The Day Will Come
Zech 12-13 Nov 9, 2008
Intro:
"Hope" is the thing with feathers—
That perches in the soul—
And sings the tune without the words—
And never stops—at all—
And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard—
And sore must be the storm—
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm—
I’ve heard it in the chillest land—
And on the strangest Sea—
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb—of Me.
Emily Dickinson
When everything is hard, when we are in pain, when our feelings are hurt, when we face uncertainty and struggle and opposition and confusion and separation and loss and even our own death, there is one thing that is critical to hold on to – and that is hope. Hope that we will make it through, hope that relief will come, hope for healing and restoration, hope that though things are difficult now, tomorrow will be a new day and on that day relief will come. It is a hope that we as Christians have extended to us even through the end of our physical lives – a hope of life anew, without sickness or death or sin.
As Christians, we have another hope alongside the hope of eternity – we have the hope that God will fight, and defeat, all the forces of evil that bring so much pain into our existence. We have this hope of a cosmic battle and victorious God, who will someday finally crush everything that is wrong and painful and replace it with a new and perfect creation, which we will then enjoy.
On this point, the hope that God will, in His own time and in His own way, finally be completely victorious, the Bible is incredibly clear. But we often haven’t seen it. And there is a very understandable reason for that – we haven’t understood the type of thing we are reading when we read about these things in the Bible. The best example is the book of Revelation, but it is not the only example. Zech 12-14 is similar. But as some of us are wondering how that could be, that we could read something without understanding the type of thing we are reading and so not see the point, so let me share a quick example. This was in a pile of junk mail at home:
“Mess Magnets”. I assume it is talking about the paper towels and not the child, though there might be more truth if it was referring to the child, but I digress… Here is my point: we instantly recognize this as an advertisement. We know its purpose – to get us to buy their product. So we don’t believe that spilled milk will actually suddenly become metallic, that paper towel will become magnetic, and that the force of the magnet-towel will overcome the pull of gravity and suck the now-metallic-milk through the air and into the paper towel, without ever making a mess on our table.
“Apocalyptic” Literature:
Carry that point over to Scripture, and specifically to Zech 12-13 which we study this morning. We are about to read a portion of Scripture which, like the book of Revelation, is a specific type of literature with a specific point. The name is “apocalyptic” literature, and more important than that is its purpose: to bring hope to God’s people who are facing difficulty – the hope that comes from knowing that “God wins”. Those two words are the most important thing to know when reading any kind of apocalyptic literature: “God wins”.
Zechariah 12:1-13:6
1 This message concerning the fate of Israel came from the Lord: “This message is from the Lord, who stretched out the heavens, laid the foundations of the earth, and formed the human spirit. 2 I will make Jerusalem like an intoxicating drink that makes the nearby nations stagger when they send their armies to besiege Jerusalem and Judah. 3 On that day I will make Jerusalem an immovable rock. All the nations will gather against it to try to move it, but they will only hurt themselves.
4 “On that day,” says the Lord, “I will cause every horse to panic and every rider to lose his nerve. I will watch over the people of Judah, but I will blind all the horses of their enemies. 5 And the clans of Judah will say to themselves, ‘The people of Jerusalem have found strength in the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, their God.’
6 “On that day I will make the clans of Judah like a flame that sets a woodpile ablaze or like a burning torch among sheaves of grain. They will burn up all the neighboring nations right and left, while the people living in Jerusalem remain secure.
7 “The Lord will give victory to the rest of Judah first, before Jerusalem, so that the people of Jerusalem and the royal line of David will not have greater honor than the rest of Judah. 8 On that day the Lord will defend the people of Jerusalem; the weakest among them will be as mighty as King David! And the royal descendants will be like God, like the angel of the Lord who goes before them! 9 For on that day I will begin to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.
10 “Then I will pour out a spirit of grace and prayer on the family of David and on the people of Jerusalem. They will look on me whom they have pierced and mourn for him as for an only son. They will grieve bitterly for him as for a firstborn son who has died. 11 The sorrow and mourning in Jerusalem on that day will be like the great mourning for Hadad-rimmon in the valley of Megiddo.
12 “All Israel will mourn, each clan by itself, and with the husbands separate from their wives. The clan of David will mourn alone, as will the clan of Nathan, 13 the clan of Levi, and the clan of Shimei. 14 Each of the surviving clans from Judah will mourn separately, and with the husbands separate from their wives.
(13:1)“On that day a fountain will be opened for the dynasty of David and for the people of Jerusalem, a fountain to cleanse them from all their sins and impurity.
2 “And on that day,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, “I will erase idol worship throughout the land, so that even the names of the idols will be forgotten. I will remove from the land both the false prophets and the spirit of impurity that came with them. 3 If anyone continues to prophesy, his own father and mother will tell him, ‘You must die, for you have prophesied lies in the name of the Lord.’ And as he prophesies, his own father and mother will stab him.
4 “On that day people will be ashamed to claim the prophetic gift. No one will pretend to be a prophet by wearing prophet’s clothes. 5 He will say, ‘I’m no prophet; I’m a farmer. I began working for a farmer as a boy.’ 6 And if someone asks, ‘Then what about those wounds on your chest?’ he will say, ‘I was wounded at my friends’ house!’
“On That Day”
The biggest clue that we are reading this specific type of literature called “apocalyptic” is the repetition of the phrase, “on that day”. When Zechariah spoke that phrase, the people would have recognized the type of literature much like we recognize the advertisement. They would know that God, through Zechariah, was about to encourage them, that in the end, “God wins” – and as a direct result, they would be renewed in their hope, and thus strengthened to face their struggles.
The passage basically says this: “on that day” (which is also often called “The Day of the Lord”), God’s people will be surrounded, outnumbered, facing a far superior army, without a chance to defeat them or even survive, and then God will step in and win. The enemies will be defeated, the sin forgiven, the things that compete with God for our attention and love completely destroyed. It will be painful, and costly, but God will do it. That, really, is the most important thing to know after reading all of the details and images.
Commentator Mark Boda writes, “(Apocalyptic literature) speaks primarily to communities undergoing a difficulty, promising hope and exhorting faithfulness through offering a vision of divine justice. This vision comes through symbolic language that communicates more like an impressionistic painting than a photograph.” (Haggai, Zechariah, “NIV Application Commentary”, p. 496).
The Meta-Narrative (vs 1):
With that critical understanding of the point of the whole passage clear in our minds, I do want to explore 3 quick themes. First comes from 12:1 – “This message is from the Lord, who stretched out the heavens, laid the foundations of the earth, and formed the human spirit.”. This is a vital place to start, reaffirming who God is, setting the stage for the entire text to come. This is the “big picture”, the context, the story behind all the other stories.
Why do I pull this out? Because it is critically important to us today. Our “world-view”, our starting place, the entire way we understand our existence and the existence of everything, is not the same as much of our culture. Sometimes this is described as the “Meta-Story” – the grand story we believe is behind everything. Zechariah 12 begins with that meta-story: there is a God, and He created everything seen and unseen, and “formed the human spirit”. This is not the big picture, the world-view, of much of the culture in which we live. That meta-story is that some matter existed, exploded in a big “bang”, and that everything else is un-designed, un-intended, and thus inherently without meaning except for the meaning we create for ourselves.
So why does this matter? Because, quite simply, living out the second meta-story means that there is nothing higher, so my life should be devoted to that which simply brings the most pleasure and enjoyment to me. And when we die, according to this story, that’s it. So, obviously, as Christians we live out of the first story – that there is something greater, there is meaning and purpose, and we find it in God.
However, let’s take this one step deeper. A little while ago, I came across a definition of “immature Christianity”, and it is basically this: we do believe in God (the first meta-story), but we live as if the role of God in our lives is to bring us the most pleasure and enjoyment (the second meta-story). So immature faith is essentially about what God can do for me. The contrast is this: “mature Christianity” is about our determination to live for what we can do to serve God and His Kingdom, regardless of whether it brings us pleasure or enjoyment.
The “Pierced One” (vs 10):
Let’s jump down to verse 10: “Then I will pour out a spirit of grace and prayer on the family of David and on the people of Jerusalem. They will look on me whom they have pierced and mourn for him as for an only son. They will grieve bitterly for him as for a firstborn son who has died.”
If you think that sounds vaguely familiar, you might be thinking of Jn 19: “32 So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the two men crucified with Jesus. 33 But when they came to Jesus, they saw that he was already dead, so they didn’t break his legs. 34 One of the soldiers, however, pierced his side with a spear, and immediately blood and water flowed out. 35 (This report is from an eyewitness giving an accurate account. He speaks the truth so that you also can believe.) 36 These things happened in fulfillment of the Scriptures that say, “Not one of his bones will be broken,” 37 and “They will look on the one they pierced.””
The “big story” we as mature Christians live according to continues: God created, humanity rebelled, so Jesus came to save us through His death and resurrection. Zechariah prophesied it, in an “impressionist painting kind of way”, and we see Jesus here in Zechariah.
God and our Repentance (vs. 10-14):
The final theme I want to touch on and close with is the theme of repentance. Vss 1-9 are about how God will be victorious in the great cosmic battle, and that this grand story gives us hope for the justice of God as the final outcome. So the theme of the next section is a little surprising – instead of celebration, the theme is repentance.
The simple explanation for this is the great cost of the victory – as we have just seen, the death of God’s only Son, Jesus. It is our sin that required Jesus’ death – our rebellion, our rejection – and so our fitting first response is one of sorrow and repentance: our hearts should be crushed within us, we should be broken and deeply moved by the sacrifice that was necessary for our sin. Commentator Boda again says this well (ibid, p. 504-505):
In the contemporary church we know little of the message of 12:10-14 with its focus on God’s work and a penitential depth of his people. In an era of “easy-believism,” we preach a faith that requires intellectual acceptance of key tenets of doctrine rather than the transformation of our affections. At the same time we often preach a faith that becomes another human work, not a work of God on human hearts. We must teach the doctrine of deep repentance as God’s work.
The kind of repentance encouraged in 12:10-14 is rooted in covenant relationship. The focus here is not on turning from a list of inappropriate behaviors but on mourning over our treatment of God through our rebellion. It is primarily a relational issue arising from our infidelity to God, a theme introduced at the beginning of Zechariah and captured in the simple cry of God through his prophet: “Return to me… and I will return to you” (1:3)
Conclusion:
So what is this long, difficult passage really about for us? It is about the entire grand, meta-story from which we live as mature Christians. It begins with God, who created. Humanity, who rebelled. Jesus, who came. And us, who respond with repentance. And then we live lives of hope – hope that “our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever!” (2 Cor 4:17); hope that God’s “love for (his people) is passionate and strong; (He is) consumed with passion for (them)!” (Zech 1:14, 8:2); and hope that determines that we will live for Him, not for ourselves. That we will not seek first what “God can do for me”, but rather how we can live for Him. Trusting, then that as we “Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, he will give us everything we need.” (Luke 12:31).
