The Index Of Leading Spiritual Complacency Indicators Series

12 At that time I will search Jerusalem with lamps,

and I will punish the men

who are complacent,

those who say in their hearts,

‘The Lord will not do good,

nor will he do ill.’

The language in this verse certainly would have caused Zephaniah’s audience to think of the Passover where every family would take a candle and search every nook and cranny in their house in order to remove any leaven that might be there. In much the same way, God said that He would search every single inch of Jerusalem in order to punish the sin that was there. And there was one sin in particular that God focused on here – the sin of complacency.

We usually tend to group sins into two groups – sins of commission, where we do something that we’re not supposed to do, or sins of omission, where we fail to do something that we should do. But what really provokes God is the kind of complacency that accepts sin as a lifestyle because we don’t think that God cares about our sin or that He won’t do anything about it. And it’s clear from this entire context of the chapter that God isn’t speaking here to outsiders, but rather to those that claimed to be His children. I’m reminded of Jesus’ letter to the church at Laodicea in Revelation 3 where He warns them against being lukewarm.

So how do we guard against complacency in our own relationship with God? Fortunately for us, Zephaniah clearly describes what I would describe as the…

COMPONENTS OF THE INDEX OF LEADING SPIRITUAL COMPLACENCY INDICATORS

Just as the index of leading economic indicators is a composite of a number of economic statistics, complacency in our spiritual lives can come from a number of different factors. So this morning, I’d like for all of us to use this passage to evaluate our own spiritual lives and determine whether we are in danger of slipping into complacency, or even if we’ve already done that.

Although Zephaniah describes a number of underlying problems, we can group them into three major components:

• Failure to seek God

In verse 6, Zephaniah addresses “those who have turned back from following the Lord, who do not seek the Lord or inquire of him.”

While he was out in the wilderness of Judah, David wrote Psalm 63, in which he described the way that we need to seek out God:

O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you;

my soul thirsts for you;

my flesh faints for you,

as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

Psalm 63:1 (ESV)

Are you seeking God like that in your life right now? Are you thirsting for God that same way that you would thirst for water if you got stranded on Interstate 10 in the middle of summer between Gila Bend and Yuma and didn’t have any water with you?

Unfortunately what happens for most of us is that we start out our spiritual journey thirsting for God. We can’t get enough of His Word, we long to come into His presence in prayer, we take advantage of every opportunity that we can find to learn more about Him and get to know Him. But gradually over time our fervor wanes and we wake up one day and realize that we are no longer seeking after God like we once did.