ZECHARIAH 1 AND 2 (NOTES OF A READING)
ZECHARIAH 1 AND 2 (NOTES OF A READING)
Zechariah 1: 12 - 21; Zechariah 2: 1 - 13
CAC As we have noticed, the restoration comes in answer to the intercession of Christ. God has returned to His people with mercies. The intercession of Christ has taken on a peculiar character during the last hundred years (verse 13). It is good to see that these words characterise the present moment — “With good words, comforting words”. They are spoken to Christ. God is comforting the heart of Christ. He is securing a comfort for Christ He has never had all through the church’s history of unfaithfulness-now God is securing it in a feeble remnant at the end of the dispensation.
Rem It makes the word to Philadelphia of great interest. New Jerusalem comes into view and the Lord keeps the door open that the testimony might go on to the end.
CAC And these words were spoken to an unfaithful and discouraged people, occupied with their own matters. If that does not magnify God’s grace, I do not know what does. They came to put heart and backbone into the people to build, and are just as much God’s word to us.
God has committed Himself to see this through. Now, have we committed ourselves to it? He looks for this. Whatever God establishes on earth never lapses in spite of all breakdown. God has never in one sense left His thoughts, but He returns to them with blessing for His people in view. “With mercies”, He says. We are in a state of great weakness, just as they were in, as seen in chapter 3. They were filthy. Even the priesthood was filthy. He puts it in a condition pleasing to Him.
Rem God works in His people to bring them into line first with His own thoughts.
CAC There is a similar activity going on today. God always has His own forces to neutralise what hinders His work, so we must not expect help from the powers that be. The four gentile powers have always scattered. They scattered the Jews, crucified Christ, martyred the apostles and persecuted the church. Their tolerant character in this country is not their normal character. But there is a greater power to neutralise it.
These first two chapters are in the nature of divine proposals, and we need to keep to their character. There was nothing but ruins actually. But the carpenters have been at work all through the history of the church. That is, Paul’s ministry was infinitely greater than all the power of the Caesars. The right church history we do not know, it is only written in heaven. The carpenters have been at work all through the Dark Ages to cast out the four horns of the Gentiles.
Rem It is remarkable that the Lord should be a Carpenter. “How often would I have gathered thy children”.
CAC A carpenter puts things together in a firm way. Jerusalem is “built as a city that is compact together”. There is more power in that than in all the armies and navies in the [p. 488] world! Four would speak of universality. All true ministry is universal in its character-true everywhere.
Next a man is seen with a measuring line in his hand. Jerusalem is measured to show the whole thing in plan, and you must have God’s plan first. Jerusalem is the final great thought; He looks on to the culmination. So God does today in the city. Construction is going on, and God looks that we all should be building. If I have before me what God has before Him, there is no doubt as to result.
We have to recognise that the plan has been lost for eighteen centuries. This man comes to give us an idea of the plan. He represents that acting of God by which the attention of saints has been turned to the characteristics of God’s plan. Things would not bear measurement. God has awakened a desire to know God’s measurements. Jerusalem represents God’s universal thoughts, and when people see it, it makes such a difference; they get away from their own blessings, security and acceptance, to see what is common to all saints — blessing “in Christ Jesus”.
Daniel and Ezekiel had had the plan. It takes in “all saints” and if you left one saint out, you would spoil the plan. It is what God is out to construct in Christ Jesus, and it is marked by absolute unity. The saints are one body in Christ in Corinthians. The material is of such nature that it must be one, “in Christ Jesus”.
Rem In Revelation 11 the temple and the altar are measured.
CAC There was something there in spite of all the apostasy that can be measured — so here in T. — and something worth protecting. The court of the Gentiles was left unmeasured. It is a spiritual thought. I do not think there will be a material temple then.
“All Gods sons by faith in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3: 26) and “one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3: 28) — that is the plan. How can you possibly go back after that! Some give the lie to everything they profess on their banner by going [p. 489] back.
Ques Why the haste in verse 4?
CAC Zechariah was a young man — the Timothy of his day, and it was urgent that he should be brought into the mind of God. The plan is first, but God is not content for it to remain a plan.
Rem A plan is a means to an end.
CAC God wants Jerusalem populated. It is as we live in Jerusalem that there is something to secure divine protection. It is very wholesome to remind ourselves of it. If we are dwelling in the divine thoughts in Christ there is something worth protection, and we shall surely have it. The empires of the world are like a handful of dust compared with the remnant that cherishes God’s thoughts. What is found in return to God will be protected.
Rem But only what is real, not artificial, with us.
CAC That is what I had in mind. “I will keep you”. The object of this book is to bring us into the enjoyment of these things — enjoying the blessings in Christ Jesus. It is not anything special to a class, but common christianity — the common portion for all saints in Christ, but many miss it by being where it cannot be known. There are thousands walking together in the fellowship of His Son. God does not want hermits.
If the saints are touched God is touched in the most sensitive part, the apple of the eye.
Ques Could this refer to individual faithfulness in the same way?
CAC There is no church testimony in one individual. You could not think of being in the midst of one. God cherishes what is collective. It is there where God is in the midst. If separated, we must hang on with tenacious grip to God’s great universal thoughts and never give them up. I do not think God is going to suffer a collective enjoyment of things to be done away with. (Paul did not give them up in prison nor John in Patmos.) He suggests more than that — “I ... will be the glory in the midst of her”.