God’s salvation results in Him delighting over his people

Through the prophet Zephaniah the sins of the people have been displayed. Jerusalem had become a wicked city with wicked people ruling over them. Why had they become like this? It is because they had failed to learn from God’s dealings with the nations around them. What about our society with things such as royal commissions into corruption? God sees the truth about our city and also about us individually.

God’s character, however, as Zephaniah tells us, is sure and stable. In this passage we find him warning the people that a day of judgement was coming. All they could look forward to was the coming of God’s jealous anger against their sins. We are warned that the whole world is going to suffer God’s righteous anger.

There is hope however because we are also told of God’s amazing grace.  He will gather his people who will come to worship him. How will this come about? There is a hint in what is said about worship. It will happen through the Lord Jesus Christ … God will take the punishment for His people’s sin upon himself which we see in the gospel. Amazingly we even find that God will ‘rejoice with shouts of joy’ over those who are in Jesus Christ by faith.