Jerusalem - December 22
Thursday December 22 – Jerusalem
I had insulted my grandmother over a card game. It was the only time my dad ever really yelled at me. Because I was a petulant teenager, I never really apologized to her. I sulked off and laid low the rest of the visit. I kept mostly to myself and decided to protest my “unfair treatment” silently.
After I got home, I told one of my friends about what had happened and about how I had been “done wrong” by my old man. My friend, who was one of the really few genuine and transparent Christians I had met at that point, corrected me in love by saying, “It sounds like you owe your grandma an apology and that your dad was only doing what dads are supposed to do when their sons mess up. Also, you insulted his mom. That won’t go well.” My friend was right. I needed to make this right and I needed to be in person. I did write her a letter but a few months later, we were headed back up for a visit. I planned on asking her to forgive me in person.
The entire trip, I was hopeful and excited to see her, but it was tempered with a newly acquired spiritual sense of grief. In my sinful words and tone and with sinful, selfish intention, I had hurt my grandma’s feelings. What a sluggard I was. That grief was also in the same orbit as the grace I knew she would extend, as she had already done in her written response to my apology. It was all in the mix there. Grief, hope, grace, supplication. I needed to ask her for something, forgiveness, and hope that she could move forward. Besides, in my life growing up, my two grandmas were really my only healthy sources of love and support. And I had lost one to the grave and then insulted the other. See? A sluggard. I think we can all agree on that. Let’s move on.
I got there. I cried and apologized. She forgave me. And the next morning, I got the center cinnamon roll in the pan. And this is no joke, I cannot tell what heaven will be like, but in my head, I like to think it is like eating the center cinnamon roll at Grandma Smith’s forever and ever.
Supplication in Jerusalem: The Messiah would be pierced.
Zechariah 12:10 ‘Then I will pour out a spirit of grace and prayer on the house of David and the residents of Jerusalem, and they will look at me whom they pierced. They will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child and weep bitterly for him as one weeps for a firstborn.”
Zechariah reminded God’s people in chapter 12 that repentance and cleansing were prerequisites to God’s promised victory over outside nations on behalf of Israel and Judah. God also made it clear to them that He was the one who brought security for them. Not a king. Not an army. Not wealth. God’s Spirit provided security for Jerusalem and her people. This security is an extension of both God’s unfailing love (Psalm 48:9) and righteousness (Psalm 48:10).
This promise of security was important to Jerusalem and the city’s tradition. This community that Zechariah preached to had to reevaluate their status in the Jerusalem living in the wake of its destruction. Jeremiah’s Lamentations had begun to guide the people toward repentance in Lamentations 3:40-42. And now through Zechariah, God offers victory and salvation simultaneously with his transformation of the people through his Spirit.
In Zechariah 12:10-14, the prophet revealed an important component. Their salvation would be secured through an outside force – the Messiah. And this salvation that will be secured for the people will be an internal renewal of the nation as God transforms their affections to seek Him in repentance. This internal renewal will begin when God pours out a spirit of grace and supplication. God will place his presence uniquely within his people. This renewal will impact people in a way that is consistent with mourning. There must be death to bring this renewal. Hence the piercing.
This understanding of piercing is used in other Old Testament texts to refer to a fatal wounding (Numbers 25:18). The person being pierced experienced death. The images and vocabulary present are all drawn from the mourning rites of ancient Israel. God’s spirit of grace and supplication will be poured out. The response to that will be piercing, death, followed by mourning, grieving, and weeping.
Our response to God’s pouring out of a spirit of grace is to mourn over our treatment of God and his law. That is a penitent response. We are to mourn over how we treated God in similar fashion as an Israelite might have mourned over the death of their firstborn son. Our sin was a mistreatment of God. Our sin pierced the Lord.
This piercing is literally fulfilled in Christ on the cross when his side his pierced by the soldiers to confirm that his heart no longer works. My individual, personal sin should cause me to mourn in repentance because of the sacrifice of the Lord.
We live in an era of what the theologian calls “easy-believism.” The current church doesn’t know much of Zechariah 12:10-14. There is not much penitential depth within God’s people. It has been flattened out by prosperity-based theology promising health, wealth, and happiness. However there is also the limited sense of repentance in light of a faith that leans heavily into intellectual enrichment rather than the overall transformation of our affections. We preach a faith that becomes more of a human accomplishment through knowledge rather than God’s work on our hearts.
The repentance Zechariah calls for is steeped in covenant relationship. It isn’t that we turn from inappropriate behaviors as much as we should mourn over our treatment of God through our rebellion. We aren’t to just feel “bad” about our sin. We are to grieve what it has done to the Lord. And an ever-increasing penitential depth is increased by recognizing that the Messiah was pierced for our rebellion. It was predicted and taught. That repentant attitude and the transformation God brings through it will enrich the working out of our salvation as well as inform our hope and expectation of Jesus’s second coming.
When they came to Jesus, they did not break his legs since they saw that he was already dead. But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once blood and water came out. John 19:33-34
“Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the peoples of the earth will mourn; and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.” Matthew 24:30
Father, forgive me for my sin of pride. I have too often made my “Christianity” more about me, about what I think and do, about what I don’t do, about what I have learned and accomplished. Help me to be open to allowing you to graciously pour your spirit of supplication into my heart. Help me to change according to your work within me. And help me to look to your Son’s second advent with a sense of repentance and hope. Amen