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This language refers in the first instance to the Jews. The time is coming when, in consequence of God pouring out His Spirit on that people, they shall look on Him whom they have pierced, and mourn. "Whom they have pierced." This language was literally fulfilled. The text admits of a legitimate application to others besides the Jews.

I. THE NEED OF THE OUTPOURING OF THE SPIRIT ORDER TO FAITH REPENTANCE. The sinner is described in the Word as being dead in trespasses and sins. Not only does the sinner yet in his sins need to be quickened, the very people of God require again and again the living power of the same Spirit who st first regenerated their souls. For even after he has been raised from his natural deadness, he is apt shew to fall into spiritual slumber. I need not dwell on the necessity of repentance. It all men have sinned, it needs no argument to prove that all men should repent. Those who would repent need to be told that in order to repent they need power from on high. It is when the Spirit is poured out that sinners are brought to genuine repentance, — that is, repentance unto life. Without this, there will always be a shying, an avoiding of the humiliation implied, — always an obstacle in the way — and the heart will turn aside like a deceitful bow. As long as the heart is untouched by the Spirit of grace, it either remains in a state of utter insensibility in reference to God and sin on the one hand, or, on the other band, it is troubled with feelings of reproach and fear, but without being persuaded or changed. Mere natural reproaches of conscience and alarms of coming judgments may stun the heart for a time, but they cannot break or melt it. The very people of God have reason at times to mourn over a narrowness of heart, over unfitness for the service of God, and an aversion to spiritual things. But while they are straitened the Spirit of the Lord is not straitened.

II. THE EFFECTS PRODUCED WHEN THE SPIRIT OF GOD IS POURED OUT —

1. By looking unto a pierced Lord, we are to understand faith in one of its liveliest exercises. The believer looks to Christ and His wounds with the eye of the mind, just as the serpent-bitten Israelites looked to the serpent of brass which Moses raised by the command of God. Whenever the Spirit is poured out from on high, the instant effect is the production of faith. Faith, indeed, seems to be the first — always along with repentance — saving or spiritual grace of the Christian character. It must be so, from the very nature of things. Our attention is called in this passage to two features of saving faith —

(1) You perceive that it looks to a "pierced Lord." Many have enlightened views of the nature and character of Jehovah, who, alas! have none of that faith which appropriates salvation. Nor is it sufficient that we look to God through the medium of the operations of His hands in the work of creation. Faith looks specially to God the Mediator. The faith that saves is a faith in Jesus the appointed Saviour. Nor is it enough that we look to the Son of God as enthroned in heaven. If we would obtain that saving power which flows from Him, we must look to the wounds by which He was pierced, and the blood that flows from them. Never till we look to a pierced, a suffering, a bleeding Saviour, will we find our spiritual diseases healed, and our soul filled with light and comfort.

(2) Another characteristic of saving faith is that it leads those who possess it to look to Jesus as pierced by them. But what share had we in the sufferings of Jesus? Every sinner has had, in a sense, a part in inflicting the sufferings to which our Lord was subjected. You must learn to connect your sins with the Saviour's sufferings, Our sins are the true enemies and murderers of our Lord. It was the accumulated sins of all and each of His people which weighed Him down to the ground in the garden, and bowed His head on the Cross. This is a distinguishing feature of saving faith. The sinner connects his sin with the sufferings of the Redeemer. When he thinks of Christ's sufferings, he thinks how his sins were the cause of their infliction, and he thinks that if Christ had not borne them he himself must have borne them. He thus looks upon Jesus, not so much in the light of a Saviour for others as one suitable to himself. His faith thus becomes a faith in Jesus as his Saviour; it embraces Christ, and appropriates the blessings which He purchased.

2. Another effect is mourning or repentance. When Paul was at Ephesus, he preached repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is a sense of sin that drives us to the Saviour, and we come to the Saviour by faith. The sinner looks to Christ by the eye of faith, and as he does so he mourns and repents. A believing view of God is necessary to full repentance. How should sorrow be the effect of a saving view of Christ? We are called to mourn over the sufferings of our Lord because of our connection with them. Note some of the characteristics of evangelical sorrow. The penitent has a deep view of the evil of sin. The penitent mourns over his sin as deeply as over his greatest earthly loss. But this sorrow for sin is not a sorrow apart from Christ, or independent of Him; neither is it a sorrow without hope. If the wounds of Jesus cannot but open lap wounds in our breast, they also supply the balm that heals the wounds.

(J. M'Cosh.)

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KJV: And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.

WEB: It will happen in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.