Minor Prophets #9

GOD’S VISION FOR BUILDING HIS CHURCH

What kind of church would we like to be? That’s a vision question. Vision statements have emerged out of the business world and filtered into church language. Some of us may balk at using business language in the spiritual realm thinking that the two have nothing to little in common.

            But the question has some value: What kind of church would we like to be?

            Part of the problem with vision statements is the purpose or goal that we associate with them. Vision leads to growth. What kind of growth? Most of us think numbers; we want our congregation to grow in numbers. Others desire spiritual growth. If we are honest, we hope that with spiritual growth comes numerical growth. The tension mounts.

            The question is still good: What kind of church would we like to be?

            Can anyone quote the KEMC vision statement? Does anyone have it memorized? If even a handful of you can recite its stanzas it’s not really enough – not if we share this vision. Vision is essential to a church. However, while our core values, mission and purpose remain the same, the vision is subject to change. It is dynamic and does not remain static. The vision must be renewed and adjusted as the congregation and its context changes. The core – the Great Commission – stays the same, but the wording changes. Vision statements give us a picture of what the mission will look like as it is realized in the community.

            This is why we ask the question: What kind of church would we like to be?

            Zechariah’s fifth prophetic vision (4:1-14) does not give a direct answer to our specific question for Church vision. It does, however, provide a view to HOW God wants to work in the faith community of Kleefeld to build his church. What it reveals will be shocking to those who have big plans and instructive to us who feel the need to have a five year plan. The Psalmist says it best: “Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders labor in vain” (Psalm 127:1a).

1. The LORD is the Source

After 70 years of captivity in Babylon, the Jews returned to Palestine to rebuild Jerusalem and the temple. But Jerusalem is a heap of rubble and the temple of Solomon is a pile of stones. The task looks and feels impossible.

            Zechariah’s role as prophet was to encourage the people to keep at the work and remember the purpose behind the work. His book of visions from the LORD recounts how God motivated his people by sharing his vision for the rebuild.

            Zechariah’s fifth vision reminded the people that the LORD was their source. Since the people were very poor and could not afford building materials, the challenge to have faith in God as their source was very great. What the prophet sees in his vision emphasizes the LORD as their source:

            “I see a solid gold lampstand with a bowl at the top and seven lamps on it, with seven channels to the lamps. Also there are two olive trees by it, one on the right of the bowl and the other on its left” (4:2-3). What does this mean? How does this help the Jews in their frustration?

            The gold lampstand was a fixture in Solomon’s temple. It was a reminder that God had called the nation of Israel to be a light to the world, how Yahweh shone his glory through his people. One of the tasks priests performed in the temple was to make sure there was enough oil in the reservoirs to keep the flame burning. The flame was to burn perpetually. But in this vision, there are two olive trees. The trees somehow provide a continual flow of oil to the lamp so that the flame never goes out.

            Oil represents the Holy Spirit in all of Scripture. Oil had many functions in the Bible, as it does today. Oil lubricates, minimizing friction and wear; oil was often applied to wounds for healing; oil was used in lamps for light; oil was used for anointing people for special tasks. Here in Zechariah’s vision, the Holy Spirit is shown to be God’s greatest resource for his people.

            This is why the LORD says to Zechariah, “This is the word of the LORD to Zerubbabel: ‘Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the LORD Almighty” (4:6).

            What’s the LORD talking about? “Might” refers to military strength. In 1 Kings 5 we read that Solomon employed thirty thousand laborers, seventy thousand carriers, eighty thousand stonecutters and 3300 foremen to build the temple. That’s over 150,000 workers. Of the fifty thousand Jews who returned from Babylon, many were aged, women, or children. They did not have the might or power of Solomon to build the temple and in short order. But God says “by my Spirit” you will build the temple.

            From a human point of view, they didn’t have the bodies to do the work. What does having the LORD’s Spirit help in this enormous undertaking? The word “Spirit” refers to the LORD’s breath. And it was the LORD’s breath that created the world (Gen. 1:2); it was the LORD’s breath that parted the Red Sea (Ex. 15:8); in Ezekiel’s vision, it was the LORD’s breath that brought the valley of dry bones to life (Ezek. 37). Was this breath needed to complete the building of the temple? Yes, because the work, the way it was done, the provision of building material, even the building itself, were all going to be a witness to how God, not people, accomplished this feat. This humanly impossible task would glorify God all the more because it would be plain to everyone that God did it. If God can create the world with the breath of his voice, surely he can build a little temple to his own name.

            Why was it so important to build the temple? The temple was the center of worship in the life of Israel. It symbolized the presence of the LORD in the midst of his people. It was a constant reminder to give glory and worth to their God.

2. The LORD will remove Barriers

From our perspective molehills look like mountains. With a mountain before us it is hard to conceive of a way around it or through it. Going over it may be impossible.

            To Zechariah’s congregation, the construction of the temple had its mountain challenges. The LORD responds to these mountain obstacles saying, “What are you, mighty mountain? Before Zerubbabel you will become level ground. Then he will bring out the capstone to shouts of ‘God bless it! God bless it!’” (4:7).

            What were the mountains the people faced? One mountain was literal or physical: there were mounds of rubble to be removed, huge broken blocks that were compromised and other waste that had piled up. Another mountain involved people: enemies of the Jews opposed the work because they feared the Jews becoming a great people. Some Jews resisted the work because they were naysayers (there’s always a few). And when the temple was finally built, some of the old-timers wept because it was a poor replacement for the glory of Solomon’s temple.

            But these, God says will not hinder the work. Your enemies, your skeptics and naysayers, and your pouters will not thwart what God wants to do. Its completion is symbolic of victory by God’s Spirit.

            Jesus would later say, “I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him” (Mk 11:23). Were these the mountains, the obstacles to God’s vision that Jesus had in mind?

            When the capstone is brought out, the chief cornerstone, the people would literally say, “Grace! Grace to it!” By the grace of God this temple has been raised.

            We cannot help but think of the new temple that God is building when we read these prophetic words. In Ephesians, Paul speaks of Jesus Christ removing the barrier, the dividing wall between the Jews and Gentiles, creating one new people out of the two. The new temple is not made with granite or marble, but with those who believe in Christ Jesus, the chief cornerstone. As Peter declared, “As you come to him, the living Stone – rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him – you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:4-5). This is what the LORD is building.

3. The LORD uses Small Things

And how does the LORD build? The LORD uses small things. This is what astounds the reader of Zechariah surely. As the LORD says, “Who dares despise the day of small things…” (4:10).

            The impression that Zechariah gives from this vision is that Zerubbabel, the prince of these Jews, must continue the work, slow as it might seem, brick by brick. One brick at a time is faithfulness to the LORD.

            To the unenlightened, the small things which prepare the way for God’s great work seem trivial and unworthy of their involvement. They mock the smallness of the job. They want to do important, significant work. So they despise the lesser roles.

            In his book, No Little People, theologian Francis Schaeffer wrote: "In God's sight there are no little people and no little places. . . ." The world loves the sensational and stunning, but God loves to work through the ordinary and insignificant. In His Kingdom, bigger isn't always better.

            We see in the Bible how Jesus loves to use small things. Crowds in the thousands followed Jesus, but he chose only 12 to begin building the kingdom of the gospel. Jesus fed 5000 people with five loaves and two fishes from a child’s lunch. He compared the kingdom of God to a mustard seed, the smallest of seeds that grows into a massive tree. And Jesus said, “Whoever…gives to one of these little ones even a cup of cold water to drink, truly I say to you, he shall not lose his reward” (Mt 10:42).

            The LORD uses small things to do great things.

            D.L. Moody had this perspective with regards to people. One afternoon he noticed a young lady at the church service whom he knew to be a Sunday School teacher. After the service he asked her where her class was. “Oh,” she said, “I went to the class and found only one little boy, so I went away.” “Only a little boy?” Moody said, “Think of the value of one such soul! The fires of a Reformation may be hiding in that little boy, there may be a young Knox, or a Wesley, or a Whitefield in your class.”

            Brick by brick. We do not notice the great thing God is doing as we work at our “small” projects, but we faithfully lay brick by brick.

            I pray that we Sunday School teachers would have the vision of D.L. Moody, that we would see the potential in our students and in the material itself, to believe that God would take the small things and do more than we can imagine.

We began this study by talking about a golden lampstand and building a temple, things that are not familiar to us in our present context. But if you remember, the opening of the book of Revelation begins with Jesus walking among the golden lampstands. These lampstands represent the churches, the people of God lighting up the world.

            We said that the temple represented the presence of God among the Jews. Solomon’s temple and Herod’s temple are long gone and the symbol of God’s presence gone with them. So where does God dwell now? We saw that God has been building a better temple with each believer as a living stone and Jesus Christ as the chief cornerstone.

            The church, the people of God in Christ, is the dwelling place of God today. Even the names for “Church” bear witness to this. Two words in Greek express what the church means to the world: One is kuriakos, which means “the Lord’s”, and from where we get the German word “Kirche,” and thus “church.” The other word is ekklesia which means “called out” as in “a people called out of darkness into God’s wonderful light.” If we are allowed to mash the two words together, the church is really “the Lord’s people called out of the world to be his light of his glory.”

            We return to the question of vision then: What kind of church would we like to be?

            Among the many characteristics we could apply to KEMC, friendly, missional, Bible-believing, family-oriented, and so on, I know what I envision. I see a body of people, called the church, that knows that the Lord Jesus is their source for all things, and faithfully work, not by might nor by power, but by the Spirit. I envision a church that sees no mountain, no barrier that can stand in our way when we see what the LORD wants us to do. I tell you, a church like this, the gates of Hell will not prevail over it (Mt. 16:18). And I envision a church that believes that no job is too small to be significant and of incredible worth to the Lord Jesus whom we serve.

            Brick by brick, little by little, we are building the kingdom of God right here in Kleefeld.

            Paul declared, “And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment – to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head even Christ” (Eph 1:9-10).

            If we believe this to be true, then we believe that what we are doing, even the small things, are not a waste, but will find their fulfillment in Christ when he comes again.

                                                            AMEN