“Listen, High Priest Joshua, you and your associates seated before you, who are men symbolic of things to come: I am going to bring my servant the Branch.”
“…and I will remove the sin of this land in a single day.”
Just like Babe Ruth pointing to the outfield and signaling a home run before the pitch was thrown, the Bible does the same thing about the birth of Jesus and His resurrection. Today, on the backside of what we read in the Bible, it can be hard sometimes to grasp how significant this was.
For starters, our beloved America is only 246 years old. The Roman Empire lasted 507 years. If you had told someone when the Roman Empire began that it was going to have a Julius Caesar and then outlined his exploits, you would have been thought of as a freak.
When I was a kid, I used to fantasize about talking to someone face-to-face like we do every day on the phone. Never did I think it was possible. How about telling someone back in the Bible days that pitch and tar were going to be the world’s greatest natural resources and power nations? All of it seems kind of far-fetched if I look at it through the eyes of those hearing these crazy predictions. How about the people of Israel hearing the prophecy in the verses above? The coming Messiah—I can just see the people rolling their eyes like, “Some crazy person, Zechariah, is prophesying again,” while still having to go back and deal with the everyday things in life.
The book of Zechariah was written around 520 BC, more than 500 years before the birth of Jesus Christ in Bethlehem. The Branch, in the verse above, is referencing Jesus, while the single day is referencing His resurrection. God is laying it down right here and prophesying the coming Messiah, only it would take over 500 years to fulfill this prophecy.
For us, Jesus has risen and taken away the sins of the world, in the past tense. It already happened, we can read about it. We can go to the place where it happened. We can watch scientists match archaeological records with the happenings of the times. We can even read about historians at that time writing about a man named Jesus. It really happened.
The Messiah has come. He had a three-year ministry that changed the world forever, and He started with only 12 men and no internet, cars, or trains. This man, Jesus, made such a splash in only three years that the world time scale has been patterned after His birth.
Today, take some time to fathom the scale of God’s timing. For the verse above, it was 500 years before Jesus was born. In one day, the world changed forever. You have to be blind not to see the comparison between the life of Jesus and the world today. It is over 2,000 years later, and we are still talking about a Jewish carpenter who had a three-year ministry and was crucified because He threatened the Jewish leaders and their delicate balance of Rome and Jewish law.
Babe Ruth was good, and it took guts to predict the home run before the pitch was even thrown. If men prophesied the coming of Jesus over 500 years before it happened, you have to ask yourself, “What was it about this God that made men do the things they did despite all the backlash?” Good news, it is all in that crazy dated book the crazy Christians call the Bible. You might want to check it out.
Prayer: Father, help me to realize that the Bible is the Word of the Lord, straight from Your mouth, Jesus. I pray that I make it a part of every day and every waking moment of my life. I pray that I dig in and never leave it behind or not heed Your instructions in this wonderful message from You. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Let It Go 
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