Zechariah 4:8-10 - Do not despise the day of small things

4:8,9

The second temple was never going to be the fulfillment of God’s plans, for it was destroyed in AD70, yet it was still important. It had a temporal significance. In our own lives, as individuals and as churches, we need to recognise the difference between temporal and eternal things. There are things that God does, or that He has us do, that are important for a time, but they are only a staging post, not the final destination. The temple was important, its completion by Zerubbabel would demonstrate that God’s word was true and reliable. The fulfilment of God’s word in temporal matters is “proof” that His word is reliable and trustworthy in eternal matters. And we need to recognise that we are all deeply interested in eternal matters. We will all die, what happens next? Can we trust God in what He says? Eternity matters.

4:10

This is another well known verse from Zechariah, “do not despise the day of small things”. So the temple was temporal, yet God would rejoice when it was completed. Since eternity is what matters most, we might think that the here and now does not matter. We know experientially that that is not true, the here and now does matter, it also matters to God. We are not to despise the temporal, for God does not, and it is still God’s work.