Never lose sight of the fact that God originally spoke these words through Zechariah to a people stalled in their efforts to build God’s temple. They were fixated on the difficulty of their present circumstances and the task of completing a building for their day, but God explained that what they had begun was something far, far greater. Their work was not limited to its effects for their own lifetime, but merely a starting point for things that would not be ultimately fulfilled until the final age on earth when the Messiah comes back to personally reign. What was previously limited to just the Temple would be propagated throughout the whole earth. From this point on begins God’s final plan for restoring the entire earth to a spiritual state which can abide in His personal presence: holiness.

Let us remember one of God’s major points near the beginning of these revelations which defined the overall purpose of His actions:

Biblical jealousy is the extreme devotion to ensuring an exclusive, faithful relationship between two parties as exemplified by the sanctity of marriage. Holiness is not just a happenstance condition, it is a choice to be purified by devotion to God’s Word and ways alone. It is accomplished by His truth. This is the purpose of what we come to call “sanctification” in the New Testament. Jesus specifically said,

And so the end result of all the descriptions through the last half of Zechariah regarding what it will be like “in that day” are depicted here in the saturation of His holiness throughout the whole of Jerusalem and Judah. It is not limited to the few square feet of space connected with the Holy of Holies in the Temple, but moves out among all the people and becomes a state of normalcy in the world.

If you believe this is the correct interpretation of Scripture, that this is God’s goal, to what degree do you believe this to have application to your present life? If God’s overall purpose is to make it holy, free from the pollutive effects of sin, then why do we not truly and wholly believe this is His will for us now? The point of the book of Zechariah as a whole is not to convey an inevitable future state, but to teach what inevitably happens to those who choose (or not) to devote themselves exclusively to His process of sanctification NOW by putting only His Word into practice and rejecting all other alternatives. In this regard, “that day” is actually THIS day based on our personal choice of whether not to live according to HIS Word. We are not supposed to wait to see this happen for everyone else, but see that it happens here and now for us._††_†

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