FBC Morning Light – December 12, 2022

Well, a good Monday morning to you. So here we are approaching the middle of December, the end of the year, and if you follow a

Bible reading plan, particularly one of those that you read through the Bible in a year, or as we're doing, some in our church are doing, reading through the

Bible in two years, in our plan we're actually nearing the end of that cycle.

So it was almost two years ago that we started this. And coming to the end of those

Bible reading plans takes us to the final books of the Old and the

New Testament. And in the Old Testament, of course, we're talking about the minor prophets. And one of the things about reading the minor prophets is that we can almost feel like,

I don't see a whole lot of application here, because, I mean, these prophets were prophesying to Israel and to Judah.

So, for example, in our reading plan today, we're reading in the book of Zechariah and the first chapter, and it begins talking about the word of the

Lord that came to Zechariah, the son of Iddo the prophet, and then talks about God's relationship to his people

Israel. And so we could read this and say, okay, well, all right, but what does this have to do with me?

Well, one of the things you can do, one of the strategies you can take in reading these minor prophets is to ask yourself the question, what does this passage teach me about God?

What does this tell me about him and his relating to his people? Because God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and we are his people.

All right, so look at this chapter, Zechariah 1, and just notice a few things about God.

In the second verse, right after the introduction and telling us that the word of the Lord came to Zechariah, it says, the

Lord has been very angry with your fathers. Okay, well, one thing it tells us is that God gets angry with people and with those who claim to be his people.

And why does he do that? Well, you look in the next verse and you discover that the

Lord of hosts is saying to the current people, Zechariah the prophet is speaking to his people now, and the

Lord tells him to say to his people, return to me and I will return to you.

That gives you a little bit of a hint that, hmm, well, was there a turning away from God by the fathers?

And then you continue reading, and in verse 4, the Lord says, don't be like your fathers.

Oh, okay, so here we go. Now we're starting to understand some reason why the Lord was angry with the fathers.

He says, don't be like your fathers to whom the former prophets preached, saying, thus says the Lord of hosts, turn now from your evil ways and your evil deeds.

Oh, there it is. There it is. Why was the Lord angry with the fathers of Zechariah's contemporaries?

Because they were guilty of evil ways and evil deeds. They were going in a path that was diametrically opposed to what

God wanted, and they were participating in behaviors and actions that were clearly a violation of God's revealed will.

If you know your Old Testament history, you know that what happened with Israel and eventually with Judah is that they got involved in idolatry.

Israel, especially, they set up a whole separate religion that was like a competing religion against that which

God had established for them to do and to practice. It was because of their whole -scale departure from the

Lord and his word and his will and his ways that God was angry with them.

He sent his prophets to them and kept telling them, turn from this, and they wouldn't do it. They were hard -hearted, they were stubborn, and so the

Lord was very angry with them. So again, in verse 4, he says, they did not hear nor heed me.

With all of the warnings, with all of the prophets that came, they didn't hear. And then he says this.

He says, your fathers, where are they? And the prophets, do they live forever? Yet surely my words and my statutes which

I commanded my servants, the prophets, did they not overtake your fathers? In other words, exactly what the prophets warned against, has that not come to pass?

Are you not suffering in captivity because of the sins and the rebellion of your fathers?

Which, by the way, the people to whom Zechariah is prophesying and speaking are guilty of the same sins.

And so the Lord is going to call upon them to return to him. So what do we learn about God in this?

We learn that God is holy, that we learn that God is just, that God has a revealed will, he has revealed his commands, we know that God is a rightly, justly, jealous

God, that is, he is the only God, so therefore the worshipping of other so -called gods is taking away from his glory, it's robbing him of his glory, it's shaking the fist in his face and denying him his rightful place, and he won't allow that, especially by those who claim to be his people.

So what do we learn about God? We learn that God does not take kindly to even our modern expressions of idolatry, to anything that we put in front of him, before him, to that which we look to for satisfaction and fulfillment, that takes us away from him.

The Lord doesn't take kindly to those things, and he will chasten his people who err, who turn from his ways, and who turn to evil, the practicing of evil deeds.

God is faithful, he's unchanging, as he was a few thousand years ago, so he is today.

So from these prophets we can take some warning to beware lest we ourselves give ourselves to idolatry, and we go practicing evil ways and evil deeds that are very contrary to God's will,

God's word, God's way. So, I encourage you, think as you read these minor prophets, think and ask yourself, what is this telling me about God?

How can I change? Where do I need to change? What is God speaking to me about in these passages?

So our Father and our God, we thank you for the warnings of Zechariah, and we pray that we would be sensitive and diligent to hear what you have to say to us.

We ask this in Jesus' name, Amen. Alright, well listen, have a good rest of your