COV LIFE BLOG

Zephaniah 3:1-8 – Judgment for the People of God

There is a church against whom this indictment might be laid today—“She obeyed not the voice”— she did not hear the Gospel. “She received not correction”—when reformers came she sought their blood. “She trusted not in the Lord; she drew not near to her God,” but she went after others and set up other intercessors than Christ, and rejected the true Head of the church.

Other churches may fall into like sin unless they are guarded by spiritual power. Remember Laodicea and how she was spued out of the mouth of Christ, because she was neither cold nor hot. Remember Sardis which had but a few names in it that were undefiled. Where are those cities and those churches now? Let desolation answer. It might be said of them as of Gilgal, of which the Lord said, “Go you there to the place where my name was at the first, and see if there is one stone left of it upon another which has not been cast down.”

Oh that we as a church, and all our sister churches, may walk before the Lord with holy jealousy as to doctrinal correctness, practical holiness, and inner spiritual life, for if not, our end will be miserable failure. If the salt of grace be not in a church, it cannot be an acceptable sacrifice to God, nor can it long be kept from the corruption which is natural to all masses of flesh. What are one people more than another? And what is one community more than another? We are men by nature, prone to the same evil, 2 and we shall fall into the same transgression unless the Lord that keeps Israel shall keep us—and therein is our confidence—that He does neither slumber nor sleep.

Charles Spurgeon

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SCRIPTURES FOR MEDITATION
Read Zephaniah 3:1-8 and consider as the Lord turns to rebuke his own people where there may be sin in your own life. How intentional have you been recently about examining the sin in your own life? Has God been working in you for a long time about a particular sin? What area, by God’s power, might you finally seek to put to death?

SONG FOR THIS WEEK
Holy, Holy, Holy by Reginald Heber