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The Coming Lord Inspires Repentance

            The details were incredible.  As I stepped closer to the painting, I noticed the subtle brush strokes that captured the shadows on the rainy street.  Then I stepped back, scanned the entire scene of Gustave Caillebotte’s 1877 painting, Paris Street, Rainy Day, and took in the overall impression of life in Paris in the nineteenth century.  In my files I have some close-up photos of the ornate terracotta etchings on the façade of our church building and some close-ups of the art-glass windows.  I also have some wide-angle views of the church’s exterior and interior. Close-up details of paintings and pictures help us marvel at the intricacies of light, color, and texture in God’s created world.  Wide-screen, full-scene panoramas help us marvel at the breadth, depth, and height of God’s created world.  Both the close-ups and the panoramas touch our senses and make lasting impressions on us.

            In our midweek Advent worship today Zephaniah brings us a message that drives us to do both, to look at the close-up and the panorama of our relationship with God.  When the people of Judah heard his message and when we hear it today, we are first of all struck by the details and prodded to what I’m going to call the first part of repentance.  But then Zephaniah helps us step back and take in the wide-screen, full-scene image he painted, positioning us for full-scale repentance, all under the Advent theme, See Him Coming – Your Eternal King.

The close-up view of our sin

            Zephaniah was called by God to announce the truth to the people of Judah, “Your days of partying as though you can make up your own gods, who will not only let you get by with immoral behavior but smile when you act like fools, are over.  A new day is coming, the day of the LORD, and it’s coming soon!”  “So, Zephaniah, you’re telling us that Jerusalem is going to be destroyed.  Ha!  That will never happen, and if it does, it’s a long way off!  We’ve got nothing to worry about.”  “So, Zephaniah, you’re telling us that there will be a day of reckoning for all sinners.  Ha!  That’s a long way off!  We’ve got nothing to worry about.”  But Zephaniah was and is unrelenting, “The great day of the LORD is near, near and coming quickly.”

            Then in breathless poetry Zephaniah unloaded just exactly what that would mean for the people of Judah and for us by blending threats about what would happen in the near term, with a close-up look at the destruction of Jerusalem coming within thirty years, and in the far term, with a close-up look at the destruction on Judgment Day, which hasn’t happened yet but surely will.  Here’s what he said …

            You expect that God is going to pat you on the head, wink at your sinfulness, and send you skipping on your way to laugh and cheer and party with your buddies.  But no!  The voice of God will fill your soul with the bitter taste of bile as putrid as the bitter water the Israelites encountered at Marah after their escape from slavery in Egypt.  Your cheers will be turned to a roar of pain and fear that will make even Hulk-like warriors weak-kneed, all because you have not measured up to what God expects.  The cry on the day of the LORD will be bitter, the shouting of the warrior there.

            You pass over your sins as not-so-bad, as just little sins that really don’t hurt anyone, and so you drink your bubbly beverages with no thought of moderation, figuring there will be no repercussions.  But no!  The angel of the death will death to your door as surely as he flew over the land of Egypt so many centuries ago, when he slaughtered all the firstborn in every home and in every barn.  Because of your sin God’s anger will overflow on you like lava bubbling out of a shaking, quaking mountain, burning, and burying everything in its path.  That day will be a day of wrath.

            You get loosey-goosey with your tongue, talking big, acting like you’re somebody special, using people and things to do anything that brings you pleasure.  You think you are free in the land of the free, free to do as you please as long as no one else is hurt.  But no!  On that day God will pull you into a four by four cell with cement walls.  Each of your sins will be posted on sticky-notes covering every square inch of the walls, and they will close in on you from all sides.  That day will be a day of distress and anguish.

            You waste more food and money in a week than some people have to live on for a month, and then you have the gall to complain about the economy.  Because of your wastefulness God will turn that day into a wasteland for you.  It will be a day of trouble and ruin.

            You think all you have to do is look on the bright side, and every day will be sunny, as if positive thinking can heal your sin-sick soul and your broken relationship with God.  No!  That day will be a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and blackness, darker than the thick darkness God brought as a plague on the Egyptians in the days when they enslaved the Israelites.

            You act as though you are not alarmed by your sins in spite of the warning signs God posts all around you, some directly in his holy word and some indirectly through the laws of the government – everything from warnings about speed as in miles per hour to warnings about speed as in drugs.  Even though you pray the Sixth Petition of the Lord’s Prayer again and again, “Lead us not into temptation,” asking for strength in your battle against temptation, you are getting lazy in that battle, too often giving up and giving in too soon to your pet sins.  Since you refuse to heed the warnings, that day will be a day of trumpet and battle cry.

            You live in your houses and apartments plush with luxuries no one dreamed of twenty years ago.  You hide there behind locked doors not so much to keep bad guys out but to prevent anyone from seeing what you watch late at night on your TV and on your computer, to say nothing of the filth that floats through your mind as though no one sees, and you won’t get caught.  But no!  God says, “I know what goes on in your fortified citiesand in your corner towers, behind your locked doors and in the corners of your mind.  Those towers are going to come tumbling down.”

            You think you can hang out with so-called friends and wander along with them wherever they think it’s cool to go even though they may lead you astray from God’s ways.  Go ahead and wander now.  But if you do, God says, “On that day I will bring distress on the people and they will walk like blind men.”

            You think you can hoard your money now and spend it on yourself whenever you please, all the while robbing God of thank-filled gifts.  You think you can buy your way out of trouble, presuming that good behavior for a week or two will be enough payment to equal the debt of your sins.  No!  Neither the almighty dollar nor your good deeds will do you any good on that day.  Neither their silver nor their gold will be able to save them on the day of the LORD’s wrath.

            Zephaniah shoved the noses of the people of Judah and shoves our noses into a close-up look at all that is ugly about us – not our warts or wrinkles, not our shape or size, but our sin.  God did not tolerate sin among the people of Judah six hundred years before the Christ-child was lying in a manger and brought a day of wrath, the destruction of Jerusalem.  God does not tolerate sin in my life or yours and threatens a day of wrath, the eternal destruction of Judgment Day.  Do you want to blow this off as inconsequential bad news that can be ignored?  Have you plugged your ears to Zephaniah’s call to the first part of repentance, a close-up, honest look at our sin?  Have I?  Listen!  Because they have sinned against the LORD, their blood will be poured out like dust and their entrails like filth … In the fire of his jealousy the whole world will be consumed, for he will make a sudden [terrible] end of all who live in the earth.  When we’ve given up and fallen to the ground helpless and shaking in fear because we know and believe what we deserve, that’s the first part of repentance.

The full-scene view of him

            But then Zephaniah grabs us by the collar and pulls us back from the details of the painting.  He does that with one word used four times in these verses.  That word is none other than the special name of the LORD, spelled in your Bible’s Old Testament with four capital letters.  That is the translators’ way of indicating that the Hebrew name for God here is not just his title but indicates his personality, his characteristics, what he is really like – that he is absolutely independent and does not need anyone or anything to help him exist or make decisions.  At the same time this name for God indicates that he is absolutely constant, that he never changes, that what he was like and has done in the past is exactly what he is like and does in the present and what he will be like and will do in the future.

            Apply that independence and constancy of God to his love for us, and you have here the reputation of God that spurts like a fountain in every direction backwards and forwards in time, the undeserved mercy of God to cover and pay for all sins, including all those identified by Zephaniah and zillions more.  You have here in that name the perfect life of Jesus that screens the anger of God over the whole panorama of history like a cloud that filters dangerous sun rays from burning sinners up.  You have here in that name the blood of Jesus that floods the panorama of history, washing sins from God’s sight.  God accomplished that in no other way than by sending his Son into the world the first time.

            We are now covered by everything Jesus, the eternal King, did at his first coming so that every day and especially on that final day at his second coming, even though all those sins Zephaniah listed are true, they are not counted against us and are considered by God to be gone.  Jesus makes every day and especially that final day a day of sweetness and cheers, and day in which God’s love overflows, a day of freedom and joy, a day of plenty and feasting, a day of light and bright, a day of strength to battle temptation, a day of open hearts and clear consciences, a day to walk hand-in-hand with him, a day rich in spiritual blessings.

            By using this special Savior-God name four times in these verses, Zephaniah is pulling us back from the details of seeing our sin, the close-up, first part of repentance, and showing us the full-scene view that God himself wants us to take of history and of our lives and of our relationship with him – the full-scene view from the start of God’s promise of a Savior in the Garden of Eden, all the way through history to the time of Zephaniah, all the way through history to the time when the Son of God was visibly on earth, all the way through history to 2009, all the way through history to the end of time – all of it is covered by Jesus.  That inspires full-scale repentance, viewing him with grateful and trusting hearts as our Savior.

            When you see both the close-up view of your sin and the full-scene view of Jesus, and when you trust that because of Jesus God now looks at you only in love and will not condemn you on Judgment Day but whisk you away from all wrath on that day and wrap you in the fire-proof suit of his perfection, then the eternal King has accomplished for you and in you exactly what he has wanted all along, repentance.  See him coming, your eternal King!  Repent and rejoice!   Amen.

Preached at Grace Lutheran Church, Milwaukee, WI (www.gracedowntown.org) on December 2, 2009

Services

Sundays 7:45, 9:00 & 10:30 am

Mondays 6:30 pm

Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church | 1209 North Broadway Milwaukee, WI 53202 | (414) 271-3006

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