What is Abide? | Listen to this Episode 

This week’s Abide episode comes from the passage in the Our Daily Bread devotional from Monday the 7th of October which is Zechariah 4:1-7.

Various stories in the Bible are about rebuilding. There are stories of people starting over in a new place or even starting over as people. As believers, we are called each day to live a new life than the one we lived previously, before we accepted Jesus into our hearts.

In Zechariah 4, the temple is under reconstruction. Zechariah was given a vision to pass along to a priest named Zerubbabel who would be used to restore and rebuild the temple that was destroyed. As mentioned last week, the people of this place were exiled, and now returning back home to a place that needed some restoration.

Last week, we explored the second half of this passage with an emphasis on God coming through with the things we consider “small.” And sometimes when we want to see the impossible happen and God’s power and strength come through, we have to trust the little things that may appear on surface level as insignificant or small.

Today, we’ll explore the first part of this passage and the vision itself and what it means to step into that vision today.

If you have your Bibles, let’s read Zechariah 4 verses 1 through 7.

The Gold Lampstand and the Two Olive Trees
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!’”

This vision represents the work that God will do.“‘Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the Lord Almighty.” I want to take a moment to focus on the word “Spirit.”

This work could not be done by man’s workings and doings alone but only through God’s Spirit. That’s an incredible promise that rings true for us, whether we’re rebuilding a broken down temple, or going about life in the 21st century.

In the vision, the lampstand represents what used to stand in the temple – something yet to be restored. And when we’re standing at the start of a rebuilding project, it can seem like an impossible task – one we have no idea what to do, let alone how we’re ever going to have all the resources we need to do it. But the vision continues to show us how we can.

The angel says to Zechariah to pass on the message to Zerubbabel that the Lord is coming through, by His power. And only by His power alone could an endless supply be provided for.

Lampstands of that time burned oil to provide light, and needed to be refilled to continue to burn. And in the passage there’s an image of God’s provision of not just rebuilding the lampstand, but also of providing the fuel they need – the olive trees to create the oil the lamp burned – but also of a means for the fuel to get to the lamps – the seven channels running to the lamps. They had this great promise to hold onto from the vision that God would provide.

Sometimes when we are in a rebuilding season or starting new, we only have some things figured out. With time, God provides the missing pieces to the puzzle. One step at a time, we begin to see God’s greater plans unfold.

And, we’re at that point as a community as well. Over the past 30 weeks we’ve journeyed together as we look at the Bible passages in the Our Daily Bread devotional, and learned some new ways to read the bible, or engage with the text in a deeper, more meaningful way. This is our last Abide episode, but just as God provided the pieces to the puzzle for the Israelites to rebuild the temple, God has also given us the pieces to be able to read and learn more from the Bible.

So as you continue to read your Bibles in your quiet times, keep in mind the various ways we’ve learned to engage with a passage. You may want to imagine yourself in the passage, or as one of the people in the passage. Use your God-given imagination to grant more insight into what they might have been experiencing or thinking.

Or you might want to look more into the context of a passage, reading the chapter preceding it, or finding where else these events are referenced in the Bible, to glean a more complete picture of what is going on.

And, we’d encourage you to also be praying through the Scriptures you read. As you read God’s Word, ask Him what it means, and what He might want to illuminate to you through his Spirit. Allow yourself time and space to sit with what you read – to meditate on it – and for it to become hidden in your heart.

As we end, I want to close with the picture we started with 30 weeks ago, in Psalm 1. It’s our hope and our prayer for ourselves, and for all of you, that we all become that person whose delight is in the law of the Lord, who meditates on it day and night, and who is like a tree planted by streams of water, yielding its fruit in season.

Even though Abide is concluding, at Our Daily Bread Ministries we’re always going to be working to help everyone engage with God’s Word, to grow deeper in understanding of it, and grow closer to Him. If you want to see what else we’re up to, at the very bottom of the page you can pop your email address in to be kept up to date with our other content and resources.

Thanks for being with us, God bless you.