Zechariah: The Apocalypse and the Covenant Jonathan K. Dodson October 14, 2015 Zechariah 1:1-6

Transcription

1 Zechariah: The Apocalypse and the Covenant Jonathan K. Dodson October 14, 2015 Zechariah 1:1-6 This morning we re stepping into another world. At first, it will feel unfamiliar and foreign, but eventually you ll see the value in it. We are entering the apocalyptic imagination of Zechariah, a Jewish prophet from the 6 th century, sent by God to challenge and inspire the people of God with transcendent visions. In it we ll encounter: a rider on a red horse, a woman in a basket, horns & plumb lines, cosmic fountains & celestial cities, and eventually zombies plague. Let s start by looking at three focal ideas which address big questions: 1) Apocalyptic: What is Real? 2) Covenant: How do You Relate? 3) Messiah: How to Hope? Apocalyptic: What is Real? The word apocalyptic brings to mind dystopian books and films like Pulitzer prize winning The Road, Mad Max films, and the most- watched cable TV show in history, The Walking Dead. On the surface, The Walking Dead appears to be just another how to survive the zombie apocalypse, but beneath the gore and the guts, the doom and the gloom, lurk profound questions every human should ask. How we answer them determines what we consider to be real. For instance, how far would you be willing to go to survive? What does it mean to be truly alive? How do you fashion meaning out of life when

2 all the distractions are stripped away, how do you hope? Who s in control a voting community or a single powerful leader, something else? What is your hope for rescue, change, restoration of peace and plenty? Similarly, the book of Zechariah looks like an end of days religious cult handbook, but beneath the surface it is a book that wrestles with the deepest questions of life. It will stretch you to better account for reality, challenge your fundamental understanding of who you are and how you relate, and if you allow it, furnish you with imaginative hope and vocabulary for triumph over evil, like bashing in a zombie s head. The original apocalyptic literature didn t have zombies but does contain angelic beings, a spiritual journeys, prophecies and otherworldly creatures and symbols. In fact, it is a whole genre of literature. So if we come to it as we would one of St. Paul s letters we ll be entirely confused. We have to adjust how we read. I was recently having a conversation with my Dad and one of my brothers when what are you reading question was passed around. When it got to me, I mentioned that I had really enjoyed Ready Player One this summer, a slightly in the future novel about a gamer in a dystopian world. My Dad said to me, we just don t think like you, all that science fiction and fantasy, we prefer arguments. What do you find appealing about it? Trying to convert them, I told him that I they haven t understood the genre. Visionary/fantasy/apocalyptic literature is meant to break up

3 ingrained patterns of thinking by delivering life- altering messages through otherworldly images. The word apocalypto doesn t mean to destroy but to reveal. If you allow, it will open up fresh ways of looking at the world that can be revolutionary and powerful. My father responded by saying well in that case you ve got me. I hope Zechariah will get you. I hope your imagination will be captured and that our lives will be revolutionized. The first eight chapters are a collection of individual night visions, mediated by an angelic figure, that reveal a transcendent reality through image and symbol (horsemen, horns, craftsmen, the deep). Some images are incidental and others are symbolic. It s important to not over interpret, finding a meaning under every rock and tree. Images that do have symbolic meaning are often repeated, repurposed as another image (ex: rider to fire), for form a collective scene with meaning. The major images in this book cluster around four categories: Divine Being, People of God, Evil, Creation. The seven visions: Image Message (1) Horseman: Vision of a New City/People (2) Horns & Blacksmith: Longing for Justice (3) Measuring Line: Spirit- Glory in the Multitudinal Urban Midst

4 (4) High Priest: Cleansing Sin & the Coming Kingdom (5) Lampstand: Spirit Created Community/City (6) Scroll & Basket: Judging Evil & Removing Sin (7) Four Chariots Sovereign Judgment & Rest by the Spirit Let s zero in on the first chapter. The focal images include the rider on a red horse, standing among myrtles, next to a ravine. Red, orange and white horses surround the rider who sends them to patrol the earth. Now, what s the point in using otherworldly images? Well, I could tell you God is all powerful and all knowing or I could say he is the Rider on a Red horse who commands angelic horseman to patrol the earth. Think TLOR s Nazgul. Which is more affective? The image. Or I could say God is beautiful holy protector or the Lord God is a wall of fire around you and the glory in your midst (2:5). These images crack open our crusty views of God and expand way beyond what we conceive. They tap into Reality: Rider who s in charge? Myrtles who are we? Deep what can we do about evil? School shootings on the rise, war, refugee crisis. Secular worldviews don t have categories for this. Columbia scholar Andrew DeBlanco has noted a gulf has opened up in our culture between the visibility of evil and our intellectual resources for coping with it. Blaming nurture trivializes the terrible, actual evil people are capable of. Zechariah furnishes us with a vocabulary for evil, a dark ravine, a basket of

5 wickedness, unrepentant sin and evil ways. Do you have a vocabulary to account for this reality (Justice, goodness, evil)? You can make up a reality that has no evil, no God, and no accountability but in the words of Sci- Fi author PKD, Reality is something that, when you stop believing in it, doesn t go away. Next. Covenant: How do You Relate? The book opens: In the eighth month, in the second year of Darius, the word of the Lord came to the prophet Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, son of Iddo. Why second year of Darius? It s 525 BC about a 75 years after the peak Babylonian kingdom and a 30 years before the height of Athens. The intervening world power is ruled by a Persian, Darius. For Zechariah, there is no in the year of our king because Israel has been without a king for decades. Verse two reminds us why The Lord was very angry with your fathers. God s people had become infatuated with political power, other gods, and spun away from God. As a result, they were sent into a 70- year exile, no king, no land, and far from God. But Darius sends them home, where under Nehemiah they rebuild the wall around Jerusalem, under Ezra they bring out the law, and temple construction begins. But they become consumed with well- paneled houses, jobs, political turmoil, they neglect the house of the Lord. Their devotion to holiness, to God himself, takes a backseat to practical concerns. So

6 after about ten years God raises up Zechariah, the Lord Remembers and warns them Do not be like your fathers, to whom the former prophets cried out, Thus says the Lord of hosts, Return from your evil ways and from your evil deeds. But they did not hear or pay attention to me, declares the Lord. In other words, remember your past, learn from it. Have practical concerns displaced your devotion to God? Zechariah enters the story to provide exactly what they need theological vision to live as the people of God with hope amidst their challenges. That vision goes straight to the heart of what it means to be human their foundation for relationship. Return to me, says the Lord of hosts, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts (1:3). In the Bible, relationship with God is described as a covenant. Now this verse looks like a consumer relationship. Tit for tat. You return to me, arms crossed, and Ill return to you. 50/50. A text like this parts the room. Return to Me people see God as Law, the upholder of truth and justice. There are the people who are like yeah, we have to have stipulations, standards, a law to live by, truth to commit to. You are drawn to the images of the rider on the red horse, the wall of fire, the Lord of Hosts. Return to You people see God as Love, a god of grace and mercy. They are drawn to the images of you are the apple of my eye, I take your iniquity away 3:4 And I will pour out on the house of David a spirit of grace (Zec 12:10).

7 The Law people and the love people. So the law person judges the people who don t keep up the law and the love person judges the people who aren t as loving. Everyone says either Law is ultimate or Love is ultimate. If God is just Law then you never measure up, you ll be guilt- ridden and condemned. But if he s just love, you can get away with murder, live however you want because he s going to forgive you. One s too expensive, the other too cheap. And both are wrong. Covenant reality, how God relates to us, holds both in tension. Law and love. Keep the law and love me you re your whole heart. Isnt it what we all want, total commitment and love through thick and thin? Return to me AND Return to you. Now this is unlike most of our relationships today. Today we often practice consumer not covenant relationships. A consumer relationship is based on convenience, somewhat temporary, and driven by performance. A 50/50 deal. Months ago i heard a knock the door and it was a Time- Warner rep. He was offering a pretty steep discount to switch from ATT internet. Plus, he was a really nice guy. We hit it off and I invited him in and signed the deal. He came back for the install. A couple days later the service was very slow. He came by and checked things out. They couldn t improve it, so as much as I liked the guy, I pulled the plug and switched back. He didn t perform. Didn t hold up to his 50. This is often how we treat our friendships. If the person doesn t perform up to our standards, unplug and move on. We do it

8 with churches, city groups, spouses. If they don t keep up their end then don t love or respect, just tolerate. But this isn t how covenant relationships work. And marriage is a covenant relationship. Its based on law and love, commitment and devotion, 100/100, no meeting in the middle. When we were young marrieds I used to get into fights with my wife and yell, I m here. I just asking you to meet me in the middle. I had it all wrong. Not only was I yelling but I was treating marriage like a consumer. I give 50 you give 50. But the covenant model goes the distance, like Christ. Love lays everything down, not just half. Husbands love our wives as Christ loved the church. Christ didn t tithe his live he gave his life. Covenant relationships entail wholehearted devotion. It s what makes a relationship hard but rich, permanent not temporary. God remembers his relationship with Israel: Return to me, says the Lord of hosts, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts (1:3). But how do you do it? Who can keep the law and keep up love? Next. Messiah: How to Hope The longing for a messiah goes all the way back to the very beginning of history, when our parents invited evil into the world by rejecting God s law and trying make a life on their own terms and conditions. They rejected true beauty of covenant relationship for the evil of a consumer life. Its been with us since. The evils range in size

9 but we ve all be struck with the disease. And the only way back into the garden, the only way to enjoy God s covenant love now and forever is for us to uphold his law. Law and love. So you know what he does? Zechariah shows us through lots of images. You see the Rider on the Red Horse become humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. From the prestige of presiding on a horse over all the world to not even a baby horse, but a baby donkey. And the gospels tell us he rode to the cross on a donkey. Jesus. Why? Somebody had to keep the law, to live a perfect life, to get us in relationship with God. Lays down his power to take up our beating. Why? Someone had to be punished for our evil. From riding in awesome power to a total ass. This is our covenant Lord. He upholds the law to show us unending love. Now that s the kind of God you want. He s real, substantive, committed, and loving, all the way, through the pain and sorrow of death, to draw you to himself. Hes not a 50/50 but 100/100. In fact Return to me, says the Lord of hosts, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts. God initiates the return. God commands the return. And God enables the return. He is the God who takes up the warriors sword (9:13) for justice but becomes the one whom they have pierced and they mourn for him (12;10). Don t you see. The only way into reality, to the deepest richest relationship is with law and love. And Christ upholds them both. He lives a perfect live for you, and lays down his life for you.

10 But if you refuse his love, he ll cut you down. He is the deliverer of justice, becomes the deliverer of grace. But to get him, you have to honor who he God, embrace reality. This is a picture of total reality justice and grace, law and love, and nothing else accounts for it. The apocalypse is real, realer, and deeper, and truer and more beautiful than we think. And Jesus is asking you today who are you? Who will you be? Will you uphold his law and enjoy his love or try to pick one over the other, reject his covenant for a a consumer life. The only relationships God forms are covenant relationships. And as a result, the kind of relationships Christians form are covenant relationships with one another. In other words, you don t just go to church; you join the church. You don t just say you re a Christian; you commit to Christians, through thick and thin, the good and the bad. Why? Because of our shared Messiah, law and love, grace and truth, the very hope of the world. Are you hoping in the Messiah? And if you do, you ll begin to see and enjoy things you ve never seen. Like a marriage that moves from 50/50 to 100/100, you plumb depths of love and heights of joy with Christ like you never have. But you have to go all in. We can return to him because he has already returned to us in Jesus our Messiah.