SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 10/4/2016 7:27 PM
My Worship Time Focus: The Nation will be Refined
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: Zechariah 13:8-9
Message of the verses: “8 “It will come about in all the land,"
Declares the LORD, "That two parts in it will be cut off and perish; But
the third will be left in it. 9 “And I will bring the third part through the
fire, Refine them as silver is refined, And test them as gold is tested. They
will call on My name, And I will answer them; I will say, ’They are My people,’
And they will say, ’The LORD is my God.’"”
As we begin
looking at these verses I want to say something that I think goes along with
these verses as we see from the book of Revelation. 13 And in that hour there was a great
earthquake, and a tenth of the city fell; seven thousand people were killed in
the earthquake, and the
rest were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven (Rev. 11:13).” Notice the highlighted portion of this verse
as it tells us that those who did not die were terrified and then gave glory to
the God of heaven. Now first of all this
has not been the normal as we looked at the book of Revelation, that is people
giving glory to God after an earthquake.
“And they said to the mountains and to the rocks, "Fall on us and
hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of
the Lamb (Rev. 6:16).” My point here is
that when most of these plagues fell upon the people they were upset with the Lord,
however in 11:13 they praised the Lord and I think that this is the time when
as Paul writes that “all Israel will be saved.”
This also goes along in my mind with our verses from today in Zechariah
13:8-9. Now I have to say that there is
another plague later on in Revelation where “the great city” is mentioned and
perhaps that could also be the fulfillment of these verses in Zechariah. The point is that there will come a day when
the Lord will refine the nation of Israel during the tribulation period and as
the Lord says through Zechariah a third part will go through the fire where He
will refine them like silver and gold are refined and tested.
When
Zechariah talks about gold and silver we can think that this image reminds us
of the value God has put upon His people Israel as they are like gold and
silver that are in need of being refined. I mentioned that for over 35 years I
worked in a foundry where we made engine blocks, heads, and other parts and
they all had to be made with the kind of iron they were suppose to get, and as
I melted the iron in what is called a cupola the very worst problem that I
could run into is to have too much “slag” or dross as this caused the iron to
be worthless. God is also in the
refining business as he refines people from their sin to make them like the
Lord Jesus Christ.
Dr. Wiersbe
concludes the following from his commentary on this section: “Before we leave this section, we need to see
the spiritual application for God’s people today. Certainly the church is a defiled people who
need to repent and be cleansed, and the promise of forgiveness is still valid
(1 John 1:9). God often has to put us
through the furnace of suffering before we’ll call on Him and seek His face (Heb.
12:3-11; 1 Peter 4:12). If God’s people
will follow the instructions of 2 Chronicle 7:14, the Lord will cleanse and
bless the church and bring healing to the land.”
10/4/2016 7:49 PM
No comments:
Post a Comment