349: I'd Like to Introduce You to Zechariah | Tim Henderson

Thank you, friends. You guys wanna know a little secret about one of the things that's unfortunate about preaching at church the Holy Spirit in a couple of weeks after Christmas? There's a thin coating of glitter all over the place up here. My iPad, I don't know if you'll be able to tell, but it's all sparkly now. It's just glitter everywhere.

Do you guys know this about glitter? We must have had glittery reeds. Years ago, we bought this really beautiful wood table—hardwood table—but it was like, you finish it yourself, you sand it, and you shellac. You know what I'm talking about—this naked furniture thing. We did it, it's beautiful, it's great, and then my sweet daughter, who I adore, did a craft with glitter, and that glitter is still in that table. Like, it never—that stuff you just cannot get rid of it. So I'm trying to get scheduled for a little later in January after we vacuumed it all off.

Introducing Zechariah

Alright. You guys, today we're gonna begin a new series, and I think it's gonna be really fun, but it's also gonna feel pretty unfamiliar, I think, to many of us. We're gonna study a book for the next six weeks that is not all that well known, not that frequently traveled, but is magnificent. It's a little bit off the beaten path, at least it is to us.

But what's crazy is that for the authors of the New Testament, this was well trod ground. They love this book. In fact, there is no other book in the Old Testament that is denser in messianic content than this particular book. Given its length—it's only 14 chapters long—there's nothing that's richer for messianic stuff. It's quoted in the New Testament over 70 times, and it is amazing.

What's the book? Zechariah. Very good.

I don't think that there is any book in the Old Testament that is more important while being more neglected in the church today than Zechariah. The New Testament authors found this book to be absolutely crucial, whereas most of us can't even find it.

So what we're gonna do in the next six weeks, we're gonna try to close the gap between the love and attention and fascination that the New Testament authors, and even the early church had with Zechariah, and our own view, knowledge, and love of this book.

But don't take my word for it. Here's a few things that others have said about Zechariah:

"No Old Testament prophet has more prophecy concerning Christ, Israel, and the nations in so short a book. Zechariah predicts 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 permanent peace, his rejection and betrayal, his return to Israel as the crucified one."

This is where John picks us up in Revelation:

They will look on him whom they have pierced and mourn — Zechariah

That's Zechariah, being smitten by the sword of the Lord.

Here's another one: "The book of Zechariah exerted a profound influence over the New Testament, particularly in the realm of messianic passages, a point long noted by New Testament scholars. Several important themes from the book figure prominently in the New Testament. One of the most important of these is the shepherd king from Zechariah nine—the king who rode into Jerusalem on a donkey emerges in Matthew and in John."

And then listen to this. This is even a little bit hard for me to take. C.H. Dodd even suggests that Zechariah provided the gospel writers with material of equal importance to the very Testimonia—meaning their eyewitness accounts of Christ's ministry. See, when these guys wrote the gospels, they depended on Zechariah as much as the three years they spent walking around with him. That is extraordinary. I'm not even sure I can go that far.

Another one says: "One of the great ironies concerning the book of Zechariah is its relative obscurity to the modern church contrasted with its profound significance to the early church. Unfortunately, students of the Bible rarely study Zechariah today. However, strong reasons exist for suggesting that the book ascended to a place of paramount importance to the writers of the New Testament and to the early church at large."

That's strong language, don't you think?

The Treasure in Scripture

I think that the Bible is like a mountain, and it's a mountain that is just filled with treasure. There are these rich veins of gold. There are gems of varying size and color. And what our job is to do is to mine in, to get a pickaxe, and to dig into the mountain, and to discover the treasures that are hidden in it. It is filled with treasure, and you can find it.

But I have noticed that a lot of us have a tendency to just stay in the familiar passages. Maybe there's one of the gospels that you love in particular, and that's home base, that's familiar for you.

Or maybe there's something that Paul wrote that you really love, or maybe for a lot of people it's the Psalms that are very familiar ground. And by all means, read John, read Romans, read whatever it is that you love, be in those places. But it's probably the case that there are vast expanses of scripture that are filled with treasure that you've not yet discovered, and it's probably the case that Zechariah is among them. It's just not really a place that we have a tendency to spend a lot of time. You've probably not been taught a lot of it, and it's probably the case that if you did have the courage to flip to it, it was just so weird that you stopped looking at it.

The most important step in this whole process is simply to read it. Flip to it and read through it. It's 14 chapters; you can hammer through it in not very long time. And if you do that, it will almost certainly be very unfamiliar to you, very strange. There's a ton of images in this book. Lots and lots of things that he's gonna say.

There's walls of fire, horses, hammers, and horns. There are construction tools and different things. There's a place where they take this woman and they shove her in a basket and put a lead cover over it, and then a bunch of other women with stork wings pick it up and fly it away. You're like, what are you talking about? What am I supposed to take from this?

But there's also a priest who wears a crown, a good shepherd who gets rejected, and a king who rides a donkey. And at the very end of the book, there is a fountain filled with blood, drawn from Emmanuel's vein, and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stain. This is a book that is just brimming with insights about Christ.

Chapter Three and the Gospel

I think probably my favorite chapter in the book is chapter three. It's a passage where there is this guilty man and he stands dressed in his own sin, filthy rags, and Satan is there to accuse him. It's one of very few places in the Old Testament where it seems like Satan's not lying. He's accusing this man, saying you did this, and you did this. He's just going after him. There's no sense that the accusations are false. But God intervenes and basically tells Satan, hey, shut up about that. He doesn't deny that it's true, but he says, yeah, this man is a burning stick, but he's mine, and I have snatched him from the fire, so back off. And they dressed this man in clothing that is not his own, and everything has changed for him.

For those of you here that are also sinners, like that guy—a handful of you, I know which ones of you are—you need to know that you have someone who speaks to the Father in your defense.

Jesus Christ, the righteous one, he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for our sins, but also for the sins of the whole world. — 1 John 2:2

And Zechariah can open that up in a way to help you see how great it is.

Reading and Understanding Zechariah

Now, there's a bunch of other stuff, all these images, bunch of strange things. As you read through this book, you need it all. It will confuse you, but don't let that trouble you. That's just the way that we learn. When we read things we don't understand, we read it again. You slow down, you look at it.

If you will read through it, and then if you keep coming back to the Holy Spirit for at least the next six weeks, and maybe even longer, Quig and Dave and I would be our pleasure to walk you through this book, so that it might begin to give up some of its treasures.

Those first six chapters have fun with those. There are nine visions. They're each like little short stories, little vignettes, very contained units, and they're weird. That's where lots of the imagery is. All these weird things happen in there. And when you go through them, don't worry about what they mean. It's fine. We'll get to what they mean down the road. Just notice what they say. Just let yourself experience it. Let yourself see it.

Next week, Sloop is gonna explain one of those stories. It's gonna be magnificent. The next week, Quigg's gonna walk us through another one, and then I'll be back up here. We're gonna keep walking our way through it until the book starts to make sense.

But what I want to do today is not so much look in Zechariah as look around it, way around it. I want to give you the context for this book. And what I mean by that is I want to give you the big picture context for the entire Old Testament.

We're gonna look at the whole Old Testament at like the 30,000, 50,000 foot view because I don't want Zechariah to just be this weird thing that's floating in the middle of nowhere for you. I want you to know where does it fit in the total redemptive arc, because it's really, I think, pretty beautiful. Alright? So walk with me over to the book of Genesis.

When Genesis begins, when the Bible opens, there's four great events and four great people. It's creation, fall, flood, Babel, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph. God makes the world and then it breaks. And as soon as it breaks, he's like, alright, I'm gonna clean this up. I'm gonna send a rescuer. It's gonna be okay. And then he floods the world, saving a remnant, but the remnant screws it all up too. And so then he has to scatter the people, confuse the languages, and we're all through the first 11 chapters of Genesis.

And then the people show up, Abraham. God picks this one guy and he says, you, I will bless you, you will bless the nations. And what he means by that is, it's from you that the rescuer is going to come. This is the line. This is where he's coming from. And then he has a kid who has a kid who has a kid who has 12 kids, Joseph's the favorite, and he makes them into a nation and he gives them a land. And they go into this land, but pretty quickly, they run out of food and there's a famine. And so they flee from their land into another land, Egypt. And Egypt's great until it isn't. And they end up getting stuck there. And they're actually enslaved and mistreated for four hundred years. And then God rescues them. He delivers them out in this fantastic act and brings them in to a new land, back into their land.

Now, that rescue is the primary template for the rescue that he promised back in Genesis three. And so they go, and it's only like a couple of weeks to walk to get to their land, but can you guess what happens? They screw it up. And what should have taken them just a few weeks ends up taking them forty years because God makes them march around in the wilderness literally until all the old people are dead so that their children can come into the land. And that is what book is that? Do you know where that is? That's Numbers. So we're in Genesis, then we're in Exodus. Numbers is the wandering. And now they're finally done wandering, they gotta take the land, but what do they have to do in order to really possess the land, guys? Do you know? They gotta fight. They gotta go conquer the land. And where does that happen? Joshua.

In Joshua, they conquer the land, and then as they conquer the land, everything's great, and they win a great victory, except it's only a partial victory. And they don't really drive out all the nations. So the nations around them become a snare to them. And this is the book of Judges now. And Judges, I would say, for my money, is the most embarrassing book in the Bible. They are such a train wreck over and over and over again. There's this pattern, and it repeats and repeats and repeats, where they cry out to God and he rescues them, and then they become complacent. And in their complacency, they sin and become rebellious, and in their rebellion, they get oppressed, and then they cry out to God for help. Repeat, repeat, repeat. It is just an absolutely embarrassing number of times that the rescuer rescues, and the rebels rebel, just over and over and over and over and over again. Finally, and the refrain in those times is, in those days, Israel had no king, and everyone did as he saw fit.

Finally, the kingdom really begins, and there a monarchy is started. And there's a monarchy, and it lasts for about three generations as an intact whole. There are three kings over unified Israel. Do you remember their names? Who are they? Saul, David, and Solomon. Now, of them, those first two, David is way better than Saul. Saul's kinda bad. He's not great. But David is magnificent until he isn't, right? He becomes the great template for the rescuer. Whereas the Exodus that we read about is the pattern of the rescue, David is the pattern of the rescuer, right? He's a hugely important figure in the Old Testament, and God says to him that the rescuer, and by now we can start changing his name from rescuer to Messiah, that's kind of the way the language shifts. This Messiah, he's gonna come from your line. He will be a son of or a grandson of or a great great great great great great grandson of David, and it is enormously important.

David, by the way, if you're looking at where this all happening in real time? It's about a thousand BC. So you can date everything around David. Stuff pre-David, post-David, a thousand BC is your anchor point. David is the guy from whom he's coming. So David is gonna have a son and his son's name is, what again? Solomon. So we're reading about Saul and David back in First and Second Samuel.

We move into first Kings, and now we're really in the life of Solomon. Solomon is complicated. In many ways, he does great things and the kingdom grows under his rule, but he also marries like a thousand women and that goes sideways for him, and his heart gets drawn away. He's a hard guy to pin down—lots of really great goodness and he wrote a lot of Bible actually, but he just fails in some really spectacular ways as well.

By the way, Solomon is the son of David, and if you think about the promises made to David that the Messiah would come from his line, David is the pattern of this Messiah. But then so is Solomon because Solomon is literally the son of David. And so there are promises made to the Messiah through Solomon. We're building this type and we're building a frame and this pattern of what God will do when he finally rescues.

And then right after Solomon, bam, the kingdom splits. This is such a drag. We only had three guys over a unified kingdom. The kingdom splits north and south, kind of like in the United States during our civil war. The North keeps the name—they continue to be called Israel. The South gets a new name—they're called Judah. But Judah keeps the promise, meaning the Messiah, the rescuer, he's gonna come from them.

And then what happens for several hundred years is these two nations, Israel and Judah, live in a generally unhappy alliance between one another, and they're wicked through and through. Literally, every single king of Israel is evil. They're all just rebellious, wretched people. And almost every king of Judah is evil. There's a couple of good guys—Asa's pretty good, Hezekiah keeps it together. But for the most part, it's like 18 out of 20 are just bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.

This whole period after Solomon—and this goes on for about three or four hundred years—it's really, really bad. And it is here, in this moment, that God sends the prophets. Right here is where the prophets show up. If we're dealing with all this stuff—Solomon, post-Solomon—we're basically in first Kings and second Kings, and this is where the prophets fit in.

The Interval Between Sin and Judgment

As we're here, God keeps telling the people—both of Israel and of Judah, both nations and a couple of the surrounding nations actually—it's like, you guys, you gotta stop. You've got to repent. You are on a path that's gonna lead to nowhere. You must stop. You must repent. God is merciful, but you're squandering, you're wasting his kindness.

Let me step out of the timeline for a second because this is so important. There is an interval between sin and judgment. Have you ever noticed this? It's not like as soon as you do something stupid, rocks fall out of the sky and crash into your head. That's not the way the world works. We do stupid things, and God allows this intervening time, this period of mercy. And what's supposed to happen in that window is that's when we come to our senses. That's when we apologize. That's when we're like, ugh, this is so dumb. That's where we turn and we begin to make changes.

But sometimes what happens—and what happened for Israel and for Judah—is they're like, hey, did you see that? We got away with it. Let's do it again, and let's do it again, and let's do it again. Because God is either a pushover, or he's not watching, or I'm in some special dispensation that I don't understand. And so this window that is meant for mercy and for grace, they completely squander it, and the judgment comes.

Those prophets, they saw it coming. They knew that it was coming, and they knew that God would be merciful even in judgment because he always is, but they're like, it would be a lot better if we averted this. And so they cry out, and the people ignore. And then finally, it happens.

In July, Assyria comes in and just obliterates the North. It's a bloodbath. They just get wrecked, ruined, scattered, and all is lost for them. Only the northern half though. The southern half, Judah, they're watching and they could think, oh gulp, like he means it, we better clean up our act. But they didn't. And so in May, the Babylonians come in and just wreck Judah.

This is really where the storyline comes to an end. And by the way, I have not forgotten that we're talking about Zechariah. We're so, so close.

So here's what's happened so far. Genesis, we got Creation, Fall, Flood, Babylon—Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. They get this land, they lose the land, they go out and they get stuck in Egypt.

They're there for four hundred years, they get brought out of Egypt and then they screw that up, they wander around for forty years in the wilderness. That's just a drag. And they finally take the land and they fight and they win, but they don't fight that hard and they don't win that much, and so the nations come in around them. That's just really bad. Then the kingdom really begins with the monarchy with a pretty mixed bag, but at least David's there. And David is the template of what Messiah will be, that this rescue will happen.

And the whole way, the whole way, the people of God have been rebelling, and God has been forgiving. The people of God have been falling into distress, and God has been rescuing. And these patterns, throughout this whole thing, the pattern is being set, and then finally we're in this window where it's just so bad, and the prophets are calling them into repentance. They just don't repent until the judgment finally falls. You with me? We're so close to Zechariah.

The Exile: The Central Event

Here's what I want you to know. This moment here of when the prophets come, and then really the moment where Babylon comes in and just ruins everything, we call this sometimes the exile, sometimes we'll call it the Babylonian captivity. This event that took place in May is absolutely monumental, and you will not be able to understand any of the prophets if you don't know what's going on. It is the holocaust. It is the major event, and in fact, it's so significant that we date all of the prophets in reference to this moment.

We basically put the prophets into three categories. Some of the prophets are pre-exilic, meaning they wrote before the exile. Some of the prophets are exilic, they write in the midst of the exile, and then some are post-exilic, they write after the exile. Most of them are pre. Most of them are like, it's coming, it's coming, watch out, the judgment is coming. That's where you're gonna find Isaiah, that's where you'd find Ezekiel, most of the words, most of the famous things are here in the lead up to it.

There's a couple guys though that write in the middle of the exile. They're like, oh, man. Well, here it is. This is horrible. Jeremiah is one of our exilic prophets. He wrote two books. He wrote the book that bears his name, Jeremiah, but he also wrote Lamentations, which is a lament, an expression of deep sorrow.

And then a couple of guys are post-exilic. They're after it's all over. That's where Zechariah lives. Zechariah is one of the guys after all. He's at the very end of the story, when everything's a mess, where the looming question is, like, is it over? Do we stretch it too far? Are we done here? Meaning, not like, are we done with the judgment, but are we done with the relationship? Like, should we just go home now? What's up?

Now, if you go back to the midst of the exile, Jeremiah is actually really helpful to us because Jeremiah wrote this book, it's called Lamentations and it really captures the heart of where the people—where the godly people were at. These are all the people of God, but they're not very godly people a lot of the time. But for those that were, here's what I want you to hear. This is the very end of Lamentations.

Joy has gone from our hearts and our dancing has turned to mourning. The crown has fallen from our head. Woe to us for we have sinned. Because of this, our hearts are faint, because of these things, eyes grow dim. For Mount Zion, which lies desolate with jackals prowling over it because Babylon destroyed it. Yet you, Lord, reign forever. Your throne endures from generation to generation. Why do you always forget us? Why do you forsake us so long? Restore us to yourself, Lord, that we may return. Renew our days as of old. Unless you have utterly rejected us and are angry with us beyond measure. — Lamentations 5

That right there is the baton that the exile guys pass to the post-exile guys. That's the question. Zechariah, figure this out. Has he rejected us forever? Is it over? And in particular, we need to know, is the Messiah still coming or did we ruin that too? That is what Zechariah is all about. Do you see now why Zechariah is such a messianically dense book? At this point in redemptive history, this is the burning question. Are we done? Is it over? Are we past redeeming? Or will you still do what you said you would do back before we exposed what we really are like? Are you moving on or will the Messiah still come? You guys, Zechariah is a book filled with messianic hope.

And I want you to know it, I want you to own it, not only because the New Testament loved it and knew it, and not only because it's just helpful to know your own history, but because my assumption is that you have probably blown it too. Amen? And what you need to know is that it is not over. It's not too late. It's not too late to cooperate with him. It's not too late to be restored. The Messiah did come, and he is coming again, and he is for you.

It is literally the most important thing in the world that you would come to cooperate with him, to come under his gracious reign, to live in the sea of his grace. There is actually nothing more important than that. There is no one who has ever lived who is wiser, or kinder, or holier than Jesus. No one is more patient. No one is more ferocious. No one is better than him in any way.

And we're studying Zechariah because the book is about Jesus, because he is so magnificent. And every minute that you spend seeking to know him, to understand him, to submit your life to him, will be richly rewarded. So, may I kindly but urgently implore you to put down whatever worthless bobble has captured your attention and go hard after this with us. I implore you, the Bible is filled with treasure and you can find it. And there is nothing that we would delight more than to be your guide into this part of the mountain.

Quig and Sloop and myself, we're gonna walk through this thing. It will be weird, promise you. But weird stuff is fun. I love weird stuff because the weird stuff is stuff we don't already know. Okay? So when you read it, it's gonna be like, that's confusing and I don't know what that is. Alright?

Your Assignment

Your assignment is this: on the way out, somebody's gonna hand you a book that looks like this. This has all the text of Zechariah, and then I put at the bottom of it all the places that the New Testament quotes it, because I want you to see like, man, that New Testament is in this thing all over the place.

Now, I will admit to you, the cover looks like this because I made it, and I have no artfulness at all. What do you want? Draw a picture of what you think Zechariah looks like, and then shut up about it. But it's good stuff in here, it's gold.

In the center of it, I've got the Bible Project's poster of Zechariah. That'd be really useful for you to reference that and say, oh, I see where we're at in the organization of it. Or you could do this, which would be so helpful: just go to YouTube and search "Bible Project Zechariah," and you can watch their eight-minute video, which should be so helpful. These guys are so good at what they do.

Grab it on the way out, and then do this: Read it. Just read it. It's 14 chapters, you're gonna hammer that out this week. When you do, some of it will make sense, a lot of it won't. Alright? No worries. Just start laying it down. Don't worry about understanding it. Just observe it. I know that when you read things that you don't understand, that can be disincentivizing, but come on, don't be such a sissy. Just read it. There's so much good stuff in here.

As you do, pay attention. Let the images just be images for their own sake. We'll figure out what they mean as we go through. Just notice what it says. You'll notice some things that you'll be like, oh, I recognize that. You'll see some stuff that you're like, hey, that reminds me of Palm Sunday. I've heard that thing before. That's good. Note that. You'll see this kingly priest or this priestly king, that might be helpful. You might notice there's this deal about 30 pieces of silver and maybe that'll ring a bell. Although you'd be like, I have no idea why they think that was about Judas, but okay. Just notice it. Just capture it.

And as you go through it, pay attention. You can write in this. Scribble in whatever you want, and then come back. We'll do it again, and then we'll do it again, and then we'll do it again. And we could become—you guys, we could become the one church in the United States of America that is fluent in Zechariah. And wouldn't that be fun? Wouldn't that be great? There's good stuff in there, so we wanna do it.

Now, when you walked in this morning, you probably weren't thinking, "Wonder what's going on with Zechariah." You came in with a million burdens. There's things going on in your life and relationships and work and, oh, good Lord. Whatever's going on in your mind and heart, we wanna help you. I think if we understand the gospel here, that is broadly helpful. We wanna make that land. But it might be that right now what you most need is everybody to be quiet for like two minutes so that you can just speak to the Lord, and we'd love to create a space for that.

What we'll do is, these curved rails are for you to come forward and just be like, whatever's going on, maybe something that I said in Zechariah is actually clicking for you and you wanna have a chance to process that with the Lord. Game on. It may be that whatever's going on in your mind doesn't have anything to do with this or at least it's not obvious how it does, and you need somebody to pray with. At the straight rails, we'll have friends that'll pray with you so that you don't have to be alone in that.

However you wanna do it, it is our pleasure to take you deeper and deeper into the mountain because it's filled with treasure, because you can find it. And whatever we can do in these next moments and over these next weeks to serve you, it would be our pleasure to do.

So let me pray for you and then we will go to the table and meet the Lord there.

Lord, we love you. You are goodness itself. You're kind and rich and generous. And you wrote a really strange book that is puzzling to us. Would you unwrap the puzzle? Would you give us the pleasure of discovering what you meant, what these images mean? That you'd kinda sneak past our logicalness and grab our hearts and show us what you want us to know about the God that is merciful and gracious.

We affirm that you are slow to anger. You're abounding in love and faithfulness.

Would you call us out of the places we have hidden, that we might drink of your love. We love you. Amen.