Zechariah in a Nutshell
One Off • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
0 ratings
· 1 viewNotes
Transcript
Main texts: Zechariah 1:1–6 and 9:9–12 (NIV)
Introduction: a book worth the walk
Introduction: a book worth the walk
This afternoon we do something a little different.
We have just finished our journey through Acts, and this week,
before we begin our Summer Psalms,
We’re going to get a bird eye view of the book we’;ve been going through in the mornings — Zechariah.
Think of this as standing on a hill and looking out over the whole country before you go down and perhaps walk through it yourself - as you read Zechariah over the summer.
I suspect that for many of us Zechariah is one of those books we skate over
— near the back of the Old Testament, full of strange visions of horses and lampstands and flying scrolls,
and we are not quite sure what to do with it.
But I want to persuade you this afternoon that Zechariah is one of the most Christ-filled books in the whole Old Testament.
The Gospel writers reached for it again and again to explain what was happening at the cross.
SO, If you want to understand Good Friday and Palm Sunday, Christ’s ascension, and even his future return, you need Zechariah.
So today, we’ll look at three things:
1 - the setting the book was written for
2 - the shape of the book as a whole
3 - the golden thread that runs right through it
— the thread that leads straight to Christ.
And we will hang the whole tour on two passages: the opening call in chapter 1, and the coming King in chapter 9.
1. The setting: a discouraged people and a word that will not fail (1:1–6)
1. The setting: a discouraged people and a word that will not fail (1:1–6)
Zechariah preached in the year 520 BC.
70 years earlier, the Israelites were attacked and conquered by the babylonians and later the Assyrians
and majorativly taken away into captivity in those surrounding northern nations.
Now though, The exile is over.
A remnant has been given permission to trickle back from captivity to a fairly desimated Jerusalem.
The temple (which then represtented God’s prescence and dwelling with his people)
lies half-finished, its foundations laid and then abandoned.
The people are few, poor, surrounded by enemies, and — most of all — discouraged.
They had expected the return from exile to feel like a new exodus, a blaze of glory.
Instead it feels small and slow and disappointing.
Zechariah is preaching alongside the prophet Haggai,
Haggai primarily preaching to get them to pick up their tools and finish the house of God,
and, Zechariah, primarily wants, to lift up their eyes and see what God is really doing.
And the very first thing God says to them — the doorway into the whole book — is this, in chapter 1, verse
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.
That is the heartbeat of Zechariah.
Before a single vision, before any promise of a king, comes a call to come home to God.
And notice the shape of it.
"Return to me, and I will return to you."
God is not standing with folded arms waiting to be won over. He is the one calling.
The turning of his people is met by the turning of their God toward them.
This is the covenant God, ever taking the initiative, ever moving toward his people.
And that call is not just for them.
Maybe you've drifted.
The fire has gone cool — prayer dried up, the Bible closed, church a habit more than a love.
Hear the word of your God: Return to me.
Not "pull yourself together." Not "try harder." Return.
Turn back from whatever you've turned to instead of him.
For the moment you turn, you find he is already turning to you.
Not the reluctant God you fear, but the Father who runs to the returning son.
And if you've never come home at all — this is your invitation too. Come.
And then Zechariah lays it straight.
In verses 4 to 6 he points to the graves.
"Where are your ancestors now?" he asks.
"And the prophets, do they live forever?"
The generations that ignored the earlier prophets is dead and gone.
Their ignorance of God didn’t do them much good:
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.” ’
The people died. The prophets died.
But the word of God did not die.
It overtook them.
It caught up with them and did exactly what it said it would do.
Zechariah, God, is planting right at the front door of his book a lesson for all of us.
The word of God always lands.
Generations rise and fall, empires come and go,
but not one word of God falls to the ground.
That is the ground under everything that follows.
When Zechariah goes on to promise extraordinary things
— a coming King,
a pierced Shepherd,
a fountain for sin,
the Lord reigning over all the earth —
you can bank on every word.
Because the God who says it is the God whose word "overtakes."
If it overtook them in judgment,
it will overtake us too in judgement,
We must do the 2 things they did then.
1- Admit our sin and repent or face judgment
2 - trust God’s Word and promises fully.
So the first thing to take home from Zechariah is this:
God says
come home to me,
repent
Trust me, my word never fails.
2. The shape: two halves, one hope
2. The shape: two halves, one hope
The whole book of Zech falls neatly into two halves, and they feel quite different.
Chapters 1 to 8 are mostly a series of eight night visions,
along with some sermons and questions.
They are dated, tied to real months and years in the reign of Darius.
And they are full of vivid pictures:
horsemen patrolling the earth;
a man with a measuring line going out to measure a Jerusalem so full it should need huge walls of protection, but will need no walls,
because — `God says
And I myself will be a wall of fire around it,” declares the Lord, “and I will be its glory within.”
There is a filthy high priest named Joshua, stripped of his grubby clothes and dressed in clean ones,
a picture of a people's guilt taken away in a single day.
There is a golden lampstand fed by two olive trees,
and the famous word that comes with it,
“Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,” says the Lord Almighty.
There is a flying scroll and an evil woman in a basket — showing evil will be carried out of the land.
The whole first half says to a discouraged people:
God is at work,
God is cleansing you,
God will finish what he started,
and he will do it by his Spirit, not by your strength.
And it climaxes in chapter 8 with some of the most warm and homely promises in the prophets
— old men and women sitting in the streets of Jerusalem again,
children playing,
and the nations streaming in.
This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘In those days ten people from all languages and nations will take firm hold of one Jew by the hem of his robe and say, “Let us go with you, because we have heard that God is with you.” ’
In other words, The little disappointing remnant is going to become the magnet that draws the world.
Then at chapter 9 the book changes gear.
Chapters 9 to 14 are two great "burdens" or oracles, and they lift their eyes from the building site to the far horizon.
The visions give way to sweeping prophecy of the ‘that day’
The last days - from Jesus born to Jesus returning.
So much of it is about the church era - today.
— a coming King,
a rejected Shepherd,
a pierced one,
a cleansing fountain,
a final day when the Lord is King over all the earth.
This is the half the Gospel writers mined to understand the life of Jesus.
If the first half says God is with you now, in the small and the slow,
the second half says and here is where it is all heading — here is your King - Look, Behold!
Two halves, then.
Visions of God at work in the present; prophecies of the King who is coming.
And running through both, binding them into one book, is a single golden thread.
a thread that leads to Christ.
3. The golden thread: the King who is coming (9:9–12)
3. The golden thread: the King who is coming (9:9–12)
Come to our second main text, chapter 9, verses 9 to 12.
Here the thread becomes a rope you cannot miss.
Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
You know where you have heard that before.
Matthew and John both quote it, word for word, on the day we call Palm Sunday,
as Jesus rides into Jerusalem.
"See, your king comes to you... on a colt, the foal of a donkey."
Five hundred years before it happened, Zechariah described the Triumphal Entry.
Here is a King — but not on a warhorse.
He comes "lowly," humble, on a borrowed donkey.
I will take away the chariots from Ephraim and the war-horses from Jerusalem, and the battle-bow will be broken. He will proclaim peace to the nations. His rule will extend from sea to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth.
This King does not conquer by killing his enemies; he conquers by making peace with them. "His rule will extend from sea to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth."
A gentle King with a global throne.
And then v11-12 which are pure gospel:
As for you, because of the blood of my covenant with you, I will free your prisoners from the waterless pit. Return to your fortress, you prisoners of hope; even now I announce that I will restore twice as much to you.
Two phrases to remeber today from that verse.
First, "the blood of my covenant" — the very words Jesus takes on his own lips in the upper room over the cup:
"This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many" (Matthew 26:28).
The prisoners are set free by covenant blood — by the blood of Christ.
And secondly, remember this name for the people of God: "prisoners of hope."
We are Not prisoners of despair.
Prisoners still, in a hard and sinful world
— but we are freed from our prison of sin
and chained to a hope that cannot fail,
because it rests on the blood of the covenant.
But This thread of the coming king is not just in chapter 9.
He has already been introduced earlier, and he is unfolded further as the book goes on.
This is what God is really all about!
Back in chapter 3, verse 8, and again in chapter 6, verse 12, God promises
"my servant, the Branch" —
Tell him this is what the Lord Almighty says: “Here is the man whose name is the Branch, and he will branch out from his place and build the temple of the Lord.
And chapter 6, verse 13 says something no ordinary man could be:
It is he who will build the temple of the Lord, and he will be clothed with majesty and will sit and rule on his throne. And he will be a priest on his throne. And there will be harmony between the two.”
— a King and a Priest in one person, who would enable the dwelling of God with His people.
the two offices that God forbid be joined in the OT because the sinfulness of man would corrupt them in one person
- joined.
There is only one man in whom the crown and the priesthood could meet without sin, and his name is Jesus.
A priest to atone for sin (a blood covenant) and a King to rule His people. (Hope)
But Zechariah doesn’t stop with general prophesy about Jesus - he gets specific.
As if we need more eveidence of Jesus being the pormised saviour King from God.
In chapter 11 the ‘Shepherd of God's people’ is rejected by people and valued at a slave's price
I told them, ‘If you think it best, give me my pay; but if not, keep it.’ So they paid me thirty pieces of silver. And the Lord said to me, ‘Throw it to the potter’—the handsome price at which they valued me! So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them to the potter at the house of the Lord.
Thirty pieces of silver, thrown down in the temple, going to a potter'.
When Judas betrayed Jesus, what price was he paid?
30 pieces of silver.
And what did he do with the money?
So guilt stricken was he,
that he took the money and gave it back to the Lord’s temple before he went a killed himself.
But the leaders didn’t want blood money in the temple, so
‘They took the thirty pieces of silver, the price set on [JESUS} him by the people of Israel, and they used them to buy the potter’s field, as the Lord commanded me.’
Mic drop moment!
But there is more:
Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered, and I will turn my hand against the little ones.
Jesus quotes this of himself on the night he was betrayed
— "this very night you will all fall away on account of me, for it is written: 'I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered'" (Matthew 26:31). .
The Shepherd struck; the sheep scattered;
and it all written down five centuries before in Zechariah.
And then the mountain-top of the thread, 10b
‘They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son.
John stood beneath the cross,
watched the soldier's spear go in to Jesus’ side, and wrote in John 19: 37
"these things happened so that the scripture would be fulfilled... 'They will look on the one they have pierced'"
. The pierced one of Zechariah 12 is the crucified Christ.
And what flows from the pierced one?
‘On that day a fountain will be opened to the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and impurity.
A fountain ‘to wash away’ sin — opened,
we now know, from the side of a crucified Saviour.
The blood and water that flowed from Jesus pierced side
blood to atone for our sin,
water to wash us clean.
So how do we respond to the pierced one?
The verse tells us: they look, and they mourn.
Look. Don't glance — look.
Fix your eyes on the one your sin pierced.
It wasn't only Roman nails and a soldier's spear — it was my rebellion, and yours, that put him there.
And mourn.
Not the despairing grief of someone with no hope,
but the grief of love — "as one mourns for an only child."
Because:
the same day they mourn the pierced one (12:10), the fountain is opened (13:1).
The mourning doesn't end in tears. It ends in washing.
So we look,
we mourn,
and we are cleansed —
and we get up as
prisoners of hope.
When did you last really look at how are sin harms Jesus,
— look, until it breaks us and heals us?
The coming humble king - pierced by people, so he could save people.
And where does the whole thread finally arrive?
SO that,
The Lord will be king over the whole earth. On that day there will be one Lord, and his name the only name.
The lowly King on the donkey in chapter 9
is the reigning King over all the earth in chapter 14.
The one they pierced is the one before whom every knee will bow.
So, God tells u sin Zech:
Return to me (chapter 1)
— behold your King comes to you (chapter 9)
— the Branch who is Priest and King (chapters 3 and 6)
— the Shepherd sold for thirty pieces (chapter 11)
— the one they pierced (chapter 12)
— the fountain opened for sin (chapter 13)
— the Lord King over all the earth (chapter 14).
That is not a scrapbook of odd visions.
That is a single, unbroken road, and every mile of it leads to Jesus Christ.
We have looked down on the country of Zechariah from the hilltop.
This summer, take up Zechariah and read it slowly, all the way through, with your eye out for the King.
and as you read, do the two things the book asks: return to him, and look at your King.
Amen.
