Two Shepherds

MY NIV Study Bible labels Zechariah 11:4-17 "Two Shepherds" and is an Old Testament parable (yep, they don't occur only in the New Testament). I may or may not speak on Sunday, September 18th, but I will state at the onset that I referred to my Study Bible at almost every verse, so feel free to use any resource you can to understand it.

Like all parables, this one is easy to understand. The flock represented the people of Israel, the Shepherd is God, and the parable explains how the sheep rejected the Shepherd (think about that for a moment--SHEEP reject the shepherd). Upon that rejection, the Shepherd tells the sheep to fend for themselves, until God allowed a second shepherd to take over the flock, one that would mistreat them.

Pretty straightforward stuff, but read vv12-13 again:

¹² I told them, “If you think it best, give me my pay; but if not, keep it.” So they paid me thirty pieces of silver. ¹³ And the LORD said to me, “Throw it to the potter”—the handsome price at which they priced me! So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the house of the LORD to the potter. 

Sound familiar? If you have a Bible with cross-referencing, follow them and see what appears--my Bible shows two (among others):

Matthew 26:15--“What are you [Pharisees] willing to give me [Judas] if I hand him over to you?” So they counted out for him thirty silver coins. 

Matthew 27:7--So they [Pharisees] decided to use the money to buy the potter’s field as a burial place for foreigners.

More prophecy being laid out 500 years in advance of its fulfillment, and I'll discuss it in greater detail when we reach that part of the New Testament (looks like it will be November 5th-6th), but leave that aside for a moment. When we get to September 25th, part of my presentation for that day will be a wrap-up of the Old Testament and why we spent nine months reading it, but one of the primary reasons is a simple one--if we read only the New Testament, from where would we deduce the necessity of Christ's sacrifice for us? How would we have been deemed sinful and worthy of eternal damnation without some benchmark to measure our sin? 

The Old Testament has been one long, dreary litany of people promising to follow God and reneging on that promise in a shockingly rapid fashion. We have one instance left on September 24th where the people would confidently state they would follow the Lord, and from there, we'll be a couple of days from New Testament times, where observance of the Law really did occur, probably a hyper-observance that forgot the reason for the Law in the first place. We need to remember these instructions today as well, since there's still plenty of sheep rejecting the Shepherd.

Scott