Divine Recompense (Zechariah 10:2-4)

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/6/2016 4:10 PM

My Worship Time                                                                              Focus:  Divine Recompense

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Zechariah 10:2-4

            Message of the verses:  “2 For the teraphim (“a kind of idol used in household shrine or worship”) speak iniquity, And the diviners see lying visions And tell false dreams; They comfort in vain. Therefore the people wander like sheep, They are afflicted, because there is no shepherd.”  “For the idols have spoken vanity, and the diviners have seen a lie, and have told false dreams; they comfort in vain: therefore they went their way as a flock, they were troubled, because there was no shepherd (KJV).”

            We are looking at the third thing that Israel is going to get in the Kingdom, as we have already seen that they will get the Divine Redeemer, and then the Divine rain, and not they will get Divine Recompense.  In verse two we see a picture of what Israel did before they went into captivity as idol worship was hated by the Lord and therefore He had to send them into captivity and since they came back to their land they stopped the worship of idols.  Now we see at the end of the verse that Israel were like sheep without a shepherd.  This was what I would call a trickledown effect for as the leaders did it so did the people of the land do the same thing.  When we studied the book of Ezekiel we saw that the leaders of Israel were actually worshiping idols in the temple of the Lord and because of that Ezekiel saw the glory of the Lord leave the temple.  I think the term is “Ichabod.”  “The word Ichabod means literally “inglorious” or “there is no glory.” The story is found in 1 Samuel, but the meaning of it is seen in the book of Ezekiel as the glory of the Lord leaves the temple.

            Now I gave the meaning of the word “teraphim” which is seen in the NASB and so we learn from this that the people of Israel had household idols that they worshiped.  This goes all the way back to Jacob and his wife Rachel as she stole her father’s household idols from him and he accused her of it but she lied to him and this did not end well for her.  You see Abraham came from an idol worshiping country, but the Lord called him out of there but he did not totally go into the Promised Land until his father died, so he was still around people who worshiped idols and it got worse as we look at the history of Israel before they went into captivity.

            Now as we go back to the end of the verse again looking at Israel with no shepherd I want to look at an interesting verse from the book of Hosea 3:4 which says “For the sons of Israel will remain for many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred pillar and without ephod or household idols.”  Israel stopped the worship of idols after leaving Babylon to come back to their land and at that point they did not have a king, nor would they have one until Jesus Christ offered Himself to be their King as seen in Luke 19, which happened on what we call Palm Sunday, but they rejected their King, not only rejected Him, but killed Him, and so they still do not have a King just as Hosea writes.

            I now quote from John MacArthur “Now you say, "Wait a minute. What's going on?" Now watch. Implied here is that what occurred in Israel's past...now watch this...what occurred in Israel's past, idolatry and the occult, for which God brought judgment on those shepherds will occur again. And I think there is a latent prophecy here that the prophet sees in the future, another idolatry in Israel, another involvement in the occult in Israel because of the false leaders and the false teachers that will rise up in the future. And God will come again and He will punish them. In visiting His flock, He will literally turn His flock into a battle horse to act in judgment against these false teachers.

            “Now you say, "You mean that's actually going to happen in the future?" I believe it is. "You mean you believe that Israel's going to turn to worshiping idols and Satan and the occult?" Yes. In fact, let me give you one illustration that will remind you that you probably believe that too. With whom does Israel make a pact in the Tribulation? Antichrist. What does Antichrist immediately do? He sets up in the midst of Jerusalem what? An image to himself and requires all of the humanity to bow to that image. The people, no question, will be trapped in this. The image, it says, will even speak. And so there will be occultism and there will be demonism. Believe me, when the Tribulation says that the doors of hell are open and the demons are all let loose, there will be demons in the world like never before. And the occult will reign supreme. And no question about it, in my mind, that Israel will get engulfed in this kind of idolatry, they will make a pact with the Antichrist, according to Daniel 9:27. They will get engulfed in that system before they're pulled out of it and that is really what Zechariah is saying. But then in the end, God will look with mercy on His people and He will take that very nation which has been victimized by these phony leaders and He will turn that flock of helpless sheep into a battle horse that will do war against those very shepherds and destroy them. And Jesus Christ Himself will ride, as it were, on the back of the battle horse which is itself Israel.

“Another passage that indicates this to us, that Israel will indeed be brought into a belief in idols and so forth is in Matthew 24. Because repeatedly in Matthew 24, it warns them along these lines. "For many shall come in My name, saying, I am Christ, and shall deceive many." Many false prophets, many false shepherds are going to come. Verse 11, "Many false prophets shall rise and shall deceive many." Same statement. Verse 23, "Then if any man shall say, Lo, here is Christ and there..believe it not for there shall arise false Christs, false prophets showing signs and wonders in so much if it were possible it would deceive the very elect."

“You see, Matthew says they're going to come. All the phony shepherds are going to come and they're going to deceive many people. Paul in writing to the Thessalonians in chapter 2 of 2 Thessalonians points up the fact that the Thessalonians need to be aware that Christ has not yet come because the apostasy hasn't yet come, but when the apostasy does come, there will come lying signs and wonders, deceiving many.

“So, there's coming a day when God's people are going to experience a delusion, a deception that's incredible. And believe me, God is even going to allow it because He's going to allow, as it were, all hell to break loose right up to its limits. And when its blown its last gasket, He's going to destroy it all. We know this is all the allowance of God because Isaiah 66:4 says, "I also...watch this, talking about the end times...I also will choose their delusions and I will bring their fears on them because when I called, none did answer. When I spoke, they didn't hear. But they did evil before My eyes and chose that in which I delighted not. I will choose their delusion," says God. I'll bring them on. And so God is going to allow the world to come into a delusion and Israel will be engulfed in it somehow and God in His wonderful grace will come in the midst of that delusion with a true shepherd to offer to them, the true shepherd as it were will get on their backs as they are transformed into the battle horse and they'll go out to conquer the ungodly.

“Verse 3 tells us essentially the same thing that we find in Isaiah and Ezekiel and the book of Revelation. Christ is going to come in judgment using the nation Israel as His war horse. In Zechariah chapter 12 we'll see this in detail...as we go from verses 1 to 9. We won't take the time to read it right now, but in verse 9 it says, "It will come to pass in that day, I'll seek to destroy all the nations that come against Israel." So God is going to use Israel as part of the force to destroy the nations. Chapter 14 of Zechariah tells us the very same thing. How He's going to come and fight against the enemy.

“A great principle here. The Lord is going to come and bring divine recompense and judge all oppressors, the end of verse 4 of chapter 10, "All oppressors will be thrown out." So the divine redeemer is part of Israel's redemption.”

After reading this and also after reading some of the books in the “Left Behind Series” I have to agree with what MacArthur is saying here.  All we have to do is look at what has gone on in Israel since they became a nation in 1948, how they were very religious when they first came back and were made a country, but things, like in our country are changing, and not changing for the good, so by the time, and this could be very soon, that the antichrist comes on the scene Israel may well be back worshiping some kind of idols, things like money, military might, and things found on TV.

9/6/2016 4:46 PM