June 4, 2023 - Sunday Service

Good morning everyone. It looks like we're having a nice family reunion, which is great. Let's now turn our hearts to worship. Let's prepare our hearts now for.

Just a moment. Let's check on this technical issue. Some sound is running through our system. I don't know what it is. Yeah, I don't have anything on my end.

Well, grace and peace to you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Welcome to the corporate worship of God. We have entered into that place, which is a stairway to heaven. Let us rejoice in this. Please stand.

God’s Glory in Creation and the Call to Worship

Oh Lord, you who laid the foundations of the earth so that it should not be moved forever. You covered it with the deep as with a garment. The waters stood above the mountains. At your rebuke, they fled at the voice of your thunder.

They hastened away. They went up over the mountains. They went down into the valleys to the place which you founded for them. You have set a boundary that they may not pass, that they may not return to cover the earth.

May the glory of the Lord endure forever. May the Lord rejoice in his works. He looks on the earth and it trembles. He touches the hills and they smoke. I will sing to the Lord as long as I live. I will sing praise to my God while I have my being.

May my meditation be sweet to him. I will be glad in the Lord. May sinners be consumed from the earth and the wicked be no more. Bless the Lord, oh my soul. Praise the Lord. Come now, let us worship him.

Please pray with me. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we have come to your holy hill of Zion. We raise our hands and open our mouths that you might fill us, that we might receive the blessing of communion with you, that we might sing your praises, that we might come to you in confession and forgiveness and assurance, and that you might serve us at the table.

Oh Lord, be glorified in us. May your name be hallowed here. We ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Please kneel for the corporate confession of sin and let us now confess our sins in unison. Jesus, forgive my sins.

Forgive the sins that I remember and the sins I have forgotten. Forgive me my many failures of temptation and those times when I have been stubborn in the face of correction. Forgive the times I have been proud of my own achievements and those when I have failed to boast in your works.

Forgive the harsh judgments I have made of others and the leniency I have shown myself. Forgive the lies I have told to others and the truths I have avoided. Forgive me the pain I have caused others and the indulgence I have shown myself.

Jesus, have mercy on me and make me whole. Amen. Please stand. What a fitting corporate confession of sin. That is us. We have a Savior who is Christ the Lord who is a God like you, oh Lord, pardoning iniquity and passing over the transgression of the remnant of his heritage.

He does not retain his anger forever because he delights in mercy. He will again have compassion on us and will subdue our iniquities. He will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea. Oh, let us exult and rejoice in the forgiveness that we have in Christ Jesus.

Amen. Let's respond to seeing number 295. Crown him with many crowns. 295. Hebrews.

Christ’s Once-for-All Sacrifice in Hebrews 10

Chapter 10. For the law having a shadow of the good things to come and not the very image of the things can never, with these same sacrifices which they offer continually year by year, make those who approach perfect.

For then would they not have ceased to be offered? For the worshipers, once purified, would have no more consciousness of sins. But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins.

Therefore, when he came into the world, he said, sacrifice an offering you did not desire, but a body you have prepared for me. In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin you had no pleasure. Then I said, behold, I have come.

In the volume of the book it is written of me to do your will, O God. Previously saying, sacrifice an offering, burnt offerings, and offerings for sin you did not desire, nor had pleasure in them, which are offered according to the law.

Then he said, behold, I have come to do your will, O God. He takes away the first that he may establish the second. By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

And every priest stands ministering daily and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices which can never take away sins. But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God, from that time waiting till his enemies are made his footstool.

For by one offering he has perfected forever those who are being sanctified. But the Holy Spirit also witnesses to us. For after he had said before, this is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord.

I will put my laws into their hearts and in their minds. I will write them. Then he adds, their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more. Now there is remission of these. There is no longer an offering for sin.

Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the holiness by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which he consecrated for us through the veil that is his flesh, and having a high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promises faithful. Let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another and so much more as you see the day approaching.

For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sin, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment and a fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries.

Anyone who has rejected Moses's law dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment, do you suppose, will he be thought worthy who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he has sanctified a common thing, and insulted the spirit of grace.

For we know him who said, vengeance is mine I will repay, says the Lord, and again the Lord will judge his people. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. But recall the former days in which after you were illuminated you endured a great struggle with sufferings, partly while you were made a spectacle both by reproaches and tribulations, and partly while you became companions of those who were so treated.

For you had compassion on me in my chains, and joyfully accepted the plundering of your goods, knowing that you have a better and enduring possession for yourselves in heaven. Therefore do not cast away your confidence, which has great reward.

For you have need of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise. For a little while, and he who is coming will come, and will not tarry. Now the just shall live by faith, but if anyone draws back, my soul has no pleasure in him.

But we are not of those who draw back to perdition, but of those who believe to the saving of the soul. This is the Word of the Lord.". And that chapter is something, isn't it? Man. Thank you, Lord Jesus.

Let us now confess our faith in the singing of the Apostles.

Creed. I want to ask you to take up the hymnal again. I want to pause here for.

Just a moment. This hymn and this tune are exceedingly familiar to us, and that provides a blessing for us that we don't have to concentrate on following along. And it's also an opportunity for us to really engage with the subject matter, which is the holiness of our great God.

So let us properly ascribe holiness to.

Our God in the singing of 100. Holy, holy, holy. Preparations for the prayers of the.

People. Please kneel. Let's pray together now with one voice. Almighty and everlasting God, in whom we live and move and have our being, we, your beloved children, offer to you our humble praises for having preserved us from the beginning of our lives to this day.

Especially do we praise you for having delivered us from the dangers and uncertainties of this past week. Bless and magnify your glorious name. Humbly beseeching you to accept this, our morning sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.

For his sake, who lay down in the grave and rose again for us, your Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ. Fulfill now, O Lord, our desires and petitions as may be best for us, granting us in this world knowledge of thy truth to come life everlasting.

Amen. I ask your prayers for God's people throughout the world, for our denomination, for this church, and for all ministers and.

Missionaries. Pray for the church. I ask your prayers for the poor, the sick, the.

Bereaved, the burdened, and for the widows, orphans, and prisoners. Pray for those in.

Any need or trouble. I ask your prayers for those who do not know Christ and for.

Those who seek a deeper knowledge of him. Pray that they may find and be found by.

Him. I ask your prayers for our children and future generations which will be.

Born to them. Pray that the knowledge of the Lord will fill the earth through.

Them. Pray that we may have grace to glorify Christ in our own day. Amen.

Please stand and take up the Psalm of the Month, Psalm 94. If you're here for prayer meeting on Thursday, you had the chance to sing this. DJ, would you give a.

Couple of words of encouragement to us as we venture out into Psalm 94? Thank.

You, brother. Alyssa, I'm going to ask you to play through one time and then a.

Pause, helpful pause to start. Thank you. Please turn in your Bibles, if you would,.

To Zechariah in chapter 12, the next to last book, the Old Testament. Zechariah in chapter 12. I want to remind you that this is no ordinary literature. This is God's holy and infallible word. We learned again last week that the Holy Spirit is the author of it.

And so when we study the scripture, we're hearing the very word of God. Zechariah 12, the burden of the word of the Lord against Israel. Thus says the Lord, who stretches out the heavens, lays the foundation of the earth and forms the spirit of man within him.

Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of drunkenness to all the surrounding peoples when they lay siege against Judah and Jerusalem. And it shall happen in that day that I will make Jerusalem a very heavy stone for all peoples.

All who would heave it away will surely be cut in pieces, though all nations of the earth are gathered against it. In that day, says the Lord, I will strike every horse with confusion and its riders with madness.

I will open my eyes on the house of Judah and will strike every horse of the peoples with blindness. And the governors of Judah shall say in their heart, the inhabitants of Jerusalem are my strength and the Lord of hosts their God.

In that day, I'll make the governors of Judah like a fire pan in the woodpile and like a fiery torch in the sheaves. 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, 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. 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. And the house of David shall be like God, like the angel of the Lord before them. It shall be in that day that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.

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

And that day there shall be a great mourning in Jerusalem, like the mourning at Hadad, Ramon, in the plain of Megiddo. And the land shall mourn every family by itself, the family of the house of David by itself, and their wives by themselves, 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, 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.

May the Lord, the power of his spirit, illumine our understanding of his word. Please pray with me. Who could we ever call upon in heaven but you, O God? The enemies of your people gather and they assemble around, but you squash them, you bring their wicked designs to nothing.

We thank you, O Lord, that we have a true Israel, and that your people are a true Jerusalem. I pray that Christ would be exalted today, and they even hear that his gospel would shine forth. They would see more and more of his glory.

We ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Please be seated. As you know, and we've been studying, Zechariah is relatively obscure in its proclamation in the church today, and the section that we are going to focus on, verses 1 through 9, would be merely introductory material in most cases for the latter half of the chapter, 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.

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

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

This is another oracle, a second oracle, 9 through 11 was one, and now 12 through 14 is another, and it's been Christological, it's been Messianic, but that's been accelerated a bit now in chapter 12 through 14.

The title of the message today is Protection and Provision. The people have come back from exile. A remnant, a percentage of them who had been in Babylon have been here and engaged in the work of rebuilding the temple.

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 Messiah, the King of Glory himself, the Lord Jesus Christ.

There have been many distinctly Christological sections that we've enjoyed here, and chapter 12 is no different. The second half, next time in Zechariah, we will get a very big dose of Christ in Zechariah, but today something else is happening.

The Lord is speaking about preserving and protecting a remnant of his people, but the question has to be asked is, what is Jerusalem? If Jerusalem is to be destroyed because of her rejection of the 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, or is there another Jerusalem? Is there another place that becomes the dwelling place of God in the Spirit?

Is there a new Jerusalem, a place where his people reside? Well, I would argue that there is, and that place is the church. And in spite of all of the different interpretations, almost everyone, 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.

There's an interpretive key that we have to unlock to understand its significance here. Let's go to Galatians in chapter 4. This is going to help us understand how this Jerusalem refers not just to the geographic location, but to something else.

Galatians in chapter 4. I'm going to begin reading in verse 21. Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not hear the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondwoman, the other by a free woman.

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

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

And 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.

This fits very nicely with our section here, because Israel and its apostasy and rejection of the coming Messiah finds itself outside of the covenant promises, because they've gone the way of the bondwoman.

The Pharisees in the days of Jesus, they believed themselves to be the caretakers of the law, the great scholars of the law, they were on the side of Hagar. It's a powerful, stinging indictment of unbelief.

I'll continue in verse 24. These things are symbolic, for these are the two covenants. The one from Mount Sinai, which gives birth to bondage, which is Hagar. For this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and corresponds to Jerusalem, which now is.

And what is the description of physical, national Jerusalem according to Paul? And how does it line up with Zechariah 12? 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.

If you do these things, you have salvation. The same idea is present in the Jerusalem of Zechariah's time, in the intervening period between the 500 years between these two divine books. There's another Jerusalem.

Did you know that you were a citizen of Jerusalem? After all, we come to Mount Zion every Sunday. We have a heavenly citizenship. You and I in Christ are citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem. There's a Jerusalem that now is, that is under bondage.

The Dome of the Rock sits on the Temple Mount, still under bondage because of apostasy, because of a rejection of our Lord Jesus Christ. But there's another Jerusalem, a one that we participated, a Jerusalem we gather with the people of God in Jerusalem to worship our God.

And you know what? Our God meets us here because we're his people. The church is the new Jerusalem. A couple more things and we'll go back. Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and it corresponds to Jerusalem, which now is and is in bondage with her children.

But the Jerusalem above is free, which is the mother of us all. I want you to repeat that again, children. I want you to pay close attention to this. But the Jerusalem above is free. There's a Jerusalem in bondage, a Jerusalem subject to the wrath of God, a Jerusalem that is going to be, every stone's going to be turned over.

And there's a Jerusalem that is free, which is the mother of of us all. Can that mean anything but the church? What else could it possibly mean? The Jerusalem from above. And it says, Rejoice, O barren, you who do not bear.

Break forth and shout, you who are not in labor. For the desolate has many more children than she who has a husband. But now we brethren, as Isaac was, are children of promise. But as he who was born according to the flesh then persecuted who was born according to the spirit, even so it is now.

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

So then brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free. Galatians 4, the analogy of faith, the scripture interpreting the scripture, it's essential for us to understand Zechariah 12 in light of all the revelation there is about Christ.

Now let's turn back there to Zechariah 12. For those of you who have need of an outline, I have two points for you. First, Jerusalem defended would be the first point I'd like to offer, and it's gonna be the bulk of what we talk about today.

Jerusalem defended. 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 song that talks about either Jacob or Jerusalem. Now my question to you, can we as a Christian people claim the promises given to Jacob and Jerusalem or not?

Are those confined only to the old covenant people of God? 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.

That songbook, the Psalms, all of those illustrations, all those descriptions are for us, for all people, for all the ages. All those promises are found in Christ and have their yes and amen. And now we have the burden of the word of the Lord against Israel.

This is the second big prophecy after the night visions. The first occurred in chapters 9 through 11, the second 12 through 14. This is the Lord speaking, and to give you a taste of what's coming, we're not going to talk about it today, look again at verse 10, and this should set your heart on fire.

God is the voice speaking in Zechariah 12. Zechariah is speaking the words of God after him. And he says, I will pour on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and supplication.

Sounds like Pentecost to me. Then they will look upon me whom they pierced. How does God get pierced? The incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ. God is speaking to the covenant people in Zechariah 12. And he says in that prophecy that I'm going to be pierced and I'm going to pour out my Holy Spirit.

And it's going to happen in Jerusalem and it's going to spread to the ends of the earth. You remember that from last week? Astounding. 500 years before the arrival of our Lord Jesus Christ. Well, let's consider it really quickly.

This is what the Lord says, and listen to his credentials. The Lord, this is his word, this is the burden, this is the message that must be delivered, but he traces his credentials. He gives his CV, his resume.

He says, I am the one who stretches out the heavens. I am the one who lays the foundation of the earth. Those of you who know the catechism, how does God execute his decrees? God executed his decrees in the works of creation and providence.

Brethren, as our brother Dr. Lawson said in our study this morning, this entire world, this cosmos, it all is the possession of our God. This is why we're those radical theonomic reconstructionists that everybody warns people about.

This entire planet, everything in it is the possession of our God. We can never be mistaken about this. It's his world. It's his stars that hang in the skies. It's his fish that swim in the streams. It's his flowers.

It's his cattle. It all belongs to him. We all bow in subjection to him, or at least we should. What qualifications to speak. And the agent of creation, we're going to find out in our section, is also the agent of recreation.

If he's able to create something, he's also able to recreate. He stretches out the heavens. He lays the foundation of the earth. And this part is a depth, a world to be explored, and time doesn't permit it, and forms the spirit of man within him.

You remember the picture of Adam being formed of the dust of the ground and molded into that image, that form. And then God breathes into his nostrils and animates him into a living, sentient being, a soul, a spiritual, physical creature.

Not just a physical creature, a spiritual, soulful creature. And God does this when he gives life. The picture of our illustration in Galatians 4 even works here. 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. This is all the Lord's doing. And here's the message that he gives. Oh, what qualifications he has to speak.

He says in verse 2, I'm going to make Jerusalem a cup of drunkenness to all the surrounding peoples when they lay siege against Judah and Jerusalem. One author said just as God once exercised his might and strength to form the world and to give life to mankind at the beginning of history, so he will work in the latter days to reform the world and to give life once again to his people.

The coming last day's work of the Messiah will be a restorative work. It's going to be the ushering in of a new creation. I'm going to make 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 Jerusalem citizens as if they were drinking wine.

But they're not going to get drunk. 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. 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.

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. Look at verse 3. It says, and it shall happen in that day that I will make Jerusalem a very heavy stone for all peoples.

There's some interesting Hebrew language here, and the wound that happens is even connected to the idea of attempting to grab a great stone. 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.

And the enemies of God grabbing the stone and having the stone fall on themselves to be crushed under its weight. Brethren, you have no idea how secure you are in Christ. The enemies encircle us like jackals and wolves.

We're just sheep. The predators swirl around us, and it looks bad. It's ominous, and they hate us because we are the only earthly impediment for the full vent of their evil designs. That's why they hate the church so much.

We are the impediment for them to go on in their wickedness. After all, the God the atheists don't believe in is the Christian God, the Trinitarian God. That's the God they don't believe in. They don't want to believe in.

And the enemies of God are going to be vanquished. They're going to try to attack 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, and that picture applies very well to our security in Christ.

The people want to attack us. 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.

I heard a statistic recently. I don't know how accurate. It's from the early 2000s that roughly 163 ,000 Christians are martyred every year for Jesus Christ. That's a huge number. There are things that happen in sub-Saharan Africa and places in Asia that we have no idea what's going on.

There's going to be a vindication of all these things. It says in verse 4, In that day, says the Lord, I will strike every horse with confusion, and its riders will be struck with madness. I will open my eyes over the house of Judah, and I will strike every horse of the peoples with blindness.

This is utter confusion. The enemies of God, it looks like they're going to overtake them, but they can't. The governors of Judah shall say in their heart, The inhabitants of Jerusalem are my strength, and the Lord of hosts their God.

In that day, I will make the governors of Judah like a firepan in the woodpile. After all, didn't Christ say, Upon this rock I will build my church? Isn't Christ the chief cornerstone, the stone of stumbling, and the rock of offense?

Though the peoples gather against us in opposition to us, they will ultimately be cut to pieces. Why? They fail to kiss the sun, and his wrath is now kindled against them. They cannot withstand him. So there's also an appeal, a plea here for us, isn't there?

If I be outside of the security and comfort of Christ, and I'm in a precarious position, I urge you, if you do not know Jesus Christ, run and flee to the security of Christ, where there's salvation, and life, and hope.

All of his enemies are going to be crushed and destroyed. Don't be numbered with them. The Lord is going to subdue all of the evil designs of his and our enemies. Whatever your eschatology is, at the end, they're all subdued.

They're all brought under his feet. Stop this madness and turn to your king in repentance, and faith, and loyalty, and obedience, and allegiance. Now, there's a peculiar thing that happens here. 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.

But Judah, at the outset, appears to me to be an enemy of Jerusalem, but there's a turn of their heart, and I think this neatly and nicely goes and connects to the salvation of the Jews, even in the days, the earliest days of the church.

The inhabitants of Jerusalem are my strength and the Lord of hosts. They're God, it says. See, the great apostasy, the great opposition of the 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, so we can expect an ongoing harvest of the Jewish people, but someday even a cataclysmic, huge revival of true religion among those people.

Our God remembers his promises. Spurgeon said in relation to verse 6 something to the effect that the people of God are so ignited by the Spirit, think of last week, that they're like a firepan in a woodpile, a fiery torch among the sheaves.

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, and this can be taken in two ways, kind of like a, 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 gospel of Jesus Christ to a lost and dying world.

Jerusalem shall be inhabited again in her own place. Jerusalem, 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, and in that early days of Christ's gospel going forth through the apostles.

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, isn't that great? That's how God worked in those days.

Jerusalem’s Defense and Prosperity in Zechariah 12

The last thing I want us to consider because of time is Jerusalem's prosperity. He's going to defend us, he's going to preserve us, he's going to protect us. It says in verse 8 that 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.

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

Surely we are a kingdom of priests and princes, aren't we? And the house of David is going to be like God. Does anybody have a clue about what that's talking about? 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. He is Israel par excellence. He is better than Jacob, he's better than Abraham, he's better than Isaac.

He is the firstborn over all creation. And Jesus, being the true Israel, has taken a bride and she is the true Jerusalem, the church. Where does Jesus plant his love and his devotion? He plants it in Jerusalem, the Jerusalem from above, the place where God dwells in the spirit.

It's the presence of the church. Zechariah 12, 8 anticipates the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ. Says in verse 9, it shall be in that day that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.

Now, if Zechariah 12 is just a future news report about happenings in a restored Jerusalem, that'd be one thing. But I believe it's much grander. I believe it's much greater. It's not just an end times prophecy, 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.

The enemies are being subdued. It looks perilous to us on the outside. Do you think the transgenders are going to conquer the church of Jesus Christ? The socialists, the Marxists, are they going to storm the church that's built on the rock of Jesus Christ?

Are they going to throw over, overthrow the church of Jesus Christ? It's never going to happen. Whatever comes, whatever they throw at us, we will 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.

Watch how the rock falls back on their heads and they're destroyed. We have absolute assurance that our God has protected, preserved, and provided for us his people. Jesus is the embodiment of what Israel is and it turns out that we are the embodiment of what the new Jerusalem is.

Astounding. A couple words of application that I will conclude here. First, I'd like you to take heart. The wicked encircle us. They encircle us, they harass us because we are the great obstacle to their wicked designs.