358: They Will Mourn | Tim Henderson

Alright. Thank you, Babs. So a couple of updates before we get started. Many of you know that for Kelly and I, the last couple weeks have been pretty tricky. Our son, Max, who we love and adore, was in a motorcycle accident about two and a half weeks ago. He's gonna be fine. It was not life threatening, but he had pretty grave injuries. He was in the hospital for several days, almost a week. Came home from the hospital, then got really sick and had to go back to the hospital. So it has just been a very tumultuous time.

Max is doing well—he's actually here right now, probably doesn't appreciate this—but there's Max, and we love him, and he's doing alright. I just want to tell you that ever since the day we moved to Roanoke, we have just been surrounded by so much love and warmth and affection. We love this community. We love you. And Kelly and I have so strongly felt, and I think Max has felt too, that it's very meaningful to us for him to see the warmth and love and the kindness that we get from you.

Somewhere in the midst of this last couple weeks, I was having a conversation with Quig, our sweet bishop, and was expressing to him how much it means to us to feel so much love, not just towards us, but towards our son. And Quig said something in such a way that I'm like, I'll never forget this, because it's just so the way that Quig can sometimes know just the right thing to say. He says, "Tim, it's a little bit out of context, but he who loves the father loves the son." And I just thought, in that moment, this is why we love Quig Lawrence. I'm grateful for your love to us, to Kelly and I, and in particular to our son. So thank you so much for your kindness there. We think things are on the mend. If you want to know some of the particulars, Kelly and I send out a letter every month to our supporters with Blue Ridge Fellows, and I just printed extra copies and put them on the connection table out there. So if you want to hear some of the details, grab one of those, and you can know what's going on as you pray for us.

Also, really quick—you guys are having a prayer conference, and when we say prayer conference, what we mean is a teaching conference on prayer. If you envision like sixteen hours of prayer in small groups, and you're like, "I don't know that I can really do that," well, not many people could, but that's not what we're doing. It is gonna be brilliant. You're going to love it. It's based on a book that Saloop gave me that's so good. I just think we're gonna have a phenomenal time. You're not gonna want to miss it. It's March 8. We should pack the house. You will be glad to be there. I think it's gonna be terrific. So make sure you sign up and come and join us as we do that—March 8.

Concluding Zechariah

Okay. This morning we're gonna finish. We're gonna conclude our study in Zechariah. I hope that you have loved it. I have loved it. This might be my favorite series that we've done in the nine years that I've been here.

Zechariah is incredibly important. The New Testament authors love it. They cite it over 70 times. It has a very important message, but it's not very well known. It's obscure. It's difficult. It's kind of tucked away in a funny corner, and it uses some genres that we're not really familiar with. But my goodness, it's so insightful. We're gonna wrap it up today. I hope that the complex insights in this book have become a little more accessible to you, and maybe even you're more motivated than you have been to mine it yourself because it's full of treasure.

Zechariah was written to a group of people who have been deeply punished and need to know if they are now permanently discarded. They needed to know: Is the Messiah still coming or have we blown it forever? And the answer to that question is honestly a little bit complicated. The answer is yes, the Messiah is still coming. No, you have not been discarded. It's not too late.

But as Dave showed us last week, Zechariah foresaw not only that the Messiah would still come, but that when he comes—when he came—he would be rejected by the people that he came to save. And though it is a heartbreaking twist in Zechariah's story, anybody who's paid any attention whatsoever in the New Testament should not have found it to be very much of a surprise. When Jesus came to his own, his own did not receive him, and the gospel accounts are filled with a story of the Jews' rejection of their Messiah when he finally came. Right? Culminating, of course, in his crucifixion.

In fact, the book of Acts—I don't know if you've ever noticed this—but in the book of Acts, we follow mostly Paul, a little bit Peter, but mostly we're following Paul. Everywhere he goes and he preaches the gospel, two things happen. There's a revival and there's a riot.

People respond in faith and people reject with anger. What's interesting though, if you pay attention to the reception and the rejection, it tends to be that it is Gentiles who receive and Jews who reject on balance. And this community of followers of Messiah that begins as a chiefly Jewish concern, by the end of the book of Acts, the church is largely a collection of Gentiles. And Acts is partly written to explain, wait, how did we get, what happened that we ended up with this bunch of Gentile dogs in this community following that Jewish Messiah? Like, how did that happen? Acts is written to explain the gap from where it started to where it has gone.

In fact, you may not have ever seen this, but this is the last paragraph. This is how Acts ends. It ends explicitly about this phenomena. Verse 28:25:

They disagreed among themselves and began to leave after Paul had made this final statement. "The Holy Spirit spoke the truth to your forefathers when he said through the prophet Isaiah the prophet, 'Go to this people and say, you will be ever hearing, but never understanding. You will be ever seeing but never perceiving. For this people's heart has become calloused and they hardly hear with their ears and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise, they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts and turn and I would heal them.'" That's Isaiah. And then Paul's comment is, "Therefore, I want you to know that God's salvation has been sent to the Gentiles, and they will listen." — Acts 28:25

Now, you have to understand, Paul says this with no glee whatsoever. This is heartbreaking to Paul. Paul is a Jew, and he loves the Jews. The driving force of his ministry is to help the Jews come to find that Christ is their Messiah. The entire book of Romans, the emotional energy that drives that greatest thing that's ever been written is Paul's deep and abiding angst over the lostness and the rejection of the people of Israel.

If you look through chapters nine, ten, and eleven in particular, he says things like:

I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. — Romans 9:2

He says:

I wish that I could be cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, the people of Israel. — Romans 9:3

He longs to see the Jews come to faith, and yet, it's not happening, and it tears him up.

So if you've read that, and you're familiar with that, and you've seen any of that—it's all over the place in the New Testament—then when you read Zechariah, it might not be surprising to see that that's exactly what happens, but it still is surprising. It's just so disappointing. And when I read through Zechariah, it just gives me this fresh look at how weird this was, how bewildering, how unexpected it should be.

Zechariah is about mercy upon mercy upon mercy to an undeserving people who are begging for one more chance and absurdly and graciously are given another chance far beyond their deserving. And then when that chance comes, they blow it again. Zechariah saw, he foresaw that the Messiah would come, and that when he did, they'd still reject him. And that's exactly what happens.

Now, even as I'm saying, isn't that bizarre? Some of you, like me, might have been shown grace over and over and over again, and then you still blew it. And so maybe it's just not that surprising after all.

The Timeline of Zechariah

Now, walking through all of that, that was Dave's job last week, to see this rejection and the heartbreak of it. This morning's passage is better news. It's life out of death. It is the happy ending. It is what we long to see be true, but it is a happiness purchased with sadness.

Now, you remember when I started this thing, we did this timeline, and I walked you through the whole Old Testament. By the time we finally started talking about Zechariah, I was way over here, right? Zechariah is around 500 BC. It's late in the game. Lots of Israel's history has already come and gone, but it's still several hundred years before Jesus comes. It's around 500 BC.

When Zechariah writes, most of what he's writing is still future for him. From his vantage point, almost everything is yet to happen, but from our vantage point, you know, we live in 2024, a lot of what Zechariah foresaw has already happened, like, namely, the first coming of Christ. Some of what Zechariah foresaw has not yet happened. From our vantage point here in 2024, it still yet lies in the future.

So Zechariah covers a big, broad swath from the first coming, some of it in the first coming, all the way into the second coming. Some of it was all future for them, a lot of it's our past, but some of it's our future.

So let's take a look. We're gonna jump in in the middle of verse 10 and see what Zechariah foresaw. We'll start here.

They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son. — Zechariah 12:10

A woman named Joyce Baldwin wrote what is broadly perceived as the number one commentary on the book of Zechariah. You could buy it if you want. Here's what she says in explaining this passage: "The house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem need a new spirit and a new cleansing that are somehow connected with profound mourning for a man put to death in the city."

Make no mistake, this man—verse 10, the one who was pierced—he was put to death. The word "to be pierced" shows up numerous times in the Old Testament, and it refers to somebody being fatally wounded. It is used to describe someone who was speared to death. It is used a couple of times in reference to someone who has been run through with a sword. This pierced one is dead.

This notion of this messiah being pierced has all sorts of corresponding passages. It might even remind you of the central verse of the central stanza of the climactic servant song in Isaiah. Maybe the most important passage in the entire Old Testament is Isaiah 53. And in that central part, you may recognize it:

But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds, we are healed. — Isaiah 53:5

This idea of someone—some servant being pierced, a shepherd taking an injury on himself—that same idea gets repeated just a few verses later in Zechariah 13. You may recognize this:

Strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered. — Zechariah 13:7

Jesus himself quotes that, referencing his own cross: "Strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered."

So there's this growing collection of passages in the Old Testament of a shepherd that gets stricken, a messiah that gets pierced, a servant that is killed. This image is building of what was going to be the work of the messiah.

Now, as all this is happening, notice that it says this man will be killed or pierced. When I say "this man," I want you to look at it again. Notice the pronouns. God is the one who is speaking, and he says:

They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son.

It's so interesting. God is speaking, and in the space of a few words, he identifies both himself and another as the pierced one. Isn't that interesting? It seems that this pierced one will both be God and someone who is with God. And of course it is, for:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. — John 1:1

But what's notable about this is not merely the fact of his piercing. Honestly, the focus—if you read through it, if you just listen to it—it's the mourning. And in fact, there seems to be a separation of time between the piercing and the mourning. They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn. They have pierced him. They will come to mourn having done so.

This verse, Zechariah 12:10, gets quoted three times in the New Testament. Jesus quotes it in Matthew 24, describing it to himself. John quotes it in John 19, clearly about the crucifixion, in particular about the spear that Jesus takes to his side—his heart. And then finally, John quotes it in Revelation 1, as he opens up his apocalyptic revelation. We'll look at that one when we get there.

Unmistakably, the New Testament authors believed that Zechariah 12:10 was about Jesus. He is the one who is pierced. Now, as I said, that piercing has already happened on the cross. But today, 2024, the mourning still lies yet in the future.

The Depth of Mourning

I want you to look at how it's described. Notice the depth of this mourning:

They will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son. On that day, the weeping in Jerusalem will be great, like the weeping of Hadad Rimmon in the Plain of Megiddo. — Zechariah 12:10-11

Now, nobody knows what the heck he's talking about. Nobody knows what happened in Hadad Rimmon on the Plain of Megiddo. I read a bunch, and even sweet Joyce isn't sure. She's like, "Well, there's this pagan thing, and the word sounds..." Who knows? It's probably lost to us. But it doesn't really matter. They would have known what it meant, and all that it meant, the import of it, is that it's a bitter grief. It's a deep sorrow.

And as I tried to imagine, like, what captures this? What in our culture might be an example of this?

And I thought about films, and the movie that came to my mind about this is Manchester by the Sea. How many of you guys have seen Manchester by the Sea? Any of you? A bunch, a handful, okay. So, you love this movie? Okay. I, if you haven't seen it, I don't necessarily recommend that you watch this because it is so sorrowful. Okay? Now maybe you're one of those people that you have such an abundant surplus of joy that you can just take the hit, you know, like, okay, good for you. I just found it was so hideously sad. It's about a man who makes a relatively small mistake, but it has just horrible tragic consequences. Stars Casey Affleck and Michelle Williams, and the mistake was that he forgot to put the screen on his fireplace, and as a result, his house burned down and killed his daughters. And it's an exploration of grief, it's an exploration of mourning.

There's a couple of scenes that are so deeply affecting that the morning after the fire, he goes to the police station and he just gives a statement, and he's just sitting there, and he's just kinda dead, and he's just in a very monotone, factual manner, just explains what happened. He was with his buddies, they were playing cards, they were drinking, he ran out of beer, the house was cold, he put a log on the fire, forgot to put the screen on, walked to the convenience store, didn't wanna drive because he was already wasted. Halfway to the store, he's like, did I put the screen on? That's probably fine. Continue the journey. Comes home to a house engulfed and his daughters perish in the flames.

And as he sits there, he tells the story to the cops. When he's all done, the police officers just say, okay, thank you for your statement, you're free to go. And he looks up startled because he thought they were gonna put him in jail, punish him, like fulfill the raging judgment that is consuming his mind. And instead they say, he made a mistake, like a million other people. But there wasn't any crime, and they let him go. And he can't handle it. So on his way out of the police station, he steals a gun out of a cop's holster, puts it to his temple, pulls the trigger, but the gun wasn't chambered, and so the gun doesn't fire. And the cops have just enough time to wrestle him to the ground before he can chamber it. And he's just drowning in his grief, but he can't even end his life.

Then there's a scene, maybe a couple where his wife, who is so broken hearted, just lays into him because she is crushed by this terrible loss. And then maybe the most impactful scene—for my money in the movie, that police station's a pretty good one, but later in the story—he and his wife are divorced, she's remarried, she has a baby, and she runs across him in the street. And they have this conversation where she has grieved enough that she's able to see how brutally cruel she had been to him in her own heartbreak, and tries to apologize, and tries to take it back, and tries to reassure him, but he just can't take any of it. He's just dead by it all.

I'm just telling you. You guys, this movie is an exploration of a thousand pieces of mourning and grief. Something like that, maybe something like all of that, in all of the many facets of regret, and grief, and sorrow, and loss, and I can't get back. That, I think, is what Zechariah is trying to draw our attention to. The language that he uses to describe the depth of mourning is embedded right here. This agonizing inability to undo what you have done.

Israel will look. They will look on the one that they have pierced, and they will mourn. They will mourn, by the way, for him. Not for themselves, it's really important. But they will mourn for him, as one grieves for an only child. — Zechariah 12:10

Zechariah describes not only the depth of the mourning, but some of you already I know. Some of you know. I don't need to describe it to you. You've lived it. Not just the depth of mourning, but the breadth of it too. This is the part, when Trish was reading this, it felt very tedious, right? You felt like, I'm gonna read this passage. There was meaning in that. Look at this part, the part that you guys when your eyes started to glaze over, here it is.

The land will mourn, each clan by itself and their wives by themselves, the clan of the house of David and their wives, the clan of the house of Nathan and their wives, the clan of the house of Levi and their wives, the clan of Shemi and their wives, and all the rest of the clans of their wives. — Zechariah 12:12

Okay. What in the world is he talking about? He's talking about this. David is the line of the kings, and Nathan is the line of who? The prophets. And Levi is the line of the priests. And Shemi, I think, is just the normal people. There's a couple Shemis actually.

The most prominent one is the scoundrel that has hated David, kicking dirt on him when he's trying to leave the city. What he's saying is the prophets, the priests, the kings, and the scoundrels. The exalted class, the normal people, the men, and the women, everybody. And that annoying repetition of "by themselves, by themselves, by themselves, by themselves"—what they're saying is it's not just the hypnosis of a group think that has happened. No. Each individual, he will grieve, and she will grieve, and he will grieve, and she will grieve, and he will grieve. Prophets, priests, kings, the normal people, the men, the women, individually, there is going to be a radical change that the world has never seen as Israel grieves, mourns the one that they have pierced. That's what Zechariah foresees.

I suspect that this passage is partly how Paul knows that his ministry will not ultimately fail. He believed there would be a revival among the Jews, and he wrote about it. It just permeates Romans nine, ten, and eleven. Here's just a sample from Romans 11:

Romans eleven twenty five, I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers, so that you may not be conceited. Israel has experienced a hardening, in part, until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved, As it is written, the deliverer will come from Zion, he will turn godlessness away from Jacob, and this is my covenant with them when I take away their sins. — Romans 11:25-27

Paul anticipated a future revival among the Jews, just like Zechariah does. They did pierce him, and they will come to mourn him.

Now, I skipped this at the beginning of verse 10 because I wanted to save it for now, but I want you to notice what is it that finally will bring about this long awaited reality. Go back to the beginning of verse 10. Zechariah writes:

This is what God himself says, I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me the one they have pierced, and they will mourn. — Zechariah 12:10

Why do they finally mourn? It is because God pours out on them a spirit of grace and supplication. Supplication is the act of pleading, of begging for mercy. Grace is usually just translated as favor in the Old Testament. God is gonna move toward a people who have been disinterested and rebellious, hard hearted, and he will pour onto them—I want you to think about a lavish cataract of grace. He will pour onto them a new ability to see the situation, to see themselves as they are. He will enable them to finally, finally ask for mercy. And then, and hear this, only then will they be able to turn and respond to him, and come to him in faith. Only then will they shake off their rebellion and turn to him.

God's Grace Alone Brings Repentance

Second Timothy, Paul says that God grants repentance. Ezekiel 36 paints this picture that God takes out a heart of stone and replaces it with a heart of flesh, that he moves us to follow his decrees and laws. Jeremiah 31 says the same thing, that he will write his law on our hearts.

The gospel is the story of unimaginable, undeserved grace, mercy that is poured out to people who cannot possibly warrant it. This whole story is about that. God's mercy to a people so rebellious that the only possible way that they will ever come to faith is if God first overrides their will to reject him. It is a humiliating story. It humiliates us because it proves just how deep our rebellion runs—that we require such an overwhelming ruling order to come to our senses.

And don't miss this: because in a bizarre way, it also humiliates God, that the one who is worthy of such absolute adoration is willing to accept such begrudging, last resort love from the puppets of his own making. It's absolutely extraordinary.

Now, it may come as no surprise to many of you that the most moving depiction that I have ever read of a person's individual conversion to faith comes from the pen of CS Lewis. His book, Surprised by Joy, if you've never read it, it's so worth it. Especially if you are among that population like me that is just so personally fond of him. His story is exceptional. So many things that I just love about that book, and it's like a supreme act of discipline to not read you like three pages of it right now. But I'm just gonna give you just this little bit, okay, just the tip of this moment, as he describes being thirty years old at Oxford, at Magdalen College. And I want you to just hear the climax of his journey and the language that he uses. He says:

You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling whenever my mind lifted, even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me.

In the trinity term of 1929, I gave in and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed, perhaps that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all of England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing, the divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The prodigal son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape?

The words "compel them to come in" have been so abused by wicked men that we shudder at them. But properly understood, they plumb the depth of divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and his compulsion is our liberation. He has what condescending love to welcome those who preference everything to you. And yet, this is God's very nature. This is who he is. This is what he does. It is grace upon grace upon grace to the undeserving and the ungrateful.

The End of the Story

I want you to hear the way the story finally ends. I mentioned that this passage is quoted in Matthew 12, John 19, and in Revelation 1. Come with me to Revelation 1, I want you to see what John points out to us as he opens up his vision of the end of all things.

To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and father, to him be glory and power forever and ever. Amen. Look, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him. And all the peoples of the earth will mourn because of him. So shall it be. Amen. — Revelation 1:5-7

John is seizing here this deep and broad repentance from Zechariah 12, and he sees a day when not only the Jews finally, but also Gentiles too, will come to their senses and see what he has done, and they will grieve. And notice again, they're not mourning for themselves, but finally, at last, and rightly for him.

He goes: I think this gives great hope that the God who is gracious, compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in love, will even then, in the final moments when people have nothing left to benefit from their rebellion, if even then they will abandon it, he will accept them. That anyone—anyone—who wants to come under his gracious protection may, even in the last possible second. What depth, what depth of love and condescension. And what that means is that he's worthy of your heart today. Don't wait, but surrender to him now.

The fact that you could, that he would grant you the ability to—that is the great miracle. When we are finally enabled to see him and preference him who has preferenced us. When he becomes greater and we become less, when we can actually say, "not my will, but yours be done." When we are changed from what we are into the sort of person who can love him with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. That's the miracle, and that is when everything changes.

And what Zechariah is telling us, what John is affirming is that the day is coming when that will happen at scale for the people that he set apart for himself. That is the end to which the story is trending. And when it happens, it will only happen as an act of sovereign grace.

He gets the next line in Zechariah 13:1:

On that day, a fountain will be opened to the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to cleanse them from sin and impurity. — Zechariah 13:1

For there is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's vein, and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stain. That's a pretty well known song. It's a less well known stanza that says: "Ever since by faith I saw the stream, thy flowing wound supply. Redeeming love has been my theme and shall be till I die."

The question is, has that become your theme? Has he won you yet, conquering your love of relatively worthless things? Or do you want him to? If so, be of good cheer, for the pouring out of a spirit of grace and supplication is the prima facie evidence that the trickle has begun, and that he will complete what he has started.

Today, I urge you—cooperate with him. Don't wait with some foolish hope that you could sneak it in at the last second. He's worthy today. His grace is real today, and he invites you to come to him today. Cooperate with him. Yield to the steady, unrelenting approach.

In fact, you could come forward right now. We have this time set aside every week. You can come forward. Maybe it's the entirety of your life. Maybe there's just some slice of yourself that you've been holding back from him. Give him the whole thing. Come. Why not come and live under the grace of the one who gave everything for you, who has preferenced you above all else? Come. Whatever burdens you carry, come. We'll have friends here on the side rails that'll pray with you. We would love to be with you.

And whatever burdens you're carrying right now or joys to celebrate it all with you. Zechariah is the story of the Messiah who never stopped. That he said he would come, and he has come. He knew he would be rejected, and he came anyway. And he is for you. All of him for all of you, if you will but have him. That, in a nutshell, is Zechariah. I hope its treasures are available to you. It really is filled with treasure. You can find it, and it has been so much fun to unpack it with you now. The word is rich.

Let's pray together to the one who is the hero of that story.

Lord Jesus, we love you. We praise you. We thank you for these new insights into what you are like. My mind walks through Zechariah. All the things that were revealed that we see of you, that you stand by our side and you rebuke Satan, that you stand in our place and you take our punishment, that you stand patiently waiting even as we reject you and find you boring, irrelevant, silly. And then when there is no further benefit, even then, say come. Lord, who is like you? We praise you. We lift you up. We exalt you highly. We thank you for loving us. Amen.