Zechariah 3

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Intro:

This chapter has been a lot of fun to study. One one hand as you read it with any sort of familiarity of the Biblical text you cant help but get the idea that what we find here must point toward Christ in a very concrete way. We read of Joshua’s filthy garments being removed and his being clothed with pure vestments and also of the coming figure of the branch who is going to remove in one day the iniquity of the land and your mid should almost automatically snap forward to Christ and what He did.
Now there is nothing wrong with this, indeed we will go there but this passage is also rich in significance within the OT texts and carries a weight of meaning that would have been super important for the people in Zechariah's day and when we see those connections and the glow of the richness of the OT contexts that emanates from this text that only serves to enhance the brightness and glory of what this text will mean as it is drawn forward to its ultimate fulfilment in Jesus!
So that is what we are going to do this morning. We will first see the text in its immediate historical context of the post exilic period and the early days of the renewed efforts to rebuild the temple in obedience to God’s command and then we will widen out with our reward glance to see how the covenant made with the people at Sinai gives even greater clarity to what God is promising to do here and then with all of that we will take some time to consider this text in relation to what Christ has come to do for all of God’s people across the whole earth and across all of history.
So lets take a moment to pray, read the chapter again and then dive in.

PRAY & READ

I think that we will find here as we dig in to the historical context of what is going on here that we will find that this passage is not nearly as difficult as it seems though even then I will note here that there are some difficult aspects to this vision that have stumped or at least brought debate and argument amongst even the most brilliant of Biblical scholars. The essence of the text is pretty straight forward, the rebuilding of the temple requires a pure priesthood to administer the temple rights so that the people can be clean and yet as we will shortly see there are some significant challenges in arriving at a cleansed priesthood that can administer these sacrifices on behalf of the people. Some of the specifics we will see are a bit more challenging.
The vision starts off in what most believe to be the inner courts of the temple in Jerusalem or more likely still the sanctuary of God in Heaven. We find that in this vision Zechariah is shown this place and sees the following:

Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him. 2 And the LORD said to Satan, “The LORD rebuke you, O Satan! The LORD who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is not this a brand plucked from the fire?”

Joshua the priest standing before the Angle of the Lord and Satan at his right hand. Satan which means adversary or accuser. This is similar to what we find in Job when he appears with the sons of God and is incited against Job.
Now I think there is something very specific going on here. This tends towards our interpretive maxamilist approach but I think it is important to see that these heavenly realities that Zechariah is seeing are firmly grounded in real world events.
The context I believe for what is happening in Heaven is found in Ezra chapter 3-5. In Ezra 3 we read of the beginning of the rebuilding efforts after the alter is finished. This is familiar territory and so we won’t rehash it. If you haven't been here you can read the story in Ezra 3 for yourself.
Now what we saw was that immediately after the rebuilding efforts of the temple had started the first time that opposition had arisen. We read in chapter 4:

4 Then the people of the land discouraged the people of Judah and made them afraid to build 5 and bribed counselors against them to frustrate their purpose, all the days of Cyrus king of Persia, even until the reign of Darius king of Persia.

The people experienced opposition to building the temple and stopped the building for around 16 years. It is this period of time that I believe is being visualized in this heavenly court. Now there is some overlap in the times here, we we know the rebuilding has started a new but the people here are being given a glimpse into why they had faced the opposition. Namely it was because Satan was accusing them in heaven and there was a period of time in God’s providence where he allowed the building to be thwarted because there were some real genuine problems that needed to be overcome so that Satan’s opposition could be thwarted.
We see this in the vision. As long as Joshua is clothed in the garments that he currently wears he is not fit to serves as a priest for the people. Satan is accusing him before the Lord and for a time his accusations are with merit; Joshua , and by extension the people are still worthy of judgement, they ought to be in exile not back in the land seeking to build the temple, they are still unclean and we will see why in a moment.

Application: See the Strings

This idea of a heavenly picture behind an earthly reality is important for us to understand. The opposition and hardships that we face in this life as we seek to live out our lives faithfully before the Lord and seek to spread the gospel and build His kingdom, while this opposition may come from men and women around us we ought to know that in the heavenly realities, the unseen force behind this opposition is Satan the accuser the adversary. We as Paul says, do not wrestle against flesh and blood!
It is also important to note the position of Satan in this vision. He is at Joshua’s right hand. This is the place we read else ware that God stands to help us and so we find here, again, the legitimacy of Satan’s opposition, he is able to stand at the right hand of this man and accuse him because his accusations have merit.

Satan Rebuked

Glory to God though, as we see here, Satan’s opposition is limited by and overcome through the purposes and plans of God to move in this world with redemption and power for His people!
And so the vision continues:

2 And the LORD said to Satan, “The LORD rebuke you, O Satan! The LORD who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is not this a brand plucked from the fire?”

We see Satan rebuked by the Lord through the declaration that this, that is Joshua, is a brand plucked from a fire.
We see similar imagery in Amos4 where we read:

11  “I overthrew some of you,

as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah,

and you were as a brand plucked out of the burning;

yet you did not return to me,”

declares the LORD.

Also in Jude 22 & 23

22 And have mercy on those who doubt; 23 save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh.

This is imagery of rescue. That these people, that Joshua has passed through judgement and has been snatched out of it.
God is declaring to Satan that he does indeed have redemptive purposes in store for this man and his people and we quickly see these purposes worked out in the vision.

Clothing Joshua

The vision continues:

3 Now Joshua was standing before the angel, clothed with filthy garments. 4 And the angel said to those who were standing before him, “Remove the filthy garments from him.” And to him he said, “Behold, I have taken your iniquity away from you, and I will clothe you with pure vestments.” 5 And I said, “Let them put a clean turban on his head.” So they put a clean turban on his head and clothed him with garments. And the angel of the LORD was standing by.

Now here again it is easy to skip forward and read these verses in light of their obvious christological and NT significance but we must not miss the significance the held of the people then.
We need to turn back to Exodus 29 to get the context for what is happening here.
The priests were to be holy to the Lord. Aaron wore a golden plate on the front of his turban that said just that and in Exodus 29 we find the process through which Moses, the prophet of the Lord purified Aaron and his sons to serve as priests. We wont read the whole chapter but if we start at the beginning we read:

Now this is what you shall do to them to consecrate them, that they may serve me as priests. Take one bull of the herd and two rams without blemish, 2 and unleavened bread, unleavened cakes mixed with oil, and unleavened wafers smeared with oil. You shall make them of fine wheat flour. 3 You shall put them in one basket and bring them in the basket, and bring the bull and the two rams. 4 You shall bring Aaron and his sons to the entrance of the tent of meeting and wash them with water. 5 Then you shall take the garments, and put on Aaron the coat and the robe of the ephod, and the ephod, and the breastpiece, and gird him with the skillfully woven band of the ephod. 6 And you shall set the turban on his head and put the holy crown on the turban. 7 You shall take the anointing oil and pour it on his head and anoint him. 8 Then you shall bring his sons and put coats on them, 9 and you shall gird Aaron and his sons with sashes and bind caps on them. And the priesthood shall be theirs by a statute forever. Thus you shall ordain Aaron and his sons.

Further down in verse 19 we read of the purifying of the priestly garments:

19 “You shall take the other ram, and Aaron and his sons shall lay their hands on the head of the ram, 20 and you shall kill the ram and take part of its blood and put it on the tip of the right ear of Aaron and on the tips of the right ears of his sons, and on the thumbs of their right hands and on the great toes of their right feet, and throw the rest of the blood against the sides of the altar. 21 Then you shall take part of the blood that is on the altar, and of the anointing oil, and sprinkle it on Aaron and his garments, and on his sons and his sons’ garments with him. He and his garments shall be holy, and his sons and his sons’ garments with him.

Now we understand that just to work in the temple required Aaron and his sons to be cleansed but the most important role given to the High Priest was the duty to enter into the Holy of Holies once a year on the day of atonement and there offer the blood of a sacrifice on behalf of all the people. In this way the High Priest represented all of the people before the Lord and it was utterly imperative that he enter this place having been cleansed and with the proper garments!
And here in lies the rub! It was Moses who had been charged by God with the task of providing the initial cleansing for Aaron and his sons and from that point forward the mantle of the priesthood was passed down perpetually from father to son.
We read as much in verse 29 of our chapter in Exodus:

29 “The holy garments of Aaron shall be for his sons after him; they shall be anointed in them and ordained in them. 30 The son who succeeds him as priest, who comes into the tent of meeting to minister in the Holy Place, shall wear them seven days.

As a prophet Moses was able to receive the divine prophetic word and act to bring that initial cleansing and from that point forward there was, at least there seems to have been, and unbroken passing of the mantle of High Priest from father to son, that is until the exile. The temple had been destroyed, the land and its people ceremonially unclean had been exiled for 70 years and now that they have come back into the land they are in the midst of a catch 22. They needed a cleansed priest to establish the temple and they needed a cleansed temple to establish the priest.
In the removal of Joshua’s filthy cloths we see more than just a picture of the cleansing of the people from their sin, we see God moving as He had done in the days of Moses to establish a legitimate priesthood. As we see in verse 2, He has again chosen Jerusalem and He is now going to cleanse Joshua in such a way that he can again take up the mantle of the High Priest and can offer again the sacrifice on the Day of Atonement.
You see the day of Atonement had not been celebrated, we read of the feast of booths and the general establishment of sacrifices but the celebration of the day of atonement that ought to have followed the feast of booths did not take place because it required a temple and it required a priest. The people were building a temple and God himself was now moving to provide a priest!
And so ceremonially we see this beautiful picture of Joshua’s defilement being removed at the Lord’s command and his being clothed in new garments.

Pure Vestments

Now even in these garments we see a hint that the blessings that are to follow in this new time period of their History were to be greater than those that had come before. The language used for the garments and the turban while they carry the sense of the holy robes that were worn by the priests they are also words that aren't typically associated with it. The words used here denote expensive garments that would have been worn in times of tremendous blessing and celebration. The vision combines the language of being clothed in the holy garments of a priest with the language of tremendous prosperity and blessing. This is what is in store for God’s people through this renewed priesthood.

A New Prophet

Notice also that we see Zechariah himself speak into this whole affair.

5 And I said, “Let them put a clean turban on his head.” So they put a clean turban on his head and clothed him with garments.

I believe that just as Moses as a prophet took place in the cleansing of Aaron to serve and the establishment of the priesthood in his day so Zechariah is being moved by the Spirit to take part in this new establishment of the priesthood.
And lastly we see that the Angle of the Lord was standing by.
Standing by brings to mind a certain readiness to act. This also fits with the turn that we now find in this vision. We have seen three visions of promise that God is preparing to accomplish something and now as the High Priest has been clothed and made ready for temple service and the Day of Atonement sacrifice is soon to be rightly administered the path has been divinely prepared for the Angle to begin to act.
Commentator Jim Jordan says that you can liken this vision to the midnight hour, the night is half spent and now we are headed toward a glorious morning. We will see this progression as well in the rest of he visions.

Application: Nakedness

Now a point of application here before we move on into the latter half of the chapter. Notice that Joshua has his filthy garments removed before the new garments can be put on.
As believers we acknowledge that we must be at the task of putting off our sin but I think that we try and minimize the nakedness that this can cause us to feel. We try and avoid this being laid bare like Joshua.
This is not central to the movement of the text and so Zechariah doesn't make any points here about this but we can draw the implication that for Joshua to be clothed in the pure garments he had need of fully removing the old which would have left him for a time naked as it were there int he courts of heaven.
Our tendency to avoid this naked feeling as we peal of our garments of sin is to try and do it slowly and piece by piece. Now sanctification is a process and so yes, we don't remove sin all at once but when properly dealt with through confession and repentance there is a feeling similar to nakedness and a potential shame and embarrassment in that act and yet as we approach it we must trust in the promises of God that we do this not to remain naked and laid bare before God but that we might be further clothed as Joshua was in far better garments!

The Charge and the Promise

Now from verse 6 on we have a charge to Joshua as the freshly clothed High Priest and a promise to him and also to the people about what faithfulness will result in.
This is also the section of the text where we hit some of the difficult imagery and thankfully as we have expounded the main thrust of the text we don't need to get tripped up if we cant determine exactly what the prophet is pointing towards here.
We read first the charge:

And the angel of the LORD solemnly assured Joshua, 7 “Thus says the LORD of hosts: If you will walk in my ways and keep my charge, then you shall rule my house and have charge of my courts, and I will give you the right of access among those who are standing here

Simply put the charge is two fold, Zechariah is told to be morally obedient to God, walk in my ways, follow the law, live a blameless life before the Lord and also to be ritually obedient, to keep his charge, to execute the office that he has been given according to the demands of the one who has made him fit to serve and who determines how the office is to be carried out. There is no creativity in the priesthood! (A thought that ought to be of great comfort to preachers everywhere!)
If he does this then he will be able to maintain his role in the temple and we see be granted access to enter the Holy of Holies, that is what is meant by:

I will give you the right of access among those who are standing here. 8

He is standing in the high court of heaven and as the High Priest he will be able to ceremonially enter in to this place through the Holy of Holies as he brings the blood of atonement before the Lord.
Next we get the promise:

8 Hear now, O Joshua the high priest, you and your friends who sit before you, for they are men who are a sign: behold, I will bring my servant the Branch. 9 For behold, on the stone that I have set before Joshua, on a single stone with seven eyes, I will engrave its inscription, declares the LORD of hosts, and I will remove the iniquity of this land in a single day. 10

Here is the difficulty and I will give just a few ideas of what these things might mean.
The easiest is the men who are a sign. These are the 24 chief priests of the divisions that served along with the High Priest in the temple. They are a sign because the renewal of this priesthood serves as a sign, as we will see, as James Jordan puts it, as a pledge of the approach of the Messianic kingdom.
This is the point of the next point:

behold, I will bring my servant the Branch.

The Branch is tied to the hopes of the renewed Davidic line and the prophets Isaiah & Jeremiah as they told of the coming Messiah the Branch that would grow from the root of Jesse.
Then we have this stone. This could be the corner stone of the temple it could be representative of the stone from Daniel’s prophecy that crashes down to earth breaking to pieces the kingdoms of this world and grows to fill the whole earth, a clear picture of the Kingdom of the Messiah. The seven eyes clearly point to the Spirit of God and the universality of His sight over all the earth but we aren't told of the inscription and we may have to wait until eternity to find out exactly what that means. It seems related though to the promise that:

I will remove the iniquity of this land in a single day.

This again is a clear reference to the work of Christ at the cross but we must also see it in light of what is being promised in the time of Zechariah. The full removal of sin in a single sacrifice had always been foreshadowed by the one day a year sacrifice of the Day of Atonement. There is coming a day the people are to understand when the temple will be restored, the work completed and the now cleansed priest, Joshua, will enter the Temple and will place the atoning blood in the Holy of Holies and in that day, that single day of the sacrifice, Israel will be again fully ceremonially clean!
That day will come with blessing as well, we read:

10 In that day, declares the LORD of hosts, every one of you will invite his neighbor to come under his vine and under his fig tree.”

This is a clear reference to Micah 4 where we read that as a result of this coming messianic kingdom:

4  but they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree,

and no one shall make them afraid,

for the mouth of the LORD of hosts has spoken.

And this is an expansion and a reflection of what e read happened in the high days of Solomon before Israel’s monarchy crumbled into rebellion:
1 Kings 4:25 ESV
And Judah and Israel lived in safety, from Dan even to Beersheba, every man under his vine and under his fig tree, all the days of Solomon.
And so we see that the blessings of being the people of God are now going to begin to flow as more and more of the necessary pieces for the right worship of God, namely in this vision, the priesthood is restored and the atoning sacrifice offered again in a rebuilt temple. All of this of course pointing us so clearly forward to the One who would come as the fulfilment of these temporal realities.

The Messiah

And so as we close we can think for a moment on that central reality. So many of the overarching themes of redemption are woven through this vision. We see a person, who represents a people, who is defiled. Just as Adam represented us in the garden and as my kids have been learning, the covenant being made with Adam not only for himself but also fro his children, all people descended from him by natural birth sinned in him and fell with him in his first transgression and so it was that sin came into the world and death through sin and death spread to all men because all have sinned.
And yet we see that God is not done with His people, though they have for a time born the consequences of their wickedness and experienced the just punishment for their sins yet God only allows satan a defined moment to bring accusation and when the time comes He steps in and pluck these sinners as we have read, like a brand from a fire, saved from being utterly destroyed in their sin they are plucked out and not just that but through his sovereign grace He has made a way that their filthy garments stained with the wretchedness of sin can be removed completely and they are not left unclothed but are rather clothed in the pure and holy garments composed of the righteousness of Christ, these garments aren't just pure and holy they are also the mark of tremendous blessing that is going to befall the people as they inherit the blessed inheritance that is theirs as the redeemed people of God.
We also see Christ in the role that Zechariah plays in this vision. Zechariah, like moses before him, is used as God’s prophet declaring into the world and making manifest the redemptive purposes of God.
Moses had declared to the people in Deuteronomy 18 that:

15 “The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen—

And Peter in Acts 3 makes a direct connection from Moses through the rest of the prophets to Christ.
We also see Christ in the Branch of verse 8 and while we will talk more about that in our next chapter we have this promise now that the restored priesthood is the pledge that this promise of the coming Messiah from the line of David, this branch that is to grow up out of the stump of the old kingly line and the covenant with David, this figure who will save His people will come.
And finally we most clearly see Christ in his office of Priest. The three key OT offices, Prophet, Priest, and King and Christ comes and takes on the mantle of all three but it is the priest who shines most clearly in this chapter.
Central in this chapter is the need for the renewal of the Day of Atonement. Without this atoning sacrifice and its blood which for a year would cover the sins of the people allowing God to pass over them the people, regardless of their current commitment to obedience, were yet unclean and faced the displeasure of God. However God moves to cleanse Joshua and establish his priesthood just as He had done for Aaron through Moses so that the sacrifice can once again be offered and the people made ceremonially clean.
We read in Hebrews:

we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God,

Christ as the great High Priest, unlike Joshua as we read in Hebrews had no need to seek cleansing for Himself and thus was able to make an offering, not for himself but for the people, fulfilling the day of Atonement language once and for all we read in Hebrews again:

11 But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) 12 he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. 13 For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, 14 how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.

15 Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance,

11 And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. 12 But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, 13 waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. 14 For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

In that day, the day of His sacrificial death on the cross, Jesus entered into the Holy of Holies in Heaven and applied there the blood of the new covenant, His own blood, a perfect sacrifice and as our Great High Priest, the fulfilment of this vision in Joshua and all that had come into the world as a result of the vision, He has once and for all time taken away, removed the iniquity of His people.
How wonderful then that God has granted that we are to share in these great and precious promises of redemption that were given to Israel that through them, through these covenants and promises the whole world might be blessed to receive an eternal redemption and be made members of the family of God by faith in this Christ!
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