Well, we come into the final
chapter of Zechariah's prophecy today, and I don't know how many
messages there will be in this before we've finished it, but
there'll certainly be more than the one that there is this morning. God's eternal plan, as we've
been seeing throughout this prophecy of Zechariah, is the triumph
of the kingdom of God over Satan. It's the message of the Bible.
Jesus came preaching the kingdom of God. And that kingdom is set
against, in opposition to, the kingdom of this world, which
is the kingdom of Satan. You say, well, there are many
kingdoms in this world. Yes, but they're all essentially the
kingdom of Satan. And God's kingdom will be populated
with his beloved elect multitude, the people he chose in Christ
before the foundation of the world, a multitude which no man
can number of every tribe and tongue and kindred. How are they
qualified to be in that kingdom of God when so many are not? We're all sinners. How is this
multitude qualified? They're qualified by divine redemption. Redemption is when you pay a
price to get something, to possess something. It was divine redemption
when, in the middle of world history, when the fullness of
the time was come, says Galatians 4 verse 4, when the fullness
of the time was come, God sent forth his son, his manifestation
of himself into this world, made of a woman, Made under the law,
why? To redeem those who are under
the law. To redeem them from the law's
curse, as Peter read in Galatians chapter three earlier. It's when
God himself, God himself, with his own precious blood, purchased
his church. You say, God can't purchase a
church with blood, because he has none. In the person of his
son he does, for he's made of a woman, made under the law.
He's in flesh, the likeness of sinful flesh. It's the day when
He, God, by one offering perfected His people forever. What was
it that made them righteous? Oh, it was their works of sanctification
progressively getting better and better. That's a lie of false
Christianity. It calls itself Christianity,
but it's not the message of this book. By one offering, by one
offering of the Lord Jesus Christ, God Himself, He did what? He
sanctified forever. He made holy forever his people. He perfected them forever. You say, well, is this relevant
to me? What you're talking about this morning, is this relevant
to me? Well, I say this. You live and you move and you
have your being in God. That's what Paul, the apostle,
told the philosophers at Athens, best part of 2,000 years ago.
They're there with their different shrines to different ideas and
philosophies and a memorial to the unknown God. Paul tells to
them him whom you ignorantly worship not knowing what you're
talking about I declare to you because it's in him all of you
all of you living and breathing and thinking conscious you live
and you move and you have your being in God without God Life,
this life, without God, and I know the majority live their lives
without any thought of God, but without God, life is an inexplicable,
meaningless vanity. You say, oh, it's explained by
science. No, it's not. No, it's not. Put your brain in gear and think
about the stupid things that you've been told. No, it's not.
God is the source of life and made all things. And without
him, this life is meaningless vanity. Who said that? Solomon. Solomon was the one who was given
great wisdom by God. Solomon was the one who was given
everything this world could offer. If he wanted riches, he just
had to click his fingers and the riches were there. Whatever
he wanted. And he wrote the book of Ecclesiastes
and he said, what is it about this life? You would have thought
he would have said, oh, it's wonderful, it's wonderful. I
just get all of these things. And you know what he said about
it? Vanity. Vanity. All is vanity. And his
conclusion at the end of Ecclesiastes? Fear God. Fear God. That's the
important thing in this life. Fear God. Think on your Creator
in the days of your youth, is what he says. Not leave it till
you get old and ill and think that you're approaching the end
of your life. In your youth, in the days of your youth, think
on your Creator. Fear God. Is this relevant to
me? There's nothing more relevant.
young, old, rich, poor, intelligent, dim-witted, whoever you are,
you need the words of eternal life. You know, Jesus said to
the disciples when many left him because of his doctrine,
because of his gospel, they left him and he said to them, will
you also go away? And Peter said, we can't go,
to whom shall we go? Only you have the words of eternal
life. You need, we all need the words
of eternal life. We need to know the way to the
kingdom of God. We need to know the way, and
Jesus, Philip said, oh no, it's Thomas, wasn't it, said we don't
know the way. He said, I am the way, the truth, and the life.
No man comes to the Father but by me. It's all found in God,
manifested in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and in Him alone. The being and justice of God,
the holy being and justice of God, must condemn all to eternal
separation because of our sin. There's no escape. But the thing
that's written on our church notice board, Joel chapter 2
verse 32, And the New Testament quotes
that three or four times. Jesus opened the understanding
of his disciples to understand the scriptures, to see that all
of these words speak of him in his divine humanity, if I can
put it that way. He is God in flesh. He is God
incarnate. Him making satisfaction for his
people to violated divine justice. Our sins have violated the justice
of God. And how did he make satisfaction?
By the sacrifice of himself. And seeing it, and understanding
it with the understanding God gives, and believing it, we possess
eternal life, this life of God. I am come. said Jesus that they
might have life and that they might have it more abundantly.
Abundant life, abundant life. You say, well, I'm in a body
that's going to die. I know, but if you're in Christ, you've
got abundant, eternal life. Zechariah is God's word. This prophecy is God's word to
his people that his kingdom, which was to be pictured by the
restored temple in Jerusalem 500 and odd years before Jesus
came into the world, That kingdom, pictured by that restored temple
and that restored city, that that will triumphantly be completed. As that picture was triumphantly
completed when they put the capstone on, so his kingdom will be triumphantly
completed. Particular redemption, we thought
of this a couple of weeks ago, particular redemption will be
accomplished. What do I mean by that? the redemption
from sin and the curse of the law of a particular multitude
of people. Not everyone without exception,
but a particular multitude of people. And the redeemed multitude
will be caused to look on Christ. Chapter 12 of Zechariah, verse
10. The Spirit of God will come and cause them to look on Him
whom they have pierced. To feel the weight of their sin
causing Him to have to go to that cross to pay for it. To
feel, chapter 13, verse 1, the fountain of cleansing. The fountain
of cleansing blood, washing away the sin. To see, verse 7 of chapter
13, the Good Shepherd. I am the Good Shepherd, said
Jesus. To see Him smitten of God and afflicted. to see him
in the place of his sheep for their salvation. And then that
gives strength and faith. The more we see these things,
layer on layer, line upon line, it gives strength and faith.
And we come by the grace of God into the full assurance of faith. Full assurance of faith means
not I'm keeping my fingers crossed, it means I know of a certainty
where I'm going, what I'm here for, I know whom I have believed
and I'm persuaded that he is able to keep that which I've
committed unto him against that day. It's a confident expectation. And so we come to this last chapter
of the 14 of Zechariah, and there's no question, it's very difficult
to understand. I think all the commentators
admit, wow, this is very, very difficult to understand. What
do these words mean? But it must. Look, when you see
that and you say, I don't understand what this means, then there's
certain solid foundations to go back to. What did Jesus say
about all of the scriptures? The Old Testament scriptures.
What did he say? What did he say they're about? He said, these
are they that speak of me. There's nobody else could say
that other than God. These are they that speak of me. So let's start there. It must
be about God in Christ. It must be about God in Christ
accomplishing the redemption of his people. It must be continuing
the same theme of the fountain open for sin and the sword of
God's justice awaking against the shepherd, the man that is
his fellow. It must be continuing the same theme. But how to unravel
it? How to unravel it? Where we are
in our weak human frailty of understanding, can we indeed
unravel it? The key, I think, is in verses
six and seven. And it shall come to pass in
that day that the light shall not be clear nor dark. But it
shall be one day which shall be known to the Lord, not day
nor night, but it shall come to pass that at evening time
it shall be light. We live in a state of an unclear
picture. Is it not true of life that everything,
some things come into focus and then go out of focus, the meaning
of this and that and the other, it comes into sharp focus and
then it gets all blurred and this is our experience. But at evening time, what happens
at evening time? You know, even in these long
light days as we go into June, what happens at evening time?
Well, you know, the light fades gradually in these northern latitudes
far from the equator. Going dark takes a long time.
It takes a couple of hours for it to go dark. Not like in the
tropics at the equator where it's as if somebody just suddenly
switches the light off and then suddenly puts it on again for
sunrise. It's an unclear picture, but at evening time, you don't
expect it to get lighter. You expect it to get darker.
But it says, at evening time, it shall be light. Let's just
take an overview of this prophecy and then come back to those verses
to try to apply them. It says in verse one, Behold
the day of the Lord cometh, the day of the Lord. In that day,
we've been reading chapter 13, verse 1, in that day, in that
day, in that, it keeps going on about in that day, the day
of the Lord, in that day. In this time state of creation
where God unfolds his salvation is the day of the Lord. It's
the day in which God frustrates and conquers satanic opposition. For the purpose of Satan is to
try to establish a kingdom which is not based on the justice of
God. It's the day when right at the beginning, after the fall,
after the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, it's the day
in which the one and only way to the tree of life is signposted.
And you know, I just said it, who is the way? Christ. He. Jesus
said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. It's the day, it's
the era, it's the epoch in which salvation is gradually revealed. It speaks in Isaiah of line upon
line, of precept upon precept, of layer upon layer. It's a gradual
revelation. It's the day when God became
man. It's the day when Christ was
born. Unto you, said the angels to the shepherds, unto you is
born this day a saviour which is Christ the Lord. It's the
day when he walked the streets and the temple courts of the
temple and Jerusalem that in Zechariah's day they were rebuilding
after its destruction under Nebuchadnezzar and the Chaldeans. The restored
Jerusalem, he walked those streets, he rode that foal, the colt of
an ass, he rode it into Jerusalem in fulfillment of this prophecy.
He did that 500 years after this prophecy was given. It's the
day that he was made sin and died for his people. It's that
day. It's that day that he made sin. He has made him who knew no sin
to be sin that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.
It's the day. Not only was he lifted up on
that cross to die for the transgressions of his people, was he stricken,
but it's the day that he rose from the dead for his people's
justification. Romans 4.25, lifted up for our
transgressions and raised for our justification. It's the day,
it's this day, it's today. Today, says Paul to the Corinthians,
today is the day of salvation. It's the day in which he calls
his people out of the world's darkness, out of the kingdom
of Satan's darkness. It's the day that he keeps his
people from evil in this world, as he prayed in John 17. It's
the day. in their turn, that he takes
each one from this body of sin into eternal perfection. It's
the day when all is folded up justly. It's the day of the Lord
when he comes in judgment, and all is folded up justly, and
all sin is rightly recompensed. It's the day when the kingdom
is inherited by his people. For Jesus said on that throne,
he will say, come ye blessed of my father, inherit the kingdom
prepared for you from the foundation of the world. Today, this day,
as opposed to a week ago, Paul says to the Romans, now, this
day, is our salvation, our final salvation into glory. It's nearer
than when we first believed. Time is progressing. The night
is far spent. The day is at hand. Now, today
is the day of salvation. We all have a part in that day. There's no opt-out. Everybody
living has a part. Everybody that has lived has
a part in that day. But what exactly this prophecy
means is difficult to understand. It's a bit like Matthew 24 when
Jesus is talking to the disciples about the destruction of Jerusalem
in A.D. 70, or is it the final destruction
at the end of the world, the final judgment? Or both? I think
it's both. But there's a certain mystery
left in there. Is this, these few verses that
we read earlier, is this about the first coming of Christ? Or
the second coming of Christ? Or both? I think aspects of it
are both. Certainly, when he was on earth
at his first coming, Christ stood on the Mount of Olives. Certainly
he did. Certainly he did, but only figuratively was a valley
opened up. Do verses two and three, do they
allude to the battle of Armageddon at the end of time, the second
coming? Certainly verses four and five
speak of the gospel, and I'm sure in future messages we'll
come back to that. The mountain being removed, this
Mount of Olives being removed out of the way, echoes Zechariah
chapter four. And verse 7, it says, who art
thou, O great mountain, before Zerubbabel, that thou shalt become
a plain, and shalt bring forth the headstone thereof, shouting
grace, grace unto it. Those verses picture the gospel.
They picture the obstacles to the way into God's kingdom being
removed. The way has been made open. Christ
is the way. He has removed the curse for
his people. I said that these are mysterious
words, but Galatians 3 couldn't be clearer. It says in verse
10 of Galatians 3, as many as are of the works of the law are
under the curse. As many that are trying to qualify
themselves for eternity by the works and the goodness that they
do and are, I'm sorry you're under the curse of the law, for
it is written, cursed is everyone. which continueth not in all things
which are written in the book of the law to do them. Why? Because
nobody does and nobody can and nobody ever will. No man is justified
by the law in the sight of God. It's evident. Why? Because the
just, the justified ones don't live by their works of law, they
live by faith in Christ. The law is not of faith, but
the man that does them You're under an obligation, you're under
a curse to continue to live in them, and cursed you are if you
do not. But by faith we know this, that Christ has redeemed
his people from the curse of the law, by himself being made
a curse in their place. It's substitution. It's written,
cursed is everyone that hangs on a tree, that tree of the cross.
And he did it so that the blessing of Abraham, the blessings of
salvation that God promised to Abraham, might come on the Gentiles,
not just Abraham's physical seed, but on the Gentiles through Jesus
Christ, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through
faith. God's people, each in their day,
each conscious of sin, each burdened with guilt, each dreading justice,
shall flee from the wrath to come. And shall reach, look in
verse 5, you shall flee to the valley of the mountains. For
the valley of the mountains shall reach unto Azel. Yea, you shall
flee like as you fled from the earthquake in the days of Uzziah.
King of Judah, and the Lord my God shall come, and all the saints
with thee. What's this about Ezel? Well,
there's a certain meaning that we can get from this readily.
It actually means a place he separated. It's there in the
margin, if you have a marginal reference. It means a separated
place. It means a set-apart place. It
means a sanctified place, that you will come into that place
where you are made the righteousness of God in the Lord Jesus Christ.
It says in Isaiah 35, And verse 8, a highway shall be there,
and a way, and it shall be called the way of holiness, sanctification. The unclean shall not pass over
it, but it shall be for those, the wayfaring men, though fools,
shall not err therein. In chapter 49 of Isaiah, chapter
49 of Isaiah, and verse 11, and I will make all my mountains
away and my highways shall be exalted. You see there in those
verses is a strong allusion to the gospel of grace. Is it clear? No, not really. But God, it says,
God shall be with his saints. It says he will be with his saints. It says that it doesn't remain
shrouded and dark. With his set-apart ones, in chapter
13 and verse 9, look, at the end of that verse, he says this,
they shall call on my name and I will hear them. I will say,
it is my people, and they shall say, the Lord is my God. Is it
clear? No, but what is clear is that
his people shall be with him and he shall be with them. So
then, let's come to verses 6 and 7 for a few moments. Light at
evening time. This life state in which we now
exist for all humanity, including believers, can be, mostly is,
unclear. It's unclear. This life is a
bundle, isn't it? This life is a confusion. In
1 Samuel, chapter 25, verse 29, there's a woman, Abigail, who
was the wife of a of an irrational, violent man called Nabal, I think
he was. And he was in conflict with David. And Abigail, David's going to
kill this man and get rid of him. But Abigail is very wise,
and Abigail ends up as another one of the wives of David. But
she says to David, the soul of my Lord, the soul of you, David,
shall be bound in the bundle of life with the Lord thy God. And so it is for God's people.
So it is for all of God's people individually, in the bundle,
in the topsy-turvy of life, in its happiness, in its sorrow,
in its wealth, in its poverty, in its health, in its sickness,
in all of these things. We could go on, but in all of
these things, the life of the believer is bound in the bundle
of life with the Lord thy God. Each soul's welfare is bound
with the Lord. He knows the end from the beginning. He knows it all. Why? Because
he ordained it all. Ezekiel speaks of turning wheels
in his prophecy, wheels within wheels, and going around. It's
the unfolding of God's purposes. You know, as a wheel rotates,
the top of the wheel is at the top one second, and then later
it's at the bottom. And so it goes on. So it is with
life. It's just this bundle of life,
this confusion of life, but all in the hands of God. And these
verses speak of a gradual unfolding of God's good purposes for his
people. Mostly, we live in a sort of
twilight It's not like a tropical sunrise where the light switches
on powerfully all at once, but it's a twilight. Things are... They go from being clear to being
not so clear, and back again. But it's all, in verse seven,
known to the Lord. It shall be one day which shall
be known to the Lord, for he has ordained it so that all things,
all things that happen, all things in our experience in this bundle
of life, work together for good to those that love God, who are
the called according to his purpose. And it shall come to pass It
shall come to pass, look at that in verse 7, that at evening time
it shall be light, the very opposite of what you would expect. You
expect as the evening progresses for it to become dark, but at
evening time it shall be light. Let's apply this to a few things. Firstly, in terms of the revelation
of the truth of God to his people generally, God has lifted the
curtain of revelation gradually. So Adam at first saw the gospel
in a type and a picture when he and Eve were clothed with
the skins of an animal that had shed its blood in their place.
For in the day that you eat thereof, you shall surely die. But they
didn't. He clothed them with an animal substitute pointing
to Christ. He sent them out of the Garden
of Eden and set that way, that guard, that pointing way to Christ
alone as the way to the tree of life, which we must access
if we're to live forever. And then their son Seth, you
know, there was Cain and Abel, we could talk about them, but
we won't for time. But Seth and Enoch and those
patriarchs, they had no written Bible at that time that we're
aware of, but they knew the truth. Jude writes about Enoch and his
knowledge of the truth and his preaching of the truth. Abraham
knew the gospel. How did Abraham know the gospel?
In that chapter that Peter read to us, Galatians 3 verse 8, it
tells us that God preached it to him. God preached the gospel
to Abraham. How did he preach the gospel?
In types and pictures, but he preached the gospel to him. What
about Isaac? How did he know the gospel of
grace? He didn't have a Bible like we
have. Isaac was substituted when Under the command of God, Abraham
was about to kill his son, his only Isaac. When he was about
to kill him, Isaac was substituted for the lamb that God had provided
that was caught in the bush. God will provide, where's the
lamb for the sacrifice, he said to his father. And his father
said, my son, God will provide himself a sacrifice. And as he
was about to slay Isaac at the command of God, under the test
of God, there was the ram. Don't touch him, there's a ram
in the thicket. God provided that lamb, as God
provided the Lamb of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. Moses was
given the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, with
so much light and truth in there, around the law, which all pointed
to that which defines sin and that which looks at the remedy
for sin, which was always the sacrifice in the place of the
sinner. Samuel, Samuel, heard God's call,
that little boy, when he was given to Eli at the temple. And
he heard Samuel, Samuel, and he thought Eli was calling him.
And he went two or three times to Eli, and Eli said, no, it's
the Lord that's calling you. Next time you hear it, say this.
And Samuel said, speak, Lord, for your servant's hearing. How
did he know? He didn't have a Bible, but he
did have the words that were given to Moses. And gradually,
more and more came. He heard God speaking. And he
listened to direct revelation. David wrote the Psalms. David
wrote the Psalms. And then the prophets came, right
the way up to Malachi, the last prophet of the Old Testament.
And then there was silence for 400 years. Silence for 400 years. And it was very, very dark. But
what does Malachi say in Malachi 4 and verse 2? He says, when
it's as dark as you think it can possibly get, Then, to you
that fear my name, shall the sun of righteousness arise with
healing in his wings, and you shall go forth and grow up as
calves of the stall. He says that in chapter one,
sorry, in verse one of chapter three of Malachi, He says, Behold,
I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before
me. That was John the Baptist. And then, the Lord whom ye seek. The people were seeking the Lord
who was promised to come and redeem them from the curse of
the law. The Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to his temple.
Just at the end of that period of 400 years of spiritual darkness,
the Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to his temple, even the
messenger of the covenant. This is Christ, the messenger
of the covenant. Whom ye delight in, behold, he shall come, saith
the Lord of hosts. Those prophecies were given clearly. Suddenly, he physically came
to his temple. He walked the temple courts of
this temple, restored in Zechariah's day. He walked those temple courts. He preached the gospel of grace. He healed the sick. He did all
of those things and then went to die in that city under the
curse of the justice of God for the sins of his people. His disciples
were in a twilight of understanding. They were three and a half years
with him, and most of the time they were confused, and they
were distracted, and they were in a bundle of confusion in their
lives. And then, at the end, Jesus opened
their understanding, that they should understand the Scriptures.
At evening time, when you would have thought the light would
have gone out altogether, then the light shone most brightly.
Secondly, that's in the revelation of God's way of salvation through
the scriptures down the history of the world. But then for individuals
coming out of the world's darkness, coming out of that state of being
children of wrath even as others, there's feeble light at first.
It's unclear. Like the man, the blind man,
whom Jesus healed. And he said, what do you see?
And he said, I see men as trees walking. They're blurred, is
basically what he was saying. Feeble light at first, but gradual
increase in clarity until there's a great light. There's the light
of the knowledge of God. the reality of holy God, there's
a reality of my sin which pierced him, there's the suitability
of Christ to deal with my sin, and at the evening of the day
of salvation for each one, there shall be light. The light that
God who said in the beginning, let there be light, cause light
to shine out of darkness at the beginning, has, it says in 2
Corinthians 4 verse 6, has shined in our hearts to give us the
light of the knowledge of the glory of God, where? in the face
of Jesus Christ. Then, thirdly, the journey from
first belief to eternity. You know, Spurgeon put it like
this, it's no high-speed rail link, there's no direct tunnel
through all of the difficulties of life, straight there. It's
a tortuous route, is this life in this world. It's periods of
darkness, At best, twilight, but God promises light in the
evening of it. For Christian in Pilgrim's Progress,
the celestial city shone brighter as Christian progressed, as Christian
went on his way. So, the light of the celestial
city shone brighter. So often, we come to an end in
situations where we can see nothing other than darkness, and then
there's light. You remember the widow, that
non-Israelite widow in the days of Elijah, in the days of Ahab,
and the great drought, the three and a half years of drought,
that Elijah called upon God to inflict upon this idolatrous
society that ought to have been his people. And everybody was
dying of hunger, and nobody had anything left. And there was
a widow, Zarephath, was it Zarephath? Not, Zarepta, or something like
that. And she and her son were about to die of hunger. And she
had in her barrel of meal, a barrel of flour, she had just enough
left to make one little cake for them. And she went out and
gathered two sticks to make a tiny little fire on which to bake
this cake. She had a little bit of oil in
a jar called a cruze, a cruze of oil. And it was dark. It was so dark that it was the
end of all things. She was going to bake this cake. Her and her son were going to
eat it. And that was the last thing that they had. they would
just be resigned to the fact that they would die and God sent
Elijah to her. And the cruise of oil never ran
out until the rain came again. And the meal, the barrel of meal
never ran out. When it was so dark, God shined
light into that situation because our God knows. Comfort ourselves
with this, believer, that God, your God, empathizes because
He's touched, it says, with the feeling of our infirmities. He is touched with the, he is
a man, there is a man in heaven who knows all of these human
feelings yet without sin and all for our good. Right to the
end and into his glorious kingdom, he knows every step of the way. And then finally, making sense
out of this world in which we live, and its history, and its
politics, and its turmoil, and how we're never going to let
this happen again, and we're never going to let there be another
war. Have you noticed that as much as man talks up what he's
going to do to stop this disaster ever happening again, and that
group of people being afflicted ever again, and that war never
going to happen again, I mean, look at the last century. The
First World War was meant to be the war to end all wars, and
how could anybody let another one start? And it only took 20
or 30 years, didn't it? And then another one started.
We struggle to make sense of the world in which we live. It
seems so random, so catastrophic, so much in turmoil, so much out
of control. And when things seem as dark
as they can get, then the evening light of God's truth shines to
reassure God's people that all things are under the control
of our infinite, unfathomable, glorious God. Who was it that
put it like this? I know Sam wrote about it recently
in one of her blogs, that it's like a tapestry. Have you ever
looked at the back of a tapestry? At the back of a tapestry, it
looks like an utter confusion of meaningless different colored
bits of thread that go here, there and everywhere in a complete
bundle of randomness. But you turn it round and there's
a glorious picture. And that's what it's like. In
this life, all seems like the back of that tapestry. But known
to God is the true picture, the overall picture. All the turmoil
of history and politics is exactly as he has ordained for the accomplishment
of the triumph of his kingdom. Is your soul, is mine, as David's,
bound in the bundle of life with the Lord thy God. How blessed
to know this and to rest in it. He promises, you know, we worry
about the things of this life. Jesus said, seek first the kingdom
of God and his righteousness. And all these other things, as
you need them, will be added to you.