TODAY’S WORD FOR WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 28, 2016.
DECEPTION
The act of misleading by a false appearance; a misrepresentation of what is the truth; deliberate concealment of the truth; trickery.
They refused to pay attention; stubbornly they turned their backs and stopped up their ears. Zechariah 7:11.
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 God Almighty was very angry.
Zechariah 7:12.
Think back on the many times you have felt that you have been deceived. Deception is rampant in the world today. We are all guilty of deception at one time or another. We not only deceive others, but we deceive ourselves into thinking we are better than we are. This is because we measure ourselves by our standards, not God’s standards.
In the 7th and 8th chapters of Zechariah the prophet is communicating God’s message to the 50,000 Jews that had been freed by Cyrus of Persia to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple. God’s message to them was not to only restore the temple but to restore their spiritual lives. Zechariah called the people to repentance and also to be honest and sincere in their worship. For years they had been deceived by false teaching and were worshipping idols and false gods.
God reminds them of their failures and reminds them that while He is unfailing in mercy and grace, He is also unchanging in His standards. What God wants from us is obedience.
The people failed in three ways. First, they refused to pay attention, verse above, and turned their backs on God. They basically ignored God by pretending not to hear.
Secondly, they made their hearts hard, verse above, and would not listen to God. They deliberately disobeyed God.
Thirdly, they began to play the hypocrite role. At the beginning of this chapter, verse 3, the people asked if they should mourn and fast during the fifth month as they had done for years in remembrance of the destruction of Jerusalem.
At that time Jerusalem was being rebuilt so the people wanted to know from the priests and the prophets at the temple if it was necessary to continue this fast. God did not answer the question directly. Instead He rebuked them for their hypocrisy and deception and asked them, “Was it really for Me you fasted?” God knows when our worship is sincere and when it is only a religious show for appearance sake.
They fasted but did not fast with a proper attitude of repentance and worship. They deceived themselves that they were pleasing God but for them it was merely ritual, not a time of genuine sorrow and repentance. They were without a sincere desire to know God and love Him. Many of us do the same today. We go through the motions of religious ritual and avoid God’s will in our lives, which is to love Him and obey Him.
Think about this: We go to church but we do not hear. We read the Bible but do not heed its instruction. We deliberately disobey and we become hypocritical. This is because we do not have a sincere desire to know the Lord and worship Him. He wants us to repent of our sins and do what is pleasing to Him. This passage in Zechariah portrays the human heart in the very act of deception.
God’s Word tells us the results of our repeatedly turning a deaf ear to God’s voice. We become blind to the truth. We lose our ability to see and hear what God is saying to us. This is what happens when God tries to move in our life and we do not listen. You lose the ability to see and hear God.
Our memory verse this week is found in Matthew 19:26
But Jesus looked at them and said to them, “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible”.
Keep my heart and the hearts of my family open to Your voice every day. Help me not to turn a deaf ear to what You are telling me and keep me faithful in reading Your Word so I can know what You desire from me.
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