SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/6/2016 8:53 PM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-4 “The Coming day of the Lord”
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: Zechariah 14:5-7
Message of the verses: “5 You will flee by the valley of My
mountains, for the valley of the mountains will reach to Azel; yes, you will
flee just as you fled before the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of
Judah. Then the LORD, my God, will come, and all the holy ones with Him! 6 In that day there will be
no light; the luminaries will dwindle. 7 For it will be a unique day which is known to the LORD,
neither day nor night, but it will come about that at evening time there will
be light.”
As I was
listening to the sermon that goes along with what we are now looking at from
Zechariah chapter 14 I noticed that a great part of that sermon has to do with
this first point, a point we have been looking at for the last four Spiritual
Diaries, and so whether or not we get done with it today is not for certain.
Let us
begin by looking at verse five where we once again are talking about this
valley that will be made when the Lord returns and His foot rests on the Mount
of Olives. Let us look at Joel chapter
three to help us out with this verse as it speaks of the mountains and the
valley. Now the following are verses in
Joel chapter three that contain the word valley from the NASB95 version: “Joe 3:2
I will gather all the nations And bring them down to the valley of Jehoshaphat.
Then I will enter into judgment with them there On behalf of My people and My
inheritance, Israel, Whom they have scattered among the nations; And they have
divided up My land. Joe 3:12 Let the
nations be aroused And come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat, For there I will sit to judge All the
surrounding nations. Joe 3:14 Multitudes,
multitudes in the valley of decision! For the day of the LORD is near in the
valley of decision. Joe 3:18 And in that
day The mountains will drip with sweet wine, And the hills will flow with milk,
And all the brooks of Judah will flow with water; And a spring will go out from
the house of the LORD To water the valley of Shittim.” Now my limited understanding of what the
Valley of Jehoshaphat is, is that this is what the valley will be called which
will be created when the Lord Jesus Christ returns from heaven and His foot
rests on the Mount of Olives and then an earthquake will come about to produce
this valley. Now as we look at verse
three we see the words “My valley” and this means that it belongs to the Lord
and we also see the word Azel or Azal there too. This word means that it is near and so the
people who are the remnant will not have to travel to far to get to this new
valley.
Now I want
to quote from the 19th chapter of the book of Revelation and if you
want more information on this chapter you can look for my Spiritual Diaries
that I did last year (2015) on the entire book of Revelation, but we are at
this time only look at chapter 19 and verse eleven: “11 And I saw heaven opened, and behold, a
white horse, and He who sat on it is called Faithful and True, and in
righteousness He judges and wages war.”
The Greek for white as seen in “white horse” means a dazzling brilliant
horse. As we look at this verse and the
following verse in chapter 19 we see that this is going to be the fulfillment
of what we have been studying in Zechariah.
Jesus will return from heaven with a host of followers of which will be
angels and also saints, that is the raptured believers and in MacArthur’s
sermon he states that possibly the OT saints will be coming too. This is the first time that I have heard this
opinion and so I don’t know whether or not this will happen, but at this point
as we look at this section of Zechariah it is not that important. We know that the OT saints will be
resurrected, and I believe that this will happen sometime before the millennial
kingdom will begin. Let us look at some
more verses from Revelation chapter 19 “12 His eyes are a flame of fire, and on
His head are many diadems; and He has a name written on Him which no one knows
except Himself. 13 He is clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is
called The Word of God. 14 And the armies which are in heaven, clothed in fine
linen, white and clean, were following Him on white horses. 15 From His mouth
comes a sharp sword, so that with it He may strike down the nations, and He
will rule them with a rod of iron; and He treads the wine press of the fierce
wrath of God, the Almighty. 16 And on His robe and on His thigh He has a name
written, "KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.’” As stated before you can look at my SD from
10-10-2015 to help you understand what these verses are teaching us and then go
to the next day’s to find out more.
Now we want
to look at verses 6-7 which talk about the change of nature that will happen
during this time, as verse 7 of Zechariah 14 tells us that this is going to be
a “unique day” and I would suppose that would be a great understatement to say
the least. I think it best to quote a
paragraph or two from MacArthur’s sermon so we can understand what this is
talking about.
“Look, there are some more changes in nature. Quickly, verse 6, I'm going to read you the proper rendering, "It shall come to pass in that day there will be no light, the luminaries will fade." In other words, when Jesus comes, all of the stars and the suns of heaven are going to go out. The heaven is going to just be black, all the lights are going to go out. Now this is discussed all over the Old Testament. This is not something just extracted out of this one text. Repeatedly the Old Testament talks about the day when God changes the patterns of heaven. Isaiah 13:9, "The day of the Lord comes cruel with wrath and anger, the stars of heaven and the constellations there of shall not give their light, the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause its light to shine." Isaiah 24 talks about it, Joel 3 talks about it, Matthew 24 talks about it and maybe the most clear passage is Revelation 6:12 to 14 where it says, "The lights of heaven go out, the heaven is rolled up like a scroll, the stars fall out of the sky like figs overripe when the tree is shaken, the whole place goes black." And in the midst of the blackness comes the blazing revelation of Jesus Christ with all His saints. Now I believe this is really going to happen literally. And at that moment Israel is going to turn and look and they're going to believe and they're going to turn to their Messiah and they're going to be wonderfully saved and spared judgment and gathered into the Kingdom.
“You say, "What does the rest of the world
do?" They cry for the mountains and the rocks, "Fall on us and hide
us from the face of Him that sits on the throne and from the wrath of the
Lamb." The unbelievers scream in fear and terror. But the remnant is
redeemed. The nation is redeemed.
“The next verse gives us another thought of the
uniqueness of the day. "It shall be one day," and the word in Hebrew
"one" here means one day, the only one of its kind, one unique day
like no other day, "which shall be known to the Lord, only He can know all
that it involves, it won't be day and it won't be night, it will come to pass
that at evening time it will be light." In other words, the whole of
nature is just going to go into an imbalance. The whole thing is out of
perspective. All that we understand as night and day is going to be ended at
that point. All the stars fall, the suns and the moons are all gone. And Christ
comes and it's a new kind of day. And He will become day so that even when it's
evening it will be light because He'll be coming in blazing glory. This also
makes me kind of think that maybe it's going to take a few days for Him to get
here, not because He needs the time but because man needs the time to get
ready.
“And then when He comes, of course, His whole
blazing glory will fill the Kingdom, fill the earth. He will arise, says
Malachi, the Son of righteousness with healing in His beams. Here He comes, the
blazing Son of righteousness with healing in His beams. Blazing out of heaven
and for all who fall into that light in faith, there will be instant salvation.
For all who curse the light, judgment. And it shall be, verse 8 says, in that
day that the living waters shall go out from Jerusalem, half of them toward the
former sea, half of them toward the hinder sea, and summer and winter shall it
be. Jerusalem's going to be dramatically changed.
“You know what's going to happen? Right in the
middle of Jerusalem, which is Mount Moriah where the temple would be, right in
the middle underneath that rock that's there, somehow God's going to crack open
the ground and create a gushing spring that's going to send rivers running in
both directions, east and west. One toward the Dead Sea, the Dead Sea to the
east. And one toward the west.
I think we will end this SD here as we will next look at “The crowning of the Lord as King” beginning with verse nine in our next SD.
11/6/2016 9:28 PM
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