Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 575
Delivered on Sunday Morning, June 19, 1864, by the Rev. C. H. Spurgeon, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington
“And I will pour upon the house of Da vid and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of Grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon Me whom they have pierced and they shall mourn for Him, as one mourns for his only son and shall be in bitterness for Him, as one that is in bitterness for his first-born.” Zechariah 12:10.
THIS prophecy, first of all, refers to the Jewish people. And I am happy that it confirms our hearts in the belief of the good which the Lord will do unto Israel. We know of a surety, because God has said it, that the Jews will be restored to their own land and that they shall inherit the goodly country which the Lord has given unto their fathers by a Covenant of salt forever. But, better still, they shall be converted to the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ and shall see in Him the house of David restored to the throne of Israel. The day is coming when they shall see in Jesus of Nazareth, that Messiah for whom their saints looked with joyful expectation, of whom the Prophets spoke with rapture, but who was despised and rejected of their blinded sires.
Happy day! Happy day! When our Jewish Brethren shall all be found worshipping before the Lord of Hosts through their great High Priest, who is a Priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek! We must remember the prophecy concerning this thing. We must enquire of the Lord concerning His promise. We must expect its fulfillment, labor for it and then beyond a doubt, when the due season shall have arrived, Israel shall own her king and upon the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of Grace and supplication shall be poured out.
We intend to hear our text, upon the present occasion, as it speaks to ourselves. A great mistake is very common among all classes of men—it is currently believed that we are, first of all, to mourn for our sins and then to look by faith to our Lord Jesus Christ. Most persons who have any concern about their souls but are not as yet enlightened by the Spirit of God think that there is a degree of tenderness of conscience and of hatred of sin which they are to obtain, somehow or other, and then they will be permitted and authorized to look to Jesus Christ. Now you will perceive that this is not according to the Scripture, for, according to the text before us men first look upon Him whom they have pierced and then, but not till then, they mourn for their sin!
This is the common folly of men—they look for the effect in order to produce the cause. They forget the old proverb and put the cart before the horse. But our text plainly indicates what is the cause, and puts it first, assuring us that the effect will follow. Repentance is in no sense a title to faith in Christ. It is, on the other hand, a legitimate consequence of faith. In certain diseases the surgeon aims at producing an outward eruption which carries off the internal poison and so assists in the cure. But no man would be justified in refraining from medical advice until he could see the eruption in his skin—that being a healthy sign, a prognostic of cure—a result of medicine, and by no means a preparation for it.
So repentance is the bringing into our own sight the sin which lurks within. It is a result of the medicine of faith. But we should be foolish, indeed, if we refused to believe until we saw in ourselves that repentance which only faith can produce! That repentance which is unattended by faith in the Lord Jesus is an evil repentance which works wrath and only sets the soul at a greater distance from God than it was before. Sweet, heart-melting, reconciling repentance brings the soul to love the Lord and to hope in His mercy—this precious gem always glitters on the hand of faith and nowhere else.
Without faith it is impossible to please God. And consequently an unbelieving repentance has nothing in it acceptable to God. Unbelieving repentance may be so deep as to drive us to hang ourselves, like Judas, but its only result would be to secure for us Judas’s doom. Without faith, if our hearts could break—if our eyes could become perpetual fountains of tears—our repentance would in no way whatever be regarded by God except as a continuance of our sin. We would really be rejecting the Lord Jesus and setting up our own bitterness of soul in competition with the finished work of our
Lord Jesus Christ. Let us be quite clear on this point, then, to start with, that it is not mourning for sin which causes or prepares the way for our looking to Christ.
It is our looking to Jesus which makes us weep and mourn for Him and works in us the sweet bitterness of true repentance. We will consider three points—first, what there is in a sight of the Pierced One to make us mourn. Secondly, what is the character of true mourning for sin. And thirdly, what is that which connects Jesus and this true mourning. The text tells us that looking does it all—“They shall look upon Me whom they have pierced and they shall mourn for Him.”