“All the wrongs you have done to me” (3:11).  Oof.  Did you pick up that God is speaking here to His own?  God says He will remove.  He will purify.  He loves His humble people: He will see to it that they do no wrong and tell no lies (3:13).  How?  They will not want to; it will be abhorrent to them.  He changes the life by changing the heart.  To purify the lips, as Isaiah also experienced, it will take fire, the fire of the Spirit.  If you are purified by the Spirit, beloved, you are purified indeed!

Over the last half of this year, I’ve been speaking off and on about purity.  We cannot make ourselves pure; we only cooperate with or hold out against the purifying work of the Spirit in us.  How strange, that people should be able to resist the working of the Holy Spirit, that they would want to, but God does not revoke our freedom; He wants us to use our God-given freedom to glorify the giver.  We are experts at receiving.  All of us—and believe me, I include myself!—we have much yet to learn about giving.  We have an excellent teacher in Jesus Christ.  He wants our freedom to be useful for us, not useless.  Freedom that leads to condemnation is not very useful, brothers and sisters!

To purify our lips is to purify what comes out of our mouths.  Do you tend to speak when you should refrain from speaking?  Do you, like me, have a tendency to speak first and think afterwards?  We don’t mean to wound by our words, except when we do.  What is the purpose of God’s Word, beloved?  To bless!  Let us learn and practice speaking for blessing.

What comes from our mouths does not originate there.  Jesus teaches that what comes out of the mouth has its origin elsewhere: places and deep places in our hearts (Lk 6:45).  If God means to purify our lips, He will purify our hearts.  Through His prophet Zephaniah, God is saying the day will come when He purifies the lips, the hearts of people everywhere, from all nations (3:9).  The Church is large and not confined to one people or language.  God means for many to call on His name, to claim and be claimed by His name.  All the claimed shall “serve Him shoulder to shoulder” (3:9): God is forging a brotherhood of faith; in Christ, we are all blood brothers.  As we devote ourselves to God, we pledge ourselves to one another.  God is our strength, He is our purpose, He is our light, hope, and salvation.  Praise His holy name.

God calls His own to bless Him, acknowledge and honor Him, but His own wrong His name.  Every sin wrongs the name of God.  Even we, His own people, still wrong His name.  God help me!  God help us.  Let us never be too proud or hard-hearted to hang our heads and cry.  Our lack of truthfulness—and not just with others!—is like the nail hammered into Christ’s left hand.  Our lack of compassion, the nail driven into his right hand.  Our running after what harms our souls is the nail in Christ’s feet.  Our habit of self-regard, self-satisfaction, and self-seeking over meekness and humility is the spear jabbed into Christ’s side.  We are wounders, beloved, and we are wounded.  Christ came to heal and heal us he shall.  By his wounds we are healed: awful glory, gory grace.  Holy, holy, holy.

God promises that the day shall come when “arrogant boasters” shall be no more in Jerusalem (3:11).  Jerusalem is that place on earth where God has been pleased to make His name to dwell.  The Church is Jerusalem.  Our hearts are Jerusalem.  How will He remove arrogance and boasting?  He will purify, by fire, the fiery sword of the Word, warning Adam and Eve that they may not return to the garden, until.  God will purify His people, His Church, our hearts, by the Spirit.  How bright we all shall be, on that day, gleaming as we reflect God’s light!

“Never again will you be haughty on my holy hill” (3:11).  God isn’t speaking only of Zion, the Temple mount.  God is speaking of that hill far away.  That holy hill is the end of haughtiness, self-superiority, self-determination.  Skull Hill is where, in the power of the Holy Spirit, God breaks haughty hearts, so that the humble heart may come to light, emerge as though reborn, returned to life.  “I will leave within you the meek and humble.  The remnant of Israel will trust in the name of the Lord” (3:12).  Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth (Mt 5:5).  God is telling us that the meek and the humble are those who trust in the name of the Lord.  The name is the character, who God is: faithfulness to His promise, good as His Word, grace, love.  How many there are who deny God because, in this world where so much bad happens, they cannot or will not believe that God is good.  They wonder what this supposed power of God could possibly be.  For these, in the face of human suffering, His grace, His love, and His faithfulness all amount to nothing.  We are all still liable to such thoughts—feelings.  We are all still liable to blame God, both for the consequences of our own choices and the choices of those who have power on this earth.  God gave freedom, and we curse Him for His blessing.

The meek and the humble are being healed of these ills, being purified of these stains upon the honor and glory of God.  We are being glorified for the glory of God.  We hear God, through Zephaniah, say that His own “will do no wrong; they will tell no lies” (3:13).  For God, truth is better than gold.  God is truth, and all truthfulness exhibits God to the world.  All truthfulness enthrones God within the heart.  God will purify the heart so that He may dwell there.  No lies, no wrong.  Every lie is a wrong, every wrong a lie.

What part of God’s Word gives you most pain?  Why?  Pray for light, beloved, for a purified heart, and for patience.  Alongside me, let us learn to trust in the name of the Lord.  Together, let us learn the ways of meekness and humility—how I still need to learn!  How I long for the day when I shall no longer do wrong!  If I do no wrong, may it be because I then do right, do righteousness!  If I do righteousness, beloved, it is because I am being purified.  If I am being purified, sisters and brothers, it is because the Holy Spirit has come to dwell within this heart, and I know I am no longer alone, and I know I am loved with creation love, love that keeps its Word: love as good as its Word.

I hope I help you to cherish this love every Sunday.  Zephaniah, hearing these wonderful words of life, calls God’s own together to sing and “rejoice with all your heart” (3:14).  Consider again why: “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” (3:15).  The King is with us, God with Us, Immanuel.  The Enemy is vanquished.  Sin is atoned for.  Death is destroyed.  Already.  It is finished.  So many live afraid, but not in the one fear that brings life: the fear of the Lord.  If sin is atoned for, as it certainly is—if death is destroyed, as it certainly is—shall we live our lives then in fear other than the fear of the Lord?  Will we, then, allow some other fear to rule our hearts and sway our minds, darken our souls and enfeeble our hands?

“On that day they will say to Jerusalem, ‘Do not fear, Zion; do not let your hands hang limp’” (3:16).  What they will say?  The meek and the humble?  The saints?  The angels?  Perhaps Zion speaking to Zion, the Church singing to the Church, the departed saints to those still persevering, the faithful to the faithful.  Have you ever spoken to yourself, reasoned, pleaded with yourself?  Beloved, the Spirit is the Comforter, our Friend, our encouragement and hope.  The Spirit is within God’s own, and says do not let fear rule or darken your life; remember who dwells with you, within you, and where you are being led, guided, shepherded, faithfully: all the way, my Savior leads me.  Act, then.  Sing, then. Pray, then.  Take courage; have hope; rejoice in faith.

“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” (3:17).  God with us saves.  Immanuel God saves.  The rebuke, the wakeup call: Stop! Turn! Return!  This was also spoken in love: the correction, the call to change, to repentance.  If God has allowed us—you, and me—to taste, hear, see, feel the consequences of our God-dishonoring actions and choices, it is to call us to the new mind and new heart He holds out to us.  Hard as it is—and it is hard!—let us praise God for His correction, His rebuke.  “For His anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime; weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning” (Ps 30:5).  Our rejoicing, and His.

Did you hear?  He will rejoice over us with singing.  How joyful, God’s song!  He will sing as He gathers; He will sing His harvest song.  How joyful the harvest.  If Thanksgiving came as a joyful time of gathering as family, gathering in faith, how much more joyful that joyful gathering to come.  “At that time I will gather you; at that time I will bring you home” (3:20).  The Word of the LORD.

Now, to the One who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all we can ask or imagine, to God be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever.