Reason to rejoice with ALL your heart!

  'Sing, O Daughter of Zion;

       shout aloud, O Israel!

       Be glad and rejoice with all your heart,

       O Daughter of Jerusalem!

  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.'

Zephaniah 3:14-15

I read Zephaniah recently and was just blown away by the grace and mercy that spill out of its pages. It is a story of Judah's rebellion and deserved judgment. Of Jerusalem's mess and corruption and God's just anger against them. And yet it doesn't end like that. Because much more importantly, it is about God. It is about a merciful God who does not treat us as our sins deserve. It is about a God who delights to save and who is mighty to save. And so even though things looked bleak for God's people at the beginning of Zephaniah, we see that God Himself provided the way for them to be saved: 'The Lord has taken away your punishment' (3:15)

The best thing about this book, is the way that it points forward to Jesus. In fact Jesus shines out of every chapter and floods the whole book with glorious hope and joy. There WILL be a day of judgment - and it is what we deserve, Zephaniah makes this plain, but on that day, if we are in Jesus, who is our righteousness,we will be sheltered from the LORD's just anger (2:3). Let us now make sure we are seeking Jesus and His righteousness, for this is all this is all that will matter on that day.

'The LORD has taken away your punishment' (3:15) - shadows that were received joyfully by God's people in the Old Testament give way to the reality as Jesus gloriously secured this for eternity. When Jesus took the judgment we deserve for our sin on Himself on the cross, sinless as He was,  the LORD took away our punishment. If we trust in Jesus, if we are in Him, sheltering in Him, then our punishment has been taken away. And so the promise applies to us:

"The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing" (3:17)

And so, because we have such security in our forgiveness and acceptance from God, security that rests not on us or anything we have done or even how secure we feel, but in all that Jesus has done on our behalf - we have great reason to rejoice! And we can rejoice with ALL our heart (3:14) because our greatest problem is dealt with for all time, because this can never be taken away from us. Whatever else is happening in our lives, we can rejoice with ALL our hearts because our punishment has been taken away and God delights in us. And this is something that will never change.

 ' Be glad and rejoice with all your heart,

       O Daughter of Jerusalem!

  The LORD has taken away your punishment' (3:14-15)

"I have a shelter in the storm

When all my sins accuse me

Though justice charges me with guilt

Your grace will not refuse me

O Jesus, I will hide in You

Who bore my condemnation

I find my refuge in Your wounds

For there I find salvation"
('I Have a Shelter' - Sovereign Grace Music)

“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”-

2 Corinthians 5:21

The year of.....

So things have been a bit quiet from my end recently...but that doesn't mean my thoughts have been quiet! Just that somewhere between my mind and my fingertips those thoughts have got lost or muddled. I am starting this post not entirely sure what I will write. And as I am starting to write a whole load of things are coming to my mind, so this could be the opening of the blogging flood-gates - the start of a blogging frenzy?

But anyway, as tomorrow is the beginning of the Chinese new year, and i have some thoughts I have been meaning to post something since our new year, i thought this might be the most appropriate opportunity to write about 'year naming'. This is an idea that came from Ann Voskamp, who likes to name her year before it begins. To set the scene, here is part of a conversation I had on skype with my friend Sophie a while back:

[11/01/2010 19:10:08] Alison Young: so, you know Ann has made this her year of YES! Have you named your year?
[11/01/2010 19:10:55] Sophie: ironically no!
[11/01/2010 19:11:00] Sophie: I like the idea tho.
[11/01/2010 19:11:20] Alison Young: me too....but i sort of think its easier to name something after its happened..
[11/01/2010 19:11:44] Sophie: yes i know what you mean. i don't feel very prophetic!
[11/01/2010 19:12:34] Sophie: i suppose it's just the same idea as a resolution because it means you set out to have a certain approach to stuff and that's good - well, depending on the name!
[11/01/2010 19:13:06] Alison Young: yeah....you'd have to be more of a positive thinker than me i think.
[11/01/2010 19:12:52] Sophie: what would you name your last year?

So I decided that 2009 could be called the year of hope. There were lots of reasons for this, but top on the list was the fact that 2009 saw me becoming more and more convinced of the wonderful and certain hope of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Hope that has nothing to do with how I feel or how circumstances look. Hope that says that I am in Jesus Christ and brought into the glorious community of the Happy Trinity. Hope that tells me that all my righteousness and salvation is in Jesus, and so couldn't be more secure! 2009 - the Year of HOPE!

And that led me to thinking about this verse from Romans 12, verse 12:

'Be joyful in hope...'

So if 2009 was the year of hope, then 2010 can be the year of joy. Not because I 'have a feeling I will be in a good mood for 365 days', but because if I have hope then joy is possible in all circumstances. If I feel I have nothing else to be joyful in, I still have hope. And it is not a momentary hope, that changes with my feelings, but a sure and certain hope, that depends only on Jesus and not at all on me.

2010 - the Year of JOY

"By faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope" Galatians 5:5