Zephaniah 1
Love your Household!
Good morning! This is Pastor Jerry Ingalls from New Castle First Baptist Church and today is Wednesday, October 2.
The prophet Zephaniah was the great-great grandson of King Hezekiah, and, as a member of the royal household, he had access to the inner workings of the Judean government. That would have been great in good times, but not during the tumultuous times when wave after wave of exiles were marched off to Babylon, with the destruction of Jerusalem on the horizon. With that historical context in mind, the major theme of his prophetic work is the urgency of the coming day of the Lord, with the Hebrew word for “day” occurring twenty times in his short book, as emphasized in Zephaniah 1:10-18. Yet, prior to that horrific depiction of what was coming upon the people, in Zephaniah 1:7-9, he called for the punishment of those in privileged positions of the royal household:
Be silent before the Lord God! For the day of the Lord is near, for the Lord has prepared a sacrifice, He has consecrated His guests. Then it will come about on the day of the Lord’s sacrifice that I will punish the princes, the king’s sons and all who clothe themselves with foreign garments. And I will punish on that day all who leap on the temple threshold, who fill the house of their lord with violence and deceit.
In the same way, as the second person of the Eternal Royal Household, the Trinity, Jesus warned the people about the coming day of the Lord in Matthew 24-25, and, like Zephaniah, He did so on the heels of declaring judgment over the religious leaders who had the privileged position to help the people, but they would not even lift a finger to help them (Matthew 23:4). So, Jesus made a way for all to be saved by allowing Himself to be lifted up on the cross for our salvation (John 3:14-16).
Seize the moment and love your household as Christ first loved you (1 John 4:19; Ephesians 5:25).
God bless you!
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YOUTUBE:
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