Return to Me
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
We’re beginning a new series this morning in the book of Zechariah in the Old Testament, so you can turn in your Bibles to Zechariah chapter 1, that’s page 539 of the pew Bible. If you saw the slides earlier, I’ve titled this whole series, Zechariah: Glory in Our Midst. God’s Presence with His People.
Zechariah was a prophet, which means he had two jobs essentially, foretelling and forthtelling. We tend to associate prophets with their foretelling, that is having future events revealed to them, but most of the time that’s only a small sliver of what a prophet does.
Most of their job was forthtelling, that is speaking the truth of God to the people of their day. And for Zechariah, that task of forthtelling was primarily to encourage the people of Judah to return to a relationship with God and complete the building of the second temple.
Of course, there is the foretelling portion of Zechariah’s testimony, so we’ll obviously cover that, too. We’ll see that many of the things that Zechariah prophesied were fulfilled right then as the temple was rebuilt. Some things, though, weren’t fulfilled until Jesus came the first time to complete his work of salvation. And there are some which will not be fully realized until Jesus returns.
Ultimately, the book of Zechariah is about the establishment of God’s Kingdom, how God will dwell with his people. And so right there, we can already see that threefold revelation. At the time of Zechariah, God was going to dwell with his people when they completed the temple, but then we see a more fully realized dwelling when Jesus comes, but we won’t know the fullness of that dwelling until Jesus comes again and establishes the new heavens and new earth.
Zechariah is about how God is dwelling and will dwell with his people. Hence the title, Glory in Our Midst.
Now, a little bit of historical context; it’s important to know where we are in history. Starting a series in a new book is always one of the most challenging sermons in the series, because I need to set up the book in its context for clarity, but not take up the whole time so we don’t actually get into the point of the book. So, I’m doing my best to balance that out here.
Historical Context
Historical Context
The events of Zechariah take place after the Jews have returned to the Promised Land after the exile to Babylon. The basic historical plot line of the Bible is this: God creates the earth and mankind. In Genesis 3, mankind rebels against him and through Genesis 11 our lineage falls deeper and deeper into sin. In Genesis 12, God covenants, enters a special relationship with, one man, Abraham, to be the head of a great nation whose purpose was to be a kingdom of priests, they were supposed to show all the nations what relationship with God looks like. At the end of Genesis, however, God’s people are not in their promised land and they are enslaved by a wicked nation.
So, in Exodus through Judges, God delivers his people from slavery, reestablishes his covenant with them and they enter the Promised Land. And part of the stipulation for them staying in the land was that they were faithful to their covenant obligations. There were a bunch of covenant obligations, but they can be boiled down to, love Yahweh, God, alone and take care of other people.
Eventually, Israel becomes a great nation through their king David and his son Solomon, but after that they begin to decline for about 400 hundred years through the leadership of a bunch of wicked kings who led that nation into sin. In 605 B.C. God begins to bring down the judgments of the covenant on Judah with a series of invasions and deportations by the Babylonian Empire that culminate in the destruction of the temple in 586 B.C. They have been removed from the Promised Land, just like God said they would through the prophets like Jeremiah. The Exile has started.
Then, around 70 years later, the Babylonians are defeated by the Persian king Cyrus and he allows the Jews to return to their homeland and begin rebuilding the temple. So, they’ve been in exile and now they are coming home.
Zechariah takes place almost 20 years after that. Darius is now on the Persian throne (he’s the king from Daniel and the lions den, you’ve probably heard of that story). And the rebuilding of the temple has stalled. 20 years and it’s not finished yet. The people of Judah have become complacent and there is significant opposition from the surrounding region; both of those have led to construction coming to a halt.
And so, God gives Zechariah a prophetic word, a series of visions and messages that were meant to spur the people on, definitely to complete the temple, but even more so to return to a relationship with God. A mere 20 years after the exile and the people are already falling back into the same sin patterns as their ancestors.
And so, the initial call of Yahweh through the prophet Zechariah is one of repentance and promise. Return to me, he says, and I will return to you.
Let’s read from God’s Word this morning.
In the eighth month, in the second year of Darius, the word of the Lord came to the prophet Zechariah son of Berechiah, son of Iddo: “The Lord was extremely angry with your ancestors. So tell the people, ‘This is what the Lord of Armies says: Return to me—this is the declaration of the Lord of Armies—and I will return to you, says the Lord of Armies. Do not be like your ancestors; the earlier prophets proclaimed to them: This is what the Lord of Armies says: Turn from your evil ways and your evil deeds. But they did not listen or pay attention to me—this is the Lord’s declaration. Where are your ancestors now? And do the prophets live forever? But didn’t my words and my statutes that I commanded my servants the prophets overtake your ancestors?’ ”
So the people repented and said, “As the Lord of Armies decided to deal with us for our ways and our deeds, so he has dealt with us.”
Return to me, and I will return to you. Verse 3 is the critical point of these verses, and really it could be said that it’s the critical point of the entire book. God says, return to me, and I will return to you.
This morning, we’re going to look at the first part of that phrase and then, for the next few weeks, as we look at the eight visions of Zechariah, we’ll see how God reveals himself to his people.
Return to me, says the Lord of Hosts, and I will return to you.
Zechariah’s call to the Jews of his time, and to us today, in this introductory portion of his prophecy was one of confession and repentance. There is really only one point in my sermon outline today and it’s this:
We Must Repent.
We Must Repent.
Repentance, in biblical terms has two parts: Turning away from sin and turning to God. Both of those are necessary if we are going to see true repentance. And we are always in danger of emphasizing one over the other and calling it full repentance. But both are necessary. Turning from sin and turning to God.
A question that I would challenge you to propose to your self now, today, this week: which ditch do you tend to fall into? Are you more concerned about turning away from sin to the neglect of turning toward God? Or, do you tend more to pursue a relationship with God while never working diligently to mortify your indwelling sin?
What does your list of what a Christian looks like look like?
Doesn’t drink
Doesn’t smoke
Doesn’t dance
Doesn’t cuss
Keeps a clean house
Has a nice haircut and clean clothes
Loves America
Goes to church
If that’s the case, you might be in danger of conflating nice behavior with repentance.
Jesus had something to say about those who were more concerned with nice behavior than genuine repentance:
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which appear beautiful on the outside, but inside are full of the bones of the dead and every kind of impurity.
In the same way, on the outside you seem righteous to people, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.
Repentance isn’t just turning away from sin; it’s heart change and turning to God, as well.
As pastor Voddie Baucham once said, “Hell will be filled with people who didn’t drink, didn’t cuss, and may have even been baptized. Why? Because not one of those things make someone a Christian.”
Do not mistake better behavior for genuine repentance. Repentance is turning away from sin, but also turning to God.
On the other hand, Paul has some harsh words for those who think that the Christian life requires no transformation of one’s life:
The law came along to multiply the trespass. But where sin multiplied, grace multiplied even more
so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace will reign through righteousness, resulting in eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
What should we say then? Should we continue in sin so that grace may multiply?
Absolutely not! How can we who died to sin still live in it?
Or are you unaware that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?
Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in newness of life.
True repentance is turning to God by his grace, but also turning away from sin.
And listen, I don’t want to pick on anybody. But, if you had the urge to amen really loudly at one of those, you need to take a hard look at the other because that’s probably you.
What is repentance? At it’s core, repentance is relational.
Biblical repentance is not just focused on a change in behavioral patterns, but more importantly it’s focused on a change of relational patterns.
God doesn’t say, return to the law. He says return to me.
My mother is here today, and as I was preparing this sermon, I wondered if she remembered the story that I’m about to tell you. I don’t know, but it’s one that I remember quite clearly.
When I was about 6 years old, I don’t remember my youngest sister being born then, but if she was she was still very much an infant, anyway, my grandmother came over and gave both me and my younger sister a dollar to go to the store with her to pick out a toy.
Even as a six year old, I knew that one dollar wasn’t going to buy much, so while everyone’s focus was elsewhere, I sneaked into my mother’s purse and took out one more dollar for myself. Double your money with this one easy trick.
Anyway, we went to the store and I ended up not even spending the dollar, but when we got home my mother called me over onto the couch and asked me if I had taken a dollar out of her purse. Being the wise 6-year-old I was, I pretended not to hear the question. She didn’t buy it since we were sitting about a two feet apart.
Now, I rightly got in trouble for the theft, but I remember thinking…you know, it’s amazing what insight can come to a child now and again, and this is probably why I remember it so clearly, I remember understanding in that moment that the more costly result of my sin was that I had breached the relationship with my mother. Obviously, I didn’t use that language as a six year old, I’m sure it was something like recognizing that I had hurt mom’s feelings, but I absolutely remember coming to the realization that sin is more of an issue of relationship than behavior.
Return to me.
The Christian life of repentance is based on a person to love, not a list of ways to act.
And again, I’m not trying to minimize the effect of sins, that is specific behaviors, those are important and they rightly deserve punishment, but repentance is not simply turning away from sins. But rather it’s equally turning, or returning, to God such that faithfulness to him exudes from every aspect of our lives, not just some arbitrary list of things that we can and cannot do.
Repentance is turning from sin and turning to God.
Repentance is confessing sin before God, and clinging to him as the only means of deliverance.
Repentance is ceasing to rule your own life, and submitting to his rule of it.
Repentance for the Non-Christian
Repentance for the Non-Christian
Now, if you are here today and you are not a follower of Jesus you may be asking, well, why exactly should I repent? Why should I return to God?
You should repent because God sent his only Son into the world to return you to him. God made you and you belong to him and you have rebelled against him.
You might be thinking, my goodness, how does this old book apply to me? It does, and here’s why.
You may not be under the consequences of Judah’s exile from the Promised Land, but you are under the consequences of Adam’s exile from the Garden of Eden. God created Adam and gave him a command for obedience and a threat of expulsion if they disobeyed. Well, in Genesis 3 we read that they did disobey and were rightly expelled from the presence of God.
And, because Adam represented all of humanity when he sinned, his sin was passed down to all of us through the generations and the consequences of that sin were passed down to all of use through the generations. And the ultimate consequence of that sin is the relational separation from God and the eternal punishment for sin that is promised in the end.
But here’s the good news. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came from heaven to earth to take the punishment for your sin that you rightly deserve AND to make a way for you to return to God.
God’s call to you today is “Return to me, and I have made the way of your return, through the sacrifice of Jesus and his triumph on the cross. Repent and believe. Turn from sin and turn to God. Return to me.
Repentance for the Christian
Repentance for the Christian
And as for you, Christian, what does repentance look like for you? And yes, repentance is necessary for the Christian just as much as the non-Christian.
In fact, the Christian ought to be ever conscious of his own indwelling sin and therefore more compelled to repent and be returned to a right relationship with God.
Just like the exiles of Judah, we have a tendency to turn away from God again just as soon as we have turned to him. Like the song says, “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love.” If we are prone to leave the God we love, then we must be diligent to return to him. And so, repentance is a constant state of the Christian.
So let me ask you, are you a repenting Christian? Not just one who has repented that one time and camp and so I’ve got my ticket to heaven thank you very much, but a repenting Christian?
When’s the last time you confessed specific sin to God and turned away from it? Not just a general forgive me anywhere I’ve failed you, but specifically named and confessed the sin that remains in you.
Can you name sins that you have turned from? Not only confessed, but rejected and striven to put to death?
And what do you do when you begin to feel convicted of sin?Let me tell you what you must not do.
Don’t try to justify it. Don’t try to stuff it down or pretend it didn’t happen. Don’t make excuses or try to convince yourself that it was really someone else’s fault. “Well, if they would just...” or “Well, if they hadn’t done that then I wouldn’t have done this.” No, no.
Don’t put on a front and pretend that there isn’t sin. Don’t be like the whitewashed tombs that Jesus warned about. Don’t try to present yourself in the most favorable light.
Instead, lean into that conviction. It’s painful, but, like Jonathan Edwards said, let the scapel of the Great Physician go as deep as it must to get to the root of the sin. Conviction hurts, but confession heals.
Look at what the people said in verse 6, the language and syntax is a little clunky, but look at what they said in the last half of the verse:
But didn’t my words and my statutes that I commanded my servants the prophets overtake your ancestors?’ ” So the people repented and said, “As the Lord of Armies decided to deal with us for our ways and our deeds, so he has dealt with us.”
Repentance means not justifying yourself, but justifying God against you. Repentance is agreeing with God about your sin and agreeing that you deserve the punishment.
And here’s the beauty, when we repent, when we agree with God about our sin, it’s then that we truly begin to understand what it means when we have been clothed in Christ’s righteousness. What it means when the Bible says, he who knew no sin became sin for us.
When we agree with God about our sin, the doctrine of imputation becomes a sweet aroma, that our sin was moved over to Christ, and his righteousness was counted to us.
It is repentance, turning from sin and turning to God, that continually provides the assurance of our salvation. Far from feeling condemned, when we confess our sin and turn back to God, we are shown the the faithfulness of God to cleanse us and return to us.
Look at what David writes about confession in Psalm 32
When I kept silent, my bones became brittle from my groaning all day long.
For day and night your hand was heavy on me; my strength was drained as in the summer’s heat. Selah
Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not conceal my iniquity. I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” and you forgave the guilt of my sin. Selah
Therefore let everyone who is faithful pray to you immediately. When great floodwaters come, they will not reach him.
Don’t turn away from confession and repentance. It does you no good to keep it in, confess it. Bring it out to God and know the joy of his salvation.
Return to me, says the Lord of Armies, and I will return to you.
Let’s pray.