Now let's go back to Zechariah. Zechariah chapter 13. Zechariah chapter 13 we'll read beginning with verse 1 and read the entire chapter 9 verses. Zechariah 13 beginning with verse 1. In that day a fountain will be opened for the house of David and for the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for impurity. And it will come about in that day, declares the Lord of hosts, 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 the Lord. And his father and mother who gave birth to him will pierce him through when he prophesies. It will also 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 am not a prophet, I am a tiller of a ground, for a man sold me as a slave in my youth. And one will say to him, What are these wounds between your arms? Then he will say, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends. Awake, O sword, against my shepherd and against the man my associate. declares the Lord of Hosts, strike the shepherd that the sheep may be scattered, and I will turn my hand against the little ones. And it will come about in all the land, declares the Lord, 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. I will say, They are my people, and they will say, The Lord is my God." Thus far, the reading of God's word. Let us pray together. Lord, we do once again come before you and pray that you will hear us as we ask that you would be our teacher this evening. Will you come now and will you speak to us, to our ears, to our hearts? Will you grant us a vision then of the Lord Jesus Christ as he has laid down his life for us, that we might have the forgiveness of sins? And will you bring forth from us that worship, praise, and obedience that is becoming to the followers of Christ. Hear our prayers now, Lord, and grant that that which is spoken here might come by the power of your Spirit, might find permanent lodging in our hearts and minds, and might bring forth fruit eternal. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Recently, just this past week, My family and I took the time to sit down and watch the newly released video on Martin Luther. I'd seen the old one many times before in my youth and even into my young adulthood. But we had not seen the new video on the life of Martin Luther. It was very well done. One of the things that Bunny commented on and that I noticed as well is that there didn't seem to be as much emphasis in this film as there was in the original on Luther's agonizing over Scripture, but nonetheless it was a very worthwhile film. I would commend it to you. But one of the things that was very apparent in the film was the prevalent, prevailing hunger and thirst of men in previous ages to be right with God, and it was rather agonizing as As in one scene, Luther is sent to Rome, and as he goes to Rome, he pays his money for an indulgence, and he's told to do an Our Father on each step of the way. The steps of the building are just covered with people who are just agonizing over their sin. this eagerness and this hunger to be right with God. It consumed them. People were driven to terribly cruel acts upon their own persons in order that somehow they might find favor with God. And that film was a reminder of the futility and desperation of human effort and merit to obtain God's favor. And as Martin Luther began to discover from scripture and began to proclaim from his pulpit, the full and free pardon that belongs to men through faith in Christ. I think the film did a good job of portraying the wonder and the relief that came to men when they understood that they could be right with God, and it was done not through their suffering but through the suffering of Christ. And so it was a reminder of the incredible relief that was afforded by the doctrine of grace the free favor of God given to men for the sake of Christ, the fullness of God's favor, love, and compassion for men that he gave his Son to suffer and bear the penalty for us. I bring all that up because the passage before us opened the curtain for Old Testament saints to receive a glimpse of the future kingdom of Christ, and I fear that we ourselves do not have as high a view, we do not have as great a hunger to be right with God. Maybe we've come to take it for granted because we've not gone through all of those things. We've lived in an age and in an era and in a country where the gospel has been prevalent. But I wonder, I don't wonder for myself, I just know that's not the case. I do not have that great sense of relief. I don't have a high appreciation for the grace of God. So this passage is one that I trust will fill us with both joy and perseverance as we think about that which has been purchased for us, that we have been pardoned by the grace of God in Christ Jesus. And this passage then before us then opens with this verse. In that day a fountain will be opened for the house of David and for the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for impurity. So the first thing that we will consider this evening is the promise of an open fountain. God gives us a promise of this open fountain, a fountain of God's grace that is flowing clear and cool and is given to us in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now remember that cleansing was not something that was new to the people of Israel, certainly not in Zechariah's day. Zechariah is preaching to those who have returned from captivity. They've had many, many years of the sacrificial system and all of the teaching of Moses and the prophets. They were keenly aware of the need for cleansing and also the promise of cleansing. But here there is given to us by the prophet Zechariah, this promise of this great fountain that will be opened. And so we see, first of all, under this heading, the promise of an open fountain, God's promise looked ahead to a certain season. In other words, there was this promise that was to create an anticipation in the people of God to whom Zechariah spoke. They understood that they were not living in that day, but rather they were looking ahead to a day when this fountain of which all of the cleansings of the ceremonial law, all the cleansings that were prefigured in the sacrifices, would be brought to their fruition and to their fullness where it would be the fountain of God's grace that would be flowing openly to them. Now, it is not that they did not participate in that, but they participated in it in a partial fashion. They participated in it through signs and symbols and not through the reality of that fountain that God would open. And so they were looking ahead. It was future to them, but it is past to us. Now, there is here, then, a specific reference with application to all seasons in which God does his work. What I'm saying is when we look at this passage and we see that God opens a fountain, it is referring to a specific time, and I believe that that time is the advent of Christ when he opens the fountain. But it is also spoken to us of when God comes and brings the gospel in power. Whenever it does in history since that time, when God opens the fountain and causes men to drink deeply of that, when he pours out his grace in special measure. And he has done that with all of us as individuals and families. But what about this season? It was a special season. They were looking ahead to a special season. What do we know about the season? Well, if we go back to the context, we are told a number of things about this particular season. It is a season in which God would pour out his Spirit. Here we have to go back to the twelfth chapter I should say, and in the twelfth chapter there we read of these things in the twelfth chapter in verse ten. 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. And you see it's in this context. that Zechariah says, in that day, a fountain will be opened. And so we see there are several things here. It was a day or a season in which God would pour out his spirit. And of course, we see this remarkably fulfilled in Acts. The first couple of chapters, Jesus tells the disciples they're not to leave Jerusalem until the power of God has come upon them. Remember, John denounced that. I baptize you with water, he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit, not many days hence." And so we see the disciples assembled, they are praying, they are asking God, and then what do we see? That God pours his Spirit out upon him, and they begin speaking in the languages of other men, and there is a great harvest, a fountain of grace is opened, as men in that day with the preaching of the disciples looked on the Messiah whom they had pierced, and said, what must we do to be saved? It's looking ahead to a time that is remarkably fulfilled in this portion of time, or a season in which God would pour out His Spirit. And we have had times of that also since then, of remarkable workings of the Spirit. It was a season in which God would awaken His people to their sin. Where we see that this outpouring of the Spirit of prayer and supplication and of grace, we see the response to that is that men began to look at themselves and to be ashamed of themselves and to be ashamed of their sin, and they begin to mourn and to weep and to wail as they see that they are not right with God, as they see that their sins are overwhelming them, as they see that they have to do with a holy God, as they look upon all of the hardness of their heart and the unbelief and the way that they have despised the grace of God that was set before them in the sacrifices and in the temple worship. So the outpouring of the Spirit ultimately resulted in joy, but immediately it was that which awakened his people to their sin. And again, we've already looked at that, and that's exactly what happened in Acts 2. And throughout the Gospels and throughout the book of Acts, as men were confronted with the Gospel, the Spirit of God was poured out and men were awakened to their sins. They cried out to God. And it was a season in which God would stir up his people to pray. We already have looked at that, we looked at that last time. So this is, again, why we see the disciples in the upper room. They are praying that the Spirit of God would come. They are praying that God would equip them for the work of service that God would begin to rule and reign. So this promise looks ahead to that specific time, but remember that that time continues on for benefits and the effects of that continues on to our own day. The promise then addressed the pervasive human problem. of sin and impurity. This is the problem that you face, that I face, that families face, that nations and communities face. We look at all the problems that men face and we can enumerate them. We can make long lists. If you were to ask me what problems I was facing, I could probably give you a long list. It kind of reminds you of, well, it would bore you to tears. and everybody would go out screaming, and you all have these various problems. But all of those really are just the fruit of this main problem, that the great problem that is addressed in this promise of the fountain is sin. It is a fountain that is given for sin and impurity. This is the human problem that is pervasive. This is that which we all face. Sin, then, must be addressed as your major problem. We can talk about our health problems, and they are problems to us. We can talk about our difficulties in our families. We can talk about political problems. We can talk about economic problems. We can talk about all kinds of problems that plague us and disturb us, but you must understand that at root and at the heart of them, the problem is that men are sinners separated from God and under his wrath and curse. And so we can say that as the gospel comes to us and as the fountain is opened, the fountain is opened to those who recognize that our problem is sin, that it is not societal, that it is not cultural, it does not come from without, the problem is from within the human heart. The problem comes from within us, that we are separated from God, that we are in rebellion against him. And so as this fountain was opened, it was a fountain that was only for those who recognized they were sinners and they were impure before God and could not approach unto him by their own merits and by their own righteousness. It is this problem that is the problem of the world, and it is this problem also that is the problem with the Church. Remember that Zechariah was not addressing the nations here. He was addressing those who are within the covenant community, and he says what the covenant community needs more than anything else is this fountain that is open for sin and impurity. You and I need that fountain on an ongoing basis. This is what we need. This is our greatest problem, and we must acknowledge it to be so. When we get into our disputes, The difficulty is that we are sinners and we don't want to do that. We don't want to look at our sin. We want to find fixes elsewhere. There aren't fixes anywhere else. Our fixes come when we come to understand that God has opened a fountain for sin and impurity. This is our problem. And if we will deal with sin, then we will be able to deal with the problems that arise from them. So sin, then, is the root of all other problems. What we spend our time doing is we, if any of you have been out to our home, you will notice that on the, I guess it would be on the east side of our property, we have two fence lines, obviously. We have more than two fence lines because we have one across the back and one across the front, but the two side fence lines. The one side, the one fence line is totally clear. The fence line on the east side is totally overgrown. Maybe I should say, I hope it was totally overgrown because I tried to kill it off, but we'll see come springtime. But for me to go out and take the hedge trimmers every spring or fall and simply cut off the edges of the briars or to cut back the honeysuckle to make it into a little bit of hedge is not going to clean out the fence row. It's not going to do it. That's not the problem. The problem isn't the shoot that's coming out. I think it's the only thing that's holding up the fence at this point in time. But for me to trim it is going to do no good at all. That's not the problem. The problem is at the roots. The problem is that I need to dig out and root out all of the roots or else kill them off so they don't continue to spring up. And this is the picture that is given to us. And God promised with that fountain. God promised with the full and flowing promise, a full and abundant cleansing and pardon for sin. Why is the fountain there? It is for cleansing. The fountain is the grace of God, the blood of Christ that cleanses us from all sin and impurity. This is what the fountain is for. It is to deal with that root problem. And so as we see in this fountain, we see some allusions, I think, to the fact that God's pardon is unlimited. God does not say, in that day, I'm going to fill a basin for your cleansing. He doesn't say, I'm going to fill a watering trough for your pardon, for that would have limited access and it would be of limited volume. But he says, no, I'm not going to do that. I am going to open a fountain that will flow and flow and flow and flow. And the grace of God, the pardon and the cleansing of sin is going to be unlimited. There is nothing that you have done or thought or said. There is nothing that this fountain will not be able to wash away, and it will continue to flow to you as the grace of God. God promised that in Christ he would open this fountain. God's pardon is effectual. It is designed for sin and impurity. In fact, it is designed for sinners, and all who come to this fountain will find themselves to be cleansed of that for which it was appointed. So often we doubt God's word of promise, and we come to Him and we ask Him for forgiveness, and we cast ourselves upon the mercy of Christ, and then we start to wonder, well, am I really forgiven? Can God forgive me? And the fountain that is given to us is a picture that this fountain which is designed for the cleansing of sin and impurity is effectual. All who come to Christ, you must know that Christ has pardoned you, that God has pardoned you for the sake of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and God's pardon. I am reminded of another passage from an earlier prophet, one of the major prophets Ho, everyone who thirsts, come ye to the waters. You who have no money, come, buy, and eat. God himself is not hedging this fountain of ballads if he's saying you can look at it, but you can't drink from it, you can't bathe in it, you can't do any of these things. No, he's saying you come, you come to the fountain. You who are sinners and impure, you who need the cleansing blood of Christ, you come. This is available to you. And if there is something that we need to make known, it is that God has given the promise of a fountain which he has already opened in Christ, and that fountain continues to pour forth grace upon grace, pardon upon pardon, and it is available to all who will avail themselves of it by faith. We also see in this passage the fruit of God's open fountain, because he tells us that not only in that day will a fountain be opened, And it will be for the house of David and for the inhabitants of Jerusalem. It is for those who believe. But it also tells us that there are going to be things that accompany the opening of this fountain. Verse 2, And it will come about in that day, declares the Lord of hosts, that I will cut off the names of the idols from the land, and they will no longer be remembered. And I will remove the prophets and 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 the Lord, and his father and mother who gave birth to him will pierce him through when he prophesies. And also it will come about in that day that the prophets will each be ashamed of his own vision when he prophesies, and they will not put on a hairy robe in order to deceive. But he will say, I am not a prophet, I am a tiller of the ground, for a man sold me as a slave in my youth. And one will say to him, What are these wounds between your arms? Then he will say, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friend. God tells us there's going to be fruit from this opening of the fountain when the pardon of God flows to a people that there are things that take place in their lives and in their culture as well. When God opens his fountain, he will reform the worship of his people. When God's grace comes to a people that worship is going to be reformed, And it is not coincidental that you see in the time of Reformation not only the preaching of the grace of God, but you see the whole of worship being reformed in its form and in its function, and you see a great emphasis being placed upon this. And I have made this observation in the past, I'll make it again today, because it is absolutely vital. Men do not consider worship to be important. And yet what you see in the history of the Church, both Old and New Testament, is that apostasy from the truth of the Gospel and in morals is always preceded by apostasy in worship. Worship is where unbelief begins, and worship is also where faith begins to exercise its influence as men come to God through the Lord Jesus Christ in the means that he has appointed. And so when God opens his fountain, he first of all reforms worship. He eradicates idolatry. And in eradicating idolatry, I think that deals with both the first two commandments. First of all, the God that we worship, and then the way that we worship this God. Both of those have to do with idolatry. In one sense, we can speak of idolatry as worshipping other gods. In another sense, we can speak of idolatry in the sense of the second commandment as worshipping or professing to worship the one true God in means that he has not appointed. And here he says that he's going to do away with the idols. He is going to eradicate idolatry. He is going to eradicate false religion and false worship among his people. And so in so doing, of course, the way he does this, first of all, is he demonstrates that idols are not gods at all. Their name is cut off. Now what does it mean? Again, we have to talk about the name because the name is the character. And so when he talks about the name of the idols being cut off, he's saying that their very reputation, their very definition is going to be eradicated, and God does this by demonstrating that the gods of the nations are idols, they're nothing. The Apostle Paul, writing to the Corinthians, who had been afflicted with all kinds of idols that they worshipped, and he's speaking to them about the meat offered to idols, and he tells them, he says, now we know that an idol is nothing, we know that it's no god, This is something of which we are convinced of. It's just an imagination. It's something that man has made up. It doesn't mean, however, that we're to participate in idle feasts, he tells them, but he very clearly teaches them. And so when the grace of God came to these Corinthian, these Corinthians who believed and God opened the fountain to them, they immediately began to understand that these idols had no place any longer. And Paul says, flee idolatry, get rid of it. You cannot continue both of these together. You cannot worship God and you cannot worship idols at the same time. And so we see that he demonstrates that idols are not gods at all. Their name is cut off. He removes then the followers of those idols as well. He says that I will cut off the names of the idols from the land, they will no longer be remembered, and I will also remove the prophets and the unclean spirit from the land. In other words, those who promote this idolatry, God will also remove. Those who promote false religion He will remove that he is the one who will deal not only with the idols themselves, exposing them to be false, but in the process he will deal with those who are the followers. And then he tells us that he removes their memory from public awareness. It says that they will no longer be remembered. Now that doesn't mean that you can't look in a history book and see these things that came about. If you study the scriptures, of course, God himself records the names of the idols. But what he's saying is they are not what we were speaking about this morning. They're no longer the topic of public discourse and of discussion. He causes their name, their reputation, simply to perish. Stop and think of all the names of idols that you just... When was the last time you heard somebody talking about going to worship Dagon? Well, you know about it because you read about it in scripture, but you don't hear about that any longer. The memory has perished, even though at the time in which the scriptures were written, that was something that would have been a part of... When was the last time that you heard somebody yelling out, all praise be to Diana of the Ephesians? You know? Now, I'm certain if you dug around, you could probably find somebody, but it simply is not the topic of discussion any longer. God has cut off that name. And so when God opens his fountain, he reforms worship. When God opens his fountain, he also purifies doctrine. These two things go hand in hand, of course. doctrine and worship, but he tells us that he will also remove the false prophets and their false doctrine. He purifies doctrine by removing the teachers of false doctrine, both the instrument and the source. Notice here that he tells us that he will remove the prophets and the unclean spirit from the land, the instrument and the source. He removes the messenger and the one who has sent him. He removes the influence of the wicked one who is the source of all lies. Satan was a liar from the beginning and his lying prophets go forth from him. Here again we see how critical teaching is to the life of the church and to the work of reformation. He purifies doctrine then by removing those teachers of false doctrine, and he purifies doctrine and actually assists in removing those false teachers and removing false doctrines by giving his people a zeal for the truth. Again, going back to the film Martin Luther, one of the things that happened with Martin Luther's preaching, when at least it was set forth in the film, When the false prophets of Rome then would come into Wittenberg and would bring their indulgences and their superstitions and all these things, the men of Wittenberg would begin to laugh at them and to mock them. They had heard the grace of God, and when they heard this idiocy, which had been their way of life, They had a zeal for the truth and they would no longer listen to the false teachers who came to them. Though they came with all pomp and circumstance and supposedly with all the authority of the Pope and Rome and all of these things, men paid them no attention because their doctrine had been reformed by the preaching of the gospel and they no longer would tolerate the idolatry of false doctrine, the idolatry of false worship. And here we see how critical this is. Because it says that when God opens this fountain of grace, verse 3, 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 the Lord. Now you want to talk about a zeal for the pure gospel and for the doctrine that God has set. I don't think there's a closer relationship, a love a parent has for his children, for his child, but it says that there would be such a love for the gospel and such a concern for the glory of God, that if a son were to begin to prophesy in the name of the Lord and begin to preach falsehood, that his own father and his own mother would confront him and take him and have him put to death. Now that's a vivid picture of a concern to zeal for the gospel. when there was such concern for the gospel of God and such concern for the souls of men that men would not tolerate that which would damn men's souls to an eternity in hell. You can see that kind of zeal that was here. It was a zeal that was directed by God's law. We see this very thing. This is what God required in Deuteronomy 13. We can't take the time to read that this evening, but just go back later on this evening and read Deuteronomy 13, 1 through 18. And there God tells them what they are to do if a prophet arises in their midst who begins to tell them, let's go after other gods. He tells them, you're not permitted. They're not permitted to live. And even if it is one of your own dear children, you're not to permit that to take place. Such is the importance of doctrine in the life of the church. A zeal that results in strong correction. Look at verse six, when one of these men, one of the prophets is confronted One of these who has turned from his prophesying and said, what are these wounds between your arms? And the prophet says, these are the wounds that came to me in the house of a friend. These are the wounds that were given to me by my parents when they told me, don't you go on preaching false doctrine. These are the wounds of my countrymen, my neighbors who came to me. Do not go on preaching this false doctrine. These are the wounds of those who loved me enough to correct me and stand up against me. better are the wounds of a friend than the kisses of an enemy." That's what this is saying. It was a zeal also that transcends human affection. It, after all, is a matter of life and death for individuals and communities. Idolatry is not something that just takes place and has no influence. It is something which kills individuals, families, and communities. And therefore, we must pray that God will give us a zeal for truth. And he purifies doctrine by converting false teachers. We also see that not only does the community no longer tolerate these kinds of things, but the prophets themselves, God says when he opens the fountain of God's grace, the prophets themselves will say, I'm a false prophet. I'm going to shut my mouth. I have no place here." And there's a sense in which Luther was one of those whom God converted. Luther had been a false prophet. God changed his heart and his message. Now he continued because God gave him that call. But here we see the picture of one where the Lord tells him, the prophets themselves verse four, also 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 will say, I'm not a prophet. I'm not a prophet. I'm a tiller of the ground. So we see that God converts false teachers, much like Saul of Tarsus. False prophets will turn from their deceptive practices in order to gain the attention of men and to promote their message, and those false prophets will embrace a lawful calling. I'm not a prophet, I'm going back to till the ground, that's what my lawful calling is, and there's nothing wrong with that, there's something noble in that. And then when God opens his fountain, he purifies his church, he removes the dross of hypocrisy. And so we see this in the later verses, verses 6 and following, but let's read that, verse Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man my associate declares the Lord of hosts. Strike the shepherd, and the sheep may be scattered. And I will turn my hand against the little ones, and again, and it will come about, and all the land declares the Lord 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 to 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. I will say, They are my people, and they will say, is my God. But you see what happens here when God opens this fountain, there's this reformation in worship and doctrine, but there's also the purification of the church, that you have this mass of people and God strikes the shepherd, scatters the sheep, and two thirds of those are revealed in that oppression. When the shepherd is smitten and the sheep are scattered, two thirds of those fall away, but one third is refined. Now, what's happening here? what God is doing is he's purifying his church. He removes the dross of hypocrisy. God's open fountain does not remove his people from trials. This is one of the things the Lord teaches us here, I think, because we're in Christ does not mean that we're going to be free from the trials and the troubles of this world. In fact, if you follow the lives of the prophets and you follow the lives of the disciples and you follow the lives of Those throughout Church history, many times their being plunged into that fountain by faith has brought even greater trials than they would have been if they had simply gone along with the culture in which they lived. The opening of God's fountain does not remove us from trials, but God's open fountain is accompanied by trials that expose and removes hypocrites. Christ will present to himself, after all, his bride, without blemish and without spot. And so we read this passage. The church is often filled with hypocrites, and it is a grief to see our friends fall away. But if you have been walking in the faith long enough, you will know people that you have loved and that you have embraced and have considered to be brothers in Christ who turn aside. And it's a tragic thing, but it ought not to shock you. It ought not to surprise you. But we ought to pray that God will preserve us. It is not merely a theoretical thing. It should cause us to tremble and it should cause us to look to Christ and to look to him alone in the trials of life that they would not take us aside. And while those trials expose and remove the hypocrite, God's open fountain is accompanied by trials that refine his elect. He says in the third part, he says, I'm going to take them through and I'm going to take away the dross from the silver. I'm going to refine the dross from the gold. My people will be refined by that which they go through. Far from driving them away, the trials of life only draw God's people closer to him. And so this is where we must flee, in the trials of life. And then God's open fountain is accompanied by trials in order to drive us to God's favor. He says here, but strike the shepherd and the sheep may be scattered. And the New American Standard says, and I will turn my hand against the little ones. I think it says, and I will turn my hand in behalf of my little ones. The shepherd will be gone, but God will not let his people go. When the sheep are scattered, he supports them with his own hand. When God refines by fire, His people will seek his favor in prayer. Notice again what it says in verse 9, after he says, Refine them as fire, as silver is refined, as testament as gold is tested, and what? They will call on my name. And when God refines us by fire, God will display his favor to all who call upon him. He says, I will answer them. I will say, they are my people, and they will say. the Lord is my God." And so we think of the Apostle Paul's words as he concludes that great passage in, I believe it's in Romans 9. Let's just turn there because I don't want to butcher it as I know that I will. This is a great passage as the Apostle Paul, it may be Romans, the end of Romans 8. Now it is the end of Romans 8. Verse 31, What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how will he not also with him freely give us all things? Who will bring a charge against God's elect? God is the one who justifies. Who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus. Is he who died? Yes, rather he who was raised was at the right hand of God. who also intercedes for us? Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Just as it is written, For thy sake we are being put to death all day long, we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered. But in these things we overwhelmingly conquer through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Hear that confidence in the grace and the power of God. And finally, what is the foundation of God's open fountain? God opens his fountain in the execution of justice. He is not arbitrary in pardoning and cleansing sin. the sword of justice must be satisfied, and so in verse 7 God addresses his own sword and he says, Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man my associate declares the Lord. Strike the shepherd, that the sheep may be scattered, and I will turn my hand upon my little ones. This is the foundation The reason that you drink from God's grace, the reason that you may drink deeply from the fountain of God's pardon, the reason that you may be cleansed from all sin and iniquity is because God has chosen to smite the shepherd instead of you. That God has chosen to pour out his wrath upon the Lord Jesus Christ himself in your place. That God himself is the executioner and God is the one who commands the sword to strike his own son. such love, isn't there a contrast, or maybe not a contrast, but a comparison? He tells parents, when someone begins, even if your own son should begin to obscure the grace of God, put him to death. For I have put my own son to death, that you might drink from this pardon that your son is obscuring. Is there not a comparison there? God did not hesitate to put his own son to death for you. Let us not obscure it. Let us not obscure that by our own laziness. God opens his fountain by striking the shepherd. Isaiah 53 tells us again that he was stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. He was pierced through for our iniquities, and by his strifes we are healed. The fountain of grace is not without cost to God the Father. His favor is certainly free, it is gracious, we enjoy the free and full pardon of God, but it was not without cost to the Father, nor is it without cost to the Son, it is not without cost to Jesus himself. Some find the requirement of parents to deliver idolatrous children to be harsh. Think about God delivering his innocent son for the sake of idolaters. This is what we must think about. And finally, God opens his fountain and scatters the sheep. God's people we must find here are prone to claim some credit for our own salvation. But when we read this passage that God smites the shepherd and scatters the sheep, we find that our salvation does not rest in our strength in laying hold of the shepherd, but in God's power in laying hold of us. And in that very passage where we see Zechariah quoted In Matthew, which we read, he says, You're all going to abandon me. Peter, with that self-confidence of which I am speaking, No, Lord, everybody else may run away, but I will never leave you. I'm strong. I'm full of faith. I'm confident. He says, Peter, you're not going to do it. Before the rooster crows three times, you're going to deny me. And Peter says, Lord, even if I have to die with you, I will not leave you." And before the end of the chapter, what do we read? The shepherd was smitten, and all of his disciples fled. They all fled. Peter boasted about his loyalty above all others. Sometimes God has to scatter the sheep. to show us that our salvation does not rest in ourselves, but rests in the shepherd who is smitten. God's people then must be brought low to repudiate our self-confidence. So when you are afflicted, remember that God does not do this to drive you from himself, but God does this to bring you into the safe harbor, the safe refuge of Christ. It is there that you must flee. And later on, we don't see it in Matthew's gospel, but we do see it in John's. As the Lord Jesus, the one who was raised from the dead, having been smitten, gathers his disciples and brings Peter to himself and asks him, Peter, do you love me? Three times. And tells him, feed my sheep. Plunged him into a fountain that was open for him. Peter no longer exhibited that self-confidence. He understood what he was. that his only hope was in this fountain opened for us by God in his grace through the shed blood of Jesus Christ. May we find our refuge in him and may we be washed and cleansed from every sin. May he continue to reform us in our worship and in our doctrine and may we flee to this one who is the fountain of life. Drink deeply and live. Let us pray together. Father, we do thank you for your grace and we ask your forgiveness that we do not have this burning zeal to be right with you as those who sought in so many different ways. We have become complacent with the ease that you have granted us. But we pray, O Lord, that this evening you will take your word and serve us.