The Lord Was Very Angry With Your Fathers

Well, first of all, it's very good to be back with you guys preaching. It was two weeks we were gone, though only one Sunday, and we very much felt it as a family being away from our church family, and so we're very glad to be back with you. Our time away was very restful, very enjoyable. Florida was beautiful. But we are glad to be back with you, even if the skies are gray and the ground is wet. What? It's Halloween. It is. It's also Reformation Day, and John said something of it. He sort of stole my introduction, though he didn't know it. It is the day, as John told us in history, that marks when Martin Luther nailed his infamous 95 theses to the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. Now, what are the 95 theses? Well, Luther was a monk, and...

as he was studying scripture in Latin, he became convinced that the church had gone astray in a number of places. And so in their time and day, we have Facebook and we promote posts. In their time of day, the church doors were where you made known the things that were going on in the community. And so what he wanted was to discuss these 95 areas and things that he thought were were errors or failures of the church. He wanted to see the church reformed and brought back into conformity to the word. And so he wanted a debate. He wanted a counsel of some sort. He wanted to see the word of God restored to the church of God. And if you know the history, you know that that's not what ended up happening, at least not in the way that Luther had originally intended it. He did not intend to make a break with the Roman Catholic Church. He didn't intend to cause all of the stink that ended up ensuing. He didn't intend to have his life in danger. What he presumed was that the word of God was authoritative and also that God's people would be improved if they could have access to it. And so Luther spent his life remaining serving God, working for reformation, and making the word of God available.

through his own work of translation into the native German at that time, so that the people of God could read the word of God. And so this day, Reformation Day, marks the beginning, what we can often consider the beginning of the Reformation, some 504 years ago. The work of Reformation had already been going on before that, but this is sort of the official start of it, at least as history records it. And so today, I've chosen to step away from our study of 2 Timothy to spend our time studying the work of Reformation. Not Luther's work, but an account in Scripture, the work of rebuilding, the work of reforming. And it's true that we could spend a lot more than one week on this topic, and we may have time in the future to revisit this topic as time goes by. But this morning, I want us to focus on just two aspects of Reformation. The first is God's agency in Reformation. What does God do?

when there's reform, and second, what our responsibility is in reform. Now, I'm going to be preaching from Zechariah. Who's Zechariah? Anyone know who Zechariah was? Major prophet or minor prophet? Minor prophet, which means that he's even less known than the major prophets. And so I realized that as I was going to be preaching from Zechariah, I would have to set the table, if you will. and give us context for who Zechariah was when he was prophesying, who he was prophesying to, what was going on in his time. And so Zechariah is preaching in Israel, and he's preaching in a time after, if we're painting with big, broad strokes the history of Israel, I'll pick up with King David. There was an institution of kings, The people cried out, remember, they said, we want a king to rule over us. And Samuel said, no, that's bad. And God says, it's not you they're rejecting, it's me, give them kings. And so they had Saul as their first king. And after Saul, they have David. And after David, you have Solomon. And what you have is the nation of Israel as one nation joined together. Now what happened after Saul's reign was over? The nation split. And then you have Israel, the nation of Israel,

And you have Judah, which is one of the tribes formerly in the nation of Israel. And you have two competing kingdoms or a divided kingdom. And so you have two kings at various times, you know, a king in each kingdom, if you will, at various times. And what happens is over the course of history, Israel forgets the Lord, gives themselves to idolatry, and eventually is taken away into captivity. remained faithful, we could say, a little longer than Israel did, but eventually met the same end and were taken away into captivity by Nebuchadnezzar. And as they were going away, Jeremiah prophesied to them, saying that you're going to be taken into captivity for a period of 70 years, and then the Lord will return to you. And so they're taken away into captivity. So they spend their 70 years in Babylon.

in captivity, having had their holy city, Jerusalem, razed to the ground, destroyed, a temple torn down, and nothing left, a waste place behind them. And after 70 years, the king at the time, whose name was Cyrus, was moved or stirred up by the Lord to send the people of Israel who were willing to go back to Jerusalem to rebuild Jerusalem. The wall, the city, the temple. And so he stirred up and he sends out a decree and he says, anybody who wants to go back, from the people of Israel who want to go back, go ahead. And so they came and there's a long list of the people who came, thousands and thousands of men that go back. Not all of them, but a number of them, they go back and they start to rebuild the city. And so at that time, you've got Ezra preaching.

Ezra and Nehemiah are preaching at this time. And so they go back and they start the work of rebuilding the wall, rebuilding the temple. Well, if you know, during Nehemiah's time, there was opposition. The opposition wasn't new. There had been opposition. There were people that were left in the land of Israel, inhabitants, that had come in, that had taken over the land. The Israelites had been removed, and so they moved in. So as Nehemiah comes back and begins to rebuild the wall, he meets opposition. And eventually, there's a letter sent to the king, who is not Cyrus, but now Artaxerxes. Crazy names. New king. New king's been a while. And so the inhabitants of the land, when Israel, when Nehemiah...

They came to Nehemiah and they said, well, let us help you build a house back to the Lord. Nehemiah says no. And you get the sense that he said no because he was disgusted with their unfaithfulness. And he says, you're not God's people and we're not doing this with you. Far be it for me to have you, you unbelievers, help rebuild the house of the Lord. So they get frustrated and they send a letter to Artaxerxes and they say, great king, these people who are here rebuilding the temple, they're going to cause you trouble if you let them redo this. Now, I'm really paraphrasing whole books of the Bible in short, so there's lots more details than what I'm saying. But basically, this letter is recorded for us, and they write back, and they say, if you'll look in the records, what you'll find is that this nation used to have great kings, and if you let them rebuild their temple, and if you let them rebuild their holy city, they're not going to pay you your money anymore.

You don't want that, would you, king? Far be it from us not to warn you and to have the king's treasuries take a hit. So you might not want to let these people rebuild this temple. So what's the king do? The king says, stop building. So now you've got all these people back in Israel having been dealing with the opposition of the inhabitants of the land, the enemies of the Lord. And then an edict, a decree comes from the king and says, stop building. And they stop. They stop building the house of the Lord. And then a period of probably 18 years, they're not building. They're just living in the land. Now, what do you think they were doing while they were living in the land? Well, the Bible tells us, if you read the book of Haggai, we'll come to it later, they were building their own houses. They thought, well, this is where we live. We need to establish our own homes, our own...

way of life here. You know, we've been told by the king, we can't rebuild the city, so we're going to build our homes. So they go about doing that. And life is pretty normal there. It stabilizes. It's not happy. It's not good. There's still danger, but there's no building of the temple going on. So then after this period of time, and there's a new king, now Artaxerxes is gone, and now we've got Darius as the king of Babylon. And he, So there's a new guy comes in, and then the Jews, the Israelites rather, are sent two prophets, Haggai, very short book, very helpful book, and Zechariah. And these men are sent to the nation of Israel, to the remnant who've come back to build the city, basically to tell them, get back to work. And that's what they do. That's what Zechariah and Haggai do. And so the Israelites, at the time, they're faced with this dilemma, right?

The king says, don't build. But Haggai and Zechariah, the Lord gives them these two prophets to say, get back to building. So what do they do? It's quite interesting what they do. They start rebuilding, okay? But as they start rebuilding, because they realize this isn't, you know, if we just do this, we're going to, you know, the king's going to come and we're going to have trouble. They send a letter to the king, the new king, Darius, and they say, oh king, If you will look back in your records, they do the same thing that their enemies did. If you will look back in their records, they just point to a different time, right? Originally, their enemies say, look back before they were a conquered land and see what kind of people they were. The Israelites write back and they say, look back in the records at what Cyrus told us, King Cyrus. He told us to build this city. We're here because the man who used to formerly sat on your throne sent us here to do this work. And that's why we're doing it.

And so Darius makes search of the records and finds out that lo and behold, Cyrus had said, this is what they're supposed to be doing. And so he issues an edict that says, get back to work. And not only that, the taxes that are collected for my kingdom from your countrymen are to be paid to you, whatever you need so that you can build and finish the temple. And he warns them and he says, anybody. who opposes this work, who frustrates this work, who won't pay their taxes, is to be impaled on a beam from his own house and his land is to be turned into a refuse heap. So all the people are like, okay, okay, okay. We got it. We'll give them our money. We don't want that to be our end. So the people are rebuilding. And our text this morning, which I haven't read to you yet, is the beginning of the book of Zechariah. We're going to be focusing on what he said to the people

to stir them up, to return to rebuilding the temple against the current, at that time, decree of the king. And the question you should have in your mind is, what in the world did Haggai and Zechariah say to these people? What did he say to them? That's what we're going to be studying. We'll read some of what Haggai said, but we're going to start and spend most of our time dealing with Zechariah. Our text is Zechariah chapter 1, verses 1 to 6. Would you please stand as we read the word of the Lord? In the eighth month, of the second year of Darius. The word of the Lord came to Zechariah the prophet, the son of Berechiah, the son of Iddo, saying, The Lord was very angry with your fathers. Therefore say to them, Thus says the Lord of hosts, Return to me, declares the Lord of hosts, that I may return to you, says the Lord of hosts. Do not be like your fathers, to whom the former prophets proclaimed, saying, Thus says the Lord of hosts,

Return now from your evil ways and from your evil deeds. But they did not listen or give heed to me, declares the Lord. Your fathers, where are they? And the prophets, do they live forever? But did not my words and my statutes, which I commanded my servants, the prophets, overtake your fathers? Then they repented and said, Is the Lord of hosts purpose to do to us in accordance to our ways and our deeds? So he has dealt with us. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. Now one thing I want to make note of, just in passing at the very beginning, is there's a refrain in this thing. The Lord keeps getting referred to as the Lord of hosts. And there are many titles or many ways that the Lord can be referred to, but this one, Zechariah, at the very beginning of his ministry and his work with the people, keeps repeating the Lord of hosts, almost to the point of confusion.

The Lord of hosts says this, says the Lord of hosts, says this, says the Lord of hosts. And it's like, okay, okay, why the Lord of hosts? Why the Lord of hosts? Well, the Lord of hosts was a title given to God as a, what is a host? He's the Lord of what? What's a host? An army. And so he's speaking to them very intentionally, very much on purpose, realizing they are a captive people, even though they've gone back to their land, they're still under the rule of a foreign king. They still have an oppressor. And so in everything Zechariah says to them, he's goading them and poking them and showing them what they need to look at. And what they needed to look at was they have a Lord, a God of hosts, one of armies, one of power, one of might, one of strength. And the point of communicating this way to them was to start from the very beginning saying, no fear here. No fear here. No fear with us. Now,

I told you already we want to focus on two things, God's agency in Reformation and then our responsibility in Reformation. And so let's start with God's agency. What did he do? Well, first, at the very end, when you read in the Old Testament, you'll find that different books are written in different ways, and they're not always written chronologically, meaning what's recorded doesn't always happen in the order. that it's recorded. Sometimes they jump around and they reference history and then they talk about the future and then they talk about this people and it kind of moves around. So you have to be paying attention. And so here, Zechariah starts out talking to the people about them. It says, the word of the Lord came to Zechariah, say this. And so he says, the Lord was very angry with your fathers. And so immediately from the beginning, he's speaking to the people and he's saying, I want you to think about the past. I want you to think about your fathers. And when he's speaking of their fathers, he's talking about,

Their fathers who were in the land before the destruction, before the captivity. You think about your fathers, and I want you to think about, more specifically, what they did to get taken out of this land. What did their fathers do to get taken out of the land? Well, in Ezra, chapter 5, as he's beginning to preach, as he's beginning his ministry to take the people back to the land, he says this. He says, because our fathers had provoked the God of heaven to wrath, he gave them into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, the Chaldean, who destroyed this temple and deported the people to Babylon. And so this is what Zechariah was referencing when he said the Lord was very angry with your fathers. Your fathers, in effect, provoked the God of heaven to wrath.

Their behavior and their disobedience and their abandonment of the word and their God led to this destruction. It's laid at their feet. This is why the Lord was very angry with them. And this is also why he sent Nebuchadnezzar, an unbelieving king, to destroy the temple and to haul them off. And so when we consider the work of reformation, which It's worth noting, if you love this country, and if you love your neighbor, you ought to want or see the need of reformation in our land. It should be apparent to you. And you also ought to feel very, very small as you look at such a daunting task. And I think one of the problems that I want to tease out as we study this text is that one of the failures we have is that when we think of reformation, we think of other people needing to change. And the overarching theme of this passage, and I hope what you take home at the end of our time today, is reformation starts with me, me personally, and my repentance for my sins. That's where we're going, okay? If you had Google Maps and you said, where are we going? I'd say, that's the location, that's where we're headed.

Not because I say that's where we're headed, but because that's where both Haggai and Zechariah both point with big orange foam fingers, your repentance, you people. And so Zechariah starts with their father's lack of repentance and lack of faith that stirred the Lord up to anger, that brought about the destruction of the temple and the 70 years of captivity. And so when we consider the work of reformation, we have to begin with what God has already said, not leaving behind the necessity of our own personal holiness and devotion to God. There's all kinds of pithy quotes about history. The best way to repeat history is what? To forget it. Things like that. If you don't read history, you're just going to repeat it because you lose sight of the fact that we got here somehow and there actually is some benefit to figuring out how you got here. Now, oftentimes when I talk about, you know, you're here now and we need to get back to, through repentance, we need to get back to holiness, I downplay the necessity of figuring out how you got here. But today what I want to say to you is, it's very likely if you don't know how you got to where you're at, that you will spend your whole life walking in circles. When I say, don't worry about how you got here, wherever here is for you,

What I'm saying is you don't have the ability to walk back in time and then go forward. But you do actually have to know how you got to where you're at. And you have to know the context. Because if we all just woke up in the morning and went, here I am and I don't know anything about how I got here, we will be incapable of plotting a course forward. Because we are unaware of the troubles and the mistakes and the failures and the sins that led. us to where we are. And so Zechariah draws their attention to the sins of their fathers, to their disobedience, to their rebellion, and consequently, to their judgment. And so when we consider the work of reformation, it's a very real and important question that must be answered. How did we get to where we are? And the question, if I put a little sharper point on it, the question is, is the church, responsible for how we got here, or is the church responsible for simply getting us out of here? And I would say the church is responsible for how we got here, not just how to get out. If there is any hope of getting out, it will be through the people of God, Christians, giving their lives and sacrificing to hack their way out of the woods and back to civilization. But how did we get where we're at? What did the church do?

do? Did we just get plopped down in the middle of America as though it's an unreached society and we've all flown in on an airplane like missionaries? You realize there are times when Christians could say, we need to figure out how this culture got to where it's at, but it wasn't us who did it. We've airdropped into it, and now we've got to find our way to the cross. But that's not true of America. From its very founding, we've had Christianity as the bedrock of our country. And so we should never think the problems in our society and the evils that we have to combat with only exist outside the church. It's easy, easy to point out the sins of other people and unbelievers. It's just pathetically simple to look at people who don't know God and go, look, There they are, you know, Elijah, when he's up on the mountain with the prophets of Baal. And there's Elijah, and there's the prophets of Baal. And what are they doing? They're up there, and they're dancing around, and they're cutting themselves, and they're doing all this craziness. And he's looking at them and going, try a little harder. It was so apparent to him what their sins were. What's not apparent is what our sins are. And so when we look at our society, I don't want you for a second.

to think that all of the way we got here was with all the unbelievers dragging us by the nose. It wasn't. It was us. It was our fathers. And if we understand, when you look at things like the social security system or the national debt, and we understand that we're making a mess, a financial mess for our children and grandchildren, why can we not do the same thing with the church and with our society and say, you know, our fathers made a mess for us, and it needs to be cleaned up. And Lord, help us clean it up. But that requires us to own them as our fathers, not disown them. Own them as our fathers and to say, they made us a mess and we're going to have to clean it up now. Not a mess we didn't make, but here it is, our mess to clean up. And honestly, if you think about your life as a Christian, you will often be cleaning up the messes of other people. Whether they're your father's messes or your mother's messes or your sibling's messes or your boss's messes.

Have you never been frustrated at the failures of your parents or your spouse's parents because you're having to clean up a mess that they made? Whether they made it on purpose or not on purpose or however you came to that, it's very easy to get angry at other people who make messes we have to clean up. But isn't that what God does? Clean up messes that he didn't make? Isn't that sort of the whole story of, isn't that what redemption is? That there's this mess in this world made of sin He cleans it up. A mess he didn't make, that he's not responsible for, that he would be perfectly just to throw in the trash bin of hell for eternity. He cleans the mess up. And so Zechariah says, the Lord was very angry with your fathers. They made a mess. And Zechariah is preaching to them and saying, we're going to clean it up. We're going to rebuild this temple. And so you have to begin with what God has already said. If you're going to work for reformation,

and how to reach the community for Christ. You don't start with a blank slate. You start with what lies have these people been told by Christians about God? That's a really good place to start. A really good place to start. What lies do they believe? What lies have other Christians told them because they didn't want to offend them, because they didn't want to lose their relationship, because they didn't care enough or didn't know enough? to tell them the truth. We start with what God has said. So what did God say to them? In a nutshell, and I'm not quoting any particular prophet here, if you continue to disobey me, I'm going to destroy this place, and you're going to become slaves. And it says at the end of our text, we're sort of jumping around, but if you go down toward the bottom, in verse 6, he says, but did not my words and statutes which I commanded my servants, the prophets, overtake your fathers? Now, what were those words of the prophets? They were what I just said to you. If you continue in your way, I'm going to destroy this place. And did not my word and my statutes, which I commanded my servants, the prophets, overtake your fathers? Yes, they did. It's a rhetorical question. The answer is yes, we are looking at the ruins of it. 70 years old of your word.

being fulfilled by your hand because of the disobedience of our fathers. Here it is. And if you were to read in Nehemiah, what you would find is that the old men who came back wept until they didn't have tears because they remember the glory and they remember the beauty and they're looking at a heap, a wasteland. And so they wept. It says then of the fathers, at the second half of verse six, after the word of the prophets overtook him, it says, then they repented. Then they repented and they said, as the Lord of hosts purposed to do to us in accordance with our ways and our deeds, so he has dealt with us. And you imagine them saying this with the clink of chains as they were led off to Babylon, thinking, surely he wouldn't do that to us.

Surely he wouldn't destroy the beauty of the temple, all of the wealth. Surely he wouldn't lay it waste. And as they were led away with dust and ash behind them, as the Lord of hosts purposed to do to us in accordance with our ways and our deeds, so he has dealt with us. And you think of that as the seed of repentance that lived in them and in their hearts for 70 years. as they lived in Babylon and considered what had brought them there. And so as Zechariah speaks to the people, he calls to attention what God did. God did to your fathers what he said he would do to them. And so apart from remembering how we've gotten here, what the failures of our fathers were, reformation is out of our grasp. Because if we don't know what sins have been committed, how do we know what repentance is necessary of us?

What sins have we inherited that we aren't even aware of are sins? Because they're all we've known. And so the first part of God's agency is that he gives us his word and he then fulfills it. And we have history as a testimony. In the pages of scripture, all the way up into the history of our country, we have his revealed will of what he says and how he does it. And we should rest assured that he will do everything he says he will do. for good or for bad. In the midst of that destruction, as they were going to be led away, you remember, Jeremiah said to them, 70 years, and he'll return. He'll return. He gave them a glimmer of hope. You know, there was somewhat of a silver lining, though that meant for most of them, you're going to die in captivity. Some of them got, some of the old men, you think, lived and came back. And they got, some of them told their children of the glory. But they would have been young children.

when they were taken into captivity, and old men when they came back. So God keeps his word. He does what he says he's going to do. And so we ought to consider well what he said and what his warnings are so that we're not foolish in our pursuit of reformation thinking it's a small thing. We're insignificant. The other thing that God did in the work of reformation is he sent them faithful prophets. For a long time, they'd not had anybody speak to them. The other prophets around this time, Jeremiah was a while before this as they were going into captivity and then for a while there in Babylon. And Daniel. Daniel was there. Daniel's a hard book for us to understand even to this day with the apocalyptic sort of dream interpretations and stuff in there. But there weren't many. There weren't many prophets until Ezra and Nehemiah and then later Haggai and Zechariah.

After 18 years of the work having been ceased, God raised up Haggai and Zechariah, sent them to the people to call them to the work. The work that they were called to was dangerous work. So what did Haggai say to these people? I want to read to you from Haggai chapter 1, verses 2 to 9. He says, Thus says the Lord of hosts. Again, the Lord of hosts. Thus says the Lord of hosts. This people says, The time has not come, even time for the house. for the house of the Lord to be rebuilt. So he's saying, this is what you say. It's not time. Then the word of the Lord came to Haggai, the prophet, saying, is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses while this house lies desolate? Now therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts, consider your ways. You have sown much, but harvest little. You eat, but there is not enough to be satisfied. You drink, But there is not enough to become drunk. You put on clothing, but no one is warm enough. And he who earns, earns wages to put into a purse with holes. Thus says the Lord of hosts, consider your ways. And you understand the implicit thing he's saying to them. He says, you got told not to build the house and you averted your attention and your energy and your time to building yourselves paneled houses while my house,

Lays in ruins. And you wonder why you don't have food and you don't have drink and you don't have warmth and you don't have wealth. Because you've taken everything you have and committed it to your own home instead of the house of the Lord. That's why you're without. That's why you work in toil and don't reap. Consider your ways. And then he says this. Go up to the mountains. Bring wood and rebuild the temple that I may be pleased with it and be glorified, says the Lord. You look for much, but behold, it comes to little. When you bring it home, I blow it away. Why? Why, declares the Lord of hosts, because of my house which lies desolate, while each of you runs to his own home. Minor prophets didn't mean like less intense. Gee, could you imagine sitting and being told that as you have these nice houses that you live in and these lands and you're toiling and working with all you've got.

to have the little that you have. And then comes this rebuke. Stop building your houses. Stop building your own wealth. The reason you work so hard and don't have what you need is because you have no care or priority for my house. Go up to the mountains and get the wood and rebuild the temple. But Haggai, what about the king? He said we couldn't do that. Said none of the Israelites. They'd given themselves to their comforts, their nice homes, and forsaken the house of the Lord and that. is why they were in the place they were in. Zechariah, in our text, says something very similar. The Lord was very angry with your fathers. And then he tells Zechariah, Therefore say to them, Thus says the Lord of hosts, Return to me, return to me, declares the Lord of hosts, that I may return to you. How similar is that to what Haggai said? And then he warns them, Do not be like your fathers. Don't be like them.

To whom the former prophets proclaimed, saying, Thus says the Lord of hosts, Return now from your evil ways and from your evil deeds. But they did not listen or give heed to me. So their fathers had prophets, faithful prophets. They rejected their counsel because it was a personal cost to them. Where did these men in Israel learn to build their houses like this and so easily to forsake the work of the Lord except from their fathers? And so God is exceedingly kind and merciful to them and sending them men to call them away from this sloth and this negligence and back to him. So both Haggai and Zechariah focused on the sins of the people in front of them and their ancestors, the sins that had led to their present situation. And they made no bones about calling them to repentance with the most intense words. And so we should not expect Or anticipate reformation in our land if we don't first see it in our own hearts. Pursuing it at our own hearts. When we listen to them speak of their homes and their houses, each one of us should go home and look in our house and we should say, what's here? What have I pursued here? And to what extent has it taken me away from building the kingdom of God? What have I loved more? And you say, well, that's not true of me.

And I say, that's exactly what their fathers would have said. Go home and look. Go home and look. Reformation comes as the people of God are moved to repentance. After they're broken free, they're gotten off of their moorings, their foundations, and they go, okay, I've got to do something else. Something else that's difficult, that's dangerous. It wasn't long after this that they're sending their letter to the king because they don't want the king's armies to come and lob all their heads off and drag them back to Babylon. And so they send their letter and say, if you'll look back, Cyrus said that we're supposed to be doing this work. Disregard all of the people who are opposed to it, please. Repentance from God's people is what precedes reformation. And I find myself, when I think about this, feeling very small and insignificant.

What if I repent? What good is that going to do? You don't know what good it will do. You don't know what good it will do. You don't know the future. You don't know the mind of God. You don't know his secret thoughts and his hidden counsels. Don't presume that you do. His ways are not our ways and his thoughts are not our thoughts. And so repentance starts with us. So what if this little church in Indianapolis gets a hold of this? What's that going to do? I don't know. When they did it, God moved the heart of the king to pay for it. You look back on men like John Calvin, Martin Luther, great reformers, and you think, these were the great leading men of their day. And I tell you, when they were alive, they were not. Geneva, where Calvin ministered, was a small place. Not like Indianapolis in Indiana, but maybe like Martinsville. God used them.

So don't act like you know the mind of God and you know the future. It's so often an excuse to justify your own complacency and your own satisfaction of your own desires. That's God's agency. Now, to our responsibility, I think it's probably clear to you, I've told you in a couple of different ways, our responsibility then is to repent of our sins. I mentioned earlier how easy it is to point out the sins of other people, to point out the sins of unbelievers, to point out the sins of millennials, or to point out the sins of our fathers, or to point out the sins of Democrats, or you could go on and on and on and list out the sins of other people. But the Bible doesn't tell us to point out the sins of other people. It tells us to start with ourselves. In 1 Peter 4, 17, it says this.

for it is time for judgment to begin with the household of God. And if it begins with us first, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God? And again, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 5, what have I to do with judging outsiders? Do you not judge those who are within the church? But those who are outside, God judges. Remove the wicked man among yourselves. And so our work, must first be to clean our own house, to look to our own hearts, and to repent. Now why is it easier to look to the sins of other people? Well, two things. It doesn't require anything of us, and it makes us feel better about ourselves. I'm glad I'm not like you, a sinner. But someone in the Bible said that, and it didn't go well for him. Jesus reminded us and said, who went home justified? And it wasn't the man who said, I'm glad I'm not like you. I was at the trunk retreat last night, as many of you were, and if you had both of your eyes open, you'd realize that the people who came to the trunk retreat are not like us. They have habits and manners and behaviors that are not ours. It was kind of hard not to notice. So do you love them? Will you love them? Are you willing to love them? How?

What I was thinking, I always have good ideas, or at least I think they're good ideas after things are over, and I think they would have been good ideas to have before it started. So this was my good idea. I thought we should have, years ago we had like a how many Skittles are in the Skittle jar thing to get people's information from them, and I thought we should have cards with a thing like that, or a gift card, you know, they can win a gift card, or I think that's what we did last time, and we should ask them. Do you have anything you'd like for us to pray about? Would you like a call from the pastor? Would you like a visit? Is there anything we can do to serve you? Just check boxes. And as long as we've got their phone number and their email address, it gives us the next step with them. That would have been really good. We'll do it next year. Outreach committee guy, we'll do that next year. We'll do that for the Easter egg hunt, right? Okay. So.

You actually have to think about what repentance and loving people looks like. These are just my ideas. There are probably better ones out there, but we should have all recognized last night that we are surrounded by people who aren't here now, and we should want them to be. So what are we going to do? Sit and look and go, I'm glad I don't live in 10 West. I'm glad I don't live in subsidized housing. I'm glad I'm not a single mom or an unemployed man. or a drug addict or a fornicator or a liar or whatever. We ought to reserve our judgments for ourselves and commit our love to the lost. It's not our business to judge the sins of the world. We're to focus on our own sins. Now you might think, but I live here and I'm being swept away into God's judgment because of the sins of unbelievers. They're not my sins.

I don't actually think that the decisions that are being made by the people who rule our country are good and wise or Christian or anything of the sort. And I'm getting folded into their wickedness. And so I want to give my energy to opposing their wickedness because that directly affects me and my family. It's a good argument, isn't it? Then pray. Pray that God would be merciful for the sake of the faithful, like Moses did. It's one of the most uncomfortable passages in Scripture. I can't imagine being Moses. When God is saying, I'm going to destroy that place, Sodom and Gomorrah says, I'm going to rain down fire and brimstone on that place. And Moses is like, Abraham, sorry. Thank you. Wrong name. Abraham. I knew something was wrong. Abraham was praying and asking the Lord in the most like, can I ask you a question? How about 100? How about 50? If I could bother you just one more time.

And he gets down and says, how about that? How about that? That's a good response, motivated by love, to see God's wrath averted. And God heard him, and God answered. Not in the way that Lot, in the way that Abraham asked for, but he did protect his people. He could get them out of there before he rained down his judgment against them. And you realize Abraham didn't have regard for the comforts of life in Sodom and how nice it might have been, how easy it would have been. If you have to destroy it, destroy it. But can you be good to your people? If you have to destroy it, then do it. But can you be faithful to them and give them the faith to not look back? I think it's too much to hope that one of the things that teaches us is that it may be too much to hope that God would be merciful to a bunch of wicked people.

for the sake of a few righteous ones who live among them. I think it was probably good for Lot's soul, who was vexed every day, to not live in Sodom anymore. And so when we pray and we see God's hand of judgment coming, we ought not to get high and mighty and think, well, you wouldn't take away what I have. What did Lot leave with? He left with his wife for a little while until he lost her, and then he left with his daughters. Some of his other kids, right? Everything else, God. burned up, left behind. Are you willing for that to be the Lord's answer? Or do you love it too much? Do you love this world more than you want reformation? Do you pay lip service to seeing the society change, but in your heart you say, no, no, I'll live out my days in comfort. And those who come after me can deal with the fallout of that. Right? That's what Hezekiah said. It's probably what Zechariah, the fathers of these people said.

surely there'll be peace in my days. And so if you see yourself being swept away, you and your family, your children and grandchildren, by the judgment that he believes coming to our nation, then pray. And in the process, don't overlook your own sins. I think part of the reason Abraham was so hesitant to approach God was because he was so acutely aware of his own sins. Because a man who's humble and meek before the face of God is a man who knows who God is and he knows who he is. Can I speak? Would you please don't overlook your own sins because you're worried about being judged for the sins of others. They're not just their sins, they're your sins too. And whatever it is that we suffer in this world is only a small taste of what our sins truly deserve. And so if we let our comforts in this life lead us astray, we will end up just like the Israelites who lost their temple and their land.

So that then they would see and believe and repent. And then be able, in time, to go back. The last thing I'll say is a warning. Because Zechariah gives a warning. Don't be like their fathers. It's easy to point out the sins of other people. I've been beating this drum and this will be the last time I beat it. It's easy to point out the sins of our fathers and to despise them. But Zechariah says, don't be like them. You can imagine that if you had gone back with the people to the land and Cyrus had said, go back and rebuild the kingdom, and then Artaxerxes says no, and Darius says yes, you could understand that, and he's paying for it all. He's footing the bill. You can understand, surely the Lord wouldn't discipline us again. Are you so sure? You remember the unfaithful slave who says, well, I knew that you were an evil.

You know, a harsh man, reaping where you didn't sow. And so I buried your talent. And what happens to him? You evil and worthless slave. You cast, you know, get out of my sight and go to the place where there's weeping and gnashing of teeth. And then there's a warning at the very end of it. And it's the warning that's the point of the story. It says, even who has not, even who does not have anything, and who thinks because in his estimation he has nothing, can no longer be harmed anymore. even what he has, he thinks he has nothing, but the Lord still has, he still has things from the Lord. Even what he has will be taken away from him. And it was as true of them when they went back to that city, they could look and say, the Lord's finally sent us back to rebuild this. Surely he wouldn't extend his hand in judgment against us again, would he? And I'd simply ask you, did he? He did. He did. When? And by whom? The Romans.

This happens toward the end, in terms of time, toward the end of the Old Testament. Basically, you have Malachi being the last prophet. After this, after this work, Malachi preaches, comes, speaks, and then there's 400 years of silence, and then you have John the Baptist, and you have Jesus, and 70 years after that, 470 years, roughly, after Malachi, what they rebuilt, gone again. Why? The whole New Testament, all of the Gospels are full of why. They did the same thing the Israelites are doing here that their fathers did. Surely he wouldn't cut us down again. Don't be so sure. Don't be so sure. Even what we have can be taken away from us. And so the work of reformation is preceded by God's mercy and kindness in sending faithful men to his people to cut them, to correct them, to teach them.

to discipline them. We need those men. We need those men. And so two points of application for you regarding that. First, pray for those men. And two, don't oppose their work. It's hard work. It's nasty work. You will not enjoy it any more than they would have enjoyed the things that Zechariah was saying to them at the moment. He was not scratching them where they itched. Haggai says, what amounts to? The hell with your houses and your wealth. Cast it all aside. That's not where they itched. Pray for faithful men and don't oppose their work. When they correct you, listen to them. Let them do their work with joy and not with sorrow. Because why? That would be unprofitable for you. Calvin was not a popular man in his day. He was kicked out of Geneva. He was exiled. Great John Calvin, this great preacher, great theologian. He was the man, you know. They didn't seem to think so in Geneva.

sent him away. Get out of here. You're no longer welcome. For years. And then he came back. And you know what he did? He'd been preaching through, I don't remember what book it was. He's gone for years. Comes back on the very first Sunday, he picks up on the very next text that he had been on. He's like, we just, the Lord pressed the, you know, timeout pause button for however many years, and he came back and played, and he went right back to the same work. Martin Luther, his friend, kidnapped him. They were so afraid that when he was leaving the Diet of Worms that the Pope was going to send men to kill him, that his friends kidnapped him first and took him away blindfolded, thinking he was going to his death, and took him away to this obscure castle out of the way. And he stayed there for years. And you know what he did while he was there? Translated the Bible into German. Reformation's hard work. You know, people got a hold of what Luther did, and you have the Peasants' Revolt. And what's Luther do with the Peasants? He was for the people. The people need.

Liberation and freedom. And then there's a peasant's revolt. And then what's he do? Condemns it with the strongest words. The work of reformation is difficult. It's hard. And I will tell you also, you probably will not see the fruit of it in your lifetime. It's often said of old composers, you know, the ones we look at with honor and revere and we think, wow, they were just poor men who were barely getting by in their day. And their work stood the test of time. And it bore fruit long after. They died. And that's the same with reformers. And that's the same with fathers and mothers. The good fruit or the bad fruit of your work will be seen in your children and in your grandchildren after you're gone. And so if you want reformation, I don't want to lie to you and have you think, I'll have reformation in my day. You may not. You may do all of the tilling and you may do all of the planting and you may pull all the weeds and cast all the rocks out of the field and then you'll die.

And then someone else will come and be glad for your work. And they'll cultivate it. Paul said, I planted an Apollos water, but God caused the growth. And so this is the work of reformation. And we ought to be about it all the days of our lives, looking to ourselves first. Because that's where it starts. And it will not start apart from that. Let's pray.