Text: Zechariah 4:1-14
Title: When It All Seems Dark Type: Expository
Purpose: Encourage hearer with the truth that God is light and victory.
Main Idea: God will get it done.
Opening: And Pound Us To Dust. In 1992, a big budget version of The Last of the Mohicans arrived in the movie theaters. I, of course, went to see it with my friends (we saw everything back in those days). I went in with no knowledge of The Last of the Mohicans and came out loving it. There are many parts of that movie which stuck with me. One of the more dismal ones is a conversation between Major Duncan and Colonel Munro. Munro is holding a British fort against the French, and it is not going well. Duncan asks Munro about “the situation”, and Munro replies in this way: “The situation is that his guns are bigger than mine and he has more of them. We keep our heads down while his troops dig 30 yards of trench a day. When those trenches are 200 yards from the fort and within range, he’ll bring in his 15-inch mortars, lob explosive rounds over our walls, and pound us to dust.”
The situation, in other words, was a losing situation. It was a losing situation and Munro knew it was a losing situation. He was not going to be able to hold the fort and he knew he was not going to be able to hold the fort. He had grand designs, great things he wanted to do for his country, but now knew he wasn’t going to realize those grand designs, wasn’t going to be able to do those great things for his country. He knew he was going to fail and he felt that failure already. He felt hopelessness. He felt despair. He felt darkness; felt he was in the darkness (that’s how I would describe it; I would describe that as darkness or coldness).
And that darkness/coldness is what a guy named Zerubbabel was feeling a couple thousand years before Munro and The Last of the Mohicans. Zerubbabel was the governor of the postexilic/restoration community that was trying to rebuild Jerusalem and restore The Temple. He was just trying to rebuild Jerusalem and restore The Temple and it didn’t look to him or to anybody else like he was going to succeed, like that was going to happen. It looked to him and everyone else that he was going to lose, to fail. It looked to him and everyone else like the rebuilding project was hopeless. And so he and the entire postexilic/restoration community were in the darkness. They were in the cold.
And that darkness, that coldness, that hopelessness is what God addresses as He continues ministering to the people through the ministry of the prophet Zechariah.
Read Zechariah 4:1-14
When It All Seems Dark. That’s what the prophet Zechariah is telling us about here in Zechariah 4. That’s what God is telling the prophet Zechariah here in Zechariah 4 (once again, Zechariah is largely confused by what he is seeing/experiencing) and what God is telling us about through the prophet Zechariah here in Zechariah 4. When it all seems dark. What to do/think/feel/understand/believe/cling to when it all seems dark (or cold; whichever you prefer).
As you have no doubt guessed by now, Zechariah 4 records yet another of Zechariah’s eight “Night Visions”, the eight-fold audio-visual revelations/revelation he received from God on the night of February 24th, 519 BC, the visions/revelations/revelation which each have their own individuals messages but which together have a large message about God blessing the postexilic/restoration community Zechariah was ministering to at the time, a larger message which further supports the “Return to me” thematic message of the book. Zechariah 4 records the fifth of those visions. The NIV calls it “The Gold Lampstand and the Two Olive Trees”. I think most others call it something similar. Whatever you call it, it is the most static of the eight night visions. All the others have some sort of movement to them; there is action; a little story is played out. This one does not have movement or action or story. This one is just an image or picture. There is just a solid gold lampstand with a bowl at the top and seven lights on it, with seven channels to the lights. What exactly this lampstand looked like is anyone’s guess. I liked this picture I found (show background picture) but I also saw several similar interpretations. In any case, it is a light source, a light source that is unfamiliar to us today who live in the era of electric lighting but a light source nonetheless, a great light source (this lampstand would have put out a lot of light), a perfect light source, in fact (seven is the number of perfection or completeness; since this lampstand has seven individual lights/lamps, so it is a perfect or complete light source). In conjunction with that are two olive trees…one on the right of the bowl or lampstand and the other on its left. As Zechariah says later in the chapter (verse 12), these olive trees are pouring out golden oil through two gold pipes into the lampstand/bowl of the lampstand (you see that in this background picture; show background picture). That’s it. That’s all that the vision is. That is all that happens in the vision. Zechariah just sees this lampstand/perfect or complete source of light being fed by these two trees.
He sees that, but he does not understand it. He has to ask the angel who is leading him through these visions “What are these, my lord?” The angel answers with a question “Do you not know what these are?”; he is either leading Zechariah along or somewhat surprised that Zechariah can’t figure it out on his own. Zechariah replies, “No, my lord,” (lord there being lower-case lord, not LORD God but sir) and the angel begins explaining it to him. The angel begins explaining the lampstand. But he doesn’t explain it in a straight-forward way; he doesn’t say, “This lampstand is this.” Instead, he explains it with a series of statements, rather esoteric yet encouraging statements. The first statement is This is the word of the LORD to Zerubbabel: ‘Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the LORD Almighty; this is probably the most familiar line in the book. The second statement is, “What are you, O mighty mountain? Before Zerubbabel you will become level ground. Then he will bring out the capstone to shouts of ‘God bless it! God bless it!’ ”; this is close to my favorite line; it is very similar to what Jesus taught about faith moving mountains (Matthew 21:21). The third statement is “The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this temple; his hands will also complete it; that is a promise, a direct promise that Zerubbabel will finish what he started; that his work will get done. And the final statement is “Who despises the day of small things? Men will rejoice when they see the plumb line in the hand of Zerubbabel; that is an insight, a reminder that the way something starts is not indicative of the way it will end, that just because something started small (as Zerubbabel’s rebuilding project did) doesn’t mean it won’t turn out big. That is the explanation the angel gives of the lampstand; those four statements, each of which are about the completion of the rebuilding project, the completion of the rebuilding project which Zerubbabel and the others didn’t think would happen, are what he says the lampstand is or means. Now Zechariah then tries to put it a little more plainly. He knows that explanation is a little unclear, knows it is really an explanation of what the lampstand does more than what it is, so he adds “(These seven are the eyes of the LORD, which range throughout the earth.)”; this lampstand is God, to some degree, is an expression of God’s involvement with the world. You put all those things together, then, and this is what then angel and the prophet are telling us: the lampstand is the efficacy of God, the ability of God to do or get done what He wants done. That’s probably the best explanation of the lampstand. That’s really what you get by combining all five statements and putting them in their context: the efficacy of God, the efficiency of God, the sure and certain effectiveness of God, the potential energy of God, God’s ability to do what He wants to do/get done what He wants to get done. That efficacy is a real thing. How many times does Scripture talk about it? How many times does God tell us in Scripture, “I’m going to do what I want to do. I’m going to accomplish what I want to accomplish. I’m going to achieve what I want to achieve. Nothing is too difficult for Me. Nothing is impossible for me.”? I don’t know, but it/He says that a lot. So this efficacy is a real thing. And a lampstand is a perfect symbol of that efficacy. Light is a perfect symbol of that efficacy because light is always working; light is always accomplishing, achieving, effective. I learned this from the popular comedian Gallagher. When I was in high school, a couple of friends and I watched a Gallagher video. One of the jokes he told was this: “Why do they put the little on/off words on a light switch? If the light’s on, you can see that it’s on. If the light’s off, you can’t see to read.” And that is true. If a light’s on, you know it’s on. If light is in the vicinity, you know light is in the vicinity. Light is effective by its very nature; it can’t be not effective. It is not like any other appliance which needs to be used or activated; it is active in and of itself. It always overcomes darkness. It always overcomes cold. It always illuminates, always warms. And that kind of light, the greatest kind of light, was there for the postexilic/restoration community. It was there behind their rebuilding project. The light was on for them.
But that is only half of the vision. The other half was the olive trees. Zechariah asks about them as well. He has to ask the angel about them twice for some reason. When the angel finally answers, he says These are the two who are anointed to serve the Lord of all the earth. So the angel says the two trees which are feeding the effective light of God are two servants of God. Undeniably, he means two human servants of God. He means that the ones feeding this light which is behind the rebuilding project are two people. Most scholars think those two people are Zerubbabel and Joshua the high priest, and that’s probably true. But it is probably also true that they are Zechariah and Haggai. It is probably also true that they are two people whose names we don’t know; there were lots of people contributing to this project, as we see in later chapters of Zechariah, so they could be the olive trees as well. The olive trees, in fact, are probably not two specific people but just any people who contribute to the work of God. God, as we know, does His work through people most of the time; it might seem strange at first to think of people as feeding God’s work/light, but that is how He usually does it. Pastor Beny has a poster on the door of his office which reads, “American Baptists serving as the hands and feet of Christ”. The Jesus on that poster is made up of pictures of all these Indonesian pastors. And there is a truth to that. We are, as has often been said, the hands and feet of Christ or God. We are the ones He works through, the tools through which He interacts with the world, the vessels through which He shines His light. It doesn’t have to be that way, but He chooses for it to be this way. And so these olive trees represent that idea; they represent those tools, those vessels; they represent the need for those tools and vessels. They are God’s way of telling the postexilic restoration community, “Keep working! Don’t stop the work on the rebuilding project no matter how hopeless and dark and cold it all seems.”
That’s the situation as God revealed it to Zechariah; that’s the right way to see the situation as God revealed it to Zechariah. And we are in that same situation today. This is still the right way to look at our situation today. We too have a God-given, very important project to accomplish. We too have grand designs. For me it is the making of disciples, the advancing of the Kingdom. Maybe for you it is pastoring or evangelizing or teaching. And at times it looks like this project is hopeless. At times it seems like we who are working on this project are in the dark and the cold. This is particularly true in our time when we are told that church attendance is going down across the country, church giving is going down (meaning we have less resources to work with), interest in The Faith or any faith is going down. I sometimes despair of every making disciples. I sometimes despair of ever making even my daughter a disciple (that’s the number one disciple I have to make, and I sometimes despair of doing it; I sometimes think the world climate is so bad, so hostile, so enticing that I will never make a disciple of her). I imagine you feel the same way about your grand designs. But this lampstand is still here. It is still here for us providing illumination and warmth. God is still accomplishing things not by might or power but by His spirit. Mountains are still being leveled. Small beginnings are still resulting in huge ends. God’s eyes are still ranging through the world. “God is not dead nor doth He sleep”; “God’s not dead; He’s surely alive; He’s living on the inside roaring like a lion”. And we need to keep feeding that. He is not dependent on us by any means, but He has asked us to contribute, to be the olive trees feeding His light/warmth, and we need to do so. You think of David who was told he was not going to be the one to build the first Temple; he still stockpiled material for Solomon to use (it wasn’t going to happen in his day, but it was going to happen, so he was preparing for it). Or think of Sam in The Lord Of The Rings; as he and Frodo were trudging toward Mt Doom to destroy the Ring, he was rationing their food so there would be enough for the return journey. That’s what we need to do. I don’t know what project God has you working on. But I do know that, dark and cold and hopeless as it may at times seem, He wants you to keep working on it. I know that His lampstand keeps shining as we olive trees keep feeding it. I know we are not going to fail; we, by His light and warmth, are going to succeed.
Closing: The Supernatural Power Of The Holy Ghost. You may not know this, but Zechariah 4 has been the inspiration for many of our hymns and spiritual songs. This is a list of a few of these (show picture). It comes from a web site called Hymnary, which catalogues the hymns of our Faith (not the contemporary songs, but the hymns). It not only lists these hymns but associates them with various Scriptures (so the worship leader can match them to whatever text is being used in any given church service). These are the ones it lists for Zechariah 4. Some of them don’t seem specific to Zechariah 4; “Come Thou Almighty King” and “O Little Town of Bethlehem”, for example. Others do. “Who Hath Despised the Day of the Small Things” clearly comes from this passage, as does “O Great Mountain, Who Art Thou”. There is another song which comes from Zechariah 4, though, which isn’t listed here. I couldn’t find that song anywhere, in fact. I’m not sure what it’s called or who wrote it or who performed it. I just know that sometime somewhere I heard a church choir or worship team singing the words of Zechariah 4:6. They very enthusiastically sang that phrase:
Not by might, nor by power,
But by the Spirit says the Lord.
Then they added
It is the supernatural power of the Holy Ghost, the Holy Ghost.
I did find other songs using those same words, but I couldn’t find this exact version. I know I heard it, though.
Not by might, nor by power,
But by the Spirit says the Lord.
It is the supernatural power of the Holy Ghost, the Holy Ghost.
And that is what Zechariah is simultaneously being told and telling us here. It is not as dark as it seems. It is not as cold as you think. It is not hopeless. Whatever it is that we are trying to accomplish and want so badly to accomplish in the name of the Lord will be accomplished through us by the Lord. That’s the message of the lampstand and the olive trees. It is going to be done. God is going to get it done. He wants you to get it done with Him.
And that’s the One who wants us to return to Him. The One who is our lampstand. The One who gives us light and warmth. The One who levels mountains. The One who accomplishes what needs to be accomplished for us and through us.
