Summer in the Minors Week 11 | Zechariah

Let's pray together, family church.

We bow before you, God, because we know that you are holy.

There is no one like you.

We bow before you as our God, as our King, as our Creator, as our Savior, and as our friend.

We come to you in the name of Jesus Christ, crucified for our sins and raised from the dead and coming again.

And now, God, as we open your word together this morning, would you speak to us from the pages of the Bible?

Would you speak to us as your people?

Would you speak to us by your spirit and give us faith so that we can receive all of this teaching?

We receive it by faith, and we receive it in Jesus' name.

And all God's people say.

Amen.

You can't be seated.

Welcome again to Family Church.

My name is Jimmy Scrogins.

I'm one of the pastors here, and every Sunday we have a Bible study, and we're going to have a Bible study right now.

So I'd encourage you to get your Bibles out.

Turn your Bibles on on your devices.

Grab the Bible from the pew in front of you and open up to the Old Testament book of Zechariah.

The Old Testament book of Zechariah.

It's right at the end of the Old Testament.

I would also encourage you, as Pastor Derek did earlier, to get out your program.

There's a place for you to take notes, fill in some blanks.

It would be good for you to get in the habit of writing things down when we have a Bible study together.

It is awesome to get to be with you guys.

It is always such a pleasure to be able to gather with our church family.

We go out there and it's the world as it is, and we face it as it is, and we're glad to have the opportunities that we have in the world.

But I always enjoy coming in here.

It's like having a family dinner together with our church family.

And we get to recharge and encourage each other.

And the Bible says we stir one another up to love and to good works every time we gather as a church family.

I hope that is your experience.

And if you're new to Family Church, I hope you'll be encouraged today by being with God's people here.

We're going to open up to the book of Zechariah, chapter one.

As Pastor Derek said, we are on week 11 of a 12-week teaching series.

We are teaching all the way through the 12 minor prophets.

And this book today that we're going to study, the book of Zechariah, is a book about hope.

It is a book about hope.

And all of us in different times in our lives need hope.

Zechariah is the longest of all of the minor prophets.

He should probably be a major prophet.

In fact, I'm going to call him a mid-major prophet, if you will.

Because it's it's it's a it's 14 chapters.

And this book of Zechariah is very mysterious.

And if you were to open it up and just try to read straight through it, and some of you have, you'll find all of these different visions that the prophet Zechariah had from the Lord.

And he uses all of this apocalyptic language about the devil and about angels and about wars and about the end of time.

The book of Zechariah is very difficult for you to understand unless you know the history which we're teaching you in here, and unless you know the point of all of it, and the point of all of it is hope.

Because everybody needs hope.

Because for all of us at different times, life can be discouraging.

But we are called as Christian people to be faithful even when we face discouragement.

And the question is, how do you have hope in God when God isn't doing for you what you thought he was going to do?

How do you have hope in God when God isn't doing for you what you thought he was going to do?

For example, you did your best, but the marriage did not work out.

You did your best, but your kids are not walking with God.

You believed and you prayed and you tried, but your depression has not gone away.

There are times in life when you do the best you can, you believe in God the best you can, but God doesn't do for you what you thought he was going to do when you started believing, when you started praying.

The healing does not come, the marriage fails, the prodigal does not come home.

And what we need is hope.

We need hope that God is still listening and that God still cares and that God has the power to actually do something to help us.

We need to believe that God actually has a plan, and we need hope that there is something better to come in the future.

Now, if you've thought thoughts like that, you are not the first Jesus person to need some hope.

And that's why God gives us so many promises about hope in the Bible, because the promises of God are made to give you hope.

So let's read our text, Zechariah chapter 1.

Zechariah 1 · chapter mention

We'll read the first few verses, and then we'll talk about it.

Here's what the word of God says.

In the eighth month, in the second year of Darius, the word of the Lord came to the prophet Zechariah, the son of Barekiah, son of Edo, saying, The Lord was very angry with your fathers.

Therefore say to them, Thus declares the Lord of hosts, return to me, says the Lord of hosts, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts.

And this is the word of God, and all God's people say, Amen.

We received God's word at family church.

Let's do a little history review.

Remember that in the 900s, Solomon, King Solomon, built a magnificent temple for the Lord.

It was one of the wonders of the world at the time.

After King Solomon died, the nation of Israel split into two nations, the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah.

Both of these nations drifted away from the Lord over time, and because they would not return to him, God judged both the kingdom of Israel and the kingdom of Judah.

They were both invaded at different times.

And the temple in Jerusalem, in the nation of Judah, was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BC.

Well, about 50 years later, 50,000 exiles who had been removed during the war were sent from Babylon back to Jerusalem to build a new temple in Jerusalem and to rebuild their society.

A guy named Zerubbabel was in charge.

We talked about that last week.

Go back and review it on our YouTube channel.

Zerubel was the governor.

He probably expected one day that he would become king of Judah.

Along with Zerubbabel was a guy named Joshua.

Joshua was the high priest in Israel at the time.

And after several years and fitchin' starts, Zerubbabel and Joshua got the new temple, the second temple, actually completed.

And you can imagine what all these 50,000 exiles were thinking when they arrived home in Jerusalem.

They've been gone for 70 years.

They come home.

These kids who have come home, these young people who've come home, they've never even seen Jerusalem before.

They've never seen a temple before.

They've heard the stories.

And now they get to come back to Jerusalem, and God uses them to build a new temple to replace the temple of Solomon that was destroyed.

And you can imagine what that was like.

Coming back to Jerusalem, the home country, and they come back and they get to do something great for God, like build a temple.

And you know what they're thinking?

They're thinking, dude, we've got our legit king from the line of David, Zerubel.

He's going to be our king.

We've got our high priest Joshua, who's a legit high priest.

Now we're back in God's city, the city of Jerusalem.

We've just built God a brand new temple.

We built it with our own hands, and God is on our side.

You can almost see the bumper stickers.

You can see the memes on social media.

We are so back, they must have been saying.

Well, it sounds like everything's going to work out for them.

So why did they need hope?

They sounds like they had it all.

Well, the first section of the book of Zechariah, if you read the whole thing, was preached while they were trying to get the temple built.

He preached kind of on the same time as Haggai, we talked about last week.

But the second section of the book of Zechariah is preached decades later, many years after the second temple was completed.

What was it like to live in Jerusalem several decades after the second temple was finished?

Boy, if you read this, you talk about unmet expectations.

The people who were young when the second temple built, by the time Zechariah writes the second half of the book, these people are now old.

The temple, it turns out, was not everything that they hoped it would be.

But the spiritual life of the nation isn't good.

They're still a vassal state paying tribute to the Persians.

The Persians dominate them militarily and economically and politically.

Turns out Judah is still a far cry from the world power it was years ago when Solomon built the first temple.

And after everything they had done and all of their hopes and all of their dreams, a new politics, a new economy, a new temple revive the life of the nation.

It just did not happen.

God did not do for them what they believed he was going to do.

In their own country, what happened in their country was not what they believed was going to happen in their country.

They thought Zerubbabel would restore the majesty of the Davidic monarchy.

He didn't.

They thought Joshua would restore true and powerful worship in the temple.

He couldn't.

And that's why Zechariah keeps introducing another figure all the way through his book.

This figure is commonly referred to as the Messiah.

Let me just hit some highlights.

It's a long book.

I just want to point out some things to you.

We'll put it on the screen.

In Zechariah chapter 3 and chapter 6, he refers to this guy called the branch.

Zechariah 3 · chapter mention

In chapter 9, he calls this one the humble king.

In chapter 12, he talks about the one who will be pierced.

In chapter 13, he talks about the one who will be a good shepherd.

In chapter 14, he talks about the one who one day will be the king over all the earth.

And of course, we as Christian people living after this time, we know about somebody that Zechariah's audience did not know about, at least in great detail.

Because we know that Zachariah was talking about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

The people back then, they were thinking the temple is going to be the thing.

Or they were thinking the return home, that's going to be the thing.

What they find out is life goes on, and after the temple is completed, and after they've returned home, God just isn't doing what they thought he was going to do, and it doesn't solve the problems they thought this was going to solve.

And maybe you've had some similar experiences in your own life.

Maybe you thought, if I could just get married, then all my problems will be over.

If I could just get out of this marriage, then all my problems would be over.

If we could just have a baby, we will have no more problems.

If I could just get this business off the ground, then I would have no more problems.

It's not that those things aren't important or even desirable or even godly things.

It's just that they're all part of a bigger picture and you can't see the whole big picture yet.

What God is promising for them is bigger than just the temple.

It's bigger than just your job or your family or even your physical health.

The temple and those things are part of it, but it's not the whole thing.

And so when you read through the whole Bible and you find out about Jesus, what you need to know is that Jesus is indeed the whole thing.

He's the one who eventually restores the kingdom.

He's the one who makes true worship possible.

He's the one who restores our families and heals our bodies.

Jesus is the fulfillment of all of the prophecies and all of the promises in Zechariah and in the whole entire Bible.

And Jesus is the reason that even when it seems like God's not doing for us what we thought he would do, Jesus is the reason that Christians can still have hope.

So what do we learn from Zechariah that applies to us in 2026?

If you're taking notes, here's the first thing I'd encourage you to write down.

Number one, trust God in discouraging circumstances.

Trust God in discouraging circumstances.

What does Zechariah say to the people in Jerusalem?

They were so disappointed about the things that didn't happen.

Well, look just first of all in the text we already read, look what Zechariah calls God in his sermons that are recorded here.

Verse 3, Zechariah calls God multiple times the Lord of what?

The Lord of Lord of hosts.

Now, in the ancient Hebrew Bible, because you know our Bible is in English, but it was originally written in Hebrew.

We've translated to English.

In the ancient Hebrew Bible, God is most commonly called the name Yahweh.

Or sometimes we would English it and call it Jehovah.

Jehovah and Yahweh are the same thing.

In your English Bible, when the word Yahweh is written, it's normally all caps.

T-H-E-L-O-R-D, the Lord.

That's when it's referring to Yahweh or Jehovah.

Some of you might be familiar with some of the names of God in the Bible.

For example, God is called Jehovah Rapha, God who is our healer, Jehovah Jirah, God who is our provider, Jehovah Shalom, God who is our peace.

Jehovah Sidkenu, God who is our righteousness.

But in the book of Zechariah, the most common name for God is Jehovah Sabaot, Lord of hosts.

In some translations, it will say Lord of armies.

Because that name, Lord of hosts, is used 55 times in the book of Zechariah.

It is a major point of emphasis.

This title for God means that God is in charge of all of the armies of heaven, the angel armies.

There is no military force on earth that can intimidate God.

God is not afraid of anybody's army or navy, not their Air Force, not even the Marines.

He's not afraid.

These people that are in this text are under the boot heel of Persia, and they need to hear that the Lord of hosts is more powerful than their earthly conquerors or their earthly kings.

And you and I need to hear the same thing.

So Pastor Derek said earlier that when you turn in these prayer cards to us, we actually treat those as very precious.

We take those and we read them and we save them and we hold them in our hands and we read those requests.

And we get on our knees before God on Tuesday mornings and we lift every single one of those requests individually to the Lord.

There's a lady who goes to our church, and for 63 weeks in a row, she's turned in a request.

And she numbers it every week.

That's how I know it's 63.

This is the 45th week in a row I have asked you to pray for this.

And now we're at 63.

And you might think that's very foolish.

Or very naive, or you might think she's crazy.

But I think she's actually very wise.

Because she's appealing to the Lord of hosts, the God of angel armies, to move the heart of her husband in a way that she cannot do for herself.

She's asking God, the Lord of hosts, to change his heart.

Are you trusting God or are you just messing with God?

Are you trusting with God or are you just messing with God?

You need to trust God to do for you, but you cannot do for yourself.

And one of the things you cannot do for yourself is you cannot remove the stain and the guilt of your own sins and your own shame and your own mistakes and your own regrets.

All of us need God, but we need God to cleanse us at the heart level because sin and guilt are like dirt that need to be washed away.

Sin and guilt are like disease that needs to be purged from our bodies.

We need to be made clean.

Well, Zachariah deals with that too.

Number two, on your notes, commit to repentance and be clean.

Commit to repentance and be clean.

So they're building this temple.

They got it built.

Now they're disappointed that all the things that they thought would happen haven't happened.

But what was the temple for?

Why was it important that they build a temple?

Why did God want them to build the temple?

Well, the temple was where God's people would come and meet with God.

And it's where the priests were because the priests would offer sacrifices to make atonement for the sins of the people.

So if you wanted to meet with God and you wanted to get with the priests, and you wanted to have sacrifices offered so that your sins could be forgiven, you had to go to the temple.

And these priests were very important because they were like mediators between people and God.

And in order for them to do their job as mediators, to stand between God and the people, the priests were supposed to come into the temple complex extremely clean.

There were all these rules about how they had to clean their bodies from head to toe.

There were all these rules about how they had to clean their clothes before they came into the temple because the priests were in a holy place, the temple, handling holy things, sacrifices offered to God, and they were dealing with a holy God.

They were supposed to trust him, they weren't supposed to mess around.

So when you read Zechariah, there's this shocking scene in chapter 3 where Zechariah has a vision about Joshua the high priest, and in this vision, Joshua can't serve in the temple because the Bible says he's wearing filthy garments in the presence of God.

And the word filthy, it actually means absolutely disgusting.

It's actually a very unique word that usually refers to bodily fluids.

The grossest ones, use your imagination from there.

But even though Joshua, the high priest, is wearing filthy garments, God doesn't judge him, God doesn't lightning bolt him, God doesn't push him out.

God does something maybe you wouldn't expect.

It's totally beautiful.

Look at chapter 3, verse 3.

I'll put it on the screen.

This is what the word of God says.

Now Joshua was standing before the angel, clothed with filthy garments.

And the angel said to those who were standing before him, remove the filthy garments from him.

And to him he said, Behold, I have taken your iniquity away from you, and I will clothe you with pure vestments.

So the angel of God says, You can't bring those filthy garments which represent his own sin and his own shame and his own regrets.

You can't bring that in here and meet with God.

So he says, Take the filthy garments off of him and put clean garments off on him.

Now in the New Testament, we know it's a picture of what happens at the cross of Christ.

Jesus is crucified on the cross for the sins of the world.

That means that when you trust Jesus, your sins, your sins and my sins are placed on Christ, and the judgment of God is poured out on Christ instead of on us.

And when you trust Christ, it means your sins are transferred to Christ, but the righteousness of Christ, since he had no sins, is transferred to you.

And so you get to take off your filthy garments, and you get to put on new clean garments, pure vestments.

And he says, that's why he says in verse 4, I have removed your iniquity from you.

That's sin.

And I've clothed you with pure vestments.

And to underscore God's commitment to cleansing his people, he says in verse 9, if you look down there, I will remove all your iniquity in a single day.

Well, that's kind of weird because Joshua, the high priest, becomes a picture of all people, all sinners for all time, them back then and you and me now.

So how is God going to actually remove the sin of the people for all time in one day?

Those Old Testament sacrifices had to be offered year after year after year after year.

The priests had to wash their bodies day after day after day after day.

How is God going to remove their iniquity all in one day?

Well, you've got to turn over to chapter 12 of Zechariah.

And Zachariah's preaching and he's prophesying about the day of the Lord in the future when God's going to take out the enemies of the people of God.

And on that day, the people of God, including many Jewish people, will Look on the one who they have pierced.

Now you see what the picture is?

See what we're pointing to?

And then Zechariah adds this new word picture.

After he says there's going to be one who is pierced, he says in chapter 13, he says that the the one who's pierced, his body is now gushing blood, and that the one who is pierced becomes a fountain where God's people can wash their sins away.

Look what it says in chapter 13, verse 1.

On that day a fountain will be opened for the house of David and for the residents of Jerusalem to wash away sin and impurity.

Now, if you go to church around here and you keep coming here, you're gonna see that we sing every Sunday, we sing songs with blood in the songs.

It's a distinctive feature of Christianity.

Blood is very important to us, it matters to us.

I grew up singing songs about blood and Jesus.

And now my kids have grown up at family church singing songs about the blood of Jesus.

Some of you know some of these older songs, some of you don't.

You haven't been to church that long.

We used to sing a song that said this: Are you washed in the blood, in the soul cleansing blood of the Lamb?

Are your garments spotless?

Are they white as snow?

Oh, be washed in the blood of the Lamb.

Zechariah chapter 12 and 13.

Zechariah 12 · chapter mention

There is a fountain filled with blood, drawn from Emmanuel's veins, and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.

Zechariah chapter 13.

Zechariah 13 · chapter mention

That's the stuff Zachariah is writing about.

How do we obtain that kind of cleansing?

How can we be washed in that blood?

How can our garments be spotless and white as snow?

How can we be plunged in that fountain filled with blood?

We do it by making a personal decision to repent of our sins, to turn from our sins and turn to Christ, crucified and raised from the dead, and to receive Jesus by faith for ourselves.

And if you will do that, you can have your filthy garments removed from you.

And you can be clothed in pure vestments, just like Joshua, the son of Jehosatak, in the book of Zechariah.

You have to make a personal decision to quit messing with God and trust God.

You remember what we read a few minutes ago in Zechariah chapter 1, he said, Return to me, verse 3, and I will return to you.

Zechariah 1 · chapter mention

Think about what we do every Sunday at Family Church.

This afternoon, we're going to baptize.

You know, all the different family churches around South Florida, we're baptizing like 60 or 70 people today.

All of us are having baptism.

It's going to be very exciting.

So we're going to be out here this afternoon.

We're going to baptize.

Baptism is a picture of cleansing and water, but also a picture of the death and burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

In just a few minutes, we're going to take the Lord's Supper.

The Lord's Supper is the picture of cleansing because the broken body and the shed blood of Jesus Christ.

And in 2026, we've got to do the same thing in West Palm Beach that the people in Judah had to do all those years ago.

Return to the Lord of hosts.

Repent to the Lord.

Believe the promises of God.

Jesus is the one who is pierced.

Jesus is the fountain.

Come to Jesus and be cleansed.

Alright?

But what then?

Because even after you come to Jesus, life will still have many disappointments.

Being forgiven doesn't end your disappointments.

But being forgiven and cleansed will change how you face those disappointments.

Which brings me to number three on your notes.

Live with confidence and do not fear.

Live with confidence and do not fear.

I don't want to say too much on this point except to say this.

Zechariah, if you read the whole book, he wanted the people to know that one day a Messiah was coming.

One day someone would come that would do what Zerubel really couldn't do, what Joshua the son of Jehoshak really couldn't do.

There was a Messiah coming, a true and better king and a truer and better priest who would give us a truer and better place to meet with God even than the temple.

And then the people, when they realized the Messiah was coming, that would help them face their temporary disappointments and setbacks by putting it in perspective and having courage.

They could do it then, and you can do it now.

So to give the people confidence, Zachariah gives them all of these prophecies about what's going to happen when the Messiah comes.

Some of these are very famous.

When I tell you these, some of you are going to immediately recognize them.

I already told you in chapter 3 and verse 6, they call Jesus, Zechariah calls him the branch.

That means he's from the line of David.

You know, at Christmas time we talk about that a lot.

Chapter 9, it says, when the Messiah comes, he's going to come as a humble king, and you're going to know he's humble because he's going to come riding on a donkey.

Zechariah chapter 9.

Zechariah 9 · chapter mention

Chapter 11, he says, when the Messiah comes, he will be a shepherd who will be betrayed for 30 pieces of silver.

In chapter 13, he says, he'll be a shepherd who is struck, and when he is struck, the sheep will scatter.

Remember when Jesus was on trial and his disciples all ran and hid?

And Jesus quotes that verse from Zachariah.

He says, Strike the shepherd.

The sheep will scatter.

Well, we all know that Zachariah is talking about Jesus because we have the New Testament.

We have the story of Jesus.

And all of these prophecies were fulfilled in the New Testament.

But when the people of Zechariah's day heard these prophecies for the first time, it was still 500 years before Jesus came for the first time.

And out of those 500 years, to be honest, a lot of people stopped believing Messiah was coming.

But he did come.

And all of those prophecies came true.

And I don't have time to get into it today, but if you keep reading the book of Zechariah, there are a lot of prophecies in Zechariah about the second coming of Jesus, too.

And that's still in the future.

And it hasn't happened yet to this day.

It's been 2,000 years since Jesus came the first time, and we're still waiting for him to come.

And after a while, people start thinking he's not really going to come.

People stop believing that the second coming is real, but it is real and he is coming.

And Christians believe that.

And if all of the prophecies about in the Old Testament about the first coming of Jesus turned out to be true, that should give you confidence that all of the promises about the second coming of Jesus are going to prove to be true as well.

And that means you should not live in fear or discouragement or go into the emotional, spiritual, fetal position when you are facing challenges or discouragement or setbacks because God is still on his throne.

He is still the God of angel armies, and Jesus is still coming back.

Which means, number four, on your notes, Jesus wins it all in the end.

Jesus wins it all in the end.

History is not random.

What is happening in your life is not random either.

It may feel random and chaotic, but it is not.

Because the Bible tells us that history is headed somewhere.

God is moving his plan for this world and for your life, and he's moving it forward.

Century after century.

I want to read you this last passage from Zechariah chapter 10.

Zechariah 10 · chapter mention

Zechariah constantly refers to Jesus as the shepherd.

And he refers to the people as Jesus' sheep.

And he says, at the end of time when Jesus returns, listen to what happens.

Chapter 10, verse 8.

He says, I will whistle for them, the sheep.

I will whistle for them and gather them in, for I have redeemed them.

And they shall be as many as they were before, though I scattered them among the nations, yet in far countries they will remember me.

And with their children they shall live and return.

With their children, they shall live and return.

I love this thought that God is pulling people in, that God is lifting people up, that God is making us a family, that God is bringing us home.

What about you?

Have you been saved?

Have you been to Jesus for the cleansing power?

Oh, be washed in the blood of the Lamb.

Are you fully trusting in his grace this hour?

Come be washed in the blood of the Lamb.

If you've never been saved, if you've never received Jesus for yourself by faith, you should do that today.

And if you were here and say, Well, I have received Jesus, but I've wandered from God, it says it right there in the first verses of Zechariah.

Return to the Lord, he will return to you.

It's not too late, you haven't gone too far.

God always wants you back.

I like reading stories to my kids and now my grandkids.

A little boy was reading a children's book.

It was an old-fashioned cowboy story, and it had pictures.

And in the story, the hero gets surrounded by the bad guys.

He's out manned and he's out guns.

It doesn't look good for the hero.

Well, as little boys do, he got totally immersed in the story, and he just couldn't take the suspense.

So he quickly flips over to the back of the book and he sees the picture of the cowboy riding into the sunset.

Now he feels better.

He turns back to the story where the cowboy surrounded, and as little boys do, he starts reading, and his mother overhears him whispering to the cowboy as he reads It's okay.

I know it doesn't look good now, but I know how it ends.

It's okay, it doesn't look good now, but I know how it ends, and that's the word of Zachariah to you, people of God.

You might be in a situation where it doesn't look good now, where it doesn't feel good now, but it's okay.

Jesus has come once, Jesus will come again.

You can make it because I know how it ends.

And to help us remember how it ends.

We take the Lord's Supper every Sunday at family church.

We're going to take the Lord's Supper right now.

The Lord's Supper reminds us of the broken body of Jesus and the shed blood of Jesus so we can be cleansed from our sins.

And we're supposed to take the Lord's Supper remembering Christ's sacrifice, but also anticipating Christ's second coming.

So we remember what he has done, but we look forward to what he will still do.

Now the Lord's Supper is only for Christians.

If you're here today and you're not a believer in Jesus yet, you should not take the Lord's Supper.

Just sing along, pray along, and after you become a believer in Jesus, you can take the Lord's Supper with integrity.

The family church we believe and we teach it's best for you to take the Lord's Supper after you've been baptized in the water by immersion and after you become a part of a neighborhood church.

If you hear this morning, say, Well, I'm a Christian, I've been baptized, but this just isn't my church, then we would encourage you to take the Lord's Supper as part of the extended family of Jesus that goes around the world.

But right now, let's bow our heads, let's close our eyes, let's confess our sins to the Lord.

Let's thank the Lord for cleansing us, for making us a family.

And let's thank the Lord that we can trust Him.

We don't have to mess with Him, we can trust Him.

And in just a minute, we'll all eat and drink the Lord's Supper together.