1. "It's always a risk to return to a place you haven't been for a long time, especially if that place means a lot to you and most of all, if that place is home. It's a risk because maybe the place has changed. Or maybe you've changed."

2. "Returning to a person after a breach in a relationship is much riskier and harder than returning to a place. The problem now is that serious issues stand between you. The challenge is not what has changed but what hasn't changed and needs to change."

3. "You will die someday. You might die today. But God's word never fails."

4. "The challenge of this call to repent is that truly turning to God costs you everything. It costs you the loss of all that gave you an identity. It marks the end of finding safety in yourself. It means surrendering all dreams and all privileges that do not align with God's will."

5. "When your life is riddled with uncertainty and insecurity, what you most need is not fixed circumstances, but the favor of God. What you most need is not for your life to be put into the shape you want it in, but for God himself to come to you and comfort you."

6. "God's grace gives you joy that can't be shaken by anything in the world because it comes from beyond the world. God's grace gives you joy that comes from another world and that will one day fill the world."

7. "Our culture tries hard to treat guilt as a mere illusion. But guilt is far from an illusion. Guilt is as real as a stain on your shirt that is stuck there even after every remedy you've tried to get it out. Guilt is that objective. Guilt is that lasting. And guilt is that far beyond your power to get rid of."

8. "In the gospel of Christ, God offers you a whole new set of clothes."

9. "To repent is to justify God and condemn yourself. To repent is to agree with God about all that you've done wrong."

10. "God's word is a mirror that shows you who you really are. When you don't like what you're seeing, that's most when you need to keep on looking. Don't close your eyes when you don't like what the mirror is holding up."

Observation Questions

1. In Zechariah 1:3, what does the Lord command the people to do, and what does He promise in return?

2. According to Zechariah 1:4-6, how did the previous generations respond when the former prophets called them to turn from their evil ways, and what eventually happened to them?

3. In Zechariah 1:14-17, what emotions does the Lord express toward Jerusalem and the nations, and what specific actions does He promise to take for His people?

4. In Zechariah 2:4-5, why does the angel tell the young man not to measure Jerusalem with walls, and what does God promise to be for the city instead?

5. In Zechariah 3:1-5, what is Joshua the high priest's condition when he stands before the angel of the Lord, and what does God do to address this problem?

6. According to Zechariah 3:8-9, who does God say Joshua and his companions are a sign of, and what does God promise to do "in a single day"?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why does God emphasize in Zechariah 1:5-6 that the ancestors and prophets have died but His words "overtook" the fathers? What does this teach us about the nature and authority of God's Word?

2. In Zechariah 1:15, God says He was "angry but a little" with His people, yet the nations "furthered the disaster." How does this distinction help us understand God's use of human agents in judgment and His ultimate accountability of those agents?

3. The vision in Zechariah 2:4-5 promises a city without walls yet completely secure. How does this paradox point both to a present spiritual reality for God's people and to an ultimate future fulfillment?

4. In Zechariah 3, Joshua the high priest contributes nothing to his own cleansing—he stands silent while God removes his filthy garments and clothes him in pure vestments. How does this scene picture the gospel and the way sinners are made right with God?

5. How does God's promise in Zechariah 3:9 to "remove the iniquity of this land in a single day" connect to the work of Christ, and why is this promise essential for all the other promises of restoration to be fulfilled?

Application Questions

1. Zechariah 1:4 warns against being like the ancestors who "did not hear or pay attention" to God's Word. What specific practices can you put in place this week to ensure you are actively listening to and obeying Scripture rather than letting it pass you by?

2. The sermon emphasized that true repentance means agreeing with God about your sin without justifying, shifting blame, or making excuses. Is there a specific sin you have been minimizing or defending? How might you bring that sin honestly before God this week?

3. God promised to be a "wall of fire" around His people and "the glory in her midst" (Zechariah 2:5). In what current area of insecurity or uncertainty do you need to trust God as your protection and source of joy rather than seeking security in circumstances or human solutions?

4. The cleansing of Joshua in Zechariah 3 shows that we contribute nothing to our salvation except our sin. How does this truth affect the way you approach God in prayer—do you come with confidence in Christ's righteousness, or do you try to earn God's favor through your own efforts?

5. Zechariah 2:10-11 promises that "many nations shall join themselves to the Lord." How does knowing that God's plan has always included people from every nation shape the way you think about and engage with people of different backgrounds in your community or workplace?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Jeremiah 25:1-14 — This passage contains Jeremiah's prophecy of the seventy-year exile that the angel references in Zechariah 1:12, showing God's faithfulness to His promised timeline of judgment and restoration.

2. Romans 3:21-26 — Paul explains how God's righteousness is given to sinners through faith in Christ, directly paralleling the way Joshua was clothed in pure garments apart from any contribution of his own.

3. Revelation 21:1-7 — This passage describes the new creation where God dwells with His people and wipes away every tear, showing the ultimate fulfillment of Zechariah's promises of God's presence and flourishing.

4. Ezra 5:1-6:15 — This historical account describes how Zechariah and Haggai's prophetic ministry stirred the people to complete the temple, demonstrating the effectiveness of God's Word through the prophets.

5. Isaiah 4:2-6 — Isaiah uses similar imagery of "the Branch" and God as a protective canopy of fire, reinforcing the messianic hope and divine protection promised in Zechariah's visions.

Sermon Main Topics

I. The Risk of Returning to Places and People After Time Apart

II. We Must Repent (Zechariah 1:1-6)

III. God Will Return to Dwell Among His People (Zechariah 1:7-17)

IV. God Will Repay Those Who Oppress His People (Zechariah 1:18-21)

V. God Will Restore His Dwelling Among His People (Zechariah 2:1-13)

VI. God Will Remove All Their Sin All at Once (Zechariah 3:1-10)

VII. Returning to God Through Christ

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Detailed Sermon Outline

When I was a kid, my mom's parents lived just outside of Boothbay Harbor, Maine, at Ocean Point. We would go spend a week or two and visit them each summer. Coastal Maine in the summer is a magical place, especially for a little kid. You can walk on the beach, play on rocks, explore tide pools, mess around in boats, go fishing, walk in the woods. Maine has it all.

In the summer of 2014, Kristen and I took, at the time, our two children, Rose and Lucy, back to the place I always visited, near Booth Bay when I was growing up. And our girls did all the same stuff I did when I was a kid, and they loved it. And I had the most intense deja vu of my life. My kids are having my childhood. And now I'm the parent here, not the kid.

It was a strange disorienting feeling for just a moment. It wasn't a bad feeling. I was grateful to be enjoying this wonderful time with my kids. But there's something disorienting about being back in the same place, doing all the same things a full generation later.

It's always a risk to return to a place you haven't been for a long time, especially if that place means a lot to you and most of all, if that place is home.

It's a risk because maybe the place has changed. Or maybe you've changed. The fourth grader who visits their second grade classroom says, these desks used to be so much bigger.

Have you ever returned to somewhere you love only to find the place changed or that you'd changed? Maybe there was something different that wasn't for the better, something you'd lost. Something you're not sure you could ever get back. What about returning to a person? Have you ever tried to repair a broken relationship?

Have you ever worked to close the gap that now exists between you and someone you used to be close to?

In that situation, returning to a person after a breach in a relationship is much riskier and harder. Than returning to a place. The problem now is that serious issues stand between you. The challenge is not what has changed but what hasn't changed and needs to change. This morning we're beginning a series through the book of Zechariah.

It starts on page 793 of the Pew Bibles. This message will cover the first three chapters in their entirety. Zechariah shares a historical context with the chapters of Ezra that our pastor Mark has been preaching through recently. Although God had expelled the people of the southern kingdom of Judah from their land because of their sin, he brought down the curses of the covenant on them through a series of invasions and deportations by the Babylonians, which began in 605 BC and culminated with the destruction of the temple in 586 BC. Then in 539 BC, after the Persian leader Cyrus defeated the king of Babylon, he permitted the people of Judah to return to their land and to rebuild their temple.

Now, Zechariah takes place almost 20 years after that. There's a new leader on the throne. Darius is ruling the vast Persian empire and the effort to rebuild Jerusalem and the temple has stalled. Complacency within and opposition from without had brought Judah's restoration to a halt. So God gave Zechariah a series of visions and prophetic messages to spur the people on, not only in their rebuilding efforts but in their relationship to God.

As Mark pointed out a few weeks ago, Ezra 5:1-2 tell us that God used the ministries of Zechariah and Haggai to stir the people up to successfully rebuild God's temple. So Zechariah's prophetic ministry accomplished its purpose. It was a success. But as we'll see, while some of what Zechariah prophesied was fulfilled shortly after he spoke it, other prophecies of his were fulfilled in Jesus' first coming. And some of them won't be fully realized until Christ returns.

The book of Zechariah is ultimately about how God's kingdom will come. The people of Israel had returned to a place, their homeland, that was very different from the home they had been forced out of. But Zechariah shows us that the permanent homeland of God's people is still to come. Look down at chapter 1 verse 3. In some ways, this one verse sums up the whole book.

Therefore, say to them, 'Thus declares the Lord of hosts, 'Return to Me, ' says the Lord of hosts, 'and I will return to you, ' says the Lord of hosts. 'Return to Me, and I will return to you. ' What does it mean to return to God? And what happens when you do?

This verse is a key to the whole book, especially to the series of visions that go from chapter one to chapter six. In the opening section of the book, God calls his people to repent. And then in the series of visions that follows, God gives Zechariah a series of images and symbols that show just what it means that God will return to his people. There are two sides to this relationship, ours and God's. So today there will be two parts of the sermon.

We must and he will. The first part of the sermon will have only one point. The second part of the sermon will have four. First, we must. Point number one, repent.

We must repent. Through Zechariah, God calls the people of Judah and all of us to repent. We hear this call in chapter 1 verses 1 to 6.

In the eighth month, in the second year of Darius, the word of the Lord came to the prophet Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, son of Iddo, saying, the Lord was very angry with your fathers. Therefore say to them, 'Thus declares the Lord of Hosts, 'Return to me, says the Lord of Hosts, 'and I will return to you, 'says the Lord of Hosts. 'Do not be like your fathers to whom the former prophets cried out, 'Thus says the Lord of Hosts, 'Return from your evil ways and from your evil deeds. 'But they did not hear or pay attention to me, 'declares the Lord. You- fathers, where are they?

And the prophets, do they live forever?

But my words and my statutes, which I commanded my servants the prophets, did they not overtake your fathers? So they repented and said, 'As the Lord of hosts purposed to deal with us for our ways and deeds, so has he dealt with us. Zechariah's message starts in verse two on a stern note. The Lord was very angry with your fathers. And then in verse four we learn more about these ancestors, these previous generations of God's people whom God had sent into exile for their sin.

Verse four, Do not be like your fathers to whom the former prophets cried out, Thus says the Lord of hosts, Return from your evil ways and from your evil deeds, but they did not hear or pay attention to me.

Declares the Lord. Two generations later, the people's circumstances have changed, but their hearts haven't yet. That's why God commissions Zechariah in verse three to say, Return to me and I will return to you. Repentance is turning from sin and turning to God. Repentance is ceasing to rule your own life and submitting to God's rule.

Repentance is agreeing with God that you are a sinner and resolving to reject all sin. We hear the rest of the story in verses 5 and 6. First verse 5, you, fathers, where are they? And the prophets, do they live forever?

You know you're in trouble when God himself breaks out the sarcasm. Here, for just a moment, the Lord of lords flexes in the sight of his people.

Those faithless ancestors. Any of them still around?

What about the faithful prophets?

Are any of them immune to death? What about you? Do you know that you will wake up tomorrow?

But in verse 5, God isn't merely showing off; He's pointing his people to the power of his word. Look at verse six. But my words and my statutes, which I commanded my servants the prophets, did they not overtake your fathers? God's word is more powerful and more reliable than the God-given life that is keeping your heart beating right now. You will die someday.

You might die today. But God's word never fails. Then in verse 6 we read, so they repented and said, 'As the Lord of hosts purposed to deal with us for our ways and deeds, so has he dealt with us.' Now who repents here?

Is it the previous generation or the people Zechariah is preaching to? For a number of reasons, I think it's the people Zechariah is preaching to. The main reason is that in verse 4, the Lord emphasizes that the previous generations didn't repent. But Zechariah is preaching, as we learned from elsewhere in Scripture, Zechariah's preaching accomplished its purpose. So let's turn back to the main point in verse 3.

Return to me and I will return to you. Now, if you zoom all the way out theologically, you discover that we can only ever turn to God because he turned to us first. For instance, the apostles confess in Acts 11:18, Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life. And in Zechariah 1:17 and 3:2, we're reminded that it is God who chose his people not the other way around. But it's also true that God calls us into a personal relationship with him.

So, what happens in a relationship when someone has sinned against you but they just won't admit it? What does that do to the relationship?

The problem is not with you, it's with them.

And you cannot resume a trusting and open relationship until the person repents of their sin. As a Christian, you're called to forgive them. As a Christian, you're called not to be bitter, to bear a grudge, to hold it against them, but you cannot resume a kind of two-way relationship until there's repentance. So ultimately, God overcomes our opposition to him. But on the level of our experience in real time, we don't experience God's favor.

We don't receive and enjoy a renewed relationship with Him unless we repent and turn to Him. Have you repented? If you're not a believer in Jesus, what's the most significant change you've ever undergone not in your circumstances, but in yourself. What had to happen in order for that change to take place? In order to change in that way, what did you have to give up?

Writing in the 1950s, the novelist and essayist James Baldwin reflected powerfully on how costly, real change is. Baldwin wrote, Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety. And at such a moment, unable to see and not daring to imagine what the future will now bring forth, one clings to what one knew or thought one knew, to what one possessed, or dreamed that one possessed. Yet it is only when a man is able, without bitterness or self-pity, to surrender a dream he has long cherished or a privilege he has long possessed that he is set free for higher dreams, for greater privileges. Now, Baldwin was no Christian.

Baldwin was writing about social change, not personal transformation.

But what he wrote rings remarkably true about repentance. The challenge of this call to repent in Zechariah 1:3 is that truly turning to God costs you everything. It costs you the loss of all that gave you an identity. It marks the end of finding safety in yourself. It means surrendering all dreams and all privileges that do not align with God's God's will.

If you're not a believer in Jesus, why should you repent? You should repent because God sent his only son into the world to return you to him. God is your creator and Lord. God made you for himself and he claims you for himself. And even if this ancient history of Israel and Judah seems remote from your life, it's really not.

You may not have inherited the consequences of Judah's exile, but you have inherited the consequences of Adam's exile. God created the first human being, Adam, and with him, Eve, and he put them in an abundant and fertile land and commanded them to obey him and threatened expulsion if they did not. They didn't listen to God. They sinned and God kicked them out.

And so all of us inherit the consequences of that exile. All of us have been estranged from God and from our true homeland with him. All of us need to be reconciled to him. So you could translate Zechariah 1:4 into terms that are relevant for all of us. Do not be like your father Adam who did not hear the Lord or pay attention to him.

Instead, repent and trust in Christ. God's eternal Son became incarnate as the man Christ Jesus to bear the curse that is due to us for our sin, and he bore the ultimate exile from God's presence on the cross. Jesus paid the ultimate penalty and then triumphed over death by his resurrection in order to turn us back to him. He came to restore us to God, so turn from sin and trust in Christ. Now, if you profess to be a Christian, have you actually repented?

Can you name sins you've turned from? Sins you've not only confessed but have rejected? Not everyone who invites Jesus into their heart repents.

Not everyone who makes a decision for Jesus disowns sin. Brothers and sisters, members of CHBC, what are the sins that you've most recently repented of? When's the last time you privately confessed your sins to God? And what do you do when you first start to feel convicted about a sin? Here's what not to do.

Don't justify yourself. Don't shift blame. Don't make excuses. Don't try to defend yourself or protect yourself. Don't try to present yourself to yourself in the most favorable light.

Beware of preserving an inflated opinion of yourself. Instead, let that scalpel go in as deep as it needs to.

Let the divine surgeon do all his work. To repent is to justify God and condemn yourself. To repent is to agree with God about all that you've done wrong. Like the people did in verse six, as the Lord of hosts purposed to deal with us for our ways and deeds, so has he dealt with us. God's word is a mirror that shows you who you really are.

When you don't like what you're seeing, that's most when you need to keep on looking. Don't close your eyes when you don't like what the mirror is holding up.

God's word is a flashlight that cuts through all the darkness of our souls. So don't hide from the light. Verse four, But they did not hear or pay attention. To me. Let that searchlight come in and show you the worst about yourself and then bring that worst to God in total confidence that he will forgive you and cleanse you.

What does it mean to return to God? It means you repent. And then how does God respond? How does he return to us? That'll be the second part of the sermon, our next four points.

God will, point two, return. God will return to dwell among his people and he has. This promise is at the heart of the first vision God gives Zechariah in chapter 1, verses 7 to 17.

This passage begins a series of visions that the Lord gave Zechariah. They aren't dreams. There's no evidence that Zechariah was asleep. Instead, the Lord simply caused Zechariah to see something symbolic. These aren't allegories.

Not every detail is significant. You don't need a kind of decoder ring to figure it out. Some details are simply there to fill in the picture so that there can be a little mini story that makes sense. There's actually, these visions are a little bit like Jesus's parables in that there tends to be one main point that all the little details are there to serve. And you don't have to nail down every detail to get the main point.

So in this passage, verses 7 to 17, verses 8 to 11 present Zechariah's vision. And then in verses 12 to 17, an angel asks the Lord a question. This prompts God himself to reply with what Zechariah is to go preach to the people. Look at verses 8 to 11.

Actually, we'll start in verse 7 for the context, verses 7 to 11. On the 24th day of the 11th month, which is the month of Shabbat, in the second year of Darius, the word of the Lord came to the prophet Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, son of Iddo, saying, I saw in the night, and behold, a man riding on a red horse. He was standing among the myrtle trees in the glen, and behind him were red, sorrel, and white horses. Then I said, 'What are these, my Lord?' the angel who talked with me said to me, 'I will show you what they are.' so the man who was standing among the myrtle trees answered, 'These are they whom the Lord has sent to patrol the earth.' and they answered the angel of the Lord who was standing among the myrtle trees and said, 'We have patrolled the earth and behold, all the earth remains at Rest. In verse 8, Zechariah sees riders on horses.

The red horse is probably actually chestnut. It's probably not meant to be anything strange, but just a normal color you could have for a horse. The colors probably aren't symbolic. They just refer to kind of elite well-bred horses who have these different varieties. Some translations will say that the red horse is chestnut.

And the horses with their riders on them are standing among the myrtle trees in the garden. Excuse me, in the glen. What is that? This scene is probably patterned on the renowned garden palace of Pasargadae, which was then the capital of Persia. The Lord is showing Zechariah that he is the real emperor here.

These horsemen are the heavenly equivalent of Persia's famously swift horseback couriers. That system of horseback couriers was basically Persia's postal service and their intelligence agency. And God is saying to Zechariah that he has his own reliable, efficient means of surveying his universal dominion. In verse 11, these mounted angelic riders report, We have patrolled the earth and behold, all the earth remains at rest. The political background here is that while Cyrus the Great did take control of what was the Babylonian Empire, He left its administrative structure basically intact.

It was a relatively bloodless takeover. So even though his takeover triggered Judah's return from exile, Babylon still had not received the full punishment they deserved and the full punishment that earlier prophets had said was coming to them. In verse 15, we're going to see that God says Babylon exceeded their commission in how they punished Judah. God used them to discipline his people, but they took it too far and God is not happy with them.

Yet now, verse 11 says that Babylon, like the whole earth, is at rest, at ease, complacent.

Have you ever heard of the long peace? As far as I'm aware, the term was coined by the military historian John Lewis Gaddis, who wrote an article about it in 1986 and then published a book by that title in 1989. Gaddis was characterizing the period from the end of World War II to the time of his writing and the same essential conditions hold today. The long peace describes the relative peace that existed and still exists between the world's great powers. Major powers.

We're now in year 75 of this global major power peace. And as historians will tell you, that long a peace between the world's major powers has not been documented since the Roman Empire nearly 2,000 years ago.

The first time that historical fact dawned on me, it made my head spin.

I've lived my whole life, most of us have lived our whole lives, in an utter historical anomaly. What we all take for granted is anything but. Relatively speaking, the same conditions obtained today that were true in chapter one. Verse 11 of Zechariah. The Lord is saying in verse 11, these nations, including what remains of Babylon, are at ease.

They're unsuspecting. They don't know what's coming to them from the hand of the Lord. God will soon end their peace and he will soon restore the fortunes of his people. Look at verses 12 to 17. Then the angel of the Lord said, O Lord of hosts, how long will youl have no mercy on Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, against which youh have been angry these seventy years?

And the Lord answered gracious and comforting words to the angel who talked with me. So the angel who talked with me said to me, 'Cry out thus says the Lord of hosts, I am exceedingly jealous for Jerusalem and for Zion, and I'm exceedingly angry with the nations that are at ease. For while I was angry but a little, they furthered the disaster. Therefore thus says the Lord, I have returned to Jerusalem with mercy. My house shall be built in it, declares the Lord of Hosts, and the measuring line shall be stretched out over Jerusalem.

Cry out again. Thus says the Lord of Hosts, my cities shall again overflow with prosperity, and the Lord will again comfort Zion and again choose Jerusalem. In contrast to the peace of the other nations in verse 11, in verse 12, this angel sends up a prayer of lament to God over the miserable state of God's people in Judah. They've returned to the land, but they're still oppressed, harassed, defenseless. Their city has no walls and their temple lies incomplete.

Look at the angel's cry in verse 12. O Lord of hosts, how long will you have no mercy on Jerusalem and the cities of Judah against which you have been angry these seventy years. By referring to seventy years, the angel is talking about the duration of the exile that was promised in the prophet Jeremiah. The angel is appealing to God to keep his promises to restore his people. He is lamenting to the Lord and pleading with the Lord to keep his word, just like the psalmists do over and over again.

This prompts the Lord to commission Zechariah to say in verse 14, Cry out, thus says the Lord of hosts, I am exceedingly jealous for Jerusalem and for Zion. Now, God's jealousy here is not a petty competitiveness. Instead, you could equally translate the word as zealous. It is God's passionate commitment to and desire for that which rightly belongs to him. God is totally devoted to his people and he claims our total devotion to him in return.

God's love for his people is intense, powerful, personal, loyal and unshakable. This week, I saw a brief statement by a group called the Atheist Forum. They wrote, Christianity, belief that one God created a universe 13.79 billion years old, 93 billion light years in diameter, consisting of over 200 billion galaxies, each containing an average of 200 billion stars, only to have a personal relationship with you.

One person replied, if you could, you would do this for love.

That is what God has done for each of us. That is the intense, jealous, zealous love God has for you. And the action that God's love for His people moves Him to take is spelled out in verses 16 and 17. Look again at those verses. Therefore, thus says the Lord, I have loved you, Returned to Jerusalem with mercy.

My house shall be built in it, declares the Lord of hosts, and the measuring line shall be stretched out over Jerusalem. Cry out again, thus says the Lord of hosts, my cities shall again overflow with prosperity and the Lord will again comfort Zion and again choose Jerusalem. Now some of this was fulfilled in Zechariah's near future. The temple was rebuilt in his generation, probably within a few years of this prophecy. Jerusalem's reconstruction was complete about 70 years later.

But as we'll see in the rest of our passage, the prosperity that the Lord promises here points to something far beyond what any of the people experienced in their lifetime or in the coming generations. It points to something far beyond anything we will experience until Christ returns. 20 years after their return from exile, the people of Judah were stuck in a rut.

God's promises of glorious prosperity for them and judgment for their enemies had not yet come true. Their city was insecure. Their political fortunes rested on the whims of a distant dictator. They were financially hard pressed. At such a time of insecurity and uncertainty, what do they need most?

God himself. That's what God promised to give them. I have returned to Jerusalem with mercy. What they needed more than political freedom or physical security was God himself returning to them in his gracious favor. Verse 17, the Lord will again comfort Zion.

And when your life is riddled with uncertainty and insecurity, what you most need is not fixed circumstances, but the favor of God. What you most need is not for your life to be put into the shape you want it in, but for God himself to come to you and comfort you.

In this passage, God promises to return to his people and he has. He has come to us in Christ. He has poured out his spirits to make his dwelling not just with us but in us. If you're in Christ, God has returned to you. Point three, repay.

God will repay those who oppress his people.

The Lord introduced this theme in verse 15 and then he develops it in the next vision in chapter 1 verses 18 and I lifted my eyes and saw, and behold, four horns. And I said to the angel who talked with me, 'What are these?' and he said to me, 'These are the horns that have scattered Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem.' Then the Lord showed me four craftsmen. And I said, 'What are these coming to do?' He said, these are the horns that scattered Judah so that no one raised his head. And these, that is the craftsmen, have come to terrify them, to cast down the horns of the nations who lifted up their horns against the land of Judah to scatter it.

The horns here are likely those of animals like an ox, The horn was a symbol of power because animals would use it for, you know, defense and offense. It's a symbol of strength. There are four horns. The meaning of that isn't totally clear. It may be that there's two horns for two animals each and that those two animals each represent a nation that carried God's people into exile.

So Assyria for the northern kingdom of Israel and Babylon for the southern kingdom of Judah. That's possible. But in any case, the point about the horns is that these craftsmen are coming to defeat them. One of our family's favorite family pictures features a very young Rose running, and me also running, holding a very small Lucy. We are running away from a swan.

The swan is captured in the picture. The swan is large. Its head probably gets up to about yay high with its neck fully stretched out.

The swan is moving rapidly in our direction. Now, we were living in England at the time and in the part of England where we lived, swans are about as common as ducks are here. They're beautiful creatures, they're elegant, they're amazing. We'd come to love them. We are not sure why this swan came not to love us.

Perhaps we were taking up space it required for other purposes. We just don't know. But in any case, the swan was chasing us and so we were running away because the swan was clearly the superior power.

I was not going to go toe to toe with the swan. And changing a few details is necessary. That's basically what's going on in this vision. There was a power that thought it was superior. Those are the nations that came against Judah.

But God is saying a superior power is coming. And what's even more frightening than that is that it's God himself. An infinitely superior power who stands behind the earthly power that he's going to use to judge those nations who oppressed his people.

God will repay those who oppress his people. So, this vision is a warning shot to all who mistreat God's people, whether those mistreaters are individuals or whole governments or anything in between. If you oppose God and oppose his people, one day you will meet a superior power, and that will be a day of ultimate reckoning. This vision also holds out comfort for those who trust in God and his promises through the midst of oppression, opposition, or any other kind of suffering inflicted by other people. God will right every wrong in this universe.

His judgment is a promise of comfort, of deliverance, of restoration. He will not fail to perfectly address every single injustice that every single one of his people will ever experience.

Now, does this coming judgment mean that we Christians should be vengeful? Absolutely not. Just the opposite. Jesus commands us to love our neighbors and to love our enemies. And the apostle Paul writes in Romans 12:19, Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.

God will repay those who afflict you. You neither can nor should. Point four. Restore, God will restore His dwelling among His people, and with it, our flourishing. We see this in the whole of chapter 2 from verse 1 down to verse 13.

Look first at verses 1 to 5, which is another vision.

And I lifted my eyes and saw, and behold, A man with a measuring line in his hand. Then I said, Where are you going? And he said to me, To measure Jerusalem, to see what is its width and what is its length. And behold, the angel who talked with me came forward, and another angel came forward to meet him and said to him, Run, say to that young man, Jerusalem shall be inhabited as villages without walls, because of the multitude of people and livestock in it. And I will be to her a wall of fire all around, declares the Lord.

And I will be the glory in her midst.

In this vision, the man with a measuring line is clearly a surveyor. The other day, I was walking up Sixth Street right up here just past Stanton Park and I saw a bunch of surveyors out around Stanton Park. I didn't stick around to ask, they were surveying but they were presumably getting ready for some type of construction or renovation. Generally speaking, you survey before you build because that's when you need extremely precise measurements to make sure everything gets set properly. And that's why there's this dramatic exchange here in this vision where another angel runs after this young man and tells him to stop.

Don't survey. Don't measure the city. Huh? What? I thought this was all about rebuilding Jerusalem.

Don't you have to survey in order to build? Not the way that the Lord is going to rebuild his dwelling. Look at verse four.

Jerusalem shall be inhabited as villages without walls because of the multitude of people and livestock in it. In ancient cities, walls were the main means of defense. It's how you kept an invading army out. But the problem is, once you build a wall, the city can't get any bigger. If the population gets too big and is spilling out, well, you've got to go build another wall farther out.

And what the Lord is saying here is that the people and animals representing wealth and abundance and technological aid The people and the animals in Jerusalem are going to be so numerous that Jerusalem will not have any walls. But if they don't have a wall, won't they be exposed to threats on all sides? Verse 5 says no. And I will be to her a wall of fire all around, declares the Lord, and I will be the glory in her midst, just like in the wilderness after the Exodus. This is like the Lord saying, They won't need a Department of Defense.

I will be their defense. They won't need a police force or alarm systems or locks on their doors. I will be all the safety they will need. But when was this promise fulfilled? Under Nehemiah, 70 years later, the walls of Jerusalem were rebuilt.

Were the people then disobeying this vision? Not at all. In this vision, God points both to an invisible spiritual reality and to our ultimate future. Regardless of our outward circumstances and political fortunes, God is our defense. He gives us a safety that no military can threaten.

He gives us a security that no government can take away. So often as we walk by faith in this life, we have no guarantee of earthly success. We have no fleshly advantage, no worldly foothold. As Christians, we live our whole lives like a city without walls, but our God is our wall. Here and now, we who trust in Christ can take this promise to the bank.

I will be to her a wall of fire all around, declares the Lord, and I will be the glory in her midst. I made sure that we printed this verse on the front of the bulletin so you can take it and stick it on your fridge. Post it up on your bathroom mirror. Put it in your office. Look at this verse this week.

I will be to her a wall of fire all around, declares the Lord, and I will be the glory in her midst. God is our safety and God is our beauty. And what is true for all of us is true for each of us individually. As David prayed in Psalm 3:4, But you, O Lord, are a shield about me, my glory and the lifter of my head. This promise is true for us now spiritually through God's presence with us.

And it will be fully realized in the new creation when Christ returns. There's a little bit of a link here with imagery in Revelation 21:23-25. Listen for it. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk.

And the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day, and there will be no night there. That is what's coming for all of us who trust in Christ. Look now at verses 6 to 13. Up, up, flee from the land of the north, declares the Lord, for I have spread you abroad as the four winds of the heavens, declares the Lord. Up, escape to Zion, you who dwell with the daughter of Babylon.

For thus said the Lord of hosts, after his glory sent me to the nations who plundered you, for he who touches you touches the apple of his eye. Behold, I will shake my hand over them, and they shall become plunder for those who served them.

Then you will know that the Lord of hosts has sent me. Sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion, for behold, I come, and I will dwell in your midst, declares the Lord. And many nations shall join themselves to the Lord in that day, and shall be my people. And I will dwell in your midst, and you shall know that the Lord of hosts has sent me to you. And the Lord will inherit Judah as his portion in the holy land and will again choose Jerusalem.

Be silent, all flesh, before the Lord, for he has roused himself from his holy dwelling.

In verses six to nine, God again warns Babylon that he's going to judge them and he warns all the Jews who are remaining in Babylon to get out. God is telling his people remaining in Babylon to do what Christian did in Pilgrim's Progress when he fled from his homeland, the city of destruction, because it was about to be overthrown. Babylon was almost due east from Judah, but God calls it the land of the north because if you tried to go straight east it would be desert all the way. So to get to Babylon from Judah, you had to go north, north, north, north, and then hang a sharp right. That's why Babylon is called the land of the north.

In verse 10, God calls his people to sing and rejoice, and then he gives us a reason. Verse 10, Sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion, for behold, I come, and I will dwell in your midst, declares the Lord. If you trust in Christ, God is with you and in you. This is cause for solid joy, stable joy, lasting joy, joy that can shine in the bleakest times. God's grace gives you joy that can't be shaken by anything in the world because it comes from beyond the world.

God's grace gives you joy that comes from another world and that will one day fill the world. This joy is why we We sing. This joy is why we delight to lift up our hearts to God in song together.

In verse 11, God explicitly promises that people from many nations besides Judah will join themselves to him and will be counted as his people. They will receive the same favored and chosen status. Brothers and sisters, that's most of us. We are living fulfillment of this promise. From the beginning, God planned to save a people from every nation and as verse 12 says, to make them his chosen portion.

Now all of these rich and encouraging promises raise an acute question. How? How Can a holy God dwell with a sinful people? After the exile, the people are still stained by sin. How can God bring his kingdom and make his dwelling with his people?

Point five, remove. God will remove all their sin all at once, and he has. In this last point, we will briefly cover all of chapter 3, verses 1 to 10. Look down at verses 1 to 5.

Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him. And the Lord said to Satan, The Lord rebuke you, O Satan. The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you. Is not this a brand plucked from the fire? Now Joshua was standing before the angel, clothed with filthy garments.

And the angel said to those who were standing before him, Remove the filthy garments from him. And to him he said, Behold, I have taken your iniquity away from you, and I will clothe you with pure vestments. And I said, 'Let them put a clean turban on his head.' so they put a clean turban on his head and clothed him with garments and the angel of the Lord was standing by.

Joshua is Judah's high priest. He alone would go in on the Day of Atonement and enter into the Holy of Holies and represent the whole people before God.

But Joshua is filthy. He can't deal with the problem of the people's guilt if he himself is covered by it. And if the high priest is in trouble, the whole people are in trouble. None of God's promises for his people will come to pass if his people remain mired in the muck of sin.

So God himself solves the problem. Through an angel acting on his behalf, God himself cleanses and clothes Joshua. This is one of the clearest pictures of the work of Christ in the whole Old Testament. He takes away our sin and clothes us in his righteousness. And what does Joshua contribute?

Nothing but his sin. As we've heard in a couple of helpful devotionals in the last few weeks in the evening services, This is a courtroom scene. Satan is the prosecuting attorney, Joshua is the accused, the angel is the Lord's spokesperson and the Lord himself is the judge. And what does Joshua do in this trial? Nothing.

What does he say? Nothing. If he did speak, It could only be to enter his plea of guilty. Joshua can't speak for himself, but that's okay because the Lord of the universe speaks for him. The Lord rebuke you, O Satan.

Is not this a brand plucked from the fire? God grabbed him. God rescued him.

As Richard Sibbes observed on this passage, Christ looks more at the good in them which he means to cherish than the ill in them which he means to abolish. Our culture tries hard to treat guilt as a mere illusion. When you hear people talk about guilt, the most prevalent way they talk about it is as if it is only something that other people invent and try to get to stick on on you. But guilt is far from an illusion. Guilt is as real as a stain on your shirt that is stuck there even after every remedy you've tried to get it out.

Guilt is that objective. Guilt is that lasting. And guilt is that far beyond your power to get rid of. But in the gospel of Christ, God offers you a whole new set of clothes. We've seen how Joshua was cleansed and clothed.

All of that served the purpose of him being commissioned. We see this in verses 6 and 7. And the angel of the Lord solemnly assured Joshua, Thus says the Lord of hosts, if you will walk in my ways and keep my charge, Then you shall rule my house and have charge of my courts, and I will give you the right of access among those who are standing here. In his role as the high priest, Joshua is responsible to do all that God says with regard to the worship in the temple, and he's responsible to make sure that everybody else does too. And God is saying, if you fulfill that role, you will have access to my innermost presence.

Verses 8 to 10 tell us that this whole episode is a preview of something to come. Look at those verses.

Joshua 3:8-10 Hear now, O Joshua the high priest, you and your friends who sit before you, for they are men who are a sign. Behold, I will bring my servant the branch. For behold, on the stone that I have set before Joshua, on a single stone with seven eyes, I will engrave its inscription, declares the Lord of Hosts, and I will remove the iniquity of this land in a single day. In that day, declares the Lord of hosts, every one of you will invite his neighbor to come under his vine and under his fig tree. Verse 8 says that Joshua and all these men are a sign pointing forward to coming attractions.

And what is that attraction? It's this man whom God calls the branch. The branch is a title from Jeremiah 23 verse 5 and 33 verse 15 and it has roots also in Isaiah and Ezekiel. Both of those passages in Jeremiah describe a descendant from David who will reign as king, fulfill God's will, and bring about his people's flourishing. The Lord is saying that Joshua's cleansing, clothing, and commissioning is a picture of what he's going to accomplish for all his people through the Messiah.

And then verse nine tells us even more. We don't have time to discuss this in detail, But I think the stone with seven eyes actually refers to seven pairs of stones, 14 total. The Hebrew word for stone is often used as a collective singular, like our word jewelry. And since eyes are a pair, seven pairs makes 14. That number exactly matches the number of stones that Israel's high priest wore on his ephod and breastpiece.

And here's the clincher. Those stones that the high priest wore were inscribed, engraved with the names of the tribes of Israel. Those stones also had an inscription. My name is graven on his hands. My name is written on his heart.

And what's written on this set of stones, regardless of whether it's one or many, I think it's the message in verse nine. I will remove the iniquity of this land in a single day. Now, what day would that be? Good Friday.

On that day, God fulfilled his promise to remove all our sin. All at once. This is why verse nine leads directly to verse 10. Under his vine and under his fig tree is an image of total abundance, prosperity, security, flourishing. We won't experience these conditions of utter material flourishing until the new creation, but they're guaranteed by the cross of Christ.

Because Jesus took all our sin away, one day God will take away everything that mars his creation and will put in its place total and unending abundance. So the question for you is how can you experience that unending abundance? It's only by turning from sin and trusting in Christ. Return to me, declares the Lord of hosts, and I will return to you, declares the Lord of hosts. Through Christ, God has removed our sin and restored his dwelling with us.

Through Christ, God will repay all who oppose his people. In Christ, God has returned to us, making us his own, and one day he will return to us for good. You may or may not be able to go home again. You may or may not be able to repair that broken relationship. But through Christ, you can return to God, and He will return to you.

And what makes all of this not only possible, but guaranteed for all who believe, is one day.

That day is promised right here in Zechariah 3:9. That day.

Was destined in God's plan from all eternity. God destined that day to come and with it our salvation. See the destined day arise. See a willing sacrifice. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for sending Christ to us to turn us from our ways so that we would be reconciled to you and experience times of refreshing. Until the time that you have appointed for everything that you spoke through the prophets to be fulfilled. Father, we pray that we would all continually return to you in Jesus' name. Amen.