In the fourth year of the reign of King Darius of Persia a delegation was sent from Bethel to
Jerusalem to “seek the favor of the Lord.”
The men who came from Bethel were not so bound to the priests they ignored or didn’t trust the prophets. They were not so impressed by the words of the prophets they rejected the words of the priests. They spoke to both the priests and to the prophets, and, in consulting both, they gave glory to the Lord that one Spirit works in all who have been called by the Lord.
The delegation wanted to know if they should continue the fasts that were initiated by the priests and observed during the seventy years of captivity and the twenty years following Cyrus’ proclamation permitting the captives to return to their homeland.
In chapter eight verse nineteen we are told the captives observed four anniversary fasts, one in the
fourth month, in remembrance of the breaking down of the wall of Jerusalem (Jeremiah 52:6), another in the fifth month, in remembrance of the burning of the temple (Jeremiah 52:12-13), another in the seventh month, in remembrance of the killing of Gedaliah, which completed their dispersion, and another in the tenth month, in remembrance of the beginning of the siege of Jerusalem (2nd Kings 25:1). Here only one, that of the fifth month is mentioned.
The question seems to imply a readiness to discontinue the fast. The question that may have been on the delegation’s mind, but was not asked, would discontinuing the fast be evidence of a false
sense of security or would it add to the displeasure of the Lord. In their present situation the people were still in distress, and under the Lord’s displeasure.
From the human viewpoint there is something to be said in favor of discontinuing the fasts. The Lord has changed His method of dealing with His people. He is returning to them in the way of mercy and would it not be proper to change their method of performing their duties as the children of the Lord?
It seems as if the main concern of the delegation is the fast held on the fifth month, the remembrance of the burning of the temple. Now that the temple was almost completely restored is there any reason to keep this fast? But having kept it for seventy plus years the delegation felt it would not be a good idea to discontinue the fast without approval from the priests and prophets.
Should a good and productive method of religious services, which we have found beneficial to ourselves and others be abandoned or altered because of the changes taking place in our society and the world? What should be our purpose for coming to the house of the Lord? The delegation’s purpose for coming to the house of the Lord was to pray and seek God’s will in this matter of the continuance of the fasts. Our purpose for coming to the house of the Lord should
be to pray and seek the Lord’s will for our lives and to worship Him. It is not for entertainment.
When we present our requests to the Lord it must be with a readiness to receive instructions from Him. If we refuse to listen to what the Lord has to say to us there is no way we can expect the Lord to accept our prayers. The question we should bring before the Lord is not, what will You do for me, but what can I do for You, even though You don’t need my help.
In His answer to the question the Lord of hosts asked the question, “When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months these seventy years, was it actually for Me that you fasted? When you eat and drink, do you not eat for yourselves and do you not drink for yourselves?”
Here is another of those questions, although it is not stated as such, “Consider your ways?’ Consider what you are doing and why. The answer to the question involves not only the delegation, but to all the priests and people of the land. We are included in the answer.
The Lord of hosts asked this question because the question the delegation from Bethel asked seem to be more concerned about the ceremony than about the substance of it. They seemed to be boasting of their fasting, and implying The Lord should have returned to them in mercy sooner then He did. It appears they are asking the Lord to give them a reason why He has not returned in mercy to them sooner than He did as the people in Isaiah’s day asked “Why have we fasted and
You do not hear? Why have we humbled ourselves and You do not notice? (Isaiah 58:3).
Was unbelief at the source of the question the delegation asked? If they had given the fasts the
credit that was due to them, there was no reason why they should doubt that the fasts ought to be laid aside, now that the occasion of them was over. Therefore the first answer to the question is a
very sharp reproof of their hypocrisy, directed not only to the people of the land but to the priests
who inaugurated the fasts, and were keeping them to serve some purpose of their own. The Lord of hosts wanted the priests and the people to know He was not made a debtor to them by these fasts. In fact they were not acceptable to Him.
What the priests and people were doing was not bad, it was not done in the right way. The Lord was not charging them with omission or neglect of their duty. He was charging them with a wrong intent. He was telling them those who come seeking God’s mercy must first be willing to admit their faults, a hard thing to do. Those who are zealous for the performance of a duty ought to examine themselves faithfully whether they have the right attitude regarding the duty. They
must ask themselves, why am I doing what I am doing.
The Lord of hosts appeals to the consciences of the delegation. They will be a witness against them if they have not been sincere in the performance of their duty and their worship of the Lord. They need to understand and we need to understand One who is far greater then the consciences.
One who knows the heart and knows all things will be a witness against them. The Lord of hosts makes it very clear what they did was not for Him but for themselves. In their fasting and worship there was a form of godliness but they lacked life, soul, and power. The stress was laid upon the repetition of the rituals instead upon the worship of the Lord. Even those who were seeking to please the Lord and obtain His favor, and sincere in their intention to find favor in His sight were wanting. This is why in the sight of the Lord their fasts was a mockery and
provoked Him. They were using the fasts as a covering for their sin, as Jezebel’s fast, or as the
Pharisees’ fasts that rested in outward expressions of humiliation while their hearts were unhumbled.
If our fasting and praying, though frequent, long, and severe, do not bring us into a stronger relationship with the Lord, increase godly sorrow for our falling short of the glory of the Lord and our mistakes, and alter the temper of our minds and the course of our lives for the better, they do not at all answer the purpose of fasting and prayer. They have the same purpose of eating and drinking. Something we have always done. If our feasts and thanksgivings have no more an eye to the Lord than our fasts. If our daily meals are not designed to honor the Lord, but self, we miss out on the total purpose in our eating and drinking. When we eat and drink to the glory of the
Lord (1st Corinthians 10:31) our bodies are fit to serve in our Lord’s service. If the sole purpose
of fasting and praying is not designed to bring honor to the Lord but like in our eating and drinking satisfy the needs of the body why continue to fast and pray?
In verse seven the priests and the people are told what the Lord of hosts has said is not something
new. The question seems to imply they have forgotten. The good thing the captives should have done was left undone. On their fast days the captives wept and separated themselves from their daily activities as a sign of their sorrow for the judgments they were under. This was not enough.
What they should have done was search the Scriptures and they would have seen what was the reason for God’s controversy with their fathers, and might have taken warning by their miseries not to tread in the steps of their iniquities. The affliction that has come upon the people was to wake them up. Bring them to repentance. Put in their minds the former flourishing state of their country: Jerusalem was inhabited and
prosperous as well as the cities and country around Jerusalem. But the Lord, by the prophets, cried out to the fathers, amend your ways and doings, or else your prosperity would soon be gone. "Now," says Zechariah. "you should take notice of that, and understand that what was required of them for the preventing of the judgments they didn’t do. If you don’t do what is required of you for the removal of the judgments all your fasting and weeping signify nothing."
The words of Zechariah agree with those of the former prophets. Whether people are in prosperity or adversity, they must be called upon to leave their sins and do their duty, this must still be the message of every sermon. The disobedience of others and the consequences should be a warning to us. God’s judgments upon Israel of old for their sins were written for admonition to Christians (1st Corinthians 10:11).
The duties that are required of the priests and the people here would have been the lengthening the tranquillity of their fathers and must be fulfilled to restore their tranquillity. The restoring of their tranquillity will not be accomplished through the keeping of fasts and offering sacrifices, but doing the duties which they were bound to by the light and law of nature, though there had been no prophets sent to insist upon them, duties which had a direct tendency to the public welfare and peace, and which they themselves would be the gainers by, and not God.
Judges must administer justice impartially, according to the maxims of the law and the merits of the cause, without respect of persons and execute the sentence they have decreed. Neighbors must have a tender concern for one another, and must not only do one another no wrong, but must be ready to do one another all the good that lie in their power. They must extend mercy and compassion to their brothers. The infirmities of others, as well as their calamities, are to be looked upon with compassion. They must not deal harshly with those whom they have advantage over
and who, they know, are not able to help themselves. They must not, either in commerce or in course of law oppress the widow, the fatherless, the stranger and the poor. The weakest must not be put down because they are weak. They must not only do no physical harm to others but must not imagine evil against others in their hearts or wish it.
The fathers of the priests and the people were obstinate and headstrong. They persisted in their
transgressions of the law purely from a spirit of contradiction to the law. They would not, if they
could help it, come within hearing of the prophets, but kept at a distance; or, if they could not avoid hearing what they said, they resolved they would not heed it and looked another way as if they had not been spoken to. If they did hear what was said to them, and, as it seemed, inclined at first to comply with it, when it came time to respond to what they heard like a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke they pulled away and would not submit to the easy yoke and light
burden of the Lord’s commandments. Or they submitted for a short time. They were like the son that said, I go, but didn’t go. They filled their own minds with prejudices against the word of God, and had some objection to fortify themselves against every sermon they heard. They stopped their ears so they could not hear what the prophets had to say to them. There
are none so deaf as those that will not hear the word of the Lord. They resolved that nothing which is said to them will make any impression upon them. Nothing is so hard as the heart of a presumptuous sinner; and those whose hearts are made hard by their own hardening, and it is just with God gives them over to a reprobate sense, to the hardness and impenitence of their own hearts.
These stubborn sinners hardened their hearts on purpose lest they should hear what the Lord has to say to them by the written word, by the law of Moses, by the words of the prophets. The words of the prophets were not regarded by them, though they were words which the Lord of hosts sent to them, though He sent them immediately by His Spirit in the prophets. In their rejection of the words of the prophets they insulted the Lord Himself and resisted the Holy Spirit
and grieved Him. The disobedience of the fathers resulted in unanswered prayers, scattering, and
desolation.
The Lord was highly displeased with His people and His displeasure was just. He required nothing of them but what was reasonable in itself and beneficial to them, yet they refused to honor Him, and in a most insolent manner too. What master would be so abused by his own servant and not punish him? Such an implacable enmity to the gospel as this was to the law and the prophets was that which brought the wrath of the Lord upon His people.
Sins against the Lord of hosts, whose authority is incontestable, brings the wrath of the Lord of hosts, whose power is irresistible. And the effect was, as they had turned a deaf ear to the word of the Lord of hosts He turned a deaf ear to their prayers. As He cried out to them in their prosperity to leave their sins and they would not hear, but persisted in their iniquities, so they cried out to Him in the day of their trouble to remove His judgments, He would not hear them, but lengthened out their calamities. But the Lord has said it, and will abide by it, “He that turns away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer shall be an abomination” (Proverbs 28:9). Iniquity in the heart, will certainly spoil the success of prayer (Psalm 66:18).
As they rejected their duty and allegiance to the Lord the Lord dissipated them and threw them about as chaff before a whirlwind among the nations where they could not expect to receive any kindness. They violated all the laws of their land, so God took away all the glories of it: All the country that was the kingdom of the two tribes, after the dispersion of the remaining Jews, upon the slaughter of Gedaliah, was left utterly uninhabited. There was not man, woman, or child, in it,
till the Jews returned at the end of seventy years’ captivity. The land was kept empty for their return. For the present it made the judgment appear much the more dismal; for what a horrid wilderness must a land be that had been so many years uninhabited. And they must understand it was by their own wickedness the pleasant land is desolated. It was not so much the Assyrians and Babylonians that did it They did it themselves. The desolation of a land are always due to the wickedness of its inhabitants (Psalm 107:34). This desolation of the land came of their willful disobedience to the law of God. And the present generation saw how desolate sin had made that pleasant land, and they were rejecting the call toreturn to the Lord.
