Zechariah 12
BEcause God has withdrawn His Spirit from the corporate church, one congregation after another has turned apostate. As a result, many believers have left their churches, while many others have been driven out. Like Jeremiah, we who love Christ find ourselves being much persecuted, much treated as outcasts.
This nevertheless is in full accord with God’s endtime plan. It is He who has loosed Satan for a little season, enabling the latter to effect the abomination of desolation in the holy place. It is He who has allowed false Christs and false prophets to prosper. But Satan is becoming increasingly arrogant. He thinks he can by his own power totally destroy us children of God.
Thankfully, the Lord is well aware of the tribulation we are going through. In Zechariah 12, among other places, He assures us that He will come to avenge us. On Judgment Day, the devil and the wicked will finally get what is coming to them.
I. God the Creator will be the judge.
The chapter begins with God identifying Himself as both the Creator of the universe and the One who gave life to mankind. Verse 1 reads:
The burden of the word of the Lord for Israel, saith the Lord, which stretcheth forth the heavens, and layeth the foundation of the earth, and formeth the spirit of man within him.
Had God not created the heavens and the earth and had He not given us breath, none of us would ever exist. This reality alone should cause everyone to want to worship Him. But that’s not the case. People have been denying the Lord as the Creator. The recent teaching, for example, is that the universe came out of an unexplained big bang, and mankind is simply the product of evolution.
Because God has formed the spirit of man within him, man subconsciously looks up to someone for help in times of need, to worship in periods of prosperity, and to placate when he thinks he is being punished. Unfortunately, as Romans 1:25 puts it, “(They) changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator.” They worship idols.
It’s only fitting, therefore, that as God warns of His upcoming judgment, He points to His being the Creator.
II. Believers will share in the judging.
While believers now have to suffer tribulation, they will be given the privilege of executing God’s wrath upon the unsaved. We read in verse 2:
Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling unto all the people round about, when they shall be in the siege both against Judah and against Jerusalem.
In this context, the Judah and Jerusalem under siege are us believers. Just when Satan and his people think that they have succeeded in defeating us, God will turn the tables around and make us a cup of trembling unto them. Of this cup, we read in Psalm 75:8: “For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup, and the wine is red; it is full of mixture; and he poureth out of the same: but the dregs thereof, all the wicked of the earth shall wring them out, and drink them.”
That God will make us believers the cup is consistent with I Corinthians 6, where God reveals that the saints will judge the world, and with Revelation 16, which speaks of seven angels pouring out the vials of God’s wrath upon the earth. (The word “angels” there should be translated “messengers” because Revelation 19:10 reveals that they are fellow servants and brothers of John.)
The whole world. While judgment has begun at the house of God, by Judgment Day it will widen to include the whole world. We read in verse 3:
And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it.
As noted earlier, one reason why God is angry at mankind is that they have been worshipping created things rather than the Creator. Another reason, this verse points out, is that toward the end of time, all the people are gathered together to battle “Jerusalem”. Deceived by Satan, they rebel against God by becoming utterly sinful. But in that day God will deliver them into our hands.
III. Judgment is an answer to prayers.
In verses 4-9, God describes the horrors of Judgment Day. Before we study that passage, let’s just look at the middle part of verse 4:
and I will open mine eyes upon the house of Judah,
A commentary of that remark can be found in I Kings 8. Solomon, having finished constructing the temple, is leading the Israelites in a humble and heartfelt prayer. In the midst of that prayer, he says in verse 29:
That thine eyes may be open toward this house night and day, even toward the place of which thou hast said, My name shall be there: that thou mayest hearken unto the prayer which thy servant shall make toward this place.
In saying “I will open mine eyes upon the house of Judah” in verse 4, God is thus saying that His upcoming judgment is an answer to the prayers of saints. And indeed it is.
Examples. One such prayer is found in Revelation 6. When the fifth seal was opened, the Apostle John saw under the altar the souls of those who had been martyred. We read in verse 10, “And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?”
In Luke 18, the Lord Jesus tells a parable about a woman nagging a judge to encourage believers to keep praying and not to faint. He concludes in verse 7: “And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them?” That parable, you see, is not telling believers to nag God in their prayers. Rather, it is about God promising to avenge His elect, who cry day and night to Him for His return.
It is on Judgment Day that God avenges the elect. This is explained in verse 9:
And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.
IV. God will give them victory.
Let’s look now at some of the other figures that God uses regarding Judgment Day. We read in verses 4 and 6a:
In that day, saith the Lord, I will smite every horse with astonishment, and his rider with madness: and I will open mine eyes upon the house of Judah, and will smite every horse of the people with blindness...In that day will I make the governors of Judah like an hearth of fire among the wood, and like a torch of fire in a sheaf; and they shall devour all the people round about, on the right hand and on the left:
In the Bible, God often uses horses and chariots to signify the power on which mankind rely. They were then the prime weapons of war. Metaphorically, God is thus saying here that when Judgment Day comes, that which the people of the world has depended on for strength will be rendered altogether useless. And as they are blind to the truths of God, they will be eternally consumed by the hell fire.
Next, we read in verse 5 and the second half of verse 6:
And the governors of Judah shall say in their heart, The inhabitants of Jerusalem shall be my strength in the Lord of hosts their God...and Jerusalem shall be inhabited again in her own place, even in Jerusalem.
Instead of lamenting as we do now over the apostate church and the wicked world, believers will by Judgment Day realize in retrospect why it is so important for us to have Christian unity. Our strength comes from God and also from fellow believers, the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And in eternity, we will always be living together where we belong. We will no longer be strangers and aliens in a foreign land.
V. God will give them total safety.
Right now, we believers are being treated as outcasts by professed Christians. We have been attacked and substantially silenced by the powers that be in Christendom. But not anymore in heaven. Verse 8 promises:
In that day shall the Lord defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and he that is feeble among them at that day shall be as David; and the house of David shall be as God, as the angel of the Lord before them.
Throughout eternity, God will be there to protect us from abuse. We may be feeble now, but we shall be as powerful as King David was at his prime. And the entire body of believers will be like Christ Himself; it will always be in the presence of God.
VI. Judgment comes after all the elect are saved.
In II Peter 3:9, God answers those scoffers that suggest that Jesus will never return, saying, “The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” That God will not return until all of His elect have become saved is also implicit in verses 7 and 10:
The Lord also shall save the tents of Judah first, that the glory of the house of David and the glory of the inhabitants of Jerusalem do not magnify themselves against Judah. …And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.
In His program to evangelize the world, God has set forth this principle in Romans 1:16: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.” When they were on earth, both the Lord Jesus and the Apostle Paul made it a point to send the gospel first to the Jew and then to the Gentiles. It is in this sense that this passage differentiates Judah from the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem.
God does not want Gentile believers to ever look down on the Jews. On this subject, God warns in Romans 11:18, “Boast not against the branches. But if thou boast, thou bearest not the root, but the root thee.”
Nor does God want us to blame the Jews for having crucified Christ. Once God has saved us and given us the Holy Spirit that teaches us all things, we realize deep in our hearts that we who have been redeemed by Christ’s blood are really the ones that have pierced Him. Our Lord would not have to go to the Cross had He not had to pay for our sins. Knowing that, we mourn bitterly; we mourn that God had to give His only begotten Son so that we who believe shall not perish in hell.
VII. The unsaved will regret forever.
While we will always be grateful to Christ, our mourning will turn to eternal joy in heaven. On the contrary, the unsaved will be eternally mourning in hell. We read in verses 11-14:
In that day shall there be a great mourning in Jerusalem, as the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon. And the land shall mourn, every family apart; the family of the house of David apart, and their wives apart; the family of the house of Nathan apart, and their wives apart; The family of the house of Levi apart, and their wives apart; the family of Shimei apart, and their wives apart; All the families that remain, every family apart, and their wives apart.
The context shows that the Jerusalem here represents national Israel in particular, and the whole unsaved world in general. Speaking of Judgment Day, Romans 2:8,9 declares, “But unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, Tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile.” When He became flesh, Jesus came unto His own, the Jews, and they received Him not.
Isolation. But the rest of the world will be no better off, because Revelation 1:7 says, “Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him.” They shall wail because they shall soon be condemned to eternal punishment in hell. And in hell, they cannot even commiserate with one another. They will mourn apart from their relatives, apart from their family members, and apart from their spouses.
Compared to the horrible destiny of the unsaved, this final tribulation of ours is really nothing. We should therefore always be grateful and joyful that God had chosen us even before time began to become His adopted children. We haven’t done anything to deserve it. Our salvation stems all from the mercy and grace of God.