helps them to see that they really can do all things through Christ Who strengthens them.

Then watch what the God Who keeps His promises, gives us forgiveness and new life, and empowers us for living…watch what God does in that person’s life. Amen

[Here are links to installments one and two of this series.]