357: The Rejected Shepherd | Dave Sloop

Introduction

Good morning. Good morning. We're so glad that you're here today. For those of you that I haven't had a chance to meet, my name is Dave, and I am in the process of becoming ordained to become one of our pastors here. And we're thrilled that you've chosen to be with us. We've been seeing a lot of new faces here, and I just wanted to say if you are checking us out this week or if you've been coming for the last few weeks, it's our hope that we would have a chance to get to know you, not just here on Sunday, but to plug you into the life of our church.

I'm holding a book right here that I want to talk about—a shameless plug for something that is near and dear to my heart. This book called A Praying Life by Paul Miller. It is in a short list of books that I would say are probably the most influential books that I've ever read that really changed my relationship with God. And not only do we have these books on sale out in the lobby for $10, but we are hosting a praying life conference here at this church, March. And I just want to encourage you to consider checking that out.

This is not something where you're going to come and be asked to pray out loud. You're not going to be in groups praying with each other. It really is a conference where you're going to learn how to interact in a personal way with the God who created us and who knows us, and I think it's going to be life-changing. So we hope that you will consider coming. It is March. Details are on our website. You do not have to read this book before you come, but you can certainly buy it.

And I think that's all. Brian, did I miss anything? Okay. I think Brian is back in the hot tub. Alright.

The Challenge of This Passage

Well, this week, we are in our second to last sermon in our Zechariah series. And I am biased, but I think that this is the most challenging passage that we will look at together. And I say that for a couple of reasons. Number one, it is just a confusing passage. You heard some of it this morning read. It's confusing. The way that this passage is structured, just the literary structure, it's hard to understand. It takes some heavy lifting, some hard work.

But on another level, this is a difficult passage because it is the passage that we will look at together as a congregation that has the least amount of good news in it. It is a hard teaching. And so far in Zechariah, all we have had is good news. If you remember, Zechariah is written in the post-exilic time frame. Zechariah is writing to the Jews. They have come back from Babylon out of exile. That time of suffering is over, and they're back in their homeland, but the city is in ruin. And there's a little insecurity there. They're not quite sure where they stand with God. Is He still for us? Is He angry? Is Messiah still coming? And if He does, what will He be like?

And so far, all we have seen in Zechariah is a reaffirmation of God's covenant with His people. I am still for you. You are still my people, and I am still your God, and Messiah is still coming. And we learn what He will be like. In chapter three, He will be like a priest who wears the sin of His people. He will be like the high priest Joshua, but He will be better than Joshua. Not just like a high priest who goes in to the inner sanctuary offering sacrifices on behalf of the people and Himself, but He would be a high priest who goes into the inner sanctuary and offers Himself as a sacrifice. He will be the better priest.

And we learned in chapter six that this priest would also be a king. Two offices in Israel that were joined in one man, the branch who would come. And in so doing, He would join those together, and He would become the better Adam, who was our first priest and king. But this one who comes, this Messiah, would be a fulfillment of that which Adam was a failure. He would be a perfect priest and king.

Then last week, Tim talked to us about the character of this king. What would He be like? He would be a mighty king, but instead of riding in on a war horse, He comes in on a donkey. He is a strong king, but He is a gentle and lowly king. He would usher in a season of victory for His people, but not using the weapons of warfare to which they had grown accustomed. He would win through losing, bringing life through death, establishing a new covenant in His blood.

And this week, in chapter 11, we get another piece of the puzzle. This same one who was a priest, was a king on a donkey, is now characterized as a shepherd, a good shepherd. And he comes to his oppressed flock, and they utterly reject him. And as you saw in verse nine, what this good shepherd says to them is, I will no longer be your shepherd. This is a tough passage.

The Context of the Passage

Have you ever wondered why we gather every single week a bunch of Gentiles here, and we worship and sing to and open the Bible and learn about a Jewish Messiah? He is their Savior. He did not just come from them. He came for them. And we are the beneficiaries of all of the promises which were aimed at God's covenant people, Israel. And when we gather for worship, very few people of that ethnicity, very few Jewish people, gather with us. To this day, very few of them recognize Jesus as their Messiah. Have you ever wondered why that is? Zechariah 11 begins to answer that question.

This is a tough passage. And we might be tempted to stand up here or even in your personal time with God to just read about and talk about and think about a God who is loving and a God who is gracious and kind and patient, the God of second chances, and all of those things are true. But if we only ever talk about those parts, we run the risk of having a one-dimensional God who is incomplete and not the whole God of the Bible.

I will never forget, as a Young Life leader at JMU, we had a guest speaker come in one time. And he came in, and he said, I want you to complete the sentence. God is. Okay. And someone in the back, a sweet girl named Megan, she said, love. It's right. It's true. It's in the Bible. It's in 1 John. God is love. But when she said that, he goes, no.

He said, the moment that you think we can reduce the all-seeing, all-wise, all-knowing God down to a single character trait is the moment we reveal we don't know who He is. I will never forget that moment.

See, Jesus came as the only Son of the Father, and we beheld His glory, full of grace, full of truth, seeming opposites. And then in John chapter two, right after John says that, He provides wine at a wedding—grace. And then in the same chapter, He turns over the tables in the temple, says, you den of thieves—grace, truth. He would say to a woman caught in adultery, where have they gone? Has no one condemned you? No one, sir. Neither do I condemn you. And then He would turn right around and say to the Pharisees, you snakes, you brood of vipers. You're clean on the outside, but you're wicked on the inside. How will you escape being condemned to hell? He would say to some, come and enter my rest, and to others, away from me, I never knew you.

If this God doesn't make you feel a little bit uncomfortable, then we are not paying a close enough attention. My wife and I are still trying to understand each other. You think that we're going to wrap our finite minds around an infinite, holy, perfect God? He is love, and He is wrath, and He is truth, and He is justice, and He is mercy, and He is beautiful, and He is terrifying.

This week, we're going to look at an uncomfortable passage, and we might be tempted to skip right over it. But as Tim so often says, whenever we get to passages like that, we double down. Because we know that if we're willing to do the heavy lifting and the hard work, there is treasure on the other side.

And so if you will stick with me this morning as we look at Zechariah chapter 11, I think that is precisely what we will find.

Zechariah 11 Overview

Zechariah 11, we're going to begin. I'm going to actually just summarize the first six verses in the interest of time, which I'm already a little over on. But the first six verses, in verses one, two, and three, you're going to see God recites a poem, and it is a pronouncement of devastation, of destruction, and of judgment. And you're going to see three cities mentioned. You see Lebanon, which is the northernmost tip of Israel; then Bashan, which is a little further south; and then all the way down to the Jordan Valley. This is indicating that this judgment coming is from top to bottom, from north to south. It is a complete judgment of the land.

And then in verse three, we read this. Listen to the wail of the shepherds. There are some people who are watching this devastation unfold, and they are wailing. They are grieving. Why? Why would a shepherd mourn? What would he mourn the loss of? You would think it would be the sheep. But instead, listen to what we read in verse three.

Listen to the wail of the shepherds. Their rich pastures are destroyed.

These shepherds cared little for the sheep. What they cared about was the loss of their wealth, their rich pastures, their status, their glory, and their power. These same shepherds are mentioned in verse five as sheep traders or sellers of the sheep. They were selling their own flock to be slaughtered to the oppressors, and they were getting rich off it, and they said, praise God. Look at this wealth God has provided. They were wicked sheep, wicked shepherds. Who were they? If you look back at chapter 10 verse two and three, God says, therefore, the people wander like sheep, oppressed for lack of a shepherd. That phrase shows up again later in the New Testament.

In verse three, he says, my anger burns against the shepherds, and I will punish their leaders.

These were the spiritual religious leaders of Israel, and God was angry. And He said, I am bringing judgment on the land. And in the midst of God's pronouncement of judgment, listen to what He says in verse four. He begins to speak to Zechariah.

This is what the Lord my God says, shepherd the flock marked for slaughter.

He's angry. His justice is coming. And then He says, Zechariah, shepherd the flock marked for slaughter. This is our God. He is just. Justice must be done, but He longs to be gracious to you, says Isaiah 30:18. He will be so gracious. How gracious He will be when you call on Him.

Isaiah 30:18 — "Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you; therefore He will rise up to show you compassion."

This is who God is. He is grace and truth. He is justice and mercy, and it's held in tension in His perfect character.

Do you remember the story of Hosea? Hosea was a prophet who was told to go and take for yourself a wife of harlotry. Go marry a prostitute. And he did. And she did exactly what you might expect. She left him and went to be with another man.

Hosea 3:1 — "Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another and has become an adulteress."

This is God's heart. He is merciful, but He's also just.

And so in verse seven, Zechariah tells us He's going to play this character of the good shepherd in this vision that God gives to Him. And here's what He says.

So I shepherded the flock marked for slaughter, particularly the oppressed of the flock.

If you're reading from the NIV, it's a slightly different translation. But I like the NIV. And it says that He particularly paid attention to the oppressed of the flock. In other words, this good shepherd, when He comes, will give the majority of His time and attention to the hurting, the broken, the weak, the outcast, the marginalized. His heart will have a gravitational pull to those who need Him most because that's what a good shepherd does.

He sometimes leaves the ninety-nine to go get the one. He's a good shepherd.

And then in verse five, then I took two staffs and called one Favor and the other Union, and I shepherded the flock. The hallmarks or characteristics of this shepherd's leadership would be favor. That word means pleasantness or favor. He is a gracious shepherd, and He means to extend grace and favor to those He leads.

And the product of His leadership will be Union. Israel was a divided nation. You had the northern tribes and the southern tribes, Israel and Judah. And He meant to bring them together under one shepherd. Union. Unity was what He longed to bring.

And then in verse eight, listen to this.

In one month, I got rid of the three shepherds.

Joyce Baldwin, who is highly regarded as one of the best commentators on Zechariah, says this is the most enigmatic verse in the entire Old Testament. There's over 40 possible interpretations for what this could have meant. And so I'm not going to tell you that I know exactly what it meant, but I will offer what I think is a likely possibility.

When He says the three shepherds, we've already determined that the shepherds were the leaders of Israel, and we know that three is a number of completion. What were the offices of leadership historically in Israel? You had the prophet, the priest, and the king.

This shepherd would come, and He would obsolete all three. Why? Because He would be a perfect fulfillment of all three.

We've already seen. He is the priest. He is the king. And now He shows Himself as the prophet. He is the perfect fulfillment of all three.

Then it says this, the flock detested me, and I grew weary of them and said, will not be your shepherd. Let the dying die and the perishing perish. Let those who are left eat one another's flesh.

Start talking so we stop thinking about that. This shepherd says, let the dying die. Let the perishing perish. He's not calling down some punishment out of spite or anger. What He's saying here is, let nature take its course. The dying will die. What He is saying is, you are going to experience some natural consequences of the shepherd that you choose. These are natural consequences.

Let the dying die. It's going to get bad based on who you choose to follow.

And then in verse ten, then I took my staff called Favor, and I broke it, revoking the covenant I had made with all the nations. No longer would He extend favor to the people. You know, the covenant that God made with Israel was always, if you obey me, I will give you blessing. I will give you favor, and it's attached to their obedience. And now it is broken because of their persistent disobedience. It was revoked on that day.

And so the oppressed of the flock, or if you're reading the ESV, it says, the sheep traders who were watching me, knew it was the word of the Lord. The sheep traders are the ones from verse five who were selling the sheep into oppression. They were getting rich on their backs, and they wanted to be rid of this good shepherd. And they knew that when He was stepping down from His post, they knew this was the word of the Lord.

And so He says to them, if you think it best, give me my pay. But if not, keep it. So they paid me 30 pieces of silver. These men, uh-huh, they pay him 30 pieces of silver. And that, the amount of money, it was what you had to pay someone.

Exodus 21:32 — "If an ox gores a man or a woman to death, the owner must pay 30 shekels of silver."

Apparently, this was something that was happening on a regular basis back then. The oxes were crazy. They were constantly killing people. And He says, if a slave gets killed, you owe 30 shekels, 30 pieces of silver, to them.

This was an insult. This was hush money. This was go-away money. It was the lowest possible sum.

Yeah. Yeah. We'll pay you your wage, and here's what you're worth to us.

Now, the Lord said to me in verse 13, throw it to the potter, the handsome price at which they valued me. So I took 30 pieces of silver and threw them to the house of the Lord. The potter would have been a low-class job. Pottery was cheap. It was constantly breaking and easy to replace. And this potter happens to work in the house of the Lord.

And He throws the money back to the potter in the house of the Lord, indicating that the money came from the house of the Lord in the first place. The ones that paid off this good shepherd were religious shepherds. They paid Him off, and He throws it back to the potter.

And in verse 14, then I broke my second staff called Union, breaking the family bond between Judah and Israel. Instead of having a unified kingdom under one shepherd, you are going to have a scattered people with no king.

How did Zechariah do? Have these events played out? Let me summarize it for you in my own words.

God looked at His people being oppressed, and He said, I will go be their shepherd. And so a little over two thousand years ago, He did just that.

God became flesh. He was in the world. And though the world was made through Him, the world did not recognize Him. He came to that which was His own, but His own did not receive Him. Indeed, He knew they would reject Him, and He came anyway.

And when He got here, He had a particular affinity for the oppressed of the flock. He saw the crowds. They were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. And He had a gravitational pull to the weak, to the wounded, to the leper, to the deaf, to the blind, to the sinner, to the outcast, to the tax collector, to the prostitute.

They all loved Him. They called Him friend.

In a very short period of time, He would show Himself to be the true fulfillment of prophet, priest, king. And He was gaining popularity, and the religious guard knew it. And so in John chapter 11, they called together a meeting of the Sanhedrin, and they said, we have got to stop this guy. If He goes on like this, Rome will come and take away our temple and our nation. They were afraid of losing their rich pastures, their status, their power.

And so they devised a plan. We've got to get rid of this guy. They found someone who was sympathetic to their cause—one of Jesus' very own, a man named Judas, whose name in Hebrew is Judah, the tribe from which Messiah was to come.

He was betrayed by his very own for 30 pieces of silver. Instantly, Judas regretted this decision, and he threw the money back into the house of the Lord, to the chief priest from where it came. And they took that money, not being able to put it back into temple treasury because it was blood money, and they bought a potter's field with it, a graveyard for broken pieces of pottery. They threw it to the potter.

Israel rejected her king. And she did so publicly and with conviction. In fact, when Jesus was on trial for His life, Pontius Pilate said to the chief priest,

"Shall I crucify your king?" — John 19:15

And they said, we have no king but Caesar. And Pontius Pilate washed his hands, and he said, I am innocent of this man's blood. It is your responsibility.

In unison, the crowd said back to him, do you know what they said?

"His blood be on us and on our children." — Matthew 27:25

What a curse to call down on yourself. And so on that day, Jesus, the Messiah, the Christ of God, who came for that people, was crucified by them. They missed it. He was their king.

Jesus saw this day coming. Do you know? He said to them, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who stone the prophets and kill anyone sent to you, how often have I longed to gather you?

"How often I have longed to gather your children, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings — Luke 13:34"

He said, that is the shepherd talking to those marked for slaughter. He said, you’ve killed everybody sent to you, and yet I still long to gather you like a hen gathers her chicks under her wings. But you were not willing, He said. Behold, your house will be left to you desolate. Your land will be decimated, He said.

And do you know that after He was crucified, 37 later, the very nation to which the chief priest pledged loyalty, Rome, laid siege to the temple in 70 AD and destroyed it?

They decimated the land from top to bottom, and Israel has not had a prophet, a priest, or a king since. For 1900 years, they weren't even a nation. They missed it. How could they have missed it? This one from Genesis 3, the seed of woman who would come to crush the serpent’s head, He was their Savior. And the entire Old Testament was an unfolding revelation of who He would be, where He would come from, what He would be like, and how He would save them—and they missed it.

But, you know, we are no better than they. The reality is, what Israel modeled for us in rejecting their shepherd is a drama that has been unfolding since the Garden of Eden.

See, Adam and Eve didn't want a king. Israel didn't want a king. And you don't want a king, and neither do I. We want to be like God. We want to call the shots. This is the essence of sin.

You know, when Israel said in unison, His blood be on us and on our children, do you know the irony of that? What they meant as a curse, God meant for their cure—and ours. Did you know that?

Have you heard the story from Genesis 37 of Joseph and his brothers? Do you know this story? Joseph, one of Jacob's sons, was sold into slavery for 20 pieces of silver. Do you know the name of his brother who sold him? Judah.

He sold him into slavery. Why? Because Joseph had a dream that everyone was bowing down to worship him. His brother said, we don't want a king. And they rejected him and went home.

And do you know who got that king? The Gentiles. Other nations. And they became the beneficiaries of this man's leadership, and the nations were blessed. And one day, his brothers, when they were in the midst of famine, would come back, and they would beg this king for food, and they would recognize who it was. It was the one they rejected, and they wept bitterly.

And Joseph said to them, what you meant for evil, God meant for good. Is God done with Israel? He is not. But can I tell you how Paul puts it in Romans 11?

"In the same way, all Israel will be saved." — Romans 11:26

Through their trespass, the Gentiles have come into salvation. If they don't reject their king, you and I are not here today. Isn't that mind-blowing?

Jesus would put it this way in John chapter 10. You know He calls Himself the good shepherd? And in John 10:16, He says this,

"I have other sheep that are not of this pen. I must bring them also. They will hear my voice, and there will be one flock and one shepherd." — John 10:16

Remember His second staff? Union. He's going to have one flock, and it will be one shepherd. Paul will tell us that God is waiting for the fullness of the Gentiles to come in.

In 2 Peter, we read that God is not slow in accomplishing His promises. Some of you think of slowness. He is gracious, not wanting anyone to perish but everyone to come to repentance.

God isn't done with Israel. They rejected their king. But in their rejection, redemption for the world became possible.

He says, I took that staff called Favor and I broke it, and a covenant was revoked on that day. But what Zechariah did not tell us is that a new and better covenant was established on that same day. Did you know that?

God took His favored one and allowed Him to be broken, His only Son, on a cross so that He might bring you in. Could anyone have possibly written this story other than God?

Israel rejected her king, and Tim is going to pick this ball up next week with a much more comforting passage. Israel will see the one whom they have pierced, and they will understand—just like Joseph's brothers understood—and they will be brought back into the family.

The question for us this week is, is He your king? Have you recognized Him as king? If Israel teaches us anything, it is this. It is possible, even in the face of overwhelming evidence, to deny Him and reject Him. And the quickest path to rejecting Him is to do precisely what Israel did: love their stuff, put a too high value on their rich pastures, their status, their wealth, and put a too low value on the king—30 pieces of silver.

In a sense, Jesus comes to every single one of us and He says, if it’s good to you, give me my pay. But if not, keep it. What is He worth to you? That’s what He's asking. And I’ll tell you something: the shepherd doesn't just want your stuff. He doesn’t want your money. He wants more. He wants you. He wants your heart. He wants your life.

And when we just quit fighting and when we give in, what we discover is that’s what we were actually created for.

Application and Conclusion

Is this your king?

Let's pray.

Father, thank you for your word. It is so clearly your word. Man could not have written this book. Thank you for the gift. Thank you for the gift of your chosen nation's Messiah that we get to call our Savior. And we pray for, and long for, the day when our brothers will come home, and they will look upon the one that they've pierced, and they will be grieved, and they will be brought back into the family.

God, I pray that today, some of us, for the first time, would call you king—that we would lay down the stuff that we've put too high a price on, and we would give you our lives.

As always, these curved rails will be available for those who would like to pray privately. And if you want to pray with someone, I want to encourage you. If something is stirring in you, and you need to just bring it to a friend in prayer, we have people that would love to pray with you at these straight rails. It would be a gift to them.

Lord, thank you. It is in Christ's name that we pray. Amen.