The Minor Prophets: Zechariah - Part 2 of 2

Insights I take from reading through the minor prophets

Christians VS. Sleigh Bells: Who Will Win?
A lesson from Zechariah - Part 2 of 2


In Zechariah, God reveals what His kingdom is going to look like when He comes back again to fully establish it here, making a new heaven and a new earth. And it is going to be awesome (!) and unlike anything we can fathom. We will be so wrapped up in God that everything else that ever distracted us from God will be forgotten (13:2). And not only that, but on that day, Scripture says, EVERYTHING will be holy (that is different and set apart) to the Lord, from the sacred basins beside the altar of the temple to everyone's cooking pot to the harness sleigh bells of horses, all of it will be Holy (14:20-21). 


Even the horses' bells and the cooking pots are holy? That's how pervasive God's holiness is going to be. Even these simple objects will one day ... will all be made holy, literally everything will be set apart for God.


For now ... all that's to be set apart for God and all that's to be made holy is us. God says that we are to be holy to the Lord (Lev 11:44-45), that we as Christians are to represent and be God's people, a holy nation as it were (Ex 19:6) as if the entirety of all the Christians in the world, if put together on a continent, we would be, each one of us, a kingdom of priests, a people completely set apart for the work of God in the world. 


How good of a job are we doing? 


How set apart are we as Christians in the world right now? How holy are we? Are we more holy to the Lord now than horses' sleigh bells will be when the kingdom of God is fully established?


Honestly ... I don't think so. I think the sleigh bells got us beat. I think for the most part, we look exactly like the world and act exactly like the world and live exactly like the world. I'm not sure how much holiness pervades us at all. 


If someone looked at my life outside of my work as a youth minister at a church, would they know, could they see, that I am holy to the Lord?  I'm not saying its not a difficult tension, to live in the world but not be of the world. But I also don't think, especially in American society, we are as concerned of being "holy to the Lord" as Christians, as men and women of God, as we should be. 


I don't want to go to the end of my life and find out in heaven that cooking pots and sleigh bells got me beat as far as God's holiness is concerned. I want to be a vessel of God's holiness myself. I want Him to take me, the mundane utensil, and make me the sacred tool in God's kingdom. 


I want to be set apart for God.