Major and minor

I've been under the weather but promise to have a new article tomorrow. In the meantime:

The fundamental reason the Minor Prophets are called minor is they’re small. While the Book of Daniel has just 12 chapters, for example, it contains almost 12,000 words, making it twice as long wordwise.

Jordan explains, “Isaiah to Daniel, they deal with the MAJOR issues; Hosea to Malachi are going to deal with filling in the blanks and the details. Hosea is the first book of the Minor Prophets and the 28^th book in the Bible. That means it matches Isaiah 28.

“I would recommend to you—if you would familiarize yourself with II Kings 14-18, that’s the time period historically out of which the whole Book of Hosea comes.

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“What Zechariah’s going to be about is the time when the Lord comes back to repossess His possession.  He’s got these angelic beings out there ready to go and He says, ‘The earth is at still and is at rest. It’s ready for me to come back and take it!’

“Once you’re at home, you have access and that’s that idea of ‘walking to and fro.’ It’s an action and an activity talking about repossession.

“Zechariah 1:12-13 says, ‘Then the angel of the LORD answered and said, O LORD of hosts, how long wilt thou not have mercy on Jerusalem and on the cities of Judah, against which thou hast had indignation these threescore and ten years? And the LORD answered the angel that talked with me with good words and comfortable words.

“I like that: good words, comfortable words. In Isaiah 4 he says, ‘Comfort ye, comfort ye my people.’ Paul says, ‘Comfort one another with these words.’

“There’s information, doctrine, truth, words in the Bible designed to produce various effects. These are ones that are going to produce comfort in Israel.

“The passage goes on, ‘So the angel that communed with me said unto me, Cry thou, saying, Thus saith the LORD of hosts; I am jealous for Jerusalem and for Zion with a great jealousy.’

“The picture here is that the time is going to come when He’s going to re-establish the kingdom. He scattered them but it’s not going to be forever. What Zechariah does is talk about that restoration process.

“Verse 18-19 says, ‘Then lifted I up mine eyes, and saw, and behold four horns.
[19] And I said unto the angel that talked with me, What be these? And he answered me, These are the horns which have scattered Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem.’

“That verse is fascinating. The horns are explained to you in the Book of Daniel. Zechariah’s going to build onto that previous revelation. But notice how he says this because there’s a sense in which this verse, if you don’t read it right, is not accurate.

“It says ‘which have scattered Judah.’ See that past tense? But the horns in Daniel, only one of them is past. They’re in the second one and there’s more to come. Here Zechariah says, ‘They’ve already done it.’ “He’s alerting you to the fact that he’s looking beyond the activities of this period of time here. He’s looking beyond to the fulfillment of these things.

“So Media-Persia, Rome, Greece—these kingdoms, once they’re done, Zechariah’s looking for that and that’s why when you come to verse 20, and I’ve always thought this verse was the fascinating one, it says, ‘And the LORD shewed me four carpenters.’

“What do carpenters do? They build things. You remember how Christ talked to the Pharisees and said, ‘You builders . . .’ The leaders of Israel were supposed to be builders of the nation.

"Isaiah 28:16 says, ‘Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste.’

"Psalm 118:22, says, The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner.

“Well, builders who don’t do their work get to be replaced by the builders, and when you’re going to be a builder, there’s carpenters. And then he says there’s going to be four carpenters and he said, ‘What come these to do?’

“Verse 21 goes on, ‘Then said I, What come these to do? And he spake, saying, These are the horns which have scattered Judah, so that no man did lift up his head: but these are come to fray them, to cast out the horns of the Gentiles, which lifted up their horn over the land of Judah to scatter it.’

“These carpenters are going to come to break the power of the Gentile dominion over Israel and establish Israel’s kingdom. Now, the fascinating thing is when the Lord Jesus Christ came, you know what they called Him? You remember what Jesus’ daddy did? He was a carpenter. In Mark, they called the Lord Jesus Christ ‘the carpenter.’

“You say, ‘I wonder why they’d call him that?’ Well that’s because that’s what His daddy did. Isn’t it fascinating that when God arranges for the Lord Jesus Christ to be born by the virgin Mary, she’s espoused to a guy who fits the pattern exactly like He said it was going to come to pass?!

“By the way, there are going to be four carpenters. How many Gospels are there? It’s interesting. The four gospels are there because there are four specific ways the Messiah is described as coming.

“Zechariah 9:9 says, ‘Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass.’

“So when you come to the book of Matthew, you see, ‘Behold the king.’ It starts out ‘son of David, the son of Abraham.’ Luke takes him back to the son of Adam. You know what Zechariah’s telling you: ‘You know what you want to watch out for? The king’s coming.’

“Zechariah 3:8 says, ‘Hear now, O Joshua the high priest, thou, and thy fellows that sit before thee: for they are men wondered at: for, behold, I will bring forth my servant the BRANCH.’

“Isn’t it fascinating how that word BRANCH is all in upper-case letters? There are only a very few words in the KJB that are in all upper case like that. That’s a reference to the Messiah. There are four different Branch titles given to the Messiah.

“You know what the Book of Mark does? It says, ‘Behold my servant.’ You go through the Book of Mark and notice how many verses start with the word ‘and.’ You read the first chapter of Mark and if you just sit and read it you just go, 'Man, Mark is moving!'

“There’s no genealogy in Mark. There is in Matthew because you need to know who the king came from. But who cares where a servant came from? What do you want to know about a servant? Can he work! You don’t want to know what his pedigree is. It’s, ‘Can he get the job done?’ Mark is the gospel of the servant.

“What you’re going to read about in Mark is sonship service. There’s a lot of talk today about ‘your sonship walk.’ If you want to see a real sonship service, you’ll see it in the Lord Jesus Christ, specifically in the Book of Mark.

“When Paul says, ‘Let this mind be in you which is also in Christ Jesus,’ you want to see that sonship mentality put on display in human form made real—the Book of Mark’s for that.

“Zechariah 6:12 says, ‘And speak unto him, saying, Thus speaketh the LORD of hosts, saying, Behold the man whose name is The BRANCH; and he shall grow up out of his place, and he shall build the temple of the LORD.’

“We’ve got another behold statement. Now he’s the man. So you’ve got the Book of Luke presenting Him as ‘the man Christ Jesus.’ He gives the most thorough description of the nativity."