Zechariah Week 4
OUTLINE -
There is a brief introduction (vs. 1-6)
There are 8 visions followed by a sign-act (chs. 1-6)
Story of Fasting and Feasting (7-8)
Images of Messiah’s Kingdom (9-14)
2 of them (9-11, 12-14)
We are on week 4 of Zechariah. We started off with some visions in the beginning of the book, then there was a story about a question the people asked God and God’s response to their question. Now we’re back into what is more typical of prophetic writings - oracles. These are when the prophet points out sins and pronounces judgments or consequences. They also include future predictions or even blessings that God will provide.
They have a significantly different feel to the rest of the book. They don’t have specific dates attached to them like the earlier chapters, but many scholars think they took place perhaps 30-40 years later just because of some of the things they speak about. So I have lengthened the time of Zechariah’s ministry on our timeline.
9:1-8
Clearly it’s time for us to pull out a map again
You can see Zechariah is roughly moving from north to south here. First He says this northern region of Syria will be destroyed, that’s the cities of Hadrach, Damascus, and Hamath. Then this coastal region of Phoenicia, that’s Tyre and Sidon. Then he moves south to Philistia and its four cities - Ashkelon, Gaza, Ashdod, and Ekron. He concludes in Jerusalem at the temple saying in verse 8 saying, I will encamp at my house as a guard. Underline that phrase.
The important thing that God is communicating here is that I am watching with care over the earth and things aren’t happening accidentally or out of control. Look at verse 1 he says, “The Lord has an eye on mankind and on all the tribes of Israel.” Circle that. Then jump down to verse 8 he says, “I see with my own eyes” Circle that one too. He’s warning them about coming destruction on their neighbors and saying, don’t be afraid because I’m watching and I’m in control.
This is where things get very interesting historically. Because we know exactly when and how each of these cities was destroyed. A certain historical figure named Alexander the Great would be the one responsible. Let’s flip back over to our timeline and show you when this takes place.
Persia will eventually get defeated by Greece. Who is the one who leads Greece? Alexander the Great. Draw dot for Alexander at 330 BC. He famously conquered the known world within 13 years before dying at a young age. He leaves Greece goes through Turkey defeats Persia comes down through Israel conquers Egypt goes back up and as far out as India before dying on his return home.
But it’s his trip through Israel that is significant for us today. He comes from the north. He conquers Syria then heads to the coast to conquer Tyre and Sidon. His battle with Tyre is rather intriguing. Tyre was notoriously hard to defeat because they had a fortress about half a mile out to sea and whenever an enemy came they would just retreat to it. Alexander didn’t like being beaten so he literally builds a causeway out of rocks and rubble out to Tyre over the course of half a year and conquers them anyways.
You can see in verses 3-4, Tyre built a rampart. She had power on the sea. But I’ll strike her down and devour her with fire. Yes, Alexander did set the city on fire.
Next, he moves south and he puts the Philistine cities under siege and easily destroys them.
But what happens with Jerusalem? Does he destroy this prominent and important city? It was larger and wealthier than some other cities he destroyed. They could have potentially put together an army and fought him. It would make sense to destroy them. But he doesn’t. What happened?
Here’s the story of what happened. Alexander sends a messenger to Jerusalem asking them to swear allegiance to him. But they reply, we can’t do that because we’ve already sworn allegiance to the Persian king Darius III and as long as he’s still alive (which he was) they can’t go back on their oath. Alexander is furious so goes down to Jerusalem to deal with them. The high priest in Jerusalem had a dream from the Lord telling him not to be afraid and to welcome Alexander into the city. They throw up the city gates and meet him with a welcoming procession and Alexander surprisingly isn’t hostile at all but is friendly towards them. He explains that he himself had also had a dream of this very high priest who had spoken well to him.
Further the Jews brought Alexander a copy of the book of Daniel and showed him chapter 8. There’s a vision of a goat referred to as the king of Greece that conquers the world swiftly. You have to go read it sometime. It’s wild how accurately it depicts Alexander the Great. Alexander reads the scroll, is convinced it’s about him, and he offers sacrifices with the priests to the Lord. Then he just leaves.
God had kept his word from Zechariah 9:8. He encamped as a guard over his house.
Let’s keep moving.
9:9-13
We have to stop on verse 9 for a few minutes. I suspect that you recognize some of the words there. Your king is coming mounted on a donkey. Why would we recognize that? All four of the gospels tell us about Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey on Palm Sunday. And both Matthew and John specifically quote this verse and say Jesus rode in on a donkey in direct fulfillment of this verse. I would circle that whole verse. It’s pretty significant.
But let’s not just pull out that one verse and forget what’s happening around it. Why does he put that verse here at this point in the chapter? He’s telling them that this coming king is going to put an end to all the wars. He’s going to free their prisoners and look at verse 13 he even mentions Greece by name and says, “You’ll defeat Greece from ruling over you too.”
The coming king is going to speak peace at the end of verse 10 and he’s going to rule to the ends of the earth. Let’s see what else will happen when this king arrives
9:14-17
Did you guys notice something in there that we always put a box around? We always put boxes around the Day of the Lord and verse 16 starts with “On that day” put a box around it.
As a reminder of the Day of the Lord, we’ve seen it pop up over and over in just about each of the minor prophets. The Day of the Lord consists of two portions - God’s Judgment and God’s salvation. Sometimes there would be minor versions of the Day of the Lord that took place historically. We might call these “foreshadowing” of the ultimate Day. They might be punished by an enemy like when Babylon destroyed Jerusalem. Or they might experience a foreshadowing of the coming salvation when God delivers them from an enemy. If you want to understand the Day of the Lord better, go back to the book of Joel. It talks a lot about it there.
Here we have on the Day of the Lord God will save them. And I think that the salvation from Alexander the Great and Greece is one of those historical foreshadowings of the coming final Day of the Lord. This would be a temporary salvation, but an ultimate one is coming.
You can see why the crowds met Jesus with so much excitement when he came in on a donkey. This was going to be a day of salvation! It might be one of the temporary ones or it might be the ultimate one. The people didn’t know for sure. But to them it probably didn’t matter because it was going to be really good for them either way.
10:1-5
Here God is putting the people to the test. He says, if you really believe that I will be the one who provides for you and causes you to flourish then call on me for rain. Don’t call on Baal. He was a god who supposedly provided rain. But Zechariah says, those other gods are worthless. Call on me instead if you believe me.
The implications for us here are probably pretty straightforward. It would be bad for Israel to hear how God will prosper them and to rejoice and say we believe, but then to go home and ask Baal to send them their rain. Similarly, it’s easy for us to hear the Bible promise God will provide, to rejoice, and say we believe, then to go home and to be scared as to how we’ll pay for everything.
Next he introduces some shepherding language which he’s going to carry throughout the rest of these chapters. Who is supposed to encourage these people and keep them focused and remind them to trust in the Lord’s promises? It’s their shepherds. It’s the people leading Israel. If the people are wandering and afflicted it’s because they have no shepherd leading them. Underline where it says, The people wander like sheep, they are afflicted for lack of a shepherd. This theme will keep coming up in a bit.
God goes on to say that he’s angry with the leaders because he cares so much for his flock. Sounds kind of like they might need someone who is the Good Shepherd to show up and care for them…
10:6-11:3
So although Israel has returned from their exile in Judah, the Jews are still somewhat scattered. First it was only the southern kingdom of Judah that went to Babylon and even then not all of them returned. A good portion stayed. We know that from the story of Esther. And as for the ten missing tribes of the northern kingdom, they are still scattered abroad in Egypt, in Assyria, and in who knows where else. God promises again that he will restore his people.
Underline verse 8. He says, I will whistle and gather them in. That’s like the shepherd whistling to bring all of his sheep to him. He has plans to restore his people.
God concludes this section in 11:1-3 by mentioning the downfall of the current shepherds. They were bad leaders of Israel. They wanted to receive glory, but God says they will be laid aside and my king will be the one who gets the glory, not them.
Let me make a small aside here and talk about what expectations there are for the future of the Jewish people. Will God one day bring every single Jew back into the land of Israel and make them a great nation once again. I will honestly say, I don’t know. Maybe. But if he does, that will only be a foreshadowing of the ultimate day when he gathers his people, the church from every corner of the globe and brings them into his kingdom forever. This will be the eternal city that is talked about coming out of heaven in Revelation 21. This will be the place where God is physically present with all of his people and rules over them as king and it will never change.
I think we sometimes get caught up in some of the specifics of the smaller prophecies and we forget that they are pointing to the greatest fulfillment one day. Imagine how people may have debated what the coming of Alexander the Great meant. Who would this king of Greece be? How exactly would God defend against them? What events would take place leading up to and following his reign? That’s fine. Those questions can be helpful. But they shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that these things point to the ultimate deliverance by the true king one day.
Let’s keep going in chapter 11. We’ll read another big portion here because it’s all related as one story.
11:4-14
Here we have another one of those sign-acts. Where the prophet acts something out to teach people a lesson. A brief summary of what is happening here: God calls Zechariah to become a literal shepherd. So he takes the job and he starts caring for this flock. There are three parties here - the people who own the flock and who would eventually sell them, the shepherds who watch the flock, the people who would buy the flock and slaughter them. None of these people care one bit about the sheep themselves. They are just a means to an end for them. Zechariah joins the shepherds.
He makes two staffs, one called favor and one called union. These staffs represent his favor on the sheep and the unity of the flock. Very quickly, he chases off three bad shepherds. So he can care for this flock more effectively.
But then trouble with the sheep themselves arises. The sheep don’t like him. He’s impatient with the sheep too. So he says, I’m done here. You all are going to be destroyed anyways and I’m not going to care. So he breaks his Favor staff so that he is no longer bound to them.
After this Zechariah goes to the sheep traders who own the sheep and says pay me whatever you think I’m owed and they give him 30 pieces of silver. Now that is significant! If you were to go back in the book of Exodus, you would see that the price for a slave was listed as 30 pieces of silver. The sheep owners have expressed to Zechariah that he is worth no more than the lowest members of society to them.
At the Lord’s request, Zechariah takes this insulting money and he throws it into the temple to the potter. Who is the potter? We’re not really sure. He could have been someone who worked for the temple.
But then Zechariah takes his second staff union and breaks it in half too. There would no longer be union for the flock. They would be divided, conquered, devoured, and squabbling from then on.
What does all of this mean? It seems that Zechariah is enacting what would happen to the Good Shepherd when he arrived. Jesus of course is the good shepherd. Israel had been being bought and sold to various conquering nations and no one cared for them appropriately. Not even their own leaders, the shepherds, were caring for them. Jesus would arrive and be there to shepherd them. But the sheep would reject him. Because of this the people of Israel would lose God’s favor - that staff would be snapped.
Then those wicked traders of the sheep would value the shepherd as only being worth 30 pieces of silver, the worth of a slave. Matthew very specifically quotes this verse because Jesus was sold by Judas Iscariot for 30 pieces of silver. Here’s Matthew 27:
Then when Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned, he changed his mind and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders, 4 saying, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.” They said, “What is that to us? See to it yourself.” 5 And throwing down the pieces of silver into the temple, he departed, and he went and hanged himself. 6 But the chief priests, taking the pieces of silver, said, “It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, since it is blood money.” 7 So they took counsel and bought with them the potter's field as a burial place for strangers. 8 Therefore that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day. 9 Then was fulfilled what had been spoken by the prophet Jeremiah, saying, “And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him on whom a price had been set by some of the sons of Israel, 10 and they gave them for the potter's field, as the Lord directed me.”
(Why does it say Jeremiah and not Zechariah here? Because Matthew is actually mixing together prophecy from Jeremiah and Zechariah and he attributes it to the more well known prophet)
Jesus was only valued as much as a slave. The insulting money is given back to the temple. And Jesus rejects his relationship with Israel. What does this mean for Israel today? I’m not entirely sure. Have they been rejected since Jesus’ death? I’m not entirely sure. I do know that God was no longer keeping a watchful eye over their temple because it was destroyed by the Romans less than 40 years later. I’m a bit out of my depth here when it comes to God’s relationship with Israel after Jesus. But it’s clear here that in some sense it’s broken.
11:15-17
We end with a bit of a bewildering revisit to the shepherds. It’s unclear exactly what’s going on, but perhaps Zechariah is dressing as a foolish shepherd to demonstrate what the foolish shepherds do
Because the good shepherd has been run off, the remaining fools who lead aren’t concerned about them and don’t care for them.
This could be a reference to those who led Israel after Jesus was rejected. Who was that leading them? It was the Pharisees and other religious leaders of the day. They weren’t caring for the hurting and broken people in Israel only themselves.
What can we take away from all of this? There was a pattern of people caring for themselves instead of caring for the needs of others. They were more concerned about having their own needs met, than they were about meeting the needs of those who were suffering and hurting.
Jesus was a good shepherd precisely because he moved towards those who were broken and weak. Bad shepherds see the weak as a problem and an obstacle. Who has God called you to shepherd? You might not be a government official or a pastor, but there may be those in your workplace or in your home that are under your charge. Do you find yourself moving towards them in their weakness the way that Christ moves toward you? Or are you frustrated with their sickness and their injuries and their ignorance?
It’s a tough challenge. But I’m thankful that Jesus has given us the perfect example of what it looks like and he follows it up by giving us weak sheep so that we can have perfect opportunities to imitate him.