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Good morning church. You want to go ahead grab your Bibles. You can open up to Zephaniah. Zephaniah chapter one, if you’re using the Pew Bible, the page number is there in the bulletin. If you’re not using the Pew Bible, it’s near the end of the Old Testament. That’s the best I can give you, somewhere in that range. So Zephaniah one. We’re beginning our three week series in Zephaniah this morning. And as you’re turning there, though, if you’ve spent any time in education, either as a teacher, especially, but as a student also, you have heard this question more than once, why do we need to learn this? Of what practical use will this be in my life? Once I graduate or finish this class, I asked this about math. Many, many times. Continue to ask it about math, honestly, calculator in my pocket at all times like, there’s no help here, you know. Is it going to be on the test? And if not, it’s out. It’s done. It’s you know. So let’s be honest. How many of us feel that way when we get to certain parts of the Bible also, why do we need to learn this? And I don’t think there is a test, so it’s not going to be on the test. So what are we even talking about here? So happens with genealogy, some of the long stuff about the tabernacle or temple construction, and then maybe especially when we get to the Minor Prophets, those prophets from Hosea to Malachi, the 12 books called minor only because they’re shorter than the major prophets, like Jeremiah and Ezekiel guys like that. But you look at them and you kind of go, I don’t understand this, and I’m not sure I need to understand this. A lot of times we come to it, why are they so hard to understand? We’ve got no context for these books, right? There’s no historical context when we start reading them. So we don’t know, like, what’s going on in history. There’s no geographical context. Are we speaking to the northern kingdom, the southern kingdom? Are we speaking to somebody else? A lot of harsh words, like a lot of judgment in these passages, like Jonah, we love we get that one that’s a narrative. But the rest of them are, like, I don’t know, and a lot of them are harsh words against nations that don’t even exist anymore. So like, surely, that’s not important for me to know. And yet Paul tells us in Second Timothy, All scripture, even the Minor Prophets, All scripture, is God breathed, and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness. In righteousness, so that we, the servants of God, will be thoroughly equipped for every good work. So Zephaniah Paul just said, is useful for us, even if it’s not speaking directly about us. We might almost say it was not written to us, because it wasn’t but it was written for us, and I understand that what happens to the Assyrian Empire, which we’ll come to next week in the series, is not really a live issue for most of us today, considering it collapsed in 612 BC. But what that shows us, tells us about God and His sovereign rule over history. That is a live issue for us today, and that’s why we need to learn Zephaniah. And yes, it will be on the test, if by the test we mean lives in conformity with the whole counsel of God. So with that in mind, though, and knowing that this is hard for us, what exactly is the context of Zephaniah? Let’s start with Zephaniah one, one, so that we can set it in its context. Here’s Zephaniah 101, kind of the PROLOG to the book, The word of the Lord that came to Zephaniah, son of cushy, the son of Gedaliah, the son of Amariah, the son of Hezekiah during the reign of Josiah, son of Ammon, king of Judah. So first question, who is Zephaniah? And the short answer is, we don’t have any idea, really. Maybe he’s a Cushite, which is why he’s called a son of cushy that would be the Upper Nile region, modern day Ethiopia, maybe. But really unlikely, honestly, more likely. He is actually King Hezekiah, great, great grandson. He’s the only prophet who’s given a genealogy that goes back four generations, and that was important to establish, you know, the throne connection that was in common for kings. So maybe he is a royal descendant. That’s more likely, though not definitive by any means. Beyond that, we know nothing. His personality doesn’t really show up a ton in the book. That’s kind of it. That’s all we got. We know a lot more, though, about when he’s preaching, and that’s during the reign of Josiah. Now, Josiah, who became a king as a boy, grew up to lead a reform movement in Judah, he led the people away from paganism and back to the right worship of God after decades of rule under his wicked father and especially grandfather, Manasseh. Now it seems like in Zephaniah, we are in the early stages of this religious revival. So most likely the book of Deuteronomy, the Book of the Law, has been found while they’re restoring the temple, because there are a bunch of allusions to Deuteronomy in Zephaniah. So most likely it’s there, and Zephaniah is the one kind of given the swift kick in the rear to keep this thing moving along, and that’s probably when he’s prophesying. So we’re in maybe 620 BC, let’s say note also that this book begins with the word of the Lord. This is Yahweh S word. These are not Zephaniah’s thoughts or ideas. He’s not a motivational speaker. Now, these are God’s words, and Zephaniah is his mouthpiece, even truer here than it is in some of the other prophets. In fact, Zephaniah has this funny habit of speaking in the third person about God. You know, he says this, he did this, and then he just randomly breaks into the first person, I will destroy this nation with no indication that he’s changing. This is just God speaking, and that is important, and why? Of course, it’s in Scripture. It’s very different from what I’m doing today. You’re hearing my thoughts and my ideas, hopefully based on the Word of God, but the word has authority, and Zephaniah’s word has authority because it is God’s word. So what does God have to say? We’ll see across all three weeks, a remarkably simple message. Zephaniah never deviates from it. It is a message of doom on the one hand, but of hope on the other. And like most of the prophets, we kind of gotta go through the doom in order to get to the hope. And so this morning, in chapter one, we’ll look at three judgments in particular kind of three scenes, if you will. We’ll take them one at a time. So judgment number one, creation unmade. Let me read Zephaniah one, two to six. I will sweep away everything from the face of the earth, declares the Lord. I will sweep away both man and beast. I will sweep away the birds in the sky and the fish in the sea and the idols that cause the wicked to stumble. When I destroy all mankind on the face of the earth, declares the Lord, I will stretch out my hand against Judah and against all who live in Jerusalem. I will destroy every remnant of Baal worship in this place, the very names of the idolatrous priests, those who bow down on the roofs to worship the starry host, those who bow down and swear by the Lord and who also swear by Molech, those who turn back from following the Lord and neither seek the Lord nor inquire of him. So