Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Tuesday, May 1st

Today's passage from the Chronological Bible In a Year Reading Plan is 2 Samuel 5:1-10, 1 Chronicles 11-12
Today's scripture focus is John 12:12-19

12 The next day the great crowd that had come for the Feast heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. 13 They took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting,
   “Hosanna!”
   “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”
   “Blessed is the King of Israel!”
 14 Jesus found a young donkey and sat upon it, as it is written,
 15 “Do not be afraid, O Daughter of Zion;
   see, your king is coming,
   seated on a donkey’s colt.”

 16 At first his disciples did not understand all this. Only after Jesus was glorified did they realize that these things had been written about him and that they had done these things to him.
 17 Now the crowd that was with him when he called Lazarus from the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to spread the word. 18Many people, because they had heard that he had given this miraculous sign, went out to meet him. 19 So the Pharisees said to one another, “See, this is getting us nowhere. Look how the whole world has gone after him!”


Talk about specific prophecy coming true in today's passage!

Consider the following OT scripture....
Genesis 49:10-11
The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until he comes to whom it belongs and the obedience of the nations is his. He will tether his donkey to a vine, his colt to the choicest branch; he will wash his garments in wine, his robes in the blood of grapes.
This prophecy is fairly straightforward and is fulfilled, specifically down to the donkey on which He rode in to Jerusalem.


Daniel 9:24-26
24 “Seventy ‘sevens’ are decreed for your people and your holy city to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy.
 25 “Know and understand this: From the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven ‘sevens,’ and sixty-two ‘sevens.’ It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble. 26 After the sixty-two ‘sevens,’ the Anointed One will be cut off and will have nothing. The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood: War will continue until the end, and desolations have been decreed.

This prophecy is a bit harder to understand, but it's absolutely remarkable.

According to John MacArthur v24 refers to a 490 year time period (70 x 7 "weeks" of years) to come.  v25 says that the first 7x7 (49 years) will be spent rebuilding Jerusalem, and then there will be an additional 62x7 (434 years) to come before the arrival of Jesus into Jerusalem (totally 69 "weeks", the missing "week" of 7 years refers to the tribulation) - the entrance into Jerusalem on the donkey.  And after that the Anointed One will be cut off - Jesus will be killed.

The decree to rebuild the temple/Jerusalem came in 445BC by Artaxerxes.
From MacArthur...

From the decree of Artaxerxes to the coming of Messiah the Prince will be 69 times seven years, or 483 years. Now these are years with 360 days in each year because that's the Jewish year. Very simple prophecy...Daniel said, from the decree to rebuild the temple, that's 445 to the coming of Messiah, that will be 483 years to the day and then the Messiah, the Prince shall come.
Now you know something interesting? Do you know that the day and I mean THE day, the sixth of April, 32 A.D. when Jesus rode into the city of Jerusalem was exactly one thousand...pardon me, 173 thousand, 880 days from the decree of Artaxerxes, you divide that up, that equals exactly 483 years of 360 days each, to the very day. If you want to read about it, Sir Robert Anderson, his book The Coming Prince, he marshals all the proofs that Jesus came into Jerusalem exactly on the 360thday of the 483rdyear of that prophecy. Now that extra week that's still hanging on there is yet to come, and that's the week of seven years called the Tribulation. The church age being a parenthesis in between.
So, you see, Jesus enters in at the very moment in divine history when God said at least 500 years before through the prophet Daniel that's when He'll come, and that's when He came and the fickle hosannas rang out.

Isn't that fascinating?!

More prophecy.....
Zechariah 9:9 Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem!  See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. 

The donkey was a symbol of peace, but the crowd seems to have conveniently ignored that, as they shout "Hosannah" which means save us now - but they didn't mean spiritually, they meant politically, as a warrior to overthrow the Romans.   But He didn't do that, which is why, only days later, this fickle crowd who shouted "Hosanna" would be shouting "Crucify him!"


Tomorrow's scripture focus: John 12:20-36
Tomorrow's Bible In a Year Passage passage:  Psalm 133

1 comment:

Miriam said...

Wow, that prophecy in Daniel always kind of made me feel confused, but how amazing to hear it explained!