Don't Rip People Off (Zechariah 5:1-11) Series

Today, we have the privilege of tackling Zechariah 5. This is a tricky passage, in many ways, most of which I'm totally planning to hide from you today. But if you're one of those who lean nerd, and who consider yourself to be a good Berean, who tests what you hear before you choose whether you will accept or reject what I teach, you should know you'll have your hands full today. If you're one of those who compare English translations of the Bible, to help you see scholarly disputes, you'll be shocked at the differences you see. And, for the most part, I'm just going to hide all of that. I've put some of the discussion in the footnotes, but I've figured out what I think is a pretty decent translation of the Hebrew, and I'm going to try to make things sound simple, and straightforward.

Our passage today breaks down into two parts. I take these two parts to be two interconnected parts to one basic vision. There's a part 1, and a part 2. There are a number of links that connect the two-- in both parts, we will see something flying. In both, there's something "going out." In both, we see God deliberately targeting particular sins, and sinners.

What we will see in this chapter is that God's end goal is the removal of these sins, and these people, from his land. God's taking out the trash, basically, and creating a society that's ordered, and structured, how He wants. And perhaps most importantly, in both halves of this vision, we see a focus (once we squint, using OT glasses) on the marketplace. God is working to set up a society where people buy and sell in an honest, righteous way, and where people respect their neighbor's property. What's yours, is yours. What's mine, is mine. And the day will come, when everyone who lives in God's kingdom, in God's presence, will respect that, and interact with each other financially in a straightforward, honest, and transparent way.

The first half of our vision runs from Zechariah 5:1-4. Let's read verses 1-2:

(1) and I again lifted up my eyes,

and I saw,

and LOOK! A flying scroll!,

(2) and he said to me,

"What [are] you seeing?,"

and I said,

"I [am] seeing a flying scroll.

Its length [is] 20 in cubits (roughly 30 feet?),

while its width [is] 10 cubits (roughly 15 feet?),"

We are used to going outside, and seeing things flying through the air (all of this is building off Max Rogland's sermon on Zechariah 5:1-4). Planes, and chemtrails, are just an ordinary part of life. Helicopters, drones, and hot air balloons are less common, and we might stop to watch them. But no one is surprised to go outside, and see humans, or human inventions, flying through the air.

But for most of human history, the only things that flew were birds, and insects. So when Zechariah sees a flying scroll here, that would be shocking. Scrolls don't fly.

The other thing that makes this vision shocking, is the dimensions of the scroll. Scrolls could be 30 feet long, but they'd typically be about a foot wide. It's uncomfortable reading anything much wider than that. It'd also be uncomfortable working with something that wide. We'd look like a little kid, trying to fold his parents' king size bed sheets.

So Zechariah sees this huge flying scroll, that's the size of a billboard. What does this mean? And how can a scroll fly?

Verse 3:

(3) and he said to me,

"This [is] the curse about to come/go out upon the surface of all the land,

because everyone stealing from here like this has been unpunished.

This flying scroll, represents a curse that God is about to send out on all the surface of the land.

And there's a specific reason God is about to send out this curse. "Everyone from here like this has been unpunished."

There are certain types of sins, where it's obvious when you've done the wrong thing (this again builds off Max Rogland's sermon). You attack someone without cause. You gossip. You lose your temper. Everyone walks away from that thinking, "That person did a really terrible thing, and should apologize." In the words of 1 Timothy 5:24, some people's sins go before them. Some sins are obvious to the whole world.

With other types of sins, the whole truth about something doesn't surface until much later. If someone steals a snowblower out of your garage, or a bike, you'll realize pretty quickly that something is missing. But you might not know who did it. Or if someone decides they will defraud the state of Minnesota for millions of dollars by running a fake daycare, or fake center for kids who fake being autistic, that act of sin might stay hidden for years. Sometimes, you don't even know there's a thief until hundreds of millions of dollars have disappeared.