The Day of the Lord (Zephaniah)

What does the Bible say about the future—and why does it matter today? In this message from Zephaniah, Pastor Chris Teien explores The Day of the Lord and what it means for believers and the nation of Israel. Though this small book may seem grim at first glance, it holds vital truths about God’s justice, restoration, and our hope in Christ’s return.

Link: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2285086/episodes/1408674

Key Points:

1. The Day of the Lord Is a Time of Judgment – Zephaniah 1 describes a day of reckoning for sin and rebellion.
2. God Protects the Humble and Repentant – Zephaniah 2:3 invites us to seek the Lord for shelter from wrath.
3. God Has a Future Plan for Israel – Zephaniah 3 reveals a day of purification, peace, and restored worship.
4. The Church Will Be Raptured Before Judgment – 1 Thessalonians 4 and Revelation 20 support a hopeful future.
5. Jesus Will Reign as King Over All – Zephaniah 3:17 celebrates God's presence, joy, and justice on earth.

Personal Stories from Pastor Chris:

• Candid reflection on differing end-times views and how he remains a “hopeful pre-trib” believer.
• How King Josiah’s national revival was influenced by Zephaniah’s prophecy.
• Encouragement to trust Jesus even when we don’t fully grasp God’s timeline.

Notable Quotes:

• “The Day of the Lord will be terrifying for some—but comforting for those in Christ.”
• “Zephaniah’s message is a call to live humbly, urgently, and faithfully.”
• “You don’t have to decode every prophecy—you just need to follow Jesus now.”

Actionable Takeaways:

1. Seek the Lord daily with humility and trust.
2. Share your hope with others as the world grows darker.
3. Support Israel and pray for its peace and future.
4. Study prophecy to strengthen your faith, not to fear the future.

Scripture References:

• Zephaniah 1–3 – Judgment and restoration
• 1 Thessalonians 4:13–18 – The rapture and return
• Revelation 20 – Christ’s reign
• Romans 2:5 – Storing up judgment
• 2 Peter 3:10–13 – Living holy lives as we wait
• Zechariah 14 – Reign of the Lord
• Matthew 24:14 – Gospel preached before the end

Keywords:
 Zephaniah, Day of the Lord, prophecy, second coming, Israel, Jesus' return, rapture, end times, judgment, hope

Closing Statement:
 God’s judgment is real, but so is His promise to restore and reign. Whether or not we know every detail, we can live for Christ today with confidence and urgency, knowing He is coming soon.

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Helping you apply God's Word and follow Jesus in everyday life. Learn more at ChrisTeien.com and Rockwell.church  Find episode transcripts at Well.faith 

Transcript

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Chris T 0:16

All right. So I was praying about what to share, and I feel like I am trying to drink water from an open fire hydrant because there are so many things that I could say. And so I want to talk about when Jesus returns in the day of the Lord and God's place for Israel in the future. And I am not an expert on all current events, nor do I even trust that the news broadcasts I see are even accurate or true. But I want to talk about eschatology a bit, though I know that there is so many ways that it can be debated. People have all sorts of ideas as to how Jesus returns. And in the very small, minor prophetical book, Zephaniah, he lays out what the day of the Lord is. And if you were to read through that, if you were to skim through that, you might just bypass everything in there because you're like, oh, this is like all doom and gloom here. Nothing happy and blessed for me here today. I'll just move on. Ground rules for discussing eschatology in our church is that we do have a statement of faith. And it does not cover everything about the Lord's return, but it covers enough. It reveals enough as to what this church believes about the end times. Statement of faith, our statement of faith, which is the converged statement of faith, though I've noticed that many of the different converged churches have different Bible verses that support the statement. Even some of our nearby converged churches have different Bible verses that support the statement. But this is what Emmanuel or Chisholm or Emmanuel and Rockwell and I guess the Virginia Baptist Church and the Evelith one had come up with. The last things. We believe in a personal, invisible return of the Lord Jesus Christ to earth and the establishment of his kingdom. We believe in the resurrection of the body, the final judgment, the eternal joy of the righteous, and the endless suffering of the wicked. And then it gives those verses. John 14 says, Jesus says, I'll go and prepare a place for you, and I'll come back and take you to be with me, so that you also may be where I am. So clearly says we believe that Jesus is returning for us. In 1 Thessalonians 4, 13 through 18, it talks about Jesus returning. In verse 17, it says, We who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, which would be the rapture, which means that this church believes that at some point Jesus is coming back to get us before Armageddon, before the big final judgments, before everything falls apart in the world, before what it says in the book of Zephaniah takes place. That's easy to see from the statement of faith. There's freedom to have different takes on things. Like I know some of you believe that Jesus is going to come back after the tribulation. Some think that Jesus is going to come back halfway in between, three and a half years in before things get bad. Jesus is going to come back, take his church up out of the way before he starts to judge the world and restore Israel. And many are pre-tribulational, which means that you believe that Jesus is coming to get you before the Antichrist shows up in the big dreadful show happens. And I am hopeful pre-trib. I give you lots of reasons for that, but for some reason I will change to mid-trib if I'm wrong. Or post-trib. I'm just waiting to see how it all turns out and trusting Jesus is going to get us through. And so then we have Revelation chapter 20. And here we have Jesus returning and reigning on earth. And in Revelation chapter 20, it repeatedly uses the term a thousand years. He bound Satan for a thousand years. He sealed Satan in the abyss and kept him from deceiving the nations until the thousand years had ended. Talks about those who rejected the antichrist, did not worship the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ a thousand years. But the rest of the dead did not come to life again till the thousand years were ended. The second death has no power over them, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with him for a thousand years. And when the thousand years are over, Satan will be released. It repeatedly says, a thousand years, a thousand years, a thousand years. And that's where we come up with the idea that Jesus is coming back to reign for a thousand years. And if he doesn't, then Old Testament prophecy doesn't make sense because a lot of the prophecies were unfulfilled. Some of the stuff that I will talk about in the time that we have. Chuck Swindah, Greg Laurie, David Jeremiah, John MacArthur, Chip Ingram, and so many preachers that write books, write good eschatology books and have videos on these things if you're wanting to find out what some of these things are. And for every voice you have that says one thing, you get an opposing voice that says, no, that's not the way it is. No. And so it can be very confusing. It makes it hard for a pastor to preach on eschatology when he only gets 30, 35 minutes each week, because it's hard to carry on what all the information, the backstory, everything that's needed. So your best bet is through a small group Bible study, through training videos and things like that to figure out what exactly is going to happen and how it's going to happen. And no one's actually got it figured out 100%, but we'll be able to look back and say, okay, yeah, now I get it. Now I see how that happened. And there's just so many things that we don't know. So one thing that all of these former authors or these authors that I just pointed out would mention is that it's hard to see America in Bible prophecy. Some say, oh, America is Babylon, but others are like, no, so what happened to America? So maybe they're not a force anymore, or maybe so many people were raptured away, they didn't matter anymore. But so if you turn back the clock to the days of the last good king of Judah, Josiah, the one who found the law in the temple, and had it read to all the people who came up with reforms to try to set everything straight in a wicked, pretty much godless land. We find the prophet Zephaniah crying out and proclaiming the word of the Lord. And he repeatedly uses the phrase, the day of the Lord. So does Joel and so does Zechariah and so do many others talk about the day of the Lord, and it's basically the day that Jesus comes back at the end of the tribulation and makes everything right. He destroys the wicked people, he sets up a throne in Jerusalem or He reigns. The world is a different place, and all of these Old Testament prophecies start to come true. The ones that talk about the righteous ruling king who makes things right. And it appears that the church, the New Testament church, which had an opportunity to experience God's salvation, even though they were not the chosen ones that the Israelites were, will come back and reign with Jesus, and that will be an exciting thing that we're supposed to look forward to. I don't know as far as current Israel and the war and everything they're doing, how much of that is godly and how much of it isn't. They are still in a period where they're rejecting God. Not all of Israel is pleasing God with what they do, but they definitely have a right to exist, and the Bible makes it pretty clear that the nations that bless and support Israel will be blessed themselves. And our country has done a really good job of that over the years. I hope that it continues, but there are some other countries saying that Israel has no right to exist and that they should be eliminated, and that's not God's will. And I don't think that is going to happen, but let me just jump into this. Number one, the day of the Lord, according to Zephaniah, is a terrifying time of judgment. A terrifying time of judgment, of destruction, of the sinful people, godless people being destroyed. And I can't go through the whole book of Zephaniah in the time that we have, especially on a communion Sunday. But it's interesting that verse 7, Zephaniah says, Stand in silence in the presence of the sovereign Lord, for the awesome day of the Lord's judgment is near. The Lord has prepared his people for a great slaughter and has chosen their executioners. This is one of these prophecies that have double meaning. Babylon has been chosen to come to take Judah, which is part of the southern part of Israel. The kingdoms were divided after King Solomon. So you had the ten tribes in the north that can were Israel and then Jerusalem, and the two tribes in the south were Judah. And so you have Babylon coming for them. And this is before Daniel was written. So Daniel was one of those who was carried off in the Babylonian captivity. So this is a prophecy that is saying that this is coming, but it goes beyond that. It's not only for that period of time, but it's also pointing forward to the end of days, the day of the Lord. And it is destructive. Zephaniah 1.14 says, That terrible day of the Lord is near. Swiftly it comes, a day of bitter tears, a day when even strong men will cry out. It will be a day when the Lord's anger is poured out, a day of terrible distress and anguish, a day of ruin and desolation, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and blackness, because these people have rebelled against God. Judah was so wicked back then, they said, Oh, yeah, we want to follow God, but we also want to do all the fun things that we can do with these other false gods and their immoral practices. And so we're just gonna join him together. And God saw their heart and God saw what they were doing, and he was not happy. He was displeased in the things that they chose to do. Hang on one second. Okay, I thought that there's another verse there. But Romans 2, 5 says, Because you are stubborn and refuse to turn from your sin, you are storing up for terrible terrible judgment for yourself, for a day of anger is coming when God's righteous judgment will be revealed. So just like back then you had a lot of people that weren't serving and following and worshiping God, today we have that also happening. And it makes sense that Jesus would judge, that Jesus would set things straight. And as we go and we look at all the different conditions, Zephaniah described conditions that will exist primarily in the final stages of the day of the Lord. A backstory, Zephaniah served as a prophet in Judah from 640 to 621 BC. The name Zephaniah means Yahweh has hidden, may indicate that the prophet was born during the time of the atrocities perpetrated by Manasseh, who shed very much innocent blood. Zephaniah probably ministered early in the reign of Josiah. He speaks of the remnant of Baal in Jerusalem and other idolatrous customs which were abandoned after the discovery of the law. He prophesied during the reign of Josiah, the great grandson of Hezekiah. In Josiah's eighteenth year, the young king ordered the renovation of the temple during which the book of the law of Yahweh was found. When read before the king and the people of Jerusalem, the scripture brought about a reformation in the life of the nation. So it says Josiah was the last good king in Judah. His bold attempts to reform the nation and turn it back to God were probably influenced by Zephaniah. King Josiah of Judah was attempting to reverse the evil trends set by the two previous kings of Judah, Manasseh and Ammon. Josiah was able to extend his influence because there wasn't a strong superpower dominating the world at the time, as Syria was declining rapidly. They were trying to make changes. They were trying to make it right. And Zephaniah, as a prophet speaking for God, comes with this word, and King Josiah says, We need to do something about this. We need to change something about this. And number two, it's the day of protection from the Lord's anger, a day of protection from the Lord's anger for those who listened, for those who repented, for those who sought the Lord. So seek the Lord, all who are humble, and follow his commands. Seek to do what is right and to live humbly. Perhaps even yet the Lord will protect you from his anger on that day of destruction. And that's what some of those people did. Zephaniah was able to summon some of those people to righteousness, was able to help change the direction of the nation, was able to inspire some people to help change the direction of the nation. Maybe God could use us to lead people to Christ to help change the direction of the nation, to help teach our grandchildren or our children or other people around about faith worth sacrificing for, about a faith where a sacrifice made it possible for us to be saved, not by works, but through grace and through Christ. And as you skim through Zephaniah, you come to chapter three, and it starts to get a little better. It gets a little better in chapter three, and he has some pleasing things to say. God reveals his character and what he wants from the people and how much he cares for them. It will be Jesus who reigns, it will be Jesus who cares. It is Jesus who was spoken about in the day of restoration for Israel. And I wanted to read some of those verses, starting in verse 8 and chapter 3, through Zephaniah the prophet. Therefore be patient, says the Lord. Soon I will stand and accuse these evil nations, for I have decided to gather the kingdoms of the earth and pour out my fiercest anger and fury on them. All the earth will be devoured by the fire of my jealousy. And if you are Israel and you are being constantly tormented by your enemies, this is good news. It's good news. It's actually good news to know that Jesus will reign on a place that will be full of righteousness, not wickedness, a place where the godly will be the majority, and the minority won't be there. So continues, then I will purify the speech of all people so that everyone can worship the Lord together. My scattered people who live beyond the rivers of Ethiopia will come to present their offerings. So I'm not sure if this is referring to us all speaking the same language. Seems like a debabbling or babble, where every all the speech was divided and people spoke in different languages after that. If we all come back together and we're all able to worship together because we can all understand each other as we worship the Lord, purifying the speech could be changing the language so that we're all on the same page saying the same thing. That would be pretty awesome. Verse 10 says, On that day you will no longer need to be ashamed, for you will no longer be rebels against me. I will remove all proud and arrogant people from among you. There will be no more haughtiness on my holy mountain. Those who are left will be the lowly and humble, for it is they who trust in the name of the Lord. God desires us to be humble. If you want the Lord to lift you up, if you want to be successful, you need to humble yourself in the sight of the Lord. And he will lift you up. And if you're going to be haughty and prideful and arrogant, the Lord will knock you down and humble you. God loves it when we worship him in humility and in truth. The remnant of Israel will do no wrong. They will never tell lies or deceive one another. They will eat and sleep in safety. No one will make them afraid. Sing, O daughter of Zion, shout aloud, O Israel, be glad and rejoice with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem. I've been reading a lot of Christian people saying, oh, well, God has replaced Israel with the church. So any promises that God had for Israel is now taken by the church, because Israel rejected God, so he rejected them and he's taken the church, the Gentiles and the Jewish people who follow Jesus through the church. But it appears to me that God has a plan for the church and the rapture and everything else, but he also has a plan for Israel to restore Israel. And I think that if you look at the whole Bible, even if you just looked at the New Testament, it would be easy to see through the words of Paul and Peter. But verse 15, 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. On that day I will say to Jerusalem, do not fear Zion, do not let your hands hang limp. The Lord is with them, with them, presently, visibly there. What an exciting time. What an exciting time for them. What an exciting thing to look forward to. Verse 17 The Lord your God is with you, the mighty warrior who saves. That's Jesus. He will take great delight in you, in his love. He will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing. Quote, I will remove from you all who mourn over the loss of your appointed festivals, which is a burden and reproach for you. And I will dear deal severely with all who have oppressed you, and I will save the weak and helpless ones. I will bring together those who are chased away. I will give glory and fame to my former exiles wherever they have been mocked and shamed. And on that day I will gather you together and bring you home again. I will give you a good name, a name of distinction among all the nations of the earth, as I restore your fortunes before their very eyes, I the Lord have spoken. It's interesting that Warren Wearsby, in his commentary on Zephaniah, says, The modern state of Israel was born on May 14, 1948. But that event, significant as it is, was not the fulfillment of God's promise to regather his people and restore their fortunes. That promise will be fulfilled in the end times after the Jews have experienced the day of the Lord and been prepared to see their Messiah, that God's promises will be fulfilled, and God's people, Israel, will be restored and bring worldwide glory to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and God and the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. But wherever we are in the timeline of God's plan, we need to seek Jesus. We need to follow Jesus. We need to pursue Jesus. And that's my last point. The day is the day Christ followers can look forward to. The day Christ followers can look forward to. Peter writes, the day of the Lord will come as unexpectedly as a thief. And I would think that Peter would be like, So be very, very afraid. You do not want this day to happen. But instead, he writes, Since everything around us is going to be destroyed like this, what holy and godly lives you should live, looking forward to the day of God and hurrying it along. On that day he will set the heavens on fire and the elements will melt away in the flames. And you can read through the rest of the passage where it says that Jesus is waiting for more people to come to him. So being God is being patient so that more people can be saved. And by hurrying it along, Jesus said the gospel of the kingdom will be preached through the whole earth, and then the end will come. So by us sharing our faith in Christ, by sending missionaries, by doing all that we can to live through Christ, through our influence and the proclamation and everything else we do, that can help speed along the day for Jesus to return. So I don't know what the future holds, but I know that Peter wrote, in a time of great persecution, and when you're being persecuted for your faith, when your life is not so comfortable, then you long for Jesus to return. And you think, Yes, I want Jesus to return now. So what can we do to speed this along? Unfortunately, some people are so comfortable with the things that they have and the resources and their house and everything they have is just so comfortable and nice, and they have all their plans and everything. They're like, you know, I'm good. So Jesus, you don't need to come for a while, maybe when I'm older or something like that. But I'm happy. A good time right now. So it's okay. But God's priority is that lost people get saved, that saved people grow in their faith, that growing people grow to maturity, that mature people reproduce disciples. And that's what we are to do as a church. There's many things in Old Testament prophecy which are hard to understand until it actually happens. In Zechariah, at the end of Zechariah, it talks about Jerusalem raising up. So does the land literally raise up? I don't know. It's amazing to think about. But so my two points are, and I hope they were clear enough, is that one, that Jesus is going to return, and that I don't think we're going to be here on the day of the Lord. We're going to be raptured up out of it and out of the way. But it is a day that is coming that we should do everything we can to prepare everyone for, so that when Jesus does return, people are ready, people are prepared to be with him for all eternity. And my second point was that I think it's very clear that God has a plan for Israel and that we should make sure that Israel sticks around and isn't wiped off the map or like other countries want to do, removed. So I believe it's a spiritual battle. I think Satan knows what's coming, and he's doing everything he can to stir up trouble in that land between all the opposing Muslim nations. But again, I'm not an expert on Bible prophecy or eschatology, and even the experts are debated by many other people that have disagreements. But we can trust that Jesus is coming, that Jesus is Lord, that Jesus is King of all, and that He's got it under control. So the worship team can come forward. Next week, when we get together, we'll continue this a little bit with living to please God from 1 Thessalonians chapter 4. But Lord, I thank you for your word. I thank you for your salvation. I thank you for the hope that you give us. I thank you that you have described the end, and while we might not like the way that it looks, that we can trust you to get us through it, because we have received you as our Lord and Savior, and you have promised to be with us, and you have promised to give us your Holy Spirit permanently as a deposit on our salvation that you'll never leave us or forsake us, that you'll provide for us and help us. Lord, help us to be bold to accomplish your will in the time that we have. And we ask us all in Jesus' name, Amen.