Zechariah 9-11: Cheap Grace

We read Zechariah 9–11 and watch prophecy build a future picture that lands directly on Jesus, from the humble King on a donkey to the thirty pieces of silver tied to betrayal. We also wrestle with what that price tag says about our hearts and why Bonhoeffer’s warning about cheap grace still stings. 
• reading Zechariah’s oracle of judgment and rescue across the region 
• the coming King described as humble and peaceful while riding a donkey 
• God’s promise to gather and strengthen His people like a shepherd 
• the acted-out shepherd lesson and the breaking of the staffs 
• thirty pieces of silver and the potter connection as a foreshadowing of Judas 
• the question of how we value Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross 
• Bonhoeffer’s definition of cheap grace and why it distorts discipleship 
• a challenge to respond to grace with surrender rather than flippancy 

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Transcript

Welcome And Reading Plan

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Hey, welcome back to the Out Loud Bible Project Podcast. This is Mike. We're reading through the book of Zechariah, one of the minor prophet books of the Old Testament. And today we just got some good old-fashioned prophecy, man. We got some we've got some prophecy of Zechariah just uh painting a picture of what's going to happen in the future, but then that picture of the future also is an indication of not just what's going to happen with Israel and Judah, but also looking forward to the coming Messiah and Jesus. And Zechariah is also going to find himself in a bit of an object lesson, like God will sometimes do with some of those prophets, of having him act out something that he may or may not even know the full extent of what he's acting out. But we today have the hindsight of recognizing, like, oh, he was painting a picture of, well, but one of them in this section being a very key moment in the story of Jesus and his betrayal leading to his crucifixion. So see if you can catch that as we get to it. So pretty interesting section of Zechariah here. We're going to be reading chapters 9 through 11 in the New English Translation. This is an oracle, the Lord's message concerning the land of Hadrach, with its focus on Damascus. The eyes of all humanity, especially of the tribes of Israel, are toward the Lord, as are those of Hamath also, which adjoins Damascus, Tyre, and Sidon, though they consider themselves to be very wise. Tyre built herself a fortification and piled up silver like dust and gold like the mud of the streets. Nevertheless, the Lord will evict her and shove her fortifications into the sea. She'll be consumed by fire. Ashkelon will see and be afraid. Gaza will be in great anguish, as will Ekron, for her hope will have been dried up. Gaza will lose her king, and Ashkelon will no longer be inhabited. A Mongrel people will live in Ashdod, for I will greatly humiliate the Philistines. I will take away their abominable religious practices, and then those who survive will become a community of believers in our God, like a clan in Judah, and Ekron will be like the Jebusites. That's the Ekron is the pagan Philistine city, and the Jebusites are those who lived in Jerusalem. And then I will surround my temple and protect it like a guard from anyone crossing back and forth, so that no one will cross over against them anymore as an oppressor, for now I myself have seen it. Now here's a great moment looking forward to the coming Christ. Rejoice greatly, daughter of Zion. Shout, daughter of Jerusalem, look, your king is coming to you. He's legitimate and victorious, humble, and riding on a donkey, on a young donkey, the foal of a female donkey. I will remove the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem, and the battle bow will be removed, and then he will announce peace to the nations. His dominion will be from sea to sea and from the Euphrates River to the ends of the earth. Moreover, as for you, because of our covenant relationship secured with blood, I will release your prisoners from the waterless pit. Return to the stronghold, you prisoners with hope. Today I declare that I will return double what was taken from you. I will bend Judah as my bow, and I will load the bow with Ephraim, my arrow. I will stir up your sons, Zion, against your sons, Greece, and I will make you Zion like a warrior's sword. Then the Lord will appear above them, and his arrow will shoot forth like lightning. The sovereign Lord will blow the trumpet and will proceed in the southern storm winds. The Lord of Heaven's armies will guard them, and they'll prevail and overcome with sling stones. Then they'll drink and will become noisy like drunkards, full like the sacrificial basin or like the corners of the altar, and on that day the Lord their God will deliver them as the flock of his people, for they are the precious stones of a crown sparkling over his land. How precious and fair! Grain will make the young men flourish and new wine the young women. Ask the Lord for rain in the season of the late spring rains, the Lord who causes thunderstorms, and he will give everyone showers of rain and green growth in the field. For the household gods have spoken wickedness, the soothsayers have seen a lie, and the dreamers have disclosed emptiness and give comfort in vain. Therefore the people set out like sheep and become scattered because they have no shepherd. I'm enraged at the shepherds and will punish the lead goats. For the Lord of heaven's armies has brought blessing to his flock, the house of Judah, and will transform them into his majestic war horse. From him will come the cornerstone, the wall peg, the battle bow, and every ruler, and they will be like warriors trampling the mud of the streets in battle. They'll fight, for the Lord will be with them, and will defeat the enemy cavalry. I, says the Lord, will strengthen the kingdom of Judah and deliver the people of Joseph, and will bring them back because of my compassion for them. They'll be as though I had never rejected them, for I am the Lord their God, and therefore I will hear them. The Ephraimites will be like warriors and will rejoice as if they had drunk wine. Their children will see it and rejoice. They'll celebrate in the things of the Lord. I'll signal for them and gather them, for I have already redeemed them. Then they'll become as numerous as they were before. Though I scatter them among the nations, they will remember in far off places. They and their children will survive and return. I'll bring them back from Egypt and gather them from Assyria, I'll bring them to the lands of Gilead and Lebanon. There will be not enough room for them. The Lord will cross the sea of storms and will calm its turbulence. The depths of the Nile will dry up, the pride of Assyria will be humbled, and the domination of Egypt will be no more. Thus I will strengthen them by my power, and they will walk about in my name, says the Lord. Open your gates, Lebanon, so that the fire may consume your cedars. Howl, fir tree, because the cedar has fallen. The majestic trees have been destroyed. Howl, oaks of Bashan, because the impenetrable forest has fallen. Listen to the howling of shepherds because their magnificence has been destroyed. Listen to the roaring of young lions because the thickets of the Jordan have been devastated. The Lord my God said this, shepherd the flock set aside for slaughter. Those who buy them slaughter them and are not held guilty. Those who sell them say, Oh bless be the Lord, for I am rich. Their own shepherds have no compassion for them. Indeed, I will no longer have compassion on the people of the land, says the Lord, but instead I will turn every last person over to his neighbor and his king, and they will devastate the land, and I will not deliver it from them. So I began to shepherd the flock destined for slaughter, the most afflicted of all the flock. And then I took two staves, calling one pleasantness, and the other union, and I tended the flock. Next I eradicated the three shepherds in one month, for I ran out of patience with them, and indeed they detested me as well, and then I said, I will not shepherd you. What is to die, let it die, and what is to be eradicated, let it be eradicated. And as for those who survive, let them eat each other's flesh. And then I took my staff pleasantness and cut it in two to annul my covenant that I had made with all the people. So it was annulled that very day, and then the most afflicted of the flock who kept faith with me knew that it was the Lord's message. Then I said to them, If it seems good to you, pay my wages, but if not, forget it. So they weighed out my payment thirty pieces of silver. Then the Lord said to me, Throw to the potter that exorbitant sum at which they valued me. And so I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them to the potter at the temple of the Lord. And then I cut the second staff union in two in order to annul the covenant of brotherhood between Judah and Israel. And again the Lord said to me, Take up once more the equipment of a foolish shepherd. Indeed, I am about to raise up a shepherd in the land who will not take heed of the sheep headed to slaughter, will not seek the scattered, and will not heal the injured. Moreover, he will not nourish the one that's healthy, but instead will eat the meat of the fat sheep and tear off their hooves. Woe to the worthless shepherd who abandons the flock. May a sword fall on his arm and his right eye, and may his arm wither completely away, and his right eye become completely blind. Well there we have two great prophetic visions of the life of Christ, one of them being his triumphal entry, entering Jerusalem on the foal of a donkey. That's the coming king, the coming good shepherd who will finally lead God's people to peace with God. And the whole bit about thirty pieces of silver is exactly the sum that was paid to Judas for betraying Jesus. And when Judas decided I did the wrong thing, he threw the money at the steps of the temple, and the leaders gathered it up and bought a potter's field, a poor man's graveyard, clearly foreshadowed here in Zechariah. One of the main issues here in this section is that the shepherded people did not value the work of the shepherd. How much do you value what Jesus did on the cross? I was just reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer's book, The Cost of Discipleship. I just read it this morning, just started it. And he starts his book off with this profound thought. He says, Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our church. Well, Dietrich, what do you mean by that? He goes on to say, Grace is represented as the church's inexhaustible treasury from which she showers blessings with generous hands, without asking questions or fixing limits, grace without price, grace without cost. The essence of grace, we suppose is that the account has been paid in advance, and because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing. Since the cost was infinite, the possibilities of using and spending it are infinite. And what would grace be if it weren't cheap? He's right, of course, grace by the very definition is an undeserved gift. It's free, and certainly accepting Christ's gift of his death and the freedom, our freedom from sin, can be accepted freely. But when we as Christians or we as the church put forth this idea of like, Jesus died for you and your sins are forgiven, all you have to do is is accept that forgiveness, then we're living in this cheap grace where people come and like, oh, okay, yeah, I'll be forgiven. Great. I can be forgiven just like that. No, no strings attached, no strings attached. Okay, great. And the problem with that is that cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner, without an understanding of the cost of Jesus' sacrifice, and without an understanding of the grievous weight of our own sin, then we are in danger of undervaluing his sacrifice. We are going to undervalue the actual cost of that grace, and we can act as free grace salesmen to the world, offering something that they neither recognize their need for it, and they never recognize the value of it. Let's not be flippant with the cost of grace. Yes, it is free to receive, but our reaction to it cannot just be a oh thank you, as we walk in the door. Rather, it requires us to follow Jesus, and when we follow him, we follow him to his death and ours, the death of ourselves as we humbly submit to whatever he wants to do because of the price that he paid to win our lives, and we owe him our lives in return. How heavy is the cost of grace in your life? That's the thinking out loud, thought for the day.