I wrote those words based on
Scripture in Isaiah 3 and verse number 10. Say ye to the righteous,
it shall be well with him. And I appreciate Susanna singing
that for us this morning. And I say to all of you who are
righteous, the Lord Jesus is our righteousness. I say to all
of you who are trusting Him and resting in Him, everything, everything
shall be well with you. It will always be. I'm going to begin this message,
ultimately we're going to go to the book of Zechariah, but
I'm going to begin in the second Psalm, if you would care to turn
with me to Psalm 2. This is a Psalm that is encouraging to
the Lord's people That is, though there is opposition to our Savior
and to the cause of the Gospel, the Lord has ordained that His
Son sit upon the throne of glory, and consequently, it shall be
well with the righteous. Here in Psalm 2, Let me read
the first six verses to you to kind of lay the foundation of
what I'm going to say in my message this morning. Psalm 2 verse 1,
the question is raised, why do the heathen rage and the people
imagine a vain thing? Who are the heathen? Well, they're
those who don't know God. They're those who have a wrong
religion. People who don't know about the
grace of God, People who don't know about the bloody sacrifice
of the Lord Jesus Christ. They're the heathen. And so,
this is the question that is raised. Why do they rage? Why do they imagine a vain thing? What is the vain thing? What is the empty thing? What
is the useless thing that they imagine? Look at the second verse.
The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers, they take counsel
against them, against the Lord, and against His anointed. Here's the vain thing, they set
themselves against God, against the purpose of God, against the
will of God, and they set themselves against that One who is God's
anointed, even the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, what is it that
these heathens say? Verse 3, Let us break their bands
asunder and cast away their cords from us. Let's be independent
of God. We don't need God. We can control
our own fate. We can do what we want to do.
So let's break the bands asunder of God, cast away the cords from
us, and we'll do our own thing. What is God's response to this
vain imagination? Look at verse 4. He that sitteth
in the heavens shall laugh." You think you're going to break
the cords of God? You think you're going to defeat
His purpose? You think you're going to frustrate
His will? You think you're going to ruin
what He is determined to do? He sits in the heavens and He
laughs. Verse 5, Then shall He speak
unto them in His wrath, and vex them in His sore displeasure. And this is what God says, yet
I have set my King, I've set my King. Who's that? That's His
anointed. That's the Lord Jesus. That's
the one who came to this world. was rejected, and then he suffered,
bled, and died to honor God's law. And then having put away
the sins of all of his people, he gave up his life, he went
back to glory, and he ascended upon the hill of Zion. That is, he rules over all things,
most especially the church. He rules over Zion. I have set
my King. I have fixed this. He's in a
fixed position. This word in verse 6 isn't set,
S-I-T, as though He sits upon a throne, though He certainly
does that. But it's the word S-E-T. This is what God has fixed. This
is what God has determined. This is what God is purposed
to do from all eternity, that that man, the Lord Jesus, based
upon his faithfulness to do the work that God gave him to do,
he would be in a fixed position of glory, of honor, of rule,
of dominion over all things, especially to his church. Here the psalmist introduces
us to something of the uproar and the turmoil and the anti-God
and the anti-Christ feelings of this world in general. Not only the secular world, but
also the religious world in general. The world is in a constant state
of rebellion against our Lord. There's no clearer evidence of
that rebellion than the way both the secular world and the religious
world treated the Son of God when He came into this world.
He wasn't received with open arms. He wasn't welcomed. The
world didn't say, we're so thankful that you have come. Immediately,
the world sought to kill Him, even when He was an infant. And throughout his life, he was
hunted and hated and hounded by all of his enemies. They said,
we won't have this man rule over us. They hated the Lord Jesus. Why did they hate him? This is
a question even the Pontius Pilate asked the Jews. What evil has
he done? Tell me some evil that he's done
that you consider him to be worthy of crucifixion. What evil hath
he done? And of course, in their own minds,
the evil that he did was that he said he was the Son of God. That he was God manifest in the
flesh. and he preached the gospel of
grace, not works. You see, the Jewish people, they
naturally thought, as everybody does by nature, that the more
they did for God, the more God would do for them. And if they
lived a life as best they could according to the Ten Commandments,
then God would receive them at last. But our Lord denounced
their false religion, which was a religion of works. It was a
religion of what you must do. He denounced that, and then he
spoke about the grace of God, the mercy of God, the blood of
the sacrifice, and indeed, he preached salvation by grace only,
and this aggravated them. And this pushed them to have
him arrested and put to death. You see, he denounced their religion. And if you denounce a person's
religion, their natural response is going to be anger. It's going
to be hatred. Who are you to tell us, Jesus
of Nazareth, that our religion is wrong? We trace our lineage back to
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Abraham's our father, and our
Savior said, if Abraham was your father, you'd do the works of
Abraham. You'd believe me like Abraham
believed me. And then He said, before Abraham
was, I am. Hey, I was already in existence
before Abraham was ever born. And they knew what he meant when
he said, I am, before Abraham was I am, and immediately they
sought to kill him again, to stone him to death. He slipped
right through them. But this was their attitude toward
Jesus of Nazareth the whole time of His life. And finally, they
were successful in having Him arrested, and wounded, and bruised,
and crucified. They put him to death. The Romans
put him to death at the insistence of the most powerful religious
leaders of the world. And yet, in doing that, they
fulfilled the purpose of God. This is what God had ordained
to have done before the world began. For it is said of the
Savior, He was the Lamb who was slain before the foundation of
the world. He came to die. He came to give
Himself the sacrifice to a holy God to settle the issue of the
sins of His people. He bore all of our iniquities,
He bore all of our sins in His own body on the tree. They were
all made to meet upon the head of this one who is the shepherd
of the sheep, and the Lord held Him responsible for all of our
sins. That's what led me to write the
psalm. Jesus died for me. He died for
me. How could I be right with God?
Jesus had to die for me. How could my sins be put away? Jesus had to die for me. How
could I be righteous? Jesus had to die for me. He had
to make things right between me and God. You understand that? God can't compromise the severity
of His law that says the soul that sinneth shall die. And it
appeared to me that I would die when God the Spirit showed me
that I'm a sinner. Well, that means I must die.
And then the good news came to me. But wait! God sent somebody
who died in your stead. The Lord Jesus Christ. And this is the gospel that the
preachers of the Lord preach. Salvation by the bloody sacrifice
of our Lord Jesus. Well, our Lord died, was buried,
rose again, went back to heaven. He reigns over all things. But
there's still that enmity and that hatred of the secular world
and most especially the false religious world against this
gospel of grace only, this gospel of faith only, this gospel that's
found in the word of God only. There's enmity in the hearts
of men and women and even young people against this way of salvation,
which is by pure, undiluted, free, and sovereign grace. The world just won't stand for
that. That's why our Lord Jesus, shortly before He died, He told
His disciples, He said, If the world hates you, Don't be surprised. Hated me before he hated you. And he told his disciples there
in John 16, listen, he said, they're going to arrest you.
Some of you they're going to kill. And they'll think they're
doing God's service. And ever since this Gospel has
been preached, Still, the enemies of the Lord's people, the enemies
of the church, the enemies of God's preachers are basically
and mainly those of false religion. Which brings me to go to the
book of Zechariah chapter 1, next to the last book of the
Old Testament. Go to Zechariah chapter 1. In the days before Zechariah
began to preach, the Lord had His church, He had His people,
and they stood for grace. They looked to Messiah who would
come. But there were lots of people
in Israel who were disobedient to the gospel. Therefore, the
Lord had the nation taken into captivity. Most of the Jews went
into captivity. Nebuchadnezzar, you've heard
of him. He being the king of Babylon, king of the Babylonian
empire. He went in and he tore Jerusalem
down. He tore the temple down and he
arrested, he took into captivity all the people who were of any,
who would be of value to him. People who were influential,
people who had money, people who had wealth, people who had
authority, people who were educated. But he left, he left in Judah,
he left the poorer class of people, the uneducated, the unimportant. He left them, took all the rest
of them away to Babylon where they'd been in captivity for
70 years. Well, those people who were left in Jerusalem and
in Judea, they then began to marry, intermarry with people
outside the nation of Israel, other countries, marry with them. And the race of people or the
class of people that was produced, they were called Samaritans. You got that? That's where Samaritans
came from. The poor, influential Jews who
weren't taken in captivity because Nebuchadnezzar didn't consider
them to be worth taking in slavery. They couldn't be of value to
him. So he left them And then they began to marry people from
other countries, especially people from the north country, and their
offspring, they were called and continue to be called Samaritans. Okay, file that away in your
memory. All right, so they're in captivity for 70 years, but
God never forgot his people. And so after 70 years, the Babylonian
Empire, of course, had been overcome by the Persian Empire. And after about 70 years, a new
king came over the Medo-Persian Empire, whose name was, as you
now know, Cyrus. And Cyrus said, I'm going to
make a law that all the Jews are free to go back to their
homeland and rebuild the temple, rebuild the brazen altar, and
reinstitute the worship of their God. And so a bunch of them did
go, less than 45,000, but if you add all the people that went
with them, slaves and servants, manservants and maidservants
and singers, upwards of about 50,000 people went. They got
there, and as you know, because I've already told you, they began
immediately to rebuild the brazen altar, to reinstitute the sacrifices. And they did that. And they worshipped
God. Because that's the only way you
can worship God, my friends, is by blood sacrifice. You can't approach God without
a blood sacrifice. And I say to you, I say to all
of you here and those of you who are watching, you can't approach
God without the bloody sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. Without
the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins. So,
the Bible makes much of the blood of the Savior, and we must do
the same thing. What can wash away my sins? Nothing
but the blood of Jesus. What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. That's His bloody sacrifice offered
to God, to God's justice, to God's law, to honor Him, And
he did that in the stead of his people. So they reinstituted
worship. But then enemies began to come
in. And if you read in Ezra chapter
4 and verse 1, the enemies who came in and started giving them
a really hard time, they were the, guess who? Samaritans. The Samaritans. And they so rattled
and upset the people who were beginning to rebuild that the
work stopped. They got discouraged. Their spirits
were low. Look at all this opposition against
us. We're not going to get anywhere
with this. And they just stopped. Eighteen years they stopped. After 18 years, God led an older
preacher to begin preaching and encouraged them, get back to
work. And then he, two months later,
he encouraged a younger preacher, or he called a younger preacher
to preach and encourage the people. That older guy, his name was
Haggai, the younger guy was Zechariah. And they began to preach to encourage
the people that the Lord is with them. Don't be discouraged by
the enemy. And I say to you, see, this has
an application to us today. Don't be discouraged by the enemy.
I know false religion is vast. It's great. It's numerous. They've got the numbers. They've
got the people. They've got the wealth. False
religion has everything except the truth. Everything except the truth as
it is in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so, this man Zechariah, He
is led to write this book in which he reveals in the first
six chapters visions that God gave him. God gave him nine visions
all in one night. All in one night. And I want
to show you another one of his visions. We've already dealt
with one of them. But I want to show you the second
one this morning, and that's in chapter 1, verse 18. Zechariah chapter 1, verses 18
through 21. Then lifted I up mine eyes, and
I saw, and here's what he saw in this vision now. Behold, four
horns. These are horns not like brass
instruments, not like trumpet or something like that. To the
Jews, the sign of power and strength was the horn. Remember, they
were pastoral people. By that I mean they were people
who raised sheep, they raised cattle. So to them, to see those
horns on the rams and on the bulls, ah, that indicated great
power and indicated unusual strength. So he says, I lifted up mine
eyes, and I saw and behold four horns, four entities of great
power. And I said unto the angel, and
the angel is the Lord Jesus, I said unto the angel that talked
with me, he asked what I would ask. What are these? In other
words, what do these stand for? What do these mean? What's the
meaning of these four horns? And he answered me, these are
the horns which have scattered Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem. In other words, these horns from
the north, the south, the east, and the west, in other words,
these are powers that totally surround the people of God. And they have been a constant
Irritant, a constant enemy, a constant opposition to the people of God
actually since the beginning. And then, verse number 20, the
Lord, He showed me, He manifested me for carpenters. Here's the title of the message.
You ready? Horns and Carpenters. That's
the title of the message. All right, horns and carpenters. And then said I, well, what do
these come to do? He spake saying, these are the
horns, all right, go back to the powers of the enemy. These are the horns which have
scattered Judah. so that no man did lift up his
head." In other words, such was the opposition. The Jews had
no joy. They had no more enthusiasm.
They just kind of hung their heads down in gloominess. Kind of like we do sometimes
with things going bad. Oh, no, things are so bad. You
hang your head down. You can't even raise your head
up. So you get the picture. So they're saying, oh, oh my,
this is terrible. The enemy is so powerful. The
enemy is so adamant against us. So the nomad lifted up his head. But these are come, these four
carpenters. Literally, it means they're skilled
workers. These four carpenters or skilled
workers, they've come to fray, to scatter, to put fear into the enemy, to cast out the horns
of the Gentiles, which lifted up their horn over the land of
Judah to scatter it. Let's talk about the four horns.
Remember, it's night. He had all these visions, all
nine visions were at night. And the Lord shows him these
powers, these horns that stand for powers. I don't think they're
particular empires. but rather just one north, south,
east, and west, the four points of the earth. It's like the enemy's
everywhere. They've got us totally surrounded
and outnumbered. No wonder they hung their heads
down. It looked to them like opposition
against the enemy would be futile. It would be useless. Israel had powerful enemies around
them who brought a halt to the work of the rebuilding of the
temple and the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem. Now, that's the letter of the
passage. It pertains to Israel being disillusioned, disappointed,
due to all of these enemies who are saying, you can't do this.
We'll stop you. And all the threats just so discouraged
them, they just all quit work. We're not going to build anymore. Now that's the natural, that's
the letter of the passage. Here's the spiritual meaning.
The people of God, as long as we lift up our eyes
unto heaven and see who our power is, see who the strength is,
as long as we keep our eyes on the Lord Jesus Christ, we'll
be just fine. You remember how the Psalms put
it in Psalm 121, I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from
whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord.
I look up to the Lord. And I realize He's the One who
sits upon the throne of majesty. He sits upon the hill of Zion. He's the One who rules over the
church. He bought the church. He rules
the church. He provides for the church. He
preserves the church. He looks out for the church.
He protects the church. One of these days, He'll perfect
the church in glory. Lift up your heads. Your redemption
draweth nigh is what the Scripture says. Lift up your eyes to the
Lord. But lots of times, our heads
hang down, don't they? And we get disappointed. We get to paying attention to
look how vast the enemy is. They have so much power. They
have so many people. Somebody told me the other day
about a particular church. They said, you know, their parking
lot, it was too small. They had to enlarge. And I said,
well, they're giving people entertainment. I know that because one of the
people who goes to that particular church lives not far from me.
And they've got the drums and the cymbals and the bass guitars
and all kinds of instruments. And they just really whoop it
up and people have a good time clapping and yelling and all
of that. They can draw people in. And this person said, but
they have so many. And if you're not careful, that'll
cause you to hang your head down. but they're void of the Gospel.
Now that's what they're missing. You say, Jim, you ought not be
cruel to people. I'm not being cruel. I pray that
God teach them the Gospel. The only hope they've got is
the only hope we've got. is that the Lord will open up
our minds, our hearts, our understanding to see the only way that God
can be just and justify people like us is through the bloody
death of the Lord Jesus Christ. If we ever fall in love with
Him, if we ever really believe Him, we'll realize He is the
King of kings and the Lord of lords. I'll lift up mine eyes
to the hills from whence cometh my help. You see, the rebuilding of that
temple of old, here's what it's a picture of. Our Lord is building
His church. He's saving His people. Now,
granted, sometimes the work goes very slow. And sometimes it's
very little. After our Lord went back to glory
in Acts 1, And he had given the disciples
of the Great Commission to go out and preach, and they were
just eager to go. You know how small it was? 120 people. So that's a pretty
good-sized congregation. For the whole world? For the whole world, 120 people
in the whole world knew God, had the truth of the Gospel of
God's grace, And I'll bet you some of them
probably said to one another, I don't think it's ever going
to come to anything. Look how little we are. The Lord
said, you just wait. I'm going to send My Spirit.
Then all of a sudden, thousands were converted. Don't get disappointed. Don't get discouraged. You know
what the Savior said? I will build my church, and the
gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And really, that's
the overriding theme of the book of Zechariah, is that the Lord
will build His church. He will build His spiritual temple. He will. This is the encouragement
of the Word of God. Notice what He says back up in
verse 16. There's a statement there. The
Lord said, Thus saith the Lord, I am returned to Jerusalem with
mercies. My house shall be built. In His
spiritual house it shall be built. God gave to His Son a people
before the world began. He chose them in free and sovereign
grace. He will bring them all to know
Him and to worship Him. After all, Christ has redeemed
us. He has bought us. He has satisfied
law and justice for all of His people. I will build my church. Don't be discouraged. and don't
try to hasten things to get more people in by carnal means. Don't do that. Just remember, I'm doing my work. And the Lord says, I will do
my work and none shall frustrate it. None shall hinder me. Four powers. There's satanic
power. There's the power of the secular
world. The secular world, what does
the secular world want to do? Get rid of the name of God. Let's
just get rid of God. We don't want His name anywhere. Take Him off the license tag.
Take His name off that. Take him off our money is what
a lot of people insist upon. Just do away with God. That's
the natural world, the enmity they have toward God. Don't be
discouraged. Keep looking up. Don't hang down
your head as though, oh, we're a pitiful group. We're a blessed
group. What are you talking about? We're
blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ
Jesus. Our Savior rules the world. Don't be discouraged. He'll save His people right on
time. It's like it says there in Acts
2, and the Lord added to the church daily, such as should
be saved. What is it for us to do? Stay
true to the Gospel. Get the Word of the Gospel out.
Pray that the Lord will make bare His mighty arm of grace. Just stick to the work. Stick
to the work. You see, greater is He that is
in you than he that is in the world. I know the powers out
there are great, but they're no match for God. Alright. He's got four powers
that are called horns. Then the Lord shows Zechariah
four carpenters, four skilled workers. Who are these? Well,
I believe these are pictures of preachers of the gospel. Skilled
workers. They're carpenters. Look with
me and go back to Jeremiah chapter 23. Look at Jeremiah chapter 23. What do carpenters do? Well, I'd say they do two things. They can be destructive and they
can be constructive. And what does a carpenter use?
A hammer. That's what he uses. A carpenter
uses a hammer. He uses it to knock down, to
tear up, and then he uses it to drive nails to build up. Look here in Jeremiah chapter
23. Look at verse 29. Jeremiah 23, 29. Is not my word,
this is God's word now, is not my word like a fire that consumes,
that burns, saith the Lord, and like a hammer that breaketh a rock in pieces? The Word of God is the hammer
that these skilled workers use. That's all we use. The Word of
God. Our weapons are not carnal. You
can read in 2 Corinthians 10 about that. You don't have to
read it now, but our weapons aren't carnal. We have a spiritual
weapon. It's the hammer of God's Word.
And we use this hammer to crush idols. We're idol crushers. I'm here with the Word of God
to tell you that if your religion is totally dependent upon you
and not totally dependent upon God, I want to take the hammer
of the Word and crush that. You've got the wrong idol. and I want to build up the gospel
of grace, I want to show that I'm for this gospel, and show
you that the only hope you have is in Jesus Christ and Him crucified. It's not in your works. It's
not in your baptism. I want to take a hammer and knock
all those things down. As a skilled workman, who uses
the Word of God. Do you remember what Paul told
Timothy? 2 Timothy chapter 4. What does he say? What's the
third word? Word. Preach the Word. Use the hammer. Use the hammer. And it's said in much of religion
today, the hammer is closed. The hammer isn't even opened.
It's not pulled out. The Word of God, the Word of
the Gospel, of the grace of God, of the substitutionary sacrifice
of Christ, that's the hammer. Let's just hammer away. Keep
on hammering away. And that's what we do every service.
We pull the hammer out. And we preach. And I'll tell
you what the hammer will do. It will, as the Lord told Zechariah,
fray the enemy. It will fray the enemy. It will
scatter the enemy. The enemy will tremble. Hear
me. I know Satan is a mighty opponent. I know that. But you know what will fray him? The Gospel of the grace of God.
And he won't like that, because that's a hammer to him. And he
just hammers on him. He can't take it. He'll leave.
It's what the enemy hates, is the hammer of the Gospel. It's
the reason people got so mad at the Savior, because He used
the hammer of His own self, of His own deity against them. And He said, I am the way, I
am the truth, I am the life. And to them, the law was the
way, the truth, and the life. Obedience was the way, the truth,
and the life. He said, I am. That's the hammer. And listen to Him put the hammer
down on this. No man cometh to the Father except
by Me. Hammer down. Hammer down. So you see, that's what my business
is. Take the hammer. Keep on hammering. And we hammer away Sunday morning,
Sunday night, Wednesday night. It's what God uses to save His
people. Oh yeah, there are horns out
there all around us. How can we fray the horns? How can we scatter the horns?
How can we make the horns to tremble, fill them with terror,
and drive them away? Carpenters, use your hammers. Use your hammers. Let's get our
songbooks and turn to 257, Tis So Sweet. to trust in Jesus.