Today, we begin a new series in the book of Zechariah. What I like to do, at the start of each series, is recommend a book to all of you, that you can work through as we work through the book. That book, a commentary, will give you a second perspective on the book. Hearing a second voice will help you see where scholars disagree. It'll help open the book up to you in a bigger way. And there will probably be times when I'm wrong, and he's right, and maybe the second voice will steer you closer to the truth. So for Zechariah, the commentary I recommend is Mark Boda's NIVAC commentary. He has a bigger, more nerdy version (NICOT), but the NIVAC one will be far more helpful.
The easiest introduction to the book of Zechariah is probably found, by starting in Jeremiah 25. Jeremiah was a prophet who spoke God's word to Judah, starting a couple decades (?) before Judah was conquered by Babylon. God commissioned Jeremiah, basically, to give Judah one last chance to repent, before it was too late. As I read these verses, picture God, and Jeremiah, speaking out of a mixture of sadness, and frustration, and anger.
Jeremiah 25:1ff:
(1) The word that came to Jeremiah concerning all the people of Judah in the fourth year of Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah.
That [was] the first year of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon,
(2) when Jeremiah the prophet spoke to all the people of Judah
and to all the ones dwelling in Jerusalem, saying,
(3) "From the 13th year of Josiah son of Amon king of Judah, and up to this day-- these 23 years-- the word of Yahweh has come to me,
and I have spoken to you.
I have spoken again and again,
and you haven't listened,
(4) and Yahweh has sent to you all his servants-- the prophets--
sending them again and again,
and you haven't listened/heeded,
and you haven't stretched out your ears to listen,
(5) (I've been) saying,
"Return, please, each one from his evil way, and from your (plural) evil deeds,
and live on the land that Yahweh has given to you and your fathers--
from long ago, and for forever--
(6) and may you not walk after other gods/elohim,
by serving them,
and by bowing down to them,
and don't provoke me to anger by the work of your hands,
and I won't harm you,"
(7) and you didn't listen to me --utterance of Yahweh--
so that they have provoked me to anger with the work of your hands, to bring harm to you."
(8) Therefore, thus has said Yahweh of Armies:
"Because you haven't heeded/listened to my words--
LOOK! I am about to send,
and I will take all the clans of the north-- utterance of Yahweh-- to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, my servant,
and I will bring them against this land,
and against the ones dwelling in it,
and against all these nations around it,
and I will destroy them, ["them"=Judah, and that surrounding area]
and I will make them into a horror
and an object of hissing
and a site of ruins forever,
(10) and I will destroy from them the sound/voice of jubilation and the sound of joy--
the sound/voice of the bridegroom
and the sound/voice of the bride,
the sound of the millstones,
and the light of the lamp,
(11) and all this land shall become a site of ruins-- a desolation--
and these nations shall serve Babylon 70 years,
Everything in Jeremiah 25:1-11 has been fulfilled by the time God called Zechariah to be a prophet. God's people refused to return to God. Jerusalem was conquered. The people were scattered across the Babylonian empire, serving it. But that 70 years is basically done, more or less (a complicated topic, actually). And God's people-- some of them, at least, have returned to Jerusalem-- to a city that was left in ruins. At this point, they've restarted rebuilding the temple, and made pretty decent progress. But their life in Jerusalem has been hard. It's not going well (*Haggai). That's basically the context we need to know, for this first little bit of Zechariah to make sense.
Let's turn to Zechariah, and read verses 1-2:
(1) In the eighth month, in the second year of Darius, the word of Yahweh came to Zechariah, son of Berechiah, son of Iddo, the prophet, saying,
(2) "He was angry -- Yahweh-- with your fathers an anger," ["He was angry" is focused]
Let's stop here. The opening words to this book, are that God was angry with the generation that preceded you. He was mad.
If you were this generation Zechariah addresses, and you were thinking about your fathers' generation, you'd probably find your thinking starting somewhere else-- with what they had to go through. Their cities were burnt, and captured. Their wealth was taken. Their homes were lost. The temple where God placed his Name, and his glory, was destroyed. And that generation was sent into exile, scattered across the Middle East. Those events defined that generation, in much the same way that WW II, or the Vietnam War, defined some of ours-- with the note, that when you've been defeated, and lost everything, those events define you even to an even greater degree. It's more like being a German in WW II. Or, in some ways, it's like having grandparents who grew up in the Great Depression. To some extent, going through things like that defines you, and your history. When you think of your grandparents, or your great-grandparents, you think of the Great Depression.
But Zechariah says, when you think about your fathers' generation, your starting point should be an awareness of God's anger. God's anger explains everything that happened. That's the framework for everything. So you can talk about burnt out cities, and war, and disease, and famine. You can think about how your parents had hard lives. But the first thing you should say, is that God was angry with our fathers.
Verse 3-6:
(3) and you will say to them, (=to this generation)
"Thus has said Yahweh of Armies:
"Return to me, --utterance of Yahweh of Armies--
and I will return to you, has said Yahweh of Armies.
Zechariah is speaking to a people who have "returned" to the land of Israel, and to the city of Jerusalem. They've come home to a land that had never been home. It's a new, strange land to them, actually. And they're dealing with all the struggles that come with rebuilding a ruined city. But what we see in verse 3, is that their return, up to this point, has been physical, and not spiritual. They've returned home, but they haven't returned to God. And so God offers them a promise: Return to me, and I will return to you.
I grew up in a church tradition that strongly stressed God's omnipresence-- the idea that God is everywhere, all the time. There's a sense in which that's right, but most of the Bible uses very different language to describe God's presence. God can be far, and God can be close. God is not equally in every place, at every time. He's more present, closer, in some places, and some times, than others. He closer to some people than others. He's more available to them. He pays more attention to some people's prayers, than to others. Some Christians find this a struggle, because their theology has been applied in kind of bad ways. So let me give you three passages where we find this idea in the NT.
James 4:8: "Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you."
God can closer. You see that?
1 Peter 3:7 (NIV): "Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers."
Treat your wife poorly, and your prayers will be ineffective.
1 John 3:19-22 (NIV):
19 This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: 20 If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. 21 Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God 22 and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him.
God can be close, or God can be far. Your prayers can be ineffective, or they can be totally effective, depending on how you live toward God.
So when we turn back to Zechariah 1:3, what is God offering? God is offering his presence. God is not with them, like He could be, and like He wants to be. God wants to return to them.
And what God wants to see, for this to happen, before He will do this, is his people to return to Him.
What does it mean, to return to God? How do you do it?
Let's keep reading. Verse 4:
(4) May you not be like your fathers, whom the former prophets called to them, saying,
"Thus has said Yahweh of Armies:
Return, please, from your evil ways and from your evil deeds,"
and they didn't listen,
and they didn't pay attention to me," --utterance of Yahweh.
(5) Your fathers-- where are they?,
while the prophets-- is it for forever, [that] they live?
(6) However/in contrast, my words and my rules that I have commanded my servants the prophets-- did they not overtake your fathers?," [on "overtake," Deuteronomy 28:15]
As we grow older, we often find it the case, that we more closely resemble our parents. We look more like them. We find ourselves acting more like them. Sometimes, we realize that's a good thing, and we find ourselves viewing our parents more sympathetically. Our parents were more reasonable, and gave better advice, than we used to think. We were actually the difficult ones, not them.
But other times, we realize we resemble our parents with a sense of shock and pain, because there were particular areas where we resolved we'd do better. We'd be better parents, or a better spouse, in some way. We'd lay off the beer. We'd listen better. We'd discipline more carefully. We'd be more intentional about steering our kids toward God. I don't know. Each of us has things that we'd change, and my kids will no doubt have their own lists-- and I applaud that. We all hope our kids do better than we did, in every area of life.
In verses 4-6, the people find themselves at a crossroad, from God's perspective. They resemble their parents, to some degree (they aren't committing the same big sins like idolatry, but they haven't returned to God, either). They can embrace this, and choose to be like their fathers, or they can choose a new path.
The striking thing about this crossroads, is that it's the exact same one their own fathers stood at. You can choose the path that pursues God, and seeks Him, and His kingdom, and his will, or you can choose the path of evil ways, and evil deeds.
Their fathers picked the wrong path, and they persisted in walking down that path despite all the prophets God sent to them. They refused to listen, and return from their evil. They ignored, not just Jeremiah, but God.
What was their fate? In verse 6, God says that his words "overtook" them. God's words are like a pack of lions, chasing down his people. When God resolves to bring judgment and punishment on his people, that's not something you can outrun, or hide from. Obama once bragged that he was very good at killing people. But Obama was nothing, compared to God. God's words chased his people down, overtaking them. And those words-- the ones we find in places like Deuteronomy 28-30, or Leviticus 26, still stand. What happened to their fathers, can happen to them.
So this younger generation is a generation that's made the wrong decision, at some point. It's chosen the wrong path. It's not pursuing God. It's not chasing the things of God, wanting more of God, and from God. And here, God sends them another prophet. Their fathers had Jeremiah. They have Zechariah. The prophet has changed, but everything else is still the same. It's still the same covenant. The blessings and curses are all still in effect. The message is the same. The invitation is the same. "Return to me, and I will return to you."
And so everyone has to decide, will be like our parents in very bad ways? Or will we choose a different path?
Some (scholars) view all of this as a thinly veiled threat. But everything here is actually a message of hope. Despite everything you've done, and everything your fathers have done, the same two paths are still set before you. You can choose blessings, or curses. You can choose God's presence, or his absence. You can choose to make better choices than your parents, and have a better life. Your future with God isn't set in stone-- it's wide-open-- and you get to choose who you want to be, and how you want God to relate to you.
Last half of verse 6:
(6) and they returned,
and they said,
"Just as Yahweh of Armies planned to do to us in accordance with our ways and in accordance with our deeds, thus/in this way He has done to us." [Lev. 26:40-44; Nehemiah 9:1-2]
Depending on your translation, verse 6 is kind of trippy (the way that English Bibles do quotation marks here is incredibly difficult, the longer you stare at it). Who returns, in verse 6? "They returned."
It's not the fathers (several scholars get this wrong here-- a debated point). The fathers never returned from their evil ways, to God. It's this generation-- the one Zechariah's prophesying to.
So this generation hears Zechariah's words, and they look back on the last 70 years of their life. They speak on behalf of their fathers, and on behalf of their own lives, and they say, "God has done to us as he planned, in accordance with our ways and our deeds."
Our suffering, and our parents' suffering, hasn't happened because the Babylonian gods overpowered our God. It didn't happen because God neglected us, or forgot about us. It happened because God gave us what we deserved, because we-- both us, and our fathers-- rebelled.
They acknowledge that, and they accept God's invitation. "God, we will return to you. We will come close to you."
That's our passage for today. This generation makes the right choice. They take God up on his invitation.
What do we make of all of this?
When we look back at the history of God's people, we see that there have sometimes been generations who have gone the wrong way, and brought great harm on themselves. They could've chased God, and been faithful in their covenant relationship with God. But they persistently, deliberately, were unfaithful. Those generations never received God's best. They brought curses down on themselves, instead of blessings.
We also see that there have been generations who started down the wrong path, but stopped, and listened, to God and God's word, and God's prophets. They returned. And those generations weren't trapped by the sins of their fathers. They weren't stuck living under the curses. Their future wasn't destined to be hard, or distant from God. At every point, God offers his people a chance to return to Him.
Why?
God's end goal, his desire, isn't to be angry, or to punish, or to bring curses. Those curses are designed to wake his people up, to bring them to their senses, to realize that life apart from God doesn't actually work at all. What God wants, is to come close, to a people who have come close to him.
Each generation of God's people has to make a choice about how it will relate to God. The torch gets passed, at some point. Young voices join older voices, and they make a choice about what they will chase.
What do we want from God? What do we want from this world? Those are the two questions we have to answer.
It's very easy to go through life having lost God's perspective on everything. To get wrapped up in making money, and paying the bills, and raising families, and enjoying this good earth that God gave us. It's easy to focus on God's creation, rather than on God the Creator.
If that's you, if that's me, God still offers the same invitation today. Return to God, and He will return to you. Chase God. Chase God's presence. We can do this as individuals. We can also do this as a church.
A church I know has built the entirety of its ministry around the pursuit of God and God's presence. This was done corporately, as a family, as a whole. This generation of God's people, in this place, resolved that they would chase God hard. If God can be closer, and God offers to come closer, then this is what they want, above all else. They want to be close to God. The heart cry of this church, for over a decade, has been, "Please come closer. More God, please. More of you. More of your Holy Spirit." And God has said "yes" to this prayer, over and over. God is in that place, in ways that He usually doesn't seem to be, in other churches. I don't say this as criticism, or to make an ugly comparison. It's just reality. You walk into that church, and you can sense God's presence three feet inside the door.
My guess is that some of us tend to think of chasing God, and God's presence, in individual terms. I can resolve, on my own, that I will chase God. I will invite God into my work space every day. I can sing songs letting the Holy Spirit know that He is welcome with me, and in me. All of that is good, and biblical. But there is something more that comes, when a generation of God's people makes that same commitment.
God be close, or far. God can be closer than He is. If that's true, and if God's invitation still stands, then that should become our heart cry. "God, come closer, please." So what I invite you to do today, is join me in making this the heart cry of this church.
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The other main application I wrestled with this week, after chewing on this passage, Leviticus 26:36-44, and Nehemiah 9:1-2, was corporate confession. In what situation should churches confess as a whole they have sinned? And how does it look in the church, when they've persisted in particular sins across generations. "We and our fathers" have been sinning in some particular area.
In confessing their sins, and the sins of their fathers, this generation of God's people in Zechariah 1 is doing exactly the right thing. I won't unpack this, but Leviticus 26:36-44 (verse 40 is the key verse; *Mark Boda):
(36) while the ones remaining among you, I will bring fearfulness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies,
and/that the sound of a windblown leaf will pursue them,
and/that they will flee like ones flees from the sword,
and/that they will fall,
and there is no one pursuing,
(37) and/that each one will stumble over his brother as from the mouth of a sword,
while one pursuing, there isn't,
and there won't be for you an ability to stand before your enemies,
(38) and you will perish among the nations,
and/that/inasmuch as the land of your enemies will eat you,
(39) while the remnant among you will decay because of their sin/guilt (avon) in the land of your enemies,
and, also, because of the sin/guilt of their ancestors.
With them, they will decay,
(40) and they will confess their sin/guilt and the sin/guilt of their fathers-- in their adultery/unfaithfulness which they were adulterous/unfaithful to me,
and, also, which they walked with/against me in hostility.
(41) Also I-- I will walk with/against them in hostility,
and I will bring them into the land of their enemies,
or then, [if] their uncircumcised heart is humbled, then they shall pay for [/make amends for] their sin/guilt,
(42) and I will remember/acknowledge my covenant with Jacob,
and, also, my covenant with Isaac,
and, also, my covenant with Abraham I will remember/acknowledge,
while the land, I will remember/acknowledge.
In verse 40, we see how the Mosaic covenant is set up. God's people have a covenant that extends across families and clans, to cover the nation as a whole. And it extends vertically, to include multiple generations. When you come to your senses, you confess in solidarity with your fathers, "we have sinned. We have rebelled. We have been adulterous." When you do that, OT, God will remember/acknowledge his covenant (v. 42), and God will return, and the people will move from curses to blessings-- or, at least, they will move from blessing to curse once that generation has "paid off" their sin (Leviticus 26:41).
If I was going to apply this theme of corporation confession in a sermon, I think I'd want to do something like this:
Imagine a church with a long history of being super racist against black people. It was a white only church by design, and black people were subtly ignored, and left unwelcome. And this went on for decades-- we can think of the 1940s-1960s, maybe, in particular. There would be value, in that situation, in a church publicly confessing that they and their fathers/ancestors sinned. "We have been racists, in really terrible ways. And we publicly confess that, and acknowledge that God is the God of all nations/peoples, and we turn from our sins, and return to God."
At the other end of the spectrum, there are denominations that have completely lost their way, pandering to the far left, and supported things like transgenderism, homosexuality, or socialism. Individual churches within that denomination might confess that "we" as a whole have turned from God, and "we"-- this particular church, at least-- return to God.
Two other possible applications:
(1) There are churches who have an ugly history of chewing up, and spitting out, pastors. Nothing's ever good enough for them, and leadership is toxic behind the scenes. Everything is a constant power struggle. There's value in acknowledging that, and confessing that. "For decades, we and our fathers have sinned. We've burnt through 10 pastors in 30 years, and we are the problem."
(2) There are churches today, in small towns, who have refused to reach out to newcomers. They divide the town into two-- the families who have been here for generations, and the newcomers. They failed to welcome the newcomers, and accept them. They've failed, and now they're dying. And that's something that should be confessed.
When God's people hear God's words, there are clear moments where they realize that they've been doing something terribly wrong as a church, possibly for several generations. "We and our fathers" have sinned. We confess that, and we turn from those sins, and return to God.
Translation:
(1) In the eighth month, in the second year of Darius, the word of Yahweh came to Zechariah, son of Berechiah, son of Iddo, the prophet, saying,
(2) "He was angry-- Yahweh-- with your fathers an anger,"
(3) and you will say to them,
"Thus has said Yahweh of Armies:
"Return to me, --utterance of Yahweh of Armies--
and I will return to you, has said Yahweh of Armies.
(4) May you not be like your fathers, whom the former prophets called to them, saying,
"Thus has said Yahweh of Armies:
Return, please, from your evil ways and from your evil deeds,"
and they didn't heed/listen,
and they didn't pay attention to me," --utterance of Yahweh.
(5) Your fathers-- where are they?,
while the prophets-- is it for forever, [that] they live?
(6) However/in contrast, my words and my rules that I have commanded my servants the prophets-- did they not overtake your fathers?,"
and they returned,
and they said,
"Just as Yahweh of Armies planned to do to us in accordance with our ways and in accordance with our deeds, thus/in this way He has done to us."
