Who here likes to surf? Boogie board? Body surfing? We are talking about riding the wave. As opposed to trying to stand in against it. Much less swim against it. Far better, far more fun - and exhilarating! - to recognize and do your best to try and ride the wave.
-Two months after Haggai writes, here comes... Zechariah. Zechariah is the longest of the minor prophets (longer even than Daniel, who as we have seen is not normally considered a minor prophet). It has been called, “The most messianic, most truly apocalyptic and eschatological of all the writings of the Old Testament.”
The word, Revelation, is the Greek word, apocalypsis. Uncovering. Eschatology, the study of future (last) things. Zechariah is looking ahead, looking forward to all kinds of great and glorious things. God gives him 8 different visions, in fact, all speaking to different aspects of the great comeback of Israel and of God’s judgment on the nations who afflicted her. There are some 71 citations or allusions to Zechariah in the NT - there is an even greater future for God’s people as one day in the not-too-distant-future Messiah will come. But Zechariah is not only about a glorious future.
-Zechariah in the Hebrew language means, God remembers. God remembers. God sees - and He remembers. What we see in this book is that God IS a God Who remembers. Here He has remembered His people. He has brought them back to the land of Promise, to the land He promised to give to their fathers and descendants after them. He has remembered His promise to bless His people so that they will be a blessing to all the families and nations of the earth.
“He who counts the stars and calls them by their names, is in no danger of forgetting His own children.” -Charles Haddon Spurgeon
[read 1.1-6]
—What the first thing the Lord mentions here? Return to Me. Come back. I was angry with your fathers. They didn’t listen to Me. They didn’t pay attention. And My Word overtook them. My warnings caught up to them, like a storm surge. Like a tidal wave. Like a flood. There was no escaping it. Now I’m telling you, just like I told them, come back to Me, so that I can come back to you. Don’t be like your fathers. Come back now - don’t wait until it is too late.
-And where are they now, your fathers? [1.5]
Zech 1.6
“But did not My words and My statutes, which I commanded My servants the prophets, overtake your fathers? Then they repented and said, ‘As the LORD of hosts purposed to do to us in accordance with our ways and our deeds, so He has dealt with us.’”’”
-As the Lord has purposed, so He has done. As the Lord has purposed, so He has done. So He has done. So will He do. Our God is consummately faithful. He remembers, and He is true to His Word. God’s plans, God’s purposes are unthwartable.
Job 42:2
“I know that You can do all things, and that no purpose of Yours can be thwarted.
-God’s people were going in the wrong direction. They were swimming against the current. Evil ways. An evil direction. Headed away from the Lord. And His Word, His warnings caught up to them. Like a tidal wave. Inevitable.
Psalm 10:4
The wicked, in the haughtiness of his countenance, does not seek Him. All his thoughts are, “There is no God.”
Some try to convince themselves that there is no God. There is no wave. Or you can try to brace yourself and stand against the wave. Try to fight the wave. Try to thwart it.
Zechariah 7.11-14
“But they refused to pay attention and turned a stubborn shoulder and stopped their ears from hearing. They made their hearts like flint so that they could not hear the law and the words which the LORD of hosts had sent by His Spirit through the former prophets; therefore great wrath came from the LORD of hosts. And just as He called and they would not listen, so they called and I would not listen,” says the LORD of hosts; but I scattered them with a storm wind among all the nations whom they have not known. Thus the land is desolated behind them so that no one went back and forth, for they made the pleasant land desolate.”
[Zech 1.12-17]
-The angel asks how long would God continue to withhold His compassion from Judah. And God says, I will return. This is the good news of Zechariah, that there is a new wave of God’s purposes cascading on to the shores of their lives.
-There is a new wave… [Zech 8.1-8]
Zechariah 8:14-15
“For thus says the LORD of hosts, ‘Just as I purposed to do harm to you when your fathers provoked Me to wrath,’ says the LORD of hosts, ‘and I have not relented, so I have again purposed in these days to do good to Jerusalem and to the house of Judah. Do not fear!”
I am with you, God says. I am for you, God says. I have a purpose for you, God says. I have a plan - a good plan. God has a good unthwartable plan for you, for each one of us. Do not be afraid. God’s plan for His people at this point included them rebuilding His house, the temple. And the work had ceased - the people had been intimidated into stopping by those who were standing against God’s purposes.
John G. Paton was a missionary in the New Hebrides Islands. One night, hostile natives surrounded his mission headquarters, intent on burning the Patons out and killing them. John Paton and his wife prayed all during that terror-filled night, for God to deliver them. When daylight came, they were amazed to see the attackers leave. They thanked God for delivering them.
A year later the chief of the tribe was converted to Jesus Christ. Paton, remembering what had happened, asked the chief what had kept him and his men from burning down the house and killing them. The chief replied with a question, “Who were all those men you had with you there?” The missionary answered, “There were no men there; just my wife and I.” The chief argued that they had seen many men standing guard—hundreds of big men in shining garments with drawn swords in their hands. They seemed to circle the mission station so that the natives were afraid to attack. Only then did Paton realize that God had sent His angels to protect them” (Graham, Angels: God’s Secret Agents, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1975, p. 3).
-The thing about waves is that they can tend to come in waves. Multiple breakers, equally awesome and unthwartable. And God’s plan at this point has multiple breakers. He has a good plan for His people in the present, and He has an even better plan for them in the future. He is going to send Messiah, the long-awaited Anointed Seed of Adam Who would crush the serpent’s head. A Suffering Servant Who will remove the iniquity of the land.
Zechariah 3.8-9
‘Now listen, Joshua the high priest, you and your friends who are sitting in front of you — indeed they are men who are a symbol, for behold, I am going to bring in My servant the Branch. For behold, the stone that I have set before Joshua; on one stone are seven eyes. Behold, I will engrave an inscription on it,’ declares the LORD of hosts, ‘and I will remove the iniquity of that land in one day.’
He will take away all our iniquities, all those things we think and do - and fail to do - which separate us from God. All gone. A King, descendant of David, a righteous Branch Whose leaves will be healing for the nations.
Zechariah 9.9
Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout in triumph, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; He is just and endowed with salvation, Humble, and mounted on a donkey, even on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
Of course we recognize that this was Jesus, Palm Sunday, riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, like King David before Him. Endowed with salvation. Zechariah gives us multiple prophetic mentions of Messiah:
Zechariah 11.12-13
I said to them, “If it is good in your sight, give me my wages; but if not, never mind!” So they weighed out thirty shekels of silver as my wages. Then the LORD said to me, “Throw it to the potter, that magnificent price at which I was valued by them.” So I took the thirty shekels of silver and threw them to the potter in the house of the LORD.
(Exact price Judas accepted to betray Jesus)
Zechariah 12:10
“I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication, so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced; and they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over Him like the bitter weeping over a firstborn.
(picture of the Christ crucified on that Roman cross - centuries before the Romans came to the fore with their unique form of extreme execution)
Zechariah 13:7
“Awake, O sword, against My Shepherd, and against the man, My Associate,” declares the LORD of hosts. Strike the Shepherd that the sheep may be scattered.
(the scattering of Jesus' disciples after He was arrested)
-God has a plan for His people. Long before, He had promised Abraham, ‘In your seed, every nation will be blessed.’ That plan is unthwartable. What is God’s plan for you? Do you know that nothing can stop or thwart God’s plans for you, the work that He plans to do in you and through you? What wave has He sent for you to ride? And just as important - how is it that we ride the wave?
Zechariah 4.6
Then he said to me, “This is the word of the LORD to Zerubbabel saying, ‘Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,’ says the LORD of hosts.”
Zechariah 8:9-13 “Thus says the LORD of hosts, ‘Let your hands be strong, you who are listening in these days to these words from the mouth of the prophets, those who spoke in the day that the foundation of the house of the LORD of hosts was laid, to the end that the temple might be built. For before those days there was no wage for man or any wage for animal; and for him who went out or came in there was no peace because of his enemies, and I set all men one against another. But now I will not treat the remnant of this people as in the former days,’ declares the LORD of hosts. For there will be peace for the seed: the vine will yield its fruit, the land will yield its produce and the heavens will give their dew; and I will cause the remnant of this people to inherit all these things. It will come about that just as you were a curse among the nations, O house of Judah and house of Israel, so I will save you that you may become a blessing. Do not fear; let your hands be strong.’"
1Chronicles 29:12
“Both riches and honor come from You, and You rule over all, and in Your hand is power and might; and it lies in Your hand to make great and to strengthen everyone.
Nehemiah’s Prayer
Nehemiah 6.9
For all of them were trying to frighten us, thinking, “They will become discouraged with the work and it will not be done.” But now, O God, strengthen my hands.
-God wants to strengthen your hands for the work He has for you. To ride that wave. The building of God’s house had been halted for 16 years. And now the people got going, they got up off their donkeys and out of their paneled houses and finished the temple in four years. In the strength of God's Spirit and the protection which God provided them. That's how it is with riding a wave. It's doesn't require the same level of self-effort as swimming. The trick is learning to harnass the inherent power and momentum of the wave to propel you.
-God has a wave for each of us to ride - and there is no stopping it. There is no thwarting it. But there is a lingering question of our motivation. God is always concerned about the why as much as the what - if not more so. Look at 7.5-6. When you fasted, was it actually for Me? When you ate [feasted], was it actually for Me? Did you do so because you cared about Me, My honor, My reputation? Because you cared to know My heart, My will? Or were you only in it for yourself? For what you could get out of it?
-God's people, their hearts weren’t ever fully right. And they still aren’t. Yes we have glimpses of pleading and intercession (Daniel/Ezra), but I wonder if these still-prone-to-wander people are being brought back into the land and propped up due more to the incredible mercy and compassion and kindness of the Lord God Who chose them.
-Here’s the thing - comeback is a mindset. It is an ongoing mindset. It is a daily discipline - both a mindset AND a direction. Because when I wake up, I have a choice. I have a choice to orient myself in one of two directions. I can return to the Lord in my heart, I can orient myself in His general direction, humble myself in His sight, recognizing and acknowledging that He alone is worthy and that apart from Him there is really and ultimately nothing I can do (this day or ever) - OR I can go my own way. Do my own thing. In my own strength. Each and every day, when I wake up, this is the question I get to answer - which direction am I facing? In which direction am I heading? Comeback is a daily mindset. Come back to Me again today, says the Lord.
-And it is a kingdom mindset. The kingdom of God. Many nations [2.11]. All who are left will go up to worship the Lord [14.16]. This is the unthwartable purpose of God, to redirect the nations - which He has made! - in His direction. To come back to Him in their hearts. To gather out of every tribe and tongue a remnant of worshippers who return to Him with all their hearts. Returning to Him each day, every day. Each day is a new day of turning back to God in our hearts. Each new day begins anew as if nothing yet has been done for Christ. May the Lord strengthen our hands…
Outline of Zechariah
• Come back to Me [1.1-6]
- Vision 1
- Patrolling Horses find peace [1.7-11]
- Compassion for Jerusalem [1.12-17]
- God heart for Jerusalem [1.18-2.13]
- Vision 2 - Four horns [1.18-21]
- Vision 3 - Measuring line [2.1-5]
- Return to Jerusalem [2.6-13]
- Vision 4 - of (for) Joshua the High Priest [3.1-10]
- Vision 5 - Golden lampstand of Zerubbabel [4.1-14]
- Vision 6 - Flying scroll [5.1-4]
- Vision 7 - Departing ephah [5.5-11]
- Vision 8 - Four chariots [6.1-8]
- Crowning the high priest [6.9-15]
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