zephaniah.bible/zephaniah-3-17
The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.-Zephaniah 3:16
What is this prophet who lived thousands of years ago telling us today? The first thing that he is telling us is that God is still with us. He even goes so far to describe God as “the Mighty Warrior who saves”. What does he mean when he says “the Mighty Warrior who saves”? He means that God fights for you and more importantly that God willing, able and ready to fight for you when you ask him to. And that is the key to the second part of that phrase “who saves”. And who does God save? God saves those who call on him. Which leads us directly into the second thing we are told in this passage. And that is that God “takes delight in you”. What does it mean “he will take delight in you”? It very simply means that God loves you. But how do we know that God loves us? To answer that question we have turn to the gospel of John and a very well known and often quoted passage that says this.
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.-John 3:16-18 NIV
God shows us that he loves us by making a way for us to be saved from our sins. He shows that he loves us be being our Mighty Warrior who is willing, able and ready to save us when we ask. God is not looking to condemn you or rebuke, but he is looking to save you out of his great love for you. Which is what the prophet Zephaniah meant when he wrote “in his love will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.”