SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/15/2016 9:51 PM
My Worship Time Focus: The Divine Choice
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.”
Zechariah
sees another vision and this time he sees Joshua the High Priest, not to be
confused with the Joshua who led the children of Israel into the Promised
Land. We also see this Joshua in the
book of Haggai too. I would imagine that
may parents named their sons Joshua because of what Joshua did leading the
children of Israel into the Promised Land.
This Joshua was the son of Johozadak who was a contemporary of
Zerubbable as seen in the book of Haggai.
So we see that Johozadak came back from Babylon with Zerubbable and now
his son is Joshua, the High Priest.
As we look
at this verse we see that this Joshua is more than the High Priest, for he
represents the nation of Israel. Now
John MacArthur gives four reasons why Joshua represents Israel: “Reason number one that I believe he refers
to Israel is because in the other seven visions they all have a broad bearing
on the nation. None of them has a relationship to one man, so that in this
situation it is consistent with all the rest that this individual symbolize the
nation. And by the way, a high priest
himself, he was totally insignificant.
His only significant comes as he’s identified in this way.
“Secondly,
the high priest is always known as the representative of the people. When the high priest goes into the Holy of
Holies on Yam Kippur, the day atonement and makes atonement, he is acting in
behalf of the whole nation. He is
identified as if he were the whole people.
For them he prayed, for them he sacrificed, and what happens to him
happens to the nation. And as we see the
vision move along we’ll see this.
“Third
reason is that where it talks about Joshua in verse 1, it immediately switches
and talks about Jerusalem in verse 2 and Jerusalem is one of God's favorite
titles for His people Israel. He calls them by the name of their city, so that
in verse 2 He says O Satan is rebuked, even the Lord rebukes you who has chosen
Jerusalem, not chosen Joshua. In fact Joshua just kind of fades away and is
identified as Jerusalem in the next verse.
“And also
the key is the fourth reason verse 8, "And hear now, O Joshua the high
priest, thou and thy fellows who sit before thee, for they are men wondered
at." The Hebrew word means they are symbolic; they are symbols. We will
see that in a minute. So Joshua and the other priests are symbols. They are
symbols of what, of the nation that Joshua represents.
“Now then
here we see in the scene this high priest symbolizing Israel. He is standing
before the angel of the Lord, and who is that? It's Christ, second person of
the Trinity called, incidentally very wonderful truth here, the angel of the
Lord in verse 2 is just called Jehovah, which is wonderful to know that the
angel of the Lord was Christ and was none other than God Himself. And
incidentally the angel of the Lord is also involved in the act of forgiving sin
in verse 4, which means again that He is deity. So then here we see Joshua the
high priest representing Israel standing before the angel of the Lord and the
angel of Jehovah all through these visions always standing next to Israel
because He's deliverer and He's Israel's protector and He is the one who will
return as the deliverer out of Zion in Paul's words in Romans 11, to save His
people, only then not in the form of the angel of the Lord, but in the form of
the Lord Jesus Christ. And so again the people are encouraged because standing
by is the angel of the Lord. And remember I told you they hadn't heard a thing
about the angel of the Lord for at least two hundred years and now he's back.
Our protector is back; our deliverer is back wanting to encourage them.
We will
continue looking at this section in our next SD.
5/15/2016 10:11 PM
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