SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/8/2016 10:08 PM
My Worship Time Focus: The City of Jerusalem will be Rebuilt
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: Zechariah 8:1-6
Message of the verses: “1 Then the word of the LORD of hosts came,
saying, 2 "Thus says the LORD of
hosts, ’I am exceedingly jealous for Zion, yes, with great wrath I am jealous
for her.’ 3 "Thus says the LORD, ’I will return to Zion and will dwell in the midst of
Jerusalem. Then Jerusalem will be called the City of Truth, and the
mountain of the LORD of hosts will be called the Holy Mountain.’ 4 "Thus
says the LORD of hosts, ’Old men and old women will again sit in the streets of
Jerusalem, each man with his staff in his hand because of age. 5 ’And the
streets of the city will be filled with boys and girls playing in its streets.’
6 “Thus says the LORD of hosts, ’If it is too difficult in the sight of the
remnant of this people in those days, will it also be too difficult in My
sight?’ declares the LORD of hosts.”
This
evening we begin looking at Zechariah chapter eight and Dr. Wiersbe entitles
this second main point from his fourth chapter on Zechariah “Promises
concerning Israel,” and that covers the entire eighth chapter. He writes the following in his introduction
to this section: “God’s people don’t
live on explanations; they live on promises.
Faith and hope are nourished by the promises of God given to us in the
Scriptures. That explains why Zechariah
dropped the discussion of the traditions and delivered a new message from the
Lord. In this message, he focused the people’s wonderful promises to encourage
them. Note the repetition of the phrase,
‘Thus saith the Lord,’ which is used ten times in this chapter.”
Let us go
back and look at Zechariah 1:14 “So the angel who was speaking with me said to
me, "Proclaim, saying, ’Thus says the LORD of hosts, "I am
exceedingly jealous for Jerusalem and Zion.”
We see in that verse something similar to what we read in these first
six verses of chapter eight, and that is God loves Jerusalem. God has a special place in His heart for the
city of Jerusalem.
I have
mentioned in earlier SD’s that the description of Jerusalem is given in Ezekiel
chapter’s 40-48 as Ezekiel goes into details about what the temple will look
like. Now as he gives the description of
the temple area we can learn that his description of the temple is so big that we
can conclude that Jerusalem will be a completely different looking city during
the millennial kingdom. After the Lord
returns to planet earth as described in Revelation chapter 19 He will begin to
separate the sheep from the goats as described in Matthew chapter 25. He will then remake the planet similar to
what it looked like when He first created it and then the millennial kingdom
will begin.
We see that
the Lord centers on the people of Jerusalem in this section of Scripture, not
just on Jerusalem as we see older people sitting around in Jerusalem, something
they could not have done during the last half of the tribulation period. We see children playing as they too are not
afraid as they were during the tribulation period. Dr. Wiersbe writes “In today’s man-made
cities, the elderly and the children aren’t safe in the streets or anywhere
else!” With the events that are going on
in our country at this time we surely will have to agree with Dr. Wiersbe’s
message here and this book was written many years ago.
Now we do
not have to wait for this prophecy to totally come true for us to have
compassion on the elderly and the children, we can do that now.
7/8/2016 10:28 PM
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