Words For Discouraged Workers
By A.B. Simpson
Last week we listened to the words of encouragement from the old Prophet Haggai, as he spake to the band of captives who were restoring the temple of God in Jerusalem. About the same time there was another prophet named Zechariah, a young man, who perhaps at this time was just beginning his prophetic ministry, whose voice was also associated by the Lord with Haggai's in this ministry of help.
It was on the first day of the sixth month that Haggai opened his lips, and it was in the eighth month that Zechariah began his ministry, and in the eleventh month of the same year that he gave the next series of visions. So you see there was a great deal done between the sixth and the eleventh month. God compressed a great deal into a small space when His people were ready for it.
Let us, this morning, look at some of the messages of Zechariah. They are quite different from Haggai's but have in them the same spirit with a deeper poetry and a loftier inspiration. The first message that Zechariah gave to the people was not exactly one of reproof, but it was a gentle reminder of the warnings which had already been given and a very serious caution not to forget them.
But he does not linger long over the words of reproof. He just touches the canvas with a mere outline of the vision of judgment that, like a departing cloud, has gone and will never come again if they are faithful; and then he presses on to that which is bright and hopeful, and in a series of eight visions gives them a succession of pictures of hope and cheer like, perhaps, nothing else in the sacred volume for beauty and encouraging power. They all came on the same night. It took many hours to record them and many years to fulfil them; but they all came before the mind of this young man perhaps in a single hour. It was on the twenty-fourth day of the eleventh month, very near the close of the year, when sleep perhaps was beginning to throw its veil over his brain, there rose before him a panorama of strange scenes, peopled with moving forms from the heavenly world, and voices fell upon his ear, and God covered him with the cloud of His presence, and out of the glory came these wonderful visions.
I. ENCOURAGEMENT AGAINST THEIR DEPRESSION
The first was a vision of a low bottom, something like the banks of the river Nile, or the low bank of the Kedron, and on this low land were growing groves of myrtle trees, looking something like a city of the dead, for the myrtle was the tree of sorrow; and, as he looked upon the scene, the low valley and the dark green myrtle branches, the type of his people's sorrow and sadness, he saw in the midst of them a number of war horses of different colors with heavenly horsemen seated upon them, and he asked who they were. The answer came that these were God's messengers, whom He had sent abroad throughout the earth. As he watched, he saw another form, no longer an angel, but the angel of the covenant Himself--the Son of God. There in the midst of this dark, sad scene, beside these angel horsemen he sees Jesus Christ, the angel of the covenant, and He lifts his voice to Heaven and begins to pray for his suffering people; "0, Lord of hosts, how long wilt Thou not have mercy on Jerusalem and on the cities of Judah, against which Thou hast had indignation these threescore and ten years"--the seventy years of the captivity. It was Jesus praying for His people. It was the Great High Priest beginning His intercession for you and for me. Others had prayed, but there had not come any answer. But now Jesus clasps His hands and looks up to His Father, and utters just one prayer to God, and the shadow of seventy years passes away--the clouds are all broken. And the next verse contains the answer: "The Lord answred the angel that talked with me with good words and comfortable words." The Father cannot turn away the pleadings of His Son. One prayer of Jesus is worth a million of the best prayers on earth. If you want to get your prayers answered, get Him to pray for you. All the years of this restoration began with that little prayer of Jesus to His Father. And is it not glorious to know today that He ever liveth to make intercession for us? For we have a great High Priest who has passed into the Heavens--Jesus the Son of God. "Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need." Then the answer goes on: "Cry thou, saying, thus saith the Lord of hosts, I am jealous for Jerusalem and for Zion with a great jealousy; I am returned to Jerusalem with mercies. My cities through prosperity shall yet be spread abroad; and the Lord shall yet comfort Zion, and shall yet choose Jerusalem."
That is the first vision. It is the vision of the sorrow and depression of God's people--among the myrtle trees, in the bottom, low down and covering themselves with sorrow, with God's mighty angels moving among them, God's dear Son praying for them, and God answering: "I am returned with mercies."
II. ENCOURAGEMENT AGAINST THEIR ENEMIES
We come now to the second vision. "I lifted up mine eyes and saw four horns." He knew what they meant. They were the symbols of those cruel earthly powers that had pushed against Judah and Jerusalem, and pierced her heart and crushed her under their ruthless feet--the horns of earthly power, the figure by which God always represents the evil powers of the world. But he says, "I lifted up mine eyes again, and I saw four carpenters," with saw and hatchet and plane, coming to meet and fray these sharp horns. "What are these?" he asks. "These horns," he says, "are the horns that have scattered Judah, and these carpenters have come to fray them"--that is, to peel them down and take the sharp points from them, and soften them as you would soften the end of a broom, so that they should have no power to harm. This second vision means defense against the hostility of enemies. The four horns mean that there are enemies on all sides--north and south, and east and west. Look where you will there are horns, but look where you will there are carpenters to meet them. There is just as much protection as there is opposition, and greater is He that is for us than all they that are against us. Cheer up then, again, beloved; don't mind the horns, but remember God has got His tools to take their sharpness all away. No harm can come to those that serve and follow Him. "For I will contend with him that contendeth with thee, and I will save thy children."
III. ENCOURAGEMENT AGAINST THE SMALLNESS OF THEIR NUMBERS
Then we have the third vision. He sees a young man with a measuring line in his hand, and he is very busy and important. He is a contractor, or a clerk of works, or some official in connection with building operations, and he has a long tape line in his hand, and he is measuring off the ground. And Zechariah comes up to him, and he says, "where are you going?" And he says, "I am going to measure Jerusalem to see how long it is and how wide it is. We are going to build walls, and we want to lay out the work;" And then there comes a voice from the angel: "Run, speak to this young man that is laying out the work and measuring off the ground for the walls, and tell him to stop; tell him there is no need for his measuring line; tell him there is no need for his work; tell him that God is undertaking the business and going to build all the walls Himself, and man's measuring line is too short for God's plan. Tell this young man that his ideas are too small and too petty for this great work; tell him that Jerusalem shall be inhabited as towns without walls for the multitude of men and cattle therein."
You are going to make a little town for thousands of people, and God is going to have millions of people, and when he gets them together he says: "I will be a wall of fire round about, and the glory in the midst of them." What a glorious promise! What a glorious reproof to our little faith! Man is always getting his hand on the work in some little way, and God is always waiting to get us out of the way, so that He may do larger things for us. Their enemies were saying: "What is the use of building Jerusalem? Where are you going to get your people? You have only got a little handful there. Your building this temple with a few hundred of people, it is all nonsense." They had only 50,000. There used to be 9,000,000, and 50,000 was a very small nation compared with 9,000,00. It would not make one good-sized city. And so they were all discouraged about their small numbers, and this vision came to encourage them in this respect, and tell them that God had the people in His hand like the sands of the sea and the stars in the Heavens--if they only had faith enough to rise to His perfect will, then He would protect them and guard them Himself; and just as the shepherd builds his wall of fire round his folds at night, and it is better than any wall of masonry to keep the wolves out, so God will shine forth in their midst with His fiery presence. And then He adds, "He that toucheth you will be just the same as if he touched the apple of my eye," so that as your eyelids fall when a grain of dust comes near, or the sand-fly touches against the tender organs of sight, down comes that little trap door and shuts out the intruder, so God says He shall be just as sensitive to your dangers. And then He says, "Many nations will come, and gather to you, and I will make you a blessing to the nations of the earth."
