Zechariah – Your King is Coming! - Part 8 - Audio

Bakersfield First Assembly

Zechariah – Your King is Coming! Zechariah 2:1-13 (NIV) – [1] Then I looked up—and there before me was a man with a measuring line in his hand! [2] I asked, “Where are you going?” He answered me, “To measure Jerusalem, to find out how wide and how long it is.” [3] Then the angel who was speaking to me left, and another angel came to meet him [4] and said to him: “Run, tell that young man, ‘Jerusalem will be a city without walls because of the great number of men and livestock in it. [5] And I myself will be a wall of fire around it,' declares the LORD, ‘and I will be its glory within.’ [6] “Come! Come! Flee from the land of the north,” declares the LORD, “for I have scattered you to the four winds of heaven,” declares the LORD. [7] “Come, O Zion! Escape, you who live in the Daughter of Babylon!” Leviticus 26:14-15, 33 (NIV) – [14] “‘But if you will not listen to me and carry out all these commands, [15] and if you reject my decrees and abhor my laws and fail to carry out all my commands and so violate my covenant… [33] I will scatter you among the nations and will draw out my sword and pursue you. Your land will be laid waste, and your cities will lie in ruins. 1. Disobedience drives us to be scattered. Isaiah 43:5-7 (MSG) – [5] “So don’t be afraid: I’m with you. I’ll round up all your scattered children, pull them in from east and west. [6] I’ll send orders north and south: ‘Send them back. Return my sons from distant lands, my daughters from faraway places. [7] I want them back, every last one who bears my name, every man, woman, and child Whom I created for my glory, yes, personally formed and made each one.’” 2. God is calling the Prodigals to come back. Luke 15:17-20 (NIV) – [17] “When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! [18] I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. [19] I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.’ [20] So he got up and went to his father. “But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him. “From God’s perspective, one hidden act of repentance, one little gesture of selfless love, one moment of true forgiveness is all that is needed to bring God from his throne to run to his returning son and to fill the heavens with sounds of divine joy.” (The Return of the Prodigal Son, Henri Nouwen) 3. We must leave the past and the places where we were scattered. “Many of the captive Israelites did not return to Jerusalem because they had become accustomed to the security and wealth they had in Babylon. But Zechariah instructed them to leave Babylon quickly. This was an urgent request because Babylon would be destroyed and its decadent culture would cause God’s people to forget their spiritual priorities. A vast majority of the Israelites rejected these warnings and remained in Babylon.” (Life Application Bible) 4. We can get too comfortable in our captivity. “The Lord called these people to ‘escape’ from ‘Babylon’ among whose ‘daughter’ nations they lived. This was a call for the scattered Jews to return home in Zechariah’s day and help rebuild their nation. But it is also, because of the context and lack of fulfillment, a prophetic call to those living in the end times to abandon the Babylon of their day.” (Thomas Constable’s Notes on the Bible) Revelation 18:1-4 (NIV) – [1] After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven. He had great authority, and the earth was illuminated by his splendor. [2] With a mighty voice he shouted: “Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great! She has become a home for demons and a haunt for every evil spirit, a haunt for every unclean and detestable bird. [3] For all the nations have drunk the maddening wine of her adulteries. The kings of the earth committed adultery with her, and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries.” [4] Then I heard another voice from heaven say: “Come out of her, my people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues.” “[Babylon] is a symbol for the spirit of godlessness which in every age lures men away from the worship of the Creator. It is the final manifestation of secular humanism in its attempt to destroy the remaining vestiges of true religion. Society set free from God is its own worst enemy.” (The New International Commentary) “Christians are to separate themselves ideologically, and if necessary, physically from all the forms of Babylon.” (The Expositor’s Bible Commentary) 5. It’s time to leave Babylon behind.