Prisoners Of Hope Liberated And Blessed Series

The covenant referred to in this passage is the covenant God made with Israel at Mt. Sinai. It is recorded in Exodus 24. In that event the nation offered sacrifices to God. Moses sprinkled half the blood on the altar, and verse 8 says, “Moses then took the blood, sprinkled it on the people and said, ‘This is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.’” There was an application of the blood on the people. This covenant flowed out of a covenant God had made with Abraham in Genesis 15. But more importantly, those covenants serve as a type of the everlasting covenant Christ established by his own blood on the cross.xxiv Even in Zechariah’s day, God did not deliver his people based on their good works. He did it “because of the blood of my covenant with you.”

The message in our text had an immediate application for the Babylonian captives of Zechariah’s day. It certainly has an application today. No one is delivered because of good works. The deliverance always comes because of God’s faithfulness to the covenant he has established. Our faith must rest fully on the everlasting covenant established by the blood of Christ at Calvary. Are you trusting in that for your salvation? Is your plea for any and every deliverance based on the covenant ratified by Christ’s blood at the cross? God will honor that! He will honor the sacrifice of his Son. Do you need a deliverance? Plead the blood of Calvary and watch God work in your behalf. This passage has a powerful application for you and me.

After 70 AD Israel experienced a broader dispersion than the Babylonian captivity. The Roman dispersion resulted in a worldwide scattering of the Jewish people. For 2,000 years they have been “prisoners of hope,” looking for the day Messiah would come and free them from their exile. The promise in our text looks beyond the Babylonian captivity all the way to the restoration Messiah will affect at his Second Coming. Eugene Merrill explains, “If, indeed, there is a reference here to an historical deliverance, the prophetic still has an eschatological one primarily in mind as the entire context attests. God’s people had been in the ‘pit’ of Babylonian exile, but they would find themselves in a worse predicament in the end of the age. From that pit God would again retrieve them according to His faithfulness to His covenant promises.”xxv

We know the promise was not fully realized when the exiles returned from the Babylonian captivity because the commitment God makes in the text: “I will restore twice as much to you.” That has not yet happened, but it will happen during the Millennium. Israel is designated as God’s firstborn among the nations in Exodus 4:22. The Torah provided the double portion for the firstborn (Deut. 21:15-17) unless he disqualifies himself through rebellion or immoral activity as Reuben did. In that case, Joseph received the double portion through his sons Ephraim and Manasseh.xxvi

Joseph’s double portion followed a season of suffering and shame. We see the same thing in Job (42:10). And God may have a double portion in store for you. If you are going through a Job experience or a Joseph experience, trust God to bring you out with double blessings. Here is what God promises Israel in Isaiah 61:7: “Instead of your shame you will receive a double portion, and instead of disgrace you will rejoice in your inheritance. And so you will inherit a double portion in your land, and everlasting joy will be yours.” That will be fully realized by Israel during the Millennium.