‘Seek ye the Lord, all ye meek of the earth, which have wrought his judgment. Seek righteousness, seek meekness.  It may be ye shall be hid in the day of the Lord’s anger.’

And my title tonight is ‘sheltered from the doom’, protected from the doom to come. Not that Zephaniah is a prophet of doom, but there is a doom to come. You need a refuge. You need a refuge for your soul. You need to stand on solid rock, otherwise you are only on sinking sand. You are standing on sinking sand in this world without a Saviour. You need an anchor, a solid anchor, an anchor to give you hope and you need to be sheltered from the Lord, from yourself, from sin, from the vanity of this world.

Zephaniah, his name, Zephaniah means the Lord has hid, the Lord has hid, he has protected. The Lord has provided a refuge. And Zephaniah is most probably from a royal family. He gives us his genealogy, a bit of his background in chapter one, verse one. Probably one of the great grandsons of King Hezekiah and King Josiah. Josiah being a king who have accelerated great reforms in the nation of Judah. A good king, both were good kings. So this is really his familial background for us to show the pertinence and the importance of his message. But to show you more of his importance, Zephaniah is mentioned four times in the New Testament. And that’s quite relevant, it’s very important for a minor prophet. Minor not because of their importance, but minor because of the length of their writings.