Zechariah 14:16-19 And it shall come to pass… And it shall come to pass, etc. Two remarks are suggested here concerning the public worship of Jehovah. I. IT IS A DUTY BINDING ON ALL PEOPLE. "And it shall come to pass, that every one that is left of. all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall even go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the Feast of Tabernacles." "Keil thinks the Feast of Tabernacles is mentioned because it was a feast of thanksgiving for the gracious protection of Israel, in its wanderings through the desert, and its introduction into the land flowing with milk and honey, whereby it foreshadows the blessedness to be enjoyed in the kingdom of God. but in rejecting Koehler's observation that there is a reference to the feast as a harvest thanksgiving, he overlooks the fact that, if this harvest reference is not recognized, the punishment threatened in the next verse, the absence of rain, loses its appropriateness. The Feast of Tabernacles was meant to keep them in mind, amidst their abundant harvests, and well cared-for fields and vineyards, that as in the desert so still it was God who gave the increase. It was therefore a festival most suitable for all the nations to join in, by way of acknowledging that Jehovah was the God of nature throughout the earth, however various might be the aspects of nature with which they were familiar. Besides, there can be little doubt that by the time of Zechariah, and probably long before, this feast had become a kind of symbol of the ingathering of the nations (John 4:35) " (Dr. Dods). Whilst the thousands neglect public worship, not a few argue against it, they say it is uncalled for and unnecessary. In reply to this, we state, where there is genuine religion: 1. Public worship is a natural development. The being we love most we crave an opportunity for extolling; we want that all shall know his merits. If we are really religious, we love God supremely, and is it not natural to declare our affection in the presence of our fellow men? 2. Public worship is a happy development. What delights the soul so much as to hear others praise the object we love the most? This at once gratifies the religious instinct and the social love. Every true worshipper in the great congregation can say it is a good thing to give praise - it is a happy thing. 3. Public worship is a beneficent development. There is nothing that tends so much to quicken and ennoble souls as worship, and nothing gives such a vital interest in one soul for another as public worship. In genuine public worship there is a close coming together of souls, an interblending of the deepest thoughts and the purest sympathies, a kind of spiritual amalgamation. "We should, therefore, not forsake the assembling of ourselves together." II. ITS NEGLECT EXPOSES TO TERRIBLE CALAMITIES. "And it shall be, that whoso will not come up of all the families of the earth unto Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, even upon them shall be no rain. And if the family of Egypt go not up, and come not, that have no rain; there shall be the plague, wherewith the Lord will smite the heathen that come not up to keep the Feast of Tabernacles. This shall be the punishment of Egypt, and the punishment of all nations that come not up to keep the Feast of Tabernacles." Two things are to be observed here. 1. The greatness of the punishment. "Upon them shall be no rain." Now, the absence of rain involves every temporal evil you can think of - famine, pestilence, loss of physical enjoyment, loss of health, loss of life. 2. The fitness of the punishment. (1) To the offence. "The withholding of the rain," says Dr. Dods," was not only one of the ways by which idolatry and apostasy were punished under the theocracy, but it was the appropriate punishment of those who refused to acknowledge Jehovah as the Giver of the harvest. This suiting of punishment to offence is a marked characteristic of God's government, and should probably be more used in education than it is (e.g. by secluding for a time, from all intercourse with his companions, the boy who has told a lie, and so on). Dante has largely utilized the principle in his great poem. In his vision of the realms of punishment he saw tyrants immersed in blood; gluttons exposed in all their pampered softness to a sleety tempest of cold, discoloured, stinking bail; the proud bending forever under heavy burdens; schismatics, who have rent the Church, themselves cleft asunder; those who had pried into the future, and professed prophetic foresight, with faces reversed, unable to see their own way" (2) To the offender. The idea of not having rain would not, perhaps, terrify the Egyptians, for they had the Nile, which supplied them with abundance of water. Hence a plague is threatened to them, and no word to them was more terrible than the word "plague." They had not forgotten the ten plagues inflicted on them in the time of Moses. It was a land of plagues. Thus God punishes. But mark, the punishment was to come because of the neglect of public worship, and the neglect of public worship is punished: (a) Now; by the loss of the highest spiritual enjoyments. (b) Hereafter; by the reproaching of conscience and the banishment from all good. - D.T. Parallel Verses KJV: And it shall come to pass, that every one that is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall even go up from year to year to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles. |
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