The Intention (Zech. 7:4-7)

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/17/2016 6:57 AM

My Worship Time                                                                                         Focus:  Then Intention

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Zechariah 7:4-7

            Message of the verses:  “4  Then the word of the LORD of hosts came to me, saying, 5  "Say to all the people of the land and to the priests, ’When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months these seventy years, was it actually for Me that you fasted? 6 ’When you eat and drink, do you not eat for yourselves and do you not drink for yourselves? 7 ’Are not these words which the LORD proclaimed by the former prophets, when Jerusalem was inhabited and prosperous along with its cities around it, and the Negev and the foothills were inhabited?’"”

            As we look at what the Lord answers in these verses we cannot help but think about what it was that caused Israel and Judah to go into captivity in the first place and that was idol worship and also not taking seriously real worship that the Lord had laid out for them in the early parts of the OT.  We have learned from our study in the gospel of John that real worship has to come from the heart, you cannot just go through rituals and not have it come from your heart.  Think about taking of the Lord’s Table or Communion and just doing it as a ritual, not doing it from your heart remembering what it cost God to send His Son to die on the cross to save us.  Jesus told His disciples that they were to do this until He comes back, to remember the cost of their salvation, and Paul tells us that we are to examine ourselves to make sure that first of all we are truly believers in Jesus Christ and then to examine ourselves to make sure that there is no unconfessed sin, a sin that you are holding onto and not willing to confess before you partake of the elements of the Lord’s Table.  This is serious because the Corinthians whom Paul was writing this to were not following this procedure, they were doing it as a ritual and because of this some were sick and some actually died, so this is serious not to worship the Lord with rituals which is what was about to happen to the remnant who came back from Babylon. 

            The Lord gets to the heart of the matter in verse six when He asks them if they were doing this for themselves, for that is not true worship.  MacArthur writes “You see, He’s…really proving a deeper problem.  Their fasts and their feasts equally were their own and God was seldom considered as the implication.  You see, the actual question that they were asking…should we keep the feast of the fifth month? you know something, is never answered.  That question is never answered because that isn’t the point.  The point is, you can worship and you can celebrate with a fast or you can celebrate with a feast any time you want if it’s truly done to the honor and glory of the Lord, you see?  There is no answer to the question, but the deeper issue is, what is the serious evil that really is infesting Israel?  It is this feeling that all these things are merely the performance, mechanical.  And the implication again of verse 5 where he says, ‘Even though seventy years, ‘ and again it’s the Word of the Lord saying He’s kind of reemphasizing their feeling of weariness.  Did you just crank it out for 70 whole years?  One commentator paraphrases the answer of God by these words, ‘When you fast, it is because of your sins.  And when you eat and drink, it is for your own profit.  The whole matter is for yourselves.  But what have I in all of this?  For neither in the fasting nor the feasting is there anything for My glory. When you fasted it was like penance, and when you feasted it was for your own satisfaction.  And where did I ever come in?  Did your really ever fast for Me?’”

            In verse seven God is telling them that they should listen to the prophets.  Obedience to the Word of God is what He is talking about here, as He is telling them that they should have listened to the prophets, which of course they did not.  And because they did not listen was exactly the reason they were in captivity.

            If they would have listened to the prophets they would be prospering and not living under the control of another government, something they would do until the Lord would give them part of the land back and make them a nation again in May of 1948.  They don’t have all He promised yet, but it is a beginning and some day they will get all of the land He promised them.

7/17/2016 7:24 AM