Introduction to Zephniah 1:1-2:15

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/28/2016 11:01 PM

My Worship Time                                                                       Focus:    Intro. To Zeph. 1:1-2:15

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Zephaniah 1:1

Message of the verse:  “1 The word of the LORD which came to Zephaniah son of Cushi, son of Gedaliah, son of Amariah, son of Hezekiah, in the days of Josiah son of Amon, king of Judah.”

In our introduction to the book of Zephaniah from yesterday’s SD we spoke of the theme of the book as begin “The Day of the Lord,” and in his introduction to this section Dr. Wiersbe quotes a very old hymn that actually comes from 1:15 of Zephaniah and it is about the Day of the Lord.  We will quote it in a moment, but first we need to think about how many hymns have you ever heard of about the judgment that God will judge the nations during the Day of the Lord, and my guess is probably none. 

“Day of wrath! O day of mourning!

See fulfilled the prophets warning,

Heav’n and earth in ashes burning!

 

O what fear man’s bosom rendeth

When from Heav’n the Judge descendeth

On whose sentence all dependeth.”

 

In our recent studies of the Old Testament prophets we have seen mentioned “The Day of the Lord,” and even when we studied the book of 1 and 2 Thessalonians we also say this topic, and then last year when we studied the book of Revelation we saw exactly when the Day of the Lord would occur.  We have also mentioned that when the OT prophets wrote about the Day of the Lord that there were times when there was an almost instant fulfillment of the Day of the Lord in their day and then added to it was a reference to the real Day of the Lord, something that has not happened yet. 

Now as Dr. Wiersbe concludes this introduction to this section of Zephaniah (1:1-2:15) he writes “In the first two chapters of his book, the Prophet Zephaniah relates the Day of the Lord to both the Jews and the Gentiles, and from 1:1-2:4 we will look at the Day of the Lord and the Jews, and we will begin that section in our next SD, but it will probably take more than one SD to get through that.

2/28/2016 11:19 PM