Zechariah 1:1-6
A time line for this sermon.
2000 BC God revealed himself to Abraham
1460 BC Exodus
1040 BC David conquered Jerusalem
997-990 BC First Temple built
960 BC Solomon dies
kingdom divided into Judah (2 tribes) and Israel (10 tribes)
Amos 767-753
Isaiah 745-685
722 BC Assyria conquered northern kingdom of Israel
Joel 620
Jeremiah 627-580
586 BC Babylon conquered southern kingdom of Judah
First Temple destroyed
Jews taken into exile in Babylon
Zechariah 520-518
520-515 BC Second Temple built
6 BC Jesus born
70 AD Second Temple destroyed
In order to understand the prophecy of Zechariah, we need a short history lesson and this begins with Abraham.
Of all the peoples in the earth, God chose Abraham to reveal himself. He made a covenant with Abraham and promised (Genesis 22:17–18)
I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, 18 and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.”
From the beginning, the challenge for God was to create a people who followed him. Abraham came from a polytheistic culture, believing in many gods, and God began the slow process of teaching that he was the one and only God, the pre-existing creator God. This is the thread that moves all the way through the Old Testament.
God renewed his promise to Abraham’s son, Isaac, and to his grandson, Jacob. When a famine came, Jacob and his entire household moved to Egypt where Joseph protected and provided for them.
But four hundred years later Joseph and the Pharaoh who knew Joseph were ancient history. The descendants of Abraham, Israel, were working as slaves under the current Pharaoh and God sent Moses to deliver them out of the bondage of Egypt.
God had made a promise to Abraham and God intended to keep the promise. He would bring them to the land he had promised to Abraham. God was still teaching and transforming the descendants of Abraham to believe in one God and to trust him. But time after time after time after time Israel kept putting their trust in the gods of the nations around them.
The deliverance of Israel from Egypt, the Exodus, was a highlight in the life of Israel. This event comes back again and again when the history of Israel is remembered. The Passover Seder, which we celebrate each year here at RIC the Thursday before Easter, remembers God’s act of deliverance in the Exodus.
Israel traveled to Mt. Sinai in the Arabian peninsula and camped out while Moses went to the mountain top to receive the Law from God.
Despite all the demonstrations of God’s power and protection, while Moses was on the mountain top, Israel became fearful that Moses had died and they were without protection. So they had Moses’ brother, Aaron, make a golden calf for them to worship. They reverted to the Egyptian gods they had grown up with. This is the sad story of the Old Testament. Regardless of what God did in the lives of his chosen people, they drifted away and put their trust in false gods.
This continued when they arrived in Canaan and began to conquer the land. Over the years Israel lived in Canaan there was a steady decline in their faithfulness to God. If you looked at a time line from Abraham to the birth of Jesus, the Exodus was a high point followed by a steady decline which the occasional reform was unable to prevent.
Despite the efforts of the prophets, idolatry consistently pulled Israel away from the worship of the one, true God.
God never gave up in working to create a people who worshiped him as the one, true God. And so to combat this idolatry God sent his prophets with message after message, warning them that a judgment was coming.
From Amos on, the prophets spoke a message of doom.
Amos warned of the destruction of Jerusalem.
Amos 2:4–5
This is what the Lord says:
“For three sins of Judah,
even for four, I will not relent.
Because they have rejected the law of the Lord
and have not kept his decrees,
because they have been led astray by false gods,
the gods their ancestors followed,
5 I will send fire on Judah
that will consume the fortresses of Jerusalem.”
And he warned that the end had come for the northern kingdom of Israel.
Amos 3:14–15
14 “On the day I punish Israel for her sins,
I will destroy the altars of Bethel;
the horns of the altar will be cut off
and fall to the ground.
15 I will tear down the winter house
along with the summer house;
the houses adorned with ivory will be destroyed
and the mansions will be demolished,”
declares the Lord.
In 722 BC Samaria, the capitol of the northern kingdom of Israel, was conquered by the Assyrians.
One hundred years later Jeremiah proclaimed the message God had given him that Judah, with the capitol city of Jerusalem, would be conquered by the Babylonians. For this he was declared to be a traitor and was thrown into prison.
Joel had announced the coming doom.
Joel 2:1–2
Blow the trumpet in Zion;
sound the alarm on my holy hill.
Let all who live in the land tremble,
for the day of the Lord is coming.
It is close at hand—
2 a day of darkness and gloom,
a day of clouds and blackness.
Like dawn spreading across the mountains
a large and mighty army comes,
such as never was in ancient times
nor ever will be in ages to come.
And now it came to pass. Amos also had proclaimed this time. (Amos 8:1–2)
This is what the Sovereign Lord showed me: a basket of ripe fruit. 2 “What do you see, Amos?” he asked.
“A basket of ripe fruit,” I answered.
Then the Lord said to me, “The time is ripe for my people Israel; I will spare them no longer.
In 585 BC Jerusalem and the Temple were plundered and destroyed.
This broke the heart of God. The carefully tended vine that God had cared for had gone wild.
Isaiah 5:1–2
I will sing for the one I love
a song about his vineyard:
My loved one had a vineyard
on a fertile hillside.
2 He dug it up and cleared it of stones
and planted it with the choicest vines.
He built a watchtower in it
and cut out a winepress as well.
Then he looked for a crop of good grapes,
but it yielded only bad fruit.
From the time of Abraham on, God had worked patiently with Israel, caring for his chosen people, protecting them, blessing them. He gave them Moses and the law. He gave them kings even though he knew this was not what was best for them. There were occasional revivals when a new king came to power, but God’s chosen people continued to do what they had done at Mt. Sinai when Aaron made a gold calf for them to worship. The people God chose to be his people continually turned to false gods, to idols. They treated God as one more god in their list of gods.
Samaria had been conquered by the Assyrians 136 years earlier but the Ark of the Covenant remained in Jerusalem. Jerusalem was still the heart of the Jews. Samaria had been lost, but that was like losing a foot or a leg. It hurt but it was not completely devastating.
The loss of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple was total devastation. Israel prided itself on being God’s chosen people and despite their infidelity, they trusted that God would protect Jerusalem and the Temple. Even though at times the Temple itself became a center for prostitution and the worship of the gods of Canaan: Baal and El, Asherah and Astarte, Israel trusted that the Temple would stand.
When Jeremiah preached the word God gave him, that Jerusalem would fall to the Babylonians, he was put in prison, thrown into the pit of a well, treated as a traitor to Judah. It was unthinkable that God would allow his Temple to be plundered and destroyed.
So in 586 BC, four hundred years after the Temple had been built, when the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem and plundered and destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple, the Jews were devastated.
Joel had prophecied, (Joel 2:1)
Let all who live in the land tremble,
for the day of the Lord is coming.
For the Jews, this was the day of the Lord. This was the end. The promise made to Abraham had been broken. The dream had been shattered.
Broken in body and spirit, the Jews were marched off to Babylon where we see in Psalm 137 how they felt. In this psalm the Babylonian captors wanted the Jewish musicians to entertain them.
By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept
when we remembered Zion.
2 There on the poplars
we hung our harps,
3 for there our captors asked us for songs,
our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
4 How can we sing the songs of the Lord
while in a foreign land?
5 If I forget you, Jerusalem,
may my right hand forget its skill.
6 May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth
if I do not remember you,
if I do not consider Jerusalem
my highest joy.
7 Remember, Lord, what the Edomites did
on the day Jerusalem fell.
“Tear it down,” they cried,
“tear it down to its foundations!”
8 Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy is the one who repays you
according to what you have done to us.
9 Happy is the one who seizes your infants
and dashes them against the rocks.
This was a bitter, bitter time for the Jews.
For a lifetime, sixty some years, the Jews lived in Babylon. Those who had been born in Jerusalem were now old men and women or had died. The Jews who lived in Babylon were mostly born in Babylon. And these Jews returned from exile to their ruined and broken ancestral home.
Psalm 126 tells us how they felt.
When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,
we were like those who dreamed.
2 Our mouths were filled with laughter,
our tongues with songs of joy.
Then it was said among the nations,
“The Lord has done great things for them.”
3 The Lord has done great things for us,
and we are filled with joy.
4 Restore our fortunes, Lord,
like streams in the Negev.
5 Those who sow with tears
will reap with songs of joy.
6 Those who go out weeping,
carrying seed to sow,
will return with songs of joy,
carrying sheaves with them.
The Jews came to Babylon with bitterness and returned to Jerusalem with joy and hope.
This brings us up to Zechariah and the rebuilding of hope.
Zechariah was most likely a priest whose focus was the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem. He is called a grandson of Iddo who is one of the priests mentioned who came back in the exile. Zechariah was one of those who had been born in Babylon and when he left Babylon for Jerusalem, this was the first time he had ever seen Jerusalem. Zechariah and Haggai were the priests/prophets who supported the rebuilding of the Temple.
The structure of the book of Zechariah is well organized.
1:1-6 a short introduction urging repentance
1:7-6:15 eight visions
7 a message about fasting and justice
8 a message about God’s blessing
9-14 two oracles
Let’s take a look at the introduction.
Zechariah 1:1–6
In the eighth month of the second year of Darius, the word of the Lord came to the prophet Zechariah son of Berekiah, the son of Iddo:
2 “The Lord was very angry with your ancestors. 3 Therefore tell the people: This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘Return to me,’ declares the Lord Almighty, ‘and I will return to you,’ says the Lord Almighty. 4 Do not be like your ancestors, to whom the earlier prophets proclaimed: This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘Turn from your evil ways and your evil practices.’ But they would not listen or pay attention to me, declares the Lord. 5 Where are your ancestors now? And the prophets, do they live forever? 6 But did not my words and my decrees, which I commanded my servants the prophets, overtake your ancestors?
“Then they repented and said, ‘The Lord Almighty has done to us what our ways and practices deserve, just as he determined to do.’ ”
Return to me and I will return to you. Turn from your evil ways.
This is the gospel according to Zechariah. This is the story Jesus told of the prodigal. The son took his eyes off his father and thought only of himself. He shamed his father by asking for his inheritance while his father was still alive and went off to live a wild and decadent life. When his money ran out, his friends left and he was alone, sitting with the pigs, wanting to eat the food he was feeding them.
The son deserved his fate. The son deserved to suffer. But the love of his father extended mercy and grace and when he returned home to repent and asked to be one of his father’s servants, his father ran to him, welcomed him, and threw a party to restore honor and celebrate the return of his son.
This is a parable Jesus told but it is also an Old Testament story because God is the same person in the Old Testament as he is in the New Testament. His love pursues us, gives us second chances, welcomes us home.
In Matthew 18 Jesus taught about how to discipline someone who sins. The person is to be confronted. If he or she refuses to repent, then the person is to be confronted by two or three others in the church. If the person again refuses to repent, the sin of the person is to be made public in the church and expelled from the congregation.
The process is not meant to punish, but to restore the person to the fellowship of the church. When Paul applied this teaching to the church in Corinth who had a man in their church who was living in an incestous relationship. He wrote (1 Corinthians 5:4–5)
So when you are assembled and I am with you in spirit, and the power of our Lord Jesus is present, 5 hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh,, so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord.
The goal was to save this man who was living in sin. And then in a following letter Paul wrote that the person who had been expelled should now be restored to the fellowship. (2 Corinthians 2:6–8)
The punishment inflicted on him by the majority is sufficient. 7 Now instead, you ought to forgive and comfort him, so that he will not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. 8 I urge you, therefore, to reaffirm your love for him.
This is the heart of God that runs through the Bible. Turn from your evil ways. Return to me and I will return to you.
God will not force us to follow him. In Romans 1 Paul begins his letter with the teaching that we all deserve the wrath of God. In talking about the pagan world, he writes: (Romans 1:21–24)
For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.
24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.
He gave them over. He allowed these people he loves, these people he created to be in relationship with himself, to turn away from him and follow the path of destruction they chose. We can walk away from God and pursue idols to worship. We can walk away and pursue what the world has to offer and God will not stop us.
But God does not take his eye off us. He keeps looking down the path, as the father of the prodigal did in Jesus’ parable. And when we return, he runs to welcome us.
This is what God did to the Jews who were taken into exile. And God gave the message to Zechariah to preach that the fall of Jerusalem had been a judgment to bring his chosen people back into relationship with himself.
The ancestors of the Jews who returned to Jerusalem from exile had not listened to God and so they suffered the judgment of God. Now, God told them through Zechariah, don’t be like them. Listen and pay attention to me.
“Then they repented and said, ‘The Lord Almighty has done to us what our ways and practices deserve, just as he determined to do.’ ”
The archeological evidence indicates that the idol worship that was so prevalent before the exile is much reduced after the exile. The Jews who returned learned from the mistakes of their ancestors.
Hope moves through the book of Zechariah. Zechariah does not envision a path without thorns and dangers. Evil is still at work. The battle between good and evil continues.
But Zechariah is a message that in the battle of good and evil, good will prevail.
After Zechariah’s eight visions and the teaching of chapters 7 and 8, Zechariah concludes with a vision of the future. These last six chapters are chapters of struggle and tension. The future will not be easy. There will be victories and defeats. And, it will seem sometimes that evil is going to win. The Good Shepherd is rejected in chapter 11. There is mourning in chapter 12. And then the Good Shepherd is slaughtered in chapter 13.
This foretells the crucifixion and death of Jesus and we know from the gospels about the despair, fear, and hopelessness of the disciples after Jesus died. We focus on this during our Good Friday service in Easter week. But we also know from the gospels the good news of Easter Sunday. From the ashes of defeat Jesus rose victorious over death.
In lesser ways, this is what happens all the time to those who follow Jesus. We stumble and fall. We are discouraged, seemingly without hope, and from the ashes of defeat we see resurrection.
Lesslie Newbigin writes about Jonah who is about to be thrown into the Mediterranean Sea to appease the anger of the god of the storm threatening the lives of all on board the ship.
Jonah is ready to pay for his sin with his life but the conversion of these pagan soldiers by this improbable follower of God has already begun. They work to save Jonah and themselves and they pray to God. But Jonah must be thrown into the sea. The grain of wheat must fall into the ground and die. The followers of Jesus must suffer. The church must lose its life.
But out of death there is resurrection. A penitent and restored Jonah goes to speak God’s word to the pagan world and his obedience is met by an incredible miracle. Nineveh repents.
Jonah was lying in the belly of the whale, lost and defeated but God brought resurrection. Out of the ashes of Jonah’s life, the sailors gave praise to God and the people of Nineveh were spared.
This is the story of followers of Jesus throughout the centuries. We despair, we suffer, but when we turn to God and repent, he brings life out of death, hope out of despair, resurrection out of ashes.
In the commentary we are using for this series of sermons, Joyce Baldwin writes:
This book prepares God’s people for the worst calamity they can ever face, the triumph of evil over good. Even God’s representative dies at the hand of evil men. There is no room in Zechariah’s thinking for glib optimism, but when evil has done its worst the Lord remains King, and will be seen to be King by all the nations.
In lesser or greater ways we fear about the future. We live in a world where nuclear disaster lurks around the corner. The hurricanes/typhoons seem stronger and more dangerous. Despotic leaders inflict suffering on their populations. I could spend the next few hours talking about all the injustice and suffering taking place in the world. It does seem that evil is winning.
In lesser ways we suffer because we do not get permission to study what we want to study in university. Or we do not get the promotion we think we deserve. We discover that someone we thought was a friend is using us for his own self-interests. We discover that someone we love and respect has gotten trapped in sexual or financial sin.
From natural disasters, to national struggles, to personal struggles, it can seem that evil is winning, but hold on. As a famous preacher said, “It’s Friday and Jesus is in the grave, but Sunday’s a comin.”
Return to me and I will return to you. Don’t lose hope. Hold on with hope. Move forward with hope. He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. God is sovereign. God will prevail. Victory is coming. Victory is just around the corner. It’s Friday, but Sunday’s a comin.
We will end with a segment of the sermon by that famous preacher, Bishop S. M. Lockridge.
