Exposition by Max A Forsythe
The
Reformer's Fire
Exposition by Max A Forsythe
One of our national press sources was bragging this week that only six women died in the last year from their abortion experience. No mention was made that there were hardly any survivors of infants from the same experience. Of course the whole language of the media is sanitized to keep emotions within control. After all our culture finds emotional reactions to tragedy to be dreaded.
I remember an unusual radio recording of the description of the burning of the Hindenburg when the reporter broke down and had to pass the microphone off. You can be certain that his career was pretty much finished. What if Dan Rather or any other major News Caster broke down and cried over the remains of an aborted baby? What do you think would happen?
Well, emotion is known to exist over the matter. Once there was a young lady who was persuaded to have an abortion. Her best friend and I tried to persuade her not to go through with it, we pretty much had her convinced until the pregnancy experts insisted on one last appointment. She was quickly wisked away and three days later she was back in school. She wasn't the same after that, her eyes were always red, she lost weight. She couldn't hold a meaningful conversation. Her sorrow was complete.
It was almost like that of a seventy year old lady who had had an abortion clear back in the late forties. Her mind is still plagued with the tragedy she was party to.
Would that the more of our nation was able to feel the tragedy of such untimely deaths. Unfortunately we have a generation or two who have been raised to hardly feel any emotions at all. Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones observed some forty years ago "that in our fear of emotionalism, some of us may be grave danger of banishing emotions altogether." Of course we understand that what he might say in the staid old Church of England in that time might not apply in our nation at the present!
But, guess what, he further observed that the trend towards banishing emotions was being imported even then from the United States of his time.
Yes, even today there is danger in false emotionalism. By this I mean the Tammy Bakker's of this world who could cry on cue and because of that ability had more than enough money to buy more mascara! I once heard of a popular southern evangelist called "Jumpin Bob" whose nickname was the result of his habit of hopping around the stage when he got himself worked up and excited. Yes, it may sound ridiculous, but how else can we explain the initial popularity of "Elvis the pelvis" whose movements on stage scandalized mothers of the early sixties. Or consider the moon walking of another popular star as well as the sheer emotional frenzies of today's rock concerts.
Is our present generation so emotionally starved that they are attracted to any and all enthusiastic performers? Of course, even as Dr Lloyd-Jones observed "eloquence is distrusted. Everything is just conversation and casual, and you must not have fervour and you must not be moved, and you must not allow anybody to move you, and nobody must be moved at all."
A few years ago I was driving a van load of soccer players and the orneriest young man in the crew was trying to rock the van from side to side. Somehow or another I was able to engage him in conversation, while the others crashed. I entertained him with tails of Scots warriors in the wars of empire over the centuries and we made it home without tipping the Van over. I quickly forgot the experience.
Three years later a guidance counselor approached me to ask what hold I had over the young man, since I was the only teacher he respected. I told him that I had only had one conversation with the young man three years before. Looking back even more years later, I guess that it wasn't the stories that caught his attention, but the emotions behind the minimal glories of the thin red line of Highlanders gallantly wading into the Russian hoards on the Crimean heights in 1854.
How much more ought we to emotionally share the greater glories of our God and King who gave us the blood of Jesus Christ on the cross so many centuries ago. With this very long introduction in mind, let us turn our attention to our text this morning.
Yes, the events here forseen by Zechariah lie in the distant future. Our text is wound up in both the first and second comings of Jesus Christ. Verse ten is quoted by the Apostle John in his report from the foot of the cross. To his testimony, let us briefly turn:
Here we see the dramatic accomplishment of Zechariah's prophecy in our text today. Here we see the opening of the fountain described in verse one of chapter thirteen. "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." Of that actual event fortold by Zechariah and described in minute detail by the Apostles, can we relate passionately enough in the midst of our twentieth century?
Yes, we can intellectually comprehend it, but our emotions are seared and our consciences held back. We comprehend the reality, we understand the intellectual implications, but do we feel it?
In 1966 I was sitting in the Chaplain's office in Fort Knox, Kentucky. It was a quiet summer's day. The Chaplain received a phone call and sent me out to pick up some paperwork. Later that afternoon I had to help him with some plans for a military cemetery up in Ohio. Standard forms, the body count had been mounting and each Chaplain had to take turns performing funerals in the Mid-West. I picked up the paperwork. I read the glowing recommendations for the medals that had been granted. I read how our young casualty had stayed behind with a machine gun to save his squad. The survivors reported that they ran half a mile while his gun chattered and echoed through the hills. Then the guns fell silent and they knew he was gone.
I had read it all before. Then I turned to the form to fill out the name. It was someone I had been in class with four short years before. That intimate knowledge changed my whole perspective. Ought not our personal knowledge of Jesus Christ change our perspective when it comes to our text today?
"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 first born son." There on that cross hung the only Son of God, even as the prophets fortold his legs were not broken as was the common custom, and most unusual his side was pierced by the soldier's spear. Blood and water poured out. James Montgomery Boice points out that we ought to remember that "in the Old Testament sacrificial system, blood was the appointed means of cleansing sin, and that in the temple ceremonies, water was used for ceremonial purification from uncleanness." He concludes his paragraph with this note: "deliverance from sin's penalty and cleansing from its defilement are to be found in the death of Jesus only.
How ought we to react to these facts? Zechariah would have us know that even though those who looked on participated, there was grace revealed and supplication possible. And even in the midst of mourning, God meant that sacrifice for our good! Do we all realize the personal implications of the middle phrase of verse ten? "They will look on me, the one they have pierced". The whole human race is implicated in the death of God in Christ on the cross. Do you see it: "the one they have pierced".
Just as the young and the old ladies grieved over the first child which they caused to be butchered, so are we implicated in the death of Jesus Christ. It wasn't just the Jews, it is all of mankind that is implicated as Christ killers.
Let us be certain that those who have abortions are no worse than anyone else. The young lady at our school was ministered to by her Christian friend. I was able to outline the free access to forgiveness and her friend went over it and over it time and again. The school year ended and I have never heard the end of the story. Was the baby killer forgiven? No matter today, we each have a more important question to consider.
The very Son of God was killed on the cross at Calvary. He died alone on the cross as the old hymn goes. But, there is another phrase to that old hymn which mirrors the last verse of our text for us today. "He died alone for you and me." Will you mourn for His precious death? Will you accept the spirit of grace and supplication promised by the prophet? Will you acknowledge the cleansing power of the fountain opened that day on the cross?
I know, it has been two thousand years, how can we be emotionally moved at this late date. But let us suppose that like the popular television series Quantum Leap you are leaping through time. Suddenly, you are there at the foot of the cross in the uniform of a Roman soldier. The spear is in your hands, you thrust it into the side of a man hanging on a cross. Blood and water flow out and splash upon you. Now you are emotionally involved. Now you know how many young women feel today. If they can be forgiven, so may we all. The fountain of forgiveness was opened, the Savior's blood was shed for your sin.
All you have to do is ask God's forgiveness, and believe in His only Son Jesus Christ who was crucified, buried and raised with one purpose in mind - to die on that cross for you! May the Lord grant you the grace to accept His sacrifice.
Resources Used:
Baldwin, Joyce G. Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries: Zechariah.
Bently, Michael. Welwyn Commentary: Building for God's Glory.
Boice, James M. The Minor Prophets: An Expositional Commentary.
Lloyd-Jones, Martyn. Revival.
Places Preached:
Christ Covenant REFORMED (Presbyterian Church in America)
Box 13926 -- Columbus, OH 43213
Zec12a 29 November 92
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