Heed the Word of the Lord

The Lord Remembers - Message 1 - Heed the Word of the Lord. The second to last book in the Old Testament, this “minor” prophet ministered at the same time as Haggai, during the return of the people of Judah to Jerusalem under the leadership of Nehemiah and Ezra. Haggai was sent by the Lord to rebuke the people for their indifference and to motivate them to finish the work for the glory of the Lord. His short (2 chapters) prophecy contains warnings, encouragement, and promises for the people as he sought to bring them from lukewarmness to being fervent for the Lord and His Temple. While Haggai's message leaned toward the negative side of motivating the people, the Lord also sent Zechariah, who began to prophecy 2 months after Haggai. Zechariah was tasked with reassuring the people of the promises God had made about the coming of the Messiah. This was their positive motivation for rebuilding the Temple, for in the near future (within about 400 years), the Messiah would arrive! Together, Haggai and Zechariah took up the positive and negative sides of warning and encouraging the people to be obedient to the Lord. As we begin to look at Zechariah's prophecy we will see that he started with an all too common theme – the need for the people to repent of their sin and return to the Lord. He assured them of God's promise that if they would return to the Lord, He would return to them. We begin this Sunday with the first message from Zechariah 1:1-6 titled “Heed the Word of the Lord.” This series takes its title from the theme of the prophecy, “The Lord Remembers”, which is also what the name Zechariah means.