Main Idea: God provides a fountain for cleansing from sin.
A Look at the Text:
With the future still in view, Zechariah’s oracle unveils that there will be a future fountain for cleansing from sin and uncleanness (Zech. 13:1). God had not abandoned His people. He would bring them back into relationship with Himself. With this, idolatry and false prophets would be cut off on that day (Zech. 13:2-6). Worship would be pure.
Yet, before that time, there would be a scattering. The Lord would send a sword against His own shepherd, and that would cause the sheep to flee (Zech. 13:7). Two-thirds would flee and perish while the other third would remain (Zech. 13:8).
The remaining third would then experience a refiner’s fire where they would be purified and come out on the other side truly as God’s people, for Yahweh alone would be their God (Zech. 13:9).
Bringing it Home:
Zechariah’s vision looked forward to a specific time. According to the New Testament, it was Jesus Christ who was the Shepherd who was slain, causing the sheep to scatter (Matt. 26:31). Just as foretold, it was the Lord’s doing, coming about through “the definite plan and foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23).
When Jesus was betrayed, He was likewise abandoned by His disciples. Even more, when the people of Jerusalem rejected their Messiah, the Lord visited them in judgment in 70 A.D. and further scattered the sheep.[1]
While the exact unfolding of God’s plans for the end isn’t easy to grasp, what is abundantly clear is that there is a fountain that flows with blood that is able to cleanse anyone, Jew or Gentile, no matter who they are or what they’ve done.
Jesus, our Good Shepherd, laid down His life for His sheep (John 10:11). Jesus Christ died on behalf of the sins of others. His death wasn’t the product of chance or human rebellion against God. Rather, it was the Father’s foreordained means of saving the world. He bore our sins in His body on the tree (1 Pet. 2:24).
As such, we can stand today cleansed and made new. If we ever feel dirty because of our sin, we need only confess our sins and look again to the cross (1 John 1:9). There is no sinner too wretched to be made new. There is no sin too vile to be washed white with the precious blood of Jesus Christ.
The apostle Paul once unpacked this reality so beautifully. After detailing a list of sins to a sinful church that would keep one from the Kingdom, he concluded:
And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God (1 Cor. 6:11, emphasis added).
No matter who we are or what we have done, we can be cleansed, made new, and changed into new creations in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17). It’s not a matter of trying harder or of behavioral modification—the difference is Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
Challenge:
Do I ever see my sin as being beyond cleansing?
[1] Hermann J. Austel, “Zechariah,” in Evangelical Commentary on the Bible, vol. 3, Baker Reference Library (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1995), 701.