SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/13/2016 2:55 PM
My Worship Time Focus: The Divine Plan for Jerusalem P-2
Bible Reading & Mediation 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.”
We want to
focus in on verse eight in this Spiritual Diary and as in our last one we will
have some quotes from John MacArthur along with more things to say about this
verse.
Let us
begin with looking at the man who was riding on a red horse, and when we define
this color red we have to know that that color was not bright red like the
color of a bright red sports car, but this horses color was reddish brown kind
of like the way that the Bible describes Esau, as Esau had red hair, but kind
of reddish brown.
As we look
at horses the way they are used in the Old Testament we are looking at war, not
all of the time, but mostly when you read about horses in the Old Testament you
also see wars. Think of when we studied
the book of Revelation and near the end in chapter nineteen we see Jesus Christ
coming back on a white horse, and He is coming back when the greatest war ever
to happen on planet earth was happening, as He comes back to end that war and
judge the nations. Another thing we can
learn from the book of Revelation and a red horse is found in chapter six where
we read: “3 When He broke the second
seal, I heard the second living creature saying, "Come." 4 And
another, a red horse,
went out; and to him who sat on it, it was granted to take peace from the earth, and that men would
slay one another; and a great sword was given to him.” What this horse represents in a bloody war,
so the read horse represents war and also blood. As we continue to look at our verse in
Zechariah we can get an idea of what is going to happen in this vision.
We have
already mentioned that the rider of this horse in the preincarnate Jesus
Christ, the Lord of Heavens Armies as we went over this in an earlier SD.
Now we move
onto the myrtle trees, which are actually more like shrubs and from what I have
learned there are a very large supply of these in the land of Israel. John MacArthur writes “And so all of a sudden
we see here a whole lot of myrtles everywhere.
They are common to the land of Israel; they are flourishing in this
place. Incidentally, the word ‘myrtle’
in Hebrew is ‘hedasa’ and a synonym for it is Ester. The name Ester is actually hedasian the
Hebrew, which means myrtle. So that a
name, a beautiful name, to a Jew who would see something very lovely in a
myrtle bush. In fact, it’s interesting
In Isaiah 41-I don’t want to get all into horticulture here, but this kind of
interesting-but in Isaiah 41, Isaiah 41:19 and Isaiah 55:13, it says that when
the millennium comes, there will be tremendous flourishing of the myrtle. So God even likes it. There’s goanna be plenty of it. God liked it enough to put it in Israel once
and he likes it enough to fill up the millennium with them.”
Now we have
seen a man, who is the preincarnate Jesus Christ, on a red horse which symbols war,
near some beautiful myrtle trees which are actually bushes, and He is in a ravine,
but we have not talked about where this is.
This ravine is near Jerusalem, just outside of Jerusalem where we see
the Kidron Valley. MacArthur writes “If
you look directly east from say the – or let’s say you’re on the Mount of
Olives to the east of the city. Between
you and the Mosque of Omar and the Dome of the Rock, there is a valley, just
goes down and up. There’s no passage
there, it’s just a valley. That is the
Kidron Valley, and as the Kidron Valley proceeds to the south, it makes a bend
around Mount Zion, and connects up with another valley, known as the Valley of
Henum. And where the Valley of Henum and
the Valley of Kidron meet, there is the lowest place outside the city of
Jerusalem. It was called ‘The Hollow’
and the spot had always been a garden.
In fact, in 2 Kings 24 it says ‘The King’s garden was in the hollow, or
the ravine where Kidron and Henum met.’
And most likely, that’s what you have here. In a low place outside the city sits a red
horse with a rider on top, amidst some flourishing myrtles, that flourish in
the shade and the water that would rein in that area.”
We will stop here and pick it up in our next SD.
4/13/2016 3:35 PM
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