The shaggy postman

This week's tasty Bible morsel is from Zechariah 4:1-7:

Then the angel who talked with me returned and woke me up, like someone awakened from sleep. He asked me, “What do you see?”

I answered, “I see a solid gold lampstand with a bowl at the top and seven lamps on it, with seven channels to the lamps. Also there are two olive trees by it, one on the right of the bowl and the other on its left.”

I asked the angel who talked with me, “What are these, my lord?”

He answered, “Do you not know what these are?”

“No, my lord,” I replied.

So he said to me, “This is the word of the LORD to Zerubbabel: ‘Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the LORD Almighty.

“What are you, 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!’”

Zerubbabel was the Israelite prince named as governor of Judah near the end of the Babylonian occupation of Israel. He spearheaded the rebuilding of the temple and other infrastructure. It was not a popular task, and he would have probably been in a lot of danger, both political and physical.

Zechariah was a prophet sent by God to encourage Zerubbabel. God sends an angel to deliver a message via Zechariah, describing how things will go with the reconstruction.

So, why send a guy to deliver a message instead of coming in person? I think sometimes it's easier to accept a prophetic statement from another person than it is to receive it directly. There's kind of a roleplaying thing going on when another person comes as a messenger, and there's less self-doubt involved when we're hearing the words spoken out loud.

Anyway, the word is "Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit. What are you, 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!" Three things happen here:

1. No amount of pushing and striving is going to get Zerubbabel there faster. God's spirit is doing the heavy lifting, not his actions.
2. No insurmountable obstacle, like a mountain, is going to slow the work down. He'll go over it like it's level ground.
3. Zerubbabel will complete the temple work, and God will be glorified.

Despite all my talk of being lazy, I have nothing against hard work. But sometimes we're the fly buzzing against the window, and no amount of pushing is going to get us through the glass. We need God to show us the open door. I think God will tell us, so we don't wear ourselves out going nowhere. I also think it glorifies him to tell us in advance that it will be smooth sailing.

God's spirit is the pick for any lock the world might put on the gates of progress. At the point Zerubbabel was at, it probably seemed like there wasn't any way for him to go further and move ahead. He wasn't big enough to bust the gates down, but God was going to get him through anyway, without even having to slow down.

So, if you're stuck, maybe you're not as stuck as you think. And maybe God is preparing a messenger to tell you how to get to the next stage. If he sent you to do something, you're going to do it, and he is going to be glorified. It's God's world.