SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/28/2016 3:18 PM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-2 The Future Glory of Jerusalem
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: Zechariah 2:1-5
Message of the verses: Now in our last SD we quoted from a sermon by
John MacArthur “The Future Glory of Jerusalem” which gave us a short history of
the city of Jerusalem. Now I want to
begin this SD with another short quote from that sermon which gives us a brief
review of the visions that we saw in the first chapter of Zechariah: “You remember that the first vision of the
rider of the red horse predicted hope for downtrodden Israel. The second vision presented of the horns and
the smiths presented the fact that the nations that hand triumphed over Israel
would be crushed. And now the third
vision says your hope will be realized when the nations are crushed and
Jerusalem is glorified. Now I want to
look at six parts to this vision and I think you’ll see how it unfolds.” We begin this SD by beginning to look at
these six parts to the vision which is in Zechariah chapter two.
The first
part is entitled “The design Proposed.” “1
Then I lifted up my eyes and looked, and behold, there was a man with a
measuring line in his hand (Zech. 2:1).”
Now it is good of us to remember that Zechariah received eight visions
and that he received them all in one night.
We are not sure what he did between visions, perhaps he would bow his
head and pray for in verse one we see that he lifted up his eyes, so he may
have been praying about the vision he just saw.
Perhaps he was looking at what we have determined as the interrupting
angle. We have mentioned that it is
difficult for us to understand what any of the prophets went through when they
received a vision from the Lord, but we can be sure that it was not an easy thing
to go through. After Daniel received one
of his visions he was sick for many days.
These prophets were seeing thing, in many cases things that they did not
truly understand, and in many times it was far off in the future when these
things would happen, which is probably the case in this vision that he writes
about here. Zechariah sees a man with a
measuring line in his hand, which we could understand as a tape measure in
today’s language. We have mentioned that
when a person measures something it is because he has ownership of it. Zechariah asks the man with the tape “2 So I
said, "Where are you going?" And he said to me, "To measure
Jerusalem, to see how wide it is and how long it is (V – 2).” This man is laying out the city of Jerusalem.
Now I will
not go into the details of why it is that John MacArthur believes that this
person who is laying out the city of Jerusalem is, but he believes that this
once again is the preincarnate Jesus Christ.
We will look briefly at Ezekiel chapter forty, and when we were studying
the book of Ezekiel we learned that chapters 40-48 were future events that will
take place in the Millennial Kingdom, as Ezekiel also sees a person with a
measuring tape measuring the city of Jerusalem and what Ezekiel sees is
something much larger than what we see in Jerusalem today. Now remember that this will take place when
Jesus Christ returns to planet earth to end the great battle of Armageddon and
the earth will be in very bad shape, but He will put the earth back together
again and when He does this we must believe that Jerusalem will be the size of what
Ezekiel sees in chapters 40-48 and also what we will be looking at in this
vision. Ezekiel 40:2 says “In the
visions of God He brought me into the land of Israel and set me on a very high
mountain, and on it to the south there was a structure like a city.” He has to be talking about the city of
Jerusalem here. Again it is very
possible that the person doing the measuring here is the preincarnate Jesus
Christ.
The answer
that Zechariah gets is that this person is going to measure the length and
width of Jerusalem. Now as mentioned I
believe that the city that this person is measuring is not the present city of
Jerusalem in Zechariah’s day, but the city of Jerusalem in the Millennial
Kingdom age. The city in Zechariah’s day
was all broken down with no walls intact and not temple completed so perhaps
this is why Zechariah is kind of stunned.
Part two is
entitled “The Destined Plan.” “3 And
behold, the angel who was speaking with me was going out, and another angel was
coming out to meet him, 4 and said to him, "Run, speak to that young man,
saying, ’Jerusalem will be inhabited without walls because of the multitude of
men and cattle within it.” MacArthur
writes “Another angel went out to meet him.’
And so over here you have the man in the scene, and over here you have
Zechariah, and in the middle you have these two angels who all of a sudden
begin to converse,” and he goes on to write “Run and speak to this young man.’ In other words he says interpreter angel you
go back and tell Zechariah this message.
God back and tell the young man this message and this is the message: ‘Jerusalem shall be inhabited like towns
without walls, for the multitude of men and cattle in it.’ Stop right there. You go tell him that the reason he can’t
figure it out is because it will be so vast that it will be as if there is a
city without walls.” Zechariah could not
understand that, for all major cities during his time had walls. When we read the book of Nehemiah we see that
the most important thing he wanted to accomplish was to build the walls around
Jerusalem and also build the gates, and the gates in that time were the first
line of defense against their enemies for they were not little gates like a
person has today, but very large gates, and most of the time they were double,
one in front of the other, so all of this was strange for Zechariah. However when you think about the time period
that this prophecy will take place the Lord Jesus Christ will be on the throne
of David in Jerusalem so there will be no need of walls and gates. Look at verse five “5 ’For I,’ declares the
LORD, ’will be a wall of fire around her, and I will be the glory in her
midst.’"” MacArthur writes “The
root verb in the Hebrew perasmeans to
exceed limits, to overflow its bounds, to spread or expand and the millennial
Jerusalem, the Jerusalem of the king, the Jerusalem yet when Jesus returns will
be so big and so populated with people and animals that it will go way past its
walls, it will spread all over the place and God will be its wall.” We will look more at verse five in our next
SD when we look at point number three, “the divine protector.”
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