Looking Back

This past week I once again took part in the "Q & A" held at the Sun City congregation. One of the questions prompted me to read The Book of Zechariah again.

I never cease to be amazed at the re-reading of a book. I think it is because so much time has lapsed between reading and re-reading that I have had time to digest additional materials and to reread other books of the Bible and to connect more of the dots. When you come back to any particular book, there is so much more to inform your rereading it; so much more than the prior reading. Someone once said, “No one should consider that he has read a book if he has only read it once.”

I ran across a paragraph in Zechariah I think you will appreciate in light of our recent studies in Lamentations.

And the word of the Lord came to Zechariah, saying, “Thus says the Lord of hosts, Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another, do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor, and let none of you devise evil against another in your heart.” But they refused to pay attention and turned a stubborn shoulder and stopped their ears that they might not hear. They made their hearts diamond-hard lest they should hear the law and the words that the Lord of hosts had sent by his Spirit through the former prophets. Therefore great anger came from the Lord of hosts. “As I called, and they would not hear, so they called, and I would not hear,” says the Lord of hosts, “and I scattered them with a whirlwind among all the nations that they had not known. Thus the land they left was desolate, so that no one went to and fro, and the pleasant land was made desolate” (7:8-14).

Zechariah’s work took place after Babylonian exile. So, what we read in the paragraph above is looking backwards, and it summarizes many of the problems Israel created for herself. They were instructed to:

Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another, do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor, and let none of you devise evil against another in your heart (7:9-10).

But they refused to pay attention and turned a stubborn shoulder and stopped their ears that they might not hear (7:11).

The Lord said their hearts were “diamond-hard lest they should hear the law and the words that the Lord of hosts had sent by his Spirit through the former prophets."

Those “former prophets” delivered the word of the Lord prior to Nebuchadnezzar’s attack on Jerusalem.

It is not uncommon for the Lord to refer to His messengers of old as, “my servants the prophets.”* What made these spokesmen of the Lord special is that the word they spoke was sent “by his Spirit” (Zech. 7:12). Peter affirms the same thing:

For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Pet. 1:21). Peter is addressing the issue of the source or origin of their message.

I do not believe there are prophets of God living today, but we do have proclaimers of the word of God. And, to the extent that their message is consistent with the Bible, that word should be heeded. Israel of old received messenger after messenger to warn them of the impending doom their wickedness would bring down on them, and they refused to listen.

To complicate matters, there were lying prophets who attempted to counter the messengers of the Lord. They were successful, but only to their own demise. The poet of Lamentations writes:

Your prophets have seen for you false and deceptive visions; they have not exposed your iniquity to restore your fortunes, but have seen for you oracles that are false and misleading (Lam. 2:14).

Do you suppose that our world will be any less culpable for the wickedness that characterizes it today? There was a way out for Israel. The way out was to obey the Lord. There is a way out for the world today. The solution is the same.

* 2 Kings 9:7; 17:13; Jere: 7:25; 26:5; 29:19; 35:15; 44:4; Ezek. 38:17; Zech. 1:6).