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
S15 || From Fasts to Feasts || Zechariah 8:18 - 9:4 || Session 15 || Verse by Verse Bible Study
Can fasts turn into feasts of joy? Discover how Zechariah 8 promises transformation from sorrow to celebration. This episode of Reasoning Through the Bible unveils the prophetic vision of a future where love, truth, and peace replace mourning, and people from all over the world seek God in Jerusalem. We draw parallels with Jesus' teachings, discussing the unique role of the Jewish people in these prophecies and the call for believers today to share this hopeful message globally. By exploring these themes, we provide a compelling perspective on the potential for spiritual renewal and global outreach in our current church age. From the fate of ancient cities to the overarching narrative between Zechariah and Isaiah, this episode offers a rich tapestry of biblical insight and encouragement for believers today.
Hello and welcome to Reasoning Through the Bible. Today we are in the book of Zechariah, chapter 8. So if you have your Bible open there, we've been hearing God's Word to us through the prophet Zechariah. The first part of the book was a series of apocalyptic visions and the second part of the book deals with some straightforward teaching through the prophet from the Lord. Let's go ahead and dive in and see what he has for us today. Steve, if you could start reading at Zechariah, chapter 8 and read from verses 18 to 23.
Speaker 2:Then the word of the Lord of hosts came to me, saying Thus says the Lord of hosts the fast of the fourth, the fast of the fifth, the fast of the seventh and the fast of the tenth months will become joy, gladness and cheerful feasts for the house of Judah. So love, truth and peace, thus says the Lord of hosts. It will yet be that peoples will come, even the inhabitants of many cities, the inhabitants of one will go to another, saying Let us go at once to entreat the favor of the Lord and to seek the Lord of hosts, I will also go. So many peoples and mighty nations will come to seek the Lord of hosts in Jerusalem and to entreat the favor of the Lord. Thus says the Lord of hosts. In those days, ten men from all the nations will grasp the garment of a Jew, saying Let us go with you, for we have heard finally answering the question that was asked earlier in the book.
Speaker 1:If you remember, there was a delegation that had come from the north of the country asking what should they do with these fasts that had been observed during the Babylonian captivity. Should we keep doing these fasts that had been observed during the Babylonian captivity? Should we keep doing these fasts? The Lord then gave a series of answers about the condition of Israel and his plans. Here we finally have God's answer. His answer is instead of sadness, which would come through a fast, instead of sadness, the times of fasting and mourning will instead be changed into a time of feasting, time where people come to feast and have joy.
Speaker 1:Jesus, over in the New Testament, said that when the bridegroom is away, his followers will fast. He said that in Matthew, chapter 9. Therefore, we fast today, in the church age and in the day he says here in Zechariah 8, 19, says there will come a day when there will no longer be fasting but rather feasting and praising God. End of verse 19, noted as a cheerful feasts for the house of Judah. Steve, can we look forward to a time when there be a time of feasting instead of a time of sadness that we have today.
Speaker 2:All of those feasts that were mentioned there the 4th, 5th, 7th and 10th. Those were all feasts to commemorate bad things that had happened the siege of Jerusalem, the tearing down of the temple by Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians, the carrying off an exile, and things like that. Here the Lord, through Zechariah, is giving the people encouragement that here, these feasts that you have to commemorate bad things are going to turn into feasts that are going to be joyful feasts. So, yeah, that is something to look forward to. We have the same thing, I think, Glenn, in that we're in this world that we have Seems like there's a lot of bad things that are going on and that we're having to live through, but we can look forward. At some point in time in the future, the Lord is going to be here. He's going to be ruling from Jerusalem. We're going to be ruling with him as members of the bride of Christ, and it's going to be a joyous time. It's going to be a great time to look forward to.
Speaker 1:In verse 19, he says there's going to be these feasts and there's going to be a cheerful feast or joyful feast. So love, truth, truth and peace. That's what he says at the end of that sentence. Love, truth and peace. Our God is a God of truth and a God of peace. The ways of the Lord are truthful and peaceful. Therefore, the opposite of that lying and dissension, are not of the Lord. The Lord is of truth and peace. That's what he's saying here.
Speaker 1:There's not going to be a time of sadness and fasting when the Lord comes. It's going to be a time of feasting and we can enjoy him today through the Holy Spirit. But that is a partial fulfillment of this, in the sense that there will be a day when there will be no fasting. And again, jesus had said when the bridegroom is away, then the guest. Jesus had said when the bridegroom is away, then the guest will fast, but when the bridegroom comes, that's when the wedding feast will happen. That's the picture that he's talking about here. Then, starting in verse 20 and going through 22, there's three verses there where God says the people are going to come from many nations and to come to Jerusalem to seek God Verse 23,. It will happen in those days. Here it's going to be that people will seek Jewish people and go with them to learn about God. Again, it specifically mentions in this passage Jerusalem, judah and the Jews.
Speaker 1:It's really difficult to stretch this to make it mean Christians in the church. Further, this has never happened in history that people have not traveled to Jews to seek the truth. There's people that have traveled to Jews, but it's generally to do them violence and not to seek truth. So it's never really happened in history. And even in today, in the church age, we can't really spiritualize these passages into the church age. Because what are we commanded to do in the church age? We're commanded to go to the ends of the earth.
Speaker 1:That's the great commission at the end of the Gospel of Matthew is to go into all the earth. Why? Because Romans chapter 3 says people are not seeking God. Sinful people today do not go out and seek God, so the church has to go to them. Here at the end of this passage where he says there's going to be all these people seeking out Jewish people saying tell me about the Lord. That's just not happening today. We can't spiritualize that into Christians in the church because the New Testament tells us exactly the opposite is going to happen. Therefore, these things will happen someday. There will come a time when the world does come to a Jew and it says there are 10 men will come to a Jew and say tell us things of the.
Speaker 2:Lord. Here's a couple of things to reinforce what you're talking about, glenn. In verse 20, it says, at the very first part of it, it says it will yet be that peoples will come. So this is something that's going to happen in the future, from the timeframe of where Zechariah is speaking to the people. Then, down in verse 22, it says so many peoples and mighty nations will come to seek the Lord of hosts.
Speaker 2:While some might look at this and say, well, yes, whenever you come into the New Testament, the Jewish people they were coming back into Jerusalem. They were still celebrating their feasts that they were supposed to do and you could say that they were coming to seek the Lord. That's the time that it's speaking about here. It clarifies even further and it says and many nations, while those Jewish people were coming from nations, the nations themselves, the Gentile nations, were not coming in to seek the Lord at that time. As you've just put, they haven't really ever come in to seek the Lord.
Speaker 2:This is talking about some time frame that's still yet to be in the future, whenever the people and the representatives from the nations and people from all of the mighty nations are going to be coming to Jerusalem to seek the Lord Along the way. There's going to be a Jewish people, 10 Jewish people are going to be going and they're going to be saying here, we want to go with you because we hear that God is with you. You certainly can't say that in today's age. All the nations today are against the Jewish people, are against the nation of Israel. You read the articles and the current events that are going on in our day and age as we record this, and there's condemnation after condemnation after condemnation of both Jewish people and the nation of Israel. For sure, this is still speaking about something that is going to be happening in the future.
Speaker 1:I would support that and the New Testament does as well. Romans 3.11 says there is none who seeks after God. It goes on in Romans 3 to say no, not one. All have fallen away, all go their own way and do not seek after God. Here it's saying people from many nations are going to be going to a Jewish person. Ten men from all the nations will grasp the garment of a Jew, saying let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you. This has not happened yet.
Speaker 1:Jesus tells us in the New Testament that is the case. These verses specifically say that people are going to come from many nations to Jerusalem, judah, to seek a Jewish person. Other Old Testament passages support this. It's not the only place that teaches this. Isaiah, chapter 2, and Micah, chapter 4 all say that people are going to come to Jerusalem to seek the Lord.
Speaker 1:I think of Steve, the woman at the well In the New Testament. Jesus approached her and told her that the hour is coming, and now is that people will not worship in Jerusalem nor at the mountain in Samaria, but will worship in spirit and truth. Therefore, in the church age, we don't go to Jerusalem and the lost people don't go to the church, the church age. We don't need to go to Jerusalem to seek God. Christians have the right and the authority, as a Christian, to go directly into the throne room of God in a spiritual sense. Hebrews, chapter 4, verse 6. Therefore, steve, here's the question If all that's the case, why is it in Zechariah 8.22, why does it say that many nations will go to Jerusalem to seek the Lord? Why would it say that?
Speaker 2:Let me guess, because the Lord is there. That's the obvious answer. You're going to seek the Lord because the Lord is there.
Speaker 1:The only reason people would go to Jerusalem to seek the Lord is because he's there. God is not talking about the church age, but talking about a time when he will return to Jerusalem. It will happen. Quote in those days, verse 23. God had already said earlier in this chapter that quote I will return to Zion and dwell in the midst of Jerusalem. Close quote that's verse 3.
Speaker 1:At Jesus' ascension, in the first chapter of Acts, the angel said Jesus would return in the same manner that he went into heaven from the Mount of Olives, acts 1.11. Jesus is going to return to Jerusalem because that's where he left from, that's where David's throne is and because that's where the glory of the Lord left in Ezekiel and promised to return. Lord left in Ezekiel and promised to return Because all these other ones the glory of the Lord in the Old Testament, jesus' ascension, all those were very physical things then. Therefore, the return, when he says in Zechariah 8 that he will return and be in Zion and in Jerusalem, that has to be physical as well. This didn't happen in history and we cannot spiritualize it into the church age, because Christian salvation is not a time of God returning to us. Rather, salvation is us returning to God. The good news that we have is that God does not forget his people. He says he will come back to them. There will be a day when he pours out blessings on the earth. Steve, that's going to be a glorious day.
Speaker 2:Glenn. Zechariah is not the only place that God, through his prophets, are encouraging the people Haggai, which is a contemporary of Zechariah. We talked about in the introduction that Zechariah's prophecies or visions here start two months after Haggai's. Haggai is giving them encouragement and giving encouragement to Zerubbabel. Zechariah is giving encouragement to Joshua, the high priest. We went through that in chapter 3, where Joshua is a representation of Israel. He's clothed in rags and he's put on clean clothes and it's a symbol or picture of God taking away the iniquities of Israel and restoring them again. Over in Haggai there's a similar type of situation with Zerubbabel, which speaks of the line of Zerubbabel the kingship will continue and it'll be greater than it has been before. Guess what? Over in the New Testament, when we get into the genealogy of Jesus New Testament, when we get into the genealogy of Jesus, zerubbabel is in the lineage that's there. And then in Malachi, which is the last book in the Old Testament and roughly about 100 years or so after Zechariah, there's encouragement in Malachi as well for the people in the nation of Israel that there's going to be better times than what they have at that moment.
Speaker 2:God, through his prophets, is giving encouragement to the people of Israel and the nation itself that things are going to be better at some point in time in the future. The branch is going to come, the Messiah is going to come, the temple is going to be reestablished. All of these things have been talked about here in Zechariah and also in some of his other prophets. So, yes, it's encouragement for the people that their situation, of them rebuilding, is not one that's going to be under oppression or occupation by another nation, be under oppression or occupation by another nation, but they're going to be restored and all other nations are going to be coming to them because the Lord, god Yahweh, is centered in Jerusalem. It's going to be a great time.
Speaker 1:There's just too many passages that say that, as you pointed out, it's going to be a wonderful time. That brings us to the beginning of Zechariah, chapter 9. This is the beginning of the last major section of the book. Here I think it's probably good to stop for a minute and talk about interpreting this section, because parts of it are indeed quite difficult. There's parts of it that are clear, but other parts that even the translators, steve, struggle, and sometimes, how do you word this and when does it fit? There's things, for example, that clearly say he's going to gather his people back to Jerusalem, but then in other places say he's going to scatter them. So the timing of when these things happen is a challenge. When should we apply? It is always a challenge. Before we get into trying to deal with all that, I thought this was probably a good time to give a clue that our Lord gives us from the New Testament. In the Gospel of Luke, chapter 4, jesus is in a synagogue and he is invited to stand up and speak. He, in Luke 4, it says he gets the scroll of the book of Isaiah and he reads Isaiah 61, verses 1 and 2. And he reads the part there about preaching to the poor, healing the brokenhearted and setting the captives free. In Luke 4,. He then closes the scroll, sits down and tells them today this prophecy is fulfilled. In your hearing, he was claiming himself to be the fulfillment of the part there where Isaiah 61 had said proclaiming, preaching to the poor and setting the captives free. The interesting part is, when he does this, he gives us a major, major clue towards biblical interpretation, because in that passage Isaiah 61, verses 1 and 2, jesus read down to. He got to where the words quote to proclaim the acceptable year of our Lord. That's when he closed the book and sat down. Well, what's interesting is he stopped in the middle of a sentence. If you go back to that passage in Isaiah 61, what it actually reads is to proclaim the acceptable year of our Lord and the day of vengeance of our God. The first half of the sentence talks about proclaiming the acceptable year of our Lord, but the second half of the sentence talks about the day of vengeance of God and that this Messiah was going to proclaim both of those. He stopped before he gets to the part about the day of vengeance. And it's interesting because there, the first time Jesus come, he didn't bring a day of vengeance. This wasn't a day of pouring out God's wrath. It was a day of the part he read which was proclaiming the good news to the poor, setting the captives free and proclaiming the acceptable year of our Lord. He stopped right in mid sentence. The first half of the sentence was his first coming to proclaim the acceptable year of our Lord. The reason he didn't read the second half of the sentence is because that's what's going to happen in his second coming.
Speaker 1:The Bible tells us clearly in many places there will be a day of vengeance of our Lord. It just wasn't in the first century when he came the first time. We have there in Isaiah 61-2, according to our divine interpretation by the Lord Jesus, the first half of the same sentence was fulfilledchariah 9, 10, 11, 12 and saying some of these things apply in the past, some of these things apply in the future and some of them we can apply in the present. We just have to look at the context of each one of them to decide where. That is the process of merging these together.
Speaker 1:Some Bible interpreters have used the word telescoping, and I think we mentioned this earlier. Telescoping is where you might look at something in a distance like a mountain range and you'll see the mountain peaks, but it's all blended together. When you actually get up close to the mountains you see there's a great distances between these mountains. You just can't see it from a distance. Zechariah is seeing these things from a distance and he sees them all together because God gave them to him all together, but really they're spread out over different eras. Any comments on that, steve?
Speaker 2:We can say that the time of vengeance is going to be at Jesus' second coming, because we have other scripture that talks about him coming again whenever he ascended the first time after his resurrection. The disciples are sitting there looking up and the angel that's next to him says why are you looking up? Because in the same way that you've seen him go, he's going to be coming again. We have other scriptures that talk about him coming again. So that's how you can say that the vengeance part is going to be on his second coming.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's a great great point to make, glenn. Here is that as we look at some of these things, as we continue to go through Zechariah, there's going to be things that are going to be explicitly told to us through other scripture has been fulfilled, but then there's other parts that are still yet to be fulfilled and I think, if we take that part of them have been fulfilled physically and actually, that we then can't spiritualize the other parts. We have to look at these things and say, if the one part was fulfilled physically, that these other parts that it's talking about are also going to be fulfilled physically, even if it's still something to happen in the future.
Speaker 1:It's also entirely possible that there's different sections of the same passage that apply to different eras and that they're intermingled together in this sense. If our Lord can take Isaiah 61.2 and split a sentence in half and say part of it's now, part of it's future, then we can go through Zechariah, chapters 9 and 10, and do the same and say that there's intermingled in. Here are things that were in the past and some of which may apply to the present and some are yet future. We just have to look at what fits in the context of the passages. That's what we have here before we dive in.
Speaker 1:The first part of chapter 9 goes through a series of cities and locations and many, if not most, of the Bible interpreters say this follows the pathway that Alexander the Great followed when he conquered the land about 190 years after Zechariah. In 9, as we'll see when we read these, it's talking about God's judgment against cities and geographic areas. The sequence he goes in is the same sequence that a northern invader, namely Alexander the Great, would go about 200 years later when he goes through that era and conquered it. We'll see that as we go through it. There's also, before we jump into this, some parallels between the first part of the book of Zechariah, with the apocalyptic visions, and this part in chapters 9, 10, and 11. Both of them deal with some of the same ideas and the same concepts. Therefore, these ideas support one person being the author of both parts of Isaiah, because he talks about some of the same things In here we might as well jump in, steve. Can you read the first two verses of Zechariah, chapter 9?
Speaker 2:The burden of the word of the Lord is against the land of Hadrach, with Damascus as its resting place, for the eyes of man, especially of all the tribes of Israel, are toward the Lord, and Hamath also, which borders on it, tyre and Sidon. Though they are very wise.
Speaker 1:The cities in that list, there in those two verses, are giving a word against these nations and these cities that were surrounding Israel. The first three places mentioned were all to the north, hadrach, which is a place that got judged, and judged it so well. Mankind forgot about it. It's sort of lost to most of history. Damascus, which is still there today, but this is a place where King David conquered and put troops there back in 1 Chronicles 18. Then, when Israel divided into two kingdoms, the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom, both kingdoms tried to go to Damascus and make a partnership with it against the other half of the nations of Israel. They were sinfully trying to use Damascus against each other, showing how sinful both nations were, the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom and after Alexander conquered Damascus, it never really regained the prominence that it had previously. The third place, hamath, came under the influence of Antiochus Epiphanes, who was one of the most evil men in history, of Antiochus Epiphanes, who was one of the most evil men in history.
Speaker 2:These first three places when it speaks against them. These prophecies were literally fulfilled. This harkens back, I think, Glenn, to the beginning part of Zechariah, where he talks about the nations that he used to discipline Israel, but yet they went too far, and so, therefore, he was going to discipline those nations because they went too far in their discipline of the nation of Israel. We start with this term, the burden or the oracle of the word of the Lord, which gives the connotation that this is the judgment that Yahweh is making on these particular cities, as whoever it is going through there is marching or going across these cities.
Speaker 1:Next we have verses 3 and 4, which speak against the city of Tyre, and they say this For Tyre built herself a fortress and piled up silver like dust and gold like the mire of the streets. Piled up silver like dust and gold like the mire of the streets. Behold, the Lord will dispossess her and cast her wealth into the sea and she will be consumed with fire. Verse 3 here talks about this city of Tyre as being a fortress that had piled up silver and gold like dust and mud in the streets. This was true because the capital of Tyre was an island city that was a few hundred yards meters off the coast in the Mediterranean Sea and the island city of Tyre. Many people think of that as the city, but that's really just where the capital buildings were and that's where everything was run from. The capital of Tyre was indeed on this island in the Mediterranean Sea, but the city of Tyre at its height was really a nation state. Tyre controlled all the shipping in the entire eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea at the height of its power. If you control all the shipping and can tax all the shipping in the eastern part of the Mediterranean, you're going to be quite wealthy. They also had the ability and had a trade secret to take a particular shellfish and make a very rare purple dye out of it that they could make a lot of money selling this dye At one point. They could make a lot of money selling this dye At one point.
Speaker 1:Tyre had this huge influence. It was very wealthy, very militarily powerful. It was quite widespread. The island part was just the capital buildings, but most of the people lived in a vast area on shore. They were very wealthy. It says here in this passage that Tyre built up gold and silver like dust in the streets and like mud in the streets. This was literally true because even in modern day, up until just a few years ago, people could go out to the sand where old Tyre was and pull out a pan and pan the sand on the seashore and still pick up little flecks of gold. There was so much wealth that it was literally true that there was gold in the streets just like dust. It was literally so much gold and so much silver that it was still in modern times still bits of it, still on the seashore times, still bits of it, still on the seashore.
Speaker 1:Of course, the island of Tyre withstood several sieges from different military powers. Babylon laid siege to it for I believe it was 13 years, and finally gave up. They destroyed the people on the land, which was most of the city, but the island could hold out. Alexander the Great, the military genius, devised a way of sweeping all of the rubble from the shore and building a causeway out to the island where he could then build his siege machines out to the island and take the city, and he did that in a relatively short amount of time, just a few months. The city was indeed cast into the sea, a literal fulfillment of verse 3 in this passage we just read.
Speaker 1:This destruction of Tyre was also prophesied in Ezekiel, chapter 26. We had this huge, great and wealthy nation. Steve, you have to put yourself in the shoes of the people of Israel that are hearing this prophecy. What he's saying to them and to the ear of the Jew that heard this Tyre would have been this vast, huge, wealthy, militarily very powerful nation. He's going to say they're going to be wiped under the sea and they're going to be judged and ultimately you are going to be lifted up. How is that going to be heard to the Jewish year in Zechariah's day?
Speaker 2:Once again, it's a word of encouragement. The people had been overtaken by Assyria, then Babylon. You have wealth of these other nations that are around. It's encouragement to the people that Jerusalem is going to be the center of commerce and worship and that things are going to be great in the future. Now, at the time that this is written, Glenn, this hasn't happened yet. It is a prophecy. We're describing what happened because historically we know what happened. At the very last part there of verse four it says and she will be consumed with fire. I think there's been archaeological excavations around the tire area and it confirms that the city, part of it, was consumed by fire. So these are things that we can look back in history through. Physical evidence and archaeological science tell that the things that are talking about here in verses 3 and 4 actually happened to the city of Tyre. But at the time that God is giving this to the nation themselves, it's still about a couple of hundred years off in the future.
Speaker 1:What we need to get from these passages in Zechariah is that God raises up nations and he will take them down again. He can look at the nation of Tyre, that was great and powerful, and say you've sinned, you've not followed me, I will remove you, I will take you down. He can look at the Jewish people and say I made a promise to you a very long time ago, so I'm going to lift you up. God is the one who controls nations. He lifts them up, he takes them down. We ignore his commands at our own peril, because God lifted up and tore down these nations back in Zechariah's day. He will do it in our day. If our nations continue on the path that they are and ignore the Word of God, he will remove us as well. We do not get away with sin. He will judge sin. We need to take this to heart, simply because God is the one who controls all these things. Steve, that's a very sobering, sobering message.
Speaker 2:It is a sobering message but again, everything we've talked about here, it's very much encouragement to the nation of Israel. It's coming at a time whenever they need it. Their temple is still partially rebuilt. Their city walls are still down. They won't be put back up until we get into the time frame of Nehemiah a couple of decades later. They do need some encouragement from the Lord.
Speaker 1:We'll pull it to the curb for today and we'll stop here because of time, but we're going to pick up again right here next time. And there's more great lessons to reason through the book of Zechariah next time.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for watching and listening. May God bless you.
