Return to Me - ANB W2, D2 - 3.12.13

Tuesday, March 12                                                             Return to Me

Zechariah 1.1-6

Before we return to the book of Ezra, it is important that we see the measures which God takes to reach His people when He has a task for them. We have seen the harsh message that Haggai was to deliver to the Israelites. Now God has a message to be brought by the mouth of the prophet Zechariah. Yesterday we saw that it had been sixteen years since the people of Israel turned from their work, laid down their tools, and grew fat tending to their own affairs. In light of this, the words spoken to Zechariah make very much sense to us reading these words over 2,500 years later. God confesses to Zechariah that He was angry with the fathers in Israel for their neglect. He had watched them disobey time and time again and now a new generation was in adulthood in Jerusalem, so as He had done before, God was ready to use them for His purpose and His plan.

What is so important to notice is that God operates with the people of Israel the same way in which He operates with us today. He tells them, “Return to me…that I may return to you” (v. 3). Throughout all of Scripture we find God meeting us halfway. In the Old Testament, God was bound by the covenant He made with Israel that He would always be their God and they would always be His people and by their repentance, He would be reconciled unto them. For us as Christians, this is the ministry of the Holy Spirit (Rom. 8.26-27) as the Spirit convicts us (1 Thess 1.5), guides us (Gal. 5.16, 25), purifies us (1 Cor 6.11), and dwells within us (John 14.17). The Spirit is our mediator and is our help in being reconciled unto God. Jesus promised us the Holy Spirit to be our help, primarily because we need the help, but also because we are children of the living God and the Spirit goes to the throne of God on our behalf, so that we can rightly return to Him.

Here in Zechariah, God again makes it clear that He is displeased by the sin of the previous generation. He shows Zechariah how He reached out to that generation and how they refused to hear the word of the prophets which were sent by God and continued in their sin. God even shows in v. 6 how the fathers finally heard the word and repented, then set out to rebuild the temple but became distracted leaving Jerusalem and the temple in ruin and causing God to have to raise up another generation to fulfill His tasks.

We, at Hopewell, are at a point where we must seek out the face of God for what He wants to do for us. This can only be accomplished if we heed the words in Zechariah 1.3 and return to God. He has given us His Spirit as our promise that He will never leave us, nor will He forsake us. He is our God and we are His people, but we MUST return to Him. It does not take some extreme form of sin for us to have drifted away from God. If you remember from yesterday the sin of the people of Israel that angered God was not that they were bowing down to golden calves, reveling in sexual sin, or even leading wicked lives. Their sin was that they lived their life without a constant mind for what God had called them to do and so they lived for themselves and not for the Lord. As we focus on what it is that God wants for us to do, let us not forget that He beckons us to return to Him. He longs for us to remember the lives to which we were called. It would be a shame for us to place His plans on our back burner and force the next generation work harder to accomplish what it is that God wants from us (Hag 1.10).

Prayer:

God, we thank You for Your continued provision of grace and that You have promised to meet us halfway. Send Your Spirit into our lives that we might return to You. Give us a vision for the tasks that You have for us at this time and let us not neglect Your call.