Week 31 Zephaniah
In the OT the Lord is portrayed as being supreme.
But what if someone decided he wasn’t supreme? What were his options?
I usually figure that when Israel started worshipping other gods they just left the Lord in the dust. Dumped him and moved on. And that was one of the options. Zephaniah refers to people: who used to worship (the Lord) but now no longer do. So…past tense.
But that’s not the only option. Zephaniah says there were also people who: go up to their roofs and bow to the sun, moon, and stars. They claim to follow the Lord, but then they worship Molech, too.
So there are two options. The first is that you subtract the Lord entirely. Then I guess you can worship another god or several gods. In this case your Personal Religious Equation looks something like this: god #1 + god #2 + god #3 + god #4 = my gods.
The second option is that you can keep the Lord in the mix. That equation adds an extra value: god #1 + god #2 + god #3 + god #4 + the Lord = my gods.
Zephaniah’s recommended OT balance is: The Lord = My God. His view was that if I start adding extra values to the equation I end up with an unequal-equation.
Note: quotes from Zephaniah 1:6, 5 (NLT). (Added note: theoretically there’s a no-god option but it wasn’t common, and the elements couldn’t be formulated too easily into an equation.)