ZECHARIAH 1
The first word that came to Zechariah called attention to the state of departure which had brought God’s wrath upon His people, and was a call to return to Him, when He would return to them. The former prophets had called upon them to return, but they did not hearken. They had now to own that what had come upon them was the result of this; all had come to pass as the prophets foretold. Now it is important for us to remember that divine prophecies have been uttered with reference to the period in which we live, and our measure of spiritual light and prosperity largely depends upon our seeing that they have come to pass. For example, the Lord’s words in Matthew 13: 24 - 33 are prophecies of what the kingdom of the heavens would become publicly, ending in the whole mass being leavened. Then Paul’s farewell to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20 makes plain that after his departure grievous wolves would come in, not sparing the flock, and even from among those present, men would rise up speaking perverted things to draw away the disciples after them. 2 Timothy is another prophecy of what the state of the Christian profession would be in the last days, and 2 Thessalonians warns us that apostasy would come. Revelation 2 and 3 give us a prophetic outline of church history ending in Laodicea being spued out of the Lord’s mouth as utterly nauseous to Him. 2 Peter and Jude may also be considered in this connection. Now we have to own that all these prophecies have been fulfilled, or are being fulfilled, so that the Christian profession is manifestly the subject of divine judgment. If we do not see this we shall not receive much light from God as to the resources available for a faithful remnant in a day of general departure. There are resources, but they are only made known to those who accept the truth as to the general position of things. Zechariah was a young man, and he represents youthful energy such as is needed for faithful service in remnant times.
The second word given to Zechariah took the form of a vision to assure him, and those who listened to him, that Jehovah was intensely interested in Jerusalem, though His indignation had been against it governmentally for seventy years. The man riding on a red horse is the prominent figure in this vision; he is called the so [p. 81] angel of Jehovah in verse 11. He is seen in verse 8 standing “among the myrtle trees that were in the low valley”. I believe that the myrtle trees in the low valley represent the faithful remnant, and in having the man on the red horse standing among them God would give them, and us, the assurance of One being with us who has far greater power than the kingdoms which exist by God’s appointment on the earth. The remnant to whom Zechariah was sent were no doubt familiar with the book of Daniel, and they knew that four kingdoms would succeed each other on the earth, the first of which had already passed away, so that only three remained to be taken account of here. But the instruction is that all the three are seen to be behind the man on the red horse. The three horses represented all the earthly powers with which the people of God would come in contact until the kingdom of the Son of man should be set up. But they are all seen to be behind the man on the red horse, because in this vision he represents the Lord as we learn Him at the end of Matthew’s gospel, having all power given to Him in heaven and upon earth. There are great powers which have been sent forth by Jehovah to walk through the earth, but in faith’s vision they are all seen to be behind the man on the red horse. He stands among the myrtle trees in the low valley, which represents those who have come to Christ and received rest from Him, and who learn from Him as the meek and lowly One, as having taken His yoke upon them. It is only such persons who have Him with them, and who understand that He is their resource. Those who had returned from captivity were in danger of thinking that they could not go on with the work of the house of God without the sanction of the kings of Persia, but God would have them to take up the work in the light of His thoughts alone, and as having Him with them in it. As a matter of fact, they began to build without having any sanction from Darius (Ezra 5:2); they acted in the light of what Haggai and Zechariah brought before them. The movement did not begin with Cyrus, or Darius, or Artaxerxes, but with the angel of Jehovah and his intercession.
“And the angel of Jehovah answered and said, Jehovah of hosts, how long wilt thou not have mercy on Jerusalem and on the cities of Judah, against which thou hast had indignation these seventy years?” Zechariah 1: 12. In seeking to apply this to the present time I think it is right to conclude that the present revival, which has been going on during the last hundred years, is the answer to the intercession of Christ. Jerusalem represents [p. 82] that which is the common portion and joy of all saints as blessed in Christ. Jerusalem was the divine centre where all Israel was unified in approaching God; it was the place where He had set His name, so that there could be no rival centre. Now when God’s universal thoughts get a place in our hearts we see ourselves and all saints as in relation to them. Everything narrow and sectional and sectarian drops out as being inconsistent with our spiritual outlook. We know that the Lord’s prayer for His own was that they might all be one, and it is profoundly interesting to see that His intercession in remnant times, as presented to us in the intercession of the angel of Jehovah in Zechariah 1, is that God’s universal thoughts may be restored in mercy. That is, that they may be so brought into the faith and affections of saints that they give character to the way in which we walk together, and to our service Godward. If Jerusalem represents what is universal, the cities of Judah may be regarded as representing the local assemblies in which God’s universal thoughts are realised and enjoyed together without being obstructed by any human order. I think it is right that we should recognise that the revival of these great and precious realities has come about in answer to the intercession of Christ. But the thought of this adds to the gravity of any difference as to these great matters.
The kingdoms set up by God when He transferred authority to the Gentiles were not doing anything at this time for Jerusalem. They could report that “all the earth sitteth still and is at rest”, but it was sitting still with Jerusalem in ruins and God’s house lying waste. God had used Gentile power to chastise His people, but they had gone to an extreme in what they had done. “I was but a little wroth, and they helped forward the affliction”. Now God was wroth exceedingly with the nations which were at ease because they did not care for the city which He loved, and He made known through the prophet that He was jealous for Jerusalem and for Zion with a great jealousy. “Therefore thus saith Jehovah: I am returned to Jerusalem with mercies: my house shall be built in it, saith Jehovah of hosts, and the line shall be stretched forth upon Jerusalem”, verse 16. That is, God undertakes the matter Himself in answer to the intercession of the angel. What a comfort it is to know that the revival in our day is the work of God Himself in answer to the intercession of Christ! We may be sure that He will see the matter through, even though only a small remnant may be in the current of His mind. It is not at all the mind of God that all the earth should [p. 83] sit still and be at rest while Jerusalem is trodden down of the nations. All man’s efforts to bring about universal peace will fail. Peace on earth will depend on Jerusalem having her place as the city of the great King. In the meantime it is for us to understand what has taken the place of Jerusalem and the house that was there, as God’s present chief interest. We must see this clearly before we can rightly apply the book of Zechariah to the present time. Jerusalem that now is is in bondage with her children, as Paul tells us (Galatians 4: 25), but in the same passage he speaks of what may be called our Jerusalem. He says, “the Jerusalem above is free, which is our mother”. So there is at the present time a spiritual Jerusalem, though we have to admit that its features have long been terribly obscured in the Christian profession. The blessing of Abraham has arrived at the nations in Christ Jesus that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith, and now believers are all God’s sons by faith in Christ Jesus, and are all one in Christ Jesus. The liberty which we have in Christ Jesus has been the great subject of attack by the enemy from the beginning; he would have us brought into bondage. When Christians were carried away from the thought of blessing in Christ Jesus (and this took place very early in the history of the church) the great thoughts of God, and His true grace, were departed from, and His people were carried off into captivity. The whole system of legal bondage was brought into what professed to be Christianity, and, as a matter of public testimony, Jerusalem became a heap of ruins. How could there be any liberty or joy before God when justification by faith was unknown, and people were kept in their own souls on the ground of what they were as in the flesh? The Reformation was the beginning of God’s returning to Jerusalem with mercies, and from that time onward increasing light from God broke in on the darkness of Christendom until it pleased God to restore Paul’s ministry of the gospel and of the assembly a little more than a hundred years ago. God’s universal thoughts of blessing in Christ were revived in contrast with men’s false thoughts of what was “catholic”. And as the unity of all saints as blessed in Christ entered into the faith and affections of those who enjoyed liberty in Christ Jesus, there was a breaking loose from sectarian and clerical bondage, and saints found that they could come together and worship together in the light of God’s thoughts with regard to all His called ones. It might seem a small thing that a few feeble saints should be able to walk together according to the [p. 84] truth, but it was really God returning to Jerusalem with mercies. He was making what was of Himself, and which had been for ages obscured and denied, a concrete and tangible reality.
“And Jehovah answered the angel that talked with me good words, comforting words”, verse 13. It is very precious to think of Christ interceding that God’s original thoughts and purposes should be revived in a remnant at the end of the church’s history, and to think of God answering Him with good and comforting words. It is a peculiar comfort given by God to Christ that a remnant should be brought into the truth of His headship, and should respond to His love, and should know their association with Him as His brethren before His Father and God. Oh, that Christians everywhere might be moved to enquire into these things, and to learn the wonder of God’s great thoughts, particularly as brought out in the ministry of the apostle Paul! God has returned to those thoughts in mercy. Not that He ever departed from them Himself, but He has returned to them in His actual ways of blessing, so that thousands of saints the world over are finding their joy, and their communion with God and with one another, in these precious divine realities. In this way God is ministering comfort to the heart of Christ at the end of a history in which there has been so much in the assemblies that has called forth His rebuke.
Jehovah would have the remnant to know that in working at His house they were engaged with that which He had before Him. “I am returned to Jerusalem with mercies: my house shall be built in it, saith Jehovah of hosts, and the line shall be stretched forth upon Jerusalem”, verse 16. What can be more encouraging than to be assured that we are putting our hands to the very thing that is God’s present object? Would not every faithful heart value the privilege of doing so? And I think we can say without doubt that the line is stretched forth upon Jerusalem today. That is, the precious and universal thoughts of God are marked out and defined for us in the current ministry of the word in a way that they have not been since the days of the apostles. If we have not clear understanding of how the city of God is laid out, it is not because ministry is lacking. Every year adds something to the area which is clearly marked out. The Spirit will not cease to speak to the assemblies so long as they are on earth, and His speaking will always be to define more clearly the outlines of the truth. We all know that it is permanently defined in the Holy Scriptures, but there is a constant [p. 85] service of the Spirit in order that it may be more clearly defined in the spiritual apprehensions and understanding of the saints who compose the assembly. Every such accession increases the pleasure of God in His people.
The last paragraph of the chapter gives us another vision. “And I lifted up mine eyes, and saw, and behold four horns. And I said unto the angel that talked with me, What are these? And he said to me, These are the horns which have scattered Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem. And Jehovah showed me four craftsmen. And I said, What come these to do? And he spoke, saying, Those are the horns which scattered Judah, so that no man lifted up his head; but these are come to affright them, to cast out the horns of the nations, which lifted up the horn against the land of Judah to scatter it”, verses 18 - 21. The four Gentile kingdoms are seen here as using their power to scatter the people of God. Under the providential ordering of God the authorities punish evildoers and commend those who do well, and so far as they carry out this, which is their divine commission, they are favourable to the people of God. And, in exceptional circumstances, as in the reign of Cyrus and at certain other times, they have directly furthered the cause of God. Indeed, we owe much at the present time in this country to a form of government which puts no restriction upon us in relation to the service of God, and protects us from any form of interference. We may well pray earnestly that this liberty may be preserved to us, for it is God’s exceptional mercy. It has been more often the case that the “four horns” have used their power to scatter. All can see that the Gentile powers have scattered Israel and Judah, and it was under the Roman power that Christ was crucified, and long years of persecution suffered by the saints. During the greater part of the last nineteen centuries the powers that be have been under the influence of a corrupt profession which has persecuted and scattered the people of God whenever it could do so.
But it is extremely encouraging to see that there has always been a counteracting power at work. The four craftsmen, or carpenters, have been present all the time, exercising a power and skill which was really greater than the power of the horns, for it was directly the power and wisdom of God. Craftsmen, or carpenters are persons who carry on constructive work, and I believe that in Zechariah’s vision they set forth those agencies by which God has carried on His spiritual work, which has always [p. 86] tended to build up His saints on their most holy faith so that they have been strengthened to stand, notwithstanding the presence and activity of scattering powers. Every faithful saint down through the ages has been an overcomer, and the fact that there have been overcomers shows that constructive work has been going on all the time. It must have encouraged the feeble builders in Zechariah’s day to know that if they were really building for God, and with God, there was a power with them greater than all the powers that had scattered them. In a day when scattering powers are at work it is good to remember this. The scattering powers can only be overcome morally as we go on with the positive work of God. The positive constructive powers are stronger than the horns. Paul’s labours, for example, have proved far more effective than all the power of the Caesars, for they have built up something in myriads of hearts which no earthly power could possibly destroy. So it is, in measure, with all true ministry of the word, and with all true spiritual labour.
Whatever pressure comes we are to go on with what is constructive; the building of the house is to be our chief interest and business. It may not appear to the natural eye that the power that builds is greater than the power that scatters, but it most assuredly is so if viewed in divine light. In times of pressure it is most important that the ministry of the word should go on, that we should edify one another. The “craftsmen” must be busily at work so that gathering may go on instead of scattering. God shakes things in the world in view of gathering for His house, as we see in Haggai. He builds up His saints so that scattering efforts, by whomsoever made, may be defeated. May we, like the remnant of old, prosper in our building through the consideration of these things!