Zechariah 7&amp;8

Should I weep and abstain in the fifth month, as I have done for so many years?”

Now as we look at the question we need to peak ahead at the answer that comes at the end of chapter 8 to understand fully what is going on. There we come at last, as we will see in a bit, to God’s answer to this question and we read in 8:18&19:

18 And the word of the LORD of hosts came to me, saying, 19 “Thus says the LORD of hosts: The fast of the fourth month and the fast of the fifth and the fast of the seventh and the fast of the tenth shall be to the house of Judah seasons of joy and gladness and cheerful feasts.

So what is going on here with all of these fasts?

The answer has to do with the destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon. Each of these months was the date of a significant event during Babylon’s conquest of Judah and Jerusalem.

A fast specifically in the Bible is the act of not eating and experiencing that discomfort in the body as a way to exhibit repentance, repentance, and entreat the favor of the Lord, fasting shows the willingness on the part of the faster to trust in the strength and provision of God to sustain them even above the sustaining power of food. Fasting is very biblical and a practice that is commended to God’s people.

The fast of the 5th month remembers the destruction of Jerusalem. the 4th month the breaching of its walls, the 7th month the assassination of Ged-el-ya-ho who had been the governor after the deportation of the people to Babylon along with the Jews who were with him and the 10th month was when the seige of Jerusalem had begun.

Now none of these fast days can be found prescribed by God but it makes sense that the Jews who had been deported to Babylon would have used these fasts as ways of mourning their circumstances and beseeching God for mercy and deliverance from their exile.

The keeping of these fasts had obviously continued even after the people were released and have now traveled back to the land to settle it again and even here as they are in the midst of rebuilding the temple and restoring the right worship of YHWH.

We could boil this question down this way:

“It seems like things are looking up now Zechariah, do we really need to continue on in our fasting and mourning now that we are back in the land and the promises of God for restoration are being manifested amongst us?”

Now, that seems at the first glance a very sensible question to ask and yet I cant believe that these men were prepared for the answer that they got.

The Voice of the Lord

One of the things that really stuck out to me as I studied this passage was how amazing it is that we can hear the Lord Jesus Christ in this answer. One of the hallmarks of our Lord was that he would often answer a question in unexpected ways because He wasn't simply answering the question but was rather addressing the heart that He could clearly perceive, as the Son of God, behind the question. And so Nicodemus gets a treatise on being born again and the rich young ruler is commanded to go and sell everything that He has. You may be able to think of others.

The same thing happens here, the response to a seemingly sensible questions shows that the heart behind the question is a dangerous one and needs immediate correction or the state of the people is liable to be worse than what they have already been through.

As we get into this response that comes first int he rest of chapter 7 we realize that the heart of this question was more about the peoples own personal comfort and enjoyment than it was about God’s blessing, they wanted to be done with their punishment and move on to the blessing of God.

I remember once while teaching adult Sunday school at UCF we were just starting through John Owen’s “The Mortification of Sin In Believers” one of my all time if not my all time favorite puritan work. After like the second class one lady came up to me and said something like:

“Is this all we are going to be talking about?” Referencing the topic of sin int he believers life and our call to be daily at its mortification.

“We need to move on” she said. We don't need to spend this much time talking about sin, there are far better things that we could spend our time on.

She never came back!

We get uncomfortable with reminders of sin. Especially when our hearts are desirous of countenancing some hidden or indwelling sin we chafe under reminders of sin and what it was that sin has wrought in our lives and what it wrought for our Lord.

These people had grown tired of the constant reminder of their sin and rebellion, the temple was being built and they wanted to move on to celebration. Just as their ancestors had done they were in danger of buying into the lie that just because they had the temple that everything must now be find and they had no need for caution or concern any longer.

God’s First Response

To this question God provides the following response through the prophet:

4 Then the word of the LORD of hosts came to me: 5 “Say to all the people of the land and the priests, ‘When you fasted and mourned in the fifth month and in the seventh, for these seventy years, was it for me that you fasted? 6 And when you eat and when you drink, do you not eat for yourselves and drink for yourselves? 7 Were not these the words that the LORD proclaimed by the former prophets, when Jerusalem was inhabited and prosperous, with her cities around her, and the South and the lowland were inhabited?’ ”

Here is the heart of the matter, when they fast, and for that matter even when they are just at their regular eating of meals they do all of these things unto themselves.

This is a dangerously easy thing to do!

These people likely were keeping the fasts now because they thought that by doing so they could appease God and appeal to Him and that through is satisfaction with their sacrifice He would bless them. They fasted not out of a true inner repentance and mourning over their sin but rather because they thought that by doing so they might gain the blessing and pleasure of God.

This is not an error that is theirs alone, we all find it easy to become absorbed in our own cares and desires and seek God as a means to an end rather than as an end in and of Himself.

In 1 Corinthians speaking in a different context but in a way that relates to what we are talking about here Paul admonishes the Corinthians:

English Standard Version Chapter 10

31 So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.

All that we do is to be done to the end of glorifying God, this is as we learn in the catechisms, the chief end of Man and as John Piper is well known for pointing out, it is when we do this that we are made able to enjoy Him forever.

In the reminder of the chapter then Zechariah summarizes thew words of the prophets to the former generations who had so neglected and abandoned the word of the Lord to them that it had resulted in their destruction and exile.

Now we must not assume that because the list that is given in verses 9 and 10 consists of ways to treat other people rightly that this text is not first and foremost concerned with the heart attitude of the people toward God.

Those who have a right attitude of the heart toward God are those who will rightly live with their neighbor. When our hearts are right with our God that shared experience of Love and blessing with God can not help but overflow into our relationship with those around us. Therefore one of the ways to make a judgement about the condition of a personas relationship with the Father is to carefully examine how it is that they treat their fellow man.

The result of Israels failure to head the caution of the earlier prophets was:

I scattered them with a whirlwind among all the nations that they had not known. Thus the land they left was desolate, so that no one went to and fro, and the pleasant land was made desolate.”

These people are in danger of experiencing these same things. While we do see periods of revival and obedience in the post exilic period we also see plenty of times of trouble in books like Malachi and Ezra and Nehemiah to know that these people were still prone to neglect the call to be obedient to the Law of the Lord from a true heart.

The call here is to check your heart and your motives, God knows that these men are not being driven to ask these questions from truly repentant hearts and that they must be warned in the ways that their forefathers had been warned about living rightly as the people of God for His glory. It is only then that these days of fasting will be turned into something different.

Chapter 8

This word of caution then transitions in Chapter 8 to a word of blessing.

Those who have headed the call to search their own hearts and to set themselves to seek to live their lives for the Glory of God alone are those who are able to hear and receive then the blessings of God and we do indeed see some tremendous blessings promised here in this passage.

Now as we read these and talk about them a bit we need to understand again that these things are meant to direct us toward the coming of the Messiah, that the restoration of Israel would not be complete until His arrival.

One of the commentators I read in preparing for this message pointed out something that was such an “aha” moment for me. At times we struggle with what to do with this period of time following the return from exile and continuing on through the 400 or more years until the coming of Christ. We have all of these promises of blessing and restoration and yet as we have often noted we don't see them fulfilled in any way that could be said to resemble the full arrival of those blessed promised realities.

What then are we to do with this period of time?

Well commentator Mark Boda makes an amazing connection, one that I nearly smacked myself in the head for failing to put together.

In Daniel chapter 9 Daniel knowing that the period of 70 years of the exile is nearly complete takes up a prayer for the restoration of his people in which he confesses their sin and beached God for His mercy in restoring them.

16 “O Lord, according to all your righteous acts, let your anger and your wrath turn away from your city Jerusalem, your holy hill, because for our sins, and for the iniquities of our fathers, Jerusalem and your people have become a byword among all who are around us. 17 Now therefore, O our God, listen to the prayer of your servant and to his pleas for mercy, and for your own sake, O Lord, make your face to shine upon your sanctuary, which is desolate. 18 O my God, incline your ear and hear.

God then provides Daniel with an answer that is well known to anyone that has done any study of Eschatology, Daniel’s 70 weeks!

24 “Seventy weeks are decreed about your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place.

Now we don't have time this morning to dive into Daniel’s 70 weeks in any sort of detail, I would commend Sam Storm’s book Kingdom Come to you for a good beginning summary of this prophecy. However what I want us to notice is that already, here toward the end of the exile, there is a prophecy that there is to be a period of time that will transpire between the beginning of the restoration of Israel through the return from Exile and the coming of the messiah who would bring to completion what Daniel calls:

to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness,

We talk about the already but not yet nature of the kingdom, that it has been Inaugurated but awaits its consummation and here we find that Israel of old also lived, and I would argue knowingly so, in a time of already but not yet and this in relation to the restoration and consolation of Israel and the removal of her sin and iniquity once and for all. The blessings that were long promised that would be associated with the Day of the Messiah would come in part during this time and direct them forward to that blessed day in the future but the full realization of these things would not come yet, not until the coming of the One on whom all of these promises rested.

KEY: This period of restoration as outlined in Daniel was going to take a significant amount of time and its right there in front of us!!!

And so we see here outlined a number of blessings that these people had to look forward to. Some of them seemingly resembling the idealized language used by Isaiah to describe the nature of the Kingdom of the Messiah.

We see that God will turn with Jealousy toward His people. We learned about God’s righteous and wonderful jealousy for us on Thursday.

We see that as a result of his turning toward them He Himself will dwell in Her, the City will be called faithful, it will be filled with Old and Young a seeming allusion to the Promises of Isaiah 65 where we read:

English Standard Version Chapter 65

20 No more shall there be in it

an infant who lives but a few days,

or an old man who does not fill out his days,

There will be abundant life, there will be peace, there will be abundance in the production of fruit and produce, God is going to gather then to Himself from across the face of the earth, He is going to save them and make them a blessing.

Therefore he says:

Fear not, but let your hands be strong.”

In other words, set your hearts and lives to live out this obedience toward which you are being called and in which you will find the blessing of God.

He says this directly in verse 16:

16 These are the things that you shall do: Speak the truth to one another; render in your gates judgments that are true and make for peace; 17 do not devise evil in your hearts against one another, and love no false oath, for all these things I hate, declares the LORD.”

Again, not that doing these things will merit the blessings but these things will be marks that they are indeed members of this blessed community.

and at last we get an answer to their original question at the beginning of chapter 7:

When these things take place our fasting shall be turned to feasting.

It is interesting to think of this in light of the ministry of Christ and the brought to him by the disciples of John in Matthew 9 where we read:

14 Then the disciples of John came to him, saying, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” 15 And Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.

Apparently fasting had long since been a part of Jewish culture and we find that when Jesus comes, at least for the time that he was present with them, the disciples did not take part in these fasts. It could well be that Jesus is here in Matthew 9 directing the disciples of John to the reality that it is in Him that these fasts are to finally be put to an end. In Christ the restoration of Israel would be complete!

At any rate we see the admonition then to:

Therefore love truth and peace.

As God is the God of truth and peace this admonition is really just shorthand for Love GOD! To love truth and peace is to love God himself because he is the truth and He Himself is our peace.

Ephesians 2:14 ESV

For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility

and John 14:6

John 14:6 ESV

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

And lastly we see a passage that really connects us with the messianic language that is going to come in the chapters ahead. We see that in this time to come that as we saw in Micah the people of the nations are going to stream to Jerusalem we see them in verse 21 using the covenant name for God implying their share in the New Covenant that had been promised and we see the role of God’s own people in leading those from the nations to the Lord:

23 Thus says the LORD of hosts: In those days ten men from the nations of every tongue shall take hold of the robe of a Jew, saying, ‘Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.’

10 here is not literal but speaks as 10 often does about completeness and as a multiplier about abundance. Many men from the nations of the world therefore are to latch hold of God people because they see that God is with them, with us.

This passage really brings a weight of meaning then to 1 Peter 3:15

1 Peter 3:15 ESV

but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect,

You see we are now the city, we are the true Jerusalem where God is to be found dwelling among us and so when we are challenged by those in the word it is imperative that the reason for our hope shines through and that it is clearly that Christ is with us and there will be those who in that defense who realize that God is indeed with us and will latch hold and ask us to bring them to the Lord that they may also share in the blessed hope of God with us!

Closing

And so we see this passage again setting the stage for the coming if the messiah, a theme that is going to feature heavily in the latter half of this book. The call to the people is a call to caution, do not fall into the trap of believing that just because you have the temple again that all is well with you. Your ancestors assumed that and yet because of their foul hearts that were far from Him the ancient prophets had said that there fasts and sacrifices were an abomination to the Lord.

We are no different. Merely going to church and taking part in the worship of God will not suffice to please God and to give you entrance into His blessings. Many people in our day pursue these as ends in themselves and the way we share the gospel as only aided people in believing that the gospel is all about them, all about bringing them happiness.

No, we must come with repentant hearts. Often reminding ourselves of the sin that caused our Lord to be nailed to a cross for us. We must not, like that woman in Sunday school, think that it is high time to move on from sins mortification to more fun and enjoyable topics. We memorialize each week that death of Christ a spiritual feast that even in its feasting gives our minds pause to consider the sin that made such a death necessary to accomplish our salvation.

And lastly there is the pressing reminder in this text that the love of God in our hearts must be shown by its flowing out into the world around us. As a result of the liberal “social” gospel that has taken root in many churches and has lead directly to so many of the ills we see in the world around us, a social gospel that finds its primary error in pursuing social justice as an end in and of itself, as a result of this. often times, faithful Christians can be wary of talking of the social dimension of the Christian life. However, these OT prophets make it clear that one of the clearest examples of the presence of the true love of God in our hearts will be the overflow of love, concern, and compassion shows to the poor and the needy among us. The history of the Christian church bears this out and so we ought not be hesitant to consider ways in which we can seek to see the hallmarks of this passage the hallmarks of our lives, not as ends in and of themselves but to the end of glorifying God through obedience to Him!