65 lines
14 KiB
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65 lines
14 KiB
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<h2><a onclick="return mV('Zec',7,'all');">Zec 7</a> - Obedience Is Better than Ritual</h2>
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<p>A. Confronting the sin of religious hypocrisy.</p>
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<p class="c1">1. (<a onclick="return mV('Zec',7,'1-3');">1-3</a>) A question about fasting.</p>
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<p class="c2">Now in the fourth year of King Darius it came to pass <i>that </i>the word of the <span class="c6">Lord</span> came to Zechariah, on the fourth day of the ninth month, Chislev, when <i>the people </i>sent Sherezer, with Regem-Melech and his men, <i>to </i>the house of God, to pray before the <span class="c6">Lord</span>, <i>and </i>to ask the priests who <i>were </i>in the house of the <span class="c6">Lord</span> of hosts, and the prophets, saying, "Should I weep in the fifth month and fast as I have done for so many years?"</p>
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<p class="c4">a. <b><span class="c3">In the fourth year . . . on the fourth day of the ninth month</span></b>: On December 4, 518 <span class="c6">b.c.</span> a delegation came to Jerusalem with a question about fasting. At this point, the temple was somewhere around halfway completed.</p>
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<p class="c4">b. <b><span class="c3">Should I weep in the fifth month and fast</span></b>: The fast in the <b><span class="c3">fifth month</span></b> remembered the destruction of the temple (<a onclick="return mV('2Ki',25,'8-9');">2Ki 25:8-9</a>). Zechariah also mentions a fast in the seventh month (<a onclick="return mV('Zec',7,5);">Zec 7:5</a>), which remembered the murder of Gedaliah, the last act of rebellion against the Babylonian governor of Judah (<a onclick="return mV('2Ki',25,25);">2Ki 25:25</a>).</p>
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<p class="c5">i. The Law of Moses only commanded one fast day, on the Day of Atonement (<a onclick="return mV('Lev',16,'29-34');">Lev 16:29-34</a>). In addition to this day, during the exile the Jewish people instituted four more feasts to remember key dates in the tragic defeat of their nation. Here are the additional feasts:</p><div align="center"><table border=0 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=3 style="border:1px solid #000;"><tr style="background-color:#efefef;"><td style="border-width:0px 1px 1px 0px;border-color:#000;border-style:solid;"><b>Month/Day</b></td><td style="border-width:0px 1px 1px 0px;border-color:#000;border-style:solid;"><b>Reason</b></td><td style="border-width:0px 0px 1px 0px;border-color:#000;border-style:solid;"><b>Reference</b></td></tr><tr><td style="border-width:0px 1px 1px 0px;border-color:#000;border-style:solid;">4/17</td><td style="border-width:0px 1px 1px 0px;border-color:#000;border-style:solid;">
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<p>Mourning the capture of Jerusalem</p> </td> <td style="border-width:0px 0px 1px 0px;border-color:#000;border-style:solid;"> <a onclick="return mV('Jer',52,'6-30');">Jer 52:6-30</a></td></tr><tr><td style="border-width:0px 1px 1px 0px;border-color:#000;border-style:solid;">5/9</td><td style="border-width:0px 1px 1px 0px;border-color:#000;border-style:solid;">
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<p>Burning of Jerusalem and the destruction of Solomon's Temple</p></td><td style="border-width:0px 0px 1px 0px;border-color:#000;border-style:solid;"> <a onclick="return mV('2Ki',25,'2-10');">2Ki 25:2-10</a></td></tr><tr><td style="border-width:0px 1px 1px 0px;border-color:#000;border-style:solid;">7/3</td><td style="border-width:0px 1px 1px 0px;border-color:#000;border-style:solid;">
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<p>Assassination of Gedaliah and the massacre of 80 men</p></td> <td style="border-width:0px 0px 1px 0px;border-color:#000;border-style:solid;"> <a onclick="return mV('Jer',4,'1-10');">Jer 4:1-10</a></td></tr><tr><td style="border-width:0px 1px 0px 0px;border-color:#000;border-style:solid;">10/10</td><td style="border-width:0px 1px 0px 0px;border-color:#000;border-style:solid;">
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<p>Beginning of Nebuchadnezzar's siege against Jerusalem</p></td><td><a onclick="return mV('2Ki',25,1);">2Ki 25:1</a></td></tr></table></div>
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<p class="c5">ii. <a onclick="return mV('Psa',137,'all');">Psa 137</a> beautifully - and powerfully - describes the sadness of heart that made the exiles remember their sin and tragedy with these additional days of fasting.</p>
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<p class="c4">c. <b><span class="c3">To ask the priests who were in the house of the <span class="c6">Lord</span></span></b>: These men knew that during their forced exile in Babylon they observed these feasts that remembered the tragic fall of Jerusalem. Now since God's people were back in the land and the temple was rebuilt, they wanted to know if it was appropriate to continue to these fasts of mournful remembrance.</p>
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<p class="c5">i. The matter brings up an issue relevant today: How long should we remember and mourn over our past? Should we do things to remember either our sin or the tragedies of the past?</p>
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<p class="c4">d. <b><span class="c3">As I have done for so many years</span></b>: These additional fasts were not commanded by God, but instituted by man. Yet because they were traditionally practiced for so long (at least 70 years), they developed an authority of their own. They thought, "We've done this <b><span class="c3">for so many years</span></b>, we may as well keep doing it."</p>
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<p class="c1">2. (<a onclick="return mV('Zec',7,'4-7');">4-7</a>) Hypocrisy in fasting is rebuked.</p>
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<p class="c2">Then the word of the <span class="c6">Lord</span> of hosts came to me, saying, "Say to all the people of the land, and to the priests: 'When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh <i>months </i>during those seventy years, did you really fast for Me; for Me? When you eat and when you drink, do you not eat and drink <i>for yourselves?</i> <i>Should you </i>not <i>have obeyed </i>the words which the <span class="c6">Lord</span> proclaimed through the former prophets when Jerusalem and the cities around it were inhabited and prosperous, and the South and the Lowland were inhabited?'"</p>
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<p class="c4">a. <b><span class="c3">Did you really fast for Me; for Me?</span></b> God's word through Zechariah rebuked the people of God for what their fasting had become - indulgent pity-parties instead of a time to genuinely seek God. Their lives were not right when they did <b><span class="c3">eat and drink</span></b> - that they did for themselves, not for the <span class="c6">Lord</span>. A few days of fasting every year could not make up for the rest of the year lived <b><span class="c3">for yourselves</span></b>.</p>
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<p class="c5">i. This also shows us that when we cling to the memory of sin or tragedy in the past, we often do it out of simple self-indulgence. We do it for our self, not for the <span class="c6">Lord</span>.</p>
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<p class="c4">b. <b><span class="c3">Should you not have obeyed the words which the <span class="c6">Lord</span> proclaimed</span></b>: Because their hearts were not right with God, their rituals were not right before God. Everyday obedience would make their times of fasting meaningful, but their neglect of everyday obedience made their fasting hypocritical.</p>
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<p class="c5">i. "It was easy to spend fast-days mourning their losses, but harder to face up to God's continuing demands." (Baldwin)</p>
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<p class="c5">ii. Instead of actively remembering the sin or tragedy of the past, God wants us to focus on active obedience and an active walk with Him. "There is no need to observe the sad anniversaries of our sins and their accompanying punishment, if once we are assured of God's free forgiveness. When He forgives and restores, the need for dwelling on the bitter past is over . . . Too many of us are always dwelling beside the graves of the dead past." (Meyer)</p>
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<p class="c5">iii. <b><span class="c3">Through the former prophets when Jerusalem and the cities around it were inhabited and prosperous</span></b>: If their ancestors had been obedient they would have never needed to fast, and their land wouldn't have been conquered and desolate.</p>
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<p class="c4">c. <b><span class="c3">And the South and the Lowland were inhabited</span></b>: Here, <b><span class="c3">the</span></b> <b><span class="c3">South</span></b> refers to the <i>Negev</i>, the desolate desert near the Dead Sea. This area wasn't always desolate; before Israel's disobedience, it too was prosperous and <b><span class="c3">inhabited</span></b>.</p>
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<p>B. What God wants: people who will listen and obey.</p>
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<p class="c1">1. (<a onclick="return mV('Zec',7,'8-10');">8-10</a>) The conduct God desires.</p>
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<p class="c2">Then the word of the <span class="c6">Lord</span> came to Zechariah, saying, "Thus says the <span class="c6">Lord</span> of hosts: 'Execute true justice, show mercy and compassion everyone to his brother. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the alien or the poor. Let none of you plan evil in his heart against his brother.' "</p>
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<p class="c4">a. <b><span class="c3">Execute true justice, show mercy and compassion</span></b>: In <a onclick="return mV('Zec',7,7);">Zec 7:7</a> the prophet rebuked the people of God and their ancestors for a basic neglect of obedience. Now Zechariah describes the kind of obedience God wanted, beginning with decent and loving treatment of our neighbor.</p>
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<p class="c4">b. <b><span class="c3">Let none of you plan evil in his heart against his brother</span></b>: Some among the people of God found it easier to fast a few days a year instead of truly treating others in a godly way. Their bad relationship with others demonstrated a fundamentally bad relationship with the <span class="c6">Lord</span>.</p>
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<p class="c1">2. (<a onclick="return mV('Zec',7,'11-12');">11-12</a>) The rebellious reaction of God's people.</p>
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<p class="c2">"But they refused to heed, shrugged their shoulders, and stopped their ears so that they could not hear. Yes, they made their hearts like flint, refusing to hear the law and the words which the <span class="c6">Lord</span> of hosts had sent by His Spirit through the former prophets. Thus great wrath came from the <span class="c6">Lord</span> of hosts."</p>
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<p class="c4">a. <b><span class="c3">Refused to heed . . . shrugged their shoulders . . . stopped their ears . . . made their hearts like flint</span></b>: Zechariah vividly describes a <i>progression</i> of <i>rejection</i>. It begins with simply refusing to <b><span class="c3">heed</span></b> God, then a self-justifying shrugging of <b><span class="c3">their shoulders</span></b>, then stopping <b><span class="c3">their hears</span></b>. It all ends with hearts as hard as <b><span class="c3">flint</span></b>.</p>
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<p class="c5">i. When you meet people with <b><span class="c3">hearts like flint</span></b>, you know they did not become that way overnight. There was a gradual, certain progression to their present place of hardness.</p>
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<p class="c5">ii. Baldwin on <b><span class="c3">shrugged their shoulders</span></b>: "Israel had <i>turned a stubborn shoulder</i>, like an animal that stiffened every muscle in its effort to refuse the yoke."</p>
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<p class="c4">b. <b><span class="c3">Refusing to hear the law and the words which the <span class="c6">Lord</span> of hosts had sent by His Spirit through the former prophets</span></b>: In their hardened state, they just didn't want to hear God's word. When we lose our hunger for God's word it is a sobering evidence of the progression of rejection and hardness of heart.</p>
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<p class="c5">i. Zechariah didn't doubt that the <b><span class="c3">Spirit</span></b> of God genuinely inspired his words and the words of other prophets.</p>
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<p class="c1">3. (<a onclick="return mV('Zec',7,'13-14');">13-14</a>) God's judgment on their disobedience.</p>
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<p class="c2">"Therefore it happened, <i>that </i>just as He proclaimed and they would not hear, so they called out and I would not listen," says the <span class="c6">Lord</span> of hosts. "But I scattered them with a whirlwind among all the nations which they had not known. Thus the land became desolate after them, so that no one passed through or returned; for they made the pleasant land desolate."</p>
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<p class="c4">a. <b><span class="c3">Just as He proclaimed and they would not hear, so they called out and I would not listen</span></b>: Since God's people refused to listen to God, God would refuse to listen to and answer their prayers. This is just another good reason to stay under the teaching of God's word - so that our prayers will be answered.</p>
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<p class="c4">b. <b><span class="c3">I scattered them with a whirlwind</span></b>: "This refers to the swift victories and cruel conduct of the Chaldeans towards the Jews; they came upon them like a <i>whirlwind</i>; they were tossed to and fro, and up and down, everywhere scattered and confounded." (Clarke)</p>
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<p class="c4">c. <b><span class="c3">Thus the land became desolate after them</span></b>: Their disobedience and disregard for God led to scattering and desolation. This is always our fate when we allow religious rituals to take the place of a real relationship and daily obedience towards God.</p>
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