November 11, 2016
Today’s reading from Encounter with God

True Fasting

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Opening Prayer

Lord, awe and wonder grip me as I consider that You are all-knowing, all-wise, and all-powerful. I praise You.

Read Zechariah 7:1–14

[1] 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.'”

Scripture taken from the THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION, NIV Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Reflect

“To obey is better than sacrifice. I want more than Sunday and Wednesday nights” (Keith Green, 1953–1982). Go to Google, put “To obey is better than sacrifice” in the search bar, and you can listen to this challenging song, recorded live by Keith Green.

So often worship is a thorny issue and it seems that it has always been so! Two years on from the start of the rebuilding project (1), visitors from Bethel, just north of Jerusalem, came and raised the question of worship and tradition. Now that the altar had been restored and the Temple was being rebuilt, should they continue with the fast days they had kept for the past 70 years (3,5)? Or, given that Jeremiah had prophesied that Babylonian rule would last for only 70 years (Jer. 25:11; 29:10), might it be time to stop and leave the tradition behind? Through Zechariah, God asked some challenging questions: “Was it really for me that you fasted?” (5); “Were you not just feasting for yourselves?” (6). God’s real concern was with the focus of their fasting and feasting (see also Matt. 6:16,17). The danger with all worship is that we focus on ourselves, judging it by what we get out of it.

 

God’s fast (Isa. 58:6,7) was not centered on ritual—it was much more earthy (and difficult?) than that, requiring self-sacrifice, not show. So what is the test of our worship? Is it faithfulness to our traditional ways of worshiping, whether old or new? Is it the quality of our music or preaching? Is it the emotional impact it has on us? Zechariah offers a different way to evaluate it: the test is whether our lives outside the sanctuary reflect our actions within.

 

Sadly this was not the first time God’s people had been warned about this (7). The desolation they had experienced was a consequence of their hardness of heart (12). God’s words are chilling: “When I called, they did not listen; so when they called, I would not listen” (13).

Apply

“And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (Mic. 6:8). Reality check: how are doing with the challenges of this text?

Closing prayer

Mighty God, when You call me I want to listen, but above all else I want to obey You. May Your strength be made perfect in my weakness.

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