A TEACHING OF THE MESSIAH THROUGH THE VISIONS OF GOD GIVEN TO HIS PROPHET IN ZECHARIAH 3.
Taught by Prophet Duncan Mghendi.
Zechariah 3 is a vision of Messiah in the presence of a number of Angels who " stand by" (v.1,4). He is clothed with " filthy garments" which are then changed to priestly robes, and he is promised that if he is obedient " I will give thee places … among these (Angels) that stand by" . Messiah was thus capable of failure; he had a change of nature, to that of Angels', after first bearing the " filthy" human nature. When paraphrased, the passage would read as, " In the resurrection of the dead I will revive thee, and give thee feet walking among the Seraphim" - i.e. the Angels. This is a correct reasoning that a change of nature from human to Divine involves death - the end of the sinful, human nature - and resurrection and transformation in order to exist in the new immortal nature.
What about the Promises of God To David concerning the Messiah (Jesus)?
Look at this:
That Messiah would be subject to a resurrection was hinted at right back in the promises to David: " I will set up thy seed after thee… I will establish His kingdom" (2 Sam.7:12). For the phrase " set up" the Septuagint uses a Greek word elsewhere translated 'resurrect'. This great seed of David was to be the son of God (2 Sam.7:14) and also a literal descendant of David (v.12). Thus Messiah was to have one Divine and one human parent, as prophesied in Is.7:14 " A virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel" - God with us. The meaning of the child's name being related to the means by which he was born, it follows that a 'virgin' here does not just mean a young woman. The Septuagint translation of the Bible, made by Egyptian Jews 200 years B.C., uses the word 'parthenos' for " Virgin" , which definitely means a virgin in the sexual sense. Thus we have here a prophecy of a virgin birth of Messiah, by the direct activity of God upon the virgin rather than that of a man. David himself recognized that the promise about his seed was not just relevant to his natural son Solomon: " My house is not so (at the moment)… Thou hast spoken also of thy servant's house for a great while to come" (2 Sam.23:5; 7:19). Psalm 16:10 describes Messiah's brief death and resurrection: " Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt Thou suffer Thine Holy One to see corruption" - i.e. he would be raised before decomposition of the body set in. And after this, he was to ascend to Heaven: " In thy presence is fullness of joy; at Thy right hand are pleasures for evermore" (Ps.16:11). This cannot apply to David, seeing he died and has been buried many years.
Other hints at a virgin birth are to be found in the description of David's Messiah-seed as the begotten son of God (Ps. 2:6,7; 89:26,27). For God to beget a son involves His action upon a woman to make her conceive His son, without the intervention of a man. This is exactly how millions of people believe and have believed since the first century that Jesus of Nazareth came into existence.
It is a consistent Divine principle that sin must result in death. In order for Messiah to resurrect from death to eternal life and ascension to Heaven (" pleasures for evermore" , Ps.16:11), he must therefore have been sinless. This is confirmed by a number of other scriptures. Thus Messiah is called by God " the man that is my fellow" (Zech.13:7) - a man can only be called God's " fellow" due to his supreme righteousness. Messiah " is just (righteous), and (therefore) having salvation" (Zech. 9:9). Thus he was to bring salvation to others through his own righteousness. For this reason Jer. 23:5,6 calls Messiah " The Lord our righteousness" , showing that through that one man's perfect character, God's righteousness would be imputed to His people. He was to be the promised seed of David: " I will raise unto David a righteous branch, and a king shall reign and prosper… he shall be called, the Lord our righteousness" .
"The SUFFERING SERVANT OF ISAIAH - Another MESSIANIC Prophesy"
This prophecy has several descriptions of a man who has to suffer greatly in order for salvation to be attained. The following points about Messiah emerge from Isa.52:13-53:12: He was to suffer physically more than any other human being will ever do (52:14). His suffering would result in 'sprinkling' " many nations" (52:15). The idea of sprinkling recalls the sprinkling of the blood in order to atone for sins under the Law, perhaps specifically referring to the sprinkling of the water of separation for cleansing (Num.19).
The blood of his sufferings would therefore enable people from many nations to have forgiveness of sins. The news about him would be widespread, but be disbelieved by the Jews (52:15; 53:1-3). Messiah's own people would deliberately stop themselves perceiving his Messiahship: " We hid as it were our faces from him… we esteemed him not" (53:3). This recalls the language of Lev.13:44,45, suggesting that Israel would perceive Messiah as smitten with the leprosy of sin. The record of the New Testament, show that many Jews have branded Jesus as a sinner unfit for their association.
One of the reasons for this would be because of his sufferings (53:2,3). " There is no beauty that we should desire him… we did esteem him smitten of God" ; i.e. Israel generally would not be able to accept the idea of a suffering saviour/Messiah. This is a frequent Jewish objection to Jesus. He would have a distinctive hallmark of not speaking up in his own defence (53:7). He was perfect, although he died with wicked men (53:9). The idea of a Messiah who dies is also expressed in Mic.5:1 and 2 Sam.23:7, both admitted by Rabbis to be Messianic passages. God worked through Messiah's death to make it a sacrifice for sins, as a result of which he obtained eternal life for himself and carried away the sins of " his seed" (53:10,11). Messiah was " bruised" to overcome sin - as prophesied of the Messianic " seed of the woman" in Gen.3:15. Therefore the once-off victory over sin prophesied back in Gen.3:15 was fulfilled in the death of Messiah described in Is.53. Through his suffering and death, " he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors" (53:12). " Thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed… he shall see (the result) of the travail of his soul" (v.10,11), indicating that Messiah was to be resurrected.
So many other prophecies speak of this suffering Messiah in language which does not ring totally true of those characters, e.g. David and Hezekiah, to whom they may primarily refer. Thus Ps. 22 speaks of a group of men mocking the Messiah as he stood in agony, his bones sticking out (v.17), God appearing not to respond to his prayers(v.1-3), his hands and feet pierced (crucifixion is about the only form of death or torture which could be described like this,v.16), his clothes parted amongst his persecutors (v.18), and then many people worldwide coming to praise God because of His vindication of His servant by answering his prayers for deliverance from death (v.22-31). This indication that Messiah was crucified needs to be coupled with passages which speak of Israel rejecting their Messiah, to show that Jesus is the only likely candidate. No other person claiming to be Messiah has been so consistently rejected by all Jewry. Ps.118:22 speaks of Messiah as the stone that the Jews rejected (He is called " the stone" in Gen.49:24; Dan.2:43,44; Zech.3:8,9). Isa.8:14 speaks of Him as the stone which Israel will stumble at. It is also worthwhile considering how many of those who typified Messiah such as Moses, David, Joseph and several of the judges were initially rejected by their brethren, although later accepted.
The fact that Israel were to reject their Messiah and then eventually accept him after a long time is surely one of the clearest indicators that Jesus Christ is indeed their Messiah. Time and again Israel are reminded that the Messianic Kingdom can only come on a major repentance of Jewry (Lev. 26:40-42; Dt. 30:1-3; 1 Kings 8:47,49; Jer. 3:12,13; 4:1,2; Zech. 6:15; Is. 59:20: Ps. 81:13,14; Acts 3:19,20 R.V.; Rom. 11:15). That Kingdom will be when Israel nationally accept the New Covenant. This has already been made, seeing that Israel have broken the Old Covenant by their disobedience, resulting in God's divorcing of them, and the destruction of the temple and priesthood make it impossible to keep the Old Covenant. It therefore follows that Israel's repentance and their acceptance of the New Covenant are the same thing. We have shown above that their repentance will be for killing their Messiah, through whom the New Covenant was made. All logical analysis points to this Messiah being This has already been made, seeing that Israel have broken the Old Covenant by their disobedience, resulting in God's divorcing of them, and the destruction of the temple and priesthood make it impossible to keep the Old Covenant. It therefore follows that Israel's repentance and their acceptance of the New Covenant are the same thing. We have shown above that their repentance will be for killing their Messiah, through whom the New Covenant was made. All logical analysis points to this Messiah being This has already been made, seeing that Israel have broken the Old Covenant by their disobedience, resulting in God's divorcing of them, and the destruction of the temple and priesthood make it impossible to keep the Old Covenant. It therefore follows that Israel's repentance and their acceptance of the New Covenant are the same thing. We have shown above that their repentance will be for killing their Messiah, through whom the New Covenant was made. All logical analysis points to this Messiah being Jesus- and the sooner Israel accept him, the quicker His Kingdom will be established.
So much is salvation a matter of giving on God's part that its best subjects are those in whom his grace of giving can have this perfect work. The poor in spirit, those that mourn, the meek and the hungry, these are made to pass before our eyes as so many typical forms of its embodiment. And because this is so, they are here also introduced as having the promise of the infinite. To be a child of God and a disciple of Jesus means to hold in one's hand the treasures of eternity.
Righteousness is the opposite of sin, and as the reference to God is inseparable from the conception of sin, so the reference to God is in precisely the same manner inherent in the idea of righteousness. To put it very plainly: If there were no God to see and judge and punish, one might perhaps still continue to speak of good and evil, meaning thereby what is beneficial or injurious, subject to the approval or disapproval of men, but it would be meaningless to speak of sin on such a supposition. And so, by equal reasoning, while what is commonly called good might without the existence of God be conceivable in the world, yet it could not properly bear the name of righteousness for the simple reason that, in order to deserve this name, according to the Biblical way of thinking, it needs first to be placed in the light of the divine nature, the divine will, the divine judgment.
At the very birth of the people of God this principle was embedded deep in their life, when God said to Abraham: "I am El-Shaddai, walk thou before me, then shalt thou be blameless" (Gen. 17:1). To walk before God means so to walk as to have the thought of God's presence and supervision constantly in mind, and to shape one's conduct accordingly.
The beginning of hungering and thirsting after righteousness lies in the birth of conviction of sin. In fact the presence of this element in it is what distinguishes true, deep repentance from every kind of superficial regret for the secondary consequences of sin. True repentance strips sin of all that is accidental. It resembles an inner chamber where no one and nothing else is admitted except God and the sinner and his sin. Into that chamber all the great penitents like David and Paul have entered, and each one in the bitter anguish of his soul has borrowed the words of the Psalmist: "Against thee, thee only have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight, that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest" (Ps. 51:4). A repentant sinner acquits God and condemns himself. And for the very reason that his consciousness of sin is God-centered, he is also alive to its inward seriousness. He learns to trace it in the recesses and abysses of his inmost life, where even the eye of self-scrutiny would otherwise scarcely penetrate, but in which the eyes of God are at home, where all our iniquities stand naked before him and our secret sins in the light of his countenance. If it is characteristic of sin to excuse itself, it is no less characteristic of repentance to scorn all subterfuge and to judge of itself, as it were, with the very veracity of God. Herein indeed is shown the first grace of God to an awakened sinner that he lets in upon the soul this cleansing flood of moral truth. It is a painful experience, but even through the pain the penitent feels that his relation towards God has been in principle rectified, that the sorrow of repentance is a sorrow after God himself. Without that much of faith there is no repentance, by that much of faith gracious repentance differs from the remorse of the hopelessly lost. And from such saving penitence there is but one more step to the recognition that the claims of the divine righteousness in their widest extent must be satisfied. To a mind thus disposed the thought of atonement is no longer an offense or foolishness, but something commending itself by its inherent justice.
God bless you, Shalom....
Zechariah 3 is a vision of Messiah in the presence of a number of Angels who " stand by" (v.1,4). He is clothed with " filthy garments" which are then changed to priestly robes, and he is promised that if he is obedient " I will give thee places … among these (Angels) that stand by" . Messiah was thus capable of failure; he had a change of nature, to that of Angels', after first bearing the " filthy" human nature. When paraphrased, the passage would read as, " In the resurrection of the dead I will revive thee, and give thee feet walking among the Seraphim" - i.e. the Angels. This is a correct reasoning that a change of nature from human to Divine involves death - the end of the sinful, human nature - and resurrection and transformation in order to exist in the new immortal nature.
What about the Promises of God To David concerning the Messiah (Jesus)?
Look at this:
That Messiah would be subject to a resurrection was hinted at right back in the promises to David: " I will set up thy seed after thee… I will establish His kingdom" (2 Sam.7:12). For the phrase " set up" the Septuagint uses a Greek word elsewhere translated 'resurrect'. This great seed of David was to be the son of God (2 Sam.7:14) and also a literal descendant of David (v.12). Thus Messiah was to have one Divine and one human parent, as prophesied in Is.7:14 " A virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel" - God with us. The meaning of the child's name being related to the means by which he was born, it follows that a 'virgin' here does not just mean a young woman. The Septuagint translation of the Bible, made by Egyptian Jews 200 years B.C., uses the word 'parthenos' for " Virgin" , which definitely means a virgin in the sexual sense. Thus we have here a prophecy of a virgin birth of Messiah, by the direct activity of God upon the virgin rather than that of a man. David himself recognized that the promise about his seed was not just relevant to his natural son Solomon: " My house is not so (at the moment)… Thou hast spoken also of thy servant's house for a great while to come" (2 Sam.23:5; 7:19). Psalm 16:10 describes Messiah's brief death and resurrection: " Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt Thou suffer Thine Holy One to see corruption" - i.e. he would be raised before decomposition of the body set in. And after this, he was to ascend to Heaven: " In thy presence is fullness of joy; at Thy right hand are pleasures for evermore" (Ps.16:11). This cannot apply to David, seeing he died and has been buried many years.
Other hints at a virgin birth are to be found in the description of David's Messiah-seed as the begotten son of God (Ps. 2:6,7; 89:26,27). For God to beget a son involves His action upon a woman to make her conceive His son, without the intervention of a man. This is exactly how millions of people believe and have believed since the first century that Jesus of Nazareth came into existence.
It is a consistent Divine principle that sin must result in death. In order for Messiah to resurrect from death to eternal life and ascension to Heaven (" pleasures for evermore" , Ps.16:11), he must therefore have been sinless. This is confirmed by a number of other scriptures. Thus Messiah is called by God " the man that is my fellow" (Zech.13:7) - a man can only be called God's " fellow" due to his supreme righteousness. Messiah " is just (righteous), and (therefore) having salvation" (Zech. 9:9). Thus he was to bring salvation to others through his own righteousness. For this reason Jer. 23:5,6 calls Messiah " The Lord our righteousness" , showing that through that one man's perfect character, God's righteousness would be imputed to His people. He was to be the promised seed of David: " I will raise unto David a righteous branch, and a king shall reign and prosper… he shall be called, the Lord our righteousness" .
"The SUFFERING SERVANT OF ISAIAH - Another MESSIANIC Prophesy"
This prophecy has several descriptions of a man who has to suffer greatly in order for salvation to be attained. The following points about Messiah emerge from Isa.52:13-53:12: He was to suffer physically more than any other human being will ever do (52:14). His suffering would result in 'sprinkling' " many nations" (52:15). The idea of sprinkling recalls the sprinkling of the blood in order to atone for sins under the Law, perhaps specifically referring to the sprinkling of the water of separation for cleansing (Num.19).
The blood of his sufferings would therefore enable people from many nations to have forgiveness of sins. The news about him would be widespread, but be disbelieved by the Jews (52:15; 53:1-3). Messiah's own people would deliberately stop themselves perceiving his Messiahship: " We hid as it were our faces from him… we esteemed him not" (53:3). This recalls the language of Lev.13:44,45, suggesting that Israel would perceive Messiah as smitten with the leprosy of sin. The record of the New Testament, show that many Jews have branded Jesus as a sinner unfit for their association.
One of the reasons for this would be because of his sufferings (53:2,3). " There is no beauty that we should desire him… we did esteem him smitten of God" ; i.e. Israel generally would not be able to accept the idea of a suffering saviour/Messiah. This is a frequent Jewish objection to Jesus. He would have a distinctive hallmark of not speaking up in his own defence (53:7). He was perfect, although he died with wicked men (53:9). The idea of a Messiah who dies is also expressed in Mic.5:1 and 2 Sam.23:7, both admitted by Rabbis to be Messianic passages. God worked through Messiah's death to make it a sacrifice for sins, as a result of which he obtained eternal life for himself and carried away the sins of " his seed" (53:10,11). Messiah was " bruised" to overcome sin - as prophesied of the Messianic " seed of the woman" in Gen.3:15. Therefore the once-off victory over sin prophesied back in Gen.3:15 was fulfilled in the death of Messiah described in Is.53. Through his suffering and death, " he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors" (53:12). " Thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed… he shall see (the result) of the travail of his soul" (v.10,11), indicating that Messiah was to be resurrected.
So many other prophecies speak of this suffering Messiah in language which does not ring totally true of those characters, e.g. David and Hezekiah, to whom they may primarily refer. Thus Ps. 22 speaks of a group of men mocking the Messiah as he stood in agony, his bones sticking out (v.17), God appearing not to respond to his prayers(v.1-3), his hands and feet pierced (crucifixion is about the only form of death or torture which could be described like this,v.16), his clothes parted amongst his persecutors (v.18), and then many people worldwide coming to praise God because of His vindication of His servant by answering his prayers for deliverance from death (v.22-31). This indication that Messiah was crucified needs to be coupled with passages which speak of Israel rejecting their Messiah, to show that Jesus is the only likely candidate. No other person claiming to be Messiah has been so consistently rejected by all Jewry. Ps.118:22 speaks of Messiah as the stone that the Jews rejected (He is called " the stone" in Gen.49:24; Dan.2:43,44; Zech.3:8,9). Isa.8:14 speaks of Him as the stone which Israel will stumble at. It is also worthwhile considering how many of those who typified Messiah such as Moses, David, Joseph and several of the judges were initially rejected by their brethren, although later accepted.
The fact that Israel were to reject their Messiah and then eventually accept him after a long time is surely one of the clearest indicators that Jesus Christ is indeed their Messiah. Time and again Israel are reminded that the Messianic Kingdom can only come on a major repentance of Jewry (Lev. 26:40-42; Dt. 30:1-3; 1 Kings 8:47,49; Jer. 3:12,13; 4:1,2; Zech. 6:15; Is. 59:20: Ps. 81:13,14; Acts 3:19,20 R.V.; Rom. 11:15). That Kingdom will be when Israel nationally accept the New Covenant. This has already been made, seeing that Israel have broken the Old Covenant by their disobedience, resulting in God's divorcing of them, and the destruction of the temple and priesthood make it impossible to keep the Old Covenant. It therefore follows that Israel's repentance and their acceptance of the New Covenant are the same thing. We have shown above that their repentance will be for killing their Messiah, through whom the New Covenant was made. All logical analysis points to this Messiah being This has already been made, seeing that Israel have broken the Old Covenant by their disobedience, resulting in God's divorcing of them, and the destruction of the temple and priesthood make it impossible to keep the Old Covenant. It therefore follows that Israel's repentance and their acceptance of the New Covenant are the same thing. We have shown above that their repentance will be for killing their Messiah, through whom the New Covenant was made. All logical analysis points to this Messiah being This has already been made, seeing that Israel have broken the Old Covenant by their disobedience, resulting in God's divorcing of them, and the destruction of the temple and priesthood make it impossible to keep the Old Covenant. It therefore follows that Israel's repentance and their acceptance of the New Covenant are the same thing. We have shown above that their repentance will be for killing their Messiah, through whom the New Covenant was made. All logical analysis points to this Messiah being Jesus- and the sooner Israel accept him, the quicker His Kingdom will be established.
So much is salvation a matter of giving on God's part that its best subjects are those in whom his grace of giving can have this perfect work. The poor in spirit, those that mourn, the meek and the hungry, these are made to pass before our eyes as so many typical forms of its embodiment. And because this is so, they are here also introduced as having the promise of the infinite. To be a child of God and a disciple of Jesus means to hold in one's hand the treasures of eternity.
Righteousness is the opposite of sin, and as the reference to God is inseparable from the conception of sin, so the reference to God is in precisely the same manner inherent in the idea of righteousness. To put it very plainly: If there were no God to see and judge and punish, one might perhaps still continue to speak of good and evil, meaning thereby what is beneficial or injurious, subject to the approval or disapproval of men, but it would be meaningless to speak of sin on such a supposition. And so, by equal reasoning, while what is commonly called good might without the existence of God be conceivable in the world, yet it could not properly bear the name of righteousness for the simple reason that, in order to deserve this name, according to the Biblical way of thinking, it needs first to be placed in the light of the divine nature, the divine will, the divine judgment.
At the very birth of the people of God this principle was embedded deep in their life, when God said to Abraham: "I am El-Shaddai, walk thou before me, then shalt thou be blameless" (Gen. 17:1). To walk before God means so to walk as to have the thought of God's presence and supervision constantly in mind, and to shape one's conduct accordingly.
The beginning of hungering and thirsting after righteousness lies in the birth of conviction of sin. In fact the presence of this element in it is what distinguishes true, deep repentance from every kind of superficial regret for the secondary consequences of sin. True repentance strips sin of all that is accidental. It resembles an inner chamber where no one and nothing else is admitted except God and the sinner and his sin. Into that chamber all the great penitents like David and Paul have entered, and each one in the bitter anguish of his soul has borrowed the words of the Psalmist: "Against thee, thee only have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight, that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest" (Ps. 51:4). A repentant sinner acquits God and condemns himself. And for the very reason that his consciousness of sin is God-centered, he is also alive to its inward seriousness. He learns to trace it in the recesses and abysses of his inmost life, where even the eye of self-scrutiny would otherwise scarcely penetrate, but in which the eyes of God are at home, where all our iniquities stand naked before him and our secret sins in the light of his countenance. If it is characteristic of sin to excuse itself, it is no less characteristic of repentance to scorn all subterfuge and to judge of itself, as it were, with the very veracity of God. Herein indeed is shown the first grace of God to an awakened sinner that he lets in upon the soul this cleansing flood of moral truth. It is a painful experience, but even through the pain the penitent feels that his relation towards God has been in principle rectified, that the sorrow of repentance is a sorrow after God himself. Without that much of faith there is no repentance, by that much of faith gracious repentance differs from the remorse of the hopelessly lost. And from such saving penitence there is but one more step to the recognition that the claims of the divine righteousness in their widest extent must be satisfied. To a mind thus disposed the thought of atonement is no longer an offense or foolishness, but something commending itself by its inherent justice.
God bless you, Shalom....
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