Zechariah 14:8 And it shall be in that day, that living waters shall go out from Jerusalem; half of them toward the former sea… Like all his predecessors, Zechariah speaks much of Christ. Some of his prophecies, owing partly to the predominance of figurative and symbolical language, are difficult and obscure. In the text he refers to Gospel days and to the Gospel blessings. He speaks of the Gospel under the figure of living, springing, running waters; and under this figure he indicates to us the beginning, the progressive course, and the perpetual extension of the Gospel, together with its ultimate triumph, as seen in the universal dominion of the Messiah. 1. The character of the Gospel. We must think of the world as a desert, a vast moral waste, void of spiritual beauty and of moral life; and this is in strict accord with the actual condition of peoples apart from the Gospel. The land, the home, the heart, unvisited by the Gospel, is cursed with spiritual barrenness and moral death. If we caused a rivulet of living water to flow over a barren land, what would be the result? The desert land would soon cease to be barren. Let this land be ploughed, let the seed be cast into it, and what is the result? The desert becomes a garden; the wilderness a fruitful field, and the barren land a forest. So let the Gospel waters flow through the desert wastes of a sinner's heart, or through the moral wastes of a country, and what a blessed transformation is the result! Death gives place to life, depravity to beauty, and barrenness to fertility. It was so in the beginning of Christianity. The power of the Gospel has been strikingly proved in the missions to Fiji. 2. The progress of the Gospel. The living waters go out from Jerusalem. Christianity was not a new religion. It was the development, the outgrowth of Judaism. But the waters were to flow in every direction, carrying spiritual fertility with them: everywhere turning the desolate heritages of the Gentile world into the garden of the Lord. Note also the constancy with which the living waters flow; "in summer and winter shall it go." The summer heat usually dries up the rivulet. The host of winter congeals it; but these living waters shall flow on through summer and winter. How strikingly has this been illustrated all through the Christian centuries. Nothing has proved able to arrest or stay the progress of the Gospel. 3. The triumph of the Gospel. From the beginning the Lord Christ has indeed been King over all the earth, but in the text there is associated with the idea of kingly authority that of willing submission. He shall then be universally acknowledged Lord, every knee to Him shall bow, and every tongue confess Him. The day will surely come when men shall be blessed in Him, all nations shall call Him blessed. (Walford Green.) Parallel Verses KJV: And it shall be in that day, that living waters shall go out from Jerusalem; half of them toward the former sea, and half of them toward the hinder sea: in summer and in winter shall it be. |
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