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
S18 || Restoration and Redemption || Zechariah 9:11 - 10:2 || Session 18 || Verse by Verse Bible Study
What if the spiritual barrenness that often entraps us could be transformed into a source of renewed hope and freedom? Join us as we explore the profound themes of restoration and redemption found in the book of Zechariah, particularly focusing on passages that depict God's unwavering commitment to His people. We promise you'll gain insights into the dynamic symbolism of sin as a confining prison and discover how Jesus Christ offers liberation, pulling us from the depths of a "waterless pit" into the life-giving refuge of God's presence.
Welcome to Reasoning Through the Bible. My name's Glenn. I'm here with Steve. We've been working our way through the Old Testament book of Zechariah. So if you have your copy of the Bible, open it to Zechariah, chapter 9. We are right in the middle of God giving a message to the Jewish people through the prophet Zechariah. He's giving quite important things here. We've been seeing how God is going to restore his chosen people, israel. Steve, can you read starting at verse 11 and go through verse 17?
Speaker 2:As for you also, because of the blood of my covenant with you, I have set your prisoners free from the waterless pit.
Speaker 2:Return to the stronghold, o prisoners who have the hope. This very day I am declaring that I will restore double to you, for I will bend Judah as my bow, I will fill the bow with Ephraim and I will stir up your sons, o Zion, against your sons, o Greece, and I will make you like a warrior's sword. Then the Lord will appear over them and his arrow will go forth like lightning, and the Lord, god, will blow the trumpet and will march in the storm winds of the south. The Lord of hosts will defend them and they will devour and trample on the sling stones and they will drink and be boisterous, as with wine, and they will be filled like a sacrificial basin, drenched like the corners of the altar. And the Lord, their God, will save them in that day as the flock of his people, for they are as the stones of a crown sparkling in his land. For what comeliness and beauty will be theirs? Grain will make the young men flourish, and new wine the virgins.
Speaker 1:In this section, starting at verse 11, god tells us why he is helping the Jewish people. He says in verse 11, it is because of the blood covenant that he made with Abraham, isaac and Jacob that that particular blood covenant depended solely on God to keep the promise. If we remember, back in Genesis, god had Abraham split the animals, abraham was asleep and only God walked through the animals to ratify the covenant. The Abrahamic covenant was solely dependent on God. He says here in Zechariah 9-11 that because of my covenant, because of the blood of my covenant, I will bless Israel and keep Israel. This was in contrast to the covenant with Moses, the Mosaic law, which was very much dependent on the obedience of Israel. Here we have the blood sacrifice is the one that God made himself back in Genesis, chapter 15. That's what he's talking about here in Zechariah 9-11. Question, steve it says here in that verse. If we look at it again, it says I have set your prisoners free. Is it true that today that sin will put us in a type of a?
Speaker 2:prison. Yeah, I mean, that's what's depicted in Scripture and the epistles and Paul refers to that often is that we're in bondage to sin, we're slaves to sin. John tells us in 1 John that the world is against God and anybody that is with the world is an enemy of God. Yeah, those are things that we do have bondage to is sin. And again, sin means missing the mark. It means not doing the things that God wants us to do.
Speaker 1:Again, he says here in verse 11, I have set your prisoners free from the waterless pit. What can set us free from the prison of sin?
Speaker 2:This wording here the waterless pit. In our version in NASB it literally has a footnote. It says literally cistern in which there is no water. I think back to Joseph. Remember his brothers put him into a cistern that didn't have any water and he couldn't get out of it and they were going to kill him but they ended up selling him into slavery. You're in a place that you can't get out of. What sets us free or can get us out of that place, where we are, that we can't get out of, is Jesus Christ. He's the one who has come. He says I am the bread of life, I'm the light of the world. To the woman at the well, he said I can give you water that has no end living water. Jesus Christ and the acknowledgement of who he is and what he's done in his death, burial and resurrection can get us out of that. We displace our belief in him and he has promised us eternal life.
Speaker 1:Again, look at the last part of verse 11 into verse 12. I have set your prisoners free from the waterless pit. Return to the stronghold. Prisoners who have no hope. That is a great picture, a great word picture of salvation in our day. What can set us free from the prison of sin? Well, the payment of Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1:It talks about a waterless place. Sin is a very dry, barren place. If we ask where can we go if we are in the dry, barren place of sin, well, the Lord is our stronghold. That's what he's saying here. Return to the stronghold. The Lord is the stronghold.
Speaker 1:I'm reminded several verses of that in the scriptures. Psalm 9.9 says, quote the Lord also will be a stronghold for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble. So will be a stronghold for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble. Then later in the Psalms it says, quote the Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, psalm 18.2. Quote a refuge from the storm, a shade from the heat, he says in Isaiah 25.4. Quote God is our refuge and our strength, a very present help in times of trouble, psalm 46.1.
Speaker 1:I'm also reminded Jesus. He said all those who are thirsty come to me and drink. He told the woman at the well I will give you a spring of living water that springs up to eternal life. Everywhere in the scriptures it screams out that sin is away from God. It's a very dry, barren place. If you've ever been in sin then you realize that's true. When we come to God, then we get refreshing water. We get the refreshment of Jesus Christ, and he is our stronghold against sin. Steve, that's just a great and glorious place to be.
Speaker 2:There's a parallel here with this return to the stronghold, as there is at the beginning of Zechariah, where he said return to me and I will return to you. We have a little bit of additional information here that he is a stronghold. He says there that this very day, I'm declaring to you that I will restore double to you. There's a principle there. Yes, he's talking specifically to the nation of Israel, the Hebrews, the Israelites regarding this, but there's truths that we can take out of this, of what we've been doing, is that God is our refuge and our fortress against sin in this world. With all those verses that you were just quoting, glenn, isn't it great to know that we have a place to go to take refuge in in order to have protection from the things of this world? I mean, don't you feel sometimes that the world pressure to conform to it is so great that it's just a great place, that we have the stronghold that we can go back to and retreat from it when you're?
Speaker 1:a Christian. When you're a regenerated child of the Lord, then the world is a very strange place. We are aliens in a foreign land and we want to go back to the Lord. We are uncomfortable in the world and the Lord is indeed our refuge and our strength. He is the one that gives us comfort, that not only puts his arm around us in love, but he also is a mighty fortress against our enemies, which are sin, the flesh and the devil and the world. We have here such a great picture of the Lord, jesus Christ. Then, at the end of verse 12, the Lord promises he's going to restore double, just like you mentioned, steve. The Lord promises he's going to restore double, just like you mentioned, steve.
Speaker 1:We have to remember where Israel was emotionally at this point. Remember they're just coming back from 70 years of captivity in Babylon. They were broken physically and broken emotionally, broken spiritually. They were in a very low place. Here these are words of encouragement. They were in a very low place. Here these are words of encouragement. God, through the prophet Zechariah, reaches out and says I'm going to bless you because of this covenant that I made a very long time ago, and I'm going to restore double to you In their lives, it had been quite a long time since they'd seen any of God's blessing. Steve, today we have people that it's been a while since they've seen any blessings. Just like those people, then, can we trust that God will come through and bless us double and triple, even after a period of long dry?
Speaker 2:spell. That's generally what happens whenever somebody yields their life to Jesus Christ and places their faith and belief in him is that they find themselves at a great burden many times has been lifted off of them and that they have a new life. They have new outlook, they have a restoration of their family or a restoration of themselves as far as their attitude of life itself, and that's different with different people, but in general, that's what happens. Whenever you place your faith and trust in Jesus Christ, the skeptics like to say, oh, you just have a blind faith. No, it's not a blind faith. And they also like to say you don't have any evidence of God. If you give your life to Jesus Christ and are serious about it and you place your faith and trust in him, you will have evidence that there is a God.
Speaker 1:Even if it's been a while since we've seen any blessings. We may feel like we're in a dry and barren place. The Lord, god, reaches out to us and says come back to the stronghold, stay with me and I will bless you. Double Over in the New Testament these concepts are repeated. I'm reminded of when Jesus in Luke 6 says Give and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over. The Lord gives and he gives abundantly. He gives to some 30, some 60, and a hundredfold increase. He gives because he is a loving God and he gives blessings Even though he may lead us into the wilderness. He did that with his disciples. He led them into some dry and barren places at times, it's always for a reason. He has not lost us. We are his children and he knows all about his children. God lost us. We are his children and he knows all about his children. He will return us to the stronghold.
Speaker 1:The next section, in verses 14 and 15, speak in military terms. They speak of arrows. It speaks of lightning, a trumpet marching like storm winds and sling stones. These are all descriptions of war and tools of war. He's saying here that God is going to bring war against his enemies and be the cause of the victory of the Jewish people. We can be sure that whenever there's a conflict or a struggle, god is going to be victorious.
Speaker 1:Even if we were to take these in a spiritual sense, then the message is clear God is going to be victorious. Even if we were to take these in a spiritual sense, then the message is clear God is going to be victorious. Those who come against God will always lose in the end. What he's saying here in this passage he says Israel, I'm going to restore you. Come back to the stronghold which is me. I will bless you double. I will then cause you to be victorious over your enemies. You're going to trample on the tools of war that your enemies bring against you and you are going to be victorious. This would be a great word of encouragement to a people that is very low emotionally, wouldn't?
Speaker 2:you think you mentioned a while ago Glenn to think about where they were, and you think you mentioned a while ago Glenn to think about where they were. They had just come out of this captivity from Babylon, Even go back further in their history that they had come into the land. God said I'm going to be with you as you go in and drive the other nations out. They didn't completely do that and it settled into this time period of the judges, where they would do what was right in their own eyes but then get oppressed by some other nation. They would cry out and God would send a judge and the judge would overthrow that evil nation that had come in to oppress them. Then there would be a series of peace or a time of peace. Then the cycle would begin again. At the end of that the people said you know, we want a king like all the other nations. God told them at the time that's not really what you want to do, because the king is not going to serve you, right, but he allowed them to have the kings.
Speaker 2:Probably the pinnacle time under kings was under David or Solomon, during that time period when the temple was first built there in the city of David, but after that there were series of bad and good kings. Most of them were bad kings. They had a division of their nation into a southern kingdom, northern kingdom. Then they were taken off into captivity. I see a picture here of God saying come back to me, Come back to the time like the very beginning, where, when you first went in and I was going to be with you, I'm a stronghold, and I see this being a plea for them to have a commitment directly with God, versus having these kings in between them and depending upon these kings. Yeah, in regards to our life, we can have that same sort of a peace and understanding, with that great direct relationship with God and knowing that that we're not having to depend on our own strength or depend on some other type of political forces or any other type of governmental structure to do it.
Speaker 1:The text before us is very clearly saying just that come back to me and I will bless you. I will bless you double. At the beginning he talked about a waterless pit, a very dry, barren place. By the time he gets down to the blessings in the end of verse 15, he's talking about, they will drink and be boisterous with wine and they'll be filled like a basin drenched, like the corners of the altar. Very much of a literary contrast. When they start out away from God and sin, you're in a dry and barren place. Once you come back to the stronghold, you get blessings of double and even more. Now the basin's overflowing and there's happiness and there's joy and you're going to have more than you need because now the land is drenched and the basins are full.
Speaker 1:Very much of a literary passage here where he's having this very good descriptions, very descriptive passage here. Then look at verse 16. He gives us another interpretive clue. It again speaks of in that day. In that day, which is always the day of the Lord quote the Lord, their God will save them. In that day. God says here that he will be the day of the Lord. Quote the Lord, their God will save them in that day. God says here that he will be the cause of the victory of the Jewish people. But he's going to do it in that day.
Speaker 1:It wasn't Zechariah's day. It's the day in the future when he's going to bring this about, and it's going to bring it about to the point that by the time we get down to verse 16, 17,. Grain and wine are going to make the young men and the young women flourish. That day was going to be a time of prosperity and flourishing. And again, remember where Israel was.
Speaker 1:They had just come back from captivity in a very uncomfortable pagan land and they're back in Israel and the cities are in ruins and their houses are in ruins and the lands have been overgrown and they have to clear them again before they can plant crops and there's a lot of poverty and discouragement. But God says there's going to come a time when the basins are full to overflowing and there's going to be so much wine that everybody are boisterous and happy and all the young people are going to be prosperous and flourishing. Steve, can we take that and apply that to our day? Can we trust our God to take us through the dry, barren places into places like this that are just overflowing with blessing, steve.
Speaker 2:McLaughlin, we can do that as we're looking at this, overflowing with blessing. We can do that as we're looking at this. We're very clear that this is a promise that is given to the people of Israel themselves, but it doesn't mean that we can't take parts of these scriptures and apply it to our lives, because God attributes and his characters run across all of these things. One of the reasons why he chose Abraham and created this nation was to show all the other nations who he was and how he would interact with the people. That's how we can take these principles that are given here of saying that if our lives are dry, if we're in a barren place, that there's a stronghold that we can go to, that God wants to restore us and to give us new life.
Speaker 2:Now, glenn, what is another thing that's being depicted here? Are we seeing a God that created mankind and then just stepped back and is way off in a distance and not interacting with mankind at all, not interacting with his nation that he has created here, his people, his chosen people? Or are we seeing a different type of a God? What type of a God are these verses showing us?
Speaker 1:I think it's just the opposite. Going back to the verse 11, where we started was he said I remember my blood covenant that I made a very long time ago. Therefore, I'm going to come through with my promises. We see God very active. He's very involved. This is not a deistic God in the sense that he wound up the machine or started the people off on the path and then steps back and watches them go. No, no, he is very, very involved with his people. He's very loving towards them and he says all these things because he cares about them and he wants them to succeed. He's reminding them that he's going to be with them. This is a God that is quite involved and we're going to see more of that in the next chapter. In fact, that brings us to what we just read as the end of chapter 9. But in chapter 10, we have this great contrast, because chapter 9 is full of a lot of blessing and returning of the people and God's going to protect them. Then chapter 10 has sort of a flip of the coin. He's going to talk about what happens when his people disobey. Your question, steve, is do we have a God that's involved? Oh, yes, of course, both in a good sense, that he's going to bless his people because of his ancient promise, but he's also going to not just let them go and let them sin. He's going to deal with it when sin comes in.
Speaker 1:Let's go ahead and read the first two verses of Zechariah, chapter 10. It says this in the field to each man, for the teraphim, which are household idols, speak iniquity and the diviners see lying visions and tell false dreams. They comfort in vain. Therefore, the people wander like sheep. They are afflicted because there is no shepherd. So in those verses they turn a corner. Really, the first verse of chapter 10 is this blessing, because you've got rain coming and rain is always a blessing when you're in the farming and ranching business very agricultural place then you need the rains, and rains bring blessing. What he's saying there is I'm going to bring the rains at the proper time, the early and the latter rains.
Speaker 1:The end of chapter 9 was speaking about this abundance of grain and that idea flows through Today, as we record this. The land of Israel is very dry and the Jews have to struggle to irrigate their land. In the days of Elijah remember in the Old Testament, steve God withheld rain and judgment against the leaders. You'll find that in 1 Kings 17. But he's saying here in Zechariah 10.1,. There's going to be a time when God causes an abundance of rain. He's going to be at the right seasons, you're going to have enough when you need it and therefore the land is going to spring forth abundantly. That's what he's saying here. In that day there's going to be enough food grown in Israel to feed every person there.
Speaker 1:Rain, I think Steve, is also used in a spiritual sense, wouldn't you agree? Jesus said that God sends rain on the just and the unjust in Matthew 5.45. Joel 2.28 says God will pour out his blessings on people as a blessing. So we have here these rains that are literal and physical in the sense that it's in the text here that's going to cause an abundance of food to be grown. But isn't it also true that God sends his blessings in just the right time? It?
Speaker 2:is true, blessings in just the right time. It is true. We've talked about our testimonies in the past and my particular testimony of when I finally yielded complete control of my life. The blessings came at some point. It was about a three-year period there of trust, and my home life was great and my spiritual life was great. I didn't enjoy my work life all that much, but at the end of that three-year period I secured another job, and from there on, god really took care of me. He always took care of me, but he really blessed me in a special way with a job that I really enjoyed, was blessed in the job that I like to do.
Speaker 2:So, yes, it's always in his timing, though, and I think that that's what these verses also speak to. He says there, in the first verse of chapter 10, ask rain from the Lord, and he says the Lord, who gives the storm clouds, will give it to you. Then in verse two, he kind of gives a little bit of a different description there. That description in verse two, glenn, is it given a description of God, or what type of a description is it given there in 2? We can?
Speaker 1:see a very hard turn in between 10.1 and 10.2. 10.1 is really the blessings, the rain. But starting in verse 2 and really the rest of chapter 10, here he's speaking in a sense of judgment. He's made a hard turn and now he's speaking to a people that are disobedient. This is one of the reasons why the Bible interpreters over the years have struggled so much with Zechariah, because places like this chapter 9, is these wonderful, wonderful blessings, but then immediately after that are these very dramatic and harsh cursings. We see here, if we start going through this verse 2, our translation here uses the word teraphim.
Speaker 1:Many of the English translations just say idols. The original word there is the household idols, the small idols that people would keep in their homes. These are idols that people would look to on a daily basis as a sign of their allegiance and a sign of authority in the family. We saw several times in the Old Testament, steve, where people would take the idols with them when they were leaving their home. Not only were they valuable and worth money, because they were made out of precious metals, but also that showed a sign of who in the family had the authority, who was the blessed one amongst the sons, of the daughters, who was the one in the family that was really the more spiritually mature, supposedly. If you had these idols and what he's speaking here, he God is speaking against these things. He's saying there.
Speaker 1:These household idols speak sin or iniquity, and the diviners? Divination is an occultic practice where people would try to get messages about the future or messages of truth apart from the Bible. They'll read tea leaves or look into crystals or look in the entrails of animals and things like this. They would try to divine truth from things in nature. So what he's saying here in verse 2 is these idols are speaking falsely and the divination is lying to you and they're telling you false dreams and they give comfort. That's an empty vein comfort. That's what he's saying here In the middle of verse 2, the false teachers are really no comfort at all.
Speaker 1:People always seem to follow false teachers. You always see false teachers that have some sort of a following behind them and what he's saying here is they may seem like they're giving comfort, but really they're lying and they're really no comfort at all. They tell false messages that end in no hope. If we look back over the course of biblical history, we're hard-pressed to find a time when there were no false teachers. There was certainly going way back into the Old Testament and even into the New Testament. They had speaking against false teachers that had already started to creep into the church in the first century. Steve, are there still false prophets and still false teachers in our churches today that we could take this advice and watch out for them so that we don't get sucked into the lies and the false teaching? Is that still going on today?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. It's going on today. It seems like in today's world maybe it's also been always true on every street corner, so to speak, there's a prophet out there that's giving political prophecies of what's going to happen in the political world. Every week or every day, they have a new prophecy from the Lord. That's not what we see scripture. We see scripture that, yeah, there were prophets that spoke what the Lord spoke to them, to the people of Israel, but those were under circumstances like this. They're coming back from their captivity, they're rebuilding the temple. Through this, we're seeing God giving them encouragement. There was purposes and reasons behind God speaking through these prophets.
Speaker 2:Today, like I said, we see a myriad of people claiming to be prophets that get these words from God, claiming to be prophets that get these words from God, and in almost every case, many of the things that they say they receive from God are completely wrong. Yet they just continue to go ahead and give these false prophecies. When you look at it, they also say that if you'll give them money, you'll support their ministry, that God has told them that the people that give will be blessed, and that's really what God is saying here. I think in verse 2, he's giving a contrast between himself in verse 1, ask me for rain, I'm the one that brings about the storm clouds, I'm the one that will bless your crops, verses.
Speaker 2:In verse two, he says the diviners. They see lying visions, just what I spoke about these prophets here, these tarot card readers, psychic readers. He says they give you false dreams and he says they comfort you in vain. It's a contrast between worldly people and him, the one and only almighty God. Put your trust in God, yahweh, put your trust in Jesus Christ, yahweh, and not in the people of this world. That's the contrast, I think, between verse 1 and verse 2 here.
Speaker 1:There are indeed false prophets in our day and what we don't find is them wearing a shirt that says I'm a false prophet. They're not carrying a sign, they don't have a badge that says I'm in the false prophet guild, or things like that. No, they look like and sound like true prophets, but once you listen to them, you find that they're false. And the New Testament warns us about false teachers. Jesus warned us about false teachers. Matthew 24,. Many of the New Testament books were written to refute false doctrine and false teachers that had already crept into the church. Only the true God can give us true hope. The false gods give us false hope. At the end of verse 2 here it says that because the people were listening to these false teachers, the phrase that used there is wander like sheep because there is no shepherd. Jesus, by contrast, said I am the good shepherd and I know my sheep John 10, 14. Jesus saw the crowds following him and they would follow just because of the miracles or just because of the food. He said that they were scattered like sheep without a shepherd Matthew 9, 36.
Speaker 1:There have been false teachers throughout the scriptures and there's still false teachers today, and we're commanded to be warned about these people because they will deceive the sheep. They will draw people away from the true God. All the way from the Garden of Eden to the book of Revelation there's false teachers. Here's the next question, steve how can we avoid false teachers? How do we recognize them as a false teacher? Because, again, they don't wear a sign and they say godly sounding words. But how do we recognize the true teacher from the false teacher?
Speaker 2:I think one really good way is to be involved with a ministry that goes verse by verse through scripture. I think that's one way, verse by verse, through Scripture. I think that's one way and I say that jokingly a little bit, but no, it is Scripture itself and the whole body of Scripture, not just certain parts of Scripture. And the best way to do that is to go and read every verse, every chapter of a book. Go through Scripture and read it with a purpose. Don't just read it because I'm going to read through the Bible in a year and without a purpose. Read with a purpose to understand.
Speaker 2:Most of it's understandable, just right off of what Scripture says. The other parts where there needs a little bit of discernment, well, dig into it and understand it and go to trusted sources to understand. But scripture is how you can ferret out false teachers and false prophets. You have to juxtapose their teaching to what scripture says and if their teaching doesn't align up with the scripture and the whole counsel of scripture, then you need to find somebody else to follow as a teacher.
Speaker 1:I spent quite a bit of time over the years looking at studying false teachers. You can't study all of them because there's too many of them, but in looking at the false teachers that I studied, what I found is that exactly what you were saying a minute ago, Steve. I haven't seen one of the truly false teachers that started chapter 1, verse 1, and then go phrase by phrase through and explain the text down to the last chapter and the last verse. They all pick and choose and bring out things and draw conclusions by selecting Bible passages and not going chapter by chapter through the Word of God. That's one is just know the Word of God and go through the Bible in detail. Another way is to avoid false teachers is to seek advice from many trusted teachers. There are good teachers and good counselors and good pastors. Don't listen to just one. Go to many of them and you'll learn. You'll find out, You'll learn discernment by having many counselors.
Speaker 1:Then, lastly, I would say is be cautious of any church leader or any teacher that focuses on themselves. If they're focusing on themselves, then watch out and I would even go as far as to say look for the nearest exit, Simply because anyone, even if they don't really qualify as a quote-unquote false teacher. If they're focusing on themselves, bad things are going to happen simply because that's not the job of a shepherd. What's the job of a shepherd? Feed the sheep, not to focus on a shepherd.
Speaker 1:So there's Christians that get caught up in pride. Even the ones that aren't false teachers can get caught up in pride and lead the flock astray. Then they ultimately become a false teacher. Those would be the things I would suggest. If we don't be aware of the false teachers, as Scripture commands us to, then our individual Christian walk, our churches and even our societies are going to go astray. That's the message here that's buried all the way back here in Zechariah. I think it's just a wonderful teaching that we should look at the Scripture in a very sober way and take to heart today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, again going through Zechariah verse by verse, and there's just such great wonderful stuff here that we can just apply to our life. Like we've said before, here's a book that's hardly ever taught, hardly ever preached from the pulpit.
Speaker 1:And we're going to see more of it next time, as we continue to reason through the Bible.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for watching and listening. May God bless you.
