(REFLECTIONS ON Zechariah 7:1-14)

In today’s Scripture, men from the town of Bethel were inquiring whether or not they should fast and mourn in the fifth and seventh months as they had done while in exile in Babylon.

However, from the Lord’s response through Zechariah, we can see that this fasting and mourning was supposed to be God-centered worship, but it had become self-centered worship.

4 Then the word of the Lord of hosts came to me, saying, 5 “Say to all the people of the land and to the priests, ‘When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months these seventy years, was it actually for Me that you fasted? 6 ‘When you eat and drink, do you not eat for yourselves and do you not drink for yourselves?

Yes, the Jews fasted and mourned as was their custom, but had it just become a custom without being true worship from the heart? When the Jews eat and drink it is for themselves, but when they fast and mourn is it also for themselves, or is it for the Lord?

And how do they know if it is for themselves, or true worship from the heart?

9 “Thus has the Lord of hosts said, ‘Dispense true justice and practice kindness and compassion each to his brother; 10 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.’

Yes, this is not a new standard for the people of Israel and for the Jews that returned from exile. It is the message that the former prophets also proclaimed to Jerusalem. However, as the Lord said regarding the former prophets, “But they refused to pay attention and turned a stubborn shoulder and stopped their ears from hearing.”

12 They made their hearts like flint so that they could not hear the law and the words which the Lord of hosts had sent by His Spirit through the former prophets; therefore great wrath came from the Lord of hosts. 13 “And just as He called and they would not listen, so they called and I would not listen,” says the Lord of hosts;

Hearts like flint are stubborn hearts, hardened hearts, like hardened flint stone, that does not change, repent, and is full of pride rather than humbly coming before the Lord.

Despite fasting and mourning, hearts like flint cannot produce the fruit of true worship. That is why the people could fast and mourn, yet justice, kindness, and compassion could be ignored.

This is a reminder for us as well. If we approach worship, prayer, the Bible with hearts like flint, perhaps what we are doing will just be out of habit, tradition, culture, religious ceremony, rather than with a humble and contrite heart to the Lord.

Let us then be a church that worships not only in form, but has the fruit of true worship as well. That is to be a true worshiper of the Lord, bearing the fruit of true justice, kindness, compassion, lifting up the widow or the orphan, the stranger or the poor, rather than devising evil in our hearts against one another.

Pastor Michael Lu
Enduring Word Bible Commentary: Zechariah 7