Zechariah

The prophet Zechariah gets referred to as one of the 'minor prophets'.

Which is a polite way of saying that he's one of those prophets whose book in the Old Testament is sufficiently small that it can be awkward trying to find it.

You'll know the feeling, if you've ever been trying to look up a reading being taken from one of these books. Fumbling through the pages and wondering why you can't seem to track this particular prophet down.

Actually Zechariah is not that 'minor' in any sense at all. The book that bears his name has more chapters than the book of Daniel, for instance, and Daniel usually gets classed as one of the 'major prophets'.

It's a bit like the English Premier League, with the so-called 'big four', and then .. well, the rest.

There's a kind of 'big four' with the prophets of the Old Testament as well. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel. And then the twelve 'minor' prophets.

Which is all a bit unfair, as I say. Not least since a guy like Zechariah had plainly worked his socks off doing the business and had quite a lot of messages typed up. So to speak.

A bit unfair not only because of the volume of stuff that he wrote, but also because it's important stuff as well.

As I believe God means us to find out for ourselves across these coming weeks.

It's difficult to put my finger on exactly how it's come about, but the Lord has been laying on my heart for a while this book of Zechariah. 'Preach it,' he seemed to be saying again and again. Zechariah. Zechariah.

Which I've not been inclined to do. The so-called 'minor prophets' are not the easiest bit of the Bible to preach. And Zechariah .. well, he can be harder than most.

I mean, I know there are some classic purple passages in his book. A verse or two here and a verse or two there. I could cope with that.

But the book as a whole? Well, I kind of shy away from that a bit.

Anyway, I've been wrestling a bit with the Lord over this for a while. And we've done a deal. I'll preach through the first 8 chapters of the book and see how it goes. He seems to be happy with that.

(There's a natural, obvious break, I should add, at the end of chapter 8, so it's not an entirely arbitrary line that I've drawn).

There are things that I'm sure the Lord is intent on saying to us at the start of this coming year. And they're all there in this book that Zechariah penned. I can see how timely a word from the Lord his messages are. For us. Here. And now.

But it's meant there's a lot of reading to do, a lot of hard graft in gaining a full understanding of what this guy is on about. And I've spent a bit of time today doing that.

We've been trying for a while to get down in writing ourselves a statement of what God's vision for us is. And now, at the start of the year, we're keen to be sharing that vision with all of God's people here.

So I've been trying as well to see just how that sharing of our vision will relate to what we're reading in the book of Zechariah.

In some ways they're unlikely partners - this ancient, 'minor' (sometimes quite obscure), old Hebrew prophet and our 21st century, up-to-the-moment statement of the vision God has given us.

But, strangely, they're not that remote from each other.

Well, not even that strange really. God doesn't change. His gospel doesn't change. His purpose doesn't change.

Zechariah was a 'post-exilic' prophet. He preached the other side of a line that was drawn in Israel's story.

He was a 'post' man. And that's pretty much us as well.

Post-modern. Post-Christian.

We live in a day where a line has already been crossed.

And we need to hear again the word of God that this old prophet brings.