THE MESSAGE OF ZECHARIAH
Number 18
THE WAY GOD WORKS
Zechariah 8:8b
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VERSE 8 and particularly the second half of the verse express the way God works to bring the blessing he has promised. In the last sermon it was pointed out that verse 7 must be speaking beyond the immediate time of Zechariah because the promise is to bring God's people back from both the east and the west, that is from the whole world, and not just part of the world. So we are right to see that this prophecy stretches beyond the restoration of the nation of Israel in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah. The way God speaks through Zechariah in this passage has all the quality of the promise of the Gospel age which came in when the victorious Saviour sent the Holy Spirit to open up the way of salvation to the whole world. The promise in verse 8 is particularly the way God acts in the age of Christ. What is the way God promises to work.

THE GOAL OF GOD'S WORK.

The goal of God's work in Christ, and the goal of all the redemptive work of Christ, is to bring God's people back to Jerusalem. Jerusalem has a much wider connotation than simply the capital city of the nation of Israel in the Old Testament. Jerusalem is used as the name of the city of God where God's people dwell. In time this refers to the people of God being brought spiritually into the realm of God, that is the kingdom of God, and are made citizens of that realm, and dwell in that realm spiritually. It is a fact of the Gospel that there is a change of kingdom for those who are saved. Paul said he was sent to preach so that people were transferred from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light, and from the Kingdom of Satan to the kingdom of God. The promise given here was realised in a temporal and physical way when in the days of Ezra, the exiled Jews returned to Jerusalem and the temple was rebuilt. The prophecy goes further because the Jerusalem indicated is the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God. The redeemed of the Lord dwell in that city now spiritually, and in prayer and meditation in the Bible have true communion with God as their God, and this is an earnest and foretaste of what is their's in eternity in the heavenly Jerusalem.

GOD'S WORK IS TO MAKE A PEOPLE FOR HIMSELF.

The work of God is a complete work. The promise here made by the Lord is that he will bring a people to Jerusalem to be his people. Throughout the Old Testament history God gave his people his law, and called them to obey it, and he then promised to  bless them. This failed, and we see from this verse and others like Ezekiel 11:19-20 and 36:24-29 that God had always a much more perfect way, where he would work to win completely and for ever a people for himself. It is this making a people for himself that holds together the whole nature of the work of God, which fulfils the promise of blessing we have been thinking about in this chapter of Zechariah. Let us think through something of what is bound up in this blessing of God making us his people.

a. Truth and righteousness.

In the NIV we have the translation "and I will be faithful and righteous to them as their God". The old authorised version of the Bible translates is as "I will be their God in truth and righteousness". Both translations are saying the same thing but we need to be clear what God is saying by this phrase.

God is not just saying that he will be a faithful God and not let his people down, and that he will always deal with his people righteously. This is of course so true. God could act in no other way with his people. God is always faithful in his dealings and always righteous, but there is more to this phrase than this. What God is promising is that he will truly be the God of his people. In other words God is saying that there is no fiction about it. He will truly be our God, and we his people.

For God to be truly our God, then something must be done to remove all the impediment which prevents God accepting us as his people, and making us his subjects for ever. This means that when God says he will be our God in truth and righteousness, he is saying that he will do all that is necessary for us to be his subjects in truth and righteousness. We can't be truly God's people while our sin is not dealt with, and God's justice not satisfied. Until the problem of our sin is resolved, we must be under God's condemnation, and suffer rejection from God and rejection by God. While our sin remains we must be people of hell and for hell, and not people of God, so the work of God bound up in God being our God in truth and righteousness is a work which answers the problem of our sin.

By God saying he will be our God and we his people, he is saying that he will redeem us and provide that we might be justified in his sight, so that he may declare us righteous and fit for his presence. So we have all the promise of redemption in and through Christ bound up in this promise. Only when our sin is purged can we stand in the presence of God and be his people. So the Gospel is that as many as received him, and only in receiving him, Jesus Christ the Saviour provided by God, have we the right to be called the children of God. We are born of God, because by God giving his Son to bear our guilt on the cross, we who believe are purged of all our sin, and are seen as being without sin in the sight of God.

In Christ God can truly call himself our God and we his people, because it is through Christ that we are made fit for such a privilege. It is because of Christ and his work for us that we can have the Spirit of adoption whereby we feel and know God as our dear Father. We are truly God's people in truth and righteousness because Christ has made it so, and made it possible.

b. Truth not fiction.

The truth bound up in this promise that God will make us his people and he will be our God truly goes even further. When we turn to Ezekiel 11:19-20 we see what this is. God not only makes us legally his Son's by answering our need due to our sin, he also deals with the problem of our sinfulness, and makes us to have the character that befits being his children.

The action of God declared in this Ezekiel passage and in others in this book and in the book of Jeremiah is that God "will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit within them. He will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. Then they will follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws." The way God works is nothing if it is not perfect and complete. His work is not to give us a little help on the way, but to do the whole work. So we see from this Ezekiel passage that God does not only atone for his people's sin and so makes them able to enter his presence, but he changes and renews his people so that they are made holy and fit for his presence, with an undivided desire and purpose to live according to his will.

The promise in God making us his people is a promise of new birth which Christ made possible by his redeeming us by his blood. We become God's people by new birth into his eternal kingdom, and by the gift of the life for this kingdom which is truly holy and in tune with the mind of God and all the principles of his kingdom.

This blessing is not properly understood so often. This new birth is a complete and perfect new life. Paul describes it as dying with Christ and rising to new life with Christ. When Christ died he not only died to atone for our sin fully, but also died to belonging to this world of sin. We died with him, so our sin was atoned for by death in him, and our life in this world ended by death. The condemned sinner died for ever. In Christ we also rose again with Christ to a new life in the heavenly realm and as citizens of the new Jerusalem. This is a real and true resurrection. We are new born and a new person, and like Christ we partake of his holy and new resurrection life. In this new life we are created holy. As Paul puts it in Ephesians 4 we are created to be like God in righteousness and true holiness. We have the holy character which conforms to the mind of God. We truly are a new creation. Because of this new life we are truly God's people in reality because we have the family likeness, and conform to the family characteristics.

This is truth not fiction. Although while we continue to live in this life, our life in this earthly body is not without sin, this does not effect the reality of our new creation which can no more be touched by sin. As Paul puts is in Romans 7 when he says that it is not himself that does the evil, but sin dwelling in his flesh in his earthly body. In our person, because in this earthly body still resides our sinful flesh, we sin and sin often and horribly, but in our new creation we remain undefiled, because it is not this new creation which sins. This truth is hard to grasp but it is the teaching of the New Testament, and this does make the promise of God that we will be his people truly a fact and not a fiction.

SUMMING UP.

Now let us sum up what we have been considering. God's promise is that we will be his people in truth and righteousness. In other words God is promising that our membership of his family is perfect, and there is nothing which falls short of this membership. To be truly God's people and inheritors of his kingdom we must be holy as God is holy, and we must be free altogether from sin both in its guilt and in its power. 

We must not be guilty of any sin, so our sin must be completely atoned for, and this God achieved through his Son who purged our sin in his body on the cross, and satisfied all the demands of God's law on our behalf. So in Christ there is no condemnation against us and we are eligible for heaven.

Together with this we must have no disposition to sin, and we must be in character and mind holy like God is holy, so we have been born again by the Spirit and raised to life through Christ and in Christ to life in the Kingdom of heaven. We have died to this world, and in a true and living way we have been born again into the kingdom of God. We are truly of the life of heaven by the sovereign work of God in Christ.

In this life the fulness of this new life is not seen because in this earthly body sin still dwells, but it does not in our new creation which has to express itself through this earthly body while in this life. We shall be free of the corruption of the flesh when we are given new resurrection bodies in heaven.

There is no idea here that we have in this teaching a freedom to sin. It is impossible for the people of God who are true people of God as described in this sermon and in the words of verse 8 to do anything other than hate sin of every kind, however small in the eyes of the world, for we have the mind and heart of God and we hate sin. So like Paul we mourn over our sin in this life and hate it and turn away from it, and seek to be rid of it and to live without any falling short of the holiness of the new creation we are.

In this new life, in fact, is the only hope of any holy living in this life. Without this holy life of our new creation all effort to be holy is simply a form of spiritual pride and vain glory before God, because nothing we do is ever holy as God is holy. We are only holy as God is holy by becoming a new creation.

Let us take hold of this wonderful blessing, and live in the heavenlies which is our home.