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Now let us read one or two passages from our prophet Zechariah. The first of them in chapter six. Zechariah chapter six and verse nine: And the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Take of them of the captivity, even of Heldi, of Tobijah, and of Tedaiah, and come thou the same day and go into the house of Josiah the son of Zephaniah, whither they are come from Babylon. Yes, take of them silver and gold, and make crowns, and set them upon the head of Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and speak unto him, saying, Thus speaketh the Lord of hosts, saying, Behold the man whose name is the branch, and he shall grow up out of his place, and he shall build the temple of the Lord.
Even he shall build the temple of the Lord, and he shall bear the glory, and shall sit and rule upon his throne. He shall be a priest upon his throne, and the council of peace shall be between them both. The crown shall be to Helam and to, and to Tobijah and to Jedaiah and to Hen the son of Zephaniah for a memorial in the temple of the Lord. They that are far off shall come and build in the temple of the Lord, and you shall know that the Lord of hosts has sent me unto you.
And this shall come to pass if you will diligently obey the voice of the Lord your God. And now a verse in chapter nine, chapter nine, verse nine. Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion, shout, O daughter of Jerusalem, behold, thy king cometh unto thee. He is just and having salvation, lowly and riding upon an ass, even upon a colt, the foal of an ass. And finally, from chapter fourteen, verse nine, and the Lord shall be king over all the earth.
In that day shall the Lord be one and his name one. Verse uh sixteen: and it shall come to pass that every one that is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernas. God give us good understanding of his word. In the first major part of the prophecy of Zechariah, there are, as we have been noticing, eight visions given to the prophet to describe the restoration of Israel by their God.
Yesterday we concentrated on the two center visions, number four and number five, and found that they bring us to the very heart of this matter of restoration. They were chapters we found that eventually talked to us about the blessed priesthood of our Lord Jesus, and secondly, about the ministry of God's Holy Spirit. Those two divine ministries lie ever at the heart of all the restoration of the people of God. We watched Joshua the high priest standing before the Lord and saw his wretched condition, both personally and more particularly as his in his official position as high priest and representative of the nation, leader of their worship to God.
And we saw the strength of Satan's accusation against him. Then we noticed the marvel of God's great mercy and the constancy of his choice. He chose his people, and he chose Jerusalem, not merely in the early days when with success they came out of Egypt, and Aaron was appointed in all the glory of his beauteous garments. That same God still chose Jerusalem, even in those moments when their high priest was now standing before him in his utter failure, both as a person and in his official capacity, and his robes no longer resplendent and glorious, but dirty and filthy.
All the mercies of God. Had it depended upon us, how long should any of us have occupied any office at all that God in his mercy had given to us. We noticed him restored not only as an individual, but restored to his office. How could Israel be restored if their priest wasn't restored? And we watched Zechariah's excitement as he added his own suggestion that they put a thermiter upon the priest's head, that he might bear the iniquity of his people once more, and in the strength of his person and in the strength of his office, carry the people of God, maintain them fit to worship the Lord.
We should notice now, as we pass in our resume, we should notice now the condition laid down in that chapter by the angel of the Lord. Verse seven of chapter three. thus saith the Lord of hosts, if thou wilt walk in my ways, and if thou wilt keep my charge, then thou shalt also be a judge in my house, and shall keep, also keep my courts, and I will give thee a place of access among these that stand by. Restored to his office and to his high privilege, and beautified with the forgiveness and reinstatement by God, yet he was not to indulge in self-indulgence merely like Eli had in times gone by.
You will remember the disgraceful episode of Eli and his high priesthood, taking advantage of the grace of God. He who had been chosen to lead the people and discipline the people and control the people and make the people aware of the glories of God and of the behavior that is, uh, uh, incumbent upon them as priests to the Lord. Eli had allowed his sons to grow up self-indulgent, hideously sinful men that saw the priesthood merely as a way of indulging their own satisfactions and were interested in spiritual things only so long as they ministered to their own pleasure and forgot God and his glory and descended to the most shameful iniquity and self-indulgence.
Restoration by the grace of God will never mean that, will it? Now Joshua, restored to his office, is called upon to execute the charge of God, to be a judge in his courts, to train and to discipline the people of God, that he might train them in what is acceptable to God and train them in behavior that is well pleasing to God. At this juncture, we do well to remember these challenging words of Hebrews chapter twelve. We are not come to a Sinai all on smoke at the presence of the glory of God, so that Moses himself did exceedingly quake, and the people requested that the voice should not speak to them again.
What are we come to? Something less majestic? Something less awe-inspiring? Well, of course not. We are come to the s- to the heavenly Jerusalem, Zion of God, dwell that august assembly of the ministers of God and the various groups of his redeemed. We come to serve him whose voice once shook the earth, yet has he promised again, and when he speaks again, his voice will shake not the earth only, but the heaven, so that all those things that can be removed are removed. We are left with what is abiding and eternal.
Seeing then we have received a kingdom such that it cannot be removed, let us seek grace that we may serve him with godly fear. Our God is a consuming fire. We shall not increase our joy if we lose sight of the awe-inspiring majesty of the God whose priests we have been called to be. And as we thought of these things, our hearts went eagerly. So the fact that Joshua restored to his office and his fellow priests became in that far off day a foreshadowing of the coming of our great high priest, who in one day and by one sacrifice made it possible not only for Israel's sin to be removed, but our sin too.
By one offering has perfected forever them that are sanctified. And now stands for us in the presence of God, now to appear in the presence of God for us, carrying us, his junior priests. For us he wears that mitre where holiness shines bright. For us his robes are whiter than heaven's unsullied light. But still today he faithfully keeps his charge. Restoration, what shall it mean?
Our minds go this morning to those sacred scenes go- growing with the holiness of God, given us in the visions of John in the Revelation one to three. Of the seven golden candlesticks, and in their midst, one like unto the Son of Man, clothed in his priestly garment, down to the foot, keeping the charge of God, moving in the courts of the Lord, investigating his junior priests, calling them to heal, praising their good works, seeing with his penetrating eye their shortcomings and sins, and calling on them to repent.
They might join in their priestly office of being bright and burning lampstands for God in this ungodly world and crooked generation. And then we thought yesterday, did we not? Of that second ministry led by Zerubbabel, the civil leader of the people that we read in vision number five in chapter four. Zerubbabel charged with the task of rebuilding the temple, amidst the opposition of all the little nations that were constantly yapping and snapping at Israel's heels, against all the opposition of the mighty imperialist power of the time.
And the glorious gospel message coming to God through the vision given to Zechariah, not by might nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord. As we read it this morning, we hear it not merely as gospel, but once again as exhortation. Zechariah was to be both encouraged, uh, uh, and the rabble was to be both encouraged and exhorted by that famous statement, not by might, nor by by by my power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord. There in the vision stood he, and doubtless Joshua, as those olive trees that poured the oil into the vessel of testimony.
Privilege of God to be the channels of God's Holy Spirit to the people of Israel. Sons of oil. We, in our little way, rejoice in the marvelous privilege that God has given us, given you, my sister, given you, my brother, where you are, to be the vehicles of God's Holy Spirit to that testimony where God has made you responsible. The message is gospel that says that God's Holy Spirit it is that maintains the testimony against all the opposition and assures us that he that has begun the good work will continue it.
The robable, your hands have laid the foundation of the house of the Lord, your hands will finish it. What a confidence we may have in the Lord. I repeat the promise that Paul comforted his own heart with as he sat in jail and thinking of his work in Philippi, begun by the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit. And he saw evidence in the lives of the believers that he that had begun the good work in them would continue it even until the day of the Lord. As I say, the word of promise is also a word of exhortation. Channels must remain only channels, mustn't they?
Listen to Paul talking to his fellow believers in Corinth, and he's discussing the matter of building the temple of God. Different temple from Israel's temple, whether Israel's temple is past or future, and whichever one you're thinking about. This was a present day temple built for God in Corinth, and Paul has a wise master builder had laid the foundation thereof, and other people were building on it in slight danger of exalting themselves from being channels to being the center of the temple, dividing up the believers under their various personalities and names, getting the believers to glory in men and put their confidence in men.
That would be a disastrous thing to do, wouldn't it? And the thing that, of course, inevitably destroys its own objective. As Paul remarks in one Corinthians two, no one knows the things of God, save the Spirit of God. That is always true. That is now true. My brother, my sister, as I stand here, a feeble channel of the Lord's grace, and I talk to you the words of God you know right well, but unless something else is simultaneously happening, unless God Almighty chooses by his spirit to reveal himself to you, then nothing really happens.
That is of the essence. God is not a thing, like an atom. Atoms, you know, are very easily understood. All you need is to be a genius like Einstein to start with, and then have an old cyclotron or something, whatever they call it, that costs, uh, a few hundred million dollars. And then you get hold of the old atom and you put it through the machine, and the poor old atom hasn't a chance, you know. It has to yield up its secrets and let you pry into its very heart, because it's only a thing. I rejoice to tell you that I'm superior to an atom, even me. Ha!
You could be an Einstein and put me through your machine, and you would find out all the chemistry of me, and the shape of my toenails, and the color of my hair, and how fast my heart beats. But me, you'll never know. Because I'm not a thing. Unless I choose to discover myself to you, you won't know me. And here is God's holy word, and you can know it from A to Z like the Pharisees did. Using every technique at your disposal. And unless God pleases to reveal himself to you, you'll know nothing. How does he reveal?
In his inscrutable mercy and grace and condescension, he uses us all as channels. The vital thing is not by might, our might, or power, or intelligence, or wisdom, or anything, but it is by God's Holy Spirit that God may makes himself known and maintains his testimony. And it comes about that God often uses the weak things to confound the mighty, and the things that are not to confound those that are. And in our day and generation, we need to listen in.
For the issue at stake is not whether I'm clever. The issue at stake is whether in this materialistic orientated world, whether it is true that there is a supernatural God, a God transcendent. And only the voice of his Holy Spirit can demonstrate that that is true. And so we follow now swiftly through the remaining vision. If second, if the rabbi bull and Joshua the high priest are in unison to be used of God to revive the testimony and build the temple, the house of the Lord, then vision six and seven remind those people that if they would build the house of the Lord, it has implication for their own houses.
And so he's given a vision in, uh, chapter 5 of a flying rod, written in detail, that flying rod enters into the houses of iniquitous sinners and destroys them. How will we read the vision? As a threat? Warning Israel to close their doors and bolt them in case the scroll comes flying into their window or something? Surely not. It's not a threat. It's a promise. Also the day when it will be finally fulfilled, and evil eliminated from among the people of God.
But you who have been taught the grace of God, made channels of his Holy Spirit, joined in the work of building the house of the Lord, do you not at this moment in your hearts pray silently to the Lord? I wish you'd send a scroll like that my way. That the Bible, God's holy word, would cease to be merely a book. Let it come, Lord. Let it enter into the floor and the rafters of my home and in every fiber of my being. Lord, use it to eliminate all that is not well.
You see, my brother, how would they in that day build the house of the Lord and be a testimony among the nations, if in their own homes and houses unworthy things still prevail? Ah. Nehemiah came back from one of his es- uh, his adventures and his business duties. To find, if you please, that in his absence, and they had built the temple to the glory of God amongst the nations, uh, old Tobiah had moved in with his household staff. Well, it was related to one of the prominent Israelites, and you couldn't make a fuss, could you?
Well, Nehemiah made a fuss. We're not rebuilt this temple to have this kind of thing going on. Get out, he said, and booted the man out and all his household stuff. How shall I in my day build the house of the Lord and be a testimony for God amongst the people in my own home is not governed by God's word and his gracious discipline, a daily releasing me from the power of sin.
It is followed by another vision, much talked of by the experts, and I'm not one of them, about the ephah and that terrible old woman wickedness thrust down in the ephah and the whole thing transported to the plain of Shinar to build a house for her there. Well, that got her out of Israel, and that was one mercy, wasn't it? What's the good of having Israel out of Babylon if you can't get Babylon out of Israel? And if the ephah symbolizes at all the commercial life of the nation, we observe, don't we? For all our sympathy for our Jewish beloved, uh, fathers.
So often the testimony of the Lord in their hand has been severely compromised by their attitudes in business. We who are Christians can scarce throw two bigger stones. How shall I do testimony for God? If in my business life, the ways of Babylon still hold me. But we come to the final vision.
God has promised that one day all things Babylonish shall be removed from Israel, and wickedness be taken to its own region and her house built there, ready for the final judgments of God. We who live in this advanced age see it going on around us. God in his wisdom will allow evil to come to its full flood tide before he eventually destroys it. And already the movements are afoot to separate out the great issues at stake into their respective camps.
The man of sin and the evil woman of Babylon on the one side, Christ and his faithful people of all kinds on the other. Even in our day, we need to stand clear and be wise as to what the currents of affairs are leading to. We come to the final vision, and as the in the first, so here now in the final vision, we see once more the horses of God's administrators in the earth. They cry, behold, they that go toward the north country have quieted my spirit in the north country.
Some of the expert commentators tell us that this is a prophecy of God's final judgment upon Babylon, and that the verse should be translated, they have quieted my wrath by executing that wrath upon Babylon. Maybe so. Maybe it is a reference to the judgment that fell upon Babylon in historic times, and Israel was given to see at least the beginnings of God's judgment on that nation that once had held them in its grim captivity. But whatever it means, in Zechariah's day, it wasn't the final putting down of evil, was it?
Yet God announced that his spirit is quieted and put at rest. If you compare it with what was said in the first vision, perhaps you will see something of the realism of God. In the first vision with those horses as the man stood in the myrtle tree, there was a fearful and frightful complacency. The whole earth at rest, and even the Israelites themselves settled down into a desperate complacency. No movement for God, no progress, no real concern about the poverty of spirit and the brokenness of Israel. By the intercessions of the angel of the Lord, that complacency was broken, and spiritual energies set loose that got Israel moving again to restore the priesthood and restore the temple.
Again, the long drawn out work of delivering God's people from evil. God, who is a God that's against complacency, is a God of realism, and he sets realistic objectives for his people. And here in Zechariah's day, no, not the final triumph. That would in fact take centuries to come, but there had been movement, there had been progress. Oh, how many long miles yet to be covered. But God can announce that in some sense, his spirit is quieted and at rest. And it may not mean much to you, but it means volumes to me, my brother.
You don't tell me to tell me that I'm a long way off heaven. I don't mean geographically, I mean the States, of course. And I don't know your view on that, how near heaven you think it is, but I mean in my spiritual experience, that is, building the temple of the Lord and in the execution of my priesthood and the pursuit of holiness, you don't need to tell me I'm not in heaven yet. I stand with the apostle, though miles behind him, and say not that I had already attained. And oh, how far off the goal seems to be some days. The question arises, shall I ever get there?
And then and then, all the mercies of what God has already done, all the graciousness of God, that as a wise teacher and father takes us by realistic stages and says, yes, there is some progress, and I can make known my satisfaction. Courage, my brother, my sister. Granted that there is within you a heart to go on with God and not rest in complacency. Don't vex your souls too much that you have not yet attained what for the moment are impossible goals.
But as you press on, learn to draw strength and comfort and courage from this. That if you're walking with God, and doing the best you know how to walk with him, and are pursuing and gaining your short-term victories, the heart of God can find satisfaction and rest for the moment in you as you are. With that, the eight visions come to an end, and if we have been paying close attention to them, we shall now have a very big question in our hearts. Eight visions talking about the restoration of Israel, talking about the restoration of the priesthood, talking about the restoration of the temple, talking about the restoration of Israel to the land.
But surely the visions haven't ended, have they? For there's a huge thing still missing. There's nothing been said yet about the restoration of the king. How could there be restoration without the king? Say, well, well, well, well, yes, there's been refer- references, my brother, to the branch, and you ought to know, uh, your prophets well enough to know that the branch in certain prophets is another name for the king. Yes, I know, but that can hardly satisfy me. I want, uh, I want a whole vision on it.
For the restoration of the king. You can't have full restoration unless the kingdom be restored, can you? Hadn't God promised it many times and explicitly through prophets like Jeremiah? When the restoration took place, the temple would be restored, and the land would be restored, and the priesthood would be restored, and the people would be restored, and the kingdom would be restored. And he would set over them David, his son. You approach those prophecies with the wisdom of hindsight and the benefit of the experience of long ages of history. But to the early, uh, people that returned, how high their expectations must have been, that now very soon God will restore the kingdom to Israel.
But all eight visions went by, and there was no word of that. But we notice that there is, at the end of chapter six an epilogue, just as there was an introduction in chapter one before the eight visions started. And in the epilogue, now a piece of history, not a vision, but a piece of history, we read of certain men that had came- come up to entreat the favor of the Lord. And, uh, they had come from Babylon, and they had got silver and gold. They're told to take this silver and gold and make crowns.
Not several different crowns, but one glorious, majestic crown made out of a whole series of little crowns, one pile on top of another, one glorious big crown made up of all sorts of little crowns. And of their silver and gold, see them now busy at it with their treasure, and they brought it from Babylon, and they come from Babylon with high hopes rising in their hearts. This is the restoration, my brethren. Oh, let's get our silver and gold and make a crown, a big crown, and put it on. I wonder what they were expecting. Whose head? Well, they had Joshua the high priest, and they had Zerubbabel the civil leader.
Was this going to be the moment when God would fulfill his gracious promise and restore the kingdom to Israel and the prince of the line of David? Or should they be allowed to come with their silver and gold and put it on the head of a restored king? Oh, what a thing that would be to do. The prophet had to take them. With their gold, silver, and silver crown. Put it, he said, on the head of... Joshua the high priest.
I wonder if their heart sank in their boots. Well, it's sunken in the boots of the literary critics of the Old Testament, hasn't it? They say this can't be original, this passage, somebody's gone and altered it and doctored it. First of all, misreading the Hebrew plural, they suppose there were two crowns to start with, and then they say it must originally have been put it on the head of the rubber bull, the civil leader, and crown him as prince and king in restored Israel. That was their hope, and when it didn't happen, then somebody went and doctored the text and made the second best of it and said, put it on the head of, uh, Joshua. That's the kind of funny tricks that some literary critics get up to in the Old Testament.
The plain fact is, it was not God's purpose, intention or program at this time to restore the kingdom to Israel. Yes, we know that in Nehemiah's day, when he began to rebuild not now only the temple, but the city, the little Gentile nations around accused him before the imperialist government of having intentions in his head to proclaim a king in Jerusalem and get political independence for Israel. And Nehemiah was at great pains to deny the scandalous suggestion.
He had no intention of crowning himself or anybody else as civil king. Israel was to remain, and remain for centuries, under the domination of the Gentile imperialist power. Must have been a disappointment to some of them in Israel. Of course, the king did come eventually, as presently we shall think and see. When our Lord Jesus rose from the dead, this was the question upper my- uppermost in the minds of the apostles, wasn't it?
Here was the Lord risen, and then he was the Christ. Lord, they said, isn't this the time you're going to restore the kingdoms of Israel? For which question they have been much found hot with, as being unspiritual and narrow-minded men who ought to have risen to bigger ambitions. What nonsense the criticism is. If Jesus is the Messiah, surely he has to be king. How can he be the Messiah and not reign in the end from shore to shore? How can restoration be complete? Till he sits on the throne of his glory. Is it at this time, said the apostles then, that you will restore the kingdom to Israel?
And they had to be told no. Not yet. One day it will be restored. In the meantime, said our Lord, you shall be my witnesses. By the time Peter has got to chapter three of the Acts of the Apostles, the Holy Spirit has enlightened him as to the program, has he not? And he preaches to Israel their need to repent and to accept their Messiah. The Messiah God has appointed for them, whom the heavens must receive until the time of the restoration of all those things that the prophet said would be restored.
Still we wait. Sure, in Zachariah's day, they were allowed to take the crown and put it for the moment on the head of Joshua, not to make him political ruler in Israel, but in a, a symbolical ceremony that he might become a stand-in and a foreshadowing of the coming king. The branch, our blessed Lord, who should be both priest and king upon his throne. We have lived to see our blessed Lord risen from the dead, made of God a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek, king and priest.
But even yet, he sits not on the throne of his glory. He sits upon his father's throne. We too wait for the great time of the regeneration, when the Son of Man shall sit upon the throne of his glory. So I wish it were now. If I wish I, oh, thought just struck me, you say. I got some silver and gold I could break up. Cool. Would, would I be allowed to take my silver and gold and make a clone of it, with my little hands, place it upon the head of the Savior when he comes to sit upon the throne of his glory.
Wish I could do it now. Take comfort from this parabolic and symbolic scene. They put their crowns upon the he- the crown upon the head of Joshua, and then it was taken off, not wasted, put in the temple for a memorial. But they in their day made a crown intended for the head of the king. Ah. And when the branch comes in his glory, and the branch, the king, the son of David, sits on the throne of his glory. Shall they not take those crowns that old Hildy and Tobias, Tobijah made?
I don't know where they've got to now, do you? I believe God knows. But allow me the parable. Shall they not take the crowns and the devotion of those far away men and place that too on the head of the branch. Shall not Hen and Tobiah gather around the blessed Lord and say, Lord, you've been a long while coming. Centuries ago we hoped to see you, and the hope was delayed. But Lord, while you were still away, and while we made it, waited, you're the crown we made in hope that one day they would be put upon your head.
Why couldn't God restore the king forthwith? Well, for one reason, that Israel herself had as yet no true and full idea of what divine kingship should mean, and they had to be trained and taught. It was a long and bitter lesson. They had it in their hearts that kingship meant being somebody like old Nebuchadnezzar with his big mustache and all the power and who me would he slew and who me would he kept alive, and if he got out of the bed wrong way one morning, you were very careful what you said and did.
Arbitrary rule of power to exalt himself. And that idea persisted, and sometimes in some very unexpected quarters. Zechariah, in his final prophecies, points us to the day when at last Jerusalem was bid to cry aloud in her joy, behold, your king comes to you. We can look back on it through the records of our gospels, of that breathtaking day when it was happened, when it happened. And the long expected king came. Oh, then if you had been standing outside the eastern gate of the temple, and your eyes had looked to the Mount of Olives opposite and seen, coming over the top of the mountain, the unbelievable sight of the blessed man from Nazareth, with crowds of hundreds, if not thousands of disciples round him, coming down the slopes of the Mount of Olives.
Suddenly men's hearts realized, and Jerusalem had to be told, your king is coming, see him descending down the mountain side, riding upon the ass. The king had come. How would he change their hearts? Yes, he could have used his power and obliterated them and given up Jerusalem, given up the planet and started somewhere else in the universe. Blow the rebels and the thieves in the temple, blow them to smithereens and have done with them. Like a man who, walking out of a summer's evening, is troubled by a little mosquito bite on his kingly forehead and slaps it into non-existence.
Not so is the king, while we were yet enemies. How shallow the idea of kingship even the learned apostles had. In sight of the sacred emblems of the body and blood of Christ, they were wrangling amongst themselves as to who should be the greatest, for they had that concept of kingship in their hearts, that being a king meant that you bossed the most people. What kind of restoration can be built on such a concept? The whole glory of paradise will be that the divine person shall serve.
Oh, my brother, hear what a wonderful thing your heaven is going to be. Why, if you could go home this night to your stately home and sit you down at your table with your beautiful linen and your silver and gold at your table, and you pressed the button and the waiter came in and served and washed for you and brought the dishes. You would be somebody, wouldn't you? Oh, my brother, be careful, for when you get home to heaven, the Lord will do that for you. He shall gird himself and come forth and serve you. That's what will make the millennium the millennium and what will make heaven heaven.
You say, like Peter, I couldn't have the blessed Lord serving me? You tried to stop him. Hm. You'll find out. This is kingship. And the biggest one is the one who serves the most. But after all, who do you think is the bigger? The pigs that get fed or the farmer that feeds them? It is really the one who serves most is the biggest, and he shall never bear the glory, for he serves the most. But how should he convert these ungodly rebels? How should he establish his kingdom? You wouldn't do it by just sitting on an old throne of ivory.
You wouldn't even do it by parading the streets of Jerusalem on a donkey with all the ceremony attached. How would you do it and bring a rebel world and a rebel Jerusalem back to God? Ah, I tell you the story, you remember it well. The king got off his donkey. It wasn't much of a beast in your estimation. You would have come in a Mercedes Benz, Benz, I suppose. But in those days, kings came on donkeys. He got off even that transport. Going out from the upper room, he went back to the Mount of Olives and rode down it now, not as a king on a donkey, but coming to the place where the stones were hard, as hard as I- Israel's rebel hearts.
The king Kneel! kneeled. Said not my will, but thine be done. By the which will, the doing of it by the blessed Savior, we have been sanctified by the offering of the body of Christ once for all. Not otherwise can paradise be built, or the all sinners be saved, or Israel restored. By the rebel being broken through the love and mercy of God displayed when the king himself kneels to the will of God and dies for us ungodly sinners.
It was, of course, no disaster, the death of Christ. The final visions tell us how God has used Israel's rejection. They despised the king in their day and sold him for thirty pieces of silver, contemptuous of his attitude. We who love him, value him more than silver and gold could ever express. Rejoice to hear Zechariah prophesy of the day when the king shall come in all his glory, and Israel look on him whom they pierced, and a fountain be opened to them for sin and uncleanness, and all Israel be saved and reconciled to their true Messiah and king.
And the Lord shall be king in that great day. And God will have arrived for the time being at the fulfillment of his purpose. They shall keep the last and final feast in Israel's calendar of redemption, the glorious feast of Tabernacles. When it happens, my brother, my sister, you shall be there. You shall see the king in his glory. Ah, and what a thing it will be. Shall we be allowed, you think? And would he take notice if we did he? Oh, I don't know, but I'm boyish at heart when I see him sitting on the throne of his glory.
Shall I be allowed to come with my little bit of silver and gold, and in the furnace of life experience, I have given and beaten and welded and engraved into a crown. I am impressed, my brothers and sisters, I don't flatter you. I am impressed and greatly helped as I have perceived this week again what gold and silver is represented by your wonderful devotion to Christ. Oh, how wealthy it makes me feel to see lives with all their grace and beauty and expertise and courage and faith given to the Lord.
I'm sure it's not very comfortable now sometimes, is it? Well, lovely at last to see you coming in all his glory and bringing the crown that you have made from your silver and gold of sacrifice and living for Christ, and saying, Lord, you've been a long while coming, as it seemed to me, and I couldn't do it before, but in your absence, this was what I was doing. I was making a crown. Let me please now put it on your head. All that will be glory, and glory that we shall be allowed to share.
So the Lord encourage us as we build the temple of the Lord in our day and at our level, to build not with wood, hay, and stubble, but with gold and silver and precious stones in light of the day when the whole thing shall be complete and our blessed Lord enter into his glory, and we share with him the delight of a restored earth, one day a new heaven as well. Shall we pray? And so, Lord, we thank thee for thy word, for all these Old Testament prophecies.
We thank thee that as we read them, we recognize in our hearts how our ancient brethren felt. We thank thee for the common devotion to Jesus Christ, thy son and Messiah, that thou hast worked in the hearts of men of all ages. And we thank thee that even as many of these prophecies have already been fulfilled, so one day they all shall. Be pleased now to look upon us, and by thy spirit and by thy word, strengthen our faith, strengthen our hope, give us the grace and the energy not to tire, but to take every minute's worth of time and energy and all the gold and silver we have to prepare for that great and crowning day that is coming by and by through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
