Zechariah 11:6
“For I will no longer have pity on the people of the land,” declares the Lord. “I will give everyone into the hands of their neighbors and their king. They will devastate the land, and I will not rescue anyone from their hands.” (NIV)
Today’s Reading: Zechariah 11:4-6 and Matthew 15:1-20
As we continue this prophecy into verse 6, God tells Zechariah that He will no longer have pity on the people of the land. The shepherds are simply using the sheep for their personal profit. They have no real concern for God’s people – particularly the ones that should be pitied.
We see this all play out during Jesus’s ministry. He was preaching and teaching on a daily basis for the people of Israel to turn away from the teaching of the Pharisees. Yet the people continued to doubt Jesus and most rejected his message.
God was expressing His frustration with Zechariah and He is basically done with the whole situation. He has done everything to get His people to be true to Him. He even sent His own Son to them, and they killed him. So that’s it. God is no longer going to pity them. He will give them over to their neighbors and their king. More on that in a minute.
We can see this same frustration with the Jews from Jesus. One particular instance, Jesus was teaching and had drawn a large crowd. As usual, the Pharisees garner his attention and try to trick him with a question. Their question dealt with washing their hands before they ate which Jesus and his disciples weren’t doing.
Jesus took the opportunity to really hand it to the Pharisees. He called them hypocrites and criticized them for not properly taking care of their fathers and mothers. Just as Zechariah’s prophecy said, they were slaughtering their own sheep and felt no guilt about it at all. So Jesus calls them out and even quotes Isaiah 29:13 to them saying they are all talk and no action. They honor God with their lips but it’s only lip service. They don’t love Him.
So Jesus eventually answers their question and tells them what they need to worry about is what comes out of their mouth and not what goes in. The disciples were probably a bit shocked and ready to cut and run from embarrassment. Jesus really laid into the Pharisees. Matthew records the next exchange between Jesus and his disciples:
“Then the disciples came to him and asked, ‘Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this?’
“He replied, ‘Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots. Leave them; they are blind guides. If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit’” (Matt 15:12-14).
Jesus’s level of frustration had reached the same point as expressed in Zechariah’s prophecy. If the people want to listen to the Pharisees, then they will all go down together. There is no more pity for people that refuse to listen.
So back to the part about the king. God says he will hand the people of the land over to their neighbors and their king. Recall that Israel doesn’t have a king at this time. The last king reigned over 500 years ago. They were currently under Roman occupation. But they did declare a king for themselves and God was going to give them to him.
After Jesus was flogged and brought back to Pilate, he was wearing a purple robe and a crown of thorns. Pilate brought Jesus out to show the people what he had done to him. Jesus was clinging to life and Pilate desperately wanted the people to be content at this point. He did not want to execute Jesus. John records the next events for us:
“From then on, Pilate tried to set Jesus free, but the Jewish leaders kept shouting, ‘If you let this man go, you are no friend of Caesar. Anyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar.’
“When Pilate heard this, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judge’s seat at a place known as the Stone Pavement (which in Aramaic is Gabbatha). It was the day of Preparation of the Passover; it was about noon.
“‘Here is your king,’ Pilate said to the Jews.
“But they shouted, ‘Take him away! Take him away! Crucify him!’
“‘Shall I crucify your king?’ Pilate asked.
“’We have no king but Caesar,’ the chief priests answered.
“Finally Pilate handed him over to them to be crucified” (John 19:12-16).
The real king of the Jews was Caesar. They have no king but Caesar. Not God, not Jesus – only Caesar. So that’s that. About 30 years later, Caesar’s successor would come into Jerusalem and destroy everything in sight. And God did not rescue anyone from the hands of the Romans.
The Jews crucified the Son of God. So God withdrew his protection. God wants our heart not our lips. He doesn’t want our worship if he doesn’t have our heart too. It was Jesus’s central message. He came for our hearts so that he could give us eternal life in return.
Christ in the Old Testament 
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