TSK · Zechariah 1:4

The LORD sent prophets among them to lead them back to him. They warned the people, but they would not pay attention.

Messengers delivered the letters from the king and his officials throughout Israel and Judah. This royal edict read:“O Israelites, return to the LORD God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, so he may return to you who have been spared from the kings of Assyria.

“Go, ask the LORD on behalf of me and those who remain in Israel and Judah about the words of this scroll that has been discovered. For the LORD’s great fury has been ignited against us, because our ancestors did not obey the word of the LORD by living according to all that is written in this scroll!”

From the days of our fathers until this very day our guilt has been great. Because of our iniquities we, along with our kings and priests, have been delivered over by the local kings to sword, captivity, plunder, and embarrassment– right up to the present time.

“Nonetheless they grew disobedient and rebelled against you; they disregarded your law. They killed your prophets who had solemnly admonished them in order to cause them to return to you. They committed atrocious blasphemies.

Then they will not be like their ancestors, who were a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation that was not committed and faithful to God.

Wash! Cleanse yourselves! Remove your sinful deeds from my sight. Stop sinning!

You Israelites! Return to the one against whom you have so blatantly rebelled!

“Come back to me, my wayward sons,” says the LORD,“for I am your true master. If you do, I will take one of you from each town and two of you from each family group, and I will bring you back to Zion.

The LORD of Heaven’s Armies, the God of Israel says: Change the way you have been living and do what is right. If you do, I will allow you to continue to live in this land.

“I, the LORD, say:‘This shows how I will ruin the highly exalted position in which Judah and Jerusalem take pride.

Observance of the Sabbath Day Is a Key to the Future The LORD told me,“Go and stand in the People’s Gate through which the kings of Judah enter and leave the city. Then go and stand in all the other gates of the city of Jerusalem.

“For the last twenty-three years, from the thirteenth year that Josiah son of Amon was ruling in Judah until now, the LORD’s messages have come to me and I have told them to you over and over again. But you would not listen.

So, now the LORD says,‘You have not listened to me. But you have made me angry by the things that you have done. Thus you have brought harm on yourselves.’

You must pay attention to the exhortations of my servants the prophets. I have sent them to you over and over again. But you have not paid any attention to them.

“Get a scroll. Write on it everything I have told you to say about Israel, Judah, and all the other nations since I began to speak to you in the reign of Josiah until now.

I sent my servants the prophets to you people over and over again warning you not to do this disgusting thing I hate.

But the house of Israel is unwilling to listen to you, because they are not willing to listen to me, for the whole house of Israel is hard-headed and hard-hearted.

“But suppose he in turn has a son who notices all the sins his father commits, considers them, and does not follow his father’s example.

but there is one who hears the sound of the trumpet yet does not heed the warning. Then the sword comes and sweeps him away. He will be responsible for his own death.

We have not paid attention to your servants the prophets, who spoke by your authority to our kings, our leaders, and our ancestors, and to all the inhabitants of the land as well.

For this reason whoever is smart keeps quiet in such a time, for it is an evil time.

‘Don’t preach with such impassioned rhetoric,’ they say excitedly.‘These prophets should not preach of such things; we will not be overtaken by humiliation.’

Should you not have obeyed the words that the LORD cried out through the former prophets when Jerusalem was peacefully inhabited and her surrounding cities, the Negev, and the foothills were also populated?

Therefore produce fruit that proves your repentance,

“You stubborn people, with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You are always resisting the Holy Spirit, like your ancestors did!

who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets and persecuted us severely. They are displeasing to God and are opposed to all people,