Main Characters:
1. Rider on the Red Horse
2. The Deep
3. The Myrtles

cf. Exodus 15:5, “The Song of Moses”

Genesis 1:2

cf. Exodus 3:1-14, “The Burning Bush”

cf. Joshua 5:13-15, “The Commander of the Lord’s Army”

cf. Genesis 28:10, “Jacob’s Dream”

2 Kings 6:16-17

John 2:18-22

Revelation 21:1, 22

Matthew 28:20

0:07
W’re going to read verses 7 to 17 This morning, but before we do that, let’s go to the Lord once more and ask his blessing upon the hearing in the reading, and the preaching of God’s Word. Let’s pray.

0:23
Our gracious Heavenly Father, we come again before you this morning. Lord we come to you and weakness and in travail of spirit and mind, as we have left the world as it were, and come into the only true, safe place that there is in this pilgrim land, that is before you a place of refuge, where we can be safe and we can let our guards down and we can hear and be changed. So we pray, Lord, we acknowledge the privilege that we have in being in your presence. We pray, give us ears to hear and eyes to see and open hearts to receive from you now, Lord we do pray, arrest our attentions, remove all those distractions that swirl around in our minds. Help us to hear and to receive. Help us to hear your voice speaking to us in your Word. Help us to bend our lives and our wills towards you. We do pray that the instrument of your word this morning, and the meditation of all of our hearts, would be acceptable in your sight. And all of God’s people said, Amen.

1:26
Zechariah chapter one, starting in verse seven, Zechariah, 1:7.

1:37
On the twenty-fourth day of the eleventh month, which is the month of Shebat, in the second year of Darius, the word of the LORD came to the prophet Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, son of Iddo, saying, “I saw in the night, and 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. Then I said, ‘What are these, my lord?’ The angel who talked with me said to me, ‘I will show you what they are.’ So the man who was standing 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 which you have an angry these seventy years?’ And the Lord answered gracious and comforting words to the angels who talked with me. And so the angel who talked with me said to me, ‘Cry out, Thus says the LORD of hosts: I am exceedingly jealous for Jerusalem and for Zion. And I am exceedingly angry with the nations that are at ease; for while I was angry but a little, they furthered the disaster. 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 shall be stretched out over Jerusalem. Cry out again, Thus says the LORD of hosts: My cities shall again overflow with prosperity, and the LORD will again comfort Zion and again choose Jerusalem.’”

3:30
So for the reading of God’s holy and inspired and infallible word. May He indeed add his blessing upon it as we look at it now.

3:45
Do you ever despair at the condition of the church? At the seeming lack of impact that the church has and the people of God the lack of impact that the people have gone have in this world? Or at the persecution of God’s people, at the infighting and abandonment of biblical morality of so many. How can it be? How long will this continue? We’re God’s people, after all. Has God abandoned his people? Why am I so weak and irrelevant? Why do I suffer? And the ungodly are so powerful and strong?

4:28
Well, this concern is not new. These questions aren’t new to the people of God in our day. It was a saying even way back in Zachariah’s time. The title of this series as we look through this wonderful and difficult book of Zechariah is “Longing for God in a Discouraging World,” because that is indeed what we see throughout Zechariah.

4:51
The people of God you will recall or subjugated to the Persians at the time, they were persecuted, the temple, the temple that was rebuilt was pathetic and small compared to the glories of the original temple. And they’re asking the people of God during the restoration period as they’ve come back to the land, they’re asking, has God abandon us? Where’s God? How long, O Lord? And in one sense, the answer is that this angst and frustration is simply part of the human experience. We all long for something more, for relief from our sorrows. And in this sense, the expression is not merely an expression of the discontented heart, but the legitimate cry of the people of God, from hearts that are not yet home, from hearts that long to be rescued from exile. And indeed, as we look at scripture, as we look at the whole of the canon of scripture, Christ Himself calls out. He cries out and so it is good and appropriate for his people to cry as well.

6:02
And the answer that we will receive as we look at God’s word, you’ll be reminded of the temporary nature of your suffering, the temporary nature of your suffering and the future fulfillment of the victory that we now have, the future fulfillment of the victory that we now have.

6:24
Again, I’ll remind you, Zechariah is a post-exilic prophet, a prophet at the time after the exile after they have returned to the land in the start of the Restoration Period, that’s what we call it, where they’ve been restored to the land and begin to rebuild. Last week, the introduction to Zechariah verses one to six, we saw that his message was teaching and a picture of very grand things. But as it was a teaching at its core, it was that that those who attempt to stand before God on the basis of their own merit will only and surely be met with judgment. And we saw that the judgment of exile was a picture of Hell, itself. Not just removal from a physical, temporal land, but of eternal exile away from the the kind presence of the Lord, of those who thinking that they could do this on their own.

7:15
This morning in verses 7 to 17, we’ll look at the first vision of Zechariah, a series of night visions they are called. Zechariah is broken up into two parts, they are the Night Visions and then the Rest of Zechariah.

7:29
One commentator said of Zechariah he said this. He says, “Zechariah is the longest and most obscure of any of the Minor Prophets, and the most difficult of any Old Testament book to interpret. One should approach it with prayer and humility, acknowledging one’s own limitations.” And that certainly is the case as we as we get into Zechariah.

7:52
And Zechariah does have some far out content, the visions in Zechariah are probably the most like those of Revelation in the whole of Scripture, as I said, it’s a very frequently quoted book, Zechariah, in the Gospels and epistles and particularly in the book of Revelation. We don’t need to be afraid, though, as we begin to unfold what the Lord has for us here, we’ll try to look at these visions in light of all of God’s revelation. And we’ll be encouraged for it, as we ask the Lord’s blessing on our efforts.

8:24
So after the warning and the promises from last week, remember, the warning of judgment, this is a post-exile warning. The exile that the prophets were prosecuting throughout all the Old Testament, before the exile, we’re pointing towards the exile removed, being removed from the land and into exile. But after that exile, the warning for exile is an internal warning. And so it’s a it’s a heightened reality but also the promise of blessing of being in the land or a promise of glory.

9:01
These images, these prophecies, as we would expect, are full of imagery. Imagery is used to amplify points that are being made in the visions. As we look at these visions of Zechariah, we’ll see the main characters in the visions, particularly this morning are the parts of the prophecy are these, the Rider of the red horse, the deep, and then the myrtles. The Rider on the red horse, the deep, and then the myrtles.

9:30
I may have lost some of you already. Like me, you may not know what– may not have known what a myrtle is. A myrtle is simply a kind of tree or a bush. These all have very, all of these three have very high, rich usage in the background throughout scriptures. Myrtles in particular, we could probably spend weeks and weeks just discussing the background of the Myrtles, these bushes or trees. We’re not going to do that in the next couple weeks, we’ll just look at it this morning. And we’ll fill in as we come to it, what is going on and what the imagery is talking about.

10:05
But I’ll remind you from just looking at verse seven of our text this morning, the humiliation of a book, in the canon of Scripture, the Lord’s word that’s dated by a pagan king. Again, you’ll remember in verse one, “In the eight month in the second year of Darius,” this pagan king, not dated by one of the kings of Israel or Judah, but by a pagan king. And then in verse seven the same thing, “In the twenty-fourth day of the eleventh month, which is the month of Shebat, in the second year of Darius,” a pagan king.

10:40
Those who had come back and were restored to the land, funded by this pagan king, and they had to live daily with the contrast of the past glories that were the people of God, Israel and it’s heightened golden age, and the painful presence, a presence that they were living in. In the humiliation that they were living in.

11:02
And then in verse eight, the word of the Lord comes to Zechariah. And it says this, “I saw the night.” That’s what it says literally, there’s no preposition there. It just says, “I saw the night.” Zechariah is saying what he’s seeing, nighttime, darkness, hovering over this entire scene. In the midst of the darkness in the gloom, he sees this commanding presence of a man riding on a red horse. This is the angel of the Lord.

11:33
We see this in verse 11. We see this is the angel of the Lord. And this is a phrase that’s not new to any of you who have read the Old Testament, all throughout the Old Testament, the angel of the Lord is a pre-incarnate Messiah. Right, the pre-incarnate Christ, he is accompanied by others. What are those others? It’s the hosts of heaven. The hosts of heaven are with the Messiah. And you all know what the hosts are. They’re like the LORD of hosts, right? The hosts are the armies. It means, “the Lord of armies.”

12:07
And so here we have the Messiah, the angel of the Lord, the company with the armies of heaven. It says, “He was standing among the Myrtle trees in the glen.” In the Glen. The Glen is a ravine, hollow, the word is darkness or depths or deep, glen, and it’s the deep, the depths, the chaos, the trouble, the gloom. That’s the sentiment of the word if he’s seeing, the context of what’s going on here. You’ll recall in Exodus and Nehemiah, when describing the Egyptian’s fate. They’re being thrown into the deep, into the depths of the sea. This is the word, the same word, the word that’s used. It’s a word used elsewhere in the Old Testament. It’s the word that’s used in Psalm 68 and Psalm 69. And in Jonah 2, speaking of the deep sea, or the depths of the Nile in Exodus 15:5. I’m speaking of the exodus of the Israelites. And it’s a word that’s parallelled, linguistically, with the darkness or deep in Genesis one: “And darkness was over the face of the deep…” Darkness was over the face of the deep. That’s what should come to mind. All these different flavors, all these different sentiments. The Rider of the red horse was standing among the myrtle trees in the darkness, above the chaos. Over the dark deep of the gloom stands the Messiah. That’s the picture.

13:41
And it says, “and behind him, were red, sorrel, and white horses.” And I know at least some of you are asking the question I did when I read this verse, and that is, what is sorrel? What is sorrel? And I don’t think it’s just me. I know that I’m artistically bankrupt. And my range of comprehension regarding the color spectrum is quite limited. But sorrel just means a reddish brown or a chestnut color. The word options for colors in Hebrew are limited. But this is what most scholars believe that this is what this means a reddish brown color.

14:22
So think of the picture, these divisions of horses and their color and the imagery that’s going on there. The image of power and fire, reddish brown and red and white are displayed. And so if we back up when we think about that, where else do we encounter the angel of the Lord, trees or bushes and a driving consuming fire? Where’s the first place your mind goes to?

14:52
At the beginning of Israel’s Exodus, in the burning bush! Which was engulfed in a consuming fire but the fire did not consume the bush. And the Angel of the Lord was there and revealed to Moses that glorious name, I AM. I AM.

15:12
If we had time, we could look at the Commander of the Army of the LORD in Joshua 5. Remember that Joshua encounters this figure. And even think of the Old Testament Feast of Booths, or Feast of Tabernacles. It’s also called the Feast of Ingathering. And it signifies the future ingathering of God’s people. It is represented by the construction of Tabernacles or Booths. And they’re made with what, myrtle trees! Myrtle trees and the glory flower of the myrtle which was expressive of God’s presence, the flower with his people in the myrtles. And these are all, these overlaying imagery and concepts and themes. And you know, in fact, it’s interesting that the name for myrtle in Hebrew is “hadassah,” is almost identical to a Hebrew word for glory, “hadar.” If you studied this feast of myrtle, feast that the myrtle was a picture and a promise of just that, God’s presence with his people, God’s presence with his people, the glory flower with his people in these booths.

16:24
And in Zacharias vision, we see the Messiah is among them, the Messiah. Earth is covered by darkness. And the Messiah is among the Myrtles along with the legions of heaven. The victory of Messiah over the chaos is what we’re seeing the victory of the Messiah over the chaos in the presence of his people.

16:49
What a picture! Is that comforting, that encouraging? It is to me. And then in verse nine, the question comes, What are these things? What are these things? And the answer comes, in verse 10, it says they are the armies of the Lord, surveying, patrolling under the direct, divine command of God, the world. It’s kind of like Genesis 28. You remember that incident of Jacob and he sees the angels ascending and descending to and from heaven. Jacob’s Ladder, angels going up and down the ladder to do God’s will. Just like the mounted angels here in Zechariah.

17:36
And then verse 11. It says, “And they answered the angel of the LORD who was standing among the Myrtles … all the nations are at rest.”

17:48
Wait a minute. The ungodly at ease? The nations? How can the chaos of the nations be at rest? How can the evil nations, the deep, be at rest, at peace? While the nation of the covenant people of God is just the opposite, it’s in disarray. It’s seemingly in defeat and in weakness. And this is a paradoxical picture that we see.

18:17
And then in verse 12, notice gloriously, the Messiah intercedes. You see that? In verse 12. “Then the angel of the LORD said, ‘O Lord of hosts, how long…”

18:35
How long? This was the great question of the Old Testament prophets, remember? It is the same question that we ask today. We say it can’t get any worse. But it does. And the older we get, the older you get, you realize, Oh, my parents and grandparents said the same thing that I’m saying now. It just keeps getting worse and worse. How long Oh Lord, we ask. And the Messiah asked the question, “how long will you have no mercy on your people?”

19:10
In verse 13 to 17, God answers. It says gracious and comforting, good words, soul-easing words. He says I am exceedingly jealous, he is jealous for his people. And the point is that, despite what they see, despite the seeming ungodly dominance on the earth, Yahweh is with his people. The covenant God is with his covenant people, the Lord of the universe is with his people. And this is the crucial affirmation of God’s presence with his people: I am with you.

19:49
I am with you. Despite what you see, despite the persecution of the church, despite the seeming irrelevance, the Messiah has triumphed! The rider on the red horse is there, and he has conquered.

20:07
Despite their outward circumstances, God is jealous for his people, he says, and he is angry with the nations, those who are not his people. And he is working all things for his own purposes, and his own glory.

20:22
And this is a wonderful lesson brothers and sisters for us today, something that we need to be reminded of and refreshed to be at the forefront of our thinking and all that we do and think and pray and our analysis of the world and everything: No matter what we’re told, he is with us and the Messiah has won, he has conquered. We are not to be in despair. We are not to be afraid. We are not to consider ourselves as defenseless. God is in the midst of his people. And God is the rock on which they stand. The Rider on the red horse stands over the chaos, interceding for his people. Do you believe that? Do you believe that, dear Christian?

21:05
The prophet, Zechariah, lives up to his name, “The LORD remembers.” He doesn’t abandon his people. He doesn’t forget his people. He remembers his people and he says, I am with you. And don’t let the world tell you that I’m not with you.

21:24
Remember that event in II Kings 6:16, I believe, with the Prophet was shown the spiritual realm, his eyes were opened. He saw what was truly going on there. “He said, ‘Do not be afraid, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.’” His eyes were opened. And he saw the horses and the chariots of fire all around. What a glorious picture.

21:53
Brothers and sisters, we’ll see as we go forward in Zechariah that most glorious declaration of the Lord, as a wall of fire around his people in the glory in their midst. We must believe these things because they’re true. Oh, that we would have the eyes of faith, eyes of faith, and see that God is with his people, defending his people, directing them, guiding them, bringing everything upon them for their good and for His glory. Even when we don’t, especially when we don’t understand. And that right now, we are surrounded by the legions of God. And that over the chaos and despite the persecution, despite the so-called irrelevance of the church and his people. Despite all of that, the Rider on the red horse is victorious over the chaos in the gloom in the dark. That’s the message of the Christian’s hope! The victory of Christ, Himself!

22:59
Verse 16, says the Lord says, “I have returned to Jerusalem with mercy; my house shall be built in it … in a measuring line shall be stretched out.” Right notice, again, verse 14 and 15. I am with my people in the now in this verse, I will be with them. The promises of the restoration and the temple. They are not fulfilled in Zachariah’s time. We talked about this last time, they’re not fulfilled in his time. This was an initial fulfillment, but they pointed to what? They pointed to a greater fulfillment, that there will be a new temple. The Rider will be the temple. Right? We know this. The Rider is the temple.

23:44
In the second chapter of john, we see this. John 2:18, So the Jews said to him, Jesus, what sign do you show us for doing these things? And Jesus answered them, destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up. The Jews then said, it’s taken 46 years to build this temple and you will raise it up in three days. But he was speaking about the temple of his body, speaking about the temple of his body, in verse 22, when therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this and they believed the scriptures, in the words that Jesus has spoken.

24:38
The Rider is the temple, the new temple made without hands. And we know this as well from the last from the end of the Bible, Revelation 21:22. Something similar. That glorious passage, that glorious chapter, that begins, “Then I saw a new heaven and new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven…” Then in verse 22, it says, “And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the LORD God the Almighty and the Lamb.”

25:32
This is the fulfillment, this is the culmination of all these things, this temple thread that pulls throughout Scripture. The presence of Christ is the new temple.

25:41
And so we think back to the opening question. On the one hand, we long for our true home. We long for our true home. And something we always have to ask ourselves, do we? Do you long for your true home in glory? Do you long for what is truly yours? Already yours but not yet fulfilled? Is your true home in heaven and do you long for it? Because if you sense that this world is yours and that you have contentment here, your contentment is in this world. Then you’re out of step with the Savior. If your heart is not crying out, when will these things be set right, O Lord? If that’s not the cry of your heart then you’re not praying with the Savior.

26:31
We should have a healthy discontentment for this world and a longing for the world to come. We are pilgrims, to be sure. We are we are pilgrims here. But we are never alone. Never are we alone, never are we abandoned, is the promise of our Savior.

26:50
So in another sense, we don’t need to ask, how long? Why? Because the Rider on the red horse has come and He has conquered. And He has compassion on his people. He has conquered the darkness in the chaos, even of this world, and he has come and built a new Jerusalem, the new temple, and he has ever with his people. What was the cry, “And lo, I am with you always.” Always. The Rider on the red horse has come, and he has conquered the darkness and the gloom. Christ is with you. Christ is with you and he is comforting you.

27:35
We will never find consumate rest in this life. But all will be set right on the last day. We will be afflicted until the coming of the Lord at his return. Our eyes are set on the consummation and this teaches us to cry both, “how long O Lord,” but also to pray, “come quickly, Lord Jesus, come quickly.” Let’s pray.

27:58
Our heavenly Father, we give you praise and thanks for your wonderful work amongst the children of men. We thank you that you have condescended to speak to us in this word. We pray that you would help us to understand what you have given us there, to believe what you tell us in that word. Lord, we pray that you would bless us in the difficulties of this life. Help us to set our hearts and our minds and our focus upon Jesus, the victor, our prophet, priest, and king. Lord, we pray, comfort our hearts. Help us with good and comforting words. Lord, we thank you that we are new creations and we pray that you would help us to ever live as new creations that you’ve raised us to be. We pray this all in Christ’s name, amen.