True Worship

Zechariah 7:5-6,9-10:  "When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months for the past seventy years, was it really for me that you fasted?  And when you were eating and drinking, were you not just feasting for yourselves? . . . . This is what the LORD Almighty says:  'Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another.  Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the alien or the poor.  In your hearts do not think evil of each other.'"

Zechariah the prophet lived during a time when the people of Israel had been away from the Promised Land for seventy years, due to their obstinate rebellion against the Lord and His Word.  And whereas the people responded early to their calamity of captivity (and the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple) with a spirit of mourning and fasting, over the years their religious practices had become more an event of formality and self-indulgence than true repentance.  These were the very ingredients that caused the judgment of God to befall them seventy years before.  The Jewish people's failure to focus upon the Lord and His purposes caused such a lack of driven determination to seek the Lord that they had begun to satisfy their own appetites and offer token religious rituals to satisfy their spiritual obligations.  These were a people who had become so lethargic in their spiritual walk that they just didn't care about God and what He might be up to.  In effect, their lack of faith was a sacrilege against the Sovereign reign of the One True God and His character traits of love and faithfulness to fulfill His promise that He would redeem them and restore them to the Promised Land.

God's summoning of Zechariah at such a time as this was to remind the people that the type of worship that the LORD truly desired was one that was expressed through obedience.  To be sure, God previously had told their forefathers to be a people of justice, to show mercy and compassion, to help the marginalized and needy, and to cultivate in their hearts a spirit of love for one another.  Sadly, these descendants who should have known better through their own living out the consequences of sin by being in captivity, were acting no differently than their predecessors.  They were selfish, and they were religiously arrogant, believing that they had fulfilled their spiritual obligations to God.  What they really needed was genuine repentance from their wickedness of religious routine with no reverence for God and His commandments.

This is a good word for us today.  How many of us are inclined to go through the motions of worship without a heart open to obeying the instructions of our Lord to be merciful, loving, compassionate, and just?  How many of us lapse into religious routine without even thinking that our hearts are so far removed from the LORD that our worship is grotesque sacrilege to the King of Kings?  How many of us believe that we've offered to God a form of worship and now He is obligated to bless us for it?   The best way to examine ourselves and our worship is to see if we are faithfully fulfilling the dictates that He has given us above.  If we are, then our worship before the LORD is a savory expression of adoration and exaltation of Him; and in these genuine expressions of worship, our Lord is well pleased.