96 103 God to live with men

We're so due today, but at least you're here, so that's a good start, isn't it? And we're glad to be here in the presence of God and carry on worshipping him for what he has done for us at Christmas and indeed throughout our lives. So it's not too late to sing a carol, I think, is it? And we'll start by rejoicing in number 35, angels from the realms of glory, wing your flight through all the earth, heralds of creation's story now proclaim Messiah's birth. You'll have to prove to me that I haven't been a little bit optimistic in choosing this as our opening carol, so get a good lungful of air and particularly as we come to the common worships, let's sing to the praise of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Angels from the realms of glory, wing your flight through all the earth, heralds of creation's story now proclaim Messiah's birth. Alleluia. I was told it was going to be Jo Maycox last Sunday, but I can't see her here, so I think she must have popped off a week early.

She's here this evening, apparently. But the last Sunday for a little while, it is for Frank and Karen Burghorst. They're just going back to the States for four months, so when they come back again, it should be quite nice and warm and sunny for you.

And they're going to read the lesson this morning. It's from Zechariah chapter 2, and also pray for us. Zechariah chapter 2, a man with a measuring line.

Then I looked up, and there before me was a man with a measuring line in his hand. I asked, what are you doing? He answered me, to measure Jerusalem, to find out how wide and how long it is. Then the angel who was speaking to me left, and another angel came to meet him and said to him, run, tell that young man, Jerusalem will be a city without walls because of the great number of men and livestock in it.

And I myself will be a wall of fire around it, declares the Lord, and I will be its glory within. Come, come, flee from the land of the north, declares the Lord, for I have scattered you to the four winds of heaven, declares the Lord. Come, O Zion, escape, you who live in the daughter of Babylon, for this is what the Lord Almighty says.

After he has honored me and has sent me against the nations that have plundered you, for whoever touches you touches the apple of his eye, I will surely raise my hand against them so that their slaves will plunder them. Then you will know that the Lord Almighty has sent me. Shout and be glad, O daughter of Zion, for I am coming, and I will live among you, declares the Lord.

Many nations will be joined with the Lord in that day and will become my people. I will live among you, and you will know that the Lord Almighty has sent me to you. The Lord will inherit Judah and his portion in the Holy Land, and will again choose Jerusalem.

Be still before the Lord, all mankind, because he has roused himself from his holy dwelling. The Lord add his blessing to the reading. Shall we pray? Dear God and Heavenly Father, you are great and wonderful.

Thank you for your word, Father. Thank you. Thank you for angels.

Thank you that, as we look back on this past year of changes, you do not change, and your word is sure. Thank you that you can be our rock and our fortress in the year to come, amidst many changes. We come to you this morning grateful that we can come in freedom to worship, and we pray for those in authority over us, Father, that your hand would be beyond them.

We pray that you would guide and lead them as they lead us. We pray for those in other countries with less freedoms than we have here. We pray for those who want to know you but are afraid.

Lord, we pray for opportunity for those who haven't heard your good news to hear it. Please guard your workers here and in other lands. As we look to the new year, Father, may this be a great year of people dedicating their lives for service to you.

Lord, we pray this morning for those who are not well. Please be near to them and heal them. Thank you for all those you have healed this year.

Father, please give strength to those going through trials. Help us all to be victorious through you this year, whether our testing is great or small. Help us to be good witnesses for you, and to look for opportunity to do so.

Please forgive us for our failings, for the things we've done wrong, and help us to follow you more closely. And as Pastor Tim brings the message to us, may your spirit be with him and teach us through him, please. To you, Father, be the glory forever.

Amen. We do trust and pray you have a thoroughly good time at home, and a good time with your family and also with your supporting churches. I wanted to preach from a text this morning, which really is a Christmas text, but which I've never heard ever preached on at Christmas.

So that was a bit of a challenge, because most of the Christmas texts are fairly well known. But I came up with Zechariah 2, verse 10. So perhaps you'd turn in your Bible to this if you've already closed your Bible.

If not, then just leave it open. Zechariah 2, verse 10. Shout and be glad, O daughter of Zion, for I am coming, and I will live among you, declares the Lord.

I heard about a man, a preacher once, who was preaching on this text, and he was in a very high pulpit, rather like this one. Only this pulpit was rather worse for wear, and beknown to him it was suffering from an advanced state of dry rot. And he was a bit of a pulpit thumper, this man.

And so he announced his text, and he said, Shout and be glad, O daughter of Zion, for I am coming, and will dwell among you. And he thumped on the pulpit. And then he repeated his text, Shout and be glad, for I am coming, and will dwell among you.

And he thumped the pulpit. And then he announced his text again. Shout and be glad, O daughter of Zion, for I am coming, and I will live among you.

And this time when he hit the pulpit, the whole structure collapsed, and the man fell out, and landed in a heap at the front of the congregation. And somebody piped up, Well, Pastor, we can't say you didn't warn us. Anyway, with that bit over, seriously, as we were thinking last Sunday evening, Christmas is not so much about the proof of God's existence, it is about the evidence of God's presence.

We all, deep down, know enough and can see enough to know that God exists. The Bible says it's only the fool who denies the existence of God. But what we want to know is, is God for us? Is God interested in us? Is he concerned about us at all? And that is the wonderful message of Christmas.

Yes, he is. And so the theme of this promise is, if it were to be in a newspaper banner headline, God to live with men. That's quite a staggering thing, isn't it? God to live with men.

And I suggest that this promise has four fulfillments. Perhaps you could put it on the overhead, just to see where we're going to start with. The first fulfillment, in the old city of Jerusalem, where this promise was fulfilled in token form.

The second fulfillment at Christmas, when it was fulfilled in flesh, as God became incarnate and dwelt among us. The third fulfillment at Pentecost, when God came to live among us in spirit, by his Holy Spirit. And the fourth fulfillment, still future, that of the new Jerusalem, where God will come to live with us, in person, and totally, holding nothing back at all.

So let's look at the first fulfillment of this promise, to the people in Zechariah's own day and age, as God comes to live amongst his people, in the old city of Jerusalem. I'd just like to cover the bottom three, if you can, while we work through this. Well, it's 518 B.C., and Jerusalem looks like a bombsite, which is not really surprising, because 70 years previously, or thereabouts, it had been utterly destroyed.

But not only was it now a bombsite, it was also turning into a building site. And there were surveyors going about their business, measuring up plots and staking out bits of land, parcels of land. And one such surveyor, though in this vision that Zechariah is an angel, appears in this chapter that we have read.

The first wave of people have returned back. En masse, they were deported to Babylon, and there they spent 70 years in exile. It was a long, long way away, but some had never lost the vision of their homeland, even in the subsequent generation.

And yet, when the time came, when they were given permission to return to their land, just a handful made the long trek home. Indeed, even 80 years later, in the time of Nehemiah, there were still no walls and no defenses to the city, and the settlers were still being leaned on, as it were, to return back to Jerusalem. They were reluctant, they took part in a lottery, and those whose names came up went back to Jerusalem to settle the city.

But they did so with some reluctance, and it was perhaps not difficult to see why. Most of the Jews were perfectly happy in Babylon. They had families there, they'd settled down, they had businesses, they had homes, they had their support networks, and the last thing they needed in their lives was a major upheaval.

And what is more, Jerusalem offered them very little security. They had no homes, they had nowhere to live, they had nothing to do. And yet, God was telling them that they must go back home, back to the land that He had given them, back to Israel, back to the city of Jerusalem.

And here in this chapter, we have a word to the exiles, first of all, verses 6 to 9, and then a word to those who'd already returned, verses 10 to 13. The word to the exiles is, run for your life, verses 6 to 9. It starts off by saying, come, come, or hey, hey, look out, look out. Difficult to know how to translate the interjection.

But God wants to get the attention of His people, those who are quite happy and comfortably settled in Babylon in the north. Sometimes it's very difficult for God to get the attention of His people, isn't it? Sometimes He has to shout very loud and often if He is going to wake you up or wake me up. We are just too comfortable where we are, we're too settled.

And one of, I think, the saddest duties that I've had as a pastor is to visit young families from time to time. And I know the situation myself, although, obviously, as a pastor, the sort of way of getting settled is a little bit different. But we become comfortable, we get settled, we get very comfortable.

Everything is sort of laid on for us. We know where we are, we are secure. And the result of being secure in our family lives, in our personal lives, is that we spiritually are exposed to great danger.

We are never in greater danger than when we are at our most secure. And that's a fact of the Christian life. The most dangerous thing in the world is to live for a good pension, because that is much too short term a view of life.

And the ultimate risk in the Christian life is to take no risk, and to try and make yourself and your family as secure as you can. It's always been this way for the Jewish nation. The Jewish people have always been under two threats.

They've been scattered around the world for much of their history, of course. And they have suffered the threat of annihilation. The Haymans and the Hitlers of this world have wanted to wipe out the Jewish nation because they are the nation through whom God was going to bring blessing and salvation to the whole of the world.

So no wonder they are the targets for genocide. But a greater threat than the threat of annihilation over the course of history has been the threat of assimilation. That the Jewish people would just disappear into the culture and the country and the people who they live with and among.

And at this stage in their history, Babylon certainly seemed like a good bet. Babylon had everything that you could possibly want in terms of this world's security. Many natural resources, a good thriving economy.

It seemed militarily very secure. But God knew that the days of Babylon were numbered and that Babylon was going to be turned over. Turned over indeed by its vassal peoples, the people who now were subject to it.

And to stay in Babylon for God's people meant certain death and destruction. So that was a word to the exiles. But then the Lord followed that up through the prophet by giving a word of encouragement to the returnees.

Verses 10 to 13. If the exiles are to run for their life, then the returnees are to raise the roof. They are to sing and shout and be glad and rejoice because God is going to come back and live with them.

The Lord is going to dwell in Jerusalem. There is to be a rebuilt temple, the earthly base of the Lord Almighty Himself. And that's a great cause for rejoicing.

Because first of all, the Lord says, I will look after you. Whoever touches you, touches the apple of my eye, He says in verse 8. It's perhaps a little bit like that song of a few years back, you know, the semi-humorous one. You touch my car, I smash your face.

In a way, that's what God says to anyone who touches His people. He feels so strongly about His people. He takes such delight and pleasure in them.

Woe betide anyone who touches one of His people. One of these little ones, as Jesus puts it in Matthew. See, if anyone lays a hand on one of God's people, it's like poking God in the eye.

His most sensitive spot. I will look after you. He says, I will be a wall of fire around you and nobody will get through that wall of fire.

And the Lord says, actually there's no point in building walls around Jerusalem because no matter how large and extensive the walls are, they won't be able to contain the population. The population of Jerusalem is going to overspill the walls whatever size you build them. This was a great word of encouragement to those who had made the long journey home, wasn't it? To now have arrived and were worried that they'd done the right thing because there seemed to be so little for them there in that bombsite as it still was.

They'd have those nagging doubts. What have we done? What have we done? Shout and rejoice, says the Lord, because I'm going to come and I will look after you and I will live among you. I will dwell among you.

This word live or dwell is the Hebrew word shakan. It's the word from which we get the Hebrew shakina, which describes the glory of God, the dwelling, the indwelling glory of God. I will live among you.

For us, like the Jewish people of Zechariah's day, God is always upsetting our securities too. I'm afraid He has to because our earthly securities are only ever a false sense of security. And false senses of security have to go.

And that means change. Change for each one of us. Not for change's sake, but change for growth's sake.

We need to change because we need to grow as Christian people. And that's very unsettling and the Lord recognizes this. We don't like change.

We hate it indeed. But the Lord says, look, through all this change, I will look after you and I will live among you. And even though the future is unknown and may be uninviting, you are too special and too valuable and too loved by me for me to ever let you go.

And in spite of our faults, in spite of our many failings, in spite of our deficiencies, in spite of our lack of potential as we often feel about ourselves, what do we have to offer? The Lord is still absolutely committed to you, to me, and to the future that He is opening up for us. So that's the first fulfillment. The Lord would come in token form to live among them in a temporary way, yes, at a fixed point in the temple in Jerusalem.

Let's look at the second fulfillment of this promise at Christmas. Now in the house that the rubber bear built, God did return. And as the temple was rebuilt, the sacrifices were reinstated and God lived among His people.

Actually, the only way in which God can live with sinners is where there is sacrifice because otherwise we are just guilty before Him and He cannot live with evil and guilt. So this is the only way we can live anywhere near a holy God. But even so, something was missing from the promise.

And as we thought, everything that God does is well done and nothing that God does is half done. And still in this promise in Zechariah chapter 2, there is an enigma, there is an element of mystery which continues to baffle the rabbis to this day. Let's read carefully again chapter 2 verse 9. Then you will know that the Lord Almighty has sent me.

Shout and be glad, O daughter of Zion, for I am coming and I will live among you, declares the Lord. Many nations will be joined with the Lord in that day and will become my people. I will live among you and you will know that the Lord Almighty has sent me to you.

Strange, isn't it? I will come, I will live among you but the Lord Almighty has sent me. Throughout the Old Testament, of course, there is a rising expectation that someone is coming. And this someone is to be a very, very special person.

Isaiah the prophet gives us one of his names. It's the name Emmanuel which means, of course, God with us. But this name begs more questions than it answers, doesn't it? What do you mean, God with us? When? How? Where? And then things go quiet for virtually 500 years until God begins to take action again.

And then in the womb of a young Galilean girl a miracle baby is conceived and the answer to the riddle is given to us. The virgin shall be with child and will bring forth a son and you will call him Emmanuel. God with us.

God with us in the most direct way, the most face-to-face way, rubbing shoulders with us, in a belt and braces kind of way, God is with us. And so we see here in this riddle in Zechariah, one Jehovah is sent by another Jehovah and yet surely there is only one Jehovah, is there not? I made the mistake of opening up this passage to a Jehovah's Witness when they called some time ago now and it's never bothered again for the next three years but I don't necessarily recommend this approach with JWs but this is convincing. One Jehovah is sent by another Jehovah and yet there is only one Jehovah.

As John Calvin puts it, it appears that one and the same divine eternal essence is in more persons than one. The prophet teaches here clearly and plainly that Christ is Jehovah the only true God and yet he is sent by God as a mediator. And this is the gospel the amazing mystery revealed to us as Jesus Christ is born and lives among people like us.

There was a little fellow whose dad was away from home for long periods of time and he looked at a photograph of his dad once on the mantel shelf and he said, I wish dad would step out of that picture. And that's just what God has done in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ he stepped out of the picture and come to this world and come into our lives. You know in Zechariah it's an amazing book, the plot thickens later on because in chapters 9 to 14 God's envoy this divine person himself suffers violence at the hands of evil men and he is killed, they drive him to his death and yet in spite of this Zechariah says the Lord is and will be king and not only is he king and will he be king but he will be seen to be king by all the nations.

It's an amazing prophecy and so in Jerusalem representatives of all the nations will come and they will join themselves to God and they will become a part of his people and they will become honorary Jews, believers children of Abraham and that's exciting isn't it because that's us that's us we're here in this prophecy and we have come and joined ourselves with the people of God as he has come to live among us. So that's the second fulfillment. Let's look thirdly at the way in which this text was fulfilled at Pentecost in the person of God's spirit in a long term way and at a global scale.

We thought of the fact of change and we thought of the need for change but one thing never changes does it? And that is the promise that to the end of time and to the ends of the world the Lord Jesus has said I am with you always and he is always with us especially when we live with intent as God's people. When we live with the intent of making Christ and his gospel known then he is especially always with us I will never leave you, I will never ever forsake you. That means for us that there are no post Christmas blues there's no flat period in January or February when the sky is a grey and it's cold outside we don't have just Christmas to brighten up our winter for a little while.

Now there's a man in Melchior who appeared in the papers last year in Wiltshire who celebrates Christmas throughout the year and come twelfth night he doesn't take his tree or decorations down he just leaves them up all the way through the year. And if you go and visit him any time of the year he will sit you down and he'll give you sherry and mince pies even in the middle of June and he'll play White Christmas to you and other silly Christmas songs because he enjoys Christmas so very very much But for us it is Christmas all the year round isn't it? The Lord is always with us the God who is above all is the God who is available Jesus said didn't he, I will ask the Father and he will give you another, another that means the same or a duplicate almost, another counsellor who will be with you forever I will not leave you as orphans, I will come to you So as we go into this year with this promise of Emmanuel in our ears we can say the Lord is with me the Lord is with us the Lord is with me the Lord is with me and that means in the year to come 1997 the Lord is with you to lead you by his wisdom, to strengthen you with his power, to purify you but with his holiness to enrich you in every way with his grace the Lord is with us, he has come to live among us this is what makes us special as a community of his people isn't it? We may not have much else going for us but we have the Lord with us in the centre of this church, in the centre of our life together by his spirit it's a fantastic privilege isn't it to belong to the people of God and to belong to a group of people amongst whom the Lord is with and so we see the next fulfilment in the new city of Jerusalem when the Lord will come to be with us in person on a permanent basis and he will give us of himself totally and unreservedly of course if God were to come down amongst us now in his full glory we would not be able to stand that one bit but there will come a time when we will be able to live with his glory burning in our midst the book of Revelation contains more echoes from the Old Testament book of Zechariah than any other Old Testament book there is the great hope of the Christian faith still awaiting us, the great hope which comes as a full bloom from the Jewish branch out of which it grew, the great hope not so much that we will go to be with God but that God will come to live with us and that's quite a difference you see it would be wonderful to go to be with the Lord in his heaven but the fact is that heaven is not really designed for people with bodies heaven is a spiritual existence God is spirit after all the angels are ministering spirits but we have bodies and God in his goodness and kindness and overwhelming love and generosity to us is designing a place and preparing it even now where we will be able to live in our bodily condition with our new bodies which he is giving to us and he will come and make his home amongst us in the new heavens and the new earth in the capital city the new Jerusalem which will be his base and no wonder there is a loud voice which rings out around heaven a voice of amazement a voice of absolute wonder as the angel cries out Revelation 21 3 and I heard a loud voice from the throne saying now the dwelling of God is with men and he will live with them they will be his people and God himself will be with them and be their God Ezekiel when he sees the city of God the new Jerusalem comes to the climax of his book doesn't he as he sees this wonderful fabulous beautiful garden city and in the last verse of his prophecy he gives us the name of the city the name of the city is Jehovah Shammah the Lord is there and that is our hope and that is our destiny friends and brothers and sisters we will be in that city and the Lord will come to live with us and we will be evermore his and evermore with him I wished myself among them said John Bunyan as he saw the ecstatic worshippers around the throne of God lapping up the beauty and brilliance of their God and we will be there too if we know and love the Lord Jesus Christ surely we should raise the roof if the people in Zachariah's day were to sing and shout and rejoice and leap about and go wild as it were because the Lord was coming to live with them in Jerusalem surely that's nothing on what we've got with the hope that we have got with the future that we have got and so at the end of 1996 and as we go into 1997 we remind ourselves again from God's word of the three most important facts of history number one that the Lord Jesus Christ has come God with us number two that the Holy Spirit has come and he is with us still and the third most important fact that the Lord Jesus Christ will come again and he will take us to be with himself and there will be that new city and we will live with him and with his Father forever and ever and I lay these three facts before you one past one present one future whatever else is going on in your life right now these are the most important facts for your life whatever else 1997 holds for you these are the most important facts about 1997 I am coming and I will live among you declares the Lord almighty may we know even now and into this coming year a strong sense of the Lord's presence with us may that give us more of an appetite and more of an expectation for that day when we will live in his immediate presence rejoicing in his glory forever and ever may God bless you, Amen So this is a song we are going to sing next year for our centenary year, it's a motto text from Psalm 100, very appropriately verse 5, for the Lord is good and his love endures forever. I think we have it on the overhead it's already appeared so we'll look forward to hearing from you It's always difficult to start something new isn't it, so you're going to have to pay attention we're going to sing it to you first of all the first time through the few of us will sing it if you can follow it on the overhead the second time through Evelyn will play it just on the piano herself, nobody will sing so you can watch it on the overhead and fit it to the words the third time you will sing it with us, remaining seated and she will just play the melody in that time, then the fourth time we'll do it properly, we'll stand and we'll all sing together.

We got that? First time we'll sing second time it'll just be on the piano and you'll watch it on the overhead third time you'll join with us singing, sitting down fourth time, the proper time we'll all stand and sing. Okay let's try that shall we Did you get the idea? You'll notice that it's a kind of double-barreled chorus. We sing it through twice each time.

So now she's going to play it through the once, I take it, but then when you sing it, we sing it through twice. Thank you. Right, if you'll remain seated, and we'll all sing it together.

Oh, the Lord is love and just forever, and His faithfulness continues through all generations. Oh, the Lord is good. Yes, the Lord is good.

And His faithfulness continues throughout all generations. Oh, the Lord our God is good, and His love and just forever, and His faithfulness continues throughout all generations. Praise to the Lord, give glory to His name.

Amen. Praise to the Lord, give glory to His name. Amen.

We'll stand now and sing it right through, both keys. We change key after the first time. Oh, the Lord is good, and His love and just, and His faithfulness continues through all generations.

Oh, the Lord is good, and His faithfulness continues throughout all generations. Oh, the Lord, and His faithfulness continues throughout all generations. Praise to the Lord, give glory to His name.

Oh, His name.