What does our Lord promise through Zechariah today? We see a promise of a return from captivity. Just as the Lord is able to send his people into captivity and scatter them throughout the world, he is able to gather them into their homeland again. In fact, the Lord says specifically that he is just as able to keep them in peace and safety as he is to cast them away. But his desire is to keep his people in peace and safety. That has been his desire since the foundation of the world. That will always be our Lord's desire.
It is difficult to conceive of a God who deeply loves his people and is able to do anything, yet at the same time who allows them to separate themselves from him by their selfish desires. Yet that is exactly the kind of Lord we see in the Scripture. If we can keep this in mind, it may make more sense of some very difficult statements in the Scripture. For instance, we read that God does not wish that anyone would perish but that everyone would come to repentance. The fact that he doesn't make everyone come to repentance is rooted in the idea that God does allow people to flee from him due to their own desires. What about the statements that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the whole world? There are many universalistic statements in the New Testament. Yet we see not everyone is saved from their sin. This is also explained by the idea that people are able to flee from God's ways and try to make their own way.
The fact remains, though, that Jesus gave himself as a ransom for the sins of the whole world. He boldly died to pay the penalty of God, to appease the wrath of the righteous God against sinful man. Jesus, the second Adam, died for the sins of the first Adam and all of his descendants. He has purchased our salvation. Do we flee that? Or do we trust that.
Lord, let us run to you in trust, realizing that you are able to keep your people forever. Amen.
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