Looking At The One We Pierced
Notes
Transcript
Handout
PRAY
PRAY
I don’t know how you treat other people,
but geenrlaly, the worse someone treats us, the worse we treat them.
But God, for His people, does quite the oppoite!
Instead of ending us in right judgement for all the times and ways we rebel, reject, ignore him,
he makes that exact thing the place he pours his love on us.
That's where Zechariah 12 and 13 land.
But to feel the weight of it, we have to start where Zechariah's people were standing.
Rewind about 2,500 years.
God's people are a shadow of what they were — a small band back from exile,
living among the ruins of a great city,
under the thumb of bigger nations,
with a rebuilt temple so unimpressive, that we read in Ezra,
that the old men wept when they saw it.
The question underpinning this whole book is simple: has God forgotten his promises?
Is he actually going to do anything for these downtroden people?
These last chapters are God's answer.
They're one long vision of a coming day — Zechariah says "on that day" sixteen times
— a day when God finally steps in and sorts everything out.
Zechariah can see the day coming.
He just can't see all the detail yet.
And on ‘that day’, God promises three things
— three things far bigger than his first hearers could have dreamed:
God fights for people who don't deserve it;
God turns rebels into mourners;
and God opens a fountain by striking his own Shepherd.
1. God Fights For People Who Don't Deserve It (12:1–9)
1. God Fights For People Who Don't Deserve It (12:1–9)
Put yourself in that little remnant ‘peoples shoes’:
surrounded, outnumbered, weak.
And God says this:
On that day, when all the nations of the earth are gathered against her, I will make Jerusalem an immovable rock for all the nations. All who try to move it will injure themselves.
Now, this is vision-language — big, vivid picture-writing, not a specific battle report.
— so we read it for its thrust, not for map coordinates.
And the thrust, to people who felt the world could crush them any day, is astonishing.
When all the nations mass to attack, God won't merely defend the city
— he'll make it like the huge stone in the field that ruptures the back of every man who tries to lift it clear.
And a bit later in:
On that day the Lord will shield those who live in Jerusalem, so that the feeblest among them will be like David, and the house of David will be like God, like the angel of the Lord going before them.
Notice what God does not say.
"the strong will win." No the feeblest — the weakest man in the city — will fight like David, the Goliath - giant-killer.
Not because the weak got strong,
but because God is shielding them.
Remember last week: chapter 11's shepherds who were frauds who fed off the flock, rather than fed the flock.
Here God gives his people leaders who actually lead them to safety. All the refernces to clans in this chapter carry more of a sense of good leadership in their clans.
So what would Zechariah's hearers take away?
One thing above all: your survival was never about your strength or your numbers.
God himself fights for you.
Though — and God in this prophesy is honest about this — not without cost.
He promises to fight for them;
But he never promises it will be easy.
So what does this have to do with us? Look again at that phrase, "on that day."
v3, 4, 6, 8, 9
Zechariah is pointing past his own moment to a day still out ahead of him.
And here's the link: the word at the top of the chapter in v1
A prophecy: the word of the Lord concerning Israel.
“Israel" — even in the OT was not just a patch of land, but God's whole covenant people.
The New Testament tells us everyone who belongs to Jesus belongs to that people,
and that "that day" ..dawned when Jesus came and … continues until he returns.
In other words this chapter is a ‘promise for the people of God on ‘that day’’
The ‘last days’ as other bible passages call it.
It’s for us as a church, and all of God’s church this side of the incarnation.
A church, an Israel, that still looks outnumbered and weak compared to the surrounding world.
Which makes the good news for us the same as it was for them:
our safety is God's doing, not ours.
The weakest person in this room is safe if they are God’s
— not because they're strong, but because of who stands behind them.
And it won't always be easy. He never said it would be.
BUt He will defend His people, His Church, His Israel.
But here comes a turn in these two chapters.
You'd expect the story to peak with the battle: enemies crushed, city saved, roll the credits.
Instead, the moment God finishes rescuing them from the enemies outside, he turns to a far bigger problem: the enemy inside.
God can flatten every army on earth, and his people still have a problem no army caused and no sword can fix — their own guilt.
And what God does about that is the real miracle.
2. God Turns Rebels Into Mourners (12:10–14)
2. God Turns Rebels Into Mourners (12:10–14)
Chapter 12 has just promised rescue from every enemy outside.
But these 5 verse, seem to show us how ‘that day’ will be begin.
‘And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son.
Think how that verse would have been heard by Zechariah's origional hearers.
Two things would have hit them.
First, God moves first. "I will pour out." Before anyone repents, before anyone feels a thing, God pours out his Spirit — the "Spirit of grace and supplication,"
the Spirit who gives grace and makes people pray
- they receive what they don’t deserve and
respond in prayer
as they trust now the Lord,
not themselves.
So the sorrow that’s about to follow isn't something they ‘work up’ to earn God's favour.
It's the fruit of grace he pours out first.
It’s easy to think: sort yourself out, then God might have you.
Zechariah says, on that day: God pours, and then they turn.
Second — and this would have stopped them cold — second part ov v10 again:
"they will look on me, the one they have pierced."
God is speaking. And God says they pierced me. To an Israelite that's almost unthinkable.
How do you put a sword through God?
Zechariah doesn't explain it.
He leaves it as a mystery, and then describes grief like nothing else — mourning
"as one mourns for an only child,"
family by family,
each on their own (v.12).
Not a crowd swept up in a mood; each person, quietly, owning their own sin - their part in percing the Lord God.
He compares it to the saddest day his hearers could remember to measure it:
weeping v”11 like the weeping of Hadad-Rimmon in the plain of Megiddo" (v.11)
— the day good king Josiah was cut down in battle and the whole nation grieved, knowing their last hope had fallen.
That is the depth of sorrow coming.
They have pierced their last hope - God himself.
And there Zechariah stops. He never tells us how God can be pierced.
For his hearers it stayed an open question — for centuries.
Then one Friday it was answered.
A Roman soldier pushed a spear into the side of a dying man, and John, watching, writes:
and, as another scripture says, ‘They will look on the one they have pierced.’
That's this verse. The one they pierced is Jesus — God made man,
in a body he could bleed from.
Now even the strange phrasing in v10 makes sense:
the verse slides from "me" to "him" — "they look on me… they mourn for him" — because Jesus is one person who is both God and man.
Pause
And that turns the passage on us. It's easy to think,
"Terrible, what they did to him."
But the truth is, if we are God’s people, If we are part of Israel,
we caused that piercing of the Lord God just as much as they
when we sin, whenever we reject our creator God,
whenever we live our own way not his.
This isn't a verse about how bad other people are.
It's a mirror, a reality check for Christians, about just how serious sin is.
And we are right to mourn our sin, to lament, for it is to have pierced God himself
- to have run him through with a sword in his side as he hangs on the cross.
In fact this ‘mourning of piercing the saviour will continue until Christ returns in the future -when ‘that day’ truly ends:
When all people of all time will look at him:
‘Look, he is coming with the clouds,’ and ‘every eye will see him, even those who pierced him’; and all peoples on earth ‘will mourn because of him.’ So shall it be! Amen.
Every eye. Including yours. One day you will look on the one who was pierced — the only question is which look it is.
The mourning here in Zechariah is the mourning of repentance — tears that run to him and find mercy.
The mourning in Revelation, when he returns, is the wail of people who see, too late,
that they were wrong about him.
Same face; two completely different looks.
So look now — while looking still leads to salavtion,
before looking at the crucified and risen Lord will lead to eternal judgement.
And that is the call of Zechariah - Look upon the pierced saviour and be saved.
Pause
So how are we saved?
3. God Opens A Fountain By Striking His Own Shepherd (13:1–9)
3. God Opens A Fountain By Striking His Own Shepherd (13:1–9)
Watch what comes the instant they mourn what they have done — no gap, no waiting:
‘On that day a fountain will be opened to the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and impurity.
For Zechariah's hearers, "fountain" and "cleansing" were temple words
— the water that washed away impurity so you could come near God.
But this is bigger: a fountain that never runs dry, opened for the very people who pierced him.
— even this sin of murdering the Son of God - can be washed away.
God’s salvation doesn’t stop there:
Next God clears out the competition in v2:
where the idols and the fake prophets who spoke lies in his name are removed.
Remember chapters 10–11 — the dream-readers and false voices?
Finally dealt with.
There's even a discredited prophet in verses 4–6 so ashamed he denies he ever was one
Each will say, “I am not a prophet. I am a farmer; the land has been my livelihood since my youth.”
Me, leading people astray with my own voices rather than God’s - no never!
How embarrassing it will be for all the false teachers on ‘that day.’
But then we get taken back to Jesus the good shepherd:
‘Awake, sword, against my shepherd, against the man who is close to me!’ declares the Lord Almighty. ‘Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered, and I will turn my hand against the little ones.
Here Zechariah picks the shepherd theme back up from chapter 11
— but where that shepherd was a fraud,
this one God calls "the man who is close to me":
an equal, someone of God's own nature.
And ‘God says’: strike him.
We understand our sin pierced the saviour, but now….
Why would God raise a sword against a Shepherd he calls his own equal,
a Shepherd with no fault?
Well Isaiah had hinted at it earlier in their history
— a servant wounded by God for the sins of others — but Zechariah leaves the full logic in a shadow.
but for us, The night before he died, Jesus lifted the shadow. He quoted this verse about himself:
Matthew 26:31 (NIVUK) "This very night you will all fall away on account of me, for it is written: 'I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.'"
Now hold the two pictures together,.
In chapter 12 God say, "the people pierced me."
In chapter 13 God says, “I will strike my shepherd."
The cross was the worst thing sinful people ever did — they pierced him.
And it was the deepest thing God ever planned — he struck him.
There was no charge against this Shepherd — Pilate said so;
the soldier at the cross said so —
so the only reason God would get involved and strike with his own sword was that Jesus, was standing in for people who DID deserve it.
The blow that should have fallen on us from God, fell on him.
Many commentators link this imagery even as far as the fountain of grace and washing.
When the soldier pierced Jesus' side,
out came blood and water. A fountain.
A Blood atonement to satisfy God’s wrath and a water washing of sin for the people.
The Shepherd God struck is the fountain that washes the people who struck him.
But look what happens to the flock: still in v7
I will turn my hand against the little ones."
The sheep don't watch from a safe distance — when the Shepherd is struck, they're scattered, and they go through it too.
Not all will see what the shepherd has truly done for them.
Zechariah is soberingly honest about the cost: two-thirds are lost, and only a third is left (v.8).
But that surviving third is not yet in glory with the Lord:
This third I will put into the fire; I will refine them like silver and test them like gold. They will call on my name and I will answer them; I will say, “They are my people,” and they will say, “The Lord is our God.” ’
Following the struck Shepherd doesn't drop you straight into heaven.
There's a fountain — and all it asks is that you come and be washed.
And there's a furnace — and that comes through the hard road of suffering until our shepherd returns.
We need both: the fountain forgives, the fire changes.
This is our life as Christians today isn’t it?
Predicted perfectly by Zechariah in 500BC.
So when life still hurts after you've come to Christ — when following him costs you — that's not God walking away.
It's the fire, and the fire refines; it doesn't destroy.
Your faith comes out worth more than gold.
For then God says, "They are my people," and they will say, "The Lord is our God."
That line is the oldest promise in the Bible — "I will be their God, and they will be my people"
— the very thing God has been driving at since the beginning.
The people who pierced him, who scattered, who went through the fire
— God looks at them, washed and refined, and says: mine.
So What Do We Do when we fear the fire is too much and we’re tempted to abandon our shepherd?
So What Do We Do when we fear the fire is too much and we’re tempted to abandon our shepherd?
Look.
That's the command in the middle of it all: "they will look on the one they pierced."
Not work. Not earn. Not fix yourself first.
Look at Jesus on the cross for you.
If you've never trusted Jesus: the worst thing about you is not too much for this fountain.
It was opened for people who killed God.
Come as you are and get washed clean.
And remember, you will look at him ‘one day’ either way — far better now, in the tears that lead to washing, than at the end, too late.
And if you are a Christian, and you've slipped back, wondering if you've used up God's patience:
the fountain never closed. It is still ‘that day’
Look to the one they pierced.
And when the fire comes, don't read it as God leaving.
It's the furnace, not the end.
He's refining what he's already forgiven.
So look at him. Mourn honestly. Be washed eternally.
For then end of v9 God
New International Version: Anglicised Edition (2011) Chapter 13
will say, “They are my people,”
and we will all say,
PRAY
