Do Not Despise the Day of Small Things

Great events often have very small beginnings. So small that no one ever would expect that they would bring forth great matters. We all know that the majestic oak tree was once a very small acorn.

Or ... who has not been astonished that the Reformation, having been begun by the work of a few simple men, produced such powerful and great fruits which were blessed by the Lord? Often the Lord uses means and men in His realm of grace which appear to contradict His glory. But God wants to reveal His greatness in just this way.

Nothing Will Come Of It

The building of the second temple in Jerusalem did not proceed very smoothly. Immediately after laying the foundation, the builders quit working. Many people felt sad and depressed, for they remembered the glory of their first sanctuary. Building the new one began so punily, so diminutively. From the very beginning, nothing of the building of this one could be compared with God’s first, glorious house. And when the Samaritans obstructed the Jews’ labors, their despondency increased. Even Zerubbabel, the leader of the rebuilding, thought that nothing could ever come of it.

The Lord disapproved of their gloomy pessimism. He sent His prophet Zechariah to encourage them. God showed him encouraging events in his fifth night vision. God could have provided oil in the golden candlestick without the priestly service. So also God could construct the second temple in which the candlestick belonged, notwithstanding the hindrances by the enemies. And who would then be so unbelieving as to not believe God’s promises regarding this new sanctuary?

“For who hath despised the day of small things?” This question of the Lord also includes a warning. The Lord asks as it were, “Haven’t you ever observed that My great acts always come from seemingly insignificant events? Now then, be not so foolish as not to expect the completion of what I have commanded to begin, over which I have given My blessing. Be neither disobedient in considering as being unimportant or impossible, that which I have promised.”

The Lord Begins With Small Things

Frequently the world will begin to set up great affairs or businesses which come to naught, showing its powerlessness. Contrary to this, God often begins simply and with scanty means. But before long He causes us to worship Him and to be amazed over what He has accomplished. That is how God works in His realm of nature, but also in His church militant.

For instance, who could ever have imagined that such a despised slave’s small child, floating in that ark of bulrushes in the Nile River, should one day become the great leader of Israel’s millions? Caesar Augustus ruled the whole world, but the small Babe in the manger is eternally King over all kings, while the great emperor sank away in eternal destruction.

... Even in the Life of Grace

The exhortation to not despise the day of small things applies also to the life of grace in God’s people. There can be so much fear that we lack God’s work within us. And Satan likes to eagerly persuade us that nothing has really happened within us. It must only be our imagination, or parroting others’ experiences.

We are prone to think that our knowledge of misery is not deep enough, not thorough enough. Our knowledge of deliverance is only imagined, because if it really was from the Lord, it would be much richer and more glorious. However, on the other side it cannot be denied that everything has changed in our life. We do not desire to live as we have lived before, but because we are in darkness, there is much doubt about God’s work within. And yet, sometimes we may be comforted by God’s Word, being confident that the Lord will perform the good work He has begun until the day of Jesus Christ.

Only the Lord can enlighten us in regard to His work. He utilizes His Word, teaching and discovering to us that we have to seek our life outside of ourselves in Jesus Christ. No, we shall never be able to find rest in what we observe within ourselves, but only in that which the Lord speaks through His Word. Holy Scripture teaches us that there is only one Savior, that there is only one way to be saved, i.e., in and through the Lord Jesus Christ.

Even though we cannot find rest in any of our soul’s experiences, when we may hear how God converts His people, it can be very encouraging when we may be included in those experiences. A young friend told me once, “When I hear in the sermons how God converts His people, I may sometimes say, ‘So it is with me.’”

God’s Work Becomes Manifested

God’s work within us reveals itself in our conversion. It exists in the experience of having sinned against a holy and well-doing God. We experience how God’s Word and law are judging us. This reproving work of the Holy Spirit begins at the root of conversion. It results in the confession of sins and the need for forgiveness. Conversion and confession of sin results in abandoning sin. This can produce much strife with many defeats, but when we may have a right awareness of sin and God’s displeasure over it, we experience by means of the effusion of God’s love for us a deep sorrow over sin. A childlike fear of the Lord is planted in the heart. This is a fear which, contrary to drifting away from God, clings to Him. This fear esteems God very highly. All the soul wants is the Lord Himself. This is clearly expressed in prayer life. We read of Paul in the beginning of his conversion, “Behold, he prayeth”! This was the first time in his entire life that he really prayed—although he must later on experience, “We know not what we should pray for as we ought.” Who can describe the struggles of a soul that is made alive, its sighs and callings to God time and again!

Faith, Hope, and Charity

Hence, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ becomes essential. Conversion and faith are inseparable. Faith in Christ is quickened by means of the preaching of God’s Word, which reveals Him to the soul; no, definitely not by means of dreams or visions. Christ is looked upon, believed in, and embraced, by faith, with a hearty and willing surrender to Him in love. For love is inherent in faith. “Every one that loveth is bom of God, and knoweth God” (1 John 4:7b). He who lacks love, misses grace and is not born of God. Love aims at God in Christ, at His Word, at His people, and at His service. By means of hope we may believe that the Lord has become our God. We desire to obey Him in everything. Regarding this Calvin says, “If we observe understandable tokens of God’s grace, we are immediately aroused to a good hope, and to be thankful to God.”

Not Despising

Despising these things darken our soul. It grieves the Holy Spirit. And He will withdraw His activities. Let’s pray much for light and wisdom when we are in strife and under attack. The Lord is the great hearer of prayer. On the other hand, if we only find rest in certain signs of new life, we shall lose true lively soul exercise and earnestness to be secured in Christ. Then we will not live out of the source of life, and this will result in a dry and barren life.

Do not despise the day of small things. This is also applicable to those who are so quick to judge harshly the beginnings of life in others. Some people will only shake their heads when a beginner in grace timidly tries to reveal what the Lord has done in his soul. Often we will hear, “Don’t imagine that anything saving has taken place; as long as you have not experienced this, or ... as long as you are unfamiliar with that ... you are still an outsider. It’s only emotional; you still lack the root of the matter.” Coldness, a lack of feeling, and lovelessness can damage the budding spring flowers created by God’s Spirit. How irreverent such “religious inspectors” behave themselves concerning what the Lord has wrought in someone whom He has made alive. God shall protect His own life in His people, leading them on step by step into the secrets of salvation. Let those who have received more knowledge and increase in faith be not masters, but fathers. For, those so-called “small things” which are a miraculous grant of God’s work are protected by God’s watchful eye.

It is dangerous to immediately lay hands upon a beginner in grace. But it is also dangerous to deal harshly with such a one. We need wisdom and love in this also.

One characteristic of true faith is that it is sincere and wants to be tested. Let the real touchstone not be another’s conversion, but God’s Word. Moreover, we have a treasure of inherited books by Dutch, English, and Scottish writers who are good tutors. And let us keep ourselves under the ordinary means of grace given by God, wherever He has placed us.

Rev. H. Paul is pastor of the Netherlands Reformed Congregation (Gereformeerde Gemeente) of H.I. Ambacht, The Netherlands. This article is translated from “Daniel.”

Canadian Thanksgiving

On October 14, the Lord willing, our Canadian congregations hope to commemorate an annual Thanksgiving Day. Again we have many reasons to be humbled before the Lord on account of His unspeakable longsuffering mercies which have been spread thickly over us in the past season. Who could have thought that Canada would not lose a single soldier in the thick of battle in the Persian Gulf War in 1991?

If we pause beside God’s goodness and consider our commonplace national sins: Sabbath-desecration, immorality, abortion, euthanasia, humanism, permissiveness, worldliness, etc., is it not difficult to grasp the patience of the Lord? And then to consider that for the most part our nations have ended in ourselves rather than in the Lord with victory in war?

We have forfeited both the privilege and the ability of true thanksgiving in Paradise. Oh, if we consider even with our minds what our countries, churches, families, and above all, ourselves deserve—each one putting his hand into his own bosom—on account of our accumulation of iniquity in 1991, we should not be able to come beyond Isaiah’s confession, “Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts” (Isa. 6:5).

If God’s common grace blessings to our nations as a whole are incomprehensible, how much more His goodness in the face of His Son! May God’s people be privileged this Thanksgiving Day to surrender their feeble prayers and poor thanksgivings into the hands of the perfect praying and thanking High Priest who is able to salt their insufficiencies with the sanctifying merits of His sufferings in order to present His children without spot or wrinkle before the countenance of His Father.

Dear children of God, may the Lord become too strong for us and cause us to end in Christ as living Lord with empty hands this Thanksgiving season. Then Thanksgiving Day will not be another day of provocation, in which we like Israel offer the Lord only “the blind, the lame, and the maim”; rather, we shall be filled with His fulness, grace for grace. Then with broken hearts and contrite spirits, the Lord shall receive our firstfruits “and the calves of our lips” (Hos. 14:2b).

We are unworthy, but the triune God is worthy.

— JRB

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