Zechariah 9:9-10 "Rejoicing In Our King"

Introduction

One of the most difficult things about being a Christian is to live out faith in promises that appear to be a contradiction to what we see going on in the world.

It is where the spiritual reality of the Kingdom doesn’t seem to match what we see and experience in society and culture as revealed on the world stage.

I don’t know about you but I like it best when life fits with my expectations. But I have learned that life in Christ can be unpredictable as we live out our Christianity.

This is nothing new for the covenant people of God. Palm Sunday is a great example of that because when Christ rode into Jerusalem on the colt of a donkey the expectation of the Messiah King to establish His throne in defiance of Roman occupation was everywhere.

The expectation was short lived because by Friday the crucifixion would have taken place.

But this expectation was not in line with how Messiah would work to establish His dominion. The people saw it as a physical deliverance but God saw it as a spiritual deliverance that in the end would have an incredible impact on people in the world.

This is why spiritual truths should dominate and inform our worldview. If we loose sight of the spiritual context joy will be hard to maintain when our expectations are not met in the experiential world.

Zechariah 9:9-10 declares the work of God’s Messiah that is foundational and informative to the believer’s joy. And there are 3 characteristics of what our King does that contextualizes our joy in Him. The first is found in verse 9:

I. The King Humbly Works Salvation (9).

Our King did not come into Jerusalem to deliver His people from Roman occupation. He came to establish the righteousness of God while working salvation on behalf of His people.

The people of Zechariah’s day saw this prophecy as the hope of restoration. The Davidic covenant seemed to have been forsaken by God and this prophecy looked to be the restoration of those promises.

This is why those people on that original Palm Sunday expected something different than they got.

Now by all appearances He was not a threat to Rome. He wasn’t on a white horse but a donkey’s colt. The Romans knew all about what it meant to flex military muscle. And this was not it.

The people never really saw sin as their biggest problem before God. They thought their problem was Roman occupation and the failure to be politically established to live in the glory of the Davidic dynasty once again.

Christian our expectations are short sighted and so often fail to take into account the priority of God’s design to manifest His ultimate glory in salvation for our good.

We want God to remove certain symptoms of sin and its effects but not to do what it takes to deal with sin as the root of the problem.

Our King came to conquer sin at the root and to remove it from us that we might be saved from it. That puts Him in a unique position as our King. Look at the first half of verse 10 as we see the second characteristic of the King’s work that contextualizes our joy:

II. The King Speaks Peace to The Nations (10a).

He will cut off the instruments of war and speak “Peace” to the Nations of the world.

The term for “peace “ here is the Hebrew word “Shalom”. It is usually translated “peace” in the English translations. And certainly in this context it is denoting peace as juxtaposed to war among the Nations.

The instruments of war are no more and conflict between Nations have been brought to and end in the establishment of His Kingdom.

Isaiah spoke of this future time as well in Isaiah 2:1-4. We could go to Isaiah’s time in history and study the historical record all the way up to the current day and you know what we will find?

We would find that Jesus Christ came into the world to establish His Kingdom but it was like the Nations didn’t get the memo that the wars are over and peace has actually been established.

Christian we should be very aware that “peace” at the spiritual level has been established among the Nations of the Gentiles. It has come through the work of our King.

He has removed the hostility and established peace in our relationship to God. And on this basis we have peace with one another. This is the current spiritual reality as we live in light of the work of our King.

Christian the “peace” that our King promotes is not the same kind of peace that is at times being promoted by the world. This is because governments of the world have no capacity to transform hearts.

Oh I know men can change their actions but have you ever noticed that eventually it seems that they discover new reasons to make war.

The First World War was deemed to be the “War to End All Wars.” Liberal theologians imagined that after all the brutality of WW-1 that the Nations would never fight again.

Little did they know that the aftermath of WW-1 would provide some of the hot coals that would eventually ignite the flames for WW-2.

Men would seek to establish their own empires as expressions of their own sense of dominion. Evil would be institutionalized in these empires. Over a hundred million put to death in the last century alone under communist and nationalistic socialism.

I have been listening to Andrew Solzhenitsyn’s “Gulag Archipelago” as he recounts events from 1918-1956 in communist Russia largely under Stalin’s rule. It is devastating to hear what human beings are capable of doing to one another.

Maybe the second thing that is so devastating is how the culture in the west is in denial of the doctrine of total depravity. And it is the same way in the church. Sin is seldom mentioned any more from the pulpits of churches. I wonder where we got such a notion?

After listening to one book on Marx and reading another and now half way through “Gulag Archipelago” there is little doubt that Marx promoted the idea that to be truly be free is to be free from moral conscience. This is why he detested the notion of God’s existence.

I think I have learned that there is nothing more destructive in this world than a free man who has no moral conviction.

Christian our King speaks real peace because only He can address the heart of man’s problem and establish the basis by which we are at peace with God. But it is not just spiritual in nature alone. It will come to earth and His Kingdom will bring all the empires of men to an abrupt end. Look at the second half of verse 10:

III. The King Rules in Absolute Dominion (10b).

We know this from what we have seen from Revelation 21 and Matthew 24.

Just think the Eternal Son of God when He rode into Jerusalem on that original Palm Sunday knew about all the destruction that sin would have on the earth for all time, and He went into that city knowing full well that He would die on a Cross to establish His Kingdom.

All that evil for all time, to conquer it once and for all by establishing the basis to confront all the evil dominion exercised in defiance of God, that He would do that.

And then coming into the city to get it done riding on the colt of a donkey?

It is almost laughable in the world’s eyes. His might wasn’t in instruments of conventional warfare. It was in His character and rank.

Holiness in character, Eternal Son of God in rank and resulting in Perfect Righteousness in His Sacrifice.

Conclusion

And today He is here in the sweetness of His sovereign and relentless grace to conquer the empires of men.

Not just the governments of this world but the sinful self-rule of men’s hearts.

He is calling you to joy in Him. Believers you may know exactly what i am talking about but He is calling you away from sinful desires that you harbor to find fulfillment and pleasure in Him. Confess and receive.

Unbeliever you need a Savior. Believe the gospel and find joy in your King.

Let’s Pray!