Sermon Tone Analysis

If you have your Bible this morning, and I hope that you do, turn with me to the book of Zechariah.

Zechariah.

Easiest way is to find the beginning of the New Testament… the gospel of Matthew… and then turn backwards 2 books.

Oh boy… Is anyone familiar with the book of Zechariah?

I admit that I was not.

I have read it before… but I don’t think that much of it really sunk in.

What a gem of Scripture Zechariah is.

It’s strange… holy cow is it strange… but it’s an absolute gem.

The book is 14 chapters long… so obviously, we’re not going to hit every little bit of it this morning.

Instead, we’ll be doing a high level overview, and just hitting a few of the main points of the book.

So, let’s just set up the book very quickly.

Some of this will be review… but just stick with me for a few minutes.

After the reign of King Solomon, the nation of Israel kind of imploded, and was separated into 2 different kingdoms.

The northern kingdom, which retained the name Israel… and the southern kingdom, which was called Judah.

For about 260 years, they were separated… and basically… for 260 years, the people lived in rebellion towards God.

And during that time period, if I remember correctly, God sent 9 prophets to speak to the people… and basically, their message was all the same… Return to the Lord.

They spoke that message in different ways, addressing the specific issues that were being faced at the time… but the crux of the message was the same… Return to the Lord.

Bad things are going to happen if you don’t return to the Lord.

Well… They didn’t listen.

And so, in about 720 BC, the northern kingdom was wiped off the map by the Assyrians.

With the northern kingdom gone, and the southern kingdom still existing… God now sends 3 prophets to the southern kingdom… over a period of approximately 135 years… Each one with the message… Return to the Lord.

You saw what happened to the northern kingdom because they wouldn’t listen.

What will you do?

Will you return to the Lord southern kingdom?

(SHAKE YOUR HEAD NO).

They didn’t.

And so, now all of Israel is in Exile.

For 70 years the people are in exile.

And during those 70 years, God raises up 3 prophets to speak to the people.

Jeremiah… who is still in Jerusalem… just watching it get utterly torn to the ground.

Ezekiel and Daniel are carted away to Babylon… and so, when reading those books, you get a sense for how life was for Israel during the time of exile.

God doesn’t forget His people though… and they do get to go back home.

And when they go home, we wind up with 7 more Old Testament books of the Bible… which we call post exilic books… post exile books… Ezra, Esther, Nehemiah, Haggai, Zecheriah, Malachi, and also… the Chronicles… which was a compilation of everything in Israel’s history up to the point that they returned to the land.

Now, specifically, for our purposes… going through the Minor Prophets… Haggai, Zecheriah, and Malachi have a message for the people from God.

That message is still… Return to the Lord… but instead of a… bad things are going to happen if you don’t return to the Lord… this time it’s God saying… Can we not do this whole thing again?

Have y’all learned yet?

Return to Me so we can move forward.

Last week, we talked through Haggai… and we saw God saying through Haggai… listen… y’all have built your houses… you’re making them all nice and fancy… but what about the Temple?

Can we not do this again people?

Prioritize God and Build the Temple!

Well, what I didn’t mention last week is that Haggai wasn’t alone in delivering that message from God. Zechariah was with him… speaking that same message the whole time.

So, the first part of the book of Zechariah is the same story that we went through last week… just from a different perspective… with a little different vantage point.

So, let’s dive in… a get a broad, high-level overview of the message of Zechariah.

Let’s begin with chapter 1, verse 1.

Now… Before we go any further, there’s something we’ve got to know very quickly.

Like a couple of the other prophets, the name Zechariah means something… and it tells us basically what the book is about.

The name Zechariah means… God remembers.

So, this message that Zechariah is giving the people is centered around the idea… God remembers.

Also, before we move on… just a little side note here… I’ve meant to say this several times as we’ve went through this series, and I just keep forgetting to.

But… understand… that when the prophets are giving these messages… It’s really not much different from what we’re doing right now.

The entire message of this book was given progressively through the years.

The people didn’t get all of it at once.

It came progressively through a span of years.

I think it’s important for us to realize that while we can read Zechariah’s prophecy from start to finish in an hour… it took them years to hear all of this.

So, if you can… put yourselves in their shoes as they would’ve heard these messages from Zechariah.

Let’s continue on, and see what God remembers.

Verse 2…

What does God remember?

God remembers how their ancestors lived… and He’s not happy about how they lived, and where it got them.

So… the message to these people is now… don’t do what your ancestors did.

Can we not do all that again?

You be different!

Return to the Lord.

You see… the 1stprinciple that we see in these first few verses is this.

God distanced Himself from their ancestors, because they distanced themselves from God… and from obedience to God.

And so they’re given a promise in verse number 3… God says… Return to me… and what’s the result of that?

I will return to you.

Listen… God is absolutely FOR YOU… when you are right with Him.

God says… Your ancestors never figured this out… and what happened to them?

Will you be different than your ancestors?

Will you return to the Lord?

And then I will return to you.

This is the same formula we see all throughout Scripture.

Jeremiah 29 tells us the same thing.

But it’s not just an Old Testament concept… James tells us the same thing in chapter 4, verse 8. Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you.

*PAUSE*

Verse 6.

We saw this last week in Haggai… remember, they’re both delivering a message to the people at the same time… How do the people respond to the message from Haggai and from Zecheriah?

Verse 6…

They repent.

They say… we want God to be near to us… we don’t want to be like our ancestors… we’ve learned our lesson… We repent, we’ll draw near to God… and we’ll begin building the temple.

Praise God Almighty!

This is the dream and prayer of every minister, every evangelist, every pastor.

That when the Word of God is proclaimed, the people listen… they hear the message… they take the message from God to heart… and they do something with it.

They repent and follow God.

I’m trying to hurry here, because we still have several things to cover… Beginning in verse 7 of chapter 1… just being real and honest with you… things start to get very weird.

All the way through chapter 6, Zechariah records some prophetic dreams that he was given.

Did you ever wake up from sleep… remember your dream… and think to yourself… what in the world did I smoke last night?

Because what was going on in my head last night was flat out bizarre! That’s what we see from chapter 1, verse 7… all the way through chapter 6. We’re told what all these dreams mean… what they represent… and I encourage you to read through them when you can.

Just understand it’s a bit of a rollercoaster.

But then we come to chapter 7.

In chapter 7, we’re faced with a pretty interesting question… Look at it with me in verse 2…

So, what’s happening here is… under the old Temple, Israel had all these fasts and festivals.

The festivals were pretty much celebratory… right?

They were reminders of what God had done, or what He was going to do.

But they also had all these fasts… these were reminders of terrible things that had happened in their history.

So, these men come to Zechariah and say… So, we’re building this new temple, right?

Do we still need to fast in the fifth month like we did under the old temple?

Do we continue to remind ourselves of those terrible things in our past?

Let me ask the question in our context.