Zechariah [Part 1] - Hope Beyond Exile

Read the transcript below, or watch a video of the teaching by Joseph Shulam.

Shalom. We started with the Minor Prophets, and we have arrived at the book of Zechariah. That is the 11th book of the 12 books of the Minor Prophets. They are called Minor Prophets because most of them are short. They could be from one chapter, like Obadiah, and they could be with two chapters and three chapters. Haggai is two chapters for example, and many of the others are three chapters. Zechariah is the longest of the Minor Prophets. It has 14 chapters, and it's a very interesting book. The reason that it's interesting is because Zechariah gives us the dates on which some of those events happened, which is unusual. We can pinpoint the dates exactly when he wrote, when he had the visions, and during which king's period this book is taking shape.

Zechariah prophesied in the 6th century BCE, before the Christian Era or the Common Era, and he gives us the date directly, as in verse 1 of Zechariah chapter 1:

So, we have the name of the emperor, Darius the Great, and we have the month and we have the year that this prophecy is being recorded or happened in the life of Zechariah. We know the name of his father, the name of his grandfather, and the name of the king in whose time he prophesied. The secular date, this would be the year 520 BC. And we could say the exact date that this prophecy was delivered to Zechariah, the son of Berekiah, the son of Iddo.

Now, the book of Zechariah is directly related to the book of Haggai for several reasons. First of all, they prophesied about the same time, in the same place, in the same period, and dealing with some of the same problems. Except the book of Haggai is two chapters, and the book of Zechariah is 14 chapters. And they are both what's called post-exilic books. In other words, it's after the exile of the children of Israel to Babylon. So they are after the exile, post-exilic. Together with the post-exilic books that we have, Ezra, Nehemiah, the most famous ones, we have Haggai, and we have Malachi, and Zechariah.

These are the Jews that were probably born during the 70 years of Babylonian exile. And by that time, Babylonia was already conquered by the Persians. And this is the time of Darius the king. And these Jewish boys in exile have come to Israel, and they have established both a spiritual entity, rebuilt and rededicated and re-established the priesthood and the temple in Jerusalem. And they had also a political entity. Zerubbabel, that was from the house of David, according to tradition, was the political ruler, and a priest called Joshua was a descendant of the Levites, and he was the priest that officiated in the temple. But he had Messianic, how should I say, inclinations, and kind of symbolized the Messiah that is going to come several centuries later, born in Bethlehem, raised in Nazareth, crucified in Jerusalem. And his name is also Yeshua.

So, what do we have? We have here a book that is divided into two sections: chapter 1 to 8 and chapter 9 to 14. And we're going to teach this book in two sessions as well, from chapter 1 to chapter 8. And of course, we can't cover every aspect of the book in the minutes that are allowed to us to share with Brad TV and our brothers and sisters in Korea and around the world, but we're going to do our best because there are some very, very important things that happen and that relate to us in the book of Zechariah.

Israel is returning home from the Babylonian exile. Obviously, not all the people, obviously not the people that went to the Babylonian exile 70 years earlier, but their children, sometimes their grandchildren. And they are supported by the Persian royal house, and they are sent back to the land of their forefathers and to Jerusalem with money and with the authority of the Persian Empire. And why would the Persian Empire, and Darius specifically, want to do that, to send the Jews back to their own land that was given to Abraham, to Isaac, and Jacob in the days of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, long, long time before?

The reason is this: Persia became an empire, and the other empire in the Middle East was Egypt, and it was there for a long, long time. But the land of Israel controlled two of the major highways of the ancient worlds: El Camino Real, that is the Royal Highway, the King's Highway, that crossed from Egypt across the Negev Desert to the other side of the Dead Sea and up the Jordan River, and then connected with the road to Damascus, and the Way of the Sea, that went from Egypt along the sea coast of the Mediterranean and arrived to Mount Carmel, turned east through the Valley of Jezreel and under the Sea of Galilee, connected to the same highway to Damascus, and from there, of course, to the rest of the Mesopotamian fertile crescent.

So, Darius wanted people who are faithful to him, who he sent and he financed, to control this part of the country in order to control the highway. That's why he sent the Jews, the Israelites, to the land of their forefathers and gave them money to restore the temple and to rebuild Jerusalem and the country so that they would be kind of the front guard from any problems with Egypt and Africa that would want to control that very strategic thing called the two highways, major highways between three continents: Africa, Asia, and Europe. It has very important strategic value to control the highways.

So, Zechariah, a prophet probably born in Babylon, sent over here to this land, and he receives visions. God reveals to Zechariah, in visions the things that he is concerned with in Israel. The first vision is already in the first chapter, and I'm going to read it for you. The words of the Lord to Zechariah, from verse 5 and verse 6:

In other words, your forefathers, the prophets of Israel, they died, but the words that I gave them, they survived more than your fathers.

In other words, this is kind of a declaration that God gives to Zechariah, a commission, if you wish. And he says, "Listen, the prophets are dispensable. They come, they prophesy, they speak, they die, but my words, the things that I promised your forefathers from my prophets, they are now in vogue. They are now in action. What you are seeing happening now is not only by the grace of Darius the Great, the king, the emperor, but it is because I promised it to your forefathers. I told your forefathers that if they're unfaithful, they will go out to exile, and I told them that I will return them from the exile. So what you are seeing now is not because of the prophets. It's because I am keeping my promises to your people."

That's the opening shot of the book of Zechariah, the person who is appointed by God to carry the messages of God to the people of Israel upon their return back to the land. So again, we have the date, in verse 7 of Zechariah 1, on the 24th day of the 11th month, which is the month of Shevat, in the second year of Darius, the word of the Lord came to Zechariah, the son of Berekiah, the son of Iddo the prophet:

In other words, the earth's okay, it's resting quietly. We have gone around, there is no alarm. The earth is resting quietly. Now, we have the exact date in which this prophecy comes to Zechariah the prophet. We have it on the second year of Darius, and the month and the date are given to us in verse 7 of chapter 1. If we translate that to our calendar, it would be December the 18th, 520 BCE. That in itself is an amazing and interesting fact. That is rare even among the major classical prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the other classical prophets. We have the exact date that this vision came to Zechariah. Now the question is here: What does this vision mean? What is God trying to say to Zechariah, that is relevant for us?

So the first thing that I want to say: Zechariah, Haggai, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Malachi are post-exilic. We are today the land of Israel. We are post-exilic. We are the first generations after two thousand years of exile, like these men that are mentioned in the text of the book of Zechariah. Most of us were born in exile. I was born in Bulgaria. The brother standing in front of me and recording this video was born in Israel, but his parents and grandparents were not born in Israel. Most of the population of Israel, when I was growing up in my neighborhood, had no one born in Israel.

In the 1950s, when I was a child, my class at elementary school had hardly anybody born in Israel. We had people born in Persia, people born in Yemen, people born in Poland, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and England. Yes, we are post-exilic ourselves. So whatever we're reading here in Zechariah, God's prophetic promises to Zechariah for his day in some ways are appealing to us as well. We can understand the difficulties and the challenges that Zechariah and the people of Israel were facing in his generation. We still have the same enemies that opposed Ezra, Nehemiah, Zechariah, and Haggai. We have the Arab neighbors that oppose the return of the Jews from Persian exile and Babylonian exile then; and the same Arab neighbors are opposing us today.

At that time, they had to build the walls of Jerusalem and the temple, restoring them with one hand holding the sword and the other hand holding the trowel for the building. We have similar challenges today, dear brothers and sisters. But here comes this story of the angel of the Lord revealing to Zechariah a red horseman or a man on a red horse in a valley, a deep ravine, a deep valley that has myrtle trees in it. He is a messenger of God that is sent to go to and fro on the face of the Earth and report what's happening on the earth. He comes back and says, "Oh wow, the Earth's fine. It's resting quietly." The problem is not in the Earth. The problem is with the people that have returned from the exile in Jerusalem. That's where the problem is.

Now, this prophet Zechariah is fascinating, and I want to take just a few more minutes to discuss the vision that God is revealing to Zechariah in the rest of chapter one. We may have to do more than one session, more than two sessions about Zechariah because of its importance. I'm reading now from chapter one, verse 13 on down to verse 17 of chapter 1 of Zechariah:

This is a very encouraging prophecy in the days of Zechariah because they faced some of the same problems that we face today after returning to Jerusalem from exile. God is assuring Zechariah that He cares for Jerusalem and for Zion and that the restoration in Jerusalem and Zion is at the height of His priority. I believe it was then the height of His priority and today the height of His priority. Why is it today? Because the Messiah ascended to Heaven from the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, and the promise is that the Messiah is going to descend back to Jerusalem. So God cares about Jerusalem as much now as He did then because Jerusalem is the city of the great King. It's the seat of the Messiah.

Now, what is this issue of the myrtle trees? Myrtle trees appear in several of the prophetic visions in the Bible. They appear in several texts in Isaiah and in the other prophets in relationship to other trees. The other trees are all useful; we could make furniture out of them, weapons out of them, and do all kinds of things with the other trees, whether it's an oak, a terebinth, or some of the other trees. They are useful. But the myrtle tree is not a useful tree. What is the advantage of the myrtle tree? It doesn't have any fruit. You can't make furniture out of it, but it smells good.

In the texts that come from Isaiah and from the other prophets that have the myrtle tree in them, the function of the myrtle tree is symbolizing the presence of the Holy Spirit, the good smell. Why is this so? Because the spirit in Hebrew is "ruach." The Holy Spirit is "ruach hakodesh," and smell is "reach." It is the same Hebrew root, and "reach" and "ruach" are the same root. That's why the myrtle tree appears in these visions.

Please read at least a few chapters from the beginning of Zechariah, or read the whole Zechariah—it's only 14 chapters—and be prepared for the next lessons of Zechariah, which every one of them is going to be fascinating. God bless you and bring you closer with the good smell of the Spirit of God in your life.