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.

Lyrics that Lead Us to Worship: “What a Beautiful Name,” alt.

“Worship is acting, thinking, and feeling in a way that reflects the glory of God.” So states one of our core documents, composed before Desiring God Community Church even had that name. A later blog post based on that document draws out the meaning of 1 Corinthians 10:31 (“Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God”): “Make all of your life worship! Value Christ above all, and display His value in all your outward actions – even seemingly trivial actions like eating and drinking.”

Therefore our Sunday service is not the one time in the week we worship God – rather, that service should glorify God through our acts, thoughts, and feelings both during the service and throughout the following week as the truths sung and read and prayed and proclaimed dwell richly in us.

Consequently, the DGCC elders prepare not only the sermon but the entire service to display accurately the character of God and the excellencies of Jesus, aiming to prompt our right response to His love, mercy, grace, and majesty.

On Sunday, the service included “What a Beautiful Name” (Hillsong, 2017), which states in the second verse:
“You didn’t want heaven without us
So Jesus, You brought heaven down.”

Several of you raised questions about whether or not those lyrics accurately proclaim biblical truth.

These lines communicate to many that there is something lacking in the joy and fellowship of the Trinity apart from creation – that God needs us to be fully happy, in a similar way to Adam needing “a helper fit for him” (Genesis 2:20).  But God reveals Himself in Scripture as full, as overflowing in love and joy and goodness. Out of that overflow He creates and redeems – not because of any need or lack within Him.

John Piper helpfully addressed these lyrics shortly after the song was written; that piece prompted some rejoinders (here is one).

We have rarely sung this song because of those lyrics – but we did sing it this Sunday. Why?

Because behind the problematic lyrics there is a precious biblical truth that both Jacob and I have been emphasizing recently: Our God is not an angry authority who only grudgingly lets us off from the punishment we deserve. Neither is our God a heavenly killjoy just waiting for us to mess up so He can zap us. In Jesus, we are His treasured possession. We are chosen, holy, and loved (Colossians 3:12).  He takes pleasure in us (Psalm 147:11, 149:4). He rejoices over us with loud singing (Zephaniah 3:17). The Father loves us even as He loves Jesus (John 17:23). He creates us in His image, He redeems us so that we might show forth that image, and He delights to see us fulfill His purpose in creation.

So what can we do with a song that includes a precious biblical truth, but obscures it with problematic lyrics?

We could avoid singing it.

Or we could alter the lyrics.

There is much precedent in church history for altering lyrics. For example, the first line of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” was originally “Hark, how all the welkin rings.” Today, when making alterations, we note that the text has been changed by including “alt” after the title.

In this case, we can change the clause from a negative into a positive: “You wanted to share heaven with us.” That states the precious biblical truth clearly while maintaining the meter.

The subsequent line – “So Jesus you brought heaven down” – also is problematic. Scripture doesn’t use that metaphor. Rather, Jesus says repeatedly He came down from heaven (see for example John 6:33-58).

So we can replace both lines with:
“You wanted to share heaven with us
So Jesus You died on the cross.”

Those lines then flow well into the rest of the verse:
“My sin was great, Your love was greater –
What could separate us now?”

We plan to use these altered lines when we sing this song in the future.

Jesus became incarnate, died, and rose as God’s superabundant grace and love overflowed in the redemption of rebels – including you, if you trust and treasure Jesus. Fear not – it is the Father’s good pleasure to give you His Kingdom (Luke 12:32). His goodness and love will pursue you all the days of your life, and you will dwell in His house forever (Psalm 23:6).

May this biblical truth dwell in you richly indeed – and may we continue to sing and read and pray and proclaim God’s revelation clearly, so that we might act, think, and feel in a way that gives glory to God every day of our lives.