mylordmyfriend posted: " Gleaning growth and encouragement from The Word of God, should be the most important daily activity we undertake. In our excitement series, our purpose is to reintroduce, parts and segments of The Bible, most people have read and perhaps put on th" My Lord, My Friend
Gleaning growth and encouragement from The Word of God, should be the most important daily activity we undertake.
In our excitement series, our purpose is to reintroduce, parts and segments of The Bible, most people have read and perhaps put on the back shelf, as been there and read that.
We can not get to much of ZZ, and we are not talking about snoozing, but two books of the Old Testament, Zechariah which we have done an article on, and now Zephaniah.
Zephaniah can be referred to as one more of the traditional prophets of doom, which would lead most to a very quick read of the book named after him.
There was certainly much in Zephaniah times, that made him cry out for justice. King Josiah had inherited from his grandfather Manasseh a totally corrupt society. Paganism was rife, alters to Ball and Molech where everywhere and temples had been built to sun, moon, stars.
There was a preoccupation with wealth, and a blind eye to the oppression of the poor and weaker members of society. There were reforms in Zephaniah's day, but they were to little to late. Wickedness was ingrained in the people that soon after the death of good King Josiah, the people reverted back to idolatry
This was God's plan for Judah that Josiah inherited. But how does today's society measure up, we must ask the question are we equally indifferent to morality, and with wealth?
Like Joel, Zephaniah talked at lenght about the 'Day of The Lord', there are a lot of similarities between the two books.
What we can get excited about from Zephaniah is , that God cannot tolerate the worship of other god's alongside Him, not can He tolerate violence, fraud, complacency, the proud, lying or deceit.
We also learn from Zephaniah that God responds to true and sincere repentance. God loves people who serve Him, humbly.
Read Zephaniah afresh, sure it is a book about God's Judgement, but it is also a book that tells us about His Mercy, Justice and Forgiveness, pointing to the Cross. The Cross where 'whosoever' comes with sincere repentance will be accepted. Enjoy the book again.
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