Make It Rain: Idols, Timing, and Fighting the Good Fight
From the sermon preached on May 17, 2026
Trusting God's timing is not passive waiting; it is active obedience that requires clearing out whatever you have put in God's place. Zechariah 10 makes the case that the harvest does not come despite the rain; it comes because of it, and the rain will not come at all while household gods are still in the way. If your prayers feel unanswered and your blessings feel perpetually delayed, the problem may not be God's silence; it may be what is standing between you and his voice.
What Are the Idols Blocking Your Spiritual Growth?
Zechariah 10 opens in the shadow of a feast. Zechariah chapter 9 closes with God's people basking in abundance (grain, new wine, overspilling plenty), and identifying idols in life is what separates the people who experience that abundance from the ones who keep wandering. The oracle shifts in verse 1: "Ask rain from the Lord in the season of the spring rain. The Lord who makes the storm clouds, and he will give them showers of rain to everyone, the vegetation in the field." The invitation sounds simple. The problem is that the people have stopped asking God and started asking their household gods instead.
Pastor Jan Vezikov drew a sharp line here. Identifying idols in life is not about finding a statue in the corner you bow to; it is about tracking where your money flows without friction, where your energy goes without being asked, what you would sacrifice almost anything to protect. He told the story of a man from Maine who rented a two-bedroom apartment in Boston for five months every year just to attend Red Sox games. When Pastor Jan ran the numbers, it worked out to roughly ten percent of the man's income: tithe money, offered to a baseball team. That is what identifying idols in life actually looks like; not paganism, but priority.
The text is precise about why this matters. Zechariah 10:2 says the household gods "utter nonsense" and the diviners "see lies," giving "empty consolation." Idols never say no. They affirm every decision, encourage every indulgence, and whisper that you are the one in charge. The people of Israel were afflicted, the prophet says, not because God abandoned them, but because they were identifying idols in life as sources of comfort instead of confronting them. The first honest step is the most uncomfortable one: sit with your bank statement and your calendar and ask which of them is telling you the truth about what you actually worship.
Why Walking in Jesus' Name Means More Than Saying His Name
The second point of the sermon hinges on a distinction that is easy to miss: walking in Jesus' name is not the same as invoking Jesus' name. Pastor Jan was direct about this. You cannot use the name of Jesus Christ as a kind of spiritual incantation and expect power to follow. Walking in Jesus' name means walking in a manner worthy of that name; the commandments, the love toward God and neighbor, the willingness to absorb pain for the sake of someone else's good.
Zechariah 10:4 supplies the architecture: "From him shall come the cornerstone, from him the tent peg, from him the battle bow, from him every ruler, all of them together." Jesus is the cornerstone, the foundation that everything rests on. He is the tent peg (the anchor that keeps you covered and grounded when the weather turns). And he is the battle bow, which means his people are his arrows. Walking in Jesus' name means letting him choose where to aim you, rather than constantly redirecting yourself toward targets he is not aiming at.
The sermon used the archery definition of sin here: the word originally described an arrow that missed its mark. If you are not walking in Jesus' name; not oriented toward his will, his word, his character; then every action you take with his name on it is an arrow flying sideways. Walking in Jesus' name means the target and the trajectory align. That alignment is not something you manufacture through effort; it is something that happens when you stop pointing yourself at everything else first. The practical step today is small: before any significant decision this week, ask not "what do I want?" but "where is he aiming?"
Are You Fighting the Good Fight of Faith, or Just Enduring?
The third point moves from the architecture of faith to the activity of it. Zechariah 10:5 says God's people "shall fight because the Lord is with them." This is not metaphor. Spiritual warfare and victory in the biblical frame is not an internal mood shift; it is a real contest between the life shaped by the Gospel and the gravitational pull of every idol that promises the same result without the cost.
Pastor Jan read from 1 Timothy 6:6–16 to press the point home. The passage calls believers to "fight the good fight of faith" and "take hold of the eternal life" to which they were called. Spiritual warfare and victory looks like this: fighting for love, for faith, for zeal, for holiness, for righteousness; not in the abstract, but against the specific idols and lies that have the most purchase in your particular life. In Boston, that might be career ambition that has quietly swallowed every other relationship. It might be the kind of intellectual self-sufficiency that makes asking for help feel like weakness. Spiritual warfare and victory starts with naming the thing you are actually fighting.
The imagery in Zechariah 10:6–7 is worth sitting with. God promises to strengthen the house of Judah, to save the house of Joseph, to bring them back with compassion; and then the camera pans to the result: glad parents, children who see those parents' joy and rejoice themselves, families where gladness compounds. This is what the fight is for. It is not a grim battle you survive; it is the precondition for a life that produces this kind of cascading gladness (the kind Pastor Jan describes feeling when he watches his daughters worship with their whole hearts). The fight is worth it because what is on the other side is not just personal peace but an entire household reshaped by grace.
The honest step today is to name one idol and one arena of spiritual warfare and victory that you have been avoiding. Write it down. Bring it to prayer. That is where the rain begins.
What Does Zechariah 10 Actually Say About God's Blessings?
Zechariah 10 is structured around three moves: the pain of rain, the gain of grain, and the fame of name; and the sequence is not accidental. The harvest does not bypass the rain. You do not get from gray to green without the wet, cold, miserable season that precedes it. Zechariah 10:1 makes this explicit: the showers of rain are God's gift, sent in the season of spring rain, but they come to those who ask; and asking requires trusting that the season you are in is not punishment, it is preparation.
1. The Pain of Rain
What it is: The uncomfortable season of growth that precedes the harvest; discomfort, discipline, and the dismantling of idols.
What it requires: Asking for it anyway; trusting God's timing even when the season feels like loss rather than preparation.
2. The Gain of Grain
What it is: The fruit that follows faithful obedience; abundance, flourishing, and the overspilling goodness described in Zechariah 9:16–17.
What it requires: Removing idols that block the streams of blessing, and refusing the empty consolation of diviners who confirm your preferences rather than tell you the truth.
3. The Fame of Name
What it is: The power and authority that flows from walking in Jesus' name; not as an incantation, but as a genuine orientation of life toward his will and character.
What it requires: Alignment; letting Jesus be the battle bow, the cornerstone, and the tent peg; rather than borrowing his name for your own agenda.
A Gospel-Centered Church in Brookline for Boston's Skeptics and Seekers
Mosaic Boston meets in the Longwood Towers area of Brookline, Massachusetts, drawing a congregation that stretches across the greater Boston metro; from the Fenway and Mission Hill neighborhoods to Cambridge and Somerville, from the South End and Jamaica Plain to Chestnut Hill and Newton. The sermon series working through Zechariah is squarely aimed at the kind of person Boston produces: skeptical, self-reliant, and quietly exhausted by the weight of having to figure everything out alone. Whether you are finishing a residency at one of the Longwood Medical Area hospitals, mid-dissertation at BU or Harvard, or building a company in the Seaport, the questions this text raises are not distant or theoretical; they are the questions underneath the choices you made last week. Sunday services at Mosaic Boston run at 9:15 a.m. and 11:15 a.m. at 20 Chapel Street, Brookline, accessible from the Green Line D at the Longwood stop.
The Rain Is Already Coming: Are You Ready for What Grows?
Zechariah 10 does not promise an easy season. It promises a fruitful one; which is a different thing entirely. The path from the idol-cluttered life to the harvest runs directly through the uncomfortable work of dismantling what you have been trusting instead of God, enduring the rain that precedes growth, and learning what it actually means to walk in someone else's name instead of your own. The closing declaration of the chapter says it plainly: "I will make them strong in the Lord, and they shall walk in his name." Not strong in themselves. Strong in the Lord.
Frequently Asked Questions
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According to Zechariah 10, idols are anything you have elevated to an absolute that was never meant to hold that place; money, career, relationships, status, even sports teams. You can identify them by tracking where your money flows without friction and what you would protect at the cost of almost everything else. The text is clear: these household gods "utter nonsense" and their voices will always confirm your choices, which is precisely why they are so hard to see and so costly to keep.
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Zechariah 10:1 reframes the question. The difficult season is not a sign that God is absent; it is the rain that precedes the harvest. Pastor Jan's reading of Deuteronomy 11:8–17 alongside this text shows that God's pattern is consistent: obedience and dependence on him produce flourishing; self-sufficiency and idol worship shut up the heavens. Trusting God during difficult seasons means accepting that you are in a season of preparation, not punishment, and asking for the rain rather than trying to manufacture sunshine by your own methods.
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Walking in Jesus' name is not about verbal invocation; it is about behavioral alignment. To walk in his name means to walk as he walked: in the commandments, in love toward God and neighbor, and in willingness to absorb suffering for the sake of others. Zechariah 10:12 promises that God will make his people strong in the Lord so that they can walk in his name; meaning the power to do it comes from him, not from summoning enough personal resolve.
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The sermon's practical counsel begins with honesty rather than willpower. Name the idol; write it down, say it out loud in prayer, bring it into the light. The process of dismantling starts with muting the voice, which means deliberately choosing not to consult it, not to feed it, and not to organize your decisions around it. Pastor Jan's closing prayer modeled this: "Help us remove those things that are in the way, that are impeding the blessing that you have in store for us." That prayer is a place to start.
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Because that is what Zechariah 10 actually says; and what every honest account of growth confirms. Rain is gloomy, cold, and miserable. It is also what turns gray ground green. To pray for a harvest without being willing to endure the rainy season is to ask for the fruit of a process you are not willing to enter. Pastor Jan put it sharply: "To ask for a pain-free life is to ask for death." The rain is not the obstacle to the harvest; it is the mechanism of it.