Introduction to Zechariah

Intro

Well today we are going to start off into Zechariah! Zechariah has been described by some as the hardest book in the Bible to understand. Its honestly a little bit intimidating to take on this task and there may well be times when we come across a passage where I have to give options or just say that we just don't know but overall I think we can work our way through this book and grow in our understanding of who God is an be encouraged as we see Him ruling over history as, as the old hymn says, the Potentate of Time and the Lord of Years.

As we approach this book today we are just going to go over the background information needed to begin into the book. As we work through this book you will see as we have seen in Revelation, a lot of apocalyptic language and that is no accident, it is very likely that John drew on much of the imagery in Zechariah and that what we find in Revelation as Jake has worked through it is brought to us first in Zechariah. This means that it is going to take some work on our part to seek to understand the symbolism and imagery but I am appreciative of Jake having done much of the heavy lifting as of now to help us begin to learn to see and read this type of literature rightly apart from some of the errors that we find in our day with folks that miss the point of these passages because of a failure to rightly read the symbolic language and let it be symbolic.

It is helpful that we have had the time to work our way through Haggai. As we saw from the passages that Jake just read to us these two prophets worked together with Zerubbable and Jeshua to lead Israel to complete the task of building the temple. In fact as we will see in Zechariah, he prophecies that this work will indeed be finished by these men!

And so we ought to be sure to pick up all that we learned through Haggai and especially the framework that we came to for understanding these post exilic prophets and use them now as we begin into Zechariah. The key then will be to see that what takes place here is really the preparation for the Messiah, there is certainly an aspect of calling these people to faithfulness and obedience and building the temple was certainly required for that and for their own worship but the reality that stands behind many of these prophecies is indeed the coming of the Messiah and many of the things we find here will either foreshadow Him or explicitly declare His coming.

One other thing that I will say here at the outset is that I had wanted to spend some time in today’s message also branching out to the book of Daniel as Daniels prophecies also provide us with some important information about the events that God tells His people will come to pass in the period between the destruction of the Temple and the coming of Christ. However we aren't going to be able to get there today and so I might just encourage you if you haven't already done so to first read the book of Zechariah and then to also take some time to read through Daniel, especially chapters 7-12. We will go there in future messages as we work out what exactly these events are that Zechariah prophecies and how it is that they worked their way out in history.

For now though lets take a moment to pray and jump into the setting and historical context for this book.

PRAY

Now the first thing that we need to see is the historical setting. Much of this will be familiar from Haggai because the times are exactly the same.

You will remember that in… what year? What was the year that Jerusalem fell and the temple was destroyed? 587 BC!!

But you remember also that God had told the people that this exile would only last 70 years and so at the appointed time we read in 2 Chronicles that:

English Standard Version Chapter 36

22 Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and also put it in writing: 23 “Thus says Cyrus king of Persia, ‘The LORD, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever is among you of all his people, may the LORD his God be with him. Let him go up.’ ”

We also read in Ezra that when this proclamation was issued:

English Standard Version Chapter 1

5 Then rose up the heads of the fathers’ houses of Judah and Benjamin, and the priests and the Levites, everyone whose spirit God had stirred to go up to rebuild the house of the LORD that is in Jerusalem. 6 And all who were about them aided them with vessels of silver, with gold, with goods, with beasts, and with costly wares, besides all that was freely offered. 7 Cyrus the king also brought out the vessels of the house of the LORD that Nebuchadnezzar had carried away from Jerusalem and placed in the house of his gods. 8 Cyrus king of Persia brought these out in the charge of Mithredath the treasurer, who counted them out to Sheshbazzar the prince of Judah. 9 And this was the number of them: 30 basins of gold, 1,000 basins of silver, 29 censers, 10 30 bowls of gold, 410 bowls of silver, and 1,000 other vessels; 11 all the vessels of gold and of silver were 5,400. All these did Sheshbazzar bring up, when the exiles were brought up from Babylonia to Jerusalem.

Sheshbazzar is Zerubbable and so we see that he leads a number of the people back to the land of Judah along with the utensils for the temple.

It is important to note again here that though there are commentators that argue that Cyrus did this because he was a faithful king, and I certainly hope that maybe he had come to trust in the God of Israel, but that there is more evidence for this being part of his wider political philosophy to consolidate power and prevent the peoples who had been led exile by Babylon from revolting against him as their new Persian king.

Now as you will remember the people built the alter of the Lord to much fanfare but then because of opposition they stopped the work on the temple and through that time we find several new kings rise to the throne until we get to the Darius of Haggai and Zechariah.

English Standard Version Chapter 1

1 In the eighth month, in the second year of Darius, the word of the LORD came to the prophet Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, son of Iddo,

Those time markers will also sound familiar and we will take them up in a moment but you'll notice right off the bat that these prophecies of Zechariah run right alongside of those from Micah and so they are going to function in very similar way, to encourage the people of God to be about the work of completing the construction of the Temple of God.

Zechariah

But now that we have rehearsed the historical setting a bit we need to ask who was Zechariah?

This is a bit more interesting of a question than the question who was Haggai. We get zero biographical info about Haggai but that is not the same here with Zechariah.

We see here in verse 1 that he is:

English Standard Version Chapter 1

Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, son of Iddo,

And so we have a bit of a lineage and this lineage is going to help us get a good deal of info on this man from the historical account of Nehemiah. In Nehemiah 12:1-7 we read of the priests that first came up out of the exile with Zerubbable:

Nehemiah 12:1–7 ESV

These are the priests and the Levites who came up with Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Jeshua: Seraiah, Jeremiah, Ezra, Amariah, Malluch, Hattush, Shecaniah, Rehum, Meremoth, Iddo, Ginnethoi, Abijah, Mijamin, Maadiah, Bilgah, Shemaiah, Joiarib, Jedaiah, Sallu, Amok, Hilkiah, Jedaiah. These were the chiefs of the priests and of their brothers in the days of Jeshua.

22 men and in there we see Iddo.

We read that Iddo was one of the chiefs of the priests.

Now this idea of being a chief of the priests goes back to David in 1 Chronicles 24 where we read:

English Standard Version Chapter 24

24 The divisions of the sons of Aaron were these. The sons of Aaron: Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar. 2 But Nadab and Abihu died before their father and had no children, so Eleazar and Ithamar became the priests. 3 With the help of Zadok of the sons of Eleazar, and Ahimelech of the sons of Ithamar, David organized them according to the appointed duties in their service. 4 Since more chief men were found among the sons of Eleazar than among the sons of Ithamar, they organized them under sixteen heads of fathers’ houses of the sons of Eleazar, and eight of the sons of Ithamar. 5

And so David had divided them into 24 groups and these groups took turns serving in the Temple and while we only see, I believe, 22 names there in the list of returned exiles it is likely that these were what was left of the heads of these lines that were originally set up by David and so Iddo the likely grandfather of Zechariah was of this chief priestly descent.

Now it is not likely that these chief priests were the same as the high priest. That job has gone to Jeshua for the time being and is passed from father to son in the line of Aaron but the chiefs were heads over all of the other work done in the temple.

The best example of this is Zechariah in the NT, in Luke we read that:

English Standard Version Chapter 1

8 Now while he was serving as priest before God when his division was on duty, 9 according to the custom of the priesthood, he was chosen by lot to enter the temple of the Lord and burn incense.

So this Zechariah was a member of one of these groups of priests who served in the temple.

Well it is likely that our Zechariah was a rather young man and we can gather this from a prophecy in chapter 2 where he is specifically called a young man but also from the fact that it appears that later in life Zechariah takes his grandfathers place in temple service. We read if we continued on there in Nehemiah 12 that when Joshua died that his son took over and:

English Standard Version Chapter 12

12 And in the days of Joiakim were priests, heads of fathers’ houses: of Seraiah, Meraiah; of Jeremiah, Hananiah; 13 of Ezra, Meshullam; of Amariah, Jehohanan; 14 of Malluchi, Jonathan; of Shebaniah, Joseph; 15 of Harim, Adna; of Meraioth, Helkai; 16 of Iddo, Zechariah;

And so after Iddo serves under Joshua then his grandson Zechariah serves under Joshua’s son Joiakim. Now there is some speculation as to what happens to Berechiah, Zechariah’s father. We don't know for sure but it is very likely that he died and was unable as a result to take his place as a chief of priests and so his son does so in his stead. This would not have been a stretch since Zechariah had served as such a productive prophet in his younger years for him to step into the priestly role. And this is likely why in some places we read of Barachiah, such as is the case in Zechariah where Zechariah is a young man and his father is still living and later in life at times we simply read of Zechariah the son of Iddo. Son of simply meas descendant of and is not always a direct one generational gap.

One Question

Now the biggest question posed by the lineage of Zechariah is actually caused by the translation of Jesus in Matthew 23 where we read of a Zechariah:

English Standard Version Chapter 23

35 so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar.

Now if you read the parallel account in Luke we don't get any lineage information and if you have a cross reference mark in your bible it is likely that it takes you from Mathew to 2 Chronicles 24 where we do indeed read of the death of a Zechariah who is indeed killed in the courts of the temple but this is Zechariah the son of Jehoiada.

Now this question is not an easy one to resolve and there are a number of possible reasons for this in the text of Matthew with none of them being that Jesus was wrong, of course He could not have been and it also doesn't mean our text is corrupted no it is likely that there was indeed similar to the Zechariah from our text a father named Barachiah that similarly never rose to the position of a chief priest or there was some confusion amongst translators as Zechariah is quite a common name, but what is important for us is to realize that our Zechariah here is not the Zechariah of Matthew!

Our Zechariah was not martyred. That would change the entire tenor of our book. There is actually external evidence that our Zechariah live a good long life. While we will find that by the time we get to Malachi there are problems in the priesthood Israel was not so far gone from God during the life of our Zechariah that he was murdered in the temple that he had helped to build!

Timeline of Prophecies:

Now as we move on we also need top briefly see a timeline of the prophecies of Haggai and Zechariah.

Now Haggai comes first:

English Standard Version Chapter 1

1 In the second year of Darius the king, in the sixth month, on the first day of the month,

English Standard Version Chapter 2

2 In the seventh month, on the twenty-first day of the month, the word of the LORD came by the hand of Haggai the prophet

Zechariah’s first word

English Standard Version Chapter 1

1 In the eighth month, in the second year of Darius, the word of the LORD came to the prophet Zechariah

Haggai’s last vision

English Standard Version Chapter 2

10 On the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, in the second year of Darius,

Zechariah’s night vision:

English Standard Version Chapter 1

7 On the twenty-fourth day of the eleventh month, which is the month of Shebat, in the second year of Darius,

Zechariah’s last vision:

English Standard Version Chapter 7

7 In the fourth year of King Darius, the word of the LORD came to Zechariah on the fourth day of the ninth month, which is Chislev.

So we see that We get two messages from Haggai to urge the start of the building and to encourage the people in that work and then we get a word from Zechariah that will be ment to motivate them to do that work with a purity of heart which is follow then by Haggai who comes with a tremendous message that:

English Standard Version Chapter 2

Consider from this day onward, from the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month. Since the day that the foundation of the LORD’s temple was laid, consider: 19 Is the seed yet in the barn? Indeed, the vine, the fig tree, the pomegranate, and the olive tree have yielded nothing. But from this day on I will bless you.”

God was going to bless them, they had set their hearts right and God was going to complete the work and we will find then that much of the night visions of Zechariah will also reinforce that simple and yet wonderful point made by Haggai. Zechariah will build in these people and in us an anticipation to see the work of God completed!

Outline:

Now not much more for today but just a brief outline of the book:

Zechariah opens with one initial prophecy that is given as a call to return to the Lord to have their hearts right before their God, this will be the first prophecy we work through but this is immediately followed by Zechariah’s “night visions” which are 8 visions given to Zechariah in one night and which form the bulk of the difficult material from this book. This is followed then by several other prophecies which speak of both blessing and judgement as God brings his plans to fruition across history. These are at times sweeping promises and prophecies and will pose their own challenges.

As far as minor prophets go it is a long book and so we will develop those in more depth as we work through them but you can divide the book there in the middle of Chapter 6 basically between the night visions and the rest of his prophecies.

Purpose

Now as we close lets briefly discuss the purpose of the book. We will of course develop this far more in the coming months but this is first off, a book, grounded in the language, imagery, and worship of the temple. Zechariah was a priest and so we will see, especially in the visions but also else ware a great focus on temple worship and imagery. Like Haggai we will thus be reminded of the centrality and importance of the Temple even as we see Zechariah also point us forward to our very day as we are being built up together into the living Temple of God in Christ Jesus which was always what the old temple of stone pointed toward!

This book as such is distinctly messianic and it plays an especially important role in both Matthew and Revelation and so we will see plenty of ways that these things dovetail with things that Jake has preached and will preach on!

Closing

What I have been constantly reminded about as we study to understand these prophecies and how they have worked out through time: God has always been marshaling all of the forces of history to bring about his purposes

Acts 2 and 4

English Standard Version Chapter 2

23 this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men

English Standard Version Chapter 4

23 When they were released, they went to their friends and reported what the chief priests and the elders had said to them. 24 And when they heard it, they lifted their voices together to God and said, “Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them, 25 who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit,

“ ‘Why did the Gentiles rage,

and the peoples plot in vain?

26  The kings of the earth set themselves,

and the rulers were gathered together,

against the Lord and against his Anointed’—

27 for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, 28 to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.

God isn't surprised, God isn't taken off guard, God has a predetermined plan that He has promised will be accomplished throughout all of the ages of history and He wields the forces of peoples and nations all in service to His plans and His purposes.

As we step back this morning and look at some of this broad sweeping background for this book that is perhaps the most encouraging and comforting thing for me, simply to be reminded that God has a plan and a purpose and nothing is going to thwart that plan and purpose and that if we have been joined to Christ through faith and have been made a living stone in that new temple through the blood of Jesus Christ then we can have utter peace and security in any circumstance because we can trust utterly in the promise of God that:

English Standard Version Chapter 8

28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.