Welcome to a year in the Bible with daily grace. The Bible tells one big story of

redemption and we want to spend five minutes every day journeying through the Bible from start to finish, and exploring how all of it

points to Jesus. Hey everyone, welcome back to a year in the Bible with the Daily Grace.

My name is Aubrey Coleman, one of the hosts for the podcast, and today we're looking at the book

of Zephania. Zephania and I lived during the final decade of the kingdom of Judah.

It was during the reign of King Josiah who tried to bring about real change and reform,

restoring worship in Israel of the one true God.

But Israel was deep into the worship of idols.

The Prophet Zephania witnessed all of these things

and he warned the people time and time again

that the day of the Lord's judgment was coming.

In this book is a collection of Zephanized message to Israel during this time.

The book is essentially split into three main parts.

Judgment on Jerusalem, judgment on the nations and Jerusalem, and then hope for Jerusalem and the nations

following God's wrath.

In the first section, Zephania speaks to disorder and darkness caused by sin, and rebellion against God. It's precisely the opposite of what

God created in Genesis 1. Zephania is painting a picture of desolation and ultimately

pointing to what will happen to Jerusalem because of their rebellion.

All the places of idle worship will be destroyed. All of the corrupt and unjust leaders will be brought down.

Zeph and I depicts an army that will come to bring down Jerusalem too. He doesn't specifically

name the army in this book, but we know from other books that the army would be the Babylonians.

Even with knowing all of these things,

...