We’re going to be in Zechariah today. We’re starting a new series. It’s a series we’ve entitled Return to Hope! This is a book filled with hope. Hope means that we look at the future and we have this eager, joyful expectation and anticipation for the days ahead. I don’t know about you, but if you read the newspaper, you’re not going to get a lot of hope. You’re going to get discouraged. You’re going to say, “What does the future hold?” When you read Zechariah, you’re going to have hope. So we’re going to be looking at Zechariah. It’s in what I call the white pages of the Bible. Matthew, Mark and Luke sometimes have a little bit of use and maybe a little bit of dirt from your fingers on them. The epistles, maybe, Genesis, maybe, but then there are white pages. We’re going to crack these open, the Minor Prophets. We often don’t attend to the amazing truth. What a call that God gives us here today as He calls out through the prophet Zechariah, “Return to me!”

1 In the eighth month, in the second year of Darius, the word of the LORD came to the prophet Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, son of Iddo, saying, 2 “The LORD was very angry with your fathers. 3 Therefore say to them, Thus declares the LORD of hosts: Return to me, says the LORD of hosts, and I will return to you, says the LORD of hosts. 4 Do not be like your fathers, to whom the former prophets cried out, ‘Thus says the LORD of hosts, Return from your evil ways and from your evil deeds.’ But they did not hear or pay attention to me, declares the LORD. 5 Your fathers, where are they? And the prophets, do they live forever? 6 But my words and my statutes, which I commanded my servants the prophets, did they not overtake your fathers? So they repented and said, ‘As the LORD of hosts purposed to deal with us for our ways and deeds, so has he dealt with us.’”

May God encourage us through His Word, today!

If your puppy runs away, what do you do? Well, if you love your puppy, you canvas the neighborhood and you call out to him, hoping that he would recognize his name and he would return. You walk the streets near and if he’s not near, you walk the streets far. If you don’t find him far, you perhaps get in your car and you widen the circle of your search. You look and you call; you call and you look. If that doesn’t work, you might print some photos with your puppy’s name, encouraging others to call to help you so that somehow, some way, you might have this beloved pet returned to you. This search is not impersonal. It’s filled with emotion. You know that this world is dangerous for little puppies. It’s filled with predators and harsh conditions. So in great affection, you call in hopes of his return.

When a puppy runs away, you recognize that the puppy doesn’t recognize the danger. In fact, from the very first step, he feels like he is on some happy adventure, exploring the world, free from the confines of any fenced yard and from the commandments of his owner. At first, undoubtedly he feels exhilaration in this journey. He is seeing new sights. He’s hearing new sounds. He is smelling new aromas. Everything is just this world of wonder to this little puppy. He perhaps feels that exhilaration until the night sets in and he feels a winter chill. There is no warm place to lay his head. He feels that exhilaration until his tummy begins to rumble and his food is not present and offered to him. He feels that exhilaration until he hears the coyotes howl and he recognizes that there is danger very near. Sometimes puppies discover too late that running away from the care of their owner is a bad decision.

In Zechariah chapter 1, God calls His people who have wandered away, who indeed have run away from Him, to return home. He calls them back to a close, vibrant, personal relationship with Himself. They had wandered off. Perhaps some had wandered off casually. It wasn’t with such strident disobedience, but nonetheless, they wandered off. Others have definitely wandered away from God’s commands and from obedience to Him. They don’t like His rule over their life, so there is even more willfulness involved. But nonetheless, these are wandering.

God uses the prophet Zechariah to remind His people that we cannot wander from God and expect blessing. There is a connection between these folks who have wandered far from God who lived 2600 years ago in a distant land, to us today who live here in the United States in the 21st century. While there are great differences between these cultures and these people and these experiences, there is a great similarity. In fact, there is the most fundamental similarity related to our relationship with the living God. Through Zechariah, God issues a call for us to examine our lives for where we are in our relationship with God, examine our lives for disobedience.

Often, we become unaware because we have disobeyed for so long, that there is actual disobedience in our lives that keeps us from fellowship with God. God urges us to see that our sin separates us from God. In being separated from God, we’re separated from the source of life, the source of all blessing. So God reminds us that life away from Him, at first, while it might appear to be stimulating, exciting and exhilarating, ultimately, life apart from Him is dangerous and is deadly. More than calling a beloved pet to return home, God calls us as a Father calls His children, to return home so that we can experience Him, that we can receive His blessing, and that we can place ourselves under His care and protection. The main idea that we’re going to trace through these first six verses is God’s call. Return to Me so that you will have hope.

Hope is what we need as we look at the future. If we look just in this world and if we establish our own days, there will be times when the future seems dark. It seems filled with despair. It seems uncertain at best and likely to have disaster involved in it throughout the course of our lives. But God says, “If you’re with me, you’ll have hope. You’ll have a brightness. You’ll have a cheer. You’ll have an eager expectation because I am the author of past, present and future. I am the Lord, the Lord of hosts who is almighty and all powerful.”

One of the reasons that this book, Zechariah, is difficult for us is because we don’t understand the history behind it. It’s why all the prophets, the Major Prophets and the Minor Prophets are a bit difficult to understand. It’s the part of biblical history where I think many believers get a little confused. Right away, Zechariah links us to the history of his message in verse 1.

1 In the eighth month, in the second year of Darius,

In other words, by saying that, Zechariah is saying it’s really important for you to know the timeframe and what is happening with the people of Israel as you listen to God speak through this book.

1 In the eighth month, in the second year of Darius,

The eighth month of the second year of Darius, we know exactly when it begins. It begins on October 27. The eighth month is October 27 all the way until the end of November. This is the year 520 B.C. Remember that Jerusalem fell to the armies of King Nebuchadnezzar almost 70 years earlier in 586 BC. The Babylonians tore down the city walls. They razed Solomon’s beautiful Temple all the way to the ground. Most of the Jews living in Jerusalem at that time were deported from their homes and brought into Babylon as slaves. Remember that young Daniel the prophet was one of these deportees. Then in 539 Babylon fell to the Persians. So the Babylonians are no longer the world empire. Now the Persians are in control.

The Persian King Cyrus thought it best for the Jews, instead of staying in their land, to go back to their homeland and to begin a new life there. So he provided an edict where the Jews could return back to Jerusalem. In fact, they were allowed to go back to Jerusalem and rebuild their temple. There is a guy by the name of Zerubbabel. He is the governor, the leader of the Jews in exile, along with a high priest named Joshua. With Cyrus’ permission, they lead a big group of Jews back into the Promised Land, back into Jerusalem. About 50,000 Jewish people go back into Jerusalem.

When they get there, they immediately begin rebuilding the altar of burnt offering. They know that God has called them back into this land. It’s the land that He promised Abraham. They know that the purpose of their existence is to be a people of God’s own possession, where God would be the center of community life, the center of all life, and where God would be worshiped. So the first thing that they knew that God wanted them to do is not so much to build houses and to build city walls. The first thing was to build the Temple, where they could become the people of God in the land of promise once again.

So for two years, they are building this temple. They build the altar. They begin building the foundation of the temple. But then opposition attacks. There is external opposition. There are also some internal struggles that they were having as a group. So they stop the work on the Temple. For the next sixteen years, they take their eyes off the reason for their return. They take their eyes off this vision of rebuilding both personal life and community life centered on God and of worshiping Him together in His Temple. They begin to build nice houses for themselves and create nice lives for themselves for those sixteen years.

So then God in once again correcting His people and calling His people back sends two prophets. The first is Haggai and the second is Zechariah. Haggai arrives and begins preaching to the Jews that they need to rebuild the Temple. “Why are you living in paneled houses, while the temple of the Lord, the house of the Lord, lays desolate,” Haggai asks. There is a little miniature revival that begins and the people begin to rebuild the temple. Two months later, God sends another prophet by the name of Zechariah. So this is the time, about 520 B.C., in which there are two prophets at a time when the Temple is beginning to be rebuilt once again from the foundations that were laid sixteen years earlier, so that the people of God could be worshiping people once again with the Lord of hosts, the Lord of promise, the Lord of the covenant at the center of their community. It’s an exciting time! God sends Zechariah to add fuel to the fire that Haggai starts. This fuel for spiritual revival is fuel that reveals the future plan that God has for the nation of Israel, with the Messiah reigning and bringing blessing to them as a people.

So for the sake of a brief review, in 586 BC the Jews are deported from their own homeland to Babylon. In 538 BC 50,000 Jews return back to Jerusalem by permission of King Cyrus, the Persian king. In 536 BC, two years later, the work on the Temple is stopped. Only the foundation has been laid. Sixteen years go by. No one is thinking about the Temple anymore. They’re just trying to make the best life they can in Jerusalem. Haggai preaches in 520 BC and work on the temple resumes. Two months later, Zechariah begins preaching once again and prophesying about the Messiah and about the future God has for this nation as they would follow Him. Then in 515 BC, the Temple ultimately will be completed.

The main idea that we’re going to trace through these first six verses though, is this message that flows through the whole of this prophecy. That is God speaking and saying, “Return to me so that you will have hope. Return to me so that you will look at your future and not think about the dismal disaster that happened in the past and you won’t think about the difficulties that are present. But you’ll know what I plan for you, the blessing I have for you yet in the future.”

There are five truths that these first six verses give us that help lead us to a revived spirit as individuals, but also to revival as a community of faith, as a church family. The first truth is

The Word: God speaks clearly.

Every good thing that comes in the life of the believer begins with God’s Word. God speaks clearly. Where there is no word, there is no truth from God. Where there is no truth from God, there can be no life because we don’t know God. We’re left in our ignorance. So notice how Zechariah begins. He gives the historical date about

1 In the eighth month, in the second year of Darius, the word of the LORD came to the prophet Zechariah,

Zechariah wants us to know that what follows is not coming from his own imagination or his own will. This is coming directly from God, the Holy Spirit. This is God’s very voice, His personal voice to God’s beloved people. Thank God that He loves us enough to talk with us and to talk to us! God would have been right to be so offended by our sin from Adam on, throughout all of human history. He would have been just and righteous to be so offended and say, “If you’re going to treat me that way, I’m walking away. I’m not going to talk to you guys anymore. I’ve talked and talked and talked and every time I talk, you don’t listen anyway. So, that’s it. I’m done!” But God doesn’t do that. God in love continues to speak to us lovingly, clearly, truthfully, pointedly, personally speak to us.

Have you ever had someone become so upset with you that they refuse to talk with you? That’s a horrible circumstance, isn’t it? It hurts, especially if the relationship to that person is really important. But once a person cuts us off and refuses to talk with us, there is nothing we can do to rebuild that relationship. We have no starting point. We don’t have a gate, let alone a bridge in which to travel in order to restore and reconcile. God in love created us in His image to know Him, to know Him personally. Yet we rejected Him. We rejected His authority. We rebelled against His Word, His commandments. God only did right by us. He didn’t deserve any of this mistreatment that mankind has done from the beginning of time. Yet in love, God continues to speak. God refuses to put Himself on a course and say, “Fine. You’re on your own.” He continues to speak. The Word of the Lord came to Zechariah. It came to Zechariah to present to a people who had been disobedient throughout their whole history. The Word of the Lord came to this prophet. What a gift!

Since God in grace gives us His Word, let us in faith receive His Word! This book is printed more often than any other book in all the history of the world. So it can become quite common. You may have it on your desk at home, or on your shelves. I have dozens of Bibles at my own home. It’s possible for us to sort of become so used to a Bible that we fail to see its significance. We fail to see the communication that God loves us enough to speak to us and to speak with us personally. Now, there is nothing sacred about the paper of the pages of this book. What is sacred is the Word. What’s living is the Word. It’s that God’s Holy Spirit opens up the heart of God to us, reveals aspects of the spiritual realm, which would be totally unknown to us apart from God bringing His Word to us through His prophets and through His apostles.

Since God in love and I would say in humility, speaks to a people who don’t deserve to be spoken to, isn’t it right for us to say, “I’m going to be a person who loves to hear God’s voice. When I hear God’s voice speak to me, I am going to respond in faith. I’m going to respond in obedience. I’m going to respond in submission because God in love speaks and He only speaks for the good of His people. He only speaks in wisdom. He only speaks in what is right and true. So I am going to be a person who makes sure that I don’t trust in my own understanding. I certainly am not going to trust in the voice of other people. I’m going to trust in the Lord. I’m going to receive His Word implanted.” The Bible says that when we receive the Word of God implanted, it gives life. There is spiritual life where there was no life. So the first idea to lead us into revival and to this vibrant personal relationship with God to return to God is His Word. God speaks clearly. So let us listen with intentionality. Let us listen with specificity and let us listen with a heart ready to worship.

Now, there are a number of obstacles that keep us from listening to God. One is just simply neglect. We just get too busy. We think there are other things that are actually more life-giving. Actually, all of us wake up and do the thing which we think will be most purposeful, most fruitful to our lives. For some, that means work. For some, it’s relationships. For some, it’s having a lot of fun. We all do that which we believe will bring us the most life. What God says is the thing that will give us life is listening to His Word. Man will not live by bread alone, but by every Word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Let’s not neglect that food.

But also, another obstacle for us listening to the voice of God is the cacophony of other voices that claim to be from God, but are not from God. This has been true from the very beginning. In Genesis chapter 3, there was a voice that claimed to have truth that was not from God. Adam and Eve listened to that voice. That’s been true all the way through Biblical history in the Old Testament and the New Testament and it’s going to be true in the last days, the Bible says. Let’s consider for instance, this group here. I want to read from Jeremiah 23, who talked to this group’s fathers and shared the Word of the Lord with this group’s fathers. This is just one generation earlier. It’s maybe two for some of them, depending on their age. Listen to what Jeremiah says about this people. God is speaking through Jeremiah. The Word of the Lord comes to Jeremiah and here’s what God says.

Jeremiah 23:29 Is not my word like fire,

Is it something living? Isn’t it something life-giving? Is it something filled with passion and filled with vigor? Is it not purifying? That’s the issue.

Jeremiah 23:29 …declares the LORD, and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?

The idea is our hearts are hard. We are willful and resistant to God. He says, “Isn’t my Word like a hammer that breaks open that hard ground?” Why? Ground that is broken open is ground that can receive seed to bring fruitfulness. Ground that remains hard can’t receive seed that brings life. So He says, “This is my Word. It’s like a hammer. It breaks us open so that we can actually be fruitful unto the Lord.” Then notice what he says.

Jeremiah 23:30 Therefore, behold, I am against the prophets, declares the LORD,

These are the false prophets. You see, in Jeremiah’s day, there were many, many, many people who said, “I’m speaking for the Lord. The Lord has declared His Word through me.” Jeremiah says all those people you’re listening to, this is what the Lord says about them. “I am against them. These are people

Jeremiah 23:30-31 …who steal my words from one another. Behold, I am against the prophets, declares the LORD, who use their tongues and declare, ‘declares the LORD.’

They say “declares the Lord,” but they don’t represent me. They use their tongues to speak that most bold of lies.

Jeremiah 23:32 Behold, I am against those who prophesy lying dreams,

They say, “I had a dream. This is from the Lord.” He says, “I’m against those folks

Jeremiah 23:32 …declares the LORD, and who tell them and lead my people astray by their lies and their recklessness, when I did not send them or charge them.

I didn’t give my Word to them, and yet, they act as though they represent me.

Jeremiah 23:32 So they do not profit this people at all, declares the LORD.

You see, Jeremiah’s message is one of severity. His message was that they are disobedient to the Lord and that God is going to send a strong discipline upon them through the empire of Babylon. The other prophets would say, “Oh no, we’re God’s people. God wouldn’t do that to us.” Jeremiah describes them as saying, “Peace, peace,” but there is no peace. They say, “No, everything is going to be great!” For a time, it seems like these false prophets are right because Babylon has not yet conquered them. It hasn’t conquered them for the nearly forty years of Jeremiah’s ministry. Many who claim to speak for God are not from God. How can we tell who speaks for God and who speaks lies? That’s a really important question for believers to ask themselves. Who do we listen to, to know what God says? Listen to Scripture.

Psalm 119:105 Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

Listen to what the Bible says about the Bible. We can measure everyone and everything on the basis of the Scriptures. In Acts 17, there are folks from Berea,

Acts 17:11 Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.

They received Paul’s preaching with all eagerness. What did they do when they heard Paul preach? They examined the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so. They said, “We know the Word of God. We know that God is always true, that He never contradicts Himself. So if you say that you’re speaking a Word from the Lord, we’re going to examine the Scriptures to see if it’s in alignment, to see if it’s consistent with the Word.” Friends, God’s Word is the Holy Spirit’s gift to us to hear Him speak directly to our hearts every day so that we might be able to return to Him.
Anger: God responds righteously.

This is a little bit surprising because we don’t think of understanding the anger of the Lord as necessary to spiritual life, but it is. God responds righteously always and forever. God responds righteously.

2 “The LORD was very angry with your fathers.

So the message is going to be “Return to Me,” but prior to saying, “Return to Me,” he says, “I want to first say something about the Word. The Word of the Lord came to me. We can trust God’s voice, His speech, His communication to us. Secondly, I want to speak about God’s anger. The Lord was very angry.”

To be angry is to be stirred with a strong displeasure, in fact, even an opposition as the result of perceived injury, insult or injustice. The Lord has received injury, insult and injustice as the result of man’s rejection of His commands, rejection of His person, and He is now stirred with a strong displeasure. He is very angry. Nearly 70 years earlier, Jeremiah writes to the fathers of this audience. Notice what Jeremiah says in Jeremiah 25.

Jeremiah 25:3 “For twenty-three years,…the word of the LORD has come to me, and I have spoken persistently to you, but you have not listened.

What a ministry! Can you imagine being called by God to hear His Word then persistently and consistently give the Word to a people for twenty-three years? Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, maybe are we going to see any response at Week 4? No. Week 52, and multiply 52 weeks by 23 years. How many weeks did Jeremiah faithfully proclaim the Word that came to him and they never listened? Not once!

The Lord has allowed me to have the joy of being a pastor here at Bethany for twenty-eight years. I’m thankful that I’ve not had Jeremiah’s experience. It is indeed true that not everyone listens to the Word of the Lord. Many, many, I don’t know the percentage. But I also know that there are some of you precious brothers and sisters who when you hear the Word of the Lord, you say, “Yes! I want to hear it. I want to apply it. I want to live by the Word of the Lord. That’s what I want.” Jeremiah received no encouragement like that. Can you imagine ministering the Word of the Lord for 23 years and not having anyone respond with, “Yes, Amen! Yes, I believe what God has said.” He goes on to say

Jeremiah 25:4-5 You have neither listened nor inclined your ears to hear, although the LORD persistently sent to you all his servants the prophets, saying, ‘Turn now, every one of you, from his evil way and evil deeds,

Jeremiah 25:7 Yet you have not listened to me, declares the LORD, that you might provoke me to anger with the work of your hands to your own harm.

This issue of the anger of the Lord is central to understand the biblical story and the biblical truth. It’s one of the means I believe, by which we can discern whether a person, a pastor or a teacher on the radio or some author, is from God or not. If you read over the course of a person’s ministry through sermons or books, a void of references to the anger of God, I would say that person is not speaking from the Lord. Because when I open up my Bible, from beginning all the way to the end, we have this theme. Now, God is a God of grace and mercy. We’re going to talk about that, to be sure. But it is grace that is amazing because the righteous indignation of God, the just response of God at the sinfulness of man is so great that we recognize it’s by His grace that God would find a way to forgive and bring redemption and bring reconciliation to us who have sinned against Him.

Think with me for a moment me about the experiences of the people to whom Zechariah writes. He just says the Lord was very angry with your fathers. Most of them, either themselves or their parents, had endured the merciless deportation from their homes by the Babylonians. So this is only one generation away for most of them. They could say, “Let me tell you what happened when I was a kid. What happened was the Babylonians came and they tore down the city walls that were huge and we thought were going to keep us safe. They tore down every house. Then there was this magnificent Temple where we worshiped God and we saw it just dislodged brick by brick. Every bit of gold, every bit of silver, every jewel, everything of value was taken away and every stone was overturned. That’s what we saw. Then we saw many die. Those of us who lived were all taken away as slaves to a foreign land where we had no homes. We didn’t know the language. We had to learn everything all over again.” That’s who he is talking to.

Now these are a people who have returned to the land. They’ve heard the stories, perhaps some of them as they were in exile with their parents and grandparents. Now, 50,000 of them returned to the land. That’s who he is talking to. When these folks get up in the morning and they go out of their house with their cup of coffee in their hand, what do they see? They look to the left, to the right, forward and back and they see city walls that have been destroyed and are not rebuilt. They remember the stories that they heard. “That’s what happened. My parents or my grandparents were here when those walls were standing.” Then they take perhaps a short little walk over to the temple area. They heard how beautiful this temple area was. Sixteen years earlier, maybe they had begun refashioning the foundation, but it’s still nothing. It’s just a foundation. It’s still a pile of rubble.

Let me ask you, why does this people need to be reminded that the Lord was very angry with their fathers? Isn’t the message all around them every day? Every time they look at a rock, they realize, “The Lord was very angry with our fathers, because this wouldn’t be in this condition if the Lord wasn’t very angry with our fathers.” Is this Zechariah or God just sort of pressing salt into the wound? Every day they’re depressed because they’re still under foreign rule. Their civilization has still been demolished and there is a constant reminder before them all the time. Isn’t this pressing salt into this wound? No. God does this out of infinite patience and love. He wants them to remember that the Lord was very angry. Why? Because God knows how quickly we are to forget this very theme of God’s anger. We have other explanations. We look right past it.
Zechariah knows that this generation is vulnerable to the exact same response to God that their fathers were, and they needed a sober reminder that when God speaks judgment, He isn’t bluffing. For those twenty-three years, the people said, “You’re bluffing. It’s not going to come to pass. No way! No how!” Then it happened, and this generation saw that it happened. God is saying, “Please, if history doesn’t teach you anything, let it teach you that I speak truth in reference to my righteous indignation.” We are always vulnerable to thinking that God is not angry with us when often He is.

Jeremiah 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?

One of the greatest evidences for the deceitfulness of our own heart is our defiance at this theme. There are many who refuse to preach or speak about this theme on a Sunday morning because it is so offensive to the heart of man. Is there not any greater evidence of how defiant we are to God and that our heart is deceitful and desperately wicked, than when we hear about God’s anger and when God acts in justice like He did here, allowing the Babylonians to decimate the city, to demolish the temple and to take a whole generation of people away in deportation, that we say, “God is not right to do things like that.”

Is not that the ultimate expression of the deceitfulness of our heart to say we actually have a greater sense of justice and morality than God does? “How dare God send a flood to eliminate everyone on the face of the earth; man, woman and child, save one family!” Many look at those stories that are from the beginning to the end of the Bible and say, “I cannot worship a God like that.” It’s the ultimate expression of the nature of our hearts to resist God’s righteousness. Friends, who are we to put God on trial as though God needs to answer to us for His righteous dealings with the sinfulness of man? Is it not possible that we are the ones who actually love evil to such an extent that we resist God’s righteous, divine wrath against evil? God is the one who is completely consistent.

I have rarely met a person who is not angered in a really strong way by some form of evil in this world. For instance, those who learn about the atrocious medical experimentation that the Nazi’s had upon Jewish children, I don’t know of any person who can’t read those stories and have some righteous indignation toward that. There must be some just response against people who do that. Or people who hear the stories of how black men and women were treated during enslavement. I don’t know anyone who can’t hear some of those stories and have this righteous indignation that something is terribly wrong and something must be done to make sure that doesn’t happen again.

So let us put away the idea that we are taking the righteous road when we question wrath as a response. You see, simply what is happening is that we have decided that we get to be the arbiters, we get to be the authority to determine what is evil and what is not, what acts are worth ignoring and what acts need to be confronted. We suffer from the problem of selective outrage. Those acts of evil that are closer to us feel less evil, so we feel like God shouldn’t respond to those acts of evil like He does other acts of evil that we find abhorrent. God is the one who is consistent. His anger is not like human anger in the sense that it’s not arbitrary. It is not selective. It is not hot-headed. It is not capricious. But He is just. God is angry with every sin all the time, consistently. He is not silent or opaque about what He calls evil. So while we are right to rejoice that God is a God of mercy and grace, we are also right to remember that our God is a consuming fire.

Romans 1:18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men,

This means every form of it. He is not selective. When we throw away the wrath of God as a theme for our meditation, we’re throwing away the Gospel. It’s impossible to refuse to speak of the wrath of God and to be faithful to declare the Gospel at the same time. The foundation of the Good News is God’s righteous response against evil. There are two matters of practical Gospel importance rooted in the wrath of God. First, we will never understand why Jesus took on flesh and died upon a cross if we don’t grasp the wrath of God against sin. Jesus died to take the punishment that our sins deserved and merited. He became a curse in our place so that we wouldn’t be cursed. Secondly, we will have no conquering motivation to proclaim the Gospel if we do not grasp the wrath of God against sin. Paul says

2 Corinthians 5:11 Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others.

When we consider the wrath of God and how we deserve to be under its wrath but we found safety underneath the protection of Jesus, underneath the blood of Jesus, who endured and satisfied the wrath of God for us, how could we let our neighbors who don’t know yet about this protection that was fashioned by Christ, how can we not talk to them and say, “There is safety. Run to safety now because there is a future day when the wrath of God will be experienced and made known, and it is unending. It is the motivation of our Gospel witness to bring freedom from the wrath which is to come through Jesus. The next foundation is

Repentance: God calls urgently.

3 Therefore say to them, Thus declares the LORD of hosts: Return to me, says the LORD of hosts,

This call to return is first a call to turn away from self-will, self-centeredness, self-direction. Then secondly, it is a call to return to the Lord. It is impossible to return to the Lord without turning away from sin.

4 Do not be like your fathers, to whom the former prophets cried out, ‘Thus says the LORD of hosts, Return from your evil ways and from your evil deeds.’ But they did not hear or pay attention to me, declares the LORD.

Ultimately this is a call toward a personal relationship with God. “Return to Me!” But it is a call away from the self-centered, self-willed, self-determined kind of life where we walk away from the Lord, where we can’t be in fellowship with God as long as we are establishing ourselves as our authority for life. Return!

2 Chronicles 7:14 if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

There is no return to God without repentance. God does not make this offer to “Return to Me,” out of some need He has for His own happiness. In other words, He is not saying, “The reason I want you to return is because I’m lonely and I need you.” He says, “Return to Me for your benefit.” It is out of compassion and out of love for us that He calls us to return to Him so that we would experience His blessing, so that we would have hope for now and for the future. God’s offer in Jesus for us to return is infinitely generous. Think about what God has done to make this offer available to us! His Son taking on human flesh for the purpose of dying on the cross so that He might become a propitiation, a satisfaction of God’s anger and righteous response against sin so that we ourselves can be reconciled to an infinitely holy God. Sin invites judgment; repentance invites God’s favor.

Hope: God promises lovingly.

3 … and I will return to you, says the LORD of hosts.

The present often seems hopeless. It seems despairing. But God says that if we return to Him then we will have Him come to us in a way that is generous, in a way that brings blessing, in a way that brings life. I love this picture because it sort of throws a picture ahead to the story Jesus would tell about the prodigal son.

This son said, “Give me your money, dad.” He took dad’s money and went off to a foreign land. He didn’t want anything to do with dad. He just wanted dad’s money. He spent dad’s money into profligacy, where he came undone by the decisions that he made. Then he turned and he thought about the love of his father and said, “Maybe my dad will still be kind to me. Maybe he will treat me at least as a servant.” So he goes back to his father. He returns. What does the father do? The father doesn’t say, “You have to crawl all the way back to the front step before I’m going to respond. You better come with a total annihilation of your self-will.” Instead, he says, “I see you returning and as you return, I’m going to run out to meet you.” That’s the Father’s heart. “If you return to me in humility, I’ll return to you. It’s not going to be difficult for me to run and embrace you if you simply in humility, repent and return to me.” Throughout Zechariah God makes many joyful and comforting promises to His people. All those promises provide hope for us to be able to have a free and fruitful relationship with the living God.

The last issue that we’re going to consider here for us to have revival is sovereignty. Through the Word, God speaks clearly. In anger, God responds righteously. In repentance, God commands us urgently to return and avoid the wrath that is to come. In hope, God promises lovingly, “I will return to you.”
Sovereignty: God accomplishes surely.

5 Your fathers, where are they?

The answer is they’re dead.

And the prophets, do they live forever?

The answer is no, not in this world. Even the godly people have perished.

6 But my words and my statutes, which I commanded my servants the prophets, did they not overtake your fathers?

Your fathers didn’t outlive God’s Word. No one does. At the end of time, what stands forever is God’s Word. If we align ourselves and connect ourselves to the life-giving Word, we also will abide forever. If we don’t align ourselves and connect ourselves with God’s Word, we perish. So what he is saying is that God always accomplishes everything God intends and purposes. Always! So if we wish to be on the right side of history, we’re going to connect ourselves to the Lord.

God’s Word never dies. It never gets stale. It never fades and it never changes. Often it is rejected by the world. Often it is ridiculed. Often it is set aside. But God’s Word abides forever. So the application for us is simply to believe in Him. It’s to return to the Lord by repenting of our sins. Return to the Lord by having a renewed heart that says, “God, I want you. I want to have a real relationship with you.” Then return to the Lord by reinvesting in that relationship. Reinvest in a relationship that the Holy Spirit is the one who produces by saying, “God, I don’t want to live my life separated from you, separated from hearing your Word speak to me every day, separated from your promises, separated from your grace, separated from the hope you offer. I’m going to reinvest.”

Every morning, we get up and we invest ourselves in something. We invest ourselves in that which we think would be most fruitful. For some, it’s work. “I’m going to get up and I’m going to start working because that’s going to be the most fruitful.” For others, it’s some hobby. “I’m going to get up and I’m going to invest in something I find fun.” Others say, “I’m going to invest in some relationship.” What God says is “Return to me and I will return to you.” The very first priority for a fruitful life is that we would invest our lives, our time, our energy in hearing what God has to say to us, receiving what God says by faith and planting it in our soul, then watching God do a miracle work of taking His Word and producing life in us, being reinvigorated in our worship, our purpose that connects us to eternity and then living for God every day. So what would God have you to do to reinvest in your relationship with the living God? Is there a sin to repent of? Is there renewal that you would recognize and ask God to make? Is there some specific act of reinvestment that God would have you to take today for His glory? God is a God of hope!