Today's Word Radio

Brett Meador: You can almost picture poor Zechariah finally getting some sleep after all these weird dreams. It says, "And the angel that talked with me came again, and waked me, as a man that is wakened out of his sleep."

One of the things the Bible tells you and me in our days is that we're to wake up. I'm reminded of Romans 13 where it says, "Now it is high time to awake out of sleep. Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ and make not provision for the flesh."

Guest (Male): Just as the Apostle Paul told believers it's time to wake up spiritually, the Prophet Zechariah was summoned in a similar way to wake up and live alert and ready for the work God had planned for him to complete: the rebuilding of the temple. Returning to the book of Zechariah for a look into the fifth in a series of visions, let's join Pastor Brett Meador in today's word.

Brett Meador: Zechariah chapter four is where we are. We've been going through the visions of Zechariah. We've been seeing these visions—eight in number. Some say 10. I told you why I believe it's more like eight, which is what most people say. But there's a few that break them up a little differently, and that's okay.

The first four that we've covered so far: remember it was the rider and the myrtle trees, and we found that that was the Lord speaking of how he was going to come to the rescue for Israel. Even though the other nations were prospering, he would be the one to come and save Israel out of their trouble.

The second vision was the four horns, the horns of power. If you remember, the carpenters or those that would actually demo guys, the demolition derby would go with those four horns if you recall and destroy those. Then the measuring line was vision three and God's courtroom was vision four.

That's what brought us all the way up to chapter four now where we get into the fifth vision. We're going to call this vision "The Olive Trees and the Candlestick." Again, these are strange visions and they would've been strange even to Zechariah and it would've been strange to the people of Israel.

The cool part of these visions is they come with that pattern that we talked about that's important. We talked about how these visions were generally divided into different sections of each vision. We talked about there was preparation for the vision, the setup.

Then we saw the presentation of the vision and then there was always confusion or a question raised in the middle of the vision. What's this all about? What does this mean? Then the interpretation or the explanation of the vision. So if you remember, we've gone through that. Each vision has a similar pattern.

By the way, in vision five we're going to start with this first section: the preparation. That starts with verse one. Let's take a look. Chapter four, verse one: "And the angel that talked with me came again, and waked me, as a man that is wakened out of his sleep."

This is the scene. He finds himself asleep and suddenly he's awake. Do you ever get that weird wake-up call where you're in the middle of a good sleep and then you're like, "What's going on?" You can almost picture poor Zechariah finally getting some sleep after all these weird dreams.

One of the things that we talked about in this is the idea of the vision or a dream. Which one is it? A dream tends to be thought of as when you're sleeping. A vision, you can be wide awake and have sort of a vision. As it turns out, the Lord uses dreams and visions in the Bible to speak to his people.

Then we ask that question: "Does the Lord still speak through visions?" I think we have to understand that yes, he still speaks through dreams and visions. Even in the last days like Joel the prophet, he reminded us that "It'll come to pass that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh. And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions."

Like I said last time, you've got to remember to be careful to discern. Have a discerning spirit about dreams and visions. Quiz time: how do you discern if a dream is from the Lord or a vision? You've got to make sure it fits with the Bible.

If it goes outside of the Bible or if it doesn't align with the Bible—if somebody came up and said, "Brett, I have a vision that you're supposed to go rob a bank." I can know pretty certainly that that's probably not of the Lord because "Thou shalt not steal" is a very clear indication.

I'm being ridiculous, but that's the same kind of thing you've got to be careful about. What's another indicator that the dream is of the Lord? Confirmation. Other Christians will say, "That sounds right to me," and there's a sense. By the way, one of the things the spirit will do is some people even have a gift of this discerning of spirits and discerning where things came from.

I think there's some people that are really blessed with that. That's the person you want to run the dream or the vision by. "Is this of the Lord?" Be careful if somebody says, "Absolutely." I'm always a little nervous about that too. But if they say, "There could be. It's possible."

I'll give you one more that might not need to be said, but I think it does: if the dream comes to pass. That was probably from the Lord. If it really did come to pass as the Lord laid it out, a vision or dream. By the way, that was the way they discerned the prophets in the Old Testament.

If you are a prophet of the Old Testament and you said thus and thus was going to happen, if it didn't happen, what happened to that prophet? They would take him outside and stone him to death if he was wrong. So you better get your prophecies right if you're an Old Testament prophet.

It's interesting because a lot of them got it right and they still wanted to stone them to death, but anyway, that's a whole other story. The idea is to be careful to discern. "Is this of the Lord?" You'll know it's from the Lord if it actually happens.

One of the things you definitely don't want to do is come up with some new doctrine or new biblical thought or understanding from a dream or vision. That's always a bad plan. We have everything we need in the Bible to tell us what we believe and what our doctrines are. You never get doctrine from a dream.

Even Galatians says, "If we or an angel from heaven comes and gives you that which other than what we have preached, let that angel be accursed." We've got to be careful with dreams, visions, stuff like that, of course. Those are some of the rules around dreams.

The preparation in this dream, as it turns out, is that he needs to wake up. It makes you wonder, does he wake up out of sleep just metaphorically, or is there an interpretation there? One of the things the Bible tells you and me in our days is that we're to wake up.

I'm reminded of Romans 13:11 where it says, "And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof."

Wake up, Paul says. It's high time to wake up out of sleep. I worry that there's a part of the church today that if we're not careful, we've been lulled into this sleepy little situation where the church is doing exactly the opposite of what we're supposed to do because the word tells us what to do.

Cast off the works of darkness. Put on the armor of light. Let us walk honestly in the day, not in rioting, drunkenness, chambering, wantonness, strife, or envy, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ. The world today is "woke," but the true version of wokeness according to Romans 13:11 is to put off dark things and to put away sinful stuff.

Don't indulge in rioting, drunkenness, chambering, wantonness, which is sexual immorality. It's sad to see how so much of our society has been so perverted in sexuality that it has led to all kinds of crazy things, including abortion and transgenderism and acceptance of all the LGBTQ things that go against the Word of God.

The whole thing is: does your worldview allow you to put on Jesus Christ to not make provision to fulfill the lust of the flesh? Or does your worldview make you a little nervous to put on Jesus and you are fulfilling the lust of the flesh of greed, envy, hatred, and anger? We have to be really careful about that.

I love this idea of putting on Jesus Christ. That's something you and I are all called to do. Sometimes Christians are accused of being fake, phonies. I understand that. There's a real version of that that is ugly and bad, of course.

At the same time, I see this "put on the Lord Jesus Christ" means I'm supposed to fake my way through it. For me to be myself, you don't want to see that. But for me to put on Jesus Christ, that's a very different Brett than the one that is right there at the root of me.

For me to be like Jesus, I'm going to have to be a serious actor. You might even say a "put-on." Have you ever been accused of being a put-on? "You Christians are just a bunch of put-ons, fake." It's got to be a little bit of a put-on because to put on the Lord Jesus Christ, that's a very different you.

You've got to put away your bad attitude and the things that make you angry or irritable. You've got to put all that away and put on Jesus. Jesus's words were seasoned with grace. His heart was of great compassion. He never got wrongly angry. He was righteous anger at the turning of the tables.

Jesus was so perfect in every way that for me to put on Jesus Christ, that's a tall order. By the way, I think the longer you do this, the more it becomes who you are. It's like the more you practice being like Jesus, the more you really become like Jesus. I think that's something we all should really want.

That's what all of us should want: to be more like Christ and put on Jesus Christ to not fulfill the provision, the lust of the flesh. So that's the idea of this. It's time to wake up, time to put off the night clothes—the night is far spent—the pajamas have got to go, and dress up in the Lord Jesus Christ.

I love that imagery of Romans. That's kind of what's happening here with Zechariah. It's time to wake up, Zechariah. That's sort of the preparation for this vision. Vision number five, we also see not only preparation but we also see this idea of the presentation, and that's verses two and three.

After he wakes out of sleep, verse two says, "And he said unto me, 'What seest thou?' And I said, 'I have looked, and behold a candlestick all of gold, with a bowl upon the top of it, and his seven lamps thereon, and seven pipes to the seven lamps, which are upon the top thereof: and two olive trees by it, one upon the right side of the bowl, and the other upon the left side thereof.'"

We have the presentation of what he sees. He sees something that at first is a normal thing. He sees what you and I might call the lampstand of the temple. You might even call it a Menorah. Do you know the difference between a Menorah and the Hanukkiah?

Remember the Festival of Lights, the celebration of the Jews around our Christmas time? The Jews have Hanukkah and we've gone over that story and what that means. It's a celebration Jesus actually celebrated with the Jews.

It was from that 170 BC era, the Maccabean revolt, when they lit the candlesticks there in the temple, the lampstand, and they just kept burning even though they ran out of oil. That's the Hanukkah. But the Hanukkah, you'll see in Jerusalem, the Menorah is the seven branches whereas the Hanukkah is the nine.

That's what if you want to not just be a tourist in Jerusalem and you're buying—because you can buy all these things—the nine-one is definitely more of a Christmas-time Hanukkah sort of thing you find in Jerusalem. But the Menorah is the one of the temple. It's an interesting thing.

The Menorah speaks of Jesus and the church. That's an important thing for you to know if you're a Bible student. The candlestick—when we read the word "candlestick" in the Bible, some of you are picturing wedding taper candles. But that's not what's happening here.

What Zechariah sees is exactly the Menorah because he even explains it. He says he saw a candlestick all of gold, which that's what the candlestick in the Tabernacle and the Temple was made of: pure gold. He sees that and with it a bowl on the top of it.

You might say, "I don't know about the bowl on top." We've always pictured each candlestick having a candle on top, but you have to understand the bowl on the top was actually a lamp. They put one of these little lamps at the top of each little branch. The branch had a little platform and then you'd put a bowl like a lamp with oil in it.

The little oil and the wick and all that stuff. By the way, these little oil lamps, you can find these. It's rare today to find a complete version of this, but there's places in Israel where you can go and just kick the dirt around and you'll find pieces of one of these from the first century.

It's amazing. It's like garbage laying around. We would call it an archaeological dig, but for them, they've got so much archaeological stuff there in Israel. In the Kidron Valley, you don't do it as much anymore, but you used to be able to walk through the Kidron Valley—that's between the Temple Mount and the Mount of Olives—and all the junk they'd throw down in that valley, all that stuff ended up going for construction.

The dirt there literally you can just kick the dirt around and find ancient lamps like this. Not the complete ones, but broken pieces. Why are we telling you about the lamp? This is what he sees. He sees the Menorah with the single middle branch and then the three branches on each side, left and right, which is a total of seven.

That's an interesting thing. Seven in the Bible is the number of completion and perfection. The imagery here is that of Jesus Christ. The lampstand is a beautiful picture of Christ and his church in the Old Testament, and you should know that.

The center post is a representation of Jesus and then the branches are the church. That's us coming out from Christ. Jesus spoke about this stuff. In John chapter 8:12, Jesus said to them, "I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life."

Then in Matthew chapter five, Jesus said this: "Ye are the light of the world." So which one is it? Is Jesus the light of the world or are we the light of the world? The answer: yes. But he's the source. He's the source of light where it first starts.

It's this cool thing of what happens. Christ comes to us and lights our light up, and then we get to be lights in this world. He says, "Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick." The candlestick speaks of the church, by the way. "And it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven."

Not only do we see this imagery with Jesus talking about he's the light of the world and then "you are the lights of the world," but then we see the exclamation point in the book of Revelation chapter 1:20. We see those seven churches. It says of those seven churches of Asia Minor, a major part of the Bible talking to the church from Christ.

Chapter 1:20: "The mystery of the seven stars which thou sawest in my right hand, and the seven golden candlesticks. The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches: and the seven candlesticks which thou sawest are the seven churches."

Interesting. The early church would've seen a Menorah here. Christ is the center and then you have the seven church seven lights, and Jesus says, "I'm in the midst of the church." It's such a really cool imagery of the Bible. Remember what Jesus was constantly saying to the seven churches? "Be careful lest I snuff out your candle." You're going to lose your light if you're not careful.

That's what we have to really be careful of as the church of Jesus Christ. We don't want to do stuff that makes Jesus say, "I'm going to remove your candle from out of this place." I think we've seen that happen. In fact, I'm broken-hearted right now to see how many churches, because of decisions that they made about their doctrine—and I say this not pridefully at all because the Lord is blessing Athey Creek and he uses the weak and the foolish.

That's Athey Creek. We're not qualified, we're not better than anybody. But here's the problem: once we start doing stuff where Jesus would say, "I have this against you, my church, I will remove your candlestick." That's what he said to several of the churches in the book of Revelation.

I think we've seen that happening as we speak, and it's just heartbreaking where the candles are being removed. The book of Revelation talks about that. Jesus also gave the imagery of the vine and the branches. "I am the vine, my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit."

The idea of this branch. The candlestick of the Tabernacle was made of gold, but it also had fruit on it. It was a picture of branches like a fruit tree almost. That's the idea. Some of the other symbology of this whole thing is the oil itself.

We see the lamps that have the oil in it. Where does that oil come from? That's what Zechariah's vision starts getting a little interesting. So far, he would've just said, "A Menorah. Whatever. He's seen that a million times." Joshua is the high priest. He was the one building the temple.

So they were familiar with this idea of the Menorah or the candlestick and the symbology of the oil. But he also saw something that was unique and we'll get into that in a second. Before we leave the idea of the oil, remember: oil in the Bible is a picture of what, anybody?

The Holy Spirit. Right. In Zechariah's time, this would've been a hard thing for him to understand—the imagery that he's about to see. But for us, it makes perfect sense and I'll show you why. So we've seen the preparation of this vision—wake up.

We've seen the presentation—candlestick, oil, and then these two olive trees with these little pipes going into the lamps. What are these pipes holding? Well, the oil. It seems like, what are these pipes all about? Well, that's where we have the confusion. That's the confusion section. Just like all the visions that Zechariah has, then he has a question and he's wondering what in the world's going on.

Verse four: "So I answered and spake to the angel that talked with me, saying, 'What are these, my lord?' Then the angel that talked with me answered and said unto me, 'Knowest thou not what these be?' And I said, 'No, my lord.'" It's almost like the angel's like, "Are you kidding? You should know this."

Why should Zechariah know this? Zechariah was a priest. So was Joshua, the guy we talked about in chapter three. Zerubbabel would be the builder and he's going to be brought up here in a few minutes. This is why I think the angel's kind of like, "What? You're like a priest and you don't even understand this?"

But that's okay. He's going to tell him. Do you ever feel like that with Bible passages? You read the Bible and you read something and you go, "Man, I don't know what that means." You almost hear an angel go, "You don't understand what that means? Come on." But it's okay. Don't worry.

I love the Bible for you and me to have a lifetime to study the Scriptures. Don't ever feel bummed if you don't understand a section of scripture. There's some people—and all of you are wired differently—but some of you are wired in a way that unless you can figure it out right out of the gate, you're one of those people that you tend to bail when you can't just figure it out immediately.

That's something you have to be really careful with the Bible because you will never figure out the whole Bible. You can spend your whole life. There's been brainiac scholars who've studied the Bible their whole life. There's one guy who studied Matthew chapter one his whole life.

You say, "Well, who would do that? It's just a genealogy." Dr. Ivan Panin. He studied this chapter his whole life and he was a mathematician. What he found is everything in Matthew chapter one in the genealogy of Jesus of that particular one is a multiple of seven. Everything.

How many Greek words are used? How many Greek vowels are used? How many times women are mentioned? How many times there's kings? How many times there's slaves? Everything is a multiple of seven. You've got to give the guy credit. That's finding out something pretty incredible.

But who's got the attention span to study that your whole life? Dr. Ivan Panin was that guy, back in the 1800s I believe is when he did that. That's where you see the fingerprints of God on the Bible. No human could write a genealogy that is real and then also have everything work out to be a multiple of seven. If you're interested, look it up. It's a miraculous thing about a genealogy in the Bible.

But if you're one of those people that you read something, "I don't understand that, so I'm going to bail," don't do that. What happens with the Bible is you read the scriptures and then as the years go by, something you read five years ago will connect with something you're reading today.

And you'll start to see the dots connected. I've heard someone call it "time bombs"—little biblical time bombs going off. As you read the Bible you're like, "Okay, read, read, read," all of a sudden, boom. "Oh, I get it." You totally see something that you read before, you see how it connects.

And then those two things that have connected in your mind now, a few years later you might be reading something somewhere else. Boom. The more you start seeing the dots connected, the more miraculous you realize the Bible really is.

Guest (Male): Pastor Brett Meador pausing in our verse-by-verse study of Zechariah chapter four with encouraging words for effective study of the scripture as drawn from today's word. I invite you to stay right there as Pastor Brett will join me here in a moment. If you missed any portion of our time today, you'll find all of his messages online at todayswordradio.com. That's todayswordradio.com. Our vision on Today's Word is to proclaim the hope of salvation and help people know Jesus through careful study of the Bible.

We invite you to find out more by going to todayswordradio.com. Also want to mention that Pastor Brett Meador is the senior pastor at Athey Creek Church just outside of Portland, Oregon. In addition to the main Athey Creek campus in West Linn, we also have locations in Hillsboro and McMinnville, Oregon. For more information, go to todayswordradio.com and click on the link "Locations."

Pastor Brett is with me now. You know, there are a lot of Christians who may be reluctant about sharing their faith, but when they do, perhaps they come across as being judgmental. Or on the other hand, they might be weak-kneed about confronting a subject that may be controversial in today's culture. Pastor Brett, how can we share God's truth with someone in a way that is bold but doing it with love?

Brett Meador: Big challenge. I think our culture has redefined some things that make this confusing. They think that a word of correction or a word of disagreement means hate. But actually, what we see in the scripture is the most loving words that can be said often come in the form of correction or disagreement.

Jesus was the embodiment of love and yet he spoke of a lot of things that he was opposed to. That's something we have to remember. It's been said rightly: people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. I think that's why Jesus was able to say sharp words that were brutal because he also presented himself as just the epitome of love.

And that's what I want for myself. That's what I want for our congregation: to be able to speak the truth, but to speak it in love. Instead of starting with "you're wrong," a lot of times I'll just say, "Here's what the Lord's revealed to me and he's shown me in his word."

And sometimes you can soften the word of correction, but I still think we need to speak it and speak it clearly, speak it humbly, remembering that we're sinners also saved by grace. Keeping all that in mind, boldness doesn't necessarily mean loud. It just means faithful. I think love really matters no matter what we say. It has to be said in love.

Guest (Male): That's really good, Pastor Brett. It's doing what Jesus did: speaking the truth, but with love and grace. Thank you for that. Well, if you'd like more information about this Today's Word Radio program or Pastor Brett Meador, just go to todayswordradio.com. Next time, Pastor Brett continues in Zechariah and reflects on the promise of the Lord to Zerubbabel of the rich resource in the Spirit of God to accomplish his work. Today's Word with Pastor Brett Meador is an outreach of Athey Creek Church in West Linn, Oregon.