ZECHARIAH 14 (NOTES OF A READING)
ZECHARIAH 14 (NOTES OF A READING)
Zechariah 14:1-9; Zechariah 14:16; Zechariah 14:20,21
CAC We get still the thought of the remnant and the Lord’s dealing with the remnant, so that in result their blessing merges in the full result of the divine ways. We can see this corresponds in great measure with what is going on now. He is dealing with the remnant and instructing them and putting them through discipline, and all He is teaching the remnant today is going to merge in the full blessing of the assembly and in a glorified condition; that is in substance what we get in this chapter.
[p. 552] Ques Is that what we get at the end of verse 5, that the assembly will come into the good of things, “And all the holy ones with thee”?
CAC We did not touch on the last two verses of chapter 13, and they ought not to be left out. We see in chapter 13: 6 what the Lord suffered from men, and in verse 7 we see what He suffered as the smitten Shepherd, which results in judgment coming on those who had failed to recognise His service. We find two parts cut off, but the third is left and brought into the fire to be refined. The thought comes before us that God secures a remnant whatever happens to the bulk of the people. The others are cut off in judgment.
Ques “And I will turn my hand upon the little ones”.
Would that be the remnant?
CAC Yes, I think so. The present sorrows are God’s judgment of an apostate or nearly apostate profession, and at the same time He is dealing with the saints in a disciplinary way, to refine the saints. It shows there is precious metal there, silver and gold, and it is to be secured without any admixture. There is always something there, but there is a good deal that is impure which has to be dealt with.
Rem “The proving of your faith, much more precious than of gold which perishes”.
CAC Faith is very precious in the sight of God, so that He subjects it to testing that it might be purified. And that is going on at the present time. It is comforting that He has His hand in all that is going on. We ought to see that He is dealing judicially with all the nations. Chapters 1 and 2 of Revelation show that God’s judicial dealings go on with the public profession — it is shown there.
Rem As to the value He secures in the saints, God keeps the matter under His control, as in Hebrews 12 in chastening.
CAC The trials of the path of faith in Hebrews 12 nobody need have at all unless they wish. You can go out of the path of faith and avoid them. “But if ye are without chastening ... then are ye bastards, and not sons”. It is a comfort now when saints are not suffering persecution that [p. 553] we have this. But we are suffering along with others and not suffering for Christ, but it is the refining process by which God is purifying His saints and getting them ready for glory.
Ques What difference is there between governmental dealing and judicial dealing?
CAC There is judicial dealing in government, but we reap what we sow in God’s government. But Christians sometimes suffer in the ways of God for no wrong-doing. Why should a bomb fall on a brother’s house and kill him? It belongs to the inscrutable ways of God. There may have been nothing wrong with the brother, but it is to sanctify the saints. What falls on our brethren is intended to purify us.
Rem “How unsearchable his judgments, and untraceable his ways!”
CAC His government can be traced, but His ways are past finding out. Many a believer can trace God’s government (and I know where I went wrong), but not His ways. Why did He allow James to be martyred? It was part of His ways, but they will all be justified by and by. The discipline of the Father is not always corrective, but it is instructive. A child is sent to school for instruction — that is the primary object, not the discipline of the birch-rod (Psalm 103).
Rem “He made known his ways unto Moses, his acts unto the children of Israel”.
CAC So Moses prays, “Make me now to know thy way”. He wanted to know God’s blessed way in Christ. God says, ‘All right’, and puts him in a cleft of the rock and covers him with His hand while He passes by. He was going to put man out of sight in the rock and reveal Himself.
In the chapter before us Jerusalem is under judgment. There is a remnant who call on Jehovah’s name at the end of chapter 13, and He will hear them. “I will say, It is my people; and they shall say, Jehovah is my God”. But there are a lot of people in Jerusalem that do not belong to that remnant.
Ques Why is it in verse 1 “the day cometh for Jehovah”, as if it were not quite the full day of Jehovah?
[p. 554] CAC I think that is right, as the first part of the chapter deals with God’s preparatory ways. It was necessary that judgment should come upon those who rejected them, as it actually did on Jerusalem forty years after, and then the most awful judgment ever upon any city perhaps fell. But He secured a remnant, “The rest of the people”. In the beginning of the Acts they passed over into the assembly.
What we find is that the Lord acts in a remarkable way for the remnant. He comes and stands on the mount of Olives.
Ques Is this the carrying out of what the angel said in Acts 1? “This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven, shall thus come in the manner in which ye have beheld him going into heaven”?
CAC Yes, “in like manner”. It is contrasted with His entry into Jerusalem. It is a remarkable service of His love to the remnant. He comes down and the valley is formed so that the remnant can flee — a beautiful way in which He comes in for the remnant. He provides for them in the mount of Olives position, not Jerusalem.
Rem “He led them out as far as Bethany”. Luke says He was taken up from there and He was going to come in like manner.
CAC The mount of Olives is unique, and stands by itself. It is the mount of Olives in Acts l. It was really the remnant there that saw Him go from the mount of Olives.
There is the making of the valley by which the remnant flee, and the holy ones come (verse 5). They flee to that position in order to come back with Christ into the royal city. There is a wonderful analogy with what is going on now. In the millennium He is going to be King in Jerusalem, there is not any other. “In that day shall there be one Jehovah, and his name one”. Before being King His feet stand on the mount of Olives and he makes a way out for the holy ones. They will go out into that valley to learn their association with Him. They learn Him in relation to heaven. It will be made known to them that for two thousand years their Messiah has been in heaven, all the while that the assembly has been here. Of [p. 555] course our way out is the rapture, our way out is Ephesians and John 20, that is, our heavenly position, and in actuality the rapture. We are going out into heavenly association, they go out and come back into earthly association. He would have a company of which He will be the ornament according to Isaiah. They will come back in association, as a queen in gold of Ophir and as the virgins that follow Him. Is that not the setting?
Rem Yes. Psalm 45 gives us that.
Rem The dragon makes war with the remnant of her seed in Revelation.
CAC It is the same remnant, but there is a beautiful touch here as to the remnant. The Lord is in the mount of Olives position before He is in Jerusalem, and that is where we know Him — in His mount of Olives position.
Rem He often resorted there with His disciples, as linked with Him.
CAC Quite so, He resorted there as was His wont. It is His own place and is connected with the heavenly position and the Spirit. The remnant of the assembly has the privilege of going out now.
Rem When David reached the summit he worshipped.
Rem On the mount of Olives His disciples ask, “When shall these things be?”
CAC There they receive instruction as to all that is going to happen in Jerusalem. We can go out to Him in the mount of Olives position; He is not yet in the Jerusalem position. This is a peculiar acting of the Lord for the Jewish remnant, which corresponds to the rapture for us. The Lord would separate us from the Jerusalem that now is — the whole legal system. It was reproduced in judaism when the Lord was here and is continued in christendom, so the thing is to go out to the mount of Olives. We can do that in our meetings. There are two things that we do: sing a hymn and go to the mount of Olives. We may sing a hymn, but I am not sure that we do that. He would have us reach Him in every association with Himself, He would have us reach Him in the [p. 556] mount of Olives position. He would have us reach Him in spirit. If we reach Him in the mount of Olives position we are beyond the rapture. The Ephesians are beyond, seated together in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus; what could the rapture do for them? For this reason there is no mention of the rapture in that epistle.
I suppose verses 6 and 7 show us the process of instruction.
There is a special day known to Jehovah through which the remnant have to pass, and they reach light at eventide. It suggests that they do not reach the light in the mount of Olives position without going through a day of exercise.
Ques What character of exercise? It says, “Not day, and not night”.
CAC It would be illustrated by the three days Saul of Tarsus went through when he neither ate nor drank and was without sight. He got the light. It came like a flash in one second. But the revolution produced in Saul’s soul took three days and nights; it was mixed, he had not the Spirit. It was at the end of that time that he received the Spirit. It answers to what the disciples went through when the Shepherd was smitten; no one knows what they went through, what obscuration of all light there was when they saw the Shepherd smitten and He gave up the ghost on the cross. We should do well to ponder it. And if you look at it as one day, at even there is light. And we have to go that way to reach the heavenly position. We have to learn there is not a vestige of hope in the man after the flesh; even Christ after the flesh has to die. We have to go through it in principle.
Rem We know not what is become of Him, they said of Moses.
CAC They had lost sight of, and all interest in, the One ascended. It is just the history of the christian profession. Of course the remnant is bound up with Him.
Rem ‘Because I go away’, the Lord said, ‘ye have sorrow’, “but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice”.
CAC At eventide it shall be light. It is very wonderful to see the harmony of God’s ways. If you see the harmony of His ways, it corresponds universally with the remnant — with the church. What light the remnant will get; they will see Christ in the Old and New Testaments from first to last, “and in the Psalms”, and will come into conscious association with Him in the mount of Olives position and be ready to come back with Him to reign.
“Living waters shall go out from Jerusalem”. From that point onward Jerusalem is seen as the city of the great King in her millennial glory, and all the earth is refreshed by the waters that flow out. All go out, as in Revelation 22. The feast of tabernacles will be kept (verse 16), for every promise has been harvested and everything is gathered in, and holiness characterises everything. It is written on the bells of the horses; that is, natural strength takes on an entirely new character — the character of holiness. All the pots and bowls are marked by holiness.
Rem So the full thought of God is reached.
CAC Yes, and gain to us as light is to be reached in the assembly, for all the spiritual thoughts of God as in the remnant are forecast in the assembly. We have our own vision of the heavenly Jerusalem in Revelation, but whether earthly or heavenly it is to impress us as to the character God would have put on His city. The assembly is His city today, marked by the supremacy of Christ and by holiness.