Zechariah 7-9

(April 9, 2013)
I was, at first, prepared to write briefly about the additional evidences that these chapters provide that the God of the Old Testament is the God of the New Testament.  There are, in fact, enough evidences (particularly in the latter part of the Old Testament) to make such a mention almost cliche.  But as I thought more about it, I realized that the grand deception that we sometimes play on ourselves is to recognize that the God of the Old Testament is the God of the New Testament, but to deceive ourselves into thinking that the God of the New Testament is somehow not the God of the Old Testament.

The very same God that spoke the beatitudes likewise commanded the destruction of the wicked.  Now we look at the one (“blessed are the meek”) and ignore the other (“it is better to obey than to sacrifice”).  Above all, we fetishize the statement “judge not,” while using that single phrase to attempt to invalidate ever other message of the Gospel – whether found in the Old Testament or in the New Testament.  The God that smote the Egyptians is the same God that blessed the children – we can either reconcile that in our minds to come to a better understanding of His nature or we can willingly close our minds to this fact and have a perverted, stunted idea of the nature of the God whose footsteps we are commanded to follow in.  And if we deliberately refuse to understand Him, how can we then follow Him?