Terms and conditions apply. If ever you listen to an advert for something on the radio, maybe for a holiday or a free trial or something, they've only got ten seconds, because they pay by the second. So they speak twice as fast as they need to. And at the end they say “terms and conditions apply,” which basically means, “We've covered ourselves. There are a few things you ought to know about this offer before you take it up, and you ought to find out what those are, but we didn't want to waste our time and our precious advert slot to go into the small print.”
It's always worth paying attention to the small print, because there's wording in there that could potentially exclude you from something that would otherwise be of great benefit to you. For example, if your car breaks down and you have breakdown cover, but you are less than a quarter of a mile from your house, unless you've specifically chosen to have the at-home part of your policy, then you're on your own. Or your mobile phone company tells you that you can use your phone in Europe like you would use it at home, but if you're going to Switzerland, you should be aware that some companies would include Switzerland under that and others would not. It's worth knowing what the conditions are, so that you get the full enjoyment of all the benefits.
We're working our way through the book of Zechariah together through this autumn. And Zechariah has been delivering a really encouraging and positive message to the people of God, round about the year 520 BC. Here's what's happened. The people of God have been exiled from Jerusalem and the area around there to the country of Babylon, because they have rebelled against their God. But then God allowed them to return home so that they can rebuild their temple. No sooner had they arrived and started, though, than they met opposition from the people who lived round about, and the work ground to a halt, and they've just made no progress at all for fifteen years. So God sent two prophets, Haggai and Zechariah, to encourage them — to encourage them that God has a plan for them to get the rebuilding back on the road, and to rebuild their hearts as well.
As we've looked through the first four chapters of Zechariah over the past few weeks, we've heard some really encouraging things from Zechariah. All of our sermons are on the church website — you can go back and listen if you missed any of these. God has said that he will personally return to his people. God has assured them that he sees his people and he will restore them — he's noticed. God has promised some carpenters who will come and overcome their strong enemies. God's people and God's city will one day be absolutely huge. God will clothe his priests and his people in his own perfect white righteousness. And Zerubbabel, the governor who laid the foundation stone of the new temple, will himself finish it — but not because he is a particularly powerful man, but because God is a powerful God. In short, God will gloriously restore his people.
But today we are reminded that the God who will do these things is a holy God. He is completely pure, and he cannot live with anything that is unjust or wrong or spoiled. The people need to be clear: the exile was not a mistake in which God temporarily forgot to be kind. There are some real problems here. God's rescue may be free, but it's not automatic. It's not universal. These people need to make sure that they don't miss out.
Now, when I say “look at the small print,” don't get that wrong. We're not saying that there are subtle conditions hidden away in obscure verses of the Bible that might disqualify you. If you've watched the movie called Wonka from about three years ago, this is not that. It's just that God's great blessings, the blessings of a holy God — well, you just need to be quite clear how it is that someone like us can approach such a God and be blessed by him.
There are many visions in these opening chapters of Zechariah, and the two in chapter 5 belong particularly closely together, so we're going to look at them as a pair.
Vision Number 1: The Scroll
So, firstly then, here's vision number one: the scroll. Verse 1: “I looked again, and there before me was a flying scroll. He asked me, ‘What do you see?’ I answered, ‘I see a flying scroll twenty cubits long and ten cubits wide.’ And he said to me, ‘This is the curse that is going out over the whole land. For according to what it says on one side, every thief will be banished, and according to what it says on the other, everyone who swears falsely will be banished. The Lord Almighty declares, “I will send it out, and it will enter the house of the thief and the house of anyone who swears falsely by my name. It will remain in that house and destroy it completely, both its timbers and its stones.”’”
Scrolls were usually rolled up. They're a way of having writing on a single large piece of parchment, rolling up the bits you don't need so that you can manageably hold the bit you're reading at that time. This scroll is unrolled so that everyone can see what is written on it. Throughout the writing prophets in the Old Testament, the symbol of a scroll is used fairly consistently. The prophets describe God himself writing on scrolls the things that his people have done, and then the consequences that will follow. And this one contains curses. We are told, “This is the curse” — verse 3.
Now, the background to this language of cursing the people of God comes from the book of Deuteronomy. So, for example, here's Deuteronomy 28:15: “However, if you do not obey the Lord your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come on you and overtake you.” Or Deuteronomy 30:19: “This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live.” God had made a covenant with his people, a solemn agreement in which God promised to bless them — he would be their God, they would be his people — and in which they promised loyalty and devotion to him. And if they break their end of it, then certain curses will follow. So this scroll contains covenant curses.
To be more exact, it contains two of the ten commandments. It contains commandment number eight, which says you shall not steal: every thief will be banished. And it contains a blend of commandment number nine, you shall not bear false witness, and commandment number three, you shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God. Now, why does it contain those particular commandments? Well, partly it contains two commandments out of ten just as a way of saying you can assume the other eight are here. But actually, these are also very carefully chosen. These are specific sins that Zechariah will pick up later on in the book.
The people at this time lived in great poverty. We've got evidence from secular historians that this province of the Persian Empire was very poor at this time. They had lived wonderful, comfortable lives in Babylon. They had beautiful homes to live in. They lived there seventy years — that's about three generations. They were established and settled, their kids were in the best schools, they had good food. And then they've come back, and they're surrounded by the rubble, by the land just all stony and not productive. Deep poverty. And you can see how tempting it would have been. Remember, they'd never been there. “Well, I think this is my family's farm.” “I think that's your family's farm.” “I'm pretty sure the river is on our land”. So you move the fence. You can see how easily that happens, can't you? And then your neighbour takes you to court, and you're happy to lie on oath about it if that's where it goes. These are very relevant sins for them that God is exposing them to.
Look more closely at this scroll. How big is it? It's both very big and very small. The sizes in these two visions are slightly messed up — we'll see that later, the woman doesn't fit in the basket of that size. So it's a very big scroll. It's big enough to see. Verse 2: “I see a flying scroll twenty cubits long and ten cubits wide.” Now, we don't tend to use the cubit today, so let me help you here. It is roughly fifty percent bigger than our projection screen. That is not a manageable scroll. If you want to take your reading with you on holiday to read by the pool, you don't pack that in your Ryanair luggage — they don't even have a price for packing a scroll that size. It's not a scroll, it's more like a billboard. You know the big advertising hoardings you get by railway station platforms — it's more like that. But then it flies out over the whole land, so it's more like the advertising banners that you get towed behind an aeroplane sometimes. Or, to use military language, it's like the satellite that hovers over the ground, so that the army, as they plan an assault, can see exactly what is happening at every location across the ground. Everyone can see it, and it can see everything. It's big. Big enough to see.
But it's also small. It's small enough to find you. Verse 4: “I will send it out, and it will enter the house of the thief and the house of anyone who swears falsely by my name. It will remain in that house and destroy it completely, both its timbers and its stones.” It's more like, now, the heat-seeking missile, or the first-person view drone that's trying to find a particular individual wherever they're hiding, in a cupboard. So easy to think, isn't it, “What I do in the dark is hidden from everybody, including God. He doesn't see. It can't touch me.” No. The curse of God's judgement focuses in on all who deserve it, and it wipes them out, and their house, and there's no escape. So there's vision number one: the scroll.
Vision Number 2: The Basket
Now, let's look at vision number two, which is the basket. Verse 5: “Then the angel who was speaking to me came forward and said to me, ‘Look up and see what is appearing.’ I asked, ‘What is it?’ He replied, ‘It is a basket.’ And he added, ‘This is the iniquity of the people throughout the land.’” I love that. “What is it?” “It's a basket.” And Zechariah is thinking, “Yeah, I got that bit — what does it mean?” “Oh, it's the iniquity of the people throughout the land.” Iniquity is an old-fashioned word; it just means corruption, wickedness, all the bad things we do.
How does a basket represent wickedness? Here's the answer. The word for basket here is ephah. You might have heard of an ephah before. It was a measure. In those days, everything you bought was sold by volume. You go to the market, you want to buy some rice — that's like living in America, isn't it? You have three cups of rice. You don't measure it out by the gram, you measure it all out by the cupful. So the ephah was the largest volume measure that they had at the time. Still not big enough for a woman to fit in it, by a long way. So their wickedness is this measure that they would use in the market. What is the wickedness of the land? It's how they did business. And while we're on it, the lid that is made of lead is a talent of lead. That's a measure of weight. Again, it's all about trade, weights and volumes. We're back to the language of greed and theft again, aren't we?
Then he's shown what's in the basket. Here we go, verse 7: “Then the cover of lead was raised, and there in the basket sat a woman.” What's in the basket? A woman!!! And he can't believe it. In my notes, I put three exclamation marks after that — it's kind of the utter surprise on the guy's face. Now, it's not that women are more wicked, and that's why if you're going to have to depict wickedness as a person you’d choose a woman. No, it's not that. Here's the shock. Okay, men and women were equally capable of great wickedness. There's no difference between men and women in that regard — we are utterly alike. Here's the shock: it's a person. So here's this basket that represents wickedness. What's in the basket? A person! One writer puts it this way: wickedness has a face. You lift the lid on the basket, and what's inside? Someone just like you.
Now, there's then a piece of good news, which is that God is stronger than wickedness. Verse 8: “He said, ‘This is wickedness,’ and he pushed her back inside the basket and pushed its lead cover down over it.” Strong words — he sort of forced her back inside and forced the cover on. So wickedness wants to break out into the world and cause havoc, but God is stronger, and wickedness can only do what God allows it to do. That lid was heavy, about 35 kg. There's no way that woman, crouched inside that basket, would be able to push that lid off.
And then the basket is airlifted. Verse 9: “Then I looked up, and there before me were two women, with the wind in their wings. They had wings like those of a stork, and they lifted up the basket between heaven and earth.” Why do these two women have wings? Because they are heavenly agents. We don't get any other examples in the Bible, that I can find anyway, of women with wings. Angels don't have wings, popular art notwithstanding. Cherubim do have wings, but they're not depicted as women. Nevertheless, this picture of winged creatures is pretty clear: these are heavenly creatures. This is God's doing, carrying this basket away. And they had the wind in their wings — the breath of God, God's Spirit, is what's carrying this basket along on its journey. And there's so much wickedness in the land that the basket is so heavy that you need two of them to carry it.
Where are they taking the basket to? Well, Zechariah asked the same thing. So let's find out where they are taking the basket. “I asked the angel who was speaking to me, ‘Where are they taking the basket?’ He replied, ‘To the country of Babylonia to build a house for it. When the house is ready, the basket will be set there in its place.’” This is a really specific answer to where it's going. Notice it carefully.
It's going to the country of Babylonia. That's where the people have just come back from. Babylonia had come to symbolise everything that is rebellious against God. Which means that basket of wickedness is going right where it belongs, right to where it will be at home. Now, remember, wickedness has a face. So God's not just saying he will remove wickedness in the abstract. No, this is about people. People will be removed, taken to a place far away from everything good, to a place where evil is fully at home, a place the New Testament calls hell. It's going to Babylonia.
It's going in a house. “To the country of Babylonia to build a house for it.” Why a house? Chapter 1 verse 16: “This is what the Lord says: ‘I will return to Jerusalem with mercy, and there my house will be rebuilt.’” There are two houses being built in the book of Zechariah: a house for God, a temple in Jerusalem, and a house for wickedness, a temple in Babylonia. Wickedness will be placed in a temple.
And then the third little detail of where it's going: it's in its place. “When the house is ready, the basket will be set there in its place” — or, literally, on a base, on a foundation, on a stand. This is the word for the huge bronze structure on which was placed some of the big articles of bronze that Solomon made in the temple — the stand, the pedestal.
So the basket, representing all their wickedness and greed, will be placed on a stand in a temple in Babylon, and their wickedness itself will be worshipped by the people of Babylon.
Jesus said, Matthew 6:24: “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” Here is part of God's judgment, and it's something you may not have thought of before. If you build your life around money, possessions, comfort, greed, the day will come when God lets you have what you want. The day will come when that becomes the thing you worship. And because that is such a hollow and empty thing, that's a terrible place to be. You worship what you live for.
It's a pretty strange pair of visions, isn't it? This flying scroll, representing the curses on the people, that can be seen by everybody, that destroys everyone; this wickedness depicted as a basket with a woman inside, a person inside, carried off to Babylon, to its temple. What's God saying? What's God's message to his people of Zechariah's day? What's his message to us? Here are three things that God wants from us.
1. Devoted Lives
Number one: he wants devoted lives. Haggai and Zechariah were encouraging the people to finish building the temple. This chapter warns us — warns them — the temple is not enough. You could have a perfect temple, but if the people were too sinful for a holy God, they wouldn't be able to worship him in it, and the temple would be no use. The people were in danger of living double lives — beautiful temple, but the rest of their lives untouched by God. They did eventually finish the temple. A few centuries later, Herod the Great refurbished it. And Jesus visited that temple. Do you remember, he wasn't impressed? “What beautiful stones,” the disciples said, “what wonderful buildings.” What did Jesus see? Ephahs and talents. They turned it into a marketplace, and he was not impressed.
How easy, brothers and sisters, we do the same thing. The New Testament warns us not to live double lives. It's so easy. We get church right, okay? Excellent music, excellent prayers, excellent readings, excellent welcome, excellent coffee, okay? We get church right. We build the temple. We build the kingdom. We share our faith, we see people become Christians, the kingdom of God, the house of God, grows. We get that right. But then the rest of us, the rest of our lives, it's not devoted to Jesus. And we don't allow Jesus to rebuild his kingdom, to rebuild in our lives, to rebuild our careers, to rebuild our bank accounts, to rebuild our homes, to rebuild our relationships, to rebuild our priorities. We don't do that bit.
2. Converted Wallets
The second thing God wants from us is converted wallets. Remember, they faced considerable economic pressure. Babylon, and life in Babylon, was a lot more comfortable than Jerusalem and life among the rubble. And so this asks them the question: what are they living for? Are they living to build their kingdom or God's kingdom? Now, we don't live amongst rubble — most of us, if you're having your kitchen redone, you probably do, but the rest of us don't live amongst the rubble. We do live amongst a culture that is obsessed with material comfort and material pleasures. So the temptation to live for those things is just massive. If the symbol God chose for their culture was a measuring basket, and said, “That's what you worship,” probably the symbol for our culture, the religious symbol for our culture, would be a card terminal or a shopping website.
And here's the warning: the scroll will enter every house and destroy it. The woman in the basket will be taken away to Babylon. If we live for those things, there is no hiding. Mark 8:36: “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” Devoted lives, converted wallets.
3. New Hearts
Number three: God wants new hearts. Notice what God does not say to them. He does not say, “Tidy yourselves up, fix your priorities, sort out your brokenness, and make yourself acceptable to me.” No. Remember, back in chapter 3, Joshua the high priest had his filthy clothes taken off him, gleaming white clothes placed upon him, and in that whole process he was completely passive. He did not contribute — it was done to him.
Paul, in the letter to the Colossians, chapter 2:14, says that when Jesus died, God forgave us all our sins, “having cancelled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross.” God took that scroll that says, “Because you have not lived as I want, you are cursed,” and he nailed it to the cross on which Jesus died — in the very place on which you would normally put the charges for which the man was being executed, a bit like the blackboard in the old days outside the police cell. Nailed it there and said, “This man is dying for your curse.”
Jesus's call in the Gospels: repent, turn around, and believe the good news. He calls us to come to him. And then his promise is that he will transform us. He'll give us new hearts. He'll build his kingdom in our lives.
This is why I wanted the story of Zacchaeus read. Jesus says to Zacchaeus, “Come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” What a wonderful invitation — Jesus comes for tea! Wow. One day you can meet Zacchaeus and ask him what it was like. What does Zacchaeus say? “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.” Jesus replies, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”
Conclusion
So there's what God wants from us: devoted lives, converted wallets, and the gift of a new heart from Jesus that leaves nothing in our lives untouched — all for his glory and for our good.
Let me finish with Mark chapter 10 verse 29: “Truly I tell you, no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in the present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields — along with persecutions — and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”