Zephaniah spoke in a day when God’s people had so welcomed the pagan world into their lives, culture, and religion that they had sunk into thinking that God was irrelevant, impotent, and not one to be taken seriously.  The political and religious leadership stopped their ears to God’s message and arrayed themselves in what the pagan world around them saw as beautiful and acceptable.  Not just in clothing and attitude, the people of Jerusalem in Zephaniah’s day largely reflected the world around them in almost every cultural measure.  God’s people looked and acted just like the world and then assumed God would have nothing to say about it.

What may resonate in our day is the idea that God is not at work in the world at all.  He will neither do good nor will he do ill, to quote Zephaniah.  Since we as Christians are called to be God’s ambassadors in the world for the Gospel of Jesus (2 Corinthians 5:20), it does matter how we live and how we relate to God.  It’s often when people see Christ at work in our lives that they see the reality that God does work in the world, especially in the lives of people.  Zephaniah declares that loudly in his book.

Zephaniah ends in one the most loved and quoted verses in the Old Testament about how God sings over us and quiets us with His love (Zephaniah 3:17).  But we have to get through chapters one and two before chapter three really makes sense.  This prophet is a loud alarm bell to culture, and he is not shy at all.  Even so, time spent with this awesome book only builds up a real and lasting faith and intimacy with God through His word that the world cannot replicate.