Zechariah 7:1-5 - Why did you fast?

7:1-3

This is two years after his first message (1:1). Some people had come from Bethel to inquire of the prophets and priests whether or not they should continue to “mourn and fast” in the fifth months. This particular mourning and fasting was associated with the fall of Jerusalem after the Babylonian conquest.

7:4,5

The fasting and mourning had been going on since the fall of Jerusalem. Ostensibly it would seem as though it was a godly thing to do, but here the word of the Lord comes to Zechariah, asking the people what they were really fasting for. Were they doing it for the Lord? Ie were that mourning because they had sinned against God, and in their sinning had brought disgrace to the name of the Lord, and so had disrupted God’s plans? Or were they in mourning because of their own loss? I think we can probably guess what the answer was. This teaches us things about our own reaction to sin. Sometimes when we sin we are “found out”, we feel terrible, maybe there are very bad consequences for us. But why do we feel terrible? Is it just because we have been humiliated or suffered loss, or is it because we have let the Lord down? We need to get to the point where we realise that we are not our own, we have life in order to give glory to God. That needs to be our raison d’etre. We need to have a God-centered view of ourselves and of life, not a self-centered view.