Zechariah 13:1-3 It Is Finished Series
Holy Thursday Thursday, April 2, 2026 “A Cleansing Fountain”
The year was 520 BC. God’s Old Testament people had been carried off to Babylon in captivity for decades and then some had returned to the land from which they had been taken. They had learned a hard lesson. God would not put up with their wickedness, their apathy, their idolatry indefinitely. He would carry out the punishment that he had threatened for their actions. Instead of living peacefully in the Promised Land, instead of enjoying its wealth and abundance, instead of worshiping at the Lord’s holy Temple, the people had been carried off by enemies and had lived in the territory of their conquerors. They learned a hard lesson. Or at least they should have. But when they returned to the land, did they wholeheartedly set to work rebuilding the temple? No. Did they rededicate themselves to serving God alone and putting off anything that would distract from worshiping and honoring him? No. Did the people change their attitudes and actions so that those who had returned were visibly different than those who had been taken away? Not really. That year God sent prophets to his people. Among them was Zechariah. If you’ve been with us on Wednesdays over the past 6 weeks, you’ve heard some of Zechariah’s prophecies. You’ve heard how many of them clearly related to the moments and events and activities of Holy Week. You’ve heard how the times of Zechariah reflect our times, how sinners remain sinners, and how a gracious God remains a gracious God. Once again today, our Holy Week prophet speaks from God and turns our attention unmistakably to Jesus. Our text is Zechariah 13:1-3 (EHV) On that day a fountain will be opened for the house of David and for the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin and for uncleanness. 2In that day, declares the Lord of Armies, I will cut off the names of the idols from the land, and they
will no longer be remembered. I will also remove the prophets and the impure spirit from the land. 3If anyone still prophesies, his father and his mother who gave birth to him will tell him, “You shall not live, because you have spoken lies in the name of the Lord!” Then his father and his mother who gave birth to him will stab him when he prophesies. We get a sense from this prophecy of Zechariah about the things that continued to go poorly among the Jewish inhabitants of the land. If God was going to have to remove false prophets and cut off idols, the implication is that there were idols and idolatry in the land. There were false prophets. God’s promise of a fountain for uncleanness suggested the people needed washing—not washing from dirt but washing from sins. The year was 520 BC, and there were prophets who claimed to speak for God but only shared their own opinions and ideas. There were idols the people had seen from other lands that they held on to for various reasons. There were distractions and attractions that took the attention of the people. They took the attention away from God and put it squarely on something else. And often enough, the idolatry of the people wasn’t the gross idolatry of chasing after foreign gods and following false gods. It was the more subtle idolatry of doing what they wanted, what they preferred, what they though would make them happy. Their idolatry looked a lot like apathy toward the Lord’s temple that remained in ruins and rubble. The issue was clear. The answer was, too. God was going to take care of things. God was going to deal with his people graciously and deal with his enemies decisively. There is no mistaking in the prophet’s words the seriousness of sin and false teaching. God was going to deal with the stains of sin, the uncleanness of the people, with a special fountain. About 550 years after God had his prophet share these words, the stain of sin was just as obvious. The apathy of the people was as clear. The problem of self-serving idolatry was just as prevalent. On a special Thursday evening Jesus gathered with his disciples. And he did for them what was almost unthinkable. He tied a towel around his waist and went to each disciple to wash his feet. This was the action of a servant. This was the thing that none of those disciples was willing to do because each one wanted to be greater than the next. This was the action and activity that called on them to set aside personal interest and preference