Zec 4:10 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.
Now here is the real value of significance of that little interrogation - "Who hath despised the day of small things?"
Out of the millions who went into exile, just these forty-two thousand
odd would pay the price of letting go their comforts and possessions and
all that they had come to settle into in their exile, and go back for
the Lord's testimony.
Comparatively, out of the millions, a very small
thing and in weakness; coming back with nothing, coming back to a
desolate land - nothing there for them, nothing to bring with them,
weak, impoverished, stripped, an afflicted people in the land - a day of
small things.
But there is something very challenging in that word,
"Who hath despised the day of small things?"
We have not really got the
value and force of those words.
God Almighty
is committed to that which is standing for His glory.
That is no small
thing, you cannot despise that, and the fact remains that whenever God
has sought to get peculiar glory for Himself, He has taken something
which had no glory in itself.
Ah yes, you may despise it, but with God
it is elect, precious, it is something of tremendous value.
You would
never despise whatever the thing was in itself if it was standing wholly
for the glory of God, and you understand that such a thing finds God
committed in His anointing to that.
God has ever been under obligation to strip His instruments of their
own glory.
A Moses with all his Egyptian glory must go for forty years
to the desert to be emptied out and brought to be the man who says, "I
cannot!" before the glory of God in Israel can come in.
A Gideon's
twenty-two thousand must be brought down to three hundred if God is
going to be glorified.
But Moses now is not a man to be despised.
Let
them despise Moses and say, "Does the Lord speak only by Moses?
Does He
not speak by us also?
And they despised him, and it just puts in there,
"Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men that were upon the
face of the earth."
Now then, see what God will do.
God is
committed, and the glory of God appeared at the gate of the tabernacle
and took up the challenge.
And the three hundred of Gideon was a small thing, but not to be
despised.
The principle holds good.
Sometimes it takes the Lord years
and years to get us sufficiently empty, meek and small, to bring in
glory to Him...And that explains His dealings with us.
When He has got us
small enough and empty enough, then He will begin His real testimony in
us.
Not by might, nor by power of any kind whatsoever, but by My
Spirit said Jehovah of hosts, the Lord God of Sabaoth.
~T. Austin Sparks~
James 4:6 But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.
Humble hearts seek grace, and therefore they get it.
Humble hearts
yield to the sweet influences of grace...
And so it is bestowed on them
more and more largely.
Humble hearts lie in the valleys where streams of
grace are flowing...
And hence they drink of them,
Humble hearts are grateful for grace and give the LORD the glory of it...
And hence it is
consistent with His honor to give it to them.
Come, dear reader,
take a lowly place.
Be little in thine own esteem, that the LORD may
make much of thee.
Perhaps the sigh breaks out, "I fear I am not
humble."
It may be that this is the language of true humility.
Some are
proud of being humble...
And this is one of the very worst sorts of pride.
We are needy, helpless, undeserving, hell-deserving creatures...
And if
we are not humble we ought to be.
Let us humble ourselves because of our
sins against humility...
And then the LORD will give us to taste of His
favor.
It is grace which makes us humble...
And grace which finds in this
humility an opportunity for pouring in more grace.
Let us go down that
we may rise.
Let us be poor in spirit that God may make us rich.
Let us
be humble that we may not need to be humbled but may be exalted by the
grace of God.
~Charles Spurgeon~
The cross which my Lord bids me take up and carry may
assume different shapes.
I may have to content myself with a lowly and
narrow sphere, when I feel that I have capacities for much higher work.
I
may have to go on cultivating year after year, a field which seems to
yield me no harvests whatsoever.
I may be bidden to cherish kind and
loving thoughts about someone who has wronged me...
Be bidden speak to him
tenderly, and take his part against all who oppose him...
And crown him
with sympathy and succor.
I may have to confess my Master amongst those
who do not wish to be reminded of Him and His claims.
I may be called to
"move among my race, and show a glorious morning face," when my heart
is breaking.
There are many crosses, and every one of
them is sore and heavy.
None of them is likely to be sought out by me
of my own accord.
But never is Jesus so near me as when I lift my cross...
And lay it submissively on my shoulder...
And give it the welcome of a
patient and unmurmuring spirit.
He draws close, to
ripen my wisdom...
To deepen my peace...
To increase my courage...
To increase my power to be of use to others, through the very experience which is so
grievous and distressing...
And then...as I read on the seal of one of
those Scottish Covenanters whom Claverhouse imprisoned on the lonely
Bass, with the sea surging and sobbing round--I grow under the
load.
~Alexander Smellie
Use your cross as a crutch to help you on, and not as a stumblingblock to cast you down.
You may others from sadness to gladness beguile,
If you carry your cross with a smile.
Psalm 146:7 Which executeth judgment for the oppressed: which giveth food to the hungry. The LORD looseth the prisoners:
He has done it.
Remember Joseph, Israel in Egypt, Manasseh, Jeremiah,
Peter, and many others.
He can do it still.
He breaks the bars of brass
with a word and Snaps the fetters of iron with a look.
He is doing it.
In a thousand places troubled ones are coming forth to Light and Enlargement.
Jesus still proclaims the Opening of the prison to them
that are bound.
At this moment doors are Flying back and fetters are Dropping to the ground.
He will delight to SET YOU FREE, dear friend, if at this time you are
mourning because of sorrow, doubt, and fear.
It will be Joy to Jesus to
give you Liberty.
It will give Him as great a pleasure to Loose you as
it will be a pleasure to you to be loosed.
No, you have not to snap the
iron hand: the LORD Himself will do it.
Only trust Him, and He will be
your Emancipator.
Believe in Him in spite of the stone walls or the
manacles of iron.
Satan cannot hold you, sin cannot enchain you, even
despair cannot bind you if you will now believe in the LORD Jesus, in
the freeness of His grace, and the fullness of His power to save.
Defy the enemy, and let the word now before you be your song of deliverance...
Jehovah looseth the prisoners.
~Charles Spurgeon~
Exodus 14:30 Thus the LORD saved Israel that day out of the hand of the Egyptians; and Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the sea shore.
What
a relief that morning brought from the anxieties of the previous night!
Then, as they lifted up their eyes, they saw Pharaoh and the dreaded
Egyptian taskmaster in full pursuit; now they beheld the seashore strewn
with their bodies, stark and cold.
They would never see them again, nor
hear the crack of their whips.
So in life we are
permitted to see the dreaded temptations and evils of earlier days
suddenly deprived of all power to hurt us.
The Egyptians are dead upon
the shore; and we see the great work of the Lord.
Let us take comfort in
this.
In the pressure of trial...You are suffering
keenly; yet remember that no trial is allowed to come from any source in
which there is not a Divine meaning.
Nothing can enter your life, of
which God is not cognizant, and which He does not permit.
Though the
pressure of your trial is almost unbearable, you will one day see your
Egyptians dead.
Amid the temptations of the great
adversary of Sauls. - They may seem at this moment more than you can
bear; but God is about to deliver you.
He can so absolutely free you
from the habits of self-indulgence which you have contracted, and from
the perpetual yielding to temptation to which you have been prone...
That
some day you will look with amazement and thankfulness on these things,
as Egyptians dead on the seashore.
So also in the
presence of death. - Many believers dread, not the after-death, but the
act of dying.
But as the morning of eternity breaks, they will awake
with songs of joy to see death and the grave and all the evils that they
dreaded, like Egyptians, strewn on the shores of the sea of glass.
~F. B. Meyer~
