Go Home!

Several years ago our family spent a day at SeaWorld in Orlando and visited Shamu Stadium. As we came into the arena, we noticed that close to the tank where the huge black and white killer whales perform, the seats and concrete risers around them were all painted blue. These rows are known as the “Soak Zone.” Before the show began, an announcement came over the PA system warning that everyone in the soak zone would definitely get wet, even drenched. Sure enough, when Shamu and the other killer whales circled into the tank and started jumping and splashing around, the soak zone lived up to its name. Most of the people in those seats took an impromptu bath. Now, Shamu did not soak those people because he picked them arbitrarily for splashing. They got drenched only because of where they were sitting, a place that had been duly marked and about which they had been warned.

God also has an anger zone. Just as the people sitting in the soak zone got soaked, those who place themselves in a posture of rebellion and sin against God will experience His righteous wrath. When we live a rebellious life, continue in sin, or refuse to trust and follow the Lord, we place ourselves in His anger zone, all because of where we have chosen to place ourselves spiritually.

The only way out of God’s anger zone is to repent and return to Him. When we His people return to Him, He has promised He will return to us: “Return to Me . . . and I will return to you.” God’s promise to return to us if we return to Him is another way that His anger differs from human anger. Sadly, when we get angry with someone and they try to make amends, we often say, “I don’t care what you do. I’m going to stay angry.” That’s not how God works. Even in His anger He is ready to forgive when we return. His anger is not temperamental or unpredictable, but righteous and just. Sinful choices on our part put us in God’s anger zone, but returning to Him restores us.

We should return to God because of His righteous wrath. But the text goes on to show that we should return because of God’s repeated warnings. Again, the Lord points to the negative example of Israel’s past in order to call His people to turn back to Him (v. 4). This marks the second of four times in this passage that God points to the “ancestors” of the present generation (see also vv. 2, 5, and 6). Here God reminds the Jews of the warnings the “earlier prophets” had proclaimed before the Babylonian captivity. In all likelihood these prophets were men like Isaiah, Habakkuk, and Jeremiah who warned God’s people of the approaching exile that resulted from their sin.

Zechariah summarizes the proclamation of the earlier prophets with the command “Turn from your evil ways and your evil deeds.” The major subject of these pre-exilic preachers had been repentance. The word translated “turn” in verse 4 is the same Hebrew word translated “return” twice in verse 3. Walter Kaiser draws a distinction between “evil ways” and “evil deeds.” “Evil ways” refers to a mindset or an attitude that leans toward wicked choices. “Evil deeds” indicates going a step further, to the actual activity of evil and sin. While some people only lean toward evil and others actually commit evil acts, God condemned evil in all its forms, and called His people to turn away from it (Kaiser and Ogilvie, Micah, 305).

The theme of repentance had been especially prominent in Jeremiah’s preaching. In Jeremiah 3 the prophet had declared to Judah that even the northern kingdom of Israel, with all of its idolatry and wickedness, could find hope by returning to the Lord:

Go, proclaim these words to the north, and say: Return, unfaithful Israel. This is the Lord’s declaration. I will not look on you with anger, for I am unfailing in My love. This is the Lord ’s declaration. I will not be angry forever. Only acknowledge your guilt—you have rebelled against the Lord your God. You have scattered your favors to strangers under every green tree and have not obeyed My voice. This is the Lord’s declaration. “Return, you faithless children”—this is the Lord’s declaration—“for I am your master, and I will take you, one from a city and two from a family, and I will bring you to Zion.” (Jer 3:12-14)

In the final days of Judah, just before the people were taken into exile, Jeremiah had warned the people repeatedly, “Turn back to God. Return to God.” But they would not listen. They refused to pay attention. Instead of repenting, they mocked Jeremiah. They tormented and tortured the prophet. Jeremiah had watched with tears in his eyes as his beloved city Jerusalem was destroyed and God’s people were taken away. They did not heed. They did not pay attention. They continued in their rebellion against God.

Decades later, God asked these questions through Zechariah: “Where are your ancestors now? And do the prophets live forever?” Imagine the response of the Jewish people to those two questions the Lord asked. “Where are your ancestors now?” Well, Lord, You know where they are. You took them from this land to a place far away, and they went there and died because they would not listen. “And do the prophets live forever?” No, Lord, they eventually stopped prophesying and our ancestors never paid attention. We should return to the Lord because His warnings, though graciously repeated, do not last forever. Our time to respond to Him is limited.

The word overtake in verse 6 means “to catch up.” The same word is used in Deuteronomy, when Moses promised the children of Israel that His blessings would overtake them if they obeyed God, but also warned that curses would overtake them if they disobeyed:

All these blessings will come and overtake you, because you obey the Lord your God. (Deut 28:2)

But if you do not obey the Lord your God by carefully following all His commands and statutes I am giving you today, all these curses will come and overtake you. (Deut 28:15)

Eventually, the word the Lord sent to Israel and Judah through the prophets caught up with them because they ignored His repeated warnings. It is a dangerous thing to decide to ignore the warnings that God gives us—warnings from His Word, warnings He gives through pastors and preachers, or warnings He brings through the godly people in our lives.

Pastor Bobby Welch tells a story, and for the setting he uses the longest bridge in the world over water, the 24-mile Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, which stretches from the north shore of New Orleans into the city. At times fog will roll in over the lake and you can barely see in front of you on that bridge. It was one of those foggy days, and a man was creeping along as bank after bank of fog came in. Suddenly, right in front of him, the man saw someone running straight toward his car, waving his arms and screaming. The driver changed lanes and kept creeping forward. The man running toward him got into the other lane and continued running toward him, still waving his arms and screaming. As the running man got closer, the driver began to make out the words he was screaming: “Stop! Stop! In the name of God, stop! The bridge is out! The bridge is out!”

Finally the man driving got the message and stopped. He got out of his car, and together, he and the other man crawled through the fog until they came to a place where a barge going across Lake Pontchartrain had hit the bridge and taken a whole section out. Half a dozen people had driven off into the water and had died instantly. The two men looked at the horrific scene of people who had plummeted into the lake, struggling for their lives. The man who had been driving that car was so thankful that someone had cared enough to warn him.

When a pastor preaches a message of judgment or a message that talks about God’s anger, it is not usually popular. But it is an urgent message. And ultimately, it is a loving message motivated by concern for the souls of men and women. That’s why we must share the message of repentance with others and heed it ourselves. Make no mistake: a time is coming when God’s repeated warnings will stop. “Where are your ancestors now? And do the prophets live forever?” A time will come when our lives will be over. Or a time may come when the person who has warned us and called us to turn back to Jesus Christ will no longer be in our lives. People who sound the warnings in our lives may seem to be a thorn in our side and their message may seem negative or tiresome as they keep telling lost people to turn to Christ for salvation or urging wayward believers to return to the Lord. But the time will come when God’s judgment will overtake those who reject God’s warnings.

At the end of our text, the Lord provides a third motivation to His people to return to Him: reassurance of His kind and merciful intentions toward them. In all likelihood “they repented” refers to what the pre-exilic Israelites had done during and immediately after their captivity. They came to understand they had been taken away from their homeland because of their refusal to obey the warnings of God’s prophets.

After they had been taken away into exile, the Jews realized how far they were from the Lord. Even in exile, some of God’s people repented and turned back to the Lord. The word repent carries the idea of a radical change. Repentance is a change of understanding, creating a change of mind, leading to a change of heart, and culminating in a change of direction. The exiles came to the place where they understood what they were receiving from God was what God had promised. They said to themselves, “As the Lord of Hosts purposed to deal with us for our ways and deeds, so He has dealt with us.” Then they trusted in the character of God enough to understand that, even after they were far from Him and though they had been carried away into captivity, He would return to them if they would repent and turn to Him. They recognized that the Lord had done with them exactly what He had planned and promised to do, and they could not question His purposes.

The Babylonian captives, who had experienced God’s anger and who had, up to this point, rejected God’s warnings, came to understand the truth of verse 3: “Return to Me . . . and I will return to you.” Now, through Zechariah, God was reassuring those who had returned to Jerusalem, “I won’t forget you. I won’t reject you. I won’t push you away. Return to Me.” He tells us the same thing today. Our Lord has already given us the assurance that He will return to us when we turn to Him. Through the cross of Jesus Christ, God brings us to Himself and brings Himself to us.

When I’m driving and I’m depending on my GPS system, I’ve learned never to ignore one message it gives me: “Make a U-turn if possible.” Has your GPS ever told you to do that? I like the fact that the voice always gives the caveat, “if possible.” The GPS doesn’t want me turning around in the middle of an interstate highway! But if I’m in a place where I can turn, the system warns me that I should turn.

When God tells His people, “Return to Me,” He’s not only saying that a U-turn is necessary in our lives, He’s also saying the U-turn is possible. Through His grace and the power of Jesus Christ, we can repent and change direction. When our lives are directionally challenged, God commands us to return to Him. And He promises, when we return to Him, we will find that He is already turned toward us.