What if Israel had accepted Jesus as Messiah? This passage from Zephaniah tells of the restoration
of the nation with the Lord in their very midst, gathering them and healing
them. It tells of His great love for His
people and His desire to be with them and to show His love to them. "The Lord your God is in your midst, a
mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet
you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing." Does that comfort you and make you weep? The God of all, the One who brought all
things into being, who created the world for you and you for the world loves
the lump of dust that is you that He breathed His life into. He took on flesh specifically to redeem the
leftover bit of creation from which we were first created because of His love
for us. He was in the midst of His
people and they knew Him not. We have
been given the grace to know Him and He is not only in our midst, He is in us
by the power of the Holy Spirit and this day He wants you to know you are loved
by Him.
The moment is amazing.
There were too many priests at the time and they were forced to live
outside the city and make their living otherwise but then they were on a
rotation whereby they were allowed to serve in the temple to fulfill their
obligations as members of the priestly clan.
Not many of them would ever have had the opportunity to serve in the
holy place, most would have done prep work but Zechariah was chosen by lot this
year to go into that place. Luke tells
us while he was in there performing his duties concerning the incense "the
whole multitude of the people were praying outside." An angel, the archangel Gabriel, appears
inside the holy place and tells Zechariah that his prayers have been answered
and that his wife will bear a son who will be the forerunner of Messiah and
Zechariah's response is, “How shall I know this?" Do you mean that an angel appearing to you in
the place you have always wanted to be but are never likely to have been and
telling you these things isn't enough? The
sign then is muteness. What would the
multitude think when he came out after the delay that could mean anything and
he was unable to speak? Do we believe
God for the promises He has made to us or are we like Zechariah?
Paul was an extraordinary man but only because of His
encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus.
When he speaks here of the circumcision party in such angry terms
because they are so misguided that he considers them to be evil, he is speaking
about the people he formerly led. He knows
that for all his obedience to the traditions and laws of Judaism, which God had
prescribed, when Messiah came he missed him.
He knew it all and was devoutly religious and yet his learning and his
devotion gained him nothing. It required
a visit from the Lord Jesus speaking to him from heaven as only God had ever
done in history to reveal this to him. The
encounter was so powerful that Paul considered everything he had done and known
to be filthy rags, something to be despised.
Have you had such an encounter and changed your mind about everything
else in your life? Ask Him to give you
that encounter that you might see things rightly.
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