Peter Gentry - The Book of Zechariah

[Music] [Applause] [Music] i was fortunate to be brought up in a christian family and i was fortunate to be raised in a christian church but almost nobody in spoke nobody spoke about the book of zechariah it was very similar to the book of ezekiel when i was in sunday school we sang songs about ezekiel's vision we talked that we sang about a wheel within a wheel way in the middle of the air but i had no idea what this meant i was i was 21 years old before i heard a message on the book of ezekiel and after i heard that message it was i was just as mystified as as before i heard it and it was very similar with the book of zechariah the book of zechariah is full of weird visions zechariah for example uh has a vision of a of a huge scroll 10 feet by 30 feet flying through the air so i i i couldn't figure this out i was completely mystified in fact i was terrified i had no idea what this book meant and i had no idea why it was important when i became when i began to study the bible seriously i became interested in the way jesus and the apostles uh used the old testament i i wasn't i want i was interested in how they were how did jesus interpret the old testament how did the apostles quote and use the old testament and i came across something interesting i discovered that one-sixth of all the quotations that jesus made of the old testament in the last week of his life were from the book of zechariah and so i realized right away that the book of zechariah was extremely important to the lord jesus christ it was it was important for his understanding of who he who he who he was and it was important for an understanding of of uh of his work his uh his work for us and so i i realized that i needed to study the book of zechariah but i was terrified i and it took me a long time um to realize how this book communicates it's a bit like our newspapers if when we think of a newspaper there's many different kinds of literature there's the news on the front page and then we have sections on leisure sections on travel sections on theater we have obituaries we have comics we have uh real estate we have classified ads we have stocks and bonds and i realized that uh i i asked myself the question well is is there truth only on the front page and no truth in the comics then i realized that uh maybe there was more truth in the comics than there was on the front page it was just using a different way of communicating so uh one of what we're going to do in this course is we're going to begin to understand the way in which uh zechariah communicates and we're go we're going to see why this book was important to the lord jesus christ why it's important for understanding who he is and why it's important for understanding uh what he's done and in addition to that another thing that we can uh think about every every author of scripture every human author of scripture makes use of earlier authors of scripture and so as you progress forward in the bible as you profess progress forward in the canon of scripture uh they're they're citing earlier books they're citing earlier authors and it makes it makes it a little more difficult to understand these books because you have to understand everything that's gone before and the book of zechariah is a little bit like that it's like the book of zechariah is like the revelation of the old testament so the book of revelation is difficult to understand because you have to understand everything that has gone before you have to understand uh isaiah and jeremiah and ezekiel and the prophets and you have to understand the book of daniel in order to because john in the book of revelation is using these earlier these earlier books as part of his communication and the book of zechariah is a little bit like that so um he's using he's making great use of earlier earlier books in the bible and one of the things that we will do in in trying to understand the book of uh of zechariah is understand how he uses the earlier books in the bible to communicate his point well really uh every every person who is interested in the bible whether they're a christian or whether they're not a christian anybody who's interested in what the bible is saying about who jesus is and about what he has done and uh any anyone who's interested in what the bible says about the future and uh what will happen when jesus christ returns

Channel: Toronto Baptist Seminary & Bible College

Views: 1,907

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Id: R6xlaKDizyk

Length: 6min 52sec (412 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 15 2021