Sunday 21st April
Read Zephaniah 1:17-18
“‘I will bring such distress on all people
that they will grope about like those who are blind,
because they have sinned against the Lord.
Their blood will be poured out like dust
and their entrails like dung.
18 Neither their silver nor their gold
will be able to save them
on the day of the Lord’s wrath.’
In the fire of his jealousy
the whole earth will be consumed,
for he will make a sudden end
of all who live on the earth.” (NIVUK)
Blinding, bleeding, bowel-ripping and burning are not bedtime reading fare. It is difficult to comprehend these words when we are conditioned by society, and even the church, to eliminate the idea of judgement from our vocabulary. Yet here it is, plain as day, a consequence of disobedience to a God many people deny even exists or may even never heard of. There is no escaping either God or the reality that judgement inevitably comes to all. The whole earth will be consumed.
The temptation is always to downplay these words as relics of a more martial, less sophisticated time, when the love of God revealed fully in Jesus was not yet known. There is enough truth in that approach to make it attractive. Particularly as the words pronounced through Zephaniah are calculated to make clear, in their context, what judgement looks like. But this truth is not countermanded by time. It remains true. The message of scripture is that judgement comes to all.
Everybody wants to go heaven, but nobody wants to die.
