The 'day of the Lord.'

(Zephaniah 1.7-9)

There are those folks who appear so pious that they won't even 'step on a threshold' (old wives tale) but accomplish their pious purposes with violence and deceit...draw your own parallels to our world today.

These are the folks who Zephaniah is addressing as people who are dressed in "foreign clothes." The foreign clothes are those incongruous with the 'clothing' of those who profess to be righteous.

We are to be 'clothed' with truth! That's the basic requirement of anyone who calls himself a child of God.

Jesus said that He is the Truth; that we should know the truth and the truth would set us free.

A brilliant mental health practitioner, Dr. M. Scott Peck, wrote a book entitled "People of the Lie." He clearly delineates the problem of evil and the association of 'people of the lie' with 'evil.'

I believe it can be stated that wherever you find evil you will find deceit, and wherever you find deceit you will find violence - anything from bombs and armies to emotional and verbal abuse (violence).

Zephaniah said to (vs. 7) "Be silent before the Sovereign LORD, for the day of the LORD is near."

The 'day of the Lord' is what old-timers when I was a kid used to call, "...a day of reckoning."

God will judge those people of deceit. It is time to be humbly silent and stand in repentance before the Sovereign Lord for His day of reckoning for everyone, great and small, is very near.