Dear Westminster Family:
Our focus this week is on Zephaniah often referred to as the “royal prophet.” He is the only prophet who shares direct lineage with King David and thus is also in the bloodline of Jesus. Zephaniah directs the majority of his prophecy to the future of God’s people. In the 53 verses of the Book, he mentions the “day of the Lord” eighteen times. The “day of the Lord” is a phrase that refers both to the judgement and restoration.
Zephaniah’s main burden was to preach to a nation that had sinned away the day of grace, that had abused its privileges, that had so angered God by its lust and its lies that judgement simply had to come. Zephaniah, therefore, I believe has a specific word to us. Here’s how John Phillips states the case in his commentary series, EXPLORING THE SCRIPTURES BOOK BY BOOK…..
“We who live in the United States of America live in a land singularly blessed of God, a land of prodigal wealth from sea to shining sea. It is a land that has been generous beyond anything known in all history——generous to friend and foe alike. It is a land that has known freedom to an extraordinary degree, a land that was built by men who feared God and who stamped their faith on the coin of the realm and wrote it into the articles of its national faith……But it has become a land that has denied the principles of its existence. It has become, to an alarming extent, a land where juvenile delinquency flourishes, where marriage is no longer sacred, where pornography is big business, where crime is syndicated, where God is ruled out of all institutions of learning, where false prophets are honored, where the vilest of sins are legislated into respectability. Zephaniah had a word for the people of his land and a world for the people of ours as well. God is the same yesterday and today and forever. “
Zephaniah’s prophecy will help us find our “voice” this week.
See you in church.
Pastor Gary