Adult Sunday School - Zechariah’s 8 Visions

Prayer for Illumination and Gospel-Centered Study

Let's open in prayer, Heavenly Father, we do give you thanks for this day that you have given us another day to come together and worship the Lord Jesus Christ, to gather around your word, to learn more about what you have given us, Father, in the scripture, to learn how to grow closer to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ, to edify and encourage one another.

All these things, Lord, impossible for us, but you, by your Spirit, we pray you would work them in us. So be with us this morning, even as we start Sunday school, throughout this day of worship, if we ask it in Jesus' name, amen.

Zechariah as a Post-Exilic Prophet Alongside Haggai

Now, there's an interruption happening in the series that Pastor Owens was giving on marriage, and that interruption is he is ill. And so we're going to take a one-day digression, Lord willing, a one-day digression, into one of my favorite prophets and one of my favorite parts of the prophet, in Zechariah.

Zechariah, we're not going to do the whole book. We're going to look at the eight visions of Zechariah, and obviously, if we're going to do this in an hour, we're not going to look at them in a lot of detail.

We're going to kind of fly through. And what I hope you see is how the Old Testament points and has its trajectory towards the church, that what we see in the Old Testament without fancy footwork, without reading between the lines, is showing the ultimate purpose in Christ, and his ultimate purposes in the gospels being taught and going forth from the church.

And so what we're going to see in these eight visions is a trajectory towards that, towards what we are here today. But before we get there, we're going to look at those eight visions and see how they're put together and see what they mean, what do they mean to them then, as much as we can.

Like I said, we have an hour, and each of these visions has books and books written about them. Some of them are a little controversial, some of them are a little tough to understand, like the one with the pipes going through the olive trees and where does the oil come from, what does it represent?

If you want to hear that given in some detail, go back to the series I did in Zechariah about two years ago. You'll find it still online. We're not going to touch that today. Today we're just going to look at these eight visions and see how we look at them, how do we understand visions and this type of prophetic word, how do we even approach the Bible?

So perhaps you'll learn a little bit of your own Bible study and how to do that on your own when you're looking at things that are difficult to grasp, which is a lot in the Bible. Before we begin in any detail, let me just tell you that when you're in the Old Testament and you're having trouble, you're having difficulty with it, and this actually applies even to the new, the key to figuring out what you're looking at is always Jesus, it's always pointing to Jesus, and if you think resurrection, just look at it, it could be in a psalm, you could be in a prophetic book, you could be in the law, you could be in 1 Peter.

What's he talking about? Give yourself the answer resurrection and see if that brings it more into focus because usually I find that it does because all scripture is pointing to that great act of God in Genesis chapter one, he speaks out existence from nothing that was, and then after Jesus' death, his suffering for our sins, he speaks resurrection and raises him from the dead.

This great act of God usually will solve a lot of mysteries, especially if you're in the psalms. It's like, what is he talking about? Resurrection, let's see if that lines it up for you. But Zechariah, tell me anything you know about Zechariah, just, what do they call it, a stream of consciousness.

What do you know about Zechariah? If I said, tell me everything you know about Zechariah, what's the first thing that comes to your mind? Raise your hand or I'll point to you. Yes, what's your name? Nick, please.

Minor prophet, why do we call him a minor prophet? Anybody know?

No?

Just because he didn't write as much as the major prophets. That's why we do it. I really appreciate that he gave minor prophet as an answer because if you look at the prophets that Jesus cites, most of them are minor.

Jonah was the sign of the resurrection. We call him a minor prophet. We get all mixed up about whales and fishes and how did he do that and how could he survive?

Who cares?

Jesus says that prophet was a sign of the resurrection. Zechariah, a minor prophet and yet, John in the apocalypse in the revelation relies upon the imagery of Zechariah more than any other prophet. So minor, remember, it's not minor because their prophecy was minor.

It's minor because they didn't write quite as much. Their books weren't cut as long. No less important. What else do you know about Zechariah? Thank you for that, Nick. What else do you know about Zechariah?

Where do you get repentance? Okay, Zechariah's calling for repentance from Israel.

Yes.

Throw it out there. Any thoughts? Okay, I'm not gonna push you anymore. Raise your hand if you're gonna read your Bible and the prophets more often. Everybody must raise their hand.

Okay.

In the eighth month, in the second year of Darius, the word of the Lord came to the prophet Zechariah. So Zechariah, if he was in the reign of Darius, was what we would call an exilic or a post-exilic prophet.

Exilic meaning he was a prophet that came after the people were exiled from Judah. After Babylon came, destroyed the temple, took the people captive, that was 586 BC. That was under Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, soon to be conquered by Cyrus of Persia, okay?

Who was Darius? Anybody know anything about Darius? Quick thoughts, dream of consciousness? We're just trying to get a context of this prophet, this minor prophet. Who knows anything about Darius? He was king of what land?

Nope.

Persia.

He was the king who came after Cyrus. Cyrus was the king of Persia, who in his first year after he had conquered Babylon, and Persia is often called Babylon. The people come from Babylon, but they actually came from Persia because by the time they were returned, Persia had conquered Babylon, but it's often called Babylon.

So what was I just saying a second ago? Darius, he was a successor to Cyrus. Cyrus in his first year was moved by the Lord to release the people to go back to Jerusalem, rebuild the temple that Nebuchadnezzar had sacked.

So that's Darius, and that's why we would call Zechariah a post-exilic prophet. During the exile, those are exilic prophets, exilic psalms, things written while they were there for those 70 years in that foreign land.

As they came back, if you had a prophet, as you do with Zechariah, we call him post-exilic. Did he prophesy with anyone else? Did he have a partner in crime there, as we like to say? Haggai. Haggai, now listen.

In the eighth month, in the second year of Darius, now that's important because whether you're a Christian or just a secular historian, you can date Darius. We know exactly when Zechariah meant, when he says the second year of Darius.

We don't even have to look at the Bible, which doesn't give us the dates. There's all kinds of historical record of Darius's reign. So this would be about 505 BC. If you look at the first verse of Haggai, you don't have to turn there, I'll just read it to you.

In the second year of Darius the king, in the sixth month, on the first day of the month, the word of the Lord came by the hand of the Lord to Haggai. So Haggai, Zechariah are co-prophets, co-conspirators in the Lord, if you will.

They're post-exotic because they prophesied during the rebuilding of the temple. The people who had been in Babylon, Babylon conquered by Persia, are released by Persia to go back. Now they're under Persian rule.

They don't have a Judaic or a Davidic king. They have a governor appointed by this foreign nation, and yet God moves Cyrus to send them back to finance the whole thing. You can read about that at the beginning of Ezra, how the Lord moved Cyrus to do this.

For you visitors, I have multiple sclerosis. So I start to tip, I have not been drinking, I have no balance, okay? That's why I hang on, that's why I get a little shaky looking. Don't worry about it, I won't fall.

And if I do, our big deacon Albert will come and pick me right back up and we'll get going again, okay? Don't worry about it. So we're talking about Zechariah and Haggai. Post-exotic because they're prophesying to the people who were rebuilding the temple under Persian command, really, because Cyrus was moved by the Lord to do so.

So we date these both in the second year of Darius. Now Haggai was in the second year of Darius in the sixth month on the first day, which would have been about August of 525, I said 505, 525 BC, 525 years before Christ.

Zechariah, in the eighth month of that same year, second year of Darius, the word of the Lord comes to him, so that would have been October. These are really close together when they begin to prophesy.

They work together, these two. Now they have very different genres, very different tones. You can read Haggai very quickly, it's only a couple of chapters. Zechariah's not real long, as Nick shows, told us it's a minor prophet, wouldn't take too long, but longer than Haggai.

But they're very different. Haggai is pretty much the word of the Lord coming as a rebuke to Judah, to Israel. And what was that rebuke? Can anybody tell me without having to read it again? The book of Haggai?

To build the temple. And why is it a rebuke? Because they were what? Not building the temple. They were paneling their own homes, right?

So Haggai is the one who says,.

You know, why are you doing this? Why are you taking care of this? Do you wonder why your crops aren't growing? Do you wonder why your money's not lasting? Do you wonder why you're not satisfied with your drinking, your food?

It's because God is holding back that blessing because he released you through Cyrus. He released you to do this. You committed to build the temple, and here you are taking care of your own homes. That's kind of the core of Haggai.

Zechariah is more pure prophecy, more apocalyptic language. There's not a lot of intercourse between God and the people where God is saying, through the prophet, therefore you must, or this is where you've gone wrong.

Here's how I will forgive you, that sort of thing that you get in Haggai. Zechariah is more pure prophecy, and it's apocalyptic, which is why the apostle John in the Revelation or in the apocalypse relies so much upon the imagery.

Now, I say that, I'm just making sure we have time to get to the visions. I say that, now who can think of a way that Zechariah, and I know you didn't know Zechariah was coming, but anybody familiar enough with Zechariah to match part of it up with Revelation?

Okay, in Zechariah, actually it's the first of the visions. On the 24th day of the 11th month, which is the month of Shabbat, in the second year of Darius, the word of the Lord came to the prophet Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, the son of Id, saying, I saw in the night, behold, a man riding on a red horse.

He was standing among the myrtle trees in the glen, and behind him were red, sorrel, and white horses. What does that remind us of, right there? Louder, louder. The four riders of the apocalypse, okay, where you got that white horse, the red horse, the chlorophyll, squalid horse, and a black horse.

They come and make war. Who's on the white horse in Apocalypse? In Revelation? Jesus. A lot of people think it's something different. He's leading death and all that, and it can't be Jesus. Well, Jesus is coming for vengeance.

It is Jesus on that white horse. There's two white horses in Revelation. Zechariah is the imagery that John relies upon to make the same point. It doesn't mean he's making it up. It means that he's using that same type of imagery.

They're both literally true. So we'll look at these visions. There it is. There's eight of them, and they all come to a focus. Now, without going into a lot of detail, a lot of Hebrew literature, poetry, historical, whatever it is, is in the form of a chiasm.

Do we know what a chiasm is? A chiasm is a Hebrew technique, and it's interesting to think that when they heard this, they didn't have to write it down and figure it out. They just heard it and understood it.

So in this case, we have eight visions. Horses patrolling the earth, four horns and four crests, and we'll read those in a minute. Jerusalem inhabited without walls. Joshua the high priest, two anointed people, sixth vision, a seventh and an eighth, and a final vision.

And what happens here is the first and the eighth are similar, and the second and the seventh, and the third and the sixth, and they sort of make this arrow to the middle, and it's called chiasm because of the Greek chi, and it's everything pointing towards this crescendo, if you will.

So in the middle, what you find then is this vision of Joshua the high priest and a prophecy to Zerubbabel, who was then the governor during the rebuilding of the temple. The last thing I wanna say before we dig into some detail here is from Ezra 6, 14.

You don't have to turn there. Let me just read it to you. Ezra chapter six, verse 14. Ezra was the priest who was sent from Babylon or from Persia to restore temple worship. He was coincident with Nehemiah, who was a governor type, and he was doing the rebuilding.

Okay?

Ezra 6, 14 says, and the elders of the Jews built and prospered through the prophesying of Haggai the prophet and Zechariah the son of Edo.

Okay?

That's how we know that these two worked together. I also believe, just as a quick aside, that Malachi was a temple prophet during that time, and we can talk about that maybe some other Sunday if I have to jump in and substitute, but they prophesied or they prospered through the prophesying of Haggai the prophet and Zechariah the son of Edo.

Now, I say that when I read that to you. What does that tell you about the prospering and how that happened? What does that tell you? What does that bring to mind? Anybody have any thoughts about that?

They prospered through the prophesying. They're building the temple. It had been ransacked, been desecrated by Babylon some 70 years before.

They're discouraged.

They're surrounded by enemies. They're looking to their own needs. All these things are happening. They hear the prophetic word, the apocalyptic word through Zechariah, the more personal, rebuke, repentance kind of word through Haggai.

They're listening. They're listening and obeying.

Thank you.

You get the scholar award today. They're listening and obeying. When we obey the word of God, when we hear it, we prosper. Now, does that not relate to us today in the church? Who's building this church?

The class said? No, the whole class said? Jesus is building the church. How is he building the church?

Through us.

Who was building the temple back then? Jesus, but God.

Through?

The Israelites. So, it's God. It says in Zechariah, not by might nor by power, but my spirit,.

But by,.

But by my spirit, says, I won't do that again, sorry. Do it on this side. But by my spirit, says the Lord. So, it's God who built the temple through the hands and the tools used by the Israelites, just as Jesus today is building his church through the hands and feet of the priesthood of all believers, through us.

Do you see the similarity? Do you see where you don't have to dance around and do fancy footwork and be clever about the scripture to say, oh, this is related to the church. It is related to the church.

Okay, you're not playing games if you show that to your family, to your friends, to people who are arguing with you about the scripture. It's very, very clear.

Okay.

So, who are people receiving this prophecy? It's the returnees, it's the people who came back. And why did they need the rebuke from Haggai? Because they had to get back to work. Why did they need encouragement?

Which is what we'll find from Zechariah. Because we all need encouragement. Listen, we're building this church. Jesus is doing it, but he's using us.

It's tough.

Let me tell you, it's hard work. It's hard work as an individual to stay on track with the Lord. It's hard work as a body to stay unified and stay on one trajectory and one path together. It's hard work as a pastor when sheep bite.

When I'm the sheepdog, I'm supposed to be biting you. I'm supposed to be chasing you back.

Okay?

This is tough. And we need this encouraging kind of word. So the eight visions of Zechariah were that kind of an encouragement to the people. Not to say, by the way, that Haggai wasn't an encouragement.

But he was more direct, more corrective, and more speaking directly to the people in almost a conversational way. So our first vision is those four white horses. We're gonna look at that very quickly.

Then we'll look at vision number eight because I think vision number eight matches up to it in this chiastic way that I explained. Saw a man riding on a white horse. Then I said, what are these, my Lord?

Now my Lord being the angel, the revelatory angel to Zechariah. What are these, my Lord? The angel who talked with me said, I will show you what they are. So the man who was sitting among the myrtle trees answered, these are they whom the Lord has sent to patrol the earth.

And they answered the angel of the Lord who was standing among the myrtle trees and said, we have patrolled the earth, and behold, all the earth remains at rest. Then the angel of the Lord said, O Lord of hosts, how long will you have no mercy on Jerusalem and the cities of Judah against whom you've been angry these 70 years?

Now, 70 years is what? I only mentioned it very, very quickly, but what does 70 years relate to?

Yeah.

No, no, not jubilee. 70 years is what the prophet Jeremiah prophesied. So you're going to be exiled for 70 years. And if you line them up, then at 586 when the temple was destroyed and they were exiled, it was about 70 years later when they were returned.

So these 70 years you were angry, these 70 years you left us in exile. That's the 70 years that he's talking about. Just four different horses. Did everybody hear what Christine asked? She asked why the different color of the horses?

You can get very allegorical. Like in the apocalypse, and I forget the name of it, one of the horses is like a chlorophyll, a greenish kind of color. And people say, well, that's the color of sickness or something like that.

People aren't getting any nutrition because the crops are gone. It's just four different horses. Just leave it at that. It's just four different horses. And in the apocalypse, I would say because I don't like allegory, I like things to be plain, I would say that the white horse is Jesus.

And we get that because the revelatory, Revelator John tells us that Jesus was on the white horse. And the others brought death and destruction and economic woes and all this other stuff. Leave it at that.

And then you can fly through Revelation. Don't make it allegorical. White horse is probably more meaningful than the other ones. Maybe black horse means something darker, but don't get too hung up on that.

But, oh, dear, the angel, have no mercy against what you have been angry these 70 years. And the Lord answered, gracious and comforting words to the angel who talked to me. So the angel who talked to me said, cry out, thus says the Lord of hosts.

I am exceedingly jealous for Jerusalem and for Zion. And I'm exceedingly angry with the nations that are IDs. Now, let's just stop there. There's no way I'm gonna finish eight visions. Sorry, I like to say, my excuse is I only found out yesterday I'm doing Sunday school, and I haven't taught Sunday school and tried to condense teaching into an hour for a long time.

And you hear how I'm just babbling away on this stuff? It shows you I don't know what an hour is anymore. Which I preached this afternoon. What is this telling us? What is this telling this people then?

I was angry with Jerusalem. I am exceedingly jealous for Jerusalem and for Zion. I'm exceedingly angry. So exceedingly jealous, exceedingly angry. Exceedingly jealous for who?

For what?

Jerusalem. And why Jerusalem? What does it mean he's jealous for Jerusalem? They're supposed to be devoted to him. They're supposed to be jealous for him. He's jealous for Jerusalem. What is he telling these people?

They saw, some of these people lived and saw the temple destroyed. It's only 70 years before. They saw the temple ransacked, the wall of Jerusalem knocked down, their sons killed, their women ravaged.

They saw this. And God's saying I'm jealous for you. Which means I'm, as it were, wed to you. I meant good for you. I mean good for you. I'm jealous for you in a godly, pure, and rightful sense. Well, we can talk about how all that destruction means God loves and God cares.

We can do that another time. That's what it means. And he's also exceedingly angry with the nations. So here's what's happening here. You have these four patrolmen that went north, south, east, and west, and they checked everything out, and they came back and they report.

Remember, it's a vision. And we don't push the details too far, because otherwise we have to find out what does the stirrup mean? And what kind of rain did he use? Was it rope or leather? It just gets crazy.

Four patrolmen, and they go out and they're patrolling, and they come back and say the nations are at ease. But what did God just say, what I just read to you, about those nations? God is what?

Angry.

How angry?

Jealous. Angry.

How angry is he?

Indignant.

Indignant. He's exceedingly angry. I think in the Hebrew, and I forgot to put this in front of me, but I'm pretty sure it says, I'm angry with anger. Sort of like back in Genesis 2. You will surely die.

With death you will have death. With that kind of Hebraic repetition. I'm exceedingly jealous for Jerusalem, I'm exceedingly angry at the nations, and the nations are at ease. Louder for me.

Cyrus.

Darius was part of the rebuilding. If you read in detail in Ezra and Nehemiah, more than Nehemiah, but both of them have it, you'll see how the building stopped. There were the conspirators against Jerusalem, Samballah and some other Arabs, wrote letters to Darius, and said, hey, they're gonna rebel against you, and he stopped the building.

But Darius also, when they checked the records, is the one who said, we gotta restart this. It gets very intricate, but you need to read Ezra and Nehemiah. Haggai, Zechariah, read those all together because they're all the same period, and again, I would argue with some other commentators that Malachi was actually a temple prophet during that time.

Not important to our meetings today, to what we're going through today. So he's exceedingly jealous for Jerusalem, exceedingly angry with the nations. The patrolmen come back, say, the nations are at ease.

What's the problem there? God's really mad. Did you guys meet before this and pay her to give all the answers? I know you didn't know Zechariah was coming, so it's all right. Okay, here's the problem.

Jealous for Jerusalem, all you went through means that I really do love this people, just like us. God disciplines those whom he loves. I don't believe that God has a frowning providence upon his people ever because he sees us in Jesus Christ.

That doesn't mean that he doesn't give us difficult providences. He does sometimes to correct us because he loves us. So he's jealous for Jerusalem, he loves Jerusalem. He's exceedingly angry with the nations.

As jealous as he is for Jerusalem, he's that angry with the nations. The patrolmen come back, say, hey, guess what about the nations? They are at ease. They're happy to have plundered Jerusalem, to have abused your people, to have brought your punishment as you sent Babylon against your people, but you're exceedingly angry.

God is exceedingly angry because they went too far. I said before that the women were ravished. It says that in the Bible, I'm not making that up. That's not what God wanted. The sons were slaughtered, not just killed in combat, slaughtered afterwards.

It's like the Germans in World War II. The first thing they do to an unarmed soldier, they kill him, they're terrible. He's going too far. So he's exceedingly angry with those nations, and those nations have no idea.

Not paying any attention at all, okay? Turn to Zechariah 8. It's the eighth and final vision, and I think it's the one that matches up with the first vision. Again, I lifted my eyes and saw, and behold, four chariots.

Now, four chariots, four horsemen. This is one of the ways we match those up. And again, the Hebraic ear back then, they would have picked that up automatically. When they heard that, they would have gone right back to number one, two, three.

They would have lined them all up. It's just the way they heard it. Four chariots came out from between two mountains, and the mountains were mountains of bronze. The first chariot had red horses, and the second, black horses, the third, white horses, and the fourth, dappled horses.

Chariots, different colored horses, horses, different colors. These match up. All of them strong. Then I answered and said to the angel who talked to me, what are these, my Lord? And the angel answered and said to me, these are going out to the four winds of heaven after resenting themselves before the Lord of all the earth.

The chariot with the black horses goes toward the mountains, towards the north country. The white horses go after them, and the dappled ones go to the south country. When the strong ones came out, they were impatient to go and patrol the earth.

And he said, go, patrol the earth. And they patrolled the earth. Then he cried to me, behold, those who go toward the north country have set my spirit at rest in the north country. What's the north country?

Babylon. Persia.

The land of exile, okay? So we have the four horsemen patrolling all the worlds at peace. You have the four chariots going, and what are they doing? They're gathering the people back. They're saying, come back.

God has made the way. God has moved Cyrus, this pagan, violent, terrible king, really. He's changed his heart. He moves the rivers. Doesn't it say that in Proverbs that the Lord, yeah, moves the heart of the king as he does the rivers of water, okay?

He did that with Cyrus. So it's come back from the north country. These patrolling, they say the nations are at ease. God has set them at ease. It's a false peace that they have because they're just reveling in what they gained.

The four chariots, come back. God is strong. God has made the way. God has moved a king to reduce you, okay? Are we okay so far? Do we agree that I've matched up number one.

And number eight?

Number two is four horns and four craftsmen. And this one's really kind of weird. So you see how fast we're going. We're not gonna spend a whole lot of time on it. There they are.

2 .18, the nations are at ease.

Let me finish a little bit about the nations at ease and we'll go back to that in verse 15. I'll just read this to you. I was angry but a little. They furthered the disaster. That's why I meant that they went too far.

Therefore, thus says the Lord, I have returned to Jerusalem with mercy. My house shall be built in it, declares the Lord of hosts, and the measuring line will be stretched out. Remember, the people discouraged, surrounded by enemies.

Look at their own. This is encouraging, okay? This tells them, get back to work. This is the way they prophesied under the preaching of Zechariah with Haggai. Okay, then to verse 18, our second vision.

And I lift my eyes and saw, and behold, four horns. And I said to the angel who talked to me, what are these? And he said to me, these are the horns that have scattered Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem. Then the Lord showed me four craftsmen.

And I said, what are these coming to do? And he said, these are the horns that scattered Judah so that no one raised his head. And these have come, excuse me, these have come to terrify them, to cast down the horns of the nations who lifted up their horns against the land of Judah to scatter it.

Horns, horns, horns. What's a horn in the Bible, especially the Old Testament?

What's a horn?

A symbol of strength, a symbol of power, a symbol of authority. So these horns are the nations that came against Judah, Jerusalem. Primarily, it's Babylon. Babylon had allies. And other nations came and added to the disaster.

The Moabites, the Edomites particularly. The Moabites and the Edomites come under very heavy judgment later. We're not gonna touch that because those were actually brothers to the Israelites through Lot.

And you can read about that back in Genesis 19 and 20. So they held to a very high level of accountability for that. So again, I'm building away. I've got these Arabs yelling insults at me. I've got some people writing letters against me to Darius and conspiring against me.

All these things happening. There's blight, there's drought, and I've gotta keep working. What does this say? It says God knows. God is aware, God is with us, and God is going to take care of those who've been against you, those who've been abusing you.

Does that have anything to do with us today? The abuse that we take today for standing on God's word? I think in this church, we're not obnoxious about it. We don't go thumping people over the head and saying same-sex marriage is wrong.

We know it's wrong. We stand against it. We're actively against abortion on the streets. But I don't think we're obnoxious about it in a way that would justify the kind of abuse that we take. Understand this, that when God's people are persecuted, when they're abused, God knows God's going to do something about it.

Now, they got to see it then.

Okay?

We may not. We may, we may not. But understand, my favorite example of this that I'm going to say is actually in Acts chapter eight. When Jesus comes upon Saul and knocks him off his horse and blinds him with light, and what's he say?

Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting who?

Me.

Wait a second. Now, Saul is going and putting people in jail, and he says later in his own words when he's Paul the apostle, he says, I put some of them to death. And Jesus says, why did you persecute that good Christian woman, Barbara, and her husband, Paul, or Mike, or whatever?

No, you're persecuting me. So understand, this consistency in the scripture from the Old Testament to the New, God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. These four craftsmen, these four horns that God is going to take care of, God knows what they did.

God knows the extra abuse that they piled upon his people, and God takes it personally. And Jesus said to Paul, or Saul, he hadn't quite called himself Paul yet, why are you persecuting me? Understand this, folks, that when we stand for Christ, when we stand on God's word, and we're abused for it, it's not, as he told Samuel, it's not you they've rejected, when they wanted to make Saul the king, it's not you they rejected, but who?

Me, God. Very similar here, very encouraging, if I'm the one who's swinging the hammer and trying to rebuild this thing under all the abuse that we're taking. So again, this wild vision, these craftsmen, the craftsmen are sometimes in Greek mythology, and some of them are called the demiurge, the builders, the ones who are sent out to make the creation that the deity wants.

He's just picking up on that imagery, he's not lowering God, okay, just picking up on that imagery.

That's the second vision.

The seventh is in chapter five. God willing, you'll see why we would match those up as well. Sixth, did I say seventh? I think it should be sixth. Again, I lifted my eyes, and behold, a flying scroll.

And he said to me, what do you see? I answered, I see a flying scroll. Its length is 20 cubits, so it'd be about 30 feet. Its width is 10 cubits, about 15. Then he said to me, this is the curse that goes out over the face of the whole land.

Everyone who steals shall be cleaned out according to what is on one side, and everyone who swears falsely shall be cleaned out according to what is on the other side. I will send it out, declares the Lord of hosts, and it shall enter the house of the thief and the house of him who swears falsely by my name, and it shall remain in his house and consume it, both timber and stones.

So again, what is the Lord saying to this people who's building the temple? He's saying, I know the lies are being spoken against you. Again, in Nehemiah, especially we read about Simbalik, the Arab who led this constant resistance against the building of the temple, and abused the people with insults, false conspiracies or lies against them to the Persian king to stop the building, and actually some violence.

Lying, abusing, and here's this curse that's going to go out. So here I am swinging the hammer, using my trowel, putting the stones back in place, and I'm hearing that, I'm going, you know, the Lord is hearing every word, and you're not going to stop me.