ECOLOGICAL DISASTER
Opening Prayer
Jesus, help me to be aware of the times I get stuck in negative or destructive cycles. Open my heart to Your words.
Read Zechariah 7:1–14
Justice and Mercy, Not Fasting
7 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. 2 The people of Bethel had sent Sharezer and Regem-Melek, together with their men, to entreat the Lord 3 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?”
4 Then the word of the Lord Almighty came to me: 5 “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? 6 And when you were eating and drinking, were you not just feasting for yourselves? 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?’”
8 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. 10 Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor. Do not plot evil against each other.’
11 “But they refused to pay attention; stubbornly they turned their backs and covered their ears. 12 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.
13 “‘When I called, they did not listen; so when they called, I would not listen,’ says the Lord Almighty. 14 ‘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 traveled through it. This is how they made the pleasant land desolate.’”
New International Version (NIV)
Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Reflect
Don’t rush. Ask yourself: why am I reading the Bible today? What do I hope to receive through it?Human beings have an incredible capacity for self-destruction, turning beauty into ugliness and making the fertile, barren (14). And we repeat our errors. Two world wars before the mid-20th century show that. You’d think we would learn from past errors, but Zechariah is tasked with warning the people against hypocrisy and its entirely predictable consequences. It’s all happened before.
The story starts with a question. The people marked the humiliating destruction of Jerusalem by mourning and fasting on its anniversary (3). Now they were home again and rebuilding the city, did they still have to fast? Wrong question! They should have asked: are our hearts right and our actions just? Are we truly sorry for the mess that led to the sacking of Jerusalem and the exile of God’s people?
Self-pity is often mistaken for true repentance (5) and self-indulgence for true worship (6). Honesty in checking out our motives before God is always time well spent. We’ll know whether our motives are right by the behavior that follows (8–10). The tragedy of the Exile resulted from people who did not honor the Lord in their relationships. Where is the likeness to the God we worship displayed in our concern for the disadvantaged?
Apply
What do you look for in gauging the spiritual health of yourself and your church? Where do verses 8 to 10 feature in your thinking? How do you measure up? Do you need to make some adjustments?
Closing prayer
Lord, teach me what true repentance looks like. Change my heart.
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