Scripture Daily

Context No. 1559 of 4322 · Zephaniah

Context · Reflection

Zephaniah 1:7-13: in context

7Be silent at the presence of the Lord GOD, for the day of the LORD is at hand. For the LORD has prepared a sacrifice. He has consecrated his guests. 8It will happen in the day of the LORD’s sacrifice that I will punish the princes, the king’s sons, and all those who are clothed with foreign clothing. 9In that day, I will punish all those who leap over the threshold, who fill their master’s house with violence and deceit. 10In that day, says the LORD, there will be the noise of a cry from the fish gate, a wailing from the second quarter, and a great crashing from the hills. 11Wail, you inhabitants of Maktesh, for all the people of Canaan are undone! All those who were loaded with silver are cut off. 12It will happen at that time, that I will search Jerusalem with lamps, and I will punish the men who are settled on their dregs, who say in their heart, “The LORD will not do good, neither will he do evil.” 13Their wealth will become a plunder, and their houses a desolation. Yes, they will build houses, but won’t inhabit them. They will plant vineyards, but won’t drink their wine.

Zephaniah announces the coming day of the LORD, a day of reckoning. God will punish the proud and the violent, those who fill their masters' houses with deceit. And he names a particular target: those settled comfortably on their dregs, who say in their hearts, the LORD will do neither good nor evil. God says he will search Jerusalem with lamps to find such people, and their wealth will be plundered, their houses left desolate; they will build houses but not live in them, plant vineyards but not drink their wine.

The people God singles out to search for with lamps are the complacent, those who say in their hearts, the LORD will do neither good nor evil. This is a particular and dangerous unbelief, not the loud denial that God exists, but the quiet, practical assumption that God does nothing, that he is indifferent and uninvolved, that he neither rewards good nor punishes evil, and so it makes no real difference how we live. These people were not atheists in theory; they were atheists in practice, keeping perhaps the outward forms while living as though God were absent and inactive, uninterested in their conduct. The phrase settled on their dregs pictures them exactly: comfortable, undisturbed, like wine left so long on its sediment that it grows thick and stale. Complacency had settled over them, the assumption that God would do nothing either way, and so nothing they did mattered to him. There is a searching warning in this against a very common form of practical unbelief. It is possible to affirm that God exists and still live as though he were indifferent to our lives, assuming he neither notices nor cares how we conduct ourselves, that our choices are of no concern to him. God says he will search out such complacency with lamps; the assumption that he does nothing is itself something he will not leave undisturbed. He is not indifferent, not inactive, not unconcerned with how we live; and the settled, comfortable belief that he does neither good nor evil is a dangerous self-deception. The living God is not absent, and it does make a difference how we live before him.

Have I settled into the comfortable, practical unbelief that God does nothing, that he is indifferent to how I live and my choices are of no concern to him, and do I need to hear that the living God searches out such complacency and is not the absent, inactive God I have assumed?

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