The False Shepherd
Zechariah 11:15-17
Those of you who have been with us for our study of this wonderful book are well aware of the tremendous prophetic importance that it carries. And we have really covered so much of the prophetic picture, all the way from the history of the time of Zechariah clear to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ and many many events in between. And one of the most significant events that is on the horizon prophetically is the rise of an individual that is commonly known as the Antichrist. Although that it is not specifically his title in Scripture, that title certainly fits him well. And we commonly know him as the Antichrist. John says there are many antichrists but there is one that we tend to think of as the most vehement rebellious Antichrist person who will ever live, apart from Satan himself.
And as we come to Zechariah chapter 11, we come face to face with this human being. He's not a demon and he's not a fallen angel, in that sense, he's not Satan, he is a human being, the most anti-God rebellious human being yet to arrive on the scene. In the context of Zechariah chapter 11, he appears as the false shepherd, the false shepherd. Or, if you'll notice verse 15, he is called the foolish shepherd. In verse 17, he is called the idol shepherd. But he is a false shepherd in contrast to the true shepherd, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now the theme of Antichrist is not a new theme in the Bible. It's one that appears in many places.
The Lord Jesus Christ Himself, in John 5:43 said, "I am come in My Father's name and you receive Me not. If another shall come in his own name, him you will receive." Jesus is really echoing the thought of Zechariah 11, that Israel will reject the true shepherd and accept the false shepherd.
The Apostle John warned about him very early in church history. Paul warned about him in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2.
Now in addition to that, it was clearly prophesied in the Old Testament that Antichrist would come. And here we find one such prophecy in Zechariah chapter 11 verse 15, let's look at it.
11:15-17
Now let me set the stage for you a little bit so you'll understand the context in which this individual comes. God and Satan have been at war ever since Satan fell. Way back in eternity before the world began, Satan pulled off a rebellion. And he said, "I will be like the Most High, I will ascend and I will be equal with God." And God threw him out of heaven and with him went a host of the angels.
And since that time, Satan and his angels have been in rebellion against God. Now the particular attack that Satan has been most concentrating on since the world began after the fall of Adam has been to attack the seed promised in Genesis 3:15 because it says in Genesis 3:15 that the seed of the woman would bruise the serpent's head. Now Satan knows this and he's doing everything he can through all of history to try to stop this seed from arriving.
And the seed, of course, ultimately is Messiah. But Messiah to come must come through the nation Israel. So Satan is always trying to stomp out Israel as well as stamp out Messiah. So you see through history Satan's great effort against God's people Israel and against Jesus Christ. And even now that Christ is already here, Satan still attacks Christ and he still attacks Israel.
So all through history you can trace this attack. That was what was happening in Exodus 1 in the killing of the firstborn in the time of Moses.
In all the attacks against Israel, all the battles and kingly overthrows and rebellions, that was Satan trying to disrupt God’s plan.
And then when you come into the New Testament, there was Herod who tried to slaughter every male child born but he missed on the Messiah.
Then there was Satan who approached Jesus as He began His ministry and tried to thwart Him with temptation. And he failed again. And then there were the people of Nazareth who wanted to push Jesus off a cliff, but they failed again and He passed through the midst of them unseen. And finally Satan got Him and had Him nailed to a cross and locked in a tomb and sealed in a tomb. And that failed because He came out of the grave.
Satan is a loser, folks. He's lost every effort. He's always attacked God. He has always attacked God's people. He has always attacked God's King, Jesus Christ. And he never stops.
And he continues right in this present age to fight. Ephesians chapter 6 says waht? "We wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers, the rulers of the darkness, spiritual wickedness in heavenly places." We're in a battle against the demonic forces and Satan himself. The war is still on.
And it will continue right on until the end of earthly history and the conclusion of the millennium when Satan is released to deceive the nations.
And his battle plan is interesting. It’s always the same thing over and over. It is always an attack against God’s people. Now the time frame of Zechariah 11 is during the Tribulation, and when he hits the earth in the Tribulation, he again goes after the same things. He tries to destroy Israel. He tries to destroy God's people. He tries to attack God's Christ, the Messiah.
Now in order to do this during the Tribulation, he uses a man. What a counterfeit! Since that’s how God did it, that’s how Satan will do it.
And he will be some kind of man! He’ll be an intellectual genius. He’ll be an outstanding orator.
He will be a master politician. He’ll be a economic wizard and a military expert. And he will be a religious leader.
In fact, he’s so religious, the world winds up worshipping Him instead of God.
And in that sense he will be anti-God, anti-Christ, anti- Christianity, and he will call the world to worship him. Quite a man.
And he sweeps the world off its feet, forms a peace treaty with Israel, and in the middle of that agreement, he breaks the covenant. He then turns on Israel, desecrates the temple and shows his true colors.
Now stay with me. He moves into position. The whole world is in his hands. Israel is in his hand. He's got a worldwide organization and army like no other army in history. He has total control and he is going to try to hang on to the kingdom of the world when Christ returns and defeat Christ. That's Satan's whole effort. He thinks if he can just amass the whole world against Christ maybe he can hold it against the returning Christ who comes to set up His kingdom at the end of the Tribulation.
Now Zechariah comes into the picture precisely at this point.
Let's look back at Zechariah chapter 11 because Zechariah tells us in these three little verses that Israel is going to accept this false shepherd.
Now let me give you a quick review since it’s been a couple of weeks. This is a chapter about shepherds, remember? Zechariah is acting all this out. And the chapter begins with the ravage of the wailing shepherds. The first thing you see is some shepherds are crying and wailing. Why? Because he is predicting the destruction of Jerusalem and the ravages and the wailing and the spoil that's going to take place. Desolation is coming, that's the first three verses. In 70 A.D. it came.
And then we saw the rejection of the true shepherd. From verse 4 to 14, Zechariah acted out the rejection of Jesus Christ. Somehow he played the part of the coming shepherd and dramatized for the people what they were going to do to the Christ. He even discusses the betrayal of Judas in verses 12 to 14. There was a price, 30 pieces of silver, cast in the house of the Lord, ultimately given to a potter. All of that was fulfilled in the death of Jesus Christ.
So, Zechariah here is like a play actor. He stands on the stage which is Jerusalem in the time in which he lived, to the people who had come back from the captivity and he says, "Look what's in your future, people.
First of all there is the wailing of shepherds who have been ravaged and destroyed. And the reason they have been is because when the true shepherd comes, you won't receive him." And then he goes and acts that very thing out in verses 4 to 14. And then when he hits verse 15, he talks about the reception of the false shepherd. He says what is so strange is that while you have rejected the true shepherd, in the end you will receive a false one. What a mix up. What an exchange.
Now notice this, there's a gap from verse 14 to verse 15 that jumps all the way from 70 A.D. to the great Tribulation. When Jesus came into the world, they refused Jesus. They crucified Him about 30 A.D. About forty years later, 70 A.D., the prophecy of this chapter was fulfilled. The land was wiped out. And that came because they rejected the true shepherd.
Now in verse 15 God says, I want you to act out one more part, Zechariah. I want you to take the instruments of a foolish shepherd. Put on your foolish shepherd costume. You say, "What's that?" I'll give you a hint in a minute.
And that's exactly what they do. They make a covenant with the prince for the time of the Tribulation. Israel lines up with the false shepherd, the Anti-Christ.
Now we’re told a little bit of detail about the false shepherd. Verse 15 deals with his character. Verse 16 deals with his work and verse 17, it deals with his punishment.
1. His Character - verse 15
Now he's going to play the part of Antichrist. He has just played the part of Christ. He will now play the part of Antichrist.
What are the instruments of a foolish shepherd?
Well, I don't really know. Maybe a broken staff, it would be pretty stupid to go out and try to shepherd a flock of sheep if your staff was broken. Maybe a big club with metal on it that you'd use to beat the sheep into submission. That would be an instrument of a foolish shepherd, rather than tenderly care for the sheep. I don't know what it is, but whatever it was, he dressed up like a guy who would really be a stupid shepherd to be in those clothes with those instruments. And he says there's coming a foolish shepherd.
Now I want you to know something about the word "foolish." The word "foolish" in the Old Testament is a synonym for "wicked".
So a foolish shepherd is an evil shepherd. That's the character of this particular shepherd. He is a wicked shepherd.
Let's look at
2. His Conduct - verse 16
Notice a very interesting note here, "For lo, I will raise up a shepherd in the land." Did you note that? Who is it that permits this shepherd to arise? It's God. Nothing ever happens outside the plan, the sovereignty of God. God is no victim. God is not biting his nails hoping that nothing goes awry. God is not second guessing Satan. God is even allowing those things to occur.
And when he comes, look at the kind of shepherd he is.
First of all, he doesn’t care for those that are “cut off”. What is implied here is “dying sheep”. They're cold; they're separated from the flock; they've been attacked by an animal; they’re wounded; they’re isolated and they're way off somewhere in the process of dying. And the shepherd doesn't bother to go out and take care of them. If they're not right there, he had no concern.
The true shepherd, on the other hand, does what?
He goes and finds that little sheep that's cold. He goes and finds that sheep that's lost.
He finds that sheep that's wounded. He finds the sheep that somehow got separated from the flock and is around the back of a hill. But this one does not. He isn't even interested at all in saving the wounded and the cold. He doesn't even look for them.
Secondly, he doesn't seek the young.
He has no concern for the little lamb who are the ones who gets lost. No concern for the little lamb who can't quite make it over the little hedge that every other sheep was able to go over, no concern. The true shepherd leaves the ninety and nine to find the little lamb that's lost. Not this shepherd...he doesn't care about the wounded in the cold and he doesn't care about the young.
Further, he doesn't heal those that are broken.
One of the concerns that a shepherd had was broken limbs. Frequently a sheep would break a leg. A good shepherd would make a splint to provide for the broken leg. Not this shepherd. The shepherd isn't interested in binding the broken leg. He isn't interested in salving the wounds. Not at all.
Further, "Nor feed those that still stand.
Now most commentators feel that "that which stands still" refers to the firm strong sheep. They're just standing still. They require a minimum of help. They don't have to be chased. They don't have to be found. They don't have to be mended. Nothing needs to be done except to just feed them. And he doesn't even do that.
To the strong who need the least help, he is no help at all. To the weak and the wounded in the cold and the dying, he is absolutely indifferent...totally unconcerned.
Well, by this time if you were in Zechariah's day and you were sitting there and you were watching Zechariah doing this little act, you'd say, "This is some crummy shepherd." This is all the opposite of every shepherd you ever knew. "You've got to be kidding. Who ever heard of such a shepherd who doesn't go out and find those that are cold and wounded? What kind of shepherd doesn't help little lambs? What kind of shepherd doesn't fix broken bones? What kind of shepherd doesn't even feed the strong sheep that are no trouble at all? Well what kind of a shepherd is this?"
Well, he does do some things. Well, you say, what does he do? Look at the end of verse 16.
"He eats the flesh of the fat." What? What kind of a shepherd is this? He eats his own flock? Yeah, the fat ones. He is greedy. He is selfish. He feeds on the fat of the sheep rather than feeding the sheep, he eats them.
Listen: when the Antichrist comes it's all hearts and flowers for three and a half years. And then the abomination of desolations and he begins to eat Israel. He begins to feed on Israel. He begins to slaughter Israel.
And then there's a most unbelievable phrase, "And tear their hooves in pieces." What’s he doing?" Well, have you ever eaten spare ribs when you're really hungry? And you want every morsel?
Have you ever eaten a pork chop the same way or a T-bone steak and you're bending the bone, you're getting it there? You're scraping in there. Your wife has just told you there's no dessert and you're going to get everything. And you are literally tearing the bones apart. Sometimes you do it with chicken.
You watch people, you give them a wing and they'll spend a half an hour on it. That's this guy. He is not only eating the flesh of the fat, but he's tearing the hoofs to pieces to get every morsel, to consume every last bit.
Now this was absolutely opposite of everything they ever knew about a shepherd. It's inconceivable that a shepherd would ever behave this way. But this is the shepherd that they will receive. They turned their back on the real one and this is the one they wanted and this is the one they're going to get.
So, we see his character and his work, and then
3. His Condemnation - verse 17
God pronounces a curse in this verse. The arm refers to strength. The right arm is always a symbol of strength. God is going to come with a sword of judgment and is going to cut off his right arm. And it's going to wither and shrivel. It's going to be severed and it's going to shrivel into nothing which means his power will be torn away.
And while arms refer to strength, eyes refer to intelligence. He won't know right from wrong, up from down, in from out. The sword of God's vengeance will fall. God is going to judge this false shepherd severely.
Now you might be wondering in your own mind, “How could such a person come along, sweep over the world, gain the power, bring Israel in and then begin to slaughter and devour, how could people be so stupid as to let a person do this?"
Well the ultimate answer is found in the power and deceptive ability of Satan.
It’s already happened once in relatively modern history with a man named Adolph Hitler.
He is a perfect example of what can happen when Satan possesses an individual and how the power of Satan can actually dominate an entire culture of intelligent people.
And you see in Hitler just a little glimpse of what this Antichrist is going to be, only he won't have the impact of Hitler, he'll have the impact of a hundred Hitlers rolled into one.
Satan's effort is always to destroy God's people, always. And who was Hitler particularly involved in killing? Jews. That's a typical approach of Satan.
If you take the time to study Hitler, you will discover he was a demon-possessed man who believed in the occult and mysticism. He believed himself to be a man who was commissioned to do something by forces other than himself.
The Nazi Secret Society during Hitler's reign was convinced that there were advance beings in the center of the earth with powers far beyond the human. In time they planned to emerge out of the hollow earth and take over the world.
And Hitler was part of the procedure to gain them the world. These creatures were called "the lords of the universe." And everybody living on the surface either had to ally with them or get wiped out when they arrived. And Hitler determined he was going to be on their side when they got here. Eric Norman writes, quote: "Nazi records seized after the fall of the Third Reich indicate that Hitler and his henchmen launched several expeditions into the hollow earth."
By the way, it is this teaching that gave Hitler the concept of using little children in his German youth program. He formed corps of what he called adolescent werewolves with black uniforms and death's head insignias on the sleeves, little children. And so you could see by just a couple of incidents there that Hitler's Third Reich was welded to the occultism. They were all members of what was called "The Society of the Golden Dawn," founded for the practice of black magic. They were in contact with super beings and in this society they believed these beings, as I said, came out of the hollow earth.
Hitler's birthplace had a reputation as an area where mediums were born. One of his righthand men named Househoffer practiced black magic and many historians believe it was he who controlled Hitler. After his flight to England, Rudolf Hess is supposed to have told British Intelligence that Househoffer was the power, the magician behind Hitler and his demonic legions. So you have Househoffer, the magician, and Hitler the medium. Now there's no question about the fact that Hitler was a medium. He was in constant contact with demons.
Listen to the record of an eyewitness. "A person close to Hitler told me that he wakes up in the night screaming and in convulsion. He calls for help and appears to be half paralyzed. He is seized with a panic that makes him tremble until his bed shakes. He utters confused and unintelligible sounds, gasping as if at the point of suffocation.
Hitler was standing in his room swaying and looking all around as if he were lost. `It's he...it's he...it's he...he's come for me,' he groaned. His lips were white. He was sweating profusely. Suddenly he uttered a string of meaningless figures, then words and scraps of sentences. It was terrifying. Then suddenly he screamed, `There...there, over in the corner, he's there.' And all the time he was stamping his feet and screaming." That's Hitler.
Those closest to him spoke of his eyes as the eyes of a person in a trance, and his face turned bizarre and people said that when he spoke in public and gave speeches, the voice that he used was not the voice that was his own.
Hitler said, "What will the social order of the future be? Comrades, I will tell you," he said. "Over all will reign a new and exalted nobility of whom I cannot speak." And what he was talking about was demon rule. He was Satan's man to bring about Satan's dominion. Satan convinced Hitler he was the leader of a new race of beings, man-God beings, the super race he kept talking about. He became obsessed with it. And he started slaughtering anybody who got in his way.
Hitler asked Himmler to exterminate the Jews, six million of them.
He had become convinced that every Jew on earth must die. Hitler said this, "There's another species of humanity which doesn't deserve the name, left as a relic of some baser form of life, created along with hideous crawling creatures: Gypsies, Negroes and Jews." He went on to say, "They are as far removed from us as animals from humans. I don't mean I look on Jews as animals, they are much further removed from animals than we are. They are creatures outside nature. Our revolution is a new stage, the final stage in an evolution which will end by abolishing history."
So, who was Hitler? Satan's man. And he's a perfect illustration of what Satan can do when he gets a hold of the right man to con a whole society of intelligent people into believing this is the way to go.
Will there be an Antichrist? Don't doubt it. Hitler may have been a good shot at Satan's effort to make one then. But God had other plans. There's coming a day when this man is going to come. And he's going to be like a hundred Hitlers put together.
But even though Israel does respond to him, at the same time he begins to tear into Israel, God begins to redeem Israel and call them out. The faithful shepherd, the true shepherd, the despised shepherd, the rejected shepherd is going to come back and Zechariah says, "They will look on Him whom they pierced and they'll mourn for Him as one mourns for his only son." And they'll look up and they'll see Christ and they'll say we made a mistake. This isn't our shepherd. He's our shepherd. And He'll save them and He'll take them into His Kingdom.
Let's pray.
