Zechariah 1:16

The Bible says in Zechariah 1:16-17, “Therefore thus saith the LORD; I am returned to Jerusalem with mercies: my house shall be built in it, saith the LORD of hosts, and a line shall be stretched forth upon Jerusalem. Cry yet, saying, Thus saith the LORD of hosts; My cities through prosperity shall yet be spread abroad; and the LORD shall yet comfort Zion, and shall yet choose Jerusalem.” Zechariah chapter one takes place at the end of the seventy year captivity, when the Jews had been taken captive and held in Babylon. Zechariah 1:16 tells us what changed so that the children of Israel could return to Jerusalem and to the promised-land: God decided it was time for Israel to return. God is in control of the events of the world. Things happen when the Lord decides that they will happen. Notice that the Lord said, “I am returned to Jerusalem with mercies.” All of us are dependent upon the mercy of Christ because we are sinners.

In Zechariah 1:17 God makes it clear that He has a long-range plan for Jerusalem and for Israel. Notice the words that God uses in regards to His plans for Israel and for Jerusalem: “prosperity,” “comfort,” “choose.” Of course, the book of Zechariah is a book of prophesy. By God’s revelation Zechariah was able to look into the future and see what the future would hold. That is because God holds the future. In our individual lives, we may not be able to know the future, but at least we know the One who holds the future: Jesus Christ. But actually we do know quite a bit of what the future holds for mankind because of the things that God has revealed to Zechariah and to other prophets of the Bible. Zechariah 1:17 tells us one of the great outlines of what the future holds for Jerusalem and for Israel. The future holds prosperity and comfort for Jerusalem and for Israel because God has chosen them. It is important to be one of God’s chosen. If you are one of God’s chosen, then you also have a bright future. Israel is God’s chosen because of the promise made to Abraham. Those who believe in Jesus are also God’s chosen because of the promise God made to Abraham.

The promise made to Abraham is found in Genesis 12:1-3, “Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee: And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.” God also said to Abraham in Genesis 17:4-8, “As for me, behold, my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of many nations. Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham; for a father of many nations have I made thee. And I will make thee exceeding fruitful, and I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee. And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee. And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.”

God always keeps His promises. That is the message of the book of Zechariah. The word “Zechariah” means “Jehovah remembers.” Bible prophecy is all about this one great truth: God keeps His promises. Do you want to know what is going to happen in the future? This is going to happen: God is going to keep His promises. Find out what the promises are that God and that His Son have made in the past, and you will know what the future holds.

Zechariah 1:18-19, “Then lifted I up mine eyes, and saw, and behold four horns. And I said unto the angel that talked with me, What be these? And he answered me, These are the horns which have scattered Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem.” In Bible prophecy “horns” represent rulers of countries. For example, we are told in Revelation 17:12, “And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast.”

In spite of the ungodly efforts of these four rulers to scatter the people of God, notice what is said in the following verses. It says in Zechariah 1:20-21, “And the LORD shewed me four carpenters. Then said I, What come these to do? And he spake, saying, These are the horns which have scattered Judah, so that no man did lift up his head: but these are come to fray them, to cast out the horns of the Gentiles, which lifted up their horn over the land of Judah to scatter it.” By the way, Schofield points out that perhaps the four rulers represent the four great world kingdoms described in the book of Daniel. If that is the case then these four kingdoms are the most guilty in causing the dispersion of the Jewish people. The point that God is making about the four carpenters that He will send is that no matter how much the powerful of the world oppose God’s people to destroy and to tear down, God has a plan to build up His kingdom, and no one will be able to ruin God’s plan no matter how much power they have in this world. The work of the four carpenters will put to naught the destructiveness of the four rulers.

Human beings who do not follow God tear down and destroy, but those who follow Jesus build up, construct, and establish. Jesus said in Matthew 12:30, “He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad.” It says in Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” God creates and builds up. It is man who destroys and tears down. If you are serving God and following Jesus, then you must be involved in creating and building up that which is good and decent and pure and beautiful and godly. Of course, that which God decides to build up no man can destroy. The four horns described by Zechariah tore down and destroyed Israel, and removed the people to another land. But it did not hold and it did not last because the Lord has determined to build up Jerusalem and Israel and to bring the people back to the promised land. That is what prophecy is all about: God accomplishing His great purpose that He has for this world. The Messiah came the first time to die for the sins of the world so that all nations could be blessed through faith in Christ. Jesus fulfilled the promise made to Abraham that all the nations of the earth would be blessed through the seed of Abraham. When the Messiah returns the second time, He will establish Israel once and for all as the great kingdom that Israel could have been long ago. Both the failures of unbelievers and believers caused Israel and Jerusalem to be ruined and as a result Israel and Jerusalem exist in a very diminished state today, but this current condition will not last. God’s everlasting purposes for Israel will be fulfilled.

To emphasize one more time that God still has plans for Jerusalem, Zechariah wrote in Zechariah 2:1-2, “I lifted up mine eyes again, and looked, and behold a man with a measuring line in his hand. Then said I, Whither goest thou? And he said unto me, To measure Jerusalem, to see what is the breath thereof, and what is the length thereof.” This is very interesting. Jerusalem no longer existed. It had been leveled to the ground. Yet, Zechariah saw in a vision that God sent someone to measure Jerusalem. How can that be? If God says something exists, then it does exist. If it exists in the mind of God, then it as good as exists anyway. That is what prophecy is all about. God revealed to the prophets what is going to happen. The proof that these things are going to happen is that God says they are going to happen. We see this same principle to a lesser degree in the affairs of human beings. The saying is this: “What you can conceive, you can achieve.” All accomplishments start with ideas only. Eventually the ideas are put into practice. The only way that you will some day do a great deed is to start by having great thoughts. God has great thoughts about Jerusalem and about Israel and all of His children. That is why Jerusalem has such a great future, and that is why every believer has such a great future: God will bring it to pass.

The rest of Zechariah chapter two tells us some of the blessings that God will eventually give to Israel and to Jerusalem. Believers in Jesus will also be given these blessings because we share in the promises given to Abraham through faith in Christ. It says in Zechariah 2:3-5, “And, behold, the angel that talked with me went forth, and another angel went out to meet him, And said unto him, Run, speak to this young man, saying, Jerusalem shall be inhabited as towns without walls for the multitude of men and cattle therein: For I, saith the LORD, will be unto her a wall of fire round about, and will be the glory in the midst of her.” There are two important points to make about the fact that God promised that Jerusalem will be a town “without walls.” The first has to do with the great number of people who will live in Jerusalem. Human beings destroyed Jerusalem, and as far as the humans were concerned, Jerusalem would have never been occupied again. But God decides these things. Walls were built around cities in order to protect them. But God said that Jerusalem would not have walls. It would not need walls because the Lord would protect them. Think of all the things that people do as individuals and as nations to be protected. There are self-defense classes, security systems, the need to be armed, well-trained police forces, and of course our military. All of these things have their place, but the best way to be safe is to trust in the Lord. Jesus rules the world. He can protect you. Jesus said in Luke 10:19, “Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you.” It says in Psalm 28:7, “The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in him, and I am helped: therefore my heart greatly rejoiceth; and with my song will I praise him.” It says in Zechariah 2:5, “For I, saith the LORD, will be unto her a wall of fire round about, and will be the glory in the midst of her.”

Concerning the final gathering of Jews back to Israel, it says in Zechariah 2:-7, “Ho, ho, come forth, and flee from the land of the north, saith the LORD: for I have spread you abroad as the four winds of the heaven, saith the LORD. Deliver thyself, O Zion, that dwellest with the daughter of Babylon.” The Jewish people were scattered abroad throughout the nations of the world, and they still are scattered abroad in spite of the existence of the small modern-day nation of Israel. Currently there are many more Jews living in the Gentile nations of the world than in Israel. The fact is that the people of Israel have not yet been totally and finally re-gathered to Israel, but they will be some day. This brings up one point about Bible prophesy that we should always keep in mind. Many of the Bible prophecies have both a temporary and local fulfillment as well as a long-term and final world-wide fulfillment. The re-gathering of the nation of Israel is a good example. They were re-gathered after the Babylonian captivity, but not fully. That re-gathering foreshadowed and was symbolic of the final re-gathering that will take place when the Messiah Jesus Christ returns and delivers Israel just as it was promised here in Zechariah and in other prophecies. The Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 11:26, “And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob.”

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