Introduction
Sometimes back before the
pandemic, you’d find yourself sitting in a church somewhere looking out at a bubbling, noisy, sociable congregation before the service started …
the picture of what you’d want a congregation to be.
Then thirty five or forty
minutes later as the sermon started to roll on towards the promise of soon reaching point two (of three), and you’d find
yourself contemplating an obvious and stark change in the attitude and
attention level of those people and you could find yourself wondering … well,
yes they’re in church, but why are they
actually here?
It’s the question no-one else
I’ve met was asking … or maybe they just weren’t asking it out loud.
But there’s a big question being
asked now which is getting much more currency but that I suspect the answer to that first question might be connected
to it.
We’re now, of course, living
through times when what we’d call ‘normal’ Church can’t happen and those bubbly
people, in that happy congregation ... where, where O where ARE they now?!
When they can’t make church
what they want or like it to be, many seem to have snuck quietly away …
vanished … where’ve they GONE?
What is going on with the
situation we’re looking at?
Where is GOD in what we’re
looking at now?
Similar questions arose for
the prophet Zechariah … which is why I find him so interesting just now.
Let’s have a dig into
Zechariah chapter 7.
I. The Zechariah context, vv. 1-3
A. The time
This book is set in the time of the return of the Exiles from Babylon
to Jerusalem.
Ezra 5:1-2 tells us that Haggai and Zechariah worked together to
challenge the returned people to rebuild the Temple and look for the fulfilment
of God’s promises.
Way back in Jeremiah 25 and 29 it was prophesied that the exile would
last 70 years and then God would return His people to Jerusalem and afterwards
the Messiah would come and that God would then restore His presence both to a new Temple
and to His people (Jeremiah 30-33) and bring the rule of the Messiah over all the nations.
The dates at the beginning of this book tell us that those 70 years
are almost up.
More specifically the first verse of this chapter tells us that …
“In the fourth year of King Darius, the
word of the Lord came
to Zechariah
on the fourth day of the ninth month, the
month of Kislev.”
Zechariah 7:1
For the timing of what happens in this
chapter, on the basis of Zechariah 7:1, we’re able to be really precise.
The fourth day of Kislev, the ninth
month would be December 7th., 518 b.c., which means
it happened 22 months after the previous eight visions.
The thing was that although the seventy years of exile foretold by
Jeremiah was almost up, life back in the Land was proving hard, and it seemed
as if the promises of God weren’t coming true.
So … why was THAT?!
The reason the book of Zechariah exists is to offer the explanation.
The shape of the book is pretty simple.
B.
The shape of the book
i) 1:1-6 The
Introduction
“In the eighth month of the second year of Darius, the word of
the Lord came to the prophet Zechariah son of Berekiah, the son of
Iddo:
2 ‘The Lord was very angry with
your ancestors. 3 Therefore tell the people: this
is what the Lord Almighty says:
“Return to me,” declares the Lord Almighty, “and I
will return to you,” says the Lord Almighty. 4 Do
not be like your ancestors, to whom the earlier prophets proclaimed: this is
what the Lord Almighty says: “Turn
from your evil ways and your evil practices.” But they would not listen or pay
attention to me, declares the Lord. 5 Where
are your ancestors now? And the prophets, do they live for ever? 6 But
did not my words and my decrees, which I commanded my servants the prophets,
overtake your ancestors?” Zechariah 1:1-6
ii) 1:7-6:15 Zechariah’s
insight – his dreams and visions
(There are six and a bonus one) which will only be fulfilled if God’s
people are obedient and faithful to the terms of the Covenant.
The coming of the Saviour – the Messiah – is conditional upon this generation
being faithful to the Covenant, which leads into the conclusion in chapters
7-8, which takes te form of another challenge from Zechariah.
iii) 7:1-8:23
Conclusion
A group of Israelites come along to see the priests at Jerusalem, and
they’ve been mourning over the old temple’s destruction and they’ve been doing
that during the Exile for nearly seventy years.
They’ve worked out the prophesied seventy years of Exile is almost up
and therefore they ask the priests’ counsel up at Jerusalem, ‘Is it time to stop mourning, because
we reckon God’s Kingdom is coming pretty soon?’
Zechariah reminds them again of their ancestors’ rejection of God’s
calls to them through the prophets which led to the Exile and so Zechariah challenges
them too.
He says this
generation will only see God coming in power in His messianic kingdom if
they pursue justice and peace and remain faithful to the covenant, because it
was failing to that which got their ancestors Exiled in the first place.
So Zechariah reverses their question: ‘Is the Lord going to come?’ and
replaces it with his question: ‘are you going to become the kind of people who
are ready to receive and to participate in God’s coming Kingdom?’
And that question is just left hanging there … until John the Baptist
and the Lord Himself come along crying ‘prepare the Way of the Lord, make
straight paths for Him …’ all as was prophesied by Isaiah, by the way.
The people don’t address Zechariah’s question or make any attempt to answer
it. And that’s where it seems to me the tragedy of God’s people lies.
There are six more chapters in this book and they are collages of
images of what the coming Messianic Kingdom would look like, but we’re sticking
here with this turning point chapter … chapter seven.
If you want to follow through the rest of what happens later, you’ll
get a pretty good idea of that by visiting this link HERE and it will take you to a nice little video about it.
C. The situation at Bethel and this
question
“The people of Bethel had
sent Sharezer and Regem-Melek, together with their men, to entreat the Lord by asking the priests of the house of
the Lord Almighty and the prophets, ‘Should I
mourn and fast in the fifth month, as I have done for so many years?‘”’
Zechariah 7:2-3
We cannot miss the issue here: Bethel is a place with a PAST!
After the kingdom of Israel was split into two kingdoms on the
death of King Solomon (c.931
BC), Jeroboam, the
first king of the northern Kingdom
of Israel, made two calves of gold (1 Kings 12:28 ff)
and set one up in Bethel, and the other in Dan in
the far north of his kingdom.
This was apparently to make it unnecessary for the people of Israel to have to go to Jerusalem to worship in the temple there, but it was going against the prior commandment of God that Jerusalem should be the place for His Name, and the prohibition in the Ten Commandments of worshipping idols, and this northern idolatrous shrine provoked the hostility of the Judaeans.
The shrine at Bethel apparently avoided destruction in the
Assyrian invasions of the Kingdom of Israel in c. 740 and 722, but was finally
completely destroyed by King Josiah of
Judah (c. 640-609 BC).
Books of Ezra and Nehemiah
Bethel is mentioned in Ezra 2:28 and Nehemiah 7:32 as
being resettled at the time of the return of the exiles from Babylon.
Books of Amos, Hosea and Jeremiah
The shrine is mentioned with disapproval by the prophet Amos (c.
750)
A few years later the prophet Hosea (8th century BC) speaks (at least according to modern translations) of the "wickedness" of Bethel (Hosea 10:15) and Jeremiah (6th century BC) speaks of the "shame" which it brought on Israel (Jeremiah 48:13). Hosea 13:1–3 describe how the Israelites are abandoning Adonai for the worship of Baal, and accused them of making or using images for 'idol' worship. Chief among these, it appears, was the image of the bull at Bethel, which by the time of Hosea was being worshipped as an image of Baal.
So, Bethel escaped the common destruction in 587,
when the Babylonians ravaged all of Judah ... possibly because it didn’t look very
‘Jewish’.
During the exilic period, however, the town
experienced rapid decline, and only a few Benjaminites were mentioned as
peopling it in the reconstruction period (Ezra 2.28).
By the time this deputation came to Zechariah, Finkelstein and Singer-Avitz (2009) show from pottery fragments found at Bethel that the place was very sparsely populated at this time and a very pale shadow of what it had been before the Exile.
It’s idolatry and exploitative, cruel Baal worship has brought
about the downfall of Bethel
But what we learn from this passage is that whoever is there
after the Exile, there is a religious tradition there of ritual laments for the
fall of Jerusalem and its privilege of regular worship.
That being the case, what’s going on
with these laments?
There are two of them
here in v. 3.
i)
This lamentation in the fifth month marked the
occasion of the destruction of Solomon’s temple on August 14th, 586 b.c., almost exactly
70 years earlier (cf. 2 Kgs 25:8).
ii)
The one in seventh month
in v. 5 apparently refers to the anniversary of the assassination of Gedaliah, governor
of Judah by the invading army (Jer 40:13-14; 41:1), seven years later.
Now, the date we’ve got for these
Bethel people coming to Zechariah is (in terms of what was going on with the
re-building of the Temple) about mid-way between the re-founding ceremony in
Haggai 2:10-23 and the completion in Ezra 6:14.
So they've been ritually mourning the loss of their institution of temple worship
and the loss of the use of a king of their own that god had allowed them, when
god himself should have been their only king.
Into that context of the rituals they’d developed lamenting
the loss of their covenant privileges come two clear and plain oracles of
challenge.
Andrew Hill says “Zechariah’s response (vv.
4-7) is generally understood as a rebuke to the delegation from Bethel and a
criticism of hypocritical liturgical practice on the part of the people.”
II. The first oracle: heart analysis, vv. 4-7
A.
Who
does it come from? v. 4
“Then the word of the Lord Almighty
came to me …”
Or as NET rather more literally translates it:
“The message of the Lord of Heaven’s
Armies then came to me”
What have we here?
An announcement that although the armies of Assyrian and
Babylon had been the power in the land, God’s armies are the power in the
universe, and what had happened with the people at the Exile wasn't because God had been too weak to save them! It was because God, the great power, had stood
back and withdrawn His hand.
B.
What
were you doing all that time? v. 5-6
“‘Ask all the people of
the land and the priests, “When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh
months for the past seventy years, was it really for me that you fasted?
And when you were eating and drinking, were you not just feasting for
yourselves?”
The expected answer to that question – and the issue is crucial to understanding this – is: ‘no, it wasn’t actually for God at ALL', but actually it was truly to please themselves.
The focus is on worship that isn’t
simply for the love of the Lord, the desire for sincere worship and the life of
true covenant allegiance.
They’d swapped those things for formal
ritualism, not heart worship … and Zechariah takes them straight back to the
Word of God they’d failed to focus on.
C. And
weren’t you warned about this at the time? v. 7
“Are these not the words the Lord proclaimed
through the earlier prophets when Jerusalem and its surrounding towns were at rest
and prosperous, and the Negev and the western foothills were settled?”’
Zechariah appeals to the earlier prophets … he does a lot of that in this
first half of the book … connecting his message to the prologue in 1:1-4 and
showing continuity with the preaching of the pre-Exilic prophets as they tried
to call the people back to humility and sincerity in their worship and covenant
living.
Meyers & Meyers (1987) highlight Zechariah’s process in this part of the book, “Zechariah
reviews past oracles delivered by the prophets, relates the results, considers the
present situation, and looks towards the future. Each step of the way, prophetic
utterance is invoked: earlier prophets (here and in 7:12), present prophets (8:9),
and the prophet Zechariah’s own oracular conclusion (8:19ff.).”
Are not these the words of the prophets who addressed you about the causes of what subsequently went on?
So here Zechariah’s rhetorical questions assume the answer will be: ’Yes! Precisely so!’
This first response of Zechariah revealed the state of their hearts ... it charged the people with hypocrisy, uncovering
the fact that their ritual practices were actually SELF-serving v. 6.
The second oracle that's racing towards us now moved on from spiritual declension in the heart onto the ground of behaviour correction.
III. The second oracle: behaviour correction,
vv. 8-10
In the follow-up to the Bethel delegation, Zechariah puts
the questions about fasting in a much wider context.
“And the word of the Lord came again to Zechariah:
9 ‘This is what
the Lord Almighty said:
“Administer true justice; show mercy and
compassion to one another.
Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the
foreigner or the poor. Do not plot evil against each other.”
Zechariah identifies four major issues for the behaviour that should characterise the social life of the people of God as a community of people in covenant relationship to Jehovah.
i)
Administer
true justice
ii)
Show
mercy and compassion
iii)
Do
not oppress your weak and vulnerable, the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor
iv)
Do
not plot evil against one another
I have only
really had good experiences of church meetings … I’ve been privileged to lead
churches of often new believers and graciously grateful-to-God people.
But those four things would
make good rules or standing orders for many church meetings!
The two issues that stand out here are these:
A. The way you should treat one another,
vv. 8-9 & 10b
“Administer
true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another … Do not plot evil against each other.”
God is really concerned about the way His
covenant people should treat one another, especially those we are frustrated
with … ‘do not plot evil against one another’.
God’s people were supposed to live as
brothers, but that wasn’t the way they’d behaved.
B. The way you should treat marginalised
people, v. 10a
But God is at least equally concerned
about how those who are privilege to be part of the covenanted community of His
people treat it’s wronged people, its weak and its vulnerable people …
“Do not oppress the widow
or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor.”
They had come along with a question about religious observance.
Zechariah calls them to behave like the people of the God Who is all
about compassion and lifting up the poor and weak ... like the people, for
example, that He’d rescued out of Egypt.
Now that all
highlights the situation behind the Exile, and what needed correcting at the
restoration of His covenant.
They hadn't lived as the people of His covenant.
So here comes the
summarising situation report … here is where everything went wrong.
God sent prophets to turn His people back to Him, but they really were not very attentive ...
IV. Situation report, v. 11-12
“‘But they refused to pay
attention;
stubbornly they turned their backs and covered
their ears.
They made their hearts as hard as flint and
would not listen to the law or
to the words that the Lord Almighty had sent by his Spirit through the earlier prophets.
So the Lord Almighty was very angry.”
i)
REFUSED to pay attention
That word ‘refused’ is one that essentially means to ignore orders, whether
written or verbal
ii)
Turned their
backs and covered their ears
Hill says: “the Hebrew idiom ‘to set a defiant shoulder’ “signifies
a haughtiness that belies an unabashed recalcitrance’
The idea of
stopping up ears means ’to make dull’ or ‘to de-sensitise’.
You know the
first time you hear a sermon that cuts close to the bone with you on a sensitive
issue that you need to correct, it makes a big impression.
But you do
nothing about it.
And the next
time, it’s much less acute, and the next time … even less so.
Remarkably quickly,
you find you have ‘stopped up your ears’.
They’d heard
the prophets speak to the problem many times, but they had learnt how to stop up
their ears … and this placed the responsibility for the consequences FIRMLY on
them.
Remarkably,
the same expression is used of Pharaoh King of Egypt when he hardened his heart
against God and refused to release the Hebrew slaves (Exodus 8:32).
Sadly, the history
of Israel’s relationship with YHWH had for a long time been characterised by similar obstinacy
(as appears also from Malachi 3:7)
They had made
their hearts as hard as a hard thing …
iii)
Made their hearts as hard as flint
The Hebrew term שָׁמִיר (shamir) means literally “hardness” and since it is
said in Ezek 3:9 to be harder than flint, many
scholars suggest that it refers to diamond.
It is unlikely that diamond was known to ancient
Israel, however, so probably a hard stone like emery or corundum is in view.
iv)
Wouldn’t listen to the Law
That verb ‘listen’ connotes obedience to what’s heard … they outright refused
to give heed to the Torah … God’s instruction or teaching … no doubt the big
idea here is the iconic Law given through Moses
But neither
would they listen to God’s Word through the prophets …
v)
Wouldn’t
listen to God’s Word through the prophets
v. 12 “would not listen to the law or
to the words that the Lord Almighty
had sent by his Spirit through the earlier prophets.”
This is the third time Zechariah shows his continuity
with the earlier prophets (1:4, 7:7 and now here v. 12).
Nehemiah also
recognised the activity and the empowerment God’s Spirit gave the prophets
(Nehemiah 9:30), but the people would listen neither to the Law nor the
prophets … God had spoken freely but they’d heard without acting and soon that
led them to ignoring His Word, defying His person and breaking His covenant …
and that eventually lost them their covenant privileges.
The consequences are spelled out in vv. 13-14.
V. Consequence, vv. 13-14
‘“When I called, they did not listen; so when
they called, I would not listen,” says the Lord Almighty.
“I scattered them with a whirlwind among all the
nations, where they were strangers.
The land they left behind them was so desolate
that no one travelled through it.
This is how they made the pleasant land
desolate.”’
Now the truth is
out.
It was Israel’s
failure to practice the covenant relationship or the Law's social justice rules detailed in the covenant set out by
Moses which led to Exiles to Babylon and to Assyrian.
The God Who is
essentially holy and just, wouldn’t put up with this covenant violation any
longer.
What did God do?
God scattered
them with a whirlwind amongst the Nations where they lived like alienated
strangers.
This form of that
verb scattered occurs only here in the whole Old Testament.
It conveys the idea
of a raging storm or tempest and evokes the word picture of Hosea of the Israelites
being scattered like chaff in the whirlwind of Exile (Hosea 13:3).
What had taken place had been detailed in one of
the curses for the violation of the covenant with Moses spelled out clearly in Deuteronomy
28:36-37 then again in Deuteronomy 28 64.
And there’s the
point.
The covenant
depended on keeping its’ commitments, and therefore the return to the covenant
blessing could be relied on when they’d become the people once more that the covenant
required them to be.
This wasn’t a
time for ritual restoration, but a time for hearty urgent covenant renewal …
relationship not ritual should be the focus of their thoughts.
And Zechariah’s call
to repentance into renewed relationship is all the more urgent given the
history of Israel’s stubbornness in rejecting the words of the earlier prophets
(which we read about in vv. 11-12).
Conclusion:
what have we got here to learn from this?
These people of God who came to Zechariah
in this passage mourned the loss of worship the way they had liked it, and had
setup (non-Biblically commanded) rituals to institutionalise this mourning ritual for what they loved but had lost
And as they came to see the priests in the Temple that day they were concerned about proper process in the mourning
rituals they used to express the grief they had nurtured of not worshipping in the
way that they wanted.
There’s been a lot of clergy discussion
about how best to do what they’ve always done in the pandemic: online or defy
the state to be able to do what we learned to like way back when and have always
continued and done?
If not face-to-face then how do we hang on
to what we like in the best compromise possible?
But who has gone back to the Bible to sort
out what the elements of GOD-pleasing worship are and to sort out what gets
done accordingly?
Not even the idolatrous Egyptians in the course of their pandemic in Exodus hoped in anything like a vaccine to sort things out … and here we are tending towards doing that, as if the big goal was just to get back without change to what we enjoyed doing before!
What Zechariah makes clear to the people of Bethel is that they need to turn back to God, not to find out the dates and the times when they can get ‘their’ worship back, but to become the people to whom their God will return bringing the privilege of worshipping Him (in their case) at His Temple, in our case as the Word-centred, Spirit-filled body of Christ on this earth.
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