Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 452
“He that touches you, touches the apple of My eye.” Zechariah 2:8. GOD’S love to His ancient people is the theme of many a Psalm and deserves to be rehearsed in the ears of every generation. Abraham was by nature as a rough unhewn stone, but the Lord who chose him in the quarry, having hewn him from the rock, made him a polished pillar, a monument of Divine faithfulness. The Lord set His love upon him while he was a Syrian ready to perish. He brought him out of the land of his nativity and called him from his father’s house. Having made a Covenant with the solitary man, He multiplied his seed until they became as plentiful as the stars of Heaven. The kindness which God showed towards Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, He retained towards His chosen people, who sprang of their loins. Even when to all appearance He had deserted them, His face was towards them for good. If He sent a famine and broke the staff of life, He provided seven years of plenty in Egypt, that the storehouses of Pharaoh might be full for their sakes. If the Egyptians heavily oppressed them, then all the powers of nature were put out of their accustomed pathway to emancipate them from the house of bondage. When He had brought them out into the howling wilderness, His path dropped fatness, the heavens rained forth bread, and the rocks flowed with rivers. He made men to eat angels’ food. He carried them as on eagles’ wings. He could truly say, “I shod you with badgers’ skin and I girded you about with fine linen.”
He made His Jeshurun to ride upon the high places of the earth and fed His Israel with royal dainties, “butter of kine and milk of sheep, with fat of lambs and rams of the breed of Bashan and goats, with the fat of kidneys of wheat.” Wherever they went, their foes fled before them—Amalek was put to confusion before the people of the Lord. Sihon, king of the Amorites and Og, king of Bashan, felt the terror of their arm. Even the false prophet, as he looked from the mountain’s brow upon them, could only say, “Happy are you, O Israel: who is like unto you, O people saved by the Lord, the shield of your help and who is the sword of your excellency? Your enemies shall be found liars unto you. And you shall tread upon their high places.”
In due time He brought this people into the best spot of land which the earth knew—a country which indolence and tyranny have rendered barren, but which anciently overflowed with superabundant fertility. He brought them to a land of hills and valleys, of springs and rivers—a land out of whose heart they might take iron and copper and treasures in abundance. He established them in a land which flowed with milk and honey, so fertile that even its spontaneous productions, as exampled in the grapes of Eshcol, rivaled the products of the choicest husbandry.
Having brought them into this goodly heritage, He drove out the former inhabitants that He might plant His people and make them dwell in safety alone. How gracious He was to them in the days of Joshua and in the years which followed! When He mapped out their lots according to their tribes, He rejoiced to dwell in the midst of them. He had His tabernacle in Shiloh and His dwelling place in Zion. He showed not Himself unto other people but only unto this nation upon which His heart was set. He chastened them but He raised up judges for their deliverance.
Oftentimes they provoked Him but His anger waxed not hot against them. When He lifted up His rod, His strokes were few and He repented of the evil which He did unto them. At last, when they became incorrigible in their sins and made their brows like flint and their hearts like adamant, for a season He gave them up to captivity. They were taken to Assyria, they were carried away to the rivers of Babylon. The days of their banishment were many and they wept in the bitterness of their soul. Still, even in their captivity He loved them.
When they had forgotten Him, He had not forgotten them and in due time He brought them up again out of the house of their bondage, once more to set them in their land. It was about this time when He would give to His people a fresh deliverance, as memorable as the coming out of Egypt, that Zechariah testified, “he that touches you, touches the apple of My eye.” As much as to say, “I smite you, but I hate the nation that oppresses you. I take the axe to cut down your stubborn pride but lo, I will break the axe to shivers. I send against you the executioners of My anger but I will surely punish them, also, for the evil which they have done. He that touches you—even though I am the great first cause of the terrible onslaught upon you—‘he that touches you, touches the apple of My eye,’ and I will be avenged on him in the day of My wrath.”
Thus introduced, the text seems to teach us three lessons, upon which we shall speak briefly and God grant it may be to your edification. It tells us, first of all, God’s esteem of His people. Secondly, danger much surrounds persecutors. And, thirdly, the safety of the Church of God. For it may be well to remind you that the Jewish nation was a type of the Church of Christ.