Zechariah Chapter 11

Zechariah chapter 11 takes a turn in the book to remind us that there is a negative future for Israel as well as a positive. As they reject their Messiah He will reject them and will further raise up for them an unprofitable shepherd that will harm them - the man we know as the False Prophet.

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Welcome to the AX242 podcast. I'm Alice Nash, and today, as I assume you know, we're gonna be talking about Zechariah chapter 11. Um we've been going through these chapters, and I know we're getting towards the end, and um we might be getting tired of Zechariah to some degree. Um but as we come to the end, there is, I suppose you could say, more things that come into focus, um, especially regarding the person of Christ. And in chapter 11, there is a specific turn to the negative side of things, um, which we're gonna see. It starts in verse four and it continues on down through um towards the end of the chapter. Um verse one, though, it just starts out open your doors, O Lebanon, that a fire may feed on your cedars. And he talks about judgment coming to the oaks of Bashan, and the sound of the shepherd's wail, for the glory is is ruined. The pride of the Jordan is ruined. He references these three lands, Lebanon, Bashan, and Jordan. None of those lands, um, as I understand it, were within Israel at the time when this was written or um had been uh recently within Israel. And so far as I know, I guess I'm not 100% sure where Bashan is. But um Jordan and Lebanon, and I assume Bashan is as well. I can't think of where it is at the moment, but those have never been within the land of Israel, uh at least since the time that this was written. It looks like it says a region east of the Jordan, Bashan. So Bashan as well. It would not have been within Israel at this time, and it would have not been within Israel at any time, so far as I know, since then. Now, the reason I stress that is because chapter 11, so far as I can tell, is following on directly on the heels of chapter 10. There's there's really no break. It says, I will strengthen them in the Lord, in his name they will walk, declares the Lord. Open your doors, O Lebanon, etc. He's talking there about the destruction that is going to come upon the nations around Jerusalem when the Lord Jesus comes back, when he sits on the throne and reigns, as we've already had in these previous chapters. He's going to take his people out and he's going to look to conquer some of these lands, and he will. And so he prophesies, woe to these ones, you know, that a fire may feed on your cedars. These are things that they were proud of, shall we say. Uh, the oaks of Bashan, the cedars of Lebanon. We've heard of them before. And the pride of Jordan is ruined. I don't know what exactly the pride of Jordan is, um, but regardless, this is destruction. But when we come down to verse, so I believe that the first three verses of chapter 11 really tie back into chapter 10, and they follow on naturally in this progression. But when we come to verse 4, there's a break, and we get these words Thus says the Lord my God, pasture the flock doomed to slaughter. Those who buy them slay them and go unpunished, and each of those who sell them says, Blessed be the Lord, for I have become rich, and their own shepherds have no pity on them. For I will no longer have pity on the inhabitants of the land, declares the Lord. But behold, I will cause the men to fall, each into another's power and into the power of his king, and they will strike the land, and I will not deliver them from their power. Now, in the context of everything that we've read up until this point, this is a stark and sudden change from everything else that the Lord has been saying. The Lord has been repeatedly saying, Come back to the land. I'm going to bless you, I'm going to bring you into blessing, I'll protect you, I'll give you the tent pegs you need, I'll give you the leaders you need, I'll make up for all of your losses, I'll do all these things. I have all these plans for you. Come back. But now the Lord, right in the next breath, after he's finished prophesying of this great victory that will come, he turns and he orders Zachariah, this prophet of real encouragement up until this point, to, and he says, I want you to do something. Go and pasture the flock doomed to slaughter. Now, I'm not sure exactly what that term references, but I guess I am maybe assuming a little bit, but I think it's a relatively safe assumption that there was a flock that was being raised for mutton, you know, for lamb chops or for these sort of things, for their meat. And so this was a flock that was doomed to be slaughtered because it was just a flock for for meat. It wasn't for wool. And so what would happen is that the uh shepherds of a flock like that, I suppose if I was a shepherd of a flock like that, I probably would try not to get overly attached to the flock. I wouldn't try to care about them too much because I would know that they're just going to die. And so, yeah, I mean, you you need to take care of them and you need to give them grass and get them fat and whatever else so you can get a good price for them, but but the flock is there doomed to slaughter. So to be a shepherd of a flock doomed to slaughter would seem to be kind of a, I don't know, it would just seem to be kind of a very weird job, I guess, to some degree, because somebody has to do it. But um, at the same point, you just feel like a shepherd is one who should be caring for his flock, and really you're bringing them up to slaughter them. Well, in any case, this happened, obviously, and the Lord says to Zachariah, I want you to go and I want you to become one of those. I want you to pasture a flock doom to slaughter. Now, I don't know if Zechariah was, you know, a shepherd normally. I don't think so, because I believe he was one of the priests or something like that. But in any case, he goes and he and he takes this up, and the Lord tells him why. He says, because those who this is the way people treat a flock doomed to slaughter, okay? Those who buy them kill them, you know, obviously, and go unpunished, naturally. And each of those who sell them says, Blessed be the Lord, for I have become rich. So you take your flock in, you get them all, you know, whatever, big and healthy and everything else, and then you sell them to the butcher, and you say, Ha ha, I got my paycheck, you know, hooray. And this is normal for a shepherd, I suppose that's pasturing a flock doomed to slaughter, but it's not normal for a shepherd, just normally, shall we say. So the Lord says, This is the character of these kind of shepherds. And then he says, their own shepherds have no pity on them. That means that, you know, a shepherd in that condition, they don't, they don't care for really their their flock. They don't have pity, you know, they don't tenderly carry their lambs on their shoulders. So, and the Lord says, For I will no longer have pity on the inhabitants of the land, declares the Lord. But behold, I will cause the men to fall, each into another's power and into the power of his king, and they will strike the land, and I will not deliver them from their power. In essence, what the Lord is saying, get this, this is startling. He's saying, That kind of a shepherd, the shepherd who pastures a flock doomed to slaughter, that's the kind of shepherd I'm going to become. I'm going to sell you into somebody's hand who's going to butcher you, and I'm not going to have pity on you anymore, and I'm just going to let it happen. And he said that that's the kind of shepherd that I'm going to be. So, Zechariah, you go represent me and become that kind of shepherd. This is quite an astounding thing, right? Quite, quite a change from everything that has gone heretofore in the book of Zechariah. So he says, I pastured the flock, doomed to slaughter, hence the afflicted of the flock, and I took for myself two staffs. Okay, so a staff is just like a think of it like a shepherd's, you know, the big thing with the hook at the top, you know, or something like that. Uh I think that's called, uh I'm not sure, but let's let's just presume that it's that it's some sort of a stick. So the one I called favor, and the other I called union. And so I pastured the flock. So he makes these nice sticks and he goes out and he says, All right, time to pasture this flock doomed to slaughter, and I've got my two sticks and I'm all set. Now I'm gonna call, I mean, I like these sticks, I'm gonna call one favor, and the other I'll call union. And then he says, Then I annihilated the three shepherds in one month, for my soul was impatient with them, and their soul also was weary of me. So apparently the flock that he ends up going and shepherding already, it must have been a big flock, and it already had at least, well, probably just three shepherds. It says the three shepherds. So it had these three shepherds already. He comes and he's now the fourth shepherd, and he's in charge of them. But what he does is over the course of just a single month, he gets rid of the the three shepherds that are there already, because he was tired of them. It says, My soul was impatient with them, their soul also was weary of me. And so then I said, I will not pasture you. What is to die, let it die. What is to be annihilated, let it be annihilated, and let those who are left eat one another's flesh. And I so what he does now is he just he fires the the the three shepherds, gets rid of them, and then he kind of looks around at the flock and says, This is a mess, and I don't want to, I don't care about you, and I'm not gonna, I'm just not gonna shepherd you. So whatever's gonna die, it's gonna die, eat each other, whatever. I don't care. I'm walking away. So that's what Zechariah does. Doesn't sound like he was very much cut out to be a shepherd, um, in in his particular case, but that's what happens, and he says, I took my staff favor. So remember, he had this rod or this staff, this piece of wood that he had carefully made, you know, whatever else. He says, I took my staff favor and I cut it up in pieces to break my covenant, which I had made with all the peoples. So it was broken on that day. And thus the afflicted of the flock who were watching me realized that it was the word of the Lord. Now, this is a very interesting change here, because as far as I can tell, he actually went out and pastured a flock doomed to slaughter. In one month, he fired everybody, and then he said, I'm I'm done. As far as I can tell, that actually happened. And then he took his staff and he didn't just like break it in half and toss it into the bushes on his way out of the field. He cut it up in pieces. But I take it that he took that staff to um the temple or to somewhere, maybe to the bosses, I don't know, but somewhere where the people would see him, and he cut it up and he said, I'm I'm done. And now we get the significance of this. It says, the afflicted of the flock who were watching me. Now these aren't sheep anymore, because sheep don't realize that it was the word of the Lord. These were people. And he does this in front of people, and the people who really were represented in the flock of sheep, those people are now called the flock, if you will, because they're intended to be one and the same in a figurative sense. And it says, the afflicted of the flock who are watching me, that means the afflicted of the flock, the people who are doomed to die, were watching me. And they realized that it was the word of the Lord. And I said to them, If it is good in your sight, give me my wages, but if not, never mind. You just see the character here, you know. And it says, So they weighed out thirty shekels of silver, the thirty pieces of silver as my wages. And then the Lord said to me, Throw it to the potter, that magnificent price at which I was valued by them. So I took the thirty pieces of silver and I threw them to the potter in the house of the Lord, and then I cut in pieces a second staff union to break the brotherhood between Judah and Israel. Now I hope we realize the significance of this, because we know what thirty pieces of silver represents. How much was Judas paid to betray the Lord? Thirty pieces of silver. And so what this is representing or showing is that there is going to come a time at which the Lord Jesus, as we now know, when the Lord the good shepherd was going to come to his people and he was going to end up leaving them for the slaughterers to come and slaughter them. And that happened, and we know it very well. It was Titus, it was the Romans, it was AD 70, and all the horror that AD 70 was. And the Lord left them to it. But we know why. It was because he, the good shepherd, was rejected. And so he says, throw it to the potter, that magnificent price at which I was valued by them. The chief priest paid 30 shekels of silver or 30 pieces of silver to Judas to get the Lord. I think that was all they paid. I don't know that they tried to bribe anybody else, as far as I know. They didn't. It was just 30 pieces of silver. And the Lord's three and a half years of ministry, that was the value to take him in, shall we say? But then what happens? He says, I cut in pieces my second staff, union, to break the brotherhood between Judah and Israel. Now I I find this one uh I guess puzzling to some degree. Um Kelly, William Kelly sees this as a refusal of Christ following his death to gather the people of Israel together as one people again. Um and it seems to me like that makes sense to some degree. Here he was, he had come. He was, he says, uh he, you know, part of his mission as Messiah was to bring all the people back. He's been talking about this in the previous chapters of Zechariah. He's going to bring all the 12 tribes back. And it's af you will, it's if you will, after his crucifixion that he says, or at his rejection, whenever it happened, he he cuts that second staff, if you will, and he says, My mission as a shepherd, first of all, of just showing favor and care, that's over. To all peoples, he says, that's over. But then also he's going to cut in pieces his second staff union, and it will break the brotherhood between Judah and Israel. He said, It's it, I will not, I will not do that anymore. I will not bring them back. Now, that was one shepherd. That was the Lord Jesus, Zechariah representing him. Now, the Lord said to me, uh, this so then we come to verse 15. The Lord said to me, Take again for yourself the equipment of a foolish shepherd. Okay, this time it's a it's a foolish shepherd. He says, For behold, I am going to raise up a shepherd in the land who will not care for the perishing, seek the scattered, heal the broken, or sustain the ones standing, but will devour the flesh of the fat sheep and sheep and tear off their hooves. Woe to the worthless shepherd who leaves his flock, a sword will be on his arm, and on his right high his arm will be totally withered, and his right eye will be blind. Here is a further piece to this, if you will. The Lord says, Okay, you've rejected the good shepherd, therefore the good shepherd has rejected you. He said, But furthermore, you've rejected the good shepherd, and I'm going to bring in a foolish shepherd, a bad shepherd. This shepherd is not going to care about you at all. In fact, he's going to persecute you horribly. It'd be the equivalent of a shepherd eating the flesh of the fat, fat sheep and tearing off their hooves. I don't know. There must be something to do with shepherding and taking care of hooves, that to tear off their hooves must be a horrible thing for a sheep. I mean, it sounds horrible. But regardless, this is a terrible shepherd. He is going to be raised up, if you will, in the place of the good shepherd. Remember, the Lord Jesus said, um, another will come in his own name, and him ye will receive. That's this person. It's a person that we know as Antichrist or the false prophet. It is a person who comes and tells the people he's going to take care of them and he's going to look after them, and he's the right guy, he's the true prophet, and all of these things. And they're going to say, Yes, this is the guy, and they're going to follow him. But then he says, Woe to the worthless shepherd. He doesn't do any of the things he promises, who leaves the flock. A sword will be on his arm, and on his right eye, his arm will be totally withered, and his eye, his right eye will be blind. I don't know exactly all that that means in terms of the, you know, um sword on his arm, arm totally withered, right eye being blind. Maybe others have, you know, better, better thoughts on that. Kelly just suggests that this is God's judgment on him, and and I would agree with that. It I don't know the details of it, but it does seem to be a reference to God's judgment on him. So just to come back to kind of the beginning here, you might think, why? Why would God do this? He's been presenting all these beautiful and wonderful things. Why would he now turn and and tell them these horrible news that of this terrible shepherd and of the rejection of the good shepherd and how the good shepherd's going to then reject them? And what happened? Where's the turn? And here's my what struck me as I was reading through this and just considering that question. I take it that God is an honest God. Of course, we we all say, Amen, we know that. But for 10 chapters, God has been promising this people blessing. And I have wondered a few times, and I wonder if any of you have wondered, as we've gone through, and just have thought in your minds, and just have thought, but they didn't get blessing. I mean, they did partially, but they had wars upon wars and terrible situations. And of course, 8070 was in front of them, and they were going to reject the Messiah. And the Lord here is promising them blessing after blessing after blessing, and it feels almost dishonest. Well, here to me is where the Lord, if you will, clears the record. Yes, all those blessings are going to come to pass. And for the people who heeded his word and did come back, they received a portion of the blessing in different measures. And the Lord saw to that. But it is true that the future blessing awaits a future real, true blessing for Israel when Christ reigns nationally over them. And so an honest God takes the moment now to use the very same prophet that had been prophesying all the blessing that was going to come to them to tell them there is the there are these bad things that are going to happen as well. And I find that so encouraging because we can trust our God. He will prophesy, he will tell us, and he does tell us of the wonderful things that await for us. And yet he also says, In the world you shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world. We serve an honest God, and he gives the whole truth if we listen to him.