Zechariah 14:12 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Zechariah 14:12

Comments

People will be consumed while they live; fleshly lusts and ungodly desires will consume unbelievers, destroying any remnant of integrity in them and bringing them into a state of guilt and misery. The things they turned to for satisfaction will let them down. Their eyes and tongues are consumed away in their skulls even while they stand in a kind of living death. This will happen as a result of plagues. The prophets are always only an arm’s length away from literal plagues. The aim is to bring out the people of God so that they can be delivered. Plagues are sent so that God’s enemies will be dead while they live and not have strength to crush the church. Some will be saved from their own ranks – they cannot stop the gospel from making progress.This is still figurative language but it rather more accurately describes what happens. Why are churches still free to meet together in many cases? Why are they not altogether hounded out of the world? Because the Lord stops the enemies of the gospel from doing all they would like to do. Sometimes he does it by dividing them into different factions, different parties who turn on each other. They are distracted by their opposition to one another (Acts 23:6-7). Tussles take place between different groups or internationally. Rank atheists become too busy fighting each other to do all they would like to do to the church.While the world gathers what seems to be costly, only believers really profit from life. They profit because they are not taken in by covetousness and they set value on things that have real value. The treasures of the world are passing away, and yet they go on hoarding up these things as if they would last forever. But Zion’s children alone have solid joys and lasting treasure. They receive the things of this life with thanks from the hand of the Lord, and they have a treasure in heaven which neither moth corrupts, nor thieves break through and steal. The believer is earning a reward that cannot be lost, even by giving a cup of cold water to a child of God. The worldling becomes poorer and poorer, but the believer richer and richer.

Application

We have to fight. The Lord fights for us, but he uses us too. Pastors report that they cannot get the people in their churches to do the work. There are great battles today. Yes, there is the battle with false doctrine and with the Charismatic Movement, but there are other battles which are closer to home. There is the battle over worship – the battle to prevent contemporary worship coming into the churches: silly, frothy, shallow, worldly forms of worship. This has taken over so many: people complain that it is nothing but noise and clamour and triviality in their area and they cannot find a church with a conservative form of worship.

Sin (verse 15) is very infectious. It spreads throughout the enemies of God because they put up no defence against it. The tents are the tents of enemies round about. They are camped around Jerusalem, surrounding the city. Even the means used by ungodly people will be blighted. As something reaches powerful proportions it is brought down. For example, some new attack is launched on the Bible and the people of God cringe, but then archaeology provides an answer to it all and the critics are left red faced.

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Zechariah 14:12 Commentary and Bible Study