Hope Again!
Sermon
Sermons on the First Readings
Series III, Cycle C
Object:
Charles Swindoll wrote a book titled Hope Again, with the subtitle "When Life Hurts and Dreams Fade." On the back cover describing the contents of the book the publisher entices the reader with the following words:
Hope is more than mere wishful thinking. Hope is a vital necessity of life -- a gift that God wants to give to you. And in a world that regularly writes dreams off as foolish and drains the hope from the heart with dark pessimism, Hope Again is a voice crying in the wilderness ... a word of enthusiasm for life in the midst of any difficult situation you are in.
Zephaniah's audience could identify with that need for hope! They were overwhelmed with grief and prolonged distress, along with a history of defiance of God's commands and demands dating back to their two previous kings, Manasseh and Amon. The prophet's purpose was to shake the people of Judah out of their doldrums and complacency and return to God.
Zephaniah's main theme is the coming of the day of the Lord, when God will severely punish the nations. It will not be a day of rejoicing and celebration in which the enemies of God's people will be destroyed and the people of Judah exalted. According to the prophet there is coming a time of accountability and judgment.
You can catch the progression of Zephaniah's thinking in his short book. Chapter 1 includes God's thunderous judgment and punishment for all who defy him. There is wrath and pronouncement of destruction. "I will sweep away the birds of the air and the fish of the sea. The wicked will have only heaps of rubble when I cut off man from the face of the earth, declares the Lord" (Zephaniah 1:3 NIV). As the Life Application Bible introduction to Zephaniah says, "We can sense the oppression and depression his listeners must have felt. They were judged guilty and they were doomed" (p. 1366).
In chapter 2 there is a whisper from the prophet of hope. He calls on the people to beg the Lord to save them and perhaps he will listen and respond (2:3). Later Zephaniah writes that there will be a remnant of survivors from the judgment and calamity that will fall on them as a people. "Restoration" is a hopeful word! (2:7).
The hope rises to an increasing surge of passionate care and love from God who will bring salvation and forgiveness to those who are faithful to him. There is almost a lilt, a rhythm, as the prophet writes,
Sing, O daughter of Zion; shout aloud, O Israel! Be glad and rejoice with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem! For the Lord will remove his hand of judgment and will disperse the armies of your enemy. And the Lord himself, the King of Israel, will live among you! At last your troubles will be over, and you will fear disaster no more.
-- Zephaniah 3:14-15 (NLT)
Hope to press on ... hope to endure ... hope to stay focused ... hope to see dreams fulfilled ... that is what God is giving them in the midst of judgment and despair!
That need still exists! In a world filled with hopelessness and abandonment, we need to hear the voice of God saying that he will live among us! He will bring hope in the midst of fear. He has brought that hope in the being of the Messiah, Jesus!
Zephaniah has two themes in his prophecy ... one is negative and the other positive.
First Is A Negative Theme (Zephaniah 1--3:13)
As you browse through Zephaniah's message to Judah you begin to feel a deep dark dread. It begins as he delivers God's message, "I will sweep away everything from the face of the earth, declares the Lord" (1:2 NIV). These words have all the earmarks of catastrophe written! This negative theme includes:
Fear. One day in hot July, a farmer sat on the porch of his shack, smoking his corncob pipe. Along came a stranger from the city who asked, "How's your cotton coming?"
"Ain't got none," he replied. "Didn't plant none. 'Fraid of the boll weevil."
"Well, how's your corn?"
"Didn't plant none. 'Fraid o' drought."
"How about your potato garden?"
"Ain't got none. Scairt o' tater bugs."
The city stranger finally asked, "Well, what did you plant?"
The farmer answered, "Nothin', I just played it safe."1
Some of us are fearful of action because there may be something out there in life that we are not prepared to meet, so we play it safe and do nothing. Paralysis grips us.
Despair. This is a horrible feeling of being overcome by the sense of futility and defeat. We have the feeling that we are alone and no one cares about us.
"I am now the most miserable man living," wrote a famous American leader. "If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on earth. To remain as I am is impossible. I must die or be better." Who was that famous leader? Abraham Lincoln.
In his book, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Ray Basler comments that in the darkest days of the Civil War, Lincoln constantly wrestled with unrelenting depression and despair. Basler writes about those twin feelings ...
It can strike anyone. No one is immune. Not even a nation's president. Here is this marvelous man with magnificent character, feeling absolutely alone ... Surely, the president ought to sleep well because of his protection, because of his wise counsel, to say nothing of his financial security. Yet there he was, tossing and turning through the night, haunted by dark and debilitating thoughts.2
The people of Judah were haunted by those feelings as they tossed and turned at night. Do you?
Sorrows. Webster defines sorrow as "Mental anguish or pain caused by injury, loss or despair."3 Because of Judah's unfaithful behavior and action, they brought on themselves as a nation and as individuals more sorrow than they could stand. Add in natural calamities and you have a recipe for sorrow.
Today we also have sorrows that come as a result of our own foolish decisions plus experiences we have no control over ... illness, death, financial reverses on Wall Street, war, and hatred that come to our street. Is it any wonder that we are filled with negative feelings in life?
Other negatives in the lives of Zephaniah's readers included burdens, homelessness, war, injury, and family disputes. Situations have not changed over the millenniums, have they?
Second, A Positive Theme (Zephaniah 3:14-20)
In the last section of his prophecy, Zephaniah loudly exclaims that all is not lost! The day of judgment has turned to the day of hope! The prophet warned the people of Judah that if they refused to repent, the entire nation, including the holy city of Jerusalem, would be lost. Zephaniah held out hope and blessing for the people of Judah telling them their punishment for sin would be a means of their purification. God sends words of encouragement to them.
Fear Not! Fear is dispelled because God will bring us strength. John Ogilvie calls strength an "inside secret." The innermost being of God is his Holy Spirit. He supplies limitless power, strength, fortitude, and help, and his well never runs dry! When we need strength to overcome fear, he dips his hand into the well and brings up a bucketful for us to drink.
Note the glorious progression ... the Lord takes great delight in you. In spite of all our failures, he chose to be our God and to cherish us ... next the Lord quiets us with his love. The unqualified, indefatigable love of the Lord gives us silent confidence, security, and peace. There's no need to prove ourselves or blow our own horns.
He sets us free from overwhelming fear.
Salvation has come! When God comes, he brings salvation from destruction ... hope for the future ... forgiveness for the penitent ... presence with his people. God says to the people of Judah that he has come to bring them life. Reverend Barbara Brown Taylor wrote:
What God cares about, with all the power of God's holy being, is the quality of my life ... not just the continuation of my breath and the health of my cells ... but the quality of my life, the scope of my life, the heft and zest of my life ... fear of death turns life into a stingy, cautious way of living that is not really living at all ... to follow Jesus means going beyond the limits of our own comfort and safety. It means receiving our lives as gifts instead of guarding them as possessions.4
God told the inhabitants of Judah that he had come to bring them meaningful life and to get up from their degradation and follow his leadership. It started from the top down. King Josiah caught the vision. Reforms swept away the idols and unfaithfulness and the people agreed. Salvation was the result!
Rejoicing results. The positive attitudes continue as we fear not and receive salvation from the heart of God and with that we experience rejoicing results! It is knowing that God is happy to see us!
The story is told of Brennan Manning who met his spiritual director at a retreat center at a secluded destination several years ago. Manning's usual habit was to park a mile from the meeting location. He would leave his car to begin the one-mile walk toward the center's entrance where his mentor would be waiting for him. The highlight of the whole week for Manning was the greeting from his mentor. As Brennan came into sight from his trek up the side of the mountain path, his mentor would begin jumping and shouting "Brennan, Brennan it is so good to see you!" He would continue to shout and jump until they finally came together in a spiritual embrace. God is with us on the journey and aware of our coming to him as he is jumping, shouting, dancing, and calling our personal name in anticipation because of his great love! We cannot help but rejoice at our homecoming, knowing that we will be greeted with such exuberance by God himself.
As Swindoll said on the back cover of his book, "If you want to smile through your tears, if you want to rejoice through times of suffering, just keep reminding yourself that what you're going through isn't the end of the story ... it's simply the rough journey that leads to the right destination." Amen.
___________________
1. James S. Hewett, editor, Illustrations Unlimited (Wheaton: Tyndale House, 1988), pp. 204-205.
2. Charles Swindoll, The Tale of the Tardy Oxcart (Nashville: Word Publishing, 1998), p. 160.
3. Senior Devotional Bible NIV (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1996), p. 1172.
4. Jan Karon, Patches of Godlight (New York: Penguin Books, 2002), npn.
Hope is more than mere wishful thinking. Hope is a vital necessity of life -- a gift that God wants to give to you. And in a world that regularly writes dreams off as foolish and drains the hope from the heart with dark pessimism, Hope Again is a voice crying in the wilderness ... a word of enthusiasm for life in the midst of any difficult situation you are in.
Zephaniah's audience could identify with that need for hope! They were overwhelmed with grief and prolonged distress, along with a history of defiance of God's commands and demands dating back to their two previous kings, Manasseh and Amon. The prophet's purpose was to shake the people of Judah out of their doldrums and complacency and return to God.
Zephaniah's main theme is the coming of the day of the Lord, when God will severely punish the nations. It will not be a day of rejoicing and celebration in which the enemies of God's people will be destroyed and the people of Judah exalted. According to the prophet there is coming a time of accountability and judgment.
You can catch the progression of Zephaniah's thinking in his short book. Chapter 1 includes God's thunderous judgment and punishment for all who defy him. There is wrath and pronouncement of destruction. "I will sweep away the birds of the air and the fish of the sea. The wicked will have only heaps of rubble when I cut off man from the face of the earth, declares the Lord" (Zephaniah 1:3 NIV). As the Life Application Bible introduction to Zephaniah says, "We can sense the oppression and depression his listeners must have felt. They were judged guilty and they were doomed" (p. 1366).
In chapter 2 there is a whisper from the prophet of hope. He calls on the people to beg the Lord to save them and perhaps he will listen and respond (2:3). Later Zephaniah writes that there will be a remnant of survivors from the judgment and calamity that will fall on them as a people. "Restoration" is a hopeful word! (2:7).
The hope rises to an increasing surge of passionate care and love from God who will bring salvation and forgiveness to those who are faithful to him. There is almost a lilt, a rhythm, as the prophet writes,
Sing, O daughter of Zion; shout aloud, O Israel! Be glad and rejoice with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem! For the Lord will remove his hand of judgment and will disperse the armies of your enemy. And the Lord himself, the King of Israel, will live among you! At last your troubles will be over, and you will fear disaster no more.
-- Zephaniah 3:14-15 (NLT)
Hope to press on ... hope to endure ... hope to stay focused ... hope to see dreams fulfilled ... that is what God is giving them in the midst of judgment and despair!
That need still exists! In a world filled with hopelessness and abandonment, we need to hear the voice of God saying that he will live among us! He will bring hope in the midst of fear. He has brought that hope in the being of the Messiah, Jesus!
Zephaniah has two themes in his prophecy ... one is negative and the other positive.
First Is A Negative Theme (Zephaniah 1--3:13)
As you browse through Zephaniah's message to Judah you begin to feel a deep dark dread. It begins as he delivers God's message, "I will sweep away everything from the face of the earth, declares the Lord" (1:2 NIV). These words have all the earmarks of catastrophe written! This negative theme includes:
Fear. One day in hot July, a farmer sat on the porch of his shack, smoking his corncob pipe. Along came a stranger from the city who asked, "How's your cotton coming?"
"Ain't got none," he replied. "Didn't plant none. 'Fraid of the boll weevil."
"Well, how's your corn?"
"Didn't plant none. 'Fraid o' drought."
"How about your potato garden?"
"Ain't got none. Scairt o' tater bugs."
The city stranger finally asked, "Well, what did you plant?"
The farmer answered, "Nothin', I just played it safe."1
Some of us are fearful of action because there may be something out there in life that we are not prepared to meet, so we play it safe and do nothing. Paralysis grips us.
Despair. This is a horrible feeling of being overcome by the sense of futility and defeat. We have the feeling that we are alone and no one cares about us.
"I am now the most miserable man living," wrote a famous American leader. "If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on earth. To remain as I am is impossible. I must die or be better." Who was that famous leader? Abraham Lincoln.
In his book, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Ray Basler comments that in the darkest days of the Civil War, Lincoln constantly wrestled with unrelenting depression and despair. Basler writes about those twin feelings ...
It can strike anyone. No one is immune. Not even a nation's president. Here is this marvelous man with magnificent character, feeling absolutely alone ... Surely, the president ought to sleep well because of his protection, because of his wise counsel, to say nothing of his financial security. Yet there he was, tossing and turning through the night, haunted by dark and debilitating thoughts.2
The people of Judah were haunted by those feelings as they tossed and turned at night. Do you?
Sorrows. Webster defines sorrow as "Mental anguish or pain caused by injury, loss or despair."3 Because of Judah's unfaithful behavior and action, they brought on themselves as a nation and as individuals more sorrow than they could stand. Add in natural calamities and you have a recipe for sorrow.
Today we also have sorrows that come as a result of our own foolish decisions plus experiences we have no control over ... illness, death, financial reverses on Wall Street, war, and hatred that come to our street. Is it any wonder that we are filled with negative feelings in life?
Other negatives in the lives of Zephaniah's readers included burdens, homelessness, war, injury, and family disputes. Situations have not changed over the millenniums, have they?
Second, A Positive Theme (Zephaniah 3:14-20)
In the last section of his prophecy, Zephaniah loudly exclaims that all is not lost! The day of judgment has turned to the day of hope! The prophet warned the people of Judah that if they refused to repent, the entire nation, including the holy city of Jerusalem, would be lost. Zephaniah held out hope and blessing for the people of Judah telling them their punishment for sin would be a means of their purification. God sends words of encouragement to them.
Fear Not! Fear is dispelled because God will bring us strength. John Ogilvie calls strength an "inside secret." The innermost being of God is his Holy Spirit. He supplies limitless power, strength, fortitude, and help, and his well never runs dry! When we need strength to overcome fear, he dips his hand into the well and brings up a bucketful for us to drink.
Note the glorious progression ... the Lord takes great delight in you. In spite of all our failures, he chose to be our God and to cherish us ... next the Lord quiets us with his love. The unqualified, indefatigable love of the Lord gives us silent confidence, security, and peace. There's no need to prove ourselves or blow our own horns.
He sets us free from overwhelming fear.
Salvation has come! When God comes, he brings salvation from destruction ... hope for the future ... forgiveness for the penitent ... presence with his people. God says to the people of Judah that he has come to bring them life. Reverend Barbara Brown Taylor wrote:
What God cares about, with all the power of God's holy being, is the quality of my life ... not just the continuation of my breath and the health of my cells ... but the quality of my life, the scope of my life, the heft and zest of my life ... fear of death turns life into a stingy, cautious way of living that is not really living at all ... to follow Jesus means going beyond the limits of our own comfort and safety. It means receiving our lives as gifts instead of guarding them as possessions.4
God told the inhabitants of Judah that he had come to bring them meaningful life and to get up from their degradation and follow his leadership. It started from the top down. King Josiah caught the vision. Reforms swept away the idols and unfaithfulness and the people agreed. Salvation was the result!
Rejoicing results. The positive attitudes continue as we fear not and receive salvation from the heart of God and with that we experience rejoicing results! It is knowing that God is happy to see us!
The story is told of Brennan Manning who met his spiritual director at a retreat center at a secluded destination several years ago. Manning's usual habit was to park a mile from the meeting location. He would leave his car to begin the one-mile walk toward the center's entrance where his mentor would be waiting for him. The highlight of the whole week for Manning was the greeting from his mentor. As Brennan came into sight from his trek up the side of the mountain path, his mentor would begin jumping and shouting "Brennan, Brennan it is so good to see you!" He would continue to shout and jump until they finally came together in a spiritual embrace. God is with us on the journey and aware of our coming to him as he is jumping, shouting, dancing, and calling our personal name in anticipation because of his great love! We cannot help but rejoice at our homecoming, knowing that we will be greeted with such exuberance by God himself.
As Swindoll said on the back cover of his book, "If you want to smile through your tears, if you want to rejoice through times of suffering, just keep reminding yourself that what you're going through isn't the end of the story ... it's simply the rough journey that leads to the right destination." Amen.
___________________
1. James S. Hewett, editor, Illustrations Unlimited (Wheaton: Tyndale House, 1988), pp. 204-205.
2. Charles Swindoll, The Tale of the Tardy Oxcart (Nashville: Word Publishing, 1998), p. 160.
3. Senior Devotional Bible NIV (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1996), p. 1172.
4. Jan Karon, Patches of Godlight (New York: Penguin Books, 2002), npn.
