Zechariah 9:9, 10

Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion!    Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you,  righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey,  on a colt, the foal of a donkey. 10 I will take away the chariots from Ephraim  and the warhorses from Jerusalem,    and the battle bow will be broken. He will proclaim peace to the nations.    His rule will extend from sea to sea    and from the River to the ends of the earth. 

Introduction

Even after the Minnesota Twins lost 103 games last year, you could feel the anticipation building.  In March people – including many shut-ins – were asking, “How do you think the Twins will do this year?”  Now that they have won four games in a row – the first time since 1987 when they won the World Series – people are getting keyed up about their prospects.

As spring sets in people are getting keyed, excited, about all kinds of things – baseball, softball, golf, gardening, getting into the fields, camping, warmer weather and a whole bunch of other things.  Spring gets us keyed.

In Zechariah 9:9-10 God tells his people, Get Keyed; Your King Comes!

…In Your King Who Comes to You

In these verses God is talking to his Old Testament people. “He tells them, “Rejoice! Shout!”

But humanly speaking, they had little reason to rejoice. Putting things into perspective, think of Syria today. Picture the bombed-out buildings in Aleppo or the destroyed historical sites in Palmyra. It will take years to rebuild these cities. Imagine the discouragement and despair of the people living in such ruins.

 That’s a small picture of what the Old Testament believers experienced in Jerusalem. 70 years prior to Zechariah’s prophecy, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar had come from the east and had destroyed Jerusalem and taken most her people into exile. About 600 B.C., Jerusalem boasted a population of about 25,000 covering 125 acres, nearly a quarter of a square mile. But now 70 years after the time, Jerusalem had only 4,500 people, and covered only about 30 acres a little more than our school campus. The temple had been destroyed and was being rebuilt.  The city walls were piles of rubble. Can you imagine living among all those ruins? Those ruins were a constant reminder of how far they had fallen and how defenseless they were.

 Now we don’t live in a city of ruins like ancient Jerusalem or modern Syria. So at first it might seem we have little in common with them. But I would suggest that we just need to look a little differently and see that we live in our own ruins.

 If you are going through a time in your life where everything is falling apart – divorce, death of loved ones, family problems, chronic or terminal illness, lack of direction, financial crises – it may be pretty easy for you to say to yourself, “Yes, my life is in ruins!” But even if you are enjoying a good time in your life, I would still suggest, “You live in the midst of ruins.”

 Compare your life with Christ’s as God commands us to do in our epistle lesson, Philippians 2:5-11 – “In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus” – loving, humble, considerate, gentle, patient, sacrificing, giving, forgiving, godly as could be. But what does a close look at our attitude and actions show? Has selfishness crept into your life this past week? How many opportunities to show kindness and love slipped through your fingers because of your selfishness?

Did sacrificial giving give way to self-centered getting?  Did patience lose to impatience?  Forgiveness to vengeance?  Gentleness to rudeness?  Kindness to sarcasm?  Humility to arrogance? Our attitude should be the same as Christ’s. But often they are not. Look at your life from that perspective, and you can see that we live in the midst of ruins too.

The Jews of Zechariah’s day suffered from the ruin of their land and the ruins caused by sin. So they were in mourning.

 That’s why God’s words come as a shock – “Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem!” Stop mourning and rejoice! Get keyed!  Why?

 “Your king comes to you.” Wait a second! Jerusalem had no king when Zechariah wrote. They were a defeated province of the Persian Empire. They had no one to look out for them. But God promises, “Your king comes to you.” Your king – the one who will use his power not to be a ruthless dictator, but one who will use his power to save and protect his people.

 What is this king like? He is “righteous and victorious” – some translations say, “having salvation.” “Righteous” assures that he is holy and pleasing in God’s sight. He will not selfishly look out for his own interests. He has come and is able to do the Father’s will. “Victorious” or “having salvation.”  He has what it takes to be victorious over all your enemies and save you.

 “Gentle and riding on a donkey.” The Hebrew word “gentle” can also be translated “afflicted.” How the Old Testament people must have struggled to understand this prophecy! They didn’t want a gentle king or an afflicted king. They wanted a powerful king to free and protect them.

 We who live in the time of the fulfillment can understand it so much better. What we celebrate this Palm Sunday is that the King who road into Jerusalem was King Jesus, true man and at the same time true God who humbled himself so that he could save us.  The righteousness we don’t have, he has in our place.  The victory over Satan, temptation and sin that we can’t win, he wins for us by resisting Satan and sin every step of his way through life.  The gentleness and humility we lack, he had for us. The death followed by damnation that we deserve, he suffered for us. The family ties with God broken by sin, he restored.  The eternal life we would miss out on, we can now look forward to.

As the Jews of Zechariah’s day heard or read these words, God was saying, “Your King who is your Savior is coming! Get keyed!”  To us in God’s family today as look back to Jesus riding into Jerusalem when God says to us, “Get keyed; Your King Comes,” we know from the rest of the New Testament, our King, King Jesus, has come!  So God could also say to his people then and now….

Get Keyed in Your King’s Peace

These words had to have impact on those Old Testament Jews. While most who lived at the time of the Babylonian invasion were dead, the descriptions and details of it were passed down and were etched in the minds of those who had returned from Babylon as well as those who never left Jerusalem. There were also enemy nations surrounding Judah and Jerusalem had no city walls.  The economy was in shambles.  Besides, the Lord reminded the people of all their sins and lack of repentance that led God to let them experience destruction and exile.  They lived in fear and turmoil.

But God went on to say: “I will take away the chariots from Ephraim and the war-horses from Jerusalem and the battle bow will be broken.”   The chariots of the ancient world were the battle tanks of today.   The battle bows were the AK-47’s of today.  God promises, “All the signs of war and all the weapons of war will be gone.” Get keyed; the King comes.”

As a result, God’s people will enjoy peace! “He will proclaim peace to the nations.”  For a time God would see to it that his Old Testament people would enjoy physical peace but wouldn’t last as enemies around them threatened them and eventually Alexander the Great invade their land. Politically never again would they have a king from David’s line.

God, of course, was pointing to the coming of the Messiah, the Savior, who not only would fulfill God’s law for the Old Testament people and for all, but would suffer and die on Calvary’s cross to bring us peace with God, which he did!

Do you feel at peace with God? At times isn’t there a war raging in our hearts and minds – guilt, fear, uncertainty, unworthiness, and border-line despair. Yet the prophet says of this King, “He will proclaim peace to the nations.”

This is the peace of God. Is God really at peace with you?  Yes!  For, God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, not counting their sins against them (2 Corinthians 5:20). To reconcile means that enemies make peace with each other. God has made peace with us by sending his Son to die for us. Jesus resurrection is proof of this peace.

Now, certainly I don’t always feel that peace. Sometimes I struggle to believe that the Holy God would really want to be at peace with me. But he promises that he is at peace with us! Hold on to that promise in faith. In the Holy Supper that we receive today or this week, King Jesus gives us his body and blood to assure us that this peace is ours. Even if your life has been ruined by sin and God has reason to be angry at you, come and receive this personal assurance. This peace is yours.

If God loves you this much in this way, will he not also love you and be with you in all the other ways you need him to love you between here and heaven?  God says, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you (Heb. 13).”  As Paul wrote, King Jesus rules over all things for us, his people.

As the same time God reminds us that the peace we enjoy in Jesus, he wants us to proclaim to others – personally, through our church, and through the missions we support.  Along these lines check out this insert in the bulletin.  It’s an invitation to give to a friend or relative who may not know the peace of God in Jesus or is struggling to retain it.  Don’t recycle it; give it away! Pray for that person and even be willing to bring them to church since coming to church is a huge step for an unchurched person.

As we and other Christians share God’s peace, it fulfills the last part of v. 10:  “His rule will extend from sea to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth.”  Jesus wants his kingdom to include people from every nation, tribe, language and people. This is an Old Testament version of the Great Commission!

Not only will King Jesus rule geographically throughout the world as he rules world affairs and rules in the hearts of people from every nation and language, he will rule eternally as he takes us and all of his people into his kingdom of glory. Then there will be no more war within people or between people.  There we will experience perfect peace, perfect joy, perfect bodies, perfect souls, and perfect life. It’s hard to imagine, isn’t it?  Nevertheless, “Get keyed!”  King Jesus has made it your destiny!