Let's begin with a word of prayer together. Heavenly Father, let me just say, we know that we are full of sin. We know ourselves. Lord, we know each one of us knows our own hearts. Even the things that are hidden from those on the outside are not hidden from You. And we know this. And so Lord, we just come before You this evening. We ask that You would remind us of the truth of the gospel. That You would bring us comfort. That You would bring us encouragement. through this prophetic message this morning from Zechariah, or this evening from Zechariah. So Lord, we give this time to You as an extension of our worship. Please open our hearts to Your Word. We ask that Your Holy Spirit would take it, seal Your Word upon our hearts. We ask this in Jesus' name, Amen. What kind of things discourage you I'm sure it's different for every single person in this room. There's a lot of different things that can cause discouragement, like discouragement from other people. Some people get really discouraged when they're really tired and they're worn out. Different types of difficulties in your life, maybe family difficulties or financial difficulties or difficulties with career and so on and so forth. Maybe you focus on what other people think of you. And you're not quite sure because they're hard to read. Maybe you just have a loss of confidence. Whatever the case may be, it is so easy for every single one of us to get discouraged. And anyone that knows anything knows that there's always a time when we need encouragement from other people, but we need encouragement ultimately from God's Word. And I think that this is what Zechariah's fourth vision, Zechariah 3, is intended to accomplish. Encouraging God's people. So I think the idea is this, God encourages sinners, like you and I, by purifying us and by promising us lasting freedom from sin. So I want to ask you the question, what do we need to be purified from specifically? Secondly, how have God's promises begun to be fulfilled already that this passage points to? There's really just two points to this particular passage this evening. Verses 1-5 will be our first point, and verses 6-10 will be our second point. So let's jump into our first point. verses 1 to 5, which is the purification of God's people. The purification of God's people. Let's look at verses 1 and 2 again together, and look at what it means to be purified from accusation. Verses 1 and 2 say this, Then he, that's the Lord, showed me Joshua the high priest, standing before the angel of the Lord. Satan standing in his right hand to oppose him. And the Lord said to Satan, the Lord rebuke you, Satan. The Lord rebuke, the Lord who has chosen Jerusalem, rebuke you. Is this not a brand plucked from the fire? So, as we begin to work through this passage this evening together, I want to just submit to you this idea. Whenever you're studying passages of scripture, whether we're talking about the Gospels, the Prophets, the Psalms, something else in the Old Testament, it always helps if you ask a few very simple questions of the passage. And they're very simple, are you ready? Who, what, where, when, why, and how. It's pretty simple. So that's what we want to do this evening as we begin working through this passage. Not in that exact order, but we're going to work through all of those very simple questions. So when we look at verse one, we begin with when. When is this happening? Well, if you go back to Zechariah chapter one, verse seven, you can see that the first of these visions begins on the 24th day of the 11th month, which is the month Shabbat, in the second year of Darius. And you're probably thinking, well, great. That doesn't mean anything to me. Well, I'll give you, in our common calendar today that we use, what year that was. That was about the year 520 BC. And if you go forward to Zechariah chapter 7, verse 1, following these visions, The prophet writes, now in the fourth year of King Darius, the king to pass the word of the Lord, King Zechariah, on the fourth day of the ninth month, Chislev. And very simply, two years later, 518 B.C. So, roughly the big picture is, this prophecy is coming somewhere between 520 and 518 B.C. You're wondering, okay, now that I have the time, What is going on and where is it happening? Why is that important? Well, let's look at the background information. In Ezra chapter 3, verse 8, the Jews have returned to Jerusalem. So there's part of our where. And what are they doing in Jerusalem? They are rebuilding the temple. Now, if you know your Old Testament history, you know that God had punished the Jews for their sin, for their unrepentance, over and over and over again, he sent prophets to them, and the punishment was exile. In fact, in 586 BC, God delivers the final blow to the kingdom of Judah, the Jews, through the Babylonian Empire. They came into Jerusalem, they wiped out the temple, and they slaughtered a bunch of God's people, and what did they do with the rest of them? They took them, captive to Babylon. We mentioned a little bit about that this morning. Well, here we are 70 years later, and the Jews have returned from Babylon. And they're rebuilding the temple that was destroyed. In fact, Ezra chapter 5, verses 1 and 2 says that the prophets Haggai and Zechariah, who wrote this book, are prophesying in Jerusalem and encouraging the Jews as they continue the work of rebuilding the temple. Now, look again at all the details, but when you read Haggai, chapters one and two, you find that there was one discouragement after another as the Jews continued the work of rebuilding the temple. Discouragement. And so, Zechariah, seeing this vision during that time period, is seeing this for the purpose of encouraging God's people. In fact, if you pass through chapter two, we find that there's a long genealogy of name after name after name after name and the whole point of that genealogy means that God is restoring the priesthood as he's about to restore the temple. Because all those names in Ezra 2 are the names of priests and Levites and everyone who's meant to serve in the temple. So we've got the when, we've got the what, we've got the where, what about the who? Well look with me at verse one again. He showed me, we see three characters here. Joshua the high priest, notice how he's described. He's standing before the angel of the Lord. Now this is interesting because as Joshua is standing before the angel of the Lord, the idea that we get here is the idea of a court scene. Our second character is the angel of the Lord. Scholars can go back and forth as to who they think this is. I think a pretty good interpretation of who the angel of the Lord is, often in the Old Testament, is what's called a pre-incarnate in the picture of Jesus Christ. All that means is it's a picture of Jesus Christ, or the Son of God, before he took on flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary. And so, the angel of the Lord is functioning as the judge in this scene. And Joshua, the high priest, who was one of the exiles, who returned from Babylon, is standing right before the angel of the Lord. Now, many of you have ever had to go to court for whatever reason, maybe traffic court, as I've had to, admittedly, in years past. You end up in court, and where do you stand in front of the judge? You're, like, immediately in front of the bench. And the judge is raised up. He's on a different level than you. And if you were like me, in traffic court, you had to look up at the judge to communicate to him. And so Joshua is kind of in a position of being a defendant here. And he's standing in the heavenly tribunal before the angel of the Lord. And look at our third character, who's standing next at the right hand of Joshua, Satan at his right hand to oppose him. Now, that shouldn't surprise us. Satan showed up a few times throughout the Old Testament by name. In Job chapters 1 and 2, We find that when the sons of God came, which I take to mean angels, came into the presence of the Lord to present themselves to God, Satan comes in among them. And remember the story, God says, have you considered my son, Joe? And what does Satan do? Satan accuses Joe of having a cheap faith, a selfish faith. God, He only loves you because you give Him everything He can possibly want. You take all that away, God, I bet you His faith will crumble and He will curse you to your face. What's Satan doing? He's essentially accusing Job. The story is that Ahab and Jehoshaphat are about to go off to battle against the armies of Syria named Rammel, Gilead. And Ahab is already under judgment. God has already pronounced his judgment, his doom, his death by another prophet. The prophet Achaia sees a vision and he sees a lying spirit who comes into the divine assembly as God says, who shall go out for us to deceive the prophets of Ahab. And a lying spirit says, I'll go. I'll be a lying spirit in the mouth of these prophets. Some Bible commentators have argued that that is Satan. Whether it is or not, Satan lives up to his name, the adversary, the accuser. That's what his name in Hebrew means, ha-satan, the accuser. So we've got the when, we've got the what, the where, the who. Now we must find out why is Satan accusing Joshua of a higher reason? Look at May verse two. And the Lord said to Satan, the Lord rebuketh Satan. The Lord who was chosen in Jerusalem rebuketh you. And this is what I want to focus on here tonight. Is this not a brand plot from the fire? So he's calling Joshua the brand plot from the fire. And the issue that Satan is highlighting is the fact that the fire represents the exile. Now, if you remember your Old Testament, You remember that the high priest stood in God's presence and represented God's people before God. And so the high priest was the one bringing the sacrifice into God, who bore the sin, bore the iniquity of God's people. Well, guess what? God's people have just come back from exile. They've still got the taint and the stain of sin on them morally and spiritually. And because Joshua represents them, he's the one bearing all of that as he represents God's people as the high priest before God. What's interesting here is you have a picture of death and resurrection. Brothers and sisters, please don't miss that. This is where really the message of the gospel comes in to this passage in Zechariah. Because when exile happened, that represented the death of God's people, the death of the kingdom, the death of the nation of the Jews. And so that when they returned to their land, and God begins to establish them in Israel again, it's not just a picture of death, it's now a picture of resurrection. The same imagery comes up in Luke chapter 15 in the Prodigal Son parable. Do you remember the young son? He went away to the far country. But when he came back, his older brother was upset. The father says to the older brother, for your brother was dead. He had gone to a foreign country, represented by death. Now, he's alive again. This brother of hers was lost. Now he's found. So, now that the Jews have come back, we've got a picture of the death and resurrection of Christ, and we're about to see what that picture is meant to accomplish. Because Satan is accusing Joshua in the Lord's presence, and the Lord tells him, the Lord rebuke you. In other words, God is not going to count the sins of His people towards their spiritual account. And here's why. Look at Zechariah 3, 3-5. This is how, answering the how question, God begins to work out His redemption that points forward to Christ. Verse 3. Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments and was standing before the angel of the Lord. repetition that he is in the law court and look when he's dressed with filthy garments. In other words, those filthy garments represent his guilt, his legal guilt before the bar of God's perfect justice and holiness and the standard of his righteousness. And Numbers 4 is really, to me, beautiful. Then he answered and spoke to those who stood before him, saying, Take away filthy garments from me. And he said to him, See, I have removed your iniquity from you, and I will clothe you with rich robes. To me, that's a really, really pretty God is the one who takes the filthy, sinful garments off of the high priest Joshua, and He clothes them with something new. In fact, I like the way that New King James translates that at the end of verse 4. I will clothe you with rich robes. That Hebrew word can be translated, I will clothe you with robes of stake. with robes of skin, that can also be transcended. I will clothe you with garments of joy and gladness. And I love verse five. I like to take issue here. Whether you're using ESV or the New King James, look at verse five. It says, and I said, assuming that Zechariah the prophet is kind of petitioning the Lord. And I said, let them put a clean turban on his head. Actually, I think a better translation is, and he said. In other words, it is the Lord who is making us sovereign decorations. Take off those filthy clothes. Put these new clean clothes on him. And also, I'm declaring sovereignly, put a turban on his head. And that's important because as the high priest, the high priest wore a turban on his head according to Exodus 28, bore the inscription in front saying, holy to the Lord. You see what's happening here. As the Lord puts this new clothes on his high priest, he is reestablishing the priesthood even as the people rebuild the temple. Now, the application is actually quite simple here for you and I. It's that we need to be purified from our sins, and you and I need to receive the righteousness of Christ. We'll see how we got that application here. We need to be purified from the legal guilt of our sin. You see, the statement of Joshua in his filthy garments, because he's a high priest representing the people, And that's representing the people in their state points out the fact that you and I need a high priest to represent us. Why? Because you and I are actually clothed with the same filthy garments. And it is because of this that we stand accused by sin. I find it interesting that in Revelation chapter 12, verse 10, New Testament passage, Satan is called the accuser of the brethren. Think about that for just a moment. Whenever you slip up, whenever you commit a sin, whenever you have an angry thought or a lustful thought, appearing to Jesus in Matthew chapter 5, Satan stands at the right hand to accuse you before the Father. John Calvin writes this, and this is important for us to grasp, brothers and sisters. He says, but the vision was given to the prophet for two reasons. One, that the faithful might know that their contest was with Satan, their spiritual enemy, rather than with any particular nation. and also to you, that they might understand that a remedy was at hand for God's good and defense of the priesthood which he had instituted. Let's take those two ideas in turn and look at ourselves. You know, it's so easy as Christians to look out into the world and to see all the types of sin that the world just seems to embrace and champion and sanction and sometimes, come on, And it can be quite discouraging because if you're a Christian trying to pattern your life on God's Word and Scripture, like, it's easy to look at that and just get discouraged and feel like, man, I am like swimming upstream here against the current. And it's wearying. And it's taxing. And it's so easy to fall into the trap, and we see this especially in politics, brothers and sisters, where those guys over there are the enemy. And you know what this is saying here? Like, we're living in a time of the Persian Empire. The Persian Empire that, in some cases, supported the Jews. In other cases, like in the Book of Esther, sought to annihilate the Jews. And it's so easy to look at these things and think, man, the enemy is them. That's not the enemy. The enemy is Satan. The enemy is the accuser of the brother. When we're tempted to look at people maybe on the other side of the aisle politically because they're sanctioning things that maybe we stand against, that's not the enemy, that's the mission field. Nowhere do you see God condemning the Persian Empire's passage. And nowhere should we be simply condemning the world around us when we have a gospel of hope to offer to those around us. Let's not fall into the trap, brothers and sisters, of misidentifying who the enemy really is. That's one of the reasons I think this prophecy is given to us. And the other thing is to remind us that when we're tempted to look at the sins of other people and the sins of the world, yeah, the world is sinful. Shouldn't that surprise us? I think what should surprise us even more is when we look in our hearts and we think, oh, why am I so sinful? I have these filthy guards that I'm wrapped in by myself. And if I don't have help, divine help, because look, Joshua could not change his own clothes. It took the divine, sovereign command and declaration to take those off and put these new clothes on him to actually fix the problem that Joshua had as a high priest. So when I look at myself, I see, man, I can't change my own heart. I can't legally declare myself righteous when I'm guilty. I need sovereign declaration from God. So the question is, how are we to change the garments that we have from our own sin and guilt and have those removed from us? Well, this is my second program application. You and I have a need to be clothed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ. How do we change our gardens and how do we have them changed for us? By acknowledging that we have sinful, filthy gardens and being willing to confess that before the Lord. To say, Lord, I know that I am an adulterer because even if I had not committed adultery, literally, I am busting my heart. Lord, I'm a murderer. I get angry at people unjustly. He's too dangerous. And you know the encouraging thing about this passage? When God's people are willing to admit that they have that problem of sin, the beauty of this is God's name is ever-ready. Ever-ready. To look at that sinner like you and me, and to tell They're declared, OK, take the garment of that sin off you. Clothed in the righteousness of my Son. Paul says in Galatians 3.27, for as many of you as have been baptized in Christ have been put unto Christ. That pointing on, the word can be translated, have been clothed with Christ. The beauty is, those of you who are parents know, when your children are little, they can't dress themselves. When they have a dirty diaper, the child doesn't take the diaper. Well, maybe they do, but... Generally, don't change their own diapers. It takes the parent to do that. God stands ready, like a father, ready to change the filthiness of our sin. and transformed us by the righteousness. And it came at great cost. 2 Corinthians 5, verse 21, just like Joshua, the Lord sent a people, listen to this, for our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. You see, Christ, like Joshua, had to be put on open display, bearing my sin and your sin. Why? So that in becoming sin, you can be clothed with the righteousness of Christ. And that leads to our second point this evening in verses 6 and 10. The promise to God's people. So we've seen the purification, but now, what's the promise? Well, verses 6 and 7 show us the promise of a better priesthood. Look at me in 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, if you will keep my commandment, then you shall judge my house, and likewise charge my courts, and I will give you places to walk amongst those who stand in them. That word translated here in the New King James, the Lord admonished Joshua. I think it better be translated, the Lord solemnly testifies. He's making a divine promise. He's purified, now he's promising, and look what the promise contains. First, two conditions, and then three results. If you, you the high priest, walk in my ways, if you keep my command, then, count these things, there's three of them, then you shall judge my house, It's kind of a position of authority and ruling over the house by judging God's people. Likewise, you will have charge in my courts. And I love this one. I will give you places to walk among these who stand here. Again, I think that's better translated. I will give you freedom and access to me. The beauty of that promise, and why that comes to a better priesthood than what the Jews typically had in the Old Testament, was that according to Exodus 30, verse 10, according to Leviticus 16, verse 34, the high priest was only allowed to enter God's presence in the Holy of Holies once a year during the feast, during the Day of Atonement. Notice what he's saying. This is saying, I'm going to give you the right of access once a year. He says, I will give you the freedom of access at the end of verse 7, among those who are standing here. In other words, among the heavenly host. What a glorious priesthood is being promised. It's not just that this priest is going to go into the holy place once a year and get an earthly tent, a tent of terror. He will enter the heavenly courts. He will enter the heavenly tabernacles we talked about this morning. And he will have free access to the Father at all times. So this is a better priesthood. But in verses 8 and 10 we find the promise of a complete cleansing from sin. And that characterizes, makes this future priesthood better than the one Joshua belonged to in the Old Testament. Look at me at verses 89, because I'm going to focus on the last part of this poem. 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. Now remove the iniquity of that land and you'll be born again. You see Joshua and his companions, the fellow Levites and priests, because of the re-established, God is saying, you guys are a sign of what I just promised. A sign is never the reality. A sign points forward to something. I'm driving to Seattle, and I see a sign on the side of the road, and it says, Seattle, 20 miles ahead. The sign is not the actual reality of the city. It's pointing towards the city. And so this new, revitalized priesthood in Jerusalem, somewhere between 520 and 518, is pointing forward and saying, OK, I've reestablished you. I'm going to fulfill my promise after you. And listen to the substance of that promise. I'm bringing my servant, the branch. Isaiah 111 says that the branch will come from the stump of Jesse of Jericho. Jeremiah 235, the branch will rule as David's heir. Zechariah 612, the branch will build the temple. Which is kind of an ironic thing to say, because the people were building the temple in that generation. You're going to promise them that someone else is coming to build a new temple? It tells you something. is yet the future. And I love the way that verse 9 is. This is the substance, brothers and sisters, of this new priesthood. How to remove the iniquity of that language. Not every year on the Day of Atonement not perpetually, sacrifice after sacrifice after sacrifice, in one day. So again, if we look to apply this to ourselves, we see that God's promises, if you're listening carefully, you can see the connections in Christ. They've been fulfilled in the person, and the work, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the branch. Let's just try to understand this as best as we can. Jesus Christ has fulfilled the law on our behalf. Look at those two conditions again in verse seven. If you walk in my ways, if you keep my command. Brothers and sisters, we've already established that we are full of sin. We are filthy garments given to ourselves when someone else has fulfilled the law on our behalf. Jesus Christ lived 33 years of His life in this earth, and He walked perfectly according to the law. Theologians call that Jesus Christ's active obedience. He actively fulfilled the commandments on your behalf and on my behalf. Hebrews 4.15 and 16 say this, For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses. but one who in every respect is contented as we are, yet without sin. So here's part of the application for us tonight. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. We're always going to be battling temptation. We're always going to be battling sin. But there is a high priest who stands ready and available to help us because He knows what it's like to be on Jesus. Part of my confidence when I come to Jesus Christ for help is I know, because He was the Son of God, He endured a temptation beyond what I ever have endured. When you're in those moments of temptation, if you're facing like me, sometimes the longer the temptation just keeps pounding away at you, you feel your resolve soften. You know, it's like being a boxer in the ring, you know, and you're just like in the corner and that opponent's just pounding away at your body. And the more that point pounds away at your body, the weaker your resolve is, and the easier it is to throw in the towel and just say, forget it. I'm just going to sin, and maybe I'll be left alone. Think about Jesus. Just getting popped away for 40 days in the wilderness, and yet, Whatever I'm going through as I wrestle in my sin, whatever you're going through as you wrestle in your sin, give the confidence in you to come to Christ and know. Not only does He know exactly what you're going through, He's experienced it in a far deeper way than you. That He didn't send me, couldn't be enough to be with you. This leads to our second point here about the occasion. Jesus Christ is the Son of God, who was removed from the iniquity of the single man. You know, yeah, he lived a perfect life, what we call active obedience, but there's also something called passive obedience. And Philippians 2.8 makes that very clear. Being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. You see, the promise of God in this passage, that sin will be destroyed and taken away and removed in one day, was accomplished in the cross of Calvary. When Jesus and John 19.30 is hanging from that cross, what's the last thing the Gospel of John records Jesus saying before he dies? For your sin, for mine. He says, it is finished. It took three words in English to communicate what Jesus said in one word in the Greek New Testament. But it is finished. Friends, the active obedience of Christ, the passive obedience of Christ, compromise the righteousness of Christ that you and I are wrapped in by faith in what He's done on our behalf. The question you have to ask yourself tonight is whether you walked into this church for the very first time, or whether you've been here 40, 50, or 60 years, do I believe that Jesus is my righteousness? And it's a question, brothers and sisters, we have to ask ourselves every day. Because the gospel's not like ABC, or one, two, three, like, okay, I've taken this one step, what's next? The gospel is constantly needing to be renewed in our hearts day by day. So just as the Jews needed these reminders, these gospel reminders to look forward to as they built the temple, so we need these gospel reminders as we look back on what Christ has done, because Peter says that we are being built up as spiritual stones, into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. How can we do that? By being close to the righteousness of Christ, because He has taken away our sin in a single What a reason to rejoice this evening. In May of 1738, John Wesley, the great revivalist of the 18th century, felt like a failure. He was about 35 years old at the time. He had already started and led the Holy Club at Oxford among the members who were George Midfield, His brother Charles Wesley and several others who went on to do amazing things for the Lord. But he had already started and led that group, none of them knew the Lord during that time. It was all legalistic. He was already an ordained priest in the Church of England. This is a man who studied Oxford and went through the rigorous coordination process in the Church of England at that time. He had already gone to Georgia as a missionary. If you read one of his biographies, I encourage you to do that. At some point, you'll find that he really made a blunder, a mistake, even going, because he's trying to save the souls of Indians, and he's not saving himself. And after returning to London, he checked, and he felt no closer to God than when he first got there. That part was a lot of text from Georgia. In his beginning years, he experienced tremendous discouragement, though clever, these were taken as physical symptoms of illness in his life. He knew his good works didn't make him the right for God, and yet, when you look at his journals, he scrutinized his own life to know what happened. He knew reality was sleuthing him. Oh, one night, on Ralphers Gate Street in London, there was a morning meeting where He wasn't even going to go. Like maybe he didn't want to come tonight, I don't know. But the reader got up and opened up Luther's preface to his commentary on the book of Romans. And as the reader just simply read Luther's preface of his commentary, expounding the new work. expounding justification by faith and what it means to be clothed in the righteousness of Christ. Something clicked in Wesley's mind. It changed his life forever. And history remembers John Wesley as, from 35 years old, so I believe he was 87 years old, Riding horseback, often riding 50,000 miles around England on horseback to preach upwards of 40,000 sermons. Countless people were swept into the kingdom because of how God had comforted the soul of one discouraged broken man with the truths of the gospel. Maybe you're discouraged tonight. I don't know, I'm just a pastoral kid. I don't know every single one of you is that spiritual. But I want to encourage you brothers and sisters and friends tonight, from God's Word, that whatever you're dealing with, whatever you're wrestling with, however you seem to struggle with sin and maybe you don't feel like you can get a handle on sin and conquer it, I want to encourage you, that God encourages sinners like us by purifying us through His Son, and promising lasting freedom through the power of the Gospel. The question is, do we believe that? Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we come before you tonight to introduce the Jews. At how easy this belief sounds, we all that have to do is believe the promises of God and Christ, Yes. So Lord, we come before you thankful this evening. Even spiritually, you offer hope through the power of the gospel. Lord, our prayer for these people tonight is that you would take their word, that you would seal these truths in their hearts and encourage them and build them up as they labor through this transition of finding a new pastor. Be with them. Encourage them and remind them of your love through this transition.