The Tragedy of Rejecting Christ (Zechariah 11:1-17)

[Garland-Green]

Nobody likes tragedies. Wars, famines, epidemics, earthquakes, floods, tornadoes, terrible accidents—all result in tragic loss of human life and in difficult consequences for the survivors.

Nobody likes to study tragedies. I suppose that we all have a morbid curiosity that attracts us to read the papers and watch the evening news when great tragedies occur, but it would be unbearably depressing to dwell on these things constantly. And yet the study of tragedies can yield positive results if we learn to avoid the factors that led to the tragedy and to prepare ourselves for the time when we may face similar circumstances.

Zechariah 11 is an anatomy of history’s greatest tragedy. The interesting thing is, this analysis of this tragedy was not written after the fact. It was penned 500 years in advance! And yet it outlines with amazing detail the tragedy of the nation Israel rejecting Jesus as their Messiah and the awful consequences that would follow. It teaches us a vital lesson:

The greatest tragedy possible is to reject Christ, the Good Shepherd.

Continue reading: link

Comment to: The best view is probably that the three shepherds represent the three main offices in Israel: prophet, priest, and king. “One month” represents a relatively short period of time. Because the religious and political leaders rejected Jesus as Messiah and abused their roles for personal gain, and because in His person Jesus fulfilled the roles of prophet, priest, and king, He abolished those roles during His earthly ministry.

Abolished means the same as formally put an end to (a system, practice, or institution).

It doesn't seem to me as if He did considering verses such as;

1 Corinthians 14:3
On the other hand, the one who prophesies speaks to people for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation.

Joel 2:28-32
“And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit. “And I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke. The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those who escape, as the Lord has said, and among the survivors shall be those whom the Lord calls.  

[cristobela]

I cannot tell you what those other 40 interpretations are, but after reading Zechariah 11 it's clear:

The “three shepherds” are the three deviant sects of Judaism mentioned in the gospels:

1. Herodians (pro-govt to a crippling degree)

2. Pharisees (pro-self-imposed-traditions even if it nullifies what is written / nullifies obedience to a Command of God, somewhat compromised with govt)

3. Sadducees (pro-deny-whole-chunks-of-Scripture-and-the-power-of-God [they don't even believe in the supernatural realm it seems; not in angels nor the resurrection of the dead—I have no idea how they're religious or claim to believe in the God of Israel whatsoever; they're very ignorant of the Scriptures])

I'll quote the Scriptural evidence of their hatred of YHWH (YHWH-incarnate in the gospels) as Zechariah 11 prophesied (starting with Zechariah's prophecy):

• Zechariah 11:8 (KJV)
  
  8 Three shepherds also I cut off in one month; and my soul lothed them, and their soul also abhorred me.
  
  
• Mark 3:6 (NIV)
  
  6 Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.
  
  
• Mark 12:13-27 (NIV)
  
  13 Later they sent some of the Pharisees and Herodians to Jesus to catch him in his words. 14 They came to him and said, “Teacher, we know that you are a man of integrity. You aren’t swayed by others, because you pay no attention to who they are; but you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Is it right to pay the imperial tax[a] to Caesar or not? 15 Should we pay or shouldn’t we?”
  
  But Jesus knew their hypocrisy. “Why are you trying to trap me?” he asked. “Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.” 16 They brought the coin, and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”
  
  “Caesar’s,” they replied.
  
  17 Then Jesus said to them, “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”
  
  And they were amazed at him.
  
  18 Then the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question. 19 “Teacher,” they said, “Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. 20 Now there were seven brothers. The first one married and died without leaving any children. 21 The second one married the widow, but he also died, leaving no child. It was the same with the third. 22 In fact, none of the seven left any children. Last of all, the woman died too. 23 At the resurrection[b] whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?”
  
  24 Jesus replied, “Are you not in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God? 25 When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. 26 Now about the dead rising—have you not read in the Book of Moses, in the account of the burning bush, how God said to him, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’[c]? 27 He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. You are badly mistaken!”
  
  Footnotes:
  
  a. Mark 12:14 A special tax levied on subject peoples, not on Roman citizens
  b. Mark 12:23 Some manuscripts resurrection, when people rise from the dead,
  c. Mark 12:26 Exodus 3:6

And Jesus hated them back; He considers them children of hell.

• Matthew 23:15 (NIV)
  
  15 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are.
  
  
• Matthew 23:33 (NIV)
  
  33 “You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?

This (and similar such passages) is why today they lift up false accusations of anti-semitism against the gospels of the Bible. But Jesus was a Jew Himself, and He didn't hate the Jews that obeyed the Law and the Prophets, just the Jews that rebelled (just like YHWH, surprise, because He is YHWH-incarnate).

In “one month”, in a short time, He invalidated all three of these sects. And Jesus knew the leaders (shepherds) from all three sects wanted to kill Him, hence the parable of the tenants in the beginning of the same chapter (i.e. Mark 12:1-12) who kill the prophets and the very Son (incarnation) of the vineyard owner. And because they understood the parable was spoken against them, that's when they sent the Pharisees and Herodians against Jesus to "trap him" with questions.

All three of those sects hate Jesus (YHWH/YHWH-incarnate), all three do not submit to YHWH's Word in some way, shape, or form. All three do not want Him as their Shepherd. Jesus warns us of the “leaven” (KJV) (or “yeast” [NIV]) a.k.a. “teaching” of all three and to instead heed the leaven of heaven (or yeast of heaven), the teaching that God/YHWH/He Himself gave—what is actually written down in the Law and in the Prophets.

• Mark 8:15 (NIV)
  
  15 “Be careful,” Jesus warned them. “Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod.”
  
  
• Matthew 16:6 (NIV)
  
  6 “Be careful,” Jesus said to them. “Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”
  
  
• Matthew 16:12 (NIV)
  
  12 Then they understood that he was not telling them to guard against the yeast used in bread, but against the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.

All three sects have erroneous yeast (erroneous teaching / erroneous interpretation) because it deviates from YHWH's Law and YHWH”s Prophets. But then there's the pure leaven (yeast), teaching, that comes from heaven (from YHWH):

• Matthew 13:33 (NIV)
  
  33 He told them still another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds[a] of flour until it worked all through the dough.”
  
  Footnotes:
  
  a. Matthew 13:33 Or about 27 kilograms

Considering that leaven (yeast) = teaching. It's going to take a while for the yeast/teaching of heaven to spread and lift up the whole dough (mass) with heaven's teaching, but all leaven (heaven's or that of deviant sects) grows and spreads. The question is: will the disciples grow in God's teachings, what is actually written? or in man's deviant teachings/interpretations (what Jesus is warning them to avoid)? Jesus warned not to be puffed up by the latter, and outright rebuked people following that leaven/yeast (teaching) of the deviant sects.

• Matthew 15:1-9 (NIV)
  
  15 Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, 2 “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don’t wash their hands before they eat!”
  
  3 Jesus replied, “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? 4 For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother’[a] and ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’[b] 5 But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is ‘devoted to God,’ 6 they are not to ‘honor their father or mother’ with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. 7 You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you:
  
  8 “‘These people honor me with their lips,
      but their hearts are far from me.
  9 They worship me in vain;
      their teachings are merely human rules.’[c]”
  
  Footnotes:
  
  a. Matthew 15:4 Exodus 20:12; Deut. 5:16
  b. Matthew 15:4 Exodus 21:17; Lev. 20:9
  c. Matthew 15:9 Isaiah 29:13

This is clear distinction between the leaven of the Pharisees vs. the leaven of heaven (the latter of which mainstream Christian doctrine says not to obey, so they're more Pharisaical than Christ-like).

It's more obvious in Spanish (and I suspect in the Hebrew as well) that the shepherds are the teachers (pastors) because the word for “shepherd” is the exact same word for “pastor” in Spanish (specifically, in Spanish, the term is “pastor” for both; ergo, if you said, “he is the shepherd” in Spanish, it's the same thing as saying, “he is the pastor”). It reads clearly to me that the three shepherds are these three deviant sects of Judaism (three false guides/three false pastors), which Jesus invalidates and starts leading people away from. The true sect of Judaism is the one Paul converts to after leaving the sect of the Pharisees (which the Pharisees in turn call a sect—that means, the sect that follows Jesus [YHWH-incarnate] is considered to be another sect of Judaism).

To quote Paul (and for context: Paul came to faith in Jesus in Acts 9, and I'll be quoting from Acts 24 during his court trial; so, he's long been a Christian and this is what Christianity is):

• Acts 24:14-15 (NIV)
  
  14 However, I admit that I worship the God of our ancestors as a follower of the Way, which they call a sect. I believe everything that is in accordance with the Law and that is written in the Prophets, 15 and I have the same hope in God as these men themselves have, that there will be a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked.

Not surprisingly, why Jesus says:

• John 4:22 (NIV)
  
  22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews.

Other people started calling them Christians (because they follow Christ) but Christianity is Jewish:

• Acts 11:26 (NIV)
  
  26 and when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. So for a whole year Barnabas and Saul met with the church and taught great numbers of people. The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch.

The Jewish sect that the New Testament writers belong to then is neither Pharisaical, Sadducaical, nor Herodian (we don't even need to venture into comparing it to the half-paganized Judaism that is found in Samaria, ergo Samaritan-flavor; though comparisons of the half-pagan, Samaritan-flavor of Judaism could be drawn to modern-day Christianity, but not Biblical Christianity).

Modern-day Christianity, modern-day Christians, have in their own ways been puffed up by all three flavors of those leavens. Very few stay in the sect of the Biblical Jesus of Nazareth, despite claiming to be Christian (of Christ, like Christ). The Catholic Church is the poster child for Pharisaical leaven (“our traditions trump what the Commands of God actually say”); American Christianity is so Herodian (their loyalty to gentile government is stronger than loyalty to God). And I don't know which group of Christians would deny angels and the resurrection (like the Sadducees), but [we have come across] Christians who don't believe in the supernatural (e.g. don't believe in the devil as a literal evil spirit, but believe that it's all metaphorical—sigh ).

That said, the way this pastor summarized verses 4-14 (Verses 4-14 portray, through a prophetic parable acted out by Zechariah, the nation’s rejection of the Good Shepherd, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the consequences.) wasn't the most complete (no doubt because he didn't realize who the three shepherds actually are). Part of the restoration and regathering (promised in Zechariah 9 and 10) includes punishing and getting rid of the defective teaching, and the defective leaders who are giving the compromised teaching/ compromised guidance (as Zechariah 11 describes). These shepherds don't actually submit to YHWH. They're straying. Ergo, Zechariah—you who listen to My Word as I actually speak it—go lead My sheep. But the people hate the Zechariah's of this world because they're 100% loyal to what is actually written, and if the flock ignores YHWH's Word, His Law and Prophets, they will ignore the Zechariah types (YHWH-incarnate and His actual followers) too.

After they reject Zechariah (foretelling their rejection of Jesus), He hands them over to bad spiritual leadership. Likewise, YHWH Himself came to shepherd them, by incarnating into His own creation, but they rejected Him—speak the same way, get rejected the same way. So, He handed them over to bad leadership, “go die”. Go experience what bad leadership is like. I see this rampant in Christianity (e.g. the prosperity gospel, dial this number and plant a seed of $1000, be blessed; they're not actually taking care of the sheep, and meeting their spiritual need, just fleecing the sheep of their wool).

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As an aside, it is annoying (because it's Biblically-inaccurate) to see people using this phrase:

Quote:

Between verses 14 and 15 is the entire church age.

???

The New Testament, when referring to Moses, and the generation that came out of Egypt, trekking through the desert, receiving the Law of YHWH at Mt. Sinai, were called “ekklesia” (same Greek word translated as “church”).

• Acts 7:38 (KJV)
  
  38 This is he, that was in the church in the wilderness with the angel which spake to him in the mount Sina, and with our fathers: who received the lively oracles to give unto us:

Screenshot of the Greek:

http://biblehub.com/text/acts/7-38.htm

So, the church isn't different from Israel. Thus why Gentiles are being grafted in, not the other way around.

• Romans 11:25 (NIV)
  
  25 I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers and sisters, so that you may not be conceited: Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in,
  

The Gentiles are coming in, not forming their own separate group over there, while Moses & co. are back here in this thing called Israel. It's all Israel. It's all church.

I agree though: rejecting the prophesied and true-to-the-Bible Messiah is something even Christians do without realizing it—either by following leavened theology or because the desire for the things of this world choke the Word of God out. Sigh.