Scott and Ellen were in Port-au-Prince awaiting the arrival of a mission team from the US and Canada. They arrived a few days ahead to set up some of the arrangements. Scott was from Southern California, and with the first sign of the tremors of the earthquake, he was instinctively aware of his surroundings… The weight of the building swayed as the foundation shuttered from the earthquake. Within a split second, cracks began to form. Scott lunged at the kitchen table, fully aware that there was no time to do anything else. Ellen was shocked and couldn’t move. Scott grabbed her feet and pulled hard. She collapsed under the table just as the west wall dropped away. In another moment the floor opened up and the whole apartment tilted and then sunk swiftly. If felt like an elevator that moved far too fast. A thump, a bump and then crashing debris – a deafening sound. Electricity popped, and sparks flew. The whole room was concrete dust. The heavy table was stable, its steel legs unyielding despite the obvious crushing weight on top of them. They held like a fortress platform above Ellen and Scott. They could see nothing. They couldn’t see each other. They could only see white dust and choked to breath some air into their lungs. They could chew the air. Scott felt for Ellen’s legs. “Are you ok?” He asked. She coughed. “What was that? Where are we?” ….”We are trapped.” Scott said. “Don’t worry. If you are ok, it will be a matter of time” – but Scott knew there was no real way to predict these things. Six hours later, he cried as he called his family in the States on his cell phone. It was the first time he could get a connection. He told them where he was, but he told them he knew there was no way to get out. It was only then that Ellen realized that they were trapped. There really was no way out….
What was true for Scott, Ellen and literally thousands upon thousands in this terrible incident may be true for you as well. I don’t mean that you are physically trapped beneath a pile of debris. I mean that you feel trapped in a perilous state spiritually, and you don’t see any way that you can get out. Guess what? You are right. You have no way out on your own. Without help from the outside, you are finished. Not only that, but the Bible says that you will not be rescued, unless you are willing to do something you have never been able to do before…SURRENDER TO His will and His way of doing things… Salvation is not a simple prayer – it is a change of life perspective that begins with a prayer.
The Bible says that God is gracious. To many people, grace means they can live as they please. Grace means there are no expectations and only personal benefits. God’s Word offers six truths about God’s grace that we must understand – because they mark the line between judgment and salvation!
Key Principle: God pardons real repentance but makes no deal on rejection. Rejection is a sin that will not be forgiven. The penalty is real, and the choice is ours.
Today I am charged with the privilege of sharing God’s Word in a hard place. This is the story of a beloved people and their rejection of a Savior. They are a beloved people, and they are enduring for a time the cold reality of a walk away from the Lord of Hosts – the One who made them for a purpose and will renew that work in that last days to draw them to Himself. On our way to the redemption of Israel, we have to recognize the rejection they have chosen.
I am particularly sensitive to the way I say this, because there have been so many justifications of Antisemitism based inappropriately on the idea of Israel’s rejection of Messiah, that I want to be careful here. Yet, the text of Scripture cites the rejection as the reason for God’s turning away from Israel in judgment. He will redeem them – He has promised. At the same time, generations of their people have been ravaged because of the temporary but powerful judgment that God placed judicially on the nation. In this study it is worth remembering that God has used His people to teach all people – and the warnings of judgment are not only national, but individual as well.
Six Truths About God’s Grace and Judgment
1: God’s Grace Can be found in His Warnings: God’s Word cries out as a warning!
Nationally speaking, Hebrew prophets often offer the EFFECT before the cause. In this section, Zechariah is reminding the people that when their freedoms have been taken, their capital destroyed (something the Romans will fulfill a generation after Jesus), and they are scattered – there was a reason God didn’t show up and save them. They were slaughtered from the sewers of Jerusalem by vicious soldiers looking for spoil.
In personal application – this is the story of both the penalty of rejection – and the warnings God offers to draw you back to Him. God doesn’t desire to PUNISH people. He is fanatical about explaining BEFORE judgment what He will do if people REJECT His provisions. People want unlimited warnings, unending second chances. Penalties, no matter how ridiculously obvious the fault – are seen as harsh. Look at what God does to warn us:
11:1 Open your doors, O Lebanon, That a fire may feed on your cedars. 2 Wail, O cypress, for the cedar has fallen, Because the glorious trees have been destroyed; Wail, O oaks of Bashan, For the impenetrable forest has come down.
God may break the back of your economic strength to get your attention. The trees were precious for building – the cedar, cypress and live oak. These were not redwoods, but it was what was available for the Bi
blical period builder. So rare were great trees that Solomon had them shipped from Lebanon’s forest. The builders knew the quality and properties of the trees – and they valued them commercially. Look at what the text says – it reveals they will be CONSUMED. Burned up – the future of all of our things not used for God’s purposes. Don’t get too attached -none of this lasts!
3 There is a sound of the shepherds’ wail, For their glory is ruined;
God may take away your power or your leadership to get your attention. For the people of Israel and the surrounding nations, they were going to face the rise of Greece, but that wouldn’t remove Jewish sovereignty until the land was stripped away by the Romans. The coming judgment was going to supplant any ruler from within and send them into an 1850 year exile before they could return home, not to mention the antisemitism, the pogroms, and the Holocaust. The shepherds would be broken and their glory would become ashes.
What about the personal application? God may need to chop you down to size to get you to hear Him on the issue of repentance. People at the top are often hard of hearing. They are better at saying, “You’re Fired!” than “I am sorry!” Could God be bringing into your life a demotion in life to get you to see the truth? Maybe your health is fading. Maybe the new kid in the next cubicle is fast becoming a competitor in the boss’ eyes for your corner office. Power doesn’t last. Control fades. If you have been self sufficient, I am here to tell you that God can move you down a few pegs, and it will be simply to get your attention.
11:3b…There is a sound of the young lions’ roar, For the pride of the Jordan is ruined.
God may step on your personal pride to get your attention. In the ancient world the Jordan Valley had the Ghor (or rift), then low Qattarah Hills (little mesa like hills), and then the zhor – the scrub that grew about 50 feet on either side of the bank of the Jordan River. The lions lived beside the water in the thicket, and only the best of the hunters could “bag” a lion. It was dangerous work, and the lions were considered a symbol of the regal and proud. Surely the coming captivity would break any pride.
What about us? Can God HUMBLE us through a series of circumstances to get us to pay attention? I have a friend who was humbled by a stupid mistake that cost him a great paying job. He didn’t mean to make the mistake, but it was his responsibility and God got to him through it.
2: God’s Grace Can be heard in your Believing Friends: Those who know God are pleading with you, knowing your future!
11:4 Thus says the LORD my God, “Pasture the flock doomed to slaughter. 5 “Those who buy them slay them and go unpunished, and each of those who sell them says, ‘Blessed be the LORD, for I have become rich!’ And their own shepherds have no pity on them. 6 “For I will no longer have pity on the inhabitants of the land,” declares the LORD; “but behold, I will cause the men to fall, each into another’s power and into the power of his king; and they will strike the land, and I will not deliver them from their power.” 7 So I pastured the flock doomed to slaughter, hence the afflicted of the flock. And I took for myself two staffs: the one I called Favor and the other I called Union; so I pastured the flock.
Those who love and care for you will watch in horror as you make choices that take you from great promise to cold rejection and punishment. If they know God, they know it isn’t true that He will give unlimited chances. A good place to see this very clearly is verses 4-7.
For judgment Messiah came into this world (John 9:39), for judgment of Israel which was at the time of His coming wretchedly corrupted and degenerated by the worldliness and hypocrisy of their rulers. He would have healed them, but they would not be healed. They were therefore for a time left desolate, and abandoned to ruin (but next week we will see that God will not leave them there).
God had a conversation with what appears to be His prophet – but a closer look reveals that the prophet was speaking a dialogue for another. The prophet was speaking in the place of Messiah. God told Messiah to go and be Israel’s shepherd, but she would not listen and be gathered by Him (11:4). She would certainly head for the slaughter.
God told the Messiah that those who He went to shepherd would be led by other desperately wicked shepherds that did not care for the flock. They would be used by their evil foreign leaders, who would abuse them and rape the land (11:5). God would not rescue them – His pity was exhausted (11:6). Rabbi Johanan said, “Now I know that the destruction of the temple is at hand, according to the prophecy of Zechariah.”
The prophet played the role and did work with the people, as the Good Shepherd did years later. God continued to offer shepherds through both Zechariah and later Jesus. Yet, the land did not respond. Zechariah symbolically brought both a rod and staff – calling one NOAM (beauty or pleasantness, root of Naomi) and the other KHEBEL (rope or cord, figuratively a bond). He carried off the beauty in one hand, the bonds of the people in another, and obeyed the Lord.
If you aren’t following God, but you know believers up close and personally, they can see something you don’t. They know that your blessings, your opportunities, your very beauty and the cords of your family and friends were given to you b
y God to use for purposes He has set for your life. He will not force you. He will draw you near to Him if you will come. If you do not, know this – for a time you will enjoy the illusion of control and even believe that you have more time to consider the claims of God on your life. You will believe He will always be patient. You will come to believe that you are so important in your world that God surely didn’t make all those privileges for one that He wasn’t going to give a free pass to. Look at these verse and remember, God LOVES Israel. He will not be second, however. He will not always just let it ride… He will act. It is the ploy of the enemy that God will not act:
The NIV of 2 Peter 3 says: “3:1 Dear friends… 2 I want you to recall the words spoken in the past by the holy prophets and the command given by our Lord and Savior through your apostles. 3 First of all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. 4 They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.” 5 But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water. 6 By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. 7 By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men..”
#3: God’s Grace is placed in This Limited Time: God will painfully hand over those who reject him, in spite of His love, for judgment!
Zech 11:8 Then I annihilated the three shepherds in one month, for my soul was impatient with them, and their soul also was weary of me. 9 Then I said, “I will not pasture you. What is to die, let it die, and what is to be annihilated, let it be annihilated; and let those who are left eat one another’s flesh.”
The love and graceful tolerance of the Lord will eventually lift from one who insists on rejecting His right to rule over them, and that one will equally be tired of conviction – the struggle will tragically end.
The world of Israel in rejection became a world of “DOG EAT DOG”. It was terrible. The rulers and the nobles were rebuked in the days following Zechariah for exacting usury and being oppressive (Nehemiah 5:7, 15).The revolt against Rome starved the people by the thousands. They couldn’t trust their own ruler and all the infighting, let alone those who were of the nations that had no regard for them at all.
That is what happens when you won’t walk with God. He replaces one ruler after another and you suffer. It seems like He walks away from you, and there is no one to care for you. You feel abandoned, because you insisted on abandoning HIM! You don’t have what you need. You call on Him, and He doesn’t seem to answer. He wants to see you kneel before Him, but you insist He bow to YOUR wishes. He simply doesn’t. He is Lord and you are not. I have been this stubborn – it is a lonely and cold existence.
Phil Yancey wrote it well: A young girl grows up on a cherry orchard just above Traverse City, Michigan. Her parents, a bit old-fashioned, tend to overreact to her nose ring, the music she listens to, and the length of her skirts. They ground her a few times, and she seethes inside. “I hate you” she screams at her father when he knocks on the door of her room after an argument, and that night she acts on a plan she has mentally rehearsed scores of times. She runs away. She has visited Detroit only once before, on a bus trip with her church youth group to watch the Tigers play. Because newspapers in Traverse City report in lurid detail the gangs, drugs, and violence in downtown Detroit, she concludes that is probably the last place her parents will look for her. California, maybe, or Florida, but not Detroit. Her second day there she meets a man who drives the biggest car she’s ever seen. He offers her a ride, buys her lunch, arranges a place for her to stay. He gives her some pills that make her feel better than she’s ever felt before. She was right all along, she decides: her parents were keeping her from all the fun. The good life continues for a month, two months, a year. The man with the big car–she calls him “Boss”–teaches her a few things that men like. Since she’s underage, men pay a premium for her. She lives in a penthouse and orders room service whenever she wants. Occasionally she thinks about the folks back home, but their lives now seem so boring and provincial that she can hardly believe she grew up there. She has a brief scare when she sees her picture printed on the back of a milk carton with the headline, “Have you seen this child?” But by now she has blond hair, and with all the makeup and body-piercing jewelry she wears, nobody would mistake her for a child. Besides, most of her friends are runaways, and nobody squeals in Detroit. After a year, the first sallow signs of illness appear, and it amazes her how fast the boss turns mean. “These days, we can’t mess around,” he growls, and before she knows it she’s out on the street without a penny to her name. She still turns a couple of tricks a night, but they don’t pay much, and all the money goes to support her habit. When winter blows in she finds herself sleeping on metal grates outside the big department stores. “Sleeping” is the wrong word–a teenage girl at night in downtown Detroit can never relax her guard. Dark bands circle her eyes. Her cough worsens. One night, as she lies awake listening for footsteps, all of a sudden everything about her life looks different. She no longer feels like a woman of the world. She feels like a little girl, lost in a cold and frightening city. She begins to whimper. Her pockets are empty and she’s hungry. She needs a fix. She pulls her legs tight underneath her and shivers under the newspapers she’s piled atop her coat. Something jolts a synapse of memory and a single image fills her mind: of May in Traverse City, when a million cherry trees bloom at once, with her golden retriever dashing through the rows and rows of blossomy trees in chase of a tennis ball. God, why did I leave, she says to herself, and pain stabs at her heart. My dog back home eats better than I do now. She’s sobbing, and she knows in a flash that more than anything else in the world she wants to go home. Three straight phone calls, three straight connections with the answering machine. She hangs up without leaving a message the first two times, but the third time she says, “Dad, Mom, it’s me. I was wondering about maybe coming home. I’m catching a bus up your way, and it’ll get there about midnight tomorrow. If you’re not there, well, I guess I’ll just stay on
the bus until it hits Canada.” It takes about seven hours for a bus to make all the stops between Detroit and Traverse City, and during that time she realizes the flaws in her plan. What if her parents are out of town and miss the message? Shouldn’t she have waited another day or so until she could talk to them? Even if they are home, they probably wrote her off as dead long ago. She should have given them some time to overcome the shock. Her thoughts bounce back and forth between those worries and the speech she is preparing for her father. “Dad, I’m sorry. I know I was wrong. It’s not your fault, it’s all mine. Dad, can you forgive me?” She says the words over and over, her throat tightening even as she rehearses them. She hasn’t apologized to anyone in years. The bus has been driving with lights on since Bay City. Tiny snowflakes hit the road, and the asphalt steams. She’s forgotten how dark it gets at night out here. A deer darts across the road and the bus swerves. Every so often, a billboard, a sign posting the mileage to Traverse City. Oh, God. When the bus finally rolls into the station, its air brakes hissing in protest, the driver announces in a crackly voice over the microphone, “Fifteen minutes, folks. That’s all we have here.” Fifteen minutes to decide her life. She checks herself in a compact mirror, smooths her hair, and licks the lipstick off her teeth. She looks at the tobacco stains on her fingertips, and wonders if her parents will notice – if they’re there. She walks into the terminal not knowing what to expect, and not one of the thousand scenes that have played out in her mind prepare her for what she sees. There, in the concrete-walls-and-plastic-chairs bus terminal in Traverse City, Michigan, stands a group of 40 brothers and sisters and great-aunts and uncles and cousins and a grandmother and great-grandmother to boot. They are all wearing ridiculous-looking party hats and blowing noisemakers, and taped across the entire wall of the terminal is a computer-generated banner that reads “Welcome home” Out of the crowd of well-wishers breaks her dad. She looks through tears and begins the memorized speech, “Dad, I’m sorry. I know . . . ” He interrupts her. “Hush, child. We’ve got no time for that. No time for apologies. You’ll be late for the party. A banquet’s waiting for you at home.” 1 The story I just read is a modern parable of the Prodigal Son. Christianity Today 10/6/97 Prodigal Son by Philip Yancey in his book “What’s So Amazing About Grace?” (found at SermonCentral). She was home safe and sound – but not until she decided to repent and surrender. Before that there was cold, loneliness and distance.
#4: God’s Grace can be spotted by His people in Plain View: Gods people can see Him remove His hand when people reject Him!
11:10 I took my staff Favor and cut it in pieces, to break my covenant which I had made with all the peoples. 11 So it was broken on that day, and thus the afflicted of the flock who were watching me realized that it was the word of the LORD.
When the break becomes permanent, those who know God may comprehend the reality of that moment. God revealed the truth to those who would learn to trust Him and believe what He said. When God said that for a time Israel would suffer a distance from Him, it was a temporary but very real condition. Those who knew His Word and believed – they saw it all. Beauty became ashes. Covenant became a broken marriage.
If you look very closely at the verses, the broken covenant was with the NATIONS – not just with Israel. God had a covenant of protection over His people that He took off of them. Nations would ravage her, and God stepped back and allowed it to happen. The people had presumed on God, and He drew a line in the sand and said, “No more!” Those who didn’t believe were just as lost as the day before – but sadness fell on those who DID know.
Believers carry pain for you if they have watched you kick against God. Those of us that have raised children that refuse to follow God have cried a river of tears. We keep praying and hoping – long after anyone else knows we are broken… We know the pain that they endure is their own doing. God will not force you to follow if you choose not to! Sadly, those who know God know He isn’t kidding about judgment…
#5: God’s Grace is used to show His Purpose: To tell His story to the World!
11:12 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.
God’s expectation is that we will respond to His love and value what He has done for us. He is a faithful marriage partner that stands stunned in the kitchen at the brazen acknowledgment of infidelity. He loved and has an expectation of returned love. Don’t mistake Him as One who is weak – that isn’t what I am saying. He is One who knows the value of Jesus’ blood, sent for His people. Rejection of His greatest gift is not overlooked. If we call Jesus worthless, and try to get away with the toss to Him of a pittance from our lives, God will not forget. We declare God is our slave, for our purpose – not that we are His people for His purpose!
The amount of thirty pieces of silver was a profound insult – as men not only refused Him His due, but added insult by giving for Him the price of a gored bond-servant (Ex 21:32; Mt 26:15). Interestingly enough, God used this prophetic moment to tell a story of an event yet to unfold…
Mt. 27:1 “Now when morning came, all the chief priests and the elders of the people conferred together against Jesus to put Him to death; 2 and they bound Him, and led Him away and delivered Him to Pilate the governor. 3 Then when Judas, who had betrayed Him, saw that He had been condemned, he felt remorse and returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, 4 saying, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.” But they said, “What is that to us? See to that yourself!” 5 And he threw the pieces of silver into the temple sanctuary and departed; and he went away and hanged himself. 6 The chief priests took the pieces of silver and said, “It is not lawful to put them into the temple treasury, since it is the price of blood.” 7 And they conferred together and with the money bought the Potter’s Field as a burial place for strangers.”
#6: God’s Grace can be Dismissed: When we reject, the grace evaporates.
11:14 Then I cut in pieces my second staff Union, to break the brotherhood between Judah and Israel. 15 The LORD said to me, “Take again for yourself the equipment of a foolish shepherd. 16 “For behold, I am going to raise up a shepherd in the land who will not care for 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. 17 “Woe to the worthless shepherd, Who leaves the flock! A sword will be on his arm And on his right eye! His arm will be totally withered And his right eye will be blind.”
When we reject God, we walk out of the tent of His deliberate protections, and He “gives us over” to a devouring enemy. It is our choice – and God honors that choice – but it causes great and painful consequences.
In Israel’s case, the cords that bound together Israel and Judah were severed. Countless Jews of the northern kingdom (by then long since captive) were cut loose into the nations at that time. In some sense, we can feel the sobering pains of Jesus when He looked over Jerusalem in Luke 19 and cried, “Jerusalem, how long I have tried to gather you as a hen gathers her chicks, but you would not come!”
What has God done to get your attention and draw you into intimacy with Him? Are you resisting Him? Can you afford to do that? Have you rejected Him. You have a chance today, right where you are to surrender. Don’t wait. Don’t forget – There is a sin that cannot and will not be forgiven – rejection of God’s provision of salvation. Don’t wait until there is NO WAY OUT.
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