SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/7/2016 2:12 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-1 Introduction to Zechariah
What I want
to do in this Spiritual Diary is to quote from a sermon by John MacArthur on
his introduction to Zechariah. Zechariah
is a rather long book of fourteen chapters and it is a very important book from
the Old Testament as it is the next to the last book found in the Old
Testament, and is a book written by a rather young priest turned prophet as he
was called by God to be a prophet in Jerusalem when the exiles returned to
Jerusalem. This quote will be a rather
long one and then in our next SD on Zechariah we will look at what Dr. Warren
Wiersbe has to say for his introduction to this book. This sermon was given in April of 1977.
“There's a great message from the Lord here. And even though this is a book written many centuries ago, maybe even as many as six centuries before Christ. As old as it, it is still written by an unchanging God.
And its word is as good as if it were penned this morning. And so it's a tremendous book. It is really incredible from many angles and I'm going to give you just a little bit of an overview before we look at the opening verses. Many people feel that it is the most difficult book in the Old Testament to interpret. And that maybe true and therein lies something of its challenge and I'd like to get all the hard stuff out of the way so that when I get old in the ministry I can just play golf and do the easy books, you know. So I'm wailing away on the hard ones right now while I'm young and aggressive and all that. And this is a hard book and so we approach it with a sense of prayerfulness and a sense of humility knowing that many who have gone before us have found it to be very difficult.
But primarily the thing that just really knocked me over as I was reading through it and through it again and again in the last month or so is the fact that it is a book about Christ, and that was really exciting to me. It is a primarily a book about Jesus Christ. In fact, on almost every page Jesus Christ appears in this book. And that really contemporizes it for me. He is the main character throughout. Now let me show you what I mean by that as we begin. Just a couple of highlights. Look at Chapter 1, verse 9. And here you have Zechariah talking to a particular personality. "And then I said oh my Lord what are these? And the angel who talked with me said unto me I'll show thee what these are."
Now here he is having a conversation with an angel. Look at verse 14. "So the angel that talked with me said unto me," now here's the same angel again and he's called the angel that talked with me. Verse 19, "And I said unto the angel who talked with me," Chapter 2, verse 3, "And behold the angel who talked with me went forth." Chapter 4, verse 1, "And the angel who talked with me came again." Verse 5, "Then the angel who talked with me answered and said unto me." Chapter 5, verse 5, "Then the angel who talked with me went forth." Verse 10, "Then I said to the angel who talked with me." Chapter 6, verse 4, "Then I answered and said unto the angel who talked with me, what are these my Lord."
Now, it is somewhat clear here that there is an angel who is talking to Zechariah. The question is who is the angel? And the answer is he is really a mouthpiece for God, Himself, and another very special angel. Let's look at Scriptures and see this other special angel. Go back to Chapter 1, verse 11. And 1:11 says "And they answered the angel of the Lord." Now look at 1:12, "Then the angel of the Lord answered and said," Chapter 3, verse 1. "And he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord." Verse 6, "And the angel of the Lord protested unto Joshua." Then who in fact is the angel of the Lord in the Old Testament? Jesus Christ.
In a sense then, along with God and through the angel that talked with him, Zechariah was having a conversation with none other than the Lord Jesus Christ. And so when I say that Christ is the main character of the book, that becomes very evident. It is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ. Now when you get into the last section of the book, you find again that Christ is everywhere. Look at, for example, Chapter 9, we'll skip a few chapters in there, but look at Chapter 9, verse 9. And now you're getting from Chapter 9-14 into the dominantly prophetic part of the book.
"Rejoice greatly oh daughter of Zion, shalt oh daughter of Jerusalem, behold thy king cometh unto thee. He is just and having salvation lowly and riding on an ass on the colt the foal of an ass." Now who is that? That's Christ and that's Christ at what point in His life? Entering into the city of Jerusalem on what we commonly know as Palm Sunday, when He came in on the colt, the foal of an ass. There you have Him, the king, who is Christ. And in 9:9 the king arrives, Christ arrives.
Look at Chapter 11, verse 12. "And I said unto them if you think good, give me my price. And if not forbear so they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver." What do you have there? A prophesy of the betrayal by Judas. So here the king arrives in 9:9 and the king is rejected in 11:12. Then in Chapter 12, verse 10 we see him again. "And I will pour upon the house of David and on the inhabitance of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and supplication. And they shall look on me whom they have pierced." And who is that? That's the king crucified. So you have the king arriving, rejected and crucified, and also received and they mourned for Him as one mourns for his only son. In other words, there is this predicted revival, the salvation that comes to Israel.
Chapter 13, verse 8-9, you have Christ in judgment. "And it shall come to pass that in all the land says the Lord two parts shall be cut off and die. The third shall be left. I will bring the third part through the fire and refine them as silver is refined and test them as gold is tested. They shall call on my name. I will hear them. I will say it is my people and they shall say the Lord is my God." And here you have the salvation of Israel at the time of the tribulation. So the king is judging and his judging or refining brings out a people tested and proven.
In Chapter 14, verse 9 you have the king reigning in His kingdom. "And the Lord shall be king over all the earth. In that day there shall be one Lord and His name one." Only one religion existing in the whole world in the kingdom, the worship of the true Christ. And that worship is expressed in Chapter 14, verse 16 where it says from year to year through the kingdom, they go up to worship the king, the Lord of hosts. So you can see that from the beginning of the book where there is a historical dialogue with the angel of the Lord to the latter part of the book where there is prophetic information about the coming of Christ, Jesus Christ is the key to the book of Zechariah. Scofield has an interesting note that I think we ought to just remind ourselves of. He says this, "No Old Testament prophet has more prophesy concerning Christ, Israel, and the nations in so short a book. Zechariah predicts," and here it is, "the second coming, the reign of Christ, His priesthood, His kingship, His humanity, His deity, His building of the temple of the Lord, His coming in lowliness, His bringing of permanent peace, His rejection and betrayal, His return to Israel as the crucified one, and His being smitten by the sword of the Lord."
All of that is the book of Zechariah. In fact, the whole significance of the life of Christ and His reign in the future is here. So we say the book is mostly messianic dealing with Christ. Christ is seen in the book by many titles. He is called Jehovah's servant. He is called the branch. He is called the man. He is called the king, the priest, the true shepherd, and so forth. Now the book was written to be a comfort to Israel to let them know God was on their side. And they were to be blessed by God. It is a comforting book. In fact, the very name Zechariah means God remembers.
And God is remembering His people in this book. God is comforting His people. God is on their side. And of course, Jesus is the great comforter. We forget that. We think that the Holy Spirit is the comforter, but may I remind you that in John Chapter 14, verse 16 Jesus said, "When I go away I will send you another comforter." Which means He, Himself, was also the comforter. And so Christ here is the comforter of His people. It is a book of comfort through Christ. And if appears in the Old Testament as the angel of the Lord, He is comforting His people. If He appears in the future as the coming king, He comes to comfort His people.
In Chapter 1, verse 13, notice it, "And the Lord answered," and here's the key to the book really. "And the Lord answered the angel that talked with me with good words and comforting words. This is a book about comfort. Chapters 1, verse 17 at the end says "the Lord shall yet comfort Zion and choose Jerusalem." So it is a book about comfort, present comfort for Israel and the need in which the book was written. Future comfort for them in the time the Messiah comes.
Now in addition to this, the comfort comes in this book through some very deep mysteries and that's why it's a hard book. There are some very strange symbols in this book. For example, Chapter 1, verse 8, you have the first of a bunch of mysteries, deeply mysterious elements. "I saw by night," and this will be our study next time Lord willing, "I saw by night and behold a man riding a red horse and he stood among the myrtle trees that were in the bottom and behind him there were red horses, sorrel, and white. And I said, oh my Lord, what are these?" That's a tough question. And then you go to verse 18. "I lifted up my eyes and I saw behold four horns and I said to the angel who talked with me, what are these." You go to Chapter 2, verse 1, "I lifted up mine eyes again and looked and a man with a measuring line in his hand and I said where are you going? And he said unto me to measure Jerusalem to see what is the breadth of it and the length. And behold the angel who talked with me went forth and another angel went out to meet him."
Now that's something that's difficult to understand initially. Chapter 4, "The angel who talked with me came again, waked me as a man is wakened out of sleep and said to me what seest thou? And I said I looked and behold a lamp stand of gold and a bowl on the top of it and seven lamps on it and seven pipes to the seven lamps which are on top of it and two olive trees by it, one on the right side of the bowl and the other on the left side of it." And those will be on the quiz. "And so I answered and spoke to the angel who talked with me and said what are these my Lord." Difficult mysteries.
Chapter 5, verse 1, "I turned and lifted mine eyes and behold a flying scroll. And he said to me what do you see? And I said I see a flying scroll. It's length is twenty cubits, it's breadth is ten cubits and he said this is the curse that goes forth over the face of the whole earth." You can go right on down in the chapter. It just goes on and on like this with very difficult things. Verse 5, you've got another one. He says, "What do you see? And he says there's an ephah going forth." And he goes on to discuss a talent of lead and a woman sitting in the midst of the ephah and on and on it goes. Now those are mysteries. Chapter 6 there's some chariots there. And so the way that Israel is comforted is by what this angel tells them and the angel is Christ, but the angel speaks to them in mysteries.
And we'll see the meaning of those as we go. There are some fantastic things in this book also relative to the restoration of Israel. If you're having any doubts about whether God is still working with the nation Israel, this book ought to settle those. In Chapter 8, verse 8, for example, "I will bring them and they shall dwell in the midst of Jerusalem and they shall be my people and I will be their God in truth and righteousness." In other words, there is coming a restoration for Israel. Chapter 10, verse 9, "I will sow them among the peoples and they shall remember in far countries and they shall live with their children and turn again and I will bring them again out of the land of Egypt, gather them out of a Assyria, bring them into the land of Gilead and Lebanon and place shall not be found for them."
There's coming a day when scattered Israel will be brought back and overcrowd their country. There are fantastic prophecies about the birth of children in the millennium. There are prophecies about the evangelism in the millennium. There is a complete description of the anti-Christ. There is a second-coming judgment passage. There is a description of the battle of Armageddon. There is a description of the judgment of the nations, the martyrdom of the believers in the great tribulation, the salvation of Israel and the ultimate salvation of the nations. All of those things in this little book.
Tremendous book full of visions and prophecies and signs and celestial visitors and the voice of God and it traces redemptive history right on out to its climax. But you know, it's also a very practical book. It talks about repentance. It talks about God's divine care for the believer. It talks about salvation. It even talks about practical Christian living if you can imagine. Some very practical things. So I just tell y'all that to wet your appetite. There's a lot in this thing. This isn't some dreary ancient thing. This is hot stuff. And you know, as I thought about why does this book flourish with so many fantastic things?
Well, do you know what is so very interesting about it is that prophecy as such, the prophetic ministry of the Old Testament prophets is about to end when Zechariah writes. It's about to end. And Israel is going to know prophetic silence for 400 years. Silence which will be broken by a man named John the Baptist. But for 400 years there will be prophetic silence. No prophets, and it appears that as the prophetic period closes it pleased God to just have a mighty outburst of prophecy to indicate that prophecy was not dying a slow death. It wasn't stopping just because it ran out of gas. It was going out in a blaze of glory.
As strong as when it was born. Now that gives us an overall view of the book.
4/7/2016 2:22 PM
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