Thursday, November 30, 2017

There is a Fountain

Thursday, November 30, 2017
“On that day a fountain will be opened for the dynasty of David and for the people of Jerusalem, a fountain to cleanse them from all their sins and impurity.  
Zechariah 13:1(NLT)
We are now in the Season of Advent, a new year in the Christian calendar; it’s a season of promise and expectancy.  This time is filled with the images of people who walked in great darkness anticipating the dawn of light and life. 
God said through the prophet Zechariah that a fountain would be opened for the cleansing and re-birth of Israel.  God’s forgiveness birthed in a stable would become that fountain that washes away the sins and rebellion of the past.
Israel needed a rebirth because of their national sins; they had stopped serving God and were full-blown into self-serving worship of whatever pleased them most.  That is a microcosm of what is true for all humanity.  As the apostle Paul proclaimed, all have sinned and fallen short of God’s standard[2].
Through another prophet, Isaiah, God spoke this same sweeping reality, that every one of us, like wandering sheep, have lost sight of God, and our deepest personal need is to be forgiven.  Zechariah’s prophecy of the opening of God’s forgiving fountain would be Jesus, the long-ago promised coming of a Savior:
All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the Lord laid on him the sins of us all.  Isaiah 53:6(NLT)
This morning I’d like to let 17th century poet William Cowper hold-out Zechariah’s image of God’s fountain for us:
There is a fountain filled with blood,
Drawn from Immanuel’s veins,
And sinners plunged beneath that flood
Lose all their guilty stains:
The dying thief rejoiced to see
That fountain in His day;
And there have I, though vile as he,
Washed all my sins away:
Dear dying Lamb, Thy precious blood
Shall never lose its pow’r,
Till all the ransomed church of God
Are safe, to sin no more:
E’er since by faith I saw the stream
Thy flowing wounds supply,
Redeeming love has been my theme,
And shall be till I die:
When this poor, lisping, stamm’ring tongue
Lies silent in the grave,
Then in a nobler, sweeter song,
I’ll sing Thy pow’r to save:

For You Today

As we begin a new year in the Christian cycle of worship, thank God for the cleansing-healing power of the blood of Christ.  That fountain is what births you into the family of God, and it is the only reason you can stay there.
You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road…have a blessed day!
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[1] Title Image: Courtesy of Pixabay.com
[2] Romans 3:23

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