God Loves You More Than You Love Him

God is more excited about your redemption than you are. Zephaniah 3:14–20 prophesies of the coming day of redemption for God’s people through the gospel of Jesus. It is a day of great joy. And, the joy of some is greater than others. In short, God’s joy in and love for you so outshines your joy in and love for him that when you finally witness it in full, it will quite literally take your breath away. Consider some bits of the passage.

 

The Joy of the Redeemed
Zephaniah 3:14 exhorts you to express your joy fervently:

 

Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem! (Zephaniah 3:14)

 

God through his prophet gives you three commands: (1) Sing aloud, (2) Rejoice, and (3) Exult. God’s people are a people who must sing and sing loudly! They are a people who must rejoice and exult with all their hearts. In the same way the Great Commandment exhorts you to love the LORD your God with all your heart, Zephaniah exhorts you to sing loudly as you rejoice and exult with all your heart.

Why? Two categorical reasons. Because of your redemption and because of your redeemer. The next verse makes this clear.

 

The LORD has taken away the judgments against you; he has cleared away your enemies. The King of Israel, the LORD, is in your midst; you shall never again fear evil. (Zephaniah 3:15)

 

The three commands of sing aloud, rejoice, and exult have three reasons that we can shuffle into the two categories of redemption and redeemer: (1) the LORD has taken away the judgments against you; (2) the Lord has cleared away your enemies; and (3) the King of Israel, the LORD, is in your midst.

 

Your Redemption
First, you sing, rejoice, and exult because of your redemption. Consider the first two reasons that make up your redemption. (1) “the LORD has taken away the judgments against” you, and (2) the LORD “has cleared away your enemies.” Zephaniah makes a word play here that we don’t get in our English translation. The Hebrew word that we translate “take away” conveys the meaning of turn aside. We could translate then, “the LORD has turned aside the judgments against you.” Similarly, the Hebrew word we translate “cleared away” conveys the meaning of turn to. So we could translate “he has turned to your enemies.”

The full effect here is this. In your sin, you were an enemy of God under his rightful judgment. Yet, the promise of redemption in Jesus means that God has turned aside his judgments against you because they have all landed on Jesus. No more wrath for sins remains for you. Thus, as a result, the LORD now turns to all your enemies—sin, Satan and his demonic forces, and death itself—in order that they may feel the full weight of his divine judgment. Because of Jesus, the LORD has turned aside his wrath from you and has turned toward your enemies in his hot, blazing wrath. This is enough in and of itself to lead to great joy. But there’s more.

 

Your Redeemer
Second, you sing, rejoice, and exult because of your redeemer. The third reason in Zephaniah 3:15 doesn’t describe your redemption but your redeemer—the King is in your midst. Notice how the prophet describes the king. He is not merely “the King of Israel.” He is “the King of Israel, the LORD” who is in your midst. This King is YHWH. That is, Jesus Christ your King, the Son of God, dwells in the midst of his people now spiritually, and he will dwell in the midst of his people forever in the new heavens and new earth.

The reasons for joy have piled up so high that you should be boiling over with loud singing, rejoicing, and exulting! You who are in Christ should be the most joyful people because of your redemption and your redeemer. And you should be experts at expressing it with passion. However, there is one whose excitement for your redemption outpaces even your own. Look at what else the prophet has to say.

 

The Joy of Your Redeemer
In Zephaniah 3:17, the prophet moves away from describing the joy of the redeemed and begins to describe the joy of the redeemer.

 

The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing. (Zephaniah 3:17).

 

The command to you is to sing loudly, rejoice, and exult with all your heart in your redemption and in your redeemer. And yet, what you read here is that your redeemer—the King, the LORD who is in your midst—also rejoices. And notice what or rather who he is rejoicing in—“he will rejoice over you with gladness.” Specifically, the prophet says (1) he will rejoice over you, (2) he will exult over you, and (3) he will sing over you. The prophet begins to paint a picture for you here.

As you come to the LORD, singing, rejoicing, and exulting with everything you have, he is doing the exact same thing. And what is the result? Is it a joyful back and forth of singing? Surprisingly, no. The prophet says you will actually stop your singing at the sight of the LORD—he will quiet you by his love. The Hebrew word for “quiet” here does not convey the idea of calming down or comforting like you might comfort and quiet a fussy or sad child. Rather, the word conveys the idea of keeping silent. The picture suddenly takes on more color. You come to the LORD with great joy, singing loudly, rejoicing and exulting with all of your heart. But you quickly find that the LORD’s joy completely eclipses yours. God’s delight in you, whom he has redeemed, is so great that it moves you to shocked silence.

 

Stand in Awe of Your Redeemer
God is more excited about your redemption than even you are. And his joy in and love for you will so outshine your joy in and love for him that it will quite literally take your breath away. What does this mean for you? Well, it means that right now for you in Christ, you should worship him with all you have. Specifically, according to Zephaniah, (1) you must sing and sing loudly, (2) you must rejoice with all of your heart, and (3) you must exult with all of your heart. You should express the entire scope of your joy and happiness in your redemption and in your redeemer. But it also means that you should expect in foretaste now and in full flavor in eternity to be moved to shocked silence—hand over your mouth, awe—when you see, experience, and know God’s joy and love for you in Christ that surpasses knowledge (Ephesians 3:17–19). It also means that even when you are not delighting in and rejoicing in him or when you may be tempted to doubt his love for you, he has not ceased to delight in and rejoice in you.

As excited as you may be about your redemption, and as much as you might delight in and love your redeemer, his excitement over, delight in, and love for you far surpasses it. Look at the joy and love of your redeemer, and be moved to silence. Stand in awe of King Jesus, the LORD your God, in your midst.

Sing

Two months ago, Pastor Wil wrote a blog post titled “Song as a War Strategy,” and he alluded to where we presently find ourselves in Colossians this weekend, Colossians 3:16, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.” In that post, Pastor Wil crystallized a vital truth for the church—God has given us psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs as a means of grace to build us up in our Christian walk. If you haven’t read it yet, don’t wait another second. Avail yourself of the opportunity here.

Wil wrote, “I want to suggest to you today that singing Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs both individually (and especially collectively) is a means by which the Spirit enables us to wage spiritual warfare against our threefold enemy: our sinful flesh, the fallen world, and the Satanic powers of darkness.” He then followed this up with wonderful examples from Scripture where songs of the saints preceded miraculous victory. I want to use this as my jumping off point for this post. Specifically, I want to answer the question: What do psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs do for us as a body that makes them such a vital means of grace? Let’s follow Paul’s logic in Colossians 3:16 to find out.

The main idea in Colossians 3:16 is Paul’s primary command, “The word of Christ must dwell in you richly” (My translation). The word of Christ is nothing less than the gospel of Jesus that Paul has just brilliantly put on display like a multifaceted diamond refracting light and beauty from all angles for the Colossians to see. You must read all of Colossians up to this point if you want to fully appreciate all the angles of the gospel that Paul has uncovered. This word of Christ, the revelation about Jesus, must dwell richly in the church. That is, it must be central to everything she does and completely conspicuous. It must be noticeable and on display. Why? Because through this gospel the Holy Spirit ignites faith in Jesus unto salvation. Our very salvation depends on the gospel of Jesus dwelling richly in our midst. Okay. It’s vital. Not an option. We’re on board. It needs to dwell in us. So how does one cause it to dwell? Paul tells us in this verse.

We cause the gospel of Jesus to dwell richly in us by teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom. Teaching and admonishing go hand-in-hand with gospel proclamation (Colossians 1:28). All wisdom is just code again for gospel wisdom — in [Jesus] are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Colossians 2:3). When we teach to one another this revelation—the word of who Jesus is, what Jesus has done to justify sinful man, what Jesus is doing to sanctify sinful man, and what Jesus promises to do, that is, glorify his perfected people—we cultivate an environment for the gospel to dwell richly. And, when we admonish one another, that is, warn one another about the disastrous consequences that await if we don’t heed this gospel, we cultivate an environment for the gospel to dwell richly.

Okay. Let’s do this. Let’s teach and admonish one another so that the gospel dwells richly in our midst unto our salvation. Obviously this happens through formal teaching settings, one-on-one discipleship, and other times of informal fellowship, but how else can we practically facilitate a culture, an environment where all this happens corporately? Of course, we gather for the corporate preaching of the word, which is central and vital to the life of the church and the body’s gospel culture. But Paul clearly gives this command to everyone, even if they are not in leadership or particularly gifted in teaching. So how do we do it? Paul has a solution. Sing.

Paul says the way in which we teach and admonish one another corporately so that the gospel dwells richly in our midst is with psalms, hymns, and songs of the Spirit, singing with thankfulness in [our] hearts to God (My translation). The grand solution—(Indulge me for a moment—The grand solution to cultivate and build a beautiful gospel culture that treasures Jesus and his gospel at such a deep, abiding level that no one could walk into the midst of a local church and not know who they were gathered to worship and why. That’s a mouth full.)—the grand solution to that, is to sing praises to God for Jesus and the gospel. If teaching and admonishing comes through this singing, this means that the songs the church sings should declare who Jesus is and what he has done in the gospel. And, in this way—through corporate praise and thanksgiving to God through singing—every member teaches and admonishes one another. Thus, singing Jesus and the gospel in praise to God cultivates a culture where the word of Christ dwells richly. And, where the word of Christ dwells richly, there one finds salvation. There one finds the Holy Spirit working to reveal Jesus and empower saints to walk in him.

Pastor Wil summed up this in his post:

“Remind yourselves in Psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs how great our triune God is. How loving our Savior is. Remind yourself how powerful the Spirit of God is within us and of the kingdom in which Christ has made us heirs, ready to fully inherit at His return. Sing with joy in God, knowing that He’s won our victory, He’s with and for us, and He’s using our song as a means through which our enemies camp is plundered.”

Sing to God with thankfulness in your heart for Jesus, and then step back, and just enjoy the word of Christ as it dwells richly in your midst.