The Day of Small Things
In this episode
Scripture References
Works
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Welcome to Halting Toward Zion, the podcast where we limp like Jacob to the Promised Land and talk about life, the universe, and everything along the way. I’m Emily Maxson here with Greg Uttinger and Bryan Broome, and today we’re talking about the day of small things.
Last week – or two weeks ago, depending on when you’re listening to this episode – we talked about the restoration of worship and what we call the Restoration Era with Ezra, Nehemiah, etc coming back from Babylon to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple and the walls.
The completed foundation slab was kind of a disappointment, apparently, to the people of Israel, at least the old people who had seen what had been before. Greg, would you read for us the passage where it talks about the mingling of the weeping and the joy?
Now in the second year of their coming unto the house of God at Jerusalem, in the second month, began Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Jeshua the son of Jozadak, and the remnant of their brethren the priests and the Levites, and all they that were come out of the captivity unto Jerusalem; and appointed the Levites, from twenty years old and upward, to set forward the work of the house of the LORD.
Then stood Jeshua with his sons and his brethren, Kadmiel and his sons, the sons of Judah, together, to set forward the workmen in the house of God: the sons of Henadad, with their sons and their brethren the Levites.
And when the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the LORD, they set the priests in their apparel with trumpets, and the Levites the sons of Asaph with cymbals, to praise the LORD, after the ordinance of David king of Israel. And they sang together by course in praising and giving thanks unto the LORD; because he is good, for his mercy endureth for ever toward Israel. And all the people shouted with a great shout, when they praised the LORD, because the foundation of the house of the LORD was laid.
But many of the priests and Levites and chief of the fathers, who were ancient men, that had seen the first house, when the foundation of this house was laid before their eyes, wept with a loud voice; and many shouted aloud for joy: 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 noise was heard afar off.
It's a simple story. Have you all ever seen the foundation slab of something you were looking forward to seeing the completion of?
The neighborhood across the street from my house when I was growing up was being built while I lived there, so we used to go and walk through the partially-completed buildings. They looked a lot bigger once they were done. It was a pretty fancy neighborhood, but the raw foundation didn’t look that big.
No. I mean, there’s always been stuff being built. I grew up in California, so there’s just constantly been things expanding and being built, but I can’t recall a time seeing an actual foundation slab being laid. Actually, that may not be true. I may have seen a department store one, but those are not exactly feats of engineering. It’s a box.
More generally though, I feel like when you’re planning a party and you’re thinking about all the individual components, it’s like, “What’s a few streamers? A few candles? A few songs on the playlist?” but it comes together much more magnificently than any of the component parts.
The whole is greater than the parts. I remember when we were living in our previous house. There was a Wal-Mart over the wall and around the corner and across the very busy street, but on our side of that very busy street there was this random corner that was very empty and had been empty since the creation of the world or the flood or something. Then one day we saw that heavy equipment was clearing it out, and then we saw the basic 2x4’s put in for laying concrete, then the concrete slabs.
As this was happening, my girls were still fairly young at the time and we all as a family looked and said, “What are they thinking here? There’s no room there. That’s just a very small piece of land. What could possibly go there? And even if they get buildings, where are people going to park?”
As we watched it come together, the foundation slab still did not convince us. “Those are tiny. What kind of building is that? That’s nothing.” Then the walls went up. Then the asphalt went in. Suddenly, we had two smallish but nonetheless true strip malls with ample parking for both of them and then some. It was like, “How did that happen? That’s magic.”
When I wrote the original article for this, I found some lady named Kate (no relation) who was posting on GardenWeb.com. She said, “Did your house look smaller at this stage? It can’t just be me, can it?” so apparently it’s a much larger phenomenon than one might think, but there’s more to it than that.
In this case, when the temple’s foundation slab was laid, there were people who remembered the complete structure, and the complete structure of Solomon’s temple was not just the temple proper. It was the courtyard and the other courts that adjoined that, and the king’s palace which was interlaced with it.
There was just a lot of stuff, and of course it was built up and it was glamorous. There was gold everywhere and polished stones, gemstones glittering and glistening in the sun, with the two big pillars out front, a huge altar that you could climb up and walk around on top of, and the brazen sea.
As they looked at this one they said, “It’s a slab of concrete.” Well, it probably wasn’t concrete but, “It’s a foundation slab,” and they were decidedly unenthusiastic about this. They were depressed. It was like, “This is not what we remember.”
On top of that, the prophets – Isaiah, Micah, Ezekiel – had spoken of the glories of the temple of the latter day, when it would be exalted over the hills and all nations would flow unto it, and the river of water of life would flow out in all directions. Ezekiel’s was like nine chapters talking about the restoration temple, and this wasn’t it.
When you have the spiritual enthusiasm that God’s going to do something great – you’re going to start a new church plant, or you’re going to open a new Christian school or your mission or you’re going to canvass the neighborhood and get a lot of people to come for your special service, and two people show up – one’s a granny and one’s some 9-year-old kid – where’s the greatness of God? It’s very easy to think that God has failed. “God doesn’t really do stuff in history, not my history, not my life.”
On the other hand, there were people there who had grown up in captivity in Babylon, and they’d heard about what it was like to be back home in Israel and all of God’s great acts, and how God always kept providing for his people, and God always had a plan and was always pushing it forward. So they’re there and they’re like, “We have a temple! Well, we have a foundation slab. This is so great! Yay!”
So as Ezra tells us, we have people shouting for joy and people moaning and weeping just as loud, so that at some distance you couldn’t even tell what was going on. It was just noise.
It’s in this context that both Haggai and Zechariah, who were two prophets who began ministry about this time, come to Israel, come to the remnant and say, “Let’s talk about small things,” so that’s what we’re going to look at just a little bit, with some thoughts about how God does things today and what small things might look like, and what we might do and not do about them.
One more illustration. With the custom of getting photographs when you’re selling a home, you don’t take pictures of empty rooms because they don’t look as big as a room with something in it.
Yes, but you do take a picture as far back in a corner as you possibly can, and I’m suspecting you’re doing something with the lenses, because I’ve looked at pictures of houses where I know the house well and I’m saying, “That room is not that big. How did they get that picture? I mean I see all the features of the room that I know of. They must have been standing on a ladder in the very top back corner and done some kind of panorama thing, because when people go to see the house they’re going to be surprised. It’s not that big.”
Now, once you start living in it it’s amazing how big rooms are, because now you have to clean them. That makes any room a whole lot bigger. When you have to clean it, now it’s big. But yes, that whole thing is amusing.
Here is what Haggai (chapter 2) says to Zerubbabel and Joshua and the people of his time –
Who is left among you that saw this house in her first glory? and how do ye see it now? is it not in your eyes in comparison of it as nothing? Yet now be strong, O Zerubbabel, saith the LORD; and be strong, O Joshua, son of Josedech, the high priest; and be strong, all ye people of the land, saith the LORD, and work: for I am with you, saith the LORD of hosts: According to the word that I covenanted with you when ye came out of Egypt, so my spirit remaineth among you: fear ye not.
For thus saith the LORD of hosts; Yet once, it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land; And I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come: and I will fill this house with glory, saith the LORD of hosts.
The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, saith the LORD of hosts. The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former, saith the LORD of hosts: and in this place will I give peace, saith the LORD of hosts.
First of all, Haggai recognizes what’s going on and he calls a spade a spade. “Okay, you people are pretty upset, aren’t you? Yeah, I got that. This thing seems like nothing compared to what you remember. Well, be strong and work.”
Some more theology is going to follow, but the bottom-line application, the use as the Puritans would call it in their sermons, comes right up front. It’s one word, work.
“Yeah, get to work. If you want it to stop looking pitiful, you need to put in some elbow grease. You need some energy. You need some prayers. You need some contribution of your own resources, some money out of your own pocket, some time off your own clock. There’s stuff that has to be done.”
At no point does he say, “And if you do that, then this will be just like Solomon’s temple and even better.” What he says is a little more subtle than that, and it’s important that we look at that. But the one thing that he does say is be strong and work.
So when we look at the impossible situation, when we look at diminishing returns, when we look at, “Wow, we invested a lot in this and we really didn’t get much in return,” okay, well, work. There’s nothing here about, “After a time of depression, after a time of wringing your hands, after a time of sobbing and bitterness, then…” No, it’s just, “Get to work.” But then he says something else. He reminds them of some of God’s covenant promises.
According to the word that I covenanted with you when ye came out of Egypt, so my spirit remaineth among you: fear ye not.
We’re going to see that Zechariah 2 highlights and underlines the work of the Holy Spirit. And then he drops into some very profound theology, and it’s huge enough that the writer of Hebrews picks this up at the tail end of chapter 12.
For thus saith the LORD of hosts; Yet once, it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land; And I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come: and I will fill this house with glory, saith the LORD of hosts.
This is not something they do. Their job is real simple – work with what you have on what you’ve got. God’s job, through his providence, through carrying out his eternal decrees, is to shake up the universe by covenant transformation and introduce a brand new era that centers around what he calls the desire of nations, the glory of his house, and peace – in other words, the gospel, the coming of Christ into the world.
They can’t do that. They can’t bring it about. They cannot hasten it. They can become vehicles for God to do whatever God is going to do, but he really hasn’t laid out the plan and he doesn’t give them a timeline. “If you get this temple up and running in 10 years, that will bring Messiah’s appearance 100 years closer.” There’s none of that. It’s just, “Here’s the job. I’m in charge of the final results, and this is part of a plan that is cosmic in scope, in the most literal sense of the word. I’m shaking heaven and earth. I’m transforming everything. The very way you approach me and the way you know me is going to be transformed by what’s coming, and this little thing that you’ve started is going to play a part in that. I’m not going to explain what that part is a whole lot, except in this geographical location I’m going to give peace.”
You can see lots of hands going up like, “When? How? How long? What’s that going to look like?”
Exactly, all the things that we would want to do, and he doesn’t. He does say, “Look, you’re worried about your expenses. The gold and silver are mine, and in this process of shaking the nations I can shake out some gold and silver in your direction. I’ll make sure your bills are paid.”
Sometimes we forget this. There was one pastor, and it might have been Moody or Spurgeon or just some unnamed pastor of that era, but he was looking at the financial needs of their congregation or their current mission activity, and down on his knees he said, “Lord, I know you own the cattle on a thousand hills. Would you mind selling some of them and sending us the money?”
Sometimes we forget that God really does have the money and that he’s in charge of it, and that he can shake up the universe and bring it to us when he wants to. But part of the point is that we’re far too dependent upon money. We think that we have to have this, we have to have that.
This temple is the ritual center of the universe. It’s where God meets with man, and God is not in a big hurry to spend a lot of money on it. Yes, Cyrus had given them some money, most of which they wasted because they didn’t follow through. They come up some more of their own money. Darius, the next emperor, sends them some more.
“Pagan emperors funding the temple? What? Didn’t see that one coming.” So God will bring it when it’s necessary, but he doesn’t even tell them to go out and start a capital campaign. He just tells them to work. “Whatever is there in front of you, whatever your current job is, do that,” and then God can arrange things. He owns the universe. He owns all the gold and silver, and he can pull it all together, and he’s going to.
This is what’s been important about this temple all along. They’ve missed everything. Solomon kind of got it. “God does not dwell in a temple made with hands. This is a place we’re going to pray toward because it’s symbolic of God’s promise yada yada,” but what they didn’t get is, “And the Messiah, the incarnate Son of God, is going to stand on the steps of this porch and announce himself as Yahweh in the flesh.”
Nobody got that. Nobody understood. They all knew this was important. They had no idea why or how. Imbibed with the pagan philosophies of the world – “Objects and idols and talismans – these things can be very important and channel cosmic power!” – not in God’s economy they don’t. God works through very simple means. We’ll talk maybe a little more about that.
The next prophet to weigh in is Zechariah. This is chapter 4 and this is a more difficult prophecy, but he says many of the same things from a different angle. It goes like this –
And the angel that talked with me came again, and waked me, as a man that is wakened out of his sleep, and said unto me, What seest thou? And I said, I have looked, and behold a candlestick [more accurately a lampstand] all of gold, with a bowl upon the top of it, and his seven lamps thereon, and seven pipes to the seven lamps, which are upon the top thereof: And two olive trees by it, one upon the right side of the bowl, and the other upon the left side thereof.
So I answered and spake to the angel that talked with me, saying, What are these, my lord? Then the angel that talked with me answered and said unto me, Knowest thou not what these be? And I said, No, my lord. Then he answered and spake unto me, saying, This is the word of the LORD unto Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the LORD of hosts. Who art thou, O great mountain? before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain: and he shall bring forth the headstone thereof with shoutings, crying, Grace, grace unto it.
Moreover the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house; his hands shall also finish it; and thou shalt know that the LORD of hosts hath sent me unto you. For who hath despised the day of small things? for they shall rejoice, and shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel with those seven; they are the eyes of the LORD, which run to and fro through the whole earth.
Then answered I, and said unto him, What are these two olive trees upon the right side of the candlestick and upon the left side thereof? And I answered again, and said unto him, What be these two olive branches which through the two golden pipes empty the golden oil out of themselves? And he answered me and said, Knowest thou not what these be? And I said, No, my lord. Then said he, These are the two anointed ones, that stand by the Lord of the whole earth.
I like Zechariah. He is so blunt. “No, I don’t know what this is.” What he sees, I’ve seen various attempts to render it pictorially or at least to redescribe it in words that we can visualize it, and I don’t know that I’ve got it all nailed down, but the basic idea is pretty clear. What he sees is the menorah from the temple, with seven branches with the lamps.
Some have pictured it as maybe a collective bowl of oil with seven lamp wicks floating in it, but the picture seems to be we’re talking about the temple. We’re talking about worship, and when you say seven lamps that’s what they would automatically think of.
The rest of these are a little weird. There are two olive trees, one standing on each side, and they have lowered branches or boughs, and out of these boughs are pipes that lead to a central bowl, and the central bowl feeds the lamps on the menorah.
Now, this is not to say this thing really exists or through human engineering could ever exist, but the picture is pretty clear. The trees are there and they’re constantly producing olives. Somehow those olives automatically go from being olives to being olive oil. They are self-smashing, self-coughing up oil, which is channeled through their branches and through these pipes to a central bowl, and from that central bowl the individual lamps are fed. In other words, as long as the olive trees are doing their thing, this menorah is going to be burning.
We might use other descriptions today with the technology we know. We might have a nuclear reactor set on each side of the thing to provide power or for electric lights or something, but it worked for them and it’s using symbols that are woven throughout scripture – trees, oil, olives, lamps, light, gold – all of that goes into this.
Exactly, but the answer is not a technical or technological description or even an aesthetic one. It’s a promise.
This is the word of the LORD unto Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the LORD of hosts.
Remember that when Haggai had referred back to God’s covenant faithfulness he says, “My spirit remains with you.” We’re back to the Holy Spirit again. In other words, the thing that makes the difference between these pathetic outward things that we have, that God has arranged for us to have in his providence, and what God intends to accomplish, is not how clever we are, how much money we have, what a political following we have, what technologies are available, whether or not we have a Death Star or a starship, a publishing house, or do we own Hollywood yet? At the rate Disney is going we could probably buy it cheap. That’s not God’s mechanism. The thing that powers and quickens and brings life to God’s plans is the person of the Holy Spirit.
It’s not by might, it’s not by power, it’s by the power of God’s Spirit – a spiritual power that we can’t trace with our eyes or our science or our financial accounting or any such thing. In other words, it’s something that does not make sense to the flesh, something that does not make sense to our practical sense of realism. “Well, that’s a great dream you have, but you’ve got to have money.”
Wow, yeah! Hmm. Maybe we’re looking for the wrong things, or we’re looking at doing the right things the wrong way. So the message here is this whole array of trees and lamps and bowls is simply a message that God works by his Holy Spirit, and since the power is God, the goal is God’s, the design is God’s, the motivation is from God, we really don’t have to worry about those things.
We’re back to work. What has God set in front of you to do? Do that. Do it in prayer, do it in faith, do it in trusting Jesus, do it with the word of God in your heart as something you’re meditating on, but do it. It may not look like you think it ought to.
The foundation slab of this new temple did not look like it, and even 490 years later when Jesus came to earth, by that point it was pretty impressive. Herod had glorified it and rebuilt it and amplified it, and still people weren’t completely happy because Herod was not a nice person, not a godly man, so they weren’t sure that they were happy with all these changes.
There was the time when the Romans nailed up a giant Roman eagle on the building to signify that, “We’re watching all of this and we’re kind of in charge here,” so even then it lacked perfection. And then let’s talk about the people who ran the temple when Jesus came. And let’s talk about all the animals and the money changing tables in the courts when Jesus came.
It never was something that was going to change the world. It was simply a place where Jesus could stand up and say, “I am the light of the world. Before Abraham was, I Am. Come unto me and drink. Out of your innermost being will flow rivers of living water.” That’s what it was there for.
Oh yes, it pictured lots of things, but as soon as Jesus came the pictures were fulfilled, and within 40 years the temple was leveled and has never been rebuilt. By the way in passing, the temple will never be rebuilt. Please do not contribute to fundraising projects aimed at rebuilding the temple for the Jews.
I’m pretty sure all the money necessary has already been amassed. If it were going to happen, funding is not the problem.
Right. But you’ve got money! Isn’t that what it’s all about? Well no, that’s actually not what it’s all about. It’s about the work of God’s Spirit. And here’s something they didn’t know – this is brand new information – God chose Zerubbabel. They don’t know why Zerubbabel, and we’ll get back to that in a second, but God has chosen Zerubbabel to start the building the project, and he’s chosen him to finish it. Zerubbabel is not a young man at this point so there is a ticking clock here, but it’s a ticking clock of encouragement. Zerubbabel might be 40 or 50.
“Then that means that this project is going to be done in that length of time, doesn’t it.”
The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house; his hands shall also finish it.
Then he comes back to this theme. “Who has despised the day of small things?” We want to start big and brassy and bright with a huge budget and tons of supporters and a huge mailing list, the most up-to-date technology and computer systems, lights, smoke machines, huge choirs, instruments. We feel that if we have all of these things – they’re necessary, but they’re not only necessary, they are efficient to the goal.
“We want revival. We want Christian presence. If we have these things that money can buy, and time and energy and logical planning, then we’ll have what we need and we’re going to change the world!”
It would be interesting to do a survey of 20th and now 21st century history and look at people who had those sorts of plans and managed to pull together the funding, the technology, the mailing lists, and all the support, and see what their project has come to after 10, 20, 30, 40 years. Do we even remember them? How did we even hear of them?
The first thing that happened to some of these ministries is they apostatized within five years because their focus was not upon Christ and his finished work and the gift of his Holy Spirit. It was upon “what we can do, how we can make this work, what assets God needs from us, and how we are so privileged to be able to present them to God, and now at last, because we’re here and we’re ready, God’s going to change the world.” That’s not the gospel and that’s not how God works.
Speaking again of our Lord, he didn’t have much of a budget. People gave him money. They had a treasurer, whose record-keeping was not very trustworthy. They did not have a seminary building. They did not have a curriculum. They did not have books. As far as we can tell, they didn’t even have a Bible. Most likely when they came to a town, they would make use of the scrolls that were available in the local synagogue, because Bibles were really expensive. Copies of the Torah and the prophets were very expensive. You wouldn’t just walk around with them.
Absolutely, so they counted on that rather than on having the technological resources of the day. Maybe someone in the group played a harp or a lute or a tambourine. We’re not told that they did, and no one makes a big deal about it.
“But how can you go around as a group of Christian people and not at least have a guitar?”
Right, and not that we’re not thankful for it, and sometimes that one guy has never had music lessons.
This is a complete tangent, almost complete, but it bears a little bit. As theater director for our school, we the school – and I have to give tribute to Kathy Rose, who’s done a lot of work particularly for our musicals over the years – we never had a whole lot. She had a pretty good computer system that she made a lot of use of, and she had boundless energy, but by and large as we looked at doing any particular play – and this I think is something that a lot of Christian schools may miss, I don’t know, I’ve not talked to them enough to know – we never said, “Oh, here’s a play we want to do. I love this play. It would be a great play to do. Let’s do this play. Now, let’s see who wants to be in it, what kinds of gifts they might bring. I’m sure we’ll have a lot of people who want to lead. Let’s listen to their auditions and then at the end of it we’ll figure out exactly how we’re going to make this thing work.”
We never really did that. We would look first at our students and say, “Do we have anyone who can play Hamlet? No. Okay, we’re not going Hamlet. Do we have two females, one who can sing soprano and one who can sing – I don’t know what the Mother Abbess is, but you know – then we can do Sound of Music.”
The first time we did it we tried all kinds of things, and we finally ended up with a young man who could not sing. You mentioned Christopher Plummer. I’m thinking of Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady. He did okay. Our guy did an okay job of speak-singing, and so it was.
We looked at what we had and what was within our grasp, and then we used a little imagination and we prayed a lot, and God generally blessed our efforts. Sometimes they were fantastic, sometimes they were just a lot of fun, but if we had waited until we had all of the pieces to pull this together, we would not have a drama department.
It’s a small analogy but speaking for Christian education generally, what you want are a couple really good teachers who are well-educated and know the Bible and are sound in their theology, and one or two probably ladies who are going to sit in the office and who are really great at managing weird kinds of things that hit them on a daily basis and can figure out how to do it so the teachers can teach. Then you need a handful of families who say, “We like what you’re doing. Count us in,” and you get those usually by praying for them.
Advertising for customers doesn’t always work that well, because sometimes you get them, which is to say you get customers, not people dedicated to a vision.
These are areas I’m familiar with, but you could talk about this in terms of building a new church or starting some kind of missionary activity. Paul would just simply come to town, go to the local synagogue, and preach a couple sermons. People would come up and talk to him and he’d say, “Hey, I’m doing a Bible study this week. Come and talk to me and I’ll tell you some more.”
Eventually somehow from that he’d lay the roots and foundations for a new small congregation, which would usually be pretty small. He’d spend some time investing in them and then he’d move on and trust them to God.
That’s not how we do things. It’s not how my denomination handles missions, and my denomination could honestly learn from Paul a good deal. Keep moving. Keep teaching. Keep preaching. Trust them to God.
One of the opening lines in the original article was from Star Trek V. “Why does God need a starship?” There’s a reason that’s there. We too often think that God does, or at least a TV network, or at least a handful of millionaires who are going to give generously.
The first churches met in homes. “Your house has a guest room? That’s going to be where church is going to meet. Thank you very much for volunteering. We don’t have instruments? Well, we’re going to sing acapella, I guess. We don’t have hymn books? Well, fortunately you’ve all memorized psalms. We’re going to sing those psalms, and maybe someone can modify some to put the name of our Lord in them in New Testament fashion.”
You start where you are, and don’t try to dictate to God what this needs to look like. You simply trust God for the solution.
That’s kind of the story of this podcast, not that we’re a huge enterprise even now, but we started with some very poor mics and a little bit of time and very minimal investment in those poor mics chiefly, and over time we had supporters come up and say, “We like what you’re doing. We want to support you financially.”
We didn’t initially have our option enabled on our distributor’s website to say, “Let people support us.” We were like, “No, this is kind of just the thing we would like to do. We feel like the Lord is blessing this idea in that it’s coming together.” Then there were people committed to the idea and they wanted to make it better and keep it going.
So now we’ve got better mics. If you started listening to us in the beginning, thank you for sticking with us, and you can tell all of our new listeners how much better our sound is now with better editing software, too.
And as we first started out, we kind of had this idea – actually, you and David had the idea, because I was just kind of along for the ride. You said, “Would you mind if we did something like this?”
We had a number of our friends kind of come and go, and some of them learned I think quickly that to talk theology in terms of pop culture requires you to be reading the Bible and reading theology and such things.
Bryan, it was a while before you settled in and became the guy who does a lot of this for us, and I could not be prouder of what the Lord has done in your life. I can sit here and just say, “Bryan, talk about this,” and you don’t have a seminary education any more than I do, but you have dedicated yourself to learning the Bible and reading books on theology, as well as investing in pop culture and broad high culture.
God has created this team. We didn’t create it. What God will do with it, I have no idea. I pray with some specific things in mind about this, but I’m going to keep them to myself because I don’t want to let my hope for size or influence or any such thing get in the way of what God actually wants to do. Whatever he wants to do is great. In the meantime, I’m having fun and it’s an encouragement to me to talk to you people all the time about the things of the Lord, so here we are.
It feels too broad to say what comes to mind, which is just for anything people do. It’s very rare that you come across something that needs all the ducks in a row in order to get a start. In fact, it’s normally better when you just start with whatever ducks happen to be in a spot, and I know about ducks because we’ve been raising them.
The first thing that comes to mind is starting a business. You have an idea and you say, “This is a good idea,” and you can really paralyze your mobility on that by thinking that you need to have the idea perfected, that you have to have the right people from the start, that you need to have it all working like a well-oiled machine on day -10, instead of just saying, “Okay, let me just hit the ground running with what I have right now and hope that I don’t drop it all.”
That can be kind of analogous to spiritual things as well, not that spiritual things are a business. We don’t want to be a business.
Or on the other hand we do want the Holy Spirit involved in our business, and sometimes business itself is a very spiritual venture if it’s done by faith in Christ and not simply with the ducks we have handy once we stuff them full of chemicals and growth hormones and things.
We should finish the prophecy of Zechariah, because he turns it and asks about the two trees. From Genesis to Revelation, this idea of two trees/pillars/columns/witnesses or something like that continues to haunt us in the background – the two trees in the Garden, the pillars of fire and cloud in the wilderness, the pillars before Solomon’s temple, the book of Revelation with the two witnesses, the two men who held up Moses’ hands during the battle with Amalek.
This idea that God has two sides, two dimensions, two things that hold up and glorify and amplify and structure his workings is very important. They’re pictured here as olive trees and as being the living source through which the Holy Spirit is working. If the oil is the Holy Spirit, then these trees, whose roots are in the ground and leaves are wet with the rain from heaven, are God-powered olive trees and they are the channels through which the oil comes that keeps the menorah going.
The menorah, the lampstand, the light is oil aflame. It’s the Holy Spirit caught on fire, radiating light, true wisdom, the Word of God to all it touches. Jesus said, “I am the light of the world.” The menorah is the background for that.
Then what are the two olive trees, and this is what Zechariah asks. “So what are these olive trees? What are these things that God uses, which the Spirit takes hold of and keeps on perpetuating the ministry of revelation and preaching and worship, and the revelation of Christ to the world? What is that?”
“These are the two anointed ones that stand before God, the Lord of the whole earth,” which still lacks explanation, but it’s closer.
Two anointed ones – these are the two Christs, the two Messiahs. In the context of Zechariah and Ezra and Haggai, the two anointed ones are Zerubbabel and Joshua, the prince and the priest, or more broadly then the two offices that God has established within his people, those who do the ruling and the governing and the directing and the leading and the exercising of discipline and admonition, that prod or pull or invite or lay out and say, “Look, this is the way,” and then the priestly dimension which draws us nigh to God, which ministers grace, which shows us the word of God and leads us in worship – these two things that God institutionalizes.
In the Davidic kingdom it was the monarchy and it was the priesthood. That’s why those two pillars stood before the temple. They did not physically support anything, but symbolically as long as the priesthood and the Davidic monarchy were there, the worship and the prophetic ministry would continue.
Within the church we have the ruling office of elder and we have the ministry of the Word and sacraments. As long as these do what they’re supposed to be doing, the life of the Church continues.
We can sometimes look at our pastors and our elders especially and say, “These elders don’t have seminary educations and they don’t read theology much.” We can look at our pastors and say, “Oh, he’s a great guy and he preaches the Word of God, but he’s got a corny sense of humor and he can’t sing very well, and he’s told that story five times. Doesn’t he know that?”
We can nitpick these people and say, “When the revival comes we’ll get really good pastors and elders.” You know what? I don’t think so. “Well, if we only had Calvin and Luther…” You wouldn’t like Calvin and Luther. You really wouldn’t like Luther.
And he would tell you in no uncertain terms how he disagreed with you, and he would punctuate it with very colorful metaphors.
I remember somebody talking about Christian art and music and poetry like, “Why don’t we have any really sound theological Christian songs and art and stuff?” – on the popular level, not hymns or something. Part of it is that people who tend to become songwriters are not the type to be elders and teachers. Those are two different types of people.
Often so. And whereas I have respect for Luther obviously, and I have tremendous respect for Calvin, but the idea that you walked into his preaching service in Geneva and magic happened does not bear up well under historical research. He called himself a timid scholar who got roped into doing God’s work and then committed himself to it.
No! There were people firing guns under his window and siccing their dogs on him, so it was not the greatest gig going on, but God used him. So sometimes we need to look at our men and just say, “Thank God you gave us somebody, because the alternative might very well be nobody.”
For years now in our church I’ve been trying to encourage the next generation to get ready for church leadership, and it has been an uphill struggle. Some of the young men we looked at have moved away, and some for good reasons – business called them elsewhere, family commitments called them elsewhere – but some have left for very bad reasons, and yet these are the people we thought, “You’re going to be the next leaders. Oh, you’re really not. You’ve kind of abandoned the faith. Wow, okay, then who’s going to do this?” and then God brings somebody in out of nowhere, or someone who’s been around a long time that we never really thought of. “Really? He could do this?” – again, no seminary education.
A funny thing in passing. This is just me and my maybe somewhat bitter sense of humor. We want our elders to be well-trained, but we kind of assume that since they haven’t been through seminary they shouldn’t say too much. I think the issue is how well do you know the Word of God? I have had some of my students sit in on ministerial examinations and come away scratching their head saying, “Why was that candidate, that young man out of seminary, so confused over easy questions?” and I don’t have a polite response to that.
Learning the Word of God is not a hard thing if you’re committed to doing it, but it does require work. It requires reading. It requires listening – shutting your mouth and listening to what other people who are older and wiser say, and remembering it and taking notes and organizing them. It’s a process, like learning anything else.
And sometimes trusting the simplicity. Like with anything else, I think people who are very intelligent – intelligence is a gift, a wonderful thing, but it can be so distracting from what the straightforward truth is. You want to figure out all the intricacies so you can figure out your best way.
One of my favorite stories from R.C. Sproul Sr is he said shortly after he got converted he was just in love with reading the Word of God. It was just something that gave him energy. He had the focus for it and it was a spiritual boon flowing out of him. He just wanted to read the Word, and he looked around at some of his friends that were his age and said to himself, “I looked at them very pridefully like, ‘Why aren’t you loving this? This is God’s Word. This is something that’s supposed to be the very lifeblood of the Christian.’”
He said, “One of the things I realized very soon after that was that one of the reasons they were having struggles with it is because that wasn’t what they were spiritually gifted for. I had been spiritually gifted to be a teacher. That’s something that came naturally to me because of God’s gifting, and it wasn’t right for me to hold them to my standard by my gifting. That’s not the way it works.”
There’s wisdom there, to be sure, absolutely. So we start where we are with what we’re given. We sow the one seed we have and then we wait to see what in the world God is going to do, and half the time it’s not what we thought, and that’s okay.
When God says, “That thing that you thought was so important? That isn’t what I was doing. I wasn’t doing it for that reason, I was doing it for this reason, and I’m done so you’re done. You can go home now. You can move to the next thing. This project or this ministry is done.”
There’s something else that’s going to endure forever. Speaking of not enduring forever, it’s time to wrap up and go to recommendations.
Listeners, I challenged my friends this evening to come up with a recommendation that had the word little or small or diminutive or something to that effect. Did we succeed?
Okay. Mine is The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. I don’t know how to say his name. It’s French. It really rang true, though I kind of flippantly came up with it because it had the word little in it, but the more we talked the more I thought, “Oh, that is really appropriate.”
Recommendation: The Little PrinceOne of the themes of the book is what gives things value, and that it’s not the parts of it that you see. The quote is, “What is essential is invisible to the eye. It is only with the heart that one sees truly.” The author of this book is not a Christian, but I’d like to think that you wouldn’t be able to tell from reading the book.
I think there’s tremendous value in the theme running through it of how love changes the way you encounter the world, especially reading that with this thought in the background that it’s the Holy Spirit who makes things happen, who gives things value, who gives us the love for Christ that changes everything we do. It’s a tremendously sweet read.
Mine is not as sweet or necessarily sweet at all. One of my favorite – or I don’t know that I would say it’s my favorite movie, but it’s funny – is Little Shop of Horrors. It’s questionable content, I think.
Recommendation: Little Shop of HorrorsYes, it is. Actually, I found out at some point that it was originally a 1950s C-movie schlock horror that was horrible, like it was really bad. Then in the 80s they revamped it into a stage musical, which then got an adaptation to the film starring Rick Moranis, and Steve Martin playing a particularly sadistic dentist.
Basically, a guy finds a plant at a store that he doesn’t know, but it’s been beamed from outer space. It’s actually an alien, and the only way it grows is if it consumes blood. At first, because the main character’s love interest thinks it’s cute, he lets it drink some of his blood from a little finger prick, and eventually it grows big enough that it starts asking him for full-grown human bodies, and the first victim is the sadistic dentist.
There’s no deep meaning to this that I could pull out, although I tried. I was like, “Well, you know, the plant starts little and it becomes very big,” but that’s not exactly what we’re going for here, unless we wanted to talk about the sneaking influence of sinfulness. But it’s a hilarious movie if you can handle some of the 80s-ness of it.
I deliberately asked Bryan to go second so that mine would seem even further away from the ecstasies of Emily’s presentation. There is a book that anyone who passes through our school has to read.
The Little Book. It’s called The Elements of Style, originally by Professor Strunk and then added to and edited by E.B. White.
Recommendation: The Elements of StyleI think we all forget that it’s called The Elements of Style and we just refer to it as Strunk & White.
I was really stretching on this one, but it is a little book and you can read it in an hour or so. It presents the basics of English structuring of grammar and style, and in the process demonstrates it. It’s fun to read just for the style that these two gentlemen put into what could easily have been a boring little textbook. So if you want to polish up your English or just see how it’s done by masters of the craft, Elements of Style by Strunk & White.
Splendid. Thank you, guys, so much for this conversation. It’s been a pleasure. Thanks also to David, our producer and my lawfully wedded husband. Thank you to our listeners. We appreciate you tuning in. I think I say that every week, but we appreciate you clicking Play on the podcast.
A big thank you to our financial supporters. We appreciate you keeping the show rolling, upgrading our equipment, and making everything generally nicer for all the other listeners. If you’d like to join their number, you can visit our website – anchor.fm/haltingtowardzion or patreon.com/haltingtowardzion.
If you’d like to send us your recommendation for our upcoming mailbag episode, please do. We’d love to hear from you with any sort of recommendation. You’ve heard the nonsense that we recommend. There’s no category limitation. You can send us anything. We would just love to hear from you and get your contributions to the conversation here. Our email address is [email protected].
Thanks again for tuning in. Good night, Gracie. We’re done here. See you next week.