SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/21/2016 12:57 PM
My Worship Time Focus: The Divine covenant
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: Zechariah 3:6-7
Message of the verses: “6 And the angel of the LORD admonished
Joshua, saying, 7 “Thus says the LORD of hosts, ’If you will walk in My ways
and if you will perform My service, then you will also govern My house and also
have charge of My courts, and I will grant you free access among these who are
standing here.”
Now the
first thing is a reminder of the Lord of Hosts and that is the Lord of Heaven’s
Armies which surely show His attribute of being all powerful. Next what we see in these two verses is a
covenant, a covenant between God and Israel.
In our last SD we saw how the Lord promised to cleanse the people of
Israel and now that He has cleansed them He makes this covenant with them. The covenant we see here has two conditions
in it and notice the first condition which is that Israel is to walk in the
ways of the Lord. God wants them to live
like Him, and we have to realize how extremely difficult that is. Paul writes that we are to “be followers of
me as I am of Christ,” showing that Paul followed Christ through the power of
His indwelling Spirit and tells us that we can do that too. Now I believe that this speaks of the future
when the Lord will save all Israel as Paul also wrote about to the Romans. It is my belief that when we get to a point
in the tribulation period where there is a great earthquake in the city of
Jerusalem and after that earthquake we something different that we saw in
earlier earthquakes as seen in the book of Revelation where the people would
curse God, knowing that He was the One causing these judgments. However in this case we see that the Jewish
people turned to the Lord as they too knew that He was bringing this judgment
on them, but this would led them to repentance and it is at this time when I
believe that those who survived this earthquake will all turn to the Lord and
thus all Israel will be saved at that time.
It is my belief because of all the prophecies that pertain to the
Millennial Kingdom that this is when this covenant will be fulfilled in its
fullest. Now the second element is they
are to “keep God’s charge.” MacArthur
writes “and that means a faithful performance of obedience to His will. So when Israel becomes like God and obedient
to God that’s the condition upon which the cleansing takes place. From God’s sovereignty it’s going to happen,
but it’s going to happen when God graciously moves on the hearts of His people
and they turn to Him and they receive salvation, the Spirit of God indwells
them, they have a new capacity to be like God and a new desire to obey His
will. And then He says I’m going to give
you two wonderful blessings, blessing number one: you can judge My house and keep My
courts. In other words you will get back
where you belong as My priest nation.”
Now as we read about the Millennial Kingdom prophecies we see that it is
going to be the people of Israel who will bring the people of the world to know
who Jesus Christ is during that time period and that is the function of a
priest.
MacArthur
goes on “And secondly, this is beautiful:
‘I’ll give you places to walk among those who stand by, or these who
stand by.’ Who were the ones who stood
by God to do His bidding? Angels. So he says I’m going to let you roam the
places where the angels roam. Now what’s
that talking about? That’s talking about
the eternal state, isn’t it? You’re not
only going to be special, as my priest nation, but when that’s all over you’re
going to come be with me and roam My heavens like My angels do.”
We have one
more to look at and that is the divine Christ and we will try and get that done
in our next SD.
5/21/2016 1:26 PM
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