Necessary Roughness

II Four Explanatory Messages

B The Response

2 Repentance, Text: 7:8-14

Title: Necessary Roughness

Introduction

There is a current TV show titled Necessary Roughness. The title is a kind of pun because the focus is a professional football team and you know how rough that is. However the roughness in view is the roughness of a Long Island psychotherapist who employs tough love therapy during her clients’ moments of crisis. Tough love is an expression used when someone treats another person harshly or sternly with the intent to help them in the long run. The phrase was coined by Bill Milliken when he wrote a book of the same title. We frequently observe tough love in God’s dealings with His people in chapter 12:7-11 the author of Hebrews reminds us that that is how God deals with us, Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father? If you are not disciplined—and everyone undergoes discipline —then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all. Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of spirits and live! They disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. This passage is all about God’s tough love toward His people and how they have resisted. Israel complained about the toughness, but failed to gain the promised blessings because they resisted and did not learn. In this Scripture we see God telling them to look, to listen, and to learn.

I Look

God tells them to look at what they are doing by listing what they ought to be doing. Self-examination is vital to following God. We read in verses 8-10, And the word of the Lord came again to Zechariah: 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.” This is the authentic voice of God, the Word of the Lord, that Zechariah is to pass along. The admonitions direct their attention to both their public and private lives. In public life they are to judge by the truth and they are to show mercy to the needy. Even today our courts are filled with a lack of equity and those who are rich and privileged manage to escape justice while those who are poor and oppressed are taken advantage of. Hear the words of God in Zephaniah 3:1-3, Woe to the city of oppressors, rebellious and defiled!…She obeys no one, she accepts no correction. Her officials within her are roaring lions; her rulers are evening wolves, who leave nothing for the morning. God is talking about judicial corruption among other things. In Psalm 82:2-4 God asks, How long will you defend the unjust and show partiality to the wicked? Defend the weak and the fatherless; uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked. This is why the judges were warned by Moses in Deuteronomy 1:16, 16 And I charged your judges at that time, “Hear the disputes between your people and judge fairly, whether the case is between two Israelites or between an Israelite and a foreigner residing among you.” Obviously unjust judgment still exists as it did in the days of Jesus, for he told a parable in Luke 18 about an unjust judge and a poor widow who could not get justice. In verses 2-7 we read, He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’ “For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’” And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off?” The message of Zechariah also touches on private life in verse 10, In your hearts do not think evil of each other. Injustice in society is the offspring of prejudice in our hearts for out of the heart are the issues of life.

II Listen

The hearing problem of Israel is clearly defined in verses 11 and 12, But they refused to pay attention; stubbornly they turned their backs and stopped up their ears. They made their hearts as hard as flint and would not listen to the law or to the words that the Lord Almighty had sent by his Spirit through the earlier prophets. So the Lord Almighty was very angry. We have already reviewed the witness of the prophets that Israel did not listen to God. Listen to what Jesus says about his own unbelieving generation in Matthew 13:14-17, In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah: “You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving. For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.” But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. For truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it. A few of Jesus generation, like His disciples, truly heard the Word, but the rest remained unbelieving and in their unbelief crucified their Messiah. Most people do not even listen when others speak. President Franklin D. Roosevelt got tired of smiling that big smile and saying the usual things at all those White House receptions. One evening he decided to find out whether anybody was paying attention to what he was saying. As each person came up to him with extended hand, he flashed his big smile and said, “I murdered my grandmother this morning.” People would automatically respond with comments such as “How lovely!” or “Just continue with your great work!” Nobody listened to what he was saying, except one foreign diplomat. , and when the president said, “I murdered my grandmother this morning,” the diplomat responded softly, “I’m sure she had it coming to her.” In these days talking to yourself may be the only way to be sure someone is listening. If that frustrates us, think how it seems to God who calls repeatedly and commands us to hear and we still ignore Him. Isaiah said people’s hearts are calloused. And they are calloused because they are so full of worldly selfish ambitions. We are commanded to be still to know God. Another translation says be silent. Few take the time to do that. Our preoccupation makes us like people trying to talk on the phone in a busy concourse. Neither party can hear what the other one is saying. Zechariah had something to say because he listened to God. The people did not.

III Learn

As a result the people did not learn as we read in verses 13 and 14, “When I called, they did not listen; so when they called, I would not listen,” says the Lord Almighty. “I scattered them with a whirlwind among all the nations, where they were strangers. The land was left so desolate behind them that no one could come or go. This is how they made the pleasant land desolate.” After the Babylonian destruction Israel was a displaced people. They had lost their homeland and were captives in a strange land. Their homeland was so desolate that no one wanted to pass through it. The responsibility for what happened to the land lay squarely on their shoulders. They cried out to God but He would not hear for seventy years. In the first year of the reign of Darius the Mede Daniel was in Babylon and he prayed, and in a long prayer of confession in chapter 9 he said to God, “We have sinned and done wrong. We have been wicked and have rebelled…Lord, you are righteous, but this day we are covered with shame —the people of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem and all Israel, both near and far, in all the countries where you have scattered us because of our unfaithfulness to you…Just as it is written in the Law of Moses, all this disaster has come on us, yet we have not sought the favor of the Lord our God by turning from our sins and giving attention to your truth…Give ear, our God, and hear; open your eyes and see the desolation of the city that bears your Name. We do not make requests of you because we are righteous, but because of your great mercy. Lord, listen! Lord, forgive! Lord, hear and act! For your sake, my God, do not delay, because your city and your people bear your Name.” And Daniel is told by the angel Gabriel that as soon as he began to pray his prayer was answered. After 70 years God has started listening to their prayers again. However what he says in our text should give us pause, because the exile was the punishment for not listening to the Word of God and now the passage hints that a similar fate will befall the post-exilic community if they refuse to listen to the new generation of God’s spokesmen. Have you ever noticed that great musicians never stop taking lessons. They are always learning. Professional golfers constantly employ coaches to analyze their swings and their putting techniques, swimmers like Michael Phelps, the Olympian, never stop trainers and training. Yet for hundreds of years Israel disregarded the advice of God and didn’t learn the lesson. So it is that God administered tough love and continues to do that in the life of each child of His.