Protection and Provision

Ascension Presbyterian Church Longwood

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Please turn in your Bibles, if you would, to Zechariah, in chapter 12.

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The next to last book of the Old Testament, Zechariah, in chapter 12.

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I want to remind you that this is no ordinary literature. This is

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God's holy and infallible word. We learned, again, last week, that the

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Holy Spirit is the author of it. And so, when we study the scripture, we're hearing the very word of God, Zechariah 12.

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The burden of the word of the Lord against Israel, thus says the

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Lord, who stretches out the heavens, lays the foundation of the earth, and forms the spirit of man within him.

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Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of drunkenness to all the surrounding peoples, when they lay siege against Judah and Jerusalem.

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And it shall happen in that day that I will make Jerusalem a very heavy stone for all peoples.

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All who would heave it away will surely be cut in pieces, though all nations of the earth are gathered against it.

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In that day, says the Lord, I will strike every horse with confusion and its riders with madness.

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I will open my eyes on the house of Judah and will strike every horse of the peoples with blindness.

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And the governors of Judah shall say in their heart, the inhabitants of Jerusalem are my strength and the

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Lord of hosts their God. In that day, I will make the governors of Judah like a fire pan in the woodpile and like a fiery torch in the sheaves.

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They shall devour all the surrounding peoples on the right hand and on the left, but Jerusalem shall be inhabited again in her own place,

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Jerusalem. The Lord will save the tents of Judah first, so that the glory of the house of David and the glory of the inhabitants of Jerusalem shall not become greater than that of Judah.

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In that day, the Lord will defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem. The one who is feeble among them in that day shall be like David.

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And the house of David shall be like God, like the angel of the

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Lord before them. It shall be in that day that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.

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And I will pour on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and supplication.

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Then they will look upon me whom they pierced. Yes, they will mourn for him as one mourns for his only son and grieve for him as one grieves for a firstborn.

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And that day there shall be a great mourning in Jerusalem, like the mourning at Hadad, Raman, in the plain of Megiddo.

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And the land shall mourn every family by itself, the family of the house of David by itself, and their wives by themselves.

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The family of the house of Nathan by itself, and their wives by themselves. The family of the house of Levi by itself, and their wives by themselves.

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The family of Shammai by itself, and their wives by themselves. All the families that remain, every family by itself, and their wives by themselves.

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May the Lord, the power of His Spirit, illumine our understanding of His Word.

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Please pray with me. Who could we ever call upon in heaven but you,

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O God? The enemies of your people gather and they assemble around, but you squash them.

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You bring their wicked designs to nothing. We thank you,

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O Lord, that we have a true Israel, and that your people are a true

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Jerusalem. I pray that Christ would be exalted today, and that even here, that His gospel would shine forth, and that we would see more and more of His glory.

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We ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Please be seated.

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As you know, and we've been studying, Zechariah is relatively obscure in its proclamation in the church today.

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And the section that we are going to focus on, verses one through nine, would be merely introductory material in most cases for the latter half of the chapter.

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But we have the privilege and blessing to be able to study these things, and to wait until next time to hear more of those glorious truths, and to not pass over some very significant concepts that exist in the first half of the chapter.

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It's been a few weeks since we've been in Zechariah, and I think one of the things that would cause you to pause here, if you remember, we had at the end of chapter 11 the absolute destruction of Jerusalem.

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And then a completely different oracle, a completely different thrust, a shift that talks about really the blessing of Jerusalem.

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So how do we reconcile these notions that seem to be really very much opposed to each other?

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Well, if we were liberals, we would say, well, these are probably two different authors, and two different prophecies, but we are no liberals here.

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This is another oracle, a second oracle, 9 through 11 was one, and now 12 through 14 is another.

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And it's been Christological, it's been Messianic, but that's been accelerated a bit now in chapter 12 through 14.

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The title of the message today is Protection and Provision. The people have come back from exile.

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A remnant, a percentage of them who had been in Babylon have been here and engaged in the work of rebuilding the temple.

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They're starting to rebuild their lives in Judah and Jerusalem. And they have heard great promises of an immediate blessing of the prospering of the work, but also of a future blessing with the advent and arrival of the

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Messiah, the King of Glory himself, the Lord Jesus Christ. There have been many distinctly

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Christological sections that we've enjoyed here, and chapter 12 is no different.

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The second half, next time in Zechariah, we will get a very big dose of Christ in Zechariah.

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But today, something else is happening. The Lord is speaking about preserving and protecting a remnant of his people.

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But the question has to be asked is, what is Jerusalem? If Jerusalem is to be destroyed because of her rejection of the

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Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, how can it be revived? Is Jerusalem confined to that area in the mountain range near Mount Zion, and is that the place where Jerusalem dwells?

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Or is there another Jerusalem? Is there another place that becomes the dwelling place of God in the

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Spirit? Is there a new Jerusalem? A place where his people reside?

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Well, I would argue that there is, and that place is the church. And in spite of all of the different interpretations, almost everyone,

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I'm so excited to report to you, almost every scholar from every persuasion says, yes, chapter 12 is about the church of Jesus Christ.

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There's an interpretive key that we have to unlock to understand its significance here.

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Let's go to Galatians in chapter 4. This is going to help us understand how this

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Jerusalem refers not just to the geographic location, but to something else.

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Galatians in chapter 4. I'm going to begin reading in verse 21.

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Tell me you who desire to be under the law, do you not hear the law?

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For it is written that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondwoman, the other by a free woman.

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This is referring to the situation with Hagar and Sarah. It says in verse 23,

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But he who was of the bondwoman was born according to the flesh, and he of the free woman through promise, which things are symbolic.

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There is a biological way to get children, and there's a way to get them through promise.

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The pagans have lots of children too, but they don't have them the way we do, in faith, in trust, in covenant with God.

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The irony here is that Israel, the people of God who have received the very oracles of God, who would see themselves as in the line of Isaac and Abraham, are pointed out to be in the line of Hagar and Abraham.

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This fits very nicely with our section here, because Israel and its apostasy and rejection of the coming

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Messiah finds itself outside of the covenant promises, because they've gone the way of the bondwoman.

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The Pharisees in the days of Jesus, they believed themselves to be the caretakers of the law, and the great scholars of the law, they were on the side of Hagar.

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It's a powerful, stinging indictment of unbelief. Continue in verse 40, 24,

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I'm sorry. These things are symbolic, for these are the two covenants. The one from Mount Sinai, which gives birth to bondage, which is

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Hagar. For this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and corresponds to Jerusalem, which now is.

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And what is the description of physical, national

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Jerusalem according to Paul? And how does it line up with Zechariah 12?

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This Jerusalem is in bondage with her children. The Judaizers have come into the church at Galatia, and they're trying to say that salvation comes through things like circumcision, keeping the ceremonial law.

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If you do these things, you have salvation. The same idea is present in the

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Jerusalem of Zechariah's time, in the intervening period between the 500 years between these two divine books.

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There's another Jerusalem. Did you know that you were a citizen of Jerusalem?

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After all, we come to Mount Zion every

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Sunday. We have a heavenly citizenship. You and I in Christ are citizens of the heavenly

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Jerusalem. There's a Jerusalem that now is, that is under bondage.

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The Dome of the Rock sits on the Temple Mount, still under bondage, because of apostasy, because of a rejection of our

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Lord Jesus Christ. But there's another Jerusalem, a one that we participate in, a

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Jerusalem we gather with the people of God in Jerusalem to worship our

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God. And you know what? Our God meets us here because we're his people.

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The church is the new Jerusalem. A couple more things and we'll go back.

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Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and it corresponds to Jerusalem, which now is, and is in bondage with her children.

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But the Jerusalem above is free, which is the mother of us all. I want you to repeat that again.

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Children, I want you to pay close attention to this. But the Jerusalem above is free.

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There's a Jerusalem in bondage, a Jerusalem subject to the wrath of God, a

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Jerusalem that is going to be, every stone's going to be turned over, and there's a

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Jerusalem that is free, which is the mother of us all. Can that mean anything but the church?

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What else could it possibly mean? The Jerusalem from above.

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And it says, Rejoice, O barren, you who do not bear. Break forth and shout, you who are not in labor.

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For the desolate has many more children than she who has a husband. But now we brethren, as Isaac was, are children of promise.

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But as he who was born according to the flesh, then persecuted who was born according to the spirit, even so it is now.

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The Jewish people are largely hostile to their Messiah and to us.

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It says, Therefore, what does the scripture say? Cast out the bondwoman and her son. For the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the free woman.

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So then brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free.

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Galatians 4, the analogy of faith, the scripture interpreting the scripture, it's essential for us to understand

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Zechariah 12 in light of all the revelation there is about Christ.

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Now let's turn back there to Zechariah 12. For those of you who have need of an outline,

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I have two points for you. First, Jerusalem defended would be the first point

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I'd like to offer, and it's going to be the bulk of what we talk about today. Jerusalem defended.

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And second, it's going to be Jerusalem prospered. I don't know if you know this, but it seems that every other week we sing a psalm that talks about either

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Jacob or Jerusalem. Now my question to you, can we as a

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Christian people claim the promises given to Jacob and Jerusalem or not? Are those confined only to the old covenant people of God?

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You can sing with great zeal and gusto the promises that are sent to Jacob and to Israel, and to Jerusalem, because you are the people of God.

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That songbook, the psalms, all of those illustrations, all those descriptions, are for us, for all people, for all the ages.

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All those promises are found in Christ and have their yes and amen. And now we have the burden of the word of the

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Lord against Israel. This is the second big prophecy after the night visions.

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The first occurred in chapters 9 -11, the second 12 -14. This is the

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Lord speaking. And to give you a taste of what's coming, we're not going to talk about it today.

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Look again at verse 10, and this should set your heart on fire. God is the voice speaking in Zechariah 12.

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Zechariah is speaking the words of God after him. And he says,

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Sounds like Pentecost to me. How does

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God get pierced? The incarnation of the

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Lord Jesus Christ. God is speaking to the covenant people in Zechariah 12.

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And he says, in that prophecy, that I'm going to be pierced.

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And I'm going to pour out my Holy Spirit. And it's going to happen in Jerusalem.

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And it's going to spread to Judea and to the ends of the earth. You remember that from last week? Astounding.

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500 years before the arrival of our Lord Jesus Christ.

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Well, let's consider it really quickly. This is what the Lord says.

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And listen to his credentials. The Lord, this is his word, this is the burden, this is the message that must be delivered.

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But he traces his credentials. He gives his CV, his resume.

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He says, Those of you who know the catechism, how does

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God execute his decrees? God executed his decrees in the works of creation and providence.

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Brethren, as our brother Dr. Lawson said in our study this morning, this entire world, this cosmos, it all is the possession of our

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God. This is why we're those radical, theonomic reconstructionists that everybody warns people about.

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This entire planet, everything in it, is the possession of our

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God. We can never be mistaken about this. It's his world.

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It's his stars that hang in the skies. It's his fish that swim in the streams. It's his flowers.

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It's his cattle. It all belongs to him. We all bow in subjection to him, or at least we should.

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What qualifications to speak. The agent of creation, we're going to find out in our section, is also the agent of re -creation.

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If he's able to create something, he's also able to re -create.

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He stretches out the heavens. He lays the foundation of the earth.

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This part is a depth, a world to be explored, and time doesn't permit it, and forms the spirit of man within him.

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You remember the picture of Adam being formed of the dust of the ground and molded into that image, that form.

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Then God breathes into his nostrils and animates him into a living, sentient being.

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A soul, a spiritual, physical creature. Not just a physical creature, a spiritual, soulful creature.

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God does this when he gives life. The picture of our illustration in Galatians 4 even works here.

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There's biology, and there's the union of ovum and sperm, and there's all these things that happen in conception and everything, but there's also this spiritual dynamic where life and eternity is implanted in a physical being.

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This is all the Lord's doing. And here's the message that he gives.

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Oh, what qualifications he has to speak. He says in verse 2,

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One author said,

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So he will work in the latter days to reform the world and to give life once again to his people.

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The coming, last day's work of the Messiah will be a restorative work.

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It's going to be the ushering in of a new creation. I'm going to make

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Jerusalem a cup of drunkenness. The enemies of God's people are going to come and they're going to attempt to revel and drink the blood of the

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Jerusalem citizens as if they were drinking wine. But they're not going to get drunk.

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They're not going to revel. They're going to find that they have God as their defender and that sweet cup of wine they're going to be finding is bitter gall.

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And their desire to attack the people of God in every age is going to turn on itself and they're going to poison themselves.

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And their desire to destroy God's people, they're going to find that that desire and that attitude actually turns out to their own destruction.

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Look at verse 3. It says, There's some interesting

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Hebrew language here and the wound that happens is even connected to the idea of attempting to grab a great stone.

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In my picture of this, we have the wicked grabbing a stone, trying to stone Jerusalem and drop it on their head to kill them.

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And the enemies of God grabbing the stone and having the stone fall on themselves to be crushed under its weight.

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Brethren, you have no idea how secure you are in Christ.

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The enemies encircle us like jackals and wolves. We're just sheep.

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The predators swirl around us. And it looks bad.

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It's ominous. And they hate us because we are the only earthly impediment for the full vent of their evil designs.

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That's why they hate the church so much. We are the impediment for them to go on in their wickedness.

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After all, the God the atheists don't believe in is the

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Christian God, the Trinitarian God. That's the God they don't believe in. They don't want to believe in.

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And the enemies of God are going to be vanquished. They're going to try to attack

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His people, and He's going to defend them. Jerusalem itself is going to be so anchored like that city is that it's an impenetrable stone forest almost.

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And that picture applies very well to our security in Christ. The people want to attack us.

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They want to come in and to ravish us, but they're not going to be able to. All who would heave it away will surely be cut in pieces, though all nations of the earth are gathered against it.

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I heard a statistic recently. I don't know how accurate. It's from the early 2000s that roughly 163 ,000

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Christians are martyred every year for Jesus Christ. That's a huge number.

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There are things that happen in sub -Saharan Africa and places in Asia that we have no idea what's going on.

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There's going to be a vindication of all these things. It says in verse 4,

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In that day, says the Lord, I will strike every horse with confusion, and its riders will be struck with madness.

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I will open my eyes over the house of Judah, and I will strike every horse of the peoples with blindness.

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This is utter confusion. The enemies of God, it looks like they're going to overtake them, but they can't.

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The governors of Judah shall say in their heart, The inhabitants of Jerusalem are my strength, and the

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Lord of hosts their God. In that day, I will make the governors of Judah like a firepan in the woodpile.

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After all, didn't Christ say,

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Upon this rock I will build my church? Isn't Christ the chief cornerstone, the stone of stumbling and the rock of offense?

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Though the peoples gather against us in opposition to us, they will ultimately be cut to pieces.

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Why? They failed to kiss the sun, and his wrath is now kindled against them.

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They cannot withstand him. So there's also an appeal, a plea here for us, isn't there?

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If I be outside of the security and comfort of Christ, that I'm in a precarious position,

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I urge you, if you do not know Jesus Christ, run and flee to the security of Christ, where there is salvation and life and hope.

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All of his enemies are going to be crushed and destroyed. Don't be numbered with them.

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The Lord is going to subdue all of the evil designs of his and our enemies.

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Whatever your eschatology is, at the end, they're all subdued. They're all brought under his feet.

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Stop this madness and turn to your king in repentance and faith and loyalty and obedience and allegiance.

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Now, there's a peculiar thing that happens here.

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I didn't introduce it because it's complicated, but Judah is used in three different ways in our section, and it's complicated, and it can kind of make muddy the waters about all of this.

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But Judah, at the outset, appears to me to be an enemy of Jerusalem.

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But there's a turn of their heart, and I think this neatly and nicely goes and connects to the salvation of the

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Jews, even in the earliest days of the church. The inhabitants of Jerusalem are my strength and the

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Lord of hosts. They're God, it says. The great apostasy, the great opposition of the

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Jewish people, the great judgment that has befallen them, we know from Romans 9 through 11 that God has not forgotten his promises to the descendants of Abraham.

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So we can expect an ongoing harvest of the Jewish people, but someday even a cataclysmic, huge revival of true religion among those people.

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Our God remembers his promises. As Spurgeon said in relation to verse 6, there's something to the effect that the people of God are so ignited by the

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Spirit, think of last week, that they're like a fire pan in a wood pile, a fiery torch among the sheaves.

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The light and the heat of the people of God is so profound that it touches and affects everything around it, that it devours all the surrounding peoples.

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And this can be taken in two ways, kind of like in a military way, a sign of destruction, but in a more gospel way, they are the light of the world, proclaiming and shining forth the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ to a lost and dying world.

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Jerusalem shall be inhabited again in her own place. Jerusalem.

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The Lord will save the tents of Judah first. This language is generally thought to be tied to the poverty -stricken, the marginalized, and it seems to be those were the first people to come to Christ in Judea, in that early days of Christ's gospel going forth through the apostles.

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The rich men, the dignitaries, they were in alliance with Rome and their power, but the gospel was going out to tax collectors and sinners and people like you and me.

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Isn't that great? That's how God worked in those days. The last thing

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I want us to consider because of time is

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Jerusalem's prosperity. He's going to defend us.

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He's going to preserve us. He's going to protect us. It says in verse 8 that,

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In that day the Lord will defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and the one who is feeble among them in that day shall be like David.

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We prayed for widows and orphans. In effect, the prophecy of Zechariah is saying the least in the kingdom of God is going to be greater or as great as King David.

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Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Jesus asked about the greatest, the greatness of John the Baptist. What a station, what an estate you, the people of God, find yourself in on this day.

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You are raised to the echelon of one of the greatest men who's ever lived in history.

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You are likened to King David. Surely we are a kingdom of priests and princes, aren't we?

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And the house of David is going to be like God. Does anybody have a clue about what that's talking about?

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And like the angel of the Lord before them, well, there's going to be a divine one who has a natural birth in some ways, but he also has a spiritual birth.

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He is Israel par excellence. He is better than Jacob.

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He's better than Abraham. He's better than Isaac. He is the firstborn over all creation.

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And Jesus, being the true Israel, has taken a bride and she is the true

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Jerusalem, the church. Where does Jesus plant his love and his devotion?

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He plants it in Jerusalem, the Jerusalem from above, the place where God dwells in the spirit.

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It's the presence of the church. Zechariah 12, 8 anticipates the incarnation of the

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Lord Jesus Christ. It says in verse 9,

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It shall be in that day that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.

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Now, if Zechariah 12 is just a future news report about happenings in a restored

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Jerusalem, that'd be one thing. But I believe it's much grander.

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I believe it's much greater. It's not just an end times prophecy.

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It's the last days have come with Jesus and you and I are living in those glorious days where the kingdom of God is advancing.

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The enemies are being subdued. It looks perilous to us on the outside.

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Do you think the transgenders are going to conquer the church of Jesus Christ? The socialists, the

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Marxists, are they going to storm the church that's built on the rock of Jesus Christ?

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Are they going to overthrow the church of Jesus Christ? It's never going to happen.

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Whatever comes, whatever they throw at us, we'll be vindicated. They're going to try to destroy us and that I'm sure is going to be ramped up in the coming days.

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Watch how the rock falls back on their heads and they're destroyed.

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We have absolute assurance that our God has protected, preserved, and provided for us, his people.

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Jesus is the embodiment of what

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Israel is. It turns out that we are the embodiment of what the

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New Jerusalem is. Astounding. A couple words of application that I will conclude here.

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First, I'd like you to take heart. The wicked encircle us.

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They encircle us, they harass us because we are the great obstacle to their wicked designs.

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Be assured that the Lord will preserve, protect, and provide for you, his people.

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Second, do not be ignorant to the real spiritual battle that's going on and there is a war in the cosmos happening.

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But take comfort. You belong to Jesus, the

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King of glory. Thirdly, the

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Lord has promised us prosperity and success. He doesn't mean that you're all going to be rich or you're going to be healed of every disease you have.

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That would be far too small of a thing. He's going to allow us to see the ascension of the kingdom of God.

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Let us now walk in the victory of Christ. And finally, today, in just a couple of moments, our brother

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Mark is going to come and he's going to help us keep the feast. He has provided a table for us in the midst of our enemies and here we dwell today in absolute peace and security in him.

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It's wonderful to know Christ, isn't it? Let's pray together.

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O Lord, we thank you for your protection and provision.

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We thank you for passages like Zechariah 12. Thank you,

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Lord, for showing us glimmers of high, heavenly, wondrous things.

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And O Lord, I pray that we would recognize our elevated station.

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It would be a cause of humility and thanksgiving and worship and adoration of you.

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But also, Lord, a holy boldness and courage not only to approach your throne of grace, but to put sin to death in our own lives.

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To take ground from the enemy that belongs to you. To speak out against the evils of our age.

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O Lord, I pray that you would give us the full spectrum of benefit that is due the people of God.

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We ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen.