Our scripture reading this morning is Zechariah chapter 13. We'll be reading the full chapter. Let's turn to the word of the Lord. On that day there shall be a fountain opened for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to cleanse them from sin and uncleanness. And on that day, declares the Lord of hosts, I will cut off the names of the idols from the land so that they shall be remembered no more. And also I will remove from the land the prophets and the spirit of uncleanness. And if anyone again prophesies, his father and mother who bore him will say to him, you shall not live, for you speak lies in the name of the Lord. And his father and mother who bore him shall pierce him through when he prophesies. On that day, every prophet will be ashamed of his vision when he prophesies. He will not put on a hairy cloak in order to deceive, but he will say, I am no prophet. I am a worker of the soil, for a man sold me in my youth. And if one asks him, what are these wounds on your back? He will say, the wounds I received in the house of my friends. Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, against the man who stands next to me, declares the Lord of hosts. Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered. I will turn my hand against the little ones. In the whole land, declares the Lord, two-thirds shall be cut off and perish, and one-third shall be left alive. And I will put this third into the fire and refine them as one refined silver. and test them as gold is tested. They will call upon my name, and I will answer them. I will say, they are my people, and they will say, the Lord is my God." Well, a pleasant good morning to all of you, if you would, if you haven't closed your Bibles, open them up once again to the book of Zechariah. This morning we'll be looking at chapters 12 and 13. I just wanted to say, as I noticed Jared trying to get me in trouble with the moms, that he forgets one thing. I get the last word, because I follow him. He's the one that thought it applied to you moms, not me. So you can see him afterward. You're welcome, brother. Zechariah 12 and 13, Messiah will save his people. Messiah will save his people. After the Jews returned from their captivity in Babylon, they were busy with an uphill battle, rebuilding their lives. Many pitfalls awaited them. They found themselves now as an insignificant people who were subservient to pagan nations. They desperately needed the messages of the post-exilic prophets Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. As we rebuild our lives, having been born in sin and lived apart from the Lord prior to salvation, we too find that we suffer setbacks, disappointments, and failure. We sometimes crumble under our inability to follow Christ. We sometimes forget that God is the one who ordains those setbacks in order to perfect us into His image. We forget that He promises to deliver us from sin, from oppression, and even from our own weaknesses. Like those Jews in the post-exilic era, the time after the exile, we need to hear these messages from these same prophets. We need messages like the one we're going to look at today in chapters 12 and 13 of Zechariah. We need this message. God ordained the rejection and murder of the Messiah, in order to bring about genuine repentance and salvation to the remnant of his people. And so, tragic language like, we'll see, strike the shepherd, makes way for promise language where God says, and I will say, they are my people, and they will say, Yahweh is my God. We are in the last section of Zechariah where we're looking at these two oracles that were given, or two burdens, these heavy messages about judgment and Messiah being rejected, but even today as we're beginning this last subsection, we have Messiah was rejected and then Messiah will reign. And even with that glorious theme, it's still a heavy message because we're going to see today that it's going to talk again about Messiah being killed and the sheep scattered. So we're looking at these last two. Chapter 9 and chapter 12 both begin with the word, the burden of the word of the Lord. And that's why we call this the two oracles, the two burdens about Messiah. And Zechariah has already been talking a lot about Messiah, but in these last chapters, he gives us even more material about Messiah. and material that we'll see the New Testament writers would pick up and quote, pointing back to saying Jesus is indeed the promised Messiah. Well, we saw a couple of weeks ago, chapters 9 through 11, that the people of God, Israel, is that they would reject their Messiah. And we know from history that they did. But chapters 12 through 14 remind us that that's not the end of the story. We're not done. God is not done. There is still more that we need to know, and so as we break that down, the Messiah will reign. and we break it down and look at the first two chapters of that, we see first, Messiah's people will repent. So we talked last, a couple weeks ago, last time in this, that they will reject Messiah, but there's coming a day when they, as a nation, will repent, and we're going to kind of walk through that and get a little more information on it from this passage. And as we look at those first 14 verses, then breaking it down a little further, Israel will be strengthened against their enemies. Israel will be strengthened against their enemies, the first nine verses of chapter 12. And let me read and get us started with the first six verses. So, Zechariah chapter 12, verse 1. The burden of the word of the Lord, Yahweh, concerning Israel. Thus declares Yahweh, who stretches out the heavens, he lays the foundation of the earth, he forms the spirit of man within him. Behold, I am going to make Jerusalem a cup that causes reeling to all the peoples around. And when the siege is against Jerusalem, it will also be against Judah. And it will come about in that day that I will make Jerusalem a heavy stone for all the peoples. All who lift it will be severely injured and all the nations of the earth will be gathered against it. In that day, declares Yahweh, I will strike every horse with bewilderment and his rider with madness. But I will watch over the house of Judah while I strike every horse of the peoples with blindness. Then the clans of Judah will say in their hearts, a strong support for us are the inhabitants of Jerusalem through Yahweh, Sabaoth, their God. In that day, I will make the clans of Judah like a fire pot among pieces of wood and a flaming torch among sheaves so that they will consume on the right hand and on the left all the surrounding peoples. while the inhabitants of Jerusalem again dwell on their own sites in Jerusalem." In this section, Zechariah uses the phrase, in that day, and that's just another way of referring to the great day of the Lord that's coming. And he's pointing forward to that great day as it comes. So he says, in that day, what's going to happen is Israel's enemies are going to attack. You're going to come against them, against Judah, against Jerusalem, seek to destroy them. But God, the sovereign Creator, as He's described here in verse 1, will strengthen the Jews. And what's interesting is the way that God will strengthen them is He will make them to be basically a plague to the people that attack them. So He uses different imagery here, including talking about, you know, making their horses blind and the horsemen thrown off and everything with that. But these pictures that He gives us, like Jerusalem's going to be like this enormous bowl that the nations, they're going to come against Jerusalem. And we'll see when we get into chapter 14 and the other passages that it's going to look like these other nations are winning. And so like they have this big bowl of wine and they're going to drink in celebration of victory, they think. But God says when they drink it, it'll be like this big cup of reeling. In other words, it'll be like they are made drunk and easy to defeat. He also describes Israel or Jerusalem as this heavy stone. It's too heavy for a person to really... they shouldn't lift it. And if they go and they try to lift it, in other words, attack Jerusalem, what's going to happen? It'll cause a lot of injury to them. Just like if we pick up something that's way too heavy for us, you know, we can get a hernia and we can, you know, tear muscles and tendons and maybe even some bones might snap. And that's what he's saying. It's going to cause they're going to think that, you know, hey, this is easy. We're able to conquer Jerusalem. And God says no. It might look that way for a minute. He says it's Jerusalem's going to be like this fire that's put among dry sheaves of grain or dry wood. He put a fire in there like a fire pot or something, and it just causes burning. And it's just going to devastate their neighbors who attack them. How's that going to happen? Look at verse seven. Yahweh also will save the tents of Judah first in order that the glory of the house of David and the glory of the inhabitants of Jerusalem may not be magnified above Judah. God is going to watch over His people. That's how it's going to happen. He's the one who's going to step in and He's going to see that they are protected. You know, right now, I know Israel, they're building up their, you know, I don't blame them, you know, because they're surrounded by people that hate them. So they're building up their armaments and everything. But that's not what's going to save them in the day, the great day of the Lord. When He comes to save them, He will be the one to protect them. He will save. He will defend. He'll do a work of grace in them, we saw in verse 5, where they actually will trust in Him. They will say, God is our support now. Not our planes, not our weapons, God is our support. And he even pointed out there in verse 7 that, think about, if there are armies coming against you, and he says they're intense, that is not, that doesn't provide any defense against armies. And when those armies start coming, the people in those tents have got to think, oh my, I wish I was inside Jerusalem, inside the walls. At least I'd have, you know, these stone walls protecting me. All I've got is, you know, this tent. And God says, no, I will protect them as well. Those who are vulnerable outside the city walls will be protected. Now, remember, these are the people that he's talking to. Now, what this is going to happen in a future generation, but he's talking to the people, the generation that just come back from exile from Babylon. And what God is or what they are doing is they're trying to rebuild. They're rebuilding the temple. They're rebuilding their lives. They're still subject to pagan rulers. They have no way to defend themselves. And so one day when armies do advance against them, they're going to think in that day, we're no match. What about all of our weaknesses? We're just this tiny little country. And what God is telling them here and giving them the word of encouragement. Your weaknesses is not a problem for me, people. God says, I am your strength. I am mighty to save. That's the promise He gives them, a promise we need to hear as well. Look at verses 8 and 9. In that day, Yahweh will defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and the one who is feeble among them in that day will be like David. Remember, he was a mighty warrior. And the house of David, the mighty warriors, will be like God, like the angel of Yahweh, that's Messiah, who is going before them. And it will come about in that day that I will set about to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem." So what the Lord is saying is that, okay, so those of you among Jerusalem and Judah in that day, If you're feeble, you have a hard time marching, you stumble, and He's saying, I will make you like David was, like a mighty warrior. And those of you who start out as mighty warriors, I'll even make you like Messiah, the one who's going to be leading you in that day. They're going to look to Him, and you're going to have the strength like Him, like He does. Messiah is going to go before them against their enemies. And he says in that day, that great day of the Lord, the Lord will destroy all the nations who rise up against Israel. We, too, should rest in God, who is our defense, even if it's not a literal army marching against us. We all have plenty of things that plague us and trouble us and frighten us. We should trust in the God who is mighty and strong. And so, second, by grace, by His grace, God will grant to Israel genuine repentance. And see, all this has to go together. God is not going to save Israel in their unbelief. He's not going to just deliver them from their enemies and leave them in their unbelief. All this goes together. He's going to save them. He's going to bring genuine repentance. Verse 10, and I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and of supplication so that they will look on me whom they have pierced and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only son and they will weep bitterly over him like the bitter weeping over a firstborn. So in that day, God is going to pour out His Spirit upon them. You see, and that's going to be key. It's talking about New Testament or New Covenant blessings here. Ezekiel 39, Joel 2, that remember we studied a while back, where God's Spirit, and I think it's the Holy Spirit he's talking about here. Some translations just have a small S, but I think it should be the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of grace is going to be poured out. And so the Holy Spirit is going to cause the Jews to recognize that Jesus, the one they rejected, the one they crucified, is actually their Messiah. They will finally, as a people, recognize that. John applied this verse to Jesus' crucifixion because he was showing that Jesus is the Messiah who's spoken of by the Old Testament, in the Old Testament. And so he's showing through this in John 19, 37. They still didn't see it, though. But one day they will. And you might notice, it's interesting here, that they will look on Me whom they have pierced, and then they will mourn for Him. And you're, OK, what's going on there? But Yahweh is speaking. Yahweh God is speaking. They will look on Me whom they have pierced. And what He's doing, and we're going to see this develop even more in this passage, is that, as Jesus would say, I and the Father are one. Here's one of the many, many, many passages, even in the Old Testament, that are showing us that Messiah is God. And, of course, we know Jesus is the Messiah, and Jesus is fully God. Messiah has to be God for this verse to work, and He is. Okay, verses 11 through 14. In that day, there will be great mourning in Jerusalem, like the mourning of Hadad Rimmon in the plain of Megiddo. And the land will mourn every family by itself, the family of the house of David by itself and their wives by themselves, the family of the house of Nathan by itself and their wives by themselves. the family of the house of Levi by itself and their wives by themselves, the family of the Shimeites by itself and their wives by themselves, all the families that remain, every family by itself and their wives by themselves. So you can imagine. Just as we saw even in Acts, when Jews who were calling for Jesus to be crucified, murdered, they realized that, oh, that is the Messiah. The first thought is, I'm in big trouble. And the next is to mourn. Those people who were there calling for Jesus crucifixion, you'd have to think the mourning, the grieving, the lamenting that went on in their hearts, realizing what they did. And even though this future generation that will once again look upon Jesus, whom their people had pierced, They, too, will genuinely repent, even though they weren't there at the cross. They have up to that time said we are in 100 percent agreement with the people, our brethren who are gathered around that cross. We agree that Jesus should have been crucified because they thought all that time that he was not the Messiah. But then one day they're going to recognize. He is the Messiah. And we are guilty just like our forefathers were. And they will mourn. They'll weep bitterly. It'll be a genuine repentance. It'll be like the deep grief that he describes here in the Plain of Megiddo when Josiah, the godly king, tragically died in battle there. He said that's the kind of weeping they're going to do. So you remember he said he'd pour out a spirit, the spirit of grace, a spirit of grace is what's going to bring about their repentance. But he's also going to pour out the spirit of supplication, supplication, prayer, and they're going to cry out to God in their repentance. They're going to say, Lord, save me. Save me from my sin. They will cry for forgiveness. Now, as we come to chapter 13, what we see is Messiah will save His people. So repentance had to precede that, right? They had to repent of their sin of rejecting Messiah, and they will, and God will save them. And He develops that more here in chapter 13. Messiah will save His people first. God will provide salvation for Israel, verse 1. This is such a beautiful picture. And we have hymns written about it. In that day, a fountain will be opened for the house of David and for the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for impurity. This is like the most amazing video you've ever seen. This is not just a still shot. This fountain is just flowing and flowing and flowing. And what a wonderful, glorious fountain it is. It is for cleansing from sin. and impurity. Again, this is that New Covenant blessing. You and I have already benefited from it. Those of us who have trusted in Jesus Christ, we have partaken of this fountain. This fountain hasn't been closed to us. This is the washing that Jeremiah 31 talks about with the New Covenant, Ezekiel 36 talks about. We saw this previously in Romans 11. But right now, most Jews reject Messiah and their rejection of Messiah closes this fountain to them. They're like, he's not Messiah. And so the gospel is closed to them. They won't hear it. But there's coming a day when they will experience this ever flowing fountain of pure, fresh, cleansing water. And so Zechariah uses this beautiful picture of this fountain, this ever-flowing fountain of crystal clear water as a way to help us understand that one day the Jews as a people will receive the cleansing that Messiah provides. Cleansing for sin and impurity. Now next, God will cut off idolatry and false prophecy, verses 2 through 6. And it will come about in that day, declares Yahweh Sabaoth, that I will cut off the names of the idols from the land, and they will no longer be remembered, and I will also remove the prophets and the unclean spirit from the land. And it will come about that if anyone still prophesies, then his father and mother who gave birth to him will say to him, You shall not live, for you have spoken falsely in the name of Yahweh. And his father and mother who gave birth to him will pierce him through when he prophesies. And it will come about in that day that the prophets will each be ashamed of his vision when he prophesies. And they will not put on a hairy robe in order to deceive. But he will say, I'm not a prophet. I'm a tiller of the ground for a man sold me as a slave in my youth. And one will say to him, well, what are these wounds between your arms? And then he will say, those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends. So God is not only going to, in that future day, purify their hearts, but He's going to purify their land, their culture. He's going to wipe out idolatry and false prophecy. Now, you might remember in our study of the minor prophets, that after God carried them off to Babylon and brought them back, they didn't have a problem with idolatry. Okay, well, what about this? We find that Jesus and Paul and John all said that in the last days, false prophets and idolatry would once again arise. So there's coming a day when it's going to get worse. But. When God saves his people. They won't have any tolerance for that. They will no longer want their ears to be tickled. And he uses this extreme, where a mother and father, their own child, if that child gives false prophecy, in their zeal, they will want that child cut off. The wounds that he mentions here are the wounds that these false prophets received in their pagan ceremonies, where they would cut themselves and things like that. They'll try to hide it. They'll lie about how they got it. Next, Messiah will be killed, verse 7. Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, against the man, my associate, declares Yahweh's Sabbath oath. Strike the shepherd, that the sheep may be scattered, and I will turn my hand against the little ones. So you may be wondering, well, didn't we deal with Messiah being rejected back in chapters 9 through 11? Why does he bring it up again? Well, I think what he wants us to grasp from this is that, and remind us, that this is the source of all the cleansing that's going to happen. Whether it's the cleansing of their heart, or the cleansing of their culture, the source of it is Messiah's death. When Israel is saved in that great day, it will not be because they returned to the law of Moses. It will be because their Savior died for them. And they will finally understand the gospel. You see, they won't just look to Jesus and say, OK, we welcome you as our king. They will say, I get it now. I realize now what the gospel was trying to say. Jesus had to die. He had to shed his blood. For me to be saved. Yahweh Sabaoth here, the Lord of hosts, calls Messiah my shepherd. And of course, Jesus, you know, would pick that up and refer to himself as the good shepherd. Yahweh also calls the Messiah Jesus, we know him as. He calls him my associate. He's saying this one is my equal. He is right here with me. In other words, he is fully God. So you see how this keeps developing, this idea that Messiah is Yahweh. He is fully God. Jesus quoted this about striking the shepherd and the sheep being scattered. He quoted it in Matthew 26, 31. He wanted to warn his disciples that, here in just a little bit, I'm going to be arrested and then killed, and you guys are going to be scattered. He wanted to warn them ahead of time, but not just them, because in A.D. 70, the rest of the Jews were also scattered. Rome came in, destroyed them and scattered them all over the earth. And so finally, two thirds of Israel will die and one third saved, verses eight and nine. And it will come about in all the land, declares Yahweh, that two parts in it will be cut off and perish. But the third will be left in it. And I will bring the third part through the fire, refine them as silver is refined and test them as gold is tested. They will call on my name and I will answer them. And I will say, they are my people. And they will say, Yahweh is my God. So in that great day, the day of the Lord, two thirds of Israel is going to be killed. That's what the Lord tells us here, and we find even in Revelation that two-thirds of mankind, so it's going to apply to Gentiles as well, two-thirds of the earth is going to be killed. And that's important to understand because what's happening is if God... Remember, we've seen in these passages in the prophets, but also in Romans 11, where it says, all Israel shall be saved. How could that happen? Well, God takes out all of the non-alike, two-thirds. They're gone. And it's only those that he, his elect that will remain, because he says here that he will refine them, bring them through the fire. And they'll have this personal relationship with God. So God says he'll preserve a third of the Jews, and then we've seen from other passages it would include Gentiles as well. We've seen this in Joel 2, Amos 9, Zephaniah 3. Now, I know the exact timing and order, you know, details. There's a lot of details we'd like to know, and God hasn't told us all of that yet. But we just need to wait and see how it all unfolds. But we know a lot of the basics. We know kind of at a high level what's going on here based on what the Word of God tells us. And so the confession that they make here in verse nine is going to show that they have come to trust in the Lord. Calling on his name is that spirit of supplication. Remember back in chapter 12, verse 10, that he's going to pour out upon them the spirit of supplication. They're going to cry out. They're going to call on the name of the Lord is what he's talking about here. We saw that back in Joel chapter 2, verse 32, which was quoted in our study that we did recently in Romans 10, 13. Whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved in that day when they realize Jesus is the Messiah and God grants them repentance. He will also grant them faith and they will call on the Lord. Daniel promised in Daniel 12, 1, everyone who is found written in the book will be rescued. And then he finishes up taking us back to remember the very beginning of our study in the minor prophets with Hosea. And he starts out there in chapter one and he says, I'm going to say to you, not my people. Remember that? But then as we keep going in Hosea to get to the end of chapter two and God says, but that's not the end of the story, because there will be a day when I will say to you, that you are my people. And that's what we find here at the end of verse 9. God says, in that day, because I will have saved them, that I will say, God will say, they are my people. More precious words can never be uttered from our Lord's lips, right? You are my people. And by faith, they, like we have done already, will respond. and He is our God. Jonathan Edwards, you remember, a Puritan here in the U.S. a long time ago, said this about Zechariah's prophecies. And this is a long quote, so I've got it broken up so it's not tiny type. He said this, it's really excellent. However obstinate they have been now for above 1700 years, that was in his day, in their rejection of Christ, yet when this day comes, The thick veil that blinds their eyes shall be removed." 2 Corinthians 3.16. And divine grace shall melt and renew their hard hearts. Then shall all the house of Israel be saved. They shall cast away their old infidelity and shall have their hearts wonderfully changed. They shall flow together to the blessed Jesus, penitently, humbly and joyfully owning him as their glorious king and only savior and shall with all their hearts, as with one heart and voice, declare his praises unto other nations when they shall be called that ancient people, who alone were God's people for so long a time, shall be His people again, never to be rejected more. They shall then be gathered into one fold together with the Gentiles." He put it so well, and he captured so much of the prophecy that Zechariah has made here. So, Zechariah's countrymen, the people that he was writing to in his day, they were called to trust in their promise-keeping God. That's why Zechariah gave them this, through the work of the Holy Spirit. Will you trust our promise-keeping God? Will you trust Him to continually rebuild your life, regardless of what setbacks that you encounter, trials, tribulations? Will you trust him the way he's called upon them to trust? Have you trusted him first? In salvation, recognizing that it's only through Jesus Christ that you can come to God and be a part of his family. Will you trust him?