INTRODUCTION:

            Zechariah has been called by some the Apocalypse of the Old Testament and it truly is in that it prophesies much concerning the end times.  Often Zechariah’s prophecies parallel prophecies in the book of Revelation and other end time prophecies in the books of other prophets. At times what Zechariah sees is expanded on by one of the other prophets.  This is the case with the seventh vision.  In Revelation 17 and 18 God gave us details about the end-times or eschatological harlot of Babylon, the ultimate symbol of worldliness and the wickedness that flows from it.  The Apostle John in Revelation 17:4-5 described this harlot in this way, “The woman was clothed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls, having in her hand a gold cup full of abominations and of the unclean things of her immorality, and on her forehead a name was written, a mystery, ‘BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.’ ” (Revelation 17:4–5, NASB95)[1] The Bible often compares false religion and worldliness with spiritual adultery and harlotry.  But all of that immorality and wickedness will climax in a final Babylon.  This final Babylon will be both the center of global commerce and business and the seat of false religion.  The Apostle John also prophesied concerning this final Babylon in Revelation 18:2, “She has become a dwelling place for demons, a haunt for every unclean spirit, a haunt for every unclean bird, a haunt for every unclean and detestable beast.” (Revelation 18:2b, ESV)[2]  This future Babylon will be the apex and epicenter of ungodliness, she will seduce all the nations of the world as they eagerly take part in the evil system of sensuality and secularism which she uses for her seduction.  Despite her power, and due to her utter wickedness, she will be thoroughly and suddenly destroyed by the judgment of God.

            John’s prophecy of Babylon in the book of Revelation came roughly 600 years after the Lord showed Zechariah a similar vision that also featured the harlot of Babylon.  This seventh night vision reveals two truths about God’s plan for the nations.  First, it demonstrates that God sovereignly constrains evil, even as wickedness continues to grow throughout the world.  Second, the vision revealed that God is sovereignly in control and has set the course for this wicked world system.  Because its destruction has been predetermined by God, we as God’s people should not be anxious about what we see happening in our world but rejoice in hope that we have for a future of infinite blessing in the presence of our Savior and Lord.  Let’s pray and then get into our passage for this morning.

--PRAY--

 

SCRIPTURE:

            Turn in your Bibles this morning to Zechariah 5:5-11.  Please, if you are able, stand in honor of the reading of God’s Word and follow along as I read.

     Zechariah 5:5-11,

            “Then the angel who was speaking with me went out and said to me, ‘Lift up now your eyes and see what this is going forth.’  I said, ‘What is it?’  And he said, ‘This is the ephah going forth.’  Again he said, ‘This is their appearance in all the land (and behold, a lead cover was lifted up); and this is a woman sitting inside the ephah.’  Then he said, ‘This is Wickedness!’  And he threw her down into the middle of the ephah and cast the lead weight on its opening. Then I lifted up my eyes and looked, and there two women were coming out with the wind in their wings; and they had wings like the wings of a stork, and they lifted up the ephah between the earth and the heavens. I said to the angel who was speaking with me, ‘Where are they taking the ephah?’  Then he said to me, ‘To build a temple for her in the land of Shinar; and when it is prepared, she will be set there on her own pedestal.’ ” (Zechariah 5:5–11, NASB95)[3]

GOD’S SOVEREIGN CONSTRAINT OF EVIL (Zechariah 5:5-8)

            This seventh vision parallels the second vision in that both speak of the judgment of the nations.  Zechariah opens this vision with this statement, “Then the angel who was speaking with me went out…” (Zechariah 5:5a, NASB95)[4]  This chapter continually uses phrases like “go out,” “going forth” or “went out.”  In the last vision the prophet observed that the flying scroll went out because God had caused it to go forth.  In much the same way, Zechariah says the interpreting angel went out, the prophet does not tell us to where the angel went out, but just that he went out.  As the angel went out he spoke to Zechariah and said to him, “Lift up now your eyes and see what this is going forth.” (Zechariah 5:5b, NASB95)[5]  So, we see this again, something else is going forth in this chapter and Zechariah is to lift up his eyes to see what it is that is going forth.  We have seen this phrase, “lift up your eyes” before and it has always signaled the start of a new vision.  This repetition of the phrase “going forth” establishes the theme of this vision.  Like the vision of the scroll going forth in judgment, this vision pictured God’ plan for history, including the wickedness of the world, moving steadily forward to the day of God’s judgment.  The sixth vision centered on Israel and those in Israel who were unrepentant, this seventh vision focuses on the nations.  Both visions are joined together to show how God’s judgment will go forth through Israel to the entire world.

            Zechariah did as the angel told him, but he was not able to understand what it was that he was seeing, so he asked the angel, “What is it?” (Zechariah 5:6a, NASB95)[6]  In some of the visions that the prophet had seen, he had sometimes inquired what he was seeing to learn the significance of what was before him.  Other times the angel asked the prophet what he saw to get him to look closer and tell what he observed.  Here it seems that Zechariah asked because he was unable to identify what it was that he was seeing in this vision.  The interpreting angel had to tell him, “This is the ephah going forth.” (Zechariah 5:6b, NASB95)[7]  An ephah is a unit of measure like a bushel but not as large.  The word was used commonly for a basket that would hold an ephah of grain.  Zechariah must have had difficulty seeing it as it was going forth because of its small size, a feature related to God’s message in this vision that we will discuss a little bit later.  In answering Zechariah, the angel was insistent that this basket going forth was the item the prophet was supposed to see and observe. 

            Having identified the basket, the angel spoke again to explain the significance of what the prophet was seeing.  The angel said, “This is their appearance in all the land.” (Zechariah 5:6c, NASB95)[8]  The interpreting angel likened the basket with their appearance, meaning the appearance of the people of Israel, the prophet’s readers and audience.  In Hebrew, the word that is translated “appearance” literally means “eye.”  The language sets up a contrast between God’s eyes, which Zechariah mentioned earlier (Zechariah 3:9; 4:10) and the eyes of the people.  Unlike God’s eyes which range to and fro throughout the earth to advance His plan and fulfill His purposes, the eyes of the people were like an empty basket, craving to be filled with the grain of material wealth.  The people’s appearance was clearly greedy.  While the exile in Babylon cleansed the Israelites of idolatry externally, it had not cleansed them of materialism.  Instead, while they were in exile they became ensnared by the foreign materialism of Babylon which exposed them to new levels of greed, desire, and secularism.    

            This self-centered materialism had taken over the lives of the exiles and stayed with them even when they returned to Judah.  Zechariah’s fellow prophet Haggai rebuked the people for being more concerned about their wealth and the completion of their own houses over God’s house that was waiting to be finished.  When Nehemiah returned to rebuild the walls many years later he confronted the leadership of Israel for their selfish materialism, putting their own people into bondage.  The prophet Malachi rebuked the people for robbing God by their covetousness.  Greed for more and more had spread to the leaders and the lay people, affecting their worship and every other area of life.  This greed was Israel’s appearance in the land.  Even though there was no more worship of foreign idols in Israel, the people had filled their homeland with a new form of idolatry—greed.  Paul speaking to the Colossian church wrote in Colossians 3:5, “Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry.” (Colossians 3:5, NASB95)[9]   This had become the new idolatry in Israel.  But not Israel alone because as I mentioned last week that the term “land” does not only mean the land of a specific nation, but it can also refer to the entire earth and in this context it does.  We will see that the rest of the passage supports this because the ephah basket goes from Israel to the distant land of Shinar which is far outside of Israel.  This vision was to show that the sin of worldly materialism was not limited to Israel but was common to all the nations.

            Even the New Testament warns against the persistent temptation of worldliness as already seen in the quote from Colossians warning believers against greed.  Other New Testament books warn against the love of money and the love of the world.  All that to say that the sin of materialism symbolized by the basket was not limited to Zechariah’s day.  Just as the basket went forth in the prophet’s vision, the sin of greed continues to operate throughout the world today and through all of human history, and it will continue to operate until the end times.  Still, while the basket depicted the greedy desire of sinful people to idolize earthly goods and material riches, at the same time, God demonstrated that He was sovereignly in control.  The very fact that the basket was small shows us that the Lord had set limits on its wicked influence.

            This sovereign constraint of the Lord over evil continued as Zechariah observed the cover on the basket being lifted.  This covering over the basket we are informed was a circular piece of heavy lead.  This heavy lead covering represented God’s constraining control over evil, containing the wickedness inside the basket.  In the vision, the cover was lifted so that Zechariah could see inside.  There he saw a woman sitting inside the ephah.  The basket itself was a symbol of sinful materialism.  Based on the prophet’s explanation as well as the book of Revelation, the woman symbolized religious perversion.  Her place in the basket pictures for us the relationship between greed (the love of material riches) and idolatry (the love of something other than God).  We must note that the woman fit inside the small basket, both sitting and remaining in the ephah.  In the book of Revelation, the final form of worldly false religion, is described as a woman sitting on a great beast out in the open.  But in Zechariah’s vision the harlot of Babylon was still very small, illustrating that God had confined the spread of her wickedness at that time.

            The interpreting angel’s action against the woman demonstrates for us the power of God’s restraint against the evil the woman represented.  The angel declared, “‘This is Wickedness!’  And he threw her down into the middle of the ephah and cast the lead weight on its opening.” (Zechariah 5:8, NASB95)[10]  When the angel declared that the woman was wickedness he was describing for us the terrible abomination of worldliness and moral corruption that this harlot represented.  In Revelation 17:4, the apostle John portrayed such wickedness as whoring after worldly pleasure, wealth, intoxication, and sexual immorality.  Though she was the symbol of absolute evil, Zechariah saw that she was constrained by the Lord.  This was seen by the angel’s ability to throw her down in the basket. She was also small in size, since she fit in the middle of the ephah.  Her containment was completed when the lead weight was cast on to the opening of the basket, in this way wickedness was confined inside, controlled and constrained by God.  The Lord had placed limits on the extent of her influence.

            In the future God will judge evil completely and with finality.  Zechariah’s vision showed that until that future time, God restricts evil in keeping with His sovereign purposes.  This restraint is nothing new.  God restrained evil after the flood by scattering the nations.  Paul reminds us in 2nd Thessalonians 2 that the Lord continues to restrain evil during the church age.  Because of this we, God’s children, do not need to fear the wickedness of the world around us.  Remember the words of John in 1st John 4:4, “You are from God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.” (1 John 4:4, NASB95)[11]

GOD’S SOVEREIGN CONTROL OVER EVIL (Zechariah 5:9-11)

            Zechariah writes, “Then I lifted up my eyes and looked…” (Zechariah 5:9a, NASB95)[12] indicating not a new vision but a new feature of this vision coming into view.  What he saw was coming out and the image caught his attention, and he described what he saw.  “…and there two women were coming out with the wind in their wings; and they had wings like the wings of a stork.” (Zechariah 5:9b, NASB95)[13]  The two women that the prophet saw had wings like angels, but the context suggests that they were demonic figures, not holy angels which are always described as young men.  This interpretation that they were demons is supported by the fact that they came out to assist the ephah basket and the wicked woman inside.  Zechariah revealed to us that these women would build a house for the woman in the basket and establish her on a pedestal.  The fact that they are willing to aid the harlot is evidence of their wicked intentions.  Also, the prophet described these women as having wings like the wings of a stork.  Storks were unclean birds according to the law of Moses.  By comparing these women to unclean birds, the prophet depicts them as impure heralds of unclean things.

            As already mentioned, Zechariah saw that these winged women were coming out.  The concept of “going forth” or “coming out” was repeated throughout this vision and the previous.  The flying scroll went out, as did God’s curse, the interpreting angel went out, and the ephah basket went forth. Everything was in motion, and the motion of these passages emphasized that God’s judgment was moving forward against the wicked. By describing these winged women as coming out, the passage placed them in the same divine flow of judgment.  Though they were demonic angels, they were operating according to God’s sovereign purposes.  The description that the wind was in their wings tells us that they were flying at a high speed.  The pieces of God’s sovereign plan were moving rapidly into place.

            As the prophet looked on he writes, “…and they lifted up the ephah between the earth and the heavens.” (Zechariah 5:9c, NASB95)[14]  This phrase “between the earth and the heavens” is only found three times in the Old Testament, and each time it is used it is speaking of God’s supernatural judgment.  1st Chronicles 21:16 is the first occurrence when an angel was standing between the earth and the heavens to strike down Jerusalem because of David’s sinful census.  David had to buy the threshing floor of Ornan and build an altar and offer sacrifices to stay the hand of the angel from destroying Jerusalem.  That threshing floor later became the site of the temple.  The next use of this phrase was when Ezekiel was lifted up between earth and heaven in a vision to behold Jerusalem’s abomination, in judgment for this idolatry, God’s glory departed from the temple,  but Ezekiel prophesied that His glory would one day return. (Ezekiel 8:3; 10:18-22; 43:1-3)  The third occurrence is our passage in Zechariah and here also God’s judgment is involved.  Like the other two occurrences, the context connected it to the temple,  since Zechariah’s prophecy addressed the task of completing the rebuilding of the temple.  That the ephah was lifted up between the earth and the heavens signaled that God would judge the wickedness that it represented.  The Lord will judge the evil angels and the wicked harlot they were assisting, even while establishing His own temple in righteousness.

            As Zechariah observed the two demonic creatures moving away with the basket he inquired where they were taking the basket and the harlot.  We read, “I said to the angel who was speaking with me, ‘Where are they taking the ephah?’ ” (Zechariah 5:10, NASB95)[15]  He could see that they were leaving the land of Israel.  Again, as I already mentioned, this vision speaks of God’s plan not merely for Israel, but for all the nations.  As I said it parallels the second vision which also depicted God’s judgment on the nations.  The angel’s response shows that this was all in God’s sovereign control to fulfill His sovereign purposes.  “Then he said to me, ‘To build a temple for her in the land of Shinar; and when it is prepared, she will be set there on her own pedestal.’ ” (Zechariah 5:11, NASB95)[16] The word translated “temple” is the Hebrew word for “house.”

            “To build a house for her” describes the building of a pagan temple, which is fitting since the woman in the basket represents false religion.  The angel went on to explain that the pagan temple would be in the land of Shinar, which was the location of the tower of Babel where humanity once united in rebellion against God.  Not only was it the location of the tower of Babel but also the location of the city of Babylon.  Zechariah’s vision revealed to us that history was moving from the tower of Babel in Genesis 11 to the harlot of Babylon in Revelation 17-18.  The harlot was small enough to fit in a basket at the time of Zechariah, God sovereignly allowed her wicked influence to grow.  At the end of humanity’s history, the evil system she symbolizes will dominate the entire world.  Just as the angel described, when her house is prepared, she will be set there on her own pedestal.  The task of the demons was to facilitate and develop the world system of idolatry and immorality represented by the wicked woman.  The end result of their efforts is described for us in Revelation 17-18.  At the end of history, the false religion of Babylon will be on its own pedestal, established as the dominant center of world religion and global blasphemy.  Zechariah’s seventh vision shows us that evil will progress throughout the course of history.  At the end of the age, the Lord will judge this wicked world system, crushing it completely before establishing the righteous reign of the Messiah.  To that end, God’s sovereign plan is moving forward.

 

CONCLUSION:

            Throughout this seventh vision we see God’s sovereign constraint and sovereign control over the wickedness symbolized by the ephah basket and the woman inside.  We see God’s constraint as He limits the influence of wickedness so that it reaches it peak at just the right time.  We see God’s control as He allows its influence to expand but not to such an extent that it can prevail against His church which also continues to grow as more are daily added to the church.  Again, we cannot overlook Zechariah’s use of the word house in this passage.  The word house not only indicates that the temple of false religion would arise but also contrasts Zechariah’s emphasis that God’s house would be built and prevail.  Just as the previous vision revealed that God’s wrath would destroy the houses of the unrepentant, so this vision reveals that the final house of false religion will also be destroyed.  Only the glorious house of God in the Messiah’s millennial kingdom will remain.

            What do we take home with us that we can apply to our lives from this passage?  First, without doubt the influence of wickedness is growing in this world.  As we live for Christ in the midst of this darkness we must remember as our Scripture Reading stated, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.” (Ephesians 6:12, NASB95)[17]  In other words, our struggle is a spiritual struggle as we seek to share the good news of Jesus Christ with the flesh and blood of this world.  Satan’s spiritual forces are going to do everything they can to keep us from sharing this good news.  We must be ready and fully clothed in the armor of God.  Second, just as Zechariah was encouraging the Israelites as they rebuilt the temple of God, let me encourage you to share the good news as we build the house of God in this age.

 

[1]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. 1995. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

[2]The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. 2025. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

[3]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. 1995. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

[4]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. 1995. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

[5]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. 1995. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

[6]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. 1995. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

[7]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. 1995. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

[8]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. 1995. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

[9]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. 1995. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

[10]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. 1995. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

[11]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. 1995. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

[12]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. 1995. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

[13]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. 1995. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

[14]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. 1995. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

[15]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. 1995. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

[16]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. 1995. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

[17]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. 1995. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.