Amazing Prophecies from the Bible

A Monthly Feature to Build Our Faith

As you study the Bible, you will find that a large number of Old Testament prophecies center upon and deal with our Lord’s Passion, Crucifixion and Resurrection. This is as you would expect, since our faith is tied to all that happened during Holy Week to redeem us from our sins and give us hope for our future life with the Lord.

This month we are going to look at the amazing prophecy of Judas’ betrayal of our Lord that is predicted in Zechariah 11. This prophecy deals with true and false shepherds of Israel. Our Lord was the true and good shepherd of Israel, while Judas and the religious leaders of his day were the false ones. In Zechariah 11:13 the Holy Spirit gives Zechariah a prophecy about the conflict between the shepherds of Israel as the Lord speaks to His shepherd Zechariah and ultimately our Lord Jesus. The text says,

“And the Lord said to me, ‘Throw it to the potter’- the handsome price at which they priced me! So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the house of the Lord to the potter.”

This amazing prophecy uses irony and sarcasm to speak about a betrayal and rejection of God’s leadership and authority over His people by false leaders. God’s shepherd is not valued by the people and is being sold and trivialized for 30 pieces of silver. In addition to this, 30 coins are being thrown “into the house of the Lord to the potter”. Now, this phrase is simply incredible! There were no potters in the Temple area or in God’s house. This phrase appears to be confusing and hard to understand. Why would someone throw 30 coins toward the Temple to a potter? None of this seems to make much sense. Also, we have no clear evidence that Zechariah or any shepherd of his day was being sold or priced for 30 pieces of silver. The price of 30 pieces of silver was the price put on a male/female slave that was “pierced” by a bull in Exodus 21:32. That reference doesn’t seem to make sense either!

Ultimately, all of these words from Zechariah would have their meaning and fulfillment in the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, the True Shepherd of Israel. These words find a clear meaning and fulfillment through the betrayal of our Lord by Judas Iscariot. The irony and sarcasm of Zechariah’s words are seen when Israel, through Judas, does not value the True Shepherd of God’s people, and as a result devalues him and sells him as a common slave according to the Old Testament law.

If you begin to study Matthew 27:1-10 in detail, you will see how the story of Judas mysteriously fulfills and gives meaning to Zechariah 11. Most of us know that Judas betrayed our Lord for 30 pieces of silver according to Matthew 26:14-16. However, what many believers fail to remember is what happened to the betrayal money. According to Matthew 27:5, Judas threw the money back toward the Temple out of guilt for his betrayal and then went and hanged himself. After the money was thrown back toward the Temple, the religious leaders refused to keep it and use it for the Temple since they saw it as “blood money” (see Matthew 27:6). Now this is an absolutely amazing turn of events! Instead of keeping the money for themselves or the Temple, these corrupted leaders used the money to pay for Judas’s burial plot. However, the astonishing thing was that they used the money to buy a place in “Potter’s Field”, which was a gravesite for foreigners (Matthew 27:7). The religious leaders had unwittingly fulfilled Zechariah’s words by not only sending the money toward “the potter”, but they also condemned Judas in his death by declaring him a foreigner to Israel through his burial location. AMAZING!!!!

As we sit back and gaze on this prophecy and the intricacies of it, I am overwhelmed with the inspiration of Scripture. No one could even begin to figure out all that was being discussed by the words in Zechariah 11. However, as we watch the Old Testament finding its ultimate focus on our Lord Jesus, it ALL makes sense. Even the price of a slave that was gored by a bull shows us a wonderful picture of our Lord. Our Lord became a servant/slave for us and allowed Himself to be “gored” or crucified on our behalf to restore us back to Israel and God’s purposes for our lives. Truly there is no end to these amazing prophecies and the awesome character of our Lord and His Word.

As I close out this edition of “Amazing Prophecies”, I hope and pray the Lord will use all of these prophecies to encourage your heart this month about the wonderful future we have in our Lord. How can we study and read such prophecies and not be filled with wonder, awe and praise for His majesty and glory in our redemption? May our lives continue to be a doxology for Him.