SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/26/2016 2:43 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 The Purpose of the Vision
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: Zechariah 4:4-5
Message of the verses: “4 Then I said to the angel who was speaking
with me saying, "What are these, my lord?" 5 So the angel who was
speaking with me answered and said to me, "Do you not know what these
are?" And I said, "No, my lord."”
The angel
is asking Zechariah “do you know what these are?” He was referring to the bowls which is seen
in verse two: “2 He said to me,
"What do you see?" And I said, "I see, and behold, a lampstand
all of gold with its bowl
on the top of it, and its seven lamps on it with seven spouts belonging
to each of the lamps which are on the top of it,” and so the question is what
is the bowl for and what does it represent.
What does oil symbolize in the New Testament and even in the Old
Testament is the question we have to answer.
Oil represents the Holy Spirit and so the bowl on the top represents the
Holy Spirit.
John
MacArthur writes “But what's interesting to me is that fact that you have this
bowl and out of this bowl flowing to the nation Israel in their millennial
witness are 49 channels of the power of the Holy Spirit. You see the point that
is being made? The point here is that there will be an unlimited supply of
power from the Holy Spirit. And you remember the words of Joel where Joel says,
"In the last days I will, what, pour out my spirit on all flesh and
remarkable things will happen." And so in the millennial picture we see the
nation Israel as the lamp stand, we see the Spirit of God being poured out in
profusion so that the light becomes gloriously brilliant. And all of it really
is a declaration of the one who is the light, none other than Jesus the
Messiah.”
Now when
you look at this vision you see, as we have talked about before that all of
this is automatic, the oil is produced from the olive tree, and the olive oil
goes into the bowl and then into the lamp stand so that you have a continued
light without anyone to work on it like they did in the OT.
Next we
look at the two olive trees and ask what are they? Let’s look at verse 14b “"These are the
two anointed ones who are standing by the Lord of the whole earth."” In the nation of Israel there are two people
who are anointed, and one of them is the king, and the other is the high priest
as these represent the religious and the spiritual offices of Israel. Zerubbable who was in line to be king as he
came from the line of David, and so he would be the civic leader and Joshua the
high priest the religious portion of Israel.
Now prophetically who is the One who is both King and High Priest? Well that is of course Jesus Christ.
MacArthur
writes “And so Zechariah recognizes this and he is seeing Christ here. So
summing it up we have the light of Messiah provided by the golden oil, and it's
called golden oil in verse 12 because of its preciousness, the light of Messiah
provided by the golden oil poured into the lamp stand of Israel and that's
basically what Zechariah sees. And the actual source of all of it is none other
than the Messiah himself so the thing goes full circle.”
We have
looked at the presentation of the vision, along with the purpose of the vision
and in our next SD we will look at the power of the vision.
5/26/2016 3:05 PM
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