Zechariah 6:9-15

Intro / Pray

You hopefully have notices as Jake read that we are now out of the Night Visions. Actually we said that we were through them last time as we covered the final three visions in one sweep. Now as today’s text comes to us we will find that it forms a bridge to the rest of the book as it buttons up the night visions for us and prepares us to move forward into the rest of what Zechariah has to prophecy to the people.

As we start in here with this text today it is good to know that this text is going to move us forward by providing a very clear prophetic signpost pointing the people forward toward the Messiah. No burying the lead here, this text is all about the messiah who is going to come and bring about the full realization of all that Zechariah has seen in these visions.

To understand this we need to remind ourselves of what the visions have directed us to.

Vision Review

We saw in the first vision the riders on the horses that came to give the report that the world was a rest and the assurance that God was now going to begin to move on behalf of His people. The temple was going to be rebuilt and an inheritance was goign to be allotted to the people again. This return of God’s blessign to Jerusalem was going to be accompanied with His hand of judgement going out to the nations which were, to that time, relatively at peace, at least from the devastating judgement of God.

This was then cast for us in the second vision as a war of worship. The idolatry of the nations that had wooed Israel to their own adulterous whorings, represented by the 4 horns of a pagan alter were going to be destroyed and their destruction would come as a result of the true worship of YHWH again being reestablished in the temple. Thus 4 craftsmen were coming to tear down that idolatrous alter and destroy it and they do this by establishing the true worship of God in the rebuilt temple.

Remember the lazer focus we have seen from our time in Haggai until now on the restoration of the right and proper worship of God. That fundamental to what God has called us to as His Church is our being built up together as the people of God and worshiping Him together rightly and we have noted a number of times how utterly important that is to us in our own day as we seek to be established in Churches that are rightly worshiping Him. Worship is not about personal preference or what makes us feel good or spiritually energized on a Sunday morning, no, worship is about honoring and glorifying God by gathering together as His people and exalting Him among us in the ways that He has directed that this be done.

The third vision took us to the man with the measuring line. We saw the promise again of a reestablished inheritance and the unwalled nature of the city. This vision is where we really began to see that these night visions, while intended to strengthen and establish the people in the work they were seeking to do on the Temple was also intended to direct their gaze forward to a future day when these blessings that they saw and experienced in their immediate context would be multiplies out as redemption spread across the world under the future rule of their messianic King.

“Many nations” we read in verse 11 of chapter 2, would “join themselves to the Lord,” and most astonishingly of all, He, this one and the same Lord of Israel, will call them HIS people!!!

This took us to the central visions that told of the reestablishment of the holy priesthood through the cleansing of Joshua and through Zerubbable the promise came of a completed temple and there was held out the wonderful truth that the promise of God to David of an eternal kingship over God’s people still held fast and would one day be established through the one called the “Branch.”

We then saw the final three visions that told of the need for holiness in God’s people and the standard of the Law that would be a curse to those who would claim to be in God’s covenant community and yet would persist in breaking the law, just as the curses of the law had been proclaimed over the land by Joshua they still, figured as a giant scroll, went out across God’s land in this post exilic period.

We saw another picture of competing worship as idolatry was carried away from God’s people and given a home in the land of Babylon from which it would still seek to draw God’s people astray if possible, if they didn't cling to the true and pure worship that God was calling them to in the Temple and finally we saw the horses of the wrath of God chomping at the bit to thunder throughout the world and bring the recompense of God’s wrath on those who would not come and be joined to God through His Temple.

These visions again, see some partial fulfillments in the post exilic period as the temple is indeed finished and many exiles return and even in the events surrounding the book of Esther as we see Jews rise to positions of power and defeat and plunder their enemies. However these fulfillment will always fall short of the kinds of fulfillments that we would look for seeing the full scope of the promises contained within the visions and we know that this is because their fulfilment was tethered to the coming of the Messianic King in whom all of the hopes of Israel and all of the promises of the Covenants would find their yes and amen.

It is now to this figure that this word from the Lord directs the people on the other side of these Night visions.

A Coming Priest/King

Lets read:

English Standard Version Chapter 6

9 And the word of the LORD came to me: 10 “Take from the exiles Heldai, Tobijah, and Jedaiah, who have arrived from Babylon, and go the same day to the house of Josiah, the son of Zephaniah. 11 Take from them silver and gold, and make a crown, and set it on the head of Joshua, the son of Jehozadak, the high priest. 12 And say to him, ‘Thus says the LORD of hosts, “Behold, the man whose name is the Branch: for he shall branch out from his place, and he shall build the temple of the LORD. 13 It is he who shall build the temple of the LORD and shall bear royal honor, and shall sit and rule on his throne. And there shall be a priest on his throne, and the counsel of peace shall be between them both.” ’ 14 And the crown shall be in the temple of the LORD as a reminder to Helem, Tobijah, Jedaiah, and Hen the son of Zephaniah.

15 “And those who are far off shall come and help to build the temple of the LORD. And you shall know that the LORD of hosts has sent me to you. And this shall come to pass, if you will diligently obey the voice of the LORD your God.”

Now there are some questions that we cant answer.

Primary among them is “When?” When does this word of the Lord come to Zechariah?

Some argue that this was the day after the visions. That Zechariah woke and almost immediately recieved this word. Now this could be and there could be some textual warrant in this but it seems more likely to me that there is some time that transpires.

I have two reasons for suggesting this.

This first has to do with the visions themselves. There was, in the visions, a call to the exiles that had stayed in the land of Babylon to return to the promised land. We saw that in 2:6-7 and see it reinforced in the other visions as the land of Babylon is clearly shown to be a place that will soon experience judgement.

English Standard Version Chapter 2

6 Up! Up! Flee from the land of the north, declares the LORD. For I have spread you abroad as the four winds of the heavens, declares the LORD. 7 Up! Escape to Zion, you who dwell with the daughter of Babylon.

And so it could be that these men who have returned now have done so as a result of hearing of these visions of Zechariah. It also seems as though these men have brought with them treasure for the building of the Temple which was also a fulfilment of prophecy, that the nations would be plundered and their wealth would come to Jerusalem.

The other point that I see for a later date for this prophecy is the fact that the crown that is made, we will talk about this crown in a moment, but this crown is placed in the Temple.

Now we know that at this point we are still early on and there are something like 14 more years left int he temple building project, at least from the time of the night visions. Therefore if it is immediately following them there would likely not have been much of a Temple yet to place this crown in.

Now, in the end it doesn't matter a great deal and does no disservice to the text either way but I am inclined to believe that at least some time has passed. How much though we don't know.

We see here though that regardless of how much time has transpired that three men have arrived from Babylon and have come into the house of another man named Josiah. Now many theories abound about the names of the men, you will notice that the names change a bit between the beginning of this oracle and the end, Heldai, Tobijah, Jedaiah, and Josiah, become Helem, Tobijah, Jedaiah, and Hen. There is some warrant to believe that there is a play on words and that the names of these men connect to the visions and that two of them Heldai and Josiah are called by nick names in the end which in the Hebrew might have added more significance but I think this is lost to us. Just know that this is likely what is happening and this isn't some sort of scribal error. For us though pining down what this might have been is more of an exercise in wading through the weeds that we need to do this morning.

What we do see for sure though is that Zechariah is to take from them silver and gold and make for that a crown.

Now the language is difficult here especially ass it relates to the crown because the word for crown is plural but there is clearly only one crown in mind. This is solved by noting that this was probably a crown made of dual circlets of silver and gold woven together to make a singular crown.

Crown Joshua?

Now though the seemingly difficult part. Look who they are to crown. Joshua the high priest.

English Standard Version Chapter 6

make a crown, and set it on the head of Joshua, the son of Jehozadak, the high priest.

Now without any sort of work to understand what was going on here who would you naturally assume is going to receive this crown?

Zerubbable right? He is from the line of David, he is the governor of the land. It seems natural that if someone was to receive a crown it would be him.

First off though we need to understand that if a crown had been placed on Zerubbable’s head that it would have been seen as an act of rebellion and it would have caused the Persians to likely sweep in and once again crush the people.

Zerubbable had been appointed by the Persian king as a governor of this tiny little province and there is no way that they could have crowned him king. Now, of course God could have easily accomplished this if He had wanted to, nothing could have thwarted that but the thing is that this isn't the point of the passage. This passage isn't at all about who is going to reign over Israel now. This is a passage of promise and Joshua here becomes a picture of something that is to come.

This becomes abundantly clear when we read what follows:

English Standard Version Chapter 6

And say to him, ‘Thus says the LORD of hosts, “Behold, the man whose name is the Branch: for he shall branch out from his place, and he shall build the temple of the LORD. 13 It is he who shall build the temple of the LORD and shall bear royal honor, and shall sit and rule on his throne. And there shall be a priest on his throne, and the counsel of peace shall be between them both.” ’ 14 And the crown shall be in the temple of the LORD as a reminder to Helem, Tobijah, Jedaiah, and Hen the son of Zephaniah.

In consideration of time we are simply going to take the each piece of this text and show how it is that it applies to christ as we consider its place within the overall passage rather than considering its place in the passage first and then taking them and tying them forward. From its earliest days this text has been considered messianic and so its not as though we even need to consider what the original context might have been, the original context is messianic.

And so you can almost picture it, you have Joshua, this newly cleansed priest who has been made fit for his role by God Himself through the ministry of the prophet Zechariah and now this man stands here before these people with this crown on his head as a living object lesson pointing toward this One who is to come and God says:

“Behold, the man!”

The branch was to be a man. This seems almost to simple for us but it is so important that we see that from the OT it was promised that this coming messiah would be a man. This also connects this individual to all of the hopes that have come before. Stretching the whole way back to the first gospel proclamation in Genesis that the “seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent.” What ever it was that God was going to do to redeem mankind was going to involve a man.

I am reminded of Romans 5:

English Standard Version Chapter 5

12 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned— 13 for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. 14 Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.

15 But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many.

EXPOUND IF NEEDED

We also see that this Branch figure is to branch out. What ever it is that is going to take place with this one there is a growth and expansion, its not just one branch.

Again I am reminded of Jesus as the vine: (John 15:4-5)

English Standard Version Chapter 15

4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. 5 I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. 6

We also call to mind the OT and NT imagery of a tree growing and Expanding. In Ezekiel 17:22 and following we read:

English Standard Version Chapter 17

22 Thus says the Lord GOD: “I myself will take a sprig from the lofty top of the cedar and will set it out. I will break off from the topmost of its young twigs a tender one, and I myself will plant it on a high and lofty mountain. 23 On the mountain height of Israel will I plant it, that it may bear branches and produce fruit and become a noble cedar. And under it will dwell every kind of bird; in the shade of its branches birds of every sort will nest. 24 And all the trees of the field shall know that I am the LORD; I bring low the high tree, and make high the low tree, dry up the green tree, and make the dry tree flourish. I am the LORD; I have spoken, and I will do it.”

And Jesus tells us the parable of the mustard seed in Matthew 13:31-32

Matthew 13:31–32 ESV

He put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”

Temple Builder

We also see that this branch is to be the builder of the temple.

English Standard Version Chapter 6

and he shall build the temple of the LORD. 13 It is he who shall build the temple of the LORD

This statement has of course caused problems for some. We have see that Zerubbable has already been promised that he will set the top stone of the temple that they are building in place. How then can Joshua or some future figure be the one who builds the temple?

The answer is easy enough ofcourse. There is a wealth of prophetic literature from the exile and the post exilic period that we have already covered that just does not fit with what is being built in Jerusalem at the present time.

Isaiah, Micah, Jeremiah, Haggai, and most notably Ezekiel had promised a grand temple that would be greater than anything that had been built before. In fact we have see that these prophets had to console the people because they were discouraged that what they were seeing taking form through their efforts was not going to even equal the glory and grandeur of Solomon’s Temple much less exceed it in greatness.

Therefore it is not hard to believe that these people, though they had committed themselves to obediently finish the work they had been given could never the less understand that there would one day be a ruler who would bring about the grandeur that they had been promised.

Now of course, as we stand in the light of the fullness of the revelation of God’s plan of redemption in Christ Jesus we understand as we have labored to show that this grandeur is so far above that Temple of stone because the Temple that this branch would build would literally be the Temple of His Own Body. He is the Temple of God.

Remember Jesus said to the Pharisees, “Destroy this Temple and in Three Days I will Build it up!”

Also we are being made a part of that temple as living stones as we are joined to Christ and made a part of His Tabernacleing structure here on this earth!

We have labored this point so I wont labor it farther but I posted a great summary of this theological theme in the FB chat yesterday.

Finally now though we get to the hardest verses in this section and I am just going to give you what I think the meaning is and not take us through a ton of the discussion surrounding them because we don't have the time. We read following the building of the Temple:

English Standard Version Chapter 6

and shall bear royal honor, and shall sit and rule on his throne. And there shall be a priest on his throne, and the counsel of peace shall be between them both.” ’

Who is sitting on whose throne and what this council of peace is has perplexed commentators for a long time.

Simply put I believe that this is speaking of Christ being sat down on the throne of His Father after having completed the work of the Cross that resulted in Peace between God and men and literally between God and Christ as it is Christ who became our representative.

The throne is YHWH’s and the priest is Christ as he came and became as Hebrews tells us our High Priest and has now sat down at the right hand of the father having completed the work he came to do.

Paul strings so many of these threads together for us in Ephesians 2 when he writes:

English Standard Version Chapter 2

13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 14 For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility 15 by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, 16 and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. 17 And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. 18 For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. 19 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, 21 in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. 22 In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

That the prophecy ends:

English Standard Version Chapter 6

15 “And those who are far off shall come and help to build the temple of the LORD.

Only strengthens the connections we have made. Of course the Jews were returning from exile and helping to build the temple but as we have noted before this whole period really serves to provide a foretaste and a picture of the greater reality which was to come!

Crown in the Temple

Backing up just a bit there though we also see that this crown was then taken from Joshua’s head after the object lesson had been given and it was stored in the temple.

English Standard Version Chapter 6

14 And the crown shall be in the temple of the LORD as a reminder to Helem, Tobijah, Jedaiah, and Hen the son of Zephaniah.

This crown was to serve as a reminder to the people of the promises that had been made through it. Remember those in the temple at the time of Christ waiting for the consolation of Israel? As far as we know this crown could well have still been in the temple when Christ was born! We don't have a lot of records of what happened when the Greeks desecrated the temple but they didn't destroy it and it could well be that this crown was there.

In fact one commentator points out that when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, an image we will see sometime here is drawn from the later prophecies of Zechariah that continue to develop the theme of this messianic figure. That when Christ literally fulfilled the words of Zechariah clearly showing Israel that He was the Branch, that he then went to the Temple and what ought to have happened was that they should have went in and taken this crown, presuming that ti was still there, and they should have set it on His head!

That is what should have happened. That’s not what happened though, we know that the people rejected the Branch and that he cleansed the Temple one last time and left and in a few short days he was crowned with an entirely different crown, a crown of thorns as He in further fulfillment of the visions of Zechariah, in one day cleansed once and for all all of his people, all of those who put faith in Him, He provided a perfect and lasting atonement through His own blood!

Commentators are divided here but I tend to agree with those who see a significance to the progression from priest to throne.

English Standard Version Chapter 6

And there shall be a priest on his throne,

Christ first becomes our High Priest and then He, as Joshua was here, is Crowned and takes the throne. The tow offices are brought together and through it all we are blessed to find perfect peace with God in a Kingdom that will never fail lead by a King who will reign forever.

What a glorious hope that is held out to these people and what a glorious hope is ours to have been blessed to share int he fulfilment of these things and be made through the work of Christ members of this very thing, the people, the living Temple of the Living God.

Closing

Quickly a point of application as we close.

God’s word proves true, we can bank our lives on it and we can trust that what it promises will come to pass.