"THE LORD IS IN HIS HOLY TEMPLE"

November -- December, 1969Vol. 47, No. 6

[Harry Foster]

Reading: Habakkuk 2:2-4, 20; Zechariah 2:1-13.

Do you notice the similarity between the last verses of the second chapters of those two prophecies?

"But the Lord is in his holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before him" (Habakkuk 2:20).

"Be silent, all flesh, before the Lord; for he is walked up out of his holy habitation" (Zechariah 2:13).

WHERE is the Lord? That is a most important question! Where is the Lord? Now, seventy years of history lie between these two prophecies, perhaps even more, because Habakkuk's prophecy was anticipating the end of the captivity. He had a vision; indeed, he had something so plainly set before his eyes that we hardly need to call it a vision. He lived in the midst of circumstances which can only be described under one word -- destruction. You know how he saw the falling to pieces of his land and of his people, and how that -- far from being comforted in the sense of any suggestion that that was just a temporary thing that would not go very far -- he was told by the Lord that the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation, were to sweep like a flood over the whole land and destroy it. And you know how he finished his prophecy with those verses that we like to quote, that, though the fig tree shall not blossom nor fruit be in the vines, and everything is going wrong, yet we will still praise the Lord. We need to remember that, when Habakkuk said that, he was not talking about a remote contingency that might or might not happen, but that all these things were going to happen. 'This is happening before my eyes, but though it happen as a certain, sure, inevitable course of events, I will rejoice in the Lord!' Habakkuk was given a vision from God that there was that which was yet to be: "For the vision is yet for the appointed time, and it hasteth toward the end, and shall not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not delay."

We have read one of the chapters of this book of Zechariah which speaks to us of the partial and immediate fulfilment of that promise. The vision has come; the Lord is at work; glory, blessing and fruitfulness are to dwell in the land. There is restoration and so the picture is painted in rosy language. There are beautiful portions in this prophecy, speaking, of course, of something far more than Zechariah actually saw, but speaking, in the first place, of what the Lord was doing there, so that he, all those years afterwards, was living in [130/131] the fulfilment of the things that had been promised, and he, and those of his day, had ample reason to know that the Lord was in His holy temple. After all, in spite of the captivity, in spite of the destruction of Jerusalem, in spite of the long, dreary, terrible years of scattering and the apparent ending of all things, the Lord has returned and is working; things are happening and glory is back in the land. The people are there, and the house of the Lord is to be built, so he could say: 'It is all right! After all, the Lord is in His holy temple!' But the remarkable thing is that, years before that, with nothing to see, no sign of glory, everything seeming to contradict the promises of god, and surrounded by devastation and destruction, Habakkuk could say the same thing: 'It is all right! The Lord is in his holy temple!'

I trust that I shall be able to impart something of what has come to my own heart as to the need and the blessedness of maintaining the testimony here on earth that the Lord is in His temple and is supreme. As we have said, Habakkuk only saw destruction, Zechariah was seeing construction. When Zechariah saw things happening he could say: "The Lord is in his holy temple", and so could we and so could any man. But when Habakkuk saw nothing happening, but rather the reverse, he could still say: "The Lord is in his holy temple", and for seventy years at least, so far as Jerusalem and the people there were concerned, with no visible token and everything seeming to be contradictory, a strain was placed upon their faith as to whether after all the Lord was in His holy temple -- but He was! In the end it is proved that He was.

GOD IN THE WORK OF DESTRUCTION

And so we must believe that the Lord is just as much in His place of heavenly government during events of destruction as He is or will be during the subsequent events of construction. The nations were having it their own way, the Chaldeans were over-running everything, catching men in their nets and destroying the places that were sacred to the people of God, and there was no answer from heaven. The fig tree literally did cease to blossom, there was no longer any herd in the stall, and the whole possibility of tragedy that could be became true. What was happening? Had God withdrawn? God is in His holy temple, and even in the midst of all that was happening faith said: "Be silent, all flesh, before the Lord!" Although they did not know it, these men of flesh were, in a sense, bowing to the Lord in His holy temple. They were serving the purpose of God, and through all that period of the most terrible destruction He was in His holy temple: and faith looked forward to the day of which Zechariah now speaks, when that Lord in His holy temple (using a human figure of speech) would wake up out of His holy habitation and begin His work, begin to build things, to fashion them according to His own mind and have His will done. That did not mean that He had been asleep and indifferent during that whole time. The whole process of destruction that had been going on was under the eye and the hand of God. God was in His holy temple. There was nothing to see; in fact, everything contradicted it; but there was a day in the future when He would begin to build up that which was after His own mind, and that day would he possible because previously he had used the forces of destruction to prepare the way for Himself, and all through the time He had never for one moment relinquished His hold of things.