SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/12/2016 3:52 PM
My Worship Time Focus: The Divine Plan for Jerusalem, PT-1
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: Zechariah 1:7-8
Message of the verses: “7 On the twenty-fourth day of the eleventh
month, which is the month Shebat, in the second year of Darius, the word of the
LORD came to Zechariah the prophet, the son of Berechiah, the son of Iddo, as
follows: 8 I saw at night, and behold, a
man was riding on a red horse, and he was standing among the myrtle trees which
were in the ravine, with red, sorrel and white horses behind him.”
In our last
SD we looked at verses 7-11 with the help of Warren Wiersbe, and not for the
next few days we will look at what John MacArthur had to say when he preached
on the book of Zechariah in 1977. I am
not too sure if this is how we will continue to look at Zechariah, but my guess
is that we will probably go back and forth looking at it from the perspective
of these two commentators as they both have something to add and even though
there will be times when they don’t agree with each other I don’t have a
problem with that. The important thing
is to get things from Zechariah that we will learn and be able to bring into
our lives so we can better serve Jesus Christ, for as we look at the book of
Zechariah we will see Jesus Christ in many places and many prophetic statements
that are made about Him.
Let us
begin with an outline that John MacArthur gives in his message on these two
verses which goes beyond these two verses.
“The first section is the ‘Call to Repentance,’ in the first six verses,
1:1-1:6. The second section begins in
1:7 and I call it ‘Comfort through Visions.’” (This section goes from 1:7 goes
to the end of chapter six.) “The third
section begins in chapter 7, and it’s called ‘Counsel Regarding Fasts.’” (This
section goes from chapter 7-8.) “And the
last section, beginning in chapter 9, “Coming Events.’”
We can see
by this outline that we will be in the Comfort through visions section for a
while, as there are many visions to be seen in the book of Zechariah, and we
want to better understand what a vision is all about so we can see what these vision
are and where they came from.
In verse
one we see the words “On the twenty-fourth day of the eleventh month,” and
MacArthur has this to say about this section of verse seven, “now that’s and
important day simply because there have been so many interesting things that
have happened on the 24th day.
Five months before on the 24th day, work on the temple had
begun. Two months before on the 24th
day, Haggai received a marvelous revelation, and so there’s something about the
34th cay that’s getting to be pretty hot stuff and about the time
the 24th day rolls around, everybody perks up.” The verse goes on to talk about what happened
on this day “the word of the LORD came to Zechariah the prophet, the son of
Berechiah, the son of Iddo, as follows.”
Zechariah is telling us when he got these visions and they all may have
come to him on this day, we don’t know that is the case, but it is possible
that is what happened.
MacArthur
writes the following about visions: “Now
there were many visions in the Old Testament.
In fact, the word occurs 86 times in the Old Testament. It occurs 15 times in the New Testament, and
I think occurs 22 of those 86 times in the book of Daniel. So Daniel had a lot of visions. But from back in Genesis 15:1, we have
visions. And there it says, ‘After these
things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision.’ So God, for a long time has been communicating
His Word through visions. In Number 12:16, back in the Pentateuch, it says ‘If
there is a prophet among you, I, the Lord, make myself known to him in a
vision.’ God, historically from Abram
on, has made Himself known to the prophets in a vision.
“You say, ‘Well,
what is a vision?’ Well, I don’t know,
specifically; I never had a vision. But
basically a vision is an awareness of reality beyond the senses. You might want to call it a sixth sense, only
it’s more than just a premonition. It is
the ability to see beyond the human senses can perceive. It is extra-physical sight. For example, the prophet will see something
that cannot be seen by anyone else. To
the naked eye it is totally invisible, but to this additional sense, God makes
it revealed and clear.”
We will
look more at what MacArthur has to say about these verses in our next SD.
4/12/2016 4:28 PM
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