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Trey Moss, Instructor of New Testament and Associate Vice President for Academic Administration at Southwestern Seminary, preached from Zechariah 9-14, in SWBTS Chapel on November 11, 2025.
Thank you, Dr Dockery, for his kind words, and for Haley, who’s, I think, here this morning, and many friends from trbc who came to support me, and many of you texted me last night and this morning saying you’re praying for me. And I was encouraged by those things. So thank you. Open your Bibles with me to the prophet Zechariah, and I’m going to read a short passage from Zechariah, nine, verses, 11 and 12 to get us started this morning. As for you, because of the blood of your covenant, I will release your prisoners from the waterless cistern, return to a stronghold. You prisoners who have hope. Today I declare that I will restore double to you. Let’s pray. Lord, would you help us as we think on this text, and help me as I preach it, to honor the Lord Jesus and make him clear and to be faithful to what your word says. We ask all these things for Jesus sake, amen.
In the mid 1950s in the early 1960s the vast expanses of American wilderness came under the desiring eye of corporations and the federal land management services, despite our collective best efforts, the West had not been fully tapped for its natural resources and commodified for its enjoyment and profit. The logic behind these desires was simple, what good is land that sits empty, unutilized and undeveloped? What does it profit the American people? What does it profit us to let this land lie fallow in response to this logic, Wallace Stegner, author, conservationist and Professor of Creative Writing at Stanford, whose students include those like Larry McMurtry and Wendell Berry, for those of you book lovers here in the room, he wrote these words to support the preservation of the American wilderness. He said, It is a lovely and a terrible wilderness, such a wilderness as Christ and the prophets went out into harshly and beautifully colored, broken and worn until its bones are exposed its great sky without a smudge of taint from technocracy and hidden in corners and pockets under its cliffs the sudden poetry of springs. There are some things a wilderness can do for us.
That is the reason we need to put into effect for its preservation some other principle than the principles of exploitation or usefulness or even recreation. We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in for it, can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope. Stegner’s words I just read were very influential to provide the philosophical groundwork for the bill that eventually became the Wilderness Act of 1964 it was passed after an eight year battle in Congress, but ironically, these words I just read from Stegner were not meant for public consumption. It appeared originally this. These paragraphs I read appeared in his private correspondence to John F Kennedy’s Secretary of the Interior, Stuart Udall, in 1960 and Udall finding that he had nothing better to say than to just read Stegner. Read stegner’s letter to him as his speech at the seventh wilderness Congress in San Francisco in April 1961 very savvy politician just read someone else’s words and.
Stegner’s words and the phrase geography of hope, originally meant just for correspondence between friends, found their way into the public discussion and became his most influential idea in the public sphere. Now, Wallace Stegner was not a Christian. It pains me to say because I love his writing so much. But here, I think he speaks the truth as we’ve thought together many times in this series, the 12 Minor Prophets are often in unexplored and unexpected territory to us in our Christian devotional reading and preaching, most of us, and I include myself, before this summer, had only driven to the edge of the Minor Prophets and peeked in. And that’s understandable, because when you read the text of Zechariah nine through 14, much like the rest of the 12, it is a strange and wild land, the culture from which Zechariah wrote, and the idioms he used are so remote to us, those of us who are enmeshed in our technological age, that wouldn’t have been so true for our great grandparents some 70 to 100 years ago, but it is true For us today. In these six chapters, there are wars and wailings, shepherds and slaughter, destruction, devastation and cataclysms galore.
But there’s also a geography of hope. This morning, I want to talk to you about the wilderness of God’s discipline and the geography of Hope provided in the scriptures. I want to show you that Zechariah nine through 14 can be read as hope for Christians who heed the prophet’s message, the situation Judah finds itself in in the first century following their exile is dire. Jeremiah, 28, five through 11, I think, gives us a good picture of what the land was like when the remnant of Judah returned following the Babylonian exile. Jeremiah writes, therefore the Lord Almighty says this because you have not listened to my words. I will summon all the peoples of the North and my servant, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, declares the Lord. And I will bring them against this land and its inhabitants and against all the surrounding nations.
And I will completely destroy them and make them an object of horror and scorn and an everlasting ruin. I will banish from them the sounds of joy and gladness, the voices of the bride and the bridegroom, the sound of millstones in the light of the lamp, the whole country will become a desolate wasteland, and these nations will serve the king of Babylon 70 years now, while the reforms of Ezra and the efforts of Nehemiah make Jerusalem stable. The total destruction of the temple the city of Jerusalem and the surrounding areas is not something that you can just recover from overnight, despite the return of the remnant of Levi and Judah from exile, the theme of continued disobedience to God’s covenant to Israel continues as they rebuild the temple and live in the land. You can see this in Haggai one and two, Ezra eight and Nehemiah 13. So where does Zechariah, the prophet Zechariah, fit into what’s happening in the land. Well, Zechariah, chapters one through six, sets the stage for what he’s going to say in chapters nine through 14, where the visions that Zechariah receives from the Lord reinforce the promise that God will restore Israel and Judah following the discipline of their exile.
This section culminates with the promise that there will be a branch, a faithful messianic king who will rule over the people, and that there will also be a faithful priest with this king to sit also on the throne, then chapter seven and eight of Zechariah give the people the audience, a call to fasting and repentance, so they may not be like their fathers who were disciplined and sent into exile, that they might not reject the words of the former prophet. Prophets like their fathers did, and that they might dwell with the Lord faithfully. Chapter Eight ends with the assurance from the Lord of Armies that if the people heed his call to obedience, the temple will remain established. The people will receive the Deuteronomic blessings of fruitful flourishing and political independence, and the nations will come to Zion to seek the Lord’s help and favor. But when we come to Zechariah nine through 14, these expectations of God’s faith, these expectations of faithfulness to God’s commands and the restoration of God’s people have been frustrated.
The hopeful optimism of Zechariah one through eight is muted, and instead, we find significant problems with the faithless leaders who oppress Israel. There’s impurity and sin in the land due to idolatry among the people, false prophets and diviners lead the people astray, and there is constant threat of oppression and destruction as earthly powers come to make war against the people of Judah, these realities in Zechariah Nine through 14 are indicative of the people of Israel, the faithless kings of Israel and Judah, and ultimately, the covenant discipline that God gave to Israel and Judah in Deuteronomy, 28 to 30 in Leviticus, 26 the pessimism of Zechariah, nine Through 14 is due because Israel’s current leaders, the prophets and the people, continue in their disobedience. But there is hope. The problem that the people of Judah needed to solve was not just returning to the land that didn’t fix the problem of the exile. For the most part, we see them continuing in many of the same things that they did before they left. The problem wasn’t their location.
It was obedience to God’s commands. As Deuteronomy, 30 states, the problem wasn’t where the people were, it was the state of their hearts. Friends, the biggest problem you and I are ever going to face in this life has nothing to do with our prospects after graduation, our financial situations, where we live, where we work, what we do, the frustrations that we feel every day for whatever reason. That’s not the biggest problem you’re going to face in your life. The biggest enemy you and I face every day is sin. That’s the real enemy. I know most of us in this room would agree that we’re sinners in the abstract. But do you feel the weight of your own sin? And do you feel the weight in the burden of sin on this good world that God has created. Paul, in Romans, eight, says that the Earth groans with longing for the revelation of the sons of God in glory. Whether you’re experiencing the results of your own sin or the results of the sins of others who have affected you.
There is a geography of hope for us in this text this morning, the structure of Zechariah nine through 14 focuses on a faithful one in the Davidic line, who will be the righteous king, the rejected King, and ultimately a restoring King. Dr Osborne said, I shouldn’t use alliterations, but that’s really my three points. There is a righteous king, a rejected King and a restoring King. This king is the hope for the people, so that their impurities and their sins may be cleansed, and so that the life promised by God in obedience to His commands may be found and the blessings may flow as far as the curse is found. This. This is not a Jesus. Juke, right, the Gospels, Matthew Mark, Luke and John all read Zechariah nine through 14 as anticipating the final week of Jesus’s life and ministry.
The gospel authors all read the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem, his rejection, his betrayal and death. His promised return, as anticipated by the text of Zechariah. So the solution to the problem of sin in this fallen condition of the world we live in is Jesus, the Messiah. That’s what Zechariah wants us to see this morning, the structure of Zechariah nine through 14 is divided into two pronouncements of the Lord in nine one and in 12 one. So there’s a three chapter section in chapter nine through 11 and a three separate three chapter section in chapters 12 through 14. The solution to the plight of Israel, Judah and the nations, is this faithful King whose righteousness, rejection and restoration become a blessing for all who look to Him. So in Zechariah, nine, one through 11:17, we will see that we should hope in God’s righteous king. In Zechariah 12, one to 13, nine, we should see that we should hope in the rejected King, and then finally, in Zechariah 14, we should hope in God’s restoring King. So Look with me in Zechariah nine through 11, hope in the righteous king. So this pronouncement against Israel and the nations focuses on the people’s enemies to the north of Judah and Israel. It focuses on judgment against wicked and foolish shepherds who lead the people astray, and It foretells the restoration of the people of Israel in the nations by the rule of God’s righteous king. I’m going to jump around a bit, but I want to point your attention to Zechariah 11, four to six to set the context of why this is so important. Zechariah 1114, through 17 is a prophetic reenactment that Zechariah does to communicate to his audience the faithfulness of Israel’s shepherds, their kings and leaders, because instead of having compassion on the flock.
Under their charge, they slaughtered them and sold them their wickedness. The wickedness of these evil kings led to the annulment of the covenant that God and ultimately so that God gives them over to what they actually wanted, not to have the Lord as their God. Because of this continued disobedience, God’s favor ends over the people, and the kingdom splits apart. This is all what Zechariah is showing us in chapter 11. Look with me in verse four, the Lord my God, says this shepherd the flock intended for slaughter. Those who buy them slaughter them, but are not punished. Those who sell them say, Blessed be the Lord, because I have become rich, even their own shepherds have no compassion for them. Indeed, I will no longer have compassion on the inhabitants of the land. This is the Lord’s declaration. Instead, I will turn everyone over to his neighbor and his king. They will devastate the land, and I will not rescue it from their hand. This rejection of God by Israel’s kings is demonstrated at the end of Zechariah 11, in verse 11 through 13. Here, after Zechariah demonstrates the faithfulness of Israel’s kings, he breaks the staffs that meant that are meant to represent God’s favor and the unity of the two kingdoms. The Lord says this. It was an old on that day, and so the oppressed of the flock who were watching me knew that it was the word of the Lord. And then I said to them, if it seems right to you, give me my wages. But if not, keep them. So they weighed out my wages, 30 pieces of silver, throw it to the potter. The Lord said to me, this magnificent price. I was valued by them. So I took the 30 pieces of silver and threw it into the house of the Lord to the potter. These wicked kings reject God’s rule and his reign. And this is what Matthew depicts in the betrayal of Jesus by Judas to the high priest in Matthew 27, six through nine.
What’s happening in Judas betrayal? So in the complicity, or the complicity of the high priests, is the rejection of Israel of their rightful king. Furthermore, these actions of Israel’s kings are not just in the past. Zechariah tells us they also occur in the present, his own day. Verse 16 characterizes what these foolish shepherds do. Starting with verse 15, the Lord said to me, take the equipment of a foolish shepherd. I am about to raise up a shepherd in the land who will not care for those who are perishing, and he will not seek the lost or heal the broken, and he will not sustain the healthy, and he will devour the flesh of the fat sheep and tear off their hooves. It’s in the context of the past and present, faithfulness, faithlessness of Israel’s leaders that the promise of a coming righteous king shines. Look with me in Zechariah, nine to 10. We read it at the introduction. Rejoice greatly. Daughter Zion, shout in triumph. Daughter Jerusalem, look, your King is coming to you. He is righteous and victorious, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey, and I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the horses from Jerusalem, the bow of the war will be removed, and he will proclaim peace to the nations.
His dominion will extend from sea to sea, from the Euphrates River to the ends of the earth. The presence of Jerusalem’s righteous king is a joyous occasion in the focus of chapters nine and 10 of Zechariah, instead of inciting hostility death and destruction, this righteous king brings peace and restoration. We see this in both directions from the text I just read in Zechariah nine and 10, instead of promoting arrogance against God in His ways, the humble King’s reign strikes down the pride of the nations like Philistia Tyre and Sidon, he strikes down the pride and arrogance of Egypt and Assyria. Hoping in the righteous king friends is a great way to deal with the pride in your life. Hoping in this righteous king allows us to peel back the layers of self sufficiency, insecurity and ego that set us up for failure in this life. Hoping for God’s righteous king is the best way to tear down your false hopes in your own abilities and skills and set you up on the only true hope you have.
Why is this the case? Because when you hope in God’s righteous king friends, you realize you’re not him. You’re not the one. Zechariah describes this king as righteous. He’s the king that always does right and he does it well. To be righteous means to live in right relationship with God and with others, and this king shows us what it means to be in the right. Zechariah describes the king as victorious, or has salvation, as the CSB notes, this king is able to save and deliver not only is he in the right with God and others, but he is able to deliver others to make them right with God, just as He is, this king is a humble King, and this is a theme that the gospel authors pick up when they emphasize Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem. This king has no need to be arrogant or to boast or to glory in himself, because he knows who he is. His actions speak for themselves. He truly identifies with the weak and lowly. He identifies with the humble and oppressed of his flock, as the CSB translates Zechariah 11, seven and 1111, Jesus isn’t just humble and compassionate in the sense that he sees our oppression and our need, and he says, Oh, I’m so sorry that’s happened to you. And then goes about his day. He has that strong compassion that is determined.
It’s a compassion that knows what it’s about, and it’s determined to hold out in patience and forbearance. He’s the righteous king. He’s the saving King, he’s the humble King, and he’s the king that brings peace. He proclaims His peace to the nations this. Piece that Zechariah describes is the Hebrew word shalom. It isn’t just the end of hostility or war. It’s the flourishing of God’s people in the nations in the world that God’s created because God’s righteous king rules. And you might say, Trey, this is all really great news and interesting, but what does Jerusalem have to do with Fort Worth? So I don’t know if you’ve checked recently friends, but neither my or your Dominion extends from sea to sea, from the Euphrates River into the ends of the earth. This phrase in Zechariah nine is the same phrase that is used in Psalm 72 eight to describe the reign of David’s promised heir. And Psalm 72 connects the Davidic promise to the Abrahamic blessing at the very end of the Psalm, where the psalmist says, of this king, may his name endure forever, as long as the sun shines, may his fame increase, may all the nations be blessed by him and call him blessed. This righteous king comes to make the blessings flow as far as the curse is found, Matthew and John both quote Zechariah, 99 through 10 in Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, the gospel authors are telling us when we read them, this is the king you’ve been waiting for Jerusalem. This is the king you should rejoice and be glad in don’t look for someone else, but rejoice. Hey, friends, unlike the foolish and the wicked shepherds of this world and age, Jesus is the righteous king because he cares for those who are perishing. He seeks the lost.
He heals the broken, he sustains the healthy. And instead of devouring his flock, he delivers them. And that’s a good reason to have hope. The second pronouncement in Zechariah is in chapter 12, and in chapter 12, one to chapter 13, nine, we see that we should hope in the rejected King. So if Zechariah nine through 11 is a contrast between the wicked and foolish shepherds and God’s righteous king, then where is the flourishing rain that this king is supposed to provide? Where is the abundance that Zechariah talks about in chapters nine through 10? So there’s another pronouncement against Israel, and it answers the question for us this morning of where is this abundance in chapter 12, one through nine, God promises to deliver Jerusalem from the armies of the nations that come against it, but this deliverance occurs at a great cost. Read with me in chapter 12, verses 10 through 14, then I will pour out a spirit of grace and prayer on the house of David and the residents of Jerusalem, they will look at me whom they pierced. They will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly for him as one weeps for a first born on that day.
The mourning in Jerusalem will be great as the mourning of had ad Ramon in the plain of Medeco, the land will mourn every family by itself. The family of David’s house by itself and their women. The family of Nathan’s house by itself and their women by themselves. The family of Levi’s house by itself and their women by themselves. The family of shemay by itself and their women by themselves. All the remaining families, every family by itself and their women by themselves. In this passage, in chapter 12, God promises to pour out a spirit of grace and prayer on the house of David and the city of Jerusalem as he promises to deliver them. However, what this spirit of grace produces among the people is mourning. It’s the morning of David’s house, Nathan’s house, the Levites and their family. And this is likened, Zechariah tells us, to the mourning that the people of Judah made when Josiah, their king, was killed by Necho, the king of Egypt and Second Kings. Now we don’t know what happened to Zerubbabel. We’ve heard about him in the last sermon.
He kind of disappears from the historical record. He is God’s signet ring. He is God’s branch, but he disappears this peer. Piercing of the one in Jerusalem seems to be a rejection of God’s appointed means of deliverance. I say that because a few verses later in chapter 13 three, those same ideas are used to describe the false prophets who are rejected by their families as their families pierce them through because of their false prophecy, Jesus, in the gospels, is rejected by Israel’s leaders as one who has an unclean spirit and proclaims lies. However, in John’s gospel, John sees the promise of blessing in God’s spirit here in Zechariah 12, as anticipating Jesus’s death, which brings cleansing from our impurities of sin and idolatry. In John 1936, the Gospel says, for these things happen so that scripture would be fulfilled, Not one of his bones will be broken. Also. Another scripture says they will look on him. They will look at the one they pierced.
The effect of this piercing in Zechariah is the cleansing of the house of David in the city of Jerusalem, primarily because idolatry and false prophecy still exists. In chapter 13, one and two, the prophet writes, 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. On that day, this is the declaration of the Lord of Armies. I will remove the names of the idols from the land and they will no longer be remembered. I will banish the prophets and the unclean spirit from the land today. I don’t think many of us are going out and worshiping Canaanite Gods under leafy trees, but we ourselves are those who are in need of Christ, and we ourselves often look for the thing that the idols in our lives promise but they cannot deliver. We look for people to tell us what we need and where to find it. We don’t have idols on our hills, but we do have black mirrors in our pockets, and they are constantly inviting us to seek things other than God and other than his Word for our satisfaction and our consolation in this life.
These things are great tools. We should use them, but they make horrible masters and friends. Jesus’s death came to cleanse us from these things. There’s more I could say here in chapter 13, but I want to point your attention as we close to Zechariah 14, we hope in a righteous king whose rejection was our cleansing, but we also hope in a restoring King. In Zechariah 14, the day of the Lord comes again, but this time, its effects are much greater than the cleansing that just happened in chapter 13 among David’s house and in Jerusalem, the fountain that is opened in chapter 13 becomes living waters that flow to the east and to the west in all seasons of the year. What’s depicted here in Zechariah 14 is a cosmic upheaval. The Mount of Olives is split in two and cast down this mountain, which was the site of David’s flight from Absalon because of his sin. It was the site of Solomon’s idolatry, where he set up the gods for the his foreign whites of the Moabites and the Ammonites.
And that is the site where Josiah begins His cleansing reforms as he seeks to purify the land and his people. There are earthquakes in chapter 14, verse five, the regular cycle of day and night ends in verse six, the topography of the land changes in verse 10, so that all of Israel’s a plain in Jerusalem is the only mountain. Jesus’ teaching about this event actually occurs on the Mount of Olives in the Gospels in Matthew, Mark and Luke. But despite these cosmic events in the text, God’s people are delivered and those who dwell in Jerusalem are free from the curses. In verse 14, Zechariah says, the people will live there and never again will there be a curse of complete destruction. So Jerusalem will dwell in security. I want to draw your attention as we close to these last few verses here in chapter 14, look at me in verse 16. Then all the survivors from the nations that came against Jerusalem will go up year after year to worship the King, the Lord of Armies, and to celebrate the festival of shelters. Should any one of the families of the earth not go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord of army, the Lord of Armies, rain will not fall on them. And if the people of Egypt will not go up and enter, then the rain will not fall on them. This will be the plague the Lord inflicts on the nations who do not go up to celebrate the festival of shelters.
This will be the punishment of Egypt and all the nations that do not go up to celebrate the festival of shelters. But do you see what it says there in verse 17, they will go up year after year the survivors of Israel and the nations to worship the King The Lord of Armies. There’s a lot of things we could say about this passage, but the greatest thing about the new heavens and the new earth is not the end of suffering in the curse. It’s not the full restoration and reconfiguration of the cosmos. It’s not that we’ll be united to our loved ones who have died and gone before us. It’s not that we’ll get to see the minor prophets like Amos, Habakkuk, Obadiah, Jonah, Zephaniah and Malachi. It is because God, the King of heaven and earth dwells there, and that will be enough for us. So what are we supposed to do with passages like this in the Bible?
It’s complex. It’s complicated, but I think Paul in Romans 15 reminds us of the purpose of these Scriptures. He says, For what would for whatever was written in the past was written for our instruction so that we may have hope through endurance and through the encouragement from this and through the encouragement from the scriptures friends, what Zechariah pronounces and what the gospel authors show is that in Jesus there is a promised restoration for God’s people. And what happened in Jerusalem with Jesus of Nazareth is for us today a geography of hope. He is our righteous king who was rejected, but who will come again to restore all things. Let’s pray.
Lord. Help us to see Jesus in Zechariah, help us to see he is our righteous king, that he was rejected for our benefit and our cleansing, and that He will come again to restore and make all things new. Amen.
