Judgment on the Nations/Zech 14:12-15
Content 25. Judgment on the Nations
Zechariah 14:12-15
“This is the calamity the LORD will bring upon all the people who have struck Jerusalem: their flesh will rot while they stand, their eyes will rot in their pits, and their tongues will rot in their mouths” (Zechariah 14:12).
1. Aspects of Judgment
The text explains four ways how God's enemies who oppose Him will be judged and what kind of disaster they will receive.
1). Corruption
“His flesh rots” (14:12).
Corruption refers to the appearance of a living thing becoming a corpse and decaying.
The rotting flesh, the rotting tongue in the mouth, and the rotting of the eyes in the cavities, is corruption.
It is a curse to allow God to corrupt in His judgment.
Therefore, God's slap when we go wrong is a testament to God's love.
Otherwise, when we do something wrong, we are not rebuked or disciplined by God because God allows us to corrupt.
Such a person has no hope and has nothing to receive except disaster.
As such, one of God's last plagues is the state of being abandoned so that sin can continue, and there is no hope.
Today we need to see whether we are falling in a corrupted place before God, and whether God is trying to cut out our decayed parts and renew us when we are about to become corrupt.
It is useless to treat rotten leaves after the roots have already rotted.
The rotted part should be dug out quickly and wait for the buds to appear there.
Corruption is the loss of all functions.
2).Hate and quarrel
“They will hold each other’s hands, and stretch out their hands against each other” (Zechariah 14:13b).
When God sends disasters, there is a way to strike them directly, but there is also a way to make them fight and hate each other.
The hallmark of hell is hate.
Hell is blaming God, hating your neighbor, hating yourself, and fighting.
There is no love.
But on that day, God's final chastisement is that such hatred and fighting will continue.
The second form of God's punishment is that the nation beats the nation, brothers beat their brothers, hate each other, quarrel and fight.
When a test comes to a person's heart, the expression of the test is expressed in various ways, and one of them is hatred.
If you hate others, there is no way you can have joy in your own heart.
So when you see the face of a person you hate, you are reminded of hell.
Therefore, we must quickly uproot the root of hatred.
Otherwise, you will receive the final punishment before God.
And you must bring peace.
3).Loss of blessing
“At this time, the treasures of the nations that are all round about, gold, silver, and clothing will be gathered in great abundance” (Zechariah 14:14).
Another aspect of God's final chastisement is the loss of all previously enjoyed blessings.
It is difficult to understand that the treasures of the nations are taken by the besieged Jerusalem.
This is like the parable given to the one who has ten talents.
In other words, just as a person who has one talent is lazy and wicked, God takes it and gives it to a person who has more and is loyal, so God takes what sinners have and gives it to God's people.
In this way, God's chastisement is to be fulfilled on that day that he has no choice but to face the grievance of being deprived of even what he had.
If we too take what we have before God and remain faithful to death, it will be increased. Otherwise, if we take it with us and take it, do things for our own sake, and bury it in the ground, God will take it away from us.
In other words, the people of the nations besieging Judea and Jerusalem are taking what they have and arguing with them, and everything is taken from the sight of God and taken by the people of Judah and Jerusalem.
It looks like the blessings you enjoyed before are lost.
4). Transmission of sin
“It will be like the plague on all the livestock in the camp” (Zechariah 14:15).
A person cannot live without being influenced by others, whether physical or spiritual.
Relationships are about whether I am influenced or influenced by others.
Whether you like it or not, whether you see it or not, it is.
However, it would be good if we were only influenced by good things, but sometimes we are also affected by evil and sin.
Wherever sin goes, wherever it touches, it becomes defiled and corrupted, hatred and suffering come, and death comes.
However, it is not only the person who becomes defiled, but the land in which the person lives and everything that belongs to it becomes defiled.
Therefore, the place of sin is hell, and in that hell, you turn your friends into demons.
Also, where there is sin, everything is turned into an instrument of sin.
This so-called sin continues to spread.
It spreads like yeast and expands exponentially.
Good things don't spread quickly, while bad things do spread very easily.
Just looking at the world trend, if something comes out in New York or Paris, it is moved from Tokyo to Seoul within a few days.
Likewise, the rate of transmission of sin is very rapid.
So, if something goes wrong in the church, the whole church goes wrong in an instant, and if something goes wrong in the country, the whole country becomes corrupted.
Therefore, the spread of sin must be stopped as soon as possible.
He also said that God's calamity not only spread to man, but also to all livestock on the earth that belonged to man.
Such is the effect of sin.
We need to know what time it is now by seeing the signs that come to us before Heaven and Hell are divided before God.
We must also see that we are not in a place of corruption, and that we do not remain in a state of liking hatred and war.
And we must see if we continue to retain all the glory and blessings we received in the past.
Finally, we must examine whether we are influenced by others for good or for evil.
We must look into ourselves every moment of each day.
Because people change from moment to moment.
Therefore, we also need to look back on whether we are standing right before God in the present, not the past.