The Divine Plan for Jerusalem, Part 2
Zechariah 1:9-17
Take your Bible, if you will, and look with me at the book of Zechariah. Zechariah's the next to the last book in the Old Testament. We're beginning a wonderful study in this marvelous book of prophecy, and I know the Lord is going to richly reward us as we continue to pursue the truth that is here. We began our message last week and I really had only plans for this to be one message, and it got split into two, so we'll just give you the remainder of it tonight.
We've entitled it "The Divine Plan for Jerusalem" and it deals with Zechariah 1:7 through 17, 1:7 through 17, "The Divine Plan for Jerusalem." I think it's most exciting and interesting that in the day in which we live, Jerusalem has again become the focal point in human history, in many, many ways. The topic of the news and our eyes are focused upon that little country in the Middle East, and that one particular, beautiful city of Jerusalem. And this is not an accident. This is as God had planned it in history and in prophecy, and we're beginning to see the fulfillment. From the beginning of God's dealing with His people, Israel, that nation has had a very unique place in God's plan. God chose Israel, purely out of His own sovereign love. It wasn't anything that they were, they weren't any better, any more intelligent, any more holy, any more anything really. It's simply that God sovereignly chose them, and Deuteronomy 10:14, "Behold the heaven and the heaven of heavens belong to the Lord thy God, the earth also, with all that there in is." Everything belongs to Him. "Only the Lord had a delight in thy fathers, to love them and He chose their seed after them, even you above all people as it is this day." There in the book of Deuteronomy, it says He did it because He delighted to do it in His love. He chose to set His love upon that particular nation.
Now many people throughout the church age have asked the question why? Why did God choose Israel, and why did He not choose another nation? Well, as I said last time, there's no way to determine why He chose them and not another nation, but there is a way to determine why He chose them. And that is because He had to have a nation. He had to have a people. You say, "For what intention, for what reason?" Let me give you several.
God needed a nation of people in the world, in order no.1, to proclaim the existence of the true God. There had to be somebody in human society who would declare the truth about God. And do you remember that Israel was told, "The Lord our God is one God." In Deuteronomy 6:4, and God said, "Talk about that when you lie down and when you rise up and when you stand and when you walk and when you sit. So talk about it all the time, and teach it to your children and to their children. Let it be known to the world that you proclaim the one true God." And so God needed a nation to do that. In Isaiah 43:21, God said, "This people have I chosen for myself. They will show forth my praise." The chosen people to declare the true God.
Secondly, He needed a nation through whom He could reveal the Messiah. In Genesis chapter 12, verse 3, God said to Abram, "In thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed." And it was truth. Through the loins of Abraham came the Messiah. That's what Jesus meant in John 4:22 when He said, "Salvation is of the Jews." He didn't mean salvation is for the Jews. He meant that the one who is the savior came through the seed of Israel. So God needed a nation to proclaim His existence and to reveal His Messiah.
Thirdly, God needed a nation to be a priest among men. You know that a priest is one who speaks to God on the behalf of men, who intercedes for men, and who, on occasion, will speak to men about God. He is an intermediary, and God needed a nation to be the intermediary between men and Himself. In Exodus 19:5 and 6, it says that "Israel was a kingdom of priests." The world could come to Israel and be introduced to God. That was God's plan, although, well, it didn't always work out like that. They were to represent God and the world. They were to be His priests.
Fourthly, God chose Israel to transmit and preserve scripture. God needed a people who would be a depository in which He could place the Word of God where it would be protected, where it would be cared for, where it would be preserved. And that's again, in Deuteronomy chapter 4 and chapter 6, why God says, "What I have commanded you, obey it, keep it, maintain it, preserve it, because it is essential to the life of all the earth." So God needed a nation to proclaim His existence, to reveal His Messiah, to be His priest in the world, to preserve and transmit scripture.
And then fifthly, and I think this is important, God needed a nation that could show that world that He was a faithful God. The one thing that God did not want the world to do was to lose their trust in Him, or that God did not want to lose His credibility in the face of the world. God did not want a bad reputation of being a God that you couldn't trust. He might say something and not carry it through. And so God had a nation, the nation Israel, and everything that God ever said to that nation, He brought to pass. When He said "Do this and I'll bless," they did it and He blessed. When He said "Do that and I won't," they did it and He didn't. And it's always been that way.
In Romans chapter 11, the apostle Paul essentially is saying that, in Romans 11, just suggesting to you verse 26-29, "And so all Israel shall be saved as it is written, there shall come out of Zion the deliverer and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob, for this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins. As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes, but as touching the election, they are beloved for the Father's sake." God determined to love them, God determined to elect them, God determined to save them, and God will do just that at the second coming of the Messiah. Israel stands for all time as proof that God is a covenant keeping God. He always keeps His promise, and the world needs only to look at the history of Israel to see that that is proven.
Sixthly, I think the reason God needed a nation was to show man His grace in dealing with sin. God wanted to show the world that He was gracious and there's no better proof of it than to see how He blessed Israel in spite of Israel's sin. No better way to prove it than to see that if Israel was simply obedient to carry out the acts of repentance and confession that were known as the sacrifices, God would forgive their sin no matter how heinous and how awful it was. The whole system of Levitical offerings was to show one that, and that was that God was gracious and God was forgiving and as Micah said, "Who is a pardoning God like thee? Whoever forgives iniquity and passes by transgression the way that you do? Whoever removes sin as far as you? As far as the east is from the west, and forgets it?" And so, a nation was needed to show His grace.
And seventh, a nation was needed to show God's anger in dealing with unrepentance. God wanted the world to see how He dealt with sin and unrepentance, and willful sin, and Israel is a perfect illustration of that. You look at their history, and whenever there was unrepentant sin, whenever there was unconfessed sin, whenever there was prolonged and protracted evil, without any conscience about it, there was war and there was death, and there was plague, and there was judgment.
And so God chose a nation for all of these reasons, that that nation might demonstrate to the world the messages that God wanted the world to hear and to see. And Israel then was that nation. And they have become to the world really the platform from which God speaks.
This last point I want to mention in some detail for a minute. God chose Israel in order to show the world His reaction against an unrepentant heart. Back in Leviticus 26:14 God said to them, "If you will not hearken to me and will not do all these commandments, and if you shall despise my statues, if your soul abhor my ordinances, so that you will not do all my commandments, but break my covenant, I will also do this unto you. I will even appoint over you terror, consumption, the burning fever that shall consume the eyes, and cause sorrow of heart. You shall sow your seed in vain for your enemy shall eat it." That means your enemies will kill your children. "I will set my face against you, you will be slain before your enemies, and they that hate you shall reign over you and you shall flee when nobody is pursuing you. And if you will not for all of that hearken to me, I will punish you seven times more than that for your sins, and I will break the pride of your power." That's pretty clear language. God says, "You're going to be judged." In verse 32, "I will even bring you into the land which is desolation. Your enemies who dwell therein will be astonished at you. I will scatter you among the nations. I will draw out a sword after you and your land shall be desolate and your cities waste." You know something? That happened in Israel's history, and it's happened again and again, recurrently in their history, whenever they have been unrepentant, whenever they have been denying sin, whenever they have failed to bow to a holy God, they have found that that has come to pass again and again and again, even in modern times.
In Deuteronomy again, the same thing indicated in chapter 28 and verse 37. It says, "And thou shalt become an astonishment, a proverb, a byword among all nations to which the Lord shall lead thee." In other words, there might even be a proverb like this: "He's as homeless as an Israelite. He's as chastened as an Israelite, because you will be the very byword for chastening, the very byword for homelessness, for wandering." In verse 64 of Deuteronomy 28, says "And the Lord shall scatter thee among all people, from one end of the earth to the other, and there thou shalt serve other gods which neither thou nor thy fathers have known, even wood and stone, and among these nations shalt thy find no rest, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest, but the Lord shall give thee there a trembling heart and failing eyes, and sorrow of mind and thy life shall hang in doubt before thee and thou shalt fear day and night and thou shalt have no assurance of thy life. In the morning thou shalt say 'Would God it were evening' and at evening thou shalt say 'Would God it were morning,' for the fear of thine heart wherewith thou shalt fear, and for the sight of thine eyes which thou shalt see." God says, "It's going to be awful, it's going to be terrible, it's going to be fearful, when you're scattered among the nations because of your sin and your failure to repent and turn to me."
It is precisely at that juncture in the life of Israel that we enter the book of Zechariah. This nation had been in sin, and they had not repented of that sin. They had failed to acknowledge that sin to God. And as a result God said, "You're going to get scattered again." And they did and they were taken captive into Babylon and that Babylonian captivity, as we saw last time, lasted for a period of 70 years. Look in your Bible at 2 Chronicles chapter 36, that's the last chapter in the book, 2 Chronicles chapter 36, verse 14, and here's the historical setting for what had happened in the Babylonian captivity. And by the way, the principle of judgment upon sin has not changed at all. God still reacts violently against sin. But notice 2 Chronicles 36:14, "Moreover all of the chief of the priests and the people transgressed very much after all the abominations of the nations and polluted the house of the Lord which He had hallowed in Jerusalem." Now it's gotten pretty debauched at this point in the history of Israel. They have polluted everything possible. Verse 15, "And the Lord God of their Fathers sent to them by His messengers, rising up early and sending, because He had compassion on His people and on His dwelling place." He sent messengers because He cared and the messengers were the prophets and God sent them in love but verse 16 says, "They mocked the messengers of God. They despised His words, misused His prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against His people till there was no remedy. Therefore He brought upon them the king of the Chaldeans who slew their young men with the sword in the house of the sanctuary and had no compassion upon young men or maiden, old men or him that stooped for age. He gave all into his hand, and all the vessels of the house of God, great and small, and the treasures of the house of the Lord and the treasures of the King and of the Princes. All these he brought to Babylon. And they burned the house of God and broke down the wall of Jerusalem and burned all its palaces with fire and destroyed all its precious vessels." Pretty sad to see that great, magnificent temple into shambles. And those who had escaped form the sword, those who happened to live through the terrible siege, and the terrible killing that occurred, He carried away to Babylon. And you notice the "He" in all of these verses is God really. It's God doing it, using the Babylonians as His agents.
Well, they were servants to him and his sons until the reign of the King of Persia. The King of the Chaldeans, of course, is the primary "he," but behind the scenes it's God. Why? To fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her Sabbaths. For as long as she lay desolate, she kept Sabbath to fulfill three score and seven years. 70 years, the land would be desolate, they would be carried away into captivity. And God was chastening their unrepentant hearts.
Then after 70 years, you remember what happened, God said "That's enough. That's enough chastening." And then verse 22 picks up the story from there. 2 Chronicles 36:22, "In the first year of Cyrus, King of Persia, the word of the Lord spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished." You remember Jeremiah 29:10 prophesied that it would only be 70 years. So in order to fulfill that prophecy, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, King of Persia, and he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and putting it in writing saying, "Thus saith Cyrus, Kind of Persia, all the kingdoms of the earth hath the Lord, God of heaven, given me. He hath charged me to build Him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Who is there among you of all His people, the Lord is God be with him, and let him go up." And there was the decree of Cyrus that sent the people who wanted to go back to the land.
As we come to Zechariah, they have come back. Now you can turn to Zechariah. They have returned to the land. They've been there now for quite a few years. They've had a difficult time getting the building going because they've been hassled and harassed by their enemies. And they are rather indefensible since there isn't any wall to their city. It's very difficult, and so they have kind of lapsed into invalids and lethargy. And it's at that point that God raises up two prophets. The first one was Haggai, and Haggai stirred them to start the work. Two months later came Zechariah, and Zechariah comforted them and encouraged them to keep the work going. And Zechariah's message was this: "Keep it up folks; God's on your side. Keep it up folks; God is going to bless you. God's got great plans for you. You can be confident in God. You can believe in God. He's going to take care of you." And he just kept comforting them and comforting them and comforting them. And he was a catalyst to keep them moving in the building.
Now, in his prophecy, the major theme of the first six chapters is the comfort that God wants to give to Israel. And it comes in a series of eight visions. Zechariah, like many prophets in the Old Testament, received visions from God that are interpreted into messages and the messages are all messages meant to comfort the people. They've been hassled for 70 years in captivity, they've been hassled since they got back to their land, things aren't like they should be, it's a very difficult time, and they are sort of under the weight of it, and so here comes this tremendous encouragement.
Now we're looking at the first of these eight visions, designed to comfort Israel as they prepare and endeavor to rebuild their city. And the first one that we looked at is the one that is in verses 7-17. Let's remind ourselves of the vision by looking at verse 8 again. The picture seen, and I think this is as far as we got last time, the picture scene: "I saw by night and behold a man riding a red horse, and he sat among the myrtle trees that were in the hollow and behind him were red horses, sorrel and white." Now, Zechariah sees this vision. Now, let me remind you of what it is that he sees. The man riding the red horse was whom? Christ, known also in the Old Testament by what title? The angel of the Lord. Riding a red horse is a symbol of what? War and battle. So he's mounted for battle. Behind him were other riders on red horses and white horses and some that were mixed reddish and white, sorrel. The white we see in prophecy has to do with victory or triumph. So there is a war coming and the idea is there will be blood but there will be victory.
And as the angel of the Lord and all these hosts behind him, we called it the God Squad last time. All the angelic hosts that are assigned to this particular thing, they are all in a hollow. And we suggested that it most likely would be where the valley of Kidron and the valley of Henum on the south part of Jerusalem meet together. It's the lowest place. It's the hollow, the glen if you will, the bottom as the old authorized might say. And it shows them in this place, amidst a whole group of myrtle trees. And we said that the myrtle trees represented whom? The Jews, Israel. And here is Israel in a low place, in a despairing place, outside their city, not really possessing their kingdom and wondering why they haven't, and all of the sudden Zechariah says, "You may be outside wanting to possess, and you may want to restore that beautiful city and that marvelous worship and all that God has given you in the past, and you may be wondering why you're in the valley, in the hollow, but look again because right in the midst of you is a rider on a red horse who's about to start a war, and it's going to be a victory for you, and He's going to reinstate you in the place of God's divine blessing."
So it's a fantastic picture. They are outside Jerusalem, they are waiting to take the city, they are waiting to move in. It's a picture of God's humiliated people, and their angelic defender, protector, who is ready to lead the battle and win the victory, and rebuild the city. What a tremendously comforting picture this must have been to that group of patriots that had come back to reestablish their land. Chastened for a time, but about to see the end of all chastening, as the angel of the Lord was ready to do some conquering. And so that's the picture seen.
Second point: we're gonna see five facets now. The perplexity solved...the perplexity solved. Now, Zechariah sees a thing like that and naturally it arouses his curiosity. So in verse 9, "Then said I, oh my Lord, what are these." Not who are these. I think he probably knew who was represented. But he was saying, "What is the significance of this? And the angel who talked with me said to me, 'I'll show you what the significance is'." Now, here we meet "the angel who talked with me." After a lot of thinking and reading this, I'm convinced that "the angel that talked with me" is not the same as the angel of the Lord. He's different. He's another angel. Let's call him "Interpreter Angel" okay? Because that's his function. He's a special angel, and his job is to explain things to Zechariah. So Zechariah's having this vision while he's awake, not asleep. He's given a sixth sense, as it were, to perceive things that are beyond the human vision and insight. And in order to understand them, God sends along an interpreter angel who helps him to get things clear. This angel is mentioned 11 times in the book so he's important. "What are these? And the angel that talked with me said 'I'll show thee what these are.'" This says the angel is gonna help him to understand.
Now verse 10, somehow this interpreter angel directs his attention to the rider on the horse, and he says in verse 10, "And the man that stood among the myrtle trees," and who is that? That's the rider on the horse. "Answered and said, 'These are they,'" and he's looking out at the troops behind him, "'these are they that the Lord hath sent to walk to and fro through the earth.'" So he looks back and he sees the riders on the red, the white, and the sorrel horses, and he says, "These are the ones that God has sent to walk to and fro through the earth." This is God's reconnaissance crew. This is the divine patrol, if you will. The word occurs in a military sense. The word "walk to and fro through the earth" is used in a military sense, with the idea of reconnoitering or the idea of patrolling, ascertaining the state of the enemy. And so God has His squad, His patrol, moving through the earth, just to get the up to date information on what's going on among the enemy.
You know Satan does the same thing. In the book of Job, you don't need to turn to it, it says in 1:7, "And the Lord said unto Satan, 'Where are you coming from?' And Satan answered the Lord, 'From going to and fro in the earth and walking up and down in it.'" He does the same thing. He's on a patrol, and he's got his patrol. Chapter 2, verse 2, He says again, "Where'd you come from?" and he says, "From going to and from in the earth and walking up and down in it." Satan's all over the place, checking everything out, and so is God with His heavenly host. And that's part of why the warfare between the angels and the demons goes on all over the place.
God is on patrol, all over the earth. The squadron of the Lord has been sent out on a world mission and they've come back to report to the angel of the Lord, like the Persian monarchs. This is very fitting in this time, because the Persian monarchs used messengers on swift horses to keep them informed on everything going on in their empire. And so the Lord knew everything about the earth because His angels were moving around it, in this vision. And they give the report, verse 11. Here's our report, they're reporting in now to the commander in chief, the angel of the Lord, none other than Christ, and they answered the angel of the Lord that stood among the myrtle trees, and they said, here's their report, "We have walked to and fro through the earth and behold, all the earth sitteth still and is at rest. We've checked it all out, and everybody's at rest."
Now, I just want to give you footnotes. Verse 11 calls the rider, for the first time, the angel of the Lord. And the angel of the Lord is none other than Jesus Christ, none other than the second person of the Trinity. But every Jew knew the angel of the Lord was his protector and defender. Every Jew who knew anything about his Old Testament, every Jew who knew anything about the history of his people, knew that there was one special angel, one super angel, who was set for the defense of Israel, and it was the angel of the Lord. What is so wonderful is that the angel of the Lord had not appeared for 200 years in the history of Israel. And now all of the sudden the angel of the Lord is back, and all the while of those 200 years while Israel was in wretchedness, and Israel was in sinfulness, their protector and advocate and defender was not around. But when their chastening was done and repentance had taken place, He was back, ready to defend His people. Great lesson, and can you imagine how excited those people got when they heard Zechariah describe his vision as incorporating the angel of the Lord and they must have whispered to each other, "But He hasn't been around for 200 years and now He's back." Victory is imminent. What a joyous vision.
There's a great truth here people. The Lord Jesus Christ, the angel of the Lord, is our defender and protector, isn't He? Isn't He the one who takes up our cause? Isn't He the one in Romans 8 who says, "Who shall lay any charge to God's elect?" Isn't He the one who says He has justified us? Isn't He the defender and the protector and the advocate? Yes He is, but I'll tell you something. He will not make Himself known in that fashion, when we are living in a state of unrepentant, unconfessed sin. In a sense, we forfeit His protection, don't we? And He turns us over to the consequence of our sinfulness. And the moment we repentant and the moment we confess, He's back, to defend.
And now He's back among His repentant people to take up their cause and He always will take up the cause of the people who are rightly related to Him, always. And here's their report, "Everything is still in the earth." Say, "Well that sounds terrific." What does the word mean when it says "The earth sits still and is at rest?" The term literally means "relaxed, peaceful, tranquil, free from war." Now this is generally speaking. There were some little squirmishes going on, we know, in the second year of Darius, but they were pretty well squelched. And the Persians had managed to pull off pretty much what amounted to a world wide peace in their world. Shaqat, the verb that is used there, is used repeatedly in the book of Judges, to express the peaceful interims enjoyed by the land of Israel. So it means "a time of political peace." And the conditions that the angels did report is known to have existed in general in the second year of Darius. They had accomplished a peace. There were a whole slew of rebellions that had been put down, a just a little flickering of some of them left by the second year of Darius. So the angelic report is really accurate. The world was pretty much at peace.
But that word also means something else. It is a word that is used, and this is where you really have to dig a little bit to find out what they're saying. When it says "The earth is at rest," that word is used several times in the Old Testament to refer to selfish inactivity...selfish inactivity. Such is its use in the case of Moab, in Jeremiah 48:11. Such is its use in the case of the city of Samaria, the country of Samaria, in Ezekiel chapter 16 verse 49. In both of those scriptures, the term means not a positive thing, but a negative. It means these people, Moab, and these people, Samaria, are selfishly indifferent to the plight of somebody that has a need. It's like the little plaque that says "If you can be peaceful in this situation, you just don't understand the situation." In other words, some people's peace isn't' really peace, it's indifference, right? It's indifference. If you're in a society plagued by poverty and pain, and you're totally blissful, that's not really peace, that's indifference. And that is the way Shaqat is used in Jeremiah 48:11, Ezekiel 16:49.
Incidentally this is a peace that isn't long to last. It is a peace that is doomed. In fact, Haggai, the other prophet of this time, said in Haggai 2:7, "'I will shake the nations and the desire of all nations and I'll fill this house with glory' saith the Lord of Hosts." And over in verse 21, He says essentially the same thing, "I'll overthrow the throne of kingdoms, I'll destroy the strength of the kingdoms of the nations, I'll overthrow the chariots and the people who ride them, and the horses and the riders, etc., etc.," And Haggai kept saying, "There's coming a day w