“Is this not a brand plucked from the fire?” Zech 3:2
When the prophet Zechariah appears on the scene in 520 BC, one thing is vividly clear: God is on the move. Eighteen years prior, a ragtag remnant of Jews had returned to Jerusalem after seventy years of exile in Babylon. Motivated at first to return to the glory days of David and Solomon, as the years passed their zeal flagged. The walls of the city were rubble, the temple, a ruins. The fact that they were paneling their own houses at the same time was cause for a stinging rebuke from his companion prophet, Haggai (1:4). Talk about priorities out of line.
Suddenly, God opens Zechariah’s eyes. He has vision after vision of a flurry of activity in the heavenly realms. He sees horses being sent to the four corners of the earth. He sees four pernicious horns that have been used to scatter and persecute God’s people. As they fade into the background, he sees four craftsmen, or carpenters, who arise and cast out the horns. He also catches a glimpse of the future when “many nations will be joined to the Lord” (2:11). Chapter 2 ends with the words “He is aroused from His holy habitation” (v. 13). God was stirred up. When that happens, it’s time to look up, and watch out!
Several of his visions are images of building and builders. He sees a “surveyor’s line…stretched out” (1:16), as well as angels coming and going, one with a tape measure in his hand. He sees a plumb line being dropped. He sees a capstone being placed upon what we discover is the temple, declaring: “[He] laid the foundation of this temple; His hands shall also finish it” (4:9).
In order to do construction, qualified builders must stand up and be counted. Chapter 3 introduces such a man: a “craftsman” Zechariah sees standing in the courtroom of the Almighty named Joshua. Satan himself is standing at his side to “oppose him”, only to receive a stern back off or else from the Lord of hosts. God boasts Joshua is “a brand plucked from the fire”. The Father proceeds to remove his filthy garments and garb him in splendrous robes, placing a turban representing authority upon his head. Reading between the lines, it’s as though God was about to proudly announce: that’s my boy!
Although the curtain to heaven has not fully opened to me in the same way, I am confident of this: God is on the move, again. He is about to do something new and glorious in our day. Heaven’s horses are baying. His eyes are scanning to and fro throughout the earth. Zechariah’s prophecies were about an actual, decimated temple, rebuilt for the nation God calls “the apple of His eye” (2:8). But they also pointed to a Day when a temple not made with hands would cause “many peoples and strong nations [to] come to seek the Lord…and to pray before” Him (8:22).
Before He does, God is again looking for fiery brands with Joshua-type fortitude and resolve. They are charred and have a smoky smell, logs who have been in the fire yet rescued by the very Hand of God, preserved and empowered for a purpose, against whom Satan’s attacks are futile. Beloved, mark my word: before God builds, He always looks for and finds builders. He could do it Himself, but He loves to include us. Rather than just deal with the evil horns, He counters them by raising up craftsmen. It is in this way He is glorified.
John Wesley was one of history’s greatest preachers. But when he was five, tragedy struck. His family house caught fire. Seconds before the roof collapsed he jumped into the hands of a human ladder his neighbors had formed, narrowly escaping certain death. He never forgot what God had done. In fact, he often spoke of how God saved him from destruction that day—identifying with Joshua, and recognizing he too had been saved for a divine purpose. Today, if you go to visit his grave, the epitaph he composed for his own tomb reads: “A Brand Plucked Out of the Burning”.
Oh to be worthy of such an inscription on my headstone one day! Beloved, God is doing a work in our day. The “temple” will be completed, and all nations will flow to it. What remains to be seen is who will be among His fiery brands.