We want to continue our study through Zechariah. And this afternoon, we’re going to be looking at the 8th vision that Zechariah was given by the Lord about things that were going to happen, not only for the nation of Israel, but also in relation to world events.
So if you have your Bibles, turn with me to Zechariah chapter 6, and we’re going to be looking at verses 1 through 8 this afternoon. Zechariah chapter 6, verses 1 through 8. Last Wednesday evening, we looked at Zechariah chapter 6, verses 5 through 11, the vision of the woman with the ephah, and how the Lord had put the evil things that were going on in Jerusalem, put them in the vision, placed them in a basket, had two women carry this basket to Babylon. And we mentioned that this would be the wickedness that had been instilled in Israel and had been brought into Israel through the Canaanitish religions and through the lack of their kings and spiritual leaders to turn them away from that and back to the Lord.
And instead, the people openly embraced those things, and God said, I’m going to take those out of Israel, where they’ll no longer be a part of Israel, and put them back in Babylon where they originated from. We also talked a little bit about the Babylonian religion. It started in the land of Babylon with the Chaldeans, and it came from the time of Nimrod in the Tower of Babel.
It had its roots there, and beyond that, it was on the other side of the flood when people began to embrace the worship of angels, and you had all kinds of demonic things going on prior to the flood, and evil and wickedness permeating the whole world that God judged it by water. Well, as God is going to take away this, He’s going to give Zechariah another vision. And this vision is one of the ways in which He’s going to take away it.
How is He going to deal with this wickedness and evil? He says in chapter 6, verse 1,
Zechariah 6:1
And I turned, and lifted up mine eyes, and looked, and, behold, there came four chariots out from between two mountains; and the mountains were mountains of brass.
Usually when you see brass, it talks about judgment. If you go to the book of Revelation, you’ll see that Jesus, when He’s viewed, has feet of burning brass, and there’s other places where brass is seen as a sign of judgment.
Judgment is coming from between these two mountains. The judgment is coming from God, and it’s coming in the form of four chariots with four horsemen. This morning we were studying in the adult Sunday school class about Deborah and Barak and their battles with the enemies of Israel, and Sisera was the king’s general in that account in Judges.
One of the things that enabled him to have prominence over the nation of Israel for 20 years was the fact that he had 90 chariots. Chariots are the symbol of power, and it was a symbol of war, and a symbol of the ability of someone to overcome their enemies because it gave them an advantage over what their enemies had. It’s not by chance that God chose in this vision chariots and horses would be sent down to destroy the powers of evil that were in Jerusalem.
So we see that they’re coming out, and they’re coming to judge.
Zechariah 6:2-3
2 In the first chariot were red horses; and in the second chariot black horses;
3 And in the third chariot white horses; and in the fourth chariot grisled and bay horses.
And a grizzled horse could be either a bay, could be described as a bay, which would be a solid color with dark mane and tail and stockings, or it could be a gray dappled horse.
But we see that those were multicolored horses, the others were single colored. And these four horses and four chariots were coming out of between the brass mountains, and we see that what they were coming out for, we’re going to find out
4 Then I answered and said unto the angel that talked with me, What are these, my lord? So, Zechariah doesn’t know what these chariots symbolize. He doesn’t know what they’re about.
5 And the angel answered and said unto me, These are the four spirits of the heavens, which go forth from standing before the Lord of all the earth.
6 The black horses which are therein go forth into the north country; and the white go forth after them; and the grisled go forth toward the south country.
7 And the bay went forth, and sought to go that they might walk to and fro through the earth: and he said, Get you hence, walk to and fro through the earth. So they walked to and fro through the earth.
8 Then cried he upon me, and spake unto me, saying, Behold, these that go toward the north country have quieted my spirit in the north country.
He doesn’t know what the mountains are about. He doesn’t know what is this to, how am I supposed to speak to my people when I don’t know what this means. And the angel answered and said unto him, These are the four spirits of the heavens, which go forth from standing before the Lord of all the earth.
And so we see that God has commissioned them to go out to the whole earth, and they’re going to come as his hand of judgment on the earth. And the bay went forth and sought to go, that they might walk to and fro through the earth.
The black horses, which in verse six, the black horses are therein go forth into the north country, and the white go forth after them, and the grizzled go forth toward the south country. Now, if you look at the north country, what is the north country? All of this is from, taken from being in the land of Judah. What would be north of Judah that had been an enemy of Judah, and it come down under the direction of really the wickedness to destroy Judah.
It would be the countries of Babylon, Medo-Persia and Assyria. All of them, as we see in Daniel’s prophecy, come one after the other, Babylon being the first, then Medo-Persia, then Greece, and then the last one being the Roman Empire. Now, as you see that Babylon, which would be Iraq today, is northeast of Jerusalem.
Assyria, which would be located in the northern portions of Syria today, would be straight north of Jerusalem. And this first horse and chariot is going to war against them, and to stop them. The second horse and third horse, he says, are going to go to the south, southern kingdom.
Now, if you look at the history of Israel, since it became a nation and came out of Egypt, they’ve had enemies. There are two main sources of people that would come against them, are either from the north or from the south, the south being Egypt and her allies, the north being, as I mentioned, Assyria, and then later Babylon, as Babylon overtook Assyria. And then later on, the Medo-Persians, even though the Medo-Persians did help Israel at the beginning of their kingdom.
But we see that God would come down and he would bring a chariot and horses against these kingdoms. And then he goes on and he says, And the bay went forth and sought to go, that they might walk to and fro through the earth. And he said, Get ye hence and walk to and fro through the earth.
So they walked to and fro through the earth. What is this that symbolic of? Well, if you look at other prophecies that we’ve been given, a prophecy that we just looked at in Ezekiel, a prophecy that were given in the book of Revelation, a prophecy that Jesus talked about in Matthew chapter 24. One of the things you see is it’s just not going to be Israel’s immediate neighbors that are going to come and try and destroy her, come and try and undermine her belief system.
But we also know that all the nations of the world are going to come against Israel. And so we see here that God tells Zechariah to go throughout the whole earth with this last chariot and horses, and he should judge and look through the whole earth and that all those should be brought into accountability. Now, if you look at what Jesus said, as he talked about in Matthew’s gospel, he talked about the last days when he would come and return and he would be judging the nations.
And one of the things that he would do is he would come and people would come to him and they would say, Lord, Lord, we’ve done all these things in your name. Why are we being judged? And he’d say, well, when my people needed this, when people needed water, you didn’t give it to them. When they needed help, you didn’t give it to them.
Who are these people that he’s speaking of? Who are those that he’s speaking of? He’s speaking of the nation of Israel. And the nations of the world are going to be judged in how they treated Israel. And God is going to deal not only with the northern kingdoms that are coming against them, and we see today that those same kingdoms are the ones that are preparing to come against Israel again.
We have Turkey, which is in the north. You have Iran, which is in the north. You have Iraq, which is in the north.
You have Syria, which is in the north. And you have those enemies of Israel that are in Lebanon, which is in the north. All the northern kingdoms are preparing to come against Israel.
You have Russia, which is rising up and has a big Muslim contingency, especially in eastern Russia, and they are not friends of Israel. We also see that at the same time, as you look at what’s happening in Egypt to the south of Israel, if you look at what’s happening in Egypt to the south of Israel, Egypt is the founding ground and the home of the Muslim Brotherhood. And they are very anti-Israel, even though they have a treaty with Israel that was gained when Saddam Hussein was president of Egypt, and which he paid for with his life, because they assassinated him because he made this treaty with Israel.
That treaty is still to some degree in effect, but it’s becoming much more difficult to have relations with Egypt and Israel. We know that when things were happening in Gaza, Egypt was no friend of Israel when it came to Gaza. They had tunnels that went from Egypt underneath the walls between Egypt and Israel into Gaza, and they were taking supplies and stuff through those tunnels to the tunnels in Gaza.
This was found out by the IDF when they went in to fight. We know that right now, Egypt has a large contingency of Muslims within the country that desires not to have further relations with Israel. And so the kingdoms to the south, and also to the south you have Ethiopia.
Ethiopia used to be more of a Christian nation. There were Christians slaughtered by Muslims in Ethiopia just this last month. Sudan, Christians slaughtered by Muslims in Sudan.
You have Somalia and the break off of Somalia, both to the southeast of Israel and enemies of Israel. So we see that the nations to the south, and then you have nations throughout the whole world, and how are they going to be judged on how they treat Israel? Today you have Great Britain that initially, during the Balfour Accords or Balfour Agreement, gave the land to Israel. But today they are anti-Israel and pro-Muslim.
You have much of Europe, which is becoming very anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, anti-Jewish. And I was just reading what’s happening in France. The riots there are not student riots.
There are riots that are being carried on by the Muslims. And part of it is to rise up against the government of France. They do not want a European government.
They want an Islamic government. And they also want Jews destroyed. They’re destroying Jewish businesses.
They’re attacking other Jewish facilities, like synagogues and educational facilities, not only in France, but also beginning in other European countries as well. God is going to judge the nations on how they treated Israel. And they’ll say, well, Lord, we’ve done this and this and this.
He said, but you didn’t help my people. You weren’t there to help them. And so I will judge you.
You came against them. And they’re going to be judged. And these chariots in Zechariah’s dream are sent out to the whole world to examine the nations, to examine the actions of people, and to bring God’s judgment against them that have it coming.
And the mark of the judgment is how you treat Israel, because how you treat Israel is what you do to God. Then cried he upon me and spake unto me, saying, Behold, these that go toward the north country have quieted my spirit in the north country. Now, what does that mean? What does it mean to have his spirit quieted? Well, his spirit was at great distress because who had brought all the people out of Judah into captivity when Zechariah was living and only a few had come back? His spirit was discomforted and not quieted in him because he saw what had happened to Jerusalem, he saw what had happened to the temple, he saw what had happened to Judea, and prior to that to Israel.
And it had all been brought about by the kingdoms of the north. They had utterly destroyed and demolished the city of Jerusalem, the temple, and many of the cities, if not most of the cities in the land of Judea and Israel. And there were very few Jews left in the land.
And he was disquieted because he saw nothing happening to them. God’s judgment really hadn’t been brought in its fullness against them. But he said, now I see and I understand God’s judgment isn’t done yet.
And one of the things that we need to learn from this is that even though we see things and the things that we see in our lifetime are through, as the Apostle Paul says, through a glass darkly. And if you’ve ever been to a place that’s had the glass that’s dark tinted, you can’t really see clear through the tinted glass. You can kind of make things out, but you really, you can see that there may be people on the other side of the window, but you can’t really make out who’s there.
You can’t really see for sure what they’re doing. Paul says that when we’re living, we’re looking through a glass darkly, but there’s coming a day where it will be clear and we’ll be able to see and we’ll be able to understand. There’s coming a day where God’s judgment will ultimately be brought in its fullness and these nations that have thought, as we read in Psalm 10 this morning, that think they’re getting by with their wickedness.
They’re saying, oh, God doesn’t see what we’re doing, if he’s even there. That’s their attitude. God doesn’t really care what we do.
God cares and God observes and God takes note and God will bring accountability and judgment. And as Zechariah sees that these chariots have come out to bring God’s judgment against these nations that have then used, first God’s chastising hand against Judah and Israel, but God said, you’ve gone too far. And what you will be is judged for what you’ve done and your hatred of my people and ultimately your hatred of me.
And so God’s judgment will come and it will be fulfilled. And one of the things that we need to understand as we look and live today, we look around and it appears, well, you have these elections, like an election in Brazil. The one who appeared to be more conservative, more promoting godly principles in his government, he won the election and then all of a sudden the election’s extended, it’s stolen from him and he’s threatened to be thrown in jail for something that’s false charges and he fled the country to the United States.
And you go, God, don’t you see what’s happening? The same thing happened to his father a few years ago where his father won the election. The guy jerry-rigged the election then so that the guy that’s a communist anti-God man was called as the president of Brazil and he immediately had this, the current one who truly won the election, thrown in jail and was trying to have him thrown in jail. He threw his father in jail just about immediately.
Well, we see that, we say, well, where’s the justice? Where’s the justice? We see what happens in, where all these young, mainly young people, but also others in Iran have been slaughtered by their own government and we say, where’s the justice? We see the Muslims coming to power and is instituting Sharia law in our country and we say, God, where is the justice? This wickedness is, it continues to grow stronger and stronger and we know that the Bible tells us it’s going to grow so strong that the whole world will embrace the Antichrist who will be Satan’s man, who will be the ultimate in promoting wickedness but he initially will come as a man of peace. But the thing is, well, is God not in control? No, God is in control. He’s seeing everything.
He’s giving people a chance to turn to him. The Bible talks about the fact that even during the Great Tribulation, God will have the 144,000 witnesses, young Jewish evangelists going throughout the whole world proclaiming the Gospel. There’ll be an angel speaking from heaven proclaiming the Gospel.
You’ll have the two witnesses standing in Jerusalem proclaiming the Gospel and the people will willfully reject it. They’ll want to silence all of these messengers and when the two, when God gives the Antichrist the ability to destroy the two witnesses in Jerusalem during the Great Tribulation, we see that the world will celebrate. That is how wicked, how they’ve embraced wickedness come against God’s people and they will be ready with the Antichrist to destroy Israel and they’ll blame Israel and the God of Israel.
And so we see here that Zechariah in looking at what’s happened to Judah, what’s happened to the temple, he’s thinking, well, is God really there? Can God really deliver? And God comes and says, I will. And my judgment isn’t done yet. And Jesus said, I am going to come and ultimately judge the nations and judge the people.
And I’ll have my great white throne judgment for the individuals and I will judge the nations when I come to establish my kingdom during the millennial reign. And those who will not come to worship me in Jerusalem, they will have to pay and there will be a drought during the millennial kingdom upon those nations, as Scripture tells us, as they refuse to come to Jerusalem to celebrate the celebrations that they need to come for. And so we see that God is not done.
God is still in control and he reveals this to Zechariah and it quiets Zechariah’s spirit which had been greatly troubled because he was saying, Lord, where are you? Much like the psalmist in Psalm 10 at the beginning of the psalm, as you read that, you go, Lord, where are you? And at the end of the psalm he goes, he’s here and he’s going to deliver, he’s going to be there for those, the fatherless, the poor, the needy, those that have been brought under false judgment by these wicked individuals. And God will judge them. Let’s just close in a word of prayer.
Lord, I pray that you would just help us to see that even though the world around us appears to be in total chaos and even though we see more wickedness coming to the forefront and people embracing wickedness instead of truth, yet we know who’s in control, you are. And your day of judgment will come. You haven’t forgotten.
Help us to keep that in mind. Help our spirits to remain high and our trust in you to remain true. And Lord, may we walk with you this we ask in Jesus’ name.
Amen.