Longing For His Appearing

Welcome to the third and final part of this series!  I would encourage you to read Part 1 and Part 2 to get the background and setup for this concluding piece.  However, to briefly recap…

In Parts 1 & 2, we are introduced to the verse in Matthew 23 where Jesus says to the Pharisees, “upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.”  I then go on to explain the differences in opinion on which Zechariah Jesus is referring to and my reasoning behind choosing the Zechariah found in 2 Chronicles 24 who we find was stoned in the temple court.  We then linked this with the verse in Joel 2 where the prophet sends forth a call to the priests to “weep between the temple porch and the altar” – the exact same location as Zechariah’s brutal murder.  We see the strong connection between the sins of our forefathers and the need of the present generation to acknowledge, repent for, and turn from these sins. 

For the Pharisees that Jesus was talking to, they honored the prophets of old whom their forefathers had killed, believing they would have acted differently had they lived in those times, not recognizing the darkness of their own hearts and the spirit of murder within them which would lead them to crucify Jesus.  Yet Jesus promised them that they would be proven guilty and that the state of their hearts would be exposed as he sent them prophets and teachers whom they would persecute and kill, thus filling up the measure of the sin of their forefathers.  This would seal their judgment for eternity and would occur in response to the cries coming from the blood of every righteous person slain.  So how does this apply to us today?

I have found it quite significant that recently a billboard advertising campaign has been launched across Canada that is bringing attention to the issue of abortion in our nation, asking the question, “Have we gone too far?”  AbortionInCanada.cais putting this issue in front of our eyes, reminding us that we cannot ignore this injustice in our land, for currently the unborn have no protection from being aborted right up into the 9th month of gestation!  According to AbortionInCanada.ca, “more than three million unborn babies have died from abortion since 1969, when abortion was first decriminalized in Canada”with the annual average being somewhere around 100,000 abortions.  On Wikipedia’s article for Abortion in the United States, they quote the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) as saying “there were 854,122 legal induced abortions in the US in 2003″.  The Bound4Life website says that in the USA “an estimated 48 million babies have been aborted since 1973. Approximately 24% of all U.S. pregnancies end in abortion”. 

Is it possible that the same thing Jesus was rebuking the Pharisees for is occurring today in North America?  How many prophets, teachers, evangelists, worship leaders (or to sum it all up – prophetic messengers of all types) have been sent to us by the Lord to preach the message of Joel 2, “Return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning”?  And how many of these messengers have been killed before they even saw the light of the sun or said one word?  How many millions of aborted babies and aborted destinies are crying out for justice, even as Abel’s blood cried out from the ground, and are testifying against us in our perceived innocence?  How can our generation think we are any different than our forefathers who condoned slavery and persecuted and killed out of racist hatred, when at our core we are just the same – maybe even worse – for on our hands is the blood of countless babies?

But if their blood is crying out for God’s just judgment to come to our land, what is our hope?  Can we escape or lessen the judgment that is surely coming?  Can we appeal to the heart of Jesus that longs to gather us under his wings, if only we were willing?  As he said, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.”  (Matthew 23:37)  Can we touch the heart of God who declares Himself to be “gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and [who] relents from sending calamity”?  (Joel 2:13)  I believe we can.

The message of Joel is for us today – both the church and unbelievers are being called to return to the Lord with all our hearts, with fasting, weeping, and mourning, to rend our hearts, to gather in solemn assemblies, consecrating and purifying our hearts (Joel 2:12-16).  Yet we as the church are called specifically, as priests (for we are a “royal priesthood” – 1 Peter 2:9), to weep and mourn in the place of identifying with the sins of the shedding of innocent blood.  Between the temple porch and the altar, where a prophetic messenger was slain, the priests were to cry out to God, “Spare your people!”  (Joel 2:17)  In the same way that Nehemiah wept, mourned and fasted on behalf of Israel, confessing the sins of his forefathers, his own generation and himself personally, appealing to God for mercy, we can stand in the breach between our nation and God’s wrath (Psalm 106:23). 

While we may or may not be able to go directly to the location of the abortion clinics, we can go there in the spirit and operate in this priestly function, interceding for our nation and taking a stand for life.  We can ask the Lord to give us the spirit of travail and to impact our hearts with this burden, that we would be able to weep and mourn with the heart of Jesus over these lost lives and destinies.  For “the Spirit helps us in our weakness.  We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express” (Romans 8:26).  Even as Nehemiah was praying before the Lord day and night, this is the kind of response Jesus is looking for to the injustice in our land, for he said in Luke 18:7, “And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night?” 

Some of you may have a feeling or know that this is something you are called to do full-time, to be a priest that ministers before the Lord in the temple - or in more modern-day terms, to function as an intercessory missionary in a house of prayer.  This is just one of the ways God is raising up the prayer movement across the globe, but regardless of whether you are being called to this kind of role in a full-time capacity, we all have a responsibility to pray and be willing to be a voice on behalf of those who cannot speak for themselves.  A simple way to start is to make the Bound4Life Covenant to Pray, Vote, and Obey. 

1. PRAY – There is a simple 22-word prayer you can pray whenever the Lord brings this topic to your remembrance, or whenever you see the LIFE bracelet, should you choose to get one.  The prayer goes like this: “Jesus, I plead Your blood over my sins and the sins of my nation.  God, end abortion and send revival to [your nation]“.
2. VOTE – Covenant to vote for candidates that are actively pro-life. We cannot pray for abortion to end and promote those who support it.
3. OBEY – Covenant to obey God as He leads you into works of compassion and justice. We must always be willing to be the answer to our own prayers.

For me, this has become very personal lately, being pregnant with my first child, whom we have chosen to name Justice (you can read the story of how we chose this name here).  It feels so real and there is such a conviction in my heart that this little one could be one of these prophetic messengers that the Lord is sending to my nation to call the people to return to Him.  This has put such a resolve and a fight within my spirit to pray for the protection of the unborn from the spirit of this age that would seek to “kill, steal and destroy” (John 10:10) these precious lives.  So will you join with me?  Will you weep between the porch and the altar? 

(For more resources on the issue of LIFE and ideas on how you can get involved through prayer in the courts of heaven or through action in the courts of the earth, visit my LIFE page, where I will be collecting relevant links to pro-life websites)

If you haven’t already, I would recommend first reading Part 1 of this series, but to briefly recap, in Matthew 23 Jesus was rebuking the Pharisees for their hypocrisy and their false belief of their own innocence in regards to the slaying of the prophets of old.  He then prophesied judgment, saying that they would persecute and kill the messengers he was going to send them, as a way of filling up the measure of their forefathers’ sin “and so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar” (verse 35).

I have chosen to relate this to the story of the priest Zechariah in 2 Chronicles 24 who is described as having been murdered “in the courtyard of the Lord’s temple” (verse 21), but as I mentioned in Part 1, it could also be referring to the prophet Zechariah, although we have no record of him being killed in this manner. 

After reading this passage in Matthew 23, I was immediately reminded of Joel’s prophecy in chapter 2 verse 17, which says…

Let the priests, who minister before the LORD,
weep between the temple porch and the altar.
Let them say, “Spare your people, O LORD.
Do not make your inheritance an object of scorn,
a byword among the nations.
Why should they say among the peoples,
‘Where is their God?’”

To me there appears to be an obvious connection between this verse and our story of Zechariah, as Joel is calling for the priests to weep “between the temple porch and the altar”, which is the exact same location of Zechariah’s slaying.   Now, depending on which view you take on when the book of Joel was written, as well as which Zechariah you believe Jesus was referring to, this can affect how we interpret this passage and connect the dots.  Again, as I mentioned in Part 1, I have chosen to take the standpoint that Joel was writing just prior to the Babylonian invasion, which puts him between the two different Zechariahs. 

Now, regardless of which of the 4 viewpoints you take of when Joel was written (from the early 9th century BC to the same period as Zechariah the prophet), if we were to go with the view that Jesus was referring to the prophet Zechariah, then it’s possible that Zechariah would have been familiar with Joel’s writings.  Also, as was mentioned in Matthew Henry’s commentary, if he was taking sanctuary in the court of the priests from his persecutors, he could have been in the very act of intercession, “weep[ing] between the temple porch and the altar”, crying out for mercy upon Jerusalem just before he was murdered.  This is powerful imagery if you were to preach on martyrdom and praying even for your enemies as Jesus did on the cross or as Stephen did while he was being stoned.  However, there are a lot of “ifs” in this scenario that don’t make for a very strong connection in this way.

If we take the story of the priest Zechariah from 2 Chronicles 24 who was stoned in the temple court, then again, regardless of the 4 viewpoints of when Joel was written, Joel’s prophecy would have probably come after Zechariah’s murder.  In this case, there is a strong reason to believe that this call to intercession was closely linked to the need for repentance for the sins of their forefathers.  It seems very symbolic and significant that the Lord would call the priests to weep and mourn and cry out for mercy in the exact location that a brutal act of injustice occurred.  This also ties in with what Jesus had against the Pharisees – they were able to acknowledge the sins of their forefathers in slaying the prophets, but they could not identify with them or realize that this same darkness was in their own hearts and acknowledge their need for repentance.  Nehemiah was a great example of someone who was able to see the sins of his father, his nation and himself personally, praying…

…let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer your servant is praying before you day and night for your servants, the people of Israel. I confess the sins we Israelites, including myself and my father’s house, have committed against you.  (Nehemiah 1:6)

The Pharisees however, perceived themselves to be innocent of the blood on their forefathers’ hands, blind to the fact that they were about to crucify the very son of God and many of his followers and apostles.  In fact, Jesus would ensure that they would be proven guilty and that the state of their hearts would be exposed by his promise to send them prophets and teachers whom they would persecute and kill, thus filling up the measure of the sin of their forefathers.  This would seal their judgment for eternity and would occur in response to the cries coming from the blood of every righteous person slain.  In Genesis 4:10, the Lord says to Cain regarding the murder of his brother Abel, “Listen!  Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground”, and Zechariah, as he lay dying, cried out, “May the Lord see this and call you to account” (2 Chronicles 24:22).  This is not unlike the prayer in Revelation 6:9-10 of those who had been murdered because of the Word of God, who called out in a loud voice, “How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?”

So how does this apply to us?  The answer to that question is coming in Part 3…

Recently I have been reading the book of Zechariah, which is a fascinating book, to say the least.  Zechariah had some pretty intense visionary experiences and insight into the end of the age, as well as a unique glimpse into the jealousy of God for Israel.  On a completely different note however, I became especially intrigued when I stumbled across a verse in Matthew 23 that appeared to reference this Old Testament prophet.  In verse 35, Jesus is coming to the end of a rather harsh rebuke to the Pharisees for their hypocrisy and their false belief of their own innocence in regards to the slaying of the prophets of old.  He proceeds to dispense judgment by prophesying that they will persecute and kill the messengers he is going to send them, as a way of filling up the measure of their forefathers’ sin, saying “and so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.”

Now, to start off, I’m going to take a rather scholastic approach to this subject in this first blog entry with some research information to help set the foundation for the more applicable content that I will write about in the subsequent entries.  Ready?  Here we go!

At first it seems obvious that Jesus is referring to the prophet Zechariah who in his book, in the first verse, is identified as the “son of Berekiah”.  Logically, this also makes sense for Jesus to start his account of shed blood with the first murder of Abel and end with one of the last of the prophets recorded in the Old Testament.  And although there is no record of Zechariah being murdered, here is a possibility mentioned in Matthew Henry’s Commentary…

Perhaps what Zechariah spoke in his prophesying concerning Christ of his being sold, his being wounded in the house of his friends, and the shepherd being smitten, was verified in the prophet himself, and so he became a type of Christ. Probably, being assaulted by his persecutors, he took sanctuary in the court of the priests (and some think he was himself a priest), and so was slain between the porch and the altar.

Alternatively, some find Jesus’ reference to be obviously connected to the story of Zechariah, son of Jehoiada, found in 2 Chronicles 24.  According to Matthew Henry, the name Jehoiada is very similar to the name Berekiah and it was common for Jewish men to be referred to by more than one name.  The clincher however, is that there is a clear account of this Zechariah being murdered “in the courtyard of the Lord’s temple” (vs. 21), or as Jesus said, “between the temple and the altar”. 

So which Zechariah is it?  I don’t know - and I don’t think anyone can prove either case conclusively.  For the sake of this particular series, I will mostly refer to the priest Zechariah, son of Jehoiada in 2 Chronicles 24, but may reference the prophet Zechariah as well, just for argument’s sake.

The next scripture I want to introduce is found in Joel 2:17, which says…

Let the priests, who minister before the LORD,
weep between the temple porch and the altar.
Let them say, “Spare your people, O LORD.
Do not make your inheritance an object of scorn,
a byword among the nations.
Why should they say among the peoples,
‘Where is their God?’ “

I think you can already see where I’m going with this, noting the obvious connection this verse has with our story of Zechariah, as Joel is calling for the priests to weep “between the temple porch and the altar”, which is the exact same location of Zechariah’s slaying.  However, before we can go there, I want to examine yet another dilemma we encounter as to the differing opinions on the timing of Joel’s writing… 

1. 9th century BC- During the time when Joash was too young to govern and the priest Jehoiada did so in his place (2 Kings 11; 2 Chronicles 23-24).  One of the reasons for this argument being the focus on the elders and priests as being the leaders Joel appeals to, instead of a king.  This also happens to be the same period as our priest Zechariah.
2. 8th century BC- Roughly contemporary with Amos who prophesied during the reigns of Uzziah (also called Azariah) of Judah and Jeroboam II of Israel (Amos 7:10; 2 Kings 14-15).  This school of thought is due to Joel’s placement in the Bible and some similarities in language used by Joel and Amos.
3. 7th-6th century BC – Roughly around Josiah’s reign (2 Kings 22-23; 2 Chronicles 34-35).  Since Joel prophesies only to Judah and Jerusalem, it implies a timing after Israel was no longer a political kingdom (722 BC).  This school of thought would argue that Joel’s references to the temple are because it was written before the temple was destroyed by the Babylonian invasion in 586 BC.  Many of Joel’s references to the “day of the Lord” and the warnings of a great army also point to the coming destruction of Jerusalem at this time.
4. 6th-4th century BC - Roughly contemporary with the prophet Zechariah.  This opinion uses the same argument of the lack of mention of a monarchy, since Judah had no king after the exile.  This opinion believes that the references to the temple are actually the second temple which was rebuilt around 515 BC.

Now, I read many different articles on the dating of Joel and nobody seemed to agree with each other.  Everybody has their reasons for believing one of the theories above.  I found it particularly interesting that two of the opinions line up with both of our Zechariahs, yet ironically I have chosen to go with neither of these, and will be writing from the point of view of the third theory, which places Joel’s writings just prior to the Babylonian invasion – the view that is used in Mike Bickle’s Studies in Joel as well as David Malick’s article (see sources below).

So, I realize this was a lot of facts and possibly uninteresting information, but I wanted there to be an understanding of where I am coming from and the research and reasoning behind my particular point of view for the next parts of this series.  Stay tuned!!

Read Part 2
Read Part 3

Sources:
Matthew Henry’s Commentary – Zechariah 1, Matthew 23
Bible.org – An Introduction to the Book of Joel - by David Malick
Hosea, Joel and Amos – by Bruce C. Birch (pg. 126)
Studies in Joel- by Mike Bickle (pg. 4)
Wikipedia – Book of Joel