Reading: Zephaniah 1-3, Psalm 134
In the very late 18th and early 19th century, there was a region of western New York that came to be called the “Burned Over District.” This was not, as one might think, the result of out of control wildfires, but due to the extensive practice of what would today be called “Fire and Brimstone” preaching in churches and by itinerant missionaries, and the rather energetic revivals that followed. It was a pretty unique period in American history. A generation earlier Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, and others had preached the first Great Awakening. Some of the ideas they popularized more or less led to the American Revolution. The revolutionary war had a dramatic effect on Christianity: by 1790, somewhere between 10 and 15 percent of the population belonged to a church. While “christian” practice dominated the culture, the church as a community pillar had collapsed. It was into that environment that the Second Great Awakening preachers like Charles Finney were born and grew up. Their “fire and brimstone” preaching revitalized the church as a social institution. While the “institutional” church is much maligned today, it is worth remembering that it gave birth to the temperance movement, the suffragettes, abolitionism, and the first social safety net programs. So maybe it doesn’t deserve such scorn.
The prophet Zephaniah was a great grandson of King Hezekiah, the faithful reformer, and a contemporary of King Josiah, the greatest religious reformer in the history of the kingdom of Israel. In between the reigns of Hezekiah and Josiah were those of Manasseh and Amon, two of the worst kings in their history. Manasseh’s reign ended with captivity by the Assyrians, and Amon’s violently with his death by revolt. As we have read in the books of Habakkuk and Nahum, doubt plagued the people of Jerusalem. Zephaniah began his public ministry during the reign of Josiah, but may well have lived through a great deal of the earlier reigns, and in any case the culture in which he was born was reeling from their effects.
Zephaniah’s preaching is certainly in the category of “fire and brimstone.” His opening line, I will utterly sweep away everything from the face of the Earth, is indicative of the rest of the book. There is little in Zephaniah that one would call nice language. He begins by putting everyone in Jerusalem in mind of the coming Day of the Lord, which heralds universal justice. God will come and repay everyone for what they have done. Justice is coming, and it will come everywhere. Jerusalem and the kingdom of Judah will be no refuge. Zephaniah is picking up the justice theme from Amos and Micah, and if anything making it more intense.
They he turns to the nations around Judah. The Philistines are mentioned as those who jump over the threshold, a reference to the collapse of Dagon in 1 Samuel 5. He lays into the coastal cities of Philistia, then turns around and puts the inland nations of Moab and Amon on blast. When he’s done with them, he turns south and says Cush (parts of Arabia and Ethiopia) are also done for. Then he’s ready to pronounce doom on Assyria and their capital of Nineveh, which gets more space than the rest of them put together. Once he’s done with the foreign nations, he turns back home to Jerusalem, just to make sure they haven’t forgotten they’ve got it coming too. Zephaniah is a short book, but might create a “Burned Over District” all by itself.
Zephaniah doesn’t end with a message of judgment. We’ve seen a pattern in the prophets of declaring judgment, then calling for repentance. When the repentance does not come or is incomplete, the prophets tell a story of judgment fulfilled, but with salvation woven into it. Zephaniah is no exception. Beginning in chapter 3 verse 9, he says God will change the speech of the people to a pure speech. An odd turn of phrase, unless one looks at the total destruction predicted in the first chapter of Zephaniah and thinks carefully about the book of Genesis. Remember that the prophets rooted their understanding of what they saw in the books of Moses. Zephaniah gets a vision of God wiping away everything from the face of the earth. This is a flood level reset. Recall that following the flood, we get the story of Babel, where God confused the languages of humans. Now Zephaniah sees a time when God undoes this curse and calls all his people back together under his rule. Zephaniah preaches a lot of destruction and judgment, but he also predicts a clear undoing on one of the major curses of Genesis- the confusion of language and the scattering of humanity.
Zephaniah closes his book with a comforting message for Jerusalem and the people of Israel. Though the reign of Manasseh was the last straw for Judah, the reign of Josiah saw the king and many of the people return to the worship of their God. There was a stay of execution for Judah, but as Zephaniah points out, the doom is coming eventually. But in this closing vision he looks past all that and sees a distant future hope: there will come a day when God himself will be king in Jerusalem, and he will restore the lame and the blind, remove the shame from his people and give them joy. God will fulfill his promises. He will bring judgment, and he will bring blessing. He will accomplish all of it. Nothing is left out, nothing is wasted.
The kind of preaching Zephaniah did has fallen out of favor. No one wants to hear about destruction and doom. They especially don’t want to hear it is deserved. But Zephaniah, and many of those Second Great Awakening preachers who made for a “Burned Over District,” understood something about this kind of judgment that we have forgotten: It is for the restoration of all things. God will bring judgment because evil demands justice. God is the only one capable of doing it, and so he will. But he won’t stop there. God will bring all things to justice, but then God will make all things new.