The Apple of God’s Eye

And I lifted my eyes and saw, and behold, a man with a measuring line in his hand! Then I said, “Where are you going?” And he said to me, “To measure Jerusalem, to see what is its width and what is its length.” And behold, the angel who talked with me came forward, and another angel came forward to meet him and said to him, “Run, say to that young man, ‘Jerusalem shall be inhabited as villages without walls, because of the multitude of people and livestock in it. And I will be to her a wall of fire all around, declares the Lord, and I will be the glory in her midst.’ ” Up! Up! Flee from the land of the north, declares the Lord. For I have spread you abroad as the four winds of the heavens, declares the Lord. Up! Escape to Zion, you who dwell with the daughter of Babylon. For thus said the Lord of hosts, after his glory sent me to the nations who plundered you, for he who touches you touches the apple of his eye: “Behold, I will shake my hand over them, and they shall become plunder for those who served them. Then you will know that the Lord of hosts has sent me. Sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion, for behold, I come and I will dwell in your midst, declares the Lord. And many nations shall join themselves to the Lord in that day, and shall be my people. And I will dwell in your midst, and you shall know that the Lord of hosts has sent me to you. And the Lord will inherit Judah as his portion in the holy land, and will again choose Jerusalem.” Be silent, all flesh, before the Lord, for he has roused himself from his holy dwelling.

Two Big Ideas:

Don’t measure to see what God is limited to, He is not limited by our small visions

We are to respond to our redemption by breaking free from our bondage

Zechariah 2:1–5 ESV

Sometimes being too concerned about numbers is not what God wants for us.

1 Chronicles 21:1–17 (ESV)

David’s Census Brings Pestilence

21 Then Satan stood against Israel and incited David to number Israel. 2 So David said to Joab and the commanders of the army, “Go, number Israel, from Beersheba to Dan, and bring me a report, that I may know their number.” 3 But Joab said, “May the Lord add to his people a hundred times as many as they are! Are they not, my lord the king, all of them my lord’s servants? Why then should my lord require this? Why should it be a cause of guilt for Israel?” 4 But the king’s word prevailed against Joab. So Joab departed and went throughout all Israel and came back to Jerusalem. 5 And Joab gave the sum of the numbering of the people to David. In all Israel there were 1,100,000 men who drew the sword, and in Judah 470,000 who drew the sword. 6 But he did not include Levi and Benjamin in the numbering, for the king’s command was abhorrent to Joab.

7 But God was displeased with this thing, and he struck Israel. 8 And David said to God, “I have sinned greatly in that I have done this thing. But now, please take away the iniquity of your servant, for I have acted very foolishly.” 9 And the Lord spoke to Gad, David’s seer, saying, 10 “Go and say to David, ‘Thus says the Lord, Three things I offer you; choose one of them, that I may do it to you.’ ” 11 So Gad came to David and said to him, “Thus says the Lord, ‘Choose what you will: 12 either three years of famine, or three months of devastation by your foes while the sword of your enemies overtakes you, or else three days of the sword of the Lord, pestilence on the land, with the angel of the Lord destroying throughout all the territory of Israel.’ Now decide what answer I shall return to him who sent me.” 13 Then David said to Gad, “I am in great distress. Let me fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercy is very great, but do not let me fall into the hand of man.”

14 So the Lord sent a pestilence on Israel, and 70,000 men of Israel fell. 15 And God sent the angel to Jerusalem to destroy it, but as he was about to destroy it, the Lord saw, and he relented from the calamity. And he said to the angel who was working destruction, “It is enough; now stay your hand.” And the angel of the Lord was standing by the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite. 16 And David lifted his eyes and saw the angel of the Lord standing between earth and heaven, and in his hand a drawn sword stretched out over Jerusalem. Then David and the elders, clothed in sackcloth, fell upon their faces. 17 And David said to God, “Was it not I who gave command to number the people? It is I who have sinned and done great evil. But these sheep, what have they done? Please let your hand, O Lord my God, be against me and against my father’s house. But do not let the plague be on your people.”

Other times, God has put into the heart of men of God to count people for the sake of records and order.

Nehemiah 7:5 Then my God put it into my heart to assemble the nobles and the officials and the people to be enrolled by genealogy.

It isn’t that we should never count the people or watch the books, but if these become our main measure of success, it can actually be prideful. If men want to know the number for their own glory, as it seemed David did, then they should be properly warned, as Joab warned David. But if God put into Nehemiah’s heart to enroll the people, which means to write down and keep track, we can see that being organized and knowing who our people are can be helpful as well.

However,

Don’t try to measure what is God’s to measure! Should we view the success of the local church by how many people are here, or how much money we have, or how nice our building is? Should we measure our own spiritual growth by comparing to those around us? Should we be disappointed in the things that are not to be our concern, but only God’s?

Our job is not to have the biggest crowd, or the biggest building, or the nicest slides, or the prettiest music. Our job is to be obedient to God. We are to love him, and respond to our redemption by serving Him with joy. And when we do that, then He will take care of all else. Seek first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness (His righteousness, not your own, because you can’t be righteous on your own) and ALL THESE THINGS SHALL BE ADDED TO YOU! What things? The necessities of life. So don’t limit God by measuring our area of impact, or what we can see right in front of us. When God is working on us, and we are trying to be obedient to Him, He will bless our efforts whether we see it or not! Sometimes pastors will hear of good things happening at another church and they ask what is going on? Are you discouraged by the numbers in our church? Will we disappointed that only 9 men are in our Warrior’s group? Those men, trying to be obedient to God, are having an impact far beyond the property we could measure, that which we call Oasis Church. And truly we are becoming a community church, and our men are the leaders in our community of Christians, which is not limited to our walls. There are good Christian people in churches around here being inspired and challenged by our men!

This is nothing special we have done. This is not simply because we are using one particular study. It is because our men SUBMITTED to what God was calling them to do. We are going to see great things happening as we will continue to train and equip men to be the godly leader they are called to be in their families, in their businesses and workplaces, and yes, even in leading the men of other churches into a deeper and more meaningful relationship with God than they have ever experienced before. And what does it come out of? Our brokenness. Our admission of weakness in a world that rejects the values of the Bible.

From our admission of our need to do better in pursuing God, He has given us challenges to teach us perseverance. He has given us pain so that we can better understand others. He has given us bad treatment from others to help us understand the rejection Christ felt and the rejection Christ promised His followers they would experience. All of this was His gift to us to make us more like Jesus so that we can touch others as Jesus did! Don’t be trapped into the measurements of the world. We don’t need to have 500 people here in the building to impact our community. All we need is a few obedient people and our entire area can be changed!

Zechariah 2:6–7 ESV

Up! Up! Flee from the land of the north, declares the Lord. For I have spread you abroad as the four winds of the heavens, declares the Lord. Up! Escape to Zion, you who dwell with the daughter of Babylon.

God is telling His people their redemption is near. When redemption is near, the redeemed move up and out of their bondage. This was written to Jews in exile. They would have found hope to know God was going to see to their release. God was saying through the prophet that they need to claim their own freedom. How does this apply to us? We who have repented of sin and put faith in Christ must take action to escape the bondage of sin we were held captive by. This is only done by remaining in a constant state of repentance, and always looking to scripture for guidance. We are to turn away form sin, not just once, but always. Temptation and vice are always available to us. We choose daily to go with the world or go with God.

Our Warriors are part of accountability groups. They are holding each other to living for Christ by challenging each other with questions and praying together. Why the Warrior language? Because the bible is clear: We are to kill off our old self. We are to battle against sin. We are to take up the armor of God and fight daily the battle of sin. We are to claim our freedom from sin by living in Christ.

Galatians 5:1 ESV

For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

Zechariah 2:8 ESV

For thus said the Lord of hosts, after his glory sent me to the nations who plundered you, for he who touches you touches the apple of his eye:

Again, as last week we learned how we are to let God be our defense, He reminds us that He will take care of those who have mistreated us. Israel is the apple of God’s eye, a precious loved nation that He will avenge. Today, we enjoy this favored status as well, having been grafted into the Vine. We who who are Gentiles, who have believed in Christ, who have been grafted in, who turn from sin and trust Christ for our salvation are the apple of God’s eye as well.

Exodus 19:4–6 ESV

‘You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel.”

Notice there is a contingent factor here. If you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant. The Jewish people do not have a promise from God apart from their obedience to his commands. Neither can we expect to ask in glorious blessings in this life if we live sinful lives.

Zechariah 2:9–13 ESV

“Behold, I will shake my hand over them, and they shall become plunder for those who served them. Then you will know that the Lord of hosts has sent me. Sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion, for behold, I come and I will dwell in your midst, declares the Lord. And many nations shall join themselves to the Lord in that day, and shall be my people. And I will dwell in your midst, and you shall know that the Lord of hosts has sent me to you. And the Lord will inherit Judah as his portion in the holy land, and will again choose Jerusalem.” Be silent, all flesh, before the Lord, for he has roused himself from his holy dwelling.

The people are to respond to God’s redemption by escaping from their bondage.

All of the prophets, in some way, called the people of God to repentance. It was actually one of the main functions they carried out. The prophet reminded the people of their past help from God, reminded them of His requirements, and challenged them to repent of evil and turn again to God. Return to me, and I will return to you.

But many Jews, just like many Christians today, put this hope in the temple, or the rituals of the temple. They were so focused on the temple and the idea that if only the temple were rebuilt, they would be ok, that they missed the message of the prophets to repent.

God spoke through the prophet Jeremiah warning the people they would not get away with lip service to God and keep on sinning. They could not rely on the temple or their rituals to save them. They needed to amend their ways. Let’s look at what Jeremiah said about this:

Jeremiah 7:1–15 ESV

The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: “Stand in the gate of the Lord’s house, and proclaim there this word, and say, Hear the word of the Lord, all you men of Judah who enter these gates to worship the Lord. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Amend your ways and your deeds, and I will let you dwell in this place. Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.’ “For if you truly amend your ways and your deeds, if you truly execute justice one with another, if you do not oppress the sojourner, the fatherless, or the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own harm, then I will let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your fathers forever. “Behold, you trust in deceptive words to no avail. Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, ‘We are delivered!’—only to go on doing all these abominations? Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I myself have seen it, declares the Lord. Go now to my place that was in Shiloh, where I made my name dwell at first, and see what I did to it because of the evil of my people Israel. And now, because you have done all these things, declares the Lord, and when I spoke to you persistently you did not listen, and when I called you, you did not answer, therefore I will do to the house that is called by my name, and in which you trust, and to the place that I gave to you and to your fathers, as I did to Shiloh. And I will cast you out of my sight, as I cast out all your kinsmen, all the offspring of Ephraim.

To summarize this idea, Mark Boda writes:

The temple became a place in which people trusted for salvation rather than responding to the prophetic call to repentance. Such trust, however, would not avert God’s judgment (Jer. 7:14). In the end both city and temple would be destroyed. Nevertheless, the prophets did expect a renewal of the city and its sanctuary. God would one day look with compassion on her ruins (Isa. 51:3) and rebuild Jerusalem and her temple (Isa. 44:28; Eze

k. 40–48). It is this hope that sustained the people throughout the coming centuries. Daniel longed for the restoration of the city, informed by his reading of Jeremiah and expressed through his penitential prayer (Dan. 9). Ezra pursued purity in his generation because of his desire to sustain the restoration of the city (Ezra 9:9). Nehemiah’s mission was instigated by an inquiry about Jerusalem (Neh. 1).

The church is a city without walls, open to unprecedented and diverse growth.

Two Big Ideas:

Don’t measure to see what God is limited to, He is not limited by our small visions

We are to respond to our redemption by breaking free from our bondage

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