SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/2/2016 8:30 PM
My Worship Time Focus: Preparation for the King
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: Zechariah 9:1-8
Message of the verses: “1 The burden of
the word of the LORD is against the land of Hadrach, with Damascus as its resting place (for the eyes of
men, especially of all the tribes of Israel, are toward the LORD), 2 And Hamath also, which borders on it; Tyre and Sidon, though they
are very wise. 3 For Tyre
built herself a fortress And piled up silver like dust, And gold like the mire
of the streets. 4 Behold, the Lord will dispossess her And cast her wealth into
the sea; And she will be consumed with fire. 5 Ashkelon will see it and be afraid. Gaza too will writhe in
great pain; Also Ekron,
for her expectation has been confounded. Moreover, the king will perish from Gaza; And Ashkelon will not be
inhabited. 6 And a mongrel race will dwell in Ashdod, And I will cut off the pride of the Philistines. 7 And I will
remove their blood from their mouth And their detestable things from between
their teeth. Then they also will be a remnant for our God, And be like a clan
in Judah, And Ekron like a Jebusite. 8 But I will
camp around My house because of an army, Because of him who passes by and returns; And no
oppressor will pass over them anymore, For now I have seen with My eyes.”
As one
looks at these verses one may wonder why Dr. Wiersbe entitles this first
sub-section the way he did. Now as we
look at these verses we see many nations in them, and I will try and highlight
each of them to see how many there are in these verses. Now what we are looking
at here is the movement of the army of Alexander the great as he moves his armies
through this region, and you can follow his movement as you move down these
verses with the exception of the nation of Israel, for he will not bother
Israel even though he said that he was going to, but the Lord had a different
plan than his. Dr. Wiersbe writes that
Alexander defeated the Persians in 333 B.C. at the Battle of Issus and then
turned to conquer the leading cities of Phoenicia.” Now as we look back at our study of the book
of Daniel we will see that Daniel predicted the rise of Alexander the Great as
a winged leopard in Daniel 7:6 and also a fighting he-goat in Daniel chapter
eight. When one reads this section and
the portion in the book of Daniel and then reads the history books that speak
of what Alexander the Great did in this area what they will see is that prophecy
was history pre-written, and Daniel and also Zechariah wrote some of these
prophecies.
Dr. Wiersbe
reports that Hadrach “was a region to the far north of Palestine, bordered by
the Euphrates River, and Damascus was the capital of Syria.” These were the first two areas that Alexander
the Great took captive. Next his Greek
army then went down the Phoenician coast, taking more and more cities and then
He got to Tyre and Sidon which was in the North and then went to Ashkelon and
also Gaza which are in the south. We
read something a bit peculiar in verse seven “And I will remove their blood
from their mouth And their detestable things from between their teeth.” This speaks of the way that they worshiped
their idols, as the blood has to do with their idol worship and God used
Alexander to defeat them in order to stop their idol worship. Defeating the Philistines was also prophesied
in other OT prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah and also Ezekiel, along with Amos.
We will continue to look at these verses in our next Spiritual
Diary on the book of Zechariah.
8/2/2016 8:59 PM
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