December 26
Zechariah 9:1-17; Revelation 17:1-18; Psalm 145:1-21; Proverbs 30:32
Have you ever been in the middle of a book and wondered how it was going to end? You were trying to make sense of multiple storylines and trying to see how they were all going to fit together. Sometimes reading the Bible can feel like that.
Zechariah along with most of the prophets focuses heavily on God’s judgment upon sin. Yet judgment is not the end of the story. Zechariah 9 takes us 500 years beyond him to Jesus’ triumphal entry. Jesus is pictured as a king, coming on a donkey, bringing righteousness and salvation to Israel. The result of his kingship was for him to “proclaim peace to the nations.” For this peace to come, judgment must be unleashed against all the sin and rebellion in the world, but the purpose of judgment is ultimately peace.
Peace is an all-encompassing reality in the Bible. In the Old Testament, it was described by the word shalom, which means more than the way we speak of peace in English. Shalom has the idea of completeness and wholeness. So, it would speak to internal peace, relational peace, and world peace. True shalom is for everyone and everything to be living according to God’s original design for it. This is the peace that Christ came to bring, that he allows us to experience now, and will fully bring at his return. So when we read of the chaos and judgment in Zechariah and Revelation, it should remind us that the end of the story is shalom, the perfect peace that Jesus will bring and wants us to walk in today.
Father God, thank you that I can have true shalom in you. Help me to walk in the life Christ made available to me. Amen.
Question: What is keeping you from experiencing more shalom in your life?
Have you ever been in the middle of a book and wondered how it was going to end? You were trying to make sense of multiple storylines and trying to see how they were all going to fit together. Sometimes reading the Bible can feel like that.
Zechariah along with most of the prophets focuses heavily on God’s judgment upon sin. Yet judgment is not the end of the story. Zechariah 9 takes us 500 years beyond him to Jesus’ triumphal entry. Jesus is pictured as a king, coming on a donkey, bringing righteousness and salvation to Israel. The result of his kingship was for him to “proclaim peace to the nations.” For this peace to come, judgment must be unleashed against all the sin and rebellion in the world, but the purpose of judgment is ultimately peace.
Peace is an all-encompassing reality in the Bible. In the Old Testament, it was described by the word shalom, which means more than the way we speak of peace in English. Shalom has the idea of completeness and wholeness. So, it would speak to internal peace, relational peace, and world peace. True shalom is for everyone and everything to be living according to God’s original design for it. This is the peace that Christ came to bring, that he allows us to experience now, and will fully bring at his return. So when we read of the chaos and judgment in Zechariah and Revelation, it should remind us that the end of the story is shalom, the perfect peace that Jesus will bring and wants us to walk in today.
Father God, thank you that I can have true shalom in you. Help me to walk in the life Christ made available to me. Amen.
Question: What is keeping you from experiencing more shalom in your life?
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