We’re nearing the end of our
sermon series, “Who Are These Guys?”
We’ve been looking at the Minor Prophets. Next week we’ll end it with Malachi, but
today we look at the prophet Zechariah.
Zechariah, scholars think, gave his message at about 520
B. C. That’s right about the same time
as Haggai, who we talked about last week.
But Zechariah’s message is completely different.
Zechariah’s book is what is referred to as an apocalyptic
book. In other words, Zechariah sees visions
of the Day of Judgment and the end times.
Zechariah actually has some similarities to Revelation. You have the angel with a measuring line who
is going to measure Jerusalem, you have the gold lampstands, you have the
golden bowls, all that sort of thing.
There are a lot of things in the vision Zechariah had that are repeated
in the vision John was given in Revelation.
And so, as we talk about this, we’re going to need to
talk about the end times. That’s not a
comfortable thought for some of us. A
lot of us don’t really understand these things.
We’re not sure just how we’re supposed to take them, whether they’re to
be taken literally or whether they’re symbolic or what. And so, because we don’t understand it, we’re
tempted to do two things. One of them is
to just dismiss it and not even think about it.
The other is that we tend to be scared of it.
I don’t think either of those is very helpful to us. These things are in the Bible for
reasons. After all, as Christians, we
claim to believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God. I don’t think it’s a good idea to dismiss
part of God’s inspired word and ignore it just because it’s hard for us to
understand. We may need to take more
time with it so we can understand it, or we may need to use our faith and try
to accept it even though we cannot understand it. But just dismissing it from our minds is not
a good option for us as Christians.
But we also should not be scared of it. The Day of Judgment may be bad news for some
people, but it’s not going to be bad news for Christians. It’s going to be wonderful news, really. Because that’s the day God is going to step
in and make everything right.
That’s what God is trying to tell the people in our reading
for today. God, speaking through
Zechariah, says, “Shout and be glad, daughter Zion. For I am coming, and I will live among you…Be
still before the Lord, all people, because he has roused himself from his holy
dwelling.”
And there’s more.
The Lord is going to rebuke Satan.
There’s a prophecy of the coming of Jesus, where God says, “I am going
to bring my servant, the Branch.” God
goes on to say, “See, the stone I have set in front of Joshua!...I will engrave
an inscription on it…and I will remove the sin of this land in a single day.”
God is telling us that there is no reason for us, as
Christians, to be afraid of the Day of Judgment. We should shout! We should be glad! God is coming! Our sins will be removed from us! We should not be scared of the Day of
Judgment. We should look forward to it!
But that, of course, leads to another question. When’s it going to happen? When will this Day of Judgment actually
be? We don’t know, of course. While Jesus was on earth he said even he did
not know, that God the Father is the only one who knows. The one thing we know is that things are
going to get pretty bad before it happens.
And that leads some people to think it’s going to be
pretty soon. In fact, some people wonder
why it has not happened already. It
seems like there’s either war or the threat of war all over the world. There are lots and lots of people living in
poverty. We see people being persecuted
for their faith in Jesus Christ. We see
natural disasters happening all over the world.
And so, some people think, well, those are supposed to be some of the
signs, right? Does that mean God is
going to act soon?
But of course, we can look at it the other way, too. We can say, well, there have been lots of
wars in the world for all of human history, really. There have even been world wars. There have always been lots of people living
in poverty. We can think of many, many
times in history in which people were persecuted for their faith in Jesus. And of course, natural disasters have been
happening for all of recorded history, too.
There’s nothing new about any of this.
So does that mean God is not going to act for a long time yet?
I don’t know. But
I do know one thing. At some point, God
is going to act. Zechariah tells us
so. Again, he says, “Be still before the
Lord, all people, because he has roused himself from his holy dwelling.”
Now, saying that God will rouse himself from his holy
dwelling does not mean that right now God is asleep. It also does not mean that God is just
watching and not doing anything. God is
active in God’s world. But for now, God
is allowing things to play out as they will.
God, and only God, will decide when the right time to act. But God will definitely act.
And when God acts, it’s going to change everything. And that can be scary, too. Because what that means, really, is the end
of the world as we know it. And a lot of
us are kind of uncomfortable with that thought.
We like our lives the way they are.
Or if we don’t like them, at least we’re kind of okay with them. We’re used to life being this way. We kind of know how to handle it. When God acts, well, what’s life going to be
like then? There’s no way to know.
But while we may not know exactly what life will be like
when God acts, we know one thing—it’s going to be wonderful. It will be the end of the world as we know
it, but the world we don’t know is going to better than we can imagine.
Listen to what
God, speaking through Zechariah, has to say about it. “The seed will grow well, the vine will
produce its fruit, the ground will produce its crops, and the heavens will drop
their dew. I will give all these things
as an inheritance to the remnant of this people…Do not be afraid, but let your
hands be strong… The fasts of the fourth, fifth, seventh, and tenth months will
become joyful and glad occasions and happy festivals for Judah…Many peoples and
the inhabitants of many cities will come, and the inhabitants of one city will
go to another and say, ‘Let us go at once to seek the favor of the Lord. I myself am going.’ And many peoples and many powerful nations
will come to Jerusalem to seek the Lord Almighty and his favor. In those days the people from all languages
and nations will…say, ‘Let us go with you, because we have heard that God is
with you.’”
We’ve talked before about how, even though we believe in
God, we so often have a hard time trusting God.
When God finally acts, we won’t have that problem any more. Not only will we trust God, other people will
come to have faith and trust God, too.
People who are not even Christians will come to believe and to
trust. Again, people from all languages
and nations will say, “Let us go with you, because we have heard that God is
with you.” What an awesome thing that
will be. Can you even imagine it? People storming the doors of the church,
coming in and saying, "Let us in!
Let us in! We want to be with
you, because we have heard that God is with you!” What an incredible thing that will be.
And I don’t want to gloss over the greatest thing of
all. This was in our reading, and I
mentioned it, but we have not talked about it yet. Chapter Three, Verse Two says, “The Lord said
to Satan, ‘The Lord rebuke you, Satan!
The Lord, who has chosen Jerusalem, rebuke you!’”
Because Satan is active in the world now. We don’t know how that plays out,
exactly. Right now, of course, we are
fallen, sinful people. We can make
enough messes all on our own, without Satan’s help. But we know Satan has not gone away. And Satan will not go away until God steps
in. But when God does step in, Satan is
going to be defeated. And it will be a
final, unconditional defeat. It’s a
defeat that only God can bring about.
And God will bring it about.
We don’t know why God has not acted yet. We don’t know when God will act. But we know that, when the time is right, God
will act. We may not understand exactly
how it’s going to happen, but that’s okay.
That’s stuff for God to know. But
God will act. And when God acts, as
Christians we don’t have to be scared of it.
It will be the end of the world as we know it, but only to make way for
an even better, more wonderful, more incredible world. A world in which God will be living with
us. A world in which Satan is
defeated. And a world in which
everything will be more awesome that you and I can ever imagine.
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