“WHEN I CALLED, THEY DID NOT LISTEN; SO WHEN THEY CALLED, I WOULD NOT LISTEN”… For 70 years, the ancient kingdom of Judah had memorialized the attack on their capital and their nation by adding a national day of fasting to God's appointed Holy Days. Without realizing it, their appointment had taken on a life of its own, binding them to a meaningless worship of their own making.

This powerful lesson is appointed for the fourth day of God’s 9th month, which began the evening of November 17 on our 2023 Gregorian calendar.

It was during the time of the Jewish exiles return to Jerusalem around 2700 years ago that we find the prophet Zechariah on the scene. Zechariah, whose name means “God has remembered”, was not just a prophet for the people of Israel in the Old Testament. Zechariah’s prophecies appear in the New Testament 41 times. So we can easily see that the book of Zechariah transcends time with a contemporary message for us today.

Indeed, Zechariah foretells Christ’s coming with great accuracy. He speaks of Jesus coming in lowliness (6:12); the humanity of Christ (6:12, 13:7); His betrayal for 30 pieces of silver (11:12-13); the crucifixion of Jesus (by the "sword" of the Lord) (13:7); His priesthood (6:13) and kingship (6:13, 9:9, 14:9,16); the future return of Jesus Christ (14:4); His building the Lord's temple (6:12-13); the reign of King Jesus (9:10) the establishment of enduring peace and prosperity by Jesus Christ (3:10, 9:9-10).

This is the Word of the Lord recorded in Zechariah 7:1-13. JUSTICE AND MERCY: NOT FASTING

¹  In the fourth year of King Darius, the word of the Lord came to Zechariah on the fourth day of the ninth month, the month of Kislev. ² The people of Bethel had sent Sharezer and Regem-Melek, together with their men, to entreat the Lord ³ by asking the priests of the house of the Lord Almighty and the prophets, “Should I mourn and fast in the fifth month, as I have done for so many years?”

⁴ Then the word of the Lord Almighty came to me: ⁵ “Ask all the people of the land and the priests, ‘When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months for the past seventy years, was it really for me that you fasted? ⁶ And when you were eating and drinking, were you not just feasting for yourselves? ⁷ Are these not the words the Lord proclaimed through the earlier prophets when Jerusalem and its surrounding towns were at rest and prosperous, and the Negev and the western foothills were settled?’”

⁸ And the word of the Lord came again to Zechariah: ⁹ “This is what the Lord Almighty said: ‘Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. ¹⁰ Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor. Do not plot evil against each other.’

¹¹ “But they refused to pay attention; stubbornly they turned their backs and covered their ears. ¹² They made their hearts as hard as flint and would not listen to the law or to the words that the Lord Almighty had sent by his Spirit through the earlier prophets. So the Lord Almighty was very angry.

¹³ “‘When I called, they did not listen; so when they called, I would not listen,’ says the Lord Almighty. ¹⁴ ‘I scattered them with a whirlwind among all the nations, where they were strangers. The land they left behind them was so desolate that no one traveled through it. This is how they made the pleasant land desolate.’”

“WHEN I CALLED, THEY DID NOT LISTEN; SO WHEN THEY CALLED, I WOULD NOT LISTEN”…