So congregation, this morning, let's open our Bible to the book of Zechariah, and chapter three. Zechariah will be found easily if you find Matthew, and then turn left two books, go past Malachi, and then right before Malachi is Zechariah. Oh, I see it's on page 1474, so that's there to help you too. To the book of Zechariah this morning in chapter three, we'll read this chapter and then our attention will be primarily in verses one and two, Zechariah chapter three. This beloved is the word of the Lord, it is a living word, it is true, it is powerful, and so let's listen. Then he showed me Joshua the high priest, standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right side to accuse him. The Lord said to Satan, the Lord rebuke you, Satan. The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you. Is not this man a burning stick snatched from the fire? Now Joshua was dressed in filthy clothes as he stood before the angel. The angel said to those who were standing before him, take off his filthy clothes. Then he said to Joshua, see, I have taken away your sin and I will put rich garments on you. Then I said, put a clean turban on his head. So they put a clean turban on his head and clothed him while the angel of the Lord stood by. The angel of the Lord gave this charge to Joshua. This is what the Lord Almighty says. If you will walk in my ways and keep my requirements, then you will govern my house and have charge of my courts. And I will give you a place among those standing here. Listen, oh high priest Joshua and your associates seated before you, who are men symbolic of things to come. I am going to bring my servant, the branch, See the stone I have set in front of Joshua? There are seven eyes on that one stone, and I will engrave an inscription on it, says the Lord Almighty, and I will remove the sin of this land in a single day. In that day, each of you will invite his neighbor to sit under his vine and fig tree, declares the Lord. Almighty, let me beloved return our attention to the first two verses then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord and Satan standing at his right side to accuse him the Lord said to Satan the Lord rebuke you Satan the Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you is Not this man a burning stick snatched from the fire Thus far your congregation God's glorious His perfect Word. Let's ask His help as we continue now this day, shall we? Let's pray. Oh, Heavenly Father, how thankful we are for Your Word, which directs our attention again to Jesus Christ, our only hope of salvation, the only Savior of sinners. And Lord, He is shown to us here in such wonderful and clear and powerful ways, yet we yearn for the Spirit's enabling that we might understand rightly. And so grant that illuminating work of the Spirit, Lord, that this day we would leave, both after the first and second service, saying, it was good to have been in the house of the Lord. So bless us with this this morning, we ask now in Jesus' name. Amen. Wilder Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ, as I kind of alluded to when I was hinting at how we could find the book of Zechariah, Zechariah occurs near the end of the Old Testament. That's not only true as its place in our English Bibles, but it's true in terms of the chronology of the history of biblical events. Now sometimes we struggle a little bit with the chronology of the books of the Bible. They don't always in every place flow, the book being at the same place of the history of God's work with his people. Yet it is true about the prophet Zechariah and the prophecy of the Lord through him. We are near the end of the Old Testament era. It is now after that time when God brought his people back out of captivity and he is now preparing them for a time of silence, 400 years of silence, until the arrival of the Messiah. But he is also preparing them to enter, as it were, into a new world, we would say a New Testament world, a new reality of the coming of the Messiah when the people would enter into different lands. And the one people of God, the covenant people of God, would be spread far and wide, north and south, east and west, to the ends of the world. And he is saying to them, in terms of these things, beware. Be alert. Be on your guard. For the world into which you will be going, to which I will send you, then comes the book of Acts. And they spread out. That world is a world filled with people who deny the very things that we just heard in Zechariah chapter three, deny these things. And it is a common pattern of the world, beloved, now that we live in. It is a common pattern of those who have control over television and movies, over Fortune 500 companies, who have control over all the major universities, all of the schools, all of the academies, all, it seems, of the governments of the world, to have one pattern, and that is that they deny these things. They reject clear biblical truth. Have you thought about this? What we just read is denied largely, rejected mostly, thinking just of America now, it's Memorial Day weekend, by powerful politicians on both sides of the aisle and at every level of government. Not all of them, but most. There is a war of worldviews before us, and we are in the midst of it. Where is our help in this war? We find it, beloved, in our text, where we see that the just and righteous God judges sin and saves sinners. The just and righteous God judges sin and saves sinners. Now, if that was simply the matter that we needed to confront this morning, and I was simply saying that to you as a point of doctrinal truth, you would say, well, of course, pastor. Now let's move on. We know these things. But beloved, we need to understand that this is a conflict, this is a war that is before us, that what I just said is denied by almost all of those who are in authority, power, influence, wealth around us. But we believe these things. The just and righteous God judges sin and saves sinners. Well, when we come to the text then, we ask this as its first question. Should the high priest be esteemed? Here again is the Lord speaking to his people. They have been through the time of captivity. He has rescued a remnant out of that captivity. He is preparing them for the 400 years of silence, as I just said, that will come before the arrival of the Messiah. And what is the role and the position and the perspective of the high priest in the eyes of the people? What do they understand about that language? Verse 1, Then he showed me Joshua the high priest. Who is he? He is the leader of all things having to do with the worship of the thrice holy God. He is the expert in the approach to the holy one. He is supposed to be the one to administer, as it were, in the old covenant scheme, the grace through the sacrificial systems of that grace necessary for the people to be in a right relationship with God. He is supposed to be high and holy. This high priest, if you want to think about him, and in particular, we should, as a real man, is mentioned also in Haggai chapter two, verse four, and Ezra chapter five, verse two, to make the point that he was actually one of those called by God to this highest possible office in the old covenant system, which office points to Christ. And then we ask a question. Aside from Jesus Christ the Messiah, is there any high priest who in and of himself was righteous? I ask the question sort of as a leading question, sort of as that softball slow pitch to you at the bat, ready to swing, and of course our answer is a resounding no, no, not one other than Jesus Christ. But then we have to remember what it was God called that high priest to do. and the intricacies of that ceremonial system into which he placed his people. To that end, beloved, I want to ask you if you would indulge, please, to turn in your Bible to Leviticus, to Leviticus chapter eight with me. Leviticus chapter eight. We need to understand something of this, beloved, in a more fulsome way this morning. Now I'm gonna read here, and I want you please to follow along if you wouldn't mind. in thinking about the high priest. And here we have the beginning of that office in Leviticus chapter 8. And I want you to notice, beloved, the particulars and the details of the ceremonies and the washings. And think of the connections to what we just read about Joshua. Leviticus chapter 8. The Lord said to Moses, bring Aaron and his sons, their garments, the anointing oil, the bull for the sin offering, the two rams, and the basket containing bread made without yeast, and gather the entire assembly at the entrance to the tent of meeting. Moses did as the Lord commanded him, and the assembly gathered at the entrance to the tent of meeting. Moses said to the assembly, this is what the Lord has commanded to be done. Then Moses brought Aaron and his sons forward and washed them with water. He put the tunic on Aaron, tied the sash around him, clothed him with the robe and put the ephod on him. He also tied the ephod to him by its skillfully woven waistband so it was fastened on him. He placed the breastpiece on him and put the Urim and Thummim in the breastpiece. Then he placed the turban on Aaron's head and set the gold plate, the sacred diadem, on the front of it as the Lord commanded Moses. Then Moses took the anointing oil and anointed it. Moses also took all the fat around the inner parts, the covering of the liver and both kidneys and their fat, and burned it on the altar. But the bull, with its hide and its flesh and its ophel, he burned outside the camp, as the Lord commanded Moses. He then presented the ram for the burnt offering. And Aaron and his sons laid their hands on its head. Then Moses slaughtered the ram and sprinkled the blood against the altar on all sides. He cut the ram into pieces and burned the head, the pieces, and the fat. He washed the inner parts and the legs with water and burned the whole ram on the altar as a burnt offering, a pleasing aroma, an offering made to the Lord by fire as the Lord commanded Moses. He then presented the other ram, the ram for the ordination. And Aaron and his sons laid their hands on its head. Moses slaughtered the ram and took some of the blood and put it on the lobe of Aaron's right ear, on the thumb of his right hand, and on the big toe of his right foot. Moses also brought Aaron's sons forward and put some of the blood on the lobes of their right ears, on the thumbs of their right hands, and on the big toes of their right feet. Then he sprinkled blood against the altar and on all sides. He took the fat, the fat tail, and all the fat around the inner parts, the covering of the liver, both kidneys and their fat, and the right thigh. Then from the basket of bread made without yeast, which was before the Lord, he took a cake of bread and one made with oil and a wafer. He put these on the fat portions and on the right thigh. He put all of these in the hands of Aaron and his sons and waved them before the Lord as a wave offering. Then Moses took them from their hand and burned them on the altar on top of the burnt offering as an ordination offering, a pleasing aroma, an offering made to the Lord by fire, He also took the breast, Moses' share of the ordination ram, and waved it before the Lord as a wave offering as the Lord commanded Moses. Then Moses took some of the anointing oil and some of the blood from the altar and sprinkled them on Aaron and his garments and on his sons and their garments. So he consecrated Aaron and his sons. and their garments. And beloved, we see with great significance the business of the Lord in that Old Testament process of, as it were, making his people holy, purifying them for the worship of Almighty God that they might enter in, the intricate rituals all designed to make clear that God is holy and his people We need to be cleansed because we are sinners. And in all of that, beloved, are we brought to the forefront of the reality that is before the church today that we are engaged in a war. Ground zero is before us. And the war has to do with two things. Who is God? And who are humans? What is God like? What are humans like? Back to Zechariah, it's the high priest. And Satan wants to accuse him. The wicked accuser is ready. It is secondly this fact of the accuser being ready to accuse in his wickedness that we might think no man can serve God. That is indeed what Satan says. This man can't serve you, a holy God, says the accuser. He can't serve you because he's filthy. His garments are covered in filth. And if we look at verse three carefully, we see that's exactly the case represented here. And actually the Hebrew word here is a little bit uncomfortable. Because in verse three it says, Joshua was dressed in filthy clothes as he stood before the angel, that is the angel of the Lord. And the word filthy here from the Hebrew actually speaks of bodily waste. That's a picture of, and we can see it, and in some ways, I hate to say it, smell it, a picture of the putrid sin that covers people. The accuser is correct about the filth. About who? About the high priest. Is he that corrupt? Is it after all that serious? Yes. In a sense, the accuser has the easiest task imaginable. He has to stand as the prosecutor before Almighty God and make a case about humans, about us, and well, there's no shortage of evidence for him to make his case with, isn't there? No shortage of evidence about us that we are covered in this filth. Now do you see, beloved, from the text what we are attempting to do this morning? We're attempting this morning to draw together our minds as one, a people together under the Lord as one, to be convinced about these two realities which our world utterly dismisses. The holiness of God, And the simple condition of people. To drive us there. We consider the one individual in the Old Covenant schema who is considered to be the holiest. The high priest. And what is he like according to the text verse 2? A burning. Stick. A burning stick. Have you ever put a stick into a fire? Of course you have. What happens to that stick after a while? Doesn't it begin to change? At first it was a stick, maybe it had bark on it, you could tell its shape, but as it sits in the fire for a while, the bark burns off quickly, and the stick itself begins to change, almost sort of on a molecular level. It begins to be something almost, now here's the word, irretrievable. Unable to be rescued, you see. And this is what God wants by His Word to have us understand. A stick, not just a stick, a burning stick, not just a burning stick, but a burning stick in the fire. This is the condition then, beloved, of humans, as it were, those in need of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. And Satan is awfully good at convincing us that we're no good. And that's what he wants to do. The dragon breath accuser wants us to think only always of our worst and to consider only always our unworthiness. And there's a certain sense which he has the easiest possible task. If you're honest this morning, And if I were to walk up to each of you and give you a piece of paper and say, now write on this piece of paper, nobody else will see it, but write on this piece of paper your top three sins, I'm quite sure that not one of you would turn back to me a paper blank. But you would have on that paper something to write, wouldn't you? And so would I. And so when the accuser whispers in our ears, you know you're pretty filthy, actually. When he whispers in our ears, you know you're really not worthy to be in the service of this holy and perfect God. Well, isn't there a sense in which he's right? Isn't there a sense in which it's true that we're dirty and filthy and our worthiness is at best questionable to serve a holy God? Do you doubt that? I hope there's no one in this room who doubts that. What does the Heidelberg Catechism say to us in its second question and answer? What three things must you know? First of all, how great your sin and misery is. So no, we can't doubt that. Beloved, I belabor this and I leave it hanging out there for a moment so that this morning we begin again with basics. Not to berate us, not to make us feel terrible about ourselves, but to show us that our only hope is to be found in Jesus Christ. If you have not heard that before, and I trust we have all heard that before, but we need to be renewed in our hearing of that. If you have not heard that before, I want you to hear that this morning for the first time. that our hope must never be lodged in us, in ourselves. Why do we have, here in a prophecy by the prophet, who is one of the last of the prophets, about the people about to enter into that time of silence, why do we have this picture of the high priest covered with filthy garments, dirty clothes, who is now in the other picture, a stick burning up in the fire. Why? Because thirdly, the righteous one alone can silence the devil. Verse two, the Lord said to Satan, oh beloved, those are words which must ring in our ears. The Lord said to Satan, those words begin our hope. The second person of the trinity of the triune God is tasked with, charged with the carrying out of the rescuing of God's people. He speaks, verse two, the Lord rebuke you, Satan. The Lord who has elected, who has chosen Jerusalem, rebuke you about this man who is a burning stick. The Lord rebuke you. If you want to ask the technical question about Zechariah, we can do that. This is, again, the second person of the triune God, who here is a sort of pre-deliverance and an eternal perspective look at the benefits of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We could call it a Christophany. Here we have a pre-incarnate picture of what it is the Lord Jesus Christ is coming to do when he arrives there in Bethlehem now some 400 years or so after this prophecy, he is coming to do these very things. But we see from the eternal perspective here in Zechariah 3 that he is very firm and very confident about what he is going to accomplish. So that he says to Satan, the Lord rebuke you. You have no right to speak here, Satan. because of Christ's atoning work, which is about to be unfolded. Did you pick up on this, by the way, in verse eight of chapter three, that we get one of those prophecies about the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ put in another way, different language? Verse eight, my servant, the branch. We're meant to understand, beloved, that though the reality that confronts humanity, the problem and death and pollution and corruption and filth of sin, though that is real, there is yet hope, there is promise. No one, says the Lord, will talk down to my perfect work of salvation. Rebuke, you are rebuked, Satan. He says, I save to the uttermost my elect, and you have no right to speak here. And then verses three through five serve as an illustration of that great rebuke and that great promise. And this is why, beloved, This assault against the truth, which is the position of the world, though it's now morphed into sexual ethics or lack of ethics and all kinds of political upheaval and the death of babies, countless numbers of them, though that's the particular structure of it in our culture and day, the attack, the error, the battle, it has been no different from the time of Zechariah to our time and will remain to be the same in essence until the Lord Jesus Christ returns. Which is why the church must stand up and say, in answer to the question, who is man? He is a sinner. And must say in the answer to the question, who is God? He is a savior. This is the basic issue, isn't it? But the war's on, beloved. Don't ever think differently. The war's on. And to the extent to which the definitions I just said to you are missed, man is a sinner, God is a savior, to the extent to which either of those definitions is missed, you have error in one direction or another. We must be firm and clear and strong on these substantive, significant matters. Thought out loud about this with you before dear congregation, but perhaps today is the first time Not for you older Christians But perhaps today is the first time for the younger Believers that they have heard in a meaningful way the things that are being taught in the sermon to them this morning Don't discount that That they are hearing boldly for the first time because of their age of growing. Now they come to a time when they can hear in a meaningful way for the first time that humans need a Savior because of the depth of their sins. Who is the Savior? The Lord said to Satan, the Lord rebuke you, Satan. The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you. Is this man not a burning stick? And then now, fourthly, snatched from the fire. Salvation is a sinner snatched from the fire. It must be preached that there is such a fire. Because here we understand from the imagery that the Lord by the Holy Spirit inspires in Zachariah's mouth and life and situation, two realities which are not exactly the same, but which are correlative. They go one from the other. the situation of the high priest and his condition of having filthy garments, that is of being a sinner, and then him as a stick which is burning, but in a fire, that's a separate related reality which we must still today preach. Have you ever been burned? A little bit, sunburned? Sunburns are uncomfortable, aren't they? You go around for a couple days, you don't want anything to touch your skin where that sunburn occurred and you're pretty unhappy. Sometimes it can lead to fever and you can get nauseous even from sunburn. It's not nice, but how about a second degree burn? Have you been burned? Do you know somebody who's been burned and the pain that comes from burns? It's almost, there's almost nothing worse. The pains from burns brings mature adults to their knees in tears. Those who are in the worst case of third degree burns, if they survive that initial event, they're usually put in a coma for a while so that they can endure, their body can endure the pain while the healing process is taken by medications. Beloved, is there a fire? What is the text addressing here? The text is addressing a sinner being consumed like a stick that is on fire, being consumed by the fire, being burned. It is a picture, make no mistake about it, of the blazing inferno that is hell. The scripture you see almost always when it speaks about fire refers to judgment and wrath, to the sufficient and comprehensive and eternal non-ending punishment the sinner deserves. This is what the text is addressing. And so the imagery here has sinners being portrayed as sticks or brands, little masses of burning material, which, as I said a moment ago, seem to change in their molecular structure so that they are simply being consumed and consumed and consumed. And that is hell. And they can't leap out of it. They can't, on their own, escape it. Is hell a real and never-ending burning? Yes, it is. Do we deserve ourselves to go there and never escape? Yes, we do. But what is this text? What is this text? Verse three, is not this man a burning stick? What does it say? Snatched from the fire. Do we get what that means, beloved? That were not that one pulled out, snatched out by somebody else, delivered from that fire, they had no power within themselves to escape its fury. What is this text? This glorious good news, isn't it? It's the message that God gives to us all over the Bible that we can say to our friends and neighbors and family members who do not know the Lord Jesus Christ, that though you may right now be a stick that is burning and being consumed, you yet can be snatched out of the fire by the Lord Jesus Christ. Look beloved at his power. Look beloved at the glory of his deliverance. He takes those who have nothing in themselves to deliver themselves who are being consumed, and he snatches them out. He delivers. This is why the Lord says to Satan, oh, you're rebuked. You have no standing here. You have no right to speak here, because I deliver sinners. pull them out of the certain inescapable doom they themselves have put themselves in, inescapable except for my power of deliverance. But the war is in front of us, all around us. of people who do not know what we just all, as you were listening to the preaching, agreed about, who do not believe what we all just said we believe. And we need to speak to them, to tell them, you're a burning stick. But there is one, and his name is Jesus Christ, who snatches burning sticks out of the fire And they live. Amen. Oh, Father, thank you for your word, which, as we've seen this morning, again, instructs us on basic fundamental issues which we must never, ever forget or deny. Lord, build up your church in the faith. Strengthen us, Lord, in these simple things. May we rejoice in your mercy to give to us a saving word, good news about Jesus Christ to sinners who need it. We delight in you, O Lord, now this morning, and thank you for this, your word. We praise you in Jesus' name, amen. Well, beloved, let's sing this morning 476. God of our fathers will stand to sing 476.