Gooding, David: 1 - The God of Restoration

The mark of the generosity of your conveners of this conference that they have invited me here again this year, after having suffered me last year. And I thank them for their patience and their perseverance to encourage one thus young in the faith. I look forward with great joy to meeting you in the course of this week and getting to know you and your work for the Lord in more detail than hitherto. Just let me fulfill the promise that I made to your fellow believers in Poland, whence I have just come. They asked that I should convey to you their love in the Lord Jesus, and that I should ask you to continue in your prayer and concern for them in that country. And now let us begin our devotional study by reading in the prophecy of Zechariah and chapter one. The prophecy of Zechariah and chapter one. And we shall begin to read there in verse seven. Upon the four and twentieth day of the eleventh month, which is the month of Shebet, in the second year of Darius, came the word of the Lord unto Zechariah the son of Berechiah, the son of Iddo the prophet, saying, I saw in the night and behold a man riding upon a red horse, and he stood among the myrtle trees that were in the bottom, and behind him there were horses, red, sorrel, and white. Then said I, O my lord, what are these? And the angel that talked with me said unto me, I will show you what these be. And the man that stood among the myrtle trees answered and said, These are they whom the Lord has sent to walk to and fro throughout the earth. They answered the angel of the Lord that stood among the myrtle trees and said, We have walked to and fro through the earth, and behold, all the earth sitteth still and is at rest. Then the angel of the Lord answered and said, O Lord of hosts, how long wilt thou not have mercy on Jerusalem and on the cities of Judah, against which thou hast had indignation these threescore and ten years. And the Lord answered the angel that talked with me with good words, even comfortable words. So the angel that talked with me said unto me, Cry thou, saying, Thus saith the Lord of hosts, I am jealous for Jerusalem and for Zion with a great jealousy, and I am very sore displeased with the nations that are at ease, for I was but a little displeased, and they helped forward the affliction. Therefore, thus saith the Lord, I am returned to Jerusalem with mercies. My house shall be built in it, says the Lord of hosts, and a line shall be stretched forth over Jerusalem. Cry yet again, saying, thus says the Lord of hosts, my cities through prosperity shall yet be spread abroad, and the Lord shall yet comfort Zion and shall yet choose Jerusalem. May God, who indicted these words, speak them again to our hearts here this afternoon. As we together wait upon the Lord in our times of devotions this week, it has seemed good to me that we should listen to the words of God through his ancient prophet Zechariah. I do not, of course, propose in these limited hours to talk about what is in fact the main burden of this great prophecy. For Zephardai's prophecy, as you know, is concerned with the restoration of Israel, and in particular with the restorations of the city of Jerusalem, both those in the past and that which is to come. Even if I were able to do so, which I'm not, this would be an inappropriate time for me to attempt to discuss all the learned prophetical matters that are here involved. Rather, I propose that we should listen again to the words of God speaking to and through his ancient prophet, that we might see again and lay hold by faith in our hearts of what kind of a God God is. As we see him reacting to the behavior of his ancient people, and discover through what he has to say to them, something of his heart, something of his character, something of the personality that is God. We shall find it speak its own word of encouragement to us in our so different circumstances. The first great lesson that we shall learn as we listen to the Lord talking to his people is that God, our God, is the God of restoration. He was then, he is now. Granted that in this prophecy, God will be concerned chiefly with the restoration of the city of Jerusalem, yet even that is a remarkable thing and speaks volumes to our hearts about the nature of God. Only remember how well privileged, how uniquely privileged Jerusalem city had been. Of all the cities upon the face of the earth, in all the length and breadth of history, Jerusalem City favored uniquely above all by the condescending dwelling of God in that city, in his temple. And in spite of that incalculable grace, Jerusalem City had grown ungrateful and obstinate in her sin and perversity, till at length the infinite patience of God could do no other than bring upon her grievous discipline at the hands of the ancient Babylon, her foe. Why, we say, didn't God take the easy route and after that destroy Jerusalem city complete? What need Almighty God of a few bricks in the tiny little postage stamp sized country in Jerusalem City? Why could he not start again and afresh? But no, not God. Oh, what a marvelous God we are. God is a God of restoration, and he will have patience with his people still and restore even that city. That God is a God of restoration is writ large to us on the first page of our New Testament. As our Old Testament closes, so to speak, the door upon the earlier revelation and opens up the new vistas that come with the birth of Jesus Christ, our Lord, it pauses to survey the story hitherto. Matthew, with the wisdom given to him, divides the history from Abraham to our Lord's coming, you will remember, into three parts, ingeniously arranging the genealogies that we might see the point, three equal parts, as Matthew counts them, of the ways of God with his people that eventually led to the birth of Jesus Christ, our Lord. There was that early part, from Abraham to David. I think sometimes, in my boyish enthusiasm, I should like to have lived then. They were days of pioneer discovery, weren't they? In the ways of God and the things of God. Good old Abram, how he was blessed of God to discover justification by faith, for instance. Can you remember the day when you discovered it? In all its newness and its wonder, justification by faith. It lifted you up to heaven and to salvation. And then all the great promises and the glorious future, the seed that should inherit the gates of his enemies, the glorious and eternal city that God called Abraham to look forward to. What days they were. Oh, of course, like all mortals, they had their down days, but on the whole it was up. There was Joseph in Egypt, keys of all the granaries of Egypt clanking from his belt, and he the son of Jacob. Oh, what days they were. You never knew what God was going to do next when you thought he disappointed you, as old Jacob did, thinking he'd lost a quarter of his family. Then God surprised him with glories beyond his imagination. Joseph in Egypt. Oh, true, there came the brick kilns and the difficult years. They did but paint the background to greater things, as with the intervention of Almighty God, the Great I Am, God displayed himself to his people and brought them out of the tyranny of Egypt and through the Red Sea and through the wilderness, and with patience indescribable, brought them in spite of their failings, often dragging them by the heels into Canaan and through the conquest. They were breathtaking moments to see the walls of Du- of Jericho go flat, and the great giant Canaanites conquered. And then in the times of the judges, there came moments of despair and disillusionment. They weren't allowed to last, and the great movement led on to those glorious days of King David and King Solomon. Then indeed Israel thought they had got to paradise. This to them, the golden age to which all had been pointing. Silver was so common, it was like the, the, the stones in the street. If you dropped a bit from your pocket, you didn't bother to pick it up, says the chronicler in his history. And gold was plentiful, and enemies dismissed, and all was marvelous. What days they were. But David didn't turn out to be the Messiah. A good job, you may think, sitting in your seat this afternoon. How would you have liked the Messiah with a few spears and an odd sword living in a very insanitary palace in Jerusalem? No, no, he was only a prototype of things to come. And then, to everybody's dismay, soon things began to go wrong, and the nation began to be middle-aged. Instead of going forward, went backwards. Instead of uphill, downhill. Toddling from one disaster to a worse, and from one apostasy to the next. It is a danger that besets the middle-aged. Let me not point the lesson further. Oh yes, there came times of great revival and encouragement. Names like Elijah and Elisha come from this period, with blessed and godly men like Jehoshaphat leading revivals amongst God's people, but there's no denying the, uh, overriding trend was down. So it ended in nothing short of disaster. And Israel was carried away to Assyria and Judah to Babylon, there to hang their harps upon the willow trees, mourning for what might have been and all that was now lost. If God's people must be such a desperate crew, so ungrateful, so short-sighted, so disobedient, so apostate, why, we ask ourselves, with all that evidence in front of him and in spite of his patient work these many centuries, didn't God finally abandon them to their fate and start again with something new. Ah, but if you think like that, you haven't read the heart of God. Oh, Ephraim, says he. How can I give you up, Ephraim? Writ large into the third great period of Israel's history is this, that God is the God of restoration, who patiently restores broken things and restores his people when they go astray. So Jerusalem was restored. God is not only a God who restores his favored people. Let me turn you aside a moment to the story of Daniel chapter four. God is so much a God of restoration that he will bother to restore even an old ungodly monarch like Nebuchadnezzar II. That great beautifier of Babylon, the developer of Babylonish culture, that glorious splendor, that riot of aesthetics that was the ancient city of Babylon. And old Nebuchadnezzar got puffed up in his pride, and his culture went astray and became corrupt. God, instead of, uh, bringing his judgments upon him and upon the city, disciplined the king, intending to restore even a Nebuchadnezzar, and that he did. And as we think of these things, our hearts surely begin to burn within us. We may feel ourselves better than Nebuchadnezzar. We might even feel ourselves better than Israel and Jerusalem City. Which one of us should lay his hand upon our heart and say, but I don't need restoration. Where would any of us be at this very moment in our spiritual pilgrimage, pilgrimage, were it not for this glorious thing about God? We share David's sentiment and his psalm. He restoreth my soul. You say to me, perhaps, that restoration of Israel after the exile, that wasn't much of a re- restoration, was it? And if you argue so, I should have to agree with you, I suppose. It started in a flurry of enthusiasm. It soon got bogged down. The great and glorious promises that God seemed to issue through haggie eyes, of a glorious golden age and a temple the like of which had never been before, were hardly fulfilled in that particular restoration. No, you say, and at the end of it, they murdered their own Messiah. What kind of a restoration was that? Well, I grant your point. It does but add weight to my theme. Would God bother to restore them? If they made such poor use of their period of restoration? Yes, he will. I tell you something more. At the end of that great period of restoration, when Messiah came and they murdered their Messiah. You have underestimated God if you should think that God will now at last and finally abandon them. Has God cast away his people that he foreknew? Certainly not, says Paul. Certainly not. Why, even in these early days, when God was speaking through Zechariah on that first restoration, he was holding out promises of a far greater restoration, looking down the ages and already determined upon it, in spite of their crime, that they pierced God's son. That they counted the Messiah so contemptible that a few pieces of silver were enough to satisfy them as they betrayed him. And in spite of it, and in spite of long, weary years of discipline, God will yet restore his ancient people again and restore their city. He's a God of restoration. Nor should we, in any sense of superiority, despise what Israel were able to perform in that long distant day when they came back from Babylon. Sure, they didn't accomplish what we've accomplished. There were many good souls and faithful that worked their fingers to the bone as they scrabbled amongst the rubble of broken Jerusalem and destroyed temple, and in faith of God and in faith of his promises, built again and toiled at their particular part of the restoration. Granted, the glorious promises, as I say, were not all fulfilled to them. Some of them wait to be fulfilled, but God was not mocking them. When he held before their eyes visions of a world so wonderful, so cleansed, so beautiful, of a nation restored and so filled with God's spirit that the very saucepans in Jerusalem would be engraved holiness to the Lord. God was not mocking them, I say, when he held out those far visions of those coming glories, because as they thought of them and dreamed of them by night and remembered them by day, they gave them courage to start again, and build again broken things, and know the restorations of God in their own national life and in their own personal life, as far as they might be known in that distant day. Day. And we, as we listen, shall we not take courage too? Ours is not to rebuild a literal Jerusalem or a literal temple in that city, but anybody's restoration is an encouragement to me. We serve the same God. We fight the same war. Granted, we fight different battles on different battlefields, and often by vastly different weapons from what Israel used. It is ultimately all part of the same great battle. As we read of God's way of restoration with them, it is surely legitimate we take encouragement in our hearts. Oh, God is a God of restoration. He will not leave off until the whole war be won. He who restored Jerusalem city in far bygone centuries, he will restore Jerusalem city yet again and make it the wonder of the world. He who one day, according to Peter in his sermon of Acts chapter three, will restore all those things that any prophet have ever talked about from the foundation of the world. He who one day will restore our solitary, so sad and suffering planet, to creation herself is delivered from bondage to corruption. That is the God who this afternoon thinks on me and you. He's the God who restores my soul. In choosing to speak of these topics these days with you, be assured that I haven't decided that you are apostles anywhere near it. Or that you are guilty of such wanderings of hearts as were ancient Israel. Why, you sit before me, a bunch of the most godly missionaries that ever was seen on the face of the earth, surely. And what a delight it is for me, an old age pensioner, to see so many young missionaries with us now going out on their first occasion to the field. Goodness me, you haven't had time to go astray, uh, let alone get to be discouraged. You didn't come to hear about a God of restoration. You came to hear about a pioneering God. May God so bless you, you never need to be restored, my brother. Just a little footnote in your mind tucked away somewhere, that should you ever need to be restored, your God is able and willing to do that too. It might surprise you how soon those moments come. For all the golden promises that we shall read in prophets like Zechariah and Haggai and Malachi, there's no disguising the fact that this restoration was difficult business. The prophet in his introduction reminds us that the restoration had started some years earlier, amidst great enthusiasm on the part of people like Ezra and Nehemiah, and those keen souls that dare leave the comfort of their well-paid jobs in the insurance offices of Babylon, to come and rebuild Jerusalem. That early enthusiasm had waned. Very difficult. It's easier sometimes to build a house from scratch, isn't it? Rather than to repair one that's gone wrong. Easier when you don't have to cope with the past and its mistakes. You have a clean sheet and can build afresh without all the memories of the past. More difficult when you want to build something fresh and first of all have got to take away the rubble of past failure. And it's frustrating work, knowing how to discern between what's broken beyond repair and what's good material but fallen just a little bit and could be reused and mustn't be despised and must be valued and reused. And there were many fo- sore fingers in those days from sorting out amongst the rubble and retrieving things. Ah, but you see, the God that sent them to that task is a God of restoration. He loves you now, my brother. And should you ever get broken like Peter was broken, all of a sudden, and to his great consternation, God will not write you off. God values you. We want to restore you and use you again, if it is at all possible. You see, I nearly said that you s- you count more to God than God's schemes, but then that's a silly way of talking, isn't it? Some of our great giant modern public companies, they have their schemes, they're more concerned with their schemes than the people they use to put them into, into practice. God is concerned with you. It wasn't only the frustrating work of beginning again and restoring the broken. It was the opposition that came upon them, so heavy, so altogether out of proportion. And soon the initial enthusiasms had departed, and they were in the doldrums. And some of us might have a sort of a fellow feeling in our heart, surely. Some of our great-grandfathers tried to do a job of restoration in Christendom, didn't they? After all the wanderings and vagaries of centuries of Christendom, came with enthusiasm once more to the New Testament and determined to get back to what was originally there, and restore assembly principle to what it used to be. Mighty easy, my brethren, now in our generation to give up and say it's unworkable. And the complications of Christendom so intricate and such a vast weight, that trying to restore things to a New Testament situation is more than can be hoped for. Is it? We too, perhaps then, need to pause and take encouragement from what God said to his people in this ancient day, spite of all the difficulties that attend the work of restoration. And now as we come to the very first vision in the book, we come across a most delightful thing, whose principle we may extend beyond Jerusalem and the restoration of Israel, surely to all those restorations that ever take place in the hearts of any of God's people. Whence come they? Whence comes the urge in our hearts after our sorrows and our mistakes and our frustrations and our despairs? Whence comes that surge of new interest and new enthusiasm? And the courage to start again. Be assured that initiative doesn't start with us. This, now the prophet learns in the first vision that is given to him. For a dead of night he was standing there in the myrtle trees and watching the mysterious representations of the great administrative powers of heaven, who reported to the angel of the Lord as they came from walking up and down through the earth and doing their statistical assessments of the situation. All the earth was at rest. As far as Israel was concerned, it seemed disastrous. Here were the spiritual doldrums, fueled by every spiritual navigator amongst the people of God. A situation when things are far from good, there's no progress, there's no advance, there's no pioneer, and the very best people are fighting the real God action, and nothing much is happening. Outside everywhere is calm, and nobody is concerned. There now shall come the initiative for revival and restoration. We hear the answer, as that terrible silence is broken by the intercessions, not of Israel, to be sure, many of whom are snoring in their beds. The silence is broken by the intercessions of one whom the prophet here describes as the angel of the Lord. For whom there is good evidence that the angel of the Lord was none other than we call the second person of the Trinity. Now indeed, are we introduced to something most wonderful and most sacred. Not only to hear the intercessions of him whom we in subsequent ages have learned to love so well. But to hear the actual content of his intercession, as he interceded with God on the behalf of his people, our hearts take a leap. Our spiritual pulse begins to race. Ha. How many of you like my brother, my sister, when you've gone to bed exhausted and worried and tired and depressed, as you were sunk in sleep, sleeping maybe for very sorrow, there was heard in the heavenly courts above the voice of your great intercessor, intercessor, calling upon the divine Father, discussing with him his disciplines of your case, and pleading for you a time of new initiative, new beginnings, new sources of power, new accomplishments. We owe it more than we can imagine. Not to our zeal, but to his, who daily intercedes for us. And so shall he ever. And if thinking in human terms, we observe how successful were his intercessions then, what shall we feel in our age? Who live in days when the blessed second person of the Trinity has long since become human, and known from practical experience what temptation and opposition mean. Learned obedience by the things which he suffered. Have run the race. Knows the energy required for running it to the end. Has endured the cross, and now has sat down, given us by God, appointed by divine oath as our priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek. Surely you will be restored, if it depends upon his intercessions. Hear him now as he discusses with God the matter of God's discipline. And here, surely, an infinitely touching thing. How long he cries to God the Father, how long will thou not have mercy on Jerusalem and on the cities of Judah, against which thou hast had indignation these threescore years and ten? Interceding for his people, the cessation of discipline. We must not think that there is any conflict within the Godhead. We must not fall into the pagan superstition that God the Father is stern and severe, and God the Son kindly. The second person of the Trinity tells out what is in the Father's heart. There lies the problem of God. He loves his people. And would spare them pain. But loves them too much. To permit their unchecked sin. Here is the problem of God that has set his hand to our salvation. Not merely our salvation in the sense of forgiveness of sins, but our salvation from our fallings here in life. Our salvation in the sense of our ultimate glorification, our conformity to the image of God's Son. Because we are never dying spirits. Because God's love determines that he will not give us up until he has fulfilled his purpose, and we are finally like Christ. Therefore, God's love cannot always afford to be kind with that kind of superficial kindness, with which an indulgent parent will excuse the child at school lessons because the child finds them difficult. And yielding to indulge the child now risks its whole future. Not so God. Be the pa- pains of spiritual education never so severe. God will educate us as people, correcting us when we go astray, but disciplining us by positive training, severe as it may seem, that our faith may grow and our likeness to Christ increase. You will think I'm a terrible man and in need of restoration, and you would be too. Watching the way of God with his people, I have long since myself decided that God is very tough. You will forgive me, and I'm sure God does, when I say that I wouldn't treat my dog, nor allow it to suffer. But then you see my dog, his future is very limited. And if he should get some illness, it would be a kindness to shoot him. But you? You are eternal spirits, begotten of God, children of God, with an eternity of glory before you. God will not give you up until he has brought you through. See the suffering, never so great. Yet here, as the angel of the Lord pleads before God and asks now for a cessation of the discipline and for happier days ahead, God comes out of the shadows, so to speak, and orders that his reply to the intercessor be published abroad that all may know it. First of God, uh, all God is concerned, so we read, that his people should understand the proportions of the discipline that they have been through. You say they deserved their discipline, didn't they? And they sinned against God. Were not they rightly carted off to Babylon? I know, I know, I know, my brother. With all the brutality of the Assyrians. The shocking heartlessness of the Babylonians. We think of the tiny children in the refugee columns. We think of the rape. We think of the dehumanizing tortures of the Assyrians. We think of the proportions of the discipline. And as we think of God's disciplines in later years, isn't it the proportions of them that make us wonder? I was traveling just recently through roads that were signposted to Auschwitz. Ah, one day when God restores his ancient people, will he not have some explaining to do? Sure, they deserved his discipline. But six million Jews systematically gassed. How will you explain the proportions of their suffering? Isn't it that that sometimes troubles your heart? Then you have found believers in the modern world, like Job in the ancient. It wasn't just one calamity that hit him, but one, two, three calamities, one after the other, so the thing nearly became ridiculous. It is sometimes the proportions, isn't it, of the disciplines that make us question. How lovely to see God taking his first opportunity in reply to the angel's intercession to come out of the shadows and explain to his people, oh, please understand it. It wasn't all I, says God, that did it. I have but a little dispute. And the nations took advantage of it. It's always so. We have an adversary of our soul, and what time God would discipline us for our good, to strengthen and purify our faith. The adversary takes advantage and persecutes to try and destroy our faith. Cry aloud, says God. I am jealous for my people with a great jealousy, like a man is jealous over his wife, lest he lose her affection to somebody else. I'm jealous over my people with a godly jealousy. And in the heart of God, as he watched his people suffering their sufferings under the persecution of their enemies, as he watched them under the sufferings of the discipline of God. God's heart was ever beating and watching, lest the very discipline destroy their faith. So is it ever with us. God has promised there is no temptation taken you, what is common to man, and he will with it make the exit so that you can bear it. And he watches our faith, lest it should be destroyed. You who are parents will know better than I. But to lose the child's love and trust through an excessive discipline, that would be a disaster. How do you manage to do both things? So with the heart of God. And now, says God, with great divine enthusiasm and relief, cry again when you've explained it. It wasn't all me. In my wisdom and providence, I had to allow your enemies to attack. Only part of that suffering was divinely inflicted. Now come the days of relief and new hope. Cry again that the Lord will yet comfort Jerusalem, will yet choose Zion. Here in the Old Testament is one more example of that delightful and assured principle in all the disciplines of God, that there comes an afterward. The Lord will yet comfort Zion. The Lord will yet choose Jerusalem. And as we hear those words, this week we shall allow ourselves the luxury of meditating upon them until they sink down in our hearts. He who chose us before the foundation of the world for our salvation. He who said, you have not chosen me, but I have chosen you to my service, that you go and bear forth fruit. That same one today stands in our midst, assuring every one of his servants, the Lord still continues with his choice, mistakes notwithstanding. The Lord, my brother, my sister, will yet and still and forever choose you. May he grant us that this week we should be made aware of his intercessions for us and the comfort of a God ready to restore us in every case of need. So let us return and give him our grateful praise. Oh Lord our God, we thank thee now for thy holy word. We thank thee for the solace of it. We thank thee that though these scriptures are ancient, yet in them we hear the very voice of God and feel the heart of God beating. We bless thee now for him who intercedes for us, maintaining our faith and restoring our soul. Father, we bow humbly and submissively before thee, and we thank thee for thy fatherly discipline. Help us, we beseech thee, not to let our hands hang down or our knees to buckle, rather submitting to all thy training and thy discipline. May we prove thy promise that afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to them that are exercised thereby. Thus we wait upon thee, seeking thy blessing through Jesus Christ our Lord.