SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/14/2016 11:03 PM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-2 Intro. To Zech. 5
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Zechariah 5:1-11
Message of the verses: “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."
“5 Then the angel who was speaking with me
went out and said to me, "Lift up now your eyes and see what this is going
forth." 6 I said, "What is it?" And he said, "This is the
ephah going forth." Again he said, "This is their appearance in all
the land 7 (and behold, a lead cover was lifted up); and this is a woman
sitting inside the ephah." 8 Then he said, "This is Wickedness!"
And he threw her down into the middle of the ephah and cast the lead weight on
its opening. 9 Then I lifted up my eyes and looked, and there two women were
coming out with the wind in their wings; and they had wings like the wings of a
stork, and they lifted up the ephah between the earth and the heavens. 10 I
said to the angel who was speaking with me, "Where are they taking the
ephah?" 11 Then he said to me, "To build a temple for her in the land
of Shinar; and when it is prepared, she will be set there on her own pedestal.’”
We
said in our last SD that we would quote a portion from John MacArthur’s sermon
on this fifth chapter of Zechariah.
“Now this is the subject of Zechariah Chapter 5. Let's look at it. At this point there have been five visions of the eight that we said were in this section. And we told you that basically these visions were for what purpose? Remember? To comfort Israel. And the first five have been very comforting, wonderfully comforting. And the natural question that would be asked at this point by any godly Jew would be this: God, it's very wonderful to hear about all this comfort, very wonderful to hear about what You're going to do in rebuilding and restoring the city and the temple and bringing the Messiah and all of these wonderful things, they're so great to hear, and making Your people the witness people and saving them and cleansing them. It's all great, but God what about the sinners and what about the ungodly? What happens to them? What is going to be their part in the kingdom? What is going to be their part in the great day of the restoration? And primarily they are referring to Jews and their thinking would be there are many Jews who are outwardly Hebrew but inwardly they're not Jews. They're not true Jews. There are many sinners that have prospered in their sin and they've caused suffering for the nation and that was true.
“As we told you before Zechariah was written they
had just come back from seventy years of captivity and the seventy years were
the price that they all paid for the sinners in their midst. Because there were
so many sinners the whole nation had to pay. And so they're simply saying there
are so many sinners who have seemed to prosper and their sin has caused so much
pain for everybody else what about them in the future? And from our vantage
point today we can understand how Zechariah's contemporaries might wonder about
that and we might be saying to ourselves, "Why is it that so many godless
Jews today seem to prosper?" Why? How is that?
“And the answer comes in Chapter 5. And the answer
is: God will deal with
them in His own time. And
when you question His time you are toying, not only with His sovereignty, but
watch this, you are
also toying with His grace. Because as Peter said, "God is
longsuffering, not willing that any should perish."
“Now remember the message of the first five visions
has been of comfort. Historically and prophetically it's been of comfort.
Historically the comfort came in the knowledge that they would rebuild their
temple in Zerubbabel's time and rebuild their wall and they'd have a sense of
security again and they'd begin to worship God. And do you know that from the
time that they rebuilt their temple, after the captivity, they have never been
idolatrous since? The Babylonian purged Israel of idolatry. They've never been
any false Gods' tolerated there. Oh they may worship money and things like
that, but none of the gods of the nations.
“And so there was a sense of restoration to
worship, and the prophecy historically said they would be safe from their
enemies, but there was much more to the prophecy than the historical and that
was the prophetic one. And
Zechariah was really looking way beyond Zerubbabel and way beyond Zechariah and
way beyond Nehemiah, and way beyond Haggai, the contemporary prophet, and he
was saying, "Some day there will be a glorious new city built with
unlimited boundaries. Remember that? And no walls, and a glorious
temple, and there will be an internal cleansing of the nation, as they are
brought into salvation, and we saw that in Chapter 3 as Joshua, the high
priest, symbolizes the people and he is cleansed. And they will be restored, as
we saw last time, to their original call to be God's witnesses to the world.
“And then in Chapter 5 God says but before that can
all happen God has to deal with sin. God has to deal with righteousness against
sinners, and that's what
this vision of Chapter 5 is talking about. And in fact there are two
visions here, really there are two visions but three parts, as we shall see.
And what its saying is that God will judge sinners. Barron who has written one
of the classic commentaries on Zechariah says, "The message here is this:
sin must be purged away, iniquity must be stamped out in the city of God, and
when the sinner is so wedded to his sin that he is no longer separable from it
he becomes the object of God's curse and must be cleansed away from the
earth." And I guess these visions that we will see in Chapter 5 should
force on our minds what Paul said when he called this kind of thing the
exceeding sinfulness of sin in Romans 7:13.
“A footnote as we look at these visions. Dr.
Ironside says, "It is noticeable as we go on with the series of visions,
there is less and less given in the way of interpretation. It is as though the
Lord would give enough in regard to the earlier visions to lay a solid
foundation for the understanding of the later ones." And the reason I say
that is because I want you to understand that we are interpreting them as we go
built upon what we've already known because there isn't much interpretation
given.
“Now let's look at three features in this chapter connected with two visions
but having three parts.
Number one, God's judgment on the sinner;
number two, God's judgment on sin; number three, God's judgment on the system.
God's judgment on the sinner, sin, and the system, and each has its unique
part.”
6/14/2016 11:19 PM
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