From Fasting to Feasting

From Fasting to Feasting
Zechariah 8:18-23
March 26, 2023

Raye Jeanne and I enjoy watching home restoration shows.  We like seeing something dilapidated and unusable made beautiful and functional.  It’s inspiring how skilled and creative some restorers are.

But not all restorers are equally effective.  Consider the experience of the Church of St. Michael in Estella, Spain.  A statue in the church depicting St. George charging a dragon had browned with age.  They called in a non-professional restorer with this result.  That doesn’t appear to be quite like the original.

Social media blew up with mocking and laughter — and reminders of another restoration done a few years earlier, this one in a church in Borja (NE Spain).  The image is of Christ wearing His crown of thorns.  After the image deteriorated, a restorer was called in to fix it.  It might not have been fixed.

One assumes that the restorers had good intentions.  They just didn’t have the skills to match their intentions.  Aren’t you glad the broken world in which we live will also be restored one day — but that its Restorer (and our Restorer) has infinite power and ability to accomplish fully His restorative, saving plan?

That’s the core of the message that we will find in Zechariah 8, in the final oracle from God when He responded to the Bethelites who complained about their fasts and wanted to eliminate the fasts.  The truth we will find in Zechariah 8:18-23 is…

God’s people are strengthened to serve Him now because of His restorative promises for the future.

Because God has promised, His people can be strong.  Zechariah reveals three fortifying promises for the future of His people…

1. God Will Turn Fasting into Feasting (vv. 18-19)
2. God Will Turn Enemies into Friends (vv. 20-22)
3. God Will Turn Rebels into Worshippers (v. 23)

Download the rest of this sermon on Zechariah 8:18-23.

The audio will be posted on the GBC website by tomorrow.