Zechariah 12-14: Repentance, Refinement, and Reign

We finish Zechariah by tracing a clear path from repentance to refinement to God’s final sovereignty. The prophecies get wild and weighty, but the takeaway stays steady: God is faithful, and His restoration always moves through holiness.
• connecting minor prophets to our relationship with God today 
• holding God’s judgment and God’s love together 
• mapping Zechariah 12–14 as repentance, refinement, sovereignty 
• reading Zechariah 12 on siege, grace, mourning, and “the one they have pierced” 
• reading Zechariah 13 on cleansing, removing idols, and refining like silver 
• reading Zechariah 14 on the Day of the Lord, battle, and the Mount of Olives 
• noting the Mount of Olives fault line detail and why it stands out 
• ending with God’s long plan centered on His faithfulness and restoration 

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Transcript

Wrath And Restoration Together

Repentance Refinement Sovereignty Framework

Zechariah 12 Grace And Mourning

Zechariah 13 Cleansing And Refining

Zechariah 14 Battle And Kingship

Mount Of Olives Fault Line

Plague Judgment And Worldwide Worship

God’s Unfolding Story And Farewell

SPEAKER_00 0:11

This is the Out Loud Bible Project Podcast, and I am Mike, and we are finishing up the book of Zechariah here. One interesting thing about reading these Old Testament minor prophets is that a lot of what they have to say about Israel and Judah and their relationship with God can apply to our own relationship with God. It's not a one-to-one thing, it's not the exact same situation, but we do get to discover what God's heart is to yes, allow punishment and difficulties to happen to his people, but he always provides hope and always provides restoration. And that is a common theme whenever we read the prophets, because it's not all about God's wrath. It's all about God's unwavering faithfulness to both honor his own holiness and extend his loving restoration and healing to his people. They go hand in hand. You don't get one without the other. You don't get all wrath without love, and you don't get all love and restoration without, well, punishment for a lack of holiness on our part. And as I'm looking at the reading for today, Zechariah 12 through 14, each chapter heading that I have, which again is not the Bible, that's just what the people who put this Bible together did to help organize sections and kind of give some idea of what the chapter is about. Um I like what they say here, where we have chapters 12 through 14. 12 is about the repentance of Judah. 13 is about the refinement of Judah, and 14 is about the sovereignty of the Lord, talking about a day of the Lord coming. And what a great, I guess, three-point microcosm of this whole thing that we're talking about in the Old Testament and in our lives today, where we can expect, yes, it all starts with repentance. We need to repent. And then through this process, God will refine us. And why? Because ultimately the Lord is sovereign, and one day every knee will bow to him. And that's what we can expect both in this reading and in our lives as we go forward throughout today and this week until literally kingdom come. So let's read Zechariah 12 through 14 in the New English Translation, with this in mind. This is an oracle, the Lord's message concerning Israel. The Lord, he who stretches out the heavens and lays the foundations of the earth, who forms the human spirit within a person, says, I'm about to make Jerusalem a cup that brings dizziness to all the surrounding nations. Indeed, Judah will also be included when Jerusalem is besieged. Moreover, on that day I will make Jerusalem a heavy burden for all the nations, and all who try to carry it will be seriously injured. Yet all the peoples of the earth will be assembled against it. On that day, says the Lord, I will strike every horse with confusion, and its rider with madness. Now pay close attention to the house of Judah, but will strike all the horses of the nations with blindness. Then the leaders of Judah will say to themselves, The inhabitants of Jerusalem are a means of strength to us through their God, the Lord of heaven's armies. And on that day I will make the leaders of Judah like an igniter among sticks and a burning torch among sheaves, and they'll burn up all the surrounding nations right and left, and then the people of Jerusalem will settle once more in their place, the city of Jerusalem. The Lord will also deliver the homes of Judah first, so that the splendor of the kingship of David and of the people of Jerusalem may not exceed that of Judah. On that day the Lord himself will defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the weakest among them will be like mighty David, and the dynasty of David will be like their God, like the angel of the Lord before them. So on that day I will set out to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem. I will pour out on the kingship of David and the population of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication, so that they will look to me, the one they have pierced. They'll lament for him as one laments for an only son, and there will be a bitter cry for him like the bitter cry for a firstborn. On that day the lamentation in Jerusalem will be as great as the lamentation at Hadad Rahman in the plain of Megiddo. The land will mourn each clan by itself, the clan of the royal household of David by itself, and their wives by themselves, the clan of the family of Nathan by itself, and their wives by themselves, the clan of the descendants of Levi by itself, and their wives by themselves, and the clan of the Shimeites by itself, and the wives themselves, all the clans that remain, each separately with their wives. In that day, there will be a fountain opened up for the dynasty of David and the people of Jerusalem to cleanse them from sin and impurity. And also on that day, says the Lord of Heaven's armies, I will remove the names of the idols from their land, and they will never again be remembered. Moreover, I will remove the prophets and the unclean spirit from the land, and then if any one prophesies in spite of this, his mother and father to whom he was born will say to him, You cannot live, for you will lie in the name of the Lord, and then his father and mother to whom he was born will run him through with a sword when he prophesies. Therefore on that day each prophet will be ashamed of his vision when he prophesies, and will no longer wear the hairy garment of a prophet to deceive the people. Instead he will say, I am no prophet, indeed I am a farmer, for a man has made me his indentured servant since my youth, and then someone will ask him, What are these wounds on your chest? And he'll say some that I received in the house of my friends. Awake, sword, against my shepherd, against the man who is my associate, says the Lord of Heaven's armies, strike the shepherd that the flock may be scattered, and I will turn my hand against the insignificant ones. It will happen in all the land, says the Lord, that two thirds of the people in it will be cut off and die, but one third will be left in it. Then I'll bring the remaining third into the fire. I'll refine them like silver's refined, and I'll test them like gold is tested. They'll call on my name, and I will answer. I will say, These are my people, and they will say, The Lord is our God. A day of the Lord is about to come when your possessions will be divided as plunder in your midst. For I'll gather all the nations against Jerusalem to wage war. The city will be taken, its houses plundered, and the women raped. Then half of the city will go into exile, but the remainder of the people will not be taken away. Then the Lord will go to battle and fight against those nations, just as he fought battles in the ancient days. Hey, you gotta catch this. This is not talking about the exile we just got back from exile at this point in history. This is talking about the future. And when it says here in verse three, the Lord will go into battle and fight against those nations just as he fought battles in ancient days. This is looking forward to a time literally not yet come here in our twenty-first century. This is describing a day of the Lord that has not yet happened. Hear this, know this, keep an eye open for this. Says in verse four, On that day his feet will stand on the Mount of Olives that lies to the east of Jerusalem, and the Mount of Olives will be split in half from east to west, leaving a great valley. P.S. This is wild. Did you know that geologists have confirmed that there that there is a fault line that runs under the Mount of Olives in an east-west direction? Like literally today. You could you can look it up. Go look it up the fault line under the Mount of Olives. There's a fault line that goes under this mountain and it will split from east to west, just like it says here in Zechariah 14:4. This is real stuff, guys. This is wild. Half the mountain will move northward and the other half southward, and then you'll escape through my mountain valley, for the valley of the mountains will extend to Azal. Indeed, you will flee as you fled from the earthquake in the days of King Uzziah of Judah. And then the Lord my God will come with all his holy ones with him. And on that day there will be no light. The sources of the light in the heavens will congeal. It'll happen in one day, a day known to the Lord, not in the day or the night, but in the evening there will be light. Moreover, on that day living waters will flow out of Jerusalem, half of them to the eastern sea and half of them to the western sea. It'll happen both in summer and in winter. The Lord will then be king over all the earth. In that day the Lord will be seen as one with a single name. All the land will change and become like a rift valley from Giba to Rimen, south of Jerusalem. Jerusalem will be raised up and will stay in its own place from the Benjamin gate to the site of the first gate and on to the corner gate, and from the town of Hananel to the royal wine presses, and people will settle there, and there will be no longer threat of divine extermination. Jerusalem will dwell in security. But this will be the nature of the plague with which the Lord will strike all the nations that have fought against Jerusalem. Their flesh will decay while they stand on their feet, their eyes will rot away in their sockets, and their tongues will dissolve in their mouths. On that day there will be great confusion from the Lord among them. They will seize each other and attack one another violently. Moreover, Judah will fight at Jerusalem, and the wealth of all the surrounding nations will be gathered up, gold, silver, and clothing in great abundance. This is the kind of plague that will devastate horses, mules, camels, donkeys, and all the other animals in those camps. Then all who survive from all the nations that came to attack Jerusalem will go up annually to worship the king, the Lord of Heaven's armies, and to observe the feast of shelters. But if any of the nations anywhere on earth refuse to go up to Jerusalem to worship the king, the Lord of Heaven's armies, they will get no rain. If the Egyptians will not do so, they'll get no rain. Instead, it'll be a kind of plague that the Lord inflicts on any nations that do not go up to celebrate the feast of shelters. This will be the punishment of Egypt and of all nations that do not go up to celebrate the feast of shelters. On that day, the bells of the horses will bear the inscription holy to the Lord. The cooking pots in the Lord's temple will be as holy as the bowls in front of the altar. Every cooking pot in Jerusalem and Judah will become holy in the sight of the Lord of Heaven's armies, so that all who offer sacrifices may come and use some of them to boil their sacrifices in them. On that day there will no longer be a Canaanite in the house of the Lord of Heaven's armies. Well, that's some wild prophecy, isn't it? It's amazing just to see this clash of both Zechariah talking about past events and his current events and our current events, much in the distant future for him, but we get to live in now and even look forward to in the future. I can't pretend to understand and explain all of this, but I do know this. We are living in God's unfolding story that takes place over the course of human history. God's been planning this for millennia, and we're still seeing it unfold. A story that is about God's faithfulness to his people and the restoration of his people. God's history is highly centered around Israel. His future plans and future restoration of the earth and judgment of the earth are all highly centered around Israel. Now, we who are not Jews, we get to enjoy the being adopted into God's family and being grafted into this vine, but it's not about us. This is about God and what he set out to do at the very beginning of the nation of Israel. He said, There's nothing about you that's special. I'm just picking you because you are small and you are weak, and I'm going to show the entire world, not just the world of people, but the entire cosmos of spiritual powers and authorities that I am the Lord and I am sovereign and nothing can stop me from accomplishing my plans. We're going to see this all unfold, hopefully in our lifetime, but certainly at the last day of the Lord, we're going to see all of this come together as one final climax to the history that we've been studying and reading and living. I don't think we can propose to understand it all now, but it is with excitement and anticipation and a heavy dose of faith that we say, Come, Lord Jesus, please unfold your great grand plan in front of us. That is the book of Zechariah, and that's the thinking out loud thought for the day. We'll see you next time.