SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/21/2016 10:30 PM
My Worship Time Focus: 2nd Introduction to Zech. 6
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: Zechariah 6:1-15
Message of the verses: “1 Now I lifted up my eyes again and looked, and behold,
four chariots were coming forth from between the two mountains; and the
mountains were bronze mountains. 2 With the first chariot were red horses, with the
second chariot black
horses, 3 with the third chariot white horses, and with the fourth chariot strong dappled horses. 4
Then I spoke and said to the
angel who was speaking with me, "What are these, my lord?" 5
The angel replied to me, "These are the four spirits of heaven, going forth after standing
before the Lord of all the earth, 6 with one of which the black horses are
going forth to the north country; and the white ones go forth after them, while
the dappled ones go forth to the south country. 7 “When the strong ones went
out, they were eager to go to patrol the earth." And He said, "Go,
patrol the earth." So they patrolled the earth. 8 Then He cried out to me
and spoke to me saying, "See, those who are going to the land of the north have appeased My wrath in
the land of the north."
“9 The word of the
LORD also came to me, saying, 10
"Take an offering from the exiles, from Heldai, Tobijah and
Jedaiah; and you go the same day and enter the house of Josiah the son of
Zephaniah, where they have arrived from Babylon. 11 “Take silver and gold, make an ornate crown and set it
on the head of Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest. 12 “Then
say to him, ’Thus says the LORD of hosts, "Behold, a man whose name is Branch, for He will
branch out from where He is; and He will build the temple of the LORD. 13 “Yes, it is He who will
build the temple of the LORD, and He who will bear the honor and sit and rule
on His throne. Thus, He will be a priest on His throne, and the counsel of
peace will be between the two offices."’ 14 “Now the crown will become a
reminder in the temple of the LORD to Helem, Tobijah, Jedaiah and Hen the son
of Zephaniah. 15 “Those who are far off will come and build the temple of the
LORD." Then you will know that the LORD of hosts has sent me to you. And
it will take place if
you completely obey the LORD your God.”
Now as we
have been doing in the past we will look at a part of the introduction from the
sermon that John MacArthur preached on this sixth chapter of Zechariah which he
entitled “Establishing God’s Kingdom on Earth.”
We will not quote all of it, but we will quote some of it that I think
will be a great benefit to all who read it.
“All of the prophecies to the Old Testament writers about the coming of Messiah were great prophetic truth. Now, they're past history to us. But God detailed many things about the future to His prophets.
“Now, let me use that as kind of an introduction to
Zechariah. I've mentioned to you that God knows everything and that within His
knowledge is the knowledge of all history past, present and future. And not
only that, there is the purpose of God working it out in fact so that God is
not a bystander observing it, but He is the one who is making it come to His
own purposes. Now, when God began to reveal this, He began to reveal to the Old
Testament prophets certain elements of the future. And, basically, there are four categories in which God
revealed the future. Number
one, God gave the prophets prophecies concerning the spiritual destiny
of Israel. If you study the Old Testament you will find the Old Testament is
just loaded with the spiritual destiny of Israel. In other words, God is saying
to them, you are going to come to judgment because of sin or you are going to
have this certain nation come and take you into captivity because of sin or on
the other hand, because you have been righteous, I will pour out My blessing.
Some day in the future, I will gather you into the land and I will restore you,
etc., etc. There is much about the spiritual destiny of Israel. The second category of
prophecy in the Old Testament is Messianic prophecy. There is much also about the coming Messiah.
It details His first coming and His second coming. It talks about His death and
resurrection as well as His coming to set up the kingdom. The third category of Old
Testament prophecy is what you'd call last day prophecy or God predicting events that
are gonna happen at the end of man's day. When the sum of all human wraps up,
certain events are gonna take place and those are repeatedly spoken of in the
Old Testament, frequently called the day of the Lord. So that you have then, first of all,
prophecies about the spiritual destiny of Israel, secondly, about the Messiah
and, thirdly, about the last days and then fourthly, you have many judgment prophecies...prophecies that
are based upon what God is going to do to ungodly nations and individuals.
“Now, I just gave you a short course in Old Testament
prophecy because
that's about the sum of it, those four categories...prophecy related to the
spiritual destiny of Israel, Messianic prophecy, last day prophecy and prophecy
related to the judgment of the ungodly. Now, I want to look at those prophecies from another
perspective, still just introducing the thought to you. I want to look
at those prophecies chronologically
and so I'll give you three
categories. Number one, in the Old Testament and New Testament we have prophecies already fulfilled.
There are prophecies already fulfilled. If you were around when I did the
series on Is the Bible Believable...which, incidentally, will be coming out as
a book on October 24 called Focus on Fact: Why You Can Trust the Bible...but when we were dealing
with that, I showed you prophecies regarding Babylon and Petra and Tyre and
Sidon and Chorazin and Capernaum and many, many cities where God said something
would happen and historically, it happened. And so there are many prophecies
already fulfilled. You read Hosea, you read Amos, you read Micah, you read
Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and you will find in all of those books prophecies
already having come to pass. And, certainly, all of the prophecies relative to
the birth and the life and the death and resurrection of Christ have come to
pass. Secondly,
there are not only prophecies already fulfilled, but there are prophecies being fulfilled.
Right now, there
are some Biblical prophecies being fulfilled. One that I can think of is the
statement of Jesus that when He went to the Father, He would send the Holy
Spirit and the Holy Spirit would come and indwell His people and empower them
for worldwide witness and that's being fulfilled right now, isn't it. Another
one is that God would send a new covenant and that God would make a personal
covenant with men, not like the old covenant, Jeremiah 31, and that's being
fulfilled right now as we are partakers in the new covenant. And so we find
that there are some prophecies being fulfilled. God also predicted that He
would gather Israel from around the world and it seems to me that that may be one of the prophecies right now
being fulfilled as God has restored His people to the land. But then,
thirdly, the third
category and an obvious one by now to you is prophecy not yet fulfilled. This is the prophecy that is
still in the future. Now, stay with me. I'm gonna give you four categories of these.
“Number one is the prophecies of the recovery of Palestine by Israel. Isaiah 27, Jeremiah 31, Ezekiel talks about this in 37 and so forth. But there is a prophecy area or category that says in the future, Israel will recover Palestine. Secondly, there is also a set of Old Testament prophecy that says Israel in the future will be saved and so we call that the national salvation of Israel. Thirdly, there is Old Testament prophecy and New Testament as well that says Israel's enemies will be destroyed. And fourthly, there is much Old Testament prophecy that says Messiah's kingdom will be established. So of the prophecy yet unfulfilled, you have these four: Israel will gain her land, Israel will be redeemed, God will judge the enemies of Israel and Himself and establish the Messianic kingdom.
“Now, as we've been studying Zechariah, we have
seen Zechariah deal...mark this...with every one of the elements of Old Testament prophecy that
I've just read to you, or just reported to you, every one of them. In these eight visions
that we've been looking at that began in chapter 1, the eight visions that make
up the middle section of the book, in these eight visions we have seen, for
example, these last four categories. We have seen God talk about Israel taking
the land. We've seen God talk about the national salvation of Israel. And tonight we're gonna see the
last two, the
destruction of God's enemies and the establishing of the Messianic kingdom.
And so there is, in a sense, to these visions, a chronological order. The visions also record for
us those first four categories I gave you of all prophecy in the Old Testament.
We've heard the prophet speak of the spiritual destiny of Israel, the coming
Messiah, the last days and the judgment of Godless nations. So it's all here
and that's why Zechariah, historically, has been such a loaded book. It's been
just studied and studied and studied because of the tremendous impact that it
makes on the prophetic picture of the Word of God.
“Now, in that last little group of four...just
forget the rest of it and start there...that last little group of four...we've
already studied two...we saw in the visions already past, the total recovery of
Palestine by the tribes of Israel. Remember how we saw the man with the
measuring line who measured the city and we saw the people being brought back
and Jerusalem being enlarged and they occupied their own area? And the second
one, the promise of national salvation, we saw that in the vision of chapter 3
where we saw Joshua, the high priest, who represented Israel and his garments
were cleansed and he was given a clean robe to put on and that was the picture of
the cleansing and the salvation of Israel. So we've seen those two. That leaves
us two more. In the final
chapter we want to see the destruction of Israel's enemies and the establishing
of Messiah's kingdom on the earth. That is precisely where history is going. History
is going to the time when God acts in judgment against His enemies and
establishes His kingdom on the earth.
“Now, we come to chapter 6 and a most fascinating
vision. And it helps us to see how God is going to judge the world and set up
His kingdom. Now, we've talked a lot about the kingdom. I don't want to belabor
the point tonight. I know you have, most of you, good teaching and a good
understanding of it. But just for a minute let me say this. Can you imagine a
world where justice always prevails, where righteousness and goodness is the
rule and dominates, where there is total and lasting peace, where joy reigns, a
world where health is widespread and somebody who dies a hundred years old,
dies a baby, a world where children can play in snake pits and lions and lambs
can walk together with bears and cows and all be led by a little child? Can you
imagine a world where agriculture is profuse and food is plenty even with the
greatest population explosion in man's history? Can you imagine a world ruled
by the loving, saving, perfect Ruler, Jesus Christ? Can you imagine a world
where all the people of God are the exalted rulers and the unbelieving are
judged by the rod of the divine Judge, the Lord Himself? If you can imagine
that world, that you will find to be the millennial kingdom and that is God's
plan for the future. It's coming. It's the new world that comes when Jesus
comes.
“Now, in this chapter we see these final two elements of setting up the kingdom: the negative, the destruction of the enemy; the positive, the establishing of Christ on the throne. God, as it were, dethrones the world of all of its Godless monarchs. God wipes clean, governments, and establishes Christ as the great final Ruler. It's like a divine coup, if you will. God just usurps the earth, taking it back, if you remember the history of the Bible, from the one who usurped it in the beginning, Satan himself. So you have two elements, the negative and the positive and I want to look at them from two words. One is condemnation and the other is coronation.”
We will begin to look at this first element in our next SD on Zechariah chapter six.
6/21/2016 11:00 PM
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