“For indeed I will raise up a shepherd in the land who will not care
for those who are cut off, nor seek the young, nor heal those that are broken,
nor feed those that still stand. But he
will eat the flesh of the fat and tear their hooves in pieces. Woe to the worthless shepherd, who leaves the
flock! A sword shall be against his arm
and against his right eye; his arm shall completely wither, and his right eye
shall be totally blinded.”
Previously in Zechariah, God had described a pitiable people
with no shepherd. The people remained
disobedient and then the rulers of the people continued to worsen. In short, a prophecy prior to this passage
describes the arrival and rejection of the Great Shepherd, Jesus Christ. God dismisses three bad shepherds, commonly
considered to be the king, priests and scribes (law makers). God then comes as a shepherd to His own
people, and they reject Him. He asked
for His worth to them and they counted out 30 shekels of silver, the price of a
slave, which Zechariah says throw to the potter. (Sound familiar? See Matthew
26:15). The people do away with Jesus
for a paltry 30 pieces of silver. After
that, they seek a shepherd that is not of God.
A shepherd of their own design. A
shepherd who comes in his own name. After
rejecting Jesus, what they get and will continue to get is what God calls a ‘worthless’
shepherd.
We see the rulers, priests and law makers getting worse as
time goes on. They take advantage of the
people. “Such a thing has always, and
continues to be an abomination in the eyes of the Lord. God help any man who
seeks to profiteer off of people's desire to know God and have fellowship with
God, and would actually stand in the way and be a middleman to make a profit or
to reap a profit off of the desire of people to know God. It angered Jesus
then. It angers Jesus now. He is not any more tolerant toward those who today
are profiteering off of the innate religious desires within people than He was
in that day. So the Lord in prophecy here
speaks out against these shepherds who actually were destroying the people, but
didn't feel any guilt over it all.” (Chuck Smith)
Once a person or a people reject Jesus, they will chose
another leader to follow. As Jesus
said: “I have come in My Father’s name, and you do not receive Me; if another
comes in his own name, him you will receive.” (John 5:43) Zechariah’s prophecy can be applied outside of
Israel. Right now, our country, our
world is not blessed with great leaders, not even good leaders. The more Jesus the Christ and the truth of
God are rejected, the worse the rulers, priests and law makers chosen to
replace Him. “It was the economic
problems of Germany that gave rise to Hitler. When your whole economy begins to
just fall apart, government has totally failed, then the people in desperation
are open to anybody who seems to have sensible, plausible answers. And they
will follow even one as Hitler with all of his bizarre ideas, because he promises
to the people the solutions.” (Chuck Smith)
These worthless leaders will not care for ‘those who are cut
off,’ but a wise and godly shepherd will seek after the lost. The worthless leaders will not ‘seek the
young.’ They may steal the young from
their parents to train the children up in lies, but a godly shepherd knows the
young need to train up in the ways of the Lord.
The worthless leaders will not ‘heal those that are broken,’ but God’s
shepherds will use the love of God and His Word to mend broken hearts. The worthless leaders will not ‘feed those
that still stand,’ but God’s shepherds will continue to build up and keep
healthy those that still stand. Not only
will the worthless shepherds not care, seek, heal or feed the sheep, but they
will ‘eat the flesh of the fat and tear their hooves in pieces.’ It would be difficult to describe a more
worthless leader for the people. Ruthless. Hateful.
A wolf in sheep’s clothing. Yet
when the people reject Jesus, when they reject the truth, the only thing left
to choose is deception. These bad
choices will escalate until the choosing of the ultimate bad leader, the
anti-christ. The Holy Spirit through the
Apostle Paul gives us a glimpse into the coming of this ultimate worthless
shepherd: “For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only He who now
restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed,
whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the
brightness of His coming. The coming of
the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs,
and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish,
because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be
saved. And for this reason God will send
them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, that they all may be
condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” (2 Thessalonians 2:7-12)
The important thing for us to focus on is not this
anti-christ. Jesus consumes that lawless
one with the ‘breath of His mouth’ and destroys him with the ‘brightness of His
coming.’ We know how this ends. No, our focus needs to be on receiving ‘the
love of the truth’ of Jesus Christ. Once
you receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, He will send the Holy Spirit
to dwell in you. When you yield to the
Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit will give you discernment of the truth as well as untruth. But if you have ‘pleasure in unrighteousness’
you will ‘not believe the truth,’ which leaves you open to all kinds of
deception.
My friend, where do you stand? Have you rejected the truth of the Good
Shepherd? Then you have rejected the
Good Shepherd. God’s Word has shown us
that any alternative to the truth is not in your best interest. Any alternative comes in its own name and is
not of God. Any alternative will not
care for you, heal you, feed you or protect you from those who want to tear you
to pieces. Any alternative will ultimately
end in tears.
Those of us who have chosen Jesus are dumbfounded by those
who reject Him. We are bewildered
because we have experienced, and continue to experience, a deep love and deep
joy and deep peace, all of which are beyond our ability to describe. Words fail.
We try to talk about it, we try to express it in song, but it all falls
short. We might conclude that whatever
the reason people have for rejecting Jesus must be borne of a lack of knowledge
of Jesus. Let us pray that Jesus reveal
Himself to these people so they can see themselves for who they are and then
recognize Jesus for what He has done. Let
us pray that they abandon their brutal and worthless shepherds and surrender to
the only Good Shepherd. Let us pray that
it may someday be said of them: “Though
now you do not see Him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, receiving the end of your
faith – the salvation of your souls.”
(1 Peter 1:8)
May you help others grow in the grace and knowledge of our
Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
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