By the REV. ALEXANDER STEWART, EDINBURGH.
Introductory.
“Your fathers where are they? and the prophets do they live for ever?”—Zech. i. 5.
IN the year 536 B.C. the Emperor Cyrus published a decree giving permission to the Jews who were in exile in Babylon to return to their own land. A considerable number availed themselves of this permission and went back to Jerusalem. They found Zion a wilderness and Jerusalem a desolation; their holy and their beautiful house where their fathers had praised God burnt up with fire, and all their pleasant things laid waste. They set themselves to repair the waste places, and in the very year of their return the foundations of the new temple were laid. But they had not proceeded far when they met with opposition from enemies; the work was interrupted, and at length quite suspended. The people lost heart; their zeal for the cause of God became almost extinct; a spirit of worldliness took hold of them; and they were fast losing all sense of their religious obligations. They were active enough in attending to their own material interests, but they neglected the things of God. For some sixteen years the foundations of the Lord’s house had been laid; but the walls rose no higher; and the unfinished work was the scorn and the derision of the enemies of God.
It was at this time, sixteen years after the return from Exile, that the Lord raised up Haggai and Zechariah and sent them with a message to the people. They were contemporaries, these two prophets; Haggai began to deliver his message two months earlier than Zechariah; and they were both sent to stir up the people from their inactivity and indifference, and to encourage them to resume the work which had been so long neglected. Their words partook of the same character, mingling solemn warning with gracious encouragement, warning until the people were stirred to action, and encouragement as soon as their face was set on the way of obedience.
At the time at which Zechariah began to declare the word of the Lord, Haggai’s first message had already taken effect. The people recognised the divine authority of his mission; they realised the guilt of their conduct in neglecting the Lord’s work; and their hearts were again moved to obey the voice of the Lord their God. Zechariah reinforces the testimony of his brother prophet. He, too, begins with words of stern and pointed warning. The people were already to some extent penitent, but the wound needed to be deepened: and not till that part of his mission has been attained does the prophet pass on to convey to the now obedient people assurances, many and varied, of divine favour and help in the performance of their duty.
The words we are considering have their place in the first part of Zechariah’s message. The voice of God to the nation is still a call to repentance; and that call is driven home to their conscience by a reminder of God’s dealings with their fathers. He tells them that He had been sorely displeased with their fathers, and warns them against following in their fathers’ footsteps. The fathers had had their own calls and warnings. The prophets had been sent to them too, and had spoken to them as the voice of God; but they had refused to listen to the prophets, and had turned away their face in unconcealed contempt. And what was the result of their disobedience? That is the point He is driving home. Let them recall the facts to mind: let them look back and consider. The fathers where are they? And the prophets do they live for ever?
These are the words whose meaning I shall try to explain:—
Your fathers where are they?
And the prophets do they live for ever? } but—.
This is a passage in which a great deal of solemn truth is implied rather than expressed. It is rich not so much in its declarations as in its reserve. Two different lines of thought are brought before us in the two questions propounded, and over against each of these is placed a third, which is introduced by the word “but.” The new consideration brought to view belongs equally to the two questions, but leads to entirely different results when applied to the fathers and when applied to the prophets. The fathers where are they? they are not: but—they reaped the fruit of their doings; this is one application. The prophets do they live for ever? No, they do not; but—the word spoken by the prophets has been fulfilled; this is another and an entirely different application. Let us try to follow out each of these lines of thought in turn.
I. Your fathers where are they? but—.
Here we have, first of all, a warning against making the example of the fathers an excuse for continuance in sin. Pride of descent has always been a prominent feature of the Jewish character. They gloried in their ancestors, and were ready to regard a thing as right for them simply because it had been the custom of their fathers. They took a pride in carrying on the traditions of the past, and in maintaining the continuity of the national life and character. The customs and attainments of a former generation were therefore likely to be the standard by which each age was wont to measure itself. What was good enough for their fathers was good enough for them. The practices of the past were hallowed simply because they bore the stamp of usage.
This is a danger to which the people of Zechariah’s day were exposed, and against which he is here warning them. Be not as your fathers, he says; and he proceeds to describe what their fathers had been. They had been a stiff-necked and disobedient people. The former prophets had cried to them, had warned them with the same divine authority underlying their words, had counselled and entreated and threatened them, but all to no purpose. They did not hear nor hearken; they did not even make a pretence of listening; they turned away their ear from the message with studied scorn.
That was their character: what was their fate? Your fathers where are they? How did it fare with them in their neglect of God’s message? Did they prosper? Were they successful in their warfare against the authority of heaven? Did they find the path of disobedience a pleasant path and profitable? The answer is implied in the question where are they? Their graves are in a foreign land. There they died as exiles and as captives, degraded oppressed and enslaved. They would not be warned and they would not return; therefore God’s hand fell upon them, and they suffered for their sins. Where are they? The history of well nigh a century of humiliation and captivity, of suffering and shame, culminating in their death in an enemy’s country, is the answer. They disobeyed the word of God, but—God’s word took hold of them, His justice pursued them, overtook them, arrested them, and visited them at length with the reward of their iniquities.
This is a warning which applies to us no less than to the Jews; for we also are exposed to the same danger. It is the danger of making custom or usage the standard of right and wrong. It is the danger of imitating our fathers in their sins rather than in their godliness; for this is the direction in which we are naturally inclined. We are ready to acquiesce blindly in a condition of things which is transmitted to us from the past, without examining whether it bears the stamp of divine approval as well as of human custom. It is indeed true that in many things it would be well for us if we came up to the standard of the past; but the fact remains notwithstanding that men are in danger of excusing themselves in sin because their fathers indulged in it before them. They justify the path of disobedience because on that path they find the footsteps of their fathers. And these are footsteps in which we are naturally disposed to follow so long as they lead away from godliness and from God.
But we are called upon in these words to take warning from the experience of others. We are called upon to examine the testimony of the past, to listen to the voice of history, concerning the unfailing connection between sin and punishment. Disobedience of God must sooner or later receive its just recompense of reward. There may be prosperity in sin for a season. It may appear as if God did not know, as if there were no knowledge in the Most High: the wicked may boast of their success, and set their mouth against the heavens in their defiance of God. It may appear as if the eye of Justice had lost its keenness, or as if the arm of Justice had lost its strength; but—there is a but; and its weight will one day surely fall. God may suffer long in His great forbearance; but the books wherein he keeps account with the children of men are never allowed to fall into disorder. The day of reckoning may seem to tarry, but it will surely come.
There is another truth which lies on the surface of these words, and that is the transitory character of human life. This is of course one of the most threadbare of commonplaces; but it is also a solemn truth of which we need to be continually reminded. Our very familiarity with the thought causes us to lose sight of its supreme importance. The fathers where are they? They have gone the way of the whole earth. You will seek for them in vain in the land of the living. They had their day, and then they “ceased to be.” They played their part in the world while they were in it, they contributed their share to the making of human history, they formed a link in the unbroken chain of human life; and then they disappeared, and were seen no more. Each individual life with all its mystery, its mystery to itself and to others, with everything in it that was common to its fellows, and everything else that was peculiar to itself; whatever kind of life it was, whether it was long or short, whether it was sorrowful or happy, completed the round of its earthly destiny and then vanished. Its joys and its sorrows, its hopes and its fears, its achievements and its failures, were soon left behind in the swift flight of time. One generation has succeeded another. One nation has gone down in the shock of opposing powers, and another has arisen on its ruins, only to fall in turn before a mightier still. We read of them in the annals of the past, but when we look for their place among the things that remain in the present, we have to echo the prophet’s words—Where are they?
And as it has been with the fathers, so also shall it be with their children. The little island of our earthly life is girt about with the sea of death, and the “moaning of the bar” is ever in our ears. We are following our fathers into the silent land from which no traveller returns. Other tongues that are now only beginning to lisp will soon have to ask regarding us in turn—Our fathers where are they? The old sad message that the prophet was commanded to proclaim in the ears of his own generation expresses the truth for all generations—all flesh is grass and all the glory of man as the flower of the grass. On nothing that the eye can rest in this earth is their placed the seal of permanence. Man dieth and wasteth away. Yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he?
But the words we are considering carry us a step further. Your fathers, where are they? But—. There is no question about their mortality; they are gone, but is that all? Is there nothing beyond? Is thought compelled to stop at the grave? Is there nothing further to be said than that they are not here? It would seem as if the significant position of the “but” in relation to this question were designed to arrest our thoughts, and to lead us to set over against the mere fact of death another consideration. Death is not the end of existence. The meaning of death is not everlasting unconsciousness. The fathers are not in time, but they do exist in eternity.
And how does it fare with them there? Ah, that is the question—where are they? That is the most solemn of all questions. But let us not forget that it is a question which admits of an answer. We can in a certain sense tell where they are. For their condition in Eternity depends on their relation to God in Time. What was their character here? How did they receive God’s message? What was their relation to God’s Word uttered through His prophets? Did they hearken and obey, or did they refuse and rebel? Examine their history, consider the record of their lives, and that will furnish an answer. For this we may be assured of, their life went straight on. Death made no radical change in their nature. It wrought indeed a mighty change; but it was a change along the lines of what was already there. It made a difference in degree, not in kind—a difference only of growth and development. The course of their life followed a direct line, the path of the righteous as the shining light, shining more and more unto the perfect day; the path of the wicked as a ripening of their nature unto an awful reaping—the reaping of unrestrained corruption in outer darkness.
The field of thought into which the word “but” is a gateway is one that is overwhelming in its solemnity. “But my words and my statutes, which I commanded my servants the prophets, did they not take hold of your fathers? and they returned and said, Like as the Lord of Hosts thought to do unto us, according to our ways and according to our doings, so hath he dealt with us.” Here to begin with you have the fulfilment of the threatenings of God. His word and his statutes took hold at length of those who had slighted them. The wrath of which they had been warned overtook them. It had been pursuing them; the Angel of the Lord had been following them hard behind; and at last, when the limit of forbearance was reached, the hand of Divine vengeance was stretched forth, and God did repay. Then they returned; then they came to themselves under the weight of God’s anger; then they acknowledged that their punishment was just and right. It was only what God had threatened to do, and it was only the fitting reward of their own doings.
These words, doubtless, had a fulfilment in the earthly history of the Jews, but let us not forget that in the fulness of their meaning they carry us over into Eternity. They assure us, first, that every word of threatening which is uttered by the mouth of the Lord shall be fulfilled upon those who disregard them; and, secondly, that there will be a terrible awakening on the part of the impenitent when it is too late, and an awful acknowledgement of the righteousness of their doom from amid the very agonies of endless despair.
II. The prophets do they live for ever? but—.
This second question seems to anticipate an objection which might be urged against the application of the prophet’s words. It is true that the fathers have disappeared, but so have the prophets. They have died as surely as those to whom they spoke. In many of its outward features their end may have been just the same. They shared the common lot of men. Where is the difference—is there any difference at all?—between him that serveth God and him that serveth Him not? The prophet concedes all this concerning God’s messengers; but over against the mortality of the prophets He places a “but,” in the light of which it must be interpreted. “But my words and my statutes, which I commanded my servants the prophets, did they not take hold of your fathers?”
Let us notice first of all the significance of the fact that these two, the fathers and the prophets, are here placed side by side in this feature that is common to them both, namely, that they are dying men. The messengers who are charged with the declaration of the will of God have only a brief space wherein to accomplish their mission: the people to whom they are sent have an equally brief tenure of the day of privilege. How solemn is the bearing of this fact on the relations which ought to subsist between them. On the one hand there is the prophet or minister—for a prophet is just one who is commissioned to speak from God to men—entering on his work in the consciousness of the twofold truth that he is a dying man himself and that he speaks to dying men. He knows not when he may be called to give an account of his stewardship; he knows not when those whom he addresses may be removed beyond the reach of his voice for ever. The day of opportunity is brief on both sides. Oh then what earnestness, what zeal, what importunity, what watching for souls ought to characterise his discharge of his office.
On the other hand the same twofold fact ought to have its due influence on the attitude of the people towards the Word of God. To any people a true prophet is one of the greatest of God’s gifts. He is God’s representative, His ambassador on earth. His function is to warn of danger, and to point out the path of safety, to blow the trumpet when the sword is coming, and to declare authoritatively the will of God for the salvation of men. But the prophets do not live for ever; they are not always left to plead with men. Sometimes when their message is disregarded God removes them in the midst of their labours, and their removal is a mark of His sore displeasure. It is a sign that He has said, My Spirit shall not always strive with this people. They are joined to their idols, let them alone. How then in the light of this consideration should men prize the day of privilege, how diligent they should be in seizing opportunities, how receptive of God’s message, how responsive to His call. They listen with ears that may at any moment become stopped for ever, to a voice that may at any moment become still.
But the great truth emphasised in these words is that the authority of God’s messengers to men is not affected by their own mortality. They are mortal men like their fellows, they are men of like passions, they have their share of human infirmity, they are far from being personally infallible. But the authority of their message, in so far as it is a message from heaven, is not affected by these considerations.
Men are apt to lose sight of the authority of Divine truth because it is delivered through a human voice. They see before them only a man, speaking, it may be, with stammering tongue, in weakness and in fear, and in much trembling, and they are too much occupied in passing judgment on the manner in which he acquits himself before them to hear the voice of the Eternal, of which he is the medium. They are so busy in examining the earthen vessel, and noting all its flaws, that they are blind to the treasure it contains. Again, they may see the prophet removed from their midst, cut off, it may be, in the midst of his days, with his work scarcely begun, and they are apt to regard that fact as detracting somehow from his authority. They do not realise that it is a fact that may be more significant for them than for him.
The prophets do not live for ever, but—the God of the prophets does. The prophets die; but the Word of the Lord lives. They are weak; but their Lord is Almighty. This is the blessed fact of which these words assure us. Notwithstanding the frailty of the human medium of expression, the Word of the Lord shall not return unto Him void; it shall accomplish that which He pleases, and prosper in the thing whereto He has sent it. Every word that He has spoken through His servants shall be fulfilled, every threatening and every promise shall surely be accomplished. He will vindicate His own authority, He will establish His own faithfulness; and He will vindicate His servants when He vindicates Himself.
Men are sometimes apt to be discouraged when they compare the privileges of a former generation with their own. There were prophets in those days—powerful voices to shake the careless out of their indifference, and to melt the proud and the hardened with tender, winning words. Men trembled when they reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, or hung on their lips while they poured forth in burning eloquence the glad tidings of the salvation of God. The children of God received at their hands their portion of bread in its season, and the very ungodly quailed before their authority. But the prophets do not live for ever, and they are gone. Their voices are silent, and when they ceased to speak it may have seemed as if God had left the earth.
Yes, but there is a “but.” The human voice that formed the temporary vehicle of divine truth may become silent, but the truth itself is eternal. It is independent of time and circumstance. God lives and the Word of God lives. He is unchanging. His servants come and go; the influence which belongs to their own personality is transient and shadowy; but all that was divine in their message lives and abides. We are called upon to consider the end of their conversation; but over against that end we are enjoined to place the fact that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to-day and for ever. Throughout all the changes of human instrument the truth remains. They shall perish, but Thou remainest. They are the vesture, which waxes old, and is folded past, and vanishes away; but the face of Truth itself is the same throughout all the years.