Divine Cleansing (Zech. 3:4)

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/20/2016 11:54 PM

My Worship Time                                                                              Focus:  Divine Cleansing

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Zechariah 3:4

            Message of the verse:  “4 He spoke and said to those who were standing before him, saying, "Remove the filthy garments from him." Again he said to him, "See, I have taken your iniquity away from you and will clothe you with festal robes."”

            As we begin to look at this verse we can see that the one who spoke is Jehovah and He is talking to His angels, and so He said to his angels “Behold I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I will clothe thee with a change of raiment (KJV).”  However when we look at the NASB we see that the change of clothes is “festal robes.”  One may ask the question “how can God just forgive their sin?”  Well God is able to do this as one day the Lord Jesus Christ would die on the cross to pay for their sin and that is mercy and that is grace, holding back what they deserve and giving them what they don’t deserve. 

            Now we will quote from John MacArthur on these “festal robes:”  “The key thing, I love it, at the end of verse 4, "I'll clothe thee with change of raiment." Literally the Hebrew says I'll put on you festival garments. Let me give you a little history. The high priest had some interesting clothes. You know get into Exodus 28, Leviticus Chapter 8 and some of those places, particularly Exodus 28. You read a lot about the priest clothes. Let me give you a little idea, little bit of high priestly fashion here. Basically the high priest wore some linen things. He had a just your basic linen outfit, right? Linen pants and a linen coat. Nothing fancy, but it was white and it represented purity and so forth. Well undoubtedly that's what he was wearing as he was there in the vision in verse 1. He had on his linen. It was filthy, just vile and the Lord said, "Get rid of it you angels and I got a whole change of raiment for him."

“Now the priest also had what were called his holy garments for glory and beauty. In Exodus 28 and Leviticus 8, it talks about they were made of gold, real gold, beautiful blue cloth, purple scarlet fine linen. There were onyx stones engraved with the twelve tribes of Israel, there was a breastplate with twelve precious stones and inscriptions on that, there was a fantastic turban on his head, something that was wrapped on his head and on the front had a gold plate and you remember what it said? It said holiness unto the Lord. I mean that's some kind of outfit. Fantastic! And he says, "Look get rid of that old dirty stuff. I'm going to put on his robes of glory and beauty and his holiness to the Lord hat." And right now Zechariah can't stand it any longer and he jumps into the vision and verse 5, "And I said, 'Well let them set a clean hat on his head.'" Do it is what he's saying. Do the whole shot, give him every bit of it. Zechariah just gets right in there.

“You want to hear something? On the Day of Atonement when Aaron went in to offer the sacrifices, listen, he wore his simple linen outfit and when atonement had been made he came out and put on his festival garments. See, so the Lord is saying I'm going to make atonement for them and when atonement is over I'm going to put on their festival clothes.

 That's the kingdom, folks. That's what God has planned for His people. It's exciting. You see God is going to clean His people up. Marvelous salvation, holiness to the Lord! They're going to be His priests again. Israel will be the high priestly nation, their place of priesthood will return. And you know what I like, verse 5, "So they set a clean turban on his head and they clothed him with garments," and I love this statement, "And the angel of the Lord stood by." And I would like to add, comma, smiling.

“You see he was approving, wasn't he? Why did they say, "And the angel of the Lord stood by?" Just so everybody knew this was what was right. Don't you think it will be a great day for Christ when He sees the people that turned their back on Him turn their face to Him? Don't you think it will be an exciting day for Him when He recognizes that they will look on Him with love, whom they once look on with hatred? The angel of the Lord stood by. A divine choice, a divine condemnation, but a divine cleansing leads to a divine covenant.”

5/21/2016 12:06 AM