Reasoning Through the Bible
Taking a cue from Paul, Reasoning Through the Bible is an expository style walk through the Scriptures that tells you what the Bible says. Reviewing both Old and New Testament books, as well as topical subjects, the hosts methodically show how Scripture is one cohesive story. Critical Thinking with a little bit of theology and apologetics and you have what this podcast is about. Just like Paul on Mars Hill, Christianity today must address woke, deconstruction, and progressive Christianity, all topics that are addressed if we go purposefully through the Bible. Join Glenn and Steve weekly on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday as they reason with you through the Bible.
Reasoning Through the Bible
S13 || God's Unyielding Love for Zion and Israel || Zechariah 8:1-8 || Session 13 || Verse by Verse Bible Study
Unlock profound insights into God's promises laid out in Zechariah 8 as we explore God's eternal commitment to Jerusalem. What if the future holds a time of unbroken peace and prosperity for this ancient city? Discover the depth of God's jealousy for Zion, likened to a husband's unwavering love for his wife, as we unpack the historical and prophetic layers that paint a vivid picture of hope for God's chosen people.
Through intriguing discussion, we shed light on the complexities of interpreting Zechariah's prophecies, challenging modern attempts to spiritualize these ancient texts. Is there a future earthly kingdom awaiting fulfillment, where Jerusalem becomes a beacon of truth and peace? We've looked closely at the promises made in prophecies like Ezekiel 36 and 37, contemplating a literal return of God's presence and a harmonious future for Israel. Join us as we sift through interpretations and anticipate further revelations about God's purpose for His people, both ancient and contemporary.
Welcome to Reasoning Through the Bible. Today we are in Zechariah, chapter 8, and we are in the midst of God giving a message to the Jewish people in response to a question they had about religious activities. So if you have your copy of the Word of God, open to Zechariah 8 and follow along. We'll read the first eight verses. Then the word of the Lord of hosts came saying. Thus says the Lord of hosts, I am exceedingly jealous for Zion. Yes, with great wrath, I am jealous for her. Thus says the Lord. I will return to Zion and will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem. Then Jerusalem will be called the city of truth and the mountain of the Lord of hosts will be called the holy mountain. Thus says the Lord of Hosts. Old men and old women will again sit in the streets of Jerusalem, each man with his staff in his hand because of age, and the streets of the city will be filled with boys and girls playing in the streets. Thus says the Lord of Hosts. If it is too difficult in the sight of the remnant of this people in those days, will it also be too difficult in my sight, declares the Lord of hosts. Thus says the Lord of hosts Behold, I am going to save my people from the land of the east and from the land of the west. I will bring them back and they will live in the midst of Jerusalem. They shall be my people and I will be their God in truth and righteousness.
Speaker 1:Now, steve, there's a lot of ground to cover here. There's a lot of message. It gets rather deep, but I think the central message and we don't need to get our eye off the ball here the central message is very clear. The main thrust is that God is going to return to Jerusalem. That's what he says. He's going to bless his people so that they're going to live there in happiness. There's going to be a time of peace where the old people and the little kids are going to enjoy themselves.
Speaker 1:Some Bible teachers disagree on when this is to occur. Is it literal in the past, or is it symbolic for today, or is it literal for the future? We'll go through all that, but the main thrust is clear God says he's going to bless his people again and there's going to be a time of peace. There's going to be a time where people grow old in happiness. There's going to be a time where the children are playing, and that implies a time where there's a lack of war. If there was major wars going on, none of this would happen. There's major conflicts. None of that would happen. So the strong implication there is there's going to be a time of blessing, there's going to be a time of peace and blessing and joy, where God comes back to his people and they will be my, my people, and I will be their God. That is the message here, wouldn't?
Speaker 2:you agree? I do agree with that. And he says there that he's jealous for Zion. Zion is another term for Jerusalem. This has been the center of where he dwells and where he works from, where his people. It's the center and the capital of the nation of Israel.
Speaker 2:Not just here but in other prophets he talks about Jerusalem as being a place where he wants to dwell. He's very clear here in these verses that he's jealous for Jerusalem and that he's going to bring his people back. I hearken back to chapter two in verse eight, when he's talking about Zion and he says the people that touches you, meaning the people of the Hebrews, they touch the apple of his eye and we talked about that when we went through chapter two. He says that I'm going to take my people and I'm going to bring them back and I'm going to dwell there with them. Yes, I think it's very clear here that this is God talking about a future state in the city of Jerusalem, where he's going to be dwelling there, and it's going to be a different type of city than what they are building now. So again, glenn, they're rebuilding the temple at this time, but they're not rebuilding the city. The city gets rebuilt in Nehemiah a couple of decades later. So I think this is definitely sometime in the future.
Speaker 1:Well, the walls get rebuilt around Nehemiah's day, but even then the rest of the city still wasn't complete. Nehemiah completed the walls and the temple got completed a few years after what we read here in Zechariah, but it took the city quite a while to be rebuilt. I've heard some skeptics and atheists and critics sometimes throw out some rather silly accusations, like how do we know the Bible is the Word of God? Well, a chapter like this one makes it crystal clear who is speaking. The phrase thus says the Lord or the Word of the Lord, appears a dozen times in just this one chapter. Further, the phrase the Lord of hosts appears 18 times just in this one chapter. We saw some of that when we were reading a moment ago.
Speaker 1:This chapter is crystal clear on who claimed to be speaking here. This was from the very words of God. The Apostle Paul said the exact same thing over in the New Testament. He said I am giving you the words of God. He said it in several places. Amongst those are Titus 1.3. So there's no question about what the Bible claims to be, which is the Word of God, as we're going to see. The reason why we hold Zechariah to be a true prophet and giving out the Word of God is that he made prophecies that literally came true in his day and are coming true in our day and will continue to come true. The prophecies of the future were proven because they were literally fulfilled. Now, if we go through again the main message here verse 2, god says he is exceedingly jealous for Zion with great wrath. He says he is jealous with great wrath for Zion. Let's talk about this idea of jealousy In general. If we just look at general human emotions, why do people get jealous?
Speaker 2:They have jealousy because somebody they love or have affection to, they're all of a sudden turning their eye and their affection and their love towards somebody else. Therefore, jealousy comes out of it. God back in Sinai says I'm a jealous God. You shall not worship any other gods because I'm a jealous God. I'm the one true God. Don't turn your love from me for other gods. Here he's saying that he is jealous for Jerusalem, even to the point that wrath will be poured out on those who want to take it and use it for their own use. I think he's clear here that Jerusalem is his. It's something that he has a plan for and that people shouldn't mess around with it.
Speaker 1:If we focus on this idea of jealousy. A husband will get jealous if some other man starts to give attention to his wife or if the wife starts to give attention to some other man. He's jealous of his wife. That's understandable. You rightfully pointed out, steve, there's many places in the scriptures where God says I am jealous of my people. Even in the New Testament, the church is described as a bride of Christ. God will therefore naturally be jealous of his bride. He was jealous of his people in the Old Testament. He does not want us chasing after others. Just as a husband doesn't want his wife to chase after others, god doesn't want his bride to chase after other gods, other idols, other things that get between him and his bride. That's what he's talking about here. He's saying I am jealous of my people because I'm afraid they're turning their attention towards other gods. That's why he's jealous. God will not have competition. We either give our full, undivided worship to him and him alone, or we will suffer the consequences, because that's what he's promising here.
Speaker 2:I do agree with your analogy there regarding the bride of Christ. But I want to call out here because some might construe it You're not saying that the actual city of Jerusalem is the bride of Christ, right, glenn? You're using that as an example for us. In the bride of Christ today, god is jealous of us, just like he is in past times, but Jerusalem is not the bride of Christ. You're not making that connection, correct.
Speaker 1:We're going to see that in detail in this passage, because that's one of the things in this chapter where we really have to make clear and if we just go through it with careful detail, we'll see that there's a distinction between Jerusalem and the church and between Zion and the church. He makes that clear as we go through this passage. God's motivations towards his people are the same both in the Old Testament and the New Testament, in the sense that he will not have his Old Testament people of Israel or his New Testament church going after other gods. Now, if we again go through this passage in detail, look at verse 3. God says I will return to Zion. He also says quote he will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem. Unquote. The word for dwell there means to settle down and live. It means to come and stay. He's going to dwell there. He's not just passing through, he's going to stay there, come in and rest and be there.
Speaker 1:In this chapter God repeatedly mentions being in Jerusalem. It's a recurring theme in Zechariah, chapter 8. He's claiming here that he is going to come to Jerusalem and stay. In fact, he makes several promises in this chapter. He says he will quote return to Jerusalem and this means he had to have been there and left and come back. That's the only way you can return. He says he's going to return to Jerusalem. He's going to stay there. Jerusalem will be the city of truth that's another phrase that he uses. There, he says there will be a holy mountain where God dwells. Verse 4, old people are going to sit in the streets. Verse 5, children are going to play in the streets. Verse 7, god will save his people quote from the land of the east and the west. And verse 8, god will bring his people back to Jerusalem to live.
Speaker 1:The main point of these passages is very clear, in the sense that God is in control of all these situations. God's the one in control of people and nations and men's hearts, and he's powerful enough to bring all this about. He's in control, he's powerful enough and he wants to bless his people. That's the message that I think everybody can agree on these passages, wouldn't you agree, steve? These?
Speaker 2:passages are talking about an intermediate age between the age that we're living in now and the end of ages, whenever there's a restored heavens and earth that Peter talks about. How you can get to that is that these are all actual locations the city, city, streets, children playing. It's going to be called the City of Truth and the mountain plain. It's going to be called the city of truth and the mountain.
Speaker 2:The current state of Jerusalem back then and throughout its history, even up to the time that we're speaking now, has not been in this type of a state. As we speak now, there is a nation of Israel that has reconstituted itself and Jerusalem is their capital, but there's unrest there. There's not peace there, children are not constantly being able to play in the streets. It's not known as the city of truth again because there's great conflict that is there in that city. This is describing a time frame sometime in the future of when there is going to be peace there, that God is going to dwell there. You have all these characteristics that are drawn here and it's not describing a time in the end stay so it has to be some sort of an intermediary time frame that I think it's talking about here in Jerusalem.
Speaker 1:There's a lot here on that, but I don't want our listeners to miss the main thrust, though I think, of what God's saying here. You have to remember where Israel was in their history at this point. They had disobeyed and God had led them off into this pagan land of Babylon and Assyria for 70 years. They had been under this pagan oppression for all those years and now they have come back to the land and it's desolate. It's destroyed, it's in ruins. Some of their people came back. Some of them didn't. Emotionally and economically they're in a very low spot. Where they're living is in total destruction. They're back to ruins and wreckage.
Speaker 1:God comes along and says hey guys, there's going to come a time where children are going to be playing in the streets. There's going to come a time when the old folks are going to sit on the corners and laugh. There's going to come a time when there's peace there and where everybody's going to enjoy. They're going to be worshiping me and I'm going to live there and they will be my people. That's the message here. That's the central theme. He's coming down to a people that are flat on their backs and he's giving them a great word of encouragement he had just told them in chapter 7, go be pure and holy, obey my commands. But now he's giving this very encouraging command of there's going to come a time where I bless you again. That's the part I think, steve, we don't need to miss.
Speaker 2:I absolutely agree with that. You know, city of truth. I think that speaks of whenever the Messiah is going to be there, reigning with rod of iron. It says, but there's going to be a righteous reign whenever he's there. These verses do give them hope. It's giving them hope and a glimpse of what is held for Jerusalem, juxtaposed to what he just did, as you mentioned, in the end of chapter 7. Then he looked back on their history and said you disobeyed. Because you disobeyed, the land became desolate. I took you out of the land. Here he is, though he's turning around and saying but in the future, the city is going to be great and I'm going to be reigning there, I'm going to dwell there in the midst of it.
Speaker 1:There's this question amongst different Bible teachers about when this is going to occur. Is it this intermediary millennium or is this symbolic of the church age? So let's go through that for a minute here. If we ask the question is the passage we just read a minute ago, does that fit with being a symbolic application of the church? Today? There are some people that do this. They would say, well, old people and little kids playing and God dwelling there in your midst, that's symbolic of salvation in the church age. Well, let's go through what the text actually says and see if that fits. First of all, the first part of the book of Zechariah has these fantastic visions scrolls flying and a woman in a basket, women with wings. Those were indeed symbolic, but we went through that. There were textual clues in those sections to tell us that they're symbolic. Women just don't have wings that fly and you can't fit a woman in a bushel basket and scrolls don't fly by themselves. We have their textual clues that say it's symbolic In this chapter Zechariah, chapter 8, and really 7 and 8, there's no textual clues here that tells us this is symbolic.
Speaker 1:There's no textual clue for the word Jerusalem to tell us from this text that it's symbolic, or quote the land of the east and the west? Unquote. There's no textual clues to say that's a symbol. There were indeed real lands to the east and the west. The people hearing this would not think of it as a symbolic vision. Number four, verse four, rather, speaks of men and women so old and feeble that they need walking canes to get around because of their age. Now, there's no church age symbol for that. There's no church age symbolism for an old person that's so old and feeble. We can't shoehorn that as a symbol into something of okay, getting old in our faith or something I mean. It just doesn't fit well in that. There's no textual clues for that. In fact, there's textual clues against it.
Speaker 1:There's good reason to believe that God will literally return to Jerusalem because his presence was literally there in the past 2 Chronicles 5.14, when Solomon was first dedicating the temple building. When Solomon was first dedicating the temple building, the glory of the Lord, the Shekinah glory, was so powerful that it physically drove the priest out of the building and they couldn't complete their duties. The glory of the Lord physically left the temple and the city of Jerusalem in Ezekiel, chapter 9 to 11. And then the glory of the Lord returns to the temple in Ezekiel 43.4. And it says there in Ezekiel 43, the glory comes through the east gate. We have all these textual clues that tell us that these are literal places that are literally going to be fulfilled, or at least a natural use of the language. Further, zechariah 8 suggests a permanent state of peace because of the presence of God.
Speaker 1:This doesn't fit into the church age because Matthew, chapter 13, jesus gives a series of parables about what the church is going to be like the kingdom, and in there he explains several times and makes it very clear that the church is going to be a mixture of good and evil, having both wheat and tares. If you remember the parable, somebody comes and has tares, weeds. Amongst the wheat there's the woman who put leaven which is always evil in the dough, and the mustard seed grows up to be a tree with birds in it, and birds are another symbol of evil. There's all these symbols of evil, that there's going to be both good and evil, that in the parable the man said should I pull the tares up? He said no, leave them there until the end, when the angels will come and separate them.
Speaker 1:The Christian life today is one of a mixture of both good and evil. Romans 7.21 says evil is present within me. The apostle says, as a saved apostle we have in the church age. We don't have this time of perfect peace with the Lord there where there's no battles and no war. The end of Romans 7, he's saying there's this war going on inside of me. That's the church age. To make Zechariah 8 symbolic of that, it just doesn't fit. The normal use of the language would be for God to return to Jerusalem, just like it says, because he was there before and he left, so he would naturally physically return.
Speaker 2:To also add to what you just said, Glenn, is that if you just read the text in verses three and four it says there I'll return to Zion and will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem, and the people might say, yes, God is dwelling in our midst, he's in our heart. Then Jerusalem we call the city of truth and we worship God in truth and spirit. Remember what Jesus said to the woman in the well. But if you keep reading the next thing it says and the mountain of the Lord or hosts will be called the holy mountain of the Lord or hosts will be called the holy mountain. Okay, how are we going to fit the holy mountain into this spiritualized text here? Well, you really can't. There's not any real cross references related to that.
Speaker 2:Then in verse 4, it says the Lord of hosts says old men and old women will again sit in the streets or the squares of Jerusalem. Well, if they're again going to sit there, that means that they were sitting there at one time in the past. As you go through here and just continue to read the text, you can't really spiritualize everything. The text just doesn't allow you to do it. Spiritualize everything, the text just doesn't allow you to do it. So, coming back to what you just said a while ago, is reading the text in its plain language just really tells us that he's talking about a physical place, physical time, the future. That's going to happen and it's not something that is happening currently, today, within ourselves.
Speaker 1:The next question comes in is there are some that would teach that these things were fulfilled in the past, in between the time of Zechariah and the first century when Jesus came. So that also doesn't fit well in the text, for several reasons. One is it says here in this passage we just read that Jerusalem is going to be known by the nations around Israel as quote the city of truth. Well, that was never the case in the past. In fact, the people around Israel have always held the Jews to be enemies. They never viewed Jerusalem as a place to go and get truth. It's been just the opposite. They've always been enemies. They always wanted to stamp out Jerusalem. God did indeed bring some people back from captivity, but he never dwelt there and stayed, which is the idea here in this passage. He will come and dwell there and bless his people the way this chapter describes. That never happened in history. Up to this point, in fact, it's still the case that God's not there because of their disbelief, and the people around them, the nations around them, aren't coming to them for truth. In fact, they're coming to them to try to kill them. There's no peace there. Them to try to kill them. There's no peace there. God has always been periodically wrathful towards the people of Israel because of their disobedience. He's always punished them, but he always brought them back. It's happened over and over again and he will do it again. That's what he's saying here is that, even though I was wrathful to you in the past, I'm going to bring you back. And I'm going to bring you back and I'm going to dwell there and there's going to be a time of peace, just like he had done over and over. This passage suggests a permanent state of peace, which has never happened in Jerusalem.
Speaker 1:The end of verse 8, god will ensure righteousness in his people. That never happened and the reason why Jesus was so wrathful towards the Jewish leaders is because they weren't righteous. So it didn't happen in history. It's not happening in the church age. And, my preterist and amillennial friends, you can't get the systems to fit going through it in detail and you can't just broad stroke this stuff without getting the things to fit. When it says he's going to dwell there and there's going to be a time of peace, that just doesn't fit any other way except what he literally says he's going to come back to Jerusalem and he's going to bless his people and they're going to call him God Jerusalem. And he's going to bless his people and they're going to call him God.
Speaker 1:We're therefore left with Zechariah, chapter 8, happening at a future time too, when we're making this recording when God will actually return to Jerusalem, set up his presence there, gather the Jews back there to live the middle of verse 6, the prophecy will be fulfilled in those days, it says, which is a phrase that indicates future fulfillment, and it aligns quite well with the prophecies that had already been given. If we go and read Ezekiel, chapter 36 and 37, god describes this exact event in detail the gathering of the Jews back to their land. He says there even though you blasphemed my name, I'm going to bring you back. I'm going to take out your heart of stone, give you a heart of flesh. I'm going to cause you to keep my statutes Again. Ezekiel 37 and 36 are quite clear there. This passage best fits in a premillennial position of a future earthly kingdom with Jesus reigning from Jerusalem, am I right?
Speaker 2:Steve In verses 7 and 8, when in 7 it says I'm going to save my people, In 8, he says that I'm going to bring them back. Who are the my people and who are them? It's the Israelites. It's the Hebrew people. It's the my people and who are them? It's the Israelites. It's the Hebrew people, it's the Jewish people. Those are the ones. Chapter 2, 8, they're the apple of his eye. He's not talking about Gentile people or Gentile nations here. How you can get out of that that this is the church and the church age, when the church, body of Christ, is primarily made up of Gentile people? I just don't get it and I don't understand how people can get to that type of a situation.
Speaker 1:With that, it's a good spot to stop for today. We will continue in Zechariah, chapter 8 next time, because we'll see more about the millennium and we're going to see more about God's purpose for the people of Israel and for us today.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for watching and listening and, as always, may God bless you.
