God Is All About Humble Beginnings ...

The Minor Prophets: Zechariah - Part 1
Insights I take from reading through the minor prophets

God Is All About Humble Beginnings ...
A lesson from Zechariah - Part 1


Zechariah is a beautiful book of the Bible, probably because most of the book is about what God will do for us instead of what we fail at trying to do for God. Left and right the book proclaims how God has a passionate and strong love for His people (1:14), how He will return to them if they accept Him (1:3), how He Himself will protect them (2:5), how He'll live among them (2:11) and forgive their sins in a single day (allusion to Jesus? I think so! - 3:9), and how the Lord will be king over all the earth and His name alone will be worshiped (14:9). Zechariah is a beautiful book because its all about what God is going to do, how God is going to change the stone heart of this earth into flesh, how He will make all things new and pure and clean and amazing and do it Himself. 


But it doesn't start that way. It starts with a very humble beginning. In Zechariah's day, the temple of the Lord was just being rebuilt due the valiant efforts of prophets like Haggai and Zechariah, calling people to repent and concentrate on the things that are important: worshiping God inside a temple and outside a temple, which still needed to be built. And its in this transitional phase that God says He's going to raise up appointed priests and a high priest named, get this ... Jeshua! (the Hebrew name for Jesus!) and these priests, get this, will be "symbols of things to come. Soon I am going to bring my servant the Branch (that is, Jesus) ... and I will remove the sins of this land in a single day ... It is not by force nor by strength but by my Spirit says the Lord ... Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin" (3:8-9; 4:6, 10). 


God started with small beginnings with His people. He appointed a priest to act on behalf of the sins of the people, but Jeshua was just a symbol, a small part, of what would come to pass, when the ultimate High Priest, Jesus would come. 


And this savior of the world had humble beginnings indeed. While He is righteous and victorious, He was humble, entering Jerusalem riding on a donkey's colt (9:9). He was born in trough, to a family so poor they could only afford a couple of turtledoves for a Jewish ceremony. Jesus had small beginnings. But through that, God did amazing things. 


It reminds me that even if I feel like I'm at a place of small beginnings ... 
of a small youth group. 
or a small amount of success at what I feel i'm doing. 
or a small paycheck. 
or a small family. 
or a small community.
or a small church.
or a small feeling of fulfillment or endowment or gifts or circumstances, that it is in those places and in those ways that God chooses to work. And its in those places and in those ways that God has chosen for me to work in. As God says through the prophet of Zechariah, "Do not despise small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin" (4:10). 


Great trees start with a humble seed. And if I know Jesus, I know He likes to grow His kingdom like a gardener might plant one single tiny mustard seed. And in time, while it may start with humble beginnings, that mustard seed will grow and one day be a tree so large that birds will find shelter in its branches. That is the kingdom (Lk 13:19). That is the way God works. God is all about humble beginnings. I don't need to be ashamed about mine.