The
Day of
Small
Things
Zechariah came on the scene at the time Israel were engaged in a great building task – the Temple lay in ruins and they were setting out to raise it up again. The foundation was finished, but there was still much to be done . . . they had just begun.
It was a context very much like many that happen though our own lives . . . we have beginning times.
Zechariah came to encourage them, and prophesied many powerful things – but two statements are very well known: (Zechariah 4:6) Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit, says the Lord of hosts. Who are you, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel you shall become a plain!
Zerubbabel was the leader who with Ezra oversaw the building. And Zechariah’s message to him was straight - every great mountain-like challenge becomes nothing when a work is done by the Spirit of the Lord rather than by human strength and effort.
The second well known statement is found in verse 9 and 10 – the foundation had been laid, now, who has despised the day of small things? It’s what is called a rhetorical question; that is, a question not requiring an answer because the answer is obvious . . . no one looks a t a foundation (a small thing compared with what the architect has in mind) and despises it.
I recall building a house two or three years ago. The foundation slab was poured just before the builders broke for the Christmas and new year holidays. Several times a week Suzanne and I would visit the building site and walk about the foundation slab. There was never anything different to see over those few weeks – except in our imagination! We walked about visualising where the walls would be, where the doors and windows will fit, how we saw the kitchen lay out, the view from one side of the house to the next – we were enthralled and excited!
No one despises a foundation, though a small thing – for it announces a great thing that is to come! We celebrate the day of small things!
In Ezra 3:10 – 13 we get another view of the same scene that Zechariah of which Zechariah was a part. The foundation, the small thing, was laid. Great praise, singing, thanksgiving arose with a great shout. But the older men who remembered the first Temple (the original) were overcome with emotion. Unlike the others, they remembered the glory, the presence of God, the magnificence of God making this building His habitation. They more than any others could “see”, could “know” the wonder of that which was to come!
Both Peter and Paul write to the New Testament believers and tell them that they were being built together as a temple of living stones for a habitation of God in all His glory.
May I relate a personal example of how to behave in the day of small things? As I wander about the foundation slab of our newly launched local church named ‘elevate’, in this day of small things . . . I’m busy dreaming and seeing.
I’m seeing people growing in God, growing in faith, growing in worship and in love. It’s not organisation or structure that I see, but it’s a body of people running after the Lord with all their hearts and lifting their friends and people all over Auckland in the process to know Him like they do. And I’m not seeing just a few people . . . I see other congregations . . . I see us becoming friends and fellow servants with a large number of folk we’ve never met yet . . . I see impact all over the country . . . and I see churches in nations being touched by what God started here in 2008.
The thing about the Temple that Zechariah, Zerubbabel and Ezra worked to build was that it was a rebuild of the first Temple that had once been filled with the glory of God. The Temple built of human stones that Peter and Paul wrote about, this Temple that we are, is also a rebuild . . . a first Temple had already come and gone.
That first Temple was also a flesh a blood Temple. One day Jesus said, If you destroy this temple God will raise it up again in three days. His listeners were confused, but he was talking about Himself. He was a Temple. God dwelt there in His glory.
What God is doing today is a rebuild. It’s Jesus again. It’s a Temple of flesh and blood human beings through whom the world will experience the love of God. And the rebuild is not finished yet. Although 2000 years old, sometimes it seems it’s still in its day of small things.
But when you remember the glory and the wonder of the first Temple – Jesus who God anointed with the Holy Spirit and with power who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil for God was with Him – you’ll become overcome with emotion when you realise that God is doing it again!
. . . so that the people could not discern the noise of the shout of joy from the noise of the weeping of the people, for the people shouted with a loud shout, and the sound was heard afar off.
