Last week, we looked at Zechariah
12 and into that remarkable verse
1 of Zechariah 13. This morning, we're just going
to look at two verses. And perhaps these two verses, these really
got to me this week. I just sat there and looked at
these verses. There's so much in here. There's such a high and such
a low, such a peak and such a valley to where emotionally you run
from one extreme to the other. which we're prone to do. But
perhaps there is no more soul-wrenching, heart-gripping, and astonishing
two consecutive verses in this whole Bible as we see here this
morning. These verses are filled with
the ultimate lows, as any that can be numbered in this book,
and also contain the sweet peak of heavenly comfort as well.
I pray that the Lord would give us much grace to simply peer
as it were behind the veil, behind the curtain, and to enter into
the holy of holies that these two verses speak concerning the
death of our chief shepherd and the consequent recovery or the
special care given to each one of his children. Look with me. at verses six and seven. And I suppose one reason why,
and I pray that our children would not experience part of
this lesson this morning, however
they may. But I know I have, and I know
some of you here have as well. Verse six. And one shall say
unto him, and we'll find out very quickly that the him, H-I-M,
is the Lord Jesus Christ. One shall say unto him, what
are these wounds in your hands? Now, obviously, this is speaking
of the Lord Jesus Christ, referenced of his hands being pierced and
his feet wounded As well as in the verse 7, we see the soul
wounding that Christ underwent. But I'm not going to underestimate
nor underplay this, the physical sufferings and emotional sufferings
that he went because he was a man tempted in all points like you
and I, yet without sin. But as difficult as those emotional,
physical wounds, the wounds of taking upon Him
our sins is something that I can only partially enter into by faith.
But look at what it is said here in verse 6. And one shall say
unto him, What are these wounds in your hands? Then he shall
answer, Those or these wounds are the wounds with which I was
wounded in the house of my friends." Now, this is the section here
that I hope that our children do not experience in a worldly
setting. The sufferings of Christ and
the words of hurt in this first section are like no other. What are the wounds? What are
these wounds in your hands? He said, these are the wounds
which I received in the house of my friends. I am not sure
that I can actually accurately or emotionally describe these
words. I do not know that there are few, or excuse me, I do know
that there are few heartaches and wounds so deep as those of
supposed friends who have double-crossed you or betrayed you." And as
I said, when I was reading this and looking this over, the words
of our Lord Jesus Christ, and began remembering some situations
in my own life and situations of some of your lives, The worst
types of abuse, wounds, are those that come from close friends
and family. What makes certain types of abuse
cases so horrific is that it is those of a father to his son,
a mother to her daughter, a husband to the wife, or an uncle to the
nephew. You read about it all the time. What are these wounds in your
hands? And Christ said, these are the
wounds, they're those which I was wounded in the house of my friends. There's nothing Speaking from
experience and Melinda and I talked about this and like I said I
just couldn't get around this as Bruce says I couldn't get
my mind around it because there's a lot of heart things here but
we've been through some things and probably the most difficult
things was not the Mind trying to figure certain things out,
but it was it was the times that you broke bread and around the gospel of the Lord
Jesus Christ. And then one day were betrayed
by those very ones who broke bread with you. You know, it's
you say, well, we need to get over those things, but we still
talk about the things, those things you talk about a bad boss. You remember a bad boss and he's
done this and you get you know, you talk about it. And then when
it comes up, oh, yeah, I remember that. But when it's somebody
who is close to you, a mother or a father, somebody who you
love, a spouse, somebody who was so close to you, a brother
in flesh, a uncle or whatever that you were really close to,
and then they just turn against you. Those are things you carry
with you probably for the rest of your life. That's why I say
I pray that it and hope that it would not, that our children
would not experience such betrayal because it is very difficult
to take. It's very difficult to understand.
It's very difficult to comprehend. And from personal experience,
as a child growing up and in and around the eighth grade to
seeing a family unit, my family unit, my mom and my dad. So,
you know, we were the family. We did the things that we did.
We, we, we, we bought games for Christmas and then we all played
them and we all sat down and we did the things that you should
do. All these different things that take place. And then in
one fell swoop, Coming home and getting off the bus from school
and walking into a house that I'd never walked into and yet
I'd walked into for years and years and years. Walked into
the sounds and the things that I thought I would never see nor
ever wanted to see. You don't forget those things. Christ, what are these wounds in your
hands? These are the wounds which I was wounded in the house of
my friends. Judas. Let us break bread together,
Judas, let us take this money and help the poor. Paul, excuse
me, Peter. Let us do this together, Lord,
you know, I'll never forsake you, Lord, you know, I love you,
I'll never leave you. Weren't you one of those of that
way? No. I don't know that man. Yes, you're a Galilean just like
that one that we're getting ready to crucify. I saw you with him.
Your language betrays you. I'm telling you, I don't know
the man and I'm going to start cussing so you don't think I'm
a goody two-shoes. Isn't that what Peter did? The Jews portrayed loyalty to
Christ. He came in there and he just
lit up those towns like none other, healing people that could
not be healed, helping people that could not be helped, had
never been helped, and then they crucified the Lord of glory. Even you and I, in this country,
everybody's the friend of Jesus, right? As I said before, in our
own currency, we have in God we trust. And we're raised from
the littlest, you know, Christianity, Jesus this, and Jesus that, and
all these other things. We ourselves, who we thought
we were all of our lives Jesus' friends, we had Him as our co-pilot, as
they say. We were followers of Jesus. And then one day under the calling
of grace and the enlightenment of his gospel, we fully saw that
it was our sins that wounded him and killed him and put him
on the cross. He never spoke out of line. He
never sinned. never persecuted anyone. The
scripture says he was always about his father's business,
healing, helping, and specifically it said he did good. But the
cry was still in our hearts, in your heart, in my heart by
nature, and in this prophecy which our Lord is speaking of,
the cry was still heard, away with him, we have a king. Crucify
him. But you say, pastor, preacher,
I love him now. And I know you do. And I'm thankful. And I do too. However, even after
God has given us grace, and he's not ashamed to call us brethren
and a friend, we now are his friends. Yet how often are we
cold in prayer? How often are we lax in worship? And Lynn and I were talking about
this, and I can say this in all honesty, because I am like you,
I'm a sinner saved by grace. You work, I work. We're gonna
make sure that if we start to get sick, that we're gonna make
sure that we don't miss work. But how often do we neglect the
coming and the hearing of His gospel? We'll make sure that
all the bills are paid. We make sure that we can go out
to eat. We make sure we can do these
things. But what about bringing those things to the storehouse
for the Lord? You see what I'm saying? Even
after He's given us grace, still we grieve the Spirit. Which then
when I look, I take a step back. I must say, as you, as we sing
these hymns together, thank God for Christ, who holds no ill
will or ill thoughts towards you and I. Who fail Him, our
best friend, our elder brother, the balm who is in Gilead. exceeding
great reward we fail him daily that's another reason Bruce why
it cannot be salvation by works it's got to be by grace aren't
you so thankful now I'm not telling you this to browbeat you I'm
not telling about this but I'm just saying you know as well
as I do when you hurt when you do when you have a close friend
and you let them down that bothers you more than than most anything. And this
passage here, where did these wounds come from in your hands?
And he said, these are the wounds which I was wounded in the house
of my friends. Every one of his disciples scattered,
which is what we'll see in verse seven. When the sword came out
of God's justice and smote Christ, He was forsaken. My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me? Now they looked at it from a
distance. They followed the disciples. They followed from a distance.
They're like, you know, they kind of see what's going on and they
want to see all the gory details, but they kept their distance.
All men forsook him. And as we were in Bible class
talking about free will and I got to thinking about this. You,
the people want their free will on the cross when he was tried
falsely, there was man's free will. You want to, you know,
you want to look at man's free will. Do you want your own will?
And the believer says, no, I want Lord. Thy will be done. Thy kingdom
come. Thy will be done on earth as
it is in heaven. That's the desire of the believer. Because we've
all been to different meetings or in school, in a classroom.
When you, okay, when you, at least I've seen this before and
I've done this before. Okay, let's make a decision.
We got to make a decision on what we're going to do about,
you know, what we're going to study. And I haven't seen teachers
do this, but I have seen them occasionally. I've seen business
meetings. They'll get their little, the little easel out, the little
tripod, and they'll put the little chalkboard. And you have item
one and you have item two. Draw a line there, draw a line
here, say, good and bad, good and bad. And you do this and
you make a comparison. You say, well, I think this would be the best
thing to do. Okay, let's do that. Put that up, Christ and Barabbas. Put the line down there and say,
okay, You go to Christ and you say,
what is the good things he's done versus the bad things? And
there ain't nothing bad. It's all positive. And then you
go to Brabus. Oh, he's a murderer. Insurrection. It's not somebody I want my kids
to hang around with. It's not somebody I want in the
community. So who are we going to choose? Let's choose him.
Let's choose him and let's kill a son of glory. There's your
free will. And that's what man's free will
will do every time left to itself. Yet, with this verse six, there's
a verse seven. And look at verse seven, again,
speaking of Christ, awake, O sword, against my shepherd, the Lord
Jesus Christ is the believer's shepherd, and against the man
that is my fellow, saith the Lord of hosts, smite the shepherd
and the sheep shall be scattered and I will turn my hand upon
the little ones. Now let's look at that as horrible
and as difficult and as incomprehensible as verse six is as far as trying
to understand, then we have the soul agony and the redemptive
work that the Lord Jesus Christ did for His little ones as it's
said here. God's will was and is still being
accomplished. Our sins and God's justice will
slay Christ, will smite him, will mortally wound him because
justice must be upheld and sin must be punished. So we see in
verse seven, Awake, O sword against my shepherd and against the man
that is my fellow. Now we see three we see three
Usages of the Lord Jesus Christ are three titles or names given
unto him He's our shepherd and look at what it says there in
verse 7 Against the man not a man the man and he says my fellow. Let's look at these Christ is
our shepherd a Waco sword against my shepherd our shepherd he's
our overseer the head of the church and he's responsible for
every single sheep and And so if he's responsible for every
single sheep and every single one of his elect are sinners
by birth, nature, and practice, that sword of God's justice,
because he can't compromise his character, must be unsheathed
and slay him. Slay the shepherd. Secondly,
he says, the man. a Waco sword against my shepherd
and against the man, not a man, not just any man, but the man,
because he was as much a human as any other yet without sin. And thirdly, Look at this. This
is the Jehovah God speaking a Waco sword against my shepherd against
the man that is my fellow turn to Hebrews chapter 1 Hebrews chapter 1 Speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ,
verses 2 and 3, verse 1 of Hebrews 1, God who
at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto
the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken
unto us by his Son. And we'll stop right there. I
think Bruce alluded to it in Bible class. But if you want
to understand the language of God, you've got to understand
Son, Christ, because that's the only language that he speaks
in is the language of his son. He has spoken in these last days
unto us by his son. So somebody says why I speak
to God all the time. I go through incantations or
I go through this or I go through that or a different God or a
different obey Jesus with a small J or whatever you say. No, you're
not communicating to the God because the God in these last
days which was The time, biblically, from the time that Christ was
crucified was termed the last days, has spoken unto us by His
Son. We go on, he says, whom he hath
appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the world.
Now look at verse three, Christ, who being the brightness of God's
glory and the express image of his person and upholding all
things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged
our sin, sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high. Christ, he says in our text, smite the shepherd, My fellow,
Christ, is God. My fellow, my equal. And that's
what he's telling us in Hebrew. Christ, who is being the brightness
of God's glory, the express image of his person, and upholding
all things by the word of his power. Do I understand that?
No, I don't. But I know that only God who set the commandments
and who has the absolute holiness and justice. And he who sets
the rules must himself honor the rules in order that you and
I might be set free. Because God only demands absolute
perfection. And that's what Christ gave him.
So he says, My fellow my fellow now look at we'll just kind of
back up a little bit. He says a Waco sword against my shepherd
He says smite the shepherd and the sheep shall be scattered
smite the shepherd turn Back some several chapters to Daniel
Daniel chapter 9 And look at verse 26 Daniel chapter 9 and Daniel 9, verse 26, and after
three score and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for
Himself. After three score and two weeks
shall Messiah be cut off, but not for Himself. He did not die. The sword was not unsheathed
and stuck Him through, ran Him through. It wasn't because of
anything or any sins that He had committed, yet He took our
place as a sinner. Christ, God made Him to be sin. Christ who knew no sin that we
might be made the righteousness of God in Him. Substitute and
I got to thinking about this. There's a lot been talked about
here about that passage in 2nd Corinthians There's a lot there
that I don't think we're gonna you know We're gonna that's one
of those passages that we try to figure out now the more we
try to figure it out Sometimes the messier it gets for our understanding
but I do know that when us in in basketball and in different
sporting events when a person leaves a game and a substitute
comes in that substitute is fully responsible and if there's a
foul and or anything he is fully responsible for everything just
like he's Because he came in for the person that's sitting
down. And Christ really and fully, not just legally and judicially,
though he had to do that because of the law of God, but fully
and really took our sins upon his person, that you and I might be made
the righteousness of God in him. This is more than just a legal
transaction. Now, I was reading this to Melinda
back to our text in Zechariah. Awake, O sword, against my shepherd
and against the man that is my fellow, sayeth the Lord of hosts,
smite the shepherd. And we could go to Isaiah 53
and see, you know, how he was smitten and afflicted by God. And look at that sometimes because
that's in the same reference as to what we're talking about
here in verse 7 of Zechariah 13. Some suggest that this sword,
a Waco sword against my shepherd. Some suggest that this sword
is the one that was set up at Eden. You remember that? You
remember that? The Lord chased those Adam and
Eve out. He said a cherubim and what it
was a flaming sword. Now, in order for you and I to
have fellowship or ever have communion again, that we got
no access to God. We've got no access to Eden because
there's a sword in our way. But if that sword, that sword
of old that has been there for eons and eons of days, that sword
is taken and laid upon Christ, now we have communion with God
again. We don't have to worry about that sword, because that
sword, it was awoke or reawakened, and it was laid against the shepherd,
against that man, against God's fellow, and it smoked the shepherd. And it was used upon Christ,
and therefore will never be used upon you and I again. Now, this
aggravates some religious people. This aggravates some people.
They say, well, we've got to be judged. No, we don't. We've
already been judged. Well, what about the Bema seat
judgment? What about all these different things, the white throne
judgment and all that? You and I are going to stand before God
and He's going to say, enter into the joy of the kingdom. It would be an injustice to God
to smite Christ and then require justice at our
hands twice. Isn't that right? That'd be like
you break the law, you go before the judge, he says, you owe me
$50, you pay $50, and then he says, well, but then there's
something else here. You say, no, I fully satisfied the requirements
of the state law against me for this crime. We would say, that's
just horrible, that's just horrible. In God's kingdom, if he, that
sword was brought out of, slumber, as it were, keeping us from the
tree of life, keeping us from communion like Adam and Eve had,
and is used on the shepherd. It will not be used upon his
people. I know people, they'll, oh, you're
gonna do this and you gotta do that, and they're afraid, they try to scare
believers into obedience by threatening judgment and all these different
things. No, if God has judged your sins upon Christ, you will
not be held responsible for those sins again. Now, we are responsible and we
are accountable. We desire to believe and act
as believers, but He will not require that which He's already
placed upon Christ. Come to God. We can come to Him even though
it was once forbidden in that garden. And nothing will be kept back,
as far as God is concerned, from His dear people once Christ has
atoned for them. You know, people act like when
Christ died on the cross, He didn't do quite enough, and you've
got to keep... It's enough. He said it's finished. And I don't know about you, but
I don't necessarily want to look for the Garden of Eden, and I
don't really care too much about it, but heaven, you better believe
it. You better believe it. For sure, our portion is sure
in heaven because the sword of God's justice is gone from us
and was laid hard upon Christ. Now, in closing, let's look at
this final section in verse 7. The sheep are scattered. And
we saw that with the apostles and the early disciples once
Christ was crucified. But that was the beauty, if you
ever look at the book of Acts, the beauty of that. And of course,
you and I, we get too focused. But when Christ was crucified
and the church was scattered, the disciples were running for
their lives. It was a tough time. It was a hard time. But do you
know that's what the Lord used to scatter his gospel? Because
they'd be like you and I, we'd just kind of huddle in one little
place. But the Lord said, no, this gospel's got to go out.
It's like taking... I put a little grass seed in
the yard yesterday and it would be like me just going, you know,
just pouring it all in one place. No, you just scatter that stuff. You scatter that seed. So yes,
the shepherd was smitten and the sheep were scattered. But look at the promise of gathering
remains. Look at the last part of this
and we'll close with this. He says, I will turn my hand upon
the little ones. This is Jehovah God saying, because
I've smitten the shepherd. I've smitten the man, because
my justice and law requires it. He says, but because of that,
I will turn my hand upon the little ones. Now, when you first
read this, you're thinking, well, You know, he's turning his hand. No, he's not turning it that
way. He's not turning his hand in chastisement. He's not turning
his hand in judgment. But it's more like John chapter
10 and verse 28. I turn my hand on him. What does
John 10, 28 say? No man can pluck you out of my
father's hands. See that? Look at that again.
And he says, and he says, and the sheep will be scattered.
But and I will turn my hand upon the little ones. Be you or me ever so weak, dear
Saint of God, or this flock ever so little. God has promised to
protect. And help. and finally save you. No man can pluck you out of the
Father's hands. Now we got, some of us got many
years, some of us don't have as many years, humanly speaking,
but our end result to see the Son in glory is guaranteed because
the Father is Jehovah. based on the work of His Son,
and the quickening and enlightening work of the Holy Spirit, has us in His hands. And we can't be gotten to. They've got to go through the
Father to get to you. You ever do that with kids? When I was
growing up, you know, we'd always say, which hand is it in? You know,
you'd hide, sit like that. And then they'd go, that one.
And they'd go like that, and then they'd try to grab it, and
then you'd go like that, and then they'd try to get it out
of your hands. If they were stronger than you, they'd probably get
it. But there's nobody stronger. than our sovereign, majestic
King. And He has His hands on His people. Betrayed by friends? Yes, we
might be, or we may not be, but Christ was. But that was part
of the sufferings and afflictions that He must need to go through,
which didn't even compare to the soul anguish and the smiting
that He would undergo. to take care of each and every
one of his sheep, none, none shall be lost. Bruce, would you
close this please?