1308-18A XXX

PRISONERS OF HOPE

(Zechariah 9:12-17)

SUBJECT:

F.C.F:

PROPOSITION:

INTRODUCTION:

A. I’m sure you’ve seen those rather famous optical illusions, those pictures that change, depending on how you look at them. So from one perspective, it’s a lamp. But wait, now it’s two identical faces looking at each other. Or the painting appears to be that of an attractive young woman, whose face is turned away. On second glance, though it is now the profile of an old woman. So which is it? Well, it’s both or either, depending on where you place your focus.

Imagine a scene in eastern Colorado, facing west. In the foreground, up close, you see a ranch, with a house, a corral, and some outbuildings. But over on the hill, there’s a mid-sized city. And, of course, towering in the distance are the imposing Rocky Mountains. So what’s this picture all about? Well, it depends on where you look.

B. And this is something of what is happening in the second section of Zechariah’s prophecy. Beginning with chapter nine, the scene changes. Some years, perhaps decades, have elapsed. The temple has been completed, the great goal they had been focusing on, but the wide-scale restoration never took place. Some of God’s people were still exiles in Babylon. And the rest were largely a defeated lot, confused and disillusioned.

And God gives them a vision of the glorious future he has promised through the coming of his King. There are elements to this vision, though, that do not fit their immediate future but would only be fulfilled at the coming of Christ. And there are still other elements which are yet in our future. And it appears what’s happening is that Zechariah beholds the whole thing at once. He looks and sees the foreground, parts of their near future. But across the valley, he sees aspects of the coming of Christ. And yet in the faraway distance, even in our future, he sees the end, the culmination of it all when Christ returns.

C. I propose we focus on the middle. The long past makes for a good historical foundation, and the future is very hopeful and encouraging, but the present is where we now live. Our focus is on Christian outreach and ministry. Here in our text we see what God is doing in our day, and it’s very good.

I. WE TAKE COURAGE IN HIS POWER.

A. It is inescapable. There is endless conflict in the world. In the Old Testament, the lines were drawn very quickly between the people of God and the rebels. Abel honored God, obeying him, bringing him a bloody sacrifice, the blood of a substitute, in worship and was accepted. Cain, his older brother, brought the fruit of his own labors, his self-effort, to God and was rejected. So the rebel Cain killed his brother.

And God selected a people, Israel, as his very own, and against Israel all the nations of the world plotted in opposition. God was their shield and stronghold. But when they broke faith with God, he lifted their guard, and they were overrun. Assyria conquered them, Babylon conquered them, Media-Persia kept them in bondage, and the next threat in their future was Greece. Alexander the Great would come to conquered Palestine 333 B.C. Yet God promised his power to defeat the rebel forces. “12 Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope; today I declare that I will restore to you double. 13 For I have bent Judah as my bow; I have made Ephraim its arrow. I will stir up your sons, O Zion, against your sons, O Greece, and wield you like a warrior’s sword.”

Unbelieving scholars, because they do not accept the possibility of predictive prophecy, will insist that this reference to Greece is a later addition. But the name of Greece, Javan, was known already in Genesis 10, and Greece as a power had defeated the invading Persian forces of King Darius about this time in 490 B.C. They never became a threat to Palestine until Alexander, though.

B. And God said he would give his people the power of victory over them. He would use his people as his bow and arrow, but the Lord himself would work through them: “14 Then the LORD will appear over them, and his arrow will go forth like lightning; the Lord GOD will sound the trumpet and will march forth in the whirlwinds of the south.” And that’s an important principle for all of Christian ministry. God uses his people, but he himself supplies the effective power. In 1 Corinthians 3, Paul explains: “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor.” (6-8) And in this way, Paul says, “9 we are God’s fellow workers.”

But here’s the best part of all. In our age, this war is waged completely against our spiritual enemy and for the souls of men. These Greeks are also mentioned in the New Testament. Paul says this in Romans 1:14-17: “14 I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish. 15 So I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome. 16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”

C. The Gospel is now the power of God. In the Old Testament God worked through military means to destroy the invading Greeks. In our day, God works through the good news of the Gospel to save these lost Greeks, and Germans, and Americans, and Asians. God’s power to save is in the Gospel, patiently, plainly teaching and explaining the good news of new birth and new life through Christ’s death and resurrection, and imploring God’s power through these means. The gospel is God’s power to save.

How much of your prayer and pleading are centered in the gospel? “Well, we have a culture to save. We have social ills to oppose. We have sinful ways to expose and challenge. We have errors to refute.” Yes, we have all of that, but all of that comes second to the good news, for the good news is the power of God. Cultures are saved, social ills are bettered, sinful ways are abandoned, and errors are forsaken when men and women become new creatures in Christ. Only then does the old pass away and the new comes. There’s an old story of a socialist up on his soapbox on the street corner extolling the glories of socialism. He pointed to an old man shuffling by in a ragged overcoat. “Socialism will put a new coat on that man.” A Christian replied, “But Christ will put a new man in that coat!”

That’s God’s power for both salvation and transformation, from the inside out: making new creatures in Christ through the good news of the Gospel.

II. WE HOLD CONFIDENCE IN HIS PROTECTION.

A. In Zechariah’s day, the people were still quite vulnerable. Oh, they had rebuilt the temple and their homes, but they had no defenses. They did not even have a wall around their city. They were easy prey for any invader. They would wait several decades until God would send Nehemiah to rebuild the walls.

But God himself promised to be their protection: “15 The LORD of hosts will protect them, and they shall devour, and tread down the sling stones, and they shall drink and roar as if drunk with wine, and be full like a bowl, drenched like the corners of the altar.” He would guard them, and as a result, they would be bold and confident. They would “tread down the sling stones.” The fearsome “light artillery” of the day, baseball-sized rocks hurled with great force and deadly accuracy, would be no threat to them. So fearless would God’s people be in his protection that they would appear drunk with bravado and valor, unstoppable.

B. This day came a few centuries in their future. After Alexander conquered Palestine in 333 B.C, another Greek general, Antiochus Epiphanes forced his way into Jerusalem and desecrated the temple in 167 B.C. He erected a statue of Zeus in the Holy of Holies and sacrificed an unclean pig on the altar. And this galvanized an outraged opposition which rose up under the leadership of Judas Maccabeus and achieved Jewish independence for almost a century.

But God promises to protect us as well as we march forward in conquest, winning the lost to Christ through his gospel.

C. What kind of threats do we face? Well, in our land there is no official threat. We enjoy the blessing of religious liberty. Yet there are a couple of mild threats we should be aware of.

1. One is an internal threat. We live in an area that promotes a certain level of religious respectability. Most people acknowledge Christianity to some degree and most attend church. But, I’m afraid, some or perhaps much of this is what my friend, Pastor Bob Vander Schaaf used to call “churchianity.” There are limits. It’s okay if you go to church, and it’s okay if you live a pretty decent life, but don’t rise too high in any of this or you’ll make everybody else look bad. In fact, you may disturb others and cause them to question the reality of their churchianity and that’s uncomfortable. So those who earnestly seek to follow Christ will often face the cool exclusion and sometimes the hot ridicule of those who practice churchianity.

2. But the other threat is external: the opposition and scorn of unbelievers, the very people we try to reach. If you explain the gospel and suggest that people are lost and under the continual wrath of God apart from Christ (which they are), you will likely encounter some push back.

Many years ago when I was a young man, I went to the county jail with the Gideons. I tried to speak to another young man in the jail offering to show him the gospel which I described as a message God had for him from the Bible. But he was a scoffer. He said, “Okay, well why don’t you show me what God has to say to me from the Song of Solomon.” I didn’t really know how to respond. I wasn’t that familiar with the Song of Solomon at that point. I just wanted to share the gospel with him. I remember feeling very foolish in my helpless silence, and the man laughed, “You don’t know anything.” I felt very embarrassed. My friend replied, “Well, I know this. You’re in there and we’re out here.” God will give us the grace to defeat our own pride and stand against the opposition of others for the sake of Christ.

III. WE CELEBRATE HIS PROVISION.

A. And, in the meantime, we celebrate God’s present provisions and his promises for our future. “16 On that day the LORD their God will save them, as the flock of his people; for like the jewels of a crown they shall shine on his land. 17 For how great is his goodness, and how great his beauty! Grain shall make the young men flourish, and new wine the young women.” I know that day has not yet come, but it’s started. And we need to celebrate these great truths.

The Gospel is good news. And we need to be the good news people. Our gatherings need to be good news gatherings. Our conversations need to be good news conversations. Our homes need to be good news homes. We are authorized, we are commanded, to bring the good news with us into every circumstance of life.

I wonder, do people really see us as the good news people? I don’t mean that we should sugar coat tough times or pretend that hardships are not hard. But what we must do is precisely what Zechariah does. He writes to people who are not making much progress. Though the temple is rebuilt, their city is still a broken-down ruin, their people are still scattered, enemies surround them, and they are still subservient to a godless, foreign ruler who does not know the Lord.

B. But Zechariah bids them to cast their vision beyond the present day to the glorious future God is preparing for them. “16 On that day the LORD their God will save them, as the flock of his people; for like the jewels of a crown they shall shine on his land.”

Think again of that scene in eastern Colorado. You’re living in the ranch, but the house needs painting, the outbuildings are leaning, the corral has broken down and the cattle are scattered over the hills. It’s a mess. But towering in the backdrop, always looming with splendor at the horizon is the majesty of those mountains. Oh, you still have to round up the cattle, shore up the outbuildings, and paint the peeling house. But you do so in the shadow of hope and glory.

CONCLUSION

Christian outreach and ministry is hard, messy work, touching real lives, facing real problems, suffering misunderstanding, ridicule, and scorn, and a veritable ocean of apathy and disinterest. We crash against immovable people, quite distracted and content to gather seashells and build sand castles that will all be washed away with the tide.

Yet we press on in confidence as “prisoners of hope,” seized and held as willing captives to the glorious promises of God. We take courage in his power, are made confident in his protection, and we celebrate his provision. For we have caught a glimpse of the future he has promised us, and we have cast aside our hope in the fading dreams of this broken age to lay hold of the hope of the gospel.

J

______