Well, dear congregation, let's continue to worship our God this morning through the ministry of his word. I invite you to turn in your Bibles to Zechariah 6. Zechariah chapter six, and we're gonna be considering this morning verses nine through 15. If you're visiting and you're a Christian and you're like, Zechariah, is that the Book of Mormon? Okay, you probably haven't been reading your Old Testament, and that's normal, but it is in the Old Testament. It's one of the minor prophets or one of the 12. And it has, I think and hope and believe, been a rich source of encouragement for us these last 10 or 11 weeks or so. But we're coming to the end. I mean, this is really the second half of the seventh and final vision. So I'm going to read it in your hearing and then we will pray and we will consider this wonderful picture of a coming coronation of the King. Zechariah chapter six, verses nine through 15. Listen carefully, this is the word of the living God. And the word of the Lord came to me, take from the exiles, Haldai, Tobijah, Jediah, 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 royal honor, and shall sit and rule on his throne. And there shall be a priest on his throne, and the council of peace shall be between them both. And the crown shall be in the temple of the Lord as a reminder to Helam, to Bajah, and Jediah, and Hinn, the son of Zephaniah. And those who are far off shall come and help to 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. That's for the reading of God's word. The grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of our God stands forever, and we are thankful for it. Would you bow with me this morning, and let's ask the Lord for help in the ministry of the word. Father God, what a wonderful time it was this morning, in every element of the liturgy, but specifically, Father, to just be swallowed up, as it were, in the singing of hymns of the people of God to you. Just hearing those voices surrounding me, Father, reminded me that this is but a slice of what it shall be on that great day when you will send your son from heaven. And Father, we pray this morning that as we think about that great day, that we will think of it as the consummation of what really has already begun to take place, that Jesus Christ is King. Jesus Christ is Lord. Jesus Christ is reigning. Jesus Christ has been crowned as he ascended to your right hand, oh Holy Father. And even now, though the nations mock, Though the nations make fun of Him and of His people, really, Father, He is the one that laughs, as Psalm 2 says. He is the one who laughs because He holds the scepter. He holds the scepter. He holds all of our days in His hand. He knows the hairs upon our head. He knows how history will turn out because He has determined it before the foundation of the world. And I pray, Father, that this morning we would remember that, especially some of us who It seemed to be glued to our news sources, and we get discouraged, Father, of the leaders in this country and other countries. And Father, I just pray that you would help us to be reminded that Jesus Christ is King, and he rules over all the heavens and all the earth, over the cosmos. If there is life on Mars, he rules over that as well. So Father, help us to see that, help us to enter into the joy of that, we pray in Christ's name, amen. In the early church in the first century, the early Christians had a saying that they would say to one another, and it was, Jesus is Lord. They would also say things like, Jesus is king. And commentators and historians have suggested, and I think that they're probably right, that this phrase, three words in English, was probably the way you became a member in a church. If you were willing to say, Jesus is Lord, well, by golly, you can come and be a member of the church. And some of you say, man, why don't we go back to that? That was easy. I mean, I just had a three hour interview with elders last week and good grief. Well, let me remind you of something. That phrase, Jesus said, Lord is Lord did not come without a cost. You see, when they said, the early Christians, when they said, Jesus is Lord, it was not simply a spiritual thing, like, oh, Jesus is Lord of my heart. No, no, it was much more raw, it was rawer, if I could say it that way, than that. It was much more powerful than that. You see, the early Christians didn't make so much of this dichotomy that many evangelicals make today between the secular and the holy, they believed, and our Reformed forefathers reminded us of this and brought it back into vogue, as it were, that Christ has a kingdom of his right hand and of his left hand, and he is Lord over both. Jesus is Lord and King over all. This is what Psalm 2 says. This is what many of the prophecies say about our King. And you must understand that in the first century, to say such a thing was seditious. It was seditious. Because what every good Roman citizen of the empire was supposed to say is Caesar is Lord, Caesar is God. And you see, Jesus is Lord and Caesar is Lord are competing claims. And so when we come back to this idea that Jesus is Lord was the status or the requirement to get into membership, it was basically risking your life if you were gonna become a member of the church. If you wanted to become a member of the church, you had to be willing to be thrown to the lions. So it wasn't as simple as just saying Jesus is Lord of my heart. It was much more exciting than that, much more expansive and all-inclusive than that. It was saying that Jesus is Lord of all. And I think that it's good for us to reclaim that. Amen? We need to reclaim that. Now I am not saying that we need to start a Christian nation, whatever that means. I don't even know what that means. People talk that way and I'm like, I don't know what that means. But it does mean that as citizens in two kingdoms, the kingdom of Christ right hand and the kingdom of Christ left hand, the secular kingdom, we recognize Jesus' kingship in both. And here's the rub, if ever, if ever there is a discrepancy between what the leaders in the secular kingdom are calling us to do and submit our consciences to, and what Jesus our Lord has called us to do and submit our consciences to, well, my friend, there is no competition. because the Christian will always say Jesus is Lord. And I want to submit to you this morning, dear congregation, that Jesus is the only king that has a rightful legitimacy to crown rights. He has legitimate crown rights to command how you live. He has legitimate crown rights to command how you laugh and why you laugh. And he has legitimate crown rights to command who you will love and what you love. He has the rights to command those things of you. Earthly leaders have a limit on what they can demand of you. Earthly leaders, dare I say, do not have the right to redefine biology. Let me say that again. earthly leaders in whatever branch of government, in whatever branch of service of the government, do not have the right to redefine longstanding, from the beginning of time, definitions and boundaries of biology. They do not have the right to redefine science. They do not have the right to redefine logic or grammar. Only Jesus can do that. And so when these worlds collide, dear Christian, you must remain faithful to Jesus and you, like the early Christians, must say, Jesus is Lord. This morning, I want us to look at this text and see that Jesus in a typological way, in a foreshadowing way, in a prophetic way, is being crowned. And it is this crowning that allows this king on the first horizon, the first level, and then the second level, the eschatological level, the level of Jesus, to then build this temple. And that's how it was in the ancient Near East. In the ancient Near East, a king, to be able to build a temple, had to go conquer a people. He had to show to his people, to his subjects, that he was a king worthy to build a temple to the god or the gods. So he had to go out and take land. He had to go out and conquer peoples. He had to go out and show himself to be a king. And I want you to remember that the text just prior to this, Zechariah 6, 1 through 8 spoke of judgment, remember? The chariots and the horsemen that went out, remember? They went out from between the two bronze mountains. And that was the counterpart to the first vision, if you recall, where the scouts went out into the world to get a state of the world report. What is going on in the world? Oh, all is at rest. It's not supposed to be at rest. It's supposed to be in turmoil, and Israel, God's people, is supposed to be at rest. And so now, in these converse positions, the first vision and now the seventh vision, the seventh vision is rectifying that state and sending out horsemen from heaven to judge the earth. And so the king is, in this typological prophecy, has judged the earth. This is foreshadowing of what's going to happen. He's judged the earth and now he, the king, has the right to build the temple. And we're gonna see that the temple is us, just to spoil it for you, okay? So I want to submit to you just a few reasons why this morning from the text, Jesus has every right to be our rightful king and that he has every right to command how we live, laugh, and love. And here's the first reason. Number one, first reason why Jesus has every right as the legitimate king to command how we live, laugh, and love. Number one, it's found in verses 11 through 13, because he is the righteous priest-king branch. He is the righteous priest-king branch, okay? What I want you to see here is that the Lord is calling Zechariah to have some exiles who are coming back from Babylon, Go into the house of, it says, the house, let's see here, the house, verse 10, of Josiah, the son of Zephaniah. Now, that is not his house, like the place where he lives. Later in the text, it talks about requisitioning. In other words, taking from the spoils, if you will, not the spoils, but the riches of the temple, okay? This house is the treasury house of the temple. And so he's calling these exiles to take from the treasury house of the temple, gold and silver and all these things, and make a crown and place that crown on the head of this priest, Josiah, the son of, excuse me, to place it on the head of Jehozadek, the high priest, verse 11. Now Jehoshadak was a priest in that time and you have to remember that Israel didn't really have a king. Remember the theocracy, the kingdom was defunct because now Persia is ruling over all the known inhabitable land. But this was a reminder that God was giving to his people that he is still on the throne and he's gonna give us a picture of what he's going to do in the future. He's gonna send this king. who's also, by the way, going to be a priest. So it's a picture that he gives us. Put this crown on his head, and this person is, verse 12, the branch, the branch. Now without going to all the places in the Old Testament where this theme or motif of the branch comes up, suffice it to say, the branch is a theme that typically speaks of the Messiah. He will branch out from a particular tribe. He will branch out, okay, from the tribe of Jesse as it were. The tribe of David, from which David came, and he will be the Messiah that God promised long ago to Adam and Eve. He will branch out. He will branch out this place. He will build the temple of the Lord. He repeats it, verse 13. It is he, this is an emphasis, who shall build the temple of the Lord, and he shall bear royal honor. Now, I want you to see what's going on here. On the one hand, there's there's two levels here that we understand this. On the one hand, it's Jehoshadak, the high priest. So there's the first horizon, as we often talk about. It's it is a historical event. Now, he's not going to keep that crown, okay? If he were to keep that crown and to make a claim of being king, that would have been a seditious act and the king of Persia would have come and probably executed him and everybody who was involved in this little inauguration ceremony. But that crown was to go back in the temple to be a memorial or a reminder of the king that was to come. But on the second level, or the second horizon, this is a picture of Jesus. And we see it in his two offices. He is both priest and king. We see the crown in verse 11, and then the priestly office in verse 11b. So we see Jesus, a foreshadowing of him as priest-king. Two offices. He's the one that's going to build the temple of the Lord. Why is it that Zechariah merges the two offices of priest and king here? Well, there's a lot of reasons, but here's one of them. It's interesting in Revelation 5, remember this? Don't turn there, but in Revelation 5, there's a scroll. I believe it's the deed to the earth. the deed of ownership to the earth, and John can't open it, and nobody can open it, and John starts weeping because nobody can open it, and then he looks, and there's a lamb who's on the throne, and that lamb is worthy to open it, and we're told in song form in chapter five, verse 13, why, or chapter five, verse nine, why he's worthy to open it. They sing, worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, For you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. Why is this king worthy to open the scroll? Because this king is also the priest that shed blood, yes, but his own blood for his people, and that's what makes him worthy to be the king. So this is a picture of the priest king. And this crowning of the priest king is the fulfillment of God's promises on, once again, two different levels, an earthly level and then a prototypical heavenly level. On the earthly level, I would draw your attention, don't go there, to 2 Samuel 7. And in 2 Samuel 7, God made what is known as the Davidic covenant with King David, you recall. And he said, I will always give you a man to reign on your throne on into eternity. And so these exiles, they're kind of looking around, they're like, where's the king? Okay, there's reason to question God's promise at this point. But he is reminding them of that promise, 2 Samuel 7, and saying there still is a king and this king will come in a more manifest way soon. But then on a prototypical level, This is talking about another covenant, the covenant of redemption. And that's the second reason why we should give our obeisance and obedience to Jesus this morning. We should recognize Jesus' crown rights because he earned them through the covenant of redemption on our behalf. Look at verse 13. It's a very interesting verse 13. It says, and he who shall, it is he who shall build the temple of the Lord and shall bear royal honor and shall sit and rule on his throne. And there shall be a priest on his throne. By the way, this is not talking about a separate priest. There's Jesus on his throne and then a priest will be on his throne. It's one person, two offices. Jesus as priest and king who sits on his throne. and the counsel of peace will be between them both. Now, the question we want to ask this morning is what is them both? If you just look at the verse, it seems to lead in the direction of these two offices, priest and king, but that's not what's going on here. No, really, if you zoom out in the broader redemptive historical context of the Bible, This council of peace, this agreement of peace, you might even call it a covenant of peace, is between the Father and the Son. This is what our Reformed forefathers have referred to as the covenant of redemption. This is what we heard echoes of in John 17 this morning. Jesus had entered into an agreement, the second member of the Trinity had entered into an agreement with the Father before time began, you heard that through John 17, and there was this contractual agreement. And that agreement was that the second member of the Trinity agrees to become man, to take on flesh, to live under the law, to perfectly fulfill the law, to go to the cross and shed His blood and to die for His people. And then God would raise him from the dead, he would ascend to the right hand, the father would crown him, and God would give to his son the people that he promised. The book of Hebrews mentions this. It says Jesus is being echoed through the voice of the prophet where he says, behold, I and the children you have given me. Now I want you to understand something. This covenant of redemption that is spoken of here was not a covenant of grace. This covenant between the Father and the Son was a covenant of works. If Jesus didn't do what he entered into covenant to do, he would not get us as a people and we would be under the wrath of God still. And so we see this echo of the covenant of redemption, which is a covenant of works that God the Son and God the Father entered into before time began. It is a covenant or a council of peace because the result of this covenant is that there is peace between the Father and the Son. Now you would not think that if you were in the first century and you saw Jesus battered and bloodied on the cross. But it is precisely because of that scene that peace between the father and the son could be brought. Because he pacified the wrath of God by taking the punishment of God that you and I as children of Adam and Eve deserve. And this is why it is called the Council of Peace. Well, now I want you to notice thirdly here, what are some benefits that accrue or that come from this covenant of redemption? Let me suggest, let's see, three here, three benefits. Three benefits that come from this picture of this Council of Peace, this covenant of redemption between the Father and the Son. Number one, verse 13, He has made us to be living stones in the temple of God. He has made us to be living stones in the temple of God. Now, the Bible uses various metaphors to talk about us as the temple. Sometimes we're referred to as living stones. Peter uses it this way. Sometimes we're referred to as pillars, and we'll get to that in a moment. But I wanna come back to the two horizons again here because Jehozadak, the high priest in the exilic time, he was to be the leader under whose leadership, to be redundant, the people would build the temple. But now it points to a second horizon, Jesus, under whose leadership, in a covenant of works transaction, He would build the temple, but we're no longer talking about a physical temple, we're talking about the spiritual temple of the people of God. And what God does in bringing you into the covenant of grace by virtue of what Jesus did in the covenant of redemption is He makes you a stone and a pillar in the temple of God. Revelation 3.12 says it this way. The one who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God. Never shall he go out of it, and I will write on him the name of my God and the name of the city of my God in the new Jerusalem, which comes down from my God out of heaven in my own new name. Now, let me just stop for a minute and try to apply this for a moment. Some of you have a low view of yourself. Some of you beat yourselves up. Some of you think that no matter what you do, it's not good enough. Some of you are always getting down on yourself. You're beating yourself up. And maybe your boss really helps this because your boss is a jerk to you. Maybe your husband or your wife helps with this. Maybe the people in your life speak down to you. And maybe you recognize there's probably some reason for that. You're not perfect after all. But I just wanna point something out to you. before the foundation of the world. You know who was scheming to give you all things? God. God. He entered into a covenant with his Son. The Father and the Son entered into a covenant on your behalf. God was considering you before the foundations of the world. Beloved, if that doesn't encourage you, nothing in this world will. That God thought of you before the foundation of the world, before time began, and He put a plan in motion to redeem you from what He knew was going to be a fall into sin. He was going to redeem you out of that. And not only that, not just like, okay, I have this redeemed product, but then He makes you a fixture in His temple. God loves His people. And God cares that they be beautified in this temple imagery because he loves his people. In fact, he loves his people so much, John says, that he sent his only begotten son to bear the wrath that they deserve and to fulfill the requirements of the law on their behalf. God loves you. That should help with your self-image. That should help with how you think about yourself. When everybody else is saying this, that, and the other thing about you, and they think this, and she thinks that, and so on and so forth, and again, you recognize there's some truth to almost everything, you consider how God thinks about you. You consider that before the foundation of the world, God planned to redeem you. But now a second benefit that accrues from the covenant of redemption is this, he has requisitioned us. Now without going into a lot of detail, I just wanna say very simply, This text, if you were to compare it to other ancient Near Eastern documents like the letters at Arad, which is like early, like 8th century BC, there's what's called a temple requisition document. What is requisition, boys and girls? Probably need to tell adults too. Requisition is when like a government official takes money from one area and applies it to another. We see and hear this going on all the time, okay? But it happened in the temple as well. There was a temple treasurer. And the temple treasurer would take the money, or the goods, or the valuables of the temple, and he would use it for temple purposes. And oftentimes, in ancient Near Eastern cultures, that gold and that silver, it would come from a conquered people. It would be the spoils of another people, right? And then they would come into the treasury house of the temple, and then that would be used to worship God, okay? What Zechariah is doing here is he's saying in the grand covenant scheme of redemption, we are requisitioned by God. God doesn't come and conquer people and take things. He comes and conquers a people and takes people. He requisitions you. He's taking you where you were spending your life and your passions and your money and your heart and your time and your blood and your sweat and your tears on pagan endeavors. in idolatry, and He requisitions you, takes you out of that kingdom of darkness and puts you into a kingdom of light, and now He's requisitioned you to a new creation. Isn't that beautiful? You are requisitioned for better things. So He has requisitioned us to be children of the living God. And we see the Lord doing this, Jesus, in His earthly ministry. In His earthly ministry, boys and girls, what did He do when He was gonna come into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday? He sends a message and tells a man, I need that donkey. He just starts commandeering things, right? I need that donkey. Give me that donkey. I'm gonna ride into Jerusalem on that donkey. And then who else does he requisition? He requisitions the disciples. He just comes up to Matthew and says, Matthew, leave what you're doing and come with me. Okay, Lord, he comes. He requisitions them, requisitioned all the disciples, and he requisitions you. And he's the only one that is worthy to requisition you, isn't he? So God, the suzerain, commands his people to bring themselves. And what a beautiful thing it is that we could worship him as such. Remember Jesus in the Great Commission. This is important to remember, dear congregation. Remember Jesus in the Great Commission. He speaks of the authority that he has to do this. What authority does he have to requisition? Well, he says in the Great Commission, Matthew 28, 18 and following. Listen, this is really important. All authority. in heaven and on earth has been given to me. All authority. This is why Abraham Kuyper says there's not one square inch on God's green earth over which Christ does not declare mine. Every square inch of the created order is Christ's. You are part of those square inches. So Jesus has the right to commandeer us, to requisition us. He's brought, and then finally, just very quickly, a third benefit of this covenant of redemption that accrues to us is that he, verse 15, has brought us who were far off near to God through his blood. We were foreigners, we were aliens, we were far off. I mean, just think about who you were, and what you did, and how you thought, and how you spoke, and how you lived your life before Jesus, and then look at yourself now. It's different, isn't it? It should be. Yes, we're still struggling, don't get me wrong, but it's different, isn't it? You're a different person. That's why one of the reasons why the elders decided that going forward all new members that come in, we want to hear your testimony. Because we want to hear about how God requisitioned you. That's why in home groups we're talking about testimonies because we want to hear how God has requisitioned you. We want to know better this contrast from darkness to light. This contrast from chains to freedom and liberty. We want to hear about it because we want to be reminded every Sunday, every time we get together, we serve a God who liberates. He liberates from our sins. He liberates us from the consequences of our sins, the eternal consequences. This is who our God is. But now finally, there's just one little rub in the last verse that I want to draw your attention to, verse 15. He says, and those who are far off shall come and help to build the temple of the Lord, and you shall know that the Lord of hosts has sent me to you. So before we go any further, so I'm gonna send this branch, and he's gonna rule, and he's gonna build the temple, and he's gonna, this is all after judgment, and the eschaton is gonna be ushered in, and then this last phrase, this is all gospel wonderful news, right? Christ has done it for you, Christ is doing it now, Christ shall do it. It's all Christ, Christ, Christ, and then at the end, And this shall come to pass if... You diligently obey the voice of the Lord. Oh, we're going to end on some law and end on some law here. Is this first use third use? Well, what you should know is in the Hebrew, it's the it's the plural second person plural. If you all people will obey the voice of the Lord. Oh, wait, does that mean does that mean that the ushering in of the consummation and me getting there is predicated on my probation time of testing and temptation here? Now, before you go any further. If you think that's good news, you don't know yourself very well. I'm gonna say that again. If you think that's good, I can do it, I can do it. Yeah, no, thank you, Lord, I can do it. I'm up for the task. No, you're not. Was Adam up for the task? No, well, yeah, I wouldn't have done it. Yeah, you would have. You would have done the same thing as Adam. Well, Israel's the second Adam. Yeah, how did that work out? Exile. You go down the line in the Bible, Abraham was thought to be the new Adam, and he failed. And then Jacob, and he definitely failed. And then Moses, and he failed. And everybody, where's the second Adam? Where's he going to come from? Who's going to be able to perfectly, personally, and perpetually keep this law that is going to be able to get us to the consummation? You see, you need to remember, this is not speaking to the people as people, it's speaking to the people through their covenant head, who at that time, on the typological level, was Jehozadek, the high priest, who is typifying Jesus, who is our covenant head, and the covenant of redemption. Listen, here's a lesson in reading your Bible. Somebody said this term to me the other day, I don't know who it was, but it was a wonderful term. Some people read the Bible with what's called narcigesis, okay? Where everywhere in the Bible, they see themselves. Oh yeah, that's talking about me. Oh, no, no, the proper exegesis will help you to see Jesus in all the Bible, right? Okay? So when we see these terms, like if you're obedient, you'll get eternal life, although I'm so glad that's not talking about me. I'm so glad that's not, I wanna be obedient, don't get me wrong, and I must be obedient, and those who get into heaven will be obedient. But the type of obedience that we're talking about here is not grading on a curve, because our God is much holier than that. We're talking about perfection. And so when we come to this last verse, this is actually gospel, not law. You wanna know why? Because the whole section has been talking about how a covenant head represents his people through his own obedience, and through that obedience brings his covenant people into the eschaton and makes them the people and requisitions them and brings those who are far off near to God. This is what Jesus does. And so really, this is talking about the greater and the truer Adam, Jesus Christ. So this morning, if you want something or if you want everything of what this is talking about, the new temple, the eschaton, the new heavens and the new earth, the being forgiven of your sin, the receiving of righteousness through Jesus Christ, you need only do this. You need only turn from your sins and believe in Jesus Christ and you will be saved. Let's pray. Father God, we thank you, Lord, that we have the greater Jehozadak, the greater Adam, the greater Moses, the greater Abraham. We thank you, Father, that you don't expect us to do it because we're woefully reminded every day that we are not up for the task. But you also delightfully remind us every day that Jesus not only was but is and evermore shall be. And that's why, Father, it was such a delight this morning, and just every song, we're talking about the loveliness of Jesus, the preciousness of Jesus, the faithfulness of Jesus, the tenderness of Jesus. And I pray this morning that we would existentially feel those things of Jesus as we look to him in faith, and that, Father, you would cause us to be people who are that spiritual temple, that spiritual building, to the world, and under the authority of Jesus Christ, we direct them to the cross. We ask all these things in the strong and mighty name of your Son and our Lord, Jesus Christ.