God’s Word for You
Zechariah 10:6 I will bring them back
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Wednesday, August 17, 2022
6 “I will strengthen the house of Judah,
and I will save the house of Joseph.
I will bring them back
because I have compassion on them.
They will be as though I had not banished them,
for I am the LORD their God
and I will answer them.
Previously, in verse 5, the Lord promised that he would make the people of the true church “like heroes.” That was the noun gabor, sometimes translated “mighty men,” but which I try to translate consistently with “hero” or “heroes” when it refers to people in general or the heroic wife in Proverbs 31. Here, the root of “strengthen” is a similar word. God will make his people strong through his word and through the sacraments. God will also save. Salvation was made available to all through Christ, and it is made available to us personally through preaching and the means of grace.
The Lord has not forgotten about the house of Joseph. This is a way of talking about all of the northern tribes, especially Ephraim and Manasseh, who were carried away by the Assyrians in the days of Isaiah and Micah. Some of the Jews were also still in the land of their captivity. They were no longer captives; they had been given permission to return home, but many of the Jews stayed where they were. Some, like Esther, married into families that made returning impossible or unlikely. Others may have been too old to make the return journey (were Ezekiel and Daniel, if still living, in this group?). Perhaps others were making a good living where they were and preferred not to go to a land they had never known.
To “save the house of Joseph and bring them back” does not mean that God planned to physically bring the northern kingdom back from Assyria, Scythia, Magog, and other places beyond Ararat. Salvation does not equal having a bed in the land of Israel. It means having my feet under the table of the Lord, with my faith in Christ.
We are saved by the compassion, the grace and favor, of God. So when he says, “They will be as though I had not banished them,” we must not think of the physical exile. What was the true shame of the exile of the northern peoples? “The Lord will cut off from Israel both head and tail, the elder and prominent men are the head and the prophets who teach lies are the tail” (Isaiah 9:14-15). They no longer worshiped the Lord, but set up many altars to many false gods, and lived lives of obscene sins and decadence, practicing slavery, oppressing the poor, denying justice, celebrating prostitution even as an act of worship; theft was common and extortion was an everyday act (Amos 2:6-12). These and many other things were the sins, the shame, the guilt and the judgment on the north. “What is Jacob’s transgression?” Micah asked, “Is it not Samaria?” (Micah 1:5). For Samaria was the capital, and God said: “All her idols will be broken to pieces. She gathered her gifts from the wages of prostitutes” (Micah 1:7).
But the Lord is compassionate. He did not forget those people, and some of them still trusted in him. A few were not like the head or the tail, but were caught in the middle, by an accident of geography. He remembered them. His gospel was for them, and everyone who trusted in the Savior promised to Eve (Genesis 3:15) would be saved. The Lord remembered them: “I will surely gather all of you, O Jacob; I will bring them together like sheep in a pen, like a flock” (Micah 2:12). “They will be as though I had not banished them” means that their sins are covered and paid for.
People cannot be justified before God by their own strength, merits, or works, but they are freely justified (declared not guilty of their sins) for Christ’s sake through faith when they believe that they are received into God’s favor and that their sins are forgiven on account of Christ. By his death, he made satisfaction for our sins. God imputes (counts) this faith for righteousness in his sight. As Paul teaches: “This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:22-24). Abraham believed and it was credited to him as righteousness, and we believe, and God does the same crediting to our accounts as well (Romans 4:3; Genesis 15:6). Put your faith in God, even scattered and dispersed away from family and friends. You have a friend forever in Jesus.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. To receive God’s Word for You via e-mail, please visit the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church website.