Zechariah 12: God's Deliverance

We walk through Zechariah 12 to explore God’s deliverance, how apocalyptic images point to hope, and why trust grows when God works in new ways. We read the text, connect it to Revelation and Jesus as the Pierced One, and end with prayer and a charge to release outcomes to God.

• context of return from exile and call to come home to God
• apocalyptic symbols that reveal God’s character and resolve
• Jerusalem as an immovable rock under God’s care
• “they will look on me whom they have pierced” and New Testament links
• God’s deliverance arriving in different ways across time
• practical encouragement to trust, pray, and release outcomes
• closing prayer and a reminder from Zechariah 9:9

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Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation (NLT).
Copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation.
Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hey everyone, and welcome to the Bible Breakdown Podcast. In this podcast, we will be breaking down the Bible one chapter a day. Whether you are a new believer or have been following Christ for a while, we believe that you will learn something new and fresh every single day. So thank you for joining us, and let's get into breaking down the Bible together.

Theme: God’s Deliverance In Zechariah 12

Community And Housekeeping

Coming Home To God After Exile

Apocalyptic Imagery And Revelation Links

Reading Zechariah 12

Mourning The Pierced One

God Delivers In Different Ways

Personal Encouragement And Trust

Prayer And Closing Verse

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Well, hello everybody. Welcome back to the Bible Breakdown Podcast with your host, Pastor Brandon. Today, Zechariah chapter 12, and today's title is God's Deliverance. God's Deliverance. As you can see, the theme continuing to build, whereas they come on home to God, then it says the king is coming, and then he gets there, and then now he's talking about the deliverance that's going to come from the hands of the Lord, even when sometimes they go through difficulties and just stuff that time brings with it. So we're going to jump into all of that as we are closely getting to the end of this amazing book. So make sure you take just a moment, get out your Bibles, pull up Zechariah chapter 12, and as always, while you're doing that, make sure you pause, like, share, and subscribe to the YouTube channel and the podcast. Make sure you leave us a five-star review on the podcast. It really does help. And make sure you're going to the Bible breakdown discussion on Facebook. It's an amazing group of people doing a wonderful job. And as always, you can get all that information at the BibleBreakdown.com. Well, if we've been walking through this text one chapter at a time, if you've been with us, the overall idea is the idea of coming home to God. Just come on home. Come on home. The nation of Israel had come back from the exile from all over the nations, and as they're coming back in, it is also time to make sure that they don't just come back home physically, but they come home spiritually to God. And you see this with some of the different minor prophets who all lived roughly the same time, as they're all saying, hey, listen, remember what got us into trouble to begin with, and that is we walked away from God, and so we walked away from the protection of the Lord, walked away from the goodness of God, and all of that. So we need to come on back home to Him. Well, as they're continuing this theme of God saying, as you come back to me, these are all the good things that's going to happen. He's also going to talk about today, about the idea of the future deliverance of Jerusalem. So if you're ready, we're going to dive into this today, and we're going to see what God's Word has to say. And also, I want you to notice, we're going to get into this. This is so there, there's so many things in the book of Revelation that actually is quotations back to Zechariah. And as we talked about, Zechariah, the literary genre of this is called apocalyptic literature, which means there's a lot of metaphor, a lot of symbols, all these kinds of things that are intended to paint a visual picture of what God is saying. So He's using word pictures here to describe what's coming. And you're going to see this. And I think when you I think if you've if you've ever read the book of Revelation with us, you're going to be like, oh yeah, I get that one as soon as we pass by. So if you're ready, here we go. Zechariah 12, verse 1 says this. This message concerning the fate of Israel came from the Lord. This message is from the Lord who stretched out the heavens, laid the foundations of the earth, and formed the human spirit. I will make Jerusalem like an intoxicating drink that makes the nearby nations stagger when they send their armies to besiege Jerusalem and Judah. On that day I will make Jerusalem an immovable rock. All the nations will gather against it and try to move it, but they will only hurt themselves. On that day, says the Lord, I will cause every horse to panic and every rider to lose his nerve. I will watch over the people of Judah, but I will bind all the horses of their enemies. And the clans of Judah will say to themselves, The people of Jerusalem have found strength in the Lord of heaven's armies, their God. And on that day I will make the clans of Judah like a flame that sets a wood pile ablaze, or like a burning torch among sheaves of grain. It will burn up all the neighboring nations right and left, while the people living in Jerusalem remain secure. The Lord will give victory to the rest of Judah first, before Jerusalem, so that the people of Jerusalem and the royal line of David will not have a greater honor than the rest of Judah. And on that day the Lord will defend the people of Jerusalem. The weakest among them will be as mighty King David. The royal descendants will be like God and like the angel of the Lord who goes before them. For on that day I will begin to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem. Then I will pour out my spirit of grace and prayer on the family of David and on the people of Jerusalem. Listen to this. They will look on me whom they have pierced and mourn for him as for an only son. They will grieve bitterly for him as for a firstborn son who has died. You see that reference in the New Testament as a fulfillment in Jesus. Verse 11. Remember that for Revelation? All Israel will mourn each clan by itself, and with the husbands separate from their wives, clans of David will mourn alone, as will the clan of Nathan, and the clan of Levi, and the clan of Shemai. Each of the surviving clans of Judah will mourn separately, and with the husbands separate from their wives. So what God is saying is, is that when he comes back to them, because remember the point has been that we need to come on home to God, and that God always has his hand out outstretched toward us, and as we come home to him, he is going to come home to us. And then in the previous chapters, it is that he will then set up what is right, what is just, what is true. And then yesterday you say, but also don't forget, in the process of time, we're still human. So it's going to be good leaders, there's going to be bad leaders, but God's going to be moving through all of it. And this one, he's also saying that in the future, God is always going to work out his deliverance. It's going to look different, it's going to be different, but we can trust that his deliverance will come. And that is something that can be very important for all of us because God doesn't always move in exactly the same way. I love uh in the Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis, you know, famously Aslan was a picture of Jesus. And at one particular time, they they were asking about Aslan coming and doing something the same way, and he said, I rarely do the same thing the same way twice. But that doesn't mean I'm not going to do something. That's an extreme paraphrase of what he said. But that was the basic idea is God is creative, God is different, God always does things in his own way, in his own time, but the end result is the same. And so I want to maybe give that to all of us as an encouragement. Because maybe, maybe you're going through something difficult right now, and you have heard how God has moved in somebody else's life, or maybe how God has moved in your life in the past, and you're getting discouraged because it doesn't seem like God is doing it that way. Well, here's the encouragement for all of us, and that is just because God is not always moving in the way that we think, doesn't mean he's not moving. It just means he's doing it in his own way. So one of the greatest things that we can do is to sometimes let it go and just trust God. That doesn't mean we don't do the best we can and work as hard as we can. We just in the end of the day trust that the results are up to the Lord. So here's my question. Is there something that you've been discouraged about because God doesn't seem to be moving in the way you would expect? Or maybe moving in ways he has in the past? What if today you prayed and you released it to God and realized that he's probably doing it differently, but he's still doing something, and in the end, the result will be the same, and that is, God will get the glory and we will move forward in victory. Let's pray together right now. God, thank you so much for today. Thank you for your wisdom. Thank you for how you are with us in so many wonderful ways. I pray today, God, that you will help us to see that we don't always have to see, that we can trust you when we don't always know what's going on, because we know that you are always faithful. We celebrate you today. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. I want to do a different verse today, and we're gonna move forward with this one for the rest, and that is Zechariah 9, verse 9. It says, Rejoice greatly. See your king comes to you righteous and victorious. I love that. And I love you, and I'll see you tomorrow for Zechariah chapter 13.