zechariah

Zechariah 12¹⁰-13²  

12.10 Mourning for the One they pierced.Zechariah was active around 520BC and he was a contemporary of Haggai.  The chief purpose of the book was to rebuke the people of Judah and to encourage and motivate them to complete the rebuilding of the Temple.  Added to this Zechariah called the people to a spiritual renewal as well.  We come this morning to look at three verses in particular: 12 verse 10 and 13 verses 1-2.

Let me ask you a question:  what moves you to mourning?  What has you crying from the very depths of your soul?  Look at verse 10 and the second part of the verse.  Zechariah says that these people mourn as if they had lost an only child or a first-born son.  But what are they mourning?  Well go back a sentence.  They are mourning as they look upon the One whom they have pierced.  This can only be one person and there can only be one event in mind here  the Crucifixion of Christ.  But why would they mourn the crucifixion  after all we know that the people will in fact cry out for Christ to be crucified and apart from a small band of disciples no one mourns his death initially.  But go back now to the beginning of the verse and read what it says.  READ v10.

Do you see what happens to lead these people to mourn over the One they pierced?  When did this happen?  Surely the Day of Pentecost  when the Spirit came upon not just the Apostles but also the crowd who listened to Peter preach and they did exactly what this verse says  they mourned the One they had pierced.  Zechariah, some 500 years before the crucifixion and Pentecost, speaks about a moment in time when God will pour out (copiously) His Spirit on all people.  This Spirit (the Holy Spirit) will do two things:

Bring Gods Grace to bear on their lives.  That is Gods undeserved riches and favour will be poured out upon the people.  What happens when Gods grace is poured out upon a man? He is convicted of his sin.  When Gods Spirit pours his grace into my life my spiritually blind eyes are opened and I am immediately aware of my sinfulness.  I am immediately aware of how odious I am to God and before God.  Gods grace draws me, unworthy and undeserving as I am, to God himself.

Then secondly the same Holy Spirit is a Spirit of Supplication.  When Gods grace is poured into my life I am moved to seek God in prayer.  The moment I become aware of my sinfulness before God I cry to him for mercy.  Zechariah says that when the Spirit of grace and supplication comes upon the people their eyes will be turned towards the One they pierced and they will mourn.  Gods grace turns me from gazing at myself to gaze at Christ crucified.  And when my eyes are lifted to the cross I am aware of the depth of my sin.  I am moved deep in my spirit, the very core of my being by the awesome consequences of my sin.  My sin pierced the Son of God.  My sin nailed the holy One of Israel to a tree and condemned him to die as a common criminal.  He who knew no sin became sin for me, he became my sin and my soul mourns because I put him there.

Zechariah says that the depth of distress in the heart of a man upon whom the Spirit of grace and supplication has been poured out is the depth of distress experienced by the death of a child.  Now let me ask you:  is that how you would describe your attitude to your sin today?  When Gods grace falls upon your life  are you filled with grief at your sin?  Are your eyes lifted to the cross?  When you gaze upon the One whom your sin pierced and murdered do you mourn?

But friends let me say this to you  all the tears of grief over sin cannot cleanse sin.  All the tears that you or I have ever, or could ever shed, over our sin cannot cleanse us from sin, from the eternal consequences of sin.  Sorrow and mourning for sin is not the end in itself. No amount of weeping over sin is the answer to the problem of sin.

13.1-2 The Answer to the Problem of Sin

READ verses 1 and 2 of chapter 13 and we will find the answer to the problem of sin.  These are some of the most beautiful verses in the book of Zechariah, in fact in all of Scripture.  Look at what the prophet says.

Verse 1 On that day a fountain will be opened to cleanse them from sin and impurity.  A fountain in the desert land of Judah was precious.  It was precious because unlike a stream it did not dry up when the dry season came.  It was precious because it could be trusted to provide a refreshing and pure drink in the midst of a dry and arid landscape.  It was precious because it was constant and consistent.  It was precious because it brought life when all around was death and decay due to the heat of the sun. Friends the prophet says that is what God provided to answer the problem of their sin and your sin today.  This fountain, the atoning death of the One they pierced, provided cleansing from sin and impurity.

This fountain cleansed them from sin  that is from all the ways in which they failed to meet the standards that God required.  Gods standard was and is perfection.  So every time they failed to meet perfection they sinned.  Now I don't know about you but I cannot think of any single occasion in my life when I reached perfection.  So when I look back on my life the mountain of sin is very tall indeed.  Zechariah says this fountain opened  opened by the death of Christ  flows with cleansing from that mountain of sin  praise God.  He goes further and says that the cleansing is not just from sin but also from impurity.

Zechariah says that on that day, the day that the Spirit of grace and supplication is poured out,  there will be mourning as eyes are lifted to the crucified Christ but there will also be hope, joy and forgiveness.  It will not be a hopeless or helpless situation.  There will be cleansing.  You see this fountain is for cleansing.  It is for washing in.  Friends that fountain broke forth upon this world the day Christ died on the Cross.  That fountain is there for us all to freely do to and be cleansed of sin and impurity in our lives.  If you remain this day unclean and impure there is no one to blame but yourself.  The other thing about the fountain is, as I said, it never dries up.  This fountain of cleansing and forgiveness is inexhaustible. There is mercy enough in God and merit enough in Christ to cleanse you from all and every sin.  There is no sin too great and no sin too small that he cannot cleanse or does not need cleansing. 

Note also will you that Zechariah places no stipulations, no barriers on who or who may not come to this fountain.  The fountain has been opened  opened for all who would come.

Verse 2  Zechariah now moves to a further outworking of this fountain  sanctification. Read   verse 2.  Do you see what follows from the cleansing of sin and impurity in the life of a believer?  There is a practical outworking of that inner cleansing.  As the fountain washes and cleanses (justifies) so it also sanctifies.  You see just as when you physically take a bath you are not the same afterwards, you are cleansed, the dirt and filth has been removed from your body  you do not immediately put back on the dirty garment you wore before the bath, or at least you should not.  So it is with the inner cleansing that has taken place when you came to the fountain, the living water of Christ Jesus (spoken of in John 4).  You cannot go back and put on the old man again.  You cannot come to Christ for cleansing and then go back to the old life, to idols and to living according to the spirit of impurity.

Zechariah says the Lord God, the One they pierced, will banish the very names of the idols from the land and they will be remembered no more.  This is significant.  Your name was very important in the OT.  When God wanted to reveal his glory to Moses he revealed his name to Moses.  Your name spoke of your identity, your character, your attributes and your power.  God says here that when you come to the fountain and are cleansed then one aspect of the outworking of that is that he comes and removes the idols from our lives.  He removes their power, their dominion, their names  their very existence is removed.  They are removed and remembered no more.  In the day of Zechariah what happened was that the people, collectively often, brought out all the idols and burned them in a public repentance. They brought them out and burned them.  Now listen to me, they had to go into their homes and into their temples and bring forth the idols and destroy them before God.  There are many idols in all our lives and we need to bring them before God and destroy them  repent of their influence and hold over us and lay them before God to be destroyed.  And when we have destroyed them we are not to go back and rebuild them again, nor to lament their destruction  in fact we are to live as if they never existed in the first place.  You cannot worship the true and living God and at the same time harbour in your heart, in your soul and in your life false gods, that are really no gods at all.  Zechariah said that when the Spirit of grace and supplication came upon them their eyes would be lifted to the One they had pierced and they would mourn what their sin had done.  They would be led to a fountain opened for them, a fountain of cleansing spiritually that would usher into their lives and the life of their nation cleansing from idols  from false gods.

Zechariah further states that the Lord will also remove the false prophets and the spirit of impurity from their nation.  The spirit of impurity is in stark contrast to the Spirit of grace and supplication.  The spirit of impurity leads only to false gods, further sin and eventual death. So when Gods Spirit of grace and supplication opens their eyes he will also come in power to remove the false prophet from their midst and to remove the spirit of impurity from their midst.  But how?

Because their eyes will have been opened to the truth and they will know the false teaching. Because their souls and their conscience will have been cleansed and they will recognise what is impure.  They will know in their hearts and in their spirits that certain actions, certain lifestyles, etc are not of God, not of his Spirit but are in fact false and impure.  Note friends too that some of those false prophets may even be members of their own families and most certainly will come from amongst the people of God, of the tribe of Judah.

Friends open your eyes.  False prophets are all around us today.  From the health and wealth tele-evangelists such as Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn, Jesse Duplantis, to the Anglican Bishops wanting to ordain and promote same-sex unions.  False prophets also abound in the media, in the political world etc.  Anyone who does not proclaim that Christ Jesus is the Son of God, the only Saviour  is a false prophet.  When it comes to a spirit of impurity  well I don't have to go into any details there.  Our eyes should certainly be open to the immorality all around us  and even within the church.  How many people claiming to be followers of Christ live immoral lives.  The secret sins that they think no one sees.  The small sins that they think do not matter.  Friends God says here in his word that when we come to the fountain for cleansing  then we are cleansed and the outworking of that in all our lives is the banishment of idols, the killing of the false prophet in our lives and the slaying of the spirit of impurity.

Conclusion

Well there is only one conclusion.  Have you come to the fountain to be cleansed?  Having come are you truly repentant for and of your sin?  What are you doing about the false prophet and the spirit of impurity in your life?  In your community and nation? Amen.