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Intro:

Open in Prayer
Well today we jump off into the prophesies of Zechariah. If you were here and remember from our introduction to this book you may recall that this first prophecy now from Zechariah as we see here comes in the 8th month of the second year of Darius which is after the second message that Haggai had delivered to the people.
Quickly we can be reminded that Haggai’s first message had called the people to rebuild the temple after a period of time in which they had been prevented from doing so by opposition but, you may remember that, as a new king had come to the throne yet the people seemingly had not sought his favor to begin the building again, rather they had continued to focus on building their homes and planting their crops thinking that the worship that they were doing at the rebuilt alter there before the now laid foundations was sufficient.
We beat this drum over and over again in Haggai and we will see it again now in Zechariah. The worship of our God is not a thing to be trifled with. We don't get to decide what we like or prefer in worship and how we think worship ought to take place. We don't get to assess our worship and call it sufficient apart from holding it up tot he standard of God’s Word and seeing if it truly is adhering to what God has prescribed our worship of Him ought to be.
The people were celebrating the feasts like they hadn't in hundreds of years and they had an alter and were continually offering their gifts on it and God through Haggai says, “Your worship is corrupt and you are not acting like my people because you have failed to pursue my worship as I have declared to you it ought to be done.”
This had been a constant problem for Israel in the past as well and as we noted in Haggai it still lingers as one of the easiest traps for God’s people today. Again, we don't get to choose what our Lord’s day worship consists of! God has told us what we ought to pursue and how we ought to bring our worship to Him as we gather together now as His living temple. (Now there is freedom in that, we did cover that in Haggai briefly as well, there is a great adaptability of the instruments or means of worship to various cultures and places but the substance, the means of worship that we are to pursue as we gather together remain the same.)
And so Haggai had called the people to build and they had done that and then he had come again in the 7th month and told them:

Yet now be strong, O Zerubbabel, declares the LORD. Be strong, O Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high priest. Be strong, all you people of the land, declares the LORD. Work, for I am with you, declares the LORD of hosts, 5 according to the covenant that I made with you when you came out of Egypt. My Spirit remains in your midst. Fear not. 6 For thus says the LORD of hosts: Yet once more, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land. 7 And I will shake all nations, so that the treasures of all nations shall come in, and I will fill this house with glory, says the LORD of hosts. 8 The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, declares the LORD of hosts. 9 The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, says the LORD of hosts. And in this place I will give peace, declares the LORD of hosts.’ ”

There was a glorious future in store for the temple and for the people as they pursued the faithful worship of God in obedience in His temple.
And this then is where the prophet Zechariah comes in. We aren't given the day but we know that at some point in the following month, the 8th month that Zechariah receives a word from the covenant God of Israel that he is to deliver to the people. We read in verses 1-6:

In the eighth month, in the second year of Darius, the word of the LORD came to the prophet Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, son of Iddo, saying, 2 “The LORD was very angry with your fathers. 3 Therefore say to them, Thus declares the LORD of hosts: Return to me, says the LORD of hosts, and I will return to you, says the LORD of hosts. 4 Do not be like your fathers, to whom the former prophets cried out, ‘Thus says the LORD of hosts, Return from your evil ways and from your evil deeds.’ But they did not hear or pay attention to me, declares the LORD. 5 Your fathers, where are they? And the prophets, do they live forever? 6 But my words and my statutes, which I commanded my servants the prophets, did they not overtake your fathers? So they repented and said, ‘As the LORD of hosts purposed to deal with us for our ways and deeds, so has he dealt with us.’ ”

Now as we read this prophecy there seems to be a very obvious question that it brings up that we will deal with in a moment. That question being why, why does God bring this particular prophecy to the people from Zechariah. They had been obedient, they were building the temple, they had recieved the message that Haggai had delivered and the people and their leaders had come together as one to build. So why does this message come to Zechariah the following month? Well we will go there in a moment but first we need to talk through the prophecy.

God was Angry

Zechariah starts off with a reminder of their history, a history that would have been painfully evident as they sorted through the rubble of Jerusalem and of Solomon's temple that had been so utterly destroyed by the Babylonians.

“The LORD was very angry with your fathers.

You can almost picture the people looking across the waste and rubble as Zechariah reminds them of God’s anger with their fathers. No object lesson was needed to drive home this point, yes indeed the anger of God was plainly evident before them and in their minds as they recalled the 70 years of exile, the exile in which many of them had been born and looked out across the waste that was Jerusalem.
This is maybe why Zechariah starts here. Many of these people had not personally experienced the fierce anger of the Lord. Some had, there were some who had seen the former temple but many had not.
Jake mentioned last week about making a public spectacle of discipline in their house so that others would be reminded not to pursue the sinful ends of their siblings. Many of these people hadn't seen the spanking, they hadn't witnessed the terrifying wrath of God against their fathers sin. They could see the aftermath though and sometimes we need to be reminded to look around at what has resulted as God has punished sin.
God had been very angry indeed.
Now there is also an important truth about God that we need to be sure to acknowledge and take to heart in this phrase as well. How many times have you heard the phrase, “God hates the sin but loves the sinner.” Nothing could be farther from the truth! This is an error that arises because of a failure to carefully fit together the theological pieces of soteriology, soteriology being the study of how it is that God saves us, a failure to rightly understand the God’s nature.
Psalm 11:5 ESV
The Lord tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence.
This text doesn't say that God was angry at their father’s sins, he certainly was but His anger is rightly said to be with the fathers themselves. We cant blunt this truth because it makes the glory and wonder of the gospel even greater.
What we find in the gospel isn't the power to take otherwise lovely human beings who just have a little problem with sin and polish them up a bit and make them truly wonderful again, no in the gospel God comes in grace to those who are his avowed enemies, filthy vile sinners of which we all were a part and God extends the grace and mercy through the cross of His son that has the power to take all of that filth and wretchedness and lay the penalty for it on His dear Son and lay on us in its stead the pure and holy righteousness of that same Son.
Yes, God is not just angry with sin, God is angry with sinners, God rightly hates sin and those who indulge in it and yet God has also, in the magnificence of His grace has provided a way that these self same sinners can be made righteous and redeemed and be welcomed into His kingdom! This is very good news and it stands in stark contrast to the puny gospel that is proclaimed from so many pulpits in or day.
And so we find the prophet thundering this truth before these people, God was angry with your fathers he reminds them as they gaze across the wreck and rubble of the burning of that anger.

Therefore

But then the prophet issues a wonderful word: Therefore...
God’s anger as we have just seen was not and is not the end of the story.

Therefore say to them, Thus declares the LORD of hosts: Return to me, says the LORD of hosts, and I will return to you, says the LORD of hosts.

The “them” here is the people now. Your fathers sinned, infact their sin was of the same sort that these people themselves had begun to indulge in, faulty worship. Now ofcourse their fathers took this to a whole different degree as they not only failed to worship God in the way that He had perscribed but also mingled their faulty worship of Him with the worship practices of the pagan nations that surreounded them. Never the less as we have seen in our other prophets Israel’s ultimate starting piont for their many failings and failures to be the people of God, if you rewind it back to the beginning, was a failure to take seriously God’s commnads to be worshiped rightly. From this failure to worship God rightly flowed all of Israels flood of wickedness.
WORSHIP IS IMPORTANT!!! If you haven't gotten that by now please let that sink in… WORSHIPING GOD RIGHTLY IS OF PARAMOUNT IMPORTANCE!!!

Return

But God here continues, THEREFORE… RETURN!
Return to me! This is an offer of Grace and extension of mercy!
Returning features two key movements that are essential to true, repentance, that's whats happening here, this is a call to repentance and repentance features first a turning away from sin, to repent one must turn their back on the sinful lusts and cravings that have been the driving force for their lives, they must do a 180 and face away from these things but there is more, there is not just a turning from something but also a moving toward something else. Returning is a call to turn from sin and come back to God!
We turn from our sin, we deny our flesh, but we turn to and begin to walk in the ways that God has prescribed!
And again here in Zechariah this is primarily a call to worship! Turn from the half hearted sinful exercise of what you believe to be sufficient worship and come build the temple and devote yourself to the true and pure worship of your Holy Covenant God as His law has prescribed!
And there is a tremendous promise associated with this call to repentance:

Return to me, says the LORD of hosts, and I will return to you, says the LORD of hosts.

When sinners repent and turn from sin and return to God and do what we were made to do, worship Him rightly, God in turn tells them that He is ready to return to them and uphold His blessed side of the covenant promise! God is ready to turn toward them, to move toward them and act in ways toward them that are stipulated in the blessings of the covenant found in Deuteronomy.

Don’t Be Like Them

Now, if there is a more damning indictment in all of scripture then the next line I don't know what it would be.
Dads in the room we ought to make it our aim to never have this said of us:
“Do not be like your fathers!”
God tells these people through Zechariah:
I sent the prophets to them, they cried out to them.

‘Thus says the LORD of hosts, Return from your evil ways and from your evil deeds.’ But they did not hear or pay attention to me, declares the LORD. 5

We read in Jeremiah (the weeping prophet) Jeremiah 35:15
Jeremiah 35:15 ESV
I have sent to you all my servants the prophets, sending them persistently, saying, ‘Turn now every one of you from his evil way, and amend your deeds, and do not go after other gods to serve them, and then you shall dwell in the land that I gave to you and your fathers.’ But you did not incline your ear or listen to me.
We know the story well, across the reign of so many kings and under the ministry of a number of prophets God’s people refused as a whole to heed the calls for repentance.
Hence the piles of ruble the children of those people are now digging through as they seek to rebuild.
The persistent rejection of the prophetic word and failure to repent and turn back to God and worship Him rightly brought utter destruction on their fathers.

Verse 5

Now verse 5 is interesting. There is some debate about what exactly Zechariah is doing here but it seems as though there is an implied back and forth with the people.
As a result of the fathers disobedience Zechariah says:

Your fathers, where are they?

This seems to drive home the point that their fathers perished in large in the judgement brought on them by God and those that lived through it mostly died in exile.
Where are they? A great call to examine the course and outcome of someones life and learn from it!
But it seems as though the response of the people may have been something like, “OK, sure our fathers have died but what about the prophets, where are they?” You are so high and mighty Zechariah you are a prophet, well tell me how much better off were the prophets than our fathers. To many this seems to be the gist of the meaning of the verse. We will see why that might be in a moment when we come back to that overall question about the purpose of this prophecy but first we can see why Zechariah includes it in the prophecy as he does. Verse 5 creates the perfect contrast for the content of verse 6.

But my words and my statutes, which I commanded my servants the prophets, did they not overtake your fathers? So they repented and said, ‘As the LORD of hosts purposed to deal with us for our ways and deeds, so has he dealt with us.’ ”

Men die, even prophets pass away but the words of the Lord endure and never fail to come to fruition.
We read in Lamentations 2:17
Lamentations 2:17 ESV
The Lord has done what he purposed; he has carried out his word, which he commanded long ago; he has thrown down without pity; he has made the enemy rejoice over you and exalted the might of your foes.
God brought to pass the judgments that He said would come.
But now we find that in that destruction finally their fathers did in large measure repent. Those who were carried off into captivity repented of their wickedness and say:

As the LORD of hosts purposed to deal with us for our ways and deeds, so has he dealt with us.’ ”

Finally, after God’s judgement, after the fierce venting of His wrath the people had finally acknowledge God, He has done what He said He would do, He has dealt thus with our sinful ways.
And so the call of Zechariah here in large is to take heed of the warning, examine the lives of their fathers and repent now of their wickedness, turn and seek God, worship Him rightly, don't wait until another judgement has overtaken you and then repent only when God has vented His anger against your sin.

Do not be like your fathers,

Why

But now we have to ask why? Why this prophecy? It seems to be out of place. Hadn't these people turned already? Wern’t they now several months into rebuilding the temple?
The answer is yes but it also seems as though there may not have yet been true repentance that had taken place. Yes these people were doing outwardly that which was in conformance with the will of God and had set themselves to rebuild the temple but it is very likely that they hadn't yet repented like they needed to in order to please God. They had turned from their sinful failure to rebuild and were working on the temple again but they hadn't yet begun to move toward God. Their hearts were not yet right and so repentance was incomplete.
Their fathers had thought that because they had the temple they were fine. These people were in danger of rebuilding the temple and yet failing to internally repent of their failures to pursue God rightly, to do that which the Psalms warn against, to outwardly conform but to inwardly fail to love God as they ought.
This may be why there was still the message given by Haggai in the latter half of Haggai 2 where he talks about the cleanliness and uncleanliness of the nation. They had not yet cleansed themselves and this cleansing would take both the rebuilt temple but also hearts renewed through repentance.
In fact it is only in the 9th moth that we read in Haggai:

Consider from this day onward, from the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month. Since the day that the foundation of the LORD’s temple was laid, consider: 19 Is the seed yet in the barn? Indeed, the vine, the fig tree, the pomegranate, and the olive tree have yielded nothing. But from this day on I will bless you.”

Something is happening in these people. They are setting themselves to be obedient and now through the call of Zechariah they are simultaneously doing the work of repenting and turning back to God with their whole hearts.

Conclusion

Zechariahs first message can be summed up like this: Don’t be like your fathers, repent now!
This then leads us into the rest of the book. The rest of the book as a whole is going to do much of the same thing that Haggai did and set the stage for the rebuilding of the temple and the renewed worship of the people of God and we find that this would not be possible without the repentance necessary to return to God and have God return to you.
And so as we close this morning I hope you can see how utterly practical this first message of Zechariah is. We often tend to run past these things to the more exciting aspects of the visions and the harder prophecies and trying to figure out all of those interesting things and those will be very important but Zechariah reminds us that the first task of God people is always repentance. We can not pursue God rightly without first turning from our sin and moving toward God.
For Israel as well as for us this repentance is seen first and foremost in how it is that we worship. The message of these prophets is to build the temple and worship rightly and stop placating yourself with the lie that your worship is good enough. Repent and pursue worship as God has commanded that it be done.
We can do a similar thing to what these people were called to do. We can look out across the landscape of modern evangelicalism and see the wreck and destruction, the rubble of churches that have succumbed to things like the seeker sensitive movement and other failures to be a church in pursuit of the right worship of God. Making worship more about pleasing those in the pews rather than the One to whom they claim to worship.
We can heed the call of Zechariah, “Don’t be like your fathers!”
Turn from these man centered thoughts and practices and seek, as we said over and over again in Haggai, seek to be built up together into the living temple of God where He is worshiped rightly among us!
As we move on into Zechariah the prophet is going to show us the glorious results that will come when God’s people commit themselves to being His people and commit themselves to worshiping Him together rightly, the glory of God will spread across the earth!
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