Little Things (2)

by J. Miller | Category: Voices From The Past - Extracted From Jottings | May 1980

The Lord did not love and choose Israel because they were more in number than other peoples, "for" He said, "ye were the fewest of all peoples" (Deut. 7:7). But they seemed a great host in contrast to the one hundred and twenty with whom the Lord Jesus began in this dispensation (Acts 1:15).

It was truly a little flock. Many children of God were not of the number, yet their absence did not retard the progress of the work which began with the few who were together, who were as one man, a unity of which David in Psalm 133:1 sang many centuries previously.

In the days of Uzziah, king of Judah, and of Jeroboam, son of Joash, king of Israel, the time of the prophecy of Amos, God was punishing His people for their sin, but the prophet sought divine mercy for them - "0 Lord GOD, forgive, I beseech Thee: how shall Jacob stand? for he is small". Twice he said the words - "How shall Jacob stand? for he is small" and twice God repented of the evil and said that it should not be. Jacob was ever small in comparison with the nations around. He could stand when God was with him, but how could he stand if God were against him in a cold and antagonistic world?

But when we come to the time of the return of the remnant from Babylon, that was indeed a day of small things! As though to dissipate the gloom that had settled down on many because of the opposition that had been experienced in seeking to build the Lord's house, God challenges those who would despise the work of a feeble remnant: "Who hath despised the day of small things?" (Zech. 4:10). Old men wept, those who had seen the Solomonic temple, when they saw the foundation of the temple the remnant laid, but young men rejoiced, those whose vision had not been dimmed by the glamour of the glory of former days. That glory, like a faded flower, had gone, never to return to a house of remnant testimony; that glorious house was but a memory. Men cannot live on what their fathers have told them of what God did in their day, that is only a help if such like work (though it may be smaller) is carried on in the living present.

We want to be men who preach the old doctrines with a freshness and living power that will warm the dying embers in the hearts of God's saints, that will cheer them with a Haggai ministry. "I am with you, saith the Lo~ of Hosts, according to the word that I covenanted with you when ye came out of Egypt, and My Spirit abideth among you: fear ye not" (Hag.2:4,5 RVM).

J. Miller | May 1980
Voices From The Past - Extracted From Jottings