Download Audio

Now if you would please take your copies of God’s Word in your hands and turn to the Old Testament scriptures to the prophecy of Zechariah, chapter 14.  Zechariah chapter 14.  You’ll find that on page 800 if you’re using one of the church Bibles.  Before we read God’s Word let’s turn to Him together as we pray.  Let’s pray.

 

O Lord, this world, we confess, is fleeting and temporary.  Help us as we have Your Word spread before us to feel the weight of eternity pressing on us.  We pray that we might glimpse, as Your Word is read and proclaimed, we pray that we might glimpse the final day, the great assize when an eternal separation is made and some are sent into the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth and others received into the joy of their Lord, there to dwell in perfect holiness and perfect gladness with their Savior forever.  Help us to see that day and to see here and now the great differentiating mark that will distinguish those who are received into glory and those who are dispatched into the darkness.  Help us to see Christ coming to us in the glories and grace of the Gospel.  And as we feel the weight of eternity, enable us, all of us, to flee for refuge to Christ alone that resting on Him we might shun hell and gain heaven.  For we ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.

 

Zechariah chapter 14.  We are reading from the twelfth verse to the end of the chapter.  This is the inerrant Word of Almighty God:

 

“And this shall be the plague with which the LORD will strike all the peoples that wage war against Jerusalem: their flesh will rot while they are still standing on their feet, their eyes will rot in their sockets, and their tongues will rot in their mouths. 

 

And on that day a great panic from the LORD shall fall on them, so that each will seize the hand of another, and the hand of the one will be raised against the hand of the other.  Even Judah will fight against Jerusalem.  And the wealth of all the surrounding nations shall be collected, gold, silver, and garments in great abundance.  And a plague like this plague shall fall on the horses, the mules, the camels, the donkeys, and whatever beasts may be in those camps. 

 

Then everyone who survives of all the nations that have come against Jerusalem shall go up year after year to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, and to keep the Feast of Booths.  And if any of the families of the earth do not go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, there will be no rain on them.  And if the family of Egypt does not go up and present themselves, then on them there shall be no rain; there shall be the plague with which the LORD afflicts the nations that do not go up to keep the Feast of Booths.  This shall be the punishment to Egypt and the punishment to all the nations that do not go up to keep the Feast of Booths.

 

And on that day there shall be inscribed on the bells of the horses, ‘Holy to the LORD.’  And the pots in the house of the LORD shall be as the bowls before the altar.  And every pot in Jerusalem and Judah shall be holy to the LORD of hosts, so that all who sacrifice may come and take of them and boil the meat of the sacrifice in them.  And there shall no longer be a trader in the house of the LORD of hosts on that day.”

 

Amen, and we bless the Lord that He has spoken to us in His holy and sufficient Word.

 

Zechariah 14, the Return of Christ the King, and the World to Come

 

In a radio interview in 1999, author Salman Rushdie once said, “The world is a very provisional place.”  The world is a very provisional place. He was not, I don’t think, trying to make a theological point.  Nevertheless, he could not have been closer to the Bible’s own perspective on the world that we currently inhabit.  When he said it, it is a provisional place.  It is temporary; it is passing.  There is a world to come.  Tonight we are concluding our series in the book of Zechariah in verses 12 to 21 of the final chapter, and as we began to see last week this is an entire chapter that acknowledges that provisionality of this world.  And it points our attention instead to the world that is to come.  Specifically, the focus has been on the events that surround the return of Jesus Christ when, verse 5, “the Lord my God shall come and all the holy ones with him.”  In the opening eleven verses we saw the hostility of the world overthrown by the intervention of the Lord Jesus at His final coming, coming as the Warrior-God, verses 1 to 5.  We saw, following in the wake of His coming, the dawn of a new creation, verses 6 through 8.  In verses 10 and 11, we saw the preservation and the security forever of the church, the New Jerusalem.  And at the center of it all in verse 9, we saw the perfect reign of the Lord as the King of Kings and the Lord over all.

 

And tonight as we turn to verses 12 to 21, the prophet recapitulates that entire plotline for us.  It’s as though he goes back to the beginning and looks at the same sequence of events with different nuances to show us still different details and a fuller picture of the world that lies ahead of us.  In particular, I want you to notice in these verses the alternating pattern between the two destinies that await all people in the age that is to come.  In verses 12 through 15 we have a chilling picture of the wrath of God on the wicked; the wrath of God on the wicked – sobering and graphic.  And then if you look down at the other end of the chapter in verses 20 and 21, we have a picture of the blessing of God on His own chosen people.  It is a picture to us of the blessedness and holiness of heaven.  And then in between those two poles in verses 16 to 19 we see the great differentia, the great distinguishing mark that will determine the destiny of everyone sent either to the eternal judgment of God or received into the glorious bliss of heaven.  And I want to think about each of those in turn.

 

I. A Chilling Picture of Hell: God’s Wrath on the Wicked

 

Let’s look at verses 12 through 15 first of all.  You will recall this whole chapter opened with a description of the destruction meted out upon the church, God’s Jerusalem, by her enemies, a world living in rebellion against God.  In verses 1 and 2 we have a clear picture of the plundering and oppression and suffering of the church.  But then in verse 3 we saw the sudden, dramatic intervention of Christ who comes to fight for His people and execute His judgment upon them.  In verses 12 to 15, Zechariah comes back to that moment to show us what it’s going to mean to suffer the wrath of the Lamb, the wrath of the Lord Jesus when He comes to judge the quick and the dead.  And I particularly want you to notice carefully with me how Zechariah in these verses describes the wrath of Christ as a three-fold disintegration; a three-fold disintegration. 

 

Personal Disintegration

First, he says there will be a personal disintegration – “and this shall be the plague with which the Lord will strike all the peoples that wage war against Jerusalem.  Their flesh will rot while they are still standing on their feet.  Their eyes will rot in their sockets and their tongues will rot in their mouths.”  It is probably the most chilling statement in the whole prophecy, one of the most chilling in Holy Scripture.  It pictures the enemies of God and His church overtaken by a plague against which they are utterly powerless.  They are absolutely without ability to resist.  The church they can fight and despoil and destroy, but against this power, it is the power of the wrath of God, against this power they can do nothing.  And its effects entail the most gruesome disillusion of their persons – flesh dissolves, bodies disintegration, eyes and tongues rot.  It is a terrible picture but is a picture consistent with the teaching of the New Testament scriptures regarding the realities that await any unrepentant sinner as they face the wrath and curse of God.  If tonight you are not a Christian, this is the destiny waiting for you unless you repent and believe the Gospel and flee for refuge to Jesus. 

 

No one spoke more frequently, more graphically about this awful reality than did the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.  The one who came to bring good news did not hide the horror and reality of hell from which He died to rescue us.  He wants us to be clear.  It’s hard to look at and yet lest we fool ourselves and allow ourselves to remain in a slumber of unconcern, we need to see it.  And so in Matthew 8:12 Jesus speaks about hell as “the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.”  In Luke 13:19 we have the famous parable of the rich man and Lazarus in which the rich man is sent for his sin to hell and Jesus says he is in torment and he longs that father Abraham would dip the tip of his finger in water and cool his tongue. For the rich man says he is in torment in this flame.  Thirst.  Darkness.  Fire.  Those are the images our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ uses.  No less terrible, are they, than Zechariah’s imagery here as hell’s realities, hell’s horrors are described.  And of course these are only pictures, aren’t they?  They’re metaphors.  The metaphors of course describe something far worse.  The reality transcends the metaphor.  The reality transcends the metaphor. 

 

In professor R. A. Finlayson’s little book, God’s Light On Man’s Destiny, he says that “hell is an unending process of spiritual disintegration.”  He points out that in the world to come our characters are fixed and unchangeable.  There is no repentance in hell and there is no backsliding in heaven.  The one you became in life as you have responded either in faith and trust to the Gospel or in rejection and rebellion to the Gospel, the one you became in life is who you will be forever.  “Let the evildoer still do evil and the filthy still be filthy and the righteous still do right and the holy still be holy” – Revelation 22 and verse 11.  “And so,” says Finlayson, “for the character whose ruling principle is unjust, there is the possibility of more and more complete submission to the domination of evil.  In such a state the human personality can lose its moral bearings and its internal cohesion.  That may be the real meaning of the word ‘perish’ in the New Testament, to connote the breaking down of personality and the consequent suffering of those who are completely and eternally under the domination of sin where the spirit of man,” listen to this line, “where the spirit of man lives among the wreckage of mental and moral disintegration. Hell is the complete decay of the inner life, the unending deterioration of the psyche as all the restraints of common grace are withdrawn and we are given over to the horror that we have chosen, as the wrath of God is poured out upon us and we are surrendered and given up to the darkness of our own spiritual corruption.  There is waiting for anyone who rejects the lordship of Jesus Christ only the blackness of darkness forever.”  An utter, personal, disintegration.

 

Relational Disintegration

There’s also a relational disintegration that Zechariah describes.  Look at verse 13.  “On that day a great panic from the Lord shall fall on them so that each will seize the hand of another and the hand of the one will be raised against the hand of the other.”  It’s a scene that has been repeated in the history of Israel often enough to become almost a hallmark of divine judgment upon the enemies of His covenant people.  One thinks, for example, of the story of Gideon in Judges chapter 7 as God made the men of Midian turn in their panic on one another and destroy themselves as the people stand and shout the praises of God.  Or think of the scene when the people under King Jehoshaphat sang praises to God while the men of Ammon and Moab destroy the men of Seir and then turn and destroy themselves – 2 Chronicles chapter 20.  One of the marks of the judgment of God is the tearing apart, the disintegration of human relationships, of fellowship, of closeness, of connection.  Hell is alienation yes, first from God, but also from all other human and personal contact, hell is aloneness, hell is antipathy.  That’s part of the point of the imagery of outer darkness.  Hell may be fully populated by a vast company, but every one of hell’s residents could not be more alone.  They could not be more alone. 

 

Material Disintegration

There’s a personal disintegration, there’s a relational disintegration, there’s thirdly, a material disintegration.  Verses 14 and 15 – “And the wealth of all the surrounding nations shall be collected, gold, silver, and garments in great abundance.  And a plague like this plague shall fall on the horses, the mules, the camels, the donkeys, and whatever beasts may be in those camps.”  This is what the enemies of God did to His church in verses 1 and 2.  Part of their persecution of the people of God was the plundering of their goods.  One thinks of the Christian community in Mosul right now where the people were told, you’ve heard this, the people were told to convert to Islam, pay a fine, have their property confiscated, leave the city, or die.  One thinks too of the subtler tactics of the liberal west using economic influence to disenfranchise Christians and compel them to go against conscience.  That’s how the world works as it wages war against the Lamb and against His people.  But when Jesus comes to judge the material things for which the world now lives, those things in which our society delights, those things for the attainment of which so many of us will stop at nothing, material things are stripped away. 

 

In Matthew 25 and verse 14 and following Jesus tells the parable of the talents.  A merchant leaves various sums of money with his servants to invest.  You remember?  And those who make a return on the investment when the master returns are rewarded.  Of the one servant who makes no return Jesus says this, “Take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents for to everyone who has, more will be given and he will have an abundance.  But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.  And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness.  In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”  Take the talent from him.  The place of outer darkness will spell material disintegration.  All the trinkets for which we live, that our hearts crave, to which we run, that we substitute for Christ as the object of our satisfaction and delight, in which we have invested our self-worth and our personal value, if we are found outside of Christ when He comes they will be stripped away till we are left bereft and bankrupt and barren and void.  It’s a chilling picture of hell; a chilling picture.

 

II. A Glorious Picture of Heaven: God’s Blessing and Holiness

 

But then would you look down with me at the other end of the chapter?  Verses 20 and 21.  Here’s the other reality that awaits in the world to come.  Here now is a picture of heaven.  “And on that day there shall be inscribed on the bells of the horses, ‘Holy to the LORD.’  And the pots in the house of the LORD shall be as the bowls before the altar.  And every pot in Jerusalem and Judah shall be holy to the LORD of hosts, so that all who sacrifice may come and take of them and boil the meat of the sacrifice in them.  And there shall no longer be a trader in the house of the LORD of hosts on that day.”  Notice the point – the universality of holiness.  The universality of holiness.  Holiness will be commonplace.  Common or garden. 

 

You may remember how back in chapter 3 of the book of Zechariah when Zechariah saw the vision of Joshua the high priest and he’s robed in filthy garments and Satan comes against him to accuse him and the Lord intervenes in justifying mercy and takes away the filthy garments and clothes the high priest in white linen garments, pure and radiant.  And Zechariah interrupts his own vision; he’s agitated.  He’s anxious.  “Don’t forget the turban that crowns the high priest’s garments!”  Why is he so concerned that the high priest’s turban not be omitted?  Because inscribed on the turban are the words, “Holy to the Lord!”  It is the declaration that here now all the filthiness gone, stands the high priest arrayed in perfect purity, radiant with the righteousness of another, the righteousness of Jesus Christ. 

 

Universal Holiness to the Lord

But Zechariah here at the very end of his prophecy says that the words “holiness, holy to the Lord” will be inscribed on everything.  Here is a world now, holy to the Lord.  The bells on the horses bridle, the pots in the temple, the common kitchenware in every home dwelling in the New Jerusalem – equally holy, equally sacred.  The purity and radiance of the Lord Jesus Christ will shine in every home, in every heart, will be reflected in every product of human activity, will be seen in every instrument of human culture.  Sin will be utterly, irrevocably, universally, eradicated.  It will be gone.  And all will be holy to the Lord.  Every person, every child of God who has labored long and battled hard with besetting sin here, on that day will be perfectly and unendingly holy to the Lord.  The work will be done and your warfare will be won and there will be no sin, no possibility of sin encroaching on that glorious day or that glorious place.  There shall no longer be a traitor.  The word is actually, “no longer be a Canaanite.”  It probably is a double-entendre.  It’s implying there will be nothing unrighteous, there will be no wickedness in the house of the Lord of hosts on that day.  “God’s people,” Revelation 21:26 and following, “God’s people will bring into it the glory and honor of the nations but nothing unclean will ever enter it nor anyone who does what it detestable of false, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.  No longer will there be anything accursed, for the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it and his servants shall worship Him” – Revelation 22 and verse 3.  Heaven is a holy place.  It is the home of righteousness the Scriptures tell us.  A world of joyous worship where everything and everyone is sacred and consecrated to the glory of the Lord our God. 

 

Let me ask you, could you be happy in such a place?  Here is a great motive to the pursuit of holiness surely.  No one ever earned a place in heaven’s holy glories by obtaining holiness themselves.  No one ever earned a place in heaven by the pursuit of holiness.  But no one could ever be happy in the home of righteousness in the holiness of heaven who did not make holiness their great pursuit in life.  Why do you want to go to heaven when God the Lord – holy, holy, holy, the Lord God Almighty, the whole earth is full of His glory – when God the Lord resides there and all who dwell there dwell in fellowship and communion and intimacy with Him, no one can live in such a world but those who are like Him, who are made like Him by His grace, who have lived like Him by the work of His Spirit who are holy.  Here’s a motive to the pursuit of holiness – heaven is the home of righteousness.  And so we have here in the opening verses a picture of hell’s awful reality and a picture of heaven’s wonderful glories.

 

III. The Great Differentiating Mark of the Two Peoples

 

And then in the middle in verses 16 to 19 there’s a passage, it is one of the most difficult passages in the book, but it is a passage that I think highlights the great differentiating marks of those who belong either in heaven or in hell.  Look at it with me, verses 16 to 19 – “Then everyone who survives of all the nations that have come against Jerusalem shall go up year after year to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, and to keep the Feast of Booths.  And if any of the families of the earth do not go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, there will be no rain on them.  And if the family of Egypt does not go up and present themselves, then on them there shall be no rain; there shall be the plague with which the LORD afflicts the nations that do not go up to keep the Feast of Booths.  This shall be the punishment to Egypt and the punishment to all the nations that do not go up to keep the Feast of Booths.”

 

There have been two groups of people, throughout history there will be two groups of people, when Jesus comes there will be two groups of people forever in the world to come.  There are those who come to worship and there are those who do not.  There are those who bend their knee in joy and faith and trust before the Lord Jesus Christ and there are those who will not.  The particular celebration that Zechariah has in mind is the Feast of Booths.  It was a harvest festival, as you may know, and here, however, as people from all the nations come to worship it seems that the harvest in view is a harvest of people, a harvest of souls, a harvest of worship from every tribe and language and nation under heaven.  Their great preoccupation year upon year, Zechariah says, their great eternal business will be the adoration of God and of His Son Jesus Christ. They were once the enemies of the church.  They once stood in opposition against Jerusalem.  But now they are made true worshipers, going up to Zion to bless the Lord.

 

But there are others who refuse to praise the Savior’s name who will not go up to worship and on them will fall God’s curse.  This time the curse is the withholding of rain; it is draught. It may not seem like much of a judgment to us but to Zechariah’s first hearers, a rainless existence was a terrible prospect.  It’s another picture of the wrath of God, desiccated souls, parched and longing like the rich man in Jesus’ parable longing for a drop of water to cool his tongue amidst the flame. Not even Egypt – Egypt, you know, didn’t depend on rain for its fertility.  It used irrigation from the Nile and so even Egypt, whose ingenuity can normally avoid draughts, will not escape.  God will send upon Egypt the plagues.  That is to say no one will escape the wrath of God if they will not bend the knee to Jesus Christ. 

 

The Great Dilemma: How You Respond to Jesus Christ

And now do you see the great dilemma presented to us in these two destinies?  There are the perishing rebels, disintegrating, desiccated, parched, deprived of blessing, dwelling forever in the outer darkness.  And there is the church, God’s Jerusalem, glorified, rejoicing, forever thrilling to come and worship the holy God whose holiness is already reflected in themselves and in the world they now inhabit, dwelling in a new creation where all is sacred.  Inscribed on everything are the words, “Holy to the Lord.”  And what is the great discriminating factor, the great determining factor that will decide their destinies – one to glory, the other to the darkness of hell?  It is whether or not they will bend the knee to Christ, whether they will come and bow at His throne in adoration and delight.  The fundamental issue that will decide your destiny is how you respond to Jesus Christ. 

 

In the Apostle’s Creed you know we confess that Jesus suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried.  He descended – He descended – into hell.”  And what we mean when we confess those words is that all the horror of that three-fold disintegration described so vividly by Zechariah, engulfed his soul as He bore our sin at Calvary.  Remember His cry of dereliction from the cross?  “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”  That was His hell, writes Donald Macleod.  That was His hell – to cry to God and God not to answer, to look for God and God not to be there.  He suffered the terrible disorientation that cries, “Why?”  He sank into the abyss of a dreadful self-image.  He was sin.  He knew that that was what He was, that that’s how God was seeing Him, that that’s how God would deal with Him.  That’s where God’s own Son was, he says – in the hell of that unanswerable “Why?” standing before God as the sin of the world.  “God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us.” There is Jesus plunged into the horror of personal disintegration, made to be the sin of the world, judged instead of us, descending into hell’s horrors instead of us. 

 

Christ: Suffering Hell’s Worst that we might Receive Heaven’s Best

And everything was stripped from Him, wasn’t it?  “He came unto His own and His own received Him not.”  One of the Twelve betrayed Him with a kiss and all of His disciples fled.  The world turned against Him – mocked Him, condemned Him, crucified Him.  Relational disintegration.  Even material disintegration, the meager belongings that were His, were torn from Him.  The soldiers cast lots  dividing His garments among them while He was nailed naked to the tree.  Material disintegration.  The God-Man, Jesus Christ, bearing the horror and fury of hell.  He bore it.  He took it.  He embraced it so that it might be proclaimed to you tonight that hell’s horrors need never engulf you.  Hell’s horrors need never engulf you.   You need never bear them.  Hell is a needless destiny, an unnecessary eternity for you.  The fury of hell’s flames has been quenched, utterly and forever, for any and all who will bend their knee and will trust in Christ.  By the hell of the cross Jesus slammed closed the gate of hell and opened wide the doors of heaven for everyone who will trust Him, for everyone and anyone who will trust Him.  There is no reason, there is no logic, there is no possible argument.  There is no need that anyone here might forfeit glory and find themselves dispatched to the darkness.  Are you unholy here?  If you would but trust in Christ, Christ the holy one has made provision to make you clean and to change you so that inscribed on you forever one day will be the words, “Holy to the Lord.”  There is no barrier, there is no blockage, there is nothing hindering you but your own rebellion.  Won’t you give it up?  Won’t you give it up?  There is a hell to flee and a heaven to gain!  And Jesus here tonight is pleading with you to come and trust Him and gain the glories and joys of the one and flee the horrors and tragedy of the other.  Would you come and rest on Christ? 

 

Let us pray.

 

Our Father, we pray for any here who do not know Jesus.  Would You show them what Christ has done and would You help them to flee Your just judgment to Jesus’ saving grace?  Save sinners.  Save them. Take away their hearts of stone and give them hearts of flesh.  And for all of us who believe, grant to us an ache and a longing for the age to come when we will be forever with the Lord, when our daily combat will be over and victory, Christ’s victory will be complete, and upon us all will be inscribed the words, “Holy to the Lord.”  And so we pray, even so, come Lord Jesus.  In His name, amen.

© 2024 First Presbyterian Church.

This transcribed message has been lightly edited and formatted for the Web site. No attempt has been made, however, to alter the basic extemporaneous delivery style, or to produce a grammatically accurate, publication-ready manuscript conforming to an established style template.

Should there be questions regarding grammar or theological content, the reader should presume any website error to be with the webmaster/transcriber/editor rather than with the original speaker. For full copyright, reproduction and permission information, please visit the First Presbyterian Church Copyright, Reproduction & Permission statement.

To view recordings of our entire services, visit our Facebook page.

caret-downclosedown-arrowenvelopefacebook-squarehamburgerinstagram-squarelinkedin-squarepausephoneplayprocesssearchtwitter-squarevimeo-square