Time to Rebuild

The restoration of the house of God

On this day over 2,540 years ago, the Prophet Zechariah received an important vision from God. The first group of Jews permitted to return home after exile in Babylon were now back in their devastated, war-torn land, facing the enormous task of rebuilding. However, strong opposition from those around them had brought them to a virtual standstill. In fear, work on the temple in Jerusalem had been suspended, leading the returnees to focus only on rebuilding their own houses, rather than the Lord’s.

Years passed, and the Lord began to challenge the returnees, through the Prophet Haggai:

“Is it a time for you yourselves to be living in your panelled houses, while this house [i.e. the Temple] remains a ruin?...Give careful thought to your ways. Go up into the mountains and bring down timber and build the house, so that I may take pleasure in it and be honoured…

You expected much, but see, it turned out to be little. What you brought home, I blew away. Why?...Because of my house, which remains a ruin, while each of you is busy with his own house.”

The people were chastened and stirred up by this message; that same month, regardless of the opposition they knew they would face, they restarted the rebuilding effort (Hag 1:14-15), spurred on by encouraging words from Haggai and Zechariah.

The vision in Zechariah 1:7-6:15 is one such encouragement. In it, the Lord reaffirms His jealousy for Jerusalem, and His intention to see His temple rebuilt and the Land prospered again:

“I will return to Jerusalem with mercy, and there my house will be rebuilt…My towns will once again overflow with prosperity, and the Lord will again comfort Zion and choose Jerusalem.”

The vision connects this rebuilding process strongly with the coming of the Messiah, the adding of many nations to the Lord’s people, and a future time when Jerusalem would experience God as “a wall of fire around it…[and] its glory within” (Zech 2:5).

A spiritual test

The opposition faced by the returning exiles (read Ezra 4) was something of a spiritual test, to see where their loyalties really lay after decades in exile for their unfaithfulness to God. Would they now obey Him, come what may, or be cowed by the first obstacle in their path? Did they fear God, or man? Did they really want to put God first – or were they too devoted to building up their own lives?

Today, the people of God in this nation and around the world are facing a similar test. We too have been driven into our homes by an external threat, hindering or even suspending completely our efforts to build the Lord’s ‘house’ (as it were, His spiritual dwelling-place - see the About page of our website).

We may ‘make do’ by participating in online meetings and Bible studies, but we nevertheless feel scattered and divided – reduced almost to rubble, just like the Temple had been in Zechariah’s day. In this situation, it can be easy to lose sight of God’s wider Kingdom purposes and our place in them, becoming preoccupied instead with simply surviving the present threat. We may even have come unstuck regarding quite what God is doing, and how He would have us labour for Him spiritually at such a time as this.

Intimidating circumstances

Like the returning exiles, we find ourselves in a land which has changed beyond recognition. The old structures are no longer there, making it difficult to get our bearings; the old ways of doing things suddenly seem obsolete. And in Covid-19, we are facing a sudden obstacle none of us expected to encounter.

It’s all too easy at a time like this to ‘build our own houses’ – to hunker down and choose self-preservation instead of working out our callings. This is not to belittle the struggles many are experiencing with all that Covid-19 has brought, nor the responsibility we have as children of God to help those who are suffering. Nevertheless, the returning exiles found that God was more concerned with the brief He had given them than with the obstacles they faced. He was not fazed by the opposition. He would encourage His people and protect them, but He would not permit them to kowtow to fear or choose self-preservation over obedience.

Likewise, the Lord Yeshua (Jesus) encouraged us not to be most concerned with our own material and physical wellbeing, but to entrust this to God – who is more than capable of looking after us – and instead to seek first His Kingdom and righteousness (Matt 6:25-34).

Time to recalibrate

If the Body of Messiah is to thrive in these days, we need to regain our spiritual bearings, both in the big picture (i.e. where we are in biblical history and where things are going) and in the small picture (i.e. how we live out our faith day to day). We need to recover our spiritual brief to build up the Lord’s house (e.g. Eph 4, 1 Thess 5:1-11, Jude 1:20-22), refusing to be consumed by our immediate circumstances or to put God on hold as we await a return to normality.

In this sense, lockdown continues to provide a unique opportunity. Though undoubtedly a difficult experience, we believe the Lord would use it to ‘recalibrate’ His people – or, to use the temple metaphor again, to relay and strengthen our spiritual foundations, to repoint us and rebuild us, preparing us for the work of the Kingdom in the future.

God has not stopped His Kingdom work, though we may have been tempted to pause our efforts. Like the returning exiles, we need to learn that God is not constrained by our earthly problems in the same way that we are – nor, usually, is He as concerned about them as we are! The time has come to seek Him for a perspective that is shaped more by Scripture and His Holy Spirit than by the world – and when we have received this, to start building again…no matter what the cost.