THE GOSPEL OF GOD



BETTER THAN ANYTHING

(Zechariah 7:8-14)

SUBJECT:

F.C.F:

PROPOSITION:

INTRODUCTION:

A. God says, “Trust me alone for your happiness. There is no true and lasting happiness out there, apart from me. I made you for myself, and you will find no true life or peace without me.”

The original temptation was to believe that God was not trustworthy, that God had some ulterior motive, that God was not really interested in our full contentment and satisfaction, and that there was so much more to life out there if we would only cast off the shackles and make a wild bid for freedom. “You will be like god.” “Self is the real source of happiness and hope, and God is preventing you from asserting, celebrating, and exploring the wonder of your self. Break away and let your wonderful self lead to the true Garden of delight, the real Promised Land.”

B. The implication in the first temptation was that God was somehow afraid that if they struck off on their own and ran away from him, they might find a superior life and happiness out there, and then he would no longer be necessary. God was like the pitiful, clinging parent who needed his children, who couldn’t bear to let them go and discover that life was better without him. And what I want to suggest to you is that there is still a portion of your heart and mine, great or small, that really believes this message deep down. Oh, sure, you’ll give a part of your life to God, the part that you probably won’t miss anyhow, like the cast offs that you give to Goodwill. But deep down, you feel that you must hold back something for self, because self really knows how to be happy and self will never let you down.

C. It’s the same old quest attempted by the Prodigal Son in the famous story Jesus told. “Dad’s house is pretty dull with all these chores and family devotions and no cable. I’ve been talking with my friends, and they’ve been telling me about a place of glamour and excitement in a far country.” So he took off, following the promise of self. And all he found was a withering disappointment and the empty ache of death.

I. WE MUST TRUST GOD’S INTENTION.

A. And nothing could be further from the truth. Our race has been swallowing this line from the very beginning, and we are all born perfectly in tune with and deeply receptive and vulnerable to this message. But the truth is that God offers us this astonishing relationship with him, not because he needs us, but only because he is love, and he delights to share his infinite joy with us; he is pleased when we take joy in him. And to the degree that we do not trust him and so reserve some portion of our life for self, guarding it jealously as our back up or fail safe, to that degree we will know disappointment, deadness, despair, and damnation.

This is the great decision, the contest of the ages. Will you trust self and inherit misery untold, or will you trust Christ and enjoy his life, infinite, abundant, and incomparably glorious?

B. In this sermon, Zechariah is pointing back to the history of their people, the very history that brought them to ruin. Instead of trusting the Lord alone and enjoying his benefits, they thought that there might be a better offer out there if they strayed just a little bit (sound familiar?). And so they served the other sexy and more glamorous gods of the nations. The Lord God, of course, withdrew his fountain of life and blessing in response, as a discipline, and, of course, the other gods could not deliver on their empty promises, and so the people found themselves miserable and hurting.

So what did they do? Did they return to the Lord, hat in hand, feeling every bit the fools they were? No, they ran further away. They looked around for some other form of satisfaction, and thought they found it by exploiting the weak and vulnerable. “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.”

You see the progression, don’t you? It’s not like they suddenly woke up one day and said, “Hey, let’s exploit the weak!” Rather, when the crops withered and the economy tanked, when the good life dried up and hunger stared them in the face, they sought to sustain their prosperity by taking from the defenseless: heavy taxation, slave labor, even sexual abuse and exploitation in their pagan temples.

C. God called to them, warning them, but they had made their decision and thought it was too late to turn back. At any rate, they would not listen. “11 But they refused to pay attention and turned a stubborn shoulder and stopped their ears that they might not hear. 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.”

II. WE MUST TRUST GOD’S CORRECTION.

A. Now here’s an important point. Why was the Lord angry with them? Yes, it was because they were exploiting his holy people, the people he had claimed as his own possession. The exploiters fell under the curse God promised to Abraham: “I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse….” (Genesis 12:3)

But even before this, they were dishonoring the Lord God by inciting him to jealousy. They were throwing it in his face: “Lord, we have found better gods than you.” They were like the adulterer who brought his lover home to live in the guest room, or even in the master bedroom.

And even more, God was jealous for them, and this is what we must see clearly! God loved them and did not want them to perish in the far country, wasting away under the heavy tyranny of self.

B. And so, like a wise Father who loves his wayward children, he chastened them severely. He sent trouble and then refused to hear their cries: “13 “As I called, and they would not hear, so they called, and I would not hear,” says the LORD of hosts….” And then he finally sent them away to languish in exile. “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.”

C. This raises an important question: what was the worst thing that could have happened to them? The worst thing was not their defeat in battle, the destruction of their land, and their deportation. The worst would have been if they could have gotten their way; if God would simply have left them to their own devices, to self-destruction under these false gods, to the utter collapse of all who trust self and lean upon self. God chastened them to stop them from their disastrous course. God loved them too much to let them have what they thought they wanted.

Listen, if you are running all the red lights and getting away with it, if you are playing some part time church game and utterly living for self, if you are happily humming along without even an occasional speed bump, not to mention a serious roadblock in your way, then I urge you to think very carefully and soberly. Because the truth is that if you really had a Heavenly Father who loved you, then he would not just let you go on without trying to stop you. So if you are able to hurry on unimpeded in your wrong way, then you likely do not know God as your heavenly Father, and he doesn’t really care what you do and where you go, for now. But I assure you on the full authority of God’s Word that you will soon, very soon meet him as your Judge when it’s too late. And you must stop and turn back and turn to Christ, hat in hand, fully acknowledging the fool you’ve been, pleading his mercy. A heavenly Father doesn’t let his children wander very far. So we must trust his correction. And…

III. WE MUST TRUST GOD’S DIRECTION.

A. If we trust God then we will follow his direction. We will obey his commands. We will do what he says. And we will expect to a certain extent that his commands may not make perfect sense to us, certainly not at first, and that his command will be in strong contrast to the ways of the world that has run fast and far away from him.

For example, here are some of God’s commands. “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.” To the world, of course, that makes no sense at all, except when someone is looking. Charity is good PR, for example. So if a car dealer tells you that some of the price you pay for a new car will go to help build houses in Haiti, for instance, then you will feel good about the car dealer and may be willing to spend a little more on a nice car for yourself, since a fraction of it will go to charity (and you can feel good about yourself, too!).

“But being honest with others? Caring more about others than you do about yourself? Not taking advantage of those who are too stupid or too weak to defend themselves? And being a goody-goody all the time? You’ve got to be kidding. Only a fool or a sap would do something as stupid as that. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, the law of the jungle, the survival of the fittest. Do unto others before they can do unto you.” The world has no time and even less inclination to trust God’s direction.

B. That helps to explain why a worldly dominated culture is always so seriously broken and dysfunctional. In our own land, for example, the vast majority of the voters want maximum government benefits for themselves—so long as someone else is paying for them. But if I want you to pay for my benefits and you want me to pay for your benefits, and neither of us is willing to pay anything, well, you see the problem. And a careless, short-sighted government might actually try to give everybody what they want by borrowing trillions and trillions of dollars from the future to pay for it. But, of course, nobody would ever be so foolish as to fall for something like that.

C. Yet even among God’s people, among the professed followers of Christ, God’s commands seem to make little sense. “So I’m supposed to forget about myself and my needs and only think about others? I’m supposed to be honest and good hearted, playing by the rules even when others don’t? And I’m supposed to devote myself to protecting and providing for the weak and the vulnerable, relinquishing my time and energy to serve them?”

“If I spend myself for others, if I give myself to caring for others, if I stand up for the defenseless, and show kindness and mercy others, how do I know I’ll really be happy?” (And here’s the big one!) “If I give up my life caring for others, who’s going to care for me?”

God says, “I will! I will! I will!” That’s what this is all about! So will you trust him, or will you trust self?

This is the great gamble of faith. It is not quite a leap in the dark, because we have every assurance and every confidence in the promise of God. “He who did not spare his own Son but freely gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him freely give us all things?”

So will you trust him?

CONCLUSION

Will you trust his intention? Will you trust his kind heart of steadfast love, even when you cannot understand his ways or trace his sovereign design?

Will you trust his correction? Will you stand firm in your faith even when your back is aching, your heart is breaking, and your mind is making you reconsider everything you ever thought before?

And will you trust his direction? Will you hear and heed his Word, though you be the only one, though you walk a lonely road of scorn and abuse?

God says, “Trust me alone for your happiness. There is no true and lasting happiness out there, apart from me. I made you for myself, and you will find no true life or peace without me.”

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