PART TWO
Religion, but not for God?
In the fourth year of King Darius, the word of the LORD came to Zechariah on the fourth day of the ninth month, the month of Kislev.
2 The people of Bethel had sent Sharezer and Regem-Melech, together with their men, to entreat the LORD 3 by asking the priests of the house of the LORD Almighty and the prophets, “Should I mourn and fast in the fifth month, as I have done for so many years?”
Two years had elapsed since the first word came to Zechariah from the Lord. The preacher continued to preach. The people continued to hear. God continued to manifest his will and patience to his people. The people were not yet in line with God’s will as it becomes clear in this chapter. In verse 11 we hear, “They refused to pay attention.” In spite of continuing inattention on the part of God’s people, the book goes on for seven more chapters. This is an example of God’s patience. “If we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself” (2 Timothy 2:13).
The people sent an assembly to the prophet to find out something from God. In this we see the Old Testament way of getting a revelation. God had told them, “Go to the priest.” He was the one who was in the middle, the one who represented the people’s case to God and brought God’s Word back to the people. The archetypes were Moses and Aaron. They spoke to the Lord for the people. The Lord commissioned them to do this. And they would speak to the people for God.
The New Testament and the priesthood of Jesus changed this. Jesus came as Prophet, Priest, and King. The book of Hebrews makes it clear that we do not have to follow the Old Testament procedure of having a human priest talk to God for us: “Because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood. Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them. Such a high priest meets our need—one who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens. Unlike the other high priests, he does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people. He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself” (Hebrews 7:24-27).
The question that Sharezer and Regem-Melech brought to the Lord was, Should we continue with the mourning and fasting in the fifth month as we have in the past?
Seventy years earlier it had been in the fifth month when Babylonian armies destroyed Jerusalem, including the beautiful temple of Solomon (2 Kings 25:8,9). Succeeding generations of Jews each year commemorated the anniversary of that tragedy as a day of national humiliation and prayer. Seventy years later, they came to Zechariah with this question: “Now that the new temple is nearing completion, should we continue to observe the anniversary of the old one’s destruction?”