The Day of the Lord will:
- Expose the denial of our mortality;
- Expose the fallacy of a career or commerce as a shelter against it;
- Expose the fallacy that life ends at death;
- Expose the guilty conscience and hidden deeds.

“At first, our turning away from God in our successes begins in slight ways: forgetting to thank God or not acknowledging, even to ourselves and those closest to us, that our opportunities, talents, and daily strength come from God. The greater our security appears to be, the more our perspective becomes warped in relation to God. The greatest practical atheists are those who act as though they are “self-made” people. We may claim to believe in God, but the word “God” is often a cipher for “my luck,” “my ingenuity,” “my hard work,” “my security,” or “my successes.””
- NIV Application Commentary

Here are the lessons from Zephaniah 1:
1. Pursuing God in holiness matters. Josiah listened to this warning and stayed the consequences of his people’s rebellion for a generation.
2. God is not ignoring evil in the world: other people’s or ours. He is giving us a warning and time to repent and live in the blessing He is offering us.
3. While we may say we believe in God, practical atheism is more dangerous and deadly to our spiritual lives than we realize.
4. God is jealous for me; His bias is toward life and blessing as He intended.
5. The Holy Spirit is already at work to wake us up, convict us of our sin, and empower us to live in right relationship with God where His blessing is found.