Oh, sure. Thanks. I’ll see how it works.
Well, good evening, brethren. How quickly these gatherings go away.
Am I wired? All right.
Once again, it is a privilege to be able to open this Book and to seek the face of the Lord. I want to share a Bible verse before we pray that drives home that indispensable principle: total reliance upon God’s Holy Spirit.
It is in the book of Daniel. After Daniel and his friends called on the Lord for help and for light—for revelation concerning that dream—Daniel made this comment in Daniel 2:22-23:
He revealeth the deep and secret things:
He knoweth what is in the darkness,
and the light dwelleth with Him.
I thank Thee, and praise Thee, O God of my fathers,
Who hast given me wisdom and might,
and hast now made known unto me what we desired of Thee.
I like to put those two verses together because sometimes, if we just take the one, we say, “Light is with the Lord, and He reveals the profound and hidden things, and darkness is opened up by the Lord.” But then Daniel makes this point in the next verse: “You have made known what we have requested of You.”
God is ready to reveal when we are ready to request. And He waits for us to ask. He waits for us to seek. He always waits for us to seek. Of course, He works it in our hearts and draws us, but let us respond to the Lord and ask Him to show us what is on His heart.
Dave, could you lead us some further time? Thank you.
Lord, we just come before You with thanksgiving and praise for Your grace and Your mercy in our lives. Lord, we call upon You now because, as Ed reminds us every time, as we know in Your Word, it is going to take Your Spirit to reveal these things to us.
Lord, our hearts just long to know You and see You—to know You, Lord Jesus. That is our desire tonight. Thank You.
As Ed shares with us from the Word, we pray that the anointing of the Spirit would be upon the speaker and upon the hearers, Lord; that we would really hear what You want us to hear, that we would see the Lord Jesus Christ.
Thank You, Lord. All of us need to be revived. We need that life. So we ask You, Lord Jesus, in the confidence of knowing that because of Your shed blood we will be heard, show us Yourself tonight. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Amen. And I add faith to that prayer and say amen as well.
To save time and not get into a lot of review, I want to pick up right at the end of where we left off in our discussion this morning. Namely, we are looking at a group we are calling the escaped remnant.
God calls them the escaped remnant: people who had certainly been set free, wonderfully saved, and now set free from the chastening they had to endure because they were so resistant. But now that is over. They have said yes to the Lord and His invitation, and they are coming back.
They are on a pilgrimage. They have returned from the land of confusion to the city of peace. This is a people that have been set free. This is a people that have stood at the altar. They have understood a little of the finished work, and twice a day, every day, they took their place as death-deserving sinners before the Lord—a humble people.
They were a people united in the will of God. They knew why they were set free, and it had to do with the rebuilding of the temple. Together they had laid the foundation. They had their foundation. They were, in a sense, doctrinally sound.
But, sad to say, there they stopped. The work stopped. The work ceased—not for moments, or days, or weeks, or months, but year after long year. That is as far as they had gotten: set free, then to the altar, then a foundation, and then the work ceased.
Let me give that passage again to get it before your hearts. Ezra 4, please. We will be back and forth from Ezra to Haggai and Zechariah, so you may want to bookmark those.
Ezra 4:23-24:
Then, as soon as the copy of King Artaxerxes’ letter was read before Rehum, and Shimshai the scribe, and their companions, they went in haste to Jerusalem unto the Jews, and made them to cease by force and power.
Then ceased the work of the house of God which is at Jerusalem; and it ceased until the second year of the reign of Darius king of Persia.
Once again, for the moment, we do not need all the details. Whatever happened, the fact is that it did happen. Something happened, and the work stopped. An incomplete temple is always a dishonor to the Lord. It does not satisfy Him. It does not please Him.
Even if we have had a great start, even if we have been saved and set free, even if we have taken a stand on the finished work, even if we are united together in one heart to build a temple, and even if we have a foundation—if we have not learned the secrets of temple building, then the Lord is dishonored.
Ezra gives us the outside story. In other words, it only hints at the spiritual motives taking place deep inside the hearts of this escaped remnant. But God waited patiently for fifteen years, and then He opened the heavens and spoke to His two servants.
Let me get that before your heart again to refresh your mind, and then we will begin to look at our new material. Ezra 5:1-2:
Now the prophets, Haggai the prophet, and Zechariah the son of Iddo, prophesied unto the Jews that were in Judah and Jerusalem; in the name of the God of Israel prophesied they unto them.
Then rose up Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Jeshua the son of Jozadak, and began to build the house of God which is at Jerusalem; and with them were the prophets of God, helping them.
You see from Ezra 5:1-2 that, whatever it was fifteen years down the road—whatever God told Haggai, the old prophet, and whatever God told Zechariah, the young prophet—when they rose up and told the remnant, that word was enough to revive them.
According to Ezra 5:1-2, they started again on the temple. Nothing else changed. The circumstances were the same. The political circumstances—everything that caused them to stop—continued. There was no change. But something changed.
That word from heaven, that word from God through His servants, touched their hearts, and they were revived. They lived again, and they went back to building.
Now look, please, at Ezra 6:14:
And the elders of the Jews builded and prospered through the prophesying of Haggai the prophet and Zechariah the son of Iddo. And they builded and finished it, according to the commandment of the God of Israel, and according to the decree of Cyrus, and Darius, and Artaxerxes king of Persia.
Under these two men, the work on the temple not only resumed, but it was brought to completion.
As I suggested this morning, when I see a fifteen-year delay, an apathy, and a people stuck—and then, all of a sudden, God initiates—I am captured by that. They did not pray for this. They did not ask for this. They were not seeking this. They did not think they were in any kind of problem.
If you had talked to them, they would have said, “We are spiritual. We are doing fine. We have no problems.” But God bowed the heavens and came down, and He said to His servants, “I have something that they need to know.” That was a living word. Oh, praise God for a living word.
Before we look at God’s real answers—His revelation of the causes of the incomplete temple—I want to show you the outside story from Ezra. If you look carefully enough, you can see the shadow. You can see the hint.
To make this crystal clear, let us work backwards. I want to start from Ezra 4:24, where the work stopped, and then back up from there. By starting where they stopped and backing up, I think we will be able to see clearly the outside story and the reasons they would give.
Ezra 4:23 says they stopped them by force of arms. Well, there is a clear answer. “Why did you quit?” “They told us to. They made us. They had weapons. They were going to kill us.”
But now think spiritually. It was a matter of submitting to the government because they had a warrant. They had a decree from the government. They had a spiritual reason. If you had asked them, “How come you quit?” they would have said, “Because we are honoring the Lord.”
They might have said, “We went to see Ed Miller, and he gave us some counsel. We said, ‘What should we do? They have come with weapons, and they told us to stop.’ And Ed Miller said, ‘Well, do you not know your Bible? Romans 13:1: “There is no power but of God.” Romans 13:2: “He that resisteth the power withstandeth the ordinance of God.”’”
“So we took his advice, and that is why we quit.” I think that is what I would have said. It sounds so right. The authorities come in and say, “This is not allowed.” Perhaps you are at a particular march, standing up for a righteous cause, making a public stand, or meeting in a certain place. What do you do?
That was one explanation they gave. But after I read the real reasons in the prophets, I went back to Ezra and took another peek. Are there any hints, any shadows, of those deeper things? There are.
The remnant would be saying something like this: “We know we have been called by God to build a temple. We are one in that conviction. We stand as one man. We have thrown ourselves into the work. We have already built the foundation.”
Now let me state it, and you think spiritually, because this is a fact but there is a principle here: we are all in favor of a completed temple, but we are not willing to die for a completed temple.
Do you see? There is a principle underneath. The temple cannot be built and completed with a remnant that is not willing to die. The prophets are going to develop that.
Haggai, the old prophet, picks that up in Haggai 1:2-5:
Thus speaketh the Lord of hosts, saying, This people say, The time is not come, the time that the Lord’s house should be built.
Then came the word of the Lord by Haggai the prophet, saying,
Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your ceiled houses, while this house lieth waste?
Now therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways.
According to God, that is what they were saying. They would not have come right out and said it that way, but God said that is what they were saying. They were not resisting the Lord; they simply said, “It is not time. God closed the door. We will get back to it. It is just not the time.”
But written all over this record is self. Your house or His house? What is it all about? They would not have known that. They would have said, “No, we have to submit to the government. They came in, and that is what we are doing.” But if you look closer, the prophets pick it up: they were busy with their own things, their own self. They were not ready to lay down their lives. They were not ready to die.
Back up again to Ezra 4:4-5:
Then the people of the land weakened the hands of the people of Judah, and troubled them in building, and hired counsellors against them, to frustrate their purpose, all the days of Cyrus king of Persia, even until the reign of Darius king of Persia.
The people of the land weakened their resolve. “Why did you quit?” “I will tell you why we quit: people, obstacles, circumstances, persecution. People got in the way. They came along and said this, and they did this. We would be very busy building if it were not for people.”
I talk to a lot of people who have quit. “Why did you quit?” “You do not know my wife.” “Why did you quit?” “My boss.” “Why did you quit?” “The elders in my assembly.” “Why did you quit?” “My neighbor.” “Why did you quit?” “My dearest friend.” “Why did you quit?” “Others.” It is always them.
Once again, if you look a little closer, there are many occasions for what they were experiencing. The prophet does not pick up on people. In the New American Standard, Ezra 4:4-5 has three verbs in it: discouragement, fear, and frustration.
“These people get me discouraged. This circumstance makes me so frustrated. Why did you quit? Frustration.” But they would not say frustration; they would say people. Yet when the prophet touches it, he says discouragement is an enemy of temple building. There are many occasions for discouragement, and the hint is there.
Back up again to Ezra 4:6. In the reign of Ahasuerus, in the beginning of his reign, they wrote an accusation against the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem.
Think spiritually, brethren. Do you think anybody would be hindered in the building of the temple if there were an accusation against them? Does anybody accuse the remnant? Hold that for a moment.
Ezra 4:12 says:
Be it known unto the king, that the Jews who came up from thee are come unto us unto Jerusalem; they are building the rebellious and bad city, and have finished the walls, and repaired the foundations.
Be it known now unto the king, that, if this city be builded, and the walls finished, they will not pay tribute, custom, or toll, and in the end it will be hurtful unto the kings.
These enemies come in, and they have an accusation. The accusation is in writing. Where do they get it? Ezra 4:19:
And I decreed, and search hath been made, and it is found that this city of old time hath made insurrection against kings, and that rebellion and sedition have been made therein.
Once you see the prophet and what he says is the real cause, then you come back to the history. The prophet calls attention to an accusation where somebody has gone in, dug up something in the past, condemned them with something in the past, and they are living under condemnation.
That is why they quit. You do not really see that in Ezra if you simply read it historically. They would say, “We quit because we are submitting to the government. We quit because circumstances got to such a place that we just could not handle it.” They would not say, “We got so frustrated.” They would not admit that.
They would not say, “There is an enemy, and I am living under condemnation. He has accused me by digging up something in the past, and he is holding that thing over my head.” They would not say that, but the prophet does. The prophet sees deeper, and they are going to need to hear these things.
There is also the Samaritan issue early in Ezra 4. They came and wanted to help. They were mixed; there was syncretism. The remnant took a rugged stand: “No. We will do it ourselves. We are not going to compromise.”
That was spiritual. They did right by not compromising. But here is where they did wrong: they said, “We will do it ourselves.” They not only ruled out the Samaritans; they ruled out the Lord. “We will do it ourselves.” The prophet picks that up, though they would not have admitted it.
So there is the outside view, and then there is the inside view.
For the remainder of this lesson, and Lord willing tomorrow morning, I want us to look at the liberating word that God gave to His two servants, Haggai and Zechariah: the true causes of an incomplete temple, and the perfect cure for each of those causes.
We are going to look at four of those causes. For fifteen years, God let the remnant go on with their rationalizations, their excuses, and their spiritually sounding reasons.
Those fifteen years, according to those verbs, were marked by discouragement, fear, and frustration. Haggai adds one more: years of emptiness and dissatisfaction.
Haggai said God had sent, during those fifteen years, a famine of satisfaction. Sometimes, when God deals with us, He simply sends a famine. He takes it away: you lose the job, the finances fall to pieces, and you lose it.
But they did not lose it. They had it. They had enough food, and they went to the cupboard and it was full of food, and they ate it, but they could not get full. They had plenty to drink, and they drank it, but they could not slake their thirst, no matter how much they drank.
They were cold, and the Bible says they put on clothes. They had the clothes. They had the covering, but they could not get warm. They earned money, and it was like putting it into a bag with holes. They had money. It was not that they had lost their jobs; they had good jobs. They had a lot of money. They just put it in a bag with holes.
You find someone who, for God’s reason, has quit building, and I will tell you right away: I know that life. They are discouraged. They are afraid. They are frustrated. They are miserable. Those are the characteristics that mark the person who has come all the way to the foundation and has not built.
God said, “I cannot take that anymore. I have an answer for them. They are not going to ask Me, so I will initiate. I will give it.”
I want to set before your heart now the secrets of temple building. May God help us.
Now, brethren, what you are about to hear is not new. I know many of you have heard it hundreds of times—probably some thousands of times. One of the blessings of my heart this weekend was to see you young people here. I appreciate you coming here. You have probably only heard it fifty times.
It is not new. It was not new to them. But they had to hear it in such a way that they would live again. I will never get tired of proclaiming these wonderful truths, even though you have heard them a thousand times, because I am trusting God to cause us to live again and give us a little reviving in our bondage.
Do not put any stock in the order. There are more than four causes of an incomplete temple. I had to reduce it in order to fit it into this little weekend, so we are looking at some of the chief causes. It is not as if cause number one is the first reason people throw in the towel, and then comes the second. Any one of these, or any combination of them, is cause to quit building the temple.
Remember also, in the context of Ezra, it is not willful sin. Perhaps in your life, or in the life of someone you know, a person has quit building because of rebellion—just plain old backsliding. They say no to the Lord: “I do not care what God says. I want to do my own thing. I do not care about God, His will, His purpose, or His pleasure.”
That happens, but that is not Ezra. Ezra is not talking about the stiff-necked, hard-hearted remnant. He is talking about the struggling remnant who wants to get it right, who wants to please God, who said yes, who has come back. God is writing not only their history, but a Bible. He is laying out these truths for us.
So we praise God for their history. But this is not rebellion. This is someone struggling to know the ways of God.
All right, let me state it as a truth and then try to illustrate it for you. Turn to Haggai 1, please.
Let me state one cause of an incomplete temple. Again, “first” does not mean much. One cause of an incomplete temple is the human impossibility of building and completing the temple.
Haggai 1:7-8:
Thus saith the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways.
Go up to the mountain, and bring wood, and build the house;
and I will take pleasure in it, and I will be glorified, saith the Lord.
Do not read that casually. This is not merely, “Go rebuild the temple.” This is, “Go rebuild Solomon’s temple.” There were some survivors who remembered Solomon’s temple.
Do you know anything about Solomon’s temple? Some of you brethren from Bridgeville have been studying the kings and some of the history books. You have read a little about that.
When God gave the command to build a tabernacle—not the temple, the tabernacle—He raised up two men: Bezaleel and Aholiab. He gave them special gifts, skilled with wisdom and power. They had endowment from heaven in order to carry on the work.
First Kings 5:13-18 tells about Solomon’s temple:
King Solomon levied forced laborers out of all Israel; and the levy was thirty thousand men.
And he sent them to Lebanon, ten thousand a month by courses: a month they were in Lebanon, and two months at home; and Adoniram was over the levy.
And Solomon had threescore and ten thousand that bare burdens, and fourscore thousand that were hewers in the mountains;
Beside Solomon’s chief officers that were over the work, three thousand and three hundred, who ruled over the people that wrought in the work.
And the king commanded, and they hewed out great stones, costly stones, to lay the foundation of the house with wrought stone.
And Solomon’s builders and Hiram’s builders and the Gebalites did fashion them, and prepared the timber and the stones to build the house.
If you do the math, more than 185,000 people worked—if you include all of the courts and the royal buildings. One hundred eighty-five thousand people worked for twenty years to build Solomon’s temple. That does not take into account the men, the cost, and the time David put into the temple before Solomon ever got to it.
Listen to 1 Chronicles 22:14-16:
Now, behold, in my affliction I have prepared for the house of the Lord a hundred thousand talents of gold, and a thousand thousand talents of silver; and of brass and iron without weight; for it is in abundance: timber also and stone have I prepared; and thou mayest add thereto.
Moreover there are workmen with thee in abundance, hewers and workers of stone and timber, and all manner of cunning men for every manner of work.
Of the gold, the silver, and the brass, and the iron, there is no number. Arise therefore, and be doing, and the Lord be with thee.
Solomon’s temple was magnificent. It was breathtaking. It was a testimony in all the earth. They came from all over the world to see the adornments, the magnificent detail, the sculpture in that temple, the chambers, the pillars, the gates, the porches, the bars, the courts, the building, the furniture—the gorgeous edifice.
In the holy of holies alone, there was more than twenty million dollars just in gold. Just in the holy of holies.
Now listen to the command again. Fifty thousand people had just come back from slavery. Who were they? They were a bunch of nobodies—just a handful of nobodies, a bunch of slaves who had just gotten set free.
They had heart. They loved the Lord. But they did not have tools. They did not have skills. They did not have special gifts. There was no Aholiab among them. There was no Bezaleel there. There was a bunch of people who got together to say yes to God. They were not architects. They were not carpenters. They were not stonemasons.
One hundred eighty-five thousand people worked for twenty years to build a temple, and they received a word: “Arise. Go to the mountain. Get wood. Rebuild the temple.” Then God adds, “That I might be pleased with it and glorified, saith the Lord.”
Wow. What kind of a command is that? How would you feel if you received that word from the Lord? “Go into the mountain. Get wood.”
In Newport, we have many mansions. Tourists come from everywhere to see the Vanderbilt place, the Astor homes, the Breakers, the Marble House, the Elms—some of these great mansions.
If one of those mansions were reduced to ashes, and I received a word from the Lord: “Ed Miller, arise. Go to the mountain. Get wood. Rebuild the Breakers—all seventy rooms.” I will tell you, I could not rebuild the stables. I could not rebuild the carriage house. I could not rebuild a gate.
Suppose the Lord came to you tonight: “Rise up. Go to the mountains. Get wood. Rebuild the Twin Towers. Go to Ground Zero and rebuild it.” Do you see how impossible that is?
According to the prophet, they were despising the day of small things. That was underneath. They did not come right out and say that was why they were quitting, but they were quitting because the whole thing was so impossible.
That is part of the reason the older men were weeping when they had the foundation. The young men saw the foundation and said, “Whoa, this is great!” But the older men remembered what the real one was like, and they said, “You do not know great. You do not know great. This is not great.”
This, brethren, is the real reason earnest Christians quit. They throw in the towel because they discover that the Christian life is impossible. It is not possible to live.
You might as well try to rebuild the Twin Towers as to have a forgiving spirit. You might as well try to build the Twin Towers as to have love for your enemies, turn the other cheek, and go the second mile.
Count it all joy when you fall into divers temptations. Try to love your wife as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for it. In everything and for everything give thanks. Have you ever tried it?
After a while, it is going to come across as, “Go up to the mountains, get wood, rebuild the temple, that I might be pleased, that I might be glorified.”
How about this? Have you ever received this command: “Be ye therefore perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect”?
I do not want to play with this, brethren. No wonder they quit. No wonder they quit. The realization of what the Christian life is, and what the standards are—no wonder they quit.
Have you seen the Christian life as impossible? Do not answer. Have you seen the Christian life as impossible? You say, “Not yet.” You will. Just try to keep living it. You will.
I am not a prophet, and I do not have any prophetic gifts, but let me prophesy what is going to happen when you find out. You are going to throw in the towel—unless God has a Haggai for you, or unless He has a Zechariah for you.
Unless He has opened the heavens and given a word so that you can go back and build, because without that heavenly secret He is about to give, everybody who is honest has to throw in the towel.
You ask an honest Christian, “Why did you quit? You were doing so well. You tasted liberty. You were set free. I remember your testimony. I heard you. I saw you when you were free.”
“You were the one who held all those identification truths. You stood at the altar. You believed in the blood and in the cross—in the substitutionary work of our Lord Jesus. I saw you. I heard you. You had a foundation. You were grounded. What happened?”
If they are honest, they will say, “Look, I tried it. Honestly, I tried it. It did not work. It did not work. I did not try it once, or twice, or three, or four, or five times. I tried it over and over again. I made resolutions—thousands of them. I made vows that I kept breaking. I kept dedicating myself and rededicating myself.”
At that discovery of the impossibility of the Christian life—“Go to the mountain, get wood, rebuild the temple, that I might be pleased and glorified”—usually there are two kinds of Christians in the world.
The first kind are those who try to solve the problem. They work their heads off, and they get this idea: “If God commands it, it must be able to be done. If I must, I may. He would not tell me to do something I could not do.”
So they begin to dig in a little harder, try a little harder, surrender a little more, dedicate themselves a little more, resolve a little more, make more promises, make more vows, more determinations, and more resolutions.
They begin to run after every spiritual gift they can find, every experience anyone has ever had. “If I am more sincere, if I am more earnest, if I pray more, if I fast more, if I study more, if I am more disciplined, if I attend more, if I associate more, if I get more involved, if I serve more, if I sacrifice more.”
At the end of all of that—and I know about that because I lived that nightmare for seven years—I will tell you, over and over and over again: trying, weeping, repenting, rising, resolving again, and falling on my face over and over and over again, because the Christian life is impossible.
Then, on the other side, there are those who say, “I have seen it. It is impossible. You cannot live it. God never commands me to do anything I can do. Therefore, for me, from now on, hands off.”
“It is God’s work. It is God’s temple. Christ said He is going to build the church. He is going to build the temple. I cannot build a temple. Just as He said one day, ‘Let there be light,’ He can say, ‘Let there be temple.’”
“At His word, in a moment of time, all the rubbish will blow away, all the marble stones will come together like the bones of Ezekiel 37, and the temple will go up. Hands off for me. I am not going to try anymore. The Christian life is over.”
Brethren, I tried that too. When I discovered I could not do it, I said, “All right, let God do it.” That remedy is just as futile as trying to do it yourself.
That is the inside picture, and it is further frustration: “The Christian life is impossible. I cannot live it. And He will not.” Now I have a problem.
If I do not have God’s answer to that problem, it is just going to be a foundation. I still love the Lord. I am still going to heaven when I die. But I will never build. I cannot build, because I tried it and it did not work. I gave it to Jesus, and that did not work either.
God speaks to His prophet and says, “They need a word. They need a revelation from heaven.”
Let me give you God’s answer to that tremendous problem—the reason people quit. They discover how impossible it is: they cannot do it, and God will not.
Turn to Zechariah 4, please. Verse 8:
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 these seven shall rejoice, and shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel;
these are the eyes of the Lord, which run to and fro through the whole earth.
Who has despised the day of small things? That is what they were doing. That is why they needed this word. They looked at themselves: a humble people, inadequate, small gifts, small resources, weak. They said, “We will never build a temple.”
Brethren, as you know, God has always blessed the day of small things. Do not despise the day of small things. That little baby’s cry—Moses, that little baby in the basket—changed the destiny of a world.
The shepherd’s rod, the ox goad, the jawbone of a donkey, a child’s sling, a little boy’s lunch, a widow’s mite—He has always used the day of small things: weak, helpless.
I love Micah 4:7. It is one of those plaque verses:
And I will make her that halted a remnant,
and her that was cast far off a strong nation:
and the Lord shall reign over them in mount Zion from henceforth even for ever.
“I will make the lame a remnant, and the Lord will reign over them.” He wants to reign over a kingdom of cripples. He desires to reign over the lame. What a marvelous, marvelous verse.
I do not think God is going to take the day of small things and, because you trust Him, turn it into a day of great things. The day of small things will always be a day of small things.
He will never take an inadequate person and make that person adequate. He does not use adequate people. He only uses inadequate people. You are going to stay inadequate, and I am going to stay inadequate. You will be helpless until the day you die.
He does not make the weak strong. He does not make the fearful courageous. He does not make the foolish wise. “When I am weak, then am I strong”—not after I am weak, then I am strong. When I am weak, then am I strong.
What is the encouragement, if I am looking at myself as inadequate and I cannot do it, and I am weak and helpless? “I cannot. He will not.”
Zechariah 4:10 says the seven eyes of God will rejoice when He sees the plumb line in the hand of Zerubbabel. Somehow, I am not out of it. Zerubbabel is not out of it.
God says, “You know what My eyes are waiting to see? I am waiting to see Zerubbabel pick up the plumb line again.”
“I cannot. He will not.” What is the secret? The answer is this: I cannot. You cannot. He will not. But we can.
Zechariah 4:6—you know it. I told you, you have heard it a million times:
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.
Brethren, what a verse. Get it in its context. What a glorious truth: “By My Spirit.” There is no contradiction in verse 9 and verse 6. Verse 9 says, “The hands of Zerubbabel.” Verse 6 says, “By My Spirit.”
The Spirit of God does not rule out the hand of man. Luke 11:20 calls the Holy Spirit the finger of God. I love to relate that to this, because the finger of God never takes the place of the hand of man.
In every true work of God, you are going to find the hand of man. That is how He does it: our hand, His finger.
At this point Zechariah was given a marvelous vision. We are not going to take time to read it. You are familiar with it: Zechariah 4:1-14, the vision of the seven-pronged candlestick, the vision of that golden lampstand.
The seven flames of fire were kept brightly burning because they had a secret supply, a flow of golden oil. In Zechariah 4:3, he sees two olive trees—one on the right side of the bowl and one on the left side.
In the vision, what are those two olive trees? In the middle is a big bowl, and there are pipes to the bowl. The bowl comes to the lampstand, and the golden oil is flowing.
Verse 14:
These are the two anointed ones, that stand by the Lord of the whole earth.
Zerubbabel and Joshua the high priest: the two olive trees are the leadership in Jerusalem to build the temple. You say, “Well, they have what it takes to keep the fire burning.” No, they do not. They are inadequate. But they found the secret: they have a supply of golden oil.
We put so much attention on the lampstand. We make sure the wick is right, the chimney is right, the lampstand is right; we polish the shaft and all that kind of thing. God’s people have spent so much time burning the midnight oil, they forgot all about the golden oil.
This is about the golden oil. This is about the Holy Spirit. I like the New American Standard margin in verse 14: these two anointed ones are called sons of fresh oil.
What is a believer? He is a son of fresh oil. Do you want to get some life back in you? Do you want to build the temple? I will tell you how you build a temple: discover that you cannot do it; discover that He will not do it; then discover that together you can.
You can be a son of fresh oil, and the Spirit of God has come to live in your heart in order to live through your hands. God is waiting for your hand to pick up the tool. It is your duty, but it is His power. It is His life.
It is that secret. I promise you, if you do not know that secret, somewhere along the line you are throwing in the towel. But if you learn that secret—that God has given His own life, His Holy Spirit, to live in me—then He is the One who is going to do the work, and you are going to start building again.
That is one of the first secrets of living the Christian life: I cannot do it. He will not do it. But together—God, Christ in me by His Holy Spirit—we can do it in union together.
Let me give one final illustration to drive this home. As you know, Joshua was a high priest. When these brethren, Haggai and Zechariah, received the word, I can just see the group: “Here come the prophets again—the old fellow and the young fellow—and they have something to tell us.”
This one was frightening on the human level because Joshua became an object lesson. They said, “Joshua, you come over here. You stand in front of these people. We are going to do something with you.” So the high priest comes over. You have a word from God—what is going to happen?
In the Old Testament, one of the things forbidden was the mixing of the king’s office and the priest’s office. If you were a priest, you could not be king. If you were a king, you could not be priest. You could not have a crown on your head and a censer in your hand. You could not do both.
Saul tried it and got into a lot of trouble. Uzziah tried it, and he became a leper because he tried to invade the priest’s office. So Zechariah receives this strange word from God.
He says, “There is your high priest. I want you to make a crown and put it on his head.” I wonder what Joshua said: “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Let us not go there.” But he had a word from God.
I want you to see it. It is in Zechariah 6. Try to picture this. Zechariah 6:11-13:
Take silver and gold, and make crowns, and set them upon the head of Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest;
And speak unto him, saying, Thus speaketh the Lord of hosts, saying, Behold, the man whose name is the Branch: and He shall grow up out of His place; and He shall build the temple of the Lord;
Even He shall build the temple of the Lord; and He shall bear the glory, and shall sit and rule upon His throne; and He shall be a priest upon His throne: and the counsel of peace shall be between them both.
Who is the Branch, brethren?
Even back then, God gave this marvelous illustration. Joshua is given this crown, and for a moment of time God takes the two offices and brings them together before the people. You want to know how to build a temple? You need to see a royal priest.
Joshua stands there as a royal priest, and he says, “The Branch is coming.” That is Jesus. He will build the church. That is how it is going to be built. He is going to do it.
You say, “Well then, my hands are out of it.” No, they are not. It is your hands; it is His life. He is going to use you.
I tell you, if you do not know that secret, very soon you are going to throw in the towel. You have to, because you cannot do it. You say, “Well, just let the Lord do it.” He will not do it.
You cannot; He will not. But if you learn the secret—the Branch, Christ in me by His Holy Spirit—“Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord”—you will live again. You will live again.
Thousands of Christians have embraced that single truth and have gone back to building the temple and going forward with the Lord.
Now, that is not the only hindrance. The impossibility of the Christian life is one hindrance. They had others, and God had other solutions.
Because I spent so much time on this, I have left myself a rather large assignment for the morning. We are going to look at the other three causes of an incomplete temple, and God’s perfect answer for each of them—every one as perfect as this.
The Holy Spirit is God’s solution to the incomplete temple. May God work it in us. Let us pray.
Father, we know that by Your Word we are sons of fresh oil. Ah, we praise You for that truth. Oh, we thank You that You have not left us on our own to do the impossible thing.
You have commanded us to stretch forth our withered hand, and it is restored by Your power.
Lord, revive us as You caused that little boy to revive. You put life in him. Thank You, Lord. Thank You, Holy Spirit, for life—for the Holy Spirit, who now pushes out the death and causes us to live.
Will You work these things in our hearts, we pray, and prepare us that we might offer You a complete temple? We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.