Reversal

God’s word is weighty.  It is substantive.  Consider that all the things you will see and touch today are the congealment of God’s spoken word.  When His word comes in contact with something (like a mountain, see Zechariah 4 or Matthew 21) it is the ‘something’ that is moved.  There is nothing in all of existence that is of greater substance than God’s word.

This can (and should) be applied to our lives today.  The highest ‘mountains’ of wrong, fear, hurt, confusion, or ______________ that seem to span the entire horizon of our days are no match for the smallest word of God.  It doesn’t seem or feel like that should be the case, but, in true reality, it is.  God’s word holds the power of reversal.

‘Those’ days and ‘These’ days

In Zechariah, we encounter Israel facing the mountains of utter decimation and defeat.  They are captive, plundered, and forced to dwell in the midst of a conquering kingdom.  They are a byword and the punch-line to the jokes spoken in every foreign language.  Laughter, unfortunately in this case, is a universal languages.  They understand that things aren’t like they used to be in the “good old days.”

In ‘those’ days, men and women dwelt comfortably in a secure city.  The streets resounded with the laughter and shouts of boys and girls playing.  Long life was the norm.  You needed a good staff because your life was going to outlast your body (see Zechariah 8).

But ‘those’ days are long gone.  Only a few remain who remember what it was like to be among friends rather than foreigners.  Yes, ‘those’ days are gone because God spoke them away.  The people of ‘those’ days neglected to remember that all the good they knew and saw was the product of God’s word of blessing.  They fashioned in their minds that this good life was the life of their own making, and they turned their entire being away from God and His word.

So, in order that His people would be ever mindful of the power and character of His word, God spoke again: exile, plunder, and loss as the everyday experience.  Reversal for the sake of revelation.

This is happening again.

Into the mire of captivity and woe, a voice is heard.  Few are the ears that will recognize it, though it addresses all exiles.

“Return to me, and I will return to you…”

“My city shall be rebuilt…”

“Up!  It’s time to go home…!”

“Your captor becomes your plunder…”

“I will be your God, and you will be my people…”

Scandalous Sentiments

God then begins to return His people to Jerusalem.  He raises leaders in Nehemiah, Ezra, Zerubbabel, and Joshua.  The exiles are home.  But more than that their hearts are home.

God accomplishes more than the rebuilding of a city.  The city is simply a location for Him to put the people that he is restoring.  And, as great as this historical reality is, this whole movement is a sign, a reverse echo, of what is to come.

The reversal of the exiles’ situation is a foreshadowing of the reversal that Jesus affects in our hearts today.  It is a foretelling of the gospel.  But have you considered the full implication that the story holds?  There are elements to this reversal that can border on scandalous if I’m not careful.  I type with trepidation as I ponder them.

Although Israel physically dwelt in Babylon their true “captor” was not an earthly force.  They were living under the weight not of a foreign king, but of God’s Word.  They were where they were because God spoke.

Although sin is our experiential ruler, we bear the burden of the condemnation God decreed through His Word.  We are “captive” to God’s righteous judgment.  We are where we are because God spoke it to be this way.

God stands as our captor.  We lie defeated under the victory of His Word.

But God didn’t stop speaking.  His Word eventually became flesh, and actually dwelt among us (Zechariah 2; John 1).

When God spoke the reversal of captor becoming plunder for His people, He fulfilled those words for us Himself in Christ.  God, in Jesus, stepped into the place of captivity, and set us in the place of victory.  Here is where caution is warranted, as the gospel advances to new and seemingly scandalous (to me at least) depths.

Now, we did nothing to defeat or overcome God and His Word.  It wasn’t our blood shed in the struggle with our sin (Hebrews 12).  Don’t exalt yourself into that role.  That is blatantly scandalous and heretical.  But there is a  sense of God becoming my “plunder” that strikes a new chord in me.  Not that I capture Him, but that He ordains Himself to become my treasure by becoming the object of His own wrath and plunders Himself.  Then, gives that treasure to me.

Does this help to drive home the immensity and power of God’s love for us?  Or the extent of our salvation?  This gift of the only truly free Person in all existence taking on the role, the position of captive.  And this, for me.  In my place.

Reality And Illustration

Examine this scene:  Two prisoners.  Barnabas, who is guilty, and Jesus, who is not.  Barnabas stands in the place, as do we, of notorious guilt.  Jesus, alone, stands in the place of singular innocence.  And yet it is Barnabas, and we, who walks away a free man, and Jesus who is delivered over as a prisoner to be scourged and crucified.  (The only confused one is Pilate, the judge, who walks away guilty, yet declaring himself innocent by his own decree.)

Barnabas was a prisoner of the law, of God.  Guilty.  The plunder of justice and of God.

Jesus was the freeman of the law, of God.  Innocent.  The possessor of the riches of justice and of God.

There is no other explanation for this reversal of outcomes except that God’s Word has come into contact with the mountain of reality and the mountain has been moved.

Gracious illustrations are nice, but the reality of grace is scandalous.