SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/1/2016 10:40 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
The Person of the Vision
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: Zechariah 4:14
Message of the verses: “14 Then he said, "These are the two
anointed ones who are standing by the Lord of the whole earth.’” “Then he said, “These are the two anointed
ones who stand by the Lord of the whole earth.” (ESV)
What we are
going to look at is the last part of this verse which speaks of the Lord Jesus
Christ, “That stand by the Lord of the whole earth.” MacArthur writes “It identifies Christ with
His reign in the world. Messiah is the
source, the channel of blessing flowing through the Spirit of God to the people
and then radiating back His glorious reality.
And He is none other than the Lord of the whole earth.”
In the
fourth chapter of the book of Micah we see a chapter that speaks of the end
times, starting with the very first verse and going to the thirteenth verse
which is the last verse in that chapter.
Now in that last verse we see the same description of Jesus Christ as
seen in this fourteenth verse from chapter four of Zechariah: “13 “Arise and thresh, daughter of Zion, For
your horn I will make iron And your hoofs I will make bronze, That you may
pulverize many peoples, That you may devote to the LORD their unjust gain And their wealth to the Lord of
all the earth.” So the Lord of
all the earth is the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ.
I now want
to quote anothersection from John MacArthur’s sermon that has in it something
very interesting we need to know: “So
the Lord of the whole earth is really the key to the whole thing. It's the
messianic Christ that pervades this thing. Sometimes in the Hebrew figures and in the Hebrew thinking there
will be a dramatic change in thought and we don't always pick it up. It seems very
clear that initially these two olive trees are the priestly and kingly offices
of Christ, but then there seems to be an introduction of thought altogether
when in verse 14 it describes these anointed ones as those standing by the Lord
of the whole earth, almost as
if they are persons. This same transition can be seen explicitly in
Revelation 11:4 because there you have a description of two witnesses who will
come in the time of the tribulation and they will announce to the world that
the king-priest is coming to take His kingdom and they are described in the 11thChapter
of Revelation and the 4thverse in these words: "The two olive trees and the two
candlesticks standing before the God of the earth."
“Now
there's an obvious parallel in the terminology of Zechariah 4:14 and Revelation
11:4, and so it may be that both are the same. That what you have here in 4:14 of Zechariah is a
prophecy not only of Messiah as king-priest, but of two very specific witnesses
who will declare that truth during the time of the tribulation. And as
you certainly know if you've studied the book of Revelation, from Revelation
Chapter 6 through 19 is the record of how the Messiah, the king-priest becomes
the Lord of the whole earth. So there is an interesting connection.
“Now
summing up very simply Zechariah has a vision. His vision sees Zerubbabel
completing the temple and the people restored. But far beyond that he sees the
nation restored, the nation having been redeemed brought back to the place of
being a witness as they're energized by the flow of the power of the Spirit of
God to radiate the truth of the very Messiah, who is the source of their
blessing.”
Ok we have
a little review of this chapter from this last paragraph from MacArthur’s sermon
to help us remember what we have been studying in this fourth chapter of
Zechariah’s prophecy.
I have
always heard that the two witnesses from Revelation chapter eleven were seen in
this fourth chapter of the book of Zechariah, and as I read and listened to the
sermon by John MacArthur it becomes clearer to me and for that I am
thankful.
It has not
been too long ago that we studied the book of Revelation as we looked at it for
most of last year (2015) and when we looked at it we found out that God is once
again dealing with the nation of Israel and in the seventh chapter we saw that
Israel was going to began once again to be witness to what God was doing during
these last seven years of the history on earth as we know it, for the
millennial kingdom will not be anything like what we live in now. We see in this seventh chapter the witness of
the 144,000 Jewish evangelists and then in the eleventh chapter we see the
witness of these two men spoken of in Zechariah chapter four, so God is using
these two events to witness to the whole world as to what is going to happen
during these seven years of great trouble.
I have to say that after I studied the ninth chapter of the book of
Daniel and learned that Daniel was praying about something that he knew was
going to happen that even today I include these 144,000 Jewish evangelists in
my prayers most every day, that God would even now, prepare their hearts for
service even though they don’t know at this time what they will be doing in the
end times. However it will happen for
God says it will.
6/1/2016 11:10 PM
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