PT-2 The Deception of Sham Prophets (Zech. 13:3-6)

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 10/26/2016 12:13 AM

My Worship Time                                                  Focus:  PT-2 The Deception of Sham Prophets

Bible Reading & Meditation                                     Reference:  Zechariah 13:3-6

            Message of the verses:  “3 "And if anyone still prophesies, then his father and mother who gave birth to him will say to him, ’You shall not live, for you have spoken falsely in the name of the LORD’; and his father and mother who gave birth to him will pierce him through when he prophesies. 4 “Also it will come about in that day that the prophets will each be ashamed of his vision when he prophesies, and they will not put on a hairy robe in order to deceive; 5 but he will say, ’I am not a prophet; I am a tiller of the ground, for a man sold me as a slave in my youth.’ 6 “And one will say to him, ’What are these wounds between your arms?’ Then he will say, ’Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.’”

            As we look at verse three remember that the cleansing aspect of Israel has already been done and we read that if anyone still prophesies will be put to death by their parents.  Why would the parents want to kill their offspring?  Well as we look back in the OT, the earlier part of it we read that if the children get to the point where they are so disobedient that the parents must execute them, and so I think that in this case if the parents see that their son is giving false prophecies then they must put them to death, for after all there should not be any reasons to have a prophet, and certainly no reason to have a false prophet since the Lord Jesus Christ has returned from heaven to rule the world from Jerusalem.  We not only read about disobedient children who should be executed by their parents earlier in the OT, but also false prophets are to be killed, to be stoned by Israel for prophesying falsely.

            As we look at verse four you may wonder what the term “hairy robe” means, and this must refer to the prophets like Elijah as that is what he wore, some kind of a goat skin garment made into leather or perhaps a camel’s hair garment which is what prophets wore. 

Let us look at Micah 3:7 “The seers will be ashamed And the diviners will be embarrassed. Indeed, they will all cover their mouths Because there is no answer from God.”  This goes along with verse four of Zechariah 13.  What we see is that no one wants to wear the clothes of a prophet for fear of their life.

Verse five shows us what they are going to say “’I am not a prophet; I am a tiller of the ground.”  Now this part of the verse makes me think of the prophet Amos since he was a shepherd, not a tiller of the ground, but not really wanted to be called a prophet, especially he was from Judah and was prophesying in the Northern Kingdom.  However these men really don’t want to be called a prophet and will do anything to show they are not.  Now as we look at verse six we see that the people around them do not believe them because of the wounds between their arms and on their hands.  MacArthur answers what this is all about:  “Let me show you some Scriptures.  Deuteronomy, 14:1 says ‘Now you’re the children of the Lord your God, you Israelites, so you shall not cut yourselves.’”  Now this is what the pagans did, remember the incident with Elijah on Mt. Carmel and all the false Baal prophets were cutting themselves trying to get their “false” god to answer them, so this is what Zechariah is writing about in verse six.

MacArthur concludes “Now what are you saying here? back to Zechariah. I'm saying that it was a custom among the pagans to cut themselves. And so while this guy is saying, "I'm no prophet, I've just been a farmer. I'm not into any of that pagan stuff, I'm just a farmer." Somebody's going to say to him, "Well, why are you all cut up then?" And literally the Hebrew says this, "What are these wounds between thy hands?" And most people have determined that what that means is between the hands is here...and so it's in the torso. Some have stated anywhere on the arms or across the torso would be where these pagans would cut or it could mean actually in the hand. But pagans cut themselves in their religion. So the question is, if you're not a false prophet, why are you all cut up? And he's caught and he says, "Well, these are the wounds with which I was wounded in the house of my lovers," ahab(?) in Hebrew, lovers literally.

“You say, "What are the lovers?" I agree with Luphold (?), the commentator who says "The lovers are the idols that he loved." These are the wounds of my idolatry. You see, he can't escape it, he has to admit it. I was wounded in the house of my lovers. I was wounded in idolatry. There's no alibi, there's no way out when God begins to deal with the sham prophets in the day of Israel's cleansing, and so Israel will be cleansed from the defilement of sin and the deception of sham prophets.”

10/26/2016 12:41 AM