Today in God's Word—December 2024
East Tallassee Church of Christ
December 20, Zechariah 3
"Hear now, O Joshua, the high priest, you and your friends who sit before you, for they are men who are a sign: behold, I will bring my servant the Branch. For behold, on the stone that I have set before Joshua, on a single stone with seven eyes, I will engrave its inscription, declares the LORD of hosts, and I will remove the iniquity of this land in a single day."
- Zechariah 3:8-9
The coming Messiah (or Christ) is the subject of almost the entire Old Testament. Isaiah is known as the Messianic prophet, and rightly so for all the prophecies his book contains about the promised Redeemer. But almost all the histories in the Old Testament, much of the beautiful poetry of the Psalms and practically all the prophets from Isaiah through Malachi bear witness to the faithfulness of God, who would, at the right time, send the promised Messiah.
Zechariah 3 is short, only 10 verses long. But it is steeped in Messianic ideas. Almost every line contains prophetic descriptions about Messiah. The high priest Joshua who led the returning captives, has the same Hebrew name as Jesus. The first scene shows Satan standing before God to accuse and oppose this priest. He could not comprehend what God's plan would be, but he fought against it with all his evil might with the same malevolence that drove him to tempt and test Jesus in every way. God rebuked Satan, and called his attention to the remnant that survived the fall of the nation and the decades of captivity. Any plan to extinguish Abraham's descendants had failed and would continue to fail until the promises and prophecies would all be kept and fulfilled in Christ. God chose the remnant of Israel, and he would sustain them.
Joshua's filthy clothes remind us that the remnant people were not so pure and holy in themselves. They also broke God's laws and defiled themselves with sin. It was by God's grace, not their merit, that the Lord spared them. It was by God's faithfulness to his covenant, not their faithfulness, that the nation survived at all. But God can cleanse and make his people fit for his presence. The Lord would take away their impurity and cleanse them with purity and holiness. Zechariah noticed Joshua's dirty turban, and prayed and God answered his prayer. Then the priest could stand before God and intercede for the people.
God told Joshua to walk in his ways and keep his charge. If he did as God said, he would give himself and his brothers access to the presence of God. These priests were a sign, a symbolic representation of the true high priest who would come. He would be the Branch, as Isaiah and Jeremiah called him, the true descendant of King David who would rule. Messiah was also described as a stone set before Joshua, and the New Testament affirms that Rock, that ever-living, all-seeing and knowing stone came in the person of Jesus Christ. He would be the one who would remove the iniquity of the land in a single day, a reference to Jesus' death on the cross to pay for all our sins. Redeemed people (both Jews and Gentiles) would have fellowship with God and one another through his atoning death and redeeming blood.
No one in all the Bible or all of history could fulfill all these prophecies except Jesus of Nazareth. Zechariah 3 ties different Messianic themes into one unified description of Messiah and his saving work. The New Testament writers and preachers affirmed that Jesus was the the one and only man who fulfilled all these prophecies and many more. As I studied this chapter, I had the sense that this was indeed “holy ground,” and we should, as God told Moses, "take off our shoes" in reverential awe of our great Savior.
Copyright © 2024 by Michael B. McElroy. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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