Thru the Bible

Guest (Male): With 24/7 news at our fingertips, it's pretty easy to stay plugged in to what's happening in the world. Welcome to Thru the Bible. In today's study, our teacher, Dr. J. Vernon McGee, encourages us to go one step further: to view world events through the lens of scripture and history. You'll see the hand of God moving to accomplish His purposes, he says, and that's exactly what we've been seeing in our study of Zechariah's 10 visions.

These visions aren't just ancient messages for Israel; they speak to us in the 21st century. As we continue our journey through Zechariah, we'll see how they come together to tell a bigger story. So open your Bible to Zechariah chapter six, verse nine, and we're going to continue Dr. McGee's introduction from our last study.

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: When you come over to the New Testament, you'll find in Romans 3:26 that Paul put it in this very succinct manner. He says to declare, I say, at this time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. How wonderful. Grace and mercy are now associated with the justice of God.

The popular notion in the church is that justice is associated with judgment and hell, and that is the extent of it. Aren't you glad God is who He is? Our God is just and righteous when He saves the sinner, and He's just and righteous in condemning the lost. God is rich in mercy. He is prepared to bestow it upon all who believe.

A man does not have to do anything to be lost; he is lost. That is his nature and his state. All man has to do to be saved is to accept God's salvation. It's a gift. God is in the saving business. Judgment is His strange work. God extends justice, grace, and mercy in Christ. If you want justice, you want Christ, by the way.

The New Testament has a way of putting it. He was delivered for our offenses. He was raised for our justification. Because God is just in raising Him from the dead, that means when God raised Him from the dead, that now there's a living Savior and we are now joined to Him.

In First Corinthians 1:30: "But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption." All of these He's been made to us. And then in Second Corinthians 5:21: "For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him."

You can trust our God. You can rest upon Him. We find in Romans 4:5 this statement: "But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness." His faith is counted for that which it is not: righteousness, justification. God fairly and impartially justifies you when you trust the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior, and you today can trust Him.

It is so important to see this. But in the millennium, the one thing that's going to prevail is justice. Now, there's not justice in the world today. You don't have to tell me about how the poor are being trodden down and the rich in other places are being mistreated and how all over the world today human rights are violated.

Of course, we're living in a sinful world today. It's not an ideal world, and man can't make it an ideal world, but God can. That is the hope of the future. There will be justice in the world. There will be justice in this earth someday.

Guest (Male): What a great reminder that real justice is coming, not by our efforts, but through God's grace and mercy. Let's pray and thank Him. Heavenly Father, we look around and see the brokenness of our world, and sometimes we feel powerless to change it. But we're thankful that You are not. As we study, Lord, may Your word bring comfort and confidence in Your perfect plan. In Jesus' name, amen. Now let's join Dr. J. Vernon McGee in Zechariah 6 on Thru the Bible.

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: Friends, I want to read this section that we're in that actually concludes these 10 visions of Zechariah. I'm going to move back and begin reading at verse nine: "And the word of the Lord came unto me saying..." Every time that Zechariah, and that's true of the other prophets, have a message of great importance that has to do with the future or of judgment that has to do with the present, they remind the people that it's not their message, that they're getting it from the Lord.

It ought to be a warning for us who are ministers and teachers of the word of God, that we've got no business to give out our pet theory. We have no business being petulant about any message that we give out. We are to give out the word of God. The prophets were very careful to say that they just weren't being ugly or mean about judgment, nor were they looking into the future and making a guess. That ought to be a warning to a great many today that are teaching prophecy.

He says, "Take of them of the captivity, even of Heldai, of Tobijah, and of Jedaiah, who are come from Babylon." These are some men that have come up from Babylon. They belong to the captivity. They were born in captivity, and they did not see fit to return with the others, but they've come up for a purpose. They've come up from Babylon.

"And come the same day and go into the house of Josiah the son of Zephaniah. Then take silver and gold and make crowns and set them upon the head of Joshua the son of Josedech, the high priest." That's a strange thing. They did not put it upon the one who is in the line of David. Why? Because that would have meant God was going to restore the line of David at that time, and He had no notion to do that.

Fact of the matter is, the next one that will wear the crown of David is the Lord Jesus Christ when He comes to this earth to establish His kingdom. And so it's been a long time ago. As a result, here the crown is to be put on Joshua, and he's the high priest. That's unusual because God kept religion and the government separate, very separate, by the way. And here the crown is being put on Joshua the high priest, and there's a reason for it.

Speak unto him saying, "Thus speaketh the Lord of hosts saying, Behold the man whose name is The BRANCH, and he shall grow up out of his place, and he shall build the temple of the Lord. Even he shall build the temple of the Lord, and he shall bear the glory, and shall sit and rule upon his throne, and he shall be a priest upon his throne, and the counsel of peace shall be between them both."

"And the crowns shall be to Helem, and to Tobijah, and to Jedaiah, and to Hen the son of Zephaniah for a memorial in the temple of the Lord." Somebody asked me the question: why was it that in the first list you're only given there these three names? Now we have a name of another fellow added, and his name was Hen.

I don't know why, but I always try to furnish an answer for anybody that asks a question. So I said his name is Hen, I guess he just chickened out and was afraid to come up with them at first, so he joined them later. But I trust that you understand I'm being facetious. That is not really the right translation or interpretation, I'm sure.

"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 your God." This is a very important section. That's the reason I've read it, because of the importance of it. It actually is very, very important, so important that we have attempted to read it, and part of it we've gone over twice.

I want to put down a preface to this passage of scripture here. We're coming now to the conclusion of the first major division of Zechariah. We've seen 10 visions. We need now to ascend our own watchtower and see where we are in the stream of history and prophecy. It is possible to lose our way through this section and by so doing, I think, miss one of the greatest lessons of scripture and one of the greatest principles that God puts down.

I would urge those today who attempt to teach prophecy to study this little book rather carefully. I think it will deliver them from making some of these wild and weird interpretations. In this first section of 10 visions—and if you only see eight there, that's all right if you wish it that way—these visions are wild and weird and highly symbolic.

When you go through them, you're apt to come to the conclusion they're just haphazard dream stuff of a prophet of long ago, that they are totally unrelated one to another, and that they can be interpreted in most any way. They are being used today to come up with some rather fragile fables, if you please, rather than a real interpretation.

They cannot mean whatever any expositor wants them to mean to fit some absurd scheme of scriptural interpretation. They are not just a conglomerate of visions. There is a danger of just lifting one out for some purpose and paying no attention to the context of the rest of scripture. Forget that one of the great rules for interpreting prophecy is that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. You've got to fit it in to where it belongs.

All of these visions are connected and related. They have a meaning that's both local, and they tell a story. They give an outline of history and they are far-reaching into the future. They tell one story and they serve one purpose. That has a threefold application. You just can't get anything out of them.

You have all the way from the riders under the myrtle trees to the multicolored chariots. Judgment is the subject, actually, in each one of them and certainly in the background all the way through. You have here the whole future of the nation Israel, including the destruction of her enemies and finally her regathering to the land of Israel and her cleansing and restoration to her high priestly witness and the establishment of the theocracy again.

In this section, the thing that finalizes it all is the coming of Christ to the earth as the great priest-king to reign on the earth on the throne of David. All of that is before us here. Israel had returned to the land, but Israel was discouraged. They wanted to leave off building the temple. God raised up Haggai and Zechariah.

The people were discouraged because not only did the work move slowly and it was difficult, but what they did seemed so small and inconsequential when compared to the greatness of Babylon. You must remember that most of these people had been to Babylon in captivity. They'd seen those great pagan heathen temples there and the Medo-Persian Empire with even greater and larger temples.

Now there has come temporarily a time of peace, and it was actually a time for them to build, but they weren't moving as they should, and God raised up these prophets. Israel was under the cruel hand of a foreign despot, and it would continue down through the centuries until finally Christ would come. Actually, it's not over today. I recognize they're a nation, but they've sure had trouble, haven't they?

They have also found out that they have been put on the auction block, and the nations of the world were willing to sell Israel for a gallon of gasoline. Actually, millions of barrels of Arab oil, and that was a pretty good price, I guess. That's more than Judas got for selling Christ for 30 pieces of silver. Millions of dollars were involved in this.

The thing that this brings out—and of course, Israel not following the word of God does not have this encouragement today, and they need this prophecy of Zechariah—God would judge these Gentile nations. He would cleanse His people, and they must be redeemed as any sinner's redeemed. God would send His King, and all of this is in these visions and more for that matter.

There is a great threefold meaning I'd like to call to your attention as we draw near to the end. There's what is known as the contemporary meaning. Zechariah was speaking into a local situation and a problem that existed in his day, and he was speaking to the people of his day regarding their problem.

Therefore, it had a contemporary meaning. People should not be discouraged was his message. They are in the plan and purpose of God, and they need to see it from the perspective of God's eternal program. They were merely a little part in that program, and that temple they were building would finally usher in the great millennial temple that the Messiah Himself would build. This was part of the program, and all of it is called God's house.

There was also another meaning, a continuing meaning. That is, there is a message for our day. You see, all scripture is given by inspiration of God, and it's profitable. Not all of it's written to us. I don't think God's asked us to build a temple. I'd never felt like I wanted to engage in that, although there are a lot of Christians that tried to get some stone out of Indiana and move it over to Israel to help them build a temple.

You can forget that type of baloney that's going around today. Our business is not to get stone or marble to Israel to help them build a temple. Our business is to get the one who is the Rock of Ages, the one who is the stone cut out without hands, the one who is the stone that He said of Himself that if you fall on Me, you can be broken, but if it falls on you, then the stone will come someday in judgment.

Today you can fall on Him, come in repentance and come as a sinner to Him. These visions, therefore, do have a message for us today, even that first woman astronaut flying through the air with the greatest of ease in a bushel basket trapeze. Yes, God's moving in judgment of Gentile nations. He moved in judgment of Babylon, and they've disappeared from the page of history.

Medo-Persia has come and gone, the Graeco-Macedonian Empire's come and gone, and the Roman fell apart and will come back together again. After all, this world is a stage, as Shakespeare said, where every man must play his part as an individual message. It's a place where God is not only judging nations today, but God is judging individuals.

I wonder, my Christian friend, are you blind to the fact that God is moving in the history of this world? God is judging our nation today. Now, I've had several letters that think I ought to run up the American flag and say everything is all right. Everything's not all right. I believe in the American flag. I am for the American flag and mother and apple pie. I'm for the whole bit, but I think we need to rub our nose into some facts and quit sticking our head in the sand.

Vietnam was a place of shame and humiliation. What did we actually accomplish over there? We spent millions of dollars. Wouldn't it have been better years ago to have sent Bibles and missionaries? Honestly, I don't care who you are. Don't you believe they would have done a little bit better starting schools and churches and orphans' homes and teaching people to be honest?

They say the biggest rackets that are being run today and the biggest black market is over there. We didn't teach them anything because of the fact that we are not a nation capable of teaching morality to any peoples of the world today. We need to bow our own head in shame. We don't even blame the leaders who got us into the mess; in fact, we've made heroes out of those of the past.

You talk about the blind leading the blind. On the other side of the Iron Curtain, we say, "Isn't it terrible, those people are being brainwashed." They're not being brainwashed any more than we're being brainwashed. We stumble along in our sin and our arrogance, the greatest nation in the world today, the strongest nation.

I wonder how long it's going to last. Who would have believed 50 years ago that the day would come that we would have to yield to the demands of a few desert sheiks who ruled over a few people and a bunch of mangy camels? What relationship did anyone see between the camel and a Cadillac?

Today, my friend, the Cadillacs and the Lincoln Continentals and the Rolls Royces have gotten in line in front of filling stations because a few Arab sheiks said, "Line up, boys. That's the way we're going to have it." What humiliation for a nation. Our eyes are not open. We keep going on in sin.

The wealth of the world is returning to that section of the country. They are going to bankrupt the world today in selling oil. The interesting thing is that God said that's the way it was going to happen, and that's the way it's happening today. We are too spiritually blind as a nation to be able to read current events in the context of the word of God.