“I will send it out, declares the Lord of Hosts, and it shall enter the house of the thief, and the house of him who swears falsely by my name. And it shall remain in his house and consume it, both timber and stones.”
- Zechariah 5:4
I know I have probably said it every week so far, but this chapter has some of the most confusing imagery yet. Keyword, YET. There’s more to come in future chapters and we have already been through some weird ones, but all pointing to a beautiful restorative work of the Lord for His people. This chapter of Zechariah is no different.
This chapter is like having one of those weird dreams as a child after Halloween when you go to bed with stomachs full of sugar, and it's just madness all night long. Maybe that was just me but those were the trippy dreams. Zechariah has been having some of the trippy dreams but with great significance!
Let’s walk through the 2 here in chapter 5:
Flying Scroll, v. 1-4:
In this dream, Zechariah sees a huge flying scroll. It’s unraveled so it's flying about like a hug banner, moving about Jerusalem as a curse. From house to house it moves to bring a curse of condemnation. Sure, God has restored His people, bringing them back to Jerusalem, but it is also going deeper than the geo-politics.
God wants to restore the hearts of the people as well as the holiness of Jerusalem and that can’t be done if the people dwell in sin. So the cursed scroll goes after thieves and those who swear falsely in God’s name.
It judges and consumes the thieves because they harm the community. They hurt and rob their neighbors rather than show hospitality and care. Thieves won’t look after the welfare of the city but only themselves. This isn’t necessarily those who steal to get by and survive, though that is wrong, those people steal because of other injustices. They are those who have plenty but steal anyways. In doing so they taint the holiness of Jerusalem.
It also comes to judge and consume those who swear falsely in God’s name. While the thieves wreck the horizontal relationships of community, these liars wreck the vertical relationship with God directly. It's people who lie and say, “God said I should do this,” when it's really out of selfish ambition.
With those who returned to Jerusalem after the Exile, God wants to purify His community of those who will ruin the horizontal and vertical relationships. God wants to see righteousness reign and fill His people until they are a kingdom of priests. His flying scroll brings a curse to those who remain in wickedness and bring harm to the community and jeopardize their relationship with God.
Wickedness in a Basket, v. 5-11:
In the next dream, there is a flying basket! Well, not really but it does go up into the air. First, there is a basket. We’re talking a huge basket, picture a 50-gallon barrel but even bigger and made of wood woven together rather than steel. There’s a heavy lid for this barrel too, when suddenly like those cartoonish birthday cakes a woman jumps from the basket. This woman, as we are told represents the wickedness of Israel. As she is probably dancing about in the basket in her wickedness the angel with Zechariah picks up the heavy lid again, shoves the wickedness back into the basket, and seals it tightly. Then, two other women, with wings like storks come by, lift the basket and fly it back up to Babylon, where wickedness will have its own home.
Once we get past the cartoonish-like details, we see an image of God casting wickedness away from his chosen people and to land the has rejected Him and always will. It is God against the world and in the end, those of this world who have not come to God will be rejected by God. For they do not dwell in the house of the Lord, they are not adopted into His family, but rather they dwell in the house of wickedness.
This is yet another case of God restoring the righteousness of Israel. It’s not enough for them to dwell in the land again. It’s not enough for them to have their leadership established and ordained again. They must embody the righteousness of God to the world.
Sifting Righteousness:
This poses to us quite a dilemma in terms of application. 1) These are specific dreams, about specific people, taking place in a specific place, thus cannot be directly tied to us today. 2) Could we say this is happening to people in the Church? To be honest, I don’t know. But this is what I do see happening in the text that can help us grow in our walk with the Lord. In these two dreams we see God sifting the people He has chosen to call His own. We see the wicked being sifted out from the righteous.
Here’s part of the problem, besides using what the Bible reveals about righteousness and God’s will, we cannot be the judges of righteousness and wickedness. And we should be happy that is the case because we would be the most unfair judges and perpetrators of injustice. Instead, I will propose this, God, in Christ, and through the Holy Spirit has written His law of freedom on our hearts, and through that writing is trying to right us. He is sifting through within us our wickedness and righteousness which is only through Christ until our lives mirror that of Christ.
Final Blessing:
It's not enough to choose a good Biblically and Theologically sound church. It's not enough to surround yourself with a good fellowship of believers. God can and does use both to sift us, but we must also open ourselves up to that sifting, to begin dealing with whatever comes to the surface, until all there is, is Christ.
Now may the Lord of Life and Redemption be with you in every step, every breath, and every heartbeat of your journey.
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