In this episode, we delve into the transformative journey of faith through personal stories of redemption and spiritual renewal. We uncover narratives of individuals who found solace and transformation in the word of God, showcasing the power of faith beyond rituals. Listen as we explore these compelling stories and reflect on the essential role prayer plays in spiritual growth and community support.
00:23:48 Next episode preview and listener interactions
SPEAKER 03 :
The foundation, ye saints of the Lord, is laid for your faith in God.
SPEAKER 02 :
Have you ever visited a church that was completely different from what you’re used to? Maybe the formality of how everyone dressed was unfamiliar, or the order of service caught you off guard. Maybe the music, the way scripture was read, or the style of communication felt, well, a little foreign. It raises a good question. Do these differences in ceremony and ritual really matter? Well, that’s what we’re going to explore on Through the Bible as we continue in Zechariah 6. Our teacher, Dr. J. Vernon McGee, offers a thoughtful three-part answer. I’ll give you a teaser. It’s not about the rituals. It’s about the heart. Has your life been changed by the Holy Spirit? Are you a new creation in Christ? Well, before we dive into our study, we want to share some stories of transformed lives. Real people changed by the power of God’s word. First, we got a letter from Angola. A listener to our Umbundu language program writes this. It’s been eight years since I started listening to this program. Before that, I lived as an evil man without Jesus. My marriage was destroyed because of alcohol and drugs. My wife went back to her parents, and everything was hard for me. Thirty years went by, and I began listening to God’s word with you. After months of receiving the teaching, I accepted Jesus as my Savior. My wife joined me again. My family is reunited, and I am going to be baptized in a few months. I thank God. 30 years. What an incredible story of redemption. And then here’s another one from a listener in Andhra Pradesh who wrote this. I am 50 years old and live alone. My husband and children have passed away. Among my family, I am the only one who believes in Jesus. Almost every day I face criticism and rejection from my relatives. As a widow, my brother has said he wants to send me to an ashram, but I don’t want to go. They’ve invited me to live with them, but I know they don’t allow me to listen to God’s word. Despite it all, I find the strength and joy watching your program in Telugu every day. Please pray for my relatives that they will also come to know God. Wow, you know, that’s a moving letter, isn’t it? Well, these stories remind us why prayer is essential to this ministry. You know, Dr. McGee didn’t just encourage prayer. He insisted on it. And that’s why we formed the World Prayer Team. It’s a community of people committed to praying for God’s word to reach hearts all around the world. Would you join us? You can sign up. It’s super easy. Just go to ttb.org forward slash pray. You can also do it in our app by clicking on World Prayer Today. And if you don’t have our app, just download it for free from your app store. Now let’s commit this time to the Lord. Heavenly Father, thank you for your word and for the life-changing power that it holds on us. Speak to us now and change each one of us. We ask this in the name of Jesus. Amen. We’re off to Zechariah chapter 6 as Dr. J. Vernon McGee takes us through the Bible.
SPEAKER 01 :
Now, friends, last time we got down to the 15th verse, which is the last verse of the 6th chapter, and we saw that there had come this delegation down from Babylon, and they had come with some crowns that they had made. And the message that was given at that time by the Lord was to make it very clear that All that they did when they crowned Joshua, he was the high priest. And it was symbolic, and it was looking forward to the time when the one who’s called the branch, whose name is the branch. Now, may I say that the Word of God speaks of the Lord Jesus Christ as the branch of In a fourfold way. For instance, you have over in Isaiah, the fourth chapter, the second verse. In that day shall the branch of the Lord be beautiful and glorious. The fruit of the earth shall be excellent and comely for them that are escaped of Israel. And so you have there the one that’s presented as the branch of Jehovah. And then you find out that he is also called the branch of David. That’s over in the 11th chapter of Isaiah and a stem out of Jesse. And then you find also that he’s spoken of as Jehovah’s servant, the branch. And we’ve already seen that here in Zechariah in the third chapter, the eighth verse. And in that, you have his humiliation and obedience unto death. And then in Zechariah, in this passage that we are looking at here, he’s called the man whose name is the branch. Now, in the gospel of Matthew, you have him as the branch of David. He is in the line of David. In the gospel of Mark, he is Jehovah’s servant, the branch. And in the gospel of Luke, he’s the man whose name is the branch. And in the Gospel of John, he’s the branch of Jehovah. And that is a marvelous and glorious picture of him in the picture that we have here. It’s the man whose name is the branch. He’s the one that’s going to rule and reign. He’ll build a millennial temple, we’re told here. He shall build the temple of the Lord. And he’ll be a priest upon his throne. We emphasized that last time. And the crowns, verse 14, shall be to heal them, and so on. These crowns were to be a memorial. We’re told that here, for a memorial in the temple of the Lord. And they were put in the upper windows, and they were to remind the people that God would send the Messiah, and he would not only be the king, but he would be the priest. And now verse 15 says, “…and they that are far off shall come and build in the temple of the Lord, and ye shall know that the Lord of hosts hath sent me unto you, and this shall come to pass.” if ye will diligently obey the voice of the Lord.” Now, the message for these people, of course, is a message of encouragement. Zacharias encouraged them to build the temple. He and Haggai both was trying to overcome their discouragement and all of the hurdles that they had to get over. And now he encourages them to build. Why? Because this little segment that seems to them so small, it fits into God’s plan and program of the ages that will finally bring the Lord Jesus Christ to the earth as the Messiah, as the branch to rule. And so what you have here, I consider a tremendous, wonderful picture. And it reveals Christ in all of his glory, the second coming of Christ. And what they were doing was in the plan and program of God. And he would be a priest king and would serve in the millennial temple. And in verse 15, he’s saying to them this, the temple that you are building now is not an end in itself. It points on to the coming of the branch of the Messiah, of the Christ, of the Redeemer. In other words, this is the hope that was given to them. Now, take a look at that little group building the temple. And they were going to get help from afar. But actually, as you look at it, it’s not impressive. But when you see it in the plan and purpose of God and in the sweep of history, it points on to Christ. And may I now make this comment. Any Christian work that’s an end in itself is doomed. It may be a cathedral on the boulevard that’s named for some man. Or it may be a great building named for a man who’s very generous. Or a college that exalts a man. I know of a Christian college that’s got names of men on practically every building that’s on the campus. the exalting man. And even a mission that just honors a man is doomed. And my friend, let’s be very personal, a radio program that is for the profit of a man and for his exaltation, all of these are doomed. They’re going to go down in ignominia and defeat. They must honor the branch because God is moving to that day when he’s going to reign moving to that day when he’ll first take his own out of this earth, the church. And then he’ll be coming to the earth to establish his kingdom here upon the earth. So that today, we can bring it right down to today, that little group of believers on a back street that’s meeting in the name of Christ, seeking to honor him and studying his word. And they really want to do his will. And I think that, very frankly, they can truly sing to the glory of God. Lord Jesus, I love you. I know thou art mine. For thee all the follies of sin I resign. May I say to you, that little group, That’s unknown to the world. It’s meeting out somewhere today on the back street or up in some rural community. It’s more important than the plan of God. then anything that’s happening in Washington are the capitals of the world today. And I know that that’s hard for a great many people to believe. But that little group are in a plan and program that’s going to join in a mighty chorus someday when they sung a new song, and it’s in heaven. And they’re going to sing it to the Lamb. And they say to him, Thou art worthy to take the book, to open the seals thereof. For thou wast slain and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred and tongue, people and nation, and hast made us unto our God a kingdom of priests. We shall reign on the earth. That’s the goal toward which they’re moving. And so that little group that the world is ignoring today and the multitudes that pass them by, They are more important to the plan and purpose of God than any other group on this earth. May I say to you, this is a tremendous passage of Scripture and what a message it has for us today. Now, that brings us to the conclusion of the first major division of Zechariah. Now, in chapters 7 and 8, we have what I’ve labeled a historic interlude. And it’s very similar to what we had in the little prophecy of Haggai. You’ll recall that in the middle of that prophecy, that this man Haggai was sent to the priests to ask concerning a law, a law concerning cleansing. Anything that is ceremonially clean, when it touches that which is unclean, will it make it clean? And of course it won’t. And that which is ceremonially unclean, if it touches that which is clean, will it make it unclean? And the answer is yes, it will. Now, in this historic interlude, we have the same problem approach from a little different angle. And I think that the important thing now is to get this before us. So let me read here in chapter 7 at verse 1 of Zechariah, and I’ll read several verses. And it came to pass in the fourth year of King Darius that the word of the Lord came unto Zechariah in the fourth day of the ninth month, even in Shishlu. All right? The impressive thing here is that, again, he’s going to have a message for these people. And it’s going to be a very important message. And he makes it clear it’s not his own message, but it’s the word of the Lord. And it was in the fourth year of the King Darius, and it was the ninth month of Cheslev, and it was the fourth day. And if you want me to bring it right down to our calendar, that was December the 4th, 518. Now, you recognize it was during that same period that that Haggai was speaking to the people in a very practical way. Now, will you notice what the problem is? It says, when they had sent unto the house of God, Sherezer and Regimelech and their men to pray before the Lord and to speak unto the priests who were in the house of the Lord of hosts and to the prophets saying, should I weep in the fifth month? separating myself as I have done these so many years. All right? Now, this is what is before us. And when it says here, when they had sent unto the house of God. Now, actually, this delegation had originally been in Babylon. These are Babylonian names. And I have put in my notes that it’s a delegation had come to Jerusalem from Babylon. Actually, when it says here that they were in the house of the Lord, these men were sent unto the house of God. They actually came from Bethel. Now, Bethel means, you remember, the house of God. It was old Jacob that named it. And it was the place, as he said that night when God appeared to him, he says, this is the very door of heaven. This is the temple or the house of God. He thought he’d run away from God, but he hadn’t. Now, these people have come down from Bethel. Bethel was in the northern kingdom. It was actually in the area that the ten tribes were. Now, let me ask you a question. Who do you think? that these people were that came down. Do you think they were of the tribe of Judah? Well, may I say to you, they were not of the tribe of Judah. They probably were of the tribe either of Benjamin or Ephraim, probably of Ephraim. And if you go back to the book of Ezra, which I’ll not do today, because we’ve already been over that book, and I called attention to it at the time. You will find that many people who returned from the captivity went back to towns. Some of them are way up in the north of the Sea of Galilee and in that area. Now, all of that belonged to the 10 tribes that constituted the northern kingdom of Israel. Now, when anybody says they are the 10 lost tribes, May I say to you, you need to really examine the scripture rather carefully because those that return would naturally go back to where they came from. And many went to the northern part that was the kingdom of Israel. They happen to be folk born in the Babylonian captivity that are now returning as Jews back to their own tribe. And there’s no ten lost tribes. So if you feel like that England or the United States happen to make up the ten lost tribes, may I say to you, you are very much lost in the maze of Scripture because they are not lost, but you are. Because actually, they were not lost, and that makes this a very important passage of Scripture, because they here actually refers to man who came down from Bethel, the place called the house of God. Now, they’ve come down with a question. In fact, you have here a question that Zechariah gives a threefold answer to, and it has to do with a ritual. Is a ritual right? Or is a ritual wrong? That is the question that they ask. And the picture is just simply this. You see, they had come down from the north, and they had been into captivity, and they had set aside days of fasting and days of weeping and mourning, and they had continued that after the captivity. And God was not blessing them. Oh, there was a certain amount of prosperity had come. Many of them were building their homes and they were getting very comfortable and some of them affluent. And yet they go and weep and mourn. And they say, we’ve been doing that and God hasn’t blessed us. What about it? What about a ritual? That’s the question that is here. Actually, the right and wrong of a ritual. And this is an important question. And I’ll tell you why it’s an important question. Because today we’re seeing a recrudescence of ritualistic religion as a movement toward formalism, adopting a ritual. And it’s always in evidence when people cease to think, when they get away from the person of Christ, then they start either getting up and down or marching around. Have to start doing something. And it’s a time of spiritual decline. It was a time when they fought over the prayer book in Europe, as if that was important, whether you should stand up or sit down or kneel or how should you do it. And then there are many people today that want a liturgy or an elaborate ritual. And there are religions that are called Christian religions. that are ritualistic. Some are liturgical. And even those of us that are nonconformists, that come from out of the Reformation, we say a ritual is repugnant. We despise the ritual. We see in it evil continually. But even in our services, we have a certain amount of it. We open with a doxology and everybody stands up for that. And we close with the benediction and somewhere between there’s an offering and a sermon. Now, what is the value of a ritual? God gave to the nation Israel a religion. That’s the only religion he ever gave. And it was ritualistic. It was loaded with ritual. And the question arises, is a ritual right? Or is the ritual wrong? And that’s the question of these people. They said, we’ve been going through the ritual. We’ve been weeping. We’ve been carrying on. And should we continue to practice it? Now, Zechariah is going to answer their question. He’s the prophet of the remnant. He is encouraging them. Most of Israel, both the northern and southern tribes, had not returned. And they were doing well and prospering. And they also had this same question. They were going through that. And so God has an answer. And the very interesting thing is that God’s answer is also a message from God. Now, I’m just going to get down to that answer, and then we’ll deal with it next time. Here it is, verses 4 and 5. Then came the word of the Lord of hosts unto me, saying, Speak unto all the people of the land and to the priests, saying, When ye fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh month, that would be August and October, even those seventy years, that is, when they were in captivity, did ye at all fast unto me, even to me? And when ye did eat and when ye did drink, did not ye eat for yourselves and drink for yourselves? God says, really, when you went through your ritual, did you do it for me? And did you do it to honor me and to praise me? Or did you do it as a legalistic sort of an exercise that you thought would build up on the credit side something that would make you acceptable to me and cause me to bless you? Well, to begin with, God never had given to them any ritual that had weeping in it and fasting. Did you know that God never gave to his people fast days? He gave to his people feast days. Gave them seven feast days. Now the question is, are these wrong? Well, we’re going to have a threefold answer. Let me give it to you and then we’ll deal with it next time. Number one, He’ll deal with it here. When the heart is right, the ritual is right. The second answer is, when the heart is wrong, the ritual is wrong. And the third part of the answer is, and we’ll get that in chapter 8, God’s purpose concerning Jerusalem is unchanged by any ritual. And that’s true today. A great many people think a ritual is so important. My friend, the important thing is the heart. It’s not the ritual that you go through. That has to do with a lot of head knowledge. But what about the heart? Now, we want to talk about that next time. And I have two letters. I hoped I’d be able to get down to read them today, but I haven’t been able to. But next time, I intend to read those two letters. And I think they might open the eyes of some folk. I trust that they will. So tomorrow, next time, we’re going to deal with this very important section we’ve come to. Until then, may God richly bless you, my beloved.
SPEAKER 02 :
Next time on Through the Bible, Dr. McGee shares the two letters that he just mentioned. And we’ll also kick off things with another listener favorite. It’s from a senior citizen who wrote in to say his eyes were opened to what the Bible really says. And that’s exactly what Dr. McGee was talking about. Praying our eyes would be opened to. And in true Dr. McGee fashion, we’re going to keep sharing letters from fellow BibleBus passengers whose lives are being changed by the Word of God. What about you? Has God’s Spirit been working in your heart? Maybe there’s something specific that you’ve learned while riding the BibleBus with us. Well, if so, you know we’d love to hear your story. You can drop your note in our app. You can email us at BibleBus at ttb.org or send a letter to Box 7100. Pasadena, California, 91109. In Canada, Box 25325, London, Ontario, N6C, 6B1. You can even leave a message at 1-800-65-BIBLE. And if you’d like to go even deeper in your study, be sure to sign up to receive our monthly newsletter. It’s full of praise reports, prayer needs, helpful Bible resources, and additional teaching from Dr. McGee. We’re happy to send it to you for free, but only if you ask. Call us, 1-800-65-BIBLE is the number, or sign up online at ttb.org. And when you’re in touch, let us know how you listen to Through the Bible. Are you tuning in through your favorite radio station? Are you listening on a podcast? Maybe you’re streaming it through our app or website. Well, this info really does help us to be wise stewards of the resources that God provides through generous friends like you, and it helps us to reach even more people with God’s Word. Well, that’s all for today. I’m Steve Schwartz. So grateful for your company on the Bible Bus and for your partnership in taking God’s whole word to His whole world. We’re grateful for our committed listening family who faithfully pray and invest in Through the Bible as we together take the whole word to the whole world.
In this episode, we delve into the transformative journey of faith through personal stories of redemption and spiritual renewal. We uncover narratives of individuals who found solace and transformation in the word of God, showcasing the power of faith beyond rituals. Listen as we explore these compelling stories and reflect on the essential role prayer plays in spiritual growth and community support.
