Zechariah 7:1-5 - Why did you fast?

7:1-3

This is two years after his first message (1:1). Some people had come from Bethel to inquire of the prophets and priests whether or not they should continue to “mourn and fast” in the fifth months. This particular mourning and fasting was associated with the fall of Jerusalem after the Babylonian conquest.

7:4,5

The fasting and mourning had been going on since the fall of Jerusalem. Ostensibly it would seem as though it was a godly thing to do, but here the word of the Lord comes to Zechariah, asking the people what they were really fasting for. Were they doing it for the Lord? Ie were that mourning because they had sinned against God, and in their sinning had brought disgrace to the name of the Lord, and so had disrupted God’s plans? Or were they in mourning because of their own loss? I think we can probably guess what the answer was. This teaches us things about our own reaction to sin. Sometimes when we sin we are “found out”, we feel terrible, maybe there are very bad consequences for us. But why do we feel terrible? Is it just because we have been humiliated or suffered loss, or is it because we have let the Lord down? We need to get to the point where we realise that we are not our own, we have life in order to give glory to God. That needs to be our raison d’etre. We need to have a God-centered view of ourselves and of life, not a self-centered view.

Galatians 1:13,14 - I was advancing in Judaism

1:13

Paul does not try to put any gloss on his past life, but is completely open about what he was like and what he tried to do. He violently persecuted the church and tried to destroy it. In Paul we see how God completely transforms a man, and we also see how God completely forgives a man. His actions were completely opposed to Christ, and caused much harm to Christians. There was no excuse for him, but in Christ he is made righteous.

1:14

Some may have tried to make the argument that Paul was promoting Christianity because he was a “failed Jew”, or not being successful enough in making progress in Judaism. Nothing could be further from the truth. Paul was advancing ahead of many people of his age. He was extremely zealous for the “traditions of the my fathers”. Paul’s life was all about traditional Judaism, and he was very good at it!

Zechariah 6:14,15 - If you will obey the Lord

6:14

The three returnees from Babylon were to be given the crown, with a fourth person, Hen, now being mentioned. It is given as a memorial in the temple of the Lord. There was to be several hundred years between the completion of the second temple and the coming of Christ. This crown was a reminder of what was to come, a reminder that the second temple was not “it”, but only a shadow of “it”. This was actually something that many of the Jews did grasp, at least to some extent. They realised, or at least suspected, that the temple and the return from Babylon could not be the fulfilment of God’s plans, there had to be so much more.

6:15

We then get a reference to those far away. We can see this as referring to the Gentiles, with people from all corners of the globe coming into the kingdom and so helping to build the true temple of the Lord. “This will happen if you diligently obey the Lord your God”. There is nowhere in the Bible where it says “obedience does not matter”, so any teaching or theology that does say this is deeply flawed.

Galatians 1:11,12 - Not man's gospel

1:11

“The gospel is not man’s gospel”. This is a fundamental point, and whether or not someone accepts this is a fundamental dividing line. We see many individuals and we see many churches that treat the gospel as if it was man made, and treat the Bible as if it was a human book. So from their perspective we are free to choose which parts of the Bible we accept or reject. If we have “superior” wisdom or knowledge than our ancestors then we should adopt our teaching. If society has “superior” wisdom then we should choose society’s wisdom over the Bible. This is the line that has been adopted by liberal scholars and churches for the last two hundred years or so. Today it is seen most clearly in the attitude towards LGBT issues. If we follow this line then we are saying that the Bible is not inspired, it is not God’s word. In fact we are saying God has not spoken.

We need to treat the gospel and the Bible as God breathed. The gospel was given by God, it was not man’s idea. Jesus came as the Son of God, sent by the Father, filled with the Holy Spirit. He acted in complete and perfect obedience to the Father, died on a cross for our sins and was raised by God from the dead. He sent the Holy Spirit. Christianity is a revealed religion, the gospel is a revealed message. This does not mean we do not use our brains. Paul certainly used his, and there have been and are many great thinkers who are Bible believing Christians. But our starting point in all things is that the Bible is the revealed word of God.

1:12

Paul does not give the details of the Damascus road experience here, though it is recounted several times in Acts, but he focuses on the main point. Christ revealed Himself to Paul. Paul was on his way to persecute some Christians, to persecute Christians in a new city, but Christ intervened directly and revealed to Paul who He was. See that Christ is the focal point, the centre, of the gospel.

Zechariah 6:12,13 - He shall branch out

6:12

The physical temple was only a shadow of the true temple. This does not mean that the physical temple and its rebuilding was of no importance or significance, it was. But to properly appreciate the importance and significance of the physical temple we need to understand its limitations and temporal nature, and the same applies to appreciating the Law. The Branch is a term used for the Messiah elsewhere in the Old Testament, such as Jeremiah 23:5 and 33:15, and Isaiah 4:2, 11:1. Zerubbabel would oversee the building of the second temple, and he did complete this work, but the Branch would go out into all the world and build the eternal temple, which is God’s people.

6:13

This Branch would sit on a throne and rule, He would be clothed with majesty. He would also be a priest, and a priest upon the throne. As mentioned earlier, there are those who seem troubled by this mixing of the kingship and priesthood. I do wonder if these people actually read the Bible. It seems quite clear from the text that kingship and priesthood are meant to be combined, that is the whole point! And the two aspects would work together in harmony. Jesus is our great high priest, and He is the one with all power and authority.

Galatians 1:10 - Pleasing man or pleasing God?

1:10

We are now going to enter a narrative section where Paul will explain and defend his apostleship. This verse forms a link between the opening of the letter and the narrative section. Note that Paul has just said it is the message that counts above all, not the messenger. Yet now he is going to spend some time justifying himself. Why is this? The reason is that the Judaisers would almost certainly have attacked Paul’s character. We certainly know that this happened in Corinth. We don’t know precisely what they accused him of, but can make various inferences from what we find Paul saying in this letter. It seems that one of accusations was that Paul was seeking to please men. And now we need to remind ourselves what the false teaching was, which is that the Galatians needed to be circumcised in order to truly please God. So the accusation may have been that Paul only said that the Galatians did not need to be circumcised because he was trying to please the Gentiles, to make himself and the message more acceptable to them. He was a man pleaser. Paul utterly rejects such accusations, and says that if he was trying to please man he most certainly would not be a servant of Jesus Christ. Too often we have the notion that we can make Christianity and the gospel “nice”, acceptable to man. This is not true, it is not the teaching of Jesus, it is not what we read about in the New Testament. Now man has not changed in the last two thousand years, he is still a rebellious sinner. The gospel preaches change, preaches acknowledging our guilt, preaches repenting of our sins, preaches putting our trust only in Christ. All this is naturally offensive to natural man.

So why does Paul defend himself when it is the message that counts above all? Because the messenger actually is important. It is important that we live lives of integrity. We are  not and cannot be perfect, but we must seek to live godly lives. For when a leader is proved to be a fraud it adversely affects the faith of people. The Galatians needed to trust Paul and to understand him so that they would be more likely to accept what he was going to say, and remember that he takes a pretty tough line with them in this letter. So Paul will now embark on a pretty lengthy explanation and defence of his ministry, in particular how he got the gospel, and his relation to the other apostles.

Zechariah 6:9-11 - Make a crown

6:9,10

This time there is no vision, instead the word of the Lord comes directly to Zechariah, and it names three specific exiles who have arrived from Babylon, we don’t know anything more about the three men. However, it is worthwhile looking at the context. First, as mentioned in the introduction, most Jews had not returned from Babylon at this time, so they tended to arrive in dribs and drabs. Then we should look at this in the context of Hag 2:8 where God declares that the silver and gold are His. Finally we should see this in the context of Ezra 6, especially verse 5, where Darius decrees that the silver and gold taken from the first temple is to be returned to Jerusalem. So it is possible that this verse ties in with those two.

6:11

The silver and gold is to be taken and made into a crown, and the crown is to be set upon the head of Joshua the high priest. Now some get upset here, saying that priests did not wear crowns, so it must mean Zerubbabel, the governor. The fact that priests did not wear crowns is the whole point of this section. God is declaring a new thing. The Messiah (referred to as the Branch in the next verse) would be both a king and a priest. If we go back to Samuel and the appointment of the first king, Saul, we see that Israel was never meant to have a king, for God Himself is their king. And in Hebrews we see that Jesus is the Great High Priest. The Levitical priesthood was never intended to be for all time, for a much greater priest was coming. Jesus Christ is both our king and our great high priest. This passage is so clearly prophetic.