The Coming Lord Purifies Our Lips
There is only one true God and if the entire purpose of human existence is to have a connection with God, then logically there has to be a communication link between God and people. These verses from Zephaniah 3:9-13 add to our joy and anticipation of Jesus' coming as "The Coming Lord Purifies Our Lips." December 9, 2009.
The Arecibo Observatory is a radio telescope located on a high wooded hill near the northern coast of Puerto Rico. The observatory’s telescope is not a long tube but looks like a gigantic upside-down saucer, more than three football fields across. It is designed for observation of the solar system by radio astronomy. It has also been used for military intelligence-gathering, and in 1974, an attempt was made to use it to communicate with extraterrestrial life. You might enjoy science fiction movies more than anyone else, but the Bible gives us the distinct impression that God did not create extraterrestrial life. Rather, he designed the entire universe to be centered on his relationship with the people of this planet.
If there is only one true God – and there is – and if the entire purpose of human existence is to have a connection with God, then logically there has to be a communication link between God and people. That is where the prophet Zephaniah takes us today. In our midweek Advent worship we are considering little portions of this little Bible book in order to prepare our hearts for the celebration of Christmas. These verses from Zephaniah chapter three add to our joy and anticipation as the prophet calls out, See Him Coming – Your Eternal King.
It’s all about communication from God
Can you imagine being a little child and your parents refusing to talk to you? In the 1954 movie, Her Twelve Men, Greer Garson stars as a teacher at a boys academy to which wealthy parents sent their elementary school sons. One little boy waited at the mailroom each day for a letter from his parents. Nothing! No communication! The look on his face just tears your heart out. Are we just as heart-broken when the Bible tells us that at certain times in the history of Israel, “The Word of the LORD was rare”(1 Samuel 3:1)? What a horrible judgment from God that he would say to people, “OK! You don’t want to listen to me? Then I’m not talking to you!” That’s what was going on in Zephaniah’s day. The communication breakdown wasn’t God’s fault. The problem was that the people of Judah didn’t want to listen to God. We would think that God would have Zephaniah announce to those people in southern Israel what he told Amos to announce to the people of northern Israel one hundred forty years earlier, “The days are coming when I will send a famine through the land – not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD”(Amos 8:11).
Do you own a Bible? Of course you do. In fact, most of you probably have several. But do you use it? When we take Zephaniah’s message to heart, we find ourselves saying, “Shame on me, Lord, for not listening to you. Shame on me for pushing off personal Bible study with excuses like, ‘I don’t know where to start,’ when all I have to do is email my pastor on where to start, or ‘It’s too hard to understand,’ when most of the Bible is straight up and clear and easy to understand, and there are plenty of Bible reading helps for those portions that initially make us scratch our heads. Shame on me, Lord, for coming up with excuses to avoid studying your Word with others like, ‘I’m afraid I’ll look ignorant,’ when there are plenty of folks who would never dream of making fun of me, or ‘I don’t have time,’ when, if asked to go to a party with free food, I’d make time in a flash. And shame on me, Lord, for taking worship for granted. Shame on me, Lord, for knowing exactly what you say in your holy Word about how to conduct myself in relation to my family and my boss and the opposite gender, how to prioritize money and possessions, and yet still sticking to my ideas and opinions.” Because of the shameful way we fail to listen to God, he has a perfect right to cut off communication with us.
Instead God says through Zephaniah, “You will not be put to shame for all the wrongs you have done to me.” God opens up the lines of communication and stays connected to us. He is not silent but is a God who speaks, as is clearly evident from the first chapter of his holy book that records how he created the universe – and God said … and God said … and God said(Genesis 1:6,9,14, etc.) – all the way through the Bible. And he still speaks to us today whenever his words are read, remembered, pondered, and discussed. His book is unique because it’s not some collection of irrelevant stories but the true and only way God communicates what he thinks of us and how he connects himself to us.
The question is – why does he talk to us? For no reason other than that he is God, and he loves us. The proof of his love is communicated to us in the wonderful account focused on a Bethlehem feedbox, when God went to such lengths to demonstrate his desire to connect with us that he actually entered our world and took on not the form of a scary ogre or a massive beast, but the form of a little baby. Further proof of his love is communicated to us in the accounts of his Son’s consistently humble life of obedience which is then considered in God’s record books to be our life. And the ultimate proof of his love is communicated in the accounts of his Son’s astounding trek into the belly of hell ending in the bashing of Satan’s skull and our release from the devil’s dungeon. If God didn’t love us, he would remain silent and would not communicate all those things to us. But he is not silent. See him coming – your eternal King, who opens his lips and communicates with us so we can be connected to him.
It’s all about communication to God
A couple weeks ago during a visit to our son’s mission church in Florida, my wife was asked to offer a presentation to the pre-school parents. During that session my son and I provided the child-care for fifteen preschool kids. It didn’t take long and all wanted to talk at the same time. The noise level kept rising. It was more cacophony than symphony. That’s what the people of Judah and especially their leaders sounded like. They were living with the goofy notion that communicating with God and communication with their idols were on the same level and could happen at the same time. All of this confusing noise-making stemmed from their obsession with seeking pleasure and figuring “the gods” would make that happen. God could well have stuffed cotton down their throats and into his own ears.
But God gave Zephaniah an unexpected message. “I will restore lips that are purified to the peoples … my worshipers, my scattered people, will bring me offerings … I will remove from this city those who rejoice in their pride. Never again will you be haughty on my holy hill. But I will leave within you the meek and humble, who trust in the name of the LORD. The remnant of Israel will do no wrong; they will speak no lies, nor will deceit be found in their mouths.” He reversed the situation one hundred eighty degrees by driving haughty, snotty children to tears of sadness over their selfishness and sin, then turning them into humble, grateful children who delighted in the privilege of communicating with their heavenly Father. It’s one thing to know that the almighty God of heaven and earth communicates with us. Actually that would be enough. But our God astounds us with mercy and love beyond what we deserve or imagine and allows sinners like us to communicate with him.
Where do we learn what to say to God? Zephaniah says, “They will eat and lie down and no one will make them afraid.” As one commentator put it, “Content with who they are and where they are, unanxious they’ll live at peace” (The Message). One of the key roles parents play is helping their children learn how to communicate. It doesn’t take long, and parents learn the looks, the calls, the cries, and later the translating of the first sounds and syllables. And nothing helps a child’s sense of worth grow more than knowing, “Mommy and Daddy listen to me and value what I say.” We communicate to God with our worship, our praise, our prayers, and he listens. See him coming – your eternal King, who opens our lips to communicate to him.
It’s all about communication with others
Communication from God and to God is vertical. God has also given us the privilege of horizontal communication with others. In fact, that was God’s plan from the beginning. He did not design humans to be islands, disconnected from each other but wanted human beings to find joy in relationships with each other. The key to any relationship is finding a way to communicate with one another. That’s true for parents and children, for people who are dating, for spouses, for co-workers, for neighbors. When communication breaks down and devolves into stone-wall silence or revs up into yelling and emotional outbursts, nothing good happens and the relationships suffer.
That’s why we are thrilled to see how God has opened up the avenues of communication to us and from us and by that created the framework for our communication with each other. For example, in worship we come together to hear from him and to respond to him. But our responses are primarily retelling – here’s the key – to each other what he has done. The amazing thing of God’s New Testament church is who is involved in all this communicating. From beyond the rivers of Cush my worshipers … will bring me offerings. Cush is Ethiopia, in those days considered the end of the earth. This was startling news for the people of Judah. The running joke for foreigners approaching Judah’s border was, “Shhh! We better tiptoe because they think they’re the only ones on this planet.” The people of Judah thought they were the only ones cool enough to have a real “in” with God. But sharing and communicating God’s love would not only go to the farthest corners of the world, but the converted would join in communicating his goodness to others.
A real life fulfillment of this prophecy from Zephaniah can be seen in the efforts of our church body’s Board for World Missions. The board’s goal certainly revolves around communicating Jesus to people the world over but more specifically includes establishing seminaries in places like the Cameroon, Nigeria, Zambia, Malawi, Hong Kong, Mexico, Latin America, and Russia so that national pastors can join shoulder to shoulder with us in the communication to their own people.
A closer-to-home fulfillment of this prophecy from Zephaniah can be seen in your home, apartment, work place, neighborhood, family table, and car when you use your lips to offer comfort to someone needing a pick-me-up, encouragement to someone facing a medical ordeal, insight to someone seeking their role in life, direction to someone needing guidance after falling off God’s path, hope to someone who feels guilty. Your hand-written notes, your emails, your whispers, and your words all flavored with Jesus are a result of God working a miracle in your heart. Then I will restore lips that are purified to the peoples, that all of them may call on the name of the LORD. See him coming – your eternal King, who opens our lips to communicate with each other.
You can debate as long as you like on whether the radio telescope at Arecibo will ever hear sounds from life forms from outer space. I prefer to stick to what we know as fact. God loves us. He says so. You can take that to the bank … and tell others along the way. Amen.
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