Zechariah 7:1-14

One of the greatest struggles we face in our walk with God is to simply obey Him out of a heart of love with joy in our hearts.  We have a very strong tendency to make everything be about our efforts and we become legalistic in the way we relate with the Lord.  It is easy to make everything be about rituals that we perform in order to impress God.  What God truly desires from us is a recognition of His grace and a joyful submission to His loving Word in our lives.  We obey Him because we trust Him and love Him and know that He loves us.  We recognize our own sinfulness and humble ourselves before Him with deep gratitude for His mercy and grace.  This is a relationship that fills our hearts with joy and peace as we walk with our Lord.  This has been the struggle from the beginning of time and will continue to plague our hearts moving forward.

GOD IS NOT IMPRESSED BY RELIGIOUS RITUALS: A commission of men comes to the house of the Lord to make an inquiry about whether or not they should continue to fast in the fifth month as they had been doing for the seventy years of captivity.  This fast was declared to demonstrate repentance of the sin that had brought the captivity upon the nation in the first place.  Now that they have been restored to the land their question is if it is still necessary to keep on observing this fast.  At face value, this does not seem like an unreasonable question.  The problem is with the spirit behind the question.  Like most things the fast had been started as a genuine demonstration of repentance.  However, with the passing of time the fast had lost its meaning and simply became another ritual performed because that is what they had been doing for seventy years.  We must be very careful not to allow our life to become a long sequence of rituals performed out of obligation and without our hearts being in them.  Our church attendance, taking communion, doing “devotions”, praying, doing volunteer work, holding an office at church and many other wonderful things can easily become religious rituals in our lives that are simply not pleasing to God.


GOD DESIRES OBEDIENCE IN A REAL RELATIONSHIP: The Word of the Lord comes to Zechariah and he makes it very clear to the people that God is not concerned about this ritual of fasting.  He says that it has merely become another fleshly practice that does not flow from their hearts.  When they stopped eating and drinking during the fast they were certainly not doing it for Him.  God makes it clear that what He wants from his people is a real relationship in which we reflect His love and character because we want to be like Him.  That means being merciful, loving, gracious and kind.  It means that we do not oppress the poor; we take care of widows and orphans for the joy of serving the Lord as extensions of His love flowing through us.  This is how God wants us to live.  This is how He has always wanted His children to live.  Unfortunately, men are selfish and focus on their own desires and lusts above the needs of others.  God calls us to a relationship with Him that allows His character to flow through us.  This lack of relationship with God and selfish ambition under a mask of ritualistic religion is what led to the seventy years of captivity in the first place.  The people refused to listen to the voice of the prophets and now here they are again being more concerned about performing a ritual than pursuing a relationship. 

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