SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/7/2016 10:19 PM
My Worship Time Focus: The Rebuke
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: Zechariah 7:8-14
Message of the verses: “8 Then the word of the LORD came to
Zechariah saying, 9 "Thus has the
LORD of hosts said, ’Dispense true justice and practice kindness and compassion
each to his brother; 10 and do not oppress the widow or the orphan, the
stranger or the poor; and do not devise evil in your hearts against one
another.’ 11 “But they refused to pay attention and turned a stubborn shoulder
and stopped their ears from hearing. 12 "They made their hearts like flint
so that they could not hear the law and the words which the LORD of hosts had
sent by His Spirit through the former prophets; therefore great wrath came from the LORD of hosts.
13 “And just as He called and they would not listen, so they called and I would
not listen," says the LORD of hosts; 14 “but I scattered them with a storm
wind among all the nations whom they have not known. Thus the land is desolated
behind them so that no one went back and forth, for they made the pleasant land
desolate.’”
“8 Then this message came to
Zechariah from the LORD: 9 “This is what the LORD of Heaven’s Armies says:
Judge fairly, and show mercy and kindness to one another. 10 Do not oppress
widows, orphans, foreigners, and the poor. And do not scheme against each
other. 11 “Your ancestors refused to listen to this message. They stubbornly
turned away and put their fingers in their ears to keep from hearing. 12 They made their hearts as hard as stone, so
they could not hear the instructions or the messages that the LORD of Heaven’s
Armies had sent them by his Spirit through the earlier prophets. That is why
the LORD of Heaven’s Armies was so angry with them. 13 “Since they refused to
listen when I called to them, I would not listen when they called to me, says the
LORD of Heaven’s Armies. 14 As with a whirlwind, I scattered them among the
distant nations, where they lived as strangers. Their land became so desolate
that no one even traveled through it. They turned their pleasant land into a
desert (NLT).”
In our last SD we spoke of how the
Jewish people were tuned into traditions, as their hearts were far from the
Lord. There were more than one reason
why the Lord had the city of Jerusalem and the temple destroyed, but the one I
want to focus in on this evening is that these people were “religious” but
their hearts were far from the Lord.
They went about their daily lives as if their religious duties were a
part of it, but it meant no more to them than any other thing they would do,
and it surely did not affect their lives in a way that was pleasing to the
Lord, otherwise He would not have destroyed their city and temple.
When we were studying the book of
Jeremiah, a book where its author lived through the terrible times of having
the city and temple destroyed, we learned that the leaders were exploiting the
common people like the widows and orphans, something Zechariah talks about in
this section.
Dr. Wiersbe writes “The danger of
tradition is that it can easily turn into traditionalism. ‘Tradition is the living faith of the dead,’
wrote theologian Jerislav Pelikan; ‘Traditionalism is the dead faith of the
living.’ Traditionalism means going
through the outward motions instead of honoring the Lord from our heart; it
means participating in a religious event but failing to have an inner spiritual
experience.”
As in the case of what happened to
the Jews in Jeremiah’s day so that same thing can happen in our day to a
society, or to an individual that is that the Lord will bring suffering into
the lives of a nation or in the lives of an individual who continually does not
walk with the Lord. The Psalmist writes
in Psalm 119:67 “Before I was afflicted I went astray, But now I keep Your
word.”
We need now to look at another
quote from Dr. Wiersbe for it has to do with the church age of the past and the
church age now. “The word ‘tradition’
simply means ‘that which is passed along.’
It comes from a Latin word that means ‘to hand over.’ The basic doctrines of the Christian faith
must be handed from generation to generation (1 Tim. 2:2; 1 John 1:1-3; 1 Cor.
11:2; 1 Thes. 2:15; 3:6; Jude 3), but the customs and traditions of the early
church don’t carry the same authority as the inspired Word of God. In fact, as times change, some of these
customs may be detrimental to the work of the Lord. To institute four fast because of the
tragedies that occurred in Jerusalem, and yet not repent because of the sins
that caused these tragedies, was to miss the whole purpose of God’s discipline.
“Churches are like families; each
one has its own set of traditions, many of which may be good. The truths of God’s Word don’t change, but
changing circumstances reveal new principles and new applications of that
Word. The old Youth for Christ slogan
said it perfectly: we must be ‘geared to
the times, but anchored to the Rock.’”
The final authority of the church
must rest in the Word of God, and not in traditions.
7/7/2016 10:46 PM
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