We have come to the end of this series of messages, which we have searched out since the beginning of the year. It has been very fruitful for me. It has been inspiring. We have explored the reasons, the processes, the prophetic supervision of a 70 period from 587BC to 517BC, and subsequent 20 years which the building work was halted because of the deception of Sanballat and Tobias.
When we journey through Zechariah, the minor prophets we come to the end of the Old Testament to Malachi, and we are struck by the going back and forth of God’s word through Malachi and the people. We see that an arrogance has come in, and the reason is they saw restoration as the end objective and not the beginning of a process. Restoration was preparing them for receiving into their midst Jesus, the Messiah. Now with all the building work finished, Temple and all the houses, it seems that they had slid back into a religiosity which put them, particularly amongst the Scribes, priests, Sadducees, Pharisees, became the major opposition to the Messiah, not understanding His Mission, nor understanding the Message, nor the Man, who came from the Father.
The results of their learning, instead of leading them into understanding, brought them into a status quo spiritually, where what was required was a spiritual revolution, was understood from a political point of view. This led them to reject Jesus’ Messiahship and this rejection is fully understood by Paul, the Apostle. This rejection led to being spread over the known world for 2000 years, pain, being self sentenced when they said “His Blood be upon our heads and those of our children.”
We readily exhort to discover God and His Son through the Scriptures, but this cannot be the end objective. This is the beginning of a journey. We saw this journey in my series, now book “Luke 24: A spiritual journey” where the starting point for Jesus was open the Scriptures, but that was not the whole experience. He is fully manifest in covenant and glory. When we become complacent we become the opposition to the new things God is doing. This does not mean my approach to the Scriptures is not done on a “religious level”, I see it as the start of my rediscovery of Jesus Himself.
The Word is a person, is also written, and is proclaimed and lived out. It is not a machine where we put something in to get something out.
Personally, each day I pick up the Bible, I discover always something new, something meaningful. No longer do I search just for a sermon, message for a blog post, podcast, but I seek out He who is the Word in Himself. He opens Himself to us, if we seek His Person with intimacy as the goal. We can become dogmatic, we can become rigid, critical, but the antidote is intimacy with Him.
I have discovered in the times of intense warfare, intense struggle, the Word comes out in like a river of gold. Even when I am talking with people who walk with me, in this pursuit, see the richness. We can sometimes pursue platform ministry, a ministry opportunity, but sometimes that intimacy over a cup of coffee, Bible open, mind open we can dig into the field of treasure.
Look at the image above, this is what I am talking about. Simplicity.
My pursuit is not restoration in itself, no it is Jesus, and in that pursuit of His Person shall restoration come as a consequence. This is what the Jews did not understand at that time. They thought that the Captivity was a reset to recapture and reinforce the Law, how mistaken they were. They should have discerned through Joel that the Outpouring of the Spirit was a consequence of their seeking God, repentance and recommitment. Our motivation needs to align with God’s, in that all He does is a step towards intimacy. That way we do not become the opposition to His work in our days, through our own misconceptions, lack of discernment and lack of simplicity.
We are in a type of “Captivity” now, in that we are still “imprisoned” to the political whims throughout the nations, but our pursuit is not through political process, campaigning, rather it is discerning out what kind of “turning our Captivity” will be, as Psalm 126 speaks.
I hope you found this series inspiring as I have done, may we progress now to even greater levels of understanding and intimacy with Him, with a view to discern Him in our generation and accomplish His work in our days!
Maranatha!!!
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