The Biblical Age of Kings #12: The Day of the Lord

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Lord, come quickly!

It's a prayer that many people utter every day. When folks grow weary of life's struggles, they cry out to God for help. Especially in light of tragedies like the Orlando mass shooting, believing people pray to God, "Lord, come quickly."

This prayer or a variation of it goes back before time of Christ. God-fearing Jews apparently longed for God to come and save them. They coined the phrase Day of the Lord to refer to this hopeful concept. This was apparently an important turn of phrase, a way of signifying their special status as God's chosen people and of expressing their need for God's deliverance.

We don't know the total weight of this term. But we know this. They thought the Day of Lord was good news. They assumed that the Lord’s coming would protect them and crush their enemies in the process.

Onto this scene marches the prophet Zephaniah. Referring to the Day of the Lord, he tells his listeners, "Be silent before the Lord God. For the Day of the Lord is at hand!"

We know enough to guess what Zephaniah's Jerusalem audience might have thought when they heard those words. Their initial reaction might have been, "Woohoo! The Lord God is coming. Won't that be nice!?" They were almost certainly thrilled at the prospect of the coming Day of the Lord.

But then Zephaniah, truth-teller and prophet of God that he was, broke the bad news. The Lord wasn't coming for the Assyrians or the Egyptians or the Edomites or the Babylonians. God was coming for the people of Judah! The Lord’s wrath would pour out on God’s own people and on God’s own holy city.

You might be able dismiss such talk as the mad ravings of a lone prophet—if these exact sentiments didn't repeat elsewhere in the mouths of other prophets. The Lord's spokesman Joel says, "Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the Day of the Lord is coming, it is near—a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness!" (Joel 2:1-2). The prophet Amos declares, "Alas for you who desire the day of the Lord! Why do you want the day of the Lord? It is darkness, not light; as if someone fled from a lion, and was met by a bear; or went into the house and rested a hand against the wall, and was bitten by a snake. Is not the Day of the Lord darkness, not light, and gloom with no brightness in it?" (Amos 5:18-20). When the Lord finally did come, it meant the destruction of Jerusalem and captivity in Babylon. It was not good news for God's people who were relying on their name rather than their piety.

What does this mean? What's the message for us? Let me quickly break down with the prophets are saying—even to us today: When you wish for the Lord to come, be very careful what you wish for. Is your life in the right shape? Are you truly ready for the Lord’s coming?

Christians today must carefully and humbly take on the prophetic task. Our job today isn't necessarily to announce to the world that the Lord is coming. Our task is to remind and demonstrate what it looks like to be truly ready for the Day of the Lord. And among those who mistakenly think that the color of their skin or the nationality on their passport somehow garners them special favor with the Lord, our job is to announce that they're badly mistaken.

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