I Still Believe
Sept 7, 2008 Zech 8:1-8
Intro:
I think I used to be more of a dreamer. I was never a pure idealist, with a grand vision of the perfect future “if only…”, but I have been close.
I remember studying Romans 6 and hearing the Holy Spirit loudly saying “YES! It IS possible for you to live a holy life, and to defeat the power of sin in your life!!”
I remember listening to a powerful sermon about really, honestly embracing Jesus, making Him the centre, and feeling so moved and inspired that I walked out of that sanctuary and actually jumped into the air and yelled my “YES!!”, to many rather strange looks from the others around me…
I remember starting in ministry eighteen years ago, with a group of about 12 teens playing a game that ended with all of us hiding in this one dark, close place, where I then led us in a prayer to start our year and I just knew that God was going to change these lives for eternity.
And now I’m 37 years old. I’ve been in ministry for pretty much 18 years. And I confess, it sometimes seems harder to dream.
My belief that we CAN live a holy life is confronted with 18 years of trying and sometimes failing more than succeeding.
My inspiration to live with Jesus always at the centre is confronted with 18 years of regularly looking and seeing how many times I’ve let other parts of life push Jesus out of the center.
My conviction that God is going to change the lives of people to whom I have the privilege of ministering and shape their eternities is confronted with 18 years of the reality that that doesn’t always happen.
I still believe. I still dream. But now I find I have to guard those beliefs and dreams more closely. I have to live in the tension of the grand dream on one hand and the reality that is today on the other hand. I have to find a way to believe the dream, see the reality clearly, and choose today only those things that will take us the very next step from the reality to the dream.
Background:
Last Sunday in our ongoing study of Zechariah we read a hard passage, asking us a very penetrating question about whether all the stuff we are doing is really for God, or for ourselves. It left us in a place of confessing and repenting.
Today we move into chapter 8, and the confrontational tone changes completely. One scholar explains, “Abruptly, the tone of rebuke in chap 7 modulates into a description of Zion’s glorious future… in (chap 7) Israel was to repent and live righteously after the punishment of captivity; here she is to repent and live righteously because of the promise of her future restoration.” (Klein, New American Commentary, p. 232. Klein quotes Baker in the second half of this quotation). We move into chapter 8, and we see God’s dream – His grand, captivating, amazing vision. And it is powerful.
Zech 8:1-5 (NLT)
“1 Then another message came to me from the Lord of Heaven’s Armies: 2 “This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies says: My love for Mount Zion is passionate and strong; I am consumed with passion for Jerusalem!
3 “And now the Lord says: I am returning to Mount Zion, and I will live in Jerusalem. Then Jerusalem will be called the Faithful City; the mountain of the Lord of Heaven’s Armies will be called the Holy Mountain.
4 “This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies says: Once again old men and women will walk Jerusalem’s streets with their canes and will sit together in the city squares. 5 And the streets of the city will be filled with boys and girls at play.”
Our Passionate God (vs.1-2):
This passage is incredible. Beautiful, moving, inspiring. It reminds me of those dreams that I’ve had, and rekindles them. I pray it will do the same for you as we walk through it.
These first 2 verses repeat something we saw earlier in Zechariah, and God takes them further here in chapter 8. What we read here is an emotional explosion from the mouth of the God of the Universe towards His people. Notice the words, “love” that is “passionate” and “strong”, a God who is “consumed with passion for Jerusalem”!
My friends, our God is not some stately old intellectual sitting calmly on some royal throne. Here we see our God with incredibly strong emotion, exuberantly and loudly jumping off the page with energy and life and enthusiasm, because of His love for His people. God is like the young man who has found the love of his life and can’t hold it in, wants to shout it from the mountain tops, has such strong emotion inside that he has to get it out and so even runs up to perfect strangers and grabs them by the shoulders and shouts, “I love her!! I love her!!”
And that is what God feels when He looks and you and me, His people today. I read “Jerusalem” in the passage as referring to God’s people together. His community, His church.
A number of years ago I was doing some pre-marriage counseling for a couple from out of town who got married here. They were a great couple, we enjoyed our time together, and I remember this one session where I try to teach couples how to be properly assertive in making their needs known to each other, and I have them take turns sharing “something you wish your partner did for you more often.” As you can imagine, this often leads us quickly into conflict resolution skills… so maybe I should give you the “warning – do not try this at home without the presence of skilled professionals…” caveat… I remember what she said clearly: “I would like you to be excited about me sometimes… to come in the door, after I’ve been working out and agonizing over what to wear for you and doing my hair and make-up and all the while thinking about you and how I want you to be pleased with me, and I’d like to see you get excited about me. I know you can get excited sometimes, I’ve seen you watch football and jump off the couch and hoot and holler when your team scores on the goalie…” Ok, she didn’t say that, I just had to make sure the guys are still listening to me… But she said, “I want you to be excited like that about me…”.
Look at Zech 8:1-2, and hear this – the God of the Universe, “the Lord of Heaven’s Armies” – is excited about us. Emotional towards us. Expressive, explosive, energetic. He looks at us, together as His people, and is “consumed with passion” for us.
Quick question before moving on – what about us. God is “consumed with passion for us as His community.” Are we “consumed with passion” in return?
God’s Dream (vs. 3-5):
The next section is God’s dream, that grand vision, that incredible portrayal of what the future can, and will, be. In vs. 3 God talks of re-naming Jerusalem and mount Zion, both powerful descriptors which renew the covenant God has made with His people. I’d love to stop and explore this in great depth but we don’t have time and I want to move to the picture God paints of His city in vs. 4-5: “Once again old men and women will walk Jerusalem’s streets with their canes and will sit together in the city squares. 5 And the streets of the city will be filled with boys and girls at play.”
First I have to remind us of the context. This city was completely destroyed almost 70 years previous. The glorious home of their ancestors, the stories of old, where they had lived and worked in peace and blessing, reduced to a pile of rubble. A small group of people had returned, maybe only a fifth of the population, and into this reality comes the voice of God, painting an incredible picture of the future. Making a promise, casting a vision, dreaming a dream.
And in this dream, the two most vulnerable members of the community epitomize the restoration. The elderly will be able to move freely and easily, the streets will again be level with no boulders to climb, no rubble to trip over, no cracks to jump. Community will be restored, old friends will be able to walk with their canes to the city squares where they can sit together and remember and share and cry and laugh. This is exactly why we are working so hard to build an elevator in our church, for the same vision. And at the other end of life, with the second vulnerable group, God paints a picture of “the streets of the city… filled with boys and girls at play.” It won’t be a dangerous construction zone, it will be safe and accessible and finished. The word “play” means “laugh, play, entertain, joke, be happy, hold a tournament” (Ralph Smith, Word Biblical Commentary, p. 231). And that, says God, is what is coming.
OK, that’s great for the “dreamers”, but that ain’t reality…
I don’t believe that the fundamental nature of people has changed all that much in the 2500 years since God spoke those promises, so I’m pretty sure of what happened next because it still happens. And the next verses, 6-8, confirm my suspicion.
In response to this glorious vision of restoration between a passionate God and the community of Jerusalem, there were some “naysayers”. Some “dream-killers”, as the dreamers call them. They tend to call themselves “realists”. Some who heard the words, and then looked at the streets of Jerusalem and the resources they had, and responded with something like this: “OH REALLY?!?! Have you seen this place? Have you looked around? There isn’t even anything we could call “streets” left here, just piles of rubble and destruction. Nice image, of old people and kids and everything, but who is going to do it all? And with what money?? And do you even have a clue how much effort that would take? Uh-uh, I don’t think so…”
Zech 8:6-8
“6 “This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies says: All this may seem impossible to you now, a small remnant of God’s people. But is it impossible for me? says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies. 7 “This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies says: You can be sure that I will rescue my people from the east and from the west. 8 I will bring them home again to live safely in Jerusalem. They will be my people, and I will be faithful and just toward them as their God.”
Is it possible?
This whole theme of dreams and visions comes to a head right here: “is it really possible?” When I was young, I had that youthful idealism that said “absolutely!!” We CAN end stupid poverty in our world. We CAN decrease our dependence on fossil fuels that are causing catastrophic global warming. We CAN form a community of people who put “love first” and live in a radically counter-cultural Biblical community that changes our neighbourhood. We CAN live holy lives, with Jesus at the centre, which changes our lives for eternity.
But now I get older, and I no longer find myself jumping at the “Absolutely!!” I still believe, but now in the face of the vision and dream I find myself saying, “Yes, if…” And the biggest “if” comes straight out of these verses in Zech 8. The biggest “if” is: “if God does it.” God confronts the naysayers and the dream-killers directly: “is it impossible for me?”
And now it comes even closer to home for me. Is it my dream or God’s? Is it something I am going to do, or that God is going to do? Is it something I’ve looked at and said, “impossible”, but God looks at and says, “is it impossible for me??”
What’s Your Dream?
It comes down to this for us: what is the dream, and is it God’s dream? what is the vision, and is it God’s vision?? What is your dream?
Do we dream of being truly forgiven? Maybe you feel that is “impossible” after what you have done. Do we dream of being truly filled with the power of the Holy Spirit? Maybe you feel that is impossible. Do we dream of being truly obedient to God in all areas of life? Maybe you feel that is impossible based on our track record thus far. Do we dream of being healed of sickness, grief, pain, and estrangement in relationships? Maybe we feel that is impossible. Do we dream of being effective in extending the Kingdom of God to the poor and broken, to the hundreds of thousands of people who live right here in Edmonton who are far from God?
What is your dream?? And is it God’s dream??? Those examples are a resounding “Absolutely!” So then, finally, it comes down to faith. Faith in the power and character of God to keep His promises. What is your dream??
Corporate Prayer:
We’ve not yet had our time of sharing and prayer this morning, on purpose. Because I wanted to ask that question, and use that as our agenda for prayer.
I shared that it has gotten harder for me to dream, and maybe that is true for some of you also. Maybe some of you who have lived longer and seen more than me have an even tougher time, but I choose to believe that you are here because you still believe that God change things. And that is why we pray. So if you are comfortable, what is your “dream” that we can take in the form of a prayer to God together?
Prayer:
Lord of Heaven’s Armies, you said “All this may seem impossible to you now, a small remnant of God’s people. But is it impossible for me?” We agree that no, it isn’t. So we stand in faith and say that we are sure that You “will rescue (Your) people from the east and from the west, (You) will bring (us) home again to live safely… (We) will be (Your) people, and (You) will be faithful and just toward (us) as (our) God. Amen.
Bridge:
As we kick off our fall season of ministries, we dream in all of them that God would use them to mold us into Christ-likeness. We believe that God will do that which seems “impossible”. We believe that God will take each opportunity, each act of service, each expression of love to one another and use that for His glory and His Kingdom.
So next we are going to introduce one of those ministries, our Sunday School, and each of the teachers and classes, and dismiss our kids to go with their teachers to find their rooms, and then we’ll introduce our Adult Sunday School time as well.
So can I have our CE people and all the teachers come up here, and we’ll do the introductions.
