This post is Day 3 in a series of studies about “Truth”. I strongly suggest you begin with the introduction to this study, please click here to read it.

Feel free to comment below with your own thoughts about each verse and how you will be acting on each thought. Also, if you haven’t yet signed up to receive the notifications of new studies, you can do that today. (The form is at the bottom of the page).

Truth – Day 3

The Jewish people, in all their desert wanderings, had forgotten what it meant to live in one place. Or have regular church in a temple, be part of a static community. For generations they had been living on the move! Prophets called for the temple of God to be rebuilt.

Zechariah 8:16

These are the things you are to do: Speak the truth to each other, and render true and sound judgment in your courts.

The Thought

This is good advice from the Lord speaking to Zechariah. He was a priest in Jerusalem after the return of the exiles to their holy city.

The Jewish people, in all their desert wanderings, had forgotten what it meant to live in one place. Or have regular “church” in a temple, and be part of a static community. For generations they had been living “on the move”!

Zechariah and Haggai were both Old Testament prophets who called for God’s temple to be rebuilt, and for The Sovereign Lord to be given once more His rightful place in their society.

Today’s verse is one of those very specific instructions from God, and we can imagine most parents saying to their children Speak the truth to each other.

For many of us it seems very normal, and we find it hard to imagine that God had to give this instruction to His people. But they had lived among “the nations” and wandered for so long that basic rules had to be given again.

At the end of this chapter, Zechariah reports that people will encourage each other to go to the temple (v21). And later still it declares that other nations will have a real desire to go to the temple because we have heard that God is with you!! (v23).

That is the way revival works!

Action

Read the encouraging chapter of Zechariah 8 today and imagine these things in a more modern setting. Pray for those days to return, and that your neighbours and colleagues, family and friends will all seek The Truth and ask to go to meetings with you because they have heard that God is with you!

For a full list of online studies available on this site, please click here.

If there is a subject you would like to see on this site, please use the comment section below or drop us an email (there’s a link at the very top of the page). We can’t promise to cover them all, and our studies are usually prepared a month or two in advance, so please be patient.

For a full list of physical resources available through this site, please click here.