God had just announced His final decree. He had assembled the nations so that He could pour out His wrath and indignation on them. They were to be devoured. God said that He would:
Pour out on them My indignation, All My burning anger; For all the earth will be devoured. By the fire of My zeal. Zephaniah 3:8
At God’s final decree all hope is lost. Or was it?
Just when you might think that all hope is lost, just when you think that the end has come for both the pagan nations and the unfaithful people of God, Zephaniah says something remarkable. Zephaniah talks about God converting the wayward sinful nations and purifying His people.
Zephaniah 3:9 “For then I will convert the nations.”
What is going on and where did this come from?
To understand this we must refer back again to the Covenant.
After our first parents, Adam and Eve gave into temptation and followed the wicked lies of Lucifer and sinned against God, rather than giving up on His image bearers, destroying them completely or maybe even starting over, God met with them. God’s love for us was so great that He made a Promise to Adam and Eve. God Promised that one day a future Son of Eve would come and both destroy Lucifer and rescue Adam’s rebellious race. To insure that this Salvation would happen, to insure that God’s Promise was true, throughout history, God entered into Covenants with His people: Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and Jeremiah. The Bible calls these the Covenants of the Promise. Ephesians 2:12
As we saw, the amazing thing about these Covenants was that, despite the fact that Adam’s sinful race would always fail to uphold their end of the Covenant, God swore on Himself, that He would always be faithful to His Promise. Though we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself. 2 Timothy 2:13 God would never give up on His children.
God gave His people a graphic picture of His faithfulness in the Covenant ceremony with Abraham. God instructed Abraham to bring a heifer, a goat, a ram, a dove, and a pigeon to the Covenant ceremony. He was to cut the animals in half and lay the halfs opposite each other on the left and on the right with a path in between. Then God walked between the animals. Genesis 15:9-21
This ceremony may be strange to us but for Abraham it was standard operating procedure. It was know as cutting a Covenant. When two rulers entered into a treaty or contract, called a Covenant, they would cut a sacrificial animal into two pieces and then the two rulers would walk between the two split animal pieces. This visually symbolized the fact that both parties were agreeing to the terms of the Covenant and, further, both were saying that should they violate the Covenant oath they would face the same fate as the animal: death.
Today we enter into Covenants such as a mortgage and both parties, the borrower and the lender, acknowledge that they have both rights and responsibilities and will face a penalty for breach of contract.
However, there is one major difference between the normal Covenant ceremony of ancient times and the ceremony in Genesis 15. Here both parties did not pass between the sacrificial animal. God alone passed between the animals. By so doing God is swearing on Himself that He swill keep His Promise to Abraham and to all of Abraham’s descendants. When God made His Promise to Abraham He swore the oath on Himself because He had no one greater to swear by. Hebrews 6:13
God had given a glimpse of what He had planned through these Covenants to the prophet Jeremiah:
The days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a New Covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, 32 not like the Covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my Covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. Jeremiah 31:31-32
Adam’s race has from the beginning been sinful and rebellious, always breaking the Covenant. Though we are God’s special creation, made in God’s image, and though we aspire to greatness, the history of mankind, even the history of God’s chosen people, is a history of arrogance, idolatry, betrayal, greed, war, and everything that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. 2 Corinthians 10:5
Notice that God calls Himself the husband of His people. That is why He likens our sin to adultery. You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?
James 4:4 Like an adulterous spouse, we violate our Covenant marriage oath, when we are unfaithful to God.
But through all of our filth God not only remained faithful, He Promised a New Covenant.
What makes the New Covenant different? Jeremiah elaborated:
For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord, ’for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. Jeremiah 31:33-34
What does this mean, the law written on hearts?
Although this has been largely forgotten, according to the Bible the law has three functions.
The first function of the law is to show us our inability to keep the law. We all, in one way or another, have a distorted self conception. Because we are adept at self deception we think we are pretty good people. The law of God destroys the myth that we can be good enough to come to God on the basis of our obedience. The law points out our sins, the sins we rationalize away or overlook. Paul noted that it is impossible for us to be righteous. We cannot keep the law of God. Honestly looking at the law exposes our inability to be righteous. Philippians 3:9
As St. Augustine observed:
The law bids us, as we try to fulfill its requirements, and we become wreaked in our weakness under it, to know how to ask the help of grace.
Although this is almost universally ignored in the church today, historically, the law and gospel were preached together in the weekly church services. Hearing the requirements of the law strips us of the false idea that we can be good enough to earn our way to God. Having been stripped of our false assurance we understand that our only hope is to be found in the Gospel; Christ’s offer of free grace. The law is our tutor driving us to Christ. Galatians 3:24
This is clearly seen in Nehemiah 8. All of Israel was gathered for worship at the Water Gate. The Book of the Law was then placed on a lectern and read aloud to the nation. In hearing God’s Word, The people wept in despair. The hammer of the Law was crushing them.
As the Law exposed their sins they grieved, fearing the sure punishment of God. After hearing the Law, as they wept, the priests taught the people how to prepare for the Day of Atonement, the day when a spotless lamb would be sacrificed for their sins, taking the punishment they deserved. Because of Christ, the Lamb of God, represented by the Old Covenant sacrificial lamb, the righteousness of Christ was imputed to the people, the priests announced, Do not mourn or weep or grieve, for the joy of the Lord is you strength.
I do not know when I am more perfectly happy than when I am weeping for sin at the foot of the cross… The fear of God is the death of every other fear; like a mighty lion it chases all other fears before it. C.H. Spurgeon
The second function of the law is to restrain evil in the world. As we saw above, even the unbelieving nations were to be obedient to the law. You would not want to live in a society where murderers, thieves, and other lawless people were not apprehended and brought to justice. The civil code and the sure threat of punishment inhibits lawlessness, making civilization possible. Romans 13:1-7 This is why God will not be patient with unbelieving nations indefinitely. He judges all nations for their unrighteousness.
The third function of the law shows us what the love of God looks like. Realizing that we have been saved by grace alone because of the sacrificial death of Christ in our place, and understanding that we have been adopted as children into God’s family, we look in gratitude toward our Creator and Savior. And, in so doing, we come to understand that the law, based on the perfect character of God, is what the love of God looks like.
The Christian is freed from the law as a means of salvation. We no longer believe in ‘works righteousness.’ We cannot earn our way into God’s family. But having been made a child of God by grace.
Because we are created in God’s image, we come to realize that living out the law fulfills our deepest longings. It is who we were made to be. It is how we were wired. Galatians 6:2, 1 Corinthians 9:21
The Gospel is not a new law.
It is not a code of morals or ethics.
It is not a creed to be accepted.
It is not a system of religion to be adhered to.
It is not good advice to be followed.
It is the Divinely given message concerning the Son of God, Jesus Christ our Lord.
– H.A. Ironside
To put this another way, as to the first function of the law, every single Christian became a Christian in the same way; justified, freed from the death penalty that their sin deserved. Freed through the perfect obedience of Christ. We all stood before God condemned, unable to offer anything to redeem ourselves. We were shown that: Our best works are like filthy rags. Isaiah 64:6 Our salvation is an undeserved gift. We have no grounds for boasting. Ephesians 2:9 We were all in the same boat and it was sinking before God imputed the righteousness of Christ to our account. This is called Justification.
However, the third function of the law is a different story. While Justification is exactly the same for every Christian, Sanctification by the Holy Spirit, the process of being freed from the power of sin, being transformed into Christ’s image, taking on the traits of the family, God’s family, that we have been adopted into, varies from Christian to Christian. Sanctification is a halting and struggling process as we all wrestle to varying degrees and with varying success with our old sinful nature and old habits, as we unlearn and discard destructive thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors and learn to imitate the ways of Christ. Ephesians 5:1
Now what is salvation? Some people think that it means being saved from going down to hell. That is the result of salvation; but salvation means being saved from the power of sin, and being saved from the tendency to sin, as well as being saved from the punishment of sin. – C.H. Spurgeon
In Christ we have been provided the double cure. He has saved us from the wrath of God’s judgment by Christ’s sacrifice for us; the wrath of The Day of the Lord. And now, He works in our lives to remake and restore us in Sanctification, as we cling to our rock and Savior. In the words of the hymn, Rock of Ages, written by Augustus Toplady in 1763:
Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee;
Let the water and the blood,
Form Thy riven side which flowed,
Be of sin the double cure,
Save from wrath and make me pure.
The picture of the long awaited Lamb of God first shown to us in the sacrifice in Genesis 3:21 has been fulfilled in Christ. His once for all time, sacrifice of our behalf, Revelation 13:8 is the only means of our Justification.
Christ explained to His disciples that after He went to heaven God would send the Holy Spirit to live within His followers: And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you for ever. John 14:16
And according to the Apostle Peter that is exactly what happened. God poured out His Spirit on all flesh, Acts 2:17; the means of our Sanctification.
Again, because this is widely misunderstood today, I must add one quick clarification of the law. The Old Covenant law consisted of three parts, ceremonial, civil and moral.
Christ said that He came to fulfill the law. Matthew 5:17-20
Ceremonial Laws: As we noted, all of the Temple and sacrifices looked forward to Christ. Because in His ultimate sacrifice, all of the ceremonial laws were fulfilled, the Church no longer practices the Old Covenant ceremonial laws. The book of Hebrews explains this in great detail.
Civil Laws: These were the laws that God gave to His nation Israel and dealt with such things as rulers and authorities, boundaries, crime and punishment, marriage and divorce, and all other civil matters.
Even though the nations of the world are not Israel, because these laws are from God, much can be learned from them. For example, as we have seen, many nations have adopted God’s system of checks and balances to restrain evil.
Moral Law: The clearest example of the moral law is the Ten Commandments and the Case Law derived from them recorded in Exodus. As we saw above, God expects even unbelieving nations to follow His moral law and He will hold accountable those nations and peoples who do not follow His moral law.
Much more could be said to clarify God’s law and its application, and, in fact, countless volumes have been written, but we must always remember Christ’s concise explanation of the Law:
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind… and love your neighbor as yourself. Matthew 22:38-39
For by the law we see our misery, and by the Gospel our remedy. – Edmund Calamy
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