As Scripture texts for this morning, it comes from Zechariah, the sixth chapter. The Zechariah is a second-to-last Old Testament book, if it helps you browsers find your place and will read verses 9 through 15. And the Word of the Lord came to me. Take from the exiles, Heldai, Tobaya, and Jadaya, who have arrived from Babylon, and go the same day to the house of Josiah, the son of Zephaniah. 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, 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. It is he who shall build the temple of the Lord, and shall bear a royal honor and 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. And the crown shall be in the temple of the Lord as a reminder to Helm, Tobaya, Jadaya, and hand the son of Zephaniah. And those who are far off shall come and help 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. The secret things belong to our God, but the things that are revealed to us belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of God's law. Will you pray with me? God we pray that you would send the Spirit of Christ, because we know that apart from your Spirit, we do not see, believe, or trust the truth. So we do pray, Lord, that you would open our eyes that we might behold wonderful things in your law for Christ's sake. Amen. Please be seated. I'm sure that probably everybody here could fill in the blank of this phrase, separation of church and state. This is a love-hate matter for most people. When our side is in the majority, we don't like separation of church and state so much, but when our side is in the minority, we're glad for some separation between church and state. Because as you know, if you know American history, kings generally don't make good priests, meeting with Henry, who was the king and head of the church in England, and the Covenantters who felt the sting of his oppression and the pilgrims and Puritans and other Protestants, which fled Great Britain to establish the United States in the British colonies. This is a big and important part of our history. Kings just don't make good priests. And even if you're a religious person, that is you're somebody who doesn't consider yourself a believer, or you have a spiritual outlook of an alternative to biblical Christianity, you probably still share the same set of concerns when the king gets involved in affecting your spiritual life, you have a problem with it unless he shares your same views. Well, this then presents to us a problem because priests mediate our lives with God, but kings rule over and defend us. So how is it, as a believer, on the one hand, be made one with God, but yet on the other have someone to be our ruler? It is precisely this question that these verses in Zechariah 6 address because these verses will tell us that God's priest and God's king will become one and the same person, but it is the one whom God will choose. It is going to be God's royal priestly son who will bring together both the relationship of God's people with him and the relationship of God's people to their world as a ruler who will rule over them. And therefore, this passage ends with an admonition to us that we are to walk in these ways and diligently believe them so that we might share in the gracious, priestly royal rule and reign of God's king. So let's look at this passage together and see how God's priestly royal son will be the one who will bring heaven to earth so that we can faithfully trust in him as our king and our priest. Let's begin first of all by looking at who this royal priest is. You see in the opening of this passage, this is a bit different than the night visions that we've been looking at in Zechariah. So far, we have looked at the introduction to the book as a whole, and we've looked at seven different night visions. But this does not begin as a night vision. So we know it's a little bit different territory. By the way, is the last in this series on Zechariah, partly because the rest of the chapters of the book begin to repeat some of the themes we've seen, and I thought it would be a good time for us to move on. But some of you have noticed it's difficult in interpret night visions, well this is not a night vision, but this is dramatic theater. The word of the Lord comes to the prophet, and God gives him instructions. Zechariah is supposed to do what a lot of God's prophets did, which is to enact something. Ezekiah was commanded to knock a hole in the wall of the city and walk in and out of it. Jeremiah was told to smear himself with manure and walk around. Well, this is not quite so odious as that, but this is God's command for Zechariah to carry out a dramatic portrayal of something that was going to have symbolic significance. And so God commands Zechariah to go to the exiles, Heldai, Tobaya, and Jadaya, who have arrived from Babylon. These three people, we don't know anything else about them, but they have, along with everyone else in Israel, had been taken into captivity 70 years earlier, but these three have come back. And if you remember the context of the book of Zechariah, Cyrus, the Persian king, decreed that all the Jews could return after this time of exile in Babylon, and some had and some hadn't. And Zechariah's whole ministry is to encourage people, return to Jerusalem because God is going to reestablish his glorious presence on Mount Zion. And God will once again dwell with his people, just as he had before the time of exile. And so here are three who have come back. And Zechariah is told to go the same day, to go to the house of these exiles, and it says, from the exiles. And we don't know exactly until the next verse what he's supposed to take, but he's supposed to take silver and gold as we're told in verse 11. Now this is probably because these three had taken of a collection in Babylon to take back to Jerusalem to help with the temple rebuilding. And as Zechariah takes up this collection that these three have gathered, he's told the same day to another man's house, the house of Josiah, the son of Zephaniah. And apparently Josiah was a craftsman of some court sort, because in verse 11 we find that of the silver and the gold that Josiah and that Zechariah got from these three former exiles. He's supposed to take it to Josiah and Josiah is to make a crown in verse 11. And once he has made that crown, then he is to take that crown and put it on someone's head. And that someone is Joshua, the high priest. Now Joshua we learned about back in chapter 3. Joshua was the shabby priest. He was the high priest of the restored people of God, but he was unclean. And if you remember the scene there from Zechariah chapter 3, there is a scene where Joshua stands before the Lord and Satan is hurling accusations at him. And he's saying that Joshua is not worthy to minister before God on behalf of the people. That we see the angel of the Lord, the figure of Christ, who rebukes Satan. And God commands that a clean turbine was put on, Joshua's head. And we see the high priesthood of Israel reestablished, which of course is a prerequisite for God coming back to live among his people. And so the high priesthood has been restored as part of the hope that God's people have, that God would come into well among them. And now we see Joshua taking and he's drafted into this audience participation. And he has this newly cast crown placed upon his head. Now, I wanted to call this sermon, crown meets turbine. But I wasn't sure that everybody would quite understand, you know, some often seeks a mistake and for Muslims and some day probably somebody will mistake a Yomukah for, you know, a Berkha and so we're not familiar with these kinds of things, but this is what's happening. Joshua has the headdress of a priest on. He has the clean turbine that was granted him by God's pardoning graces to restore him to ministry as the priest of God's people. So the people have a means now by which they can relate to God and God can relate to them. But now something is added, a crown. And we know what a crown is a symbol of. We know that a crown is a symbol of a, what, a king, yes. Now Joshua is not being drafted to be king. This is a symbolic drama to depict something that is going to happen because as soon as he is crowned in this symbolic way, in verse 12, the Lord says, behold, the man whose name is branch. The man whose name is branch. God is say, Joshua wearing his priestly turbine with this symbolic crown put up on his head is a symbol of somebody who's called branch. You might remember from previous passages, but it's a good to remind ourselves who is this branch. This branch is from the root of Jesse. He is the successor to David Isaiah chapter 14, Jeremiah 23, and several other prophetic passages speak of this, that God had promised David that there would always be a son of David reigning on the throne of Israel. And even if the Davidic king aired, God wouldn't abandon him, but he would chase him. And even back when Joshua, the shabby priest, was made clean, there was a mention of this branch. You see, there were two hopes that Israel had that God would come back and live among them, and that God would raise up a king to rule over them, to defend them, and to be their king. And so Joshua with his priestly turbine and his royal crown is a symbol of not just a king, but the priest. And we are told what this priest is going to do, this kingly priest in verse 12. He shall build the temple of the Lord. This royal priest will be a temple builder. This descendant of David, this human king that God has chosen will rebuild God's temple, which is a prerequisite toward God returning. You can often tell what somebody does for living by the hat they wear, right? In fact, some of you may have had jobs, or may have jobs where they say, have you, you wear more than what? One hat, right? I have a hat rack in my office, symbolically speaking, because it seems like I'm always putting off one hat and putting on another. I was trying to remember, I think it was on green acres where the general store owner, Sam Drucker, when he needed to become the postmaster, he would disappear and come back with a postmaster's hat. Or if he needed to sell a train ticket, he would disappear and come back with a station master's hat. I can't be sure that it was a petty coat junction, but I seem to remember that somewhere in an old television show. Well, here we see one person wearing two hats, and his name is Branch, and this speaks to us of who we can expect to come. We read and learned in the New Testament that Jesus was born a descendant of David, Luke, in his announcements of Jesus as coming. The birth of Jesus is foretold by the angel Gabriel. The Lord will give him the throne of his father David, Jesus came as a king. But we're also told in the book of Hebrews that Jesus is a great high priest who has ascended into the heavens who lives to make intercession for us. You see here is an anticipation of who Jesus would be. It wouldn't be a Joshua high priest, it wouldn't be as a rubble who was appointed the governor of Judea by the emperor in Babylon, and who was overseeing the rebuilding of the stone temple right there in Jerusalem in that day. It wouldn't be as a rubble. But it would be someone who would wear both hats. But it's more than telling us about who Christ was to come. It tells us what we need. What we need is somebody to mediate God's grace to us. We need a priestly mediator. But we also need someone to rule over us, as the catechism says, to rule over us, to subdue us to himself and to defend us from all his enemies and ours. See, we need a king. And this side of east of Eden where we live, the church and the state or the priest and the king simply can't do that together. Because we live in a time in a world where God has not been enthroned visibly and where the devil still does his work and where sin still reigns within us. So when you look at Zechariah's vision, this is a reminder of what you and what I need. We not only need someone who can atone for our sins and mediate God's grace to us. We also need someone who can subdue us to himself, who can rule over us and defend us. And it is in this. This is the who of this dramatic enactment. The royal priest is the one who will wear both crown and turbine and mediate both God's grace and rule over us as God's king. But then what will he do specifically that is important to this vision? We're told he will build the temple of the Lord. That branch is going to build a temple in which God would dwell. Now, going back to the very beginnings of Zechariah, there have been promises in chapter 1, verse 16. God said, I have returned to Jerusalem with mercy. My house shall be built in it. God is promising to rebuild his house among his people. In the next vision in chapter 1, verse 20, there were four craftsmen that were going to break off the four horns, the imperial powers. We talked about Carpenter's 9-1-1. When we looked at that, instead of God sending an army, he sends builders to overthrow the powers because in his enthronement in his temple would be the conquest of all his enemies and the enemies of his people. The next vision in Zechariah anticipated that Jerusalem itself would become like the temple, that the whole city of Jerusalem would be filled with a glory of God, like the temple had been filled before. In fact, there would not even be a wall around Jerusalem because the glory of God would be its wall. It was going to be too big to be numbered and a stone wall just wouldn't do. It would be from that new temple city that God's light in the menorah mission of the lamp stands in chapter 4 that God's light would go forth. And so now here at the end of this first half of Zechariah's prophecies where all these visions have been laid out and all these expectations have been created, we are told branch will build it. Now think about this. In the Old Testament world, it's different than our world today. If I meet a pastor who's been through two building projects, I say you need counseling because every pastor and those of you who probably led in this building project say once a lifetime is enough, it takes its toll to build churches because you've got a lot of people who have a lot of opinions and you've got all kinds of other issues to deal with. But generally speaking, church leaders build churches. And you might think that in the ancient world it was priests who built temples but that's not the case. Both in scripture and in the surrounding cultures, it was kings who built temples. And if you think about your Old Testament history, you can remember Christ precisely that. David said to himself and to God, it's not right that I'm living in a house and you're living in a tent. God. And what did God say to David? David, I'm going to build a house for you. Meaning he was going to build David a dynasty. And he made the covenant with David, 2 Samuel 7, to do that. But he said, your son, Solomon, whose name means peace, he'll build me a house. And when you look at first kings, I think beginning about chapter 5 that goes on through chapter 8, you see Solomon, the master builder, bringing Hiram down from Lebanon and building the temple of God in Jerusalem. The kings built temples in the ancient world. And this is precisely what's happening here. God's royal priest is going to build God's temple. And as I alluded to earlier, this has got to be more than the rubble because the temple of the second temple, the temple that is a rubble was helping build is almost finished at this point. The glory of the temple dedication in Ezra, chapter 3. And even if people might have been tempted to think as a rubble was going to be this royal priest builder, they may have forgotten what it said there in Ezra, chapter 3. This is so telling about what we should expect going into the New Testament that when the rubble was finished and they had a temple dedication celebration, we're told many of the priests and Levites and heads of the fathers houses that is the old people, the ones who had gone to exile and come back, old men who had seen the first house, wept. Wept with a loud voice when they saw the foundation of this house being laid, though many shouted a loud for joy so that the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people's weeping. The temple that got rebuilt after exile, even though it was commanded by God to be rebuilt, it was not the final temple that God would build. It fell well short of God's promises. It was a tiny house compared to the temple that God promised he would build. And so the people of Zechariah's day would be saying to themselves, it's not this stone temple, it's going to be an even better one, a greater temple. But look at what else this branch will do. He shall bear royal honor, that is, he will, another word, a better word maybe than honor is majesty. He would be obviously and outwardly the king and he would have the status of being God's king. And then it says, and shall sit and rule on his throne. Now who's throne? You might think well on the king's throne. But that's not what a temple was, a temple was not David's palace, but the temple was a palace. Israel's temple was a palace because Israel was unique among the nations in this way, that their God was also their king, their ultimate king. There's even a reference in Jeremiah to how the ark of the covenant was God's throne. It's where God would meet with his people where he would render decisions as well as receive their sacrifices. So when we're told that this branch will bear royal honor and sit and rule on his throne, it's not his own throne, it is the Lord's throne. Because this royal priest is not going to come to set up his own kingdom, he's going to come to establish and rule over God's kingdom. Think about what Psalm 2 said, about the human king of Israel. Psalm 2 verse 6, where God is speaking of his anointed son. As for me, I have set my king in the palace that David built, in the palace that Solomon built. No. As for me, I have set my son on Zion, my holy hill, that God's royal priestly son would not rule in a separate palace, but he would rule from the very throne of God himself. I don't know this for sure, I should have asked someone that knows, but that's not a constraint that pastors are always under to actually know what they're saying when it comes to illustrating. But it is my understanding that you can tell a lot in the west wing of the White House by where someone's office is. And there's probably a whole food chain there with people biting and devouring one another over where, and I know one big thing is, does the vice president have an office in the White House? Most presidents put the vice president across the street in the executive office building, which from a vice presidential point of view, could be a good thing on some days. It's a plausible deniability, I think, is what Gerald Ford coined as an expression, but this branch, this human king of Israel who will both wear turban and crown, he's not across the street at the executive office building. He is not even in the chief of staff's place next to the Oval Office, he is in the Oval Office itself. Psalm 110, which is the most frequently quoted Psalm in the whole New Testament, says, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand. And we know that when Christ was exalted, that he was seated at the right hand of God, that he in his exalted state is the Lamb who stands as his slain, who is next to the ancient of days on the throne. So that as Revelation 5 instructs us that while God rules sovereignly, he does it graciously through his sovereign son, so that he is worthy to open the book, to break its seven seals, he is able to both reconcile us to God and also to rule over the affairs of the nations. This is who branch is, and we're told in verse 13, there should be a priest on his throne, that is, Jehovah's throne, and the council of peace shall be between them both. Now, what does it mean the council of peace shall be between them both? Is it merely that Yahweh, the God of Israel and branch, the king of Israel, does it simply mean that they're going to get along? In human affairs, you can't always assume that lesser magistrates would get along with greater ones. This is just really too, I'm letting a lot of pitches go by today when talking about human government, it's almost not fair. I said to somebody this week, you should buy stock at NBC because Saturday Night Live is not even writing scripts anymore, they're just using the newspaper. But this is not that kind of a matter, is it? The branch and the Jehovah don't have a problem getting along, so what does it mean the council of peace shall be between them? And this is a wonderful and a bit of a deep mystery, and it is one which your elders I think will gladly get into in the Catechism class in some evening because such a rich and beautiful subject. In the Latin, it is referred to as the Pactum Salutus. In English, we refer to it as the eternal covenant or the covenant of redemption. The scriptures allude to this at various places, and the substance of it is this, that from all eternity, the triune God, covenanted within Himself to redeem for Himself of people, that the covenant of peace, the counsel of peace, the eternal covenant, the variety of names by which it goes in Scripture tells us that from all eternity, God within Himself counseled and committed to Himself to redeem sinners by grace, and that's just the first half. And the second half of it is this, and that the history of redemption, the story that we read in the Bible, is God carrying out in history what He had eternally promised to Himself. When Jesus said, I come to do the will of Him who sent me, when Jesus refers to the plan and the purpose of God that He has come to fulfill, it is a purpose with which He participated in making, and with the Father and the Spirit, the Son all three, one God in three persons together carry out this plan of redemption, and this is the glorious story of the Bible. And this is what Zechariah envisions, and once the people of God to know that the covenant that God made in all eternity before the world was made, that He is now carrying out His plan and the person of this royal priest whose name is branch. That's who this person is, this is what He will do, but there is a charge for us in the final verses of this passage, that is we are to be loyal citizens of this royal priest. In verse 14, God instructed Zechariah and Zechariah instructed Joshua and all who were there, the crown shall be in the temple of the Lord, a reminder to Helm, to Baja, to Daya, and hand the Son of Zephaniah. In other words, this is like, you know, Miss America, or where I come from it was Miss Pinkneyville or Miss Perry County, or I went to University of Illinois and we always kind of chuckled to the fact that Iowa had the pork queen. It was always a lovely lady, but the end of the appointed year, the queen or the king, or whoever it has to give up the crown, and smilingly granted to someone else, that's not what happens here. Joshua, this is not Joshua's to keep, but it is God's object lesson, his illustration, to be stored in the rubbable's temple as meager as that temple was compared to the first one. And as far as short as that temple would be compared to the final one, this crown was to be stored in the temple as a reminder to God's people that one day priest and king would be one. And that royal priest would rule on God's throne on God's behalf. The crown would be put in the temple as a reminder, and perhaps where it said to Helm, to Baja, to Daya, and hand, it's a reminder just to them to all who are in exile that everybody should return or as we might say, y'all come. Because the very next verse tells us, and those who are far off shall come. And help to build the temple of the Lord. Now those who are far off would include all those who had been driven into exile by God's chastening actions in the exile. But the vision that prophets like Isaiah give us is that when the exiles come back, they're going to have a carload of foreigners with them. That Egyptians and Assyrians and Ethiopians and all manner of all kinds of people would be running alongside Israel saying, we want to come with you. That kings would bring their tribute to God's temple on Mount Zion. This is one of the very first stories in Matthew's gospel, isn't it? That you have three kings from the east who in Jesus' infancy recognized him as the true king. And so there's going to be this time of all kinds of people coming, and they're going to help build the temple. What kind of sense does that make? People in Jesus' time were immensely confused about what Jesus said about the temple. In John chapter 2, he said, and this, he stood in the midst of Herod's temple. Now, Herod, who was not a legitimate king of Israel, he was just a cousin of the Jews, he wasn't even a Jew. Herod had added on to the rubbable's temple, and I would say it would be in the Rococo category. It would be like an Indian restaurant with blinking lights plus plus. It was grand and it was huge, it was larger than Solomon's temple. And Jesus stood in the midst of that temple and said, tear down this temple, and I will raise it in three days. And some of them said, it took Herod 40 years to build this temple. And you're going to rebuild it in three days, but the Apostle John tells us what Jesus' intentions were. He was referring to his own body. When Jesus came into the temple, in Matthew chapter 12, he said, something greater than the temple is here. Why did he say that? Because the branch was there in him. When Jesus came into the temple, the stewards of the temple rejected him, and he told a story. He said there was a vineyard, and that vineyard was meticulously and lovingly planted by the landowner, and he let it out to stewards. When it came time for the tribute out of the harvest to be paid, the stewards refused to pay the rent. So I sent another servant to collect the rent, and they progressively treated each one of his servants worse and worse and worse. So finally the landowner said, I'll send my son, who is the heir, to collect the rent. Surely they will listen to him. But when the tenants saw the heir coming, they said, if we kill him, the vineyard will be ours. And they did, and Jesus asked the crowd what should be done, and the crowd was outraged. They said, these wretched should be put to a wretched end. And here's what Jesus said, the stone, which the builders rejected, would become the cornerstone, and that language of cornerstone is cornerstone of a new temple.
That the vineyard will be taken away from those who killed the son, and it would be given to those who would bear fruit, who would be good stewards. And so the apostle Paul tells us the midst of followers of Jesus who are trying to figure out where the Gentiles fit in. We are the heirs, the promises to the Israel. Where do the Gentiles fit in? And Paul says, the gospel has made peace by bringing those who are far off and making with them one with those who are near. So the two are now one, Jew and Gentile, there's no slave free, Jew or Gentile, male or female, slave or free in this new Israel that God is gathering to himself. And therefore Peter describes the church of the diaspora, the church in exile in 1 Peter 2 as a temple being built out of living stones in which we all who believe in Christ are royal priests. So do you see there in verse 15, all that Zechariah was promising on God's behalf was the fullness and the fulfillment of God's Old Testament promises, which we have now seen, we have the benefit of 2000 years of watching the temple grow. We pray this morning for the pastors of Tanzania, we prayed for missionaries in London, presumably reaching out to Muslims in London. We are seeing men and women and children from every tribe and tongue and people in nation, we have been seeing it for 20 centuries contributing to the building of God's final temple, the risen Christ. But God finishes this, if you will, with not only the charge to us as we participate in the building of his final temple, but it says that the very last sentence and this shall come to pass if you will diligently obey the voice of the Lord your God. The Hebrew there is literally, if you will diligently hear, because to hear means to obey. When our children don't know what we ask, we don't say, did you obey me, we say, did you hear me? See, God's temple building people, both those who are of the natural branch and those who have been grafted in, are a people who listen to the voice of the Lord, who obey the Word of the Lord. It struck me as I was considering this, that a believer is not just someone who believes that God exists, but a believer is somebody who believes in what God has said. The demons, James says, believe that God is, but they're not doers of what God says. And so, the commission to us is to participate in this temple building work of the royal priestly branch, and to continue to obey the voice of the Lord, to honor his Word, to cherish his Word, and to continue to seek into plumb what his Word requires of us. So, we have the royal priestly son, who will unite, both priest and king in one person. He will build the house of God, not simply so that God can come and inhabit it, but so that he would rule on God's throne because he himself is the God man, fulfilling God's eternal purposes by gathering to himself people by his plan of redemption. And therefore, for us, we are to participate in this temple building process by obeying his voice. So, it's not so difficult, is it, to understand Zechariah. Jesus said it a lot more simply in Matthew's gospel. He said, he will build his church. Let's pray. We pray to you, O branch, presented at the temple as an infant, found in the temple in your adolescence, teaching and instructing in the temple, rejected at the temple, and wondrously and gloriously and graciously, reconciling us to yourself so that we might be living stones. And what you have established in your royal priestly work. Jesus, we need a priest. We also need a king. We pray that you might intercede for us before the fathers of our faithful high priest. And we pray that you would rule over our hearts so that we would be a people of renown, a people for your glory. A suitable vessel for your purposes. And we ask it in your name. Amen.