Standing before the Lord: Exposition of Zechariah 3:1-7 A message given by Tom Whiteman at Cornerstone Church Omaha, NE 11/24/2013 Introduction: Well, this morning we’re going to be looking at the Old Testament book of Zechariah and I’ve simply titled this message “Standing before the Lord” although I could have just as easily titled it “The Gospel according to Zechariah.” That’s exactly what the Lord has revealed to Zechariah in this vision and thankfully the Lord has preserved this vision in the text of His word so that we can see what Zechariah saw along with him. I’m hoping to show you a couple things; one is a compliment from the Old Testament to what Pastor Jim has been preaching on over the last weeks from the book of Romans, that God is Completely Sovereign & Man is nonetheless responsible and those two propositions are totally compatible though how they are is yet a mystery. Another though, and more important to me, is I want you to see just how much God loves and graciously treats His people despite their great sin against Him and how Awesome He is and worthy of our worship. Lastly, I want you see the promise of God to His people for redemption. Let’s go ahead and take a peek and then I’ll do my best to put this in historical context for you, join me in reading Zechariah Chapter 3:1-7 “3 Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him. 2 The LORD said to Satan, “The LORD rebuke you, Satan! Indeed, the LORD who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is this not a brand plucked from the fire?” 3 Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments and standing before the angel. 4 He spoke and said to those who were standing before him, saying, “Remove the filthy garments from him.” Again he said to him, “See, I have taken your iniquity away from you and will clothe you with festal robes.” 5 Then 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, while the angel of the LORD 6 7 was standing by. And 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 perform My service, then you will also govern My house and also have charge of My courts, and I will grant you free access among these who are standing here. Provinence: As always, before we can just dive in and start swimming in the immediate text before us, we must back up and take a look at the pool it belongs to and where it is in the pool. Last time I showed you Micah 7 and we saw the Lord delivering messages of judgment and hope about the coming exile His people would be experiencing soon because of their rebellion and sin as a nation, do you remember? He was going to be exiling them to Babylon in order to cleanse the nation and also exact judgment. Now fast forward 70 or so years and we’re seeing the first group of exiled Israelites returning to Jerusalem and beginning to rebuild the city and the Temple under the leading of the High Priest Joshua and Zerubbabel the Governor who had traveled back to Jerusalem from Babylon also under the orders of King Cyrus of Persia. But they have begun to receive some opposition from the people who had moved into their land and we can read about that in Ezra Chapter 4. Put your finger in the page and turn with me there. We read in Ezra 4:1-5 “Now when the enemies of Judah and Benjamin heard that the people of the exile were building a temple to the Lord God of Israel, 2 they approached Zerubbabel and the heads of fathers’ households, and said to them, “Let us build with you, for we, like you, seek your God; and we have been sacrificing to Him since the days of Esarhaddon king of Assyria, who brought us up here.” 3 But Zerubbabel and Jeshua and the rest of the heads of fathers’ households of Israel said to them, “You have nothing in common with us in building a house to our God; but we ourselves will together build to the Lord God of Israel, as King Cyrus, the king of Persia has commanded us.” 4 Then the people of the land discouraged the people of Judah, and frightened them from building, 5 and hired counselors against them to frustrate their counsel all the days of Cyrus king of Persia, even until the reign of Darius king of Persia. You can read on and Ezra describes in more detail what this discouragement looks like, they have sent deceitful messages and accusations to the Kings of Persia after Cyrus and made untrue appeals that are simply causing legal delays and general hindrance much like today when an attorney files all kinds of paperwork to tie up a legal matter in court for so long that it eventually gets dropped altogether. That’s what they were working for; they wanted to vengefully stop the Temple from being rebuilt. As a result, in Jerusalem, God’s people began to imagine that their God had perhaps abandoned them. These outsiders were threatening violence and Despite that they had seen God’s prophecy through Micah and others come true that they would return to their promised land the Israelites have already begun to doubt God and His promise and so the work on the Temple grinds to a slow crawl and eventually a halt. We can all relate to this I’m sure on one level or another. The last time you ordered something from a catalog or online and then 2 weeks later it still hadn’t arrived, who doesn’t begin to wonder whether or not the place where you ordered it from has forgotten you or your order? Now imagine this same situation but now you also have one of the stores competitors sending you messages saying that they’ve clearly forgotten you, you should just order it from us instead. Imagine the frustration and exasperation and anxiety that goes along with that. Well obviously the metaphor isn’t perfect but you get the idea, those who’d returned from exile are discouraged and confused and just becoming depressed really and so they are beginning to revisit rebellion and progress on the temple has basically stopped. So God raised up two prophets to encourage and urge on His people to complete the temple, Haggai and Zechariah. Little is known about Zechariah himself except that he was a priest who had come back with this first group of returned exiles. Through the prophesies and visions God gave to him though the people were reassured of the Lord’s presence and sovereignty and so the work on the Temple began again and was eventually finished around 516 B.C. This is the historical setting of the passage before us today in Zechariah 3, God has given the prophet a dream (night vision) that is meant to be greatly encouraging about God’s presence with His people, his deliverance of them from the evil they’re experiencing, how he will treat them in judgment and also includes a salvific promise for the whole nation. So now let’s dive in and begin looking at Zechariah’s vision. (The Good Part!!) Verse 1: “Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him.” God seems to sneak Zechariah into His heavenly courtroom to have a look at what’s going on. Regrettably, the Hebrew language is often very wooden and understated, and that’s true of this whole passage. What this text seems to only say in a plain as day manner is really much more amazing and Terrifying than is being let on so let me set up the play that is about to be enacted before us. The characters involved are Joshua the high priest, this is the same Joshua mentioned in Ezra and Haggai as Jeshua. He begins the scene Standing before a character named “The angel of the Lord”. Later we’ll see this character referred to as simply “The Lord”. That, coupled with other places in scripture where this title Angel of the Lord is used lead us to understand that Joshua is not merely standing before an angel, one of God’s messengers, but in fact he is standing before the creator of the Universe Himself, Jehovah God. Standing next to Joshua on his right side, which is known as the place of accusation, is Satan. Even today in courtrooms we hold to this setup, the defendant on the left and the plaintiff or prosecutor on the right before the Judge. And here in this verse Satan is the only character whose motives and actions are revealed, he is here to accuse or make charges against Joshua the High Priest. At this point some of you may be wondering “exactly how is this terrifying?” Well in order to understand that we need to understand what the high priest is to Israel. God didn’t just choose any old character for this vision to Zechariah, He chose Joshua the High Priest of Israel, someone who, as a priest himself, Zechariah would have complete knowledge of and understanding regarding his role.