The text is in the 5th of the eight visions which the Lord showed Zechariah in one night in the 2nd year of Darius. The vision teaches that it is the Holy Spirit who builds the Church (verse 6). It also uses the very fact that the reconstruction of the temple was being hindered, to yield encouragement to the builders. The work had been the reverse of straightforward. After the foundation was laid, opposition from the foreign settlers had halted the work, and 15 years passed before the preaching of Haggai and Zechariah stirred up the Jews to resume. Then again opposition arose, this time from Tatnai the local governor who demanded to see their written authority for building. They had none, and Tatnai took the matter up with Darius. Not very hopeful of the king’s support, the builders continued with heavy hearts. A great mountain of difficulty lay in the way.
But not for long! The Spirit of the Lord would so work in the hearts of Darius and the builders, that every obstacle would be removed (verses 7, 9). Divine grace would be acknowledged as the power which ensures, that notwithstanding feeble and easily disheartened men and strong opposition, the Church of God will continue in the world holding forth the Word of life, and providing the means of grace by which the elect will be saved and sanctified.
So we come to the question of verse 10 — “Who hath despised the day of small things?” Probably many had been guilty of this. Undoubtedly it was a day of weakness, yet it was wrong to despise it. One factor outweighed all the others, and that was the perpetual interest which God has in his cause. This factor is represented here by the plummet in the hands of Zerubbabel.
What I propose to try and say this evening on this text might be described in the covenanting term, “Preaching to the times.” Some may think that we might be better employed, like Robert Leighton who is reported to have said, “If all the brethren have preached to the times, may not one poor brother be allowed to preach for eternity?”
I quote therefore a writer who loved the Covenanters. “Leighton’s words have a very pious sound; but the good man who uttered them was led into queer courses and company. John Livingstone of Ancrum was certainly under strong temptation to refrain from speaking to the times if he looked at his own and his family’s worldly interests. By what considerations he was impelled to take a different and more manly course will be seen by his own aptly illustrated reference to the subject. ‘You will say, may not a man be silent at least, and why should he hazard himself and his ministry, not to speak of his family and other things, by speaking of some things he had better be silent upon? Why should he do so? Let him preach faith and repentance. Very good! Faith and repentance we consider to be very comprehensive duties, and I confess I never delight to hear of a man that most of his preaching is on public and state matters. But there are times when a man’s silence may bring a curse on his head.
‘Take this illustration. There is a besieged town, and there is a watchman appointed with a captain and a guard at the West Port. Now he has a duty to sound the trumpet when he perceives any danger. Well, he does see the enemy coming, so, like a wise man, he does what? He marches all his men to the East Port, and there he stands where there is none to oppose him. He is a careful man; he thinks he will only preach against Popery, and not meddle with other controversies. He will preach love to God, and love to our neighbour.
‘Now should a man be silent in that way, how shall he look for a happy sight of Christ on his deathbed when his Master shall say, “Ha, sir, I know you well enough. You spoke, as they say, when none spired at you. You were bold then, but when my cause came in hand, when you might have done good service in bearing up my banner when it was like to fall, you would not. Therefore, now get you gone”.
Let us therefore consider:—
- What constitutes a day of small things.
- The cause of a day of small things.
- The danger of despising such a day.
- Our duty in a day of small things.
1. What constitutes a day of small things
These Jews were keenly aware of what made their day one of small things. They were few in number, only about fifty thousand of them. They were subject to a heathen king. Hostile neighbours were hindering them in their most important task. They were poor and lacked resources to enable them to match the original temple. And they were dispirited. Verily it was a day of small things!
Turning now to ourselves, when because of the more spiritual dispensation of the Church, the features of a poor day must be reckoned differently, we find these: (1) The Holy Spirit seems in great measure withdrawn from the Church. The awakening, quickening and sanctifying of souls which are his peculiar works are seen much less frequently than in former times. (2) As a result of the Spirit’s withdrawal, the visible church has largely become corrupt, full of blind leaders and dead souls. The living branches are few, small and weak. In our own the proportion of believers is small, and most of the Christless show little concern over their condition. The spirit of worldliness has invaded even the living branches so that professing people are often little different from the world in their spirit, manner, speech, conduct and appearance, especially the younger ones. (3) Believers are content with less Bible-reading, prayer, meditation and the reading of edifying books than their fathers. There is also less regard for the finer applications of the moral law, so that selfishness, pride, gossip, slander and uncharitable feelings are common. (4) Another of the sad features of our day is the feeble degree of spiritual discernment in professing people which unfits them to detect serious faults of doctrine and character.
(5) Our day is also one when too many among ourselves are given to belittling things that are important. For example, there has been a falling off in respect for the office of the ministry, seen often when Christ’s servants warn and rebuke. God says, “Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves: for they watch for your souls as they that must give account.” But many today resent this rule when it clashes with their desires as, for example, when women are warned about the sinfulness of wearing their hair short and donning male garments such as trousers.
Also belittled, is devotion to the principle that the Church of God must adhere to the pattern of Scripture. The principal of an unchanging Church in the midst of change specially interests ourselves as it underlies our very existence as a denomination. We are here tonight separate from other churches just because there was a need 85 years ago to insist that the Church of Christ must not change simply to keep in step with men’s changing views of Scripture and its doctrines. The principle can only be maintained by us in the same way as by our fathers, namely, by clean separation from bodies which violate it. Yet devotion to the principle is belittled by those who make such comments as — “You are making an idol of Free Presbyterianism” — “We must not be sectarian” — “We are too exclusive” — “We think we are perfect” — “We cannot go on living in the past,” etc.
Belittled also are the endeavours of some who fear the Lord, to obey and follow Christ in all things. Their principles and conduct are styled, “Too strict,” and “Carrying things too far,” by those who prefer an easier way. Faced with the situation I have outlined, we can say like Asaph, “We see not our signs” (Ps. 74 v. 9). We pass on now to notice —
2. The cause of a day of small things
In the Jews’ case it was not any sudden development, but the outcome of generations of infidelity to Jehovah. And as He had threatened, the anger of the Lord was kindled against that land to bring upon it all the curses that had been written, even to banishment (Deut. 29 v. 25-28). That period of judgment was now ended, but its effects remained in the form of all-round weakness, “the day” spoken of in our text. Right at the beginning of this book, the Jews are reminded of the root cause of their weakness — “The Lord hath been sore displeased with your fathers” (Ch. 1 v. 2). A similar cause lies behind our own day of small things.
“The Lord hath been sore displeased with your fathers!” What was the great sin of our fathers? It was the rejecting of the Word of the Lord in rationalistic unbelief. That sin opened the floodgates for great forces of evil to inundate the Church and lay it waste. Let the plenary inspiration of Scripture be denied; let its unique character as the very Word of God be displaced by the view that in part or totality it is a fallible human production, and its authority as the only rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy God is gone. That is what our unfaithful, and probably faithless, fathers did, following the lead of others in Germany and elsewhere. You scarcely need to be told what followed.
Freed from the curbs imposed on them by an infallible Bible, carnally-minded theologians gladly undertook the liberalising of Christian doctrine to the extent that the Gospel of Jesus Christ was displaced by another which was no Gospel. Then with the Scripture’s testimony to a fiat creation (creation by decree and at a word) put out of the way, the theory of organic evolution received a warm welcome as a more pleasing explanation of how all things, and man, came to be. At a stroke this theory abolished for many the idea of a personal, transcendent and immanent divine Spirit to whom man is bound in permanent relationship as Maker, Preserver, Lord and Lawgiver. Men now felt free to ignore moral responsibility and sin, and regard themselves as just one form of matter whose wisdom lay in making the best of their stay here. Is not the Protestant part of Christendom materialistic in the main?
“The Lord hath been sore displeased with your fathers!” So today we find our land populated with a godless, materialistic people, many of whom are puzzled as to why they exist, and are meeting with no success in their pursuit of happiness. “They have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water” (Jer. 2 v. 13). “Lo, they have rejected the word of the Lord; and what wisdom is in them?” (Jer. 8 v. 9).
Let us be clear then that the deplorable, even horrifying, religious and moral condition of our land is as much a judgment consequent upon the sins of our fathers, as captivity and its aftermath was a judgment upon the Jews. If Scotland is experiencing a day of small things religiously, this can be traced to the infidelity of its churchmen several generations back, and to these sins accepted and made their own by the church-people, to the ruination of the Church in Scotland. A small branch like our own, still holding and contending for the faith once delivered to the saints, is an exception. But it has also to be said that we have not been untouched by the evils of such a day. This I have already mentioned. We have our own sins to confess; the Holy Spirit is not working among us as we would desire, and adverse effects have followed. The day of small things is that kind of day for us too.
3. The danger of despising such a day
Having attempted to define and account for our day of small things, we must next notice that it is not a day of no account, but of small things. If it were entirely made up of sin and divine wrath, it would be hard to understand this implied warning not to despise it. There must be something good about it. This was true of Zechariah’s day. The Jews had truly repented of idolatry and other sins. By God’s grace they were back in their own land. They had set up again the pure worship of Jehovah, and were rebuilding his house. God was encouraging them by his prophets, and from this they might deduce that Darius would not hinder them. Surely then it was wrong to regard their day as a useless one, and their work as futile! It was far from deserving the sort of description that Job gave to the day of his birth (Job 3 v. 3-5).
Similarly, there are things true of our day which make it wrong to despise it. There is the great boon possessed by ourselves of representing the Reformed Church of Scotland in its scriptural purity. The existence of a pure branch of the Church is most encouraging when you think of other lands. Also encouraging is that the Lord has not left us to a dead orthodoxy, has not taken away his Spirit altogether. There are godly, faithful ministers, discerning office-bearers and exercised members together with reverent, attentive worshippers making no profession.
There is, however, one thing in particular that makes it wrong, and even dangerous, to despise a day of small things, and it is that such days are divinely appointed and serve certain purposes. The Saviour taught this before He ascended to heaven to undertake the stupendous work of opening the seals of the book of providence (Rev. 5 v. 5, etc.). The lesson is to be found in the last chapter of John’s Gospel. A night’s fishing had taken nothing, and we may be sure that this was not due to lack of skill, effort or perseverance. Was it then the lack of fish, and why should that be when the lake contained plenty of them?
It is when we consider what complete success they had when Jesus instructed them to cast their net in an unorthodox fashion, that we come to realise that it was the unseen watcher on the shore who had willed that not one fish should enter their net all the previous night. He rules all things including “fish of the sea and all that pass through the same.” A similar incident much earlier (Luke 5 v. 2-11) had reference to their work of manfishing while Jesus was with them on earth. This one contained instruction concerning the work ahead of them when the Saviour would be in heaven while they laboured on earth. The plain lesson was that their work would prosper in the degree that He willed.
In a day of small things we need to remember that Christ reigns, and that He does save all for whom He died. Which means that our poor day is in fact one in which there are “few that be saved.” The divine plan embraced such periods, there have been many of them, and some have been very long, for example, the dark pre-reformation ages. Days thus planned must also have a use, and that is the great reason why they must not be despised. Our inability to discern their purpose makes no difference. Yet there are always some who despise such days, and I now go on to mention some ways in which this is done today.
(a) The day of small things is despised when Christians act as if there ought not be such a day and try to terminate it by human effort.
This is the seriously faulty principle behind the many attempts to “evangelize” by special campaign. Men decide that some district needs a revival, and attempt to generate it by means which I need not describe. The preaching is broadly biblical, but usually Arminian in its offer of Christ, and offensive to the Holy Spirit in its practice of calling for decisions. The divine sovereignty in election and effectual calling is little mentioned. We all disapprove of these attempts which clearly despise the day of small things.
But I believe we have also to be on our guard lest in our desire to see the Church extended, there be an unsubmissive attitude towards the Lord’s ordination of a poor day, and the secret belief that if only we put forth enough effort, a better day will begin. Surely if we take the Gospel to the churchless multitudes, something will come of it! But why do we suppose that the dry bone in the unworked valleys will be more likely to come alive than those which confront us every Sabbath in our own churches? Certainly the Lord can bless what is called “outreach,” but the hard fact is that He is not doing so. Fish are not entering the Gospel net; let us not close our eyes to the main reason, namely, the will of God.
If there is one thing that the Lord has been teaching his Church in our land these last 30 years it is this, that the sovereignty of his Spirit and the impotence of men must alike be acknowledged. The message He has been spelling out is that of verse 6 — “Not by might nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.” Have we been learning the lesson? Are we bowing in deep humility and felt weakness before Him to whom belongs the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, and entreating his help and guidance?
More “evangelistic” effort has been made in the last 30 years than in the century before, but the land is more tightly shrouded in spiritual death than ever. The day of small things has not passed just because men have decided that it has gone on long enough, and that if they act, the Holy Spirit is bound to do the same.
(b) The day of small things is despised if we in the ministry think that our pastorate need only occupy part of our time.
Our congregation may be small, years of labour have borne little fruit, hope that we shall ever see fruit is fading, and perhaps there is the feeling of being a kind of misfit, more suited to and more inclined to a different field of labour. Where there is this situation, there is the danger of concluding that our present work need only take up part of our time, and that we may spend the remainder at other useful work of our choice.
Does not this view, however, cut at the very root of the orthodox (and I think correct) conception of the work of a pastor? What is that? It is that the work to which Christ and the Church appointed him will demand all his time and strength. Supposing he should have only the tasks directly connected with his local ministry, these would demand all his time.
But he has other tasks. There is the work of Church Courts and committees. There is the wider sphere of vacant charges, communions and deputation work to which duty often calls. He should keep himself informed of what is going on in the world, especially the religious aspect. He may feel it his duty to improve his general education. Family duties make demands on his time. He needs rest periods, but usually has to do with less than he requires.
Returning now to his main work, he has to preach to and teach, to visit and pray with his people. How does he obtain fitness for that? From prayerful, detailed study of God’s Word, from meditation, from reading theology, church history, devotional literature, etc. (A very big etcetera in this case). And from prayer, and more prayer, for himself and the souls for whom he has been made responsible!
Where now is the servant of Christ who can say to his Master, “I thank Thee that I have done all that I engaged to do when I entered upon thy work in this part of thy vineyard.” Have we not rather to mourn that we have done so little, and done it faultily? We are learning the vastness of that requirement, “Give thyself wholly to them” (1 Tim. 4 v. 15). We realise that we have no spare time to devote to other kinds of work. The most devoted servants of Christ can only confess in connection with their immediate and obvious tasks, “We are unprofitable servants, for we have not done that which was our duty to do.”
(c) The day of small things is despised by those who think it can be overcome, or at least improved, by united effort.
Not accepting that the day is divinely ordained, and believing like trade-unionism that “unity is strength,” their prescription for making the Church strong and influential is organic unity, and as a step towards that, co-operation. This is the grave error of modern ecumenism as embodied in the World Council of Churches with its efforts to bring about universal Church unity. This movement has been correctly exposed as a carnal and dangerous activity whose policy of united effort has accelerated the decay already going on in the nominally Protestant Churches. When we further consider that the Papacy has seen this movement as a possible agency for the recapturing of its own supremacy, it is not hard to detect Satan as the master-mind behind modern ecumenism.
Next let us note that the ecumenical principle of united effort is actively pushing in our own land the virtue of church co-operation at all levels. It is now common to find ministers and priests joining in acts of worship, and this being accepted by communities calling themselves Protestant.
Now, still on the subject of ending the day of small things by united effort, we wonder if it is not the same idea that lies behind the proliferation of agencies set up in recent times by what is called the evangelical section of the visible Church in Britain and elsewhere. A rash of interdenominational or undenominational associations, alliances, conferences and societies has broken out. They have usually provided some common ground or cause in which ministers and others may associate. Now, avoiding anything like a generalisation on the worth of these agencies, I believe that they tend to produce the feeling in those brought together by them, that the doctrinal and other differences between the members are less important than they formerly believed. This effect is exactly what ecumenism wishes to produce by so strongly commending and promoting co-operation in religious effort. And as you might expect, it is those whose principles are most scriptural who stand the greatest danger of losing their sense of the value of them, and of sliding into compromises.
And so we come to ourselves, and the question whether this error of thinking that the day of small things may be improved by joining hands in new enterprises with people of other bodies, affects us. It does. Voices are heard — “We must not be so stand-offish” — “We ought to co-operate more” — “We need to possess a more evangelical spirit, and show that our’s is a truly non-sectarian Christianity.” Not only words, but actions! co-operation in evangelism with persons of unsound faiths, justified on the ground that the purpose is good. Which means that either this kind of evangelistic effort is conducted on a variety of doctrinal levels, according to the persons engaged in it, or it is pursued in terms of some attenuated creed acceptable to all. Neither way is God’s way. These are methods which this Church has always denounced as false and wrong. They are the methods of ecumenism and bogus evangelism.
The godly, discerning fathers of our Church saw clearly that it was our wisdom, in the ecclesiastical situation in which we found ourselves, to avoid unnecessary contact with other religious bodies in Scotland. They formed that judgment when other churches were sounder than they are today. They well understood that fraternisation would result in Free Presbyterians becoming less attached to their distinctive position, whereas others would not be in the least moved from their errors. No-one would gain, but some would lose, and their loss would be serious.
In the past we have followed Nehemiah’s example when the day of small things still prevailed. He judged that mischief would follow a meeting with Sanballat and Geshem in one of the villages of the plain of Ono. We have reason to believe that only mischief will follow consultation, conferring and co-operation with other churches and churchmen on new schemes to advance the kingdom of God in our time. Is it not our full-time task as it is, to engage in God’s work of calling sinners to repentance and faith in ways agreeable to the Word of God? We may say, as Nehemiah did, “I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down: why should the work cease, whilst I leave it, and come down to you” (Neh. 6 v. 3). The work we as a Church are engaged in is the Lord’s. Results will follow in his own good time.
I have brought to your notice three ways in which I see our day of small things being despised. Let me state them again briefly. It is despised by those who think that increased effort or combined effort will end it, and by those who are content with reduced effort. In my judgment, and it is one not hastily formed, these errors have a foothold among ourselves. Now error breeds rapidly in today’s moral climate. If these dangerous despising of the day of small things continue (and the last described I regard as the worst), I foresee this Church’s testimony becoming so diluted and weakened, that we shall at last become merged with some other body. If that happens, then we shall have betrayed the sacred cause which meant so much to our fathers, and the Church of the Reformation in Scotland will have ceased to exist.
4. Our duty in a day of small things
This is bound up with the question, What is our future course as a Church to be? Are we to continue on the same simple course as that on which our Protestant fathers set out, a following of the old scriptural paths and rejecting of innovations which have their spring in the carnal mind? It cannot be denied that that is a course which the Lord has blessed. Or is our future course to be one of experimentation with new methods, for example, shorter sermons, and the abolition of the fencing of the tables as we know it? It is to be a course where contacts with other churches and their ministers would be encouraged, and the adoption of a generally more flexible attitude towards those beyond our borders?
Let the very envisaging of such a course be enough. Let us determine to keep to the well-tried, divinely-approved ways and await the Lord’s time to crown them with success, a time of his Spirit’s power. Let us call that our first duty.
Our second, then, must be confession of sin. That is what Ezra did in the day to which our text originally referred. He unhesitatingly associated himself with those who were actually guilty of serious sins (Ezra 9 v. 5-15). Nehemiah in the same period also subscribed to the confession of sin in the 9th chapter of his book. May we not adopt the words of verse 33? “Howbeit thou art just in all that is brought upon us; for thou hast done right, but we have done wickedly.”
None of us can say that we are uncontaminated by the sinful spirit of our day. Let us then confess that the weakness we feel within ourselves, and the weakness we observe in our Church, is connected with our sins as well as the sins of others. And whoever has been guilty in any way of despising the day of small things, let him confess that. And let those who have been guilty of condoning this despising in any of its forms, confess that. It is only those who confess and repent of this sin who will rejoice at the prospect of a better day, or rejoice when it comes.
Thirdly, we have a duty to attend to what we are told here regarding the Lord’s own interest in a day of small things. The Trinity are involved. It is the Father who speaks (v. 8). His eye, one of complete vision and knowledge as signified by the term “seven eyes,” is ever upon the cause He loves and cherishes. It is in infinite love that He arranges for that cause to pass through days of small things. Such times are necessary for reasons mostly beyond our grasp. What we do know is that the Church’s course and the world’s course run concurrently, and in order that the members of the Church may be taken out of the world and given to Christ, the divine plan includes such days as ours. It is one of the things that should cause us to exclaim — “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!”
The verse also contains a notable reference to Christ. The prediction is that the temple on Mt. Zion would be completed. Zerubbabel the governor who had been a leader in the work is depicted holding a plumbline against the finished walls. But behind Zerubbabel is a higher Governor, the Son of God in our nature. We see Him here, exalted to God’s right hand and possessing all power, going on with his great work of building his Church. He must save all whom He redeemed. He, the great Master-Builder, is engaged in laying each of his blood-bought ones upon Himself, the sure foundation and chief corner-stone. In this way a spiritual house is built up to be a holy temple in the Lord. At certain times there will be few of his elect to be gathered, but these periods are put to such use by Christ, that they will be succeeded by others in which the building will rise rapidly.
Then, although the verse does not expressly mention the Third Person of the Godhead, his activity as the executive of Christ’s will in applying redemption is the principal subject of this vision. He is symbolised by the oil, but referred to in plain language in verse 6. Unless He work, not one sinner will turn to God. But when He does work, no-one will resist Him — a willing people will come to Christ. Do we know this, and prove that we do, by really depending on God’s Spirit to accomplish all work of this sort? How do we expect to be sanctified? How do we expect sinners to be converted? How do we expect the Church to expand? How do we expect our nation to turn from its idols to God? How do we expect the Jews to receive Christ, and the whole earth to be filled with his glory? — “Not by might nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts.”
Lastly, we have a duty to attend to every task that the Lord has laid upon us. The ruling elders must do all they can to serve the Lord, consistently with the claims of their worldly callings. The ministers must devote themselves to all the tasks of their special calling, as those who know that they never dare be satisfied with their efforts. We do not know how soon better days may come, nor the demands that a coming great work of the Spirit may make upon us. Therefore we cannot be too diligent in preparing now, and all the time, for preaching, advising, warning and comforting. It is the endless labour of study and prayer behind the four walls of our studies, unseen by men, but witnessed and blessed by God, that will principally make us able ministers of the New Testament. Let us at all costs shun any of the forms of despising a day of small things, and with a quiet and hopeful mind pray, “Thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as in heaven,” and, “Fill the earth with thy glory, O Lord.”