70 from your hardback timbrel,
hymn number 70 from the hardback. And let's all stand together. Holy, holy, holy Lord God Almighty. Early in the morning our song
shall rise to Thee. Holy, holy, holy, merciful and
mighty, God in three persons, blessed Trinity. Holy, holy, holy, all the saints
adore thee, casting down their golden crowns around the glassy
sea. Cherubim and seraphim falling
down before thee, which wert and art and evermore shall be. Holy, holy, holy, though the
darkness hide thee, though the eye of sinful man thy glory may
not see. Only Thou art holy, there is
none beside Thee, perfect in power, in love and purity. Holy, holy, holy Lord God Almighty
All thy works shall praise thy name In earth and sky and sea
Holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty, God in three persons,
blessed Trinity. Please be seated. One day, We'll be in the presence
of that holiness. See him as he is and be made
like him. Be without sin. Now we see in part. We look through a glass, as Paul
said in 1 Corinthians 13 darkly. We just have little glimpses
of his holiness and of his glory. Our prayer this morning is that
the Lord be pleased to shine the light of the gospel in our
hearts in the face of the Lord Jesus Christ and show us just
a little bit more of what it means for him to be holy, undefiled,
separate from sinners. Can't sing that hymn without
thinking about Isaiah 6, can we? In the year the King Uzziah
died, I saw the Lord high and lifted up. That's where the Lord
Jesus Christ is. He's high and lifted up. His
train filled the temple, and the seraphim hovered over Him.
And what did they cry? Holy, holy, holy is the Lord
God of hosts. Heaven and earth is filled with
His glory. The gloriful Savior and God that
we serve, let's bow together and ask His
blessings on our time together. Our merciful Heavenly Father,
we confess to you that we really have no idea what it means to
be holy. Lord, we come before you as men
and women that are inflicted and afflicted with the sinful
nature of our old man. Lord, how desperate we are to
have one who is holy to stand in our stead, to represent us
before a holy God, one who's able to save to the uttermost,
save perfectly. Lord, we are in need of that
salvation, and we do pray that you would be pleased now to send
your spirit and power, that he would do what His work is to
convict the world of sin because they believe not on you and to
convict us of righteousness because the Lord Jesus Christ is our
righteous advocate and he has gone to the father and seated
at thy right hand and of judgment because the prince of this world
has been judged. Sin's been put away. All thy
people through the accomplished work of thy dear son have been
saved. Lord, we pray that you would call out those who are
yet lost in their sins and that you would cause them to bow and
rest in the glorious person of thy dear son who is himself holy,
holy, holy. For it's in his name we pray,
amen. The second from the last book
in the Old Testament, Malachi, as you know, is the last book,
and just before that is the book of Zechariah. And Lord willing,
we're going to begin this morning a venture through the book of
Zechariah. And I am so encouraged with this
study. Zechariah's name means Jehovah remembers. Jehovah remembers. What is it that God remembers? Well, this whole book is an encouragement
to God's people whereby the Lord is declaring to us that He remembers
His covenant promises. So oftentimes when we read the
Old Testament prophets, we get the impression sometimes perhaps
the Lord's not remembering anything but our sin and His wrath and
judgment. But here in the book of Zechariah,
it is so clear and so comforting what the Lord says to Jerusalem
and to Zion and to his people. I remember the covenant promises
that I've made. I made a promise with my son
way back before time ever began. I promised to give him a bride. He promised to do what's necessary
to redeem them. And the Holy Spirit entered into
that covenant promise and promised to go and make them willing in
the day of His power. We have a covenant of grace,
a covenant that God made with God. A covenant is a promise. That's what it is. And the hope
of our salvation is based on God's promise to us. Now, All of us want to be faithful
to our promises. There's a religious organization
where that's that call themselves promise keepers. I've titled
this message The Promise Keeper. The Promise Keeper. This organization
is made up of a bunch of promise breakers who get together and
use fleshly means and methods to try to do better. It's just
nothing more than another attempt to control flesh with flesh. Believers want to be faithful
to their promises, but the means that God uses are not confessing
our sins to one another or having accountability partners or getting
men emotionally charged at a big rally to commit themselves again. The means that the Lord uses
to keep us faithful is his faithfulness. It's his faithfulness. Look to
the one who always keeps his promises. Look to the one who
is a covenant keeping God. And that's what the prophet Zechariah
repeats to us over and over again. We have a God who promised to
save his people. And he actually fulfilled that
promise 2,000 years ago on Calvary's cross. All of God's elect are
saved. All of God's elect are in the
Lord Jesus Christ seated in the heavenlies at the right hand
of God. Now, all of God's elect have
not yet been called. They've not been called. out
of darkness into his marvelous light but they're already in
Christ and it's just a matter of time before each one of them
will be called and they'll come to see the gospel of their salvation
as an accomplished work that the Lord Jesus Christ finished
on Calvary's cross. He's the promise keeper. He promised
to save God's elect and he was faithful to that promise. The Lord Jesus Christ promised
to never leave his people or forsake them. And what a faithful
promise keeper he is to do just that. He will never forsake one
of his. He's going to keep them and present
them faultless before the throne of God in all their fleshly wanderings
and in all of their unfaithfulness, he's going to remain faithful
to his promise. We have a promise keeper. And
the hope of our salvation is not founded in our promises. It's founded in his. He promised to hide his children
under the shadow of his wings. Now, the Lord is likened in the
Old Testament to an eagle who guards his young under their
wings. The Lord is likened, likens himself
in the gospels to a hen who guards her chicks under his wings. But being hid under the shadow
of God's wings has another meaning. It has a more encouraging and
clear meaning to me. And that is that the mercy seat,
the mercy seat was that piece of gold that sat on the top of
the Ark of the Covenant. And the Lord instructed Moses
to, to take the blood of the sacrificial lamb and put it on
that mercy seat. And there the Shekinah glory
of God came down, God affirming to Moses that it was the blood.
God said, here, I will meet with you. Well, what else was over
that mercy seat? On each side of the Ark of the
Covenant was a cherubim, an angelic figure whose wings extended over
the mercy seat and touched each other in the middle of the mercy
seat. And the hope here that we have is that God promised
to hide us under the shadow of his wings. And he's faithful
to that promise. We are hid. Our sin is hid. Our sin is put away by the shed
blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. And God meets with us under the
shadow of those wings at the mercy seat. because he is faithful
to all of his promises. We serve a faithful God. We want
to be faithful, we do. But the hope of our salvation cannot be found in our faithfulness,
can it? The Lord promised to inhabit
the praise of his people. He said, where two or three are
gathered together in my name there, I will meet with them. And he is faithful to that promise. He's faithful to that promise.
We come here to lift up the Lord Jesus Christ. And he said, if
I be lifted up, I will draw all men to myself. This is the place. Why do we come here? Because
this is the place where he promised to meet with us. This is the
place where he promised to make himself known. This is the place
where he promised to extend the gift of his salvation to his
people. He's faithful to that promise. Our God promised to provide all
that his children need, not only in the life to come, but in this
life as well. He said, your father knows your
needs. Don't be like the Gentiles, worrying
about what you're going to eat and what you're going to wear,
where you're going to live. Your Heavenly Father, He knows
the number of hairs on your head. He said the lilies of the field,
Solomon in all of his glory was not arrayed as one of them. And
the birds of the air, they don't fret. They don't fret. Why? How much more your Heavenly Father,
how much more He loves you than He loves those birds and those
flowers He provides for them, He's going to provide for you.
That's His promise. We have a covenant-keeping God. Hezekiah's name means Jehovah
remembers His promises. And this whole book is going
to be God saying to us, I'm a promise keeper. I am the promise keeper. I'm the only promise keeper. Rest all your hopes in my faithfulness
for it is impossible for our God to lie. Now Hezekiah was
a prophet that God raised up at the end of the Babylonian
exile. God sent the children of Israel
into exile for 70 years. And I love the way the Lord says
it in the book of Daniel. He says, when those 70 years
are accomplished, when they are accomplished, I have a purpose
for sending you into exile and I'm going to accomplish my purpose.
And then I'm going to bring you out and I'm going to bring you
back to Jerusalem in chapter one of Zachariah. The Lord is
speaking through the prophet Zechariah to the children of
Israel saying to them that their time of exile is over and that
God now is going to fulfill his promise to bring them home to
Jerusalem. Now we can see that exile representative
in our own lives. The scripture says that the life
of a man is three score and 10. And there is a very real sense
in which we've been exiled to Babylon. This world is very much
like Babylon, isn't it? Babylon goes all the way back
to Babel. What happened at Babel? Men trying to reach heaven by
the works of their hands. And they had brick for stone
and slime for mortar and they tried to build this city in order
to... That's a picture of man-made religion. and God confused their
language and we use that word today. When someone's not making
sense, we say, what do we say? They're babbling. Well, that's
what the voice of man-made religion is. It's just a bunch of babble
and everybody's got a little something different to say in
terms of how it is that the bricks should be fashioned and they
should be stacked together so that we can reach up into heaven.
That's the world we live in and we've been here for at least
70 years. And at the end of that time,
when God's time is accomplished, He's going to fulfill His promise
to take His children home. Take them home. Now there's another
sense in which we can understand this Babylonian exile and that
is that the reason why they were exiled to Babylon is because
they refused to believe what God said. In other words, they
sinned against God. How often times in your life
does the Lord withdraw from you the awareness of his presence?
Now he's not going to leave his children nor forsake them. But
the scripture says that your sin has separated you from your
God and that's our experience isn't it? That's our experience. And so just, the Lord is promising
to bring us home. How many times do you need to
return to God in your life? Though we're here for 70 years,
we're constantly returning, aren't we? We're constantly being brought
by the faithfulness of the Spirit of God under the conviction of
our sin and under need for the Lord Jesus Christ and brought
back to Him. And so this experience of being
brought home and the fulfillment of this promise to take his children
home is our daily experience. It's not only a big experience
for the life as a whole, but it's our daily experience. As
the Lord continues to say to us, you didn't keep your promise,
but I'm gonna keep mine. And I'm gonna bring you back
to myself again and again and again and again. Would Peter say, Lord, how many
times do I forgive my brother? Seven times? No, Peter. No, Peter. Seven times 70. Don't ever stop forgiving. Why?
Because I don't stop forgiving. I don't stop forgiving. Zechariah 1, verse 1, in the
eighth month and the second year of Darius came the word of the
Lord unto Zechariah. Just that one statement is such
an encouragement to me. Where are we going to go to hear
the word of the Lord other than the prophets that God has raised
up and spoken to? God speaks to us by revelation. He spoke to the penman of scripture
by inspiration. Holy men of God wrote as they
were moved by the Holy Spirit. These were not words of man's
interpretation. This was nothing less than the
word of God. What I'm saying to you is that
God doesn't speak by inspiration anymore. That doesn't mean that
we're not inspired from time to time, He doesn't speak in
the sense that inspiration is interpreted as the inspired word
of God coming to the hearts of the penman of scripture. But
he does speak by revelation. In other words, he takes the
inspiration that he gave to these men and he reveals the truth
of that word to his people. And so the voice of God is just
as clear and just as powerful today in the hearts of God's
people as it was in the hearts of God's prophets. It's just
that we're hearing the word of God through the prophets, not
by direct inspiration with God. A man who says, God's spoken
to me. I've got a word from God. Well,
show it to me. Show it to me. Maybe he'll speak
to me too. Oh, no, it's not in the Bible. Well, then it's not
from God. It's not from God. In the eighth month and the second
year of Darius came the word of the Lord. You remember Darius?
We saw Darius when we did the study in the book of Daniel.
And Darius is the one that sent Daniel back with Ezra and Nehemiah
back to rebuild the temple and reestablish the place of worship
in Jerusalem. And now, Zechariah is in that
same era. And the scripture's gonna tell
us exactly when he lived. Unto Zechariah, the son of Bekiah,
the son of Edo, the prophet. Now, the prophet is not Edo,
it's the son of Edo. Zechariah is the prophet. Zechariah
is the prophet, son of God. The Lord hath been sore displeased
with your fathers. He's looking back 70 years to
the time when God sent his people into exile in Babylon. They were slaves in Babylon.
Therefore say thou unto them, thus saith the Lord of hosts,
turn ye unto me, saith the Lord of hosts, and I will turn unto
you, saith the Lord of hosts. What's the Lord said? Don't be
like your fathers. Don't be like your fathers. Now, God's not
saying if you do your part in turning, take the first step,
then I'll turn to you. That's not what God's saying.
Anybody, any child of God that reads this and has any understanding
of their own inability will say with another prophet, turn me,
Lord, and I shall be turned. Lord, you don't have to do the
turning. But the point here is that that God turns us to himself
and that he turns to us. This is what actually the word
repentance means. It's a changed mind. It's being
brought under the conviction of sin and coming to realize
that we have one hope, one hope. Lord, you're going to have to
do the saving. I can't save myself. Be ye not as your fathers. Now
the Lord repeats this in Hebrews chapter four, doesn't he? When
he brings up the children of Israel in the wilderness, when
he says to them, they had the gospel preached unto them, just
like you've had the gospel preached unto you, but they didn't have
faith to believe God. And what the Lord is doing is
using the unfaithfulness of the fathers to say to us, don't be
like that. Don't be like that. Be not as
your fathers unto the former prophets have cried, saying,
thus saith the Lord of hosts, turn ye now from your evil ways
and from your evil doings. But they did not hear nor hearken
unto me, saith the Lord." They didn't hear. Lord, if I'm going
to hear, you're going to have to give me ears to hear. Let
him who has ears to hear, hear what the Spirit hath to say unto
the churches. Or if I'm going to turn, you're
going to have to turn me. If I'm going to hear, you're going
to have to give me ears to hear. Lord save me. Your fathers, where are they? Well, that's
a rhetorical question. They're dead. They're in the
grave, just like You're going to be, and just like I'm going
to be. Take into consideration your
own mortality. Take into consideration the brevity
of this life. This is a, this is, this is the
way God's calling out his people to understand the importance
of what he has to say to them. And the prophets? Listen, brethren and friends,
and the prophets? Do they live forever? How presumptuous we are to think,
well, I'll hear another day. Kind of like Felix. Come back
another day, he said to Paul, and I'll hear you again. Almost
thou persuadeth me to become a Christian. I'll listen to you
another day. He never got another chance.
Never had an opportunity to hear the gospel again. When blind Bartimaeus heard that
the Lord was coming his way, what did he say? Son of David,
have mercy upon me. Shut up, Bartimaeus. Oh, no. This is the only chance I have
for him to walk by me. I've got to take advantage of
this opportunity lest I never have another one. And that's
what the Lord's saying to me and you. Your fathers, where
are they? They're dead. And the prophets,
are they always here? Do they speak forever? Nope. Nope. Lord, give me an urgency for
the salvation of my soul. Give me ears to hear and enable
me to turn and rest the hope of my salvation in my dear son,
lest I be like my fathers. I'll be just like them, what's
the difference? What's the difference? But my words. But my words, my
word, heaven and earth will pass away, but my word shall never
pass away, the word of God. Here's the foundation. Here's
the eternal hope. It's the declaration of God's
word. And the declaration of God's word cannot be separated
from the person of God's word, can it? The Lord Jesus Christ is the
word of God. And the word became flesh. And
he dwelt among us. And what did Paul say in Hebrews
chapter 1 verse 1? He said, God who at sundry times
and in divers manner spake unto our fathers by the prophets.
That's what he's doing here in Zacharias. This is 500 BC. 500 BC. And he's gonna give to Jerusalem
and Israel promises that are gonna be fulfilled in 500 years. That's a long time. Was God faithful
to keep his promises? Yeah. Yeah. You know, actually, to God, 500
years is about a half a day. Just a half a day. A day is as
unto the Lord a thousand years. A thousand years is a day. I
mean, we're talking Michelangelo. We're talking Martin Luther. We're talking Henry VIII. Those
are the guys that lived 500 years ago. That was a long time ago,
wasn't it? These promises were fulfilled
perfectly in God's time. He not only brings them back
to Jerusalem, but he fulfills all the things that he said he
would do in the coming of the Messiah. That's what this book's
all about. I don't work on your time schedule.
Sometimes it might seem a long time between the fulfillment
of promises, but you can be sure of this. Every promise that I've
ever made, I'm going to keep. I'm the promise keeper. Every
promise I've ever made. Faith is not believing that God's
going to do something that He revealed. Faith is believing
that God is faithful to His Word. Everything that God said He would
do, He's going to do. He's either already done it or
He's going to do it. It's just trusting God. And that's
what the Lord's saying to these. He's about to bring them out
of Babylon now, just like he takes us out of this world and
takes us home. And just like he takes us out
of those times of exile, all of us experience, whether it
be for an hour, whether it be for a day or a week or a month
or however long, maybe you've been in exile all your life.
God's faithful to bring his people out of exile and bring them back
to himself. But my words and my statutes,
verse 6, which I commanded my servants, the prophets, did they
not overtake? That's what the word take hold
of. Did they not overtake your fathers? In other words, your
fathers didn't believe me. But now that you can look back,
who was right? Were they right or was I right? And just like I was right in
the past, I'm going to be right in the future. All of my words
are gonna come to pass. All my promises are gonna be
fulfilled. Believe me. And they returned and said, like
as the Lord of hosts thought to do unto us according to our
ways and according to our doing, so hath he dealt with us. Even your fathers admitted after
they were brought into Babylonian exile that I was right, Even
your fathers admitted it. Who didn't believe me at first,
but they were forced to confess that what I said was true. Upon the four and 20th day of
the 11th month, which is the month of Sebat, in the second
year of Darius came the word of the Lord unto Zechariah, the
son of Bekiah, the son of Edo, the prophet saying, I saw by
night. In other words, I had a vision.
God revealed this unto me. When Paul said, I didn't get
this gospel from men, I got it directly from God. Believing
God is believing that God was faithful to speak to these men
and that his word is true, his testimony is true. I saw by night and behold, a
man. A man, who is this man that Zechariah
saw? He's riding on a red horse. He's
also called the angel of the Lord in a couple of more verses.
And in verse nine, he's called the Lord. This man is a pre-incarnate
revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ to the prophet Zechariah.
When God speaks to his church, ultimately he speaks through
Christ. He speaks through the Lord Jesus Christ. My sheep hear
my voice and they follow after me. So the prophets and the spirit
and the church all point to the Lord Jesus Christ and the Lord
Jesus Christ is the one who speaks to the hearts of his people and
says unto them, come unto me. All ye that labor and are heavy
laden, all ye that live in a dry and thirsty land, all ye that
cannot find no hope for your soul in this world, come ye unto
me and find rest for your soul. Take my yoke upon you, for my
yoke is easy, my burden is light. Learn of me, learn of me. That's the man. We have a man,
one man, the God-man between us and God. The only man able
to take one hand and touch God without being destroyed and take
the other hand and touch sinners and not be defiled. The Lord
Jesus Christ hanging on Calvary's cross brought reconciliation. between God and man. He's the man. He's the man riding
on a red horse. A red horse. The shedding of
the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ is the only hope that you and
I have to have our sins put away, to have them covered. I saw by night, you know there is a sense in
which We all see by night. We come
to the Lord like, we're in darkness is the point
that I'm trying to make until the Lord turns on the light of
the gospel. We're in darkness. I saw by night and behold a man
riding upon a red horse and he stood among the myrtle trees
and were that were in the bottom. Now the myrtle tree is a picture
of the church. These are the plantings of the
Lord, the trees of righteousness the Lord Jesus calls them. And
they're in the bottom. They're down in the low ground.
They've been brought low. They've been humbled by the Spirit
of God. And this is where the man is
walking. He's walking among the myrtle trees. And behind him
were red horses speckled in white. Then said I, oh my Lord, what
are these? So now Zacharias speaking to
the man and he calls him Lord. He calls him Adonai. The Lord Jesus Christ is Lord. He is Lord. You don't make him
Lord. He is Lord. But we acknowledge him as Lord,
don't we? What are these? And the angel
that talked with me, now the Lord Jesus Christ is referred
to as a man, he's referred to as Lord, he's referred to as
an angel. These are all types and pictures. An angel is a messenger. It is
the Lord Jesus Christ who brings the message of salvation to his
people. This wasn't a created angel. This is none other than Michael,
the archangel. And the angel that talked with
me said unto me, I will show thee what these things be. And
the man that stood among the myrtle trees answered and said,
these are they whom the Lord hath sent to walk to and fro
through the earth. Now he's talking about those
horses that were red and speckled and white at the end of verse
eight. And he's explaining to the prophet
what these are. Now these are angels. These are
angels. And the Lord said, I sent them
out to walk to and fro through the earth. And they answered
the angel of the Lord that stood among the myrtle tree. That's
a different angel. This is the Lord Jesus Christ
called the angel of the Lord. So the angels are answering Christ,
the angel who stood among the myrtle tree and said, we have
walked to and fro through the earth and behold all the earth
sit at still and is at rest. The pagans are taking their ease. They're all relaxed. There are
no wars in the world. And that's the way it was. When
Darius let the children of Israel leave, when God moved the heart
of Darius to turn the children of Israel loose, to go back to
Jerusalem, there was peace in the world. The Persians had created
a world of peace. And so the angels go throughout
all the world and they said, all the world's at peace, there's
no wars. Then the angel of the Lord answered and said, O Lord
of hosts, how long wilt thou not have mercy on Jerusalem and
on the cities of Judah against which thou hast had indignation
these three score and 10 years? And so now the prophet is pleading
with the Lord. It's been 70 years, Lord, that
we've been exiled. It's been 70 years that we've
been separated from thy presence and from the hope of thy worship
and from the salvation that resides in the tabernacle and in the
sacrifice. Lord, will you have mercy upon
us? Is this not the prayer that each
one of us pray every time the Lord convicts us of our sin? Oh, Lord, don't leave me here.
Have mercy upon me. or be faithful to your promises
to keep me from falling, be faithful to save me, be faithful to bring
me to yourself again, be faithful to give me ears to hear and eyes
to see, or turn me and I'll be turned. And the Lord answered the angel
that talked with me with good words and comfortable words. Oh, don't you love that? When God answers a prayer for
faith and for mercy. He answers with good words and
comfortable words. He doesn't beat his sheep. He
may allow in his providence for them to suffer in time, but when
they plead for mercy, he only answers them with good and comfortable
words. Comfort ye, comfort ye my people. The Lord doesn't browbeat his
sheep. He doesn't talk down to his sheep. He doesn't cause his
sheep to be afraid. I love thinking about those that
were drawn into our Lord's presence. The publicans and the sinners
and the prostitutes and all the, they weren't afraid of the Lord.
They were drawn to him. There was something appealing
about his mercy and about his love and about his grace that
caused them to run to him. It was the Pharisees and the
public, it was the Pharisees, the self-righteous, the religious
that ran from the Lord. They were afraid of him. They
didn't want anything to do with him. The Lord speaks words of
comfort to sinners. When God spoke to the prophet
Isaiah, he said, Comfort ye, comfort ye my people. Speak ye
comfortably unto them. Tell them that I'm a promise-keeping
God. Tell them their warfare is accomplished. Tell them their iniquity has
been taken away. Tell them that I've blessed them
double for their sin. Speak comfortably to them. speak
to their hearts. So when the Lord Jesus Christ
responds to Zacharias plea for mercy, he speaks to him with
good words and with comfortable words. And he says, so the angel
that communed with me said unto me, cry thou saying, Thus sayeth the Lord of hosts,
I am jealous. Now this is a good jealousy. Normally we use the word jealous
as a negative emotion, but when God says, I am jealous for Jerusalem
and I am jealous for Zion with much jealousy. That means I'm going to do everything
I do to protect and preserve my people. I'm going to fulfill all my promises
for them. I'm jealous for them. Everything
I'm doing in time and in eternity is for their salvation. Oh, what
a jealous husband we have. What a jealous husband we need. We're not jealous as we ought
to be for him, are we? We're not faithful to our promises
as we ought to be, but he's jealous and he's the promise keeper.
This whole book of Zechariah, I hope you'll take the time to
read it this week. It's just 14 chapters and we'll
spend We'll spend a good bit of time dealing with this book.
I think you'll be encouraged. Let's take a break. Thank you.