SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/15/2016 10:47 PM
My Worship Time Focus: God’s Judgment on the Sinner
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: Zechariah 5:1-4
Message of the verses: “1 Then I lifted up my eyes again and looked,
and behold, there was a flying scroll. 2 And he said to me, "What do you
see?" And I answered, "I see a flying scroll; its length is twenty
cubits and its width ten cubits." 3 Then he said to me, "This is the curse that is going
forth over the face of the whole land; surely everyone who steals will
be purged away according to the writing on one side, and everyone who swears
will be purged away according to the writing on the other side. 4 "I will
make it go forth," declares the LORD of hosts, "and it will enter the
house of the thief and the house of the one who swears falsely by My name; and
it will spend the night within that house and consume it with its timber and
stones."”
When we
looked at this section earlier we noticed that in the NASB and the NIV uses the
word “land” while the KJV uses the word “world.” Some think that this is only talking about
the land of Israel, while others think this is speaking of the entire world,
which makes more sense because of the way we have been looking at the timing of
these later visions in the book of Zechariah.
John
MacArthur states that there are three elements we can see from these verses, “the
criterion for God’s judgment, the completeness of God’s judgment, and the
certainty of God’s judgment.” We will
take these one at a time and so I am not sure how far we will get in this first
SD on these verses.
“The
Criterion for God’s Judgment” comes from verse one “1 Then I lifted up my eyes
again and looked, and behold, there was a flying scroll.” The Hebrew word for flying scroll is megillahin” and what we are looking at
is two sticks and on these two sticks is papyrus or in some cases hide,
something to write on. One thing we need
to remember is that the Hebrew language goes backwards from what we are used to
looking at. Our language goes from the
left to the right side of the page, while Hebrew goes from the left side to the
right side of the page, so on this scroll they would begin on the left side as
they read and then go to the right side.
We are
given the size of this scroll, as it is a very large scroll, some 30 feet by 15
feet; yes it is a big scroll for sure.
30X15 is a good size room, let along the size of a scroll. Now the Holy
place in the temple is exactly the same size as this scroll. John MacArthur writes “If you see something
that is exactly the size of the Holy Place, that means that God has made that
thing to conform to divine dimensions.
Okay? That means that the scroll
is a divine standard.”
He goes on
to say “Do you get the point? God made
that scroll to conform to the Holy Place in the tabernacle in the temple
because that was the form of divine measurement, and the flying scroll is
simply the curse that is based on God’s divine measures. That’s the criterion for judgment. This is a symbol of the word of God, and it
is the word of God that is alive and powerful and sharper than any two-edged
sword that pierces and divides asunder.
It is the word of god that is the criterion.”
Now we went
over what I am about to write earlier, but I want to add some more to what I
wrote, and that is that what we are looking at that was written on this scroll
is what the two tablets of the Ten Commandments are which speaks of the Mosaic
Law when it was given on tables of stone.
Now we add the following onto what we wrote earlier as again I quote
from MacArthur “What it is saying is that it is a divine standard by which God
is going to judge. God sets the criterion
for judging sin. In Romans 2:1 Paul
says, ‘Thou art inexcusable O man, whosoever art that judges for when in thou
judges another thou condemmest thyself; for thou that judges doeth the same
things.’ Now watch, ‘But we are sure that the judgment of God is according to
truth.’”
God
judgment is going to be based on “Truth” something we have been looking at in
our study of John’s gospel, chapter eight.
It is not a judgment of man’s work for salvation, for that will never
work. Now God’s Word is truth, and God’s
Son is truth, and God’s Spirit is truth for He is the Spirit of Truth. So we see that the criterion for judgment, is
the word of God. Take a look at our SD
on John 8:31a and then on our next one that will be on John 8: 32b.
6/15/2016 11:22 PM
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