“"Was it for me?"”

Sunday, April 24, 2022

Now the people of Bethel had sent…men to entreat the favor of the Lord, saying to the priests of the house of the Lord of hosts and the prophets, “Should I weep and abstain in the fifth month, as I have done for so many years?”

Then the word of the Lord of hosts came to me: “Say to all the people of the land and the priests, ‘When you fasted and mourned in the fifth month and in the seventh, for these seventy years, was it for me that you fasted? And when you eat and when you drink, do you not eat for yourselves and drink for yourselves?” (Zechariah 7.1-6)

If you searched the Law of Moses wondering when God commanded the Israelites to observe these fasts—in the fifth month or mid-summer, and in the seventh month or mid-autumn—you’d come up empty.  They were never commanded.  This is much like two of the feasts Jews today observe: Purim and Hanukkah.  These two also appear in the Bible, but they were instituted by man. That’s not necessarily bad; we even see Jesus himself going to Jerusalem for Hanukkah, despite threats against his life (Jn 10.22-23).  Yet the Israelites’ well-reasoned memorials and mourning failed to please God.  Why?

First, we should learn what these two annual fasts were intended to commemorate.  Zechariah doesn’t do much to inform us on this point, but the major theme of the first half of his book, the rebuilding of God’s temple in Jerusalem, serves as a major hint.  What had happened in the fifth month that was important to Israel and the temple?

In the fifth month, on the seventh day of the month…Nebuzaradan, the captain of the bodyguard, a servant of the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem. And he burned the house of the Lord and the king's house and all the houses of Jerusalem; every great house he burned down. And all the army of the Chaldeans, who were with the captain of the guard, broke down the walls around Jerusalem. And the rest of the people who were left in the city and the deserters who had deserted to the king of Babylon, together with the rest of the multitude, Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard carried into exile. (2 Kings 25.8-11)

This was when the temple was destroyed—the reason the returned exiles needed to rebuild it, and needed a prophet like Zechariah to encourage them.  For that matter, it also marked the day the Jews had ceased to be an independent nation—the day most of the Jews were exiled from their greatest city, which was itself left in ruins.  The seventh month had something similar:

And Gedaliah swore to them and their men, saying, “Do not be afraid because of the Chaldean officials. Live in the land and serve the king of Babylon, and it shall be well with you.” But in the seventh month, Ishmael the son of Nethaniah, son of Elishama, of the royal family, came with ten men and struck down Gedaliah and put him to death along with the Jews and the Chaldeans who were with him at Mizpah. Then all the people, both small and great, and the captains of the forces arose and went to Egypt, for they were afraid of the Chaldeans. (2 Kings 25.24-26)

Nebuchadnezzar had at least left some of the Jews in Jerusalem and installed Gedaliah as governor.  With his assassination, all semblance of order was destroyed, and those few who had remained in their ancestral homeland now fled, in the opposite direction from the other exiles.  The Israelites were now truly scattered abroad.  Zechariah’s prophecies concern the returned exiles, who are tasked with rebuilding the temple.  God is good, indeed!  The cause for mourning and lamentation has melted away!  Therefore, it’s understandable that the people would question whether they needed to continue these annual rites.  As so often happens, though, God doesn’t give them a simple yes or no.  Instead he tells them they were never really observing these memorials out of devotion to him, anyway.  They acted selfishly even in lamenting the loss of God’s temple.  It was supposed to be about his glory; they’d made it about their own, instead.

This is a huge problem today, as well.  Several billion people on this earth call themselves Christians, with widely varying levels of sincerity.  There’s also a wide variety of practices and rituals associated with Christianity, only a handful of which are firmly grounded in God’s commandments in the New Testament.  For whom do we observe these rituals?  Is it for God, or for ourselves?

Keeping his commandments is, indeed, good for us, and worshipping him ought to have a noticeable and uplifting effect on us—Paul says,

“I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you. Nevertheless, in church I would rather speak five words with my mind in order to instruct others, than ten thousand words in a tongue.” (1 Corinthians 14.18-19)

Both ends establish the point: Paul is glad that he possesses a certain spiritual gift—he gets something out of it; he also recognizes that in the context of worship part of the goal is to edify each other—for others to get something out of it.  It’s not wrong for us to derive that kind of benefit.  But is that why we do it?  If so, what will happen when, one day, you become bored with worship?  That day will certainly come.  “Because I like it” is not a good reason!  On one hand, it leaves available the option to abandon the pattern, one way or another, as soon as it no longer stimulates your interest.  On the other hand, it means your focus is entirely misplaced.  We should be molding our will to match God’s more closely all the time, and for that reason we will eventually come to appreciate God’s commandments and derive enjoyment from following his pattern.  But it starts with obedience, whether we like it or not—obedience from the heart (Ro 6.17).

Jeremy Nettles

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