Immanuel Sermon Audio
Zechariah (38:66)
Have a seat, take a Bible out, find Zechariah. Getting close to the end of the Minor Prophets. If you don't know where Zechariah's at, look him up in the table of contents. If you can find Matthew, then you can work your way back to the left, right before Matthew is Malachi, right before Malachi, is Zechariah, so right there at the end of the Old Testament. Tonight we are going to talk about Second Chances, the book of Zechariah for all of its complexity and all of the challenges that go along with trying to understand it. Really, it's just a pretty simple book in what it's teaching us, and it's teaching us, and it's explaining to us how God is giving his people, Israel, a second chance. And so I'll share a story with you about somebody who got a second chance. This is a picture of, anybody know who that is? He's holding something, that ought to give you a clue. Edison, Edison, inventor of the light bulb, inventor of all sorts of amazing things, and accomplished a lot in his life. I was going to show you a picture of a place in Louisville, Kentucky that was about two miles from the place Brooke and I lived when we lived in Louisville, and it's called the Edison home. And we went and visited the Edison home, and in my mind, you go visit things like this, historical things, and then you learn a few things and you forget most of it, but you remember going, and so I was thinking today, oh yeah, we've been to the Edison home, that's where he grew up. So I was going to show you this picture of it, and when I looked it up, he didn't grow up there, he grew up in Michigan. But he lived there for two years, about a year and a half. And then when I read it online, they said, "We don't even know if he lived in this house, "but we know he lived in this neighborhood, "and this was the last house standing." So we said, I'm like, okay, so I'm not even going to show you the place, but I've been to the Edison house in Louisville, Kentucky. It was really, really cool. And he lived there maybe for a couple years, maybe. But Edison invented, among many other things, the light bulb, and this is, I'll be honest with you, this is a preacher's story. I've done my best to look this up and see if this is really a true story. I have no idea if this is a true story, it's just kind of a preacher's story. Someone tells it and you're like, oh, did that really happen? I don't know, but maybe, maybe he lived in Louisville, maybe in that house, maybe this happened. The story is told that Edison, in a team of engineers and a team of inventors and scientists and all these people, they'd been drawing and planning and trying to come up with the light bulb and how to do it. And finally they said, okay, we just got to sit down and we got to put the thing together, we think we know how it's going to work, we've made some bad ones, let's make it. And so they got together, this whole team of guys in his lab and they built the first working light bulb and they had this thing, and the story goes that they spent 24 hours straight assembling it, talking, debating, putting it together just right. 24 hours and they get the thing done, everybody's exhausted, they call over the little scrub kid who cleans up around the place and they say, look, take this thing, we're gonna go upstairs, we're gonna plug it in, we're gonna see if this thing works. So he takes the thing, they go up the stairs, he gets to the top of the stairs, he turns around for some reason and he drops it and it breaks, bouncing down the stairs. And so Edison and the guys go back down the stairs to the lab and they work for another 24 hours and they put another one together and they get it just right and they have it again and it's time to go to where they're gonna test this thing out. And who do you think Edison asked to carry it? The story goes the same kid, he told the kid, get over here, pick this thing up, don't drop it this time and make it all the way up the stairs and he carried it up the stairs and they plugged it in and it worked and everybody was happy. And you hear that story and you say, oh, what a great story, a second chance. He got a do over, he got an opportunity to redeem himself and you don't always get that in life, do you? Don't always get a second chance and you can think about situations in your life where you look back and say, man, if I could just have a do over right there, if I could just have one more crack at that, whether it's maybe something in athletics, maybe it's something with a relationship, maybe it's something at work or school or whatever, you can look back and you can say, man, I wish I could have had a do over there. I wish I could have got a second chance. Or maybe there's things in your life that you look back gratefully and you say, I am delighted that I got a second chance and I made the most of it and I used it and I took advantage of that second opportunity that doesn't come around very often. So the book of Zechariah, it's about God's people getting a second chance. Listen, we're about to talk about some things in Zechariah that are very hard for me to understand. This is a hard to understand book. It is not, the cookies are not on the lowest shelf. And so if you take nothing else away from Zechariah, then you come away saying, okay, it's about second chances. The people got a second chance and that's what the book's about. So Zechariah is in the minor prophets. We're all the way here at the end of the list. You have heard me say about 10 times now that in the Jewish scriptures, all of these books are smashed into one book. It's called The Book of the Twelve. And it's just all of these prophets. They just run in together. And in the Christian canon, we divide them out into 12 separate books. And so Zechariah is way at the end of that list right before the last book of the Old Testament, which is Malachi. Here's a couple of just sort of trivia things. I'll give you one now and one in a little bit. Maybe you can just file this away and someone's gonna ask you in Sunday school someday or a Bible trivia or something and you're gonna know the answer. Zechariah is the longest minor prophet, the longest one. And if we were to sit down and read it, I timed it the other day, reading it out loud. You read slower out loud than you do silently, reading it out loud. It takes about 30 minutes to read the book out loud. So we're not gonna do that tonight. It's long enough that time prevents us doing that, but it is the longest minor prophet and is definitely the most confusing. The only way to say it is just a confusing book. And you'll see why in just a little bit. Here's where Zechariah, the book and the man fits in the history of Israel way at the end of Israel's story in their return from exile. So they fought for the promised land in the conquest, the period of the judges. You know about that. That's the book of judges in the book of Ruth. Then there's the monarchy, Saul, David, Solomon. Then the division is they split the kingdom, Rehoboam and Jeroboam, split it in half. There's rebellion meaning both of those nations turn against the Lord. God sends him into exile and then eventually he brings them back. So this is the breakdown of the minor prophets. You only get to see this for a couple of more weeks and then we're moving on to greener pastures. Hosea Amos, Micah Jonah all wrote before the northern kingdom was taken into exile by Assyria. Nahumah, back to Zephaniah. All right, after the northern kingdoms gone into exile, but before the fall of Jerusalem, before Babylon conquered the kingdom of Judah. Then the next group is Joel and Obadiah. After Jerusalem is conquered, after Nebuchadnezzar takes the people into exile. And then these last three books, Haggai Zechariah, Malachi, right after the exile is over. And so here's where Zechariah and Haggai and Malachi fall on the timeline of events here. You see Assyria takes Israel into exile, Babylon takes Judah into exile. Then there's waves of exiles coming back and Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi fall right in there. And so when you look at those three little blue lines, you see those three blue lines on that timeline. Here's what those three blue lines represent, three waves of people coming back. There's a guy named Zerubbabel, and he's important in the book of Zechariah. We read about him. He was sent back in 538 to rebuild the temple. Remember Nebuchadnezzar destroyed it? Zerubbabel goes back to rebuild it. Ezra is sent back with a group of people in 458, and his job is to teach the law. So now they have this temple, but they don't know what the law says. They don't know what they're supposed to do there. They don't know what it looks like for them to obey God. So Ezra goes back to teach them that. And then in 444, Nehemiah goes back and he rebuilds the wall. Put that next slide up for me, Lucas. I told you last week that Haggai fits in right there about 520. When we talked about Haggai, one of the things we said is Haggai went back and he said, 18 years later, why haven't you built the temple? You've had 18 years to build it. What in the world is taking so long? You've built nice homes for yourself. You live in very nice homes and houses, but you haven't built God's house. Your priorities are out of order. That was Haggai. And we know from the first couple of verses of Haggai and the first verses of Zechariah that they lived and preached about the same time. So just look at this so you know what I'm talking about. Haggai 1-1 says in the second year of Darius, the king in the sixth month. Second year of Darius, six month. And then look at Zechariah 1-1. In the eighth month of the second year of Darius, still second year of Darius, just two months later. So these guys are living almost exactly the same. They are living at the same time, preaching it almost the exact same time. So that's where they fit in with the story here. During the reign of Darius. Here's the outline to the book. This is really simple at this point. And then you actually start reading these sections and it gets a little bit tricky. The first six chapters are eight visions. And this is the part of the book that gives Zechariah a bad name 'cause these visions are really hard to understand. Eight visions and all of those visions in different ways are teaching this one truth, that God is giving his people a second chance and that's because he's totally sovereign. He can do whatever he wants to do, whenever he wants to do it and he doesn't ask anybody permission. He just makes his own decisions and he does it. And in all of these visions, we'll see this, we'll talk about this in a minute. God's not asking the people to do anything in all these visions. He's just telling the people here's what I'm gonna do. Here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this. I want you to watch this, pay attention to that. Here's all the things that I'm gonna do for you. So eight visions, they're gonna get a second chance because God is sovereign. The next section in the book is chapter seven to eight. It's two sermons, short sermons. And the point is that God's gonna give his people a second chance through his word. He is speaking to his people. He's revealing himself to his people. He's bringing them back to the land and he's gonna talk to them. And that's part of them getting a second chance. So that's the middle section. The last section of Zechariah is chapter nine to 14. It's two oracles. And the point is that God's gonna give his people a second chance through his son, capital S, son, meaning through Jesus. And we're gonna look at those, some of those verses here in just a little bit. Okay, so up to this point, you're saying, this doesn't seem like a very complicated book. It seems pretty simple, seems pretty basic. It's a book about second chances. I understand that. It only has three parts. There's eight visions at the beginning about God being sovereign. And then there's a couple of sermons in the middle where God's speaking his word to his people. And then at the end, there's a couple of oracles. And it's talking about he's gonna send Jesus, easy. It is easy. And then you'd start reading it and it's kind of confusing. So here we go. Just look at each of these sections in a little bit of detail. Let's talk about the eight visions, okay? You don't have to write this down. I didn't put it on your outline. I didn't ask you to fill anything in. But I just want you to see one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. These are the eight visions in Zechariah. And I've got 'em bullet pointed like that for a reason. Put the next slide up and I'm gonna color code 'em for you. And you're gonna understand how this works, okay? The Hebrews, the Jewish people, they loved poetry, but they did not write poetry like we write poetry, like roses are red, violets are blue, sugar is sweet, and so are you. We sort of have these cadences we like and rhyming patterns and different things. And we say, well, this is good poetry. Their favorite form of poetry is called a chiasm. And it sort of works in this like inverted V. And in a chiasm, the very first part corresponds with the very last part. You see that's in black, okay? And then the very middle part that you see in blue is the most important part of any chiasm. And so you see in these visions, those two right there in the middle are the most important. If you don't understand any of the rest of 'em, you gotta get those two in the blue. And then there's those in the red and those in the green. And the red and the green sort of go together. They correspond to each other. And this is their favorite form of poetry. And so I just wanna walk with you, take your Bible, and we're gonna look at some of these things in Zechariah so that you understand some of these visions, and you can maybe wrap your mind around this a little bit. Look at chapter three. We're gonna look at this middle section first, okay? The two visions that are in blue, garments for the high priest, and then there's a gold lamp stand in two trees. And we're just gonna read this part. It's not too long, so we're gonna read it. Zechariah three one. Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord. And right there, if you make notes in your Bible, you just need to make a note. We are talking about the high priest of Israel. His name is Joshua, meaning Yahweh saves, and he's the high priest of Israel, okay? You just file that away. He showed me, God showed Zechariah in this vision, Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord. And Satan, standing at his right hand to accuse him. You know, Satan has only mentioned three times in the entire Old Testament. Does that surprise you? Only three times do you find the word Satan in the Old Testament, this is one of them. Satan is standing there at his right hand to accuse him. Satan meaning the accuser. And the Lord said to Satan, the Lord rebuke you of Satan, and the Lord, the Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you is not this, a brand plucked from the fire, talking about Joshua. And the idea there is, you don't have to stand here and accuse Joshua of being a sinner. I know he's a sinner. He's like a stick that's burning in the fire, being punished, being judged, and I plucked him out, and I've saved him from that. You're not telling me anything, I don't know. Joshua, standing before the angel, clothed with filthy garments. And if you've read anything about the Old Testament, you know the high priest would never be allowed to wear dirty clothes, never, never, never, never. But here he is in this vision and he's wearing filthy garments. The angel said to those who were standing before him, remove the filthy garments from him. In to him he said, "Behold, I have taken your iniquity "away from you and I will clothe you with pure vestments." And I said, "Let them put a clean turban on his head." So they put a clean turban on his head and clothed him with garments. And the angel of the Lord was standing by. And the angel of the Lord solemnly assured Joshua, "Thus says the Lord of hosts, "if you'll walk in my ways, keep my charge, "then you'll rule my house, have charge of my courts, "and I'll give you the right of access "among those who are standing here." Here now with Joshua the high priest, you and your friends who sit before you for they are men, for they are men who are assigned. Behold, I will bring my servant, the branch. And if you're reading a good translation of the Bible, that word branch is capitalized, capital B, branch, hint, hint, hint. For behold, on the stone that I have set before Joshua, on a single stone with seven eyes, I will engrave its inscription, declares the Lord of hosts. And I will remove the iniquity of this land in a single day. You can get all in the weeds and say the stones and the turban and the this and the that. Step back, the high priest is wearing dirty clothes, he's not supposed to, God takes it away, gives him clean clothes. And then he says to them, here's something I'm gonna do, I promise you this, I'm gonna remove the iniquity of the land in a single day. And that day declares the Lord of hosts, every one of you will invite his neighbor to come under his vine and under his victory, okay? He's talking to the high priest, and there's this promise that he's gonna remove the iniquity of the people in a single day, okay? Keep that in your brain. Now look at chapter four. The angel who talked with me came again and woke me up like a man who's awakened out of his sleep, and he said to me, what do you see? And I said, I see him, behold the lampstand of all gold with bowl on the top of it and seven lamps on it, with seven lips on each of the lamps that are on the top of it. And there are two olive trees by it. One on the right of the bowl and the other on its left. And I said to the angel who talked with me, what are these my Lord? Then the angel who talked with me answered and said to me, do you not know what these are? And I said, no, my Lord. Then he said, okay, just stop right there. There's this lampstand and the lips and the things and all this stuff. And you can read somebody who would tell you that that means whatever you want it to mean. You make up a million different things for what that means. Or you can read the text and you can listen that the angel says in verse six, this is what it means. This is the word of the Lord to who? Sarubabel, what was his job? To take the people back and to rebuild the temple. And we talked about Sarubabel the last couple of weeks and we said, he's right in the line, the genealogy of who, Jesus. He comes after David before Jesus. He's right there in that line. And he's coming back to build this temple. This is the word of the Lord to Sarubabel, not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord of hosts. Who are you, O great mountain? Before is the rubberbell, you shall become a plane and he shall bring forward the top stone amid shouts of grace, grace to it. Then the word of the Lord came to me saying, the hands of the rubberbell have laid the foundation of this house, his hands shall also complete it. Then you will know that the Lord of hosts has sent me to you. Forever to despise the day of small things shall rejoice and see the plum line in the hand of Sarubabel. What he's saying is, let me tell you what this vision means. You don't get to interpret it however you want to. What the lampstand means is I have sent Sarubabel back. I've given him a special job to do and his job is to build the temple and he's gonna do it. He started it and he's gonna finish it. And when the temple is built, that's a picture of what? Me living with the people. And I'm going to do that for you through his line, through Sarubabel, through the king. So you've got chapter three talking to you about the high priest and his name is Joshua or Jesus. Yeshua saves, the Lord saves, Yahweh saves. And his job is to remove the sin of the people in a single day and then you've got this very next vision and he's saying, okay, now we're not talking about the priest, we're now talking about the kingly line and his job is to build this temple and this temple is a picture that I'm living with you. And here's where you put it all together, okay? Look at verse 11. Then I said to him, what are the two olive trees on the right and the left of the lampstand? And again, you can find people that will tell you the olive trees or whoever or whatever you want them to be where you can read the text and it says, the second time I answered and said to him, what are the two branches of the olive trees which are beside the two golden pipes from which the golden oil is poured out? And he said, don't you know what they are? And I said no. And he said, these are the two anointed ones who stand by the Lord of the whole earth, okay? You put all that together. You can come up with all sorts of fanciful interpretations of who the two anointed ones are or you can understand what I think is pretty clear, right at the heart of these visions. And God is saying, I'm gonna send somebody who's gonna be the high priest. And he's gonna remove the sin of these people in a single day. Who did that? Jesus. When you read in the Old Testament about the high priest, you read that he was anointed for his service. He was the anointed one, literally in Hebrew. He was the Messiah, the anointed one. And then you read in the very next chapter, chapter four, there's gonna come a king and he's gonna build this temple and the temple's gonna be God living with his people. Who was God living with his people? Jesus from the line of who, Zerugabel. He's talking about sending Jesus to be with the people and the king, not only the high priest, but the king in the Old Testament was anointed for his service. You remember the stories about David being anointed and Saul being anointed. He was the anointed one. And what I'm telling you is that when you read in verse 14 about two anointed ones, that's one person, Jesus. And the New Testament says in the book of Hebrews, Jesus is our great high priest, the anointed one. And the Bible says in the book of Revelation that he's the king to rule all kings. He's the anointed one. So you can get all in the weeds with these visions and play games with all this stuff or you can just listen to the explanation and it's pretty obvious. We're right here at the end of the Old Testament. Matthew is just three pages away. Jesus is right around the corner and God's saying to his people, look, I've brought you back to the land and I'm about to do something amazing for you. Someone's gonna come, a great high priest who will remove the sin of the people in a single day. And somebody's gonna come who's gonna be the king, not just any king, this is gonna be God living with you. Jesus is coming, so this middle part of these visions, okay? Pointing you straight to Jesus. We're not gonna read the rest of 'em 'cause I told you the middle was the most important but you can look at 'em, let me just mention this. When you look at the two that are in black, the man among the trees and the four chariots, they go together. Both of them, both of those visions have four horses that are sent out to all the earth and they come back and the report they bring is peace. Both of 'em. You look at the red visions and you look at the green visions and the point in all of those visions, they all go together is that God is removing any obstacle between him and his people. If it's a foreign nation, he's removing 'em. If it's the sin of the people, he's removing it. Whatever stands between him and his people, God is the one who's saying in all these visions, this is what I'm gonna do for you. I'm gonna make peace to bring you and I together and I'm gonna do it through Jesus Christ, who's the point of that blue section right there in the middle, okay? In all of it, all these visions and you can get in and read 'em and look at 'em, you just remember this. Nowhere in these visions does God really say to the people, now here's what I need you to do. Here's what you're into the deal is. He just says to 'em, this is what I'm gonna do. I'm sovereign, I'm in control, I make my own decisions, I do whatever I wanna do whenever I wanna do it and he's talking to the people about how his sovereignty is gonna give 'em a second chance, okay? Then there's two sermons. And the first sermon explains why did God send the people into exile and the second one explains what he's gonna do to restore the people. And I just want you to see the beginning of the two sermons, so you see how this works. Look at chapter seven, verse one, says in the fourth year of King Darius, the word of the Lord came to Zechariah. The word of the Lord came to him. Then look at chapter eight, verse one. Again, it says the word of the Lord came, saying. So two times the word of the Lord comes to him and both times he preaches a sermon. And the point is why were you sent into exile and what's God gonna do to restore you? So that's the sermons, they're not quite as obscure. And then there's two oracles at the very end. And they both talk about judgment and they both point you to somebody who is to come. This is the last section of the book. So look with me, I just want you to see how these oracles began. Look at chapter nine, verse one. It says the burden of the word of the Lord. Not just that the word of the Lord came to him, but that the burden of the word of the Lord is against the hand of Hadrak. And then jump forward and look at chapter 12. This is where the second oracle begins. It's the exact same wording. He's telling you this as sort of a sign marker. The burden of the word of the Lord concerning Israel. So two different oracles, both talk about judgment and important, really important, both of them talk about somebody who is to come. Somebody that God's gonna send. And I just want you to look at a couple of verses and see if these verses ring a bell to you and see who you think they might be talking about. And you can jot these down. I didn't put them on your outline, but look at Zechariah nine, nine. Zechariah says, "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion. "Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem. "Behold, your king is coming to you. "Righteous and having salvation is he. "Humble and mounted on a donkey, "on a colt, the full of a donkey." Does that remind you of anything? Jesus writing in to Jerusalem as the king and everybody's shouting, "Hosanna," and they're laying their things down and he's writing in on this young donkey. That's exactly what that verse is talking about. Somebody is gonna come. Look at verse 14. The Lord will appear over them. This is still in chapter nine. The Lord will appear over them and his arrow will go forth like lightning. The Lord God will sound the trumpet and he'll march forth in the whirlwinds of the South. The Lord of Host will protect them and they will devour and tread down the sling stones and they will drink and roar as if drunk with wine and be full like a bowl, drenched in the corners of the altar. All that I know is kind of confusing but this is pretty clear. Verse 16, "On that day, the Lord their God will save them "as the flock of his people." He's gonna save them and they're gonna be as flock. And you read that and I don't know what you think about but I think about Jesus in John 10 saying, "I am the good shepherd. "I have a flock and I'm gonna lay down my life "to save the flock." That's exactly what this passage is talking about. Look at chapter 11, verse four. This is even a little more plain thinking about John chapter 10. "Thus says the Lord my God become shepherd "of the flock doomed to slaughter." There's people heading to death and they need a shepherd. Jesus is the one who says he's the good shepherd. Look with me at chapter 13. Verse seven, 13, "A wake oh sword against my shepherd "against the man who stands next to me "declares the Lord of hosts. "Strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered." Anybody you know of ever quote that verse in the New Testament, name Jesus. Telling his disciples exactly what's gonna happen in the garden. Look, they're gonna come from me. You guys are gonna run for the hills. They're gonna strike the shepherd and you guys are, "No, we're not gonna do that. "Oh yes you are." Zechariah talked about it a long time ago. It's gonna happen and I'm telling you, this is exactly how it's gonna go down. Again, pointing you straight to Jesus. Do you be surprised to know that in the New Testament, when you look at the crucifixion accounts of Jesus and Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, just the stories of the crucifixion. They quote one book from the Old Testament way more than any other book in the Old Testament. You say, "Well maybe it's a book of Psalms, "that's the longest book." Nope, maybe it's Genesis. That's an important book. Nope, maybe it's Isaiah. Isaiah 53 has a lot to say about the crucifixion. They don't quote Isaiah the most. They quote Zechariah the most. More than any other book in the Old Testament. When Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and John sat down to explain what happened when Jesus died on the cross. This was the book they thought of more than any other. And it's because this last section, it almost the very end of the Old Testament, God is saying to his people, "I'm gonna send somebody. "I'm gonna send somebody. "I'm gonna send somebody." And here's maybe the coolest verse out of all of them, okay? Look with me at Zechariah 12, 10. And this is the last thing on your outline. Zechariah 12, 10 only makes sense if you understand who Jesus is. For all the confusing visions and oracles and all the things in this book, this is pretty cool. Zechariah 12, 10. I will pour out on the house of David. And you understand that when that's in quotes, that's not Zechariah speaking, that's God speaking through Zechariah. God the Lord Yahweh is talking. I will pour out on the house of David in the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy so that when they look on who, me, comma, on him whom they have pierced, comma, they shall mourn for him as one mourns for an only child and weep bitterly over him as one weeps over a firstborn. Read it one more time. I will pour out on the house of David in the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy so that when they look on me, on the one that they pierced they shall mourn for him as one mourns for an only child and weep bitterly over him as one weeps over a firstborn. God is speaking and he says that the people are going to pierce him. If you're listening to that in Zechariah's day, do you have any problems with that verse? You're kind of confused, right? Are you telling me that we're going to pierce the Lord, the one who sits enthroned in the heavens? We're going to have a spear, a sword, something sharp. It's going to pierce him. It's only possible if God takes on flesh and we understand as Jesus is on the cross, what do they do? They pierce him. Then you read this story, maybe, or this verse, maybe you miss it because it's kind of subtle, but it says look at it again in the middle that when they look on me, that's a future event, right? When in the future, when they look on me, the one that they have pierced past tense. In the future, they're going to look on me, the Lord, who they've pierced. And you say, now wait a minute, if you've pierced somebody, that kind of sounds like you were trying to kill them. How are you going to then see them in the future? And we look back on it and it's a little bit more clear for us and we say, well, Jesus died, but he's alive. He died, but he rose again and he's promised to come back. And the book of Revelation says that when he returns, we're going to look on the one, all of the earth will look on the one that we've pierced, the one who died for our sins. And you look at this verse and you say, that is a really confusing verse for a Jew who has this high view of God exalted in the heavens that somehow we're going to pierce him and then somehow we're going to see him. And we look back on it and he's saying, well, through Jesus, it makes a lot of sense. He's the one who was pierced for us. He's the one that God used to take away the sins of the people in a single day. He's our great high priest that Zechariah talked about. He's the king of all kings that Zechariah promised. He's the branch from the line of David right through the line of Zerubbabel. All these little details in Zechariah pile up and they point you straight to Jesus. And I hope you see that that fits pretty well with the big idea of Zechariah. Big idea is what? You get a second chance. And God's bringing these people back from exile and he's saying to them, I'm giving you a second chance. First chance I brought you in with Joshua. I drove out all the nations before you. I gave you my law and my commandments. You blew it. I sent you into exile. But now I'm bringing you back and you get another chance to be my people. And the rest of this book is explaining here's how you get a second chance. It's not just that I'm gonna forget about all that other stuff and sweep it under the rug. It's that I'm gonna send somebody to make it all right. To pay your penalty, to die your death, to take your punishment. And you and I understand that that's Jesus. And so Jesus is the one that gives us this second chance. And it was true for the people who came back from exile. And it's true for us today. So there you go, that's Zechariah. And it has a lot of confusing things in it. But the big idea is clear and it points us straight to Jesus. So I'll pray for us. And then we'll move on with a few other things before we finish. Father, thank you for your word. And there's some things in your word and the scriptures that are easy for us to understand. And there's some things that we just scratch our heads at. And we pray that you would give us wisdom. We pray that we would be students of your word, that we would strive to interpret it correctly. And that where things are difficult, we would be humble. That we would seek to learn and to study and to sharpen our minds and to understand what it is that you're trying to say to us. And the details here are foreign to us and the visions are strange. But we see the big truth very clear. And we're grateful that you are a God who gives your people a second chance. And we know that that's only possible because Jesus came to seek us, to save us, to die for us, to take our place, to take our punishment. And Father, we're thankful for the grace and the mercy that you showed us in Jesus. Father, as we wrap up this study, as we've been in the Minor Prophets, help us to understand these books, help us not to ignore these books, help us to see how they might apply to our lives, even though they're written so, so many years ago. And Father, as we get ready to move into the New Testament, help us to see even more clearly the good news about Jesus Christ. And we pray in His name, amen.