This evening, we’re coming to chapter 2 of Zechariah. In Scripture, when you see something mentioned more than once, God wants us to take notice of it. Zechariah is speaking to the people from Israel who had been taken captive into Babylon, and later had been, as Babylon had been defeated by the Medo-Persian Empire, They were now under the direction of Cyrus, and we studied the last time we met about the fact that Cyrus had encouraged them to, and given them permission to go back to Jerusalem and rebuild their temple.
However, as we saw last week, the work on the temple hadn’t gotten very far, and they’d been there for some time. And they laid the foundation, but beyond that, it hadn’t worked. God encouraged them to continue on, and some of the encouragement would come from Ezra, who was sent by the Lord to encourage them to do it.
But Zechariah also was sent by God to encourage them. Now, it’s interesting, as you look at the text that we’re going to look at tonight, we’re going to see that God is talking to Zechariah to share with the nation of Israel the importance of the temple. lf you remember, something very similar to this was a vision that Ezekiel had had, and that he had brought to the nation of Israel.
Ezekiel had brought the vision of a man who had a measuring reed, and he measured out the temple and started to lay out the rooms of the temple, started to lay out the courtyards of the temple, the walls of the temple, and the people were encouraged to understand that even though they were in Babylon, their temple had been destroyed, God was not done with Israel, and He’s not done with Mount Zion, and He’s not done with Jerusalem, and He’s not done with His temple. And he had mentioned that. Well, as I said at the beginning of the message, when God says something more than once, it’s very important.
Today you have people, I just talked to a man today, he kept telling me, I understand about God’s people, the chosen ones and all this, but the nation of Israel, they are just so awful. And I’m going, where are these people getting this? Yes, they don’t have a perfect government. Yes, they have men in charge that have allowed certain things to happen.
They don’t make all the right decisions. But why are you so anti-against Israel? And yet all the nations around them can do all these wicked things, and nobody says anything against them. It’s really a spiritual issue.
Just as it was a spiritual issue at the time that Zechariah was living and bringing this message to the people that had returned from Babylon to Judah. And we see that as these people come back, they have become discouraged. And Israel is going to be encouraged by Zechariah.
And that’s part of why he’s bringing these, that God’s giving him these visions. Well, the vision we’re looking at tonight deals, you could entitle it, The Vision of the Surveyor. Because Zechariah is given a vision of a man who’s going about laying out the framework or the groundwork of the temple.
Zechariah 2:1
I lifted up mine eyes again and looked, and behold, a man with a measuring line in his hand.
And a measuring line in his hand meant that this man was a surveyor. He was one who would come to lay things out.
In Fargo, we’ve been doing a lot of road work, and you see these guys walking around with tripods and with a little eyeglass on the top of them where they can measure distances and lines. And they’re walking around measuring the roads so that we have straight roads and so that they’ll be laid out the way they want them to. Well, this guy came, and this man has seen of Zechariah in this vision, and he comes with a line, and he’s laying it out so that the temple will be built the way that God has established that it would be built.
Zechariah 2:2
Then said I, Whither goest thou? And he said, Unto me, to measure Jerusalem, to see what is the breadth thereof, and what is the length thereof.
So not only is he concerned about the temple, but he’s concerned about the whole city of Jerusalem. And a lot of people today, we’ve mentioned it before in many of my messages, in the world today, they think Jerusalem is not something that God is concerned about, it’s not something that is Jewish in nature, but it should be the world city, or it should be the Catholic city.
No, God says I’m going to measure out the walls of Jerusalem because it’s my city. And also he wants the people to understand that have been coming back to Judah from Babylon, I’m not done with Jerusalem, I’m going to rebuild it. And if God did this the first time and fulfilled His word, He’s going to do it the second time and fulfill His word.
We see that oftentimes in these prophecies, there’s a prophecy given to the immediate people that are before the prophet. This would be the people that have gone back to Judah, Zechariah is speaking to them. But also you can see meaning that is coming to a group of people that will be coming much later, and we see that prophecies deal with the end times, and even the day in which we live.
And we’re going to see that the surveyor that’s coming to measure out Jerusalem, the message here isn’t just for the people during the time of Zechariah, but it’s also for us today to find out the importance of Jerusalem, who is the true builder of Jerusalem, and who is the one that’s in control of Jerusalem, and who is the one that established it, and will come back to rule and reign from it.
Zechariah 2:3
And behold, the angel that talked with me went forth, and another angel went out to meet him. And said unto him, Run, speak to this young man, and the young man would be Zechariah, saying, Jerusalem shall be inhabited as towns without walls, for the multitude of men and cattle therein.
Now, as Zechariah and the people that had come back from Babylon are looking, they’re seeing a temple that’s just a foundation. They’re seeing walls, as we know from the book of Nehemiah, when he came back to rebuild the walls, were laying in such rubble that as Nehemiah, if you go to the book of Nehemiah, the walls had been tore down to such a degree that he started to walk around to just lay out the work and how he was going to rebuild the walls, and God was showing him this. And he started out with a donkey, riding on a donkey, and he got to the point the rubble was so great and so high and such a mess, he had to get off his donkey and walk by foot.
It was that bad. And we also know that when Nehemiah did rebuild the walls, the people still had more work to do because all of the housing within the city of Jerusalem had been destroyed and was rubble as well, and we know that they had to rebuild their houses as well. So, as they’re looking at just masses of rubble, a foundation with no walls on it for the temple, and they’re going, really? We’re going to have Jerusalem again? And Zechariah says, run and tell them.
It’s going to be this. It’s going to be a city so great that it will be filled with inhabitants, filled with cattle, and they will have no walls around it. Now, this is interesting because the city that they would rebuild had walls around it.
You go to Jerusalem today, the new city doesn’t have walls around it, but it has walls when you get out. It has fences that go along the highways to prevent people from shooting at cars because Islam is such a peaceful religion that you have to prevent them from shooting at the cars. So, there’s walls to a degree in Israel today, and old Jerusalem still has its walls around it.
They were rebuilt again after the Romans destroyed it, and the walls are there around the old city. But this says there’s coming a day where there will be no walls. And why will there be no walls? It’s going to be amazing.
They’re looking where there’s just a handful, literally, of people compared to all the Jewish people that had been taken away into captivity. A mere 50,000 came back. And if you stop and think that there was probably hundreds of thousands that literally were taken into captivity or killed, both by the Assyrians and then later the Babylonians, this 50,000 would just be a handful.
Yet, this runner is coming and saying, look, the whole city is going to be like an unwalled city, and it’s going to be filled with people, filled with cattle. That means it’s filled with commerce, it’s filled with people, it’s going to be alive, it’s going to be filled. And not only that, we see that the temple is going to be at the center of it all.
But let’s go on and see, if it’s an unwalled city, how are they going to gain protection? Well, that’s interesting.
Zechariah 2:5
For I, saith the Lord, will be unto her a wall of fire around about, and will be a glory in the midst of her.
Now, this is an interesting statement.
Who’s going to be their protection? God. The Lord is going to be the wall of fire around them. He will be the protection around them.
We’re given in the book, when we were looking at the book of the kings, and we saw that during the time that the Assyrians were coming against the nation, the northern tribe of Israel, Elisha was a king, or rather a prophet rather, who had taken over for Elijah, when Elijah was caught up into heaven. Elisha was the prophet that God anointed to take his role in calling the northern kingdom of Israel into repentance. And remember that the Syrians knew about Elisha, and they wanted this man of God silenced.
And so they sent an army to destroy a prophet. They sent an army to destroy one man. And if you go and read the account, when you look at it, they weren’t an ordinary army.
They were vicious men. They were mercenaries. They were paid to do what the king of Syria wanted done.
And he sent them to get Elijah and bring him back to Syria, so that he could deal with them. Well, remember the servant of Elijah looks out the window. He sees the whole house and land that Elisha is sitting on is surrounded by Syrian soldiers.
They have bows. They have spears. They have horses.
They have shields. They’re armed. And it’s just Elisha and one servant.
And the servant is terrified. And he runs to Elijah and says, Look it! Look it! And Elijah isn’t terrified. And then he prays to the Lord.
He says, Open his eyes that he can see. And the Lord opens the servant’s eyes and he sees all around the Syrian army angels with swords of fire around. God is not going to allow anything to happen to his prophet.
These men may think they’re going to take his prophet, but they will not. And they couldn’t. And they didn’t.
Because God was the wall of fire around Elisha. Well, he says, I am going to be the wall that’s going to be around Jerusalem. People think that he’ll destroy Jerusalem.
I heard somebody say one time, you know, the Muslims keep saying, Well, we’re going to want to destroy all the Jews, want to destroy Jerusalem, want to destroy Israel. And he said, and then they keep shooting rockets. And if you look at what’s happened when Iran was shooting all those rockets, remember they shot more rockets at one time than had ever been shot anywhere else.
Rockets, missiles at one time. And only one person got killed in that barrage. And that was an Arab man who walked outside when he was told not to.
Other than that, nobody got hurt. And the rockets didn’t hit things that they should have hit. And it was really a miracle of God.
What was it? Well, God says, I’m going to be a wall of fire around them. I’m going to be their protection. Somebody said, you know, if they really want to get rid of Israel, the Muslims should start shooting their rockets at the sun, the moon, and the stars.
Because God said, as long as the sun is in the heaven, the stars are in the sky, and the moon is there at night, Israel will remain and will be a people. The whole world hates Israel. The whole world and the Antichrist is coming.
He thinks he’s going to get rid of Israel. Satan thinks he’s going to get rid of Israel. Why? Because if he can, God’s a liar.
And if he can, God isn’t going to deliver on his promises, even on these promises that he gives to Zechariah. And we see that God is not a liar. And so people that are Christians and really come against Israel and become anti-Semitic, they need to read their Bibles.
And maybe read the words of the prophets. And they need to read what God has said. Verse 9,
Ho, ho, come forth and flee from the land of the north, saith the Lord, for I have spread you abroad as the four winds of the heaven, saith the Lord.
Now who is he talking to? He’s speaking to the Jews that are in the north. Where is the north? The north is Babylon. This is where they’ve been carried away.
They’ve been carried away to the north by the Syrians. They’ve been carried away to the north by the Babylonians. Both of those are north.
And he’s saying, those who are in the north, come and flee back to Jerusalem. Come back. He’s calling them home.
I scattered you. I’m calling you back. And we see that God, this isn’t the only time that God did this.
Like I said, there is the near fulfillment of prophecy and there is one that is further in the future. And we know that exactly, we see through some of the prophetic words that even Jesus gave about what was going to happen to the city of Jerusalem after he went to the cross and died and rose again from the dead. He said that the city of Jerusalem would be trampled under by the Gentiles.
And as it was trampled under by the Gentiles, the Jews would be scattered amongst the nations once again. And they would remain scattered until he called them. Here we see, God is calling at this time the Jews back out of Babylon.
And he said, I will call the people that I have scattered to the four ends of the earth. I will call them back again in the last days. And I will hiss.
The word used, hiss, the word means whistle, if you would, like you. I can’t do it. I mean, I was always rather frustrated because there were girls in my class who could do those really high-pitched whistles where they stick their fingers in their mouth and you could hear them five blocks away.
I go in and it kind of sounds like this. That’s it. That’s my high-pitched whistle.
Well, God’s going to whistle and all the Jews in the world are going to hear and they’re going to start coming back. And you’re seeing that happen. Right now, I would not want to be a Jew in Europe today.
France has been really over, if you’ve seen the things that have been going on in France, the fires in the streets, the destruction of buildings, the graffiti on anything that’s Jewish. And already, it was months ago, the head rabbi in France and the head rabbi in Jerusalem both said, if you’re in France and you’re a Jew, you better get back to Israel. In England, same thing.
Jews are being beaten up and attacked on their way to synagogue or Jewish schools or simply walking down the street. And if they know you’re a Jew, they will attack and beat you. And this is in London and England.
And it’s very similar in Germany. And what we’re seeing is Jews are moving back to Israel from Europe because of the anti-Semitism. You’re also seeing Jews are moving back to Israel from the United States.
I think you’re going to see what happens with Mondami being the mayor in New York City. You’re probably going to see he is the most anti-Semitic. He’s anti-Jewish.
He’s pro-Muslim, getting rid of the Jews in Israel. He is a socialist communist Muslim who hates the West. And yet he’s the mayor of New York City.
And I think you’re going to begin to see a lot of Jews leave New York and go back to Israel. And it’s exactly what God said would happen in the last days. Just like He said here during the time of Zechariah, as they were in Babylon, He said, I’m calling you back.
And then He says, Deliver thyself, O Zion, that dwellest with the daughter of Babylon. And basically, if you look at that, it’s delivering themselves more than just physically. This is a spiritual call as well.
Deliver thyself, O Zion, that livest with the daughter of Babylon. Well, throughout the scriptures you’ll see that there’s a great spiritual battle. And constantly the kingdom or the headship of Satan is Babylon.
That is his headquarters. It’s Babylon during the time of Nimrod. It’s Babylon during the time of the Antichrist.
They all come and they want to take over Jerusalem. And they want to take over that which is godly. But Satan establishes his headquarters.
And what the Lord is saying here is, you need to leave your heart, which you’ve given over to Babylon, because what had happened is, many of the Jews become very comfortable in Babylon as they had been taken away into captivity. Now they’ve established their residences there. They’ve established businesses there.
Their families were established there. And God’s calling them back. And part of it is, they’ve been influenced by the Babylonian system.
And they were comfortable in Babylon. They didn’t want to go back where they had to walk according to the principles of the Lord. And he’s saying, leave your heart in Babylon and get yourself back to Zion.
And get your priorities right. Many Christians, we have to take the same thing to task. Christians, we can have a heart that we say we’ve given to Jesus, yet the expression of our lives is, we’d rather stay in Babylon.
And we’d rather do the things of Babylon. And we need to heed God’s warning that he gave to those Jews that were coming back. Bring your heart back to Babylon.
Bring your heart back rather to Zion. Don’t leave it in Babylon and desire those things. For thus saith the Lord of hosts, After the glory hath he sent me unto the nations which spoiled you, for he that toucheth thou toucheth the apple of my eye.
The glory of God is going to be seen through how he works through the Jewish nations. And he says, the nations have spoiled you. Now what does he mean by spoiled you? It means they’ve attempted to destroy you.
It’s given when I was in school, they talked about, we were learning in biology and stuff about how different bacterias and things work. And we were studying, and we were learning about apples. And how that if you’ve ever had this, apples or potatoes, and you have a basket of apples or potatoes, and one of them is spoiled.
And we had this in our house, especially potatoes. My wife would keep the potatoes underneath the sink in our kitchen. And we got a spoiled potato that she didn’t see.
And the spoiled potato was in there. And guess what? Pretty soon there was a whole bunch of spoiled potatoes. The one that had spoiled had spread the wickedness, and it had spoiled them all.
And it spoiled them, and it made them useless. And really what he’s saying is, the world wants to make the Jewish people, they want to make Israel useless. And so what they did is they spoiled them.
They thought that they destroyed their city, they destroyed their temple, they destroyed their walls. They took them into captivity. And remember what I said about Nebuchadnezzar when he took the leaders, the young leadership back there into Babylon.
He wanted to make them Babylonians. He wanted them to forget about their God, forget about their religion, forget about everything they’d learned, and become Babylonians. They wanted to totally spoil them, make them something they had not been.
A spoiled apple is not like a fresh apple. It’s totally different. And he’s saying, God will remember, and he will deal with those who are attempting to spoil Israel.
Why? Because Israel is the apple of his eye. Now what is the apple of the eye? The apple of the eye is the center most part of your eye that allows the light in, and if you touch it, it’s very sensitive. And it’s what enables you to see.
And he says, Israel, really, they’re the apple of my eye. And you try to touch them, you’re causing me to experience harm, the pain that I’m going to come against you. And if you stop and look at it different, look at it also, it’s through Israel, how God deals with Israel, and what’s happening with Israel, that we will know God’s timetable, and know how God will deal with us, and how he has the promises he’s given to us, the Messiah that came, and in the last days, how he’s going to bring judgment on the earth, and how he will fulfill all of his promises to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, just as he said.
And those who try to spoil that, and come against Israel, they’re coming against the apple of his eye. That’s a strong statement. And people don’t realize it, they just go, oh, that’s a cute little statement.
No, it’s a very strong statement. And God will deal with them. And then he goes on and says, For behold, I will shake mine hand upon them, and they shall be a spoil to their servants, and ye shall know that the Lord of hosts hath sent me.
He’s going to deal with those that would come against Israel, and he’s going to shake them, and he’s going to cause them to be the ones that are spoiled. Now, if you claim to be a believer in Jesus Christ, and there are many that say that they are today, but yet they’re very anti-Semitic, they’re against Israel, they’re against Jerusalem, they’re against all the gods, God’s replaced them with the church, God’s done with the Jews, the Jews aren’t the Jews. Maybe you ought to read some of these verses and see what God says when you try and spoil what is dear to Him, and spoil what His plan is.
You’re coming against the plans of God and His Word, and He will shake you and spoil you. And that is not a good position to be in. Well, how does He deal with Israel? He says, Sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion, for lo, I come, and I will dwell in the midst of thee, saith the Lord.
So I’m going to deal with your enemies, and I’m going to come, and what am I going to do with you? I’m going to dwell in the midst of you. So you who think everything is destroyed, you who think that the nation of Jerusalem will be no more, the walls are torn down, the temple can’t ever be rebuilt, I am going to come and I’m going to dwell in the midst of you, sing and be joyful, saith the Lord. And why? And many nations shall be joined to the Lord in that day.
What day is that? When God comes back to Jerusalem amongst His people, and many nations in the world will all of a sudden see who God is, that He is Jesus the Messiah. And they’ll come to Jerusalem and shall worship Him. And He says, in that day, and shall be My people, and I will dwell in the midst of thee, and thou shalt know that the Lord of hosts has sent Me unto thee.
The nation of Israel is going to know this, and this is speaking of when Jesus’ second return, when He comes back to establish His kingdom, the Millennial Kingdom, which we were looking at earlier at the end of the book of Ezekiel. And God comes back, and Zechariah says, It’s going to happen. It’s going to happen.
And I’m going to deal with those that want to spoil My people. I will spoil them, and the nations of the earth shall recognize who I am as I come back. Where? Not to New York City, not to London, not to Stockholm, not to Uganda in Africa, but rather to Jerusalem.
When I come to Jerusalem to dwell amongst My people, the world will come to Me, and they will be My people also. Then you’re going to see people coming to know the Lord, and the Lord shall inherit Judah, His portion in the Holy Land, and shall choose Jerusalem again. Be silent, O all flesh, before the Lord, for He has raised up out of His holy habitation.
For He has raised up out of His holy habitation. So He tells the world, Be silent and realize that I am the one that shall establish where I shall rule from, who is God, and I shall fulfill My word, and I shall rule and reign. Where? From Jerusalem, from Mount Zion.
Just as I said, when I sent the man out with the cord in Zechariah, when I sent the man out with the reed in Ezekiel to rebuild the temple in Zechariah, to rebuild the walls, I’m coming again. Be ready, Jerusalem. Be ready, Judah.
Be ready, world, for I shall rule and reign, and you shall acknowledge who I am. Let’s just close in prayer. Lord, I pray that You just help us to understand the truth of Your word, the fulfillment of Your prophecy in the beginning of it, even as we live today.
Lord, help us to see how You are a fire around the city of Jerusalem, where they don’t need walls, they just need You. And help us to understand that one day You shall come and show all of Your glory and might in the midst of the city and rule and reign from the temple on Mount Zion. This we ask in Jesus’ name.
Amen.