The Return Of The King (Zechariah 9:9)

 


Monday, November 18, 2024


Psalms 41; 44:1-9

Zechariah 9:1-10

Revelation 6:12-7:8


The Return Of The King (Zechariah 9:9)


Now that we have covered the history of the return of the exiles from the memoirs of Ezra and Nehemiah, we return to the prophets who were preaching at the time. Zechariah was, as we hopefully remember, one of the two loudest prophets during the rebuilding of Jerusalem. Haggai was the old man of wisdom and patience, while Zechariah was the young man of zeal and energy.


We have picked up where we left off – Zechariah had a wild night of vision, of flying scrolls, horses, angels and so forth. Now he is being given some, shall we say, more traditional prophetic words to speak. To quickly cover some Bible-reading basics, if you are getting confused about Revelation and the horses and scrolls in there, it might be worth going back to the start of Zechariah. God’s word is uniform across the whole Bible, and if we read about the same thing in different places, then God has done that deliberately, in order to help us better understand what he is telling us.


Zechariah’s words in today’s reading, however, seem fairly straight-forward. Pronouncing woe on all the usual mob – those bloodthirsty Philistines – is common fare for the Old Testament prophets. But snuck in at the end of today’s section, we have a couple of verses that sound familiar, if not unusual for this time of year: the king is coming, humble, and riding on a donkey. Our New Testament writers tell us explicitly that this is a direct reference to Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem, marking the beginning of his final week before his great work of salvation on the cross. (Matthew 21:1-9)


Zechariah was preaching to the returned exiles, and it must have been encouraging to them to hear that they might finally be at the end of all their woes – and as a people, the Jews had certainly been through enough at that point. There was no king at that time, just governors and temple authorities, and yet God had promised that there would be a king over them, in the line of David, forever. He would break the weapons of war and proclaim peace to the nations. They believed it would happen “in real life”: that is, actual nations and actual world peace. Now that Jesus has come and fulfilled this prophecy, do we believe that actual nations will come to the Lord, and actual world peace is possible? Have we been cowed into the lie that this all a spiritual reality only? Or do we believe that the Lord Jesus is bringing his gospel of peace to all the nations, not just in some abstract way, but in concrete, material reality? And where do we find our place in this great mission of his?


Lord Jesus, our righteous and humble king: put the shout of great rejoicing in our mouths and in our hearts, so that we may see and do your work of proclaiming peace to the nations; and may we be among those who belong to you, becoming leaders, and never again being oppressed.

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