Bible Commentaries

Spiritual Times and Seasons

Zechariah 1:1-9

We dislike men who know the day upon which they were converted. We have lived, by the temptation of the devil, down to that low point. Our reason for disliking such men is that we do not know the day of our own conversion; and if we do not know when we were converted, how is it possible for any one else to know when he was converted? All the prophets must go down before this narrow and shallow criticism of ours, because they give the day and the date, and almost the very hour. The difficulty is for a man to forget the day when he first saw the Lord. Why, there is no other day. All the Zechariah 1:1). Zechariah is not ashamed of his function. We are not to read "the son of Iddo the prophet," according to English punctuation; the comma ought to be after the word "Iddo"; and, omitting the intermediate genealogy, the word will then stand—"The word of the Lord unto Zechariah the prophet." How can the Lord send his word to anybody but prophets? Other people could not understand it. Here is a mystery, but it is a mystery of fact rather than of speculation or dream. Some men laugh at the Gospel. Do not mock them; they cannot do aught else. Why I cannot tell, I did not make the universe; the human heart is no construction of ours. There are men to whom there is no Church. Do not reason with them; you cannot put liquid into a vessel that is open at both ends; do not waste your words: the kingdom of heaven is sent to them who can understand it, feel it, catch its music, and answer it with kindred melody. All this involves much questioning; all this indeed supplies the basis upon which angry cross-examination might take place; and we know it. The explanation may come by-and-by, and that explanation will be adequate; meanwhile, there are men to whom sermons cannot be preached because they cannot be heard. There are souls on whom hymns are wasted. How this is we know not.

When the Lord sends his word to his chosen one he will make it easy for that chosen one to deliver it, will he not? No: he sends his servant upon hard work. When did the Lord ever give any servant of his an easy function? When did he say to his Zechariah 2:1): that is about all that is possible to any man. Zechariah puts himself into an attentive and receptive relation, and there our duty begins and ends, so far as receiving messages from heaven is concerned; afterwards we have to go out and carry these messages into effect; at the first, all we can do is to lift up our eyes in expectancy, and look as if inspired by an assured hope. This must be our way of treating the Bible. We do not see everything in one look; we have to look again and again. Jesus Christ did not quote the Scriptures once for all when he contended with his enemy in the wilderness; he told that enemy that it was "written again." Every new day has some new vision of God for the soul that longs to see divinest beauty. All the old things will bear looking at again. The sunset is never old in any sense of exhaustion, of suggestion, beauty, and glory. The tiniest flower that blooms in spring or summer will bear looking at again and again, and will always have some new aspect of loveliness to show to us, if our eyes be directed to it with expectancy. How true this is of the whole scheme of divine providence! Read the days as they pass, and see how swiftly God is writing the story of human life and the revelation of his ineffable purpose! All this writing is done in daily business, in general strife, in the clash of arms, in the emulation of empires, and in all the affairs and elements that constitute human progress. We should see more if we looked with more eagerness. Only to the open eye will God show himself. Nor is that the eye of the body, it is the eye of the heart. Yea, blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

Zechariah saw "a man with a measuring line in his hand" ( Zechariah 2:1). Surely this may be taken as a sign of judgment! When God brings men to the standard, he means either to approve or condemn them. So when God lays the measuring line upon a city and upon a life, surely his purpose is to find out its defects, and to judge accordingly. Ezekiel saw this same angel. Various prophets have referred to the same mystic messenger as operating energetically in vision and in action. We may see him to-day if we look for him. The angels are not dead; we have concealed them within the clouds of our unbelief, or fear, or selfishness, but the clouds are purely of our own creation, and they do not affect the reality of spiritual existences. In this verse the angel declared his purpose, which was "To measure Jerusalem, to see what is the breadth thereof, and what is the length thereof." Whilst this conversation was proceeding between Zechariah and the angel, "another angel went out to meet him," and would appear to have delivered the precise message which Zechariah was intended to hear, namely, "Jerusalem shall be inhabited as towns without walls for the multitude of men and cattle therein." It is important to notice the architectural outline of this Jerusalem, because it suggests that it cannot be the earthly Jerusalem that is meant. To be without walls, was in ancient times and places to be without defence; to have no wall, was to be a continual temptation to surrounding peoples. So long as Jerusalem was without a wall, her life was one of constant and humiliating fear. The period of her restoration and security was indicated by the building. It had been promised to Daniel that her "street shall be built again, and the wall, even in strait times." Nearly five hundred years before the coming of Christ Nehemiah mourned, saying, "The remnant that are left of the captivity there in the province, are in great affliction and reproach, the wall of Jerusalem also is broken down, and the gates thereof are burned with fire." It would appear, therefore, that the prophecy looks forward to the times of Christ. He was to have a Jerusalem not limited and bounded by walls and fences and landmarks; his city was to be without any such boundaries, and was to gradually expand on the right hand and on the left, until the whole world should become the city of God. "Thine eyes shall see Jerusalem a quiet habitation, a tabernacle that shall not be taken down; not one of the stakes thereof shall ever be removed, neither shall any of the cords thereof be broken." This would seem to refer to limitation, but the prophet proceeds, "Spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes; for thou shalt break forth on the right hand and on the left."

Is the spiritual Jerusalem to be a city without a wall of defence? Is it to be the prey of the enemy? Is it to live a life of continual exposure? The answer is given in Zechariah 2:5 :—

"For I, saith the Lord, will be unto her a wall of fire round about, and will be the glory in the midst of her."

These firewalls escape the attention of our poor vision. We think the Church is not safe unless we build up walls of creed, and dogma, and ceremony, and all manner of mechanical arrangements; we seem to be determined not to leave any room for divine providence in the economy and progress of the Church. Be it known unto us, one and all, to meddlers of every class and kind, that the Lord himself is a wall of fire round about his Church. Elisha prayed that the young man's eyes might be opened, and no sooner were they opened than he beheld this same wall of fire. We are also inclined to create minor glories and grandeurs in the Church; we have our hierarchies, our gradations from the highest to the lowest, our appointments of a ceremonial and ritual kind; our great men, our fertile writers, our keen debaters, our brilliant assailants of error, and our magnificent defenders of positive truth; all these in their right places may be of much use, but we must remember what God says in this same verse—that he "will be the glory in the midst of her." Similar words are found in the prophecy of Zechariah 2:6).

The Lord having founded a city of defence, calls all his people to it. They have not to build one Babylon to oppose another; with their own hands they have to create no defence; they have simply to come to the city of God: "Go ye forth of Babylon, flee ye from the Chaldeans, with a voice of singing declare ye, tell this, utter it even to the end of the earth; say ye, The Lord hath redeemed his servant Jacob." The music of Jeremiah is in the same lofty and thrilling key: "Flee out of the midst of Babylon, and deliver every man his soul: be not cut off in her iniquity; for this is the time of the Lord's vengeance; he will render unto her a recompense." At all times the command of the Lord is to flee and deliver ourselves from opposing forces. We are never told merely to flee, as if to outrun the enemy; we are always invited to some particular goal, some divinely-built and divinely-protected Jerusalem. The sinner is not commanded to flee away from his sin; he is commanded to flee to his Saviour. The same doctrine is laid down in divers directions, but it always indicates the specialty of God's provision for those who flee from evil. "Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing"—this is negative, this is simply to call up the soul to some perilous adventure, the soul not knowing the issue of its endeavours, but the promise follows the command—"and I will receive you." So commands and promises roll together in these marvellous communications from heaven.

"For he that toucheth you toucheth the apple of his eye" ( Zechariah 2:8).

The Old Testament is full of the most endearing expressions regarding the relation of God to his Church. It would be easy to show that there is more real tenderness in the Old Testament than in the New so far as the expression of sentiment is concerned. The one thing that invests the New Testament with supreme tenderness is the Cross of Christ: in presence of that spectacle all other tenderness becomes but a variety of cruelty. No man can touch the saint without first touching the Saviour. The glory of the Lord is round about the humblest of his people; so that he who would smite the obscurest worshipper must force his way as through a circle of guardian fire. What can be closer in the way of relation than that which is expressed by the image before us? Precious in the sight of the Lord is the life of the saints, the whole course of their conduct, and precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. It would seem as if the Lord saw nothing but the saints, because all his arrangements are made with a view to their culture, their edification, and their final and eternal fellowship with himself. Does not the image teach us that God's people seem to be part of God himself? Can any man remove the pupil of his eye without losing his sight, and thus inflicting injury upon his whole constitution? We are partakers of the divine nature, if so be our life is hidden with Christ in God. Know ye not that your bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost, and the Holy Ghost dwelleth in you? Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: not something outside God, but something partaking of his very nature, something identified with his very deity. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the Church.

"Sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion: for, lo, I come, and I will dwell in the midst of thee, saith the Lord. And many nations shall be joined to the Lord in that day, and shall be my people: and I "will dwell in the midst of thee, and thou shalt know that the Lord of hosts hath sent me unto thee" ( Zechariah 2:10-11).

It is impossible that the Church should keep a silent tongue amid the shower of blessings poured out from heaven upon the inheritance of the Lord. We are called upon to sing and rejoice, and shout and clap our hands, and enter into all possible manifestations of exultant delight We cannot arrange for such experiences, saying that to-day or tomorrow we will hold high festival in the Church of God. There are times when the soul is filled with such a sense of the divine presence and glory that it must break forth into singing, and betake itself to demonstrations which, to the carnal mind, must seem not only eccentric, but wild and irrational. The soul must know the secret of its own gladness, and fully respond to all the indications of the divine pleasure. A silent church is an ungrateful church. A silent family is a family that represents unthankfulness and impiety. A silent life gives no testimony to the indwelling and all-ruling presence and energy of the Holy Spirit.

The promise that many nations shall join themselves to the Lord in that day, and shall become the people of the Lord, is a grand evangelical prophecy. Isaiah had looked forward to the time when proselytes in considerable numbers should join the true Israel. Jeremiah also had predicted something of the same consummation. They, however, seem to have limited their vision in some directions, but Zechariah now takes up the prophecy, and says that many nations shall join themselves. The Jews had made no converts among the heathen; the Jews had been scattered everywhere, and yet the nations had not allied themselves with the great Jewish current of history and development; but now comes the prophecy that many nations shall join themselves unto the Lord. From eternity this has been the thought of God. We are nowhere taught that God had fixed his love upon one particular nation to the exclusion of all other peoples. Even God must begin at some historical point, and he began with a people of his own special creation, but he only began with that people, that he might add to it all the other peoples of the earth until the whole world should be filled with his glory. The title of Israel was "the people of God," or, in other words, "A people unto himself." The heathen were represented as "not a people," and God purposed to provoke Israel to jealousy by these outlying nations. Israel was very dear unto the Lord, not because of good behaviour, but because of his own purpose and grace. The figure which Jeremiah employs indicates the utmost closeness: "As a girdle cleaveth to the loins of a man, so have I caused to cleave unto me the whole house of Israel, and the whole house of Judah, saith the Lord; that they might be unto me for a people and for a name, and for a praise, and for a glory." This was not to be the exclusive and final privilege of Israel; but to these enjoyments many nations were to be admitted. Thus Christ is to see of the travail of his soul, and be satisfied. The Church of God is to consist of Israel and the Gentiles. The unity of humanity is realised and acknowledged in the Son of man.

In the twelfth verse we come upon an expression which has often been unduly limited, namely, "the holy land." The verse reads, "And the Lord shall inherit Judah his portion in the holy land, and shall choose Jerusalem again." The land was made holy by the presence of God. It is not land separate from all the other portion of the earth, and technically described as "holy." Wherever God is there is holiness. The whole earth is to be filled with the knowledge of God, then the whole earth will be the holy land. Let us understand, therefore, that we are not dealing in this verse with a merely technical expression. We are looking forward to a time when the whole earth shall be God's Palestine. Happily we are not to think of the conversion of the heathen as something independent of the purpose of God in the general administration of earthly affairs. Even when the whole world is converted, it would appear as if Jerusalem should be the centre of the new empire. It is true that repentance and remission of sins are to be preached among all nations: the beginning was to be made in Jerusalem.

When, in the thirteenth verse, we find the exclamation, "Be silent, O all flesh, before the Lord," the literal word is "Hush!" The whole human race is to have nothing to say to God, is not to argue with God, has no part or lot in any equal controversy with God: the duty and the privilege of the earth is to be silent when the Lord raises himself out of his holy habitation and speaks to the creatures of his hand. According to the thirteenth verse there is a time when God seems to be perfectly indifferent to the affairs of life. It would appear, indeed, as if the Divine Being were in slumber, for we read of his being "raised up." These, however, are but accommodations of language to human weakness and usage. For ever and ever the eyes of the Lord are open, and the heart of the Lord is filled with solicitude towards his creation.