God And His War Horses, Antsy To Bring Judgment (Zechariah 6:1-8) Series

Today, we have the privilege of tackling the first eight verses of Zechariah chapter 6. The first few times I read these verses, I thought that there wasn't much there. It seemed confusing, to be sure, but it also seemed like the type of passage where it's difficult to preach a full sermon out of it. From my perspective, by the end of my studying, and learning, and growing, it ended up being something quite different in the end. Hopefully, I leave you today feeling the same way.

Let's start by reading verse 1:

(1) and I again I lifted my eyes,

and I saw,

and LOOK! Four chariots going out from between the two mountains. (chariots: Psalm 68:17; 2 Kings 6:17; Isaiah 66:15)

Now, the mountains [were] mountains of bronze. [1 Kings 7:15-21]

Zechariah has another vision from God. He gets access into spiritual realities, and those spiritual realities are revealed to him in the form of a movie. It's not like a prophetic oracle, where God simply gives him a message to pass on to the people. It's a movie.

So what does Zechariah see?

Four chariots, emerging from two mountains made of bronze.

In the OT, one of God's names, or titles, is often translated as LORD of hosts. What this means, really (probably), is Yahweh of Armies. Our God is a general, who commands a huge angelic host of spiritual warriors. In several passages, this army is described. God has tens of thousands of chariots at his disposal. In the Ancient Near East, chariots were the premier fighting weapon of any army. They were a deadly combo of speed, and lethality-- the ancient equivalent of a fighter jet, or tank, or an attack helicopter in areas where there's total air dominance. It's difficult to win, without chariots. It's difficult to lose, with chariots.

So what we see here are four chariots. God has thousands of chariots. Here, we only see four. But this number four, is a symbolic number, representing a much bigger number (*Mark Boda). To see four chariots, is to see tens of thousands.

Where these chariots are moving out from, is between "the" two mountains. In the OT, mountains are the place where spiritual beings tend to live (except evil ones, who roam the desert?). When you want to have an encounter with Yahweh, the God of Israel, those encounters are often found at mountains. When Israel's neighbors wanted to worship their gods (elohim), or seek advice from them, they would often go to mountains, and offer sacrifices on the high places. And if you've ever been up high in a mountain range, this should make sense to you. When we traveled through Beartooth Pass at Yellowstone, you might be in a car full of family, and you might be worried you're about to die because the temperature is dropping, and the wet roads are going to turn to ice, and you're going to drop thousands of feet off the side of the road. But truthfully, it's hard to focus on any of that, because when you're up in those mountain ranges, all you can really think about is God. To go up in elevation, is to get closer to God. And that's something that people have legitimately understood to be true at least since the tower of Babel.

All of that said, it's unusual here that there are two bronze mountains. Many scholars link the two bronze pillars to Solomon's temple (1 Kings 7:15-21). His temple had two bronze pillars at the entrance. Passing through the pillars meant you were entering God's presence, or leaving it. And since earthly places of worship tend to be a dim mirror of heavenly places of worship, it makes sense that what we are seeing here is a better, bigger version of Solomon's temple. This heavenly temple would be the place where God is enthroned. It's his base of operations. It's like a combo of a military base, and a throne room.

So at the end of the day, the movie we need to let run in our heads, in our imaginations, should look like something out of the Lord of the Rings. We see four chariots streaming out from the place of God's presence. If you can picture the hooves pounding the earth, and angelic beings riding in chariots, guiding the horses, coming out from a Lord of the Rings mountain range, then you'll be very close to having the right movie in mind.

Verse 2-3:

(2) With the first chariot, reddish-brown horses,

while with the second chariot, black horses,

(3) while with third chariot, white horses,

while with the fourth, dappled horses-- powerful,

In these verses, Zechariah's vision zooms in, to focus on the horses. It could've focused on the pillars, or the chariots, or something else. But we see the horses.