Lecture

I. Introduction

In this segment, we talk about two contemporaneous prophets: Haggai and Zechariah. We know from the book of Ezra that Haggai and Zechariah preached together and even worked together. They are mentioned as encouraging the people of God to work on the temple at Jerusalem. Here is the situation: As of 520 B.C. the returning exiles from Babylon to Judah had managed in eighteen years to build only the foundation of the temple. Jerusalem lay in ruins. The great flat rock area at the top of Mount Zion, where the temple had been, was nothing but bedrock since the first temple had been destroyed and removed entirely by the Babylonians, including its foundation. The progress made in getting the temple rebuilt had been limited in almost two decades to nothing but the foundation stones.

This presented kind of a scary picture. The prophet Jeremiah had said the exile would last seventy years. That exile is measured from the time of the destruction of the first temple, the one Solomon had built, in 586 B.C., obviously to the point seventy years later, which would be 516 B.C. Yet in 520 B.C., for various reasons—namely fear, fear of what others would do, fear of attack from outsiders, fear of the opposition of enemy nations—the people of Judah had allowed the temple to get no further than just its foundation. There were four years to go to get that great massive structure, the biggest thing anywhere around, built. But there was a new political situation: a king named Darius had come to power in Persia. He was the new emperor. After a substantial period of several years of instability, he subdued all rebellion against the central authority in Persia. This meant that the empire was stable. God had, of course, brought it about and now it was time in that situation of stability for His people to get to work and build that temple. So Haggai and Zechariah were moved by God as prophets to begin preaching to the people words of encouragement.

II. Book of Haggai

Haggai’s prophecies are as limited in time scope as any we know of. In this short book, the four prophecies that we read about were all given within a three-month period in the year 520 B.C., the second year of the reign of Darius, king of Persia. Indeed, Haggai’s last two prophecies are delivered on the very same day, the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month of that year.

A. First Message: Complete the Second Temple (Hag 1:1-15)

He begins with these kinds of words, “the word of the Lord came . . . This is what the Lord Almighty says, ‘Give careful thought to your ways. You have planted much, but you have harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it.’” In other words, “You are having a terrible time. You are barely holding on financially here in 520 B.C. Why?” Well, the answer is “You have not been doing what you are supposed to have been doing. You have not been dedicating yourself to the first responsibility of every believer, and that is to worship Me.” So He says, “‘Give careful thought to your ways. Go up into the mountains and bring down timber and build the house, so that I may take pleasure in it and be honored,’ says the Lord.” That is what God wants done. “Why are these things happening to you? What have you brought home? Why has it gone awry? Why?” says the Lord. “Because of my house, which remains a ruin, while each of you is busy with your own house.” You preoccupied yourselves with what you thought were necessities, but your real necessity was to pursue My kingdom.

It is just like Jesus’ words, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all the other things will come in line, all these others will be added to you.” That is what the people of 520 B.C. in Judah were not getting. So God, as He says in chapter 1 of the book of Haggai, had given them drought so that the fields were dry; and, of course, there was little productivity to any of the crops, and a certain degree of misery was being experienced by the people. What they needed to know is that God wanted first things first. Now He encourages His people; He does not want them just to be afraid of Him, and just to feel misery. He says, “‘I am with you’ (in chapter 1), declares the Lord.” That is an important statement. You read often in Genesis, “God was with Joseph,” bringing him out of the bondage. He found himself as a jailed person for charges against him that were not really true and elevating him steadily up through the civil service, until he becomes the prime minister of Egypt. “God was with Joseph,” we read. Or, the prophecy of Isaiah states that Immanuel will come, meaning, “God with us.”

B. Second Message: Encouragement (Hag 2:1-9)

For God to say to His people, “I am with you,” is to say, “I have got great things in store for you. It is not just “I am hanging around watching,” but rather, “I am supporting you, encouraging you; I am behind you, and I will do the things for you that you cannot do for yourself. Build that house. Get the temple done.” Is God petty? Does He have to have a temple to look good? No, not at all. With the temple built, the people could properly worship; they could honor God, and they could place Him first in their lives at the center, which they desperately needed to do. This was a responsibility that they had to undertake; people are not properly organized unless God is at their center. People are skewed and unbalanced, unless they see worship of their Lord as primary to their lives.

C. Third Message: Instruction and Assurance (Hag 2:10-19)

There is an interesting little story in the book of Haggai about something that might be called a priestly ruling question. The prophet goes around to some priests and asks them this question: “If a person carries consecrated meat in the fold of his garment, and that fold touches some bread or stew or wine or oil or other food, does it become consecrated?” The priests answer, “No.” It is an interesting question and this is a ruling he is kind of getting from the priests. He is asking them about the way that consecration works. “If you have consecrated some food by offering it to God on the altar, you have that with you, and you touch other things with it, do they catch the consecration? Do they kind of get it by being near it? Does it filter off to them?” The priests say, “No, that is not how it works.” You do not consecrate other things by touching them with something that has been consecrated, because the priests knew you had to consecrate each piece of food right at God’s altar in His very presence. God is the consecrator. You bring things right to Him and put them directly before Him. You put them close to Him, and they get consecrated.

Haggai is led by God to ask another kind of question of the priests: “If a person defiled by contact with a dead body touches one of these things, does it become defiled?” The priests reply, “Yes, it becomes defiled.” In other words, that which is itself unclean, like a dead body, can by contact spread defilement. So consecration cannot be spread automatically but defilement can. What is the message here? “‘So it is with this people and this nation in my sight,’ declares the Lord. ‘Whatever they do, whatever they offer there (at the temple mount without a built temple) is defiled.’” In other words, good obedience to God is not automatic. You do not drift into it. It does not just happen; it is not something you can expect to take place just by waiting for it. That is not how it works. If God is to be properly honored and worshiped in a temple, that is in that day the way that people were supposed to worship Him, it has got to happen. It does not just take place in and of itself; whereas, defilement does happen somewhat automatically. If you do nothing, you are automatically going to fall into defilement.

So the priests themselves, the ones who should have been pushing hardest for that temple to be built, were in fact standing around with everybody else worried about the consequences of building it—whether it would be too much money, too much time, whether it would somehow provoke the wrath of neighboring states. They need to learn the lesson, and teach it to the people, that you have to be proactive to reach God and His blessing. You do not just passively assume that He will find you and save you from your sins; you have to go to God and ask for forgiveness. And you certainly have to actively worship Him if you are supposed to be one of His worshipers.

D. Fourth Message: Great Things to Come (Hag 2:20-23)

The book ends with predictions of great things that can come. In 520 B.C., Zerubbabel was the name of the governor of Judah and Joshua was the high priest. They needed a lot of encouragement, and Zerubbabel in particular needed to be encouraged not to be afraid of the consequence of getting to work on the temple. He was so sensitive to what this might do to the Moabites and Ammonites and Samaritans and others who tended to oppose the Jews that he tended to be overly cautious.

God’s Word to him at the end of the book is this, “Tell Zerubbabel governor of Judah that I will shake the heavens and the earth. I will overturn royal thrones and shatter the power of the foreign kingdoms. I will overthrow chariots and their drivers; horses and their riders will fall, each by the sword of his brother”—very much like what happened in the days of the Exodus when God overthrew the horse and rider and the chariots of Egypt. “‘On that day,’ declares the Lord Almighty, ‘I will take you, my servant Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel,’ declares the Lord, ‘and I will make you like my signet ring, for I have chosen you,’ declares the Lord Almighty.”—encouragement for a chicken governor. A word of hope and a promise to him from God was, “I am in charge. I can keep the other nations from attacking. I can hold them back, and I can do whatever is necessary to suppress them. You go ahead with that project and get the temple built.”

III. Book of Zechariah

The book of Zechariah starts with many of those same themes that we see in Haggai. It is also 520 B.C., and the temple needs to be built. Zerubbabel and Joshua, the high priest, have been overly cautious about going ahead with the work.

A. Visions and Messages of Encouragement (Zec 1:1-8:23)

Zechariah starts with a series of visions. God allows him to see a whole bunch of visions that are described for us in the first several chapters of the book, up through chapter 6. These visions contain all kinds of ways in which God reassures the leadership of Judah, and therefore also its people, that He is in charge that He has stabilized world events, that the chaos and dangers of the past are now limited, and that they can go ahead and truly rebuild His temple, and also rebuild their religious faithfulness to Him.

We have pictures, for example, of horses and riders that go out around the world and come back and report things are stable; God is in control. We have a description of four horns coming at Judah, and as you see it, first all you see are those horns in the prediction that comes at the end of chapter 1. Little by little, you can see that these belong to animals; and then there are four plowmen who are coming. It is translated in some of the versions as “craftsmen,” but the better translation is “plowmen.” They know how to herd these animals home. These are big oxen with their horns sticking out, and that is what looks scary when you just focus on the horns. But the plowmen are not afraid of them, so they just prod the oxen and chase them back home. God says, “So I will do to the great nations that in the past have suppressed you”—in other words, the Egyptians and Babylonians and Assyrians and Persians.

There is a man with a measuring line measuring Jerusalem. Why? Because it is going to be rebuilt; it is going to be a great city. It is going to be different from what it was in the old days, the actual physical Jerusalem that the prophet Zechariah lived near. It is going to become a fantastic, wonderful place for the people of God to live in. Their God will be in the midst of all His people just as He was, symbolically especially, in the midst of Jerusalem. New garments are produced for the high priest. He can take off his dirty ones, symbolizing his insecurity, his infidelity to the covenant, and his lack of faith. Now he can serve the Lord, and with God’s grace and by God’s Spirit, do the right kinds of things he should have done all along.

The golden lampstand and the two olive trees were part of the design of that tabernacle and temple lampstand described as symbolizing the governor Zerubbabel and the high priest Jeshua. They are the olive trees that will now be precious to God and do His will, another way symbolically in the vision of encouraging these two leaders. He also sees a vision of a woman in a basket. This woman represents sin. She gets stuffed into a huge basket and she gets sent way off to Babylonia. “Let them have the sin,” says the Lord. “I am going to forgive you, and I am going to cleanse you, My people. I am going to deal with you as a pure people.” A great encouragement at a time when there was a desperate need for people to turn to the Lord and realize His forgiveness. There is a depiction in chapter 6 of the high priest, Jeshua (or Joshua as he is also called), getting a crown. Again, this is encouragement for him; the crown represents God’s favor in leading the people. There are many promises in the book, but there are also worries and threats; and the book shifts rather dramatically in chapter 9.

B. Oracles (Zec 9:1-14:21)

It is again a bifid-structured book, in which chapters 1-8 deal with predictions and encouragement of all kinds to boost the people of Judah and Jerusalem and their leaders in their morale to serve the Lord and to honor Him and to get the things done that needed to be done at the end of the sixth century B.C., as the people were returning from captivity and restoring their relationship with the Lord in the land of their ancestors. But with chapter 9, we hit new material—these are the first oracles against foreign nations. We have a prediction of judgment on them in chapter 9, but that combined with a prediction of the fact that the King of Zion is on His way. “The Lord will appear” is a promise of that book.

In chapter 10, we have a prediction of God’s loving care for Judah and an encouragement to be sure to get out of idolatry. We must remember that not only had the Jews practiced idolatry for most of their long history in Judah, but they had been right in the midst of full-blown involuntary idolatry in Babylonian captivity. That is the kind of thing that got Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego thrown into the fiery furnace in the book of Daniel. So this invitation: “The idols speak deceit, diviners see visions that lie; they tell dreams that are false, they give comfort in vain. Therefore the people wander like sheep oppressed for lack of a shepherd.”

Well, what is God’s attitude toward this terrible situation, where even the restored community of Judah is getting attracted away from His truth? “My anger burns against the shepherds,” says the Lord. “I will punish the leaders. The Lord Almighty will care for his flock, the house of Judah, and make them like proud horses in battle. From Judah will come the cornerstone, from him the tent peg, from him the battle bow, from him every ruler. Together they will be like mighty men trampling the muddy streets in battle. Because the Lord is with them, they will fight and overthrow the horsemen. I will strengthen the house of Judah. I will save the house of Joseph and restore them, because I have compassion on them,” declares the Lord. This theme of shepherds is a theme that relates to the problems of leadership that had just plagued Judah.

After Zerubbabel, as far as we can tell, there were not very many noble governors. An exception was the wonderful governor Nehemiah, and you can read about him in the book of Nehemiah—all the good things that he did. But he really was an exception. We simply do not know of any other good ones. The vast majority of the governors appointed by the Persians were apparently very much less than they should have been, apparently very much enamored of playing the political game and of currying favor with the people, of doing as little as possible that was difficult or controversial, of just keeping the cult going—but not really promoting true faith in God and obedience to the Mosaic covenant. As a result, they are often criticized; God speaks against worthless shepherds of one kind or another. He talks about the ways in which He will judge them.

There is a fabulous Messianic prophecy in chapter 12 of the book of Zechariah—well worth reading. We can only just sample from it here, but listen to this kind of language: “I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for Him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for Him as one grieves for a firstborn son. On that day the weeping in Jerusalem will be great, like the weeping of Hadad Rimmon in the plain of Megiddo (referring to a ceremony of weeping that used to take place at that part of Israel). The land will mourn, each clan by itself.” This is a way of describing in the language and imagery of that day, language and imagery meaningful to Zechariah’s audience, that God would put to death His only Son. He would be pierced, and they would look on Him and that would be their means of consolation—if they would really, indeed, weep for their sins.

But they needed to be cleansed from sins, and so we find predictions of that in chapter 13. “On that day a fountain will be opened to the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to cleanse them from sin and impurity. On that day (meaning the day that I act, not specified yet in Zechariah’s time, but we know it as related to the coming of Christ and His death and resurrection), I will banish the names of the idols from the land, and they will be remembered no more. I will remove the false prophets, the spirit of impurity from the land. And if anyone still does that kind of prophesying, his father and mother, to whom he was born, will say to him, ‘You must die, because you have told lies in the name of the Lord.’ When he prophesies, his own parents will stab him.”

Is this a prediction of something that actually came true literally? No, it is a way of saying that falsehood, false doctrine, the nonsense that characterized so much of Judah’s history—turning to the false gods and their prophets and the ones who falsely claimed to speak the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, all that—would be done away with. God would have His Word purely stated before the people. He would give it to them, and they would know it. All of them would know Him from the least to the greatest. There is also in that same chapter the prediction of the death of Christ, and the shepherd that is struck, and the sheep that are scattered as the Gospels refer to it.

Then, in chapter 14, there is a wonderful prediction of the coming of the Messiah. It is in the Lord, the one we know as Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God, that all of history has its consummation. Zechariah reveals that to the people that he’s called to preach to. The Lord takes away all opposition to Him, makes Him finally and utterly powerful, just as Jesus said of Himself: “All power in heaven and earth has been given to Me.” That is the picture with which the book of Zechariah ends, and of course it is the fact that we count upon ourselves as we follow Christ in this world in our time.