Up to this point, the visions have been greatly encouraging. But God is a holy God, and covenant blessings are never poured out blindly, apart from God’s recognition of our obedience or lack of it. The blessings are utterly inconsistent with continued sin.
Zecariah looks up and sees a scroll, unrolled, flying across the sky. A cubit is eighteen inches, and so the scroll is the size of a huge placard, about 10 yards by 5 yards. The scroll has writing on both sides, and stands for the curses of the covenant. One side places a sanction on stealing, and the other on swearing falsely. The scroll flies over the whole land of Israel, and is in plain sight. The curse cannot be evaded, and will enter into every house based upon deceit, and utterly waste it.
Once just a few things have been explained, the meaning of the vision is hard to miss. The scroll was twenty cubits by ten — the significance of the scroll’s size is connected both to holiness and to law. In Exodus 26:15-28 we find that the holy place in the tabernacle was just this size. We also know from 1 Kings 6:3 that the porch of the Temple was this same size as well. This was the place where the law was read aloud. The dimensions of this flying scroll simply reinforce the obvious. God’s law is holy, and God’s law is clear and unambiguous. The holy place, the place of reading, is flying over the whole land of Israel, judging it.
Two commandments are mentioned, i.e. the third and the eighth. These two commandments represent the first and second tables of the law, respectively and they also identify the particular problem that these people had. Consider this problem of theft in context — recall the context of these visions. The people had been guilty of footdragging with regard to rebuilding the Temple. This is what the prophet Haggai at this same time had explicitly addressed:
This is the divine response. If the people of God show contempt for His house, then why should He be solicitous for their houses? The covenantal answer is that He is not. Not only is He not solicitous, He will bring a rotting devastation Himself. The previous judgment had been brought for a reason, and those involved in the work of restoration were called to remember that reason.
Being in covenant with God means that we live under His government of His blessings and curses. The fact of blessings and curses has not changed in the transition to the new covenant. Remember what Paul says to us as Gentiles — “that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ” (Eph. 2:12-13). But doesn’t this new covenant exclude curses? Not a bit of it. “Anyone who has rejected Moses’ law dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. Of how much worse punishment, do you suppose, will he be thought worthy who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace?” (Heb. 10:28-29).
This should make this think carefully when it comes to issues involving “me and my house.” “The curse of the Lord is on the house of the wicked, but He blesses the home of the just” (Prov. 3:33). Is your household under this blessing? There is only one alternative to it. And as for the land, our hearts have been cauterized by the wickedness around us. We are accustomed to great evil, and are no longer outraged by it. We have tolerated a destructive doctrinal lie within the church, and the judgment of God approaches our nation because of it. What does the Scripture say . . . under all covenants? “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap” (Gal. 6:7).