Zephaniah 1:5 And them that worship the host of heaven upon the housetops; and them that worship and that swear by the LORD, and that swear by Malcham.
Some things can’t be shared. We tend to say to young people that sharing is always good and jealousy is always bad, but is that true? Now I am not introducing situational ethics here. I am talking about context, and specifically about God. If we belong to God, are we someone whom God would want to share with the world? Is God wrong to love us singularly and to be jealous of us and for us?
Zephaniah was a prophet who spoke in the day of Josiah to people in Jerusalem who were idolatrous. They were God’s people, but they were serving idols. Now, they were not compelled to do so by the point of a sword because Josiah was trying to reform the evil in his country. They were voluntarily involved with “stumbling blocks.” They were people who held God in one hand, Baal, for instance, in the other, and thought that was okay.
You may be half-hearted about God, but God is never half-hearted about you. The Bible speaks in verse 5 of them that “swear by the LORD, and that swear by Malcham.” That is crazy! It reminds me of similar people in II Kings 17 of whom the Bible says, “They feared the LORD, and served their own gods.” How can you serve God and your own gods at the same time?
These idolatrous people thought that God was just as indifferent about them as they were about Him. Verse 12 says, “And it shall come to pass at that time, that I will search Jerusalem with candles, and punish the men that are settled on their lees.” In other words, God was going to shed a light on them while they were feeling so foolishly secure. The verse continues, “That say in their heart, the LORD will not do good, neither will he do evil.” So, on the one hand, they were worshipping false gods, and on the other hand, they thought that God would not do good or evil. They were sorely mistaken because of what the Bible calls in the final verse of this chapter the “fire of his jealousy.”
This is a God who loves us. God is not indifferent about us. Some things can’t be shared. I think about my marriage. My wife is not noble to share me with another wife. I am not going to share my wife with some other person. No, I am jealous in that case. Our relationship is singular. If you belong to God, you are part of what the Bible calls “the bride of Christ.”
So, if we think that we can hold God in one hand and watch these movies, drink this alcohol, and have this wrong attitude, we are fooling ourselves. You can be indifferent to God, but God is not indifferent toward you any more than a loving husband would be indifferent about his beloved wife.
There is a sense in which to be half-hearted is to be fully against God. The Bible speaks here about the “great day of the LORD” that was near. This was a day of wrath, trouble, and distress, waste and desolation, darkness and gloominess, clouds and thick darkness. This was because God loved these people. God was not indifferent about them.
We are living in a country where it has been acceptable historically to be culturally Christian. That is, whether we really love God or not, whether we are people of conviction or not, it is acceptable to have the culture, words, and terminology of Christ. I live near Nashville, Tennessee, and that is certainly true here. These are good people in a good place. It is easy in this culture to love God, or so we think, but hold all the trappings of the world in the other hand. But that won’t do. God is not half-hearted about you and you and I should not be half-hearted about Him.