Repentance is turning from sin unto God.

I. THE CALL IS FOUNDED ON GOD'S ABSOLUTE RIGHT TO OBEDIENCE. "Lord of hosts." Sublime title. Thrice used, to give the greater impressiveness. Implies that God's rule is wide as creation. Mark the "host" of stars (Isaiah 40:26). Higher, behold the "angels and principalities and powers" (Psalm 103:20, 21). God is Lord of all, and it is this God that claims our homage. To turn from him is folly and ruin; to turn to him is the highest wisdom and blessedness.

II. URGED BY GOD'S JUDGMENTS ON TRANSGRESSORS. Israel is our "ensample" (1 Corinthians 10:11). The sun dues not ripen the corn more surely than God's favour attended the Jews when they were steadfast to walk in his ways; nor are thorns and briars more certain to spring up in a neglected field than God's judgments to fall on Israel when their hearts were set in them to do evil. God is not changed. The world is governed now on the same principles as in the past.

III. ENCOURAGED BY GOD'S PROMISES. "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh." So of God's Word. It reveals his heart. There is no bar on God's part to the sinner's return. He himself has opened the way, and his promise is to those who turn to him. "I will turn unto you." Here is hope held out, help graciously offered, joyful welcome assured. We have not only doctrines, but facts. Great cloud of witnesses, who can say each for himself, like Paul, "I obtained mercy."

IV. ENFORCED BY THE EXPERIENCES OF LIFE. Every man's life is separate. But much common. The brevity of life. Delay is dangerous. The confessions of life. God's Word is truth. Faithful are his promises and his threatenings. The monitions of life. Voices of the past, of the good, and of the evil, of earth and heaven, all combine and cry with awful and convincing force, "Repent!" - F.

The first step is at all times to turn to the Lord; the second follows, "turn you now from your evil ways, and from your evil doing." The motive and the power to forsake evil must be found in himself. Once know Jesus and His love, experimentally, and you possess a motive for holiness, greater far than either heaven or earth can furnish. It is the expulsive power of a new affection. And yet, as in all advance, there is reciprocal action. The first step must ever be to Jesus. When the man is in Christ he possesses the power. But in turning away from evil, new light and life are thrown back upon the starting point. We see truth more clearly, and embrace it more earnestly. Thus there is growth in grace. To every step of faithfulness on our part the Lord adds new light; and this light is reflected in the face of Jesus Christ. He becomes more known, more loved; and this produces its effect in more likeness to Him.

(T. Whitfield, M. A.)

Urged from —

I. THE DIVINE DISPLEASURE TOWARDS THE IMPENITENT MEN OF THE FAST. "The Lord hath been sore displeased with your fathers." "They had shown a mournfully strong and inveterate propensity to depart from God and from His ways. They had needed incessant repetitions of Divine admonitions, entreaties, promises, and threatenings; and manor a time all had proved unavailing. Jehovah bound them to Himself with 'cords of love.' But 'they brake the bands asunder, and cast away the cords from them.' They chose their own ways. They thus provoked Him to anger. Their fathers had by their sins brought that heavy seventy years' judgment upon themselves." Now the displeasure of God to sinners of the past is here referred to in order to induce the Jews to repent of the selfish negligence which they had evinced concerning the building of the temple (Haggai 2:5-7).

II. FROM GOD'S ASSURANCE OF A WELCOME TO ALL THAT TRULY REPENT. Proved —

1. By His invitation to the impenitent. "Come now let us reason together, saith the Lord," etc. etc.

2. By the experience of mankind. Manasseh, David, Saul, Bunyan, and millions more returned to Him, and He not only received them, but rejoiced over them.

III. FROM THE TRANSITORINESS OF HUMAN LIFE. By the "fathers" are meant those with whom God was displeased, An argument —

1. For the wicked to repent.

2. For faithfulness, and for persevering zeal.For we shall all soon have finished our mission.

(Homilist.)

Berechiah, Darius, Iddo, ZechariahJerusalem, ZionAffirmation, Almighty, Armies, Attend, Attention, Cried, Declares, Deeds, Doings, Ear, Earlier, Evil, Fathers, Former, Hearken, Heed, Hosts, Listen, Note, Pay, Practices, Proclaimed, Prophets, Return, Saying, Says, Thus, Turn, Voice1. Zechariah exhorts to repentance.
7. The vision of the horses.
12. At the prayer of the angel comfortable promises are made to Jerusalem.
18. The vision of the four horns and the four carpenters.

Zechariah 1:4

     4963   past, the
     5885   indifference
     6194   impenitence, warnings

Zechariah 1:3-4

     1235   God, the LORD

Zechariah 1:3-6

     7773   prophets, role

A Willing People and an Immutable Leader
The Psalm is a kind of coronation Psalm. Christ is bidden to take his throne: "Sit thou at my right hand." The sceptre is put into his hand. "The Lord shall send the rod of thy strength out of Zion." And then the question is asked, "Where are his people?" For a king would be no king without subjects. The highest title of kingship is but an empty one that hath no subjects to make up its fulness. Where, then, shall Christ find that which shall be the fulness of him that filleth all in all? The great …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 2: 1856

The Source of Power
'And the Angel that talked with me came again, and waked me, as a man that is wakened out of his sleep, 2. And said unto me, What seest thou? And I said, I have looked, and behold, a candlestick all of gold, with a bowl upon the top of it, and his seven lamps thereon, and seven pipes to the seven lamps which are upon the top thereof: 3. And two olive-trees by it, one upon the right side of the bowl, and the other upon the left side thereof. 4. So I answered and spake to the Angel that talked with …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

"But Whereunto Shall I Liken this Generation?"
Matth. xi. 16.--"But whereunto shall I liken this generation?" When our Lord Jesus, who had the tongue of the learned, and spoke as never man spake, did now and then find a difficulty to express the matter herein contained. "What shall we do?" The matter indeed is of great importance, a soul matter, and therefore of great moment, a mystery, and therefore not easily expressed. No doubt he knows how to paint out this to the life, that we might rather behold it with our eyes, than hear it with our …
Hugh Binning—The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning

That Upon the Conquest and Slaughter of vitellius Vespasian Hastened his Journey to Rome; but Titus his Son Returned to Jerusalem.
1. And now, when Vespasian had given answers to the embassages, and had disposed of the places of power justly, [25] and according to every one's deserts, he came to Antioch, and consulting which way he had best take, he preferred to go for Rome, rather than to march to Alexandria, because he saw that Alexandria was sure to him already, but that the affairs at Rome were put into disorder by Vitellius; so he sent Mucianus to Italy, and committed a considerable army both of horsemen and footmen to …
Flavius Josephus—The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem

Zechariah
CHAPTERS I-VIII Two months after Haggai had delivered his first address to the people in 520 B.C., and a little over a month after the building of the temple had begun (Hag. i. 15), Zechariah appeared with another message of encouragement. How much it was needed we see from the popular despondency reflected in Hag. ii. 3, Jerusalem is still disconsolate (Zech. i. 17), there has been fasting and mourning, vii. 5, the city is without walls, ii. 5, the population scanty, ii. 4, and most of the people …
John Edgar McFadyen—Introduction to the Old Testament

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