Zechariah 7 describes a period in Israelite history after Jerusalem had fallen, after captives had been carried to Babylon and now, after Judah has returned to Palestine; Rebuilding the city and the Temple has begun and in about two more years, it will be complete. A delegation from the city of Bethel has come to the priests and prophets in Jerusalem to seek the Lord’s favor and ask – what seems like a perfectly logical question – should we continue on with the fasts of recent generations: the fast of the fifth (7:3), the seventh (7:5), the fourth and the tenth months (8:19)? These were all related to Jerusalem’s fall in 586 B.C.: In the tenth month, Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem; in the fourth, he penetrated the city; in the fifth, the temple was burned; and, in the seventh, Gedaliah, the Jewish governor, was assassinated and the remnant fled (see 2 Kings 25). For nearly 70 years, Jews observed these dates as fasts. But now, with the Temple going up and Jerusalem being rebuilt, they wondered if there was any need to continue.
In his answer Zechariah points out (7:5) that because of their hard hearts (7:12), the Lord had scattered their ancestors to Babylon and warned that they too were showing similar problems. While God promised His great work to bring Messiah and restore the remnant Israel to the place of peace (8:9-17), He warned them against repeating their past focus on the outward in order to make themselves feel as if they had done all they could (7:6) rather than do all that the Lord had asked.
The first lesson is that when we focus on rules and rituals, particularly those made by men, we are concerned about things God did not command while we neglect the things God has. While He had not commanded their fasts, He had ordained one: the Day of Atonement (Lev. 23:27). Their fasting on other days to confess sin and pray for national restoration was not wrong per se but God had never ordained them. However, He had commanded them to “do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with [their] God” (Micah 6:8). In Zechariah, He proclaims: “Dispense true justice, and practice kindness and compassion for each to his brother; and do not oppress the widow or the orphan, the stranger or the poor; and do not devise evil in your hearts against one another” (7:9-10).
“Dispense true justice” (7:9-10). Rather than repentance, Judah’s fasts reminded themselves of events caused by their sin. It was an outward show with little inward renewal. As a nation of individuals, they should have repented of the sin God had condemned among them. And what was that sin? In Zechariah’s words, it was their failures of true justice, kindness and compassion (7:9-10). While idolatry and the infringement of the Mosaic covenant was one cause for their judgment (2Kings 17:7-23), Zechariah says that it was also their abandonment of human brotherhood with the defenseless while also devising evil against each other. When they asked if they needed to keep fasts they had devised, they thought nothing of their continuing dodge of God’s clear interpersonal commands for the care for the poor, the stranger (i.e. immigrant), the orphan and the widow.
Now, in American streets, while a cultural war rages over prejudice and racism, over the immoral and illegal actions of some police officers and riotous people who destroy and make mayhem, what should Americans do? Even more so, what should Christians do? Should we continue on without reflection and still miss the point of what has caused the whole explosion in our culture? Even today, any nation – and especially the people of God, the church – are commanded this same brotherly love for all people (do I need to reference the many Scriptures here?). While Christians certainly must keep and maintain the essential biblical customs Paul demanded of churches (2Thessalonians 2:15), we cannot avoid the weightier matters of the Law, like “justice and mercy and faithfulness” (Matthew 23:23).
Even in the context of Zechariah, Judah had the “religious” system down and had the “motions” going. But they were oblivious to their hearts. They had based their fellowship with God on the mechanical or outward and not – the real heart shaped by the word from God – and Zechariah called them out in their failings to “dispense true justice” (7:9-10). We too, while still distinguishing between custom and Divine Law (Mark 7:1ff), must equally demand of ourselves everything God expects of us for the powerless among us. Outward religion without a heart shaped by God’s teaching will lead to further hardening of the heart.
This isn’t just about social justice; it’s true justice. While people who kill and people who cause mayhem should pay the penalty, so should people who mistreat the powerless. God held the whole nation accountable for it – and equally placed as the reason for their guilt and expulsion from their homeland.
As disciples we must work to reach the powerless with the gospel. How can they hear without the gospel? How can they hear through voices of prejudice and oppression? The Saved should be reaching out to The Lost – not just to those who look like, talk like, walk like or really “anything” like us. Paul went to pagans who were nothing like him because his own heart had been transformed by the good news of God. The result is that churches should look like Heaven. Heaven will not be white or Anglo-Saxon; Heaven will be a perfect blending of every color God made in all the people God saved. Churches should also.
We may say, “But we have racial equality.” Do we? Do we “love” when we fail to show kindness and compassion to {every} brother especially in times like these. People who put down others because of their ethnicity, skin color – and even their economic place – do not know God’s real heart for the underprivileged, the very ones our society has tried to make invisible because it makes us uncomfortable and reminds us what our forefathers in oppression have done. God’s people should stand up – in every generation – against all ungodliness.
We can celebrate our “months” – or – we can really change and “dispense true justice.”
by Don Hooton