Show Mercy and Compassion - It is not an option! (Sermon at FFMC 7/4/24)
In the fourth year of King Darius, the word of the Lord came to Zechariah on the fourth day of the ninth month, which is Chislev. 2 Now the people of Bethel had sent Sharezer and Regem-melech and their men to entreat the favor of the Lord, 3 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?”
4 Then the word of the Lord of hosts came to me: 5 “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? 6 And when you eat and when you drink, do you not eat for yourselves and drink for yourselves? 7 Were not these the words that the Lord proclaimed by the former prophets, when Jerusalem was inhabited and prosperous, with her cities around her, and the South and the lowland were inhabited?’”
8 And
the word of the Lord
came to Zechariah, saying, 9 “Thus
says the Lord of hosts, Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to
one another, 10 do not oppress
the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor, and let none of you
devise evil against another in your heart.” 11 But
they refused to pay attention and turned a stubborn shoulder and stopped their
ears that they might not hear.[a] 12 They
made their hearts diamond-hard lest they should hear the law and the words that
the Lord of hosts had sent by his Spirit through the former
prophets. Therefore great anger came from the Lord of
hosts. 13 “As I called, and
they would not hear, so they called, and I would not hear,” says the Lord of hosts, 14 “and
I scattered them with a whirlwind among all the nations that they had not
known. Thus the land they left was desolate, so that no one went to and fro,
and the pleasant land was made desolate.(Zech 7:1-14)
1. One question
2. Four applications
3. One warning
4. One promise
One question
I know this married couple: the husband is quite a bit older than the wife. He loved his wife deeply and provided everything for her comfort and financial security. She lived in luxury. He noticed suspicious behaviour on her part. He eventually found out that she had been unfaithful - with multiple partners. In their own home! He begged her again and again to return to him – to be faithful. She refused to give up her lifestyle. Finally, the heartbroken husband told the wife that they would go through a trial separation for a year and she must leave their large, luxurious house – the place where she had been unfaithful. She had to downgrade her lifestyle and live in very tight circumstances. Every month, the wife went to their beautiful old home on the date her husband left her to stare at it. At the end of the year they met again. This time, it was her turn to beg him to return to her. She told him: you know – every month I went back to our old home!
I ask you – what do you think is on the husband’s mind? Why did you even bother in the first place? Was it about me? Or about you? Do you love me?
The husband and wife, of course, is a picture of God and His people. And the one question is found in v.5 ‘When you fasted and mourned in the fifth month and in the seventh, for these seventy years, was it for me that you fasted?
It is 7 December 518 BC. For 70 years, the people of Israel had commemorated the destruction of the great Temple in Jerusalem at the hands of the Babylonians in 587 BC. This involved a ritual show of mourning: lamentation and fasting during the month the Temple fell. Now the Israelites had returned to their land. The temple refounding had started (Hag. 2:10–23) but the rebuilding was not yet complete (Ezra 6:14). And so the people came to ask: shall we continue this practice? The reason for the mourning was already past. The Temple was being rebuilt. We don’t want to appear irreligious by stopping, but is there any point in continuing?
Zechariah could have answered with a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
But God’s message to His people (“the Word of the Lord” in v. 4, 8) was like that of the husband: why did you fast in the first place?
The difference between the husband and God is that God already knows the answer. Through Zechariah He said, “When you eat, it was definitely about you. When you fast, it was definitely not about me.”
The Israelites had not grasped the lesson of the Temple’s destruction and the 70 years of captivity. They had mourned the loss of their religious centre and their land, but they did not mourn the sin that was the reason for the loss. They had no regret for their previous behaviour. They were only sad for the suffering they underwent. The question God asks of them is the question the husband asks of the wife: do you really love me? Did you miss me? Or did you miss the good life you once had? When you looked at our family home, were you thinking of me? Or did you only think of the good life you had?
God asks this of us as well. We, too, have our own religious rituals. We tithe, we pray and read Scripture. We may fast. We may serve. Perhaps we attend prayer meetings. Most of all, most of us here attend church regularly. I often think of what I could do with 3-4 hours on Sunday mornings if I weren’t in church. Weekends are so precious. Leisure times are limited. Why am I here? To meet friends? To listen to worship music?
God says: “Your religious practice is just as self-centred as your feasting and your leisure!”
We can be self-centred with our religious practices in a number of ways: There are many psychological reasons to be religious. We can find religion comforting, or profitable, or meaningful, or purposeful, or something done out of duty. God need not be front and centre in our consciousness. God’s words in this passage are a challenge to all of us to have a living relationship with Him that is expressed in our religious practices. The practices themselves must never sideline God.
So when Zechariah asks the question “Was it for me that you fasted?”the answer is clearly ‘no’. But why? Why is it so clear to God that their rituals were unacceptable? The passage tells us that the proof that God was not at the centre of the religion of the people was that if that were the case, their attitude to people would have shown it. Faithfulness to God was expressed in attitude and actions to people. Put another way, compassion is the truest indication of a religious heart.
This is not a new teaching. Before the Temple fell, Isaiah had told the people (58:1-14) that fasting was about sharing bread with the hungry and bringing the homeless poor into your house; to cover the naked, to pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfying the desire of the afflicted. It was not about abstaining from food, but abstaining from self-centered sin.
Compassion was at the heart of the Law of Moses. 17 For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe. 18 He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. 19 Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. (Dt 10:17-19). He is a God who stoops down to save the weak and unworthy – like us. “…you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord. (Lev 19:18)”
The NT continues this teaching. James 1.27 tells us that true religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.
- “Render true judgments” (v. 9a). This refers to executing justice - applying the law fairly. We are asked to deal fairly to those under our authority. We must not use authority to profit ourselves by favouring a particular party, to blame wrongly, to put personal interests first. God has instituted earthly authorities in the workplace, home, society and church. This applies to employers and domestic helpers, parents and children, or bosses and subordinates.
- “Show kindness and mercy to one another” (v. 9b) clarifies and expands the kind of justice we are to show. To administer true justice is ‘to do it with the spirit of faithful loyalty and tender compassion’. True justice is not harsh, only rejoicing in punishment of the offender. True justice demonstrates concern for the individual and looks at circumstances. It goes beyond simply executing justice according to the letter of the law. So the outward actions of justice must be accompanied by an inner attitude of mercy and compassion - being like God (The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, Ex 34:6). This attitude must characterise our relationships with one another in the family of God (“one another”). Church can be a rigid, harsh, unforgiving place – full of gossip and negativity. But we are not to be harsh in judging one another. If one of us falls in to sin, we are to remember the words of Gal 6:1-2: “Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. 2 Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” Also, there are people who at first sight do not look disadvantaged. But they can be lost because they are newcomers, or sad and in need of encouragement, or alone with no social support.
- “Do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor” (v.10a). We are not to take advantage of people on the fringes of society: the widow, the fatherless, the poor have no resources of their own. They cannot fight back. They are neglected, powerless, without foundation or legal protection. . Not taking advantage of them starts from an attitude of regarding them as being of equal worth and dignity as the richer, more famous and more respectable members of society. God has a special concern for these people. We should be looking out for them – the FDWs, the cleaners, the construction workers, those that sell tissue papers at hawker centres. I remember being taught a lesson years ago by the example of a brother who was himself going through a difficult time in life that buying tissues was not about whether I needed tissues. I’m not saying we are to be gullible, but our hearts must be inclined to be open to those in need, to be ready to be taken advantage of (at least once).
- “and let none of you devise evil against another in your heart” (v.10b). The second negative command parallels the next chapter 8:16-17 (16 These are the things that you shall do: Speak the truth to one another; render in your gates judgments that are true and make for peace; 17 do not devise evil in your hearts against one another, and love no false oath, for all these things I hate, declares the Lord.”) The repetition of ‘one another’ in verses 9–10 emphasizes the attitude God’s people are to have towards one another. This is an inward command. We are not to plot harm, or even to wish harm on one another in church. Compassion starts in the church. If we can only show compassion on non-Christians outside the church, something is wrong with our inner motivations and feelings.
One warning
To make one’s heart “diamond-hard” (v.12) is to totally set one’s own will against the will of God. The word for diamond is rare in the OT (cf. Jer. 17:1; Ezek. 3:9). The Israelites did not start that way. Their issues began more subtly. “But they refused to pay attention and turned a stubborn shoulder and stopped their ears that they might not hear” (v.11) is a progressive pattern. There is neglect, ignoring God’s voice, inner defiance, an avoidance of situations where some change might be demanded of them, and finally an active rejection of the truth.
The essence of hardness of heart is the unwillingness to change, to be transformed. We think to ourselves “I don’t need to do more than what I am doing”. “I don’t really need to grow more in my Christian life.” “I already know all this”. “This is nothing new” and then this leads to “I refuse to do anything more” and “Why should I listen to God anyway?”
What does this have to do with compassion? Hardness of heart to others starts with hardness of heart to God. His desire is that His people be compassionate, because He is a compassionate God. Just like physical children look like their parents, spiritual children should look like their spiritual father,
Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. 13 But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. (Heb 3:12-13)
I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. 26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules (Ez 36:25-26)
We live under the new covenant and experience its blessings. The evidence that we live in under the new covenant is that we have a soft heart – a heart that loves to hear the voice of God and to obey Him.
- it is a core feature of true religion.
- it comes from a character that reflects God’s character. Outward actions must express the inner reality.
- It shows a right attitude to fellow-church members
- a lack of compassion can be an indication of a hard, rebellious heart that has not experienced the blessings of new covenant Christianity.
Some of us come today with a hard heart – a resistant, stubborn, angry heart that is full of resentment at life’s unfairness and the fact that people have taken advantage of us. It is not possible to be compassionate. God’s warning to you is that a hard heart will distance you forever from the living God. God’s promise to you is of cleansing and a new heart. Some feel constant demands of our goodwill. We need discernment to know what true needs are and to learn how best to give of our resources. We need refreshment and encouragement to persevere in doing good. God’s Word to us is that God hears us when our hearts are generous, because He loves to have children that behave like him. Be encouraged.
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