SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/12/2016 8:30 PM
My Worship Time Focus: Introduction to Zech. Eleven
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: Zechariah 11
Message of the verses: “1 Open your doors, O Lebanon, That a fire
may feed on your cedars. 2 Wail, O cypress, for the cedar has fallen, Because
the glorious trees have been destroyed; Wail, O oaks of Bashan, For the
impenetrable forest has come down. 3 There is a sound of the shepherds’ wail,
For their glory is ruined; There is a sound of the young lions’ roar, For the
pride of the Jordan is ruined.
“4 Thus says the
LORD my God, "Pasture the flock doomed to slaughter. 5 “Those who buy them
slay them and go unpunished, and each of those who sell them says, ’Blessed be
the LORD, for I have become rich!’ And their own shepherds have no pity on them.
6 "For I will no longer have pity on the inhabitants of the land,"
declares the LORD; "but behold, I will cause the men to fall, each into
another’s power and into the power of his king; and they will strike the land,
and I will not deliver them from their power." 7 So I pastured the flock
doomed to slaughter, hence the afflicted of the flock. And I took for myself
two staffs: the one I called Favor and the other I called Union; so I pastured
the flock. 8 Then I annihilated the three shepherds in one month, for my soul
was impatient with them, and their soul also was weary of me. 9 Then I said,
"I will not pasture you. What is to die, let it die, and what is to be
annihilated, let it be annihilated; and let those who are left eat one
another’s flesh." 10 I took my staff Favor and cut it in pieces, to break
my covenant which I had made with all the peoples. 11 So it was broken on that
day, and thus the afflicted of the flock who were watching me realized that it
was the word of the LORD. 12 I said to them, "If it is good in your sight,
give me my wages; but if not, never mind!" So they weighed out thirty
shekels of silver as my wages. 13 Then the LORD said to me, "Throw it to
the potter, that magnificent price at which I was valued by them." So I
took the thirty shekels of silver and threw them to the potter in the house of
the LORD. 14 Then I cut in pieces my second staff Union, to break the
brotherhood between Judah and Israel.
“15 The LORD said
to me, "Take again for yourself the equipment of a foolish shepherd.
16 "For behold, I am going to raise
up a shepherd in the land who will not care for the perishing, seek the
scattered, heal the broken, or sustain the one standing, but will devour the
flesh of the fat sheep and tear off their hoofs. 17 “Woe to the worthless
shepherd Who leaves the flock! A sword will be on his arm And on his right eye!
His arm will be totally withered And his right eye will be blind.’”
I had mentioned
in an earlier SD that I had a difficult time trying to figure out what time
period chapters nine and ten were speaking of, and if I got an answer then I
would record it. Dr. Wiersbe begins his
introductory commentary on chapter eleven by writing what could give us a
clue: He writes: “The two chapters we just surveyed indicated that Israel will be in
trouble in the last days until their Messiah comes to rescue them, cleanse them,
and give them a kingdom. How did they get into this trouble?”
As we look
at the history of the nation of Israel beginning with their kings David and his
son Solomon we see that they were the most powerful nation in all of the area,
but after the death of Solomon the nation split which brought about their
downward spiral ending with the Northern Kingdom’s defeat at the hands of the
Assyrians and the Southern Kingdoms defeat at the hands of the Babylonians.
After
seventy years of promised captivity a small number of Jews went back to
Jerusalem to rebuild the city of Jerusalem and also the temple. As we read through this history in the books
of Nehemiah and also Ezra, along with the post exile prophets which include Haggai
and also Zechariah and Malachi, we see that times were very difficult for those
who returned to do the work of rebuilding.
Then around 400 years later our Lord Jesus Christ was born and 30 years
after that He began His ministry to the Jewish people. Forty years after the Jews had Jesus Christ
crucified the Romans came in and once again destroyed the city and the temple
and the Jews were then dispersed around the world, something that is spoken of
in the book of Deuteronomy.
Dr. Wiersbe
then explains about what we will look at in this 11th chapter of
Zechariah: “This chapter explains the
nation’s rejection of the true Messiah and how they will accept a false
messiah, the Antichrist, who will appear at the end of the age and deceive the
whole world. The key image in the
chapter is that of the shepherd, and three different shepherds are presented.”
8/12/2016 8:51 PM
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