Thru the Bible

Guest (Male): Have you ever visited a church that was completely different from what you're used to? Maybe the formality of how everyone dressed was unfamiliar, or the order of service caught you off guard. Maybe the music, the way scripture was read, or the style of communication felt a little foreign. It raises a good question: do these differences in ceremony and ritual really matter? Well, that's what we're going to explore on Thru the Bible as we continue in Zechariah chapter six.

Our teacher Dr. J. Vernon McGee offers a thoughtful three-part answer. I'll give you a teaser: it's not about the rituals; it's about the heart. Has your life been changed by the Holy Spirit? Are you a new creation in Christ? Well, before we dive into our study, we want to share some stories of transformed lives. Real people changed by the power of God's word.

First, we've got a letter from Angola. A listener to our Umbundu language program writes this: "It's been eight years since I started listening to this program. Before that, I lived as an evil man without Jesus. My marriage was destroyed because of alcohol and drugs. My wife went back to her parents and everything was hard for me. 30 years went by and I began listening to God's word with you. After months of receiving the teaching, I accepted Jesus as my Savior. My wife joined me again, my family is reunited, and I am going to be baptized in a few months. I thank God." 30 years. What an incredible story of redemption.

And then here's another one from a listener in Andhra Pradesh who wrote this: "I am 50 years old and live alone. My husband and children have passed away. Among my family, I am the only one who believes in Jesus. Almost every day, I face criticism and rejection from my relatives. As a widow, my brother has said he wants to send me to an ashram, but I don't want to go. They've invited me to live with them, but I know they don't allow me to listen to God's word. Despite it all, I find the strength and joy watching your program in Telugu every day. Please pray for my relatives that they will also come to know God."

Wow, that's a moving letter, isn't it? Well, these stories remind us why prayer is essential to this ministry. Dr. McGee didn't just encourage prayer; he insisted on it. And that's why we formed the World Prayer Team. It's a community of people committed to praying for God's word to reach hearts all around the world. Would you join us? It's super easy. Just go to ttb.org/pray. You can also do it in our app by clicking on World Prayer Today. And if you don't have our app, just download it for free from your app store.

Now let's commit this time to the Lord. Heavenly Father, thank you for your word and for the life-changing power that it holds on us. Speak to us now and change each one of us. We ask this in the name of Jesus, Amen. We're off to Zechariah chapter six as Dr. J. Vernon McGee takes us through the Bible.

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: My friends, last time we got down to the 15th verse, which is the last verse of the sixth chapter. We saw that there had come this delegation down from Babylon, and they had come with some crowns that they had made. The message that was given at that time by the Lord was to make it very clear that all that they did when they crowned Joshua, he was the high priest, and it was symbolic. It was looking forward to the time when the one who's called the Branch, whose name is the Branch.

Now, may I say that the word of God speaks of the Lord Jesus Christ as the Branch in a four-fold way. For instance, you have over in Isaiah the fourth chapter, the second verse: "In that day shall the branch of the Lord be beautiful and glorious; the fruit of the earth shall be excellent and comely for them that are escaped of Israel." So, you have there the one that's presented as the Branch of Jehovah. Then you find out that he is also called the Branch of David. That's over in the 11th chapter of Isaiah, a stem out of Jesse.

Then you find also that he's spoken of as Jehovah's servant, the Branch. We've already seen that here in Zechariah in the third chapter, the eighth verse. In that, you have his humiliation and obedience unto death. Then in Zechariah in this passage that we're looking at here, he's called the man whose name is the Branch. In the Gospel of Matthew, you have him as the Branch of David; he is in the line of David. In the Gospel of Mark, he is Jehovah's servant, the Branch. In the Gospel of Luke, he's the man whose name is the Branch.

And in the Gospel of John, he's the Branch of Jehovah. That is a marvelous and glorious picture of him, and the picture that we have here. It's the man whose name is the Branch. He's the one that's going to rule and reign. He'll build the millennial temple, we're told here. "He shall build the temple of the Lord." He'll be a priest upon his throne; we emphasized that last time. The crowns in verse 14 shall be to Helem and so on. These crowns were to be a memorial.

We're told that here, for a memorial in the temple of the Lord. They were put in the upper windows, and they were to remind the people that God would send the Messiah and he would not only be the king, but he would be the priest. Now verse 15 says: "And they that are far off shall come and build in the temple of the Lord, and ye shall know that the Lord of hosts hath sent me unto you, and this shall come to pass, if ye will diligently obey the voice of the Lord."

Now the message for these people, of course, is a message of encouragement. Zechariah is encouraging them to build the temple. He and Haggai both were trying to overcome their discouragement and all of the hurdles that they had to get over. Now he encourages them to build. Why? Because this little segment that seems to them so small, it fits into God's plan and program of the ages that will finally bring the Lord Jesus Christ to the earth as the Messiah, as the Branch, to rule.

So what you have here, I consider a tremendous, wonderful picture. It reveals Christ in all of his glory in the second coming of Christ. What they were doing was in the plan and program of God, and he would be a priest-king and would serve in the millennial temple. In verse 15, he's saying to them this: "The temple that you are building now is not an end in itself. It points on to the coming of the Branch, of the Messiah, of the Christ, of the Redeemer." In other words, this is the hope that was given to them.

Now, take a look at that little group building the temple. They were going to get help from afar, but actually, as you look at it, it's not impressive. But when you see it in the plan and purpose of God and in the sweep of history, it points on to Christ. May I now make this comment: any Christian work that's an end in itself is doomed. It may be a cathedral on the boulevard that's named for some man, or it may be a great building named for a man who's very generous, or a college that exalts a man.

I know of a Christian college that's got names of men on practically every building that's on the campus, exalting man. Even a mission that just honors a man is doomed. My friend, let me be very personal: a radio program that is for the profit of a man and for his exaltation—all of these are doomed. They're going to go down in ignominy and defeat. They must honor the Branch because God is moving to that day when he's going to reign, moving to that day when he'll first take his own out of this earth, the church.

And then he'll be coming to the earth to establish his kingdom here upon the earth. So that today, we can bring it right down to today, that little group of believers on a back street that's meeting in the name of Christ, seeking to honor him and studying his word, and they really want to do his will. I think that very frankly, they can truly sing to the glory of God: "Lord Jesus, I love you, I know thou art mine; for thee all the follies of sin I resign."

May I say to you, that little group that's unknown to the world that's meeting out somewhere today on a back street or up in some rural community is more important in the plan of God than anything that's happening in Washington or the capitals of the world today. I know that that's hard for a great many people to believe, but that little group is in a plan and program that's going to join in a mighty chorus someday when they sing a new song and it's in heaven.

They're going to sing it to the Lamb and they say to him: "Thou art worthy to take the book and to open the seals thereof, for thou wast slain and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred and tongue, people and nation, and hast made us unto our God a kingdom of priests, and we shall reign on the earth." That's the goal toward which they're moving. So that little group that the world is ignoring today and the multitudes pass them by, they are more important to the plan and purpose of God than any other group on this earth.

May I say to you, this is a tremendous passage of scripture and what a message it has for us today. Now that brings us to the conclusion of the first major division of Zechariah. Now in chapter seven and eight, we have what I've labeled a historic interlude. It's very similar to what we had in the little prophecy of Haggai. You'll recall that in the middle of that prophecy, this man Haggai was sent to the priests to ask concerning the law, a law concerning cleansing.

Anything that is ceremonially clean when it touches that which is unclean, will it make it clean? Of course, it won't. And that which is ceremonially unclean, if it touches that which is clean, will it make it unclean? The answer is yes, it will. Now in this historic interlude, we have this same problem approached from a little different angle. I think that the important thing now is to get this before us. So let me read here in chapter seven at verse one of Zechariah, and I'll read several verses.

"And it came to pass in the fourth year of king Darius, that the word of the Lord came unto Zechariah in the fourth day of the ninth month, even in Chislev." All right, the impressive thing here is that again he's going to have a message for these people, and it's going to be a very important message. He makes it clear it's not his own message, but it's the word of the Lord. It was in the fourth year of the king Darius, and it was the ninth month of Chislev, and it was the fourth day. If you want me to bring it right down to our calendar, that was December the 4th, 518.

Now you recognize it was during that same period that Haggai was speaking to the people in a very practical way. Now, will you notice what the problem is? It says: "When they had sent unto the house of God Sherezer and Regem-melech and their men to pray before the Lord, and to speak unto the priests who were in the house of the Lord of hosts, and to the prophets, saying, 'Should I weep in the fifth month, separating myself, as I have done these so many years?'"

All right, now this is what is before us. When it says here, "when they had sent unto the house of God," actually this delegation had originally been in Babylon. These are Babylonian names. I have put in my notes that it's a delegation that had come to Jerusalem from Babylon. Actually, when it says here that they were in the house of the Lord, these men were sent unto the house of God; they actually came from Bethel. Now Bethel means, you remember, the house of God.

It was old Jacob that named it, and it was the place as he said that night when God appeared to him, "This is the very door of heaven, this is the temple or the house of God." He thought he'd run away from God, but he hadn't. Now these people have come down from Bethel. Bethel was in the northern kingdom. It was in the area that the ten tribes were. Now let me ask you a question: who do you think that these people were that came down? Do you think they were of the tribe of Judah?

May I say to you, they were not of the tribe of Judah. They probably were of the tribe either of Benjamin or Ephraim, probably of Ephraim. If you go back to the book of Ezra, which I'll not do today because we've already been over that book and I called attention to it at the time, you will find that many people who returned from the captivity went back to towns, some of them are way up in the north of the Sea of Galilee and in that area. Now all of that belonged to the ten tribes that constituted the northern kingdom of Israel.

Now when anybody says they are the ten lost tribes, may I say to you, you need to really examine the scripture rather carefully. Those that returned would naturally go back to where they came from, and many went to the northern part that was the kingdom of Israel. They happened to be folk born in the Babylonian captivity that are now returning as Jews back to their own tribe, and there's no ten lost tribes. So if you feel like England or the United States happen to make up the ten lost tribes, may I say to you, you are very much lost in the maze of scripture because they are not lost, but you are.

Actually, they were not lost, and that makes this a very important passage of scripture because "they" here actually refers to men who came down from Bethel, the place called the house of God. Now they've come down with a question. In fact, you have here a question that Zechariah gives a three-fold answer to. It has to do with a ritual. Is a ritual right or is a ritual wrong? That is the question that they ask. And the picture is just simply this.

You see, they had come down from the north, and they had been into captivity, and they had set aside days of fasting and days of weeping and mourning. They had continued that after the captivity, and God was not blessing them. Oh, there was a certain amount of prosperity had come; many of them were building their homes and they were getting very comfortable, and some of them affluent. Yet they go and weep and mourn, and they say, "We've been doing that and God hasn't blessed us. What about it? What about a ritual?"

That's the question that is here: the right and wrong of a ritual. This is an important question. I'll tell you why it's an important question: because today we're seeing a recrudescence of ritualistic religion. There's a movement toward formalism, adopting a ritual. It is always in evidence when people cease to think, when they get away from the person of Christ. Then they start either getting up and down or marching around; they have to start doing something. And it is a time of spiritual decline.

There was a time when they fought over the prayer book in Europe, as if that was important, whether you should stand up or sit down or kneel, or how should you do it? Then there are many people today that want a liturgy or an elaborate ritual, and there are religions that are called Christian religions that are ritualistic, some are liturgical. Even those of us that are nonconformists that come from out of the Reformation, we say a ritual is repugnant. We despise a ritual. We see in it evil continually.

But even in our services, we have a certain amount of it. We open with a doxology and everybody stands up for that, and we close with the benediction, and somewhere in between there's an offering and a sermon. Now what is the value of a ritual? God gave to the nation Israel a religion, the only religion he ever gave, and it was ritualistic. It was loaded with ritual. And the question arises: is a ritual right or is a ritual wrong? And that's the question of these people.

They said, "We've been going through the ritual, we've been weeping, we've been carrying on, and should we continue to practice it?" Now Zechariah is going to answer their question. He's the prophet of the remnant. He is encouraging them. Most of Israel, both the northern and southern tribes, had not returned. They were doing well and prospering, and they also had this same question. They were going through that, and so God has an answer. And the very interesting thing is that God's answer is also a message from God.

Here it is, verses four and five: "Then came the word of the Lord of hosts unto me, saying, 'Speak unto all the people of the land, and to the priests, saying, When ye fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh month,' even those seventy years, did ye at all fast unto me, even to me? And when ye did eat, and when ye did drink, did not ye eat for yourselves, and drink for yourselves?" God says: "Really, when you went through your ritual, did you do it for me? And did you do it to honor me and to praise me, or did you do it as a legalistic sort of an exercise that you thought would be beneficial to you?"