HOLINESS UNTO THE LORD

The Final Vision of Zechariah and the Call to Worship

Please turn in your Bibles to Zechariah chapter 14. This is the last of the sequential sermons in Zechariah. I hope to do a review next week, so pray for that, that's going to be challenging for rehearsing all the important events in Zechariah.

Zechariah chapter 14, I'm going to begin reading in verse 10. All the land shall be turned into a plain from Geba to Ramon south of Jerusalem. Jerusalem shall be raised up and inhabited in her place, from Benjamin's gate to the place of the first gate and the corner gate, and from the tower of Hananel to the king's wine presses.

The people shall dwell in it, and no longer shall there be utter destruction, but Jerusalem shall be safely inhabited. And this shall be the plague with which the Lord will strike all the people who fought against Jerusalem.

Their flesh shall dissolve while they stand on their feet, their eyes shall dissolve in their sockets, and their tongues shall dissolve in their mouths. It shall come to pass in that day that a great panic from the Lord will be among them.

Everyone will seize the hand of his neighbor and raise his hand against his neighbor's hand. Judah also will fight at Jerusalem, and the wealth of all the surrounding nations shall be gathered together, gold, silver, and apparel in great abundance.

Such also shall be the plague of the horse and the mule, and the camel and the donkey, and all the cattle that will be in those camps, so shall this plague be. Now our text for consideration today. And it shall come to pass that everyone who is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall go up from year to year to worship the king, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles.

And it shall be that whichever of the families of the earth do not come to Jerusalem to worship the king, the Lord of hosts, on them there will be no rain. If the family of Egypt will not come up and enter in, they shall have no rain.

They shall receive the plague with which the Lord strikes the nations who do not come up to keep the feast of tabernacles. This shall be the punishment of Egypt and the punishment of all the nations who do not come up to keep the feast of tabernacles.

In that day, holiness to the Lord shall be engraved on the bells of the horses. The pots in the Lord's house shall be like the bowls before the altar. Yes, every pot in Jerusalem and Judah shall be holiness to the Lord of hosts.

Everyone whose sacrifices shall come and take them and cook in them. In that day, there shall no longer be a Canaanite in the house of the Lord of hosts. This is God's holy and infallible word. Please pray with me.

O Lord, may your name be exalted in our hearts today. May the glory, the brightness of your glory shine in this place. And O Lord, may we walk in holiness. We ask these things in Jesus' name, amen. Please be seated.

An In-Gathering of Worshipers

For those of you who have need of an outline, the first point of consideration is an in-gathering of worshipers. And we touched on this at the end of the message last week, so it'll be very brief probably.

Here.

An in-gathering of worshipers. Second, we're going to consider the worship of the King. Worship the King. And third, holiness unto the Lord. The in-gathering of worshipers. The worship of the King and holiness unto the Lord.

Zechariah is a book about a post-exile journey and return out of Babylonian captivity. In it, we learn that they were commissioned to rebuild the city and most notably the temple and reform and renew and purify the priesthood.

And we also learned that this great temple is going to be destroyed. They are engaging in a building project that will ultimately lead to a destruction. They are inspired to work vigorously and hard that the temple might be rebuilt, that the sacrifices might be performed, that the priesthood might function.

But we also have seen that there is a telescopic view that points through the King-Priest Joshua earlier in the book to the incarnation, the branch, the Lord Jesus Christ. So in Zechariah, it deals not only with the events that are happening in the rebuilding and return to Jerusalem, but it telescopes into the future and it looks to the incarnation of Christ.

And even, it stretches so far to the last day in this final section. So it is from where they are coming out of captivity, there are events that are going to happen in the interim, there's going to be a rebuilt temple.

It stretches all the way to the incarnation of Christ and it stretches even past the day in which we now live to the last day, the day of the Lord. So what is this section about? The nations are going to go up to the house of the Lord and worship the King.

The entirety of their lives are going to be consecrated to His service, but not so the wicked. The nations are going to go up to the house of the Lord. The Jews have come out of Babylonian captivity, they've been under the taint of Babylonian corruption and at the end of this book we learn that Babylonians are going to come and worship the Lord.

The Egyptians, those dirty rotten Egyptians who are so known and characterized by their displeasure of God, they're going to be brought in. Canaanites will be brought in. Philistines are going to be brought into the worship of God.

The nations are going to come to Jerusalem. The seven mountains around Jerusalem are going to sink into the ground and they're going to climb the holy hill of Zion and they're going to worship the King in the beauty of holiness.

And the people in the future, in the last day in that complete glorified state certainly, but hopefulness for us that maybe we will make progress in this area ourselves and the church will be purified, the church will be sanctified, the church will mortify her flesh.

The entirety of the people of God and their lives are going to be consecrated to His service. Two thoughts I want you to consider when we're thinking about this today. One, how zealous are you for the worship of God?

How zealous are you? How zealous, how passionate are you for communion with God? And secondly, do you have the holiness to match? I would say that every one of us is deficient in our zeal for God. Every one.

We all have much room and much growth and much area of improvement in giving ourselves entirely to the worship of God. Even in this lead up to the time of preaching, we were distracted while we sang hymns and psalms and prayed, our minds wandered.

We need to diligently assert ourselves in this direction toward God. The entirety of our lives are lived before His face, therefore we must worship Him in spirit and truth as was prayed today, but not only that, every part of our life, not just Sunday, is to be consecrated to His service.

How's your worship? How's your holiness? Let's begin looking at the text. Verse 16 again, judgment has fallen on Jerusalem, but now the nations used to chasten Jerusalem, they have been chastened by the Lord and they are destroyed.

The curse, the plague that is on them is outlined in verse 12, their flesh will dissolve while they stand on their feet, their eyes shall dissolve in their sockets, their tongues shall dissolve in their mouths.

Potent language about the judgment of God upon the wicked. But there's a remnant of those people. It shall come to pass that everyone who is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles.

The Worship of the King

One of the great mysteries that's revealed in the New Covenant is the inclusion of the Gentiles, and if you read the Old Testament, you're going through your reading plan this year for example, you see the sharp contrast that God has done in carving out His people from among the nations, separating them, think about Leviticus.

This very distinct separation from the people of God from the nations of the world. So it's very powerful, it must have been, when Zechariah's audience and Haggai's audience and Zerubbabel and Joshua, they're thinking about these things, we're trying to reconstitute our nation, we're the people of God and we're trying to worship and you're talking about including the Gentiles of whom we've come out from.

Well, the Messiah of Israel is the Messiah of the world. The little city of Jerusalem pictures the dwelling place of God in the Spirit, the Church, and God in His mercy has extended His grace to the Gentiles in Christ.

A remnant is going to be saved and they're going to go up and worship the King, the Lord of Hosts, and to keep the Feast of Tabernacles. You'll remember that the Sukkot is a harvest feast, it's the third of the pilgrimage feasts and it's very prominent related to the exodus from Egypt, we talked about this last week, and the people constructed those makeshift structures like tents because they tabernacled in the wilderness, and make no mistake about it, we saw a little bit last week, Jesus sees Himself as the fulfillment of the Feast of Tabernacles, didn't He pitch His tent and dwell among us?

So the Feast of Tabernacles observance, I believe in Zechariah 14, is nothing less than the people of God coming to worship the King, the Lord Jesus Christ. That's how they keep the Feast of Tabernacles.

You and I are keeping the Feast today because we find our provision, our protection, our hope, our salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ who pitched His tent among us. Look at verse 17, it says, and it shall be that whichever of the families of the earth do not come up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, on them there will be no reign.

Brethren, I've tried recently in recent weeks to remind you of this, the condemnation of the reprobate is real. There are people who are in the Kingdom of God, and there are people who are outside the Kingdom.

There are people who receive the grace and mercy and forgiveness of union with Christ. And then there's everyone else. This should fill us with sobriety, and our hearts should be grieved of those who do not know Christ, but this is the reality.

Judgment has either fallen upon Christ in our stead, or it's going to fall upon them. You and I have passed through a judgment because Christ has been the one who's born the judgment. The judgment has fallen upon Him.

But what happens to those who will neglect so great a salvation, who will trample the Son of God and His atoning blood underfoot? What will become of them? They're going to be destroyed. And I believe the picture of Jerusalem's fall is the picture of the unbelieving world in the last days.

The destruction that came upon Jerusalem in A .D. 70 is typical of what's going to happen in the final judgment. The Lord is going to be vindicated. All of the enemies of God who have not repented, they are going to be severely punished, and they are going to be sent to an eternal torment.

This is the reality that we live in, and the world and culture around us says this could never be. Don't stop preaching hell to your neighbors. Don't stop telling them of the impending doom of the judgment of God, because it's real.

It's the truth. The Lord and His mercy is in gathering the nations. You remember back in verse 8, there's going to be living waters flowing out of Jerusalem. In every direction, the four corners of the earth, the waters are going to go out, and that irrigation, that watering is going to sprout up in new life where believers are going to be popping up all over the world, but there's going to be people by whom the seed passes by, the fertilized seed, the watering is going to pass by.

They're not going to receive that grace and mercy from heaven. They're not going to receive the rain of God's blessing, and the union with Christ, and the filling of His Holy Spirit. It's not going to fall upon them.

And that's pictured here in our text. Interestingly, if you know about the topography and the water of the region, Jerusalem really has no water. They have had to create a lot of systems to get water from the hills and other places into the city.

They're very dependent on the early and latter rain. Egypt is in a little bit of a different position because they have this Nile River. It's interesting, I believe that the physical rain speaks of a bigger blessing, of the blessing of God as pictured here by rain, the outpouring of God's mercy and grace.

I think it's interesting that Zechariah invokes the name of Egypt. Look at verse 18. It says that the family of Egypt will not come up and enter in. They shall have no rain. And they shall receive the plague with which the Lord strikes the nations.

What does that bring to remembrance? The first exodus. Egypt has said here, Egypt, they can repent and believe and turn to the Lord. Astounding. But Egypt can still be Egypt. And Egypt can still suffer the plague of God and His judgment if they reject the salvation that He gives in Christ.

The Lord is going to strike the nations who do not come up to keep the Feast of Tabernacles. This shall be the punishment of Egypt and the punishment of all the nations who do not come up to keep the Feast of Tabernacles.

I'd like to walk you through a few of my favorite psalm sections. They're consecutive psalms. Really quickly, I'm not going to read every psalm, but I'd like you to go first to Psalm 95. Turn back to Psalm 95.

The worshipers have been gathered in. They are being gathered in, and this is something that will continue to happen into the future. You and I have escaped a great judgment. I don't know if you appreciate this fully.

We love to talk about our covenant promises and our wonderful standing. It's true. But we must also be mindful of the judgment that has been averted. You and I should have, according to merits, been judged, but we have escaped a great judgment in Christ.

We have run into the ark of Christ and His salvation. We have drunk from the rock, which is Christ. We have eaten the bread from heaven, which is Christ. The light of the world, which is Christ, has shone on our faces.

The only response proper is worship first and obedience and holiness second. We were created for worship, but that was marred. We have been recreated for worship. We will be glorified for worship. Psalm 95, verse 6.

I want you to think about this. You have attended a worship service today. You're attending a worship service, but have you worshiped? O come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker.

For He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand. Have you been moved with the entirety of your person to worship and bow down, to kneel before the Lord, our Maker? Are you ready for the service to be over?

Is your belly growling? Do you have other things on your mind? Is there some kind of theological thing you'd prefer to talk about on the back porch today? I'm telling you, we must be the people who worship Him.

Our hearts must be entirely given to Him. Nothing in reserve, nothing held back, leaving it all out there for Him. Psalm 96. O sing to the Lord a new song. Sing to the Lord, all the earth. Sing to the Lord, bless His name.

Proclaim the good news of His salvation from day to day. Declare His glory among the nations, His wonder among all peoples. For the Lord is great and greatly to be praised. He is to be feared above all gods.

For all the gods of the peoples are idols, but the Lord made the heavens. Honor and majesty are before Him. Strength and beauty are in His sanctuary. It's almost like this is written for Zechariah 14.

Give to the Lord, O families of the peoples. Give to the Lord glory and strength. Give to the Lord the glory due His name. You and I have sought our own vainglory. You and I have withheld the worship and the glory given that is due our God.

And we need to repent. If any people is to be the worshiping people, it should be us. We know better. Bring an offering and come into His courts. Verse 9. Oh, worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.

And that interjection of reverence. Tremble before Him all the earth. Did you tremble coming into His presence? Did you worship Him with all of your heart today? Say among the nations, the Lord reigns.

The world is firmly established. It shall not be moved. He shall judge the peoples righteously. Psalm 97, verse 6. The heavens declare His righteousness. And all the peoples see His glory. Let all be put to shame who serve carved images, who boast of idols.

Worship Him, all you gods. Zion hears and is glad. And the daughters of Judah rejoice because of your judgments, O Lord. For you, O Lord, are most high above all the earth. You are exalted far above all gods.

Do you sense the zeal and the passion, the wholeheartedness of the Psalms? But what's coupled with it? You who love the Lord hate evil. How many people out there, oh, they love the Lord so much that they imbibe in every form of evil.

Do they love the Lord?

They can't. It's incompatible. You and I must drive out all the evil in our lives. You and I must drive out all the worldliness in our lives. We have great confidence because the verse continues, He preserves the souls of His saints.

He delivers them out of the hand of the wicked. Light is sown for the righteous and gladness for the upright in heart. Rejoice in the Lord, you righteous, and give thanks at the remembrance of His holy name.

The picture of Isaiah, chapter 6, so often quoted, R .C. Sproul talks about it so much, we're all so familiar with it. Isaiah 6 speaks of real things. We would be utterly undone to stand in the presence of God.

But we do because of the mediation of Christ. It's an incredible thing, isn't it? If we could actually see the glory, we'd be struck dead somehow. And yet we beheld and behold His glory. Another way, there's an in-gathering of worshipers, and they worship.

We need to have a zeal for God and His glory, and we need to find greater joy and satisfaction in Him than in anything else. John, chapter 4, very powerfully introduces this idea of in-gathering with Jesus and the woman at the well.

The Father is seeking such to worship Him. He wants a five-plus-time adulterous offender to come into the house of the Lord and worship and be sanctified. What a God, what a Savior is Christ. We'll sing to the Lord a new song.

He has done marvelous things. His right hand and His holy arm have gained Him the victory. The Lord has made known His salvation, His righteousness. He has revealed in the sight of the nations. He has remembered His mercy and His faithfulness to the house of Israel.

All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God. Shout joyfully to the Lord, all the earth. Break forth in song, rejoice and sing praises. Sing to the Lord with a harp, with a harp, in the sound of a psalm, with trumpets, in the sound of a horn.

Shout joyfully before the Lord, the King. Let the sea roar in all its fullness. The world and those who dwell in it. You see how the reach of His grace and mercy goes beyond Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria.

It goes even to the ends of the earth. Let the rivers clap their hands. I love that part. It's very beautiful imagery to me. Let the hills be joyful together before the Lord, for He is coming to judge the earth with righteousness.

He shall judge the world and the peoples with equity. Let them praise Psalm 99, your great and awesome name. He is holy. The King's strength also loves justice. You have established equity. You have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob.

And here it is again. Exalt the Lord our God and worship at His footstool, for He is holy. We've got a worship problem, but we have a Savior who is Christ the Lord. Well, that brings us to the last point.

You can turn back if you churned with me, back to Zechariah 14. 1 Peter, quoting Leviticus, says, Be holy, for I am holy. God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, unchangeable, in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.

Theologians have said holiness is the sum of God's perfection. After we lay out all the attributes and character of God and we extol all of the virtue, the unpalmable depths of it, we get to that last thing and we say He's holy and it's all-encompassing.

He's consecrated. He's separate. He's different. And you and I are called to this. But we like a little world. We like to integrate a little worldliness, a little syncretism into our Christianity, a little soft idolatry in, a little earthly pleasures in.

There's lots of pleasures on the earth, but we take in some of the worldly pleasures too. But we're called to something better. We're called to holiness. In the future, that which was reserved formerly for the chief priest, miter, is now going to be applied to common things.

Look at verse 20. In that day, holiness to the Lord shall be engraved on the bells of the horses. You may remember from earlier in Zechariah, horses are usually connected to, in this ancient Near East world, to war.

We think about maybe equestrian things with horses. These were implements of war. But now there's a change. It's like swords into plowshares almost here. Holiness to the Lord shall be engraved on the bells of the horses.

And I can imagine some of us being enterprising like we are getting out a metal engraver and walking through our house engraving things. Holiness to the Lord. That would be fine, but that may be an external way of this.

We want the substance of this. There are no common things for the Christian who's united to Christ because they've been sanctified and set apart. My shovel in Christ is sanctified. My hammer is sanctified in Christ because I live and breathe and move in Him.

The pots in the Lord's house shall be like the bowls before the altar. The most common archaeological find in Jerusalem and Judea is pottery. Think about all the little jars you have in your house, all the little things that you use to put things in and food comes in.

These are ubiquitous. They're broken shards of nothing. They had no value. Even those things, like the imagery of the potter in the clay, even those ignoble things, those things that are of no consequence, even those things are consecrated to the Lord.

Every pot in Jerusalem and Judea shall be holiness to the Lord of hosts. This is looking forward to a day of great sanctification. Everyone who sacrifices shall come and take them and cook in them. And in that day there shall no longer be a Canaanite, and it's probably important to recognize the Canaanite's connection to being a merchant, like he is in Job.

This is not saying that there's no Canaanites in the kingdom of God, but the Canaanite was known for being a merchant coming into the house of God to make money. As Dr. Lawson in our Sunday school lesson has said, there are many charlatans who use religion for other purposes.

In that day, in that glorious day, there's no longer going to be the need of Jesus turning over the money changer's tables in the house of the Lord of hosts. So this is telescoping into the future, and it begs the question, but what about now?

Well, we should be doing the same thing. Our lives of holiness should be so demonstrable that the wicked are grabbing our arms and saying, tell us about the salvation of the Lord. Our witness is impotent in the world because we lack holiness.

We're no different. Our music is cheap imitation of their music. It's going to be a big part of the end gathering is when the church is holy. The church will be holy again. We are, in this definitive sense, holy now, but we need some practical holiness.

Also, the church is going to be a place of end gathering for worshipers when we start worshiping. It's all very basic, isn't it? If we will worship the king, if we are zealous to give him all the glory and all the honor due his name, maybe this will be a sign to those who stand under judgment.

In Christ, we pass through the judgment and are made part of the end gathered throng who worship the king and have the entirety of their lives consecrated to his service. It's time to start now. Not just in time's eschatology.

The time is now. The ends of the age have come upon us. A few words of application will close here. Brethren, I admonish and exhort you today to fully engage in the worship of God as those who have been redeemed in Christ.

Don't oversleep on Sunday morning. Don't forget your clothing on Saturday night. Pray, be attentive. Sit, come sit on the pew at the edge of your seat hoping to see something of the glory of God, longing to commune with him.

Second, you and your family need to consecrate the entirety of your beings, your entire lives to the glory of God in Christ. Is there any part that's excluded from this in your life that's not directly serving the Lord?

Is there any part that's not serving the Lord? Third, let a practical holiness adorn your faith that the unbelieving may see the beauty of holiness, that God would be glorified, that they might see Christ.

We say we love God so much. Do you have zeal for communion with God? Do you love holiness? Are you mortifying the flesh? Don't boast in your love for God until you have fruits showing those things. But take heart today.

In Christ, a glorious victory has been won. Let us go out into the streets and tell the nations of this great victory he has accomplished over Satan, over sin, and over death. And invite them to be engathered and to be part of that throng that they too might be worshipers and that they too might be entirely consecrated to his service.

The nations are going to go up to the house of the Lord and they're going to stream in even to little churches like ours. They're going to come to worship the King. By the power of the Holy Spirit moving in us, the entirety of their and our lives are going to be consecrated to his service.

O Lord, make it so, please. Change us. May it be said of us that in that place there is holiness unto the Lord. Please pray with me now. O Lord, we thank you for this book of Zechariah and from the practical lessons we can derive from this message.

O Lord, we thank you that you have set us apart and called us holy. O Lord, we pray now that we would have evidence and fruit of that, increasingly so. O Lord, I pray that you would inflame and stoke fires of worship in us, that we would worship you truly in spirit and in truth.

We also pray, O Lord, that we would entirely be consecrated to you and that the most common thing we do would reflect our faith and our worship, our adoration of you, O Lord. We ask these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.