Zechariah 2

Intro:

Have you ever heard the admonition “preach to yourself?” It is an important thing for God’s people to learn to do. You don't have to be a preacher that steps into a church pulpit to do this either. You don't have to write out fancy sermons, you don't have to have the oratory skill of Spurgeon or Whitfield. You just have to know the Lord and know His word.

We must be able to do this task. You cant always wait until Sunday to receive the message you need to hear for some difficult time or circumstance you are facing. Even in the good times we need to be reminded to give our thanksgiving to God and hold on to those blessings with an open hand lest we become like Israel of old and allow times of blessing to cause us to loose sight of our need for our Savior.

We must understand the promises and treasures of the truths of God’s word and have them ready in our minds to bring to bear on any number of circumstances that we will face in life.

This is part of the reason for our text today, this third night vision of Zechariah was meant to provide precious truths for the people of God, not just for the moment that they heard them from the prophet but that they might store up these words and their truths and promises in their hearts that a a moments notice as they faced the trials and hardships associated with the task of rebuilding the temple there amongst the pagan nations that surrounded them, as they face at time fierce opposition to the work that God have given them to accomplish, that they could take these words of the prophet and preach them back to themselves.

It is my hope this morning that as we work through this vision and then in our next time together the associated oracle that follows it that you would likewise find some rock solid truths and some glorious promises that you can store in your sermon repository that you can be ready in your own life to take these very same things and preach them to yourself.

Lets take a moment to pray and then we will dive in.

Pray & Read

As We join our Prophet we are now here in his third vision of the night. As we have done with our previous Visions we are going to examine the vision before we take some time and ask what does the vision mean. Our vision this morning is interesting because not only does the profit see a vision but it also seems as though we get an oracle that accompanies the vision which is also meant to be delivered to the people.

And so for today we take up the vision vision. We read here that Zachariah lifts up his eyes and he sees a man with a measuring line in his hand. now we will take some time later to talk about what this measuring line might mean but for now we see that Zachariah sees this man with the measuring line and so as in the other visions he asks the man a question.

Zachariah's question is, “Where are you going?”

One of the things that's difficult with all of these visions is the fact that we're often not given a lot of setting, we're not given a lot of context for where Zachariah might be. Just as in the last vision when Zechariah saw the horns of the altar and we were not given a lot of context, not told he's in a temple, not told he's in a field or on top of a mountain, and so similarly here we're not told that he's near Jerusalem or looking out over the city, all we know is that he sees a man and he asks, “Where are you going?”

It's also interesting here that Zechariah doesn't ask the man what he's going to do as he did with the craftsmen in the previous vision. The reason for this is likely because the measuring line the man was carrying was a well known object this line would have been used to measure out portions of land and large areas it wasn't a ruler it was meant for measuring distances And so it is likely that Zechariah assumed the man was going to measure a place and so the obvious question is what place are you going to measure “where are you going?”

Notice also that, at this point, Zechariah isn't currently being attended by the angel that has followed him through the previous two visions. It seems to be just Zechariah and the man with the measuring line.

And so the man responds:

English Standard Version Chapter 2

And he said to me, “To measure Jerusalem, to see what is its width and what is its length.”

Now we are getting somewhere, the man is headed to Jerusalem! We will come back to the specifics of that measuring in a moment because it is significant but now we at last have Zechariah’s angle enter the vision.

Now it could be that in the vision the man that had answered Zechariah's question has continued on his way and is some distance off, we tend to assume that he is walking down a road or something like that but we aren't given those details but it at first seems from what follows that he has moved on and as he has moved away from Zechariah and that this angel that we have become familiar with comes to Zechariah.

Well, a second angle enters the vision and approaches Zechariah’s guide angle and says:

English Standard Version Chapter 2

Run, say to that young man, ‘Jerusalem shall be inhabited as villages without walls, because of the multitude of people and livestock in it. 5 And I will be to her a wall of fire all around, declares the LORD, and I will be the glory in her midst.’ ”

Who Are These Figures?

Here is where our vision becomes interesting and hard, again we're not given as many details as we might like to have, but what we see is a new angel enters the scene and he instructs Zechariah's vision guide angel to run and give a message to the young man.

Now things are quickly getting tricky for us,hence all the MAYBES, and I will admit that as we get into it here I don't know that I am totally ready to drop my hat into any one particular camp in some of the interpretations that have been proposed for the specifics of this prophecy and so we will review some options but I do think that even with some of the significant differences between the options we can come to a good idea of the central meaning of the promise itself and how it was that this was meant to be an encouragement to Israel.

Firstly, commentators are divided on who the individuals are in this vision. Some propose that the angle who gives orders is actually the Angle of the Lord since he seems to carry authority, others propose that the man with the measuring line is the angel of the Lord because in Ezekiel we seem to see the angel of the Lord figure in chapter 40 with a measuring reed in His hand to measure the temple. Others argue over the significance of the term young man used by the angle. Is this another angle, is it a preincarnate appearance of Christ, is it a vision of a young Hebrew builder?

Another point of disagreement is to whom does the angle run with the message. Many see the angel running to the man with the measuring line but notice that the text doesnt explicitly sday that. Others believe that the angle runs to Zechariah to give him this message about Jerusalem.

Now I think I would probably opt with the last view, a view that is held by the more interpretative maximalist folks but at the end of the day I don't know that we can give a defensive answer.

The Measuring Line

But first lets consider the measuring line in the young mans hands.

This is a unique instrument and I believe is very helpful in understanding what is going on here. This is not the same as a measuring stick or reed. Sticks and reeds would have been used in construction of buildings, this is why the figure in Ezekiel 40 has one for measuring the temple. However, a line was used as we stated earlier to measure larger areas. A line would have been used to measure out, and this is particularly important for us this morning, a line would have been used to measure out the area of ones inheritance and to establish its boundaries.

You might recall this devastating judgement we saw against the rich oppressors in Israel in Micah 2:5

Micah 2:5 ESV

Therefore you will have none to cast the line by lot in the assembly of the Lord.

If you recall this meant that these who were to be judged would not take part in the reapportioning of the land when the exile was completed. They had lost their inheritance and so they would not be able to cast a lot and have a line stretched over the land for them again.

And so this man that has this measuring line here in Zechariah 2 is headed out we might gather, not to measure out the city of Jerusalem for the purpose of rebuilding the temple or any building in particular but rather to begin the process of establishing the inheritance of the peoples again.

Now the biggest question that seems to puzzle interpreters is understanding the purpose for which the second angle is sent to the man with the line. There are those who believe that this angle was sent to correct the man, they see the thrust of the message give to him:

English Standard Version Chapter 2

Jerusalem shall be inhabited as villages without walls, because of the multitude of people and livestock in it. 5

They read that and they think that the young man is being corrected. They believe that he should not have been going to measure the city because in actuality the measuring line was going to be an insufficient tool to do this task.

One commentator illustrates this view well:

Haggai, Zechariah & Malachi Comment

This vision shows that the young man’s conception of the restored Jerusalem is too small and serves to challenge readers and hearers of the book about their own conceptions.

There are those however who do not see this message as corrective for the man with the line but rather as a message for Zechariah and thus for the people.

Those who believe that this angel is told to run to Zechariah hold that the man with the measuring line knew exactly what he was doing. Again, a measuring line like this wasn't necessarily the tool that one would use for this type of task to measure out a city, it was for larger more open areas and so this line of reasoning says that this angle is told to run to Zechariah with this message because this would have been confusing to hear that someone was going to use this tool to measure a city and so this angel is told to run to Zechariah and explain to him why this was the right tool for the job.

Now one compelling thing for me in this is that we know that at this point in time Zechariah was indeed a young man. Notice that Zechariah doesn't describe the man originally as a young man just as a man with a measuring line but now the angel is told to run to the young man. The one in this story that we know for sure is a young man is Zechariah and it seems that including that detail is perhaps to help us know to whom the angle was told to run.

Now again, this disagreement over who the specific figures are int he vision and to whom the angel is told to run don't really ultimately make much of a difference to the interpretation of the message that is delivered.

We can see that the message is important because of the instruction to run. Nearly all commentators agree that the command to run is given not to highlight the distance from one person to another but to highlight the importance of the message to be delivered.

The message again is:

English Standard Version Chapter 2

‘Jerusalem shall be inhabited as villages without walls, because of the multitude of people and livestock in it. 5 And I will be to her a wall of fire all around, declares the LORD, and I will be the glory in her midst.’ ”

Now for today we are just going to go through verse 5 and save the oracle that follows for our next time together. I knew that if we tried to bite off the whole thing this morning we would have gone far too long and so we will stop here but there are a few important things that we need to see promised in this message that I want us to end on this morning. Keep in mind as we do that none of these rely on the identities of the people in the vision, the message stands on its own regardless of which line of reasoning you follow to this point.

3 Promises

Now there are three key things promised in this declaration given to the angel to run and declare.

We see the size of the city, we see the security of the city, and we see the presence of God in the city.

First we see the size. This is really the main reason for the vision coming as it does with this measuring line. God is showing the people the expanse of His what he is doing.

There are two key indicators for this. First we read that Jerusalem will be inhabited as villages without walls. Now this does seem to tie into the next promise about protection but it also shows us the expanse of the population of the city. Most walled cities were fixed structures. You could add to the walls and you could build up but there was a limit to how many people you could put in a city. Villages on the other hand could spread out. As people moved in the village would continue to expand. Think of the suburban sprawl that we often see today as populated areas grown and expand to immense size.

We see also that this area will be vastly populated. You wont be able to wall in the city because of the multitudes of people that will be living there and the implication I think is that it continues to grow so that building a wall is almost impractical. We will see added to this in the oracle that follows the promise again of the nations joining themselves to the Lord which will speak directly to this vast number of inhabitants.

These people also have livestock. This isn't a vast city full of poor beggars this is a people who have an abundance of livestock. Their needs are being met they are blessed.

Can you imagine how this promise must have sounded to the people now as they toiled away in the dusty rubble of the city, a small and insignificant number of people who seem to be entirely at the whims of much larger imperial powers surrounding them?

These people are to be encouraged, the work that they are doing is connected to a much larger work that God is preparing to do! (We ought to remember this as we carry on in our own obedience, our small acts of daily obedience to God are always intricately connected in His providence to the great world spanning plans that He is accomplishing!)

But now the question that follows is, if the city has no wall how is the city to be protected?

The answer:

English Standard Version Chapter 2

And I will be to her a wall of fire all around, declares the LORD,

This draws for a wide pool of OT imagery of God protecting His people with fire. We read in Genesis that God protected the garden, His sacred place from entrance by Adam’s fallen sons with a flaming sword. We read of God separating the Egyptian army from the Israelites at the red sea with the pillar of fire. We read of Elisha praying that the eyes of his servant be open to see the vast army of fiery chariots that stood between them and the Syrian army. So here, God declares that He will be the fiery guard around His people as they come into His city.

We just learned this past week about God’s omnipresence and that ties in well here as we consider the nature of this city now and that the true Jerusalem, representative of God’s people throughout the earth is a vast number that you couldn't possibly put a wall around but none the less God is able because of His omnipresence to be a wall to his people wherever they may be found.

That’s jumping the gun a little bit but we will have to come back to that next time as we take up the oracle because we will have to wrestle with the fact that Nehemiah did in fact come and in obedience to God build a wall around Jerusalem! That event will have a great bearing on how we seek to understand the fulfillment of this vision.

Finally though we see that in similar language to that of the filling of the tabernacle and the temple God promises to be a glory in the midst of the city. We will see in the oracle that follows somewhat cryptic language of God’s glory going out to the nations, a passage that I will argue talks about God’s going with His remnant into exile but here we find the promise that God’s glory is going to again dwell in the midst of His people, in the midst of their city! This message of God’s glory returning to dwell in the midst of the city is going to connect well with the exodus language we are going to study later and remember that when God dwells in the midst of a people like this, just as He had done in the exodus, it is not merely to bring some kind of material blessing to the people, its not even primarily about their protection, it is about making Himself manifest and available to them that they might do what He created them to do, to worship Him! Worship, these things always come around to the right and proper worship of God!

Closing:

Now as we close this morning we need to know that we will come back and hopefully answer some questions we have left open in our next time together as we take up the oracle that accompanies this vision. However I want to just note one last thing.

If as I have said that I lean towards, that the man with the measuring line wasn't crazy, didn't need corrected and knew exactly what his job was then we can draw a very reassuring and comforting conclusion from that.

Jake sent me what he said about measuring lines earlier in Revelation and its helpful here:

“The measuring is meant to divide those who will be protected from calamity from those who will not, to mark out those who are true worshipers of God from those who are not. While Jerusalem and her temple will be destroyed we’re meant to understand that the true worshipers of God will escape the destruction, that the Christians will be protected.”

While this text isn't speaking specifically about judgement it is speaking about protection and if we view the man with the measuring line as understanding what he was going to do and taking with him the right tool to measure out a very large area we can draw out the truth that God knows full well the extent of His people, their dwelling, and is fully able to measure them so that He can be a wall of protection around them and can establish His presence in their midst!

The God of Zechariah’s vision, the same God that has saved us by delivering us from our sin and making us His people and is building us together into His living temple and establishing His Kingdom through us in the midst of a wicked world is a God who knows all, sees all, and has all the power to bring about and accomplish all of His purposes that He has for His people.

This message would have been of great encouragement as we said for these people here in this dusty corner of the world toiling away at a seemingly impossible task against seemingly impossible odds and we ought, to go back to where we started this morning, we ought to cash these truths and promises abut God in our hearts and minds so that we can often bring them to bear in our own lives as we face nearly the same sort of situation in our day!