I can speak for myself, and knowing
Brother Chris, I can speak for him. Our purpose in this meeting
is to exalt our sovereign God, is to set
forth clearly the successful redemption of the Son of God,
and to do the best we can to abase flesh. That's gonna be
our purpose. And with that in mind, I want
you to turn to Zechariah chapter 12. And I want to begin reading in
verse 12. Zechariah chapter 12 and verse 10. Zechariah chapter 12 and verse
10. And I want to read down through
chapter 13 and verse 1. And I will pour upon the house
of David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit of grace
and of supplication. And they shall look upon me whom
they have pierced. And they shall mourn for him
as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness
for him as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn. And that day
there shall be a great mourning in Jerusalem as the mourning
of Hadad Ramon in the valley of Megiddo. And the land shall
mourn every family apart, the family of the house of David
apart, their wives apart, the family of the house of Nathan
apart, their wives apart, the family of the house of Levi apart,
and their wives apart, the family of Shimei apart, and their wives
apart. and all the families that remain,
every family apart and their wives apart. And in that day
there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to
the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness. I want to begin here with verse
one in chapter 13 and maybe we could think for just a few minutes
on the fountain opened. Or maybe we could think for a
few minutes on the cross and the effects of the cross. But
let's think upon this passage here that I've read unto you.
Zachariah uses this phrase here often in his book, In That Day. In That Day. And he's not speaking
of a 24-hour day as you and I know it, but he's speaking of the
day of salvation. The day of salvation. In the
New Testament it says it like this, now is the accepted time. He calls it a day. In the New
Testament they call it an acceptable time. Behold now is the day of
salvation. That day has been ever since
the Lord Jesus came to this world in our humanity. The Son of God
incarnate lived and suffered and died upon the cross of Calvary. That's when this day was. In
that day there was a fountain open. You and I have been living
2,000 years now in that day, in that day, that time. Sometimes it's called the year.
of the Lord, the acceptable year of the Lord. Do you remember
when the Lord Jesus came to Nazareth? He took the Bible out and he
found the place in Isaiah, and this is what he read. The Spirit
of the Lord is upon me. He has anointed me to preach
the gospel to the poor. He sent me to heal the brokenhearted,
to set at liberty those who are bruised, to preach the acceptable
year of the Lord. I heard a friend of mine say
one time, this is a year in which the Lord is accepting sinners. Are you interested in that? I'm
interested in being accepted, aren't you? Take a poor man that
has no job, and he's in poverty, he's ready to starve to death,
and his family is in poverty, and he hears that somebody has
taken application. and he is going to put in an
application, hoping that he will get accepted. Well, if you had
to put in an application tonight to the Lord, what would be your
qualifications? Do you ever think about that?
If you had to go put in your resume, what would you write
upon it and hand it to the Lord and let Him read it to see if
you are qualified to be accepted? What would you put on it? Well,
here's what I'd put on mine. I'd write it out and I'd hand
it in to him and he'd say, well, let's see now. Let's see what
you, if you have any qualifications to be accepted. Well, here's
what you wrote. I'm a poor sinner and nothing
at all. But he would say, now listen,
I get a lot of these resumes. Let's examine just a minute before
I accept you. Are you really a sinner? Oh,
Lord. Oh, Lord. I was born a sinner. All I've ever done is sin my
whole life. I've never done any good thing.
I've been a sinner by choice, a sinner by practice. Lord, I'm
a sinner. Well, he says here, let's see
this. It says here you're a poor sinner. Are you really a poor
sinner? Lord, I'm in poverty. I used
to think I was rich, but Lord, I have nothing. Look at the clothes
on me. Look how filthy. Look at the
hole. Something's going to have to take place with me. I don't
have a thing to bring with me. I'm a poor sinner. Well, let's
see. Let's read on. I'm a poor sinner
and nothing at all. Oh, Lord, would you let me have
that back? I've erred. Oh, I've made an awful mistake
here. Lord, please let me rub this out and let me change that. Okay, here's what it says now.
You wrote on here, I'm a poor sinner and less than nothing. Less than nothing. Lord, I have
nothing. I know nothing. I am nothing. And if you reject me, I'll die
as nothing. Well, there's the application.
And what does he say? I accept you. I accept you. In all your poverty, I accept
you. And listen, listen. Once I accept
you, I'll never refuse you. I'm interested in this acceptable
year of the Lord in that day. But you know what? That day's
run out for many people. Has it not? There's been many people. That
day has passed. That time is gone. And there'll
be a day soon when it's passed for this world. The day is coming. when the day of salvation will
be passed. But oh, thank God, we're still
living in that day. In that day, what happened in
that day? In that day, there shall be a
fountain opened. Oh, thank God it's opened. What
good would it do us, brothers and sisters, poor sinners as
we are, if it wasn't opened? Wouldn't do us any good, was
it? It's open. What is this fountain? The blood
of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. That's the fountain. When he
says it's finished and the soldier tucked the spear and put it in
his heart and all of his blood and water run from his body,
that's the fountain that's opened. It's open. They're doing a sewer project
in our little community. We live in Springport. And underneath
the ground in our little town, there are springs, live springs. You that live out in the country
and you have wells and you want to know what your well look like,
you could have seen it in our little community. They dug down
about 30 feet. And there was a well, a fountain,
and it was as cold as it could be and as clear, but they did
some work there and covered it back up. You can't get to it.
But here's a fountain that's opened. And why is it open? Well, he says you're for sin
and for uncleanness. That's the reason that God opened
this fountain deliberately on purpose to wash away sins, to
cleanse from uncleanness, filthiness, vileness. If the word got out that in Kingsport,
Tennessee, there was a fountain right on the square in downtown
Kingsport. And no matter what disease you
had, if you could wash in that fountain, you'd be made whole.
If you were blind, you could wash in that fountain and you'd
be seeing. If you had cancer or some disease
they could not understand or heal or give you any medication
for, you came to Kingsport, Tennessee, you washed in that fountain and
whatever disease you had, you'd be healed. I tell you, word would
get out, wouldn't it? All over the world, people would
sell everything they had, that bag, bar of steel, any way to
get to that fountain. Listen, there's a fountain open
for the worst disease known to man. It entered back yonder in
the Garden of Eden and it's killed more people than anything else. It's killed everybody spiritually.
as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin. So death passed upon all men. What an awful thing sin is! It's
eating away at the soul, and it's going to destroy the soul
and the body, the disease of sin, but here's a fountain that
will wash it all away, that will wash the filth of the soul, and
every stain I recommend it highly. Having
experienced it, I come here to tell you about it. This poor
sinner plunged in himself, and I've been made complete in the
blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. I don't know how you'd estimate
this fountain. How could you begin to estimate
the value of a fountain like this? You'd have to estimate
your sin, wouldn't you? If you just estimated this fountain
on your sin and your filthiness and pollution of your own soul,
you couldn't estimate the value of that fountain. But take your
pollution and your sin and magnify it to an unknown number of sins,
a number that no man can number. That's the only way I know to
value this fountain. In other words, you can't value
it. You just cannot. It's too wonderful. It's too
precious to wash away sin. Oh, there's no wonder that they
wrote that precious old song. There is a fountain filled with
blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins and sinners plunge beneath that
flood, lose all their guilty sins. Come to this fountain so
rich and sweet. Cast your poor soul at the Savior's
feet. Plunge in today and be made complete. Glory to His name. There's a
fountain open for sin and uncleanness. The Holy Spirit gives us here
just a hint of how to estimate this fountain, its value, its
worth. He tells who it was opened for.
And I think when we see whose sins were washed away by it,
whose uncleanness was purged by it, it'll help us to estimate
the value of this fountain. Who's this fountain open for?
He describes two peoples for us. It's open to the house of
David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. Now who in the
world or the inhabit is the house of David. Who is that? Who is
the house of David? I'm going to give you this scripture
to read. I can't take time to turn over there because it's
going to be taking too much time. But I want you to either make
this note in your mind. I want you to write it down.
2 Samuel chapter 7. There is where David was talking
to Nathan the prophet. And David said, I want to build
the Lord a house. And David said, do it. If it's
in your heart, David, do it. Nathan got outside and the Lord
said, Nathan, you go back in and tell him, no, he can't build
me a house. But tell him this, I'm going to build him a house.
And David was so carried away in the glory of the Lord and
His mercy, he said, I can't believe you're going to build me a house.
What kind of material was the Lord going to build David a house
out of? Now I want you to turn to this scripture. I want you
to hold Zechariah chapter 12, 13. I want you to look at Acts
chapter 15. This is where they were having
this grace conference here in Jerusalem. The apostle Paul and
the other apostles were there. And James rises up to speak about
the Lord choosing Peter to go down and preach to the Gentiles.
And I want you to look in Acts chapter 15 and look in verse
14. Acts chapter 15 and verse 14.
This is going to tell us who the house of David is. Simon Peter hath declared how
God at the first did visit the Gentiles to take out of them
a people for his name. A people out of the Gentiles
for his name. And to this agree the words of
the prophet as it is written, after this I will return and
will build again the tabernacle or tent or house of David which
is fallen down and I will build again the ruins thereof and I
will set it up. that the residue of men might
seek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles, upon whom my name
is called, saith the Lord, who doeth these things, known unto
God are all his works from the beginning of the world. Wherefore
my sentence is, that we trouble not them which from among the
Gentiles are turned unto God." He describes here, he tells us
who the house of David is, and who is it? The Gentiles. the Gentiles. Of course it includes
the elect among the Jews, but chiefly the Gentiles. That's
who the house of David is. It's a spiritual house. I wonder
if David began to imagine when the Lord said, I'm going to build
you a house, I wonder if he began to imagine what kind of materials
he was going to use for that. I don't think he thought it was
going to be a house like this. David could build a house like
this. He could build a house out of
cedar and stone, a beautiful house. But the Lord is saying,
David, I'm going to build you a spiritual house. And I'm going
to build it out of dead dog Gentiles. Man alive. You remember when
the gospel first went among the Gentiles? You talk about a world
that was dark. The worship of devils was rampant. The Gentiles had this veil over
their faces. All kinds of immorality and idolatry. When you looked out from Jerusalem
into the Gentile world, it was like a dark cloud over the whole
world. And the gospel invaded the Gentile
world. And you know what it did? It
took out of the Gentile world. And it is still taking out of
the Gentile world. The spiritual house And how in the world is God going
to take these dead dog Gentiles, filthy and vile and polluted,
and make them holy? He's going to wash them. He's
going to wash them. He went into Aethius, and that
place was given over to idolatry. He had this huge temple to Diana. Same thing at Thessalonica, given
over to idolatry. Aethius was a place of vulgarity,
Corinth, look what was going on at Corinth, all the adultery
and fornication and murder and idolatry. How in the world is
the Lord going to save them people and make them clean in this fountain?
You are the house of David. I am looking at many in the house
of David. You live in stones in the house
of David. The fountain was opened for the
house of David. That is amazing, isn't it? That's
amazing. We've got fellows today telling
us the Jews have one gospel and the Gentiles have another gospel.
There's just one gospel. There's one body. There's one
house of David made up of Jews and Gentiles. We're one in Christ. Just one. Who else is this mountain
open for? The inhabitants of Jerusalem. I'm just telling you this, giving
you a hint. of how to estimate, how to value this fountain. And
one of the ways that you value it, look at the depths of sin. Look at the uncleanness of the
human heart, the vulgarity of it. And yet this fountain is
open and has made those hearts as white as snow. And those inhabitants
of Jerusalem, you remember when the Lord Jesus sent his apostles
out to preach? You go into all the world and
preach the gospel, but where were they to begin? At Jerusalem. Why? There's those blood-red
sinners, boy. That's them blood-red sinners,
guilty of the blood of Jesus Christ. They hunted him and hounded
him, called him a devil. You're a Samaritan. You're a
liar. Why would you even listen to
this man? And when He was before Pilate, and Pilate was willing
to let Him go, what did they cry? Crucify Him! Crucify Him! Give us Barabbas! Oh, they hated
the Son of God, did they not? And when He was upon the cross,
they walked around and clured their throats and spit in His
face. If you be the Son of God, come
down and we'll believe you. Let Him have you if you're His
son. And Peter confronted them with this on the day of Pentecost,
didn't he? And he said, You by wicked hands have crucified and
slain the Lord of glory. What's going to wash them? What's
going to cleanse them from their uncleanness? This fountain? How
precious is this fountain then that flows, brothers and sisters,
that it could forgive that sin and those sins? I tell you, it used to be when
I sinned, I still have trouble with this, and you do too. You
wouldn't go to pray and confess it. You'd try to wait until your
conscience got to feeling a little bit better. Oh, you don't want
to go now. You're too guilty now. Believers
do this. We need to learn this. This is
why this fountain was opened. God knows we need it. That's
why He tells us to come, confess daily. And He says, here's my
promise to you. I don't care how many times a
day, you've done it and you've fallen. When you confess, I am
faithful and just to forgive you your sins. And to what? Cleanse
you. With what? This fountain, this
blood of Jesus Christ. Oh, every time you've had a wicked
thought or a bad motive. or said a terrible word, magnified,
go to the Lord right there and say, Lord, this is what I've
done. This is what I've said. This is what I've thought. Wash
me. Wash me. Wash me. Oh, there's a fountain, brothers
and sisters. There's a fountain open for sin. Fly to it. That's what the old forefathers
used to tell us. Fly to this fountain and be washed
from all your sins. Oh, who knows what God has in
store for the saved people? Oh, who knows what he has in
store? But you know where it starts? Washing. You can't go
to heaven if you're not washed. And there's but one fountain
that's open, and that's Emmanuel's blood. Wash and make you clean. But you know, having said all
of that, I could preach till I was old and gray-headed and
bald-headed. And you know what? Not one sinner
would wash if it's left up to the sinner. I'd be preaching
in vain. Brother Chris would follow me
and preach in vain. If it was left up to man, if
it's left to man, then it would be so what we're told on every
hand. That God has done all He can
do and the rest is up to you. That Jesus died and made a good
effort of it too. And now He's sitting in heaven
and He's just hoping and praying that somebody will apply what
He's did. Well, if it's that way, every
last one of us is going to hell and you know it. Let him open
his fountain. Let him tell us how free it is.
But leave us there and we perish in our rebellion and our darkness. What must happen? I tell you,
there's got to be a work taking place on the inside. And that's what the Holy Spirit
is doing. When the Lord Jesus opened this
fountain, They buried him, he raised from the dead and went
back and said, Father, send the Holy Spirit. And this is what
we have in verse 10, is it not? Look at our text again in Zechariah
chapter 12 and verse 10. I will pour upon the house of
David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem. Now who was this
fountain open for? The house of David and the inhabitants
of Jerusalem. Who is the Spirit poured upon?
the house of David, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. For whom did Christ
die? For whoever he died, that is
who the Spirit is coming to, and giving them eyes to see,
and hearts to understand, and ears to hear. You know what this
tells us right here? The death of Jesus Christ was
effectual. Doesn't it? The same ones He opened a fountain
for, now the Holy Spirit is coming upon. Brothers and sisters, the
Son of God, Jesus Christ, is too wonderful a person to have
died in vain in any sense. And one of the reasons some people
will not even consider that His death was successful, I fear
that they thank too little of Him. If a man thought of Him
as highly as he should, how could he say anything like, He's a
failure? I tell you, the older I get and
the more I learn of Him, the more distasteful that is to me. Christ died in vain. Do you not
think any higher of Jesus than that? There's been a lot of good men
who died for good causes. and it didn't accomplish a thing.
Their cause failed, never did rise again. But that's not Jesus
Christ. He died to redeem the house of
David. And brothers and sisters, listen,
He did. He died to redeem the inhabitants
of Jerusalem and He did. And now he's sending the Holy
Spirit. And what's the Holy Spirit doing? He's coming and stirring
up the heart. Stirring up the spirit. To do
what? Well, he tells us here, doesn't
he? They shall look upon me, whom they have pierced, and they
shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be
in bitterness for him. I don't deny And I know that it's
a good thing for lost people to fear hell. If there's a hell and you're
lost, I think you probably shouldn't be afraid of it. And if a man's
lost, he should have some concern about being under the wrath of
God. But how many brothers and sisters have we known who feared
hell and yet went there? You talk to them about the wrath
of God and you can almost feel them trembling. And they died
under the wrath of God. Right here tells us what true
conviction of sin is. Here is saving repentance, isn't
it? What is saving repentance? It's
united to the cross. to Christ and Him crucified.
They shall look upon me. I tell you, when a man sees his
sins in the light of the cross, I tell you, he's going to start
hating his sin. He's going to start mourning over his sin.
He's going to start praying, wash me in this fountain, Lord.
I never saw my sin so vile and so wretched and so damnable and
so God dishonored as when I got a look at Him hanging on the
cross. T'was you my sins, my cruel sins, His chief tormentors
were. Can we think of that and not
be affected about our sins? Can we think of that and not
abhor ourselves? Each of my sins became the nails,
unbelief the spear. Shall we continue in sin that
grace may abound? God forbid, not if we've seen
Him, we won't. That would put a death blow to
a man's love and his sins, would it not? They shall look upon
me whom they have pierced. They shall mourn for him and
be in bitterness for him. It's all about him, is it not?
Repentance is about him. Faith is about him. This Bible
is about him. It's me, me, me all the way through
it. My wife got me a little shirt.
I go home sometime and I tell her, I said, babe, those people
think I'm so humble. I do. People come up to me and
they said, you know why I like you? Because you're such a humble
fellow. I said, you better believe it. I told my wife the other
night, I said, I said, baby, you know what, when I go off
to places and I'm off going down the road someplace and this man
and woman stand out in the yard and they look at me as I go by
and I said, you know what I think? Those people have been living
there and just waiting all their life for me to pass by so they
could get a glimpse of me. And when I go through these little
towns, I see people looking through the, pulling the curtains back,
just getting a glimpse of me as I go by. And she got away
looking at me until her eyes turned sort of black. And she
said, I don't know what to even say when you start talking to
me. It's all about me. She got me
a shirt, a night shirt, and it says it's all about me. But you
know something? This is all about him. When you
think of God's eternal purpose, when you think of the creation,
when you think of somebody sovereignly ruling this universe and this
world, guiding the heart of the king like a river turning to
and fro, when you think of eternal salvation being accomplished
and applied, when you think about believing sinners endearing to
the end, When you are thinking about the judgment and assigning
every man his long home, it is all about Him. It is all
about Him from first to last time. It is Him. It is me. And boy, if we ever see that,
if we ever see that, it will be gone and done with
our sinning. then you'll mourn over it the rest of your life.
While you confess it with confidence that he's washed it away, you'll
go mourning over it all of the rest of your life. But you know
this is not just a one-time looking. We look upon him all the time,
don't we? And you know it don't stop with just forgiveness of
sins. That's where it begins, but it won't stop there. How
do you endear this life? looking to Him. And boy, I think
the Holy Spirit shows us here sometimes this is so passionate. It's about in yourself you have
this mourning. In yourself you have this weeping
in your soul. And what's that for? Everything
you need comes from Him. And you want it so bad sometimes
your soul fills it, don't it? And you know the only one that
can give it is Him. So you keep going to Him. And
you want it so bad, sometimes you say, Oh, wretched man that
I am. Who shall deliver me from the
body of this death? Everything we need, brothers
and sisters, we get it from Him. It comes from looking to Him. David said this, David said there's
something inside of me way down deep inside of my soul that is
just not satisfied. I'm not content. And he said
I'll never be content until I wake in his likeness. You feel that?
Paul said it like this, he said the time of my release has come. Release from this body of death. You want to be like him? You
want to walk with Him. You want to feel His strength
in your soul. You want Him to keep you from
evil. And someday you want to be with Him and just like Him. And all of this comes from looking
to Him. They shall look upon Me. Theodore Monod wrote a song,
and I think this is what I'm trying to say, something of what
I'm trying to say. Here's what he said in his song.
Oh, the bitter shame, the sorrow that a time could ever be when
I let the Savior's pity plead in vain and proudly answer all
of self and none of me, none of thee, all of self and none
of thee. Yet he found me, I beheld him
bleeding on the accursed tree. I heard him pray, forgive them
father, and my wistful heart said faintly, some of self and
some of thee. Day by day his tender mercy healed
him, helped him, full and free, sweet and strong, oh so patient,
brought me lower while I whispered, less of self and more of thee. Higher than the highest heaven,
deeper than the deepest sea, Lord, Thy love at last has conquered. Grant me my supplication, none
of self and all of Thee. Isn't that our aim? But don't
we mourn for that? We can't reach that in ourselves.
And if we ever reach that, it goes right back and starts over
again. Little of you but more of me. How do we take up our
cross? How do we follow Him as His children? There's but one way, brothers
and sisters. Look into Him. Look into Him. Run to Moses, if you will. That
mountain will fall on your head and crush you. Run to Mount Calvary. I used to tell people, I found
out, we plant, we have a garden at home. I love to plant gardens
and I used to tell people how to make, people can't figure
out how to make a straight row in the garden. And I have this,
my neighbor has this old, I don't know what you call it, it's got
the big wheel on the front and the little plow, you know, you push it.
And I've seen people stretch these strings all through the
garden and they plow next to this string. I found out how
to lay a straight row through the garden. You get on one side
of the garden and you put you an object, I got some of these
big cans I put on the other side of the garden and you get your
eye on that object and you take those handles in your hand and
you don't look down and you don't look back. If you look back,
you'll start going around in circles. If you look down, you'll
start tripping on things. Don't look back to see how you're
doing. Keep your eye on that object. And when you get to the end of
that garden, you look back and lo and behold, you cannot understand
it, but there's a straight road. And what I'm saying is this,
keep your eye on Christ and Him crucified. What He's done, where
He is now, what He's doing there. Look into Him and never take
your eyes off of Him. There's times when you'll mourn
There's times when you'll weep, more of Jesus, more of Jesus,
less of me. But keep your eye on Him, and
keep looking to Him, and looking to Him, and looking to Him, and
I'll tell you what'll happen, you'll look your way right into
Heaven. And then, and not until then, you can look back on this
life, and be amazed that it all turned out well. Look Him unto
Jesus. God bless you.