Saturday 19 February 2011

Zechariah


Before I get into all that I’ve done in the past week I’ve been neglecting my blog (sorry to those of you who care :P), I found the clearest prophecy of Jesus I think I know today. If you know of more it’d be awesome to have a list just for my own reference – I love prophecies. And the most awesome thing about this is that last night I was thinking about prophecies, and I realised that if someone just said to me, “OK, find me a prophecy fulfilled in Jesus,” the only place I’d really know to go, straight off is Isaiah 53. And then today I just decided to read Zechariah (which is a prophetic book in the Old Testament [the first half] of the Bible).

So I’ve flicked through most of Zechariah, and there’s amazing prophecy throughout it all (since it’s a prophetic book), and this is from Zechariah chapter 3 verses 1-10 (New International Version):

Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right side to accuse him. The Lord said to Satan, “The Lord rebuke you, Satan! The Lord, who has chosen Jerusalem, rebuke you! Is not this man a burning stick snatched from the fire?”
Now Joshua was dressed in filthy clothes as he stood before the angel. The angel said to those who were standing before him, “Take off his filthy clothes.”
Then he said to Joshua, “See, I have taken away your sin, and I will put rich garments on you.”
Then I said, “Put a clean turban on his head.” So they put a clean turban on his head and clothed him, while the angel of the Lord stood by.
The angel of the Lord gave this charge to Joshua: “This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘If you will walk in my ways and keep my requirements, then you will govern my house and have charge of my courts, and I will give you a place among these standing here.
‘Listen, O high priest Joshua and your associates seated before you, who are men symbolic of things to come: I am going to bring my servant, the Branch. See, the stone I have set in front of Joshua! There are seven eyes on that stone, and I will engrave an inscription on it,’ says the Lord Almighty, ‘and I will remove the sin of this land in a single day.
‘In that day each of you will invite his neighbour to sit under is vine and fig tree,’ declares the Lord Almighty.”

Of course Jesus is prophesied throughout the Old Testament – he’s all over Isaiah and most of the prophetic books. But it was just so great to find this passage today. 

So Jesus is actually just the Greek form of Joshua, and Jesus is referenced as our High Priest in the New Testament (second half of the Bible) in Hebrews (especially chapters 7-9). And the change of clothes represents the sin He took from us, and the punishment, before He was again made clean – new robes as our King. So I loved that :-)
 
Well, this week. It’s the first week of our new timetable, and I’m loving the classes I’ll be doing for the rest of the semester (so until July); I started with Personal Leadership on Tuesday, which is leading yourself – discipline, morality, etc. – which I think is so good to teach potential leaders, because people won’t lead by example if they can’t lead themselves. So that was really good.

On Tuesday afternoon I had my first fieldwork in the kids’ department! Everyone is really awesome there, I was just helping out with whatever I needed and it was great just to be able to hang out and help out. I’m loving kids’ work in general here, the 3-5s are incredibly cute – I ended up with a 3-year-old on my lap for half an hour because it was his first week and he was missing his mum. L aww!

I had a day of tutorials on Wednesday, and tutorials are pretty great – my tutorial leaders are all cool, and just the little group dynamic is lovely. My favourite so far’s been Public Speaking and Presentation – I’m really looking forward to the projects! We do two 5-minute presentations, a community presentation (present an idea for the community) and then a mini-lecture, which should be awesome. So that’s good, I’m already working on my idea J This is the exception though, because it’s purely a tutorial class – usually our tutorials correspond to a lecture class. The other classes I do this year are Mission and Culture and Old Testament Tutorial. They’re all pretty good, but I’m so looking forward to Old Testament this year – it’ll be great to get so much insight from all my lecturers – I have the college principal for it, and she speaks Hebrew (the language it was written in).

So it’s been a pretty good week, it’s so crazy here though, you can have a real down one morning and feel 
amazing by the end of the day! And the environment is just amazing; I know I’ve grown so much in so many ways just over the past few days. But this is just the beginning – I still have so much further to go. Last night was great too – I went to Beth’s for dinner and just had an awesome chat, then stole their internet (with permission…!) to Skype home (hello daddy J ) and then came home to bed and got up at 6 this morning do help with kids at a breakfast event(!) so for the rest of the day I’ve been entirely lazy out of pretty much exhaustion. I think I’m going to Church this evening, because it’s so hard to get a relaxing service on Sunday, I’m always rushing into a service after helping out with kids! So good morning England, good evening Australia and I must dash!

1 comment:

  1. Wow, what an amazing week. Keep up the good work kiddo. I bet you are growing in so very many ways....hopefully not outwards! Love
    mandy :-)

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