Zechariah 11:6
The Bible says in Zechariah
11:6-7, “For I will no more pity the inhabitants of
the land, saith the LORD: but, lo, I will deliver the
men every one into his neighbour's hand, and into the
hand of his king: and they shall smite the land, and out of their hand I will
not deliver them. And I will feed the flock of slaughter, even you, O poor of
the flock. And I took unto me two staves; the one I called Beauty, and the
other I called Bands; and I fed the flock.” In Zechariah 11:6 God is
talking about the fact that the time had come when judgment must be brought
upon the
When Jesus fed the flock,
He said that He did it with two staves: one “called
Beauty” and the other called “Bands.”
Before telling us what these two staves signify, the Lord turns to the bad
shepherds to make clear what He thinks of them and what will happen to them.
God says in Zechariah 11:8-9, “Three shepherds also
I cut off in one month; and my soul lothed them, and
their soul also abhorred me. Then said I, I will not feed you: that that dieth, let it die; and that that is to be cut off, let it
be cut off; and let the rest eat every one the flesh of another.” How
much God dislikes bad shepherds. The word that God Himself uses is the word “lothed.” It means to be
“grieved.” These shepherds did not do God’s work, and they did not feed the
people God’s Word. From God’s standpoint you cannot get much worse than that.
It is interesting to
notice that God “lothed”
the bad shepherds, and the bad shepherds “abhorred” God. It is obvious that they did not
love God, or they would have loved His Word. It is obvious that they did not
love God or they would have loved His people: His sheep. It is obvious that
they did not love God or they would have wanted to feed God’s people with God’s
Word.
It is a dangerous thing to
have a hard heart towards God and to His will. Although God is very patient and
can wait many, many years for a person to wake up to their need of Him, there
eventually comes a time when the Lord says basically, “Enough is enough.” Your
opportunities are over. You time has come. You refused all of my offers of love
and forgiveness. You forgot that your time on earth is limited, and now your
time is over. God said, “I will not feed you.”
Of course, He is talking about giving out His wonderful truth. You know
nothing, except what the Lord has allowed to enter into your mind. God wants
every person to benefit from the Word of God, and because Jesus is the Great
Shepherd He feeds us, or at least He feeds those who open up their minds and
hearts to Him. There are few worse spiritual situations to be in than for God
to look at you and say, “I will not feed you.”
If you do not take in
physical food, you will die physically. If you do not take in spiritual food,
you will die spiritually. It is not surprising that after saying in Zechariah
11:9, “I will not feed you,” that the Lord
says, “that that dieth,
let it die; and that that is to be cut off, let it be cut off; and let the rest
eat every one the flesh of another.” Life also is a limited opportunity.
And because God gives this limited opportunity, He is the One who decides when
it shall be taken away. It says in Hebrews 9:27, “And
as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.”
As Zechariah 11:9 clearly shows, your opportunity to live on this earth can be taken
away prematurely. It says in First John 5:16, “If
any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto
death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto
death. There is a sin unto death: I do not say that he shall pray for it.”
One thing to notice about
Zechariah 11:9 is that it does manifest a somewhat different
emphasis between the Old Testament and
the New Testament. The law of Moses was very
unforgiving. It often pronounced a death penalty for failure to obey. Certainly
Zechariah 11:9 is of the spirit of the law. Compare a different emphasis found
in reference to the ministry of Jesus. Matthew 12:19-21, “He shall not strive, nor cry; neither shall any man hear
his voice in the streets. A bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax
shall he not quench, till he send forth judgment unto victory. And in his name
shall the Gentiles trust.”
The Bible says in Zechariah
11:10-11, “And I took my staff, even Beauty, and
cut it assunder, that I might break my covenant which
I had made with all the people. And it was broken in that day: and so the poor
of the flock that waited upon me knew that it was the word of the LORD.”
It seems pretty obvious what the staff named “Beauty”
represented. It represented the “covenant.” The staff was broken in order to
show that the covenant was now broken. It was as good as broken, that is. The
covenant of the law actually went away at the crucifixion of Jesus. What
covenant are we talking about in Zechariah 11:10? There are two great covenants
in the Bible: the old covenant, which is the Old Testament; and the new
covenant, which is the New Testament. The old covenant of the law was a
temporary covenant. It was doomed to fail from the start, not because of the
law itself, but because of man. Man is sinful, man is a failure, and man did
not keep the law of God. The staff that represented the old covenant was called
“Beauty,” which shows us how good and
beautiful God considered that the Old Testament law really was. There was
nothing wrong with the law. Notice how consistent this is with what Paul told
us in Galatians 3:21, “Is the law then against the
promises of God? God forbid: for if there had been a law
given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the
law.”
The covenant of the law
was broken. The covenant of the law was temporary. What a difference between
the covenant of the law and the covenant of the New Testament. The covenant of
the New Testament is not temporary. It says in Hebrews 13:20, “Now the God of peace, that brought
again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through
the blood of the everlasting covenant.” One of the big differences
between the Old Testament and the New Testament is that the old covenant was
temporary, but the new covenant is permanent. The new covenant cannot be
disannulled. The new covenant cannot fail. The new covenant cannot be broken.
Why did the old covenant fail, and why was it broken? The old covenant was
broken because of the sins of the Israelites. They committed sins, many sins:
every sin that you can conceive of. Just to name a few: they committed
adultery, idolatry, rebellion against God, murder, stealing, and lying. They
broke all of the Ten Commandments many times. They went their own way instead
of God’s way. The Israelites did not uphold their part of the covenant of the
Old Testament law. We saw what happened when God pronounced the end of the old
covenant. He said in Zechariah 11:9 “that that dieth, let it die; and that that is to be cut off, let it
be cut off; and let the rest eat every one the flesh of another.”
What would happen today if
a believer committed the same sins as those committed by the Israelites? Would
the new covenant be broken just like the old covenant was broken? No it would
not. That is the power of grace: the grace that is in Jesus Christ. As it says in John 1:17, “The law was
given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” It is
a wonderful thing to live in the age of grace. Hopefully there are no
Christians who view themselves as if they were living under the old covenant.
You cannot break the new covenant no matter how much you fail. Yes, there are
still consequences to suffer for you actions, and yes, you can lose rewards,
and yes, the Lord may need to chastise you; but never ever, ever will the new
covenant be broken that Jesus has made with you. He will never say to you what
he had to say to the Israelites, “I will not feed
you: that that dieth, let it die; and that that is to
be cut off, let it be cut off.” Because of the new covenant, which is an
everlasting covenant, no matter how much you fail, in the end Jesus will say to
you, “Thy sins be forgiven thee.”
It says in Zechariah
11:11, “and so the poor of the flock that waited
upon me knew that it was the word of the LORD.” One truth about the
Bible is that it is a hidden book: hidden from those who are lost. The Apostle John
quoted Isaiah and said in John 12:38-40, “That the
saying of Esaias the prophet might be fulfilled,
which he spake, Lord, who hath believed our report? and to whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed?
Therefore they could not believe, because that Esaias
said again, He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart; that they
should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be
converted, and I should heal them.” One very important question to ask
is this, “How can they get their eyes opened?” The answer is this: through
Jesus. One of the reasons that Jesus opened the eyes of the blind was to be
symbolic of the fact that only Jesus can open the spiritual eyes of those who
are spiritually blind. The Bible is a closed book to those who are not saved by
faith in Jesus. It says in Matthew 20:30-34, “And,
behold, two blind men sitting by the way side, when they heard that Jesus
passed by, cried out, saying, Have mercy on us, O Lord, thou Son of David. And
the multitude rebuked them, because they should hold their peace: but they
cried the more, saying, Have mercy on us, O Lord, thou Son of David. And Jesus
stood still, and called them, and said, What will ye
that I shall do unto you? They say unto him, Lord, that our eyes may be opened.
So Jesus had compassion on them, and touched their eyes: and immediately
their eyes received sight, and they followed him.”
The next few verses in Zechariah
talk about the Savior. It says in Zechariah 11:12-14, “And
I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my price;
and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver. And
the LORD said unto me, Cast it unto the potter: a goodly price that I was prised at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver,
and cast them to the potter in the house of the LORD. Then I cut asunder mine
other staff, even Bands, that I might break the brotherhood between Judah and
Israel.” Of course, this passage is another great Messianic passage. The
“thirty pieces of silver” was a prophesy
fulfilled in Matthew 26:14-15, “Then one of the
twelve, called Judas Iscariot, went unto the chief priests, And said unto them,
What will ye give me, and I will deliver him unto you? And they covenanted with
him for thirty pieces of silver.” Think of it. Judas really got a rotten
deal. The precious life of the Son of God was worth more than all the gold and
all the silver in the world, and yet Judas betrayed Jesus for just thirty
pieces. Even this price that was paid was a sign of the humility of Christ. Man
paid thirty pieces of silver for the life of Jesus. Jesus paid His precious
blood for the souls of mankind.
Just as it says in
Zechariah the money was used in reference to a potter. It says in Zechariah
11:13, “”And I took the thirty pieces of silver,
and cast them to the potter in the house of the LORD.” The thirty pieces of silver would be cast down in the
house of the Lord. Five hundred years after these words were written, we
are told in Matthew 27:3-8, “Then Judas, which had
betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought
again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, Saying, I
have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us? see thou to
that. And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and
went and hanged himself. And the chief priests took the silver pieces, and
said, It is not lawful for to put them into the
treasury, because it is the price of blood. And they took counsel, and bought
with them the potter's field, to bury strangers in. Wherefore that field was
called, The field of blood, unto this day.”
Why did God arrange it so that the silver was used
to buy a potter’s field? Why not a farmer’s field that was used to plant grain?
Or why not a shepherd’s field that was used to graze sheep? There are many
types of fields used for many different purposes. But the money that came from
Jesus’ life was used to buy a potter’s field. A potter makes pots and other
vessels, and a potter would need a field that has clay in it in order to have a
source of clay for the pots that he made. At any rate, the field belonged to a
potter. A potter takes a simple lump of clay, and fashions it, and makes
something useful out of it. That is exactly what Jesus does. He takes our life
out of the earth’s normal way and then He fashions us into something useful for
His service. Everything about Jesus speaks of salvation. Even the field that
was purchased with the thirty pieces of blood money reminds us of this great
and wonderful spiritual truth.
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Copyright; 2011 by Charles
F. (Rick) Creech
All Rights Reserved