How Zechariah Vision Take Concern Us Today
The visions of Zechariah renew the Abrahamic promise to post-exilic Israel—God intends to bless Israel so that all nations might be blessed. Gazing through my tears, seeing the Lord's people thus transformed from filthiness to cleanliness, and from shame to beauty, I think I should have said, Now, Lord, finish the work; make that servant of thine to serve thee; as he is perfectly clothed, now, Lord, put on the mitre, and make him fit to do thy work.” Some of God's people appear to me to forget this.
Jerusalem, the city of our God” and The joy of the Whole Earth”, is also called by various prophets of Jahweh, The Harlot” the city of blood”, the Seething cauldron”, Sodom and Egypt, where our Lord was crucified”, and many other dreadful names of shame.
But, blessed be God, " the Angel of Jehovah encampeth (as with a great invisible host) round about them that fear Him, and delivereth them " ; and if there are evil, malignant spirits (ever restlessly walking to and fro in the whole earth on their mischievous intent of hindering, if they cannot frustrate, the gracious purposes of God and the manifestation of His Kingdom on the earth), God also has His messengers who walk to and fro to counteract and frustrate Satan s designs, and to succour and shield, and in many more ways than we know, to be ministering spirits to them who shall be heirs of salvation.
Chapter 8 is a collection of ten oracles in two sections - seven in the first (8:1-17) and three in the second (8:18-23) - with each oracle introduced by the general wording "So says the LORD of hosts." Chapter 8 also connects to the themes of chapters 1-6, the earlier prophets, particularly the eschatological blessing of Jerusalem and the nation's pilgrimages to it, and, because these themes are well developed in chapters 9-14, it's easy to see the hinge that this section is in connecting the first half with the second, amalgamating the book as a whole.
But look at what God says to Joshua in Chapter 3:7, if you walk in My ways and keep My requirements, then you will have this significant role, God says to Joshua, of representing My people, of enabling them to have access to Me, of enabling them to go forward, of enabling them to get on with the building and the whole process of being a people in the world for Me.
At the cross, we see the fulfillment of God's promises made through the post-exilic prophets when Jesus the true temple (John 2:19-22) and great high priest (Heb 4:14) offered himself as the perfect sacrifice (Heb 9:12-14) for a sinful people, prone to grumble and forget his love.
And so somehow, this man who has been coming for years to this Church has never actually taken hold of what the Sunday-school members I suspect mostly grasp, which is that Jesus died for me on the cross, and that is how I can be forgiven and right with God.
By ending here, the rabbis are really cutting this speech off in the middle, since verse 7 continues God's speech, which describes Zerubbabel leveling a mountain to produce an excellent stone see it (probably a reference to the Temple.) Instead, the rabbis chose to end with a call to Zerubbabel, the heir to the Davidic kingdom, to rule with the spirit of God and not to attempt force.
Jewish Sages interpret this verse to mean that just as it is easy to injure someone by touching or poking the pupil of one's eye (a most sensitive part of the body), so too God is injured when His people Israel are harmed in even the slightest manner and thus receive His divine retribution.
It was " in the twenty and fourth day of the eleventh month, that is, in the month Shebat, in the second year of Darius" On that very day just five months before, the spirit of Zerubbabel and of Joshua, and " of all the rest of the people," being stirred up by God through the preach ing of Haggai, commenced to work again in the rebuilding of the Temple (Hag.
And so the fourth thing that Zechariah has told in this thrilling good news concerning the future is that the Messiah is coming and it's not his first coming, but it's his second coming and he's going to come and he's going to establish residence in the midst of the people of Israel in the city of Jerusalem.