Cleansing from sin
“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.
2 “On that day, I will banish the names of the idols from the land, and they will be remembered no more,” declares the LORD Almighty. “I will remove both the prophets and the spirit of impurity from the land. 3 And if anyone still prophesies, his father and mother, to whom he was born, will say to him, ‘You must die, because you have told lies in the LORD’s name.’ When he prophesies, his own parents will stab him.
4 “On that day every prophet will be ashamed of his prophetic vision. He will not put on a prophet’s garment of hair in order to deceive. 5 He will say, ‘I am not a prophet. I am a farmer; the land has been my livelihood since my youth.’ 6 If someone asks him, ‘What are these wounds on your body?’ he will answer, ‘The wounds I was given at the house of my friends.’”
In 1771 William Cowper penned this hymn verse:
There is a fountain filled with blood— Immanuel was slain—
And sinners who are washed there-in Lose ev’ry guilty stain. (CW 112:1)
Cowper used verse 1 as his inspiration. The chapter goes on to describe how the Lord would rid the land of false religion—on that day. We speak wistfully of the day, of the day. That will be the day! we say, when our church is no longer plagued by evil and by falsehood, when the devil does not steal away our members and turn them into strangers who confess some foreign religious idea.
When the Lord speaks about that day, we, of course, are not given a definite year, month, or day. We do see, as we see in all prophecy, different steps in the fulfillment. As the end of the world is shown in Matthew chapters 24 and 25— some of the events already fulfilled—so it is in Zechariah’s prophecy. Certainly there were times in Israel’s history when the evil prophets were driven out. There were days of spiritual housecleaning.
In fact, the history of God’s people is one long repetition of the fact that they rid themselves of the evil through the judges and prophets only to find themselves at a later day with the evil once more entrenched in the form of false religion.
The Reformation would be a day when, to a certain degree, the evil was removed, the prophets and the spirit of impurity from the land.
Martin Luther wrote in one of his hymns, “O God, root out all heresy, and of false teachers rid us” (CW 205:2). As heirs of the Reformation, you and I live in an era when the good news of full and free forgiveness in Christ is preached widely.
The final day of cleansing will be the day of judgment. Revelation 20:10 foretells it: “The devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.” Notice that this prophecy, which lies in the future, is written as if it is already accomplished! It is as good as done! Zechariah, the prophet of God, has spoken; it will happen.
God’s truth will stand. Verse 3 points out that even the closest ties of human beings—those between parents, mother and father—will be abandoned if they get in the way of truth. Parents will not even stand up for their own children if these children stand as a threat to the truth. The false prophet will be forced to seek other employment, something completely different from his evil trade—like farming. Verse 6 ties in with verse 3. Friends will even rise up against friends and wound them if they see them tampering with God’s truth.
What a good day it will be when the Lord finally calls an end to all false religion! The saints in heaven are crying, “How long?” And we join their cry