Zechariah 7-8 - Outline

[Jim Watt]

“*TWO ARE BETTER THAN ONE” MINISTRIES*

*Jim & Marie Watt*

*Tel: 253-517-9195 - Email: jmbetter at gmail.com*

*Web: www.2rbetter.org*

April 3, 2013



 *OCT 12 - ZECHARIAH 7-8 - FASTS UNTO FESTIVALS*


 *1. 7:4-5 (7:1-7, ESV) FASTING: ITS TRUE NATURE UNTO JEHOVAH. Then the
word of the LORD of hosts came to me: 5 “Say to all the people of the land
and the priests, When you fasted and mourned in the fifth month and in the
seventh, for these seventy years, was it for me that you fasted?” *We
should bring proper attitudes and motivations when we come unto You, O
Great Jehovah Elohim! *Hallowed be your :name!*


 *2. 7:14 (7:8-14) FASTING: ITS TRUE NATURE UNTO THE NEEDY. “And I
scattered them with a whirlwind among all the nations that they had not
known. Thus the land they left was desolate, so that no one went to and
fro, and the pleasant land was made desolate.” *Father, we would hear You
say, *I will heal your land*, because our words and works flow out of a
right heart. *Your :kingdom come!*


 *3. 8:3 (8:1-8) BLESSING: GOD’S UNCHANGING PURPOSE FOR JERUSALEM. “Thus
says the LORD: I have returned to Zion and will dwell in the midst of
Jerusalem, and Jerusalem shall be called the faithful city, and the
mountain of the LORD of hosts, the holy mountain.” *You will meet all our
needs, Father: daily bread for the land, our body; the Word as soul-food
for our city; and Your own dear presence for Zion, the mountain of the
LORD, our spirit! *Your :will be done, As in heaven, so on earth.*


 *4. 8:13 (8:9-17) BLESSING: ITS CONDITIONAL NATURE. “And as you have been
a byword of cursing among the nations, O house of Judah and house of
Israel, so will I save you, and you shall be a blessing. Fear not, but let
your hands be strong.” *O Your timing, Father! How right and just and wise!
O make us like Issachar to perceive the times of refining, followed by
times of blessing (1 Chronicles 12 32). We put Your fear *above* the fear
of man - the expulsive power of a new affection. *Our :daily :bread Give us
this day.*


 *5. 8:18-19. FASTING: JOY TO BE ITS MARK. And the word of the LORD of
hosts came to me, saying, 19 “Thus says the LORD of hosts: The fast of the
fourth month and the fast of the fifth and the fast of the seventh and the
fast of the tenth shall be to the house of Judah seasons of joy and
gladness and cheerful feasts. Therefore love truth and peace.” *What a
turn-around! Normally Your fasts, Father, are times of affliction of soul;
now they are seasons of refreshing! *And forgive us our :debts, As we also
have forgiven our :debtors.*


 *6. 8:22 (8:20-22) BLESSING: TO BE CENTERED IN JERUSALEM. “Many peoples
and strong nations shall come to seek the LORD of hosts in Jerusalem and to
entreat the favor of the LORD.” *How amazing! The king’s heart is indeed in
Your hands, Father. You turn it in whatever direction it pleases You. O may
we know You as the God of Sovereign power! *And bring us not into
temptation.*


 *7. 8:23. BLESSING OF NATIONS: RELATED TO JEWS. “Thus says the LORD of
hosts: In those days ten men from the nations of every tongue shall take
hold of the robe of a Jew, saying, ‘Let us go with you, for we have heard
that God is with you.’” *Yes, and the day will come when the spiritual Jew,
the Christian believer, will be treated in the same manner. *But deliver us
from the evil one!*


 *NOTE**: 8:7-8 (8:1-8) GOD’S PROPHETIC BLESSING TO ISRAEL. **“Thus says
the LORD of hosts: behold, I will save my people from the east country and
from the west country, 8 and I will bring them to dwell in the midst of
Jerusalem. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God, in
faithfulness and in righteousness.” *


 *Quote from Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address - *With malice
toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives
us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in.


 *Our Psalm for the Day: 102:16-17 (102) DO NOT HIDE YOUR FACE FROM ME. “For
the LORD builds up Zion; he appears in his glory; 17 he regards the prayer
of the destitute and does not despise their prayer.” *Your time to favor
Zion, yes *the set time* is come. This is that generation, and that Jubilee
(the 120th), when final judgment comes on the enemy, Father, and Your
people are fully set free! *Hallowed be your :name!*


 *Subject*: This is a patriot’s lament over his country’s distress. He
arrays himself in the griefs of his nation as in a garment of sackcloth and
casts her dust and ashes upon his head as the ensigns and causes of his
sorrow. He has his own private woes and personal enemies; he is, moreover,
sore afflicted in body by sickness, but the miseries of his people cause
him a far more bitter anguish, and this he pours out in an earnest,
pathetic lamentation. Not, however, without hope does the patriot mourn; he
has faith in God and looks for the resurrection of the nation through the
omnipotent favor of the Lord. The word rendered “complaint” has in it none
of the idea of fault-finding or repining, but should rather be rendered
“moaning” - the expression of pain, not of rebellion. To help the memory,
we will call this Psalm “The Patriot’s Plaint.”


 102:1. *Hear my prayers, O Lord. Or, O Jehovah. *Sincere suppliants are
not content with praying for praying’s sake; they desire really to reach
the ear and heart of the great God. It is a great relief in time of
distress to acquaint others with our trouble., We are eased by their
hearing our lamentation. But it is the sweetest solace of all to have God
Himself as a sympathizing listener to our plaint. That He is such is no
dream, or fiction, but an assured fact. It would be the direst of all woes
if we could be indisputably convinced that with God there is neither
hearing nor answering; he who could argue us into so dreary a belief would
do us no better service than if he had read us our death-warrants. Better
die than be denied the mercy-seat. As well be atheists at once as believe
in an unhearing, unfeeling God.


 102:2. *In the day when I call answer me speedily. *It is a proverb
concerning favors from human hands that “he gives twice who gives quickly,”
because a gift is enhanced in value by arriving in a time of urgent
necessity; and we may be sure that our heavenly Patron will grant us the
best of gifts in the best manner, granting us grace to help in time of
need. When answers come upon the heels of our prayers, they are all the
more striking, more consoling, and more encouraging.


 102:13. *For the time to favor her, yes, the set time, is come*. When
God’s own time is come, neither Rome, nor the devil, nor persecutors, nor
atheists, can prevent the kingdom of Christ from extending its bounds. It
is God’s work to do it - He must “arise”; He will do it, but He has His own
appointed season; and meanwhile we must, with holy anxiety and believing
expectation, wait upon Him.


 102:21. *To declare the Name of the Lord in Zion, and His praise in
Jerusalem.* To communicate to others what God has done for us personally
and for the church at large is so evidently our duty that we ought not to
need urging to fulfill it. God has ever an eye to the glory of His grace in
all that He does, and we ought not willfully to defraud Him of the revenue
of His praise.


 102:24. *Your years are throughout all generations.* You live, Lord; let
me live also. A fullness of existence is with You; let me partake therein.
Note the contrast between himself pining and ready to expire, and his God
living on in the fullness of strength forever and ever; this contrast is
full of consolatory power to the man whose heart is stayed upon the Lord.
Blessed be His Name, He fails not, and, therefore, our hope shall not fail
us; neither will we despair for ourselves or for His church.


 *Conclusion: * We have passed through the cloud, and in the next Psalm we
shall bask in the sunshine. Such is the checkered experience of the
believer. Paul, in the seventh of Romans, cries and groans, and then in the
eighth rejoices and leaps for joy; and so, from the moaning of the Hundred
and Second Psalm, we now advance to the songs and dancing of the Hundred
and Third, blessing the Lord, that “though weeping may endure for a night,
joy comes in the morning. *(From “The Treasury of David” by C.H. Spurgeon,
abridged by D.O. Fuller)*


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