Thursday, July 26, 2007

Did the Not Take Hold

Zechariah 1:6 KJV
But my words and my statutes, which I commanded my servants the prophets, did they not take hold of your fathers? and they returned and said, Like as the LORD of hosts thought to do unto us, according to our ways, and according to our doings, so hath he dealt with us.
God's Word, as preached by the prophets, says Zechariah, "took hold" of the fathers of this generation of Jews. He is speaking about the prophecies of Jeremiah and Jeremiah's contemporaries that Babylon would
Capture Jerusalem
Carry them into captivity and then
Release them to return to their homeland 70 years later

Zechariah reminds the people that God's Word accomplished exactly what it said it would.

The term "take hold" means to reach.
It carries the concept of ability. God's Word is able. It is able not only to accomplish the prophecies found within but to accomplish all that God sets for it to do. Gill puts it this way; ".....overtake them, seize upon them, and have their accomplishment in them? not one thing has failed, or come short of being fulfilled, of all that was determined, or said should be done..."

We can trust the good news of God's Word as equally as we can count on the judgments of God's Word. Each is equally able to take hold.

My prayer is that God will use the words that are preached to take hold of the souls of the saints and lost alike and that we will be converted to follow Christ.

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