SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/14/2016 11:10 PM
My Worship Time Focus: 2nd Introduction to Zech. 3
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: Zechariah 3:1
Message of the verse: “1 Then he showed me Joshua the high priest
standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right hand to
accuse him.” As mentioned in our last SD
I want to look once again at chapters three and four from some of the things
that I have learned from John MacArthur’s sermons on these two chapters.
Now in
chapter three we will be looking at the fourth vision that Zechariah sees from
the Lord, and just to review what we were looking at in the first three John
MacArthur writes “And just to remind you that in the first three visions the
purpose of God was revealed in three areas:
the people will be restored, the enemies will be judged, and the city
will be built. That was primarily it. In fact in summing that up we would say that the
first three visions dealt with the externals.
They dealt with the physical elements, the restoring of the people, the
building of the city, and the judgment of the enemies. Now that had an historical significance in
the time of Zechariah, but has a prophetic significance way into the future
that is far more exciting, far more fulfilling yet to come.
“But the
crucial question aeries after the third vision, at least in the mind of anyone
who studies carefully because history tells us that the reason God sent them into
captivity was because of their sinfulness.
And while they were in captivity there wasn’t necessarily any great
sweeping revival. They came back to the
land, which is still rubble for all intense and purposes by Zechariah’s time
and the efforts to rebuild the temple are moving along a little faster now, but
there isn’t much progress there and the people are somewhat discouraged and
somewhat despairing and somewhat wondering whether their country will ever be
what it once was, and ever again know the glories of Solomon. And God comes along and says in those first
three visions, ‘I want to comfort you with the promise your city will be
rebuilt, your people will be restored, your enemies will be judged both now and
in a great future fulfillment.”
So the dilemma
is how is going to do this when the people are still sinful, in the same state
of mind that they were before the judgment of God came upon them. Now when we studied the book of Ezekiel we
found out that Ezekiel was preaching to the remnant and that remnant was just
as hardhearted as they were before they went into captivity. Another thing to remember is that when the
nation of Israel was once again made to be a nation in May of 1948 they surely
did not come into the land in any great revival, for as we go back to Ezekiel
in chapter 37 we see that they were described as a bunch of dry bones, and then
the rest of the body was put onto the bones, and then Ezekiel speaks of the
last thing they were to get was a new spirit, and as of yet they have not
received that new spirit for they are depending on the force of their armies to
keep them safe and not on the Lord, but we hope that some of these visions that
Zechariah has will be fulfilled in the lives of the people now living in
Israel.
What we
will see in this third chapter is things happen eternally to the remnant
beginning with the political and religious leaders, speaking of the High
Priest, Joshua and the governor who is Zerubbable, but we also see the tempter
in that first verse of chapter three, as he is always involved in the nation of
Israel, for if he can get Israel to do things that would stop the prophecies to
not be fulfilled he would win a great victory, but God will not let that happen.
We know
from our studies of Revelation that after the church has gone to heaven at the
rapture that the last seven years of Daniels prophecy will began to happen when
Antichrist makes a covenant with the nation of Israel which is suppose to last
for seven years, but in the middle of that treaty he will break it and Israel
will be left very much in trouble and will have to rely on the Lord for help,
something they should be doing even today.
God will then raise up the 144,000 Jewish evangelists, 12,000 from each
tribe to begin to bring revival to Israel and also to the Gentiles and what
will happen then he wants to “talk about, how he wants to show us how the
transformation takes place from ungodliness to godliness, for sin to
righteousness.” Now remember how prophecies from the OT can
have a fulfillment during the time they were written, and a further fulfillment
during the end times. Israel will have a
revival at the time Zechariah writes this and also one during the end times,
the tribulation period when God is once again dealing with Israel as the church
is gone.
MacArthur
writes “Now there are five elements in this that I want you to see and we’ll alliterate
them so you’ll hopefully remember them:
the divine choice, the divine condemnation, the divine cleansing, the
divine covenant and last, the divine Christ.
And you’ll notice that each one is divine. Each one involves God because the only
personality in the universe that can ever transform anybody is God. It’s all Him from beginning to end.”
5/14/2016 11:42 PM
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