“Seek the Lord. All you humble of the land, who do his just commands. Seek righteousness, seek humility. Perhaps you may be hidden on the day of the anger of the Lord.”
– Zephaniah 2:3
Well, what a clear call in the middle of verses about God’s judgment coming upon all people from all nations who have sinned against him here in Zephaniah 2:3. In the middle of these promises of judgment, we see this command, this invitation, this call to seek the Lord. All you humble of the land, who do his just commands. Seeking the Lord, doing justice, doing the just commands of God, those go together. Seeking the Lord. All you humble of the land. So humility, justice, obedience, seek righteousness, to seek the Lord is to seek righteousness, seek humility. Humility comes up again.
In everything, Christians are to seek Jesus by living righteously and humbly.
Perhaps you may be hidden on the day of the anger of the Lord. In other words, this is where salvation is found, in seeking the Lord. Obviously we know from all of the Bible, the salvation is not found in our works or our efforts to do righteousness, but ultimately in trusting in the righteousness of Jesus. Who in his humility took our sin upon himself on a cross, who obeyed the father’s will, pay the price for our sin so that we might be clothed in his righteousness.
So ultimately, trust in Jesus. And as you do, live in Jesus, seek him, humble yourself before him every day, do his just commands, seek his kingdom and his righteousness. Seek humility, for this is where the favor of God is found. It’s where the grace and the mercy of God are found. Ultimately, this is where we find the life that God created us for.
Zephaniah 2:3 Teaches Us to Seek Humility
So God help us to do Zephaniah 2:3 today. Even right now, God, the reason why we pray, we do podcasts like this is because we want to pause and to seek you. And God, I pray for every person listening right now, that it wouldn’t just be these few minutes they listen to this podcast, that I would seek you all day long. You would help us to seek you with all our hearts, to be humble. God help us to seek humility. We pray for humility.
God, please give me humility. Please give everyone listening right now humility. Grant us ever increasing humility, ever decreasing pride. God, remove pride from us. Pride before you, pride before others. God, take pride away from us. We pray for humility. We pray that you’d help us. By your grace, by the power of your spirit in us, God help us to do your just commands. To obey you. To do justice.
Living For God
Love mercy, walk humbly with you in obedience to you, God. We need your grace, the power of your spirit to help us do that. We pray that you’d help us to do what you call us to do in Matthew six. Jesus, to seek, first, your kingdom and your righteousness. Not all the stuff this world offers, help us to seek you and your kingdom and your righteousness. God, in all of these ways to experience your life and your joy and your peace and your favor as sinners who deserve your judgment, but have been saved from your mercy, hidden from the rightful, holy anger our sins deserve. God, thank you for sending Jesus.
Thank you for dying on the cross for our sin. We praise you in a fresh way today as our savior and as our Lord and we want to live in you fully. We seek you. And we humble ourselves before you. We pray. We want to do your just commands. So we seek your righteousness and we want to live with your humility inside of us. And we want to live with humility before you. May you become greater. May we become less today and may that be more and more every day. You become greater, us become less. Help us to live in Zephaniah 2:3, we pray in Jesus name. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
