Archive for December, 2009

Drink freely from the water of life

Posted on: by Zachariah No Comments

Thirsty for more of God in 2010?

I am.

“The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.’ Let anyone who hears this say, ‘Come.” Let anyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who desires drink freely from the water of life.” – Revelation 22:17

You can argue that this is merely referring to the river of the water of life, flowing from the throne in the new Jerusalem. But yet, anyone who hears the message of John’s Revelation is invited to come. All you need to do is be thirsty and desire to drink.

Come to the water, you who thirst, and you’ll thirst no more, says the famous song of 2008 by Tenth Avenue North, “Love is Here.” We are all invited to come and drink from the living water of God. Just come thirsty.

Today’s reading took me through the last verses of the Old and New Testament, and the last verses of the Psalms and Proverbs. I want to dive right in to Malachi, because it definitely adds a lot to yesterday’s reading. Malachi 3:2-4 reads, “But who will be able to endure it when he comes? Who will be able to stand and face him when he appears? For he will be like a blazing fire that refines metal, or like a strong soap that bleaches clothes. He will sit like a refiner of silver, burning away the dross. He will purify the Levites, refining them like gold and silver, so that they may once again offer acceptable sacrifices to the Lord. Then once more the Lord will accept the offerings brought to him by the people of Judah and Jerusalem, as he did in the past.”

This he is Jesus, predicted in verse one. And when he comes (in clarity we just celebrated a few days ago, on Christmas, that he has already come, but follow along with the tense of the verse) he will be like a blazing fire that refines metal, or a a soap that bleaches clothes. Both of these are about removing the impurity completely, like with fire or bleach. The stains are taken away, the metal has been made pure, the silver has had its worthless impurities purged from it. Jesus accomplished all of this for us. And remember, we too are of the royal priesthood (1 Peter 2:9), so are purified in the same was as the Levites, so that we may once again offer acceptable sacrifices to the Lord.

Yesterday’s post was all about how the sacrifices we give are often half-hearted and less than the best, which are unacceptable to the King of Kings. But this here changes everything. Jesus came to erase the broken worship of our past and let us once again offer acceptable sacrifices. He made us pure so we can have another chance to offer ourselves as pleasing sacrifices to the Lord. Just as so many people are viewing tomorrow as a new beginning, Jesus is the new beginning to our worship. Because he came, we can come to God and have our offerings accepted. The only question remaining is, will we take advantage of this new beginning in Jesus and bring our all and our best in the sacrifice of worship?

Malachi 3:8-12 describes how the Lord is upset that the people cheated him in worship, but he makes a promise to the people. If they bring all the tithes to him, where they belong, he will open the windows of heaven and pour out more blessing on them than they can even take in. “Try it! Put me to the test!” says the NLT translation of God’s words in verse 10. It is so simple and yet so overlooked. Bring your all to God, where it belongs, and you will be blessed beyond measure and beyond anything you could have on your own.

While you still have your bible open to Malachi (or, please open your bible to the book of Malachi. If you can’t find it, go to Matthew and flip a couple pages back), move down to Malachi 3:13-18. The story here is so startling and yet so true even in today’s time. The Lord accuses the people of saying bad things about him. The people, as usual, deny any wrongdoing. The Lord counters by reminding them that they’ve been moping around, saying What’s the use of serving god? What do we get out of it? The evil and arrogant are the ones prospering and getting rich. But God says that you can’t see now what the big picture is, and that when judgment comes, it is not the evil who will be spared, but those who feared God and always thought about the honor of his name. It is then that we will see the difference, even if we cannot see it now.

“Worship only God!” exclaimed the angel who showed John the Revelation. The angel was so great and powerful that he could showcase all of the end times in all of their glory, and yet even he deflected the worship of John. The quick lesson in Revelation 21:8-9 is to not settle for worshiping anything less than God himself.

Jesus says, in Revelation 21:12, “Look, I am coming soon, bringing my reward with me to repay all people according to their deeds.” Don’t ever let anyone sell you on the idea that Christianity is just about faith. Yes, faith starts it, but what you do shows what you believe, and we were created to do good works (see Ephesians 2:10). When Jesus comes, he’s going to repay people according to their deeds, with reward for good and punishment for evil. Christianity is not a lip service religion; it’s a relationship with God whose love to us should overflow as action by us.

The very last verse of the entire book of Psalms, Psalm 150:6, says, “Let everything that breathes sing praises to the Lord! Praise the Lord!” When I actually thought about how many breathing things are on this earth, this verse actually hit me. On top of the seven billion humans in the world, there are billions more breathing organisms in the world. And the Psalmist wrote, Let all the trillions of breathing organisms sing praises to the Lord! Also, keep in mind that for these organisms, breath is a sign of life. If we are alive, we ought to worship. If anything is alive, it should breathe in worship. Whether or not this is scientifically valid, I learned years ago that יהוה, YHWH, the Hebrew from which Yahweh and Jehovah come, is the sound of an exhale when pronounced without vowels, and so the Hebrews considered even breathing to be something that was God given and necessary to be given back to God. Let’s give our breaths back to God in praise and worship and action.

A year is winding down, a decade is coming to a close, and my first complete month of blogging has finally occurred. My aim is make 2010 the year I read through the entire Bible, and I want you to come along with me, not just by reading my blog, which is just short snippets of what I’m learning, but by reading the Bible yourself. The more I read of the Bible, the more I’m captivated by what I reading and learning, and I want you to get into your Bible too in such a way that helps you grow closer to God. If you want to follow along with the exact passages I read every day, you can do so at oneyearbibleonline.com, where there is a downloadable PDF of the plan I follow, a plan generator that will give you links to the day’s reading in whatever popular translation you want, and a spot to sign up to have those links sent to you via email. In my Resources page I will be putting up more specific links to all the great things available at One Year Bible Online, if you want to check that out.

Whether or not you already have a resolution, make the more passionate pursuit of God a resolution of yours in 2010!

-Zachariah

יהוה

Offering defiled sacrifices

Posted on: by Zachariah 1 Comment

“I have always loved you,” says the Lord.

These are the first words of the message of the prophet Malachi. It is always interesting to me what words the minor prophets have first in their messages. They certainly don’t get as many words as, say, Isaiah or Ezekiel, so the start and finish are usually super important and profound. And Malachi 1:2 did not let us down. The infinite God, who is before time was, has always, throughout all of time and beyond, loved you.

Music to my ears and water to my soul.

A love that is unchanging, unfailing, unending, has always forever been directed at you. At me. At all of us. Pretty cool to think about. It would be great if the message stopped there, nice and feel good, but the very next sentence tells a different story. But you retort, “Really? How have You loved us?”

Malachi is a story about the family of God just plain not understanding the two way street of God’s love. Verses 1 through 5 tell the story from the people’s perspective. They aren’t seeing God’s love for them, even though it’s all around them. In verse 6, the tables turn. God talks about how his people are showing contempt for the name of the Lord rather than love. And so the people ask in Malachi 1:6, “How have we ever shown contempt for your name?”  The Lord’s response in verse 7? “You have shown contempt by offering defiled sacrifices on my altar.”

The Israelites (I’m assuming Israelites here. Could be the people of Judah, I guess. Not enough info.) were offering blind and crippled animals (Malachi 1:8-14) in their sacrifices. Instead of giving the best offerings they could, the unblemished firstborns and first fruits of the harvest, God was getting the left-overs. The second-best, or worse. The Israelites were not giving their all and best in worship. They were doing just enough to get by, in a kind of half-hearted love, worship, and action. And God knows it. The minimal sacrifice earned minimal favor. He says, in Malachi 1:9 and Malachi 1:10 “Go ahead, beg God to be merciful to you! But when you bring that kind of offering, why should he show you any favor at all? How I wish one of you would shut the Temple doors so that these worthless sacrifices could not be offered! I am not pleased with you and I will not accept your offerings.”

And yet that is still the trend 2400 years later. Just as the people of God then said, “It’s too hard to serve the Lord” and turned up their noses at His commands (see Malachi 1:13), are the worshipers today giving their all to God? Are we earning the curse of God mentioned in Malachi 1:14 because we are the cheats who are promising to give our lives to God but then not doing so? Failing quality standards doesn’t get us any farther in other parts of life either. A sculptor cannot promise a swan and provide a cube of ice. A journalist cannot write half a story. A car wash cannot only wash half of the car. These aren’t acceptable to employers or clients.

I learned a while back in leadership training that you can influence those around you, but the only person you can change is yourself. I can only influence you to look at your own worship and see if you are giving your all, the best of what you can provide when you worship, or if you are holding back from God. I can only influence you to change your worship habits. I can only change me, and you can only change you. But I want to commit to change, and you can too. All God has done for us should make us slaves to him for eternity, but instead He gives us the choice to be inspired by His love to serve Him for this life and be with Him in the next. So let’s serve him. Let’s stop offering defiled sacrifices.

I want to highlight five points I gathered from Psalm 149 about worship before I end today’s post. Maybe these can help you in a journey to really give your all for God.

1. Don’t get into a rut in your worship

Psalm 149:1 says to “sing unto the Lord a new song.” A lifetime is too short to praise every part of an infinite God and what He has done for us. Keep your worship fresh by praising God for something new, a recent thing He has done for you or an attribute you haven’t yet appreciated.

2. Worship together

Also in Psalm 149:1 it says to “sing his praises in the assembly of the faithful.” An assembly of the faithful is God’s family coming together in one place, normally a church. Don’t just worship your God, but come together and worship our God with believers. Everyone has something different they bring to a corporate worship setting, and they all enhance the worship.

3. Move

For some people who don’t move at all in worship except for their lips, this is perhaps an odd or unwelcome sentence. Psalm 149:3 says to praise the name of God with dancing, though, and the Bible is, well… the infallible Bible. If nothing else, the true worship of God should inspire you to move in action, to work according to the will of God.

4. Don’t be afraid of the mediums of worship

The next part of Psalm 149:3 mentions worship with a tambourine and harp. I picture the tambourine as more of a secular, pop-music instrument. But God can use it for his glory. Worship is not all about music. There are so many things around us in the world that can be used for the worship, as a medium of expressing love and adoration of God. We can worship through planting trees if it is done with the heart of being a good steward of the Earth that God has provided us. We can worship by driving cancer patients to their doctor appointments if it is done out of love for people and God, appreciating his gifts to us by sharing them. Don’t be afraid to break free from the box of Sunday morning “worship”. It’s about a heart and lifestyle, not about the latest song to hit the music industry.

5. Worship is ubiquitous

Ubiquitous is a big fancy word for everywhere, all at once. The point I want to make is that worship is not bound to a location, just as much as it is not bound to a medium. Psalm 149:5 mentions people singing for joy as they lie in bed. In every part of your waking day, you are in a place you can worship. It might not always be comfortable. It might not always be something you do out loud. But, just because you are not in church has no bearing on your ability or call to worship. In the car, at the dinner table, falling asleep at night, at school, at work, at the grocery store. These are all places we can and should worship.

I hope today really got you thinking about your worship and your sacrifices, and how they might not be the first fruit of your harvest. Today certainly challenged me to look at how much I’m not putting into worship but am called to.

Let us continue to aim to be the change we want to see in the world.

-Zachariah

There will be one Lord

Posted on: by Zachariah No Comments

I’m reading through Zechariah and Revelation at this point in my daily devotionals, so there’s no surprise that I’m hitting a lot of end times prophecies. But, despite that, some prophecies are surprising me and teaching me unexpected lessons. Let’s dive right in to Zechariah 14:1 for an example. “Watch, for the day of the Lord is coming when your possessions will be plundered right in front of you!” The “you” here, according to my Bible, is the people of Jerusalem, but many messages to God’s holy family of the Old Testament apply to the Christians, the holy family of the New Testament. So, when the Lord returns, our possessions could easily be plundered right in front of us. I would say this goes in with my anti-materialism statements of recent. Faith in possessions will do us nothing if they are plundered, but God cannot be taken from us, nor us from God (see John 10:28-30).

Yesterday, I mentioned snow in my blog, because it was snowing and the Psalm mentioned it. Today, Zechariah also talks about snow. The NLT neglects the original Hebrew, but look at Zechariah 14:6 NIV: “On that day there will be no light, no cold or frost.” That day is referring to the day of the Lord, in verse one, which is the day of judgment mentioned in Joel 2. So, I can confidently say, despite what any Watchtower people may tell me, that the Lord has not come back yet, because there is still frost and snow and cold. Thank you Michigan weather for setting the record straight.

An interesting point about when the Lord returns is found in verse 9: “And the Lord will be king over all the earth. On that day there will be one Lord—his name alone will be worshiped.” When the Lord returns, the focal point of worship and the governmental powers all shift to the Lord alone. All worship to the Lord, nothing to any other religious figurehead. The presence of the Lord must be just that convincing.

I never realized there were so many zombies in the bible. Zechariah 12:12-15 says that the people, horse, mules, camels, donkeys, and any other war animals of the nations that fought against Jerusalem will all become like walking corpses (zombies), with their flesh rotting away. What a terrifying plague. I wonder what modern nations this would affect?

In Zechariah 14:21, it is said that all cooking pots will become holy to boil sacrifices in, and there will no longer be merchants or foreigners in the temple. I wondered about this for while, because I can’t see why meat sacrifices would be necessary when the Lord returns, because He paid for everything with his death years ago. From what I can gather from John Wesley’s and Matthew Henry’s commentaries, it would seem this actually marks a shift to a worship taking place everywhere, even the homes, in such a way as pleasing as the dutiful sacrifices. So, worship as a common lifestyle actually will happen in the future, despite the relative unpopularity it has now.

Today I read about the Great White Throne Judgment in Revelation. Read it for yourself in Revelation 20:11-15, because I’m just going to quickly highlight here how everyone dead was put before the throne and judged according to what was written in the books of God. One of these books is the Book of Life, and if your name is written in that book, you will not be thrown into the Lake of Fire with the devil (that happened in verse 10). But, without much knowledge of the books of the Lord, I’m going to guess that there is a book about our actions in life, because we all do have to give an answer for our actions. This passage says we are judged by the books, not just the Book of Life. I would say that even if we are heaven bound there is judgment we face for our actions in this world. Verse 12 says, “the dead were judged according to what they had done.” This is just another biblical encouragement to choose action for God rather than action of the world, because in the end, we answer for how we spent our time.

Proverbs 31:8-9 reads, “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves; ensure justice for those being crushed. Yes, speak up for the poor and helpless, and see that they get justice.” As we are called to serve the world for Christ, keep in mind the voiceless, oppressed, poor, and helpless. These are the lambs to shepherd as we seek to act on our faith and act with God’s love.

I hope you are encouraged as you seek to act on your faith and act out your faith (see Ephesians 2:10 and James 1:22),

-Zachariah

The Lord’s delight is in those who fear him

Posted on: by Zachariah 1 Comment

“Then I will pour out a spirit of grace and prayer on the family of David and on the people of Jerusalem. They will look on me whom they have pierced and mourn for him as for an only son. They will grieve bitterly for him as for a firstborn son who has died.” – Zechariah 12:10.

Zechariah 12 is a pretty interesting chapter, because it displays how much the Lord has planned the protection and victory of his people. The Lord says, in verse 3, “On that day I will make Jerusalem an immovable rock. All the nations will gather against it to try to move it, but they will only hurt themselves.” The day the Lord is talking about, as far as I can tell from verse two, is a day that nearby nations send armies to attack Jerusalem. When Jerusalem goes under attack, God makes them an immovable rock. I have tried to move immovable rocks before for various reasons, like curiosity and labor, but, as the name suggests, they are immovable. It was strain to try to move them, because the rocks could only be moved by a bigger power than me. In this way, God made Jerusalem immovable to an extent that powers beyond the besieging armies of the neighbors of Jerusalem. As the story goes on, God has a plan to destroy the enemies of Judah, in such as way that all cities but Jerusalem and all clans but David receive honor first and more than Jerusalem and the house of David by being victorious in battle first. The Lord gives a model of making the greatest of all royal lines and the greatest city the least, last, and humblest.

So the destruction of all the nations coming against Jerusalem has begun, and now, here we are at verse ten. I would like to say that this is a Jesus prophecy, because the only begotten Son of God did die, was pierced, and was mourned for. And a spirit of grace and prayer (or, The Spirit of grace and prayer) was poured out. The Holy Spirit poured out.

Despite a spirit of God being mentioned sporadically in the Old Testament, it was only after the piercing and morning that everyone in God’s family was given the gift of the Holy Spirit. And this Spirit is described here being of as grace and prayer. Why? Grace, I can understand that. The Spirit, and salvation, were a package deal of undeserved gifts offered to us. That’s grace. But, prayer, how does that fit into all this? Have people really been given a Spirit of prayer, a spirit of communication with the Almighty God, but refuse to use it and listen to God and talk to God? I guess I’ve never seen the Holy Ghost as a spiritual cell phone, but in truth the indwelling Spirit makes God much more accessible than the distant Father in heaven. And yet we don’t take advantage of it. It is almost unheard of that humans would turn down a Christmas gift or a chance to talk with someone famous they respected, but we do both by ignoring the spirit of prayer. Or, at least I do. I don’t think I’m the only person in the world who needs to pray more. I certainly don’t have seven times a day down yet, though. Maybe this just stuck out to me because it’s important personally, just as I hope you can take things you read in the Bible and in my thoughts on the Bible and apply them to your life. Let’s all try to pray at least once more than usual today.

Zechariah 13:1-2 reads, “On that day [the day with the mourning because Jesus got pierced] a fountain will be opened for the dynasty of David and for the people of Jerusalem, a fountain to cleanse them from all their sins and impurity. And on that day, says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, I will erase idol worship throughout the land, so that even the names of the idols will be forgotten. I will remove from the land both the false prophets and the spirit of impurity that came with them.”

The destruction of idols has been a topic in my blog since day one, back in September. I’ve covered many times ideas of abandoning our idols and turning from our idols, actions we take. It’s been a while since I’ve covered actions God takes. And it says that He erases idol worship, to the point that the names of the idols are forgotten. I can confidently say that we have past the day where the fountainhead to cleanse iniquity was established (hence, Easter exists), so I know God has his eraser out and moving. Perhaps all along that was what first we should be looking to do if we struggle with idols, is to let God erase it, rather than turn on our own. Things don’t cease to exist because we ignore them (which is great, because we ignore God a lot), so we really have to give up the idol to God’s eraser, working together with Him to right our life.

Zechariah 13:7-9 puzzles me. The past couple days, the shepherd analogy has been back and forth in Zechariah. Good shepherd, bad shepherd. Today is another bad shepherd day, for the Lord commands his sword to rise against his shepherd, striking him down and scattering the sheep, so that most of the them die. Not too pleasant to think about.

But I did say most. Some, in fact one-third by my Bible’s counting, of the sheep live. What happens to them? “I will bring that group through the fire,” says the Lord in verse 9, “and make them pure. I will refine them like silver and purify them like gold. They will call on my name, and I will answer them. I will say, ‘These are my people,’ and they will say, ‘The Lord is our God.’” Interestingly enough, the call and response, the communication, the prayer between God and his people, who declare themselves to have the Lord as God, only happens after the fire. After refinement. After purification is made. There is searing pain in the heat, but the purification leads to open communication with God.

“He [the Lord] takes no pleasure in the strength of a horse or in human might. No, the Lord’s delight is in those who fear him, those who put their hope in his unfailing love.” – Psalm 147:10-11. Out of a Psalm that had a lot of depth of material, verses 10 and 11 stuck out to me because of the thoughts of God’s view of power. In the Hebrew, the pleasure for the horses’ strength is the verb חפץ, châphêts, mean to desire, take pleasure in, or delight in (this came up in on December 7, 2009 in Hosea 6:6. Same word.) The pleasure for human might that the lord does not take is actually a completely different Hebrew word, רצה, râtsâh,which, on top of the meanings of châphêts, also means satisfying a debt. The Lord is not pleased with human might means that human might satisfies no debts to the Lord. Râtsâh is also the word translated as delight in verse 11. What is pleasing to God, what we owe him, is fearing Him and putting our hope in his unfailing love. The debt is satisfied when we put our hope in the unfailing love of the One who sent his only begotten Son to pay the debt.

It has been snowing during the entirety of my quiet time and this post writing (which, in its size, takes some time), and I was delighted to find a verse about snow in the Psalms today as well. Psalm 147:16-18 says, “He sends the snow like white wool; he scatters frost upon the ground like ashes. He hurls the hail like stones. Who can stand against his freezing cold? Then at his command it all melts. He sends his winds, and the ice thaws.” It’s a nice little thought that God is completely in charge of when it snows and when it thaws.

Today, a friend pointed me to a song by a Christian artist, and I was interested to find (totally unrelated to the original purpose of me listening to the son) that the lyrics mentioned wine, and how it made food taste better. Although not from experience, based on the cooking and eating habits of humanity, I can’t deny that wine brings out the flavor in food. But at the same time, it made me think about my position on alcohol and God’s position on alcohol. People in the Bible drank wine, and Jesus wanted us to emulate a supper of bread and wine in remembrance of Him, so it is hard to say where the line is, even though the Bible does preach the evils of wine. My proverbs reading for today, completely coincidentally (which means absolutely and completely planned by God) happened to touch on this subject. King Lemuel, a king also wise enough to get a little bit of real estate in the book of Proverbs, was told by his mother that kings should not guzzle wine and rulers should not crave alcohol (Proverbs 31:4). Why? Proverbs 31:5 goes on to say, “For if they drink, they may forget the law and not give justice to the oppressed.” So, to be good shepherds, I would say the lesson here is to avoid alcohol so that we do not forget to be shepherds to the flock and give justice to the oppressed. I will say I have no good answer yet for this, but I do not want to deny justice to the sheep of God’s fold.

Lots of thinking, reading, Hebrew, and just plain off the wall challengingly deep stuff today. I hope you think on these things and respond to them. Let me know sometime what you do to keep up a healthy prayer life, or what you have found in the Bible about alcohol, because these are both interesting topics to dig deeper into.

How great is our Lord! His power is absolute! His understanding is beyond comprehension! (Psalm 147:5)

-Zachariah

God’s anger against worthless shepherds

Posted on: by Zachariah No Comments

Zechariah 10-11 focuses mostly, although not entirely, on the shepherd analogy I mentioned yesterday. These two chapter also highlight what a bad shepherd is like in comparison to what the Good Shepherd is like to His people. Diving right into scripture, Zechariah 10:2 says, “Household gods give worthless advice, fortune-tellers predict only lies, and interpreters of dreams pronounce falsehoods that give no comfort. So my people are wandering like lost sheep; they are attacked because they have no shepherd.” Three things that people in those days put a lot of faith into, almost religiously, are all discredited in the first half of the verse. For thousands of years this advice has been around, but there still seems to be a market for these sorts of things. A prime example would be astrology. Every so often the astrology section catches my eye in a newspaper, and it’s always peculiar how vague and ungrounded the predictions are. Household gods could be another thing that is prevalent today; although we don’t have idols of silver we bow down to, there are certainly things in life that we let occupy us more than God and we listen to what they say, be it the media, people around us, ourselves, or something completely different.

The second part of Zechariah 10:2 goes on to say that because the people are buying into the lies, they are wandering like lost sheep and attacked like they are without a shepherd. This is not like a military attack; this is attack with the intent of consumption, like a wolf devouring its prey. This is the opposite of the bright and cheerful life with a shepherd analogy yesterday. Without a shepherd these sheep have no direction and are in serious peril and danger of being completely consumed.

As it would go, the Lord is also upset about the sheep being lost because of the lies they are fed. Zechariah 10:3 continues, “My anger burns against your shepherds, and I will punish these leaders. For the Lord of Heaven’s Armies has arrived to look after Judah, his flock. He will make them strong and glorious, like a proud warhorse in battle.” The Lord is angry against the things that lie about your future, your dreams, your well-being. He wants you to instead seek the truth out, and hear the truth from him.

If God were to whistle, what would it sound like? While this sounds completely far-fetched, Zechariah 10:8 actually does mention God whistling: “When I whistle to them, they will come running, for I have redeemed them. From the few that are left, they will grow as numerous as they were before.” The Hebrew root for the word translated here as whistle, שׁרק, or shâraq, is literally a shrill noise used to call someone, and in the KJV is actually translated as a hiss. The picture I got when I read this was one of a master whistling for his animals, and I suppose this still lines up with the shepherd analogy, although I personally couldn’t tell you if sheep respond to whistling or not. Regardless, the metaphor is that of the redeemed running to God when he calls them. I’m not sure that I’ve ever heard God “whistle” per say, but I know that He calls us all individually in unique and varied ways, if we are only to listen for it. Animals respond to the calls of their masters because the masters are good to them, and similarly, we ought to respond to the call of our Master because He is good to us.

In Zechariah 11, the prophet Zechariah is called twice by the Lord to become a shepherd of the flock intended for the slaughter to demonstrate a point of what bad shepherds are like. Zechariah himself ends up in a mutual hatred relationship with the sheep he is tending and abandons them, and is paid 30 pieces of silver, which he throws into the treasury at the temple. At the end of the chapter God reveals how this demonstrates the worthless shepherd, who did not care for the dying, the young, the injured, or the healthy, but was too busy with feeding himself. I have to wonder, especially if you parallel this with Matthew 25:31-46, if God is painting us a picture of the kind of shepherd we need to be on earth to His people, shepherd who are caring for the dying, the young, the injured, the hungry, the thirsty, the strangers, the naked, and the imprisoned. Simon Peter was told to prove his love for Jesus by tending God’s sheep (John 21:15-17). I find it no stretch to say that we are also called to act on our love and faith by being shepherds to the people, not the worthless shepherds or lying shepherds that anger the Lord and are punished for abandoning the flock, but shepherds who provide for and rescue the sheep. If we are called to be like Jesus, and Jesus was a shepherd, we are called to be shepherds to the sheep of the world, especially those who are outside the fold and in danger of attack.

The continuation of this idea in my Psalm reading for today confirms the importance of the lesson. Psalm 146:7-9 says, “He [God] gives justice to the oppressed and food to the hungry. The Lord frees the prisoners. The Lord opens the eyes of the blind. The Lord lifts up those who are weighed down. The Lord loves the godly. The Lord protects the foreigners among us. He cares for the orphans and widows, but he frustrates the plans of the wicked.” Almost all of those ideas have to do with what we the Church ought to be doing in the world as shepherds and stewards of God’s creation.

Let me put these shepherd qualities into a list in case you’re genuinely interested in all this.

To tend to God’s sheep, we are called to:

  1. Care for the dying
  2. Look after the young
  3. Heal the injured
  4. Feed the healthy and the hungry
  5. Give drink to the thirsty
  6. Visit the imprisoned
  7. Welcome the strangers
  8. Clothe the naked
  9. Visit the sick

(These all come from Zechariah 11:16, in contrast to the described “worthless shepherd”, and from Matthew 25:36-41, in accordance with the sheep that have God’s favor and go into eternal life)

Some of these are a stretch. For example, I’m not quite sure I have healing powers, medically or as a spiritual gift, and feeding the healthy sounds less churchy than feeding the people that are actually hungry. However, these are all points found in the inspired word of God in showing examples of good and bad shepherds, which is not about caring for the sheep of the world, but about caring for the sheep of the Lord.

I hope the thoughts for today get you thinking like I did about the real meaning of tending God’s sheep and feeding his lambs, which are ways of loving God and others in deed and truth rather than word and talk (1 John 3:18).

-Zachariah