'In that day shall there be upon the bells of the horses, Holiness unto the Lord; and the pots in the Lord's house shall be like the bowls before the altar. Yea, every pot in Jerusalem and in Judah shall be holiness unto the Lord of hosts.' (Zechariah xiv. 20, 21.)
What I have to say may not strike some of you as setting forth any very high or exalted truth, but I am satisfied as to its being a very important matter. I want to talk to you about the sanctification of the commonplace things in life.
However desirable it may seem, you cannot always be sitting at the Master's feet in that contemplative, ecstatic mood sometimes attributed to Mary. Like Martha, we have to do a good deal of serving. Whether we are encumbered by 'much serving' is a separate question; but if we are to fulfil the Divine tasks we have to do a great deal of serving as well as praying and trusting. I may quote, with slight alteration, two lines of a poem:—
Who sleeps and dreams that life is beauty,
Will wake to find that life is duty
How true that is in practical life many of us know full well.
The most attractive manifestation of God's power is seen in the fact that He stoops to touch men at the points of their daily need. It is that aspect of the grace of God—the meeting your need in the daily battle of life—which makes it so supremely precious. In the same way, when we, who profess to be followers and imitators of our Heavenly Father, and to regulate our conduct by the principles of holy living, bring these principles to bear upon the ordinary relationships of life, we are most accepted in our witness for Jesus Christ, and exert the best, the most effective influence upon others.
These are the thoughts that have been in my mind, and which have led me to the subject upon which I wish to speak: the sanctification of the commonplace things. My thoughts arise from reading this passage in the Book of Zechariah: 'In that day shall there be upon the bells of the horses, Holiness unto the Lord; and the pots in the Lord's house shall be like the bowls before the altar. Yea, every pot in Jerusalem and in Judah shall be holiness unto the Lord of hosts'.
Now, when we look at these things, these pots and pans and horses and bridles and things of that sort, having to do with our daily toil, our cooking and eating, our work at home and in the streets, and compare them with the glories of the Temple, the golden candlesticks, the golden vessels, the High Priest's wonderful garments, his breastplate, and, not least, with the Ark of the Covenant, we feel they are very commonplace things. And yet, you see, according to this statement the same stamp of holiness is to be put upon them all. Even the most commonplace of them comes within the scope of this Divine sanctity, and there is to be in relation to each of them this sacredness, this sanctification: 'Holiness unto the Lord', is the stamp for all alike.
As an illustration of how Jesus did great things by the use of the commonplace, look at that narrative of the marriage in Cana of Galilee. We should probably never have heard of this marriage but for our Lord's miracle; and yet, apart from His Divine power, the process of turning the water into wine and transforming the character of the entire feast, that event was, indeed, a very common one.