Prayer based on Exodus 35

Glorious God, we will rest in Your Son’s resurrection and work for His glory with joy forever. Our one new Man has led the way for us into a new world. He is clothed in majesty, and anointed with Your Spirit in fullness. What shall we do, O Lord? Your people are covered with His righteousness. Our hearts are stirred. We have given of our substance for the work of Your Kingdom. We dedicate all to You. We seek first Your Kingdom. We commit our lives to You. What shall we do, O Lord? Our leaders seek Your face. We are with them in Your Son Jesus Christ. You have called us by name, and have given us gifts for such a time as this. Bring forward from our hands and hearts all that is beautiful, orderly, wonderful, helpful, and good. May Your kingdom come, and Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Prayer based on Jeremiah 28

Lord God, You spoke to Your children through prophets, yet not every man who claimed to speak for You was true. In Old Testament days there were many false prophets, as there are even to this day. Many seem to speak only what people wish to hear. The Word that You have for us is wonderful. Why would we ever reject Your blessings and insist on answers that are not good. Your plan of eternal salvation is far better than the instant gifts that we would demand from You or the man-centered answers to our questions that we would invent. Give us patient ears and submissive hearts. Stay near us, O Lord.

Prayers based on Malachi

Malachi 1
Lord of Glory, You have spoken through Your messengers the prophets. You revealed Your love for Israel. Yet Your plans have always been great even beyond the borders of Israel. Father, You sent Your Son to be the Savior of both Jews and Gentiles. He accomplished His work as our High Priest with full integrity. He did His work perfectly. His offering was pure, for He gave Himself as a holy sacrifice. In Him there was no blemish. Now He is our great King, and His Name shall be exalted throughout the earth.

Malachi 2
Great God, we will honor Your Name. We humble ourselves under Your almighty hand. We are to be priests before You. Your priests should be different from the world. We should guard knowledge, give good instruction to one another, and follow in the way that we would teach others to go. Please forgive us, for we have corrupted Your word. Particularly within our homes we should be good examples of love and sacrificial commitment. We should seek You and serve You as we train up our children in the way that they should go. Have we spoken thoughtlessly and acted as if You do not care about justice. Have mercy on us, O Lord.

Malachi 3
Father God, You have sent Your Son as the Mediator of a New Covenant. He has provided a way for those who fear You, but He will come again to judge the wicked. We must return to You. We must be faithful with the wealth that You have given to us. We will generously support the work of Your church. We will give to the poor within our midst. Grant to us true joy in Your service. Bless us with a deeper repentance. We have committed ourselves to the way of righteousness. We will serve You.

Malachi 4
O God, the Day of Judgment is surely coming. Yet, the Sun has risen in our hearts through the coming of Jesus Christ. In Him we have the greatest blessing. You have turned our hearts back to You, our Father. He has destroyed the destruction that was coming against us. In Him we have a most secure peace and hope. Come soon, Lord Jesus!

A Thanksgiving Prayer Based on Genesis 43

Great God and Provider, we hunger and thirst for You today. Satisfy our eager longings, and grant to us all things necessary for life and godliness. Thank you for our families, for the heritage that we enjoy, and for the future ahead of us. Make us to be gracious and righteous participants in the events of our day. May we live for You above all. You are such a generous Lord. We do not deserve this kindness that You grant to us every day, but we receive it with great thanksgiving. You will restore to us in the resurrection all that may seem lost today. This will be done in accord with Your decree and for the praise of Your glorious grace. How we thank you, even with tears, as we consider the kind love with which you have loved us. Surely we have received a bountiful portion from Your hand, in accord with our unusual and wonderful position as sons of the Most High God.

Malachi 4

The arrogance of the lost should make us weep. How sad it is when people are so sure that they are right, so very sure that they need not receive the gift of salvation that is freely offered in the preaching of the kingdom of God. Those who would rightly expound the Scriptures and proclaim the story of the coming resurrection have urged all men everywhere to repent and believe the gospel. Christ, our Redeemer has been patiently presented as crucified and risen. The words of the prophets and apostles have been read and explained, so that people everywhere would know that all who call upon the Name of the Lord shall be saved. Yet many stubbornly refuse. They reject the only Savior of sinners for no good reason. This is very sad. The Old Testament closes with the announcement again that a day is coming when they will face the burning wrath of God.

They may have amassed great fortunes on earth. They may have even been considered men and women of unusual and wonderful qualities in so many ways. Yet this will not protect them on that awful day. All that they hold dear in the present age may be consumed in a moment by the power of the victorious Son of God when He comes again to judge. They will be left with less than nothing, and with no defense against the righteous accusation of the King of kings.

There is an alternative. They could humble themselves before the Almighty. For those who will fear His Name, who will believe and repent, the great Sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings. Have you ever considered why Jesus healed so many people when He came to proclaim the kingdom of God? He was displaying to us the greatness of His resurrection power. None of His beloved children will have bodily or emotional difficulties in the present heaven or in the age to come. He has shown us His great capacity to heal. When He comes again with such glory that the only thing that we can compare Him to is the rising sun, He will surely come with healing in His wings.

In that day, the people of the Lord will be so full of vitality that we could be compared to calves that come leaping out of their stalls. In the present age, however well-meaning we may be, our bodies cannot keep up with our best intentions. We get tired, and we get cranky. Different parts of us wear down or break. We become less and less functional as we move past our best years. But when He comes, we will have perfected desires, glorious bodies, and entirely sound minds.

The Lord will even use His people to judge men and angels in that great day. Are we alright with that? Are we aware of the brokenness of the world all around us? Do we hear of those who abuse the poor, and who slaughter the innocent? Do we know of many who have destroyed the reputations of people they unjustly accused? Have we heard of those in civil or religious authority who have used their positions to take advantage of the ignorant or the young? Isn't it right that God would judge the wicked? When we have had all of our sins removed far from us, the Lord will use us in some way to bring His justice upon those who have loved wickedness and have spurned the Messiah's free offers of full redemption.

Consider the people of God back in the day of Malachi a few hundred years before the birth of Christ in Bethlehem. While they waited for the revelation of their Messiah, what were they to do? What was God's instruction to the faithful? First, they were to attend to the Law of Moses, that great system of commandments designed to protect the Lord's beloved during the era of preparation. They were the church under age, and they needed to stay close to the Law, which was a schoolmaster guiding them away from danger in the midst of a world of trouble and sin.

Eventually the Lord would send forth a prophet in the spirit of Elijah to prepare a later generation for the arrival of the Messiah. With the preaching of John the Baptist, and then with the coming of Jesus, the age of the Law would be completed, and the beginnings of the age of resurrection would come. That new age would first shine forth in the personal ministry of the Messiah and then in the proclamation of His good news of the coming fullness of His kingdom.

The best thing that the leading people of God could have done in the first century would have been to listen to John the Baptist. Most did not. His message would have clearly told them what to do in order to restore right relationships within families and within the entire covenant community of the nation of Israel. Yet when that day came hundreds of years after the preaching of Malachi, the leaders of the people were so fully corrupt, that those who responded to his message were not the priests or the teachers of the Law, but the prostitutes and the tax collectors. The Old Covenant age came to a close as the Lord brought His decree of utter destruction not only on the Sinai Covenant way of worship and life, but upon the person of His own Son, who died to plant the seeds of an entirely new life even beyond the borders of Israel.

Beyond the brutal story of the death of Jesus of Nazareth, we are presented with something powerfully new. We hear the accounts of the fact of His rising again as the firstfuits of a whole new world; a world that first shined forth from the light of an empty tomb. In the resurrection of Christ the disciples of the Lord were made to see something of the wonder of a new creation that would be preached among the nations, and would one day be seen and heard by all God's elect.

Those who heard Malachi with obedient hearts would have to wait many decades for the Lord of glory to come in humility. As always, the just needed to live by faith. This is how we still live today as we wait for the resurrection of the dead coming at the shining of the great Sun of Righteousness who will surely come with the fullest measure of divine healing for those who trust in Him.

Here we are today, at the close of this chapter at the end of the Old Testament. We have seen the message of Christ and the resurrection age clearly in the words of the prophets. If there is some answer to the mysteries of the Old Testament other the story of the love of God through the cross of His Son I am unaware of it.

Yes, the arrogance of the lost should make us weep. So what can we do? We must preach Christ and Him crucified and nourish souls in the hope of the resurrection while it is still today, until that moment when the trumpet sounds, and the dead in Christ are raised. On that day, the time for preaching will be over, and the time for the final judgment that the prophet Malachi wrote about so long ago will be here. Then it will be too late for the lost to be found, and too late for the condemned to be saved.

Malachi 3

The identity of the messenger referred to in the first verse of this chapter is known without question to be John, the son of Zechariah and Elizabeth. Matthew's gospel cites this verse and identifies this man, known as John the Baptist, as the one who prepared the way of the Lord, who came in the spirit of Elijah, the great Old Testament prophet. It is somewhat more difficult to see that the man called in the same verse, "the messenger of the covenant," appears to be Jesus, the One for whom John prepared the way. He is the Lord who will suddenly come to His temple.

Jesus fulfilled this in His first coming, particularly at the end of His earthly ministry, but a more profound and sweeping completion of this prophesy will take place in connection with a better temple than the building in Jerusalem. During the gospel age, the Lord has been building His church as a temple of the Holy Spirit. When He comes in judgment and salvation on the Day of the Lord, He will suddenly appear in power to His body temple as the One who fills all in all. He will be the ultimate messenger and agent of the Covenant of Grace in bringing us resurrection salvation. He will also be the ultimate messenger and agent of the judgment that the wicked deserve according to the Covenant of Works. For some who are longing for His coming, those who delight in Him and in His grace, His arrival is the best of all possible days. For others His coming is not only unexpected but unwelcome in the extreme. Malachi states with absolute assurance as a messenger from heaven these great words: "Behold, He is coming."

On that day the Lord will purify His church, the priesthood of all believers. The Old Testament levitical priesthood was only a placeholder for the ultimate High Priest and Messiah, Jesus Christ. We who are found in Him on that day will be the true priesthood of the faithful, those who have believed in His Name, and who have thus served Him with the love that is born of true living faith. We could not endure the day of His coming were it not for the fact that He first offered the pure sacrifice of His own life and death for us. He will remove from the church all false brethren, and from all of the elect He will take away any remaining defects from the former power of sin in our lives. By His perfect offering we have been redeemed. It shall be ours to serve Him in perfect faith and love in the coming age.

But for those who have hidden within the protection of the visible church and have yet been devoted to sorcery, adultery, lies, and oppression of the weak, they will be exposed as strangers to the covenants of promise made with our forefathers in ancient days. These have not truly feared the Lord, and they have not loved the Mediator of the Covenant of Grace, who has not only died as our atoning sacrifice, but who also reigns forever as the King and Head of the church. Regarding these hypocrites and lawless professors of holiness, we are told our Christ will draw near for judgment, which is a most frightening prospect to consider.

This combination of salvation for the elect and judgment for the reprobate is settled decree in the eternal purposes of Almighty God. He does not change, and His purposes do not come and go with the shifting of the wind. Because of the settled faithfulness of God so perfectly displayed in the obedience of Christ to the revealed will of the Father, we will not be consumed. If we had to stand in our own righteousness before Him without the covering of His holiness credited to us, we and our forefathers in the faith would be utterly and eternally convicted of heinous transgressions, for we have all turned aside from His holy Law, and have not kept His statutes.

Do we need proof of our sin? He has said that we are to serve Him with all the substance He has granted to us, and yet we have often begrudged Him a simple tithe. Others have presented their giving before the world with trumpets. They have already received their reward from the passing praise of men. In the depths of our hearts we have robbed the Lord of the perfect praise and obedience that He deserves. We should have obeyed Him outwardly and inwardly and enjoyed His blessing amongst us, but we have not dared to put Him to the test on this matter as He commanded, because the hearts of Israel and His church have not been truly faithful.

We have also spoken ill of Him, as if there would be no gain for us if we had been more holy. We presumed that we could be judges of God and judges of everyone else around us, and our arrogance has spoken a word against us, for all have sinned. Yet for the sake of the elect that He has loved with an everlasting love, the Lord sent not only a messenger of preparation, but also He came Himself as the very Lord of the Covenant. Amazingly He has visited His beloved as the humble Servant of the Lord, even suffering to the point of death on the cross for our sake.

Because of Him, all those who have been granted a holy fear of the Lord, have a hope and a future. Our names have been recorded in the eternal covenant of God. We belong to Him, for we were purchased with the blood of our Redeemer. Our Father in heaven did not spare His only Son. Therefore, we have been spared and are rightly called sons of God in Jesus Christ our Lord. Because of this great plan of grace, and with the blessings of our obedience openly displayed as fruits of His gift of faith to us, there will one day be a firm distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between the ones who know and serve the Lord, and those who do not.

Malachi 2

To be a priest in the Old Covenant was a very important position. The existence of this class of mediators between God and men was a testimony to the distance that existed between the Lord and His own people. They could not simply enter into His presence. They had to respect the methods that God had established for communion between Him in all His holiness and the people He loved in all their sinfulness. The priest was a part of that system. The people needed to bring their offerings to God in accord with the established ceremonial law, but they could not go to God directly. They brought the appropriate sacrifice to the priest, who then approached the Lord on behalf of the worshipper.

There were some severe limitations with this system which made it less than ideal. First, the sacrifices could not ultimately take away sin, since an animal could not bear the burden of human guilt. Second, the man who served as priest had to atone for his own sins through these imperfect means before he could offer up sacrifices for others. In this way it was obvious that the offerings of the people were not the perfect sacrifices and that the ones who served as priests were not the perfect mediators. A holy God would certainly demand a sacrifice without any blemish and a representative who would have the righteousness necessary to stand in the presence of God for others on the strength of His own holiness. The solution to this need could be nothing other than the provision of the perfect Savior who would be both Sacrifice and Priest in accord with the perfect plan of God.

These problems of imperfection in both the sacrificial system and in the priesthood were compounded by the fact that the men who served as priests in the days of Malachi were guilty of serious personal and ceremonial offenses against God that demanded His response. The Lord was aware that these men did not really honor His name. According to the terms of the Sinai Covenant they deserved the curse of God against the people, and not His blessing. The Lord insisted that His judgment would come upon them and their offspring.

It was the Lord's intention to be faithful to His covenant, even though he was fully aware of the sin and disobedience of his people. He had plans for life and peace to come through His priests. They should fear the Lord and stand in awe of His Name. They should teach the people according to His holy word, as those who walked according to the righteousness that they preached. The priests were a grave disappointment in that regard. They should have been guardians of the truth and teachers of the right knowledge of the Lord's Word. When people wanted to know the way to go, they should have been safe bringing their inquiries to the Lord's appointed priests. These men needed to be the Lord's forthright ambassadors, the messengers of the Lord of hosts.

Instead the priests were rightly indicted by God as a group that caused many to stumble by their instruction and their living. They had not held true to the way of the covenant granted to them in the Lord's Word. They were men who had become partial in their judgments and instruction. They were serving themselves rather than the Lord, and were obscuring the unity of the people of God because of their faithlessness. Meanwhile the people were wandering away from the Lord in their devotion to false gods from other nations.

This faithlessness in devotion was expressed in their false ways of treating one another. Within the families of God's people there was much treachery in forgetting the covenant of marriage. Here again, God's plan for His people was one of fruitfulness through the raising of a godly offspring, but the people had chosen the pathway of divorce, sacrificing the blessings that could have been for the coming generations, and choosing their own desires for freedom and pleasure. The Lord of justice calls His people to be faithful to Him and to reflect that faithfulness in their care for their wives and their children. He expects us to care about the obvious difference between what is evil and what is good. He expects His beloved people to guard their spirits from wickedness and to give themselves faithfully to Him and to one another.

When Christ, our faithful priest and teacher came to atone for our sins, He came not only as the Lord's messenger. God also revealed His Son to be a Husband. He did what Israel and her priests would not do. He was true to His covenant word and faithful to His pledge of love. He demonstrated the sincerity of His commitment through His death on the cross. Even beyond that death, He now lives forever as our faithful High Priest, and He is sanctifying His church as His holy bride. As those who trust His faithfulness, it is ours to distinguish daily between that which is good and that which is evil. This is not legalism or moralism. It is the appropriate response of a grateful bride to the most heart-warming actions of covenant faithfulness by our perfect Husband, the great Man of grace, who has proven Himself as the true holy Sacrifice, and the only acceptable Mediator between God and man.

Prayer based on Exodus 34

Lord, after we have failed so badly, would You give Your people another opportunity to serve You? If You would not, there could be no hope for Your church. You are the Lord, a God merciful and gracious. You have forgiven us in such a way that the penalty of our iniquity was paid through Your Son’s holy work on the cross. Pardon our iniquity and sin again we pray. Do wonders before us as Your work moves forward even through us. Drive out those who would only be a snare in our midst. Cause the pure truth of Your Word to be known and loved day by day. Is there yet hope for us after all our weakness and sin? Yes. Your promises are all “Yes” and “Amen” in Jesus Christ. We have been redeemed through the blood of that One Lamb. There is no other Name for us. There is no other Lamb for sinners. There is no other hope than what Christ has won for us. We turn away from all foolish idolatry and false worship. You are here among Your people. We hear Your Word, and follow Your Son, by the power of Your Spirit. Shine Your holy light in our midst, that we might be changed. If we are worldly in our ways, how can we be the light of the world? You will help us to know You and to follow You in truth and love. We will do Your holy will.

Prayer based on Jeremiah 27

Lord Almighty, You have called us to bear the yoke of Christ. His yoke is easy and His burden is light. Our fathers could not bear the yoke of the Law. You have brought us a Word of grace, and have filled us with Your Spirit. In Your providence You may bring us under the yoke of powerful men and nations for a time, but this is for our good. Help us to trust You today. The words of false prophets are lies. They sound smooth and appealing. They promise us an easy and speedy victory, but they do not speak the truth. Can we trust You in the suffering that is our portion this day? Be with us now, for Your Son suffered and died for us.

Malachi 1

The Lord has had things to say to His Old Covenant people through many messengers over many centuries. We now come to the last of these, at least for some period of time, the prophet Malachi. As with others who have come before him, the Word that he brings is not his own. It is the Word of Almighty God. It can be counted on to be right and true. It is the Lord's Word to seal up the Scriptures until the coming of John the Baptist, the forerunner to the Messiah.

With the heritage of Israel in mind, and this special closing moment of Old Covenant revelation, we are interested to see what these words, that are something of a conclusion to the Scriptures from the age of the Law, will say to the Lord's people. The Lord begins with His electing love. Throughout this book He speaks to His beloved Israel as an older child, one who has come to ignore or reject everything that his Father is saying to him. The Father says, "I have loved You." The son does not believe it, and so he questions this. The Father points to the difference between Jacob and Esau recorded in the book of Genesis by Moses so long ago. The difference between the two boys who were born essentially at the same time and of the same parents is that one was chosen by the electing love of the Father and the other was not. This is the difference of being loved by the Father because of the work of Messiah on behalf of the elect, and being hated by Almighty God because of His righteous indignation against sin and the absence of a perfect Mediator. That is why God has loved Jacob, the ancestor of Israel, but He has hated Esau, the ancestor of the Edomites. People may try to build up that realm again, but the Lord's final plans are for an "Israel" from all the nations, not for a new Edom coming down out of the heavens. There is no blessed future in being an Edomite.

The Lord has a Word against His levitical priests. They have not honored the Lord as a Father, and they have not served Him as a Master. Again there is an indignant response of challenge and unbelief: "How have we despised Your Name?" They have not followed the Word of the Lord according to the system of sacrifice that He established for them under the Law. Even according to the dictates of their consciences they should have felt that they were in the wrong, for they gave things to God that they never would have offered up to a human governor. The civil leaders over them were more real to them than the God who loved them.

The Lord indicates that it would be better to have the whole sacrificial life of the Old Covenant brought to an end than to have it continue in this way of hypocrisy and rebellion. He does not want them to have fire on His altar any more. Their ceremonies are just empty and worse than useless, and they will not be acceptable to a holy God. This settled determination signals the end of any future for the Old Covenant ways. This is not a new message, but there is a note of finality throughout Malachi that is appropriate for this occasion in the life of God's people.

That is not to suggest that God's purposes of love and grace are over. In fact, as He has spoken through His prophets for many centuries, His plans will be fulfilled and His covenant will be expanded to include the nations. From the rising of the sun to its setting, the Lord's name will be great among the nations, and there will be a pure offering to His Name in the sanctified lives of His people, blessed by the prayers of a perfect Mediator who lives forever to give the incense of acceptable intercession for us to the Father.

This certainly does not describe any future day of a renewed Old Covenant life for this Israel. They consider the ceremonies of His Law to be a weary system. They show their lack of regard for Him by their offerings of what they have stolen from others, or by their giving to God what was otherwise useless among men. They have made vows to God promising to give the best, and then they sneak in something less than that as a payment of their vows. Because of this, they deserve the curse of the covenant.

Their day will come to a close, though the Lord will not forget His everlasting love for His chosen ones. Yes, their day is coming to a close, but the glory of the Lord of hosts will never pass away. Though He would first come as One who was despised and rejected by the people of Israel, He would be the perfect sacrifice and the fulfillment of the richness of the Old Testament ceremonies. He would come as the Davidic King, and a great King over all the nations. He would come as the perfect Man, a worshiper who would pay His vow in full for our sake.

Because the Lord Jesus Christ has done this, though God's Old Covenant system has ended, the Lord's Name is feared among the nations. We do not see that completely now. We see Christ, and we see the church that He has established. We see her coming to the point of flaunting her own rebellion and disobedience to His holy will. Her apostasy, her rejection of His perfection and His Word will only mean the closing of another age one day, the age of the gospel. But the Lord will come with a great host of Jews and Gentiles who have been perfected in holiness, and with a powerful angelic host who will do His bidding, and He will be feared among the nations.

Zechariah 14

Only God could tell us what the end of all things will be. We could not entirely figure that out from observation and reasoning, at least not with the kind of certainty that would convince our weak minds. For this reason, we are so greatly blessed that the Lord has spoken to us. The facts of our destiny did not wait to be revealed till the coming of Jesus Christ, although we are much more certain of our interpretation of these matters because of the brightness of the light of His revelation in His person and works. Yet even in the Old Covenant, we see now how very clear the story of the future was. When we hear the promise that there will be a day when there will be no trader in the house of the Lord, we know that we are talking about the day of the perfect world. The hardest thing for us to understand in the final chapter of Zechariah is that complete blessing under the reign of Messiah King does not seem to insist on the eradication of the wicked, at least not in every sense. We do know that the righteous win, but there is some continued existence for the reprobate. Yet the spoil that they robbed from the innocent will be divided among the righteous. As in the final book of the Bible, the Book of Revelation, it can be rightly said about the book of Zechariah, "I have read the end of the book. God wins."

This does not mean that reaching that final victory will be easy. All of the nations will be gathered together against the Messiah and His people. We noted in an earlier place that this has a double fulfillment according to the New Testament. Christ faces something of the venom of the nations against the Lord and His people in His death on the cross. But the final display of this anticipated battle, which is even now being played out in the war of faith and faithfulness in this era of martyrs which we call the gospel age, this final display will come as this age of the gospel comes to a close in the arrival of our Messiah King in glory with the angels and saints of the heavenly host. Before that day, churches will be harassed, people will be murdered, women will be raped, children will be killed, many will be abandon the fellowship of worshipers, but nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ. The enemies of the church can only kill the flesh. When they do this, the spirits of just men go to a place of greater power, where angels live, and where angelic hosts are more obviously and visibly performing the bidding of the redeemed of the Lord who have now been perfected in holiness. To kill a true martyr now is to send a friend of God to a place where He may do more good for the cause of Christ that He loves.

The world forgets about heaven and the forces of heaven. The world is impressed with its own weapons. When the Lord comes again to some new Mount of Olives in order to establish His final victory, that victory will not conclude with a dead man on a cross. It will conclude with the establishment of a new heavens and a new earth where righteousness reigns and where we are together forever as the people of God from all ages. On that day, winning will be winning, and you will not need the eye of faith to see the victory.

That day shall be different and obvious. It will not be a secret. All of the great expectations that have been revealed in the prophetic oracles over many centuries will find their perfect establishment in a new world that cannot be taken away. Everything about that world will be right; the light, the temperature, the waters, the seasons, the government, the religion, the communion with God, the security, the topography, the company, the blessing of God, it will all be forever right.

Despite this great perfection, there is mention here of great destruction. The vision is not one of the utter annihilation of the wicked. The wicked live, but not in a resurrection unto glory and blessing, but in a resurrection unto ugliness and shame. Those who have made it their aim to hate and to hurt the Lord's people will be like the living dead. They will be rotten, but alive. They will be full of panic and attack, yet the people of the Lord will be safe and at peace in every way. This is the separation of the sheep and the goats that Christ speaks of in Matthew 25. This is the difference between everlasting destruction and everlasting life.

The blessed survivors out of all of the nations will be the ones who come to the New Jerusalem. They will be the ones who will worship at the Feast of Booths. It is very appropriate that this feast was chosen in this prophecy, for this was the feast that symbolized the Lord eternally dwelling with His people. The Passover spoke of the cross of Christ, by which our salvation was won by God's grace. The Firstfruits was a testimony to the Resurrection of Christ, the firstborn among many brethren. The Feast of Pentecost was about the gathering in of the people of God from the field of the world by the gift of the Spirit and the preaching of the Word during the gospel age. The end of the calendar came in the Feast of Booths, after the sounding of the final trumpet, and the separation of the wicked and the righteous. This Booths or Tabernacles speaks of the Lord dwelling with His people forever and ever.

When God is with His people, everything is holy. Now there is no separate temple. The whole renewed world is the place of His perfect realm, and it is all much holier than the old Holy of Holies. The horses will have bells that say "Holy to the Lord" in that place, and every common dish that people eat off of will be holy. Then there will be no hypocrite or spy in God's house, for the Lord will be with His people forever and ever. Beloved of the Lord, when you face the daily battle of faithfulness, never forget the end of the book. Rejoice and be glad. God wins, and in Him we shall have life.

Zechariah 13

God has had much to say about the categories of "clean" and "unclean" over the history of His dealings with His people. One of the great challenges of living this mortal life in a world that is under the wrath and curse of God is this: Sin and uncleanness are everywhere. Not only are they all around us. Unfortunately they also come from within us. When Christ, the Son of David, comes to work out our salvation through His atoning death, He speaks authoritatively about this matter, setting aside all of the Old Testament regulations concerning clean and unclean foods for the New Covenant people. He says in Mark 7:15 "There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him."

In making this statement, our Lord teaches us that all of the symbolism of clean and unclean that was so much a part of Old Testament ceremonial life was at root about the filth that comes to us because of our own sin. Certainly we feel the impact of the sin of others upon our own lives. We all have been so greatly affected by the sin of Adam. Nonetheless, as we live in this world under the curse, we need to realize the serious problem of our own sin, so that we need not go through life merely considering ourselves victims of the evil done to us by others. The real question before us is the way out of all of this. Is there some fountain where we can wash so that we would be made clean? Zechariah announces the coming of such cleansing waters for all who are counted in the house of David through their relationship to Jesus Christ, the final King of the Lord's people from the House of David.

The prophet speaks of a coming day when a fountain will be opened. There will be some future day when the story of clean and unclean will be very different, not only because of a change in rules, but because of a new provision for us. We need to be cleansed from the guilt of our sin. We need to be cleansed from the slavery to sin that we experience. We finally need to be cleansed from every trace of the uncleanness of our sin so that we can live in a place that is not unclean. From the fullness of God's revelation to us in both the Old and New Testaments it is clear that this fountain can be nothing other than the atoning blood of the Lamb of God. From this great Source comes the pouring out of the Holy Spirit form on High, taking the benefits of the blood of Christ and applying these to all the inhabitants of the New Jerusalem. As a witness to the reality of these gifts, the church administers the waters of baptism, seeking that those who are rightly marked by these waters as a part of the covenant community will recognize and appropriate for themselves all of the cleansing power of the blood of Christ in their own lives. But beyond all of these great things, the church calls on people to believe that there is a day coming, won for us by the same blood of the Lamb, when all of the ugliness of all sin will be utterly washed away from us. That day comes when the Lord returns with the Jerusalem that is above, transforming the earth, and bringing about the wonder of the resurrection age.

That day that we long for begins, in a sense, with the first coming of Jesus, but it is finally and fully experienced only with the second coming of our Lord in glory. Zechariah writes long before the first of these two days. He looks to a day when all of the prophetic activity of the Old Testament would be completed. This first happens in the period of silence between Malachi and the coming of John the Baptist, but it is especially fulfilled with the completion of the New Testament as a result of the gift of the final Word, Jesus Christ (See Hebrews 1:1-2 and consider with Hebrews 2:1-4), and the completion of all of the attesting accounts concerning Him by those who were witnesses of our Messiah. They were inspired by the Lord to give us the completion of Scripture in the final books of special revelation written in the first century.

Now we look, not for new revelation, but for the completion of the revelation that we already have in the Scriptures. We look for the future day when we will be as clean as clean can be, not only legally before the judgment seat of God, but also experientially, without any spot or blemish or any such thing.

That final blessing does not come to us without much prior suffering. First the sword of the Lord God would have to come upon our Savior on the cross. Our great Shepherd needed to shed His own blood in order to be the effective Source of cleansing for us. Understand that there is no magic in His physical blood. When we refer to His blood we mean the life and death that it represents. His obedient life is the actual source of righteousness that is pleasing to the Father. His cross is the paying of the penalty that we deserve. There His "blood" is shown to have been shed for the sin of someone else, since He was perfectly righteous and did not deserve to die.

Yet He did die. The Shepherd was struck down, and the sheep were scattered, as He predicted to them using this verse from Zechariah. His suffering is now made complete in the plan of God through the sanctifying and testing of His church in the gospel age. This is something we experience. We should not be surprised by these fiery trials, but should remember that a day is coming beyond the devastation, a day of perfect renewal, a day of the fullness of holy and beautiful life, a day when we will see God. On that day we will call upon the Lord's Name, and He will answer. He will say, "You are my people," and we will say, "The LORD is our God."

Zechariah 12

Our Lord has a special plan concerning His covenant people. During many centuries this plan included the plain fact of divine discipline against them. Eventually, at a time known to Him, this plan will finally take the form of a great victory. The Lord's perfected Israel will come in glory with the One who was pierced for our transgressions, the One we have looked upon in order that we might live. The Lord of creation who made the heavens and the earth, the Lord who has made us to be not only physical beings, but who has given us spiritual life and created us in His image, the Lord who has made us alive in His Son, has a Word to communicate to us concerning His plan, a Word to strengthen us during the many centuries of suffering that we may face along the way to glory.

The Lord has revealed here that in some final day the nations of the earth will gather against His Jerusalem. This will not be for the final destruction of the Lord's people but for their victory over the world. This prophecy cannot have been fulfilled in any moment from the history of the Old Testament people. We can point to moments of defeat for Jerusalem, but where is the moment that then turned into victory against the nations that were gathered against the Lord's anointed flock? When did Jerusalem become a heavy stone that others would try to lift, only to hurt themselves?

When the Christ, the Rock of our salvation, came as the true Israel of God, something like this did happen. A prayer of Peter, John and their friends concerning this, based on Psalm 2, is recorded for us in Acts 4:24-30. "Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them, who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit, 'Why did the Gentiles rage, and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers were gathered together, against the Lord and against his Anointed'- for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place." The apostolic church saw what would happen next through their ministry as a victory by God's power, a victory that they requested with these words, "And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus."

We know that there will be another day, which the New Testament writers also spoke of, when the nations would be gathered against the people of the Lord in some final battle. That occasion also fits with this prophecy, when it will appear that the people of God will appear to be almost overwhelmed, yet the result will be a massive and final victory for the Lord and His glorious Jerusalem. As Paul writes in 2 Thessalonians 1:9-10, "They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints." On that great day, the Lord will strengthen all those who are in Christ, the exalted Son of David, and will grant them the greatest victory that can be imagined. He will give the fullness of salvation to His people, and will destroy all those who were gathered against them.

How can we understand the connection between the amazing victory of one man over the nations that the church seems to be praying about in Acts 4, and the final victory that will come at the Day of the Lord, when heaven will come to earth at the return of the Son of God? During the period between the victory of the cross and the resurrection and the final return of the glorious Son of Man, the Lord would be pleased to bring the message of this one Savior to the ends of the earth through the ministry of His church. Here in Zechariah 12, God promises to pour out His Spirit of grace upon the people who are part of this great Son of David, His holy Jerusalem. They will make pleas for mercy, and they will be heard. They will look on him whom they pierced. They will look to Him and weep, but they will look to Him and live. This began when soldiers looked on the one they pierced (John 19:37), and it will not be over until He comes again on clouds of glory, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him." (Revelation 1:7)

Men and women from among the Jews and the Gentiles have come to look upon Him as He is presented in the preaching of the Word, and many families have believed. Though for centuries the church has faced much persecution and many sad setbacks, there can be no doubt that the Son of David will have His final victory, and that He will bring with Him all who now rest in Him in the present heavens. Despite the struggles that we face in any day of trouble, we are kept going as we rest upon the One who has loved us with an everlasting love. He was pierced for our transgressions. By His wounds we shall be healed.

Zechariah 11

Though we may have difficulty interpreting the particular meaning of some of the prophetic texts of the Old Covenant, it is normally clear from a simple reading of these passages whether the prophet is speaking of something very good or something very bad. The ultimate realities of the plan of God which will be seen in the return of the Messiah on the final Day of the Lord include those things that are very bad for some group of people, and those things that are very good for another group of people. As we shall see, these two very different results are closely connected to each other in important ways. After all, it was through the Messiah facing something very bad that we have been given something extraordinarily good. In any case, there should be no mistaking that Zechariah 11 explores the bad side of this picture; the destruction and devastation that will come upon some by the just judgment of God.

In the opening verses we read about fire devouring the trees of the forest, probably representative of towering leaders and important nations who will be brought low by the coming day of God's wrath. This final day has intruded into the history of mankind on many occasions, as the Lord works out His providence in the world in such a way that a taste of His anger against sin is expressed in the events surrounding the fall of nations. These things do not happen without great personal suffering and misery. Hear the Lord speaks of the wailing of the trees, but we know that He is teaching us about great trouble coming upon people.

The imagery of shepherds and sheep is used throughout this chapter, and we can easily see that this is about civil and religious leaders and the flocks that follow them. There are those who take over a position of some authority as shepherds during a time of what would seem to be inevitable decline. Here the Lord speaks of a flock that is doomed to slaughter. Their enemies are used as agents of this slaughter. These adversaries are happy that they have prospered at the expense of others. We see here brutality and slavery as people are treated like animals to be used for profit. The Lord will not intervene, because the end has come for that society.

Even if God Himself became the Shepherd of this flock, according to His sovereign will, they would still be doomed to be slaughtered by the sheep traders. The Lord had once had favor upon them, shining forth the blessing of His beauty upon their land. He had once given them hope of a blessed unity, like the kind of hope that people had in the restoration about the future union again of Israel and Judah. But those who should have followed the Good Shepherd were soon judged to be irreparably corrupt, and their time came to an end. More than that, the Lord withdrew, in some sense, from being Shepherd over this people, which is what took place when He brought the entire Old Covenant system to a conclusion.

There is some sense of detachment here concerning this doomed people. Those who are to die will die, and those who are left for some time longer will have a miserable existence. Who fared better of the two groups? Only the Lord knows, since He has the keys to eternity in His hands, and He has not completely revealed the specific list of the sons of God except in broad outlines. God has brought to an end one covenantal arrangement, and that will have implications for many in this world here below. But the Lord will never annul the Covenant of Grace that He has made with His Son, and with the elect in Him. The blessings of that covenant will surely come to the people of God in the resurrection age, though for now, so very many people will suffer and die.

The key figure for the securing of eternal blessings for those who face varying degrees of temporal curse is the divine Shepherd King who comes as a lowly Servant. In a cryptic jewel tucked away for future generations in verses 12 and 13 there is mention of this Messiah figure who is valued at thirty pieces of silver, the betrayal price that was paid to Judas who would lead the disgraceful shepherds of Israel to the place where Jesus would be identified with a kiss. From there He would willingly go into their custody on His way to the cross. The story of the thirty pieces of silver takes us to the horrible remorse of the betrayer Judas, who tries to return the blood money, finally casting it into the temple. The coins are used for the purchase of the Potter's field that became known as the Field of Blood.

While this is the end of the Old Covenant, it is the beginning of the gospel age and the preaching of this one rejected Messiah, who has become the hope of the nations. The key battle that has secured for us a redemption that goes beyond the Jews took place at the cross. There Christ, the Good Shepherd, took upon Himself the kind of penalty that the wicked shepherds of Israel and Judah and the corrupt rulers and benefactors of the nations deserved.

He was treated there by the Lord as a rejected and foolish shepherd for our sake, according to the Lord's plan of sovereign mercy. He was punished as if He were a man who did not care for his people, who ignored the plight of the weak, and abused the people for His own gain, like one who had deserted His flock, like a worthless shepherd. Of course, nothing was further from the truth. His devotion to us and to His elect from all over the world was powerfully displayed on the cross, where He loved us to the end. He took the punishment that we deserved that we might walk today in His eternal light as free men and women in Christ.

Prayer based on Exodus 33

Father God, You lead us through the wilderness by the means that You see fit. But Father, we earnestly request that You Yourself will surely be with us. You have chosen to work through means. You give us preachers and teachers of Your Word. You give us baptism and the supper Your Son instituted. You give us prayer together as Your people. Nonetheless Father, we need You. Please do not depart from Your church, or we are done. We will not be able to accomplish even one Kingdom purpose without you. We must have Your Son as our Leader. We need Your glorious Spirit as our Teacher. You are the Lord. Be gracious to us. Be merciful to us. We must have You. Hide us in Christ, our Rock, and use the means that You have provided. But we will not worship means. We will worship only You. You are God.

Prayer based on Jeremiah 26

Father, we need You. Your church has been given a most important task. We are to speak forth Your Word, which we love. Yet there are many who do not love the message that we bring, and we are tempted to turn back from the truth and to either speak the lies that people want to hear or to speak no word at all. Help us Lord, for there is an enemy against us. Disaster seems very near, and we need You. Protect us from those who do not love You. Give us energy for each day, lest we sleep and do nothing.

Zechariah 10

We have needs. The people of God in every generation have needs. God knows this, and He has an unusual plan for the fulfillment of these needs. He wants us to ask. In one sense it really is that simple. Ask and you will receive. Yet the Lord will not allow us to usurp His place as God. We must seek His glory above everything else. Yet it is the case that if we seek the glory of His Name, and our submission to His will, we should ask Him boldly for those things that are necessary in our service of Him. He can certainly provide rain at the right time, the kind of rain that would fill the fields with vegetation.

When we examine the situation if the Lord's people in the history of Israel we immediately have some further issues to discuss concerning the prayers of God's people. Do they need food? Do they need rain? Why are they still turning to household idols? Why are they approaching fortune-tellers for empty answers? Why are their ears closed to the Word of God? They are wandering sheep. They have scorned their true Shepherd. Therefore they are afflicted.

This wandering is, in part, due to the faithlessness and abuse of false shepherds, and the Lord is angry against them. When God comes against those shepherds who have fatally mislead His beloved flock, it should be obvious that He does this because He loves His people, and seeks to protect them from those who will only do them harm. In the abstract this is obvious, but each true shepherd of the Lord feels the weight of his own weakness and depravity. Not only that, but each false shepherd imagines himself to be a true servant of the Lord until the day of the Lord's judgment comes upon him.

There is one Servant of the Lord who is beyond the ambiguity of self-evaluation. He has become the Cornerstone of the Lord's Temple, and He is the pure and holy Shepherd over the Lord's Israel. The scope of the salvation that Jesus Christ will bring is wonderful to consider. Not only will he bring back His chosen flock from Judah, the tribe of David. He will also save His elect from "Joseph," who stands for the northern tribes, those tribes that had rejected the Davidic King and had so polluted their worship and service of God, particularly after they had been decimated by the Assyrian invaders. The Lord has a good plan of salvation for His people, a plan that springs from His eternal and stable compassion for His elect. These nations had been greatly disciplined for their disobedience. Yet here the Lord says that he will bring about a day when it will be as if the Lord had not ever rejected them. He will be with His people, and He will answer them when they call to Him. They shall ask and they will receive.

The result will be very wonderful. The people of the Lord shall be strong in body, and glad in heart. These are wonderful blessings. Think of all the bodily troubles that people of all kinds face in this age on the earth. Even if all of these afflictions of body could be taken away in a moment, we would still have much misery here because of our emotional distress. The problems that we have in what we call our "heart" are as varied as those that we face in our bodies. But a day is coming when we will have the strongest bodies and happiest hearts. Our children will see it, and they will be glad as well, and their hearts will also rejoice in the Lord.

God is able to gather His people from very far away. The gift of the return of the exiles was only a small taste of the Lord's power to gather His children. More amazing than that miracle has been the gathering of Jews and Gentiles into the covenant community during this era of gospel proclamation. Yet as marvelous as this is, it is still more wonderful to take millions of bodies from the dust of death and to gather them together for immortal life in the age of resurrection. This will be what we are longing for, the beauty, order, and safety of coming home to the place that He has prepared for us for eternal life in an estate of complete blessedness.

There was a cost that had to be paid in order to bring about this wonderful promise. Someone had to pass through a sea of troubles, a judgment that could only be eternal for us, a penalty that would have continued forever. Christ, who alone is equipped to take away from us the punishment we deserve, has passed through the sea of troubles and has declared victory over the waves of the tumultuous sea of God's righteous wrath that stood against us.

The might of empires like that of the Assyrians and the Egyptians will not be able to stand against the Lord's redeemed people in the age to come. God will make His people strong in Christ, and we shall walk in His Name. For us to live that way now would be a complete spiritual victory. What God has declared will one day be ours. Just as we will have strong bodies and joyful hearts, we will also have perfectly righteous spirits. This is what the Lord has for us, and it has come to us because of Christ and the cross. In that day we will surely ask the Lord rightly, not only for what we need, but for all those things consistent with the holy, wise, and abundant desires that will then be what we most want to have, and we shall receive.

Zechariah 9

The Scriptures are full of a sense of destiny and hope for the covenant people of God. In the Old Testament times the covenant people were the descendants of Israel, worshipping God and calling upon His Name as He had revealed Himself in the Law and the Prophets. In the New Covenant era, the people of God are all those in the church of Jesus Christ, worshipping the same God as the Jews of the Old Testament, yet now according to the ways of the gospel age revealed to us in the New Testament. No longer is the temple in Jerusalem and the sacrificial system of Leviticus our place and means of approaching God, for we worship the Lord in Christ who is our Temple and our Sacrifice.

It is a fact that there have always been those who appeared to be a part of the covenant people of God, who the Lord will judge to be outside of His final redeemed assembly. Thus in the days of Jeremiah, there were those who were proclaiming "Peace! Peace!" when there was no peace. And in the days of the Apostle Paul, we were reminded that not all "Israel" was truly Israel. Christ Himself taught us that there would be some who would one day attempt to call Him "Lord" who would yet be called evildoers by Him, and that they would be excluded from His assembly. This is the confusing problem that we face inside the covenant community, a problem that can only be finally sorted out by the Lord Himself.

The problem outside of the visible covenant people is much clearer, and it is very desperate. There are many millions throughout history have made no pretense of connection with the God of the Jews. They are mentioned by the names of various nations in Zechariah 9, and they are slated for judgment. They haves names like Hadrach, Damascus, and the towns of the Philistines. They may have had wisdom and military advantages, or great riches like Tyre and Sidon, yet none of these things can win them a true connection to the great promises of God. Their only hope is to be brought into the company of those who are truly Israelites through vital association with Jesus Christ, the King of the Jews.

Given these facts, how is it that some of these peoples of the earth seem to have a place as a remnant for the true God as servants of the Lord and His people. The only answer that the Bible gives us is that there will be those who are drawn to the way of peace through the one who is recognized in Zechariah 9 as the King of the Covenants, the One who comes as a humble servant of the Lord, mounted on a donkey. Do not be fooled by His humility into thinking that He has no power. He has the power of a perfectly righteous life, and He has salvation in His hand, ready to give blessings to those who are far off, and good gifts to those who are near. It is He who speaks peace to the nations who were without hope. It is He who shed the better blood of the covenant, by which prisoners of sin and death have been freed from a hopeless pit where they were once trapped without the water of renewal and life.

This does not mean that everything is safety and prosperity for everyone. There are still many who will be utterly outside of the covenant blessings of the Lord, unwilling to be marked by the waters of baptism in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. There are also sadly some who have lived within the protection of the church who will be found to be her enemies on the day when the Lord separates the world and His Israel. But today is the day to return to the Lord as our true stronghold and to reject the safety of false gods. The Lord stands ready to bless those who will repent. He knows His own, and He will not let them go. He will restore to them double of what they have lost in the sufferings and persecutions of this world.

But for those who refuse His protection and His kindness, for those who continue to rail against Him, to abuse His people, and to deceive the weak, He will come with power and glory to rescue His beloved Jacob, and to defeat His enemies. In that fight He will use His true Judah and Israel somehow as a weapon of His power. We see an expression of this force even now as the word of the gospel goes forth to Greece in the early years of the New Testament era, and beyond the Mediterranean to all the ends of the earth. Now is the day to surrender to the message of God's love through the cross of His Son, and to be counted as those who repent and believe.

For all who love His Son's appearing, not only will those who trouble them be defeated, and not only will the enemy within their own ranks be found out and cast out, there will be great blessings of joy and life that will never be taken away. Our God will save us in Christ, and we will be the flock of His people forever. As the tribes of Israel were jewels on the breastplate of Aaron, the Lord's people will be precious royal stones in the Land of Resurrection. We will behold the greatness and beauty of God in the face of Jesus Christ, and we will enjoy the bounty of His gifts as those who are permanently and clearly united to the Son of God.

Zechariah 8

The Lord of men and angels is jealous. This is a confusing concept for us. We have seen people who are sinfully jealous. They are envious of others, and bear malice towards those that they see as threats to their position. We can't imagine God being like this. Some people are confused by the thought of God's jealousy, supposing that the Lord is somehow jealous of them, in the sense of His being afraid that they are getting too much attention, and that their greatness is an unsettling threat to His feelings of well-being.

Of course God is not jealous of us, He has a jealous love for us, yet without any sin. There is nothing wrong with this divine jealousy. In fact it is an expression of His powerful love and care for His people. He is not willing to see them enticed away by false gods. The Lord loves us and wants the very best for us. Zechariah tells us that this great jealousy that the Lord has for His people is expressed against there enemies with a great wrath.

God's jealous love has caused Him not only to fight against our enemies, but also to dwell in the midst of Jerusalem. His communion with the city of God is not just as an Observer. He who is faithful and holy in His very being, must be the Source of our future faithfulness and holiness. It is a very exciting gift to us that we will one day be not only a beloved bride, but also a bride who has been perfected by our divine Husband. This is the destiny of the Lord's city.

God's good plans for us are wonderful for us to anticipate. We should surely expect that they are marvelous in His sight as well. We are given words that tell us of a place with human physical delights, with the pure joys of people that age with grace and of young ones who fill the streets with the good sounds of joyful play. When we are able to anticipate the fullness of these future days because of some experience that we have the pleasure of enjoying even now, it is such a blessing to our souls, which were made to long for the perfect goodness of the resurrection. It means so much to us to really know that our Lord will not only gather us together, He will live with us, and He will be our God in faithfulness and righteousness. That is such good news.

In this report of God's words to His people we hear about work for our hands, and our God's blessing upon that work beyond what we experienced in former days. We know from other passages that there were times when the people of God were not attending to the Lord as the chief desire of their hearts, and things were not going well for them. God is not content to allow that kind of mixed mess to be the final chapter of the existence of His people. No, there will be fruitfulness, peace, and security. They were once the object of scorn to others. Now they will be a blessing. As it once was His purpose to discipline His people, it has now become His purpose to bring them some great eternal blessing.

The plan of God for us is one of blessing and holiness, of fruitfulness and righteousness. Of course we will live in the midst of a people that hear and follow the Lord. There can be no secure peace without that kind of obedience. We will not be doing what the Lord hates, but what He loves. We will not mark our time from one fast of mourning to the next. We will have feasts of joy, feasts of gladness and cheerfulness, feasts of truth and peace.

As the kingdom of the Lord is being gathered, there will be those who will associate themselves very closely with the God of the Jews. There will be a buzz of excitement among those who have this holy anticipation of the life to come. This is something that we all should greatly desire.

As an expression of this great desire, the Lord speaks of people who will be very eager to associate themselves with one Jew. This was exactly what happened through the ministry of Jesus Christ. In His earthly days we remember the testimony of one woman who wanted to remain secret. She had told herself that great good would come to her if she could just touch the hem of His garment. This is what she did, and she was healed.

We have come to Him in our weak and sin-sick condition, and we have touched the hem of His garment by faith, and experienced new life. This moves us past the fear of death, since our judgment has already been experienced by Him when He took His place on the cross as our Substitute. Now our expectation immediately at the point of our death is an experience of wonderful life that we should not allow ourselves to imagine as being less than our current existence. It was not bad news, but very good news to the thief on the cross when Jesus said to him, "Today you will be with me in paradise." Yet beyond that wonderful joy, we have something greater still in the renewal of the earth and the fullness of resurrection life with all the people of God. The City of God shall not disappoint us, for our Lord will be there with all His blessings for the fullness of His holy Jerusalem. Our jealous God will not let His beloved bride be kept from the glory of that day. He loves us too much to give us over to some false suitor. He is willing to fight for us.

Zechariah 7

It can be very difficult to sort out the meaning of certain prophetic texts from the Old Testament. I am referring to those passages that could be pointing to the resurrection age which will have its full expression at the return of Jesus Christ. Does that kind of good hope in Zechariah refer to his generation and the return to the land of Israel? Is it about the coming gospel age, and the gathering and perfecting of the Lord's elect into His church? Is it somehow about the experience of those who go to be with the Lord during the age of the Law, or during the gospel age? Is it about the final age of full covenant blessing that will be ours at the resurrection of the dead? Is it possible that the right answer is some combination of these possibilities?

Perhaps we need to see these options as closely connected to each other, which they certainly are. Whatever our answer to the interpretive dilemmas of books like Zechariah, it should be clear that the Lord is speaking at various places throughout this book about things that are very good. It is also clear that in this seventh chapter the Lord is identifying a great problem. It should further be clear that there is a connection between our belief in the blessed hope that God gives us and our response to the Lord's commands and corrections. Our reaction to such a wonderful future must include obedience to the Lord who has secured His promises for us through the blood of His Son. Particularly in light of the price that God has paid for our redemption, our efforts to sincerely follow the One who saved us must be more than merely ceremonial. Our following of Christ and His Word must also be sacrificial and real.

God tells His people to render true judgments, and to show kindness and mercy to one another. We must not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor. We must not devise evil against each other in our hearts. If we will not hear these commands, then we will miss the opportunity to give true testimony to the greatness and the glory of our God's promises. The spiritual leaders of the people had become accustomed to leading the exiles in scheduled fasts as a display of humility before God during the time of their distress. Yet they did not do these things truly for God. Their desires were not for Him, but for themselves, just like their forefathers whom the Lord sent into exile.

There was much for the people of the restoration to learn from earlier prophetic warnings and from the sad experience of prior generations. The ethical requirements of the Lord had not changed. The attitude of heart and character of life that God insisted upon as announced in Zechariah 7 was no different from the words of men like Amos, Micah, and Isaiah. Yet the people of Israel and Judah did not listen to the word of the Lord given to them in those days before the exile. Would the people of God listen now to Zechariah, or would they risk yet further discipline from the Lord?

There forefathers had been very stubborn about their duty of repentance. Zechariah says, "They made their hearts diamond-hard." They would not feel conviction because they were so unwilling to change. They did not want to hear God's Word to them, and this led to great trouble. God had called them in His commandments, and they refused to hear His voice. When they would later call out to Him in their troubles, He would similarly not listen to them. This was now historical fact. The Lord had scattered them among the nations, and His pleasant land was made desolate.

When our Savior came as the faithful Israel, He did not behave as those who had ignored the voice of God. His heart was soft toward His Father. He eagerly received the Word of instruction and encouragement that came to Him as the Son of God. He knew what it was like to have an impenetrable heart, not because He possessed one, but because He encountered many who stubbornly rejected His Word. He faced many who were so sure of themselves and of their false opinions concerning the interpretation and purpose of the Law that they had completely rejected the Lawgiver when He came in person to save sinners.

Our Christ kept the Law. He rendered true judgments in the perfect holiness of His heart and in the sinless expressions of His lips. He had a flawless eye for kindness and mercy. He met the weak in their suffering and healed them. Though there were many who were devising wicked strategies against Him in order to kill Him, He never once devised evil against anyone in His flawlessly pure heart. It was this man who lived a life without blemish who died for our sins. He has secured for the church whatever blessing we enjoy in this gospel age. He experienced and won for us a life of joy and purpose with the Father that we will know during the time that our mortal bodies rest in the grave. He has led the way for us in the life of eternal resurrection and has granted this blessed hope to all who believe. Let us then not only believe, but also obey, for we have received the Word of blessing, and we know the will of the One who has won our salvation. He is building up a Kingdom of those who are willing to hear the voice of God in His Word and to follow our holy King.

Zechariah 6

Zechariah is made to see horses of different colors in this sixth chapter of His book of prophecy. Horses such as these will be seen by John in Revelation 6. In both cases these beasts are frightening representatives of the power of God. We might expect that a mighty nation could not be shaken by a few horses. Of course these animals are different then the cavalry of some ancient land. These animals come with the great force of the Almighty. They can secure the borders of The Promised Land from those enemies who may come from the north or the south. As Zechariah says, all of these horses were strong.

The prophet is told by an angelic messenger that these beasts are going out "to the four winds of heaven." Throughout the history of the Lord's speech to us we are given a sense of another realm where the Lord dwells. That realm seems also to rule over the earth, and the going out of these beasts is an expression of the Lord's reign from heaven over the affairs of Israel at the time of the restoration and over the nations of the world more generally. It is the Lord who rules over all. That is why these horses present themselves before Yahweh Almighty, the Lord of all the earth, before they move in His power.

The horses are not reluctant to do their Lord's bidding. They are ready to use their strong power, and eager to obey Him. They move forward in battle to patrol the earth. The great powers in the day of Zechariah are to the south and especially to the north. The Lord is able to place His Spirit at rest over a region so that no trouble can come from mighty kings and powerful armies and empires. This is the vision that God has for His people, a message of the Lord's sovereign control, and an expression of His intention to use powerful means to protect His people.

What will God do when He has secured the borders of His land? Zechariah is told to bring a message to some men who are to make a royal crown for the priest Joshua who is mentioned here and in other places. This man is himself used as a sign for things to come. He is given the name "the Branch," a messianic title used previously in this and other prophetic books. The timing is perfect for a great story to be told, and in that story that he lives out, Joshua is allowed to play the part of a royal high priest, one who is far greater than Joshua.

The reason the timing is perfect is that the people of the restoration are to build a temple for the Lord in what is a new beginning for the Lord's faithful servants. At the head of their efforts are three men, as far as the story is told in this book. One is Zerubbabel, in the kingly line of David. The second is Joshua the priest, who is permitted to play the role of a royal priest here. The third, the one we would most easily miss, is the prophet Zechariah. Of course He is here throughout as the one through whom the Word of the Lord comes. It is within the context of the building of the temple that we can see our great Priest Jesus Christ, who is also our King and our Prophet.

He is building a temple that is far beyond the edifice that the men of the restoration built in Jerusalem. He is raising up a glorious resurrection temple. He is the first stone in that temple, an assembly built upon the blood of the only Redeemer of God's elect. Now we are being built up as living stones in that temple through faith in Jesus Christ, though our glory which is to come is veiled until the proper time. Jesus is building that temple even now. He shall reign in the land of Resurrection forever, the borders of which will be perfectly secured from the intrusion of any enemy force. His Land shall be a glorious place that is governed according to the counsel of His perfect wisdom and peace.

The crown for Joshua that is made as a part of this story is to be kept in the temple of the Lord as a reminder. It is to be a reminder to the ones who made it, and yet they will one day die. Presumably it could be a reminder to those who will follow them as long as the temple lasts. The day will come when the building will be taken down after Christ has risen from the dead as the more perfect temple of the Lord. Then the church will move forward with the Word of the gospel, through which our Prophet, Priest, and King is gathering stones for His new living house.

We who were once far off have a place in that temple, because our royal priest offered up His life for us as an atoning sacrifice. This is the price of our freedom in Christ. This is what it cost for us to have a place in the final resurrection temple, when heaven will come upon the earth in the perfect day of restoration and renewal. Let us move forward with the diligence of faithful obedience to our God even today. Let us hear His voice in the words of Zechariah the prophet, and beseech Him that He will not only be with us through a true life of communion with Him, but that He will also live through us in mission and service for the glory of His great Name.

Prayer based on Exodus 32

Lord God, we have violated Your commandments. What can we do? We must repent. Like our fathers before us, we have found idolatry strangely attractive. Why would we believe our hearts when an unclean impulse draws us to created things? We hear the lying and enticing words of enemies. “These are your gods!” Is that message so sensible that we must follow it? No, the hearts of Your people are so weakened and foolish through habitual sin that we quickly believe ridiculous lies. Father, we thank You for the intercession of Your Son on our behalf. Surely Your justice would have destroyed us, were it not for Your eternal covenant faithfulness. Give us hope again today. We have security and deliverance from all sin and idolatry through the greatness of Your mercy to us in Christ. Even our leaders fail and fall. Yet our Captain is without fault, and is full of compassion for Your elect. Merciful God, we are on Your Son’s side, whatever the cost may be. All idols underfoot be trod! You, O Lord, are God. There is no other. We have sinned a great sin, but Your Son has made a perfect offering for us. He took the curse that we deserved, so that we would not face Your wrath against our iniquity forever.

Prayer based on Jeremiah 25

Lord God Almighty, You are able to deliver us from situations that seem hopeless. You have spoken to us consistently through the Scripture, showing us the way to go. We have not listened to You. We have not obeyed You. Please forgive us and help us. Take us through days of discipline. Hold us and keep us. Bring us beyond the time of desolation. We long for the life that can only come from You. We long for the resurrection of the dead. Bring us a taste of life even now when we face great difficulty and even disaster. Help us to have faith that You are bringing about a very good plan. Though You roar against Your church, yet we know that You love us and will save us. We remember the cross, by which Christ has taken away the horrible wrath that was coming against us. He has faced Your fierce anger for us, and we have a secure and full hope in Him.

Zechariah 5

Why would it be that God would speak symbolically to His people through the prophet Zechariah? Is it just that He wants us to be able to remember things and that descriptive images are more easily remembered? While there may be something to that suggestion, it is unlikely to be a very helpful explanation for us. If we are not told the meaning of the images, what exactly would the Lord have us remember from the image? When visions are given without explanation it seems most likely that the Lord is concealing something even as He may be revealing something else. The most straightforward way to give complex truth is through clear explanation. Where this is lacking, we are normally dealing with something that God has determined only to hint at for the present moment, though He knows the fullness of it very well. With that said, we should certainly do our best to have a true understanding of His hint though we need to be cautious about over-interpreting things that God has chosen to keep concealed.

In this chapter we have two visions, the first of a flying scroll, and the second of a woman in a basket. The analogy of other passages in the Bible is not conclusive here, since there are no other texts that use precisely these images. There are many places in the Bible where we hear of scrolls or have visions of scrolls, but this a flying scroll. There are many places in the Bible where a singular woman personifies some idea or group, but here we have the details of a woman in a basket with a lid who is transported far away. What we are left with, in terms of understanding the clarity of the prophetic hint, is the larger context of Zechariah, and especially any explanations that are contained in the chapter itself.

A scroll is often the sign of written revelation from God or of God's eternal decrees. In Zechariah 5 we are especially talking about the Law of God. Some of the Ten Commandments are mentioned, stealing on one side, and false witness on the other. What is specifically noted is not the text of the Law, but the consequences of violating that Law. God in His infinite knowledge is going throughout the land. He sees thievery and promise-breaking, even when these are done within the private homes of people. The scroll seems to fly forth as an agent of the judgment of God through His providence. He brings sanctions upon the lives of people. His just curse against them has a corrosive impact upon their homes. This is the first vision.

In the second vision we see a basket that is going out from the land. The basket has a woman sitting inside and the woman has a name. She is Wickedness. There is a heavy cover over the basket to keep her inside. It is opened only for us to see this woman Wickedness. She would like to get out of the basket and cause much trouble throughout the land. But she is forced back into the basket and the lid is firmly shut. We would love to hear that all wickedness was carried away like this from the Lord's people, as long as we were able to stay after Wickedness was sent far away. We want to be able to live with God and His people, and to have all of our personal evil taken away from us.

It would appear to be a very good thing then, when this basket is removed far from us. It is good, though it does seem that the basket set up in some other place, perhaps for a later evil day. Two women with wings are pictured as taking this dangerous basket far away to Babylon. The land that they speak of with the ancient word "Shinar" is no longer a great world power, but it probably stands for the world system itself, a world that is against God and His Law, and a world that will surely be judged by God. God in His providence has a plan that allows for wickedness to exist, and He uses wickedness near and far according to His eternal plan, but only for a time. Eventually there will be a complete and permanent separation of the wicked and the righteous. There is also coming a day when there will be no remaining vestiges of wickedness among the people of the Lord. For now wickedness is allowed to be, but there is a time coming when we will no longer be bothered either by evil outside of us, or by the more troubling evil inside of us.

The hint from God to us in Zechariah 5 seems to be this: Though we have much to fear from a just God who knows about the sin that can so easily destroy our households and our lives, God has made a way to remove wickedness far from us according to His sovereign will. God knows how to contain wickedness. He can exercise complete control over it, and ultimately He will defeat it.

We would be afraid to give such a bold interpretation of these visions were it not for the fact that the clear testimony of these truths has so surely been given to us in the perfect revelation of God, the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the living scroll from heaven. When we encounter Him, not only are we rightly convicted of our own sin and the curse that it deserves, we also are embraced by the assurance that this curse has been swallowed up in the victory of the cross. It is through Christ alone that our substantial wickedness has been sent far away from us. We long for the revelation of the perfected Land that is coming to us at His return. There we shall dwell with Him in peace, for we will have no reason to fear any enemy outside of our walls, and the enemy within will have been utterly defeated through the finished work of our redemption.

Zechariah 4

God revealed things to the Old Testament covenant community through the prophets in many small portions and through a variety of methods. In the case of Zechariah, God chose to reveal truths through visions. In chapter four we have two of these visions presented together. One is of a lampstand with seven lamps. The second is of two olive trees. Both of these visions are used again in the final book of the Bible as images of the church in the midst of much persecution in the world. From the opening verses of this chapter it is clear that the prophet does not immediately know how to interpret these things.

These are presented as God's images that He is sending to Zechariah through the ministry of an angel. Therefore they are not to be dismissed as faulty just because the prophet has trouble understanding them. We look at the hints that we are granted here and in other biblical passages, and we remember that the Lord is revealing to us what He has chosen to reveal to us in ways that He has chosen to communicate with His people. One aspect of the vision may be clear from the context of the time of the restoration of the Lord's people from exile. Another may be hidden until the time of the Apostle John, through whom the Lord chooses to explain something more about the very same pictures.

This is the case with the visions of the lampstand and the two olive trees. In Zechariah the focus is on the royal figure of Zerubbabel and the priestly figure of Joshua just discussed in chapter 3. We have been hearing their names throughout this book, and it should not surprise us that they are prominent here. As we have seen before, there can be multiple levels of fulfillment in these prophesies. Great things are said about these two figures, but we also have a sense that there is something beyond these two figures that God is speaking of. We have a sense of the most ideal priest and king who will be the answer to our longings. When we find these images used in the book of Revelation, we are explicitly told that the lampstand is a symbol of the church. A strong case can also be made that the two olive trees, noted as two people who are two faithful witnesses in Revelation 11, also stand for a larger group, the faithful church in the midst of persecution in the gospel age.

When we combine these ideas together, we have images that were first given with the focus on the coming singular Messiah figure in Zechariah, but which later focused on the plural entity of the church that is united to that great Priest and King. This is the way that Christ wants us to think of the blessedness that He has in store for us. It is blessedness that is properly His, but it has truly come to be ours because of our union with Him.

Christ will build His temple of people by the power that Zerubbabel would build the restoration temple: Not by the might of men, but by the Holy Spirit, the power of God. Without that Spirit we could never stand against the forces arrayed against us, presented here as a great mountain. But now, the great mountain will not be able to stand against the Spirit-filled Zerubbabel. The first stone in the temple was set by Him, and His hand will lay the final stone. The whole resurrection temple of God will be completed in Christ.

This will be the work of the Lord. He has sent His messenger to announce the greatness of this coming King and Priest. We will wait for another day to see more of the community of the redeemed that have been made kings and priests to our God and Father. That will be clear enough at just the right time. First the Messiah will be exalted. Then when the Desire of Nations has come to give His life for us, we will be able to rejoice all the more that there is a great multitude who are found in Him.

In the meantime, the new temple may seem very small, or the progress of the gospel at any given moment may seem disappointingly slow. The glory of the whole enterprise is not dependant upon the number of people that are included in it, although it is a marvelous fact that a great multitude is saved. More important is the greatness of the one Messiah. His perfection is what allows us to truly celebrate in the day of small things, for we still rejoice in our incomparably great Lord. This is known perfectly to God, who knows about days that seem small and days that seem big.

The Lord who is anointed with the fullness of the Spirit is not only our King, but also our Priest. We are faithful witnesses and fruitful servants because He was utterly faithful and perfectly fruitful in His role as the one mediator between God and man. The message of His salvation goes forth into every land. Let us rejoice that our singularly perfect Savior counts us as being His radiant people, for He has given us of His Spirit.

Zechariah 3

To be a true priest is to be granted amazing access to the presence of God. The Lord is holy, and He demands holiness of all those who enjoy this special closeness to Him. How will we who have sinned against Almighty God ever have this closeness? We have heard of the priesthood of all believers (see Revelation 1:6), but how could we be priests in light of the obvious facts of our sin? This sin is known to our adversary Satan, who stands ready to accuse Joshua, the high priest in the day of Zechariah.

It is the Lord who speaks to him, and as we saw in the last chapter, we have here the Lord speaking about the Lord, as if referring to another person. This is part of the wonderful mystery of the Godhead contained in this episode from hundreds of years before the birth of the Son of God as a man and as the final High Priest. The new Joshua, Jesus Christ, would be Himself the visible divine representation of Yahweh. The Lord is more powerful than Satan, and He is able to put him in his place. By His electing love, Yahweh has chosen His eternal Jerusalem. We are plucked out of the fire of God's judgment, and we will somehow be made clean.

This Old Testament priest Joshua is pictured here first as very unclean. His garments are ritually filthy. If we were to seek close access to the Lord based on our own holiness, this same sentence of "unclean" would be rightly spoken against us. Even our greatest acts of righteousness are as filthy rags. Our pride and presumption, our seeking for glory, and our immoral thoughts and deeds testify against us. Like this Joshua of old, we are clearly unclean. Yet the command goes out from the angelic ambassador of the Lord, "Remove the filthy garments from him."

There are two aspects to our justification in Christ, and the first of these is seen here. We do not come to God in a state of innocence or neutrality, but in a state of deep guilt. This guilt must be taken away from us, and it must be dealt with in a manner that is consistent with the Lord's true justice. Christ, the sinless One, has taken upon Himself our filthy garments and He has been willing to wear those spiritually unclean rags. This was a tremendous act of love for the unworthy. Can you imagine being willing to wear the guilty filth of someone who has insulted you or hurt you badly? We don't want to even come near people like that, but Christ wore our guilt.

This was only the first part of His justifying love. It is one thing to have the dirty clothes taken off. We also need to have clean clothes put on. For Joshua the high priest that meant wearing the garments that were designed by God for the Old Testament priest; the special vestments and the clean turban. These represent the active righteousness of Christ's perfect obedience to the Law of God. We need to be clothed in those righteous garments if we are to have this access to God of holy priests who will serve Him forever.

By the removal of our guilt, and then by the provision of a new righteousness for us that was performed by another, we have been given bold access to the throne of God, and have been invited into the household of the Almighty. Through faith in our great High Priest Jesus Christ we have become a priesthood of all who have faith. Now it is ours to walk in the faith that we profess. This is the Lord's will for us now, our sanctification or continued progress in holy thinking and living in this present gospel age. He is not satisfied that this work would be done in a partial way. He who began a good work in us will be faithful to complete it, and to grant to all His true priests glorification in the day of His coming. We should not think that we can have the continued experience of access to God if we continue in sin. In that final day, all sin will be banished from all the resurrection people of God.

This all comes to us through the Lord Messiah, the One who is called "the Branch." This righteous Branch is the root of Jesse, and also a descendant of Jesse's son David. We are called to find our connection in Him and to bear fruit for His glory. He is also the solid living Stone with the fullness of insight and wisdom, spoken of here as a single stone with seven eyes. Through His death on the cross He has removed our iniquity in a single day, and thus fulfilled the prophetic Word written concerning Him.

The place of safety, the place of provision, the place of protection is under His vine and His fig tree. When everything around us may seem to fall apart, it is yet time for us to invite our neighbors to find their place of rest and fruitfulness in the Lord Jesus Christ. This is God's good plan announced through Zechariah. The One who is our High Priest has become for us a Root of every good blessing. He has taken away the entirety of our sin and clothed us in His righteousness. Though many men rejected Him – even some who were the key men of their day, He has become a solid stone of wisdom for millions upon millions, and a tree to us of eternal life and abiding hope.

Be of good cheer. Satan's accusations against us will not stand. Whatever suffering we face in this age is for but a moment. Christ has overcome the world, and has brought us near to God forever.