Our Old Testament scripture reading is Zechariah 5 verses one through four. It's on page 794 in your Pew Bibles. It's also the text for our sermon as we continue our series in the prophet Zechariah. A few of you are the sorts who may have noticed this in the past. I have a couple of times referred to there being seven night visions in Zechariah, but if you count the headings in your ESV Bibles, there are definitely eight visions. And so you may have noticed that contradiction and wondered what is going on. Well, the reason for that is one of my favorite writers on Zechariah, Meredith Klein, likes to combine both of the visions in chapter five as being one, and that is because they have a common theme. Other scholars argue they go together as well because of the introduction to the second half of it in verse five is a different sort of introduction than all the others, suggesting maybe these two go together. One might also favor combining them, because that gives you the number seven, and seven just sort of feels right. But it is also the case that we can divide these two and that's actually what we are doing. We're gonna look at just this first one of Zechariah 5 verses one through four. I say all this so that you know what we come to next week will be something of a part two for the themes we see this morning. Zechariah 5 verses one through four. Again, I lifted my eyes and saw, and behold, a flying scroll. And he said to me, what do you see? I answered, I see a flying scroll. Its length is 20 cubits and its width 10 cubits. Then he said to me, this is the curse that goes out over the face of the whole land. For everyone who steals shall be cleaned out according to what is on one side, and everyone who swears falsely shall be cleaned out according to what is on the other side. 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. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Our New Testament reading is Revelation 5, verses one through 10. We have been using Revelation as something of a key to interpreting Zechariah, though our long-term goal is that this actually works in the other direction, that studying Zechariah is essential background for understanding Revelation. The book of Revelation assumes that almost everything it says that its meaning is something like obvious. And that is because almost all of it finds its meaning in imagery that is already well known from the Old Testament scriptures. Not talking about a strange time in the future, but revealing to God's people what is true right now, what is really real, what is happening in the world. And it uses images to say something about what is happening. In that context then, as part of our understanding of Zechariah and also as one of the texts that Zechariah helps us understand, we read Revelation 5 verses one through 10. Then I saw in the right hand of him who is seated on the throne a scroll written within and on the back, sealed with seven seals. And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming with a loud voice, who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals? And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it. And I began to weep loudly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it. And one of the elders said to me, weep no more. Behold, the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David has conquered so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals. And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders, I saw a lamb standing as though it had been slain with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. And he went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who was seated on the throne. And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the 24 elders fell down before the lamb, each holding a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. And they sang a new song, saying, worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. And you have made them a kingdom and priest to our God, and they shall reign on the earth. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Before we pray, I would encourage you to notice an image there in verse eight, that the 24 elders before the lamb in heaven are holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. As we are about to pray, what is that image telling you about your prayers? Where are they? Have you ever prayed and felt like your prayer bounces off the ceiling? That familiar feeling? It's not getting anywhere. Well, even though it feels that way, where does Revelation tell you your prayers are? They are before God's throne in heaven. That is our confidence now as we pray in response to God's word. Let us pray. Our Father in heaven, we know ourselves to be dependent upon your word as the means by which you have revealed yourself to us. And so as we offer this prayer to you, we delight in the promise you have given, that our prayers are before your throne in heaven, that you hear and you respond. In that confidence then, we pray for you to minister to us through your word. Cause this to be your word for us, not only because you guided and inspired its writing so long ago, but that because even now as it is proclaimed, your word is living and active. We need this experience, we depend upon it, that we would hear the voice of our Savior speaking to us. And so we pray now that you would do this for us through this, the preaching of your holy word, for we ask it in Jesus' name, amen. Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ, as we have heard the reading of the vision of a flying scroll in the book of Zechariah, the whole tone of this book has changed. Up until this point, everything God has been promising through Zechariah has been, well, just that, promises, good news, grace, gospel. This word came to Israel when they were in exile. They had suffered the consequences from their sin. They were carted off to a foreign land. They were living in a land that was not their own. And in the midst of that fear, that seeing destruction all around them, God in Zechariah has been giving them promises that one day they will be restored, that God's word will be fulfilled. But this morning in our scripture reading, all of that has changed. We have before us a flying scroll with curses written upon it, and God's saying that that scroll is going to hunt people down, enter their houses. Well, and then the end of verse four, it shall remain in his house and consume it, both timber and stones. Now, we can analyze some of the details of this vision, but the overall impression of it is pretty quickly pretty clear, that there is sin in the land and God is sending consequences that are gonna consume the house from within. What do we do with this this morning? What is the purpose of this? What is our goal? Why do we hear this message now? Why do we need this? Why is it important for us? That question impresses upon us for at least two reasons. One, we know we need gospel this morning. We need good news, that's what we're here for. It's the Lord's day, the day Jesus rose again from the dead, and here we just heard the reading of a curse. Well, I'm gonna leave that before you simply as a puzzle to hopefully motivate us to get through the difficult first stretch of this sermon. Look at the three points. We're gonna look at sin, we're gonna look at judgment, and then gospel. In God's word, messages of sin and judgment always serve grace and gospel, and we will get there. The second reason we need to ask this, though, what is the purpose, is, well, quite frankly, it's in the Bible. And so we cannot simply skip over it. We have before us a message of sin and judgment, and we need to deal with that and take it seriously. Indeed, I would actually suggest that one of the greatest needs in the Christian church today is to get this right, the way we talk about sin and judgment. We are entering a time in our culture where it is increasingly the case where you can say the word sin and people don't know what you're talking about. It is increasingly the case that we can say the word sin and we're not even sure we know what we're talking about. A couple generations earlier, it was the case that if you were doing evangelism or meeting someone who didn't go to church and you were trying to convince them to put their faith in Jesus, usually they grew up going to church, they had some sort of positive experience and evangelism was simply a matter of reminding people of things they kind of already knew and bringing them back to the gospel. But we increasingly live in a time where this stuff makes something like no sense to us. Indeed, often in what are called deconversion stories, people who grew up in evangelical Christianity and later rejected the Christian faith, often in the way they talk about their experience of the Christian faith, one of the main reasons they are rejecting it is because we didn't get this right, how we talk about sin. I'm curious. When I say to you, we don't talk about sin in the right way, what do you have in mind? My guess is that many of us have in mind, that's right, no one talks about sin anymore, right? Out there in the world, it's all about just God is always love and everything is friendly and we don't talk about this sort of thing. And that is in part true. But there are other problems in how we talk about sin as well. In many of what I would call deconversion stories, people who have rejected the Christian faith, the sense they will say they grew up with is that their parents or their church simply talked about sin as a way of getting them to not do naughty things. As though the church is simply a place where there's certain things we don't want people to do. And so we like to talk about the big man in the sky who is super powerful and he's gonna get you and make bad things happen to you if you do sin. And we do this to try to convince people not to be naughty. And indeed you might get that impression from Zechariah chapter five. As though God just sort of likes to make up rules. In this case he doesn't want people stealing or lying. And so he threatens that bad things will happen. You're gonna get punished if you do those naughty things. And the impression begins simply this structure to keep the young people in line. You know what I'm talking about. Threatening consequences to try to keep people from doing naughty stuff. That idea is entirely foreign to scripture, and that idea is what so many in Christianity in our own country have grown up with. And I would suggest that many of us, if we're honest, that is sort of how we have thought and felt about it as well. And there is a third way we get this wrong. Another one that I know many of you have grown up with, because you have said as much to me. That is sure, we talk about sin and judgment and consequences, but in the end, it is fundamentally graceless. That all this talk about Jesus, all this talk about warnings and God's law and this sort of thing here, in the end, is deeply gospel-less. It simply becomes a matter of rules and regulations. What I want us to do this morning is to hear this message about sin and judgment from God's word in a way that answers all of that. Is it true that we live in a culture that prefers to ignore sin? Absolutely, we want to address that. Is it true that some of us have lurking within this idea that everything the Bible is saying is simply a matter of saying there's some big powerful being in the sky just to keep us all in line from doing naughty stuff? That lurks there as well. And is it true that many of us struggle with being able to hear this sort of thing in a way that truly serves grace and the gospel? that is a problem as well. With all of those challenges in mind then, we come to Zechariah 5 verses one through four. Sin, judgment, and gospel. What we have here is a vision, and I wanna set again before you the image. Zechariah looks and he sees, verse one, a flying scroll. Now right away that sounds strange to us, and two parts of it are strange. It's a scroll and it's flying. The scroll part was not strange. Scroll was just a book. In fact, until the time of Christ, this was the predominant way of having writing being published. A long piece of paper with writing on it, or a piece of parchment, not paper yet, that was then rolled up. This is the scroll and it's flying. Now that's strange. You can picture that however you want. We're not told how to picture it. Does it have wings or is it hovering? We don't know, but the point to it is the strangeness. This was not the kind of thing someone heard and thought, oh, of course there's a flying scroll. The point to it was it was striking. And then to make it even more strange, verse two tells us it is 20 cubits by 10 cubits, something like 13 by 15 feet. So not only is the scroll flying, it is massive. This is a very large scroll. We're told some other things about it later. Verse 3, we're told that the scroll is a curse that goes out over the face of the whole world, of the whole land. We'll talk about that word curse in a moment in section 2 under judgment. And then we're told there are two sides of writing. Everyone who steals shall be cleaned out according to what is on one side and everyone who swears falsely shall be cleaned out according to what is on the other side. And we're not sure does that mean two sides of the roll or does it mean two columns next to each other? We're not entirely sure. But the idea of two sides does remind us of there being two tables of the law, two sections of the Ten Commandments. And it turns out that these two sins here involve both tables of the law, sins against people and sins against God. What is that curse going to do? Verse 4. Okay, as you picture it, it's a flying scroll with curses written on it, consequences for sin written on it, and then we're told this. I will send it out, declares the Lord of hosts. 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. This flying scroll is going to hunt down the thief and the one who swears falsely by God's name and shall consume their homes. Okay, so you've got the image. A scroll with curses on it, flying to hunt down sin and to bring consequences. The first thing we need to ask about it then is what are the sins being talked about? What is resulting? Why is there a flying scroll bringing cursing? Well, there are two sins referred to. In verse three, remember there are two sides of the scroll. There are everyone who steals and everyone who swears falsely. And then in verse four, the same two are referred to. Everyone who steals is called the thief, and then everyone who swears falsely is everyone who swears falsely by my name. Sins against people. Stealing property, swearing falsely is ultimately a bearing witness against your neighbors. The idea is you're in court and you lie about what someone did in order to get them in trouble, swearing falsely. But it's also a sin against the Lord. It's a sin against the Lord because people are made in God's image and so any sin against people is a sin against God. But also because what is the detail that verse four adds to the swearing falsely? Swearing falsely by my name. That is, dishonoring God in the use of His name. Now remember the questions we raised earlier about how to talk about sin. What are these sins? What is this that is happening? What is the Bible talking about here? Are these just rules that God made up and imposed on the world? We need to remember, we've been studying in our time in the catechism, in the evening service, that when God forbids something, he is revealing something to us that is true about the world. He is saying, these things are destructive. These are things that I am telling you not to do, not because God makes up rules, but God is saying, because I'm trying to protect you from something that will hurt you. What this is saying is that the time of destruction that Israel has come into has been a result of their way of living toward each other. And both of these sins, stealing and swearing falsely against each other in God's name, are sins that have the ability to tear a community apart. They're means by which people turn against each other, and ultimately, they can destroy each other, destroy each other's name, destroy each other's property. And notice very carefully, these things are not in a way, anything that you could somehow isolate as simply being a private thing. They are things that happen in community. This is God's concern for justice in a social context. And for those of you who have anxiety about these sort of things, you can put those two words together. God's concern for justice in a social context, in community, in people together, that corporate communal expressions of how we are to live matter to God. And God is saying that that way of life, that way of life of turning against each other in those ways will lead to destruction. We have to hear the Bible talking about sin in this way. And when we need to hear it in this way, we need to be undoing so much of what we have heard elsewhere. Because our culture prizes the individual and individual freedom, every rule is heard as something imposed on or limiting individual freedom. But God's concern here is to give freedom, to say these ways of living will destroy life and the way of living according to God's word is simply the way of life. So here are the steps in which you need to hear it. Sometimes does God's word alert us to a sin that we were neglecting? Have you ever had the experience of God's word forbidding something and you're like, oh man, yeah, I have not been paying attention to that. I have not cared about that as I should. We all have that experience. And it's in that moment we're tempted to think, well then maybe it's just because the Bible says so. But we have to go to the second step. When God's word says something that it forbids and we think, okay, I've been neglecting that, that's right. We don't stop there. We then look at the world and say, okay, why does God's word forbid that? What is destructive about that? And then we seek that out. But have you ever had this experience? Have you ever heard God's word forbid something? Look at the world and try to figure out what's wrong with it and you're not really sure. You have that moment where you think, man, I'm just not there yet. I'm not seeing how this is destructive. In fact, that way of life that God's word is forbidding, I can see ways in which maybe that's okay, or I can't see why that's such a big deal. Have you ever had that feeling? Some of us have had that as well. And what do we need to do then? We need to trust that God is wiser than us. That there are ways of living that are destructive that we are often tempted to think are flourishing. There are ways of goals of life, even ideas of what counts as good and flourishing that we have all wrong. And we must remain open to God's word correcting us. But even then, what are we counting on? God is the creator, he made us, he made the world, he knows how we are to live. All right, if that issue does not challenge you, I can see in some of your faces you're ready to move on, that's fine. Some of us in our midst are very angsty about this, including myself, all right? What are we summing up here? God is not imposing rules on the world, he's revealing to us how the world works. He's the one who made it, he knows. And that is what is happening in Zechariah 5. All right, that's how we talk about sin. Next, we have to talk about judgment. Because what is this text doing? It's not simply identifying that there is sin. There are ways in the world that are in and of themselves destructive and against the grain of reality. It's announcing judgment for those things. Specifically, verse, excuse me, verse two. No, verse three says, this is the curse that goes out over the face of the whole land. The scroll is a curse. And what does that word mean? Strangely enough, the word curse is a covenant word, a relationship word. A curse is not something that falls upon people in general. A curse here is a result of the covenant relationship, that God has said, I have made you my people, I have drawn you to myself, I have called you to faith in me, and then in, for example, the book of Deuteronomy, he says for those who are in the covenant, who have been made his people, who then rebel against that and reject it, live contrary to it, there is covenant cursing. Here is the challenge. When we hear the language of cursing and judgment in the Bible, we like to assume it's for people out there. Like, we're all okay, and there's all that bad, icky stuff out there, and that's what all of this judgment is about. Covenant cursing, especially in the prophets, is almost never, and I say almost, because there are exceptions, it is almost never talking about people out there, and it is almost always talking to the church, to the covenant people, to those who are tempted to reject what God has called them to. This is a word of relationship. It's God saying, because I am your father, because you are my people, these are the consequences of the way you are living. Now that is said here purely negatively, but I hope you hear the glimmer in that of something positive to come. Remember, we're headed toward the gospel section. Covenant cursing is for those who are in the covenant community, assuming a relationship. And then that image of a flying scroll, when Zechariah proclaims this image, we could say he is preaching with Deuteronomy as his text. Sometimes we forget this, that the prophets were preachers, and they had a text they were preaching from. They were saying, thus saith the Lord, from the end of the book of Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy 28, for example, God warns Israel when they go into the promised land, that if you live contrary to all this, if you embrace idolatry and you chase after other gods and you live the way of the nations around you, he says, these curses will hunt you down. They will find you. Deuteronomy 28, for example, verse 15, but if you will not obey the voice of the Lord your God or be careful to do all the commandments and the statutes that I command you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you. And so it's as though Zechariah takes that verse as his preaching text and says, there is a flying scroll. of curses and it is going to chase you down because God said through Moses in Deuteronomy, the curses shall come upon you and overtake you. The language gets even stronger, verse 45. All these curses shall come upon you and pursue you and overtake you till you are destroyed because you did not obey the voice of the Lord your God. That's what the flying scroll is. the consequences of sin, and God saying they will overtake you and consume you. Zechariah, one of the very important things to remember about the prophets, there's two modes of speaking in the prophets, foretelling and forth-telling. Foretelling is to speak about the future, but quite often what the prophets do, and some would argue the majority of the time, is they are forth-telling. They're not talking about the future, they are simply speaking forth what God's word already said. Zechariah could point to Deuteronomy and say, look, God already said, if you live this way, his curses will chase you down. Consequences will hunt you down and consume. And he points to that text. Remember the anxiety, the question I started with this morning. The idea that people have grown up with that simply the language of sin and judgment is something God imposes on the world, that we impose on the world to try to get people to not do naughty things. Isn't that in part how this sounds? God saying, I am sending the curse to hunt you down. Now, there is truth in this. That one of the clear messages of God's word is that God is active in the reality of judgment. That there are things that happen as a result of sin that God is active and present in. His judgment is something he does. But the scriptures are also very clear that this is not random or arbitrary. Think of the image in verse five. It shall remain in his house and consume it, both timber and stones. There's this image of a way of living that consumes from within. That so long as that way of living is embraced, there's a curse upon it that simply devours and destroys. And that's what we have to seek in wisdom. The ways of living that God's word forbids consume and destroy from within. Part of growing in wisdom as human beings, as followers of Jesus, is thinking of our sin in that way. Not allowing that sense to linger from within. You know, it would be really fun if we could do that, but God says not to. But instead, seeking to identify how does it consume? How does it destroy? The great example of this in our own culture is sexual sin, where the ideal of our culture is absolute free for all of doing whatever we want. And then Christians are tempted to come across as God simply imposing rules on that. But where does the curse consume from? It remains in his house and consumes it, both timber and stones, ways of living that are destructive. We have got to get away from this image of simply the big man in the sky imposing rules and then zapping with judgments. Congregation of Christ, this is the good creator who made this world good and who loves us, warning us about ways of living that end in death and destruction. That is what he is doing. And the love he has revealed in Jesus is a love that is his as the creator, as the source of reality. And I would challenge you to wrestle with this in your own heart. Those things that you are tempted by, those ways of living that you are tempted by, to wrestle with this. How is this actually the good creator showing us the way of life that is good? And then brothers and sisters, as a matter of life and death urgency, Communicate that to others. Communicate that to your children. There's a bunch of those here. Parents, this is your job to make clear to them that what we are saying, that what God's word is saying is the word of a good creator showing us the way of life. When we are immature, we are tempted to sort of look over the fence as it were out there and to say, man, look at all the party hats. Look at all the fun stuff happening and look at all the stuff we're not allowed to do. We need to unmask the party hats for what they are. It is destruction and death and wickedness and it brings curse and destruction and the good creator is telling us this way of life is the way that is good and flourishing and living. If we give our children the impression That there's simply a big boss somewhere who likes to make rules and then zap us if we break them. We have missed basically everything the Bible is saying. God's word is telling us that the good creator is showing us the good way of life. And congregation of Christ, in the midst of that, we need to then hear the warning. That God's word is saying that as a matter of judgment, it's not some big boss somewhere zapping because naughty things have been done. There is real destruction in the world. There is real ways of living that really do bring about cursing that consumes from within. And you see, the New Testament speaks this way as well. Think, for example, of 1 Peter 4, verse 17, that judgment begins with the house of God, that we are at no point allowed to say we no longer need to hear this stuff, but it is serious and it is for us. Hebrews 10, verses 30 and 31, a great passage of covenant cursing in the New Testament. where it says God will judge his people. A whole language of cursing that is not aimed at the world, it's aimed at the covenant people, warning us of destruction. Or think, for example, the language of James 1. James 1, verses 14 and 15. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire, when it is conceived, gives birth to sin. Sin, when it is fully grown, brings forth death. Do you hear the language of Zechariah 4? Ways of living that grow, it's all organic language here, conceives, gives birth to sin, it's fully grown. Eventually, what does that sin bring forth? Death. Now, the idea here very clearly is not a rule with the big boss zapping us if we don't follow it. It's rather the good creator warning us that there are ways of living that if you are not fighting it, it will grow and bring death. Do we hear that with that urgency for us today? This is serious business. It is a flying scroll. Now I know that might sound silly to us at first, but what is the point? It is effective and it is going to track down the offender. That there is this inexorable connection that if you insist upon going off the cliff, you will be going off the cliff and the cliff is real. And that God's word in revealing this is powerful and effective. Congregation of Christ, this is a warning for the Church of Jesus Christ about ways of living that lead to destruction, sin, and judgment. Pause. As we said earlier, though, where is all of that headed? It's headed toward gospel. Well, how can that be? Perhaps the simplest way to get at it is this. Is Zechariah 5 verses one through four the last word? Absolutely not. There's Malachi, okay, but then there's a big gap, hundreds of years of nothing, and then what is there? The gospel of Jesus Christ. I said a moment ago that the language of cursing is the language of relationship. The language of cursing is language that runs throughout the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. Genesis, curse is proclaimed as a result of our sin. Revelation 21 and 22, there will be nothing accursed in the new creation. How do we get there? Galatians 3 verse 13. Jesus came as Israel's Messiah He was rejected, the consequences of Israel's exile and all of our sin are piled up on him, and then he went to a Roman cross, and the Apostle Paul proclaims these words. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written, cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree, so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles so that we might receive the promised spirit through faith. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. That that language embedded in Zechariah of the curse, the consequences for our sin, is there for the sake of Christ. That that very curse is what will be poured out on Jesus on the cross for us so that as we look to him by faith, we are in Christ. We have the language we read from Revelation chapter five. Why is heaven and all of creation singing together? They sing to the Lamb that is our Lord Jesus Christ. Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. That that curse that lay upon us, Christ has freed us from by his death on the cross. And that language of cursing in Israel was there all along so that when Israel's representative, the Messiah, came, it could fall on him. It was there in Zechariah so that it would be there upon Christ for all who look to him in faith." Brothers and sisters, then, it is this clear from God's Word. When you look to Jesus in faith, You are in Christ. You belong to him so that the curse that Zechariah proclaimed falls on him instead and you are righteous in the sight of God. Blood has been shed But it was not our blood, it was the blood of another. Blood has been shed and by that Jesus put to the end all sacrifice. There is no longer any need for the shedding of blood. All of that cursing and destruction that Zechariah warned of has been spent in him. Perhaps this morning you are here and in a particular way, You have heard that warning about judgment for sin. Perhaps you have seen the consequences, the destruction. You see what sin does. Perhaps that has felt fearful to you. Well, thus far, that's okay, but do not stop there. We then go to Christ. There is no sin too great, no destruction too great, no consequences too great, no rebellion too great for the blood of Christ to cleanse. Whatever it is for you right now, whether you've trusted in Jesus a long time and there's that thing in your past you have not been able to acknowledge it being forgiven, you cling to it, the sense of guilt and shame, whether you've never trusted in Jesus and perhaps that warning of real judgment in the real world has awakened you to the reality of a good creator who judges sin, look to Christ. He forgives. All of it. It is all satisfied in him. And that is the gospel that Zechariah points us to. Pause. And then we say, and there's even more. Zechariah is actually full of good news, because here's what happens. You look to Christ in faith, you hear that announcement, that very moment, forgiven, cleansed of all that you have done by the Creator's love revealed in Jesus, all that our sin does taken care of, and then what do we have now? is the good news of a good creator warning us of destructive ways of life in the world. That now, in Christ, what you get to hear in Zechariah 5, but God pointing you to the way of life that is good. And he gives you that life by his Holy Spirit. Again, parents, It is of life and death urgency that we get this feeling across to our children that what God's word is directing us toward is the way that is life and that is good and beautiful and true. And that then when we hear those warnings, we're hearing good stuff. Right? In Christ, we hear the warning about a cliff and we're thankful for it. We say, oh yeah, this is the way of life that is good, that God gives us by His Spirit. There's even more good news. Strangely enough, and maybe this won't sound strange to you. Those of you who have grown up with the scriptures, you're used to identifying these themes. Strangely enough, God's word revealed as a flying scroll can actually be heard positively. Because what is it telling us? God is present. He is active. He is in the world. He is present with his people. There's even a clue of this, and scholars don't agree on this. I'm like 55% sure this is a really important connection, 45% it's possibly there. The dimensions of the scroll, scholars argue. Why are we told the dimensions? Why aren't we just told it's really big? Why do we have to be told the specific dimensions? Well, these are the specific dimensions of the holy place in the temple, the place that in Israel was the promise of God's presence. And so some have heard in this the promise of God's presence here for judgment, but now when you are in Christ, you've trusted in Him by faith, what is the promise of God's presence about? But fellowship with God, so that you can now hear the good news of God being active in the world, and it is just that, it is good news. Because in Jesus, he has revealed his love, he has solved the problem of our sin, so that now his presence is simply good and a joy. It is his love being revealed to us. Another signal of good news in this, again, you hear the reality of judgment for sin, you look to Christ by faith, you know yourself to be forgiven. Now, how do you hear this idea of a covenant curse that will consume the house of evil? You have in this the promise that evil will be defeated. Do not take for granted the importance of this. Evil is real. Evil is monstrous. Remember the beast powers of Zechariah? Evil is a monstrous force at work in the world. Evil is frightening. I hope you have this experience of seeing what happens in the world, seeing what our own sin can do, and realizing evil as a force, as a presence, is terrifying. It is real. It's terrifying when it's monstrous, and it's terrifying when it's appealing. and you realize the presence of evil, what is God promising here? Evil does not win. Evil will be consumed. That thing in the world that scares you will be defeated and it will be defeated by a flying scroll that will hunt it down and consume it from within. You hear the language there of effectiveness. God's word will do what he says it will do. And then finally, there is good news, because this is not the only scroll in the Bible. We read from Revelation chapter five. It is true that in Zechariah the scroll is God's word of cursing, but the scroll is also in general an image for God's word, all of God's promises. And Revelation 5 gives us this image of John weeping because the scroll of God's promises representing his purposes could not be opened. And then he is told in verse 5, weep no more. Behold, the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David has conquered so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals and then all of heaven burst forth in worship because in Jesus, God's promises are fulfilled. Go back to the fact the scroll is huge and it is flying. What does that image say about God's word? It's effective. God's going to do what he says. God is going to fulfill his word. Now that applied to cursing, to the consequences of sin, but that also applies to promise and blessing. It applies to God's purposes in Christ. So just as he says that scroll of cursing is going to hunt down evil and consume and destroy it, so as you look to Christ, you can hear that the scroll of God's blessing, of his promises will be fulfilled and satisfied. Back to the language of Deuteronomy. Remember the image of the curses will hunt Israel down and pursue them. Deuteronomy speaks the very same way about God's blessing. Deuteronomy 28 verse two, and all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you. In Christ, this is the good news we hear, that God's blessings will pursue and overtake, that God will do all that he has promised, that God will bring the new creation, that he will set the world right, that he will bring new life and resurrection, and he will fulfill all of his word. Brothers and sisters, Zechariah proclaims covenant cursing for the sake of the gospel. See our sin, hear the warning of judgment, and then look to Christ by faith. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen.