Saturday, October 8, 2016

The Gentiles will worship at Jerusalem (Zech. 14:16)


SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 10/8/2016 9:34 PM

My Worship Time                                                   Focus: The Gentiles will worship at Jerusalem

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Zechariah 14:16

            Message of the verses:  “16 Then it will come about that any who are left of all the nations that went against Jerusalem will go up from year to year to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, and to celebrate the Feast of Booths.”

            I have read in some places that one out of four people who are in the world at the time after the rapture of the church will be alive at the end of the tribulation.  In numbers I don’t know how many that will be as I don’t know how many will go in the rapture.  The reason that I am saying this is because in our verse tonight we see that Zechariah is telling us that “any who are left of all the nations that went against Jerusalem,” and he is to me, talking about the survivors of the tribulation period who are believers will be the ones who will go up to Jerusalem to worship the Lord.  Now remember after Jesus returns He will separate the sheep and the goats putting the goats into the lake of fire with Satan, the Antichrist, and the False prophet, so all who will be left to go into the kingdom will be the believers who are left after the tribulation period, some Gentiles and some Jews.  The kingdom will begin with all believers, however after children are born to these believers some of the children will not accept the forgiveness they need to become believers and so at that time not all will be believers.

            Dr. Wiersbe writes the following on this verse:  “Israel will have a ministry to the Gentiles who will trust the true and living God and come to Jerusalem to worship at His temple (Isa. 2:2-5; Zech. 2:10-13).  Of the seven annual feasts listed in Leviticus 23, the Feast of Tabernacles is the only one that will be celebrated during the Kingdom age (Lev. 23:33-44).  This feast commemorated the nation’s wilderness wanderings, but it also was a time of rejoicing at the bountiful blessings of the Lord during the harvest (v. 40).

            “But why celebrate only the Feast of Tabernacles?  Merrill Unger makes an excellent suggestion when he points out that the Feast of Tabernacles is the only one of the seven feasts of Leviticus 23 that will not have been fulfilled when the kingdom is established.”  What he is saying by not saying it is that all the other feasts will have been fulfilled through the person of Jesus Christ.  I have to say that this would be the most fun feast to celebrate because it is kind of like camping out only you build your own little place to live in for the length of the feast, and you can remember how the Lord took care of the children of Israel while they wondered around the wilderness for forty years.  As believers today we can remember how the Lord has taken care of us our entire life and celebrate that each month when we partake of the Lord’s Supper.

We have three more SD’s to look at in this portion of our journey going through Zechariah and then we will go back to looking at some of the things that John MacArthur brings up from his sermons on chapters 12-14.  Not sure how long that will take us, but we began this study in April of this year and hopefully we can finish it sometime late this year so we can them move onto the book of Malachi.

10/8/2016 9:57 PM

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