Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2901
“AndI will pour upon the house ofDavid, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem this 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.
NOTICE in this verse the very remarkable change of persons which you find in it, for you have, first, the first person, and then, the third—“They shall look upon Me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for Him.”” It is the same Person who speaks in each case and He is speaking concerning Himself in both instances, so it is very remarkable that He should first say, “Me,” and then say, “Him.” What is this but another illustration of the Unity of the Godhead and yet the Trinity of the adorable Persons in it? Notice that the One who, in this chapter, speaks of Himself as, “Me” and “Him,” is none other than Jehovah who made the heavens and the earth. Read the first verse—“The burden of the word of the Lord for Israel, says the Lord, which stretches forth the heavens and lays the foundation of the earth, and forms the spirit of man within him.” The Creator of the heavens and the Creator of our spirit is the same Person who was pierced, and who says, “They shall look upon Me.” Yet there is a distinction, for we next read, “They shall mourn for Hm” Jesus Christ is God and, therefore, so speaks of Himself. Yet He is also Man and, therefore, He is spoken of in the third person.
There are other instances in which the Divine and Human in Christ Jesus are spoken of in a very remarkable manner. Turn, for instance, to the 50th Chapter of the prophecy of Isaiah at the 3rd verse—“I clothe the heavens with blackness, and I make sackcloth their covering.” No one but God could truly say that. Now turn to the 6th verse. I need not read the two intervening verses, but I will put the 3rd and the 6th together—“I clothe the heavens with blackness, and I make sackcloth their covering…I gave My back to the smiters, and My cheeks to them that plucked off the hair: I hid not My face from shame and spitting.” Can you realize the tremendous descent from the Godhead of Him who clothes the heavens with blackness and covers them with sackcloth, to the Manhood of Him who gave His back to the smiters and His cheeks to them that plucked off the hair? That is another illustration of the Truth of God which is so singularly implied in our text where we read that “Jehovah, which stretches forth the heavens, and lays the foundation of the earth, and forms the spirit of man within him,” also says, “They shall look upon Me whom they have pierced.”
The next point I want you to notice is the remarkable fact that Jesus Christ was crucified and pierced. Did it ever strike you as being very singular that He should have been pierced? When the Jews brought Jesus to Pilate, he said to them, “Take Him, and judge Him according to your law.” Would you not have supposed that the Jews, on hearing that, would at once have seized the opportunity of putting Christ to death according to their law? They accused Jesus of blasphemy, saying, “We have a law, and by our law He ought to die, because He made Himself the Son of God.” You know that the death ordained by the Law of Moses for a blasphemer was by stoning. And if I had not read any of the Old Testament prophecies, or the New Testament narrative, I would have felt morally certain that when Pilate said, “Take Him, and judge Him according to your law,” they would have taken Him away and stoned Him to death! And I would have felt all the more certain that this would be the case because such was the animosity and hatred of the high priests against Him that I would have thought that each one of them would have wanted to cast the first stone at Him.
But when He was sentenced to be crucified, the act of putting Him to death was left to the Roman soldiers! And it is, to me, very surprising that as the Jews had an opportunity of stoning Him, themselves, they did not avail themselves of it. Why was this? Why, because this ancient prophecy had said, “They shall look upon Me whom they have pierced.” And because another still more ancient prophecy had said, “They pierced My hands and My feet.” Therefore Jesus Christ must die by crucifixion—not by stoning!
There is another very notable thing in connection with this prophecy. The piercing of the hands and feet of Christ by the nails, might, perhaps, not seem sufficient to carry out the idea of the prophecy—“They shall look upon Me whom they have pierced.” So, when our Lord hung upon the Cross—when “He was dead already”—as the Roman soldiers said when they came around to break the legs of the criminals to put an end to their sufferings, one of the soldiers who had never read the Old Testament and knew nothing about what was written there—probably just to gratify his heart’s cruel instinct—takes his spear and thrusts it into the heart of Christ! “And forthwith came there out blood and water.” Now, if that had been done by someone who knew about the prophecy, it might have been said that there was some collusion to fulfill the prophetic Scriptures. But, as this Roman soldier was a barbarian who did not believe at all in the Jewish Scriptures, is it not a remarkable thing that this prophecy was fulfilled through his spear being thrust into the heart of Jesus Christ as He hung upon the Cross? So now, as you read these words, “They shall look upon Me whom they have pierced,” adore the Infinite Wisdom of God who was able to fulfill the prophecy made hundreds of years before in the most singular and literal manner!