(REFLECTIONS ON Zechariah 11:1-17)

There is a fire in the land burning through all of nature and creation, but even greater, it burns through the shepherds’ of God’s people who are not shepherds.

3 There is a sound of the shepherd’s wail,
For their glory is ruined;
There is a sound of the young lions’ roar,
For the pride of the Jordan is ruined.

The shepherds after the Jews returned to Jerusalem were not sufficient because they weren’t sufficient in the eyes of the Lord. Zechariah is then asked to shepherd the people of the Lord. And although he did, in the end he was also limited in what he could do.

9 Then I said, “I will not pasture you. What is to die, let it die, and what is it to be annihilated, let it be annihilated; and let those who are left eat one another’s flesh.”

Thus Zechariah’s two staffs, one called Favor, and the other called Union are cut into pieces. The destruction of Favor represents a breaking of the Lord’s covenant with His people, and the destruction of Union represents a breaking of the union of God’s people between themselves.

Again, another shepherd is established. However, this last shepherd is called a foolish shepherd. This shepherd “will not care of the perishing, seek the scattered, heal the broken, or sustain the one standing, but will devour the flesh of the fat sheep and tear off their hoofs.”

Failed shepherd after failed shepherd, and failed people despite Zechariah as their shepherd. Is there no hope for the people of God? Is there no shepherd that will be a good shepherd and not just another failed shepherd?

12 I said to them, “If it is good in your sight, give me my wages; but if not, never mind!” So they weighed out thirty shekels of silver as my wages. 13 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 shekels of silver and threw them to the potter in the house of the Lord.

Doesn’t this remind us of Judas, the disciple that sold out Jesus for thirty pieces of silver? And this is the Good Shepherd, the shepherd that was sold to death, and that is death on the cross, not for Himself, but for us.

And that is why we are to fix our eyes on Jesus. In Hebrews 12:2, we read,

2 Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Jesus is the author and perfecter of faith, which sounds a lot better than trusting in our own faith. That is why He is the Good Shepherd, because he is not like all the other shepherds that couldn’t lead the people of the Lord.

He is the Good Shepherd, the author and perfecter of faith, and it is He that endured the cross, for our sins, for the purpose of giving us life in Him.

Fixing our eyes on Jesus is faith, beyond our belief, beyond our strength, beyond our ability to hope, and it is an acknowledgment that there is no other shepherd worth following besides Him. Let our faith then be defined by fixing our eyes on Jesus, more than anything else we can believe or do in our lives.

Pastor Michael Lu
Enduring Word Bible Commentary: Zechariah 11