Zechariah 14:9 English Standard Version (ESV) And the Lord will be king over all the earth. On that day the Lord will be one and his name one.

This is the verse of the day from biblegateway.com for June 30^th, 2020. Did this verse stir up memory or curiosity? Did it comfort you or create longing? What led up to the Lord being king over all the earth? Is He not the King on the throne of heaven? What is to be learned here?

Many questions here. Which ones are yours and what is the answer you are looking forward to hearing?

Zechariah 14:1 English Standard Version (ESV)

The Coming Day of the Lord

Behold, a day is coming for the Lord, when the spoil taken from you will be divided in your midst.

Here is the opening verse for chapter 14 and I want to point out a couple of things offhand. This day is coming for the Lord, it is the day the Lord has been waiting on all this time. If you remember in Matthew 24:36 Jesus declared that no one knew when this day would come, not even the angels. Zechariah declares it is coming but does not say when.

The second item in the verse is about lost spoils being returned. That is a tricky subject because it holds relevant meaning to the people being spoken about. It is not the people of Zechariah’s time nor a people of today, unless the Lord should come today. It is a people living in the future that would have a claim to make.

How can we make a claim upon anything belonging to a people and time of which we are not a part? Try as we might, we cannot place ourselves in their shoes because what will happen between now and then can and probably will define those spoils.

What is in it for us?

Zechariah 14:5c English Standard Version (ESV)

…. Then the Lord my God will come, and all the holy ones with him.^[a]

Footnotes: a. Other Hebrew manuscripts you

Matthew 6:7 English Standard Version (ESV) “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words.”

Yesterday I wrote to remember to pray “thy will be done” and to mean it. There is at this time in the world view, if you repeat a thing enough, it becomes truth. The attitude is kept alive with the addition to the dictionary of every common use word and pronunciation being added merely because it has been repeated enough times to be noted. That does not make a thing right or true, only acknowledged that it is in use.

Empty platitudes have no power to enact change. The act of repeating the same words over and over is a signal that the speaker has no confidence that anyone is listening. Where is faith in that? God knows our hearts better than we do. Confession of the soul only has value if spoken in honesty.

Luke 18:13-14 English Standard Version (ESV)

¹³ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ ¹⁴ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

God can work with us if we will be honest with ourselves and confess our condition. For a born again believer this is a twostep process. One is to confess and be changed. Two is to acknowledge our change and act accordingly. We will from time to time make a misstep but in doing so, we have not changed back to the old person we were and should not become doubtful that we have ever changed. These changes are God enacted and irreversible.

We have not yet been perfected and that is a future condition which we work at by being cooperative with God’s design and purpose for our lives.