Sermon Tone Analysis

Sad Fasts Changed to Glad Feasts by C. H. Spurgeon"Thus saith the LORD of hosts; The fast of the fourth month, and the fast of the fifth, and the fast of the seventh, and the fast of the tenth, shall be to the house of Judah joy and gladness, and cheerful feasts; therefore love the truth and peace."--Zechariah

8:19 My time for discourse upon this subject will be limited, as we shall gather around the communion-table immediately afterwards.

So in the former part of my sermon I shall give you an outline of what might be said upon the text if we had time to examine it fully.

It will be just a crayon sketch without much light and shade.

You will be able to think over the subject at your leisure, and fill up the picture for yourselves!

We have, in the chapters we have read, a blessed message of peace to God's people in the day of their trouble.

In the land of their captivity the Jews were in great perplexity.

Their sad lament is on record; "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.

We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof."

But their trouble led many of them to seek the Lord and he was found of them.

Welcome is such misery which leads to such mercy.

In the seventh chapter we are told that, when they sent unto the house of God, to pray before the Lord, and to say, "Should I weep in the fifth month, separating myself, as I have done these so many years?

Then came the word of the Lord."

Jehovah has put their tears into his bottle, and in answer to their sighing sent them a message of hope.

That message has in it much that is very practical.

It is a letter full of mercy, but it is directed to certain characters.

God does not send indiscriminate mercy.

If men go on in their sin, he sends them words of judgment; but when they turn from their wickedness, and are renewed by his grace in the spirit of their minds, then it is that words of comfort are spoken to them.

Reviewing the whole message which Zechariah was commissioned to deliver, and which is summed up in our text, there are three things which stand out in clear prominence.

The first is, that God calls for transformation of character in the people he is going to bless.

The second is, that he promises translation of condition to those whose characters are thus changed and beautiful.

And, lastly, he ordains transfiguration of ordinances as the result of the new character and condition.

The whole subject is exceedingly suggestive, and well worthy of careful study when you reach your homes.

We must not lose sight of the fact that, primarily, this message is for Israel according to the flesh, and contains a prophesy of their latter-day glory.

God hath not cast off his people whom he did foreknow, and there are majestic words here which still await their fulfillment when the set time shall have come.

The Lord "will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem", and make the place of his feet glorious in that day.

But as "no prophesy of Scripture is of any private interpretation," so the message to the Jews also bears a message for us.

Let us seek to learn its lessons well.

I.

My text reminds me--and the chapter before us emphasizes the fact--that, when God means to bless his people, HE CALLS FOR TRANSFORMATION OF CHARACTER.

The promise of the abiding presence of the Lord God Almighty is ever proceeded by the call to separation and holiness.

"The words which the Lord had cried by the former prophets" made it very clear that only with the righteous nation would God dwell; and Zechariah delivers a similar message.

Very remarkable will be the transformation of character which God shall work.

According to the text, love of truth is to be one of the main effects of the change.

These people certainly did not set much value on the truth before; they were in love with every lie, with every false god, and with every false prophet.

But God would have them taste of his covenant blessings, and be set free from every false way.

It is the only truth that can set men free; yet many there are even to-day who delight to be in bondage to error.

How is it with you?

Do you love the truth, or can you put up with that which is not true, if it is only pleasant?

Say, dear heart, are you anxious after truth--truth in your head, truth in your heart, truth on your tongue, truth in your life?

If you are false, and love falsehood, you are taken with a sore disease; and unless you are healed of the plague, you can never enter heaven.

You must be transformed and made true, and only the Spirit of truth can effect the mighty change.

Another sign must follow: love of peace.

The text also says: "Therefore love peace."

In some men it is a plain proof of conversion when they desire peace.

Some are naturally very hot-tempered, and soon boil over.

These are the men of great force of character, or else of great shallowness: it is the small pot which is soon hot.

Some are malicious; they can take enmity quietly, and keep it in the refrigerator of their cold hearts, even for years.

Such love is not peace; they are at war with all who have in any degree disappointed or displeased them.

When the grace of God takes away an angry, passionate, malicious disposition, it achieves a great wonder.

But then grace itself is a great wonder; and unless this change is wrought in you who need it, you shall not see God, for you cannot enter heaven to go into a passion there.

Depend upon it, unless you lose your bad temper, you will never be amongst the ranks of the glorified.

It must be conquered and removed, if you are to join the happy hosts on high.

"They are without fault before the throne of God;" and so must you be if you are to be numbered amongst that company.

Moreover, those whom God blesses have undergone a transformation as to their conduct with each other.

Righteous dealing is another effect of the change.

Notice the ninth verse of the seventh chapter: "Thus speaketh the Lord of Hosts, saying, Execute true judgment."

This is at all times a necessary admonition, but never more necessary than new, when so many never dream of justice and goodness: in business and in private life many seem to have no care for righteousness.

If the thing will pay, they will rob right and left; and they will only be honest because there is an old saw that saith, "Honesty is the best policy."

But he that us honest out of policy is the most dishonest man in the world.

May God grant us grace to do what is right at all costs!

Christian men, when the grace of God reigns in their souls, would rather be the poorest of the poor than get rich by a single act contrary to uprightness.

O beloved members of this church, be upright in all your transactions, clear and straight in your dealings; for how shall you call yourselves the children of the righteous God if you make gain by unholy transactions?

Another point of transformation lies in the exercise of compassion.

This comes out in that same ninth verse of the seventh chapter: "Shew mercy and compassions every man to his brother."

A great mark of a changed heart is when we become tender, pitiful, and kind.

Some men have very little of the milk of human kindness about them.

You may lay a case before them, and they will wonder why you should come to them; and when you see how little they do, you yourself wonder why you ever came to them.

Many there are whose hearts are locked up in an iron safe, and we cannot find the key!

They have hidden the key themselves; there is no getting at their hearts.

One such said to a minister who preached a sermon, after which there was to be a collection, "You should preach to our hearts, and then you would get some money."

The minister replied, "Yes, I think that is very likely, for that is where you keep your money."

The answer was a very good one.

That is just where a great many persons carry their treasure; but when the grace of God comes, and renews the miser's heart, he begins to be generous, he has pity upon the poor, and compassion for the fallen: he loves to bless those who are round about him, and make them happy.

It is a mark of wonderful transformation in the character of some men, when their heart begins to go a little outside their own ribs, and they can feel for the sorrows of other men.

Notice, next, in the tenth verse of that same seventh chapter, that another mark of God's people is consideration for others: "Oppress not the widow, nor the fatherless, the stranger, nor the poor."

How can he be a child of the all-bountiful Father who would make men work for wages that scarcely keep body and soul together?

How can he be a son of the God of love, who will defraud the poor woman whose fingers must go stitch, stitch, stitch, half through the night, before she can even get enough to give her even relief from her hunger?

God's children will have nothing to do with this kind of thing.

Those who take delight in oppressing the poor, and who make their gain thereby, will be themselves pinched in eternal poverty; they are little likely to enter the golden gates of paradise.

There is many a child of God who has lived here in the depths of poverty; and when he gets to heaven, away from all the struggle and bitterness, is he to see the man who was his oppressor here below, coming into glory to sit side by side with him?

I trow not.

Once more, where there is a work of grace, it leads men to brotherliness of character.

"And let none of you imagine evil against his brother in your heart," saith the Lord in the tenth verse of this seventh chapter; and the same thing is repeated in the seventeenth verse of the eighth chapter.

I should be sure that some women were converted if they left off imagining evil against others in their hearts.

For there are some women--and there are some men, too, I am sorry to say--who cannot think of anybody without thinking evil of them.

There are such dreadful persons about, and sometimes we come across them to our dismay.

They paint the very saints of God black, and there is no getting away from their slander; nay, let a man live the life of Enoch, yet would some of these people report evil against him.

Slander is no sign of a saint; it is the brand of one who is under the dominion of the devil.

"For all these are things that I hate, saith the Lord."

God save us from them all!

Thus I have given you a brief outline of the transformation of grace.

They are great changes because God works them.

When men come to him, and yield themselves up to his divine power, he takes away the heart of stone, and give them a heart of flesh.

He turns their nature to the very reverse of what it was before; then they follow after truth and peace, they love righteousness, and learn kindness, through his good Spirit.

II.

The second point to which I would draw your attention, with reference to the methods of God with his people, is that HE PROMISES TRANSMUTATIONS OF CONDITION to those men in whom are found the transformation of character.

I have already read the eighth chapter through to you; let us go through it again, and pick out just a note or two of the joy and gladness which are here written in full score.

First, jealousy is a tunnel into communing love.

God represents himself, in the second verse, as being very jealous about his people; because he loved them so much, he was jealous for them with great fury.