I know ordinarily our Minor Prophets study has been in the first service on Sunday. We had a sort of Thanksgiving message in our first service. I wanted Zachariah here because Zachariah chapter three is one of those easily overlooked passages of scripture in the Old Testament and I just want you to see it. Now, I hope you have been following along in this series on the Minor Prophets, specifically, Zechariah, because if you are, I think you know by the time we get to chapter three, Zechariah definitely has the people's attention. At a time when tens of thousands of people had returned from captivity in Babylon and came back to Judah and restarted their lives, God sent two prophets, one named Haggai and this other, Zechariah, to encourage them in one specific task, rebuild the temple, reestablish worship of God. In Haggai, we see how it opens with Haggai coming to a man named Zerubbabel, who is the governor of Judah, and Joshua, who is the high priest of Judah. And he meets with them and says, look, God says to get back to work. the governor and the high priest buy into this message. They go out with Haggai into the public and tell the people, God wants us to get to work on the temple. And joining them, God sends Zachariah the prophet. And while Haggai was very straightforward in his message, right? God says, get back to work. Zachariah was a little bit different. Zachariah's like, I have been having visions. I looked down into a ravine and below the myrtle trees, there was a man on a red horse and he was sending out other riders throughout the world to report back on world events and the angel who talked to me explained that God has a plan for all nations and to reestablish Jerusalem and then, I had a vision of four horses, sorry, four horns and four craftsmen that God had designed and appointed to destroy them. And then I saw a young man who was a surveyor. He had a measuring line in his hand and he was measuring the city of Jerusalem. And God said that he would be himself a wall of fire around the city to protect it. Like if you were out there in the public and you were hearing Zachariah talk about his visions, you would be attentive. There is just no telling what this guy is gonna say next. So imagine what it was like when Zachariah gets to this point and he looks over at Joshua the high priest and points his finger at him and says, and then I saw you. Zechariah chapter three. Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord and Satan standing at his right hands to oppose him. And the Lord said to Satan, the Lord rebuke you, Satan. The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you. Is this not a brand plucked from the fire? Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments and was standing before the angel. Then he answered and spoke to those who stood before him saying, take away the filthy garments from him. And to him he said, see, I have removed your iniquity from you and I will clothe you with rich robes. And I said, let them put a clean turban on his head. So they put a clean turban on his head, and they put the clothes on him, and the angel of the Lord stood by. Then the angel of the Lord admonished Joshua, saying, Thus says the Lord of hosts, if you will walk in my ways and if you will keep my command, then you shall also judge my house and likewise have charge of my courts. I will give you places to walk among those who stand here. Hear, O Joshua the high priest, you and your companions who sit before you, for they are a wondrous sign. For behold, I am bringing forth my servant, the branch. For behold, the stone that I have laid before Joshua, upon the stone are seven eyes. Behold, I will engrave its inscription, says the Lord of hosts, and I will remove the iniquity of that land in one day. In that day, says the Lord of hosts, everyone will invite his neighbor under his vine and under his fig tree. All right, for you note takers, Let me give you a summary of the message in just a couple of sentences. There's a lot of detail in Zechariah chapter three, and we're gonna deal with it, but if we try to boil it down to its most basic message, the truth it teaches us, I think is this. There is no righteous person except those whom God makes righteous. He saves them from His wrath. He cleanses them of their sin and establishes their lives to walk by faith in His goodness. at first blush, you might be tempted to read Zechariah chapter three and think, well, since this is a strange vision from a strange Old Testament prophet, and it's about a high priest whose job it was to serve in a temple that did not exist at this point and does not exist now, maybe this just doesn't have a lot of meaning for me. And to be sure, there is a lot here that is maybe difficult for us to relate to, but Zachariah's vision of Joshua the high priest in chapter three, while it is far from typical, it presents basic truths about salvation. There is no righteous person except those whom God makes righteous. He saves them from His wrath, He cleanses them of their sin, and He establishes their lives to walk by faith in His promises. So I think it might be helpful this morning I just start to get to know the main character in Zachariah's vision here. His name is Joshua, except of course that's not how they would have pronounced it. There's really no J sound in Hebrew. So they would have pronounced his name Yahoshua or Yeshua. And the name simply means Yahweh saves or Yahweh is salvation. Joshua was almost certainly born in captivity in Babylon. He is part of a distinguished family. After all, as a high priest, we know he descends from the lineage that traces all the way back to the first high priest of Yahweh, Aaron, the brother of Moses. But in recent years, that proud family heritage has, right along with the rest of the Jews, fallen on hard times. When Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, sent his army into Judah to sack the city of Jerusalem, he took as captives the very best people. But not all of the captives made it back to Babylon. The high priest at that time was a man named Sariah. and he and his family were taken prisoners, but about 250 miles from Judah, at a place called Ribla, the high priest Sariah was brought out before the people and executed publicly, and then the rest of the family was dragged on into captivity to Babylon. One of the high priest Sariah's sons, as a man named Ezra. He goes on to his own sort of biblical fame, leading some of the captives back, writing the book of Ezra and Nehemiah. He would lead those people back, but Sariah also had another son, a man named Jehoshadak. He's less known. He goes on into captivity in Babylon and presumably he never returns. But out there in captivity, far away in Babylon, longing for a home, Jehoshadak has a son. And instead of naming his son a family name like Sariah, his father the high priest's name, Jehoshadak names his son Joshua or Yeshua, Yahweh saves. Just like the man who took over for Moses, Joshua who led the people into the promised land, now this little boy gets the assignment of that name and gets the burden of all the same expectations placed on him. And so now in Zechariah 3, this little boy, Joshua, Yeshua, he's grown up into a man. He is a man who has the weight of the world on his shoulders. Oh, he's got a fancy title. He is the high priest of Yahweh, just like his Saba, like his grandpa Sariah was. But that title comes with a responsibility of presenting the people in righteousness to God. And how could he do that? Because the people weren't righteous. They didn't even care enough in order to rebuild the temple, in order to worship God. And without a temple, what's the point of being a high priest? You can't go into a nonexistent holy of holies and bring a sacrifice to atone for the people. So Joshua knows the sins of the people. Worse yet, Joshua knows himself. Any man who holds the responsibility of leading people in righteousness, if he holds that responsibility well, he has a keen awareness of his own failings. I don't know what the personal failings of Joshua the high priest was, what faults he possessed, except to say that he was a man with the same kind of faults and frailties as other men. Likely feeling overmatched. ineffective, the people's failings, his personal failings weighing on him, and then this strange new prophet comes on the scene and right out there in front of everybody starts exposing all of Joshua's secret fears, right? Bringing the ugly on the inside right out into the open. Zachariah starts in, I saw you, Joshua the high priest. God gave me a vision of you and I saw all your filthiness. I saw Satan and I heard his accusations against you. You can well imagine Joshua was probably not super comfortable with Zachariah at that very moment. I mean, after all, he's high priest. It's one thing to say that the people need to get in step and follow God and obey him, but if there's anybody in Judah who should be righteous, it's the high priest. What do you do when everyone finds out that the very most righteous person you know is not righteous enough? Well, what you do is you accept the truth of Zechariah chapter three. There is no righteous person except those whom God makes righteous. He saves them from his wrath, he cleanses them of their sin, and he establishes their lives to walk in faith in his promises. I want you to see salvation is those things. Salvation is being rescued from wrath. Look at verses one and two again. He showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord and Satan, standing in his right hand to oppose him. And the Lord said to Satan, the Lord rebuke you, Satan. the Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you. Is this not a brand plucked from the fire? While Joshua is the main character of this vision, sort of, there are two other pretty important characters introduced in verse one. The angel of the Lord, this is not the first time he has appeared in Zachariah's visions so far. Back in chapter one, the angel of the Lord was Yahweh himself, the second person of the Godhead. It's Jesus Christ incarnate. Joshua standing before the angel of the Lord in verse one, because as high priest, That is who he's supposed to be standing before. This is who he's supposed to serve. But there is an adversary there. Literally, the word Satan means adversary or accuser. It is a common word in Hebrew that's sometimes used of adversaries or enemies that any person could have in their life. So for example, Solomon, David's son, had a shaitan, an adversary, and a man named Hadad the Edomite. But sometimes, like here in Zechariah 3, the word is used as a title. This is not a generic adversary. This is the adversary. This is Satan. Satan is real. He is powerful. He is evil. Peter in the New Testament describes him as our adversary, the devil, who paces back and forth like a roaring lion, seeking whom he might devour. Revelation 12, 10 calls Satan the accuser of the brethren, who accuses them night and day. In John 8, Jesus calls him the father of lies. In this vision, Satan is doing that accusing of Joshua, but the interesting part of Zechariah 3 is that Satan's accusations toward Joshua are implied to be true. He's not there lying about Joshua. He's there truthing about Joshua. In fact, the very most righteous person in Judah has no basis, has no merit, has no worth that he has right to stand before God and serve God or even be in God's presence. But while Satan is real and powerful and evil, there is a divine presence in this vision who is equally real, far more powerful, and unconditionally good and righteous. Joshua, when you read this, he does not have to defend himself against his accuser. The Lord God defends him. But listen carefully to the defense in verse two. The Lord rebukes Satan, but he doesn't do it offering any excuses or offering any defense about Joshua the high priest's righteousness, because even if God had defended the righteousness of Joshua the high priest, that would have been a lie. Joshua is not righteous. Instead, the defense is the Lord's gracious decision to rescue this man from wrath. Verse two, the Lord said to Satan, the Lord rebuke you, Satan. The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you. Is this not a brand plucked from the fire? You don't hear the Lord defending Joshua by saying, well, yeah, he's done wrong. But he's done so much good that it makes up for the wrong he's done. Listen, there is no amount of good that you can do that's going to make up for your sin in the eyes of God. There's not a list of good deeds or worthy character traits that offers an excuse for Joshua's failings. And we'll see just in a moment how graphic those failings are in verse three. But Satan will win this argument if the central facts are about the righteousness of Joshua. But when Satan accuses us, he has to contend with the righteousness of God, and that is a losing strategy. God's case here is based on nothing in Joshua, it is based on his own sovereign authority. just as it is with every one of God's children. Verse two makes it clear that Joshua, while this is personal for him, he is a stand-in for all the people whom God claims as his own, right? The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you. Not just, well, this is my guy, but I've taken all of these people. all of God's people, everyone, all the way up to the seemingly most righteous person like Joshua the high priest. All of us are deserving of death and an eternity in hell and everlasting fire. Salvation is being saved from that wrath. It's when God, by his sovereign choice and his almighty grace, reaches down and mercifully removes a lost sinner from his fiery wrath. Satan accuses Joshua, God says, I chose to save him. That's the defense. That's the whole defense. By the way, to deny God's sovereign election in salvation is to deny yourself of the only solid defense for Satan's accusation. If this is about Joshua and the things that Joshua had done or the things that Joshua had said or the things Joshua would do, then Satan would win the day. But the sure defense of Joshua is simply to say, he's chosen by the Lord. I chose to save him, God says. And so God asks the rhetorical question, isn't this a brand? Isn't this like a burning stick that has been pulled out of a fire? With God's intervention, Joshua and all Jerusalem and all Judah and all of us here, we deserve nothing more than the eternal destruction and the fires of hell, but like a stick snatched out of a burning fire, salvation is being rescued from God's wrath. Second, salvation is being cleansed from sin. Look at verses three through five. Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments and was standing before the angel. Then he answered and spoke to those who stood before him, saying, take away the filthy garments from him. And to him he said, see, I have removed your iniquity from you and will clothe you with rich robes. And I said, I love that Zachariah, the right to pipe in here with his own ideas. And I said, let them put a turban on his head. So they put a clean turban on his head and they put the clothes on him and the angel of the Lord stood by. One of the challenges that all people face is to see ourselves the way that God sees us. We are poor judges of our own character and we often offer quick justifications for our wicked actions. Our friends and our family are very little help in this because they're essentially an echo chamber that assures us, yeah, you're good at everything you do, you're pretty good. But if we could see ourselves through the lens of scripture, it tells a different story. It tells us that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. It tells us that there's none righteous, no, not one, that we are all guilty before God for the things that we've said, for the things that we've done, and God even sees into the depths of our heart and judges the sin that he finds there. Starting at verse three, we find a description of sin that is graphic, explicit, and nauseating. If anyone in Judah should have been able to stand before God and serve him in righteousness, it should be Joshua the high priest. Verse three pictures him standing before the angel. He is clothed, that is he is in his high priest clothes. He is ready to serve, but it says that those garments, those clothes are filthy. Zachariah here in describing the vision he saw also is giving us a pretty good hint of what he smelled. The word filthy in Hebrew is the word soim and it describes excrement. Human excrement likely Joshua's own. What embarrassment it would have been for the people in Zachariah's day to hear this public description of a repugnant scene, the high priest attempting to stand before the righteous, almighty God of creation, covered from head to toe with his own stinking filth. Not only would it be embarrassing for Joshua, it would have been embarrassing for the people as well. Like, this is our high priest, this is the best we've got? This is our representative before God? Friends, this is an opportunity for us to see ourselves as God sees us. The vision by Zachariah represents the startling reality of sin. See it as God sees it. You are covered with filth. The most righteous deeds you have ever done that you might think you could brag about. Isaiah says all of those righteous deeds are nothing more than filthy rags. Yet by the intervention of God, He reaches down and snatches us out of the fire because salvation is being rescued from wrath. But salvation is also being cleansed from sin. Verses four and five record this gracious act of God where He cleanses His people from the filth of sin. God commands the excrement-covered clothes to be removed from Joshua. He commands new clothes, pure, clean, rich to be put on him, head to toe. Zechariah gets his wish. There's going to be a new turban put on his head. I just want to pause here and point out something we might miss. It's important to see your sin the way that God sees it for a couple of reasons. First, for unbelievers, when you see the vileness of sin through this true and righteous lens of God's word, it will drive you to the righteousness of Jesus Christ. You will know, when you see yourself as God sees you, you will know how much you need to be cleansed from your sin. More on that in a moment. But second, for believers, when you see the vileness of sin as God sees it, it will cause you to appreciate what it is that God has done for you. I am convinced there are a lot of believers in Jesus Christ who still needlessly carry around the guilt of all of their sins. They continue to carry that burden even though God has cleansed them from sin, he has lifted that burden away. Listen, my brother, my sister. When God has cleansed you from your sin through faith in Jesus Christ, that sin is gone. You can serve him. There's no smudges left. There's no scent following you around. When God cleanses you of sin, he's pleased with his work. He expects you to be pleased with his work. He tells Joshua at the end of verse four, see, literally look at this, I have removed your iniquity from you. Joshua was not expected to spend every day of the rest of his life crippled by guilt and embarrassed and ashamed over all the filthiness that was. He was expected to spend his life thankful and praising and serving God over the cleansing that had come. Some of us have the idea that being saved by faith in Jesus begins some process of cleansing and we're waiting for the point later on in our life where that guilt and shame has been removed enough that we can be considered good enough to serve him. Listen, that's not the way that God sees it. While it's true that in your experience you will grow in knowledge and you'll grow in love of Jesus, you will live better as time goes on through faith in Jesus Christ. God declares you at the moment you've trusted Jesus that you are cleansed, you are entirely free from filth and the guilt that plagued you. Salvation is being saved from wrath. Salvation is being cleansed from sin. Salvation is being called to obedience. Go to verses 6 and 7. Then the angel of the Lord admonished Joshua, saying, Thus says the Lord of hosts, if you will walk in My ways, and if you will keep My commands, then you shall also judge My house and likewise have charge of My courts. I will give you places to walk among these who stand here." There are more times than I would like to count that I have spoken with people about their position with God, like the status of their life, their expectation of eternal life, and just keep getting the same response, which is essentially, I took care of that when I was a kid. Like I walked the aisle, I raised my hand, I repeated the prayer, I got dunked in the water. Whatever, like their hope for their eternal soul was some moment in the past in which they can hardly even see it now through the fog of time. And so, because they can hardly see it, they'll actually try to keep the receipts. Like, you know, here's my baptismal record. I've got the form. Here's the family Polaroid the day I got baptized. Here's the Bible that Pastor Good Guy gave me, and he filled out the presentation page on the day that he saved me. He signed his name, said, I'm good. Y'all, I have gotten all of those things. Now I don't want to contradict myself, because a moment ago, I noted that when you're cleansed from sin, you are fully and finally free from sin. There's no more guilt, no more filthy rags, you are saved. And yet Joshua's experience here, and that of all of God's people, is that salvation, which comes to you at a moment in time, has a continuing, evident, lifelong effect. being cleansed from sin and presented holy before the Lord. It's not like being turned into a prize hog at a 4-H fair. Some of y'all might not relate to this, it's okay. You go to the county fair, the 4-H kids all bring in their prize hogs for the contest. Those things get hosed down, sprayed down, washed off. I saw one with a bow tie one time. Those things get cleaned up, and those pigs, you look at them and you go, you know what? I know they didn't look like that yesterday, and I know they're not gonna look like that tomorrow, and the one that wins probably ain't gonna have a tomorrow. That's another thing altogether. Listen, salvation is not you being taken from a pigsty, sprayed off, and then handed a baptismal certificate and told, now, go ahead and go back to the pigsty, but just remember, Keep that certificate framed and clean, some preacher might ask for it someday. Remember where you kept it so in the future you can pull out your recollection of this nice day and assuage your guilt. No, when you are cleansed from the work of Jesus, you don't get sent back to the pigsty. Joshua is rescued from wrath, he's cleansed from sin, and he is called to service. Verse six says, the angel of the Lord admonished Joshua. He admonished him. This is a strong word. In the original language, it means to solemnly charge or strongly exhort. I like that KJV uses protested. Like it is an adamant instruction which continues into verse 7 where Joshua is called to walk in God's ways and keep God's commands. When you are rescued from wrath and cleansed from sin, that doesn't put you into some probationary period where it's now, well, we'll see how you do, and if everything goes good, then you're going to be called into service of me. Well, the moment you trust Jesus, you have submitted him to him as Lord and Master, and it enlists you into lifelong service of him. Now, exactly how each one of us serves is gonna be a unique matter. If I'm not mistaken, none of us in here are called on to be high priests of Yahweh at the temple in Jerusalem. Joshua was. So he was made in this, a judge in God's house. He is in charge of God's courts. Those are terms for the soon to be rebuilt temple. But in short, he's called to serve. A person who claims to have experienced the saving grace of God, but continues in the pigsty of their life, With no persistent and perceivable change, such a person should tremble before the prospect of God's judgment. Jesus says his sheep know his voice and follow him. They continue following him. He said if you love me, you will keep my commandments. Paul said salvation is seen for those who believe and confess that Jesus is Lord. He is master of your life. You serve him. Now I know since this is the Old Testament, Jesus has not yet come in the flesh and went to the cross, so how could it be that Joshua is called to entrust his life to service of the Lord Jesus? Well first, The angel of the Lord in Zachariah's visions is Jesus. We talked about this a couple weeks ago. I'm not going to try to prove it again. But second, every Old Testament saint was saved the same way that New Testament saints are saved. By faith in Jesus. God promised salvation through Jesus Christ, his son. Those Old Testament saints are saved by embracing the promise of salvation that God would bring through the Messiah. We're saved by embracing God's promise of salvation that he has brought through the Messiah. Salvation is being rescued from wrath. Salvation is being cleansed from sin. Salvation is being called to service. Salvation is all about Jesus. Even in Zechariah 3, let me show you. Salvation is found in trusting Jesus. Start at verse eight. Hear, O Joshua the high priest. you and your companions who sit before you, for they are a wondrous sign, for behold, I am bringing forth my servant, the branch. For behold, the stone that I have laid before Joshua, upon the stone are seven eyes. Behold, I will engrave its inscription, says the Lord of hosts, and I will remove the iniquity of that land in one day. In that day, says the Lord of hosts, everyone will invite his neighbor under his vine and under his fig tree. Joshua is called upon in verse eight to hear, to listen to this promise of God. Even in verse eight, he's told that Joshua and his companions are symbolic. The words here, they are for a wondrous sign. I actually think the NIV does a great job here when it says that they are, quote, symbolic of things to come. What kind of symbolism Could we possibly have in Joshua, Yeshua, the high priest? Well, let's see. We got a few clues here. In the end of verse eight, behold, I'm bringing forth my servant, the branch. If your Bible has that in all caps, it's because the translators wanted you to see this is a title for the coming Messiah, Jesus. Several times in the Old Testament, the prophets used this term branch, specifically of the descendant of David to come. So I'll just give you some examples quick. Isaiah chapter four verse two, in that day the branch of the Lord shall be beautiful and glorious. Isaiah 11 verse one, there shall come forth a rod from the stem of Jesse and a branch shall grow out of his roots. Jeremiah 23, five, behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, that I will raise to David a branch of righteousness. A king shall reign and prosper and execute judgment and righteousness in the earth. God promised to David that one day he would have a future descendant who would rule and reign on his throne forever. And even though, the picture's this, even though David's family tree looks like somebody's chopped it down at this point, it looks like you could not possibly have this promise fulfilled. God says, from that stump, there's going to be a branch that grows. Imagine how Joshua the high priest would have heard this when he thinks in his own life and says, well sure, Babylon can come and murder the high priest, Sariah, and still God can apparently raise up Sariah's grandson and bring him out of captivity and put him in a temple in Jerusalem. Could not God do the same thing for David? We get another messianic title for Jesus in verse nine. Behold, the stone that I've laid before Joshua. Zechariah is told to look at it, but he doesn't describe it other than to say it has seven eyes. This is symbolic. This stone is gonna have complete vision, total understanding, knowledge of all things. It's got an inscription that we don't get to read. The Messiah is often called the stone or the rock in the Old Testament. Psalm 118.22, the stone which the builders rejected as the chief cornerstone. Isaiah 8.14 calls him the stone of stumbling and the rock of offense. And Daniel 2, he is the stone that is cut without hands that comes and crushes the kingdoms of the world to powder. So you have this term branch, which is about the Messiah, the term stone, which is about Messiah. We also get a promise, the Messiah's work in verse nine, when it says he removes the iniquity of that land in one day. That's not just saying, well, one day he's gonna do it. It's gonna happen someday. That's saying that when God removes the iniquity from his people, he's going to accomplish all of that in a single day. In a single day, the Lord Jesus is arrested, beaten, tortured, nailed to a cross, raised up in mockery. He sheds his perfect blood in the place of filth-covered sinners. In one day, also speaks of the promise that Jesus would give complete, perfect, everlasting cleansing. For Joshua, the high priest, once there is a temple and he starts bringing an atoning sacrifice for the people, you know what he's done? He's done when he's dead. He's got to keep bringing those sacrifices day after day after day because it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sin. But when Jesus comes, he offers one sacrifice for sin once and for all. In other words, when you're saved through faith in Jesus, you are saved one time for all time. The salvation that's found for Joshua the high priest here is the same kind of salvation that is found for all filth covered sinners today. Joshua looked forward to the promise of a Messiah coming, in verse nine, who would remove sins in a single day. And even though that day had not come, Joshua experienced the salvation from wrath and the cleansing and the calling to service because he trusted in the promises of God. And God even says, see, I have, in verse four, I've removed your iniquity from you. This is a beautiful prophetic combination of you have it now even though it's coming later. In fact, when salvation comes later, It's going to come in the person and work of Jesus, the Son of God. And while I don't know who the angel who talked with Zachariah is, that's a different angel, I don't know who the angel who talked with Zachariah is. I like to think that it's the same angel that we find in the Gospels who is sent to a young man named Joseph to reassure him about his fiance and is told, She's going to bring forth the son and you will call his name Yeshua. Yahweh is salvation because he will save his people from their sins. You know, the name of Jesus, Yeshua, happens to be the same name of the dude in Zechariah chapter three. Yeshua, Yahweh is salvation. The high priest Joshua could not save anybody. He was hopeless to help himself. He couldn't make the people righteous, he needed to be made righteous. The ultimate Yeshua, Jesus, the son of God, salvation is found in him alone. Do you know him? If not, you are facing God's fiery wrath. I encourage you, see yourself as God sees you. standing in foul-smelling, filth-covered clothes, and trust God's promise that through faith in Jesus, you will be rescued from wrath like a burning stick pulled out of a fire. You will be cleansed from sin, given clean righteousness of Jesus. You will be called to serve Him, dedicating your life in submission to Him as Lord. You have no other hope but Jesus because there is no righteous person except those whom God has made righteous through his son.