Word of Salvation – Vol. 26 No. 24 – March 1981

 

The Church At Rest

 

Sermon by Rev. Dr. M. Woudstra on Zephaniah 3:12,13

Scripture: Zephaniah 3:1-20

For I will leave in the midst of you a people humble and lowly They shall seek refuge in the name of the LORD those who are left in Israel; they shall do no wrong and utter no lies, nor shall there be found in their moutha deceitful tongue.For they shall pasture and lie down,and none shall make them afraid.

Psalter Hymnal: 204; 386; 38; 471

 

Beloved Congregation:

We sing in that well known hymn: “And the Great Church Victorious, Shall be the Church at Rest”.

In my text there is something about that church at rest. Maybe we should not speak of it. Maybe we should urge the church not to be at rest, to be up and doing. After all there is such a thing as a comfortable pew. There is a rest which is not much else than complacency. It is a resting on one’s laurels while one should be manning the front lines.

I do not speak of that kind of false rest, that false security. There is reason why the church should be told constantly about her duty and her heavenly calling. ‘Fight the good fight, with all thy might’, that is a good exhortation which must be heard from the pulpit again and again.

But there is also room for the other. There is room for a presentation of the blessed prospect of peace. St.Andrew of Crete’s great hymn which is a battle hymn also has the element of peace after conflict. ‘Peace shall follow battle, Night shall end in day.’

Where would we be, where would anyone of us be, if that were not true along with the other. Who would be able to stand one hour in the battle of life if it were not for the blessed prospect of the peace, the safety and the undisturbed rest that awaits all God’s children. To speak of that peace is not to create a false optimism that does not see reality. It is meant to face reality with greater hope, greater determination, and greater steadfastness.

The Church at Rest

– A Lowly church

– A Sinless church

– A Safe church

The People of that church are left… Lowly… Sinless… Safe.

Thus far we have assumed that the text speaks about the church. Is that assumption correct? Yes and no. The text speaks about those that are left in Israel. Now Israel is the Old Testament people of God. And the Bible makes it quite clear that the NT church is a continuation of Israel. So we may apply this word to Israel and to the church. Israel had to go into exile because of its sins. But God would not completely destroy them. A remnant would come back.

It would be good for Israel to know this. For the prophet had spoken earlier of the great day of the LORD. That would be a day of judgment upon disobedient Israel and Judah. Judah had departed from the covenant. It had served the stars of heaven rather than God who made the stars. It had copied outlandish fashions thereby indicating that it wanted to be like those others who did not fear the LORD. For all this there had to come judgment.

Zephaniah describes it very vividly. He hears the crushing in of the walls. He picks up the wailing of the people as the enemy pushes forward through the city. And then he gives us one of the classic descriptions of the Day of Judgment: It is near, it is hastening fast. It is a day of wrath, of distress and anguish, a day of darkness and of gloom.

You see how comforting this word of the text is for Judah. On the one hand: all the earth shall be consumed. A full sudden end he shall make of all the inhabitants of the earth.

And yet I shall leave in the midst of you a people humble and lowly. Israel should know that when it survives it survives wholly by the sheer goodness and grace of God. It always knew it. It knew it from the start. It knew it from the time when God said to that childless couple Abraham and Sarai: I will make your seed as the sand of the sea and as the stars of the heaven. It knew it when God said to Elijah that he had left seven thousand who had not bent their knee to Baal.

God’s people are a people that are left. This also applies to the church today. God’s people are those who are left.

It is true as the hymn says that it will be the great church victorious that will be the church at rest. But the shouts of victory should not make us forget: The victory is won by grace. It is of God’s goodness that we are not consumed. ‘Not unto us, not unto us, but unto thy name be praise’. That is what Israel said in its better moments. That is what the church continues to say. ‘Other refuge have I ́none, hangs my helpless soul on thee.’

I will leave in the midst of you a people humble and lowly (afflicted and poor [ASV and NEB]). They shall seek refuge in the name of the LORD; those who are left in Israel. This takes us to our second thought. The left people are the lowly people, and the lowly are those who take refuge in the Lord.

That notion of the lowliness of the church is an interesting one. The humble and the lowly are a special category in the Bible. They often belonged to the oppressed, the downcast. God had a special concern for them. The humble of the land was originally an economic expression but it began to take on more and more the meaning of those who trust in the LORD. The humble and the lowly often had no other recourse than to God. So the word became synonymous with the righteous. These were the ones who put their faith in the LORD and sought to do his will. It is in essence the same people of whom Jesus says: Blessed are the poor in spirit.

Earlier the prophet already has used these words. Seek the Lord, so he says, all ye humble of the land, who do his commands, seek righteousness, seek humility.

There you have it: the humble of the land are the ones who do the commandments of the LORD. This could even apply to the rich, the well to do. It is basically not a matter of economics but of attitude, the attitude of trust and faith.

Doing the commandments of God makes one belong to the poor and the humble. So does the taking refuge in the LORD. Other refuge have I none. The old writers would often speak of a faith that was: refuge taking. A refuge is a place of safety from trouble or danger. It is a shelter in the time of storm. It is sure retreat.

Seeking refuge may be an act of cowardice but it need not be. It may also be a sign that we know the strength of the enemy, the weakness of our faith, and the power of the LORD. Those who seek refuge are not necessarily those who do not go out and do battle for the LORD. They are the men and the women who go out to their jobs, their occupations, on the days of the week. They stand in the frontlines of commerce and enterprise. Yet they know of that safe hiding place. They know that only through prayerful leaning on the great power of God will they be able to stand one moment. Faith is a refuge-taking faith, There is no other.

The prophet says it even a bit more precisely. He says that the lowly and the humble will seek refuge in the name of the LORD. These people do not have faith in an unknown God. They have faith in a God whose name they know. God’s name is that whereby He makes himself known. That name does great things for it stands for God as He is and wants to be known by us. In that name kings have defeated the enemy. David felled Goliath in the name of Jehovah. Peter raised the lame beggar at the gate called Beautiful in the name of the Lord Jesus of Nazareth That name was called over the temple,the ark. That name has been called over us as babies when we lay helpless in our parent’s arms and when we were baptized in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.

They shall seek refuge in the Name, those that are left in Israel.

This is a description of you and of me together with the Israel of old. Does it fit? Do you recognize yourself? Do you say: Yes, that is I?

I am not asking you first of all to strive to become what you are not. But since I speak to church people I am asking you to be aware of what you are. When Jesus lifted his eyes on the multitude on the mount he did not say: Seek to be poor in spirit. He said, as he beheld the multitude, the Israel of his time, his followers, his disciples: “Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you that hunger now, for you shall be satisfied.”

Likewise Zephaniah says in effect: “Know yourselves for what you are. Left and lowly, humble and refuge seeking.” And in knowing yourselves that way, share the blessedness that comes with that knowledge. The forces of evil are great and threatening. They are within us still and they do battle without. God leaves in the midst of it all a people that is lowly and humble. Jesus saw them when he lifted up his eyes and I see them, God’s people.

Lowliness, Here is your and my measuring stick. Do we fit the description? humility, trust, faith in the all powerful God? Those are some of the marks of childhood, of peoplehood, and it applies to us individually and to us corporately. Only those who answer this description will be left when the Day comes, when certainties crumble and when the world seems to be crashing down on us.

The church is also described as a sinless church, “They shall do no wrong, and utter no lies, nor shall there be found in their mouth, a deceitful tongue.”

This is an amazing statement of a people this side of perfection. Doing no wrong, that is sinlessness is it not? And what about the tongue that utter no lies or deceit? The epistle of James says that the tongue cannot be tamed by anyone. No matter how much a person may think that he is religious says James, if he does not bridle the tongue he is in effect deceiving his heart.

Yet here it is: those who are left, the humble and the lowly are those who do no wrong, and utter no lies. It is clear that the language at this point goes beyond the church this side of perfection. The Jerusalem we are told about here is none other than the Jerusalem which John sees coming down from heaven. Into that city nothing unclean shall enter, Rev.21:27, or anyone who loves or practices falsehood (a lie) Rev.22:15.

As the language goes this is the state of perfection. Yet one would go wrong if he pressed the language unduly. John Calvin would understand this as an absolute statement concerning a relative improvement. Relatively speaking the people of Israel after the return from exile are more pure than their forefathers. The great lie of idolatry in that crass form is no longer practiced. Haggai and Zechariah, prophets from the time after the exile, speak of the people’s sins to be sure, but they do so in language that is different from that used by Micah and Amos who lived before the exile. God’s humble people are first of all those who came back with Ezra and Zerubbabel. But yet, the language is such that one may and must look beyond that point. The language reminds one of what a much later writer in a much later book of the Bible would pen down: 1John 3:6. Yet John knew very well that sin is here to stay as long as the church is in the world and the world is in the church.

Let us not be too quick to dismiss this as wishful thinking. At the beginning of Israel’s history as a nation there stands this tremendous word: You shall be to me a royal priest.1ood, a holy nation. That is what God wanted Israel to be, and to the extent that Israel lived according to the commandments, that is what Israel was.

Is it any wonder therefore that the prophet, as he looks beyond the judgment, as he speaks of the lowly people who will be left, begins to see the fulfilment of that great word? A holy people ? God had never dropped that demand: Be holy for I am holy. Yet, no matter how hard Israel tried, and often it did not try at all, that holiness was an article of faith – but reality often ill corresponded with that article of faith. So Israel’s history cried out, as it were, for the ONE through whom alone the word of John could become true: He who abides in Him sinneth not. To Him this word points forward. Only in Him can it possibly become a reality. Thanks be to God: It has become a reality in Him. Through Him we today are the royal priesthood and the holy nation of which God already spoke at Sinai. And something of this word is applicable to us. We believe a HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH, do we not?

Here again I suppose it is as we saw earlier. We need not try to become what we are not, we are to be better what we are. The remnant church shall do no wrong, neither utter lying or deceit. For in the Lord the Spirit and the gifts are ours. “Jesus Christ laid down his life for us”. “No one who lives in him keeps on sinning”.

Finally we also read of the safe church. Those who are left, the humble and the lowly are those who will pasture and lie down, and none shall make them afraid. This is the imagery of the flock; an image also used by Jesus in the NT, but already widely used in the Old Testament. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. Ezekiel devotes a whole chapter to the picture of the shepherd and the flock. Jeremiah speaks of it. And so do some of the other prophets. The remnant church and lowly church is also the safe church, no more fear of predators, no more wolves to prey on the sheep of Christ.

The imagery of the flock and the shepherd is so well known that it does not need much explanation. Yet I have heard it criticized in a sermon. I can understand some of that criticism. Not as if the Biblical figure as such should be criticized. But maybe we have tended at times to make something of it that it was never intended to be.

It is possible, is it not, to think of this rich image a bit too passively. The shepherd, the pastor, he does the leading, the caring, the feeding. He is to do it all or almost all. We expect everything from him. This is indeed a misconception. Next to that of the shepherd and the sheep there is also the image of the spiritual armour which we must wear. There is the idea of bearing our cross, there is the parable of the pound with which we must do some trading. All of these and several others add up to the total picture of what the Christian life is all about.

And yet, this too is part of it. They will pasture and lie down and none shall make them afraid. The church is a safe church, safe now already in principle and safe in the future for all eternity.

What a comfort this must have been for the Judean people of Zephaniah’s days. They had heard all those dreadful things about the coming of the great Day of the LORD. It was a day of darkness and terror, of clouds and thick darkness. What a heaping up of terms it was to describe that day. Neither was it clear to them that they would not feel anything of that day themselves, even if they were among the godly.

It was the Dies Irae of which they spoke so much in the Middle Ages. Zephaniah has been used in medieval poems to describe that day in all its vivid details.

But after the judgment the sky breaks clear. The sun of God’s grace starts to shine. There is a peace that awaits the children of God. There is a ‘Jerusalem the golden with milk and honey blest, beneath whose contemplation sink heart and mind oppressed.’

To speak of our longing for heaven does not mean to shut our eyes for the struggle that still awaits us. Our forefathers sang of the blessed hope, and at the same time they saved their pennies and their nickels to give to kingdom causes. The one does not exclude the other.

There is a way in which we can look upon life as something we are just passing through. There is an unwholesome otherworldliness which sometimes marks the life of Christians. But there is also the proper and wholesome longing for the safety of the harbour, for the rest after the journey, for the peace that follows the conflict. Of that the prophet speaks here: They shall lie down and find pasture and no one shall make them afraid.

As remnant church on earth let us belong to the lowly that seek refuge in the Lord’s name in order that at last we come to that dear land of rest where all our tears shall be wiped away, and we shall be forever with God.

Let us sing of the “pastures of the blessed” with the words of 471.

Amen