God’s Word for You

Zechariah 13:3 Correct each other

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Friday, September 9, 2022

3 And if anyone still prophesies, his father and his mother who bore him will say to him, ‘You must die, because you speak lies in the name of the LORD.’ And his father and his mother who bore him will pierce him through when he prophesies.

Zechariah knows that even after the Lord comes to redeem the world, there is still a chance that fallen, sinful mankind will produce more false teachers. Someone might say, “How could that even happen? Wouldn’t it be impossible?” But Zechariah knew that Moses faced false teaching and opposition, as did Abraham before him, and Abel before him. One of the laws about the First Commandment given to Moses was the “If your own brother, son or daughter” clause. It goes like this:

“If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, ‘Let us go and worship other gods’ (gods that neither you nor your fathers have known, gods of the peoples around you, whether near or far, from one end of the land to the other), do not yield to him or listen to him. Show him no pity. Do not spare him or shield him. You must certainly put him to death. Your hand must be the first in putting him to death, and then the hands of all the people.” (Deuteronomy 13:6-9)

A false teacher was not to be spared, not for one second. Under the Law of Moses, if you heard anyone even suggesting the worship of a false god, that person was to be killed immediately so that the infection of their false teaching would end right then and there, even if they were someone close to you.

Remember the trouble that came to Israel when Korah, Dathan and Abiram opposed Moses in the desert of Sinai? When they broke away from Israel with tens of thousands of Reubenites and Levites, setting up their own nation that harassed and oppressed Israel and joined with their enemies against them for centuries to come? No, we don’t remember that, because it didn’t happen. When Moses was opposed by Korah and the others, the earth opened up and swallowed them along with their families. The heresy began and ended in the space of an hour.

The law Moses received alerted the Jews to the danger of false teaching and blasphemy, but of course we know that the ability of man to judge a man’s doctrine is also clouded by the judge’s own false belief, as when Jesus faced opposition in Nazareth (Luke 4:29) and in Jerusalem (John 8:59, 10:31). So when Zechariah uses the same verb as in 12:10 and says that the false prophet’s parents will “pierce him,” it’s a reminder to us that Christ was unjustly arrested, punished, tortured, crucified, and even stabbed with a spear, “a fact,” Professor Baldwin notes, “that alerts the reader to question whether the ‘witch hunt’ has overstepped the mark, and wiped out the true with the false” (Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi p. 196). So Jesus warned about unbelief and false teaching in the parable of the weeds: “The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull [the weeds] up?’ ‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them” (Matthew 13:28-29). The world is no longer as simple as in the days of Moses, nor as clear-cut. So now, in the New Testament age, we do not put false teachers to death, but as Luther says: “They will not do this with weapons of iron but with the word of God. For it will be a spiritual, friendly piercing, as is done to a child by a father and a mother, and even as Saint Paul pierces the Galatians and Corinthians and rebukes their error with God’s word” (LW 20:333). As Jeremiah prayed: “Correct me Lord, but with justice, not in your anger, or you will reduce me to nothing” (Jeremiah 10:24 EHV).

When we hear false doctrine, it is most often not from the lips of a false prophet today, but from our own friends and family members who simply don’t understand that we don’t get to heaven by being good people. We should know “that a person is not justified by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ” (Galatians 2:16), but there are times when we get spiritually sleepy, and forget the main point. So when a friend is misguided, or if your child, or your dad, or your husband has got that wrong, let them know what is right. Use gentle words when correcting one another, as Paul commands (2 Timothy 2:25), saving the piercing stabs for false prophets and wicked teachers who are out for money, power, or prestige. “I will punish their sin with the rod,” the Spirit says, “their iniquity with flogging, but I will not take my love from him” (Psalm 89:32-33), for a false teacher needs harder blows than his flock does. Remember that one does not rescue a straying lamb with a fork or spear, but with a loving hand. “Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked” (Psalm 82:4), and “save us and help us with your right hand, that those you love may be delivered” (Psalm 60:5). As Jesus forgave and corrected us, so we forgive and correct each other.

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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