Today's Word Radio

Brett Meador: Has Jerusalem ever been a safe place to live? No. It's funny, the name Yerushalayim means city of peace, but it's been everything but that. But it will be that when Jesus comes and he rules in Jerusalem. It will be the city of peace.

Guest (Male): On today's word, Pastor Brett Meador and the impact of the Prince of Peace.

Brett Meador: According to our text here, Israel's finally going to be safe once Christ comes and rules and reigns. That's going to happen. The Lord shall be king over all the earth.

Guest (Male): From our study of a book full of visions, Zechariah chapter 14 brings us to the final vision of God's plan where the Lord ultimately intervenes in human history to reconcile to himself all peoples in the coming Day of the Lord. In today's word, Pastor Brett Meador takes one last look at the last chapter of Zechariah, resulting in the ultimate peace to Jerusalem.

Brett Meador: Zechariah 14:1, "Behold, the day of the Lord cometh." The Day of the Lord is not a single day, but it's talking about a time period where God intervenes in humanity and their future, and also judging them for their past.

The Bible's an amazing story. It starts with God creating the heavens and the earth, and the keys and the title deed is given to humanity by God. God gave humanity a perfect earth without sin and gave Adam and Eve instructions on how to deal with the earth and live on the earth. But it took about ten seconds and the very one thing they weren't supposed to do, they did. Human nature is to sin. When Adam and Eve sinned, the world entered into a fallen state: death, disease, suffering, sorrow, sadness.

Then the rest of the Bible is God fixing our flub-up. We messed up, we blew it, and the Lord says, "Okay, I'm going to reconcile humanity back to myself." That's the story of the Gospel, where God becomes a man, lives among us, lives the perfect life, dies on the cross for our sins. Then after he rose from the ground, he ascended. But before he ascended, he said, "I'm going to come back. I'm going to come a second time, and that's when I'm going to intervene into all the death and dying and sin and evil, and I'm going to reconcile not just all people, but the Jews specifically." The Lord has a plan to reconcile the Jewish people to himself.

That's going to be really this Day of the Lord. So if you're wondering about the timeframe, I believe it's very clear and simple. The next thing on the list of things to do: the rapture of the church to take his church out before he pours out his wrath on a Christ-rejecting, sinful world. The Day of the Lord really begins with the rapture of the church. That kind of kicks off the Day of the Lord when the Lord intervenes. He pours out his wrath on a Christ-rejecting, sinful world seven years of tribulation.

Then during that time called the tribulation, Israel will be saved and they'll come out of Zion. Zion is where? Jerusalem. Zion is Jerusalem, but it's also even more exactingly the Temple Mount, and kind of including the Mount of Olives area. But the Temple Mount is kind of the epicenter of all these things. That's where Christ is going to rule, and he has a covenant with them, like this verse says, to take away their sin.

So one of the final outcomes of the Day of the Lord is the Jews will be restored in good standing with God during the time at the end of the tribulation when Christ returns. They'll be back in business. But there's another part of the Day of the Lord that's a little more ominous and should be a little concerning for many. One of the results is that God's going to judge the world.

How is he going to judge the world? Isaiah chapter 2:17 tells us exactly how God's going to do this in the tribulation period and when he returns, the second coming of Christ. What he's going to do according to Isaiah, "And the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be made low: and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day." The ultimate final fulfillment of the prophecies concerning the Day of the Lord that's mentioned here in the very first phrase of our chapter will come at the end of history when God with all-powerful, all-knowing power will punish the evil unrepentant sinners of the earth that refuse to repent and refuse to be saved.

So chapter 14:1, "Behold, the day of the Lord cometh." And now we're talking directly about Jerusalem. "And thy spoil shall be divided in the midst of thee. For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled," or some of your newer translations say ransacked, "and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city."

In the last days during the tribulation, toward the end of the tribulation, nations are going to gather against Jerusalem. It's interesting because they're going to chop it in half, it says here. So we see that Jerusalem's going to be hanging by a thread there in chapter 14:1-2. Then something radical is going to happen starting there in verse 3. "Then shall the Lord go forth, and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle."

We looked at how when God fights in the day of battle, you don't want to mess with God. He's also—we talked about how he's compassionate, kind, loving, patient, but he's also a warrior and he's mighty in battle, the Bible says. It says in verse 4, "And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half toward the south. And ye shall flee to the valley of the mountains; for the valley of the mountains shall reach unto Azal," which is another old name of Petra, by the way. "Yea, ye shall flee, like as ye fled from before the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah: and the Lord my God shall come, and all the saints with thee. And it shall come to pass in that day, that the light shall not be clear, nor dark: But it shall be one day which shall be known to the Lord, not day, nor night: but it shall come to pass, that at evening time it shall be light."

What? Light during the evening? Like, what's going to happen here? Well, I don't know for sure, but what we need to go away with on these verses, verses 4-7, is a massive cataclysmic earth event. We've talked about Mount of Olives splitting, but that sounds so localized and so small. Zechariah 14 sort of broadens our understanding. This is going to be massive.

Jesus is going to return, the earth will quake and the Mount of Olives will split. But remember the fountain of water that's going to spring up from that crack in the mountain? We pick that up again in verse 8. "And it shall be in that day, that living waters shall go out from Jerusalem; half of them toward the former sea, and half of them toward the hinder sea: in summer and in winter shall it be." I won't dive into that again, but that's going to be bringing water to the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. Dead Sea is going to come back to life. It's a great picture of what Christ is going to do.

But look at verse 9. It says, "And the Lord shall be king over all the earth: in that day shall there be one Lord, and his name one." Now, this valley that's created by the earthquake is defined in verse 10 and 11. It says, "And all the land shall be turned as a plain." Mark that word "plain," because it's an interesting word, Arabah in Hebrew, which is the geographical name of a deep rift or valley that would happen. "And the land shall be turned as a valley or plain from Geba to Rimmon south of Jerusalem: and it shall be lifted up, and inhabited in her place, from Benjamin's gate unto the place of the first gate, unto the corner gate, and from the tower of Hananeel unto the king's winepresses. And men shall dwell in it," this valley, "and there shall be no more utter destruction; but Jerusalem shall be safely inhabited."

Has Jerusalem ever been a safe place to live? No. It's funny, the name Yerushalayim means city of peace, but it's been everything but that. But it will be that when Jesus comes and he rules in Jerusalem. It will be the city of peace. That's going to happen. But the point is this is going to be a massive, huge valley. It's not going to be just Jerusalem; it's actually going to be like thirty miles. It's going to change the whole geography.

It's basically saying that the hill country around Jerusalem, the rolling mountains, it's going to be leveled and flattened. Jerusalem will still be high, but it won't be as high and it won't be all mountainous. It'll be leveled out more in a geographical plain kind of thing. So all that to say, Jerusalem's going to be safely inhabited.

It's sad to see how Jerusalem's always been under threat. But for some reason, the world just doesn't really acknowledge Israel's right to defend itself, and it makes sense that the world's going to come against Israel and specifically against Jerusalem. But anyway, according to our text here, Israel's finally going to be safe once Christ comes and rules and reigns there in verse 11.

Now, in verse 12, something kind of horrifying happens. Verse 12 says, "And this shall be the plague," there's a plague that's coming, "wherewith the Lord will smite all the people that have fought against Jerusalem; Their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet, and their eyes shall consume away in their holes, and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth." Does this sound like the Indiana Jones movie? Remember when they opened the Ark of the Covenant and the eyes melting down their face? That's kind of what's going to happen here. Not a good day at the office.

Now, you say, "Brett, who's this going to be?" All the nations that go against Israel. If you want to follow what the Bible says, you should not be pro chopping Jerusalem in half. We do know, however, that's going to happen. Jerusalem will be chopped in half by the nations that hate Israel and gather against Israel in the last days, but this is what happens to them.

So you say, "Brett, well, what is this that's happening to them? I mean, I know their skin melts off, their eyeballs out of their sockets. But what's going to happen?" Don't know for sure. Could be nuclear weapons used with the radioactive fallout. There's some similarities in the way this is described here. And by the way, Israel has nuclear weapons, lots of them.

Some people say no, it won't be that; it'll be chemical warfare. Could be. When you read about the Ezekiel 38-39 battle, there's also professional people who have to come and clean up the dead bodies that are going to be from that battle. Because if you find a body or a bone, you're supposed to put a little flag there and say, "Don't touch this," and run away. Then the professionals come and have to bury the dead bodies. What's that all about in Ezekiel 39? Who knows? Maybe it's just a miraculous thing that God does, like when 185,000 soldiers were killed by one angel in one night when the Assyrians were surrounding Jerusalem back in the old days.

Who knows what this is going to be? But it's going to be horrifying. All I know is we don't want to be a part of this group of nations that's going to come against Israel. One of the things I'm thankful for, by the way, is the Lord's patience. He could have done all this centuries ago or months ago or years ago. Why does the Lord not make this all happen, this melting of eyeballs and nations being subdued? All I know is Peter answers this question to a degree here in 2 Peter 3:9. "The Lord is not slack," or lazy, "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."

I love that the Lord is saying, "I'm going to wait till the maximum amount of people repent and are saved," because that's the heart of the Lord. He doesn't want anyone to be crushed or eyeballs melting or faces melting off their face. The Lord says, "I want people to repent and be saved and not have this horrible future."

Now, by the way, one thing you should know about this melting of faces and stuff, the Jews—the people—one of the things the world doesn't understand is how tiny Israel is, the size of New Jersey. They can't afford to have these nations gathering against them. So that's why some people believe the Jews will use nuclear weapons. It has to do with sort of a worldview. The Jews have a thing you can call it two things: the Masada complex they call it, or the Samson option. Remember Masada? This is that fortress rock fortress that King Herod the Great built for his Roman stuff. He never went there, but it's an amazing place. When you are an IDF soldier and you're new and you're being sworn in, they make you hike up to the top of this, and that's where you get your stripes or whatever, and you become an official soldier. But you swear to upholding the tactical sort of thing of the Samson option. That is, if people are going to take our nation down, we'll go down with it. That's part of their thing.

United States, we could lose New York and Los Angeles and maybe even still survive. But Israel, if they lose Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, they're toast. Just two big bombs would take Israel out. The Jews are saying, "We can't let that happen." So the nations are going to come with this sort of hatred and the Jews are going to defend themselves. But ultimately, Jesus is going to come and defend Israel.

So it goes on in verse 13. It says, "And it shall come to pass in that day, that a great tumult from the Lord," that's where it's going to come from, the Lord, "shall be among them; and they shall lay hold every one on the hand of his neighbor, and his hand shall rise up against the hand of his neighbor. And Judah also shall fight at Jerusalem; and the wealth of all the heathen round about shall be gathered together, gold, and silver, and apparel, in great abundance. And so shall be the plague of the horse, and the mule, and of the camel, and of the ass, and all the beasts that shall be in these tents, as this plague." In other words, this is kind of the end of it. Everything is going to be done. The enemies of Israel are going to be subdued, all the gold and wealth of the hatred nations that are going to be destroyed are going to be collected.

That's when we see the kingdom set up. That is when Jesus begins to rule and reign from Jerusalem. Check out verse 16. "And it shall come to pass, that every one that is left of all the nations"—there won't be much left, by the way, if you read Revelation 6 through 19, much of the population of the earth will be wiped out during the tribulation period. So it'll come to pass, verse 16, "that every one that is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall even go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles."

After all this battle and warfare and bloodshed is done, suddenly Christ is ruling in Jerusalem, and suddenly people are doing what? They're going to keep the Feast of the Tabernacles. Did you know that's one of the feasts that will be reengaged during the Millennial Kingdom? Why the Feast of Tabernacles? Well, the Feast of Tabernacles is the third of the great annual feasts and festivals of the Jews. It was instituted in Leviticus 23:33-43, and interestingly enough, it's also called the feast of ingathering.

The Feast of Tabernacles was a period of eight days where they would leave their homes and live in tents or booths, little buildings that they'd build outside of their houses, little temporary dwellings. They would do this often with branches of trees and build little lean-tos and stuff. Why would they do this? Two things they would be doing. Number one, to be a memorial of their wilderness wanderings when they lived in tents for forty years wandering with Moses in the wilderness. They'd commemorate that. But the second part was to celebrate the harvest with thanksgiving. Nehemiah chapter 8:9-18 talks about the sort of a thanksgiving sort of part of the Feast of Tabernacles. So that'll be reinstituted once Christ rules and reigns. They're going to get back to the Feast of Tabernacles.

"And it shall be," verse 17, "that whoso will not come up of all the families of the earth unto Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, even upon them shall be no rain." So if you're living in the Millennial Kingdom and you don't want to go to Jerusalem, you probably need to because rain is sort of important. We in Portland forget the need for rain sometimes.

Verse 18, before we read this, Egypt is a type of what? The world. So this is going to be used idiomatically as the world. You'll see kind of contextually what I'm talking about here. But verse 18, "And if the family of Egypt go not up to Jerusalem, and come not, that have no rain; there shall be the plague, wherewith the Lord will smite the heathen that come not up to keep the feast of tabernacles. This shall be the punishment of Egypt, and the punishment of all nations that come not up to keep the feast of tabernacles." So that's a big component of the Millennial Kingdom is Feast of Tabernacles is going to be kind of a big deal.

But there's another big deal, and this is how Zechariah ends it. So Christ is ruling from the throne, the enemy nations were wiped out, everybody else now has to kind of—it's sort of an enforced righteousness in the Millennial Kingdom. People kind of have to do what the King says. But there's one other thing that's going to be reinstituted that we're going to see here, verse 20. "In that day shall there be upon the bells," or better translation, some of your Bibles say bridles, "the bridles of the horses will be written, Holiness unto the Lord." You say, "Wow, that's kind of awkward. Why are we talking about horses' bridles and having names on the bridles?" Don't know for sure, but you have to understand the horse was the powerful war machine of Bible times. So this is speaking of the power and the authority of the Lord with these horses and their bridles. If you know horses, they're powerful animals, and that's the idea here is we're supposed to kind of go, "Wow, this is sort of a heavy, intense sort of thing. Holiness unto the Lord."

Now we're going to talk about a Tupperware party. Verse 20, "And the pots in the Lord's house shall be like the bowls before the altar." Now, you might be saying, "Brett, why are we talking about pots and bowls all of a sudden?" This is where we as Gentiles don't really understand the importance of this. This is sort of again saying the smaller thing to speak of something amazing. Busting out the pots and bowls in the Millennial Kingdom means they're going to reinstitute the sacrificial system at the Temple Mount. It's a big deal.

Check this out. It goes on, verse 21. "Yea, every pot in Jerusalem and in Judah shall be holiness unto the Lord of hosts: and all they that sacrifice shall come and take of them, and seethe therein: and in that day there shall be no more the Canaanite in the house of the Lord of hosts." The Canaanite is sort of again an idiom for impurity, unclean people that are sinful. There's not going to be any room for that because the Canaanite will have no room there. So they're going to be basically going back and gathering in Jerusalem.

By the way, isn't it amazing? Even during the Millennial Kingdom, there's going to be a stubbornness saying, "We don't want to go to Jerusalem," and the Lord's going to kind of make that happen. Some of you struggle with that even today. Some people don't want to gather in the name of the Lord. You know the guy that says, "Oh, I'm not into organized religion. Church is out in the woods for me. I go to church and fish in the fly fishing and stuff like that." That's just stupid. You're being ridiculous. Church is people, and when you are told by God to gather—"Well, that's the Old Testament, Brett." Well, the New Testament says it this way, that we are not to be forsaking the assembling of ourselves together as the manner of some of the people are, but exhorting one another, and watch this, and so much the more as you see the day approaching. In other words, the Day of the Lord as it gets closer and closer. Does anybody sense the day is getting closer? Boy, I sure do. So what should we be doing? Gathering all the more. Like, we should be, as the day gets closer, we need to gather all the more, according to Hebrews 10:25. So if you're one of those people, time to repent and say, "Well, I don't like crowds." Tough bananas. There's a lot of wonderful, nice, tiny churches that are wonderful, and you can go over—you don't have to come to a giant church. There's all kinds of options for you, but don't forsake the gathering of the saints.

So holiness to the Lord, the sacrificial system—now you say, "Brett, why are they going to bring the sacrificial system back to Jerusalem in the Millennial Kingdom?" Kind of interesting because it's appropriate. In the Old Testament, how did they commemorate what was coming when Jesus would die on the cross? How did they foreshadow that in their worship? The sacrificial system. They'd slaughter a lamb and put it on the altar on the temple, and they did that in the Old Testament pointing forward to when John the Baptist said, "Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world." They'd look forward to that.

Then when Jesus died on the cross and rose from the grave, no longer were we doing the sacrificial system, thank the Lord for that. The church age that you and I are living in, what do we use to commemorate the death of Christ on the cross? Communion. But what's interesting is when the church is raptured, it seems that communion won't be the thing anymore. It'll go back to, as the Jews now are back in business, as the Jews are now serving around the temple in the Millennial Kingdom, they're going to get back to their sacrificial system looking backward for the Jews to what Jesus did for them on the cross. One of the things that Zechariah tells us unlike any other of the prophets is he says during this time the Jews will say, "Wow," as they see Jesus, they'll say, "Where did you get those wounds?" And he'll say, "I received these wounds in the house of my friends." They're going to see Jesus as the Lamb that had been slain.

Guest (Male): Pastor Brett Meador comes to the end of our verse-by-verse study in today's word of the book of Zechariah, fittingly culminating in worship to the Lord at his second coming to rule and reign. And I trust you'll stay right there, as Pastor Brett will join me here in a moment with some closing thoughts on Zechariah.

But first, today's word is the radio ministry of Athey Creek Church just south of Portland, Oregon, where Pastor Brett Meador's the senior pastor. We invite you to find out more by going to todayswordradio.com. If you've missed any portion of our study, you can find all of Pastor Brett's messages online at todayswordradio.com. You can also watch full video messages by him by going to todayswordradio.com.

All right, Pastor Brett is with me now. Brett, as we conclude the book of Zechariah, we've seen how this prophet gave a warning from God about the Day of the Lord, which is a period of wrath during the tribulation in order to help his people see the true Messiah. How does the message that God gave Zechariah apply to us today?

Brett Meador: Well, I believe that's an important question because the Day of the Lord isn't just theology, it really is meant to be a wake-up call for all of us. Zechariah warns of coming judgment, but then also promises restoration. So God's heart is not that of wrath as much as redemption. He wants people to turn. And so the Day of the Lord, the doom that comes, it should really inspire us to turn to him where we can be redeemed, saved. Jesus is coming again. That's not speculation, that's a promise. And so how do we live with that anticipation? I think we live with urgency and with holiness, with hope. And Zechariah really focuses on the King is coming, and that really should shape how we live today.

Guest (Male): I appreciate that summary from the prophet Zechariah, as we close out the book that bears his name here on today's word. Thank you, Pastor Brett, for that. Well, if you'd like more information about this today's word radio program or Pastor Brett Meador, you can visit our website at todayswordradio.com. That's todayswordradio.com. And that's all the time we have. Next time, Pastor Brett will begin the book of Malachi, which happens to be the last of the minor prophets in the Old Testament. Today's word with Pastor Brett Meador is an outreach of Athey Creek Church in West Linn, Oregon.