The Silver Lining In The Cloud

Of all the Old Testament prophets, it seems to me that Zechariah had a long-term vision of God’s purpose for the world more clearly than any. What the book of Revelation is to the New Testament, the prophecy of Zechariah is to the Old. He leapt over the centuries to foretell a day which would dawn and which would be endless, when there would be no more night and all the darkness of the world, with its sorrow, sin and suffering, would be banished forever. The question is, how is it all to come about? In days like these, it almost seems to good to be true.

Well, let us review the message of this great man of God. He lived just over 500 years B.C. The Jewish people had returned from the captivity and bondage of Babylon, where for 70 years, they had suffered tyranny and misery as the inevitable outcome of their refusal to obey God. The time of their captivity was over and as they returned to their national home, their first thought was that of the rebuilding of the destroyed temple. Meanwhile, however, the people who had occupied the land in their absence took a dim view of this project, with the result that they found building strongly discouraged! Before long the work stopped altogether. The irritating restrictions imposed on them, and the manifold discouragements with which they met, simply got them down. Yes, as I have said before. . .history repeats itself.

Well, just at the time when spirits were flagging and hearts drooping, Zechariah came on the scene. He was not alone; he had a contemporary, Haggai by name, whose message, delivered at the same time and in the same circumstances, can be read concurrently with this prophecy. Through the joint ministry of these men, the Jewish people were encouraged to restart work, and they set themselves to the task of completing the restoration of the temple, and of restoring their national worship.

The man who is used of God to revive drooping spirits and downcast hearts, who can speak to such purpose and with such effect that a nation for whom God had a mighty purpose of blessing can be restored to a consciousness of their great vocation, is worth listening to. The message of Zechariah in the hour of frustration is my message to you.

Can we just try to survey the whole of his message? It is a difficult book and yet it seems to sort itself out into three parts. In the first six chapters, Zechariah addresses himself to the past; in the next two, he faces the present; and in the closing six, he anticipates the future.

The Message From The Past

The people to whom he spoke were sighing for the good old days.

Listen to what he had to say to them—“Be ye not as your fathers, unto whom the former prophets have cried, saying, Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Turn ye now from your evil ways, and from your evil doings: but they did not hear, nor hearken unto me, saith the LORD. Your fathers, where are they? and the prophets, do they live for ever? But my words and my statutes, which I commanded my servants the prophets, did they not take hold of your fathers? and they returned and said, Like as the LORD of hosts thought to do unto us, according to our ways, and according to our doings, so hath he dealt with us” (Zechariah 1:4–6).

These people have their counterpart in every generation. There was something about the past which they had failed to realise; it had been ruined by sin, as these verses tell us, and that sin had brought disaster. They had refused to take hold of God and therefore He took hold of them.

What a solemn lesson and what an inevitable principle! It is God who has the last word with all men. If we refuse to listen to Him, to cry to Him for mercy, and to take hold of His salvation offered to us so freely in the Lord Jesus Christ, then inevitably, He will take hold of us. What we do with Christ now decides ultimately what God must do with us in eternity. If we reject Him now, He will reject us then. If we accept Him now, He will accept us then.

The whole point that Zechariah was seeking to drive home was this: supposing they could have the “good old days” back again, would they be any different? Have they learned the lesson from the past? They are setting about their rebuilding schemes for the restoration of the temple, but their greatest need is not simply bricks and mortar, but that they might know the fulfillment of the promise of the Lord— “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,” and again, “for he that toucheth you toucheth the apple of his eye” (Zechariah 2:5 and 2:8). The challenge of Zechariah was: had they learned from their past sin the futility of any reconstruction programme which was contemplated without regard to repentance?

Let me emphasize that for a moment. Let me ask all these people who long for the “good old days” before the war, and who wish that we could have back the comparative prosperity, when we were free from rationing, shortages, and the thousand and one other restrictions which hedge us round now, do they really suppose that our country would be any different? In the interval between two World Wars, many a man, loyal to the truth, declared the whole counsel of God and, speaking generally, he was ignored. Gradually we slipped away from the rock foundation of the Word of God, from any regard to a moral code of life and from any consciousness of the claim of God upon us, with the result—disaster came. Six years after it is all over, we are on the verge of another war. Have we learned our lesson? I question it; it may be that even worse has to come to us in order that we may be brought, as a nation, to our senses, to see the futility of every reconstruction programme which is not built upon national repentance for past sin.

I ask again, have we learned the lesson from the past? There is a practical way to answer that question, you know. Apply it to your own life. How often have you, as an individual, said, have you not, “I wish we could have the good old days again,” and the older you get the more inclined you are to say it? But the memory is conveniently short. Do you not remember how often the good old days were spoiled by your own sin? There are memories which, if we take time to think of them, make us all blush with shame. You, fathers and mothers, have you never looked at your children and said to yourselves, “I wish I could be like that once again,” in order to blot out from memory the sins of youth, maidenhood, man and womanhood? You cannot, of course. But just suppose you could. Do you really think you would be different? Would you honestly start again if you could and live a life that is clean and straight and pure? You can answer that question in the affirmative only if you have come to realise in the course of your life the supreme claim of Christ upon it. God grant, if you have not already done so,. . .that you will yield your heart’s allegiance to Him.

You see, the promise of God to the Jewish people was to be a wall of fire round about them and the glory of the LORDin the midst of them (see Zechariah 2:5)—that means their absolute protection, not necessarily from physical harm, but ultimately from disaster. Isn’t that the only thing in life that matters? What men can do to the body is not of much importance— “Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28). Here is the point, God will be the wall of fire and will be the glory in our heart if, and only if, we have learned the lesson of our past failure and have sought Him with all our heart in deep repentance and contrition.

The Message About The Present

But Zechariah had something shattering to say about the present also.

Listen to him—“When ye fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh month, even those seventy years, did ye at all fast unto me, even to me? And when ye did eat, and when ye did drink, did not ye eat for yourselves, and drink for yourselves? Should ye not hear the words which the LORD hath cried by the former prophets, when Jerusalem was inhabited and in prosperity, and the cities thereof round about her, when men inhabited the south and the plain?” (Zechariah 7:5–7).

In the process of rebuilding the temple, the people had recommenced the formal, hollow ritual of the religion of the past; there was no reality in it. So they had come to ask him questions about feast days and so on. How hard that kind of thing is to die. I remember saying during the war that I believed this Second World War had pronounced the sentence of death upon the mockery of formal religion, a happy sentence too. I believed that the world would no longer tolerate the existence of religion that is not real, in the light of the horrors of 1939–1945. Well, it may be dead, but it won’t lie down! The hollow, empty shell of ritualism which is unsupported by experience of life, is yet with us.

What has Zechariah to say about that?

Let me quote— “Thus speaketh the LORD of hosts, saying, Execute true judgment, and shew mercy and compassions every man to his brother: and oppress not the widow, nor the fatherless, the stranger, nor the poor; and let none of you imagine evil against his brother in your heart. But they refused to hearken, and pulled away the shoulder, and stopped their ears, that they should not hear. Yea, they made their hearts as an adamant stone, lest they should hear the law, and the words which the LORD of hosts hath sent in his spirit by the former prophets: therefore came a great wrath from the LORD of hosts. Therefore it is come to pass, that as he cried, and they would not hear; so they cried, and I would not hear, saith the LORD of hosts” (Zechariah 7:9–13).

And again—“These are the things that ye shall do; Speak ye every man the truth to his neighbour; execute the judgment of truth and peace in your gates: and let none of you imagine evil in your hearts against his neighbour; and love no false oath: for all these are things that I hate, saith the LORD” (Zechariah 8:16–17).

How tremendous! In other words, the message of God to the formality of religion is, “Stop it or the same disaster will overtake you again and even worse.”

Tell me, are we learning this today? Read again quietly those verse that I have just quoted. Can you personally face up to them? How do we pray; is it mere repetition of words? How do we live; is our conduct related to our faith? Nothing has proved so disastrous in all history to a country as religion which is false.

Oh, for heaven’s sake, let us break through all this, and get through to the reality of the living God, adjusting our lives to His will, to His purpose, and living in the light of His truth! The only thing that can save us today from doom is a revival of New Testament Christian living. Begin it in your life now and you will discover that the power of God is with you to enable you. If we have learned the lesson of past failure, the only real evidence will be that we are living victoriously in the present.

The Message For The Future

But one other thing. Zechariah looks on to the future. The last six chapters are full of the recurring words, “At that day; at that day; at that day,” anticipating the day when the Lord Himself shall be King over all the earth. In that day there shall be one Lord, and His name one (see Zechariah 14:9).

Yes, Hitler was right; the answer to world need is not democracy but dictatorship—the only thing he had a bit wrong was who was going to be the dictator! All our statesmen say that the only hope of world peace is one world ruler, and though the nations will undoubtedly produce their own, yet in the final analysis it is only the universal Lordship of God our Creator and our Redeemer that can bring about universal peace.

Zechariah tells us how we may anticipate the day and the signs of its near approach. For example, he says that the Jews scattered throughout the whole world will return to Palestine: “And I will sow them among the people: and they shall remember me in far countries; and they shall live with their children, and turn again. I will bring them again also out of the land of Egypt, and gather them out of Assyria; and I will bring them into the land of Gilead and Lebanon; and place shall not be found for them” (Zechariah 10:9–10).

We were all aware of the fact that for the first time since AD 70, there is now a National State of Israel in Palestine. Can it be the day about to dawn?

But something else. Though the Jew returns to his own country without any faith in the true God, yet He will defend them there: “In that day shall the Lord defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and he that is feeble among them at that day shall be as David; and the house of David shall be as God, as the angel of the LORD before them” (Zechariah 12:8).

And He will save them there—“In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness” (Zechariah 13:1).

How will all this happen? Zechariah leaves us in no doubt: the King is coming!

“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, and upon a colt the foal of an ass. And I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim, and the horse from Jerusalem, and the battle bow shall be cut off: and he shall speak peace unto the heathen: and his dominion shall be from sea even to sea, and from the river even to the ends of the earth” (Zechariah 9:9–10). We live halfway between those two verses.

“Then shall the LORD go forth, and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle. And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives. . .” (Zechariah 14:3–4).

As I anticipate that tremendous day, how my heart rejoices. What hope is there in the world apart from His coming? Who can establish peace except Him who is the Prince of Peace?

Yet when I think of the accountability of every man to his God, I know that when I see Him, there is only one thing that will matter to me, and that is to know that I have been to the fountain open for sin and uncleanness. I dare not stand there before Him who is King of kings and Lord of lords, in any merit of my own, for I have none. I am a sinner, deserving only of God’s judgment; but, praise His name, I have found forgiveness and cleansing at the foot of the cross. Have you?

Oh, my friend,. . .let me just ask you lovingly, have you learned the lessons from past failures? Have you seen the emptiness and hollowness of religion which has no life? Can you anticipate that day, and see that the clouds which hang over this world of ours, and which are dark with doom, have a silver lining bright with the promise of His soon return? In the light of these tremendous realities, there is only one prayer for us all—

“Love divine, all loves excelling,
Joy of heaven, to earth come down,
Fix in us Thy humble dwelling,
All Thy faithful mercies crown:
Jesus, Thou art all compassion,
Pure, unbounded love Thou art;
Visit us with Thy salvation,
Enter every trembling heart.

Finish then, Thy new creation:
Pure and spotless let us be;
Let us see Thy great salvation,
Perfectly restored in Thee.
Changed from glory into glory,
Till in heaven we take our place,
Till we cast our crowns before Thee,
 Lost in wonder, love, and praise.” —C. Wesley