[0:00] Zechariah 6, 9. He says, And you will know that the Lord Almighty has sent me to you.
[1:15] This will happen if you diligently obey the Lord your God. Well, I had a meeting with someone on Wednesday morning after the primary elections, and he was discouraged and disgusted with a lot of things, mostly about the politics of this country.
[1:38] At least in the highest level, seemed to be nothing but a parade of charlatans, at least from his perspective. It becomes more and more apparent that we love to hear what our itching ears love to hear certain things, and some people are glad to tell us of those things.
[1:56] We love talk. On top of it, Malia Obama decided to go to Harvard, and he wondered what are the chances that Malia would be able to get into Harvard if she wasn't the president's daughter.
[2:10] And I don't have any idea how smart Malia is. I'm sure she's a smart girl. But it does seem odd that children of extremely wealthy people, children of extremely important people, never have a problem getting into elite schools, where they'll meet elite people, and then be handed wonderful opportunities that only they could have, for no other reason than that they are who they are.
[2:40] And normal people, common people, we struggle to pair a way to go to IUSB. This guy was discouraged and disheartened and even bitter, and I started talking to him, and I got very little traction with him until I landed on tonight's passage.
[2:59] And finally, the clouds broke, and the sunshine came out. And I have no problem telling you about this particular counseling session because I was the counselor, and I was also the counselee.
[3:15] Now, what happens to me, I'm sure happens to you. I'm sure you can, maybe the elections didn't have that effect on you, but maybe it's something else, where you get discouraged, and you lose sight of Jesus.
[3:35] That's what happened to me. At its very most basic level, my big problem was I lost sight of Jesus. And what happens when you lose sight of Jesus, when he quits being the most important person in your world?
[3:51] Well, you get discouraged, and you get stuck, and you start thinking the wrong things, don't you? Your thought processes don't work properly. Things that shouldn't be important to you become really important to you, and things that really are important, well, they're not meaningful.
[4:12] So, what ends up happening is wrong hopes, and that's what was going on here. I'm looking at the situation, and I have hopes for it, but wrong hopes always eventually land you into spiritual depression.
[4:29] There's always this connection. When we have these false hopes, they might last for a little while. You know that. They'll last a little while.
[4:39] They'll last you a day. They'll last you a week. They'll last you a month. For some hopes, they'll last you years. And then, they're proven false, and you fall into this place of depression.
[4:54] And there we get stuck under the clouds, bitter, discouraged, on the treadmill, going nowhere. And when we are in that place, we need to ask ourselves, what am I hoping in?
[5:07] So, if you're spiritually depressed, discouraged, downhearted, you need to ask yourself this evening, what are you hoping in? What are you hoping for? Have you lost sight of Jesus?
[5:20] Now, tonight is about seeing Jesus, because at the very heart of this passage that Pastor John read for you, it says in the NIV, here is the man. In the ESV, and other translations, it says, behold the man.
[5:37] There's this look at him. So, what's your hope? What's your hope for this life? What's your hope for the next life? Behold the man.
[5:50] Now, we're at the end of this first section of Zechariah. Zechariah roughly falls into three sections. The first section is chapters 1 through 6. And you remember, in this first long section of Zechariah, it's packed into one night, and it's vision after vision after vision of God telling Zechariah and telling the people of Israel, this is what I'm going to do for you.
[6:16] This is where you are now, but this is what is going to happen. Now, this last little bit, and at the end of chapter 6, it caps it off. It's not part of the vision series, but it ends that section.
[6:28] It puts the crown, so to speak, on the top of things. And it ends with the Lord saying, now you've heard all of that, but don't miss him. You've heard about a city without a wall.
[6:41] You've heard about the removal of sin. You've heard about the coming kingdom. You've heard everything I'm going to do, but don't miss him. It's possible to read and to understand all of that, and if you miss this coming king, you're going to misunderstand all of that.
[6:58] You can't understand all of that without understanding the coming priest king. He's your hope. Now, remember what the problem was.
[7:09] They were stuck. They needed to build the temple, but it had been put on hold, and so now they're encouraged, and I think they are starting to work on the temple, and the Lord has to come in and say, and has to remind them that he is your hope.
[7:25] It's not this temple that you are building with your hands. This man, this coming king is your hope. He's the one who's going to finally build the temple, and so don't miss him. Now, a lot of people read the scriptures without Christ at the center.
[7:40] They read the scriptures without Christ at the center. They read it as a book of rules. Now, are there rules in the Bible? Of course, we heard about that this morning, but the Bible is not just a book of rules.
[7:52] They read it as a book of examples, and so they go into the Old Testament, and they see examples, and that's all they see, and they read it as a book of prophecies to come.
[8:05] Anytime I want to watch someone who can rant and rave about the prophecies to come, I can watch my channel 46 news on Sunday evening, and I'll hear all about what's going to happen in the future and how everything that is happening now is predicted in the scriptures.
[8:21] And that's how they read the scriptures. Some read it as a history. But the scriptures from first to last is about Jesus Christ. It's his story.
[8:33] And so they are saying with one voice, from beginning to end, they're saying, behold the man. He's coming. He's coming. Here he is. Here he is. There he was. There he was. He's coming again.
[8:44] He's the key that unlocks the door. He's the glue on your Bibles, on the spine, that glues every page together. It all comes together in him.
[8:54] He's the ultimate hope. Not politicians, not money, not human elbow grease, not end-time prophecies, not principles to live by. Jesus Christ the man. And that's what I was missing Wednesday morning.
[9:07] That's what I'd lost track of. And that's what Satan is working overtime in your heart to make you forget. And that is what your flesh is so glad to forget.
[9:20] Your flesh will put its hope in anything other than Jesus Christ. So God has given us a Savior. He is a priest.
[9:33] He is a king. His name is Jesus. Now as we begin, as the passage begins, some folks from Babylon, all the way, hundreds of miles in Babylon, have come to Jerusalem.
[9:45] And it seems that they've been, they're carrying gold and silver from far away in Babylon. And I don't know if it's just their gold and silver, or if it was other people's in Babylon, their gold and silver.
[9:56] They want to help build the temple. But that's the point. They're coming. They have gold and silver from far away. And these people want to build the temple. They want to help rebuild it. And so this gold and silver is going to be used for the decorations of the temple.
[10:09] It's going to be used to pay for the things in the temple to help rebuild the temple. And the word of the Lord comes to Zechariah, and he says, Now go take that silver and gold from these exiles, make a crown, weave the silver and the gold together into a crown, and put the crown on Joshua's head.
[10:30] On Joshua the high priest's head. Now you remember Joshua. We've ran into him earlier in Zechariah.
[10:41] Now what was he? Well, he was the high priest. Now did high priests normally wear crowns? No, they didn't.
[10:53] They wore a turban, a cloth turban that said, Holy to the Lord on it. So they wore a turban, not a crown. Now let me ask you another question. Let me ask you to put your thinking caps on.
[11:07] Can you think of what Israelite king was also a priest? What Israelite king was also a priest? Can you think of him?
[11:22] I'm glad no one raised their hand and answered because I would have to say, I'm sorry. The answer is no. Because it's a trick question. Kings were never priests.
[11:33] And priests were never kings. Sometimes kings were just kings. And sometimes kings were also prophets. David was a king and a prophet.
[11:45] Now sometimes priests were just priests. And sometimes priests were also prophets. But kings were never priests.
[11:57] There was never a crossover between those two offices. Now one time King Uzziah, who was for the most part a very good king, he ruled for 50 some years in Israel. He decided, he was probably at the height of his power, and he decided that he wanted to be a priest.
[12:13] And so he went into the temple to offer some incense. And the priest in the temple stopped him and bravely said, you can't do this. You need to leave. And King Uzziah reacted.
[12:26] And he was angry. And he got into a rage. And all of a sudden, leprosy broke out all across his forehead. God instantly made him unclean. And the priest saw it, and everyone saw it, and they rushed him out.
[12:40] And this time Uzziah didn't even try to stop them. He was running along with them because he knew that if he didn't get out of the temple quick, God was going to do more than give him leprosy.
[12:52] So in Zechariah, we're seeing something that's not just rare, it's almost totally unheard of. A priest with a crown? The only other person who was both a king and a priest of God Most High was Melchizedek.
[13:09] Melchizedek. And we don't really know very much about him. Just this, that when Abraham, the father of Israel, the friend of God, met him, instead of Abraham blessing him, Melchizedek blessed Abraham.
[13:26] And instead of Melchizedek giving a tenth of everything he had to Abraham, Abraham gave a tenth of everything he had to Melchizedek. But Melchizedek was the only one, and he wasn't an Israelite.
[13:42] And so when Zechariah comes in and puts this crown on Joshua's head, you can imagine what Joshua is stunned. What is going on?
[13:52] What does this mean? And then the Lord tells him, Here is the man. Here is the man. Behold the man, who is the branch. And it's not that Joshua himself was going to be the branch.
[14:05] We already saw in chapter 3 that Joshua is symbolic of things to come. Joshua is a picture of Jesus Christ. So here's this picture for Israel.
[14:18] And Zechariah is saying, here's your hope. Here's the one who's going to build the temple. The branch. And it says, The glory of God will be on his shoulders.
[14:31] The glory of God will weigh on his shoulders, and he will carry it. And it will be upon him, and he will do it. Now, so the great hope is not Joshua.
[14:43] It's not Zerubbabel, the governor. They were both great guys, great as they are. But their real hope is not even this little earthly temple that they are building.
[14:58] Their real hope is this branch. And God doesn't want them to miss it. You can imagine. They're excited. They're stirred up. They want to build the temple. They're building the temple. And do we have sometimes the tendency to, when we get excited about things, to get too excited?
[15:14] To think, Oh, this is it. This is the big deal. And God wants to gently say, Yes, you're building the temple. That is good. But don't miss the one who's really going to build the temple. Don't think too highly of yourselves and get too excited about this.
[15:29] There's one coming who will really build the temple. And so God himself takes them by the hand and says, Let's fly. And they fly through the clouds, and they break through the clouds, and they get up into the sun.
[15:41] And God shines upon them, and God says, Behold the man. So who is Jesus? That's the question. Who are we looking at tonight? Who is your Savior?
[15:52] Who is your hope? Because it's not just true of them. This is true of us. Who is our hope? Well, I want to see four things in this passage. The first is that Jesus is the real temple.
[16:05] Jesus is the real temple. Not only will he build the temple, he is the temple. Now look at verse 12. Here's the man whose name is the branch.
[16:17] And he will branch out from this place. He's going to do what a branch does. He's going to grow out from this place and build the temple of the Lord. And so the branch is going to branch out.
[16:29] He's going to spread out. So you can imagine a vine, and it's spreading. And it's spreading. It keeps going. And wherever he goes, what does he do? The temple is built.
[16:41] Wherever he goes, the temple is built. Wherever he grows, the temple grows. That tells us something. That the true temple is not a building. The true temple is a person.
[16:53] It's Jesus Christ. And when we are added to Jesus Christ, we become a part of that temple. Now sometimes we, Paul even can talk about himself as we are the temple of God because God's spirit lives in us.
[17:06] And that is true. But that only becomes true of us when we get added to Jesus Christ. So when our stone is attached to him, we become the temple of God.
[17:18] So remember what Jesus said. And he said, destroy this temple, and in three days, I will raise it up. And everyone said, what?
[17:30] What are you talking about? And John says, looking back after the resurrection, he understands, and he says, he was talking about his body. His body is the temple.
[17:43] He's talking about himself. So Israel's hope was not some earthly temple. And they couldn't get that wrong. If they thought this little thing that they were building, and you know what happened to this little thing that they were building?
[17:59] Well, it started to fall apart. It got old. It got dilapidated. And then, it got so small that Herod had to build a whole new temple.
[18:13] And it was a glorious temple. But in 70 AD, that temple was destroyed. And if that was their hope, that building, then they were in trouble. If they thought, we are good with God because we have this temple, then they were in trouble.
[18:28] And that's what present-day Orthodox Jews are waiting for. They're waiting for the temple to be rebuilt. But they've missed it. They've missed their real hope. It's not a temple in Palestine.
[18:38] The real hope is Jesus. And so, where do you go to meet with God? Where does God live with men? Where does the glory of God shine here on the earth? Well, it's when you go to Christ.
[18:50] Where do you go if you want to meet God? You go to Christ. You close with Him. He's the temple. Now, that's the first thing. Jesus is the temple. Now, the second thing is Jesus' kingdom is the temple.
[19:02] Jesus' kingdom is the temple. So, you have this picture of a priest who's also a king. So, what was the kingdom, so to speak, of a priest?
[19:14] If a priest was said to have a place where he ruled, where he was in charge, what was that place? Well, it was the temple. So, in the temple grounds, he was in charge.
[19:27] So, when Isaiah comes in, Isaiah is not in charge anymore. The priest is in charge. And when David comes into the temple, the priest is in charge, not David anymore. The priest was God's king, so to speak, over the temple.
[19:39] And so, wherever Jesus goes, wherever Jesus' will is done, where Jesus reigns, that becomes the temple of God. That becomes the place where God and man come together.
[19:55] Now, that starts right here in my heart. That starts in your heart. When Jesus comes in and sets up his throne and gives us his spirit, then we become the temple of God.
[20:06] But it's not just a personal thing. It's not just something that's going to happen and stay right here in my heart, in your heart, and in our hearts. At the end of Revelation, you see this picture of the new Jerusalem.
[20:21] And, the new Jerusalem in Revelation, it's both a, it's a place and it's a people at the same time. It comes dressed, beautifully, beautifully dressed as a bride for her husband.
[20:33] Well, that's us, dressed for Jesus Christ. But it's also the place. And so, this new Jerusalem is the people and the place. It's a garden, it's a city, but it's also this perfect cube.
[20:45] Now, sometimes we wonder, why all these weird numbers in Revelation? Well, none of them are without meaning and understanding. And the city is as long as it is high as it is wide.
[20:57] It's this gigantic cube. And the only other cube in the Bible is the Holy of Holies. Revelation is saying something.
[21:10] That in the new heavens and the new earth, the whole thing is the Holy of Holies. The whole thing is where God dwells. The whole thing is the temple of God.
[21:22] So, Jesus is on his throne and the whole world is his kingdom. That's what we're seeing in Revelation. The whole world is his kingdom. And the whole world and everyone in it has now been transformed into the temple of God.
[21:37] And we will be pillars in the temple of God, he says. So, wherever Jesus reigns, ordinary ground becomes holy ground. Wherever Jesus reigns, God meets with man and man worships God.
[21:52] And if Jesus reigns as your king, then you are holy to God. You're set apart. You're sacred. You're special to him. And God comes and lives in you.
[22:03] Now, that's the second thing. Jesus' kingdom is the temple of God. Now, the third, and I want to make the next two much more personal to you. The third, Jesus reigns as your priest.
[22:18] Jesus reigns as king, as your priest. Verse 13 says, and he will be a priest on his throne. throne. And so, he's a king.
[22:30] He has a throne. He rules. He reigns. Jesus says, all authority in heaven and earth is given to me. But, it also says, he's a priest on his throne.
[22:43] So, he's sitting as a king, but his every act as a king is also his act as a, as a act as a priest. And so, what do priests do?
[22:54] Well, priests intercede between God and men. A priest's whole mission was to take sinners and bring them to God and, and make them right with God to be blessed by God.
[23:07] And so, now Jesus reigns as a king, as, or as a priest, as your priest. So, think about that. The one who sits on the throne of heaven, the one who sits on the throne of heaven, who God says, sit here at right, at my right hand until I make all your enemies a footstool, who wields all authority, who has authority over diseases, who has authority over powers and rulers and authorities, over demons, over kings, over presidents, over congresses, over warlords.
[23:41] What does Jesus do with that great cosmic authority? authority? How does he use that authority? How does he wield it?
[23:51] Well, he sits as a priest on the throne. He wields all this cosmic power to bring you and all of the people to God, the people of God, he brings you to God to bless you, to do you good.
[24:08] He, it says, he rules all things for the good of the church. Now, think about that. He rules, he rules all things and he rules it to a specific end to do good to the church and if you're a part of the church, then it's to do you good.
[24:28] So, every act of power, every time he sways his scepter, every time he gives a word in heaven, it's for your good. It's to bless you.
[24:40] It's to give you grace. See, we're on the heart of that king. We're on his heart and he can never forget us and he can't exercise authority out here without thinking of us and saying, is that going to be good for my bride or not?
[25:01] We're on his heart because he died for us. And you see, this is what's so wonderful is what came first for him, the priesthood or being the king.
[25:16] Well, in Joshua's case, he was priest who was exalted as king, so to speak. And the very same thing is true of Jesus. Hebrews says, having made atonement, that's a priestly thing to do.
[25:29] Having made atonement, he sat down at the right hand of God. Philippians says, he was obedient unto death, therefore, God highly exalted him.
[25:42] So who is the one sitting on the throne ruling all things at this moment over elections and over Congress and over all the rest, over your life and my life, your problems and my problems?
[25:54] Well, he's the one who went to the cross for you. And so you can trust his heart. You can trust his heart. He's not going to use his authority in a way that's abusive and is harmful for you.
[26:07] He can never do that because he died for you. Your name is engraved on his hands. So Gentiles, remember the Gentile lord, they lorded over them. How do you become a king of the Gentiles?
[26:18] Well, you got to be big, you got to be strong, you have to be powerful, you wield your authority. But how does Jesus become the king? Well, he's this priest who makes a sacrifice and it's not just any ordinary sacrifice, it's himself.
[26:32] He lays down himself in there before God highly exalted him. And so he came to his throne not through might. As strong as he was, he didn't come to his throne because he was that strong.
[26:45] He came to his throne because of his loving sacrifice. And so all of his authority is pointed toward giving you grace, helping you, bringing you to God, making you right with God, blessing you.
[27:09] It really is a throne of grace for you. Where every act of that throne is grace. Where every word from the throne is grace. And so why will you and why will I, poor, weak sinners that we are, failing?
[27:26] Why will he be able to, why will we be able to stand faultless before God's throne with great joy? Well, it's because our priest is our king and nothing can stop him.
[27:42] Nothing can hold him back. And one day we will reign on earth forever and ever, sinners that we are, because our king is our priest. And so he loves you. Your king loves you with a never dying, yet with a dying love.
[27:58] Now fourth, that's third, Jesus rules as a, he rules as a priest, as a king. The fourth is, now Jesus intercedes for you as a king.
[28:13] Jesus intercedes for you as a king. So this is the, the other side. This is the other side of the coin, of the last one. He's a king who is a priest, but he is also a priest who is a king.
[28:30] Now, so kids, imagine that your Sunday school class, you want to go to an amusement park, and you want to go as a class, you want to have a fun time, you want to stay at a hotel, you want to go swimming, you want us to pay for your ice cream and for your pizza, and you think, this is going to be a great idea.
[28:51] But, then you start thinking, well, however are we going to get enough money for that? And are the pastors and the people that are going to let us go? How are we ever going to get the church to help us?
[29:03] And suppose, I heard about that, I heard about your plan, you wanted to do this, you wanted to go to the hotel and go swimming and have pizza and go to the amusement park, and I heard about it, and I came to you and I said, well, don't worry, I will talk to the deacons for you.
[29:16] I'll stand up for you. I'll try to get them to do it, and I'll see if I can talk Pastor John into it, and I'll do everything I can. And I think it would be nice to have one of the pastors on your side speaking for you, saying, let me see what I can do.
[29:37] Or suppose Bremen School was falling apart. I don't know if it is or not, I'm just saying, suppose it is.
[29:48] It was falling apart and it needed money to make repairs and hire teachers, and one day, the President of the United States heard about it, and he came, and he walked through, and he said, yeah, you need money.
[30:01] I'm going to see what I can do. This isn't right. Let me see who I can talk to. And he says, don't worry, I'm on your side. I'll do everything that I can to get everything you need, and so that's what he did.
[30:12] Now, can you imagine who's going to bat for you? Who's interceding for you? Who's speaking on your behalf? Well, it's not your mom and dad. They're not writing dear congressman letters. It's not your grandma and your grandpa helping you.
[30:25] It's the President. And so, how confident are you going to be if the President is speaking on your behalf? Well, you would say, I think he's going to be able to help us. I think, you know, when the President speaks for us, we have quite a voice.
[30:41] But who speaks for you as a Christian? Who is your priest? Who intercedes with prayers for you?
[30:52] Who is always praying, Father, help them. Father, forgive them. Father, give them grace. This is hard. Help them. God's son. It's God's own appointed king.
[31:07] Your priest is the king of the whole world. He's not the President of the United States. He's not the pastor of Grace Fellowship Church. He's the king of the whole world. And when that one speaks for you on your behalf, well, then you have quite a voice.
[31:21] You have someone really talking for you. The government, it says, is on his shoulders. The government of what? The government of everything is on his shoulders.
[31:33] And Zechariah says he's clothed with majesty. And so when the king speaks for you, you have quite a voice. And so do you see what an encouragement this is? Who is the one who's praying for you? It's not Joe Schmo.
[31:45] It's not Grandma and Grandpa. It's the king. And so, our hope isn't in some ordinary human, ordinary man.
[32:00] Our hope is exalted to the highest place and he is praying for us. And so everything we need, everything we long for, righteousness. When we look at our world, what do we want to see?
[32:12] We want to see righteousness and peace and justice. We want to see the end of oppression. We want to see the humiliation of the proud. We want to see change in the world.
[32:23] We want to see change in our hearts. Well, every need is met in him. Every bit of brokenness is bound up in him. He's our hope.
[32:37] He's our salvation. And that's what I needed to remember on Wednesday morning. I needed to get past the clouds of this world and to fix my eyes on things above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.
[32:56] And Zechariah says, behold him. There's more in this passage and I wish we had time to get to it. Maybe we'll come back to it. But Zechariah is saying, behold him.
[33:11] Whatever else you're doing, behold him. And that's the message of the whole Bible. Genesis 3, after the fall, now man needs hope.
[33:23] Man is in a bad place. And God comes and he says to the devil, I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring.
[33:36] He shall crush your head and you will bruise his heel. God is saying there's a man coming. Behold him. And later, Moses came to the Israelites and he said, someday God is going to send a prophet just like me.
[33:52] You have to listen to him. There's coming a prophet. Behold the man. And later, God comes to David and says, one of your sons is going to sit on the throne of his father and rule forever.
[34:08] His rule is never going to end. Your 15,000 of his rule is just the beginning. He's coming. Behold the man. And last of all, you hear this, Pilate, last of all, and he stands with a beaten, bloodied Jesus with a crown of thorns pushed on his head, blood coming down.
[34:37] And Pilate says, behold the man. And was Israel ready to see their king like that? Of course not. So Joshua wore a crown of gold and silver weaved together.
[34:50] Jesus wore a crown of thorns weaved together. But how much more beautiful the thorns than the gold and silver when they're on Jesus' head.
[35:02] And then nailed to his cross was that crude board. It was that Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews. And so here's the man.
[35:14] Here's the answer. Here's your king making his sacrifice. God all along has been saying, behold the man, behold the man, behold the man.
[35:25] Why? Why has he said it over and over again? So that you, whoever you are, might look to him and be saved. He says it again and again so that you can look at him, see him, be saved, and he doesn't want you to miss him.
[35:47] Don't miss him tonight. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your son. We thank you for Jesus Christ. We thank you that you exalted him to the highest place.
[36:01] And it is our delight to think of our king sitting and reigning. It is our joy and our hope to think of the day when he will come again and he will put down the rebellion finally and forever.
[36:15] forever. And the proud will be humbled. And the first will become last. And then all of those beatitudes about blessed are the poor and blessed are the meek and blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.
[36:32] All of those will come true finally and fully forever. And we will inherit the earth. And it won't be because of anything we've done.
[36:43] It's because of him. So we give you the thanks. We give you the glory. And we pray and I pray that you would help us to keep putting our hope and our trust in him.
[36:56] To not lose sight of him but to fix our eyes on Jesus. To set our hearts and set our minds on things above where he is. To focus our love and our expectation upon him.
[37:12] Forgive us for how we've wandered. Lord bring us back and center us and focus us on Jesus. And for those who need to do that for the very first time to give up their own thoughts and their own desires and bow the knee to King Jesus to receive his sacrifice.
[37:31] I pray Lord that you would give grace to that end and save sinners even tonight. Pray this in Jesus name for his glory.
[37:42] Amen. Amen.