The prophecies of Zechariah, prophecies of Zechariah chapter
four, first part of verse 10.
For who hath despised the day of small
things?
Prophecies of Haggai chapter two, verse three.
Who is left among you that saw this
house in its former glory?
And how do ye see it now?
Is it not in your eyes as nothing
yet?
And the prophecies of Malachi chapter three, verses
16 and 17.
Then they that feared the Lord spake one
with another.
The Lord hearkened and heard.
The book of remembrance was written before him
for them that feared the Lord and that
caught upon his name.
They shall be mine, saith the Lord of
hosts, even mine own possession in the day
that I make.
And I will spare them as a man
spareth his own son that serveth him.
Who hath despised the day of small things?
This is among many matters which it is
very necessary for us to have made clear
in our hearts and in our minds to
have our mentality adjusted just as
a ship after a long voyage spend some
time in having its compass adjusted because of
interferences and variations.
So it is with us on our way
it does become necessary from time to time
to stop and think again get our minds
corrected and to be free from those influences
that upset the balance and the poise and
the right appreciation.
This matter then of greatness and smallness is
an important matter.
A good deal of confusion about this and
that confusion can result in our missing the
way entirely being found in an altogether false
position.
We need to know what we mean by
greatness and what we mean by smallness.
It's quite evident from the scriptures which we
have read that a certain kind of appraisal
a certain kind of observation resulted in a
false judgment which brought the people perilously near
to calamity.
The Lord reading their hearts used this word
as to their attitude and their reactions despised
despised the day of small things and if
you look carefully into these prophecies you will
see that from God's standpoint it wasn't as
small as they thought.
An altogether different point of view about the
matter.
You see we have a way of confusing
bigness with greatness and they are two entirely
different things.
Bigness may be in outward dimensions and bulk
and the impression that a thing makes upon
your senses.
Greatness may have none of those characteristics at
all.
You may not even be able to take
its measure or see any measure in it
from human standpoints and in God's sight it
may be very great.
There's a lot of difference between bigness and
greatness from God's standpoint.
Just as there is a great deal of
difference between littleness and smallness.
I know that's going to give our friends
who are not familiar with the English language
a good deal of trouble.
You know you can be a little person.
Things can be so little, so petty, so
paltry, so mean, so despicable.
Little but they can be quite small and
of tremendous value.
You would sooner have an ounce of gold
than a ton of iron.
In intrinsic value.
Some of you may have read the life
story of Madame Curie, the discoverer of radium.
You have, you remember, the tons and tons
and tons of by-products from the guestworks
unloaded in her backyard.
Working upon this mountain of stuff and out
of it the smallest particle of radium.
There's your comparison.
Big and great.
In that almost imperceptible speck of radium the
immense qualities, values, potentiality, all subtracted
from this great mass of stuff.
The difference between bigness and greatness isn't there?
Well you see what I mean when I
say it is so necessary for us to
get adjusted in our mentality about things lest
we go astray.
Smallness we may judge merely in an
objective and outward way.
They owe it so small and despise it
and yet here this day of small things
may be a tremendously potential day.
Fear not, little flock, it is your father's
good pleasure to give you.
There's something little that is immensely potential and
you have only to run your eyes through
the bible see again and again what God
made of apparently little things that would have
been despised and set aside, overlooked, scorned by
those who always had this mentality of bigness.
Now look at these passages and you will
see that there was something here that was
very precious to God although in their natural
judgment the people were calling it so small.
The last passage which we read on the
end of the old testament an end time
finds God saying in another translation and version
they shall be mine saith the Lord in
the day that I do make a peculiar
treasure.
They that feared the Lord, just that little
company who feared the Lord, spake upon his
name, fought upon his name, were occupied with
him.
Something so precious that our translation doesn't convey
how valuable it was to the Lord.
You know these two words the Lord hearkened
and heard.
It's not just a repetition of two words
or the same word in two different forms.
The first word signifies the Lord bent down,
inclined.
The Lord said here's something to take note
of, here's something to which to listen, here's
something to hold our attention, God's attention.
The Lord inclined, listened.
Her and the picture is the Lord saying
here get the book, the great book, the
book of life and put this down, put
the names of these people in.
The book was kept, the book of remembrance.
Those that feared the Lord, that fought upon
his name, they shall be mine saith the
Lord in that day that I do make
even a peculiar treasure.
And that was right in this same setting
as you know, this section of the bible
including Haggai, Zechariah.
What was it that made for this greatness
over against what people were calling so little
and despising as such?
What does the Lord look for?
Well here it's quite clear, this little company
comparatively was a disciplined and chastened company.
They had come out of the fires of
Babylon, they had been through all the disciplines
of those years in exile.
They were of those who had hung their
harps upon the willows.
He said how can we sing the songs
of Zion in a strange land?
Songs of Zion.
See where their hearts were?
And then the day came when the proclamation
was made you can go back, you can
all go back to Zion.
The vast majority decided that their position was
a very much more comfortable one than it
would be back there in Zion and decided
to stay.
And this little company with all the hardships,
the difficulties, the sufferings, the toil and much
more involved in going back went back because
their hearts were in Zion and Zion was
in their heart.
See the heart relationship to the Lord and
to that which is dearest to his heart.
So they were always thinking upon his name,
talking together about his interest.
They're a little company comparatively, a despised people.
I expect all those who stayed behind thought
they were fools.
Well be it so, what did the Lord
think?
That was the matter.
That was the point.
And this is what the Lord thought.
A chastened, a disciplined people whose hearts were
for the Lord.
Small, if you like, read the prophecies of
Jeremiah.
What a book that is.
Oh, what a time it takes and what
patience it takes to work your way through
the whole of Jeremiah's prophecies.
What a big book.
And what little books these are.
Malachi and Haggai.
We call them the minor prophets.
But what have you got for the Lord
in Jeremiah?
A major prophet, if you like, but there's
nothing for the Lord in it.
Little minor prophets about something very precious to
the Lord.
The discipline has taken place.
The chastening has been carried out.
The heart has been searched.
The Lord has got something.
You say small.
Oh no, not in the eyes of the
Lord.
Something very great.
That is what is precious to the Lord.
That is what he is looking for.
And that is what he calls great.
Though looking at it with natural eyes and
the eyes of man always judging by outward
size and appearance made this time.
From the Lord's standpoint there's much intrinsic value
and with him everything is a matter of
intrinsic value, not bulk.
For Jesus has put his finger upon that
principle in another connection.
If the salt has lost its salt, what's
the good of it?
Bulk.
Tons of it.
It's useless.
You'd better throw it out in the street.
It's useless.
A teaspoonful of salt with its savor in
it is of more value than tons of
savorless salt.
It's intrinsic value.
It's a divine element.
The sting of God.
The vital quality.
And unto that there has to be suffering.
There has to be chastening.
There has to be discipline.
The heart has to be searched.
The work has to go very deep.
A people in line with God's abiding intention.
God was there in figure, in type, in
the temple, represented.
God's heavenly and abiding age-long thought.
The place of his dwelling amongst his people.
It's an eternal thought.
All the world was, that was in God's
mind, to dwell with men.
All the way through the Bible is just
that.
God's with us.
Right on to the end of the Bible
is the tabernacle of God is with men.
He should dwell with them and be their
God.
God's everlasting thought concerning his house, his dwelling
place in the midst of his people.
There's the figure.
There's the type.
We know the reality.
Spiritual reality.
And here are people in line with God's
thought.
In Babylon, God's thought did not obtain at
all.
That was not his place.
Here it is.
And the Lord always calls that spiritually great.
When you are wholly centered upon the thing
that he has ever had in mind.
A people right in line with God's eternal
thought.
A people right in touch with himself as
to what it is that he ever desires
to have.
He's got that.
Let that people be small from outward standards
and despised by men of distorted judgment.
God says that's great.
Don't you despise them.
Who has despised?
Who has despised the day of small things?
It's a rebuke that's in that interrogation.
It's a correction.
Pause and adjust your judgment, your standards.
A people still still with the vision in
their hearts of what God intended and would
have.
May have been discouraged, greatly disheartened, perplexed about
it all as to the possibility of it,
and very, very tried as to the realization
of it.
Nevertheless, it was in their hearts.
They wept.
Look at the context.
They wept over the situation.
They were distressed that what was was so
much less than what they knew the Lord
wanted.
A troubled people about this.
And their perplexity and their distress even led
them sometimes to drop their hands in despair.
And for the time being suspend operations.
Plenty there as a ground for discouragement.
Plenty there to give point to saying it's
hopeless.
But you know you never feel hopeless if
you've never had hope.
A person who's never known what hope is
doesn't know what hopelessness is.
They're just dead things.
These people were troubled, heartbroken, distressed, and even
if they did despair for a time and
say it's no use, no use, that was
simply because they were in their hearts troubled
about it.
If you like disappointed, and you cannot be
disappointed unless you've had a kind of appointment.
Simply there deep in their hearts was the
vision.
And they were suffering in relation to the
vision.
And that's what God is looking for.
People who in their hearts through all trial
and testing still have the vision of what
God is after.
And are suffering in their hearts concerning it.
That's something precious.
He writes upon that.
He says we take note of that.
Put that down in the book.
Don't let that be forgotten.
Have that in remembrance.
It's going to come up in the day
that I make.
I'll have that then.
So we must revise, must we not.
And get away from these temporal ways of
viewing things to the eternal standards and standpoints.
Yes.
For all this leads us to what?
To the Lord Jesus.
Here in this very fourth chapter of the
prophecies of Zechariah has a recurrence in the
book of the revelation.
The two olive trees standing before the Lord
of all the earth.
You know where they comes in the book
of the revelation.
Something here of eternal significance.
Lord Jesus is brought into view in these
prophecies.
It's here in Haggai that the prophecy is
first uttered yet once again.
And I will shake the heavens and the
earth.
And the desire of all nations shall come.
That's quoted in the letter to the Hebrews
isn't it.
The things which can be shaken.
The temporal things.
The big things according to man's mind.
They'll be shaken to their foundations.
But the things which cannot be shaken shall
stand.
And you know that the letter to the
Hebrews is all centered upon the Lord Jesus.
And his heavenly kingdom.
Receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken.
That comes out of Haggai.
As for Malachi.
Why Malachi dwells much upon the Lord Jesus.
The messenger of the covenant.
And his forerunner.
Malachi the last book of the bible of
the old testament introduces the Lord Jesus in
a very real way.
It's all focused upon him.
And you know that when God sees things
focused upon his son.
He's all alert and alive.
Listening and watching and recording.
It amounts to this.
Value from God's standpoint is always a matter
of how much of his son is in
effect.
Wasn't much of Christ in the major prophets
as they looked on toward the captivity.
Anything of Christ in the major prophets look
beyond the captivity.
And these minor prophets are beyond the captivity.
Or these end prophets are beyond the captivity.
And Christ is in full view.
And God is all alive again.
About this matter.
So we sum it all up by saying
the test of everything is how much it
represents Christ.
How much of Christ is there.
Not how big and impressive it is from
man's standpoint.
Let us get our balance again.
Of course God is a great God.
And we expect a great God to do
great things.
A slogan was introduced with the great Edinburgh
missionary conference in 1910.
Attempt great things for God.
Expect great things from God.
Yes.
All right.
But be sure you know what greatness is
from God's standpoint.
And that you are not confusing greatness with
bigness.
Intrinsic value with outward bulk.
See what the Lord is after.
The values of his son.
They are the eternal.
Who hath despised the day of small things.
But these seven shall rejoice when they see
the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel.
And from that point you're moving on the
positive line.