Three Rs of sin - recognition, repetition, reputation

1. Recognition. If you have never realised that a certain thing is a sin then you are not likely to feel convicted.

If you don't know that it is a sin to worry or a sin not to keep the Lord's Day special then your conscience will not convict you. It is only when you see such things are sins that you are likely to come under conviction.

2. Repetition. Even when we know something is sinful, we may not feel convicted about it because we have done it so many times so much so that we are hardly aware we are doing it.

Think of a person who feels guilty about swearing or making rude jokes at first but gets so used to it that 

he does not notice it any more. The same with gossip, lying. and other sins.

3. Reputation. As for reputation, we are ashamed of some sins just because we know what others will think of us.

A person may be quite happy to steal or to do something spiteful or malicious to another or to cheat on his wife – as long as no-one else knows about it. The very fact that he may be found out often stops a person from committing a sin and when he does, the reaction of others to it can bring deep conviction.

A great clean up of stumbling blocks

Zephaniah 1:2, 3 "I will sweep away everything from the face of the earth," declares the LORD. "I will sweep away both man and beast; I will sweep away the birds in the sky and the fish in the sea-- and the idols that cause the wicked to stumble." "When I destroy all mankind on the face of the earth," declares the LORD, 

(1. Who is going to bring about this judgment? The LORD himself)

2. What will be its chief characteristic?

You notice the repeated idea of sweeping away. It begins "I will sweep away everything from the face of the earth," declares the LORD. Then there is some itemisation "I will sweep away both man and beast; I will sweep away the birds in the sky and the fish in the sea - and the idols that cause the wicked to stumble." If there is any doubt about what such sweeping away by God entails, the phrase "When I destroy all mankind on the face of the earth," declares the LORD makes it clear.

Just as when someone takes a brush and sweeps the rubbish up across the floor so God will come one day and he will sweep away all unrighteousness. It's a great clean up.

When I was a child my mother would have a big clean up in the house, which was fine but sometimes there were things that I treasured that she would throw away because they were cluttering up the house. It is something like that when God is at work.

In doing what he says he will do, God will destroy the whole earth including the unrighteous, consigning them to hell. The New Testament speaks of this (2 Peter 3:10) But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.

3. What will be swept away?

In verse 3 Zephaniah enumerates who will be swept away. It is like Genesis 1 in reverse. There we read of the creation of man and before that of the beasts and before that the birds and the fish. Here he says I will sweep away both man and beast; I will sweep away the birds in the sky and the fish in the sea …. All of creation is going to be swept away when this great day of judgment comes. He adds - and the idols that cause the wicked to stumble. On the fourth day God made the sun, moon and stars, which people have made idols of. But they also will be destroyed.

These idols that cause the wicked to stumble really are stumbling blocks. They get in the way of true worship and cause people to fall into sin. When someone trips over something in the street we say he has hit a stumbling block. That literal thing is a picture of the way idols get in the way and cause people to fall. But they will not last.

It all reminds us of Jesus's own words in Matthew 13:40, 41 As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil.

The whole thing may sound negative but in fact it is very positive for this will mean the end of idolatry and all the wickedness associated with it when God judges all the earth. This drive against idols has already begun but it will be completed when Jesus comes again.

(4. How ought we to react? Be holy)

Knowing the truth is only half the battle.

Knowing the truth is important but it's only half the battle. A medical expert may know all there is to know about a certain disease but it is of no use if he misapplies his knowledge. If he treats you with all his expertise but you have some other disease not his speciality, it will do you no good. Rather, it may do you harm. So it's not enough to know that God is just, we need to know how that justice is worked out – and we have to say that it's not always as straightforward as we may expect. We must believe God is just – it is a core biblical doctrine. However, it will not always be obvious that God is being just in the way that he acts towards individuals.

A theological argument against worrying - God's omniscience

Luke 12:30 ends and your Father knows that you need them (food, clothes, etc). What a powerful argument that is. If only we could remember that whatever we are worrying about, God knows exactly what the need is, how he will meet it and every other circumstance. God is omniscient – he knows everything. To worry about things really makes no sense at all. It is like a young child in the UK lying awake at night worrying about whether his parents will remember to give him breakfast or whether they will remember to put clothes on him. Of course they will! (Certainly in nearly all the cases we know anything about). In a similar way, we need not fear that God will ignore us or neglect us. He will do everything that needs to be done.

The Sovereignty of God and boldness

John Knox is rather forgotten in Scotland today but he was the Great Reformer who transformed the country. All we read about him reveals him to be a prophetic figure who was not afraid to speak in the boldest terms to the Scottish Queen, Mary Queen of Scots. Mary could not believe his audacity. He was once asked how he could defy the queen and oppose her views in the way that he did, even though she was Queen. He famously replied, "When you have just spent time on your knees before the King of Kings, you do not find the Queen of Scotland to be so frightening." With David (Psalm 56:11) he could say in God I trust; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?

If you are aware of the sovereignty of God, especially as it brings us to our knees in prayer, then you will be bold for him. This is a desperate need of our times.

The Sovereignty of God

In Isaiah 6 Isaiah does not argue with the Lord. He does not think that he knows better. He is willing to humbly and trustingly obey whatever the Lord says. If it is God's will to ruin and depopulate cities, to leave houses ... deserted … fields ruined and ravaged and send the people into exile and more – Isaiah will still go in obedience to his Lord and Master.

This is the spirit seen in some of the finest missionaries the church has known. Henry Martyn, the brilliant Cambridge student from Cornwall, is rightly famous as the young man who in the 19th century went out to India and Persia with the gospel and died before doing half that he intended. He is said to have seen only one convert. But he believed in the sovereignty of God. He once wrote home in a letter “If we labour to the end of our days without seeing one convert, it shall not be worse for us in time, and our reward is the same in eternity. The cause in which we are engaged is the cause of mercy and truth, and therefore in spite of seeming impossibilities it must eventually prevail.”

Lord Ion Keith Falconer is another lesser known missionary, who lived a little later than Martyn and worked in Aden in the Yemen. Another gifted young man, brilliant in Arabic, he went out preaching the gospel but seemingly with little or no success. Yet some years later another missionary in Aden could write

“During the years since the mission was started there have been very few converts, but there have been some. Work among Muslims is very hard, ... but the work goes on, and the endeavour is made to win the people for Christ. All this work is directly due to the self-sacrificing labour of Ion Keith-Falconer, who is still remembered by some of the older people, who when they were boys were accustomed to receive sweets from him. His name is commemorated in the title of the mission, which is called the Keith-Falconer Mission and in that of the United Free Church at Steamer Point called the Keith-Falconer Memorial Church. … (and here speaks a man who clearly believes in the sovereignty of God) … One happy day, Mohammad's Crescent will yield and disappear before Christ's Cross; and, when this day dawns, the young scholar, whose torch seemed to be stifled and extinguished far too speedily among the Arabian sands, will be counted among those who have brought about the glad consummation.”

Preliminary Sketches

You know that when a painter is going to paint a masterpiece he will often make several preliminary sketches before he starts on the piece itself. We can think of it like that. Before the masterpiece which is the incarnation, the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, there are preliminary sketches like the one in Joshua 5:13-15 or the other Old Testament theophanies. A close examination of this piece then will help us to understand better the masterpiece that is Jesus Christ.