SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 10/3/2016 8:25 PM
My Worship Time Focus: The Nation will be Cleansed
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: Zechariah 13:1-7
Message of the verses: “1 "In that day a fountain will be opened for the
house of David and for the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin and for impurity.
2 "It will come about in
that day," declares the LORD of hosts, "that I will cut off
the names of the idols from the land, and they will no longer be remembered;
and I will also remove the prophets and the unclean spirit from the land.
3 "And if anyone still prophesies,
then his father and mother who gave birth to him will say to him, ’You shall
not live, for you have spoken falsely in the name of the LORD’; and his father
and mother who gave birth to him will pierce him through when he prophesies. 4 “Also it will come
about in that day
that the prophets will each be ashamed of his vision when he prophesies, and
they will not put on a hairy robe in order to deceive; 5 but he will say, ’I am
not a prophet; I am a tiller of the ground, for a man sold me as a slave in my
youth.’ 6 “And one will say to him, ’What are these wounds between your arms?’
Then he will say, ’Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.’
“7 "Awake, O sword, against My
Shepherd, And against the man, My Associate," Declares the LORD of hosts.”Strike the Shepherd that the
sheep may be scattered; And I will turn My hand against the little ones.”
Now as far
as I have learned this phrase “in that day” is talking about the end times,
either the tribulation period or the 1000 year reign of Messiah on the earth,
so that narrows it down to what we are looking at. In the former days the prophets including
both Isaiah and Jeremiah had admonished the nation to wash themselves to make
themselves clean before the Lord, but they refused to listen, but now in
response to Israel’s repentance and faith the Lord will wash them clean! This is a part of the new covenant which
Jeremiah wrote about in Jeremiah 31:31-34 “31
"Behold, days are coming," declares the LORD, "when I
will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah,
32 not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them
by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they
broke, although I was a husband to them," declares the LORD. 33 "But this is the covenant which I
will make with the house of Israel after those days," declares the
LORD, "I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it;
and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. 34 "They will not
teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ’Know the
LORD,’ for they will all
know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them," declares
the LORD, "for I will
forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.’” The writer of the book of Hebrews adds some
of these verses to his writing in chapter eight as he speaks about the new
covenant there telling his readers that Jesus Christ is the Mediator of this
New Covenant.
Dr. Wiersbe
points out that William Cowper based his hymn “There is a Fountain Filled with
Blood” on Zechariah 13:1. In the OT Law
the Jews could clean themselves on the outside with the external washing with water,
but for internal cleansing the sinful heart of men and women can only be
cleansed by the blood of the Savior. “And
He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also
for those of the whole world (1 John 2:2).”
We see in
verse two that the Land will also be cleansed as all of the idols will be
destroyed and never used again. Not only
will the idols be gotten rid of but also the false prophets as seen in verses
3-6, so God will cleanse the land thoroughly.
Now we need to discuss verse seven as we see
in contrast to the false shepherds we see the true Shepherd. It just so happened that as I was listening
to my Bible on DVD yesterday morning that I was listening to Matthew 26:31
where Jesus quoted a part of this prophecy when He was on His way to Gethsemane
with His disciples, and that is exactly what happened as when the officers led
Jesus away all of His disciples ran away.
Dr. Wiersbe writes “Only Jesus the Messiah could the Father call ‘the
man who is My fellow,’ that is, ‘the man who is My equal.’ (See John 10:30 and
14:9).
“But there
is also a wider meaning of this text as it relates to the scattering of the
nation in AD 70 when Jerusalem was taken by the Romans. The Jews had smitten their Shepherd on the
cross (Isa. 53:10), and this act of rejection led to the nation being scattered
(Deut. 28:64; 29:24-25). Israel today is
a dispersed people, but one day they shall be gathered; they are a defiled
people, but one day they shall be cleansed.”
10/3/2016 8:55 PM
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