ReDiscover God's word verse by verse chapter by chapter this is real Bible study with teacher Tom Bradford welcome to Torah class I'm going to begin this second lesson in the book of Zachariah with a plea I made in the first do not proceed and until you have first studied the book of ha guy with us it's a very simple matter these two books are connected and in fact hagy sets the stage for what we're going to study in Zechariah a guy comes first and then assuming you have we're going to continue now we open last time with a relatively condensed introduction to Zechariah and then took a look at the first few words of the first verse of chapter 1 and we didn't get far because immediately we encountered a long established issue within our Christian Bibles the issue of God's name and I set before you that out Mount Si God told Israel his formal name that he was always to be known as and it was using the Hebrew alphabet letters UD V now if we do find this pronounced in English Bibles it's usually Jehovah when transliterated it is most often vocalized as Yahweh however I think it's a three- syllable word not not not to thus I think the more likely correct pronunciation is something like yov or yehovah either way the issue I pointed up is that English Bibles nearly never attempt to include God's name at all rather they simply do away with God's name and substitute it with the term the Lord now because this occurs more than 6,800 times in the Old Testament then its effect on our understanding of God and who he is cannot be overlooked now today I'm not going to go into why all this happened you can review last week's lesson for a detailed explanation but only go forward with this virtually every time we see the term the the Lord in the Old Testament and especially when it's capitalized the actual word is y we are to understand this as referring to God the father as opposed to God the son now the first six verses to open chapter one are the first prophetic Oracle God gave to Zechariah we need to rather we read this entire chapter last time so let's reread only the first six verses to get started today so open your Bibles to Zechariah Chapter 1 we're just going to read verses 1- six in the eth month of the second year of daresh the following message from Adonai came to Zakaria the son of Baraka the son of Ido the Prophet Adonai was extremely angry angry with your ancestors therefore tell them that Adonai saot says this return to me says Adonai seot and I will return to you says Adonai sa don't be like your ancestors the earlier prophets proclaimed to them atai sa o says to turn back now from your evil ways and deeds but they didn't pay attention or listen they didn't listen or pay attention to me says Adonai your ancestors where are they at prophets do they live forever but my words my laws which I ordered my servants the prophets overtook your ancestors didn't they then they turned and said Adon has dealt with us according to our ways and deeds just as he intended to do both Hagi and Zechariah found it important to set down dates when they received their Divine oracles usually we get it in the form of day month and and year but this first Oracle is given only as month and year two different calendar systems are intertwined to communicate this date the month is given in terms of the Hebrew calendar the year was given in terms according to the regnal calendar system therefore we learn that this Oracle was presented in the Hebrew eth month of their civil calendar called heshan but it happened during the second year of King darius's reign as King of Persia now because of the way this is presented we really don't know how far along into the second year of darius's rain this is speaking of that is this is not meant to say that one year and eight months into darius's Reign this Revelation occurred the eighth month and the second year have no relationship or connection each is independent of the other as separate pieces of information and as we discussed last time despite what the complete Jewish Bible says or what any English Bible says the literal way the next part of this first verse is expressed is the word of Y came the complete Jewish Bible says the following message from Adonai came while all English Bibles say the word of the Lord came the phrase the word of yov was used by biblical prophets as a kind of standard word formula to announce a Divine prophecy coming from the god of Israel now especially for people of the Bible era when there were so many cultures and and and religions each with their own God systems and God hierarchies then it was critical for the reader to know the name of the particular God that was giving the Oracle and you know what it's still critical now within so-called Western Society a generalized cultural label that's been around for a few hundreds of years it is the biblical God that is assumed automatically what a God has spoken of therefore it seemed to the church that the need to know or use God's name wasn't important however that's a false assumption especially in the 20th and 21st Centuries with the rise and infiltration of Islam into Western culture it has become common for many leaders in Christianity to teach and believe that Allah the god of Islam is the same as yahovah the god of the Bible it has also become rather popular among the more Evangelical Christian branches who already confuse God the Father with God the son in the Bible due to long ago having dropped God's name from the scriptures to say that Muslims are actually worshiping Jesus they just don't know it nothing could be further from reality now the first part of God's message is found in verse two yo was extremely angry with your ancestors this is not meant to look back for centuries in history but rather mainly due to the previous couple of generations those immediately preceding the invasion of Judah by Babylon and then the judeans Exile that is it was divine anger that caused what has been going on for the past 80 or 90 years so it wasn't just the lack of good harvests that had been plaguing the Jan since they got back that was part of their punishment and that mostly was about dragging their feet and rebuilding the temple that indicated God's yehovah's displeasure with them it went back another few decades now I think there's something that we all must face up to here it is that on a national level God's blessings and then punishments don't vacillate at a fast frequency that modern societies seem to we don't displease him for eight or 10 years and then get punished for the next five or 10 years and then with sufficient repentance the pendulum swings again rather quickly L back to blessing God is longsuffering he will observe Warn and wait for significant amounts of time decades scores of years before he finally reacts and then when he does the time of punishment is not brief and some short burst by leaders and the people of sorrow and change doesn't immediately reverse the awful effects of his discipline especially in the 21st century when time seems to be very compressed and changes seem to happen quickly even a few months is seen as a long time but not in God's economy I cannot speak for other nations on this planet but in America where where so many of us with faith in God have watched our nation rebel against the very notion of morality and many others within our faith that claim morality but approach it totally subjectively based upon involving man-made traditions this now endemic trespass against God's laws and commands has gone on for a long long time lately even those who are atheist see our steep National decline coupled with chaos and confusion seems that with each election cycle our hope is that we'll find a better leader to solve our troubles by enacting different policies and especially people of Faith who vote for someone they think Embraces a Godly faith we sort of deep down believe that once that right person is voted in that our national changes for the good will show good results rather quickly the reality is that if indeed the chaos and the confusion and the Troubles of all kinds are God caed cused punishment for our unfaithfulness towards him than the cycle of sinning warning punishing and restoration man that takes a long time long time several decades at the least to complete me goodness the cycle for the northern kingdom of Ephraim Israel has been going on for 2700 years and it's still not com fully complete so the consequences for God's actions against us can last far longer than we wish they would it is therefore most important that we do our part to ensure that we never Force God to react against us so that we experience his severe sight and that avoidance always revolves around obedience to his objective moral code the law of Moses now once caught in this cycle there's only one way out of it and that way is stated in verse three and there it says therefore tell them that yahovah o says this return to me says yahovah Zod and I will return to you says yahovah zot to return to God means to return to the terms and obligations of his Covenant with Israel this is not speculation it's stated in verse six and as I have noted in many of the Torah class lessons on the Minor Prophets God's covenant since Egypt that generally means the covant of Moses but often also includes the Covenant of Abraham this is at the center of how God deals with Israel God's covenant is sacred forever it is something Israel agreed to abide by it is full of terms and conditions that are usually called laws and commands terms and conditions that obligate Israel to God and God to Israel along with these laws and commands the consequences the curses for breaking those laws are Spilled Out There is a command then there is a prescribed punishment for breaking that command it wasn't some ethereal notion of malpractice that the judeans committed that cause God to react by expelling them from from their land it was trespassing against a precise and unnown code of conduct that was violated and then yehovah exacting the penalty for that particular sin that had long ago been spelled out so today when we go astray It Is by one standard alone that determines that indeed we have sinned the law of Moses and it is by that one standard alone that we will be disciplined according to that contained in the law of Moses if says yo these judeans will return to obedience he will return to them to [Music] return to them means to restore blessings at this point their Disobedience was in not rebuilding the temple and I contend that another part of that Disobedience was the judan sacrificing on the altar but with no temple building yet completed see this lack of blessing was currently mainly showing up in poor harvest s the Hebrew word used here for return is Shu it is also used to mean repent therefore we get a a better idea of exactly what it means to repent it means to turn or to return the word picture is of something going in One Direction but then changing direction and coming back to where it came from kind of like a uturn the assumption is that a person came from a good place was heading towards a bad place realized it and turned back towards the good place biblically the thought is of heading in a wicked Direction and then turning back towards a righteous direction see here's the thing that I hope you can gather from this this is not about being sorry being sorry for your sinning ought to be the motive for turning back but Sorrow by itself is a little more than an emotion God doesn't forgive the sorry he forgives those who have turned back to good back to him and I want to say this in another way if a God as a god worshipper you were you were doing what was right and then sinned and continued to live in that sin and then at some point you realized it and asked for forgiveness yet you have yet to reach the point of repentance and that's the possibility of being forgiven it's only when you actively change your behavior back to righteous behavior that has any forgiveness transaction possible so the thought that I can be sorry for a while and during that time be in a state of forgiveness for that sorrow assuming that eventually when I'm ready I can bring myself to finally make the necessary changes this is a fantasy first return Then forgiveness that's the order that it happens and this is expressed in exactly the order we see it in verse three return to me then I will return to you you know verse four reminds me of the patient kindly talks my father had with with me when I was young he explains what he's saying and he expands upon it in hope that I'll finally stop fighting against it and instead to embrace it so Zechariah 1:4 says don't be like your ancestors the earlier Pro the earlier prophets proclaimed to them yahovah Sao says to turn back now from your evil ways and deeds but they didn't listen didn't pay any attention to me says yov so the idea is this cycs happened before to even their earlier ancestors Hai and now Zechariah are the prophets speaking to this current generation of judeans but a along time ago there were other prophets that spoke to their ancestors and they proclaimed exactly the same message that is now being proclaimed return to me but sadly those ancestors ignored the warning and the pleas of yahovah and the consequences were well catastrophic and ironically we find these same words to don't be like your ancestors spoken by King Hezekiah to the ancestors of Israel just prior to Assyria being God's instrument to destroy and Scatter the kingdom of Ephraim Israel well now that we have been seeing what Horrors can happen to Israel and then to Judah for their unfaithfulness and Disobedience towards yeh perhaps these following words from Chronicles will carry the Deep emotion with them deep emotion that we need to understand are present in them in second Chronicles chapter 30 starting in verse four we read this the idea had seemed right to the king and to the whole community so they issued a decree that it should be proclaimed throughout all Israel from Bea to Dan that they should come to the pesak to Passover to Jehovah the God of Israel at Jerusalem for only a few had been observing it as prescribed so Runners went with the letters from the King and his officers throughout all Israel in Judah and they conveyed the king's order people of Israel turn back to Jehovah the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob then he'll return to those of you who remain who escaped capture by the kings of Asher don't be like your ancestors or like your Kinsmen who sinned against Jehovah the god of their ancestors with the result that he allowed them to become an object of horror as you see Don't Be Stiff necked now as your ancestors were instead yield yourselves to yahovah enter a sanctuary which he has made holy forever and serve yahovah your God so that his Fierce anger will turn away from you don't be like your ancestors these are words words that Yeshua could easily have spoken with great passion to all of us notice in Chronicles that the current problem was that the Israelites other than for a few had done what they had stopped coming to Jerusalem on certain biblical feasts as instructed in the Torah the specific one mentioned is pesak Passover so we find that there have been several different specific areas of Disobedience that had occurred over the centuries and each one was eventually addressed with its accompanying disciplinary action well then in verse five another aspect of those ancestors who disobey is addressed the rhetorical question is asked so where is your ancestors where are the prophets see the proper response is of course well they died long ago so those who delivered those earlier oracles were dead just as were those who disobeyed them the issue is that both the prophets and the people were mortal this contrasts with verse six that begins with with but my words and my laws that is God's laws and commands are Immortal compared to humans that are mortal Zechariah 1:6 but my words and my laws which I ordered my servants the prophets overtook your ancestors didn't they then they turned and said yahovah has been dealing with us according to our ways and deeds just as he intended to do humans live only for a short time but God's laws and commands Live Forever The Prophet says that even though God's laws are old and overtook those of you from past Generations so they are still alive and well and now those same laws and commands they've overtaken you those laws are about the ways and deeds the behavior of God's people all people in a certain sense and it is through these laws of his Covenant that God intends to deal with people there's no plan B okay Believers think very hard what we just heard because of great lessons being laid out here one that Israel never could seem to learn and one that the constantinian church denies still exists a lesson that our savior Yeshua emphatically also warns us about it is that a person ought not try to resist the words of God that is his laws and commands because indeed those words words live on forever there're the mechanism through which God determines the measure of a person's Behavior as good or bad righteous or Wicked and an equal measure to a person's obedience he Rewards or he punishes and those who refuse to heed this lesson have only elves to blame for the terrible consequences one more time Matthew 5:1 17-20 do not think I've come to abolish the Torah of the prophets I haven't come to abolish but to complete yes indeed I tell you that until Heaven and Earth pass away not so much as a uterous strugle pass from the Torah not until everything that must happened has happened so whoever disobeys the least of these beats F the least of these Commandments and teaches others to do so will be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven but whoever obeys them and teaches them will be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven for I tell you that unless your righteousness is far greater than that of the Torah teachers and the Pharisees you certainly will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven just as God tells us in Zechariah that all humans are mortal but God's laws are Immortal so it says Yeshua Remains the Same even after his Advent just as God tells us in Zechariah it it doesn't matter how old these laws are because they are Immortal in their substance then it's always that the immortal will pursue and overcome the Mortal so says Yeshua these laws commands remain the same even after his Advent just as God tells us in Zechariah that the measure of how well or how poorly one follows those Immortal laws will determine whether that person will be given much or Little Blessings Yeshua says it Remains the Same after his Advent and goes on even until the heavens and the Earth cease to exist in other words by any any human measure this goes on forever there are two principles presented here that no man can alter first God responds to us and like kind to the way we respond to him and second God's message to us never changes because God's word never changes and conversely God's word never changes because God's message to us never changes if Christ had brought a different message to us than the one we just read in Matthew 5 then by definition it would have had to have come from a different word than his father had given to his people long long ago and I'm sorry to say that despite what Yeshua told us in this passage the church says a new message from a different word was given to us this error has only compounded over the centuries and led so many into wrong Doctrine let's move on to read the next Oracle given to Zechariah the next or Oracle consists of a few parts with each part of it called a vision the first Vision takes up the remainder of the first chapter so let's go back to our Bibles and start reading Zechariah Chapter 1 at verse 7 verse 7 on the 24th day of the 11th month the month of shat in the second year of daresh this message from I came to Zakaria the son of Baria the son of Ido the prophet it was night I saw there before me a man riding on a russet colored horse he stood among the myrtle bushes in the valley and behind him were other horses russet chestnut colored in white and I asked what are these my Lord and the angel speaking with me said to me I will show you what these are the man standing among the Myrtle said these are those whom Adonai has sent to wander throughout the Earth then they themselves answered the angel of Adonai standing among the myrtles we have been wandering throughout the earth and the whole world is quiet and at peace the angel of Adonai said Adonai how long will you keep withholding Mercy from yusim and the cities of udah you've been angry with them for the past 70 years Adonai replied with kind comforting words to the Angel who was speaking with me and the angel speaking with me then said to me here is what Adonai saot says I am extremely jealous on behalf of yusim and seon and to the same degree I'm equally angry with the Nations that are so self-satisfied because I was only a little angry at yerusalem and seon but they have made the suffering worse therefore Adonai says I will return to yerusalem with merciful Deeds my house will be rebuilt there says Adonai sa o yes a measuring line will be stretched out over yerusalem in addition Proclaim that Adon zot says my cities will again overflow with prosperity Adonai will again Comfort zon and he will again make yusim the city of his choice well whereas it was the eth month of the Hebrew calendar in the second year of darius's Reign Over Persia that the first Oracle of God was given to Zechariah now in the 11th month of the Hebrew calendar shat still in the second year of darius's Reign another Oracle is given and this time a fuller or more complete date is provided including the day the 24th day of that 11th month and when we look at the composite work of Hagi and Zechariah together we see that this date given in Zechariah is two months later since the last prophetic Oracle given in Hagi now I mentioned that Zechariah 1 begins uh verse 7 begins this next Oracle what I didn't tell you is that it continues all the way through the entire sixth chapter so there's much information to cover now what we can understand overall is that the ceremony that dedicated the refounding of the temple as we see in hagy is in our rear is in our rear view mirrors in Zechariah it's already happened so zechariah's job is less to exhort the judeans to finish the temple than it is to explain to them what the meaning is for this new Temple in the context of the very different circumstances under which it was built that is it was built when Israel had no king of their own and even the land it was being built upon was now but a province of another Nation Persia this seemed to defy all the traditional reasons and signif significations of and for a temple in the first place the new Oracle begins with the same word word formula and identification of the name of the Prophet that received it as did the first one and around three months after Zechariah was first called to be God's prophet and I assume he had not been a prophet prior to this General time frame because nothing's recorded that's recorded would indicate it this new revelation came to him and it was quite expansive much of it involved Israel's relation relationship with the rest of humanity as well as the destiny both the people and the nation would experience now because this was of course entirely in the future then it makes sense that nearly all of it was given through Visual symbolism what can be pretty challenging ing is trying to decipher even the general nature of what each symbol was communicating so some amount of thoughtful speculation will be necessary in some cases the first words of this first vision of this new Oracle are it was night and I saw I saw is in Hebrew R it lets us know this was not a dream that he was having which we might otherwise have guessed since it happened at night Zechariah was awake he was conscious and immediately following this word in the original Hebrew scriptures we find H which means behold and behold then indicates it's something it's it's important it's unusual uh spectacular killer and knowing this is occurring at night means more than just telling us something about the time of day it is part and parcel of the symbolism itself and this symbolism begins with the appearance of a man riding on a russet a red colored horse now there's much differing opinion if not confusion about this man sitting on the red horse the Hebrew word is Ish definitely meaning a man and yet the preponderance of scholars believe this must be an angel that comes in the form and the appearance of a human male something that's quite typical for the Bible so rather than to declare him either I'll just call him the writer how interestingly he was a bit of a distance from Zechariah with the horse and the rider standing amid some Myrtle now these myrtles were themselves growing in a depression some Bibles translate it as a as a as a valley others a Glenn still others a ravine probably more appropriate to the vision is they were in the shade this is where myrtles tend to grow along river banks in low moist depressions and a Myrtle is a somewhat low growing plant that falls in size somewhere between a large Bush and a small tree they grow dense so they produce shade now I think that the issue of the shade is quite critical to the scene as it works in conjunction with the fact that it was nighttime in other words shade and night together say that the horse and the rider was were rather obscured they were somewhat concealed it also tells us the horse and the rider were more or less standing still they were not moving around now behind the man on his horse were three more horses another red one a sorl and a white one now a sorl is sort of copper color and this description alone creates all sorts of problems because the rider and his horse and the myrtles are said to be red do we have two red horses or are they possibly the same horse and then how much difference is there really between a red horse and a sorl and even more considering what comes next are there a total of three horses or are there four verse 9 only deepens the mystery in verse 9 a new character is added to the scene the angel who talked with me I asked what are these my Lord and the angel speaking with me said to me I'll show you what these are Zechariah asks someone he calls Lord Adon in Hebrew who these three other horses are assuming that we have a total of four horses at the same time this new character is called in Hebrew Mal and malach means messenger or Angel so is Lord the rider on the horse standing in the myrtles or is this referring to the angel that speaks with Zachariah or are these both the same person because Christianity is tended to ascribe the person of Jesus to every mention of the word Lord or Lord even in the Old Testament and likely because that reference is not correct except for a few times at best then one level of typical confusion can be eliminated that is whoever this writer is or this Angel is it is in Jesus now I also think we need to be cautious about assigning much meaning to the horse C in other words I don't see any necessary connection between the meaning or purpose of each horse as based upon its coloration in fact I see it as sending us down needles rabbit Trails Zechariah asked the angel that talked with him to explain what these horses were about and the angel says he will and just for the sake of clarity I'm going to assign a name to to this Angel as the interpreting Angel since that does seem to be his function that is he is not so much part of the symbolic meaning of the vision as he is the one that seeks to help Zechariah understand it so the interpreting Angel says to Zechariah in verse 10 the man standing among the among the myrtles said these are those whom yahovah has sent to wander through the earth now if you're paying close attention then we have come to a very difficult Nuance to spot the person answering Zechariah is said to be standing among the myrtles but we have another figure who is sitting on a horse among the myrtles are these two different beings or whether standing or sitting is it's the same person and is merely dismounted now after all it does say in Hebrew that the ish is standing in the myrtles whereas the Hebrew for Angel is Mal seems to me that what we have here is two different figures one that's on Horseback another standing a little further distance behind him but himself still in the myrtles going back and forth between using the terms man and Angel don't have to be so confusing if we take the word Malo in its more generic form as meaning messenger rather than meaning Angel this way we have the man sitting on the horse and we have the messenger standing behind him that is we don't have to try to figure out what kind of being this is his place in the vision and His function or his role is more important than precisely what that figure's substance and nature is so what I have determined to call the interpreting Angel just so we can more easily differentiate among these characters that tells Zechariah that those three horses he sees that do not count the one in the myrtles with the writer were sent by Jehovah to wander around all over the planet these horses may also have Riders upon them unless these horses speak because the next verse gives a response from them about why they were sent to wander around the earth verse 11 then they themselves answered the angel of yov standing among the myrtles we have been wandering throughout the earth and the whole Earth Earth is quiet and peace oh goodness do we now have a third figure standing in the myrtles a figure called the angel of yahovah which again is obscured in the Christian Bible because 100% of the time it is the Angel of the Lord and never the literal original angel of yehovah we'll get into that another time but first I want to talk about these three horses unless one lived in those ancient times or as a historian we wouldn't know that horses were not what Israelites normally wrote upon rather it was donkeys only royalty and the very rich use them for transportation so these horses aren't just a common way to carry things or people around horses were expensive and they were primarily for military use horses were not from the Middle East for the longest time there were a specialty of Egypt so militaries that had horses spent significant funds to acquire them and this gave them a real advantage over those that didn't have them in this case the three horses were a symbol of God scouting out the Earth to collect information that they had writers or they didn't irrelevant because it was what they represented to the ancient mind that was the point God wanted to know what was going on everywhere and The Scouting horses bring back their report we have been wandering throughout the earth and the whole world is quiet and at peace so the report is the whole world is quiet and in peace let's put this together first notice that the three horses they all play the same role their coloration has no recorded meaning at least in this particular Vision second this report is of a global Dimension and is about what is happening only on Earth not in heaven being quiet and at peace is speaking politically which plays itself out militarily that is there's only War involving militaries when the political leadership the Kings and their courts decided to direct their militaries to go to war it's no different now than it was then therefore in general the report to God is there were no notable Wars going going on the world was rather stable for the time being now what this likely had future implications it also describes the condition of the known world at the time of Zechariah Persia had some time ago completed their takeover of Babylon and their empire and now any kind of serious military action was over King Darius had more or less reinstated Cyrus's enlightened governing policies that had been overturned for a while by his immediate accessor casses the Persian Empire was vast stretching Horizon to Horizon and it had become stable darius's srey governing system that honored each province's culture and traditions was operating very well this was the world at that moment in history and so it was the way things were in yahood where the returned judeans from Babylon were now living and we'll stop here continue in Zechariah next time for more teachings of real Bible study and to ReDiscover God's word with Tom Bradford visit Torah class today on the web streaming TV or download the Torah class mobile app app