Life of Grace: God's Sacrifice of the Good Shepherd

Zechariah 12 ended with Israel’s return to the LORD through the once rejected but now embraced Messiah. And Zechariah 13 opens with the fountain flowing from their embrace of the Messiah.

They now enjoy a fountain that brings cleansing for sin and for uncleanness. The cleansing comes after their mourning for the One whom they have pierced.

“According to the verse before us this provision is inexhaustible. There is a fountain opened; not a cistern nor a reservoir, but a fountain. A fountain continues still to bubble up, and is as full after fifty years as at the first; and even so the provision and the mercy of God for the forgiveness and the justification of our souls continually flows and overflows.” (Spurgeon--of course!)

Idolatry and false prophecy were the two principle ways Israel was led astray from God. God not only provides a fountain to cleanse, but He also promises to cut off the source of uncleanness - in this case, idolatry and false prophecy.

God promises ultimately to take away even the memory of our sin.

Zechariah prophesies a coming day when public opinion will not tolerate false prophets. There will be such a commitment to the LORD and His truth that even the family of a false prophet will condemn the false prophet.

The man accused of being a false prophet insists the scars on his body are not the self-inflicted wounds often associated with false prophets (1 Kings 18:28; Jeremiah 48:37), but merely the result of a brawl in his friend’s house. This unlikely, ironic explanation shows just how desperately people will avoid being identified with false prophets in this coming day Zechariah speaks of.

(Some take verse 6 as another Messianic prophecy in Zechariah, because Jesus was clearly wounded by those who should have been His friends. But the context demonstrates that this is about false prophets.)

But in the context starting in verse 7, and especially in light of the quotation of this passage in Matthew 26:31, we understand that the Shepherd is Jesus the Messiah - and it is God the Father Himself who calls for the Shepherd to be struck.

Zechariah relates a thought also said in Isaiah 53:10:

Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief.

The prophets Isaiah and Zechariah gloriously and emphatically, state that the suffering of the Servant of the Lord was ordained by the Lord. This was God’s doing! He gave the command to strike the Shepherd. Jesus was no victim of circumstance or at the mercy of political or military power. It was the planned, ordained work of the Lord God, prophesied by Isaiah hundreds of years before it happened. This was God’s victory, not Satan’s or man’s triumph.

As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:19, God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. The Father and the Son worked together at the cross. Though Jesus was treated as if He were an enemy of God, He was not. Even as Jesus was punished as if He were a sinner, He was performing the most holy service unto God the Father ever offered.

Jesus quoted from Zechariah 13:7 in Matthew 26:31 in reference to the scattering of His disciples during His arrest and suffering. There is also a sense in which the disciples were a type of Israel as a whole in being scattered.

Without Christ and His work on the cross, we are without a Shepherd and are lost and scattered. Thank God for His provision.

O Pierced Shepherd, we thank You for being willing to take the punishment that was our due. O bless the heart that planned it! We pray Lord that You would guide the Bright Zone outreach. We take confidence that it is from Your hand, that we should live Beyond Ourselves and minister to those in our neighborhoods during these hard times.

I pray especially for these families: Birds, Babbilis, Brinkmans, Lundes, Harrisons, Harringtons, Mazrie-Goltehebrah, Goforths and the Wintons. That any stress or pressure they may be experiencing would drive them to You. And that any joy or thanksgiving they may be experiencing would draw their hearts to You! Give guidance to the committee as to how we all can be a part of this outreach, and that we will all be willing to live Beyond Ourselves. In Jesus' name, amen!

Jehovah bade His sword awake;

O Christ, it woke ’gainst Thee!

Thy blood the flaming blade must slake;

Thine heart its sheath must be;

All for my sake, my peace to make;

Now sleeps that sword for me.

(Anne R. Cousin)

There is a fountain filled with blood,

Drawn from Immanuel’s veins;

And sinners, plunged beneath that flood,

Lose all their guilty stains.

(William Cowper)