“I will sweep away everything
from the face of the earth,” declares the Lord.
“I will sweep away both man and beast….
I will stretch out my hand against Judah and
against…. those who turn back from following the Lord
and neither seek the Lord nor inquire of him….”
(Zephaniah 1:2-6)
That’s the opening message of the prophet Zephaniah.
I’ve been stuck in Zephaniah since the beginning of the year. Yes, it’s a book in the Bible and, yes, nobody you know has ever preached from it. There’s a reason for that. Most pastors don’t want to be accused of causing clinical depression (it’s bad for the tithes). Zephaniah isn’t exactly the most uplifting book in the canon. He makes Amos look like a standup comic.
When you do those Read Your Bible in a Year things, Zephaniah is one of those books you skip through pretty quickly, wondering which crazy Church Father let that one through and how it could in any way be relevant to life in the 21st Century. But as unappealing as it seems, there it is, in your Bible and in mine.
Zephaniah condenses your favorite bits of Joel, Amos, Nahum, and Habakkuk into three short chapters of ferocity against the wicked of the earth and the complacent among God’s people. As you just saw, it begins with an extraordinary statement of universal destruction.
Zephaniah is a message you don’t want to read.
I don’t want to read it.
Nobody wants to read Zephaniah – which is probably why nobody does.
But I’m putting it on your front page. What are you going to do with it?
Over the course of the next few posts I’m going to start to show you what is coming and why. I want to tell you about Zephaniah, but in order to go forwards I’ve got to go back. So hold on while I stick it in reverse.
In 2012 God began to speak to me about judgement. He told me he was bringing judgement in the Church and in the earth. Honestly, I didn’t know what to do with that. I was still working through my thoughts on judgement in the New Testament era, and I didn’t know whether, theologically speaking, that was a very PC thing for God to say. I decided that perhaps it would be wise for him to be a little more cautious with his words – although I didn’t exactly tell him that. Anyway, it didn’t make sense to me. I didn’t like church as it was, but was it really bad enough to warrant judgement? And what did that mean anyway?
This second question I’ll address in a later post. I won’t answer the first one because, fortunately, that decision isn’t up to me. I would decide badly if it were. But one very interesting thing to keep in mind is that the word of the Lord came to Zephaniah “during the reign of Josiah […] king of Judah” (1:1). If you remember anything about the kings of Judah you’ll remember that Josiah was almost unique in turning the hearts of the people back to the Lord. He instituted national reforms that mandated worship of Yahweh and he rid the country of many of its idolatrous practices. He was one of the good guys.
Zephaniah preaches utter destruction and he does so, oddly enough, during the prosperous reign of this godly king.
It doesn’t matter if you or I believe the Church is intrinsically good, or rotten to its core. God has decreed something. As I am about to tell you, he has spoken his sword from his mouth and he will not retract it.
But back to the trail of breadcrumbs God was dropping….
He started with Ezekiel – one of those biblical fun books like Leviticus and Nahum. And he started in the most fun part of it, too.
As a sign of what God is going to do to his people he tells Ezekiel (ch.5) to cut off his hair and weigh it out into thirds. And then he has to trim his beard and do the same. This wasn’t one of those wispy, Fu Man Chu, great-Chinese-sage kinds of beards. This was a full-blown hipster, use-as-a-blanket, mother-of-all-hedgerows thing that would block out the sun as he walked past. 
So cutting it off was probably a pretty big deal. Collectively, all of this hair signifies the people of God. He has to burn a third, strike a third with a sword, and scatter a third to the wind. All perfectly normal behavior if you’re a prophet of God – you know, like walking around naked or calling your child Mahershalalhashbaz.
As a figure of the remnant that God will keep for himself, Ezekiel is told to keep a few hairs and hide them away. But just when you’re thinking ah these are the lucky ones, saved from destruction, God tells him take a few of those out and throw them into the fire.
Are you following? Ezekiel has to cut his hair and trim his beard. He has to hack it up, throw it the wind, and burn it. He can keep a just a few hairs safe, but even some of those he has to take out and throw to the fire. And all this symbolizes what God is about to do to Israel. Only a handful will be saved from God’s imminent justice, which in Ezekiel is repeatedly referred to in three terms: Famine, Plague, and Sword. Over and over God tells his people I’m sending famine, plague and sword. A third to the famine. A third to the plague. A third to the sword. And if that isn’t enough to wipe them out, he occasionally adds wild beasts to the mix. Any that the famine doesn’t kill, the plague will. Any that the plague doesn’t kill, the sword will. Any that escape the sword will be left for the wild beasts. It isn’t a pretty thought.
Prior to Ezekiel’s beard-trimming exercise, God had led me repeatedly to a most perplexing passage – Ezekiel 21. It’s a shocking piece of scripture. There just isn’t any other way to describe it. I’ve written it out below and I want you to read it. Slowly. Once you’ve finished you’ll either go, meh, so what? – in which case you can just go back to surfing YouTube; or, like I was, you’ll be so bewildered you won’t know what to make of it.
Ezekiel 21
The word of the Lord came to me: 2 “Son of man, set your face against Jerusalem and preach against the sanctuary. Prophesy against the land of Israel 3 and say to her: ‘This is what the Lord says: I am against you. I will draw my sword from its sheath and cut off from you both the righteous and the wicked. 4 Because I am going to cut off the righteous and the wicked, my sword will be unsheathed against everyone from south to north. 5 Then all people will know that I the Lord have drawn my sword from its sheath; it will not return again.’
6 “Therefore groan, son of man! Groan before them with broken heart and bitter grief. 7 And when they ask you, ‘Why are you groaning?’ you shall say, ‘Because of the news that is coming. Every heart will melt with fear and every hand go limp; every spirit will become faint and every leg will be wet with urine.’ It is coming! It will surely take place, declares the Sovereign Lord.”
8 The word of the Lord came to me: 9 “Son of man, prophesy and say, ‘This is what the Lord says:
“‘A sword, a sword,
sharpened and polished—
10 sharpened for the slaughter,
polished to flash like lightning!
“‘Shall we rejoice in the scepter of my royal son? The sword despises every such stick.
11 “‘The sword is appointed to be polished,
to be grasped with the hand;
it is sharpened and polished,
made ready for the hand of the slayer.
12 Cry out and wail, son of man,
for it is against my people;
it is against all the princes of Israel.
They are thrown to the sword
along with my people.
Therefore beat your breast.
13 “‘Testing will surely come. And what if even the scepter, which the sword despises, does not continue? declares the Sovereign Lord.’
14 “So then, son of man, prophesy
and strike your hands together.
Let the sword strike twice,
even three times.
It is a sword for slaughter—
a sword for great slaughter,
closing in on them from every side.
15 So that hearts may melt with fear
and the fallen be many,
I have stationed the sword for slaughter
at all their gates.
Look! It is forged to strike like lightning,
it is grasped for slaughter.
16 Slash to the right, you sword,
then to the left,
wherever your blade is turned.
17 I too will strike my hands together,
and my wrath will subside.
I the Lord have spoken.”
(Ezekiel 21.1-17)
Now, in my preface to this post earlier in the month I talked about how all the shaking that is taking place in the earth – physically, socially, strategically, politically, legally – is in God’s hands and he is allowing it to fulfill his own purposes. Well, if you look at this passage you’ll see the same pattern here. In the Hebrew Bible this section actually begins in the previous chapter (20:45). There, God uses the image of a forest to represent his people. And he says, “I AM about to set fire to you and it will consume all your trees, both green and dry…. Everyone will see that I the Lord have kindled it…” The language continues the same way into ch.21 until the sword’s work is complete (21:17).
God says, “I am doing it. I am coming with fire. I am coming with a sword. It’s me doing this!” Shalmaneser was his sword against Israel, and Nebuchadnezzar was his sword against Judah but it was Yahweh who wielded them. The famine, plague, sword, and wild beasts were his doing.
So, what does any of that have to do with us?
Well, I sat with Ezekiel 21 for six months while God kept telling me “I’m coming with a sword”, and I couldn’t work it out. Was God really saying he was going to cut off the wicked and the righteous? Why would he do that? And what did he mean by “righteous”?! He wouldn’t do that, would he? How could he even say it? It’s outrageous!
After six months of perplexity I closed Ezekiel and gave up. I couldn’t reconcile that scripture with anything I knew – certainly not with the God of grace I believe in. I left it and tried to forget it.
That was 2012.
But it seems that God didn’t forget. I got prophetic words given to me about swords. I got led to places in scripture that talked about the sword of God. I had visions (I NEVER have visions) of a sword. Other people had visions of me and God and a sword. And the strangest thing was that all this is happening as I’m moving theologically toward non-violence!
And then I opened Zephaniah, and all heaven broke loose. And I knew these things about swords weren’t the random result of eating too many onions or late night Lord of the Rings pantomimes. They were intimately connected to God telling me he was coming.
END – Part One
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