The Word Takes Flight: God's Law on the Offensive Text: Zechariah 5:1-4
Introduction: When God's Law Attacks
We live in an age that wants a domesticated God. We want a God who is a celestial therapist, a divine butler, or perhaps a kindly grandfather who pats us on the head and tells us everything will be alright, regardless of how we are living. We want a God whose law is a set of gentle suggestions, not a set of binding covenantal demands. Our culture has taken the sharp, two-edged sword of God's Word and tried to fashion it into a butter knife, suitable for spreading a thin layer of sentimental spirituality over our godless lives.
But the God of Scripture is not safe. He is good, but He is not tame. And His law is not a passive document that sits quietly in a book, waiting to be consulted. His law is active. It is living. It accomplishes His purposes. In our text today, Zechariah sees a vision that should shatter our modern sensibilities. He sees God's law, embodied as a massive scroll, take flight. This is not a gentle dove; this is a predator drone. It is an airborne curse, a divine legal indictment that flies over the whole land, seeking out its targets with unerring precision. It is God's Word on the offensive.
Zechariah's ministry took place after the exile. The people had returned to the land, and the work of rebuilding the temple had begun, but it was halting. The people were discouraged. They were surrounded by enemies, and worse, they had brought sin back into the land with them. They were in danger of forgetting that the same God who judged their fathers for idolatry and covenant-breaking was still their God, and His standards had not changed. They needed to be reminded that covenant renewal required covenant faithfulness. God was cleansing His people, and this required a purging of sin from their midst. This vision, the sixth of eight that Zechariah receives in one night, is a stark reminder that God's law is the standard of holiness, and His curse is the inevitable consequence of violating that standard.
This vision of the flying scroll is a bucket of ice water for a sleepy church. It tells us that God is intensely interested in justice and righteousness within His covenant community. He cares about how we handle our property and how we use His name. And it shows us that His judgment is not slow, or arbitrary, or escapable. It is swift, it is specific, and it is utterly devastating to the unrepentant. This is not a message our therapeutic age wants to hear, but it is a message we desperately need.
The Text
Then I lifted up my eyes again and saw, and behold, a flying scroll.
And he said to me, "What do you see?" And I said, "I see a flying scroll; its length is twenty cubits and its width ten cubits."
Then he said to me, "This is the curse that is going forth over the face of the whole land; surely everyone who steals will be purged away according to the writing on one side, and everyone who swears will be purged away according to the writing on the other side.
I will make it go forth," declares Yahweh of hosts, "and it will enter the house of the thief and the house of the one who swears falsely by My name; and it will spend the night within that house and consume it with its timber and stones."
(Zechariah 5:1-4 LSB)
The Airborne Indictment (v. 1-2)
The vision begins abruptly, with Zechariah seeing a startling object in the sky.
"Then I lifted up my eyes again and saw, and behold, a flying scroll. And he said to me, 'What do you see?' And I said, 'I see a flying scroll; its length is twenty cubits and its width ten cubits.'" (Zechariah 5:1-2)
A scroll is a written document. It contains words, information, a message. But this scroll is not sitting on a desk. It is flying. This immediately tells us that the Word of God is not static. It is dynamic, active, and on the move. God's judgment is not something He has to be prodded into; it goes forth. It is self-propelled, unstoppable, and it cannot be contained by walls or borders. No sinner can outrun it or hide from it.
The angel asks Zechariah what he sees, and the prophet gives its dimensions: twenty cubits by ten cubits. This is not a random detail. A cubit is roughly eighteen inches, so this scroll is about thirty feet long and fifteen feet wide. These are enormous dimensions for a scroll, but they are not arbitrary. These are the exact dimensions of the porch of Solomon's Temple (1 Kings 6:3). And they are the dimensions of the Holy Place in the Tabernacle. Zechariah, being a priest, would have recognized this instantly. The message is clear: the judgment that is going forth is measured by the standard of God's own holiness. The law that condemns sin proceeds from the very presence of God. Sin is being measured against the blueprint of God's house, His sanctuary. This is not human opinion or a shifting cultural standard; this is the absolute, unchangeable standard of God's own character.
The Two-Sided Curse (v. 3)
The interpreting angel then explains the meaning of this massive, flying document.
"Then he said to me, 'This is the curse that is going forth over the face of the whole land; surely everyone who steals will be purged away according to the writing on one side, and everyone who swears will be purged away according to the writing on the other side.'" (Zechariah 5:3)
This scroll is not a blessing; it is "the curse." This is the covenant curse of Deuteronomy 28, the promised consequence for disobedience to God's law. God had promised His people blessing for obedience and cursing for disobedience. The exile was the fruit of that curse on a national scale. Now, the returned remnant is being warned that the curse is still active and will seek out individual sin within the covenant community. God is going to clean house.
The curse is written on both sides, and it targets two specific sins: stealing and swearing falsely. This is not an exhaustive list, but a representative one. These two sins stand for the two tables of the Ten Commandments. Stealing, a violation of the eighth commandment, represents sins against one's neighbor. It is a horizontal offense. Swearing falsely by God's name, a violation of the third commandment, represents sins against God. It is a vertical offense. Together, they summarize the whole duty of man: to love God and to love your neighbor. To violate either is to violate the entire law. As James tells us, "For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all" (James 2:10).
Notice the language: they will be "purged away." The goal of this curse is not simply to punish, but to purify. God is cleansing the land. He is removing the leaven of sin from the lump of His people. This is a severe mercy. For the community to be holy, the unrepentant sinner must be removed. God will not allow His rebuilt temple to be surrounded by a community that trifles with His law.
The Unstoppable Judgment (v. 4)
In the final verse, God Himself speaks, declaring the authority and the devastating effect of this curse.
"I will make it go forth," declares Yahweh of hosts, "and it will enter the house of the thief and the house of the one who swears falsely by My name; and it will spend the night within that house and consume it with its timber and stones." (Zechariah 5:4)
This is not an impersonal force of karma. This is a direct, intentional act of the sovereign God, "Yahweh of hosts," the Lord of armies. He is the one who sends it forth. The scroll has a divine search warrant. It will "enter the house" of the sinner. This is a terrifying thought. A man's home is his castle, his private refuge. But no lock can keep out the curse of God. Sin committed in secret will be dealt with. The judgment of God penetrates our most private spaces.
And the curse does not just pay a brief visit. It will "spend the night," it will lodge there, it will remain. This speaks of the settled, abiding nature of God's judgment on unrepentant sin. And its effect is total annihilation. It will "consume it with its timber and stones." This is the language of de-creation. It is a holy un-building. The curse is like a divine termite that eats away not just the furnishings, but the very structure of the sinner's life, until nothing is left. It is a picture of utter ruin. This is what sin does. It rots the very framework of our lives, our families, and our society. God's curse simply accelerates and completes the process of corruption that sin began.
The Scroll and the Cross
Now, this is a grim vision. A flying curse, a divine indictment, a house-consuming judgment. If we stop here, we are left with nothing but terror. And we should be terrified, because we are all guilty. Who among us has not stolen, if not property, then glory from God or a good reputation from a neighbor through gossip? Who has not sworn falsely, if not in a court of law, then by making a promise we failed to keep, thus cheapening the value of our word and, by extension, profaning the God of truth?
That flying scroll has our address on it. It is heading for our house. The curse of the law, which we have all violated, hangs over our heads. The Apostle Paul quotes Deuteronomy, saying, "Cursed is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, to perform them" (Galatians 3:10). That is the bad news. That is the news that should drive us to our knees in despair.
But that is not the end of the story. Because there is another place in Scripture where we see the law, the indictment against us, dealt with. Paul writes to the Colossians that God has "canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross" (Colossians 2:14).
That flying scroll, that airborne curse, had a destination. It was flying over the whole land for two thousand years, and one day, it landed. It landed on a hill outside Jerusalem called Golgotha. It did not find timber and stones to consume. It found the living stone, the chief cornerstone, Jesus Christ. And the full, unmitigated, house-consuming fury of the curse was exhausted on Him. "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us, for it is written, 'Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree'" (Galatians 3:13).
Jesus did not just take our punishment. He became the curse. He absorbed the full payload of that divine judgment into Himself. He drank the cup of God's wrath down to the dregs so that for all who are in Him by faith, there is now no condemnation. The scroll has no claim on us. Its curse has been satisfied. Its demands have been met. The house built on the rock of Jesus Christ cannot be consumed.
Therefore, we do not read this passage in Zechariah and despair. We read it and we tremble, yes. We tremble at the holiness of God and the severity of His law. But then we flee to the cross. We flee to the one who became a curse for us. And we do so knowing that the same God who sends forth His law to condemn sin is the God who sent forth His Son to save sinners. For those who remain in their sin, who love their theft and their false words, the scroll is still in the air. It is coming. But for those who have taken refuge in Christ, the curse has passed over. We are safe, not because we are innocent, but because our Champion has already met the curse and disarmed it by His blood.