The plan this morning is to review chapter 7 and 8. And I use that word review because We could easily turn chapter seven and eight into four sermons because we'll see it has four sermons in it, but I think it's gonna be most helpful for us to sort of step back and look at the big picture. So before reading the text, I'm gonna ask you to just look at your Bible here and see how Zachariah's book is structured. You already know, as we've covered the first six chapters, that Zechariah came onto the scene in Judah and God gave him eight night visions. And that's what chapters one through six covers, those eight night visions. Then, look forward at chapter nine for a second. Chapter 9, you'll see it begins, And that gets repeated again in chapter 12, verse one, the burden of the word of the Lord. So the final section of Zachariah's book, chapters nine through 14, deal with those two, they're referred to as two burdens. So chapters one through six have those eight night visions. Chapters nine through 12 have those two burdens. And sandwiched in between in chapters 7 and 8, these chapters are a little bit different. They contain four sermons by Zechariah. But all four sermons are prompted by the same question. So look at chapter 7, verses 1 through 3. Now in the fourth year of King Darius, it came to pass that the word of the Lord came to Zechariah on the fourth day of the ninth month, Kislev, when the people sent Cherezer with Regim Melech and his men to the house of God to pray before the Lord and to ask the priests who were in the house of the Lord of hosts and the prophets saying, Should I weep in the fifth month and fast as I have done for so many years? The time frame is established in verse 1. It tells us that Two years have passed since Zachariah delivered those messages of those eight night visions. And all eight visions were centered on encouraging the people to rebuild the temple that had been torn down. And so this temple project has been ongoing for two years. It's about halfway done. It's gonna be two more years before it's complete. But the prophet Zechariah didn't just sit around twiddling his thumbs that whole time. You can imagine when the prophet receives a message from God, he delivers it to the people, but there are also times when the people have questions. And so Zechariah apparently doesn't mind doing like we do on Wednesday nights. We come on Wednesday nights. We set aside time to ask and answer questions that we have. And so after two years, Two years after those visions, this delegation arrives with questions. Now there's some debate about where they come from and what their destination is. Verse two says the delegation came to the house of God and that would indicate they came to the construction site of the temple. But those words house of God or the Hebrew words Bethel and it's very likely, this actually means they were coming from the city or the village of Bethel and coming to the temple. Two, it says the priests who were in the house of the Lord of hosts and the prophets. And they come with this question. Should I weep in the fifth month as I have done for so many years? That question prompts everything else in chapters seven and eight. Zachariah responds to that question with four sermons. You'll see how it's outlined in the first sermon, verse four, the word of the Lord of hosts came to me saying, and you'll see that again in verse eight, and then in chapter eight, verse one, and then the fourth one begins in chapter eight, verse 18. All of them are aimed at some aspect of answering this question. Should I weep in the fifth month as, and fast, as I have done for so many years? So, now that you kind of understand the structure of this, we're gonna read all of chapter seven and eight. We're gonna have a long reading, but stick with me here. Zechariah chapter seven and eight. Now in the fourth year of King Darius, it came to pass that the word of the Lord came to Zechariah on the fourth day of the ninth month, Kislev, when the people sent Cherezer with Radomalek and his men to the house of God to pray before the Lord and to ask the priests who were in the house of the Lord of hosts and the prophets saying, should I weep in the fifth month and fast as I have done for so many years? Then the word of the Lord of hosts came to me saying, say to all the people of the land and to the priests, when you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh month during those 70 years, did you really fast for me? For me? When you eat and when you drink, do you not eat and drink for yourselves? Should you not have obeyed the words which the Lord proclaimed through the former prophets when Jerusalem and the cities around it were inhabited and prosperous and the South and the lowland were inhabited? Then the word of the Lord came to Zechariah saying, thus says the Lord of hosts, execute true justice, show mercy and compassion, everyone to his brother. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the alien or the poor. Let none of you plan evil in his heart against his brother. But they refused to heed, shrugged their shoulders and stopped their ears so that they could not hear. Yes, they made their hearts like flint, refusing to hear the law and the words which the Lord of Hosts had sent by his spirit through the former prophets. Thus great wrath came from the Lord of Hosts. Therefore it happened that just as he proclaimed and they would not hear, so they called out and I would not listen, says the Lord of Hosts. But I scattered them with a whirlwind among all the nations which they had not known. Thus the land became desolate after them, so that no one passed through or returned, for they made the pleasant land desolate. Again, the word of the Lord of hosts came saying, Thus says the Lord of hosts, I am zealous for Zion with great zeal, with great fervor I am zealous for her. Thus says the Lord, I will return to Zion and dwell in the midst of Jerusalem. "'Jerusalem shall be called the city of truth, "'the mountain of the Lord of hosts, the holy mountain. "'Thus says the Lord of hosts, "'old men and old women shall sit again "'in the streets of Jerusalem, "'each one with his staff in his hand "'because of great age. "'The streets of the city shall be full "'of boys and girls playing in its streets. "'Thus says the Lord of hosts, If it is marvelous in the eyes of the remnant of this people in these days, will it also be marvelous in my eyes, says the Lord of hosts? Thus says the Lord of hosts, behold, I will save my people from the land of the east and from the land of the west. I will bring them back and they shall dwell in the midst of Jerusalem. They shall be my people and I will be their God in truth and righteousness. Thus says the Lord of hosts, let your hands be strong, you who have been hearing in these days, these words by the mouth of the prophets, who spoke in the day the foundation was laid for the house of the Lord of hosts that the temple might be built. For before these days, there were no wages for man, nor any hire for beast. There was no peace from the enemy for whoever went out or came in, for I set all men, everyone against his neighbor. But now I will not treat the remnant of this people as in the former days, says the Lord of hosts. For the seed shall be prosperous, the vine shall give its fruit, the ground shall give her increase, the heavens shall give their due. I will cause the remnant of this people to possess all these. And it shall come to pass that just as you were a curse among the nations, O house of Judah and house of Israel, so I will save you and you shall be a blessing. Do not fear, let your hands be strong. For thus says the Lord of hosts, just as I determined to punish you when your fathers provoked me to wrath, says the Lord of hosts, and I would not relent. So again, in these days, I am determined to do good to Jerusalem and to the house of Judah. Do not fear. These are the things you shall do. Speak each man the truth to his neighbor. Give judgment in your gates for truth, justice, and peace. Let none of you think evil in your heart against your neighbor. Do not love a false oath, for these are things I hate, says the Lord of hosts. Then the word of the Lord of the hosts came to me saying, thus says the Lord of hosts, The fast of the fourth month, the fast of the fifth, the fast of the seventh, and the fast of the 10th shall be joy and gladness and cheerful feasts for the house of Judah. Therefore, love, truth, and peace. Thus says the Lord of hosts, people shall yet come, inhabitants of many cities, the inhabitants of one city shall go to another saying, Let us continue to go and pray before the Lord and seek the Lord of hosts. I myself will go also. Yes, many people and strong nations shall come to seek the Lord of hosts in Jerusalem and to pray before the Lord. Thus says the Lord of hosts, in those days, 10 men from every language of the nation shall grasp the sleeve of the Jewish man, saying, let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you. All right, that's a long reading, but it is all a message together. I've noted before that I think one of the beauties of preaching through books is found on the occasions where the message of the text fits the circumstances of the congregation. It also, to me, it occasionally suggests that the Lord has a sense of humor. It is not lost on me that I was originally scheduled to preach this message on fasting last Sunday when we were going to have a fellowship meal after church, and then either some kind of bug or food poisoning prevented that so that we are going to get to enjoy it this week. I assume y'all ate lunch last week and didn't just sit awkwardly and stare at each other across the table. If there's any text on fasting, that I would actually like to preach before a fellowship meal, it's Zechariah chapter 7 and 8. When this delegation arrives with the question, should we keep on fasting like we have for so many years, the succinct answer of the Lord through Zechariah was, That fasting that you've been doing for years has very little to do with worship. If you trust and obey the Lord your God, He's going to turn that fasting into feasting. Now, the Jewish people had found a way to celebrate or mourn almost every significant occasion in their history. Now, some of that is just human nature. I mean, we find ourselves in some community and we do those things. We celebrate July 4th as the independence of our nation. We also assign a date in May to mourn and memorialize those who've died in service. To be clear, these two chapters are not talking about every occasion for fasting on the Jewish calendar. However, there are several that are addressed. This delegation specifically asked, should we keep fasting in the fifth month? And that fast marked their remembrance of the destruction of the temple. And so you can see why they would ask this question, right? Their hearts are in the right place. we're rebuilding the temple, the project is halfway done, should we keep mourning over the destruction of the old temple when we've got this new temple almost completed? It's a good question. Glance over at chapter eight, verse 19. In chapter eight, verse 19, God gives them an answer, but he doesn't just answer about that fast of the fifth month. You can see he mentions the fourth month, the seventh month, and the tenth month. The fast of the fourth month was that they had set aside a day to fast on the day that the wall of Jerusalem was breached and broken through. The seventh month had a fast day for the day that the Babylonians executed the Jewish governor named Gedaliah. The 10th month had a fast for the day when Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians had surrounded the city. So like every event of that destruction of Jerusalem from the time the army came to the time they got through the wall, another time for when they executed the governor, another time for when they destroyed the temple. All of those things have been set aside as days to fast, days to mourn. And none of those were inherently wrong, but none of them were commanded by God for them to do either. God had only commanded that the people observe one fast day. That's the day of atonement. And yet they were so sure that this burden from the Lord had come directly from the Lord. And so they stress that at the end of their question. Shall we continue to weep in the fifth month and to fast as we have for so many years? Right, like we've done this for the 70 years in captivity. We've kept doing it since we've gotten back. Do you think God is satisfied yet? What the strange irony here is that they're asking the prophet of God, does God still want us to fast in the fifth month? When in reality, God had never told them to do it to begin with. There is a principle here for us. You and I, we are prone to struggle under self-imposed religious burdens, right? We will have a list of rules. We will observe some regulations that the Lord never gave, and then we will get bitter with God and others when that self-imposed burden makes us weary. If you feel like you are struggling under the weight of some burden from God, Get in the Word and make sure that this burden is actually from God. It might be. And I'll be glad to help you try to find the answer to it. But I'll tell you that what you'll usually find is that obeying God's calling on us is a joyful obedience, not a begrudging burden. Zachariah's response from the Lord answers these questions that the people brought by essentially asking four questions that they should have been asking themselves. So I wanna just go through, obviously we're gonna go through chapter seven and eight quickly, but I wanna ask these four questions that they should have been asking themselves. The first sermon of Zechariah essentially asks, why were you doing it in the first place? When this delegation comes from the people asking this question, Zechariah lets them know, God has some questions of his own for you. The entire first sermon from chapter seven, verse four through verse seven, consists of questions that Zechariah is asking on behalf of God. Ultimately in the final sermon, they're gonna get a very direct answer. But first, the Lord has Zachariah issue this string of rhetorical questions. Look at verse five. Say to all the people of the land and to the priests, when you fasted and mourned in the fifth and the seventh month during those 70 years, did you really fast for me, for me? When you eat and when you drink, do you not eat and drink for yourselves? Should you not have obeyed the words which the Lord proclaimed through the former prophets when Jerusalem and the cities around it were inhabited and prosperous and the south and the lowland were inhabited? So when the Jewish people did all that fasting for all those years, were they doing it for the Lord or were they doing it for themselves? Did you really fast for me, God asks, stressing that for me? It was all about you. You choose when you eat and when you drink. It wasn't a command from God. It was your own selfish intentions. Listen, selfishness shows up in many ways. Selfishness can show up when we disregard the command of the Lord and we satisfy ourselves instead. If we refuse his call to holy living and we reject his command to worship and we embrace sin because we think it's gonna satisfy us, that is being selfish and rejecting God. But that is not what's happening here. Here we find people who have made up religious rules and are also in the process rejecting God and acting selfishly. In other words, rejecting the commands that God gives is an act of selfishness, and making up commands that God didn't give is also an act of selfishness. This is a problem with the legalistic mindset of many modern Christians who wanna say, well, okay, here's the standard. And they don't actually adopt the God-given standard in Scripture. I mean, let me give you an example. I'm familiar with a church that has in their statement of faith a little stick figure diagram that marks off every area of the body that has to be covered in order to be dressed modestly. Now, can I just say as a side note, We should dress modestly, okay? I'm not arguing for immodest dress. But there is no stick figure diagram in the scripture telling us what exactly modest dress looks like in that way. And when self-imposed rules become part of our statement of faith, that's a problem. It is making up a command and pretending that it's from God. And Zachariah suggests those kinds of self-imposed burdens are actually an act of selfishness. It's not an act of obedience. God even says in verse 7 that instead of these folks making up fast days and pretending that they're from God, they would have been better off just listening to what God had actually said through, he calls them the former prophets, right, the prophets who came before Zachariah. All the prophets have taught that God is more satisfied when we obey what he commands instead of mourning and weeping over the consequences of disobeying. Think of one of the earliest prophets, Samuel. Andrew brought this up last week. Samuel's ministry overlapped with King Saul, who disobeyed the Lord. The Lord said he would give Saul a victory over the Amalekites, but that all of their property had to be destroyed. And when Samuel showed up, He hears the cattle, the animals in the background. And when he asks Saul about it, the king says, oh, I decided to keep those so we could offer a sacrifice to the Lord. That's why I was keeping them, so that we could offer them as sacrifice. Just think of all of the great ritual offerings we could bring the Lord. And Samuel's response was simply, to obey is better than sacrifice. Like, if you would actually just do what it is that God has told you to do, you wouldn't have to make up sacrifices in order to have some burden that you think's gonna please the Lord. Now, when the people send this delegation in Zechariah 7 and ask if they should keep this feast, The essence of Zechariah's first sermon, with all its questions, was essentially, wait a minute, why were you doing it in the first place? It wasn't for God, he didn't command it, this has been all about you. And if this was ever about God, you simply would have obeyed what he had actually said to begin with. Every religious action we take has to flow out of genuine faith and obedience to what God has actually commanded us. Anything and everything short of that is self-serving, self-glorifying, and ultimately self-condemning. So this first sermon asks, why were you doing that to begin with? The second sermon asks, who have you been listening to? If the first sermon ended by showing God had sent the former prophets to the people, while the land had been, Zachariah says, inhabited and prosperous, did the land remain inhabited and prosperous? Well, no, it didn't. And why didn't it? Why didn't Judah remain inhabited and prosperous? Because they were sinful, right? God had said, here's what you should do. They rejected those former prophets and wouldn't listen to the word of God. And so God poured out his wrath by bringing the Babylonian army against Judah and Jerusalem. As a result, every one of those fasts that gets listed in chapter 7 and 8 have to do with all the destruction and all the devastation that came when the Babylonian army came. There was that fast of mourning for when they laid siege on the city. There was another fast for when they broke through the wall. There was the other fast for when they executed Governor Gedaliah. There was this big fast on the fifth month for when the temple was broken down. The second sermon by Zachariah shows the people wanted to mourn those days, but they did not want to mourn the sin that brought on those days. Very simply, if the nation had listened and obeyed to the word of God delivered by the former prophets, none of those tragic circumstances would have happened. And by ignoring that truth, They're subject to falling into the same kind of sin and the same kind of judgment that the prior generations experienced. Look at verse nine. Thus says the Lord of hosts, execute true justice, show mercy and compassion, everyone to his brother. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the alien or the poor. Let none of you plan evil in his heart against his brother. Now think about this. If all of, if their fasting and their commemoration, if all of that was taking their minds back to the past to mourn over the events of the past, right, and as far back as they go is the coming of the Babylonian army and the destruction of the temple, Zechariah's simply saying, look, you're not taking your minds back far enough. They need to remember what led up to the loss of the temple and to mourn those sins so that they don't repeat those sins. If all you're interested in doing is following religious rituals, right, like I'm right with God because I didn't eat anything last Thursday, then all you're trying to do is put a check mark in religious boxes, right, fill out a religious checklist that God never gave. If this delegation and the people who sent them really cared about satisfying God, They wouldn't come with this question, they would actually follow all the commandments that God has given, right? Execute verse nine, execute true justice, essentially make fair decisions. Don't assume somebody is right or somebody is wrong because of how they look or how they dress or what their last name is or how much money they have or don't have. Every righteous nation is called to render honest justice. Show compassion and mercy. Do it uniformly, like basic kindness, consideration, forgiveness, a willingness to suffer wrong. Those ideals should govern the relationships of God's people. If you look over your life and the only thing you can find is reasons to explode about how you have been mistreated, you are probably failing at this. Don't oppress the weakest people. Verse 10 lists widows, orphans, foreigners, the poor. Don't oppress those people. Let none of you plan evil in his heart, God says. Live a God-honoring life. That requires us to let go of grudges, not nurture offenses, not sit around scheming our plans on how we're gonna get our revenge on people. These are some of the most basic behaviors of godly living, and they are some of the hardest to actually incorporate into your life. Hard enough that that list essentially gets repeated again in chapter 8 verses 16 and 17. You have to live in a way which God approves of and reject the sinful behaviors that God hates. He's not been silent about this. He's not willing to permanently withhold the consequences of disobedience. The former generation had learned that truth through God's wrath and destroying Jerusalem and the temple. And this generation needed to learn that same truth and actually incorporate it in their lives. And they're getting the same message. Look at verse 11. They refused to heed, they shrugged their shoulders, they stopped their ears so that they could not hear, so that God, in verse 14, scattered them with a whirlwind among the nations and the land became desolate. Now this generation has returned from captivity and it's coming with this question, right? Do we need to keep fasting over the destruction of the old temple? When they are engaging in the very same sins that led to that destruction in the first place. Can I just summarize Zachariah's second sermon like this? Don't you know that God cares more about people than he cares about your dinner menu? Do you really think that God is gonna be pleased with you over what you do eat or what you don't eat on some special days if on the outside of those days you're living like a merciless, oppressive, pitiless, devious, conniving jerk to other people? This is what Zechariah is telling them. So what is the basis of your righteousness? As disciples of Jesus Christ, we know our righteousness is found in Him. We trust Him alone for salvation. We find life in Jesus, and then we live our life for Jesus. Not by empty adherence to some checklist of rules, but by pursuing a life of righteous, God-honoring behavior. Any religious ritual without true righteousness is nothing but a God dishonoring plague on your life. The third sermon, Zechariah essentially asks, what do you expect? Chapter eight opens the third sermon. It's the longest of the four. It runs from verse one through verse 17, and it calls on the people again to hear the message of the former prophets and of Zachariah himself, and believe in the promises of God's faithfulness. One of the challenges that we face in Christian life is the tendency to reduce our faith into some moment of the past. Now listen, I am not belittling those moments of the past. We do need to believe what God has done in the past. Right? He's promised a savior. He has sent his own son. Jesus has lived the perfect righteous life. He died on the cross. He rose from the grave to conquer death. He's ascended to the right hand of God. These are all facts of God that he has done in the past that we look back on and we believe and that's vital. But that is not alone. Being a child of God has always, it has always meant accepting the promise of God in the past and the plan of God for the future. So in our case, We believe Jesus in the past, He was born in the flesh, He lived, He died, He rose again, He ascended into heaven, and we believe in God's plan for the future that He is going to come back. He's going to establish His rule and reign on earth over all people in all nations. We'll see that before this chapter's done. In Zachariah's book, the people had asked about fasting to commemorate the past. And so in his third sermon, Zechariah turns their hearts and minds to the future instead. God proclaims in chapter eight, verse three, I will return to Zion and dwell in the midst of Jerusalem. This has already been a theme of all of Zachariah's message all the way back in chapter one, verse 16. God had said, I'm returning to Jerusalem with mercy and my house shall be built in it. In chapter two, verse 10, he said, seeing and rejoice for I'm coming to dwell in your midst. But all of that is just faintly foreshadowing the message that Zachariah has starting in chapter nine through chapter 14. He's going to rule and reign in Jerusalem as King. Yahweh says He's going to bless the Jewish people with long life and new life. One of the things that happens in any society when society becomes fragile the oldest and the youngest are where it is seen the most. Old people don't live to ripe old ages in broken nations. Young people often don't survive infancy in dying societies. In chapter eight, verses four and five, old men and women are described as going to be lining the streets of Jerusalem and watching while the streets are filled with little boys and girls playing. Yahweh is going to restore Israel. Listen, not everybody at this point in time had returned from captivity, but in verses seven and eight, God tells those who did that there are others that are still out there, and I'm going to bring them back. He's going to establish them. They will be my people. I will be their God in truth and righteousness. They're gonna live that way. That's where that repeated behavior list happens in verses 14 through 17, but this time it's not a threat of you have to obey this way, it is the promise that you are going to obey this way. So what is it that they're expecting when God has said he's gonna bless this nation? The fourth sermon asks them, where is your hope? You can see how all of this leads to the ultimate answer to the question. The delegation wanted to know if they should keep looking to the past and fast and mourn over the loss of that former temple, or should they embrace the present and the almost finished construction of the new temple? And just like the first message said you're not looking back far enough, the final message, Zachariah says, and you're not looking forward far enough either. God is going to turn your fasting into feasting. Here is officially, officially the answer in verse 19 of chapter eight. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the fast of the fourth month and the fast of the fifth, the fast of the seventh, the fast of the tenth, shall be joy and gladness and cheerful feasts for the house of Judah. Therefore, love truth and peace. You can stop that fast of the fifth month that you asked about. And while we're at it, stop the fast of the fourth and the seventh and the tenth months that you didn't ask about. I never told you to do those things. You can stop mourning and all those fasts over what was lost and replace them with joy and gladness and cheerful feasts for what's to come. And what is to come? Look at verse 20. Chapter eight, verse 20, thus says the Lord of hosts, people shall yet come, inhabitants of many cities, the inhabitants of one city shall go to another. saying, let us continue to go and pray before the Lord and seek the Lord of hosts. I myself will go also. Yes, many peoples and strong nations shall come to seek the Lord of hosts in Jerusalem and to pray before the Lord. Thus says the Lord of hosts in those days, 10 men from every language of the nations shall grasp the sleeve of a Jewish man saying, let us go with you for we have heard that God is with you. In short, what is to come is that the Lord Jesus is to come. When He returns to rule and reign in Jerusalem, people from all over the world will come to experience His presence and to worship Him. They will come to pray before Him. They will come to seek Him. They will come to worship Him. And it's not just going to be the Jewish people restored, it's going to be all kinds of people from all kinds of places. Incorporating those Gentile nations into his people has always been the plan of God. He told Abraham, in your seed will all the nations of the earth be blessed. He prophetically promised the Messiah in Isaiah 49 verse six and said, it is too small a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved ones of Israel, but I will also give you as a light to the Gentiles, that you should be my salvation to the ends of the earth. Jesus has established that salvation. And he has given his people the task to be disciples and make disciples of all nations. And that will happen. And listen, as you read the Gospels, it is hard to believe that the Jewish people will someday be happy about the fact that Gentiles are incorporated into the kingdom of God. but they will be happy about it. Verse 23 promises is a blessing that it's going to be like every Jewish man has 10 Gentiles tugging on his sleeve, begging to be brought into the presence of God. This is their hope of the presence of God in Jerusalem to be worshiped by all nations. That hope is fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Where is your hope? Is your hope somewhere else? Is your hope found because someone has incorporated in your mind a checklist of here's the things you do to make God happy and to achieve righteousness, and you've been checking those things off of the list even though, man, it's been a heavy burden. You better make sure that's a burden God's actually given. because otherwise it is just checking boxes off of an empty man-made list of religious traditions. Turn to Jesus in faith. Jesus is the only one who can turn fasting into feasting.