A Fountain Opened
Scripture Reading: Zechariah 13:1
On that day there shall be a fountain opened for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and uncleanness.
The phrase “on that day” is predominant throughout chapters 12 and 13 of Zechariah. Unless I miscounted, it appears 11 times in those two chapters. “Day” doesn’t always mean 24 hours. The context will help the reader determine if that is what is meant. In this case, it seems that what Zechariah is emphasizing is a decisive moment in the timeline of God’s purposes. It is a moment in time when God acts unmistakably and dramatically. This is something that happens which changes everything.
On one of those “days,” Zechariah says that a fountain shall be opened. Christians with an understanding of the gospel and the New Testament immediately think of Jesus Christ and the Cross when they read this. We are right to do so.
We sing, “There is a fountain filled with blood, drawn from Immanuel’s veins. And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.” The day Christ died, a fountain was opened for the cleansing of sin and uncleanness. It is a historically, spiritually, and epically decisive day. It was the day that changed everything.
Everything in God’s up to that day had been pointing toward it. Everything since then is pointing back to the cross.
Jesus’ death is a fountain, not a cistern. It is a perpetual, eternal source of cleansing from sin, both in the actual acts of sin and the impurity of nature that sin causes. Jesus’ death for “sin the double cure, saving from wrath and making us pure.”
