Devastation or Salvation?

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

The opportunity though that we do have together this morning is to celebrate many of the good things that God has given to us. So we celebrate major events in our lives by God’s grace. We also celebrate our eternal salvation and we do that together week by week on Sunday mornings. And as we begin that time we remember our help is in the name of the Lord. Remember this and stand firm. Recall it to mind, you transgressors. Remember the former things of old. For I am God, and there is no other. I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things not yet done, saying my counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose.

Calling a bird of prey from the east, the man of my counsel from afar country. I have spoken and I will bring it to pass. I have purposed and I will do it. Let’s pray. Lord, the nations worship gods that are not gods. As ancient Babylon served mute and deaf idols stooping down under their many burdens, so we are surrounded by those who do not know your way. But we know you. And we’ve assembled this morning to remember together that there is no God like you, the Alpha and Omega. You do all that you please, your word accomplishes all that you purpose. So let us not be stubborn of heart. Let us be humble, falling down to worship you.

Let us exalt in your salvation, singing of your righteousness and learning to love you as we repent. And we ask this in Jesus name, amen. In a few weeks, I plan to start teaching verse by verse through another book of the Bible, and that is going to be the book of Revelation. There are good reasons to study Revelation on Sundays, and I’ll probably explain some of my intentions in the introductory message. I’m telling you now ahead of time, not just so that you can make plans or so that you you can prepare your arguments one way or another. Part of the reason I’m telling you now is so that you can be excited. On a higher level, God also reveals many things He plans to do and often some of His reasons for those things.

God does not only tell us what was and what is, but also often what will be. When the Lord sends a prophet with a word and that word comes to pass, the Lord demonstrates that his word is trustworthy. That’s one of the things he intends to accomplish by telling us ahead of time some things so that when those things happen, we see he’s trustworthy. It also enables us to know that he knows the end from the beginning. We read that in Isaiah in the call to worship passage. It also just shows God’s nature as a God who communicates.

not keep everything hidden. So prophecy, including future plans, causes us to worship God. For those who hear and keep His word, it also causes us to be excited. Excited for what He says is still to come. Think about, and there’s lots of things we could choose, but think about Isaiah 53 from the perspective of Isaiah’s original audience. Think about the anticipation that was built for them in reading Isaiah 53, what they didn’t know, but we know now would not even be fulfilled for about 700 years. I’m telling you, I’m going to start Revelation in like three weeks. They were looking forward to the fulfillment of these words for about 700 years.

We know who the suffering servant of Isaiah 53 is. We know his name, Jesus, the son of the Virgin Mary, from Nazareth. We know him. What the Israelites knew, though, reading Isaiah or hearing Isaiah 53, what they knew was that they were sinners, and that they were in a cycle of sinning and then needing to sacrifice to cover those sins. They needed someone who could cover it completely and finally. While the promise to deliver in Isaiah 53 would not fit all of their expectations, they had every reason to be excited for his coming. It wasn’t just an issue of getting the information. It was an issue of trusting God and anticipating the fulfillment of what God said he was going to do.

We worship the Lord because of who he is and what he has done and what he has said about tomorrow. So don’t be anxious. That’s one application. And also, remember that a farmer is not pessimistic about all the seed deaths in the field. He’s not pessimistic about all of the challenges along the way. He knows that those seed deaths are actually going to make for an abundant harvest. So listen carefully to the word of the Lord about the future and believe. Trust. Be excited for His fulfilling of what He has promised to do. And today’s message is going to have some more for for us to get excited about as well a little bit later in the service.

For now, are you listening and heeding to God’s word? Are you paying attention to what he says, not just about what has happened, but what will? If that brings to mind things that you need to make right with him, if there are other sins that the Spirit is convicting you of, then now’s the time in our service to worship him by humbly submitting and confessing those sins, seeking his forgiveness from the purchase price of the suffering servant. As usual, you are invited to kneel in humble confession, and then I’ll pray for us corporately in a minute or so. Let’s pray. Father, whatever we plan to do, we ought to, if not explicitly say, we at least need to remember that we make plans, and then it is according to your will, Lord willing, that those things will happen.

You do what you will. And so we ask forgiveness for our dim hope and our dull hearts in light of that reality. We confess that we don’t actually listen that well to you. And so we are impatient or panicked or unprepared for the future. Please humble us so that we can be lifted to deep confidence in you. Please forgive us for sloppy hearing of your word or partial hearing of your word or convenient hearing of your word. make us eager and watching and obeying as your people. And Lord, the prophetic word of judgment on those who won’t submit to you is sure. Our nation is trying to make a future for itself apart from acknowledging you, and that actually is a self-fulfilling plan, guaranteeing futility and your righteous wrath.

So please grant repentance, turn many men away from their own ways, and grant them faith, turning away from self-reliance, and draw many to the only Savior, Jesus the Lord. Thank you for his sacrifice, that you sent him to bear our iniquities that we might be brought to you. And we pray all this in his name, amen.

You’re invited to stand in the reminder of the purchase price and the purchaser of our forgiveness and salvation in Isaiah 53. Out of the anguish of his soul, he shall see and be satisfied by his knowledge, the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore I will divide him apportioned with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death, and was numbered with the transgressors, yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors. And if you are a believer in him, then your sins have been fully covered. They have been fully paid. You are not continuing to pay them off. You’re not paying them off in part, not even a teeny little bit.

He is the one who was numbered with us and took our sins on onto him so that we could be saved. And that is a reason for us to be thankful and for us to sing. So let’s do that together. The reading this morning is from Zechariah chapter 12 verses 1 through 5. I’ll be reading from the ESV. So Zechariah chapter 12 verse 1. The Oracle of the Word of the Lord concerning Israel thus declares the Lord who stretched out the heavens and founded the earth and formed the Spirit of man within him. Behold I am about to make Jerusalem a cup of staggering to all the surrounding peoples. The siege of Jerusalem will also be against Judah.

On that day I will make Jerusalem a heavy stone for all the peoples. All who lift it will surely hurt themselves, and all the nations of the earth will gather against it. On that day, declares the Lord, I will strike every home with panic and its rider with madness. But for the sake of the house of Judah, I will keep my eyes open when I strike every home, horse of the people’s with blindness. Then the clans of Judah shall say to themselves, the inhabitants of Jerusalem have strength through the Lord of hosts, their God. Let’s pray. Father, the reading this morning speaks of the sure and fearful judgment you bring upon any people who oppose you.

The psalmist wrote, the Lord reigns, let the people tremble. He sits enthroned upon the cherubim. Let the earthquake, the Lord is great in Zion. He is exalted over all the people. There is none who can question your judgments, for they are altogether righteous. There is none who can resist your decrees, for your will is irresistible. And yet the foolish do question your judgments, and the arrogant do fight against your will. But we who call upon your name this morning humbly acknowledge that you are the great I am. We gladly bend the knee to worship you and give you all the glory and honor. We marvel to watch your plan of redemption unfold in ways no human could have predicted.

Truly your ways are not our ways, and your thoughts are not our thoughts. Teach us, O Lord, your ways and your thoughts. Then we will have understanding, and our path will be straight. Continue to purify your church until it reflects the full radiance of Christ. We ask that you guard our own assembly and keep us sound in doctrine, holy in practice, and devoted to genuine love. We are mindful that the enemy of our souls is constantly looking for ways to steal our joy and diminish our faith. We pray for those parts of the church universal that have gone astray from the truth, A true gospel and are now weak or even apostate.

May you bring your loving hand of discipline to bear so that they might learn obedience to your word and no longer be a stain upon the reputation of the church. We pray for the persecuted church. May they have the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen in the midst of their sufferings. We pray especially for the saints in India who are afflicted, who we are affiliated with through project 92. Recent elections there have caused a massive surge in Hindu nationalism and the Christians are experiencing opposition, threats, and even death. May they, by the grace you supply, persevere in preaching Christ and may their suffering be rewarded with many professions of faith.

We pray for our nation this morning as the next election cycle heats up. It is to our national shame that we have such a dearth of godly candidates. All governments derive their authority and legitimacy from you. We ask that you raise up candidates for office who know you and understand the proper role of government. We ask that you remove those political leaders who advocate ungodly policies and laws. Father, our nation has sinned in ways that warrants your most severe of judgments. We pray that you would bring about a genuine spiritual revival and that our motto in God we trust would be our inspiration rather than our indictment.

We pray for those with physical needs this morning. We pray for Ralph as he continues his cancer treatments. The doctor reports that the cancer appears to be moving towards remission and that he might only need one more round of treatment. We pray that this be the case and that his bones can begin to strengthen. We pray for Mary Kay as she goes to have a cataract removed from her other eye. We ask for that procedure to go well and her vision to be greatly improved. We pray that the doctors would be able to help her find relief from the other physical problems she is having. We ask that both she and Ralph would, in the midst of so many physical challenges, find your grace sufficient, and that their hope and glory yet to be revealed would sustain them.

We continue to pray for Debbie that you would completely cure her of her cancer. Thank you again that she is able to lead a fairly normal life. And we pray for many opportunities for her and Dave to share Christ with the cancer patients that they encounter. We pray for Jeff this morning as he reports that he suffered a mini-stroke this past week and had be hospitalized briefly. We thank you that he’s doing much better and is with us this morning and we just pray that you would continue to strengthen his body and that the doctors can get to the root cause of these problems and solve them and I pray especially that you just give him strength this week as he prepares to officiate his son’s wedding this coming Saturday.

We pray for Bruce Kleenan, a friend to summon this church. We ask that Bruce would fully recover from recent strokes and that there would be no more recurrences. We also ask that the doctors would be able to figure out the cause of several other health issues that Bruce has and successfully treat them. And we pray that Bruce and his wife Brandi experience genuine peace and comfort as they walk through this unexpected trial. Father, given all the ways that human weakness manifests itself, it’s absurd how much man boasts in his own strength.

The reality is that man’s life is but a vapor or a spark that flies up from a fire. May our boast this morning be in you alone and may we say like the clans of Judah that our strength comes from the Lord. We pray all this in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Let’s pray. Father we thank you for this time and this time to look into your word about things of the future and prophecies that are there. Help me to speak and honor you and through your spirit correct those things that I say that are wrong and help us all to strive to know what you would have us know from the things coming in the future in your son’s name Jesus Christ amen. To start this out today I first want to say that in our what we believe we elders have pulled that information together on what we think the Bible says to us and how we should worship, how we should believe, and what we should believe.

And you’ll notice that some things are not finely detailed in specific things, you know, that this bold judgment will have that or even the rapture isn’t in there. But we do speak to issues that we think the Bible is clear about. And the thing we stand on that tradition because out of the Reformation came the teaching, it was by faith alone that we got saved. And those Catholic priests that wanted to reform the Catholic Church, the ones that wanted to reform it, saw that that was the issue. It wasn’t by works, right? It was by grace. Out of that and before that, people were wanting the Bible for themselves. And the issue was those people gave their lives and were burned at the stake to bring the Bible to the people.

And when they had it in their hands, then they needed to be able to read it. Hence came education, to educate them to read it with the assumption that you could read and understand what was in this book. Now the thing is, if you’re reading a story, a story has all kinds of things. It has symbolism and all kinds of picturesque language and things. But basically, the story’s being told in plain English and what it says we should obey. For instance, I’ve been to many conferences where covenantal types, dispensational types, amillennials, premillennials, all those guys all in the same room, celebrating together for the gospel, but not wanting to touch those little fringe issues that the Bible, we think, speaks clearly to.

One of them being baptism. It says, believe and be baptized. Well, therefore, you have to be an age where you can believe and follow those things. Just simple, that’s the reading. The simple reading of prophecy. Jesus is coming back and a whole bunch of stuff is going to happen. And describing exactly what all that stuff is gets really hard to do. But it’s pretty obvious if you just read the story, he’s coming back. He’s not very happy with what’s going on. And he’s going to fix it up. And according to the word, he will have a kingdom here on earth and superintendent for a period of time. We believe in millennium, because that’s of the Bible says, and we put that in our thing because that’s what’s clearly said in the Bible.

Now the people against us would say, well, it’s not clearly said, it could be symbolic, it’s only one verse, it says millennium, yada, yada, yada. But what I want you to start to see today is that I think we are really woefully educated in prophetic literature. How many sermons have you listened to out of the minor prophets. How many sermons have you listened to in the second half of Ezekiel? How many sermons have you listened to in the later halves of Isaiah?

I would be willing to guess, not even close to what you’ve heard in the New Testament, or church polity, or how we should live, and you know me, the golden rule is the issue, make that happen in your business, your life, everything you’re doing, do unto others as you’d have them do to you, you’ve summed up the law and the prophets, live that way. And that’s what the New Testament teaches. And it tells us all kinds of really good day-to-day stuff that we need to obey. But when getting in this subject, we woefully neglect huge chunks of our Bible. If you just take your Bible and grab from Isaiah onto the New Testament, you get a chunk like that.

If you grab then Revelation and put that together with it, now it grows to about there. And then you start realizing, oh wait a minute, there’s parts of Daniel that are this, there’s things in Genesis that are prophecies. And so you start clicking all that together, you’re going to get a huge amount of the Bible telling you what is to come. And some of those prophecies, the near and the far of them have happened and other parts of it haven’t happened yet, okay? That’s a whole nother study of prophecy. The whole purpose of what I’m trying to do today, and I’m really glad that Sean let the cat out of the bag that he was gonna do Revelation, before I had the knowledge that he was gonna do that, I mean, I knew he was going to do it in the future, but as you guys know, we have lots of interesting studies.

studies, we have our Kyperian comradery, which delves into this subject a lot. And when you get into this thing, I’ve realized that most of the people that I’m arguing with have really not read prophetic literature, the parts of the Bible, very carefully. They read it and dismiss it as picturesque language, or it’s too difficult to understand, and who knows, and let’s just get done what we gotta do today kind of stuff to dismiss it off. And when you start reading it and start really studying it and trying to understand what does this word mean and that kind of thing, I’m gonna take a little tiny chunk, the first five verses in chapter 12 of Zachariah, and we’re going to dissect those and show the decisions you have to make in just that paragraph to show you that this is not for kids, but if a kid sits down and reads this, I’m pretty sure that kid is gonna look at you and go, whoa, this is really gonna be bad when this comes back or this is happening, and has this happened before?

And you need to be able to answer those questions. When I first was given the gospel, the guy that gave me the gospel told me to read 1 John, go home and read 1 John. I disobeyed, went home, had a drink, and read Revelation. I came back and he went, oh, don’t read that book, it’s way too confusing and people don’t agree. And I said, no way, I read like up to chapter 12. And I said, as soon as I got done with all that discussion about those churches, I realized, oh my goodness, this says that Jesus is gonna come back and he’s really mad and things are really gonna get bad. And he said, oh, well, yeah, okay, You could read that, but I want you to read 1 John.

Now, why did he want me to do that instead of focusing the gospel in that chapter, in Revelation? Because he knew that 1 John would smack me right up the side of the head about, are you a Christian or not? Are you not a sinner? You know, do you say you have no sin and yet you’re a liar, right? All those things just like a wave hit me and that knocked me over and got me straightened out to get saved. But I think it was interesting that I read that stuff just as a pagan and just went, whoa, if this is true, this is bad, what’s gonna happen? So the reason that I chose all these passages, you’ll notice on our handout thing, that all of the passages are out of prophetic literature.

That the confession was out of Isaiah 53, Isaiah 46 was the call to worship, And then the charge will be out of revelation. In fact, it’s the last four verses of the Bible. And I’ll have more to say on that when I give the charge later on. So when you start understanding there’s so much of this to go and to understand, you have to start thinking, how do I interpret this? Now, we can come to it with a presupposition. and I think we all have presuppositions, okay? As a literal reader of the Bible, that’s my presupposition. I wanna read it and if it seems to say that, I believe that. If it seems to be way out and some picture of something that’s to come that I don’t really know and the prophet maybe didn’t know what he was talking about other than the vision of the words that he was given to write down, You have to realize he’s describing something bigger and better, all that kind of picturesque languages in those things.

So given that, you know, you can read though a lot of very particular things that are going to happen. Now, the whole argument here gets down to hermeneutics. I’ve talked about that before. Basically, hermeneutic means how you interpret your Bible. What grid do you put these words through before you say, I think that’s what it says? Okay. Literal means normal reading and understanding which takes into consideration grammar, historical background and the recipients of this prophecy. So the historical grammatical approach is what that means. Allegorical interpretation which the Catholic Church and most of the reformers, that was the way to look at Revelation in those days.

And keep reminding yourself, I think this is really a strong point to be made about the Reformation. All of those guys were Catholic priests that were trying to reform the Catholic Church back to what they saw as its origin. They had straight away with these different teachings and works righteousness and indulgences and all that kind of stuff. They wanted it to return to the basic gospel. And so they saw the gospel had been polluted, but all the other teachings that had gone on for 1,000, well 1,500 years at that point, that had crept into the church, they didn’t really pay attention to all that stuff. They were so interested in salvation, the rest of the stuff became background information.

And as soon as they fought against the right way to get saved, then there was a price on their head. And they were worried about themselves getting killed and just staying alive to preach the gospel. So, you know, they’re in a very interesting spot and I think it will be fantastic when we’re able to sit down with them and say, you know, or they’re gonna tell us, and you’re an idiot, didn’t you see it? But I think when you sit down with them, they will say, wow, there was so much more and yet God revealed to us the proper way to get saved and changed the whole world of Christendom when they did that and changed our world.

I believe without Martin Luther, there wouldn’t be an America. We wouldn’t have our form of government without Luther changing the way that was worshiped in Europe, then Calvin coming along and collecting more things and all the rest of it. All those things fit together to make where we are and what we have is a blessing. So you have literal interpretation, allegorical interpretation, and then you have the categories. We’ve been through it a couple times, but just to reiterate that you have pre-millennialist, which means that you believe we’re before a literal thousand year reign of Christ on this earth. When Christ comes back, He will reign for a thousand years on His earth, okay?

That’s out there, right? Wow, that’s quite the prophecy, okay? Then there’s ameliness that believe there will be no thousand year reign of Christ on earth, and that the kingdom is either the state of believers who have gone to be with the Lord, or the present spiritual reign of Christ in the hearts of believers. So they believe that it’s just this non-specific period time that we’re living in and we’re able to keep becoming more Christ-like and at the end Christ will come back. Remember like I said a couple weeks ago if you don’t believe Jesus is literally and bodily coming back to the earth at the end of time or at these end times you’re a heretic okay he’s not some spirit waving around out there dispensing, you know, good feelings.

He is a real person that will come back and be with us and be here, that we will see in the form that he’s in, okay? Post-millennialists generally believe that Christ will come after the millennium, which the church ushers in through conquering Christianizing the world. Amillimials and post-millimials understand most Old Testament prophecies in an allegorical or spiritual sense. So they think that these are big, large kind of subjects about how people are behaving or how the world would be. Then there’s a last category. And we do have one of these, at least in our congregation. Preterist that believes Jesus already came in the form of judgment on Jerusalem in AD 70, and they believe that most of the book of Revelation has already been fulfilled during that time in 70 AD.

Now, as we go through the book of Revelation, you’re going to find it, I think, pretty difficult to put all those things that happened to Jerusalem into the time in Jerusalem in 70 AD. But give it a world. Give it a try. There’s also positions that are subcategories of all these things and different little flavors of all these places. One of them would be historical, pre-millennial position. I don’t wanna get into the subcategories of the subcategories or I could be here the rest of the morning just describing, well, this guy believes that part, but this guy didn’t agree with him and at a convention they had a thing and then they wrote a paper and blah, blah, blah.

The big discussion is, is this stuff actually going to happen? And I think you’ve got to take a big bite of the allegorical interpretation to say that it’s not going to happen. Now, these are obviously plucked comments from these Bibles and this study material to give a flavor of this position. The New Geneva Study Bible, which is a covenant-type Bible, Foundation for the Reformation 1995, the notes on Zechariah 12.3, the earthly Jerusalem of Zechariah’s day was the type of the church, the heavenly Jerusalem in which we now live by faith. Okay, so when we get to Zechariah 12.3, if you got your new Geneva Study Bible, open it up and you can say that’s a type of the church when we talk about that.

Matthew Henry’s commentary, Notes on Zechariah 12, these are the promises by which the church shall be secured. And Zechariah 14, it is promised they should be a great resort to the church and great purity and piety in it. So he kind of covers the whole thing that the church is what’s being talked about and the struggles that bring the church to fruition are what Zechariah is talking about in these three chapters. Continuity and discontinuity, a book written by Bruce Waltke, who’s a covenantalist. He wanted to do the whole thing like R.C. Sproul did with MacArthur when he started his debate on infant baptism and said, since it doesn’t say in the Bible about it, let’s understand continuity and discontinuity.

So Waltke says about Zachariah, though the symbols of the old dispensation, e.g. feast days, cooking pots, Jerusalem, and so on, see Zechariah 14.1.16. The prophets represented the final dispensation before the new earth. He’s like stuck a bunch of things together saying, Zechariah’s throwing away the Old Testament and kinda talking about the new dispensation what it’ll be like when the new earth comes, which is really hard to put all this stuff in that category, I think, but that’s his comment. Then the Last Days of Madness, put out by Gary DeMar, who is a really interesting branch of end times.

What the Bible is trying to teach us in this descriptive language of the Mount of Olive split in its middle. The earliest Christian writers applied Zachariah 14.4 to the work of Christ in his day. So he goes so far as to say when Christ puts his foot on the Mount of Olives, it’s really not going to split. It’s actually talking about the early Christian writers and the work of Christ in his days. So Christ came down and split civilization into believers and non-believers, that kind of thing. Then we have the MacArthur Study Bible, our great dispensational preacher of the last 50 years probably.

And the Master’s Seminary, Dallas Seminary, those kind of guys, Grace Bible Seminary, the brethren one. The prophet begins historically and then moves forward to the time of the second advent. Now that second advent means when Christ’s second coming comes for the millennium, when the Messiah returns to his temple to set up his earthly kingdom, all right? So MacArthur just straight up says it’s literal and that’s what’s going to happen. So now if we look at Zachariah, the first five verses, you’re going to see that we’re going to have to make some decisions about time indicators and descriptive words or nouns and understand what they’re talking about.

So there’s a book that does this the whole three chapters and I recommend this book highly. It is by a friend of mine, Ken Fuller, who runs the Believers Foundation. And he went through and did all three chapters and gave these choices in this book. So you could go through and check, oh, I believe that’s this, that’s this, that’s this. And then as you start looking through, you realize, oh, if I believe it’s that here, now I have to believe it’s that here. So maybe I wanna go back and change what I believed here so it corresponds with what it says in this chapter. These three chapters really boil down Christ’s Second Coming and a lot of information that’s given in Revelation and spread out and carefully explained along with sites in Ezekiel and that kind of stuff.

This kind of boils it all together and gives the structure of what’s happening if you read it literally how it works out. So you have to make these decisions to make it make any sense, or you just blow it off that it’s picturesque language of the end times or whatever. So the way this works in this book is that he color codes the word and then he gives you a choice and he gives you a blank to make a choice. For instance, in the sentence that would be the first number two where it says behold I am and then Jerusalem he’s going to do something I am about to make Jerusalem just that far okay in verse 2 you have to make a decision about to make what does that mean and and you have to make a decision of what Jerusalem is.

So he gives these choices. I am about going to make, is that blank your choice? Is it before the first coming? Is it in the exilic return? Is it at his first coming? Is it in AD 70? Or is it at the second coming? Is it in the millennium? Or is it in the church age? When is going to make? When is he going to do this? Then you have Jerusalem, the next word. You’ve gotta make a decision. Is Jerusalem blank, something that you make up what Jerusalem is? Is it Israel the nation? Is it the northern ten tribes? Is it a remnant of the Jews? Is it unbelievers? Is it the church? Is it the heavenly city? You can go on and on obviously placing those things.

But just those two choices show that immediately in verse two, well immediately in verse one, when he says the word of the Lord concerning Israel, you have to make a decision there. But in verse two, I am about to make, you have to decide when that is, then you have to say make Jerusalem, you have to decide what Jerusalem is. So there’s all these decisions you’re gonna have to make, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. And when we go through the whole paragraph, you can see there’s a lot of them. This book clarifies that and it, buying a bunch of them, you can get it for five bucks. I’m sure I could get a hold of Ken and we could get the five-buck deal if a bunch of you wanna buy it.

The other way to do it too is read your Bible and sit there and try to understand what these words are. And I know and I’m willing to bet that most of you have not sat down and labored through the last part of Ezekiel or even this part of Zechariah what these words actually mean, you know, what’s being talked about. This is tough sledding, and it’s, lots of people have tried to understand it. Now, I’m not telling you that I understand all these little variations and the nuances to it. I’m just telling you, I think it’s very clear there’s a whole bunch of stuff that’s going to happen that’s being described here. So, that kind of takes care of the way that it came.

definition of those times just for you to see what’s being thought of and the time implements before the first coming. So he’s saying may refer to the fulfillment at any time to the birth of Christ. You could maybe see he’s talking about something that already happened. In the exilic return, returns to the fulfillment of time with the return of the Jewish exiles from Babylon, okay? Some people wind that in into Zechariah. And the captivity and the rebuilding of Jerusalem to the time of John the Baptist because there’s whole temple discussions in these chapters. The first coming refers to the fulfillment associated with the advent of Christ and or Pentecost. In AD 70 refers to the fulfillment associated with destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. At the second coming refers to the fulfillment associated with the return of Christ and the setting up of his 1,000 year reign on earth.

That’s a pre-millennial position. In the millennium, refers to the 1,000 year reign of Christ on earth. It’s pre-millennial area, you know, but it, you know, you don’t get involved in the rapture and other things. All these things have subcategories of subcategories of subcategories. So it’s not one of these things where at the end of this, come up to me and say, but what about this phrase here? I think it means this and you think it means that. That’s not what I’m trying to do here. I’m trying to get everybody to look at, there’s a whole bunch of information about what’s going to happen in the future that gets, I think, neglected, all right?

And then the description of the multiple choice of the words phrases is that Israel the nation, the remaining is Israel the nation, duh. There’s not really big things that need to describe there. And then there are footnotes throughout this and footnotes in all your study Bibles that help you understand those things. For instance, in the New Geneva Study Bible, example of, and this is where covenantal people say, well, I don’t really believe that the church replaces Israel. Well, that’s good, you don’t. There are certain covenantal people that do, for instance. And an example of the church replacing Israel as one of the receiving, the Old Testament promises comes from the new Geneva Study Bible.

Notes on Ezekiel 40.5, or 40 verse five. Ezekiel’s restored temple is not a blueprint, but a vision that stresses the purity and spiritual vitality of the ideal place of worship and those who will worship there. It is not intended for an earthly physical fulfillment that expresses the truth found in the name of the new city. The Lord is there, Ezekiel 48.35. God will drill in the new temple and among his people.

That’s pretty clear that it’s saying allegorically this building represents how people are becoming more pure and all of that kind of thing. But when you start reading the real description of the temple in Ezekiel, you find that its dimensions don’t match anything that has already been built and it doesn’t match the dimensions of the temple and revelation at the end. So what do we got going on here?

That’s for us to find out, right? And be revealed to us. All right, so it goes on like that and then there’s a bunch of obvious metaphors, 12-2 cup of reeling, a heavy stone, a fire part, a torch. You’ll see some of this in this first paragraph how obviously there are metaphorical things or picturesque language to describe things that are in these prophecies. Okay, now, let’s just take a look now at Zechariah 12.1. And what I wanna do is I’m going to read Zechariah 12.1 through five, as Jim did, and then I wanna read it and put in, oh, now I have to make a definition, and I will put in what I would choose to do.

But as you look at it, think, well, what would I say here? And I do that and just see how it starts to hang together for yourself, considering that you have all the verses stacked together. So, the burden of the word of the Lord concerning Israel thus declares the Lord who stretched out the heavens and founded the earth and formed the spirit of man within him. Behold, I’m about to make Jerusalem a couple staggering to all the surrounding peoples. The siege of Jerusalem will also be against Judah. On that day, I will make Jerusalem a heavy stone for all the peoples. All who lift it will surely hurt themselves. All the nations of the earth will gather against it.

On that day, declares the Lord, I will strike every horse with panic and its rider with madness. But for the sake of the house of Judah, I will keep my eyes open. When I strike every horse of the peoples with blindness, then the clans of Judas shall say to themselves, the inhabitants of Jerusalem have strength through the Lord of hosts, their God.” Okay, that’s just straight reading of the ESV translation. Minor footnote, this is what I promised you I wouldn’t do, but it’s one of my pet peeves, and that’s why I ended up, when I got saved, I went to seminary like six months after I got saved because I kept asking people, what is the right word here?

Don’t worry about it, translators did it. And I said, but I’ve got a new King James, I’ve got this NIV, and I got this other Bible, and they got different words. What is the right word? And the guy just looked at me and said, if Greek starts on Monday, you’re welcome to attend. And that is the issue. You do sometimes have to know what word is being described here, all right? So the literal translation may help you. A literal translation I’m talking about would be the NASB, a New American Standard, and then probably the most literal translation, very difficult to read, is the old ASV, which is 1901. It’s more like King James English, but pretty woodenly literal to the Hebrew and the Greek.

So Zechariah 12.1. The burden of the word of the Lord concerning Israel. Hmm, now I gotta make an Israel, is that Israel a guy? Or whatever. I believe Israel the nation would be the way to take that literally. So the burden of the word of the Lord concerning Israel. Thus declares the Lord who stretched out the heavens and founded the earth and formed the spirit of man within him. I love that God, when he gets ready to really start zinging you, reminds you all the time, I’m the person that made all of this and now I’m telling you what’s gonna happen. It seems to me we should stand up, shape up, and try to figure out what these words mean instead of just, oh, isn’t it wonderful, it’s a big, I don’t know what it is.

He seems to be saying, I’m gonna tell you something pretty important, so I think we need to pay attention to what he’s saying. So he says, behold, I am about to make, make win. I believe this is at his second coming. Okay, not the first coming when he’s coming back. All right. About to make Jerusalem, and that means Jerusalem again, a cup of staggering, an object that causes trouble. Obviously figurative language, you know, about a cup of staggering. So Jerusalem is going to cause people trouble and sway them off balance, okay, to all the surrounding peoples, the enemies of Israel. When he comes back and starts this, the surrounding people around Jerusalem are watching this going, whoa, what’s going on? All right? So they are the surrounding peoples, they are the enemies of Israel, they’re watching this. The siege, a military battle with real armies of Jerusalem, Jerusalem again is Jerusalem, will also be against Judah.

Judah is the land of Judah, Israel the nation, the 10 tribes, okay? Whatever Israel’s got its borders to at this point, that’s who’s surrounding them and where they are. On that day, at the second coming, I will make Jerusalem, Jerusalem again, and Israel the nation a heavy stone because now he’s joined Judah and Israel together being surrounded, right? If you read the context. So as you go along and you gain more information, sometimes you have to alter your definitions of what’s being talked about. But you’ve gotta wait till you get that described before you can push that in there. On that day of the Second Coming, I will make Jerusalem, oh I’m sorry, heavy stone I got off here, an object that causes trouble for all peoples, the enemies of Israel, all who lift come against militarily, so all the nations who are lifting against Jerusalem coming against it militarily, it will surely hurt themselves.

They will be physically injured as they come against them. And all the nations of the earth, enemies of Israel, all the nations of the earth, enemies of Israel, will gather in the second coming against it, in the city and its people, Israel the nation. Gather against it. It is the city and its people, Israel the nation. Notice how all of this, to make this go together, you gotta make sure, did I pick Jerusalem up here or did Jerusalem change its definition down here? You don’t get to go, oh now it’s this, now it’s that, now it’s this, now it’s that. We’ve got one paragraph we’re just dealing with here. Then on verse four, on that day in the second coming, declares the Lord, I, declares the Lord, I will, when will he do that at the second coming, strike every horse with panic and it’s rider, okay?

Enemies of Israel, the horses and rider is obviously a symbolic thing of war implements that are coming, army imagery, whatever, however you wanna say it, with madness, literal madness. So all these guys are gonna go nuts and start doing stupid stuff. Where have we seen that before? In all the battles in the Old Testament God confuses the enemy and sometimes the enemy goes against itself and kills him. This is not like it’s already not been said and witnessed in the Bible that these things have happened. Then in verse 5, then at the second coming, the clans of Judah, the land of Judah, shall say to themselves, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, which are the inhabitants of Jerusalem, have strength, military support, through the Lord of hosts.

There, the Jews of the city, that are in the cities, Israel, the nations, God. So all of a sudden, Israel is turning and realizing, oh my goodness, we are being saved by God. Now keep in mind, this is the time when we, and dispensationalists or people that literally believe what Revelation is saying and what this is saying, he’s coming before they’re necessarily believers, all right? And he is demonstrating that he will protect them and do all of that, just in this first paragraph. Now, there are many paragraphs here in Zechariah 12. There’s actually 1,700 words in the 12, 13, and 14 that are very exacting about what’s gonna happen in this time, and you have to make all these little decisions about these words.

You actually preach through that. And I think that as you read through these things or you’re listening to your Bible reading or whatever, when you’re in these chapters or in minor prophets, you need to really listen sometimes and realize that three sentences or one paragraph can be that complex because the guy might be shifting from a near prophecy to a far prophecy and back again sometimes. That happens quite a bit, okay, where he’s talking about the near thing happening that is a prophetic thing, and then the far thing. One of those things is that a virgin shall bear the child in Isaiah. That’s actually talking about a real virgin of that time too but then put into place when you see the bigger picture, that’s talking about Christ, all right?

So careful Bible study cannot hurt you, it will, you’ll just go, oh my goodness, this is so complex and people have been working at this for a couple thousand years now and before when they had only the Old Testament. So it’s not like a lot of great minds haven’t looked at this but it’s well worth your time to do that kind of thing. So as you go through this, you’re going to come up, I would think that you’re gonna have to go, This is all just a picture, or it is actually a biblical description of future Jerusalem found in the Old Testament, and the description of a future Jerusalem found in the New Testament in the book of Revelation.

So this is an interesting little chunk that I got out of this book. It was one of the appendixes. And it’s kind of interesting to see how you have this Old Testament book and then the New Testament book, Revelation, tells us everything is going to happen till God makes the new heavens and new earth, okay? Now, if we have a book that tells us what’s gonna happen all the way to the end where this earth is destroyed and we have a new heavens and new earth, that’s pretty much the end of things, okay? Now, can I shoehorn something in between that and make a prophecy about something? Probably not. I probably don’t wanna try to do that because beginning in the beginning God and the end God made the new heavens and new earth and told people not to add to this story.

Okay, so let’s not be inserting in the middle. One of my favorite tricks with people that say, oh, I have a prophecy is if I have a Bible, you can go into the back and find a blank page And you get a pencil and say, okay, I’m ready. And they look at you and they go, what are you going to do? Well, I’m gonna write this down if you’re gonna tell me what God said. I gotta write it down. Oh, no, no, no, I meant I had a vision or whatever. Okay, well good. Eat more bad food, okay. So this comparison is Jerusalem in the last days and there are at least three ways to interpret the biblical data, okay. And obviously, it will be one.

Taking all the biblical data literally as an example of the pre-millennial position, the biblical picture then is of one Jerusalem during the thousand year reign of Christ on earth and the heavenly city of Jerusalem, all right? So you have Jerusalem during the thousand year reign and then the new heavens, the new earth and a new Jerusalem starts happening. Take all the biblical data, I’m sorry, Taking the Old Testament data allegorically or in a spiritual sense, and the New Testament data literally is example of the Amillennial position. The Old Testament descriptions of Jerusalem are viewed as a picture of the church, while the New Testament data is taken literally and describes heaven, which contains the new city of Jerusalem.

That’s radically splitting it apart, but I’ll hang with radically being a wooden literalist and let that be the description of the other side, okay? Taking both the Old Testament and New Testament data in an allegorical or spiritual sense would then become what it means to me. That’s a definite slap, yes. If you’re going to make both of them allegorical, pretty soon you just, hey, pot doesn’t really mean pot. It means a container in which our souls are poured. And then the fire is burning our souls and helping us to become more holy. You can just start making up stuff, and that is not Bible interpretation. And so you can cast that one out.

All right, so here’s some interesting things that happen as you start to compare Old Testament descriptions of Jerusalem, New Testament descriptions, or millennial descriptions. And it’s kind of interesting, all right? And I’ll go through these. I should be able to get these fairly quickly here. So, millennial Jerusalem, the city, Ezekiel 45, 15 through 20 says, he measured it on four sides. It ate a wall all around. The linked 500 and the width 500 to divide between the holy and the profane, one by one mile temple area. Ezekiel 48, 15 through 17, 1.65 by 1.65 mile, for the city. All right? So Ezekiel has a clear description what the city is going to be like in the millennium. Then the heavenly Jerusalem in Revelation 21 16, the city is laid out as a square. Now people can argue that it’s 1,500 miles in a pyramid or it’s a circle, 1,500 miles as a diameter. So there’s ways to get into all that. I don’t want to get into those arguments, but it’s definitely a thing that’s put together, okay?

And its length is as great as it’s width, and he measured the city with a rod 1500 miles, its length and width and height are equal. So now we have this 1500 mile thing. Definitely a different description. Millennial Jerusalem walls, Isaiah 60.10 says, foreigners will build up your walls, and their kings will minister to you. For in my wrath I struck you, and in my favor I have had compassion on you.” Ezekiel 40.5, or 40 verse five, 875 feet by 10 foot high and 10 foot wide. On each side, that’s the walls around the temple complex. In heavenly Jerusalem, Revelation 21, 17 through 20, and he measured its walls 72 yards according to the human measurements.

We’re also in angelic measurements. The material of the wall was jasper and the city was pure gold like clear glass. The foundation stones of the city wall were adorned with every kind of precious stone. Definitely different walls than there were in the millennial Jerusalem. Millennial Jerusalem gates, Isaiah 60, 11 through 12. Your gates will be opened continually. They will not be closed day or night so that men may bring you to the wealth of the nations with their kings led in procession. For the nation and the kingdom which will not serve you will perish and the nations will be utterly mined. Isaiah 48, 30 through 34, gates have the names of the 12 tribes on them.

Heavenly Jerusalem, the gates, to Revelation 21, 21, 21, and the 12 gates were 12 pearls. Yeah, each one was a pearl. Each one of the gates was a single pearl. And the street of the city was pure gold, lights transparent glass. Revelation 21, 25 through 26. In the daytime, there will be no night there. Its gates will be never closed and they will bring the glory and honor of the nations into it. The gates have the name, 12 tribes and the apostles have their names on them. Millennial Jerusalem Temple, Ezekiel 45 through 42, 20.

Detailed description of the temple, totally different than Solomon’s temple and all of that or what was destroyed in 70 AD, not even close, all right? And then Revelation 21, 22, I saw no temple in it for the Lord, the Lord God, the Almighty and the Lamb are its temple, okay? So in the heavenly Jerusalem, no temple. Millennial Jerusalem, death, Isaiah 65, 20, No longer will there be in it an infant who loves but a few days, or an old man who does not live out his days, for the youth will die at the age of 100, and the one who does not reach the age of 100 will be thought accursed. And that’s in the millennium, all right, so people will live during that time, real people.

Heavenly Jerusalem, death. This is what heavenly Jerusalem is like, 21 and four. and he will wipe away every tear from their eyes and there will be no longer be any death. There will no longer be any mourning or crying or pain. The first things have passed away. No more death in heavenly Jerusalem. Millennial Jerusalem, there’s a river, Ezekiel 47.1. Then he brought me back to the door of the house and behold, water was flowing from under the threshold of the house toward the east for the house faced east. And you see Zachariah 14.8, There’s a description of this river there also. In heavenly Jerusalem, the river is in Revelation 22.1.

Then he showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal coming from the throne of God and from the lamb, all right? Then in millennial Jerusalem, there are trees. Ezekiel 47.7, now when I had returned, behold, on the bank of the river, there were very many trees on one side and on the other. In heavenly Jerusalem, trees. Revelation 22, 2, in the middle of its street on either side of the river was a tree of life, bearing 12 kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit in every month, and the leaves of the trees, and it went on to discuss, there are real trees happening. Then in millennial Jerusalem, there are lights, Isaiah 30, 26, the light of the moon will be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be seven times brighter, like the light of seven days, on the day the Lord binds up the fracture of his people and heals the bruise he has inflicted.

In heavenly Jerusalem, the lights are this, Isaiah 60, 19 through 20. No longer will you have the sun for the light by day, nor brightness will the moon give you light, but you will have the Lord for an everlasting light, and your God for glory, and your sun will no longer set, nor will you moon wane, For you have the Lord for an everlasting light, and the days of your mourning will be over. Revelation 21, 22. I now saw no temple in it, for the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are its temple, and the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of the Lord has illuminated it, and its lamp is the Lamb.

So Jesus and God are the light in the heavenly Jerusalem. Okay. All of that to say, I’m just trying to make the case that we should pay attention to prophetic books maybe more than we have before. And I think that it’s a good thing to talk about these things, but you just can’t blow them off with a phrase unless you’re kind of talking with your same crowd. If you’re sitting talking with your same crowd and you think that’s literal, you can go a long way looking at this. But the first thing we have to do is sit down if you think it’s just a descriptive thing, then you have to have the discussion of, well, why is it only descriptive and why couldn’t it be real and why wouldn’t this be explaining something that’s really going to happen?

Is this some kind of, you know, major exegetical trick with all this information described on what’s gonna happen to us is not really real stuff. It’s just out there. And I think that the case to be made that it’s really something is going to happen is way stronger when you just read through the whole Bible and accept what it’s saying and then try to work through it. I think that as you apply just normal reasoning, it seems to be saying this. Now is it far out stuff and miraculous stuff and things that can only happen when God starts breaking the normal rules that he’s laid up for this earth, well duh, yeah. But we are Christians.

Our whole faith is founded on the upsetting of the normal pattern. We are Christians because we worship Jesus Christ. We worship 100% man, 100% God, Jesus Christ. What happened to this guy? They killed him. Then he was buried for three days. Then he rose again in some kind of body that was different than what he had, but recognizable. Now if that isn’t some story that we are all sitting around here after 2,000 years after this event, still coming on Sunday and worshiping him and thinking it’s probably the most, not probably, is the most important thing we can do in our lives to make that decision that he actually did that supernatural crazy thing so that we do not have to be punished for our sin and spend eternity in hell.

That’s a crazy story. And we, if we don’t believe that, we’re not Christians. So on that evidence alone that I’m reading a description of crazy stuff and saying, yes, it really happened to be a Christian, I don’t think it’s a hard slug at all to think, wow, God could come down here and redo the whole thing and just, you know, there it is. I mean, that’s how he made the whole universe. And the more we discover it, the bigger we discover it is, the more powerful we discover the littleer we look, the more we find inside the thing that we thought we never could see something smaller, all the rest of it. I mean, in his general revelation has showed us there is a God, in his special revelation there is a God, and in his special revelation, he tells us all kinds of stuff.

And for us to disregard that, I think, is a major flaw. And I don’t blame the men that have brought us to where we are in our reformed faith. I see them as steps in the ladder, and they came in, they were Catholic priests that saw that this was wrong, they put it together trying to get the Catholic Church to reform, it didn’t happen, we split off, we became Protestants, and on and on it goes. And we, I think, the more times we read it, the more times you go through it, you go, huh, never noticed that before, now I gotta change my mind about that because if I believe that about this, then that means I’ve got to change my mind about over here.

That’s not a problem. We’re just people trying to do the best we can with those details. And the glorious thing is all of us can do this together and have these differences on the fringes and still worship together, treat each other as we would, live out the golden rule and get to go to heaven and find out what the end is going to be like anyway. So, with all of that, my purpose is to really push things that we don’t touch a lot. I mean, I spent quite a few, well, I listened to every tape that John MacArthur did before I came in 1990 and have probably heard every sermon until maybe 2001, till that time. And there were references to the minor prophets occasionally.

Once he went through the book of Daniel, he went through Revelation I think twice or three times. The rest of it just, you never hear a guy go, I have never heard a sermon. I’m pretty sure we get, well I know we can check it out in this day and age, but I don’t think ever has there been a sermon preached like at Grace Community Church on the second half of Ezekiel. Okay? And to me, you know, bring it on. There’s a lot of guys that have really studied that. I mean, MacArthur Study Bible has all kinds of comments on it, but nobody wants to get up and preach that because they know that half a Christendom goes, ah, you believe all that goofy stuff? You know, they go to the convention and see their friends.

Well, if we really believe that it’s literally there, I think we should preach it, study it, and look at it. So on that, I’m sure I’ve caused all kinds of confusion, but That’s fine, I love doing that. All of you know me, and I mean, you know, maybe I’ll change my mind tomorrow, who knows. But the best thing is, the issue is the gospel. That’s what keeps us here. That’s plain. But sometimes I think we forget how crazy the gospel is. It is really a crazy story. God kills himself and raises himself for us. No other religion in the world like that. It’s not a religion. It’s a relationship that he has with us because of that.

Let’s pray and then we’ll have our offering which Andy will bring it up. Again, we like to comment. We do that on purpose. We don’t go around with a plate making you feel guilty if you don’t put something in there and all that kind of stuff and we’re putting it on this table as a offering from all of you to the Lord right before our communion. So let’s pray and then we’ll go on with our communion service. Father I just thank you that you’ve given us all these books in your book and how your books made up of many books, many different authors over a long period of time, and how it does all well together and how the more you study it the more you see its uniting features and how this prophet that maybe didn’t even know that he was speaking to that issue blends with another prophet or another situation that has happened. It’s just glorious how the more you study it the more entrenched you become that you are the one true God. We thank you for that. We thank you for your spirit that teaches us and guides us into these things.

Help us to pay attention to your spirit as closely as humanly possible. And even as supernaturally that you would endue us with special wisdom to understand these things. I ask you for that also. Thank you for this fellowship and the ability to worship here and help us now to celebrate your son and communion as we do that together in the next section of our service. Amen. Okay, now we come to our favorite part, as you know. I did this just last week, so I’ll say it again though. I think it is one of the most powerful things we do when we do this all together. And I do believe that our liturgy and our worship all together changes us every week.

I know it’s changed me over the years now that we have gotten together. And I really praise what we’re doing here, and I praise you guys that we are worshiping God. You’re not being entertained by us. You are part of our whole corporate worship. Even though we’ve got these guys facing you with the music and the piano and stuff so you can hear it. Ideally, I would love it if we were all just part of the group here sitting out here worshiping to God. And I think we do that in the best way that we can.

And that, that’s why we do communion every week because we do that all together. And here for visitors, I’m not sure we have any, but just follow the guy in front of you and come up and get the elements and then go back to your seat. and we’re gonna do it together when we actually partake of it. So the benediction today in the charge, I’m gonna read the last four verses of the Bible, but the thing to remember is that these last four verses do close this whole book, and it tells the end, okay? The new heavens and the new earth have happened. All the stuff that’s describing here is going to happen before we live in the new heavens and new earth and all the stuff that happens in this.

So I think it’s important to pay attention to those prophecies that are still ready to come and discern which ones have already taken place carefully. And sometimes they happen in parts previous and parts to come, which is always interesting, right? It always comes to me like Jesus looking at them and he says, for you, have you not read?

Duh, I was coming, I told you I was coming, you didn’t even get it, okay. So let’s not be those people. All right, so here’s our benediction for today. The spirits and the bride say, come, and let the one who hears say, come, and let the one who is thirsty come. Let the one who desires take the water of life without price. I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book, if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book. And if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.

He who testified to these things says, Surely I am coming soon. Amen. Come Lord Jesus, the grace of the Lord Jesus be with all. Amen.