Be God's Family
S3 E46. Zechariah: Visions of a New Jerusalem
This is to be God's light podcast with Ben Greenbaum and Mark Elsasser. And here in 2024, we're continuing our look into the Old Testament to see how God's been at work from creation until the restoration of things all the way through the New Testament and even into our day. And we took a look a couple of weeks ago at Zerubbabel, who returned from exile to begin rebuilding the temple. When things got put on hold, pressure got exerted upon him and they stopped for about a decade. Haggai, we looked at last week, came and encouraged the people to get going again. Zechariah was another one of those prophets along with Haggai who encouraged the people to get going. In fact, in the book of Ezra, chapter 5, verse 1, both these prophets are mentioned and Ezra 5.1 says, "Now Haggai, the prophet and Zechariah, the prophet, prophesied to the Jews in Judah and Jerusalem in the name of the God of Israel, who was over them." Verse 2, "Then Zerubbabel and Joshua set to work to rebuild the house of God in Jerusalem, and the prophets of God were with them, supporting them." So these two guys, Haggai and then now, today's topic, Zechariah, really encouraged, let's get this temple going. Let's rebuild it. Don't worry about the opposition. We've got clearance from the Persian king. Let's go. And they were in their throw in some sweat equity into the thing too. They were helping along the way get it going. But Zechariah also has some things beyond the rebuilding of the temple that he speaks about. And there's lots of these as this temple rebuilding is going on. He has these visions that he receives from God and there are a handful of them. I think about eight of them or so that they're in here that are somewhat interesting. I don't know how many of them will get to today, but let's just take a look at a few of these and you glance at them. Maybe something you want to hit on with one or two of them, and I'll take a look at a couple of them and see what we can figure out from these visions of Zechariah. Here's the first one, it's the man among the Myrtle trees. Here's the deal. I don't even know anybody named Myrtle much less do I know what a Myrtle tree looks like. So like, what's a Myrtle tree? Do you know what a Myrtle tree looks like? I'm not an arborist. You know, I didn't know if I was a South Louisiana thing, Myrtle trees. No, if it is, I've long forgotten it. All right. Well, there's a guy here in this story. He's among the Myrtle trees. He says, in Zechariah chapter 1 verse 10, we'll pick it up, 8, I'm sorry, verse 8. During the night, I had a vision, Zechariah says, and there before me was a man mounted on a red horse. He was standing among the Myrtle trees in a ravine. Behind him were red, brown, and white horses. Then the man standing among the Myrtle trees explained, "They are the ones the Lord has sent to go throughout the earth." Then the angel of verse 14, then the angel who was speaking to me said, "Proclaim this word. This is what the Lord Almighty says. I am very jealous for Jerusalem and Zion, and I am very angry with the nations that feel secure. I was only a little angry, but they went too far with the punishment. So the punishment that they exerted upon his people." Verse 16, "Therefore, this is what the Lord says. I will return to Jerusalem with mercy. And there my house will be rebuilt." Part of the reason they came back was to rebuild the temple. And the measuring line will be stretched out over Jerusalem, declares the Lord Almighty. "Proclaim further, this is what the Lord Almighty says. My towns will again overflow with prosperity, and the Lord will again comfort Zion and choose Jerusalem." So this is a vision, it's an interesting one, because the description is given that God's jealous and he wants Jerusalem to be rebuilt, and to have prosperity and be a place of worship. But there's these interesting horses, red horses, brown horses, white horses, and these kinds of things that are going throughout the earth that are there. I've been a look at this, and it's reminiscent of the book of Revelation to me with the different colored horses that are there. And it seems to be an apocalyptic style of writing as I'm looking at it. And white is often a color of victory and red, one of warm and brown or pale. If I remember right, kind of one of sickness or something like that. So I don't know if that's what that means. This is what's going to come back at these nations who have conquered my people, they've gone too far in the punishment, they've destroyed the city more than what they should have. They've killed people, they've done these things. So if these horses are symbolic of the retribution that's coming back to the nations, and eventually there's the white horse of victory that God is going to bring, and he's saying, because I'm jealous for Jerusalem and I'm angry with the nations who ruined Jerusalem, and my house will be rebuilt. That's these promises. So that's kind of a first reading to me as I take a look at it, at this vision that he has, that he has given there. You got anything to toss into that, to clarify my thinking? No, not really. I think with it, one of the overarching themes though too, and something to remind ourselves of is that the nation as it has returned is fledgling. This isn't what the nation of Israel wants was when it rolled on into Canaan so many hundreds of years earlier and took the land, established a nation state. While they have returned, they're not exactly what I would qualify as a military power or able to protect themselves from outside forces. And so to see God's care for his people, the people who really cannot, at this point, care for themselves. And so there is this sense of humility among the people of Judah and Jerusalem at this time as this dependence upon God has been very much reestablished, and God is promising the people. It's an expression of love to the people as he's going to show them mercy, as his loving kindness is going to be present with them, and also reminding them, in essence, I've got you. Yeah. You know, these other nation states cannot come against you, those who have in the past, they're going to come to ruin because of how they've treated you. And so what we see is this reminder of how God is for his people, the people that have no power to exert their will over anything or any one, even as they have returned to Judah and Jerusalem. It's a beautiful picture, especially given the thought that they were still under the thumb of the Persian Empire, so it's this promise of what's to come. Yeah, and the Persians, for the most part, as we see, have treated the nations as a whole pretty well. You know, the Babylonians had a different perspective. The Babylonians came in, they conquered, they exiled. The Persians were a people that, I mean, for the most part, for the most part, for many of the nations that they conquered, it's like, if you're willing to live at peace and pay us taxes, we've got your back. Yeah, dude. Have you ever seen the movie 300? Yeah. I have not. I haven't seen it either. I haven't seen it either. Oh. Just asking if you saw it. You know, the whole concept of coming in Xerxes, the Persians comes in to attack the people who are in modern degrees, and, you know, and thermopally, and the whole people. You don't want to, yeah, you don't want to be an opposition force to them. Yeah. So there was some bloodshed that happened along the way too. So, and they knew that this was a fierce, fierce army that had conquered the world. But yes, they did seem to give at least these Jewish people a chance to rebuild, and maybe they wanted part of their kingdom to be rebuilt. I mean, they, they were in charge of Judah and they wanted to be rebuilt. Maybe it. I don't know. Maybe it's as simple as that. So, okay. There's, there's some more of these. Pick one of them. I don't know. And there's a tell me something, you know, or we, or we can ask Doug if we don't know what it means. I don't know, man. Just go forward. Okay. You're the captain of this proverbial show. Yeah. Okay. Well, let's, let's take another one of these. Let's just do the next one, it's in Zechariah chapter one, verse 18. Then I looked up and there before me were four horns. Now, once again, a horns in apocalyptic writing often stand for rulers, rulers of nations, different, different people. And we see this played out again in the book of Revelation. So I saw before me four horns, so this could be mean four leaders. I asked the angel who was speaking to me, what are these? He answered, these are the horns that scattered Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem, the different empires perhaps that have come in and conquered them. Then the Lord showed me four craftsmen and I asked, what are these coming to do? He answered, these are the horns that scattered Judah so that no one could raise their head, that the craftsmen have come to terrify them and throw down these horns of the nations who lifted up their horns against the land of Judah to scatter its people. Again, these, like this is interesting language, you got to try to figure out like, what does it mean? And I think it's similar to what you just described, it's a message of hope. It's a message of saying there are all these different kings, these empires who've come against you, the Assyrian empire, Babylonian empire, Persian empire, there will be the Greek empire that's right on the heels of this, Alexander the Great is going to come and take over. And like all these things are in play and Judah just keeps losing, Israel keeps losing to all of them. And it's like almost this vision, there's going to be hope, there's going to be a rebuilding. You don't think, okay, here come these mighty armies, what am I going to do? I'll get some carpenters, that's what I'll do to go against them. But it says, image, craftsmen, stone masons, whatever it might have been, who are going to rebuild and overcome. Yeah, and when we think about the four horns and the people being scattered in the nations who have, throughout the Old Testament, who were seen as the ones that conquered the people of Israel, whether the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Persians, the Babylonians, whomever they were, one of the reminders we have, especially looking back on history, is that nations rise and fall. Yep. And yet there's this sense of where God's people throughout the Old Testament, they remain. But the people of Judah always come out ultimately on top. Within the context of the New Testament, and we look at the church throughout the centuries since the resurrection of Christ, how many nations have tried to eliminate Christianity? We think about the persecuted church, where the church is persecuted, inevitably it's always where the church is growing, I mean, it's one of those things that you marvel at. And so we see how God's kingdom, again, the power, the nature of God's kingdom that moves among the kingdoms of the earth as God preserves, not only preserves his people, but oftentimes grows his people. I mean, again, like within a New Testament context, look at how the church itself, sometimes people are like, we're only one generation from the church going away. And I'm like, that's insane, isn't biblical at all. I understand that a particular church could die, or even Christianity in some ways in a particular nation might dry up. But oftentimes that's because the church itself loses its way. It's not because of persecution, because where you see the church persecuted, you know, you see again, nations rise and fall. And yet when those nations fall, all of a sudden this underground church that's been in existence for years rises up and you see, holy cow, the gospel has been at work. It's moving cultures. Oppressing Christianity, you often see like this vibrancy in Christianity, but where culture absorbs Christianity, you see a lukewarmness. Yeah. Well, I think it's not so much culture absorbing Christianity as Christianity absorbing culture. Yeah, right. Maybe. Maybe. It could be. One of the most interesting things I saw when I was in Greece was a surprise. I didn't know I was going to even, the tour was going to stop here. I thought we were only looking at biblical sites, but we ended up stopping at these monasteries that were built in the 14th and 15th centuries and all those things. Like, well, why were these things built? Well, when Constantine had come along a thousand years earlier and legalized Christianity, it went from being oppressed to accepted. And then all of a sudden there were tons of people throughout the Roman Empire who were cultural Christians. They just like, yeah, I'm a Christian because I was born a Christian now because it's now not only legal, it's cool to be a Christian. So I'm going to be one. They were no longer oppressed over 300 years Christianity thrived under oppression. And after Constantine, it became a little bit more lukewarmish. So these monks decided they're going to go up on these cliffs and build these monasteries. They were inaccessible. They did the pulley system to lift up the stones to build this. It's like really weird, but they built them up there to escape culture so that they could have authentic prayer and it's weird to me, like don't escape culture. I wouldn't do that. But it was really an interesting, the interesting piece for me was once Christianity got legitimized, it got less powerful, at least according to the people teaching us on this trip. And I thought that was, that was fascinating. So here, you know, Israel is facing that too. They're under all this oppression of all these, these problems going on. And there's a hope given through this vision that there's going to be a rebuilding period. And these, these horns won't last forever. That these rulers, these, these leaders, these empires won't last forever. Let's skip to chapter two. There's another one. It's super short and I just find it interesting. It's in chapter two, verses four and five, and it says this Jerusalem will be a city without walls. And I myself, God says, will be a wall, a wall of fire around it. And I will be it's glory within now. This is, this is not literally true. I mean, it was for a short period of time because the wall wasn't rebuilt until Nehemiah and we're going to take a look at him pretty soon here. So the, the wall wasn't built yet and there's a good, they're getting the temple and it's being rebuilt and it's being put in place, but I think there's more of a story here than will there be a physical wall around the city. God had promised that when the people were put in exile, he said, I will be your sanctuary. And now when they're back in Jerusalem and there's no wall around them, I will be your wall. This to me shows the nature of God, like when we think we're lacking something in life, something physical or tangible or even relational, whatever, like God says, I'm there for you. You know, I'm not be super honest with you. I don't even know if I'm reading all these 100% right in a written in such a way that I'm not sure that anybody can guarantee they're reading all of them 100% right perhaps because the style of language that's being used, a wall of fire around the city. What does that mean? And it's promised I will be its glory within. And we remember from the book of Ezekiel, the glory of the Lord departed. Later in the book of Ezekiel, the glory of the Lord returns, but God says, look, I'm the glory. I am the glory within the city. I'm the wall around the city. It's this promise that where we have lack, God provides. Yeah, the whole purpose of the narrative here in the images that we see, it's all about are the people going to entrust themselves to God or not, are they going to allow God to be their wall? Because if we remember pre-exile as the Babylonians are knocking at their door, where did the people of Judah turn? They try to get the Egyptians to come and rescue them. God warns them, don't do that, repent and trust yourself to me, or like ultimately give yourself over to the Babylonians, this isn't going to end well for you because your lack of repentance, don't go down to Egypt. And so they were looking for a nation state that was going to come and effectively be their wall against the Babylonians and they were turning into the Egyptians and God here promises to, as you described, be their wall. And so it's this constant message to the people, give yourself over to me, yield to me, trust yourself, trust me and trust yourself to me for your protection because the default of the people in the past had been to run to another nation for their salvation. Great. That's super well put. Let's just take a look at one more. That's in Zechariah chapter three. And this is about the high priest, the high priest is the leader of the religious community that guides the people. And in Zechariah chapter three verse one, it says, then he that has God showed me, Zechariah, he showed me Joshua, the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord and Satan standing at his right side to accuse him. It's a really interesting picture there that this guy's trying to reestablish the true worship of God and the accuser, Satan, is there to block him to try to keep him from doing that. The Lord said to Satan, the Lord rebuke you, Satan, I was like so much in that. It's like Jesus when he speaks to Satan, you know, and when he like, oh, so many different aspects of the Bible, we can see connecting back to this verse. He goes on, the Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you, Satan, is not this man, a burning stick snatched from the fire. Now Joshua, the high priest, was dressed in filthy clothes as he stood before the angel. The angel said to those who were standing before him, take off his filthy clothes. And he said to Joshua, see, I have taken away your sin and I will put fine garments on you. It's a really picturesque way of God saying, when you're standing for the Lord, you will get opposition and you will have things, even if Satan is speaking in your life and you're keeping into that and you're sinning, that God is the one who has the authority over Satan and God is the one who has the ability, the only one who has the ability to remove your filthy clothes of sin and replace them with fresh clean garments of his righteousness and forgiveness and salvation. We think that the Old Testament is not filled with this grace, but oh my goodness, isn't this like a really cool picture of the way God operates in our lives? Yeah, and I mean, we see this throughout the Old Testament text. I mean, we see it directly after the fall where God covers their shame, gives them garments to clothe them, to cover the shame of Adam and Eve. We see this in God's words to Abraham, where God credits righteousness to Abraham because of his faith, it's always been righteousness by faith. And so what we see here is we see God clothing him in his righteousness and removing his sin from him, ultimately depicting what is given to those who receive Christ as Savior, pointing to that in what we call imputed righteousness, that the righteousness of Christ is credited to those who believe in him so that we stand before God qualified for, as Paul would describe in Colossians 1, qualified for our eternal home based upon the righteousness of Jesus. Yeah, that's really cool. That line that's in the middle of that when he says it's not this man a burning stick snatched from the fire. That's one of the first things that I learned about when I was in seminary at Duke teaching us all about John Wesley and who he was and when he was a little kid, house caught on fire and the whole family got out big old huge family. Whole family got out except he was like a five or six year old kid and he was in the upstairs area and he was going to burn up in the fire and they rescued him. His mom, wasn't his mom that rescued him there? Probably his mom did pretty much everything. Everything. Yeah. She was on a reel. Yeah, she was super mom and had a whole pile of kids and so that's one of his lines that he used. He felt like he was a brand snatched from the burning fire or something like that. It's a reference back to this verse and this is a powerful image that when we think we're being consumed by evil and sin and the problems that are around us, God has the ability to rescue and he will get it done. So that's a good, good, good reminder for us. Well, there are a bunch more of these that are in here. There's a story of the gold lampstand and the two olive trees in Zechariah chapter four, the flying scroll in Zechariah five along with in that same chapter the woman in a basket and then also there's four chariots in Zechariah chapter six. We don't have time to look at each one of those today but, you know, Zechariah is filled with some interesting imagery that is used to give hope as the temple is being rebuilt to breathe hope back into the lives of the people and say, God's got you. It's going to be okay and you might be a burning snake, you know, a brand snatched from the fire and God might have a purpose in your life. That's how Wesley interpreted his childhood experience and so then he went on to do great things for God. I just would say that whether you've had something dramatic or not to know that God has your back and your front, God has your past and your future, God has you and he's not going to abandon you, he's there for you. What do you give us to conclude our little time with good old Zechariah? I think you've summed it up perfectly. I mean, I think again, it hearkens back to God's covenantal presence with his people. Like the guarantee of his love, you know, of his the Hebrew term, "hesid," of this unfailing love that God has guaranteed to his people. And I think that's what we see play out throughout the Old Testament is we see God's grace and mercy to the people, his constant pursuit of the people, ultimately this expression of his unfailing love for his people. Yeah, that's that's really good. Well, that they end up rebuilding the temple. They get it, they get it all wrapped up, they get it done. And but the wall is still not done. And even though God says that he's going to be this wall around them, they still want to rebuild the wall. And that's going to be left to them to the man named Nehemiah. So we'll take a look at his story about rebuilding the wall around Jerusalem next time. If you want to jump in deeper, go to our church's website, fishersumc.org, or our church app and click on the be God's light link, that'll take you to more elements in this year long study of the Old Testament. And it'll help you find the daily Bible readings and devotions that we have, as well as the weekly sermons and other episodes of podcasts and even more. And if you want to stay up to date with these be God's light podcasts, we encourage you to follow and rate wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening today and we'll see you next time. [BLANK_AUDIO]
Mark Ellcessor and Ben Greenbaum talk about the prophet Zechariah, who received visions for a rebuilt temple and Jerusalem.