There is a lot of debate raging in our nation right now, about different topics. I am not going to dive into those in this post. However, this is a time in which the Bible and current events are intersecting and pointing us to the answers. I’m going to show my inner kid for a moment. There is a point in the movie, The Lion King, in which a crazy monkey named, Raffiki, finds the appointed heir, Simba. Years before, Simba watched his dad die, and Simba’s uncle, Scar, lied and blamed Simba for it. That caused Simba to run away. Years later, during their meeting, Raffikki takes his staff and whacks Simba in the head. When Simba asks why he did it, Raffiki’s response was, “It doesn’t matter it is in the past.” Simba says, “yeah, well it still hurts.” Raffiki then gives some wisdom when he says, “Ah, yes, the past can hurt. But you can either learn from it or run from it.” There is so much truth in that statement as Israel was learning in today’s text. We are going to look into the book of Zechariah. Zechariah was a prophet to Israel after they had returned from the Babylonian captivity. In Zechariah 1:4 we read, “Do not be like your fathers, to whom the former prophets preached saying, ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts: Turn now from your evil ways and your evil deeds. But they did not hear nor heed Me’, says the Lord.”
As Spanish-born American, George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Zechariah is warning the nation of Israel to learn from their past. This shows the seriousness of our sin. If God was willing to judge the nation of Israel, His chosen people for their sin, do we honestly think He will not judge us for ours? By not taking sin lightly, we are inviting the judgment of God into our lives. God desired to have an intimate relationship with Israel and to bless her, but it meant that they were going to have to learn from the past so that they wouldn’t repeat it in the present.
There is another lesson in this text. This one is encouraging. The lesson is that God doesn’t hold the sins of the father against his children. Therefore, the things that my father did that God says are a sin, is not something that I will have to answer for. The same is true for my children. After all, if God punished the children for what the parents did, that wouldn’t be just. What we do see in Scripture and in our lives is this, that what the parents struggle with often becomes a struggle the children have in their own lives. I still remember something I heard Pastor Jonathan Falwell say years ago. Falwell said, “What one generation does in moderation, the next will do in excess.” Look around at our nation and ask yourself, are his words happening before us? Undoubtedly they are. God holds each person to the same standard, and each person will answer for their own decisions. Therefore, we can no longer blames others for what we are doing. Our past may pre-dispose us to certain behaviors, but they don’t pre-determine what we will do. Therefore, if you are struggling with something in your life, bring it to the Lord and ask for His help. Get one or two people of the same sex in your church to talk with, pray with, and hold you accountable. If we don’t want to walk down the same roads we have walked before, we need to learn from our past, allow God to heal us, and let God lead us into the future He desires for us.
By His grace and for His glory,
Pastor Justin