The Day of the Lord
Zechariah 14:1‑21
Take your Bible, if you will, and let's look at the fourteenth chapter of the book of Zechariah...Zechariah chapter 14. I feel that if there's anything that I feel somewhat comfortable with it's the Greek of the New Testament. I had about seven years of Greek study and so I feel like I really can handle that. And when I get to the Old Testament, I don't quite feel as capable and consequently it makes greater demands on me in terms of my own study time to draw out of any given passage what's there, trying to deal with the language with which I am less familiar. And then to compound my own lack of alacrity in Hebrew, Zechariah is an infinitely complex prophecy. And to make matters worse, I try to cover 21 verses for tonight. So in the complexity of all of that kind of effort we're going to see what we can do with the whole fourteenth chapter at one shot. Get comfortable. We'll see what happens.
This is our last look at Zechariah's wonderful message. And I really believe that God has used this in my own life to increase my understanding not only of this book but of much of the Old Testament apocalyptic literature, of much of the heart of a prophet, much of God's attitude toward His people Israel and much of it, of course, carries right on into the New Testament as God doesn't change. So it's been a refreshing study.
The basic theme of the book of Zechariah, just to remind you, is the sweep of Israel's history from the time of Zechariah when the nation returned from the Babylonian captivity right on till the establishing of the millennial kingdom on earth. That is the subject of this fourteenth chapter, the establishing of the millennial kingdom. We started out in chapter 1 with Zechariah dealing with the people as they had come back, were endeavoring to rebuild their city which was in rubble, to rebuild the wall, etc. And Zechariah came along as a great prophet of comfort, a great prophet of hope and his message was to tell Israel that God was going to let them rebuild, God was going to let them restore their city. But more than that, God had an incredible future for them way off in the distance when all of human history came to its climax.
Now as we come to the fourteenth chapter, we really come to the climax, the final establishment of the millennial kingdom, the end of human history, as it were. And it's a tremendous chapter, it's just loaded with prophecy, some of it is very, very amazing. Some of it is very difficult to understand with our own limitations. But I do feel this way about it, I want to reaffirm this as we approach it. I do feel that we must interpret the fourteenth chapter literally. I read about five commentaries this week on this chapter that do not interpret the chapter literally. But they make it a symbolic chapter. They do not wish to have a restored Israel in their theology. They do not believe that God has anything left for the nation itself. They do not see a restoration of the people to the land in prophecy. They do not see an actual setting up of an actual earthly kingdom. And so there's some question about an actual battle of Armageddon, etc. So they want to make these things figures or symbols rather that literal reality. And in so doing they are left with some very, very, very difficult problems. In fact, no less a man of God than Martin Luther himself wanted to approach the fourteenth chapter of Zechariah in a figurative way. He wanted to approach it as symbol language. And taking a figurative approach, he confessed after writing this particular chapter in commentary fashion these words, "In this chapter," said Luther, "I surrender for I am not certain of what the prophet speaks," end quote.
In other words, approaching it from a figurative or symbolic angle, Luther could make really no convincing sense out of it. He went on in expounding the chapter but didn't think it could have any reference to the end times and related it only to the period of the destruction of Jerusalem and all of the language was somehow symbolically fulfilled around 70 A.D.
Well, he was not alone, he was followed by many theologians in modern day times, those who are amillennial, those who do not believe in a literal kingdom, those who would take what is known as a covenant view of theology also want to do the same thing. The problem with it is that it leaves you with some very, very difficult issues to settle which could never be resolved. A very modern commentary written by a person named Baldwin attempts to take the same approach, very scholarly, very capably done, but hopelessly muddled in trying to interpret the chapter.
So, what I'm saying is the best way to approach it is simply to take it for what it says in its clearest literal meaning and leave it at that and let the Spirit of God worry about how He's going to bring it all to pass. Because when you try to make symbols out of it, your guess is as good as anybody else's, and none of really makes much sense.
In 1919 there was written a commentary on Zechariah by a man named David Baron...B‑a‑r‑o‑n. In my judgments, probably the finest work that's ever been written on the book of Zechariah. And David Baron took a literal approach. He took a literal approach to interpreting this book when literal approaches to these kinds of things were not really very popular, simply because it looked impossible for these things to happen. This is what David Baron wrote in 1919.
"First of all, we have to suppose a restoration of the Jews into their land in a condition of unbelief, not a complete restoration of the whole nation which will not take place until after their conversion, but a representative and influential remnant will return. It seems from Scripture that in relation to Israel and the land, there will be restoration before the Second Coming of our Lord, a very much the same state of things as existed at the time of His first coming when the threads of God's dealing with them nationally were finally dropped, not to be taken up again until the times of the Gentiles should be fulfilled."