Resource in a Day of Limitation

"Not by Might, Nor by Power, But by My Spirit"

by T. Austin-Sparks

Chapter 6 - Resource in a Day of Limitation

Reading: Zechariah 3:1-10; 4:6.

Once more at the outset let us make a survey of this and the present chapter. It is always important for us to be sure that when we are speaking from the Word of God, and especially from the Old Testament, what we are saying really does have an application in the thought of God to our own time and that we are not trying to make something apply. And so in order to get our present contact with the Word of God, and see that it is related to our own time, let us just glance over some of the features of this portion.

I think we have not far to look to discover the prophetic and the typical elements that are in this whole book of prophecies as well as in the other book which is its companion, in the prophecies of Haggai which precede these - I say the prophetical and the typical elements, and they are twofold.

Firstly, they are historical, as to Israel. They have that immediate application to Israel and are pointing on to future things. There is a future element and factor about these prophecies all the way through which had no fulfilment in the immediate history of the Lord's people. You take such a fragment, for instance, as that towards the end of the prophecies of Haggai (2:21,22): "Speak to Zerubbabel, governor of Judah, saying, I will shake the heavens and the earth; and I will overthrow the throne of kingdoms; and I will destroy the strength of the kingdoms of the nations." Now, that passage is quoted in the letter to the Hebrews where we are told that the things which can be shaken will be shaken. God will shake not only the earth but the heaven; and Haggai is quoted in relation to the desire of all nations coming. So that you see there is a future element here even in this fragment alone, and there are many others in these two books which had no fulfilment in that phase of Israel's history. It was prophetic as to their own history and lay in the future.

But there is also another side which is spiritual, as to the church. Again let me point out what is familiar to most of you: that these two things run parallel throughout the whole of the Word of God; that while there is a historical aspect which in the main relates to this earth and its affairs, there is also behind that historical a spiritual, which does not primarily relate to this earth but relates to the heavens although it affects this earth; and that is spiritual. There is a representation in the historical on this earth, of that which is spiritual in the heavens.

These two things run right through all the Scriptures, and here in these prophecies they are quite patent. You take some of the features of these prophecies and you will at once see this twofold aspect of things. Take some of the typical words and phrases here. Firstly you began with: "My house that lies waste." "My house". Now it does not require a very profound or comprehensive grasp of the Scriptures to see that that very phrase relates to two things. It related to the temple as here on the earth, and has been used many times in that connection - My house. But we also know quite well that that phrase is linked with another house which is not on this earth, which is not a material house at all. It is the House of God which is eternal and not temporal, and in the heavens and not of the earth. It is that House which is brought into view for us by the spiritual epistles of the New Testament; and the two find their meeting place in the Person of the Lord Jesus. On the one hand He gathered up in His Own Person in His own body, the temple of the old dispensation, and related it to Himself, and showed that that temple and that system passed out when on that side of the meaning of His Person He passed out. In the presence of the temple in Jerusalem, for instance, He said, which we say in a beguiling way to the unspiritual and undiscerning: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up", this naos (Gr.), this sanctuary. They thought He referred to the temple but there was a sense in which He linked the temple with His own Person, but the recorder with spiritual illumination puts in brackets: "But He spoke of the temple of His body." So there was a link between the Person of Christ on the historic side with the temple of the old dispensation, but with His passing, that passed, and we know that it did in a very short time and it has not been reconstituted since.