Holy to the LORD

“On that day holy to the Lord will be inscribed on the bells of the horses, and the cooking pots in the Lord’s house will be like the sacred bowls in front of the altar.”

~Zechariah 14:20 (NIV).

Imagine the picture before us of a life where holiness and the things of God pervade the entire envelope of existence. Pretend for a moment that God has finally eradicated all sense of the common, and all sense of evil; all things profane and impure have found their rightful place—in annihilation.

This Is Possible

The very prospect of holiness absolutely saturating the known earth is only possible because of a Saviour. This Saviour, Jesus, came to show us the way to live life, to live a sacrificial death, and to live forever in our hearts through the Holy Spirit.

We are purified through him. Life under the New Covenant is issued through him.

The historically-backed fact of the sinless Jesus promotes the very concept of the possibility of Zechariah’s prophesy coming forth in reality.

Living In ‘This Image’ of the World, Now

It is possible for us to live this vision of Zechariah’s right now. It belongs in our minds and it lives in our hearts.

We only need a firm and stand-fast image of what holy to the Lord means, and specifically what it means to us.

There are so many ‘versions’ of God that have been promoted over the ages, and there are even surprisingly ‘versions’ of the holy Lord—the God of Spirit, Word, holy revelation, all-creation and Wisdom—that are promoted making God out to be some emotional and scattily angry deity that we cannot trust.

Let’s get one thing straight. God’s inherent nature does not and cannot change, ever.

The purity of Zechariah’s image for us confirms the unchangeable nature of God—an even-handed God that does not favour one over another, and cannot be fazed ‘emotionally’.

Living ‘in’ God now is about living firmly in God’s reality—so far hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3) that the external world matters so much less, to even those who might contort God to their own measures; those false teachers.

This image of God, the holy to the Lord life, understands that God already owns everything. God’s dominion maybe shaded only momentarily by the ‘prince of this world’ (Satan) who counterfeits the vestiges of faith. Never mind the battles once in the heavens and now over the earth—the war’s already won.

This Life Now

Zechariah calls forth to a time in the future; there is perhaps no doubt about that. But for every mirage we see coming on the horizon we have an image, in God, for today.

This ‘image’ is the Presence of the Almighty God, the Saviour or the World, the One who came to preserve us and redeem us in our sin, so that our sins ultimately matter no more.

For this life—the one that is purged of the eternal punishment for sin—we are in holy to the Lord territory. We are holy to the Lord. And this is how we shall live, pure in God’s sight and thankful for God’s eternal and ever-abundant grace.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

General Credit: Thomas McComiskey, The Minor Prophets Vol. 3 – Zechariah – An Exegetical & Expository Commentary (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 1998), p. 1244.