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Well good Thursday morning to you. Today we're in Zechariah chapter 9, and in this passage there is one of the most familiar verses in all of the book of Zechariah.
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But in this chapter I want to actually look at two different verses. One of them is a verse that gives us reason to rejoice.
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The other is a verse that gives us reason to reflect. Let's look at the second verse, because it's the verse that's most common and most well -known from the entire book of Zechariah.
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It's verse 9. It says, Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion. Shout aloud,
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O daughter of Jerusalem. Why? Behold, your king is coming to you, righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
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In a few days we're going to celebrate Christmas, we're going to rejoice in the fact that our king has come in the form of this baby in a manger.
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When Jesus was born in Nazareth in the city of David in the days of Herod the king and so forth, there wasn't a lot of fanfare, was there?
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Sure, there was for the shepherds out on the field, the angelic host came and sang glory in the highest, but as far as fanfare among people, there wasn't much of any.
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There was really none. You could say that the magi who came and they presented gifts to him, they recognized that he was born king of the
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Jews, and so there was some honor there. But there was nothing like the fanfare that Jesus received on Palm Sunday, the triumphal entry, which is the fulfillment of verse 9, when he rode on that donkey, the colt, the foal of a donkey.
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People rejoiced as he came down the pathway headed toward the city of Jerusalem, shouting,
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Hosanna, he is the king. They recognized he's the king who's come. And so we have a great deal to rejoice over, because in reality, my king has come.
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My king has come. The Lord Jesus Christ has come. He came in a humble and lowly fashion from his birth all the way to his death, and yet he is the king.
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And when he, the king, came, he brought with him the gift of salvation, and he purchased it with his righteous blood.
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Yes, he is righteous and has salvation with him.
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So we have a great deal to rejoice over, because our king, our king has come.
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But there is, at the beginning of this chapter, a verse that gives us pause to reflect, a reason to stop and consider.
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I'm talking about verse 1, and I recognize that it's translated variously in different ways in some of the translations, but here's how it reads.
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Verse 1 says, The burden of the word of the Lord is against the land of Hadrach and Damascus, its resting place.
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For, because, the Lord has an eye on mankind and on all the tribes of Israel.
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The Lord has an eye on mankind. And this passage is going to be talking about some of the judgment that the
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Lord is going to bring upon Hadrach and Damascus, its resting place, and so on and so forth.
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And why? Because he has had an eye on those places, and he deems that they are worthy of the judgment that he is going to execute.
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But the point I want us to get is that the eye of the Lord is on mankind. His eye is on us all the time.
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His eye is on us even now, even as you are sitting and listening to this devotional, and his eye is on you beforehand, and his eye is on you afterwards.
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His eye is on us all the time. So the thing for us to reflect upon is just how much do we live in the light of his presence, in the awareness that our
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God is constantly, ongoingly with us.
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His eye is constantly on us. There's a sense in which God's eye is on these evil nations for judgment, but his eye is also on his people for their blessing, for their benefit.
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So as we meditate on the reality that God's eye is on mankind, and as he goes on to say, and on all the tribes of Israel, and the point of that was he's bringing judgment upon the nations that are fighting against Israel and hurting
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Israel, and his eye is on Israel for good. Yes, his eye is on his people for good, but his eye is on us all the time.
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Let's live in the light of his ongoing presence. So our
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Father and our God, I pray that indeed we shall. How easy it is to get caught up in all the activities of our life, and all the things that we have to do every day, and just get so focused on these things, and just not have the awareness, the underlying awareness, that in every detail of our day, you are observing it, you're watching, your eyes are upon us.
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Father, we thank you for that reality, because your eyes are on us, then you know when we're in need, and you're always ready and able to help.
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Father, thank you for the reasons that we have to rejoice, and thank you for giving us reason to reflect today.
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We pray in Jesus' name, amen. All right, listen, have a good rest of your