"A Priest as King?" Zechariah 6:13 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Zechariah 6, verses 9 through 13 is what I'll read this morning.

Zechariah 6:9–13

The word of Yahweh came to me.

Take from the exiles, Hildah and Tabajah and 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 Jehosedak, the high priest.

And say to him, Thus says Yahweh of hosts, behold, the man whose name is the branch, for he shall branch out from this place, and he shall build the temple of Yahweh.

It is he who shall build the temple of Yahweh, 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.

This is the word of God.

On June 30th, 1921, President Warren Harding announced that he would nominate former President William Taft to be a justice on the United States Supreme Court.

In fact, this was not his only chance to wear two hats.

William Taft was known as someone who was really bred for the U.S.

Supreme Court.

From the time that he was a child, he had it as his life goal to be a justice on the U.S.

Supreme Court.

Some kids want to be firefighters, some kids want to be soldiers, some kids even want to be president.

But not Taft.

Taft wanted to be a justice on the Supreme Court.

This makes sense.

His father was the Attorney General for the United States after the Civil War.

He was highly respected, and so Taft grew up in a legalese household and had that as his goal.

He went to Yale Law School.

One of his biographers records that everybody at Yale knew that he would be a Supreme Court justice.

He was one of the youngest people in our country's history to be nominated to the Federal Court of Appeals, where he served for eight years with a promise from the president that he would be the next appointment to the Supreme Court.

However, in those eight years, no justice died or retired.

And so, eventually, Taft was relocated.

He was sent to the Philippines.

President McKinley made him a promise.

I need you to be the ambassador to the Philippines, go there, it will keep you out of trouble.

If you keep writing controversial opinions in the appellate court, it'll make you harder to confirm on the Supreme Court.

What trouble can you get in in the Philippines?

And sent him away.

The promise was that if a justice died, he'd return and join the Supreme Court.

Instead, if you're familiar with President uh with history, it was President McKinley who died himself.

Theodore Roosevelt became the president, and he drug Taft back from the Philippines and made him the Secretary of War, put him on his cabinet.

Taft uh joked with Roosevelt, or maybe not joked, encouraged Roosevelt to keep his end of the bargain and put him on the Supreme Court.

And Roosevelt said, you know, I'd rather have you on my cabinet.

And this became a running joke between the two of them throughout Roosevelt's presidency.

Taft said, if I was on the Supreme Court and I was a Secretary of War, imagine how efficient things would be around here.

At one point, he even became the Solicitor General, arguing cases before the Supreme Court.

Again, he told President Roosevelt, I wish I was on the bench.

I could listen to my own arguments and agree with myself.

And you understand that our country is structured, that you can't do that.

Well, Roosevelt did not run for president next, in fact, encouraged Taft to.

Taft was very popular, and so he did run for president and was in fact elected.

Taft referred to himself as the most reluctant president ever.

This was not the job he wanted.

Well, after he left office, eventually President Harding uh took office, and President Harding offered Taft a position on the Supreme Court.

You know, it's an interesting twist of Providence.

When Taft was president, six justices left the Supreme Court.

He was president for four years.

In those four years, he nominated six justices.

He was waiting for eight years and nobody left.

Well, when Harding offers him a position on the court, he says, because I nominated most of the court myself, it wouldn't be right for me to be a justice in the Supreme Court.

I will accept your nomination if you make me the Chief Justice.

And so it happens that a former president of the United States became the Chief Justice of the U.S.

Supreme Court, a position he held for 35 years.

He's widely known as perhaps one of the most influential and successful chief justices in court history.

Most biographers even say that he was a way better justice than a president.

He's also the only American to occupy the top role in both the executive and judicial branches.

Could he be the Secretary of War in the justice in the Supreme Court?

No.

Because our country separates those powers for pretty fundamental reasons.

Would it surprise you to know that Israel also had a similar separation of power?

In Israel, it was not possible to be both a king and a priest.

This was something baked into the Israelite society.

You could not be king and priest.

If you were a priest, you could never be king.

If you were king, you could never be a priest, regardless of how badly you wanted it.

And this has to do with the two basic functions of a king and a priest.

They're diametrically different from each other.

The king, in a sense, comes from the people and represents people.

You remember the first king of Israel?

It was Saul.

God was supposed to be Israel's king.

God was supposed to lead them.

The Israelites didn't want to be led by God.

They wanted somebody who made them look regal.

They wanted somebody to represent them in the battlefield, to have the banner over his head on the horse.

Yahweh didn't ride a horse.

Yahweh didn't have a banner.

They wanted a sharp, tall, dark, and handsome king.

And so God gave them Saul.

Saul was the most handsome Israelite.

He's exactly what they wanted.

But he, of course, was a terrible, terrible king.

And, you know, God told the Israelites, if you get a king, yeah, great, he'll be one of you.

But he's going to expand your borders, he's going to take your cattle and your horses, he's going to take your wives and he's going to tax you.

He'll take your gold and your silver.

He's going to take all of that.

That's what a king will do.

And Saul, of course, was a terrible king and gets kicked out of the kingdom by God and replaced with David.

David was a man after God's own heart.

He was a good king.

He was the kind of king God wanted, but he was a king nevertheless.

And the thrust of David's ministry was leading God's people, growing the borders, taxing them, winning in battles.

That's nothing compared to Solomon.

Solomon's kingdom was even more successful.

It grew even bigger.

Pastor Dan last week talked about all the wealth Solomon accumulated in his reign.

It's practically undescribable.

He also gathered so many wives for themselves.

He grew his kingdom in power and might and influence.

That was a good king.

He wasn't a priest.

A priest doesn't come from the people, so to speak.

A priest isn't the voice of the people.

A priest represents God to the people.

A priest takes God's law and a priest does sacrifices and a priest offers forgiveness to people.

Kings don't do those kind of things.

Kings gather the cattle.

Priests slaughter the cattle.

Kings make laws.

Priests ask for forgiveness for breaking the laws.

Kings rule.

Priests petition.

Kings give edicts and slam the gavel down, and a priest comes and begs.

The role of a judge and a king in Israel were, of course, conflated.

It was one of the functions of the king to stand at the gate and hear people's cases and render verdicts, to take sides in every dispute.

It's not a priest's job.

The priest is to ask for mercy.

Kings direct people horizontally.

Kings are all about the horizontal.

Priests direct people vertically, getting their eyes off of this world onto the Lord.

God made those two jobs differently, distinctly, and for different purposes.

And to enshrine that in Israel, it made it impossible for one person to be both.

Every king had to come from the tribe of Judah, the fourth tribe.

Every priest had to come from the tribe of Levi, the third tribe.

And to make it even more specific, any priest that ministered in the temple had to be not just from the line of Levi, but from Aaron.

There was no way a person could be both king and priest.

That's not to say some people didn't try.

Uzziah, for example, he was a good king.

2 Kings 15 describes him as a very good king, a king after God's own heart.

His son walked in his ways, 2 Kings 15 says, and did what was right according to Yahweh.

But 2 Chronicles 26 has a story from Uzziah's life.

After he'd been king for a while, he was strong and he grew proud.

And he felt as king he should be able to walk anywhere in Jerusalem he wanted to.

He was the king of Judah.

He reigned in Jerusalem.

There should be no place that was off limits to him.

And so one evening he marched into the temple.

And the priests who were on duty there intercepted him and told him, It's not right.

You can't go into the temple as a political statement.

It's only to offer incense and sacrifice.

And so the king grabbed a censer and brought his incense with him into the temple.

This goes up the chain of command with the priests.

Eventually they get the high priest out of bread and drag him over there, Azariah.

And Azariah grabs onto King Uzziah and begs him to not do this and says, It's not right.

You're a king.

You cannot be a priest.

You cannot offer incense before the Lord.

What are you doing?

And Uzziah brushed him off and went in and offered incense before the Lord.

You remember, I'm sure what happened next.

Uzziah left from inside the temple and came back out to find the priest there.

And Uzziah had turned white with leprosy.

God punished him for mixing the two roles.

He had to live in his own house, isolated, cut off from the rest of the city for the rest of his life.

It's interesting in 2 Kings 26, it doesn't say how much longer he lived.

Could have been a few years, could have been a couple decades.

You don't know, but it's the irony is palatable here, that he felt like he could go anywhere he wanted to as king, and now he's confined to his own little outhouse.

He can't even live in the palace for the king.

He remained a leper, the chronicler tells us, for the rest of his life.

You want to know one other irony?

If you have leprosy and you're healed or it goes away, do you know who has to declare you clean?

The high priest.

So this is a bit of a political impasse now in Israel.

The king and priest are at odds.

The king is banished as a leper where he spends the rest of his life.

And that seems like such a distant story by the time you're in Zechariah.

Zechariah is taking place after the exile.

You can look at verse 9.

The word of Yahweh came to me.

This is a very key time in Israel's history.

I know sometimes we look at the Old Testament as things pointing to Christ, and the New Testament as things pointing back to Christ, Old Testament pointing forward, New Testament pointing back.

And if that's the grid you come to the Bible with, that's great.

That's helpful, that's a good grid.

But there is a little bit more distinction in the Old Testament than just before Jesus.

Zechariah takes place after the exile.

Uzziah was king, got leprosy, dies, his son is king, after that king, after that king.

Eventually Jerusalem goes into exile.

Jerusalem is conquered by the Babylonians.

Their king is led out by a hook in his nose, like some kind of fish, let out of the city.

Israel is conquered.

Judah is falls.

Jerusalem is destroyed.

The temple is taken apart brick by brick.

There's no longer anyone from the line of David around.

There's no priests around.

There's no temple around.

There's no throne for a king to sit on.

And in the Old Testament, they were waiting for somebody from the line of David to be the king, to be the Messiah.

They wanted a king to come from God and be their savior.

And then they fall to Babylon and there's no king at all.

It's not a question of is Uzziah the king or is Josiah the king or is Manasseh the king?

Will he be the savior?

No, there's no king anymore.

They're in exile for 70 years.

You know Daniel in exile.

Daniel's in Babylon in exile.

He's not the king.

Then the exile ends.

And they come back to Jerusalem.

And they come back into the city that their parents or their grandparents lived in.

All the Davidic hope was about this city.

The Messiah would come here.

The savior of the world would come here.

He'd be from the line of David, from the tribe of Judah.

He'd be a descendant of Abraham.

They would be a Jew and he would be like David, and he would be the savior of the world.

And that's who their hope was in.

And they get back to Jerusalem and there's no city there.

There's no palace for the king.

There's no throne for the king.

There's no scepter for the king.

There's no crown for the king.

There's no king.

There's nobody from David's line there.

And they turn their eyes to the temple.

There's no temple there.

They don't have any priests there.

Where is their hope now?

Maybe God is over the Davidic covenant.

Maybe that was a promise for a time, and now it's all done.

That's the question that Zechariah is addressing.

It's after the exile.

And the people are legitimately asking: is there still a promise for a descendant of David?

Who should we be looking for?

We don't know anybody from David.

And that's when verse 9 takes place.

It was then the word of Yahweh came to me.

This is a very critical juncture in Israel's history.

Verse 10, here's the command Zechariah gives: take from the exiles, Hildaih and Taviah and Jedediah.

Now, these are in the ESV, they're given his names here.

Most commentaries say they're more likely titles.

It's a take from the princes and take from the, you know, these are very low titles here because they don't have a society really.

They're exiles returning.

So it's like take from this family, those leaders, take your neighborhood watch captains and your city council members and your rotary club people.

Like it's whoever is in any kind of visible leadership position at all, get those people together.

That's likely what this verse is describing.

Bring them together.

Come this this very day.

Once they get back into from Babylon, once they arrive in Jerusalem, grab those leaders and put them in the house of Josiah, the son of Zephaniah.

We don't know who that person is.

This is just a random assortment of leaders from exile that have made it back to Jerusalem.

Get them together and hear the word of the Lord.

The word of the Lord comes in verse 10.

I mean verse 11.

Take from them silver, gold, and make a crown.

These people are bringing silver and gold back with them.

If you remember, Cyrus, the Persian ruler, said that when you leave Babylon, you can bring gold and silver with you to repopulate Jerusalem.

Just like the first Exodus, they plundered the Egyptians.

The second Exodus, they're also plundering the Persians, they're bringing gold and silver with them.

What are they going to do with it?

Well, verse 11 says, you're going to make a crown with it.

Now, there's lots of different Hebrew words for crown.

We have one in English.

We don't have a king, so we don't need a lot of words in English for crowns.

We have different words for like jackets, though.

You have your coat and your jacket and a suit jacket and a sport coat and a tuxedo jacket.

That's totally different.

This is like the regal word for crown.

This is not the crown the king would wear on his head when he's sitting on the throne.

This is a massive, like comically oversized crown.

It's got diadems and the scepters the king have in the crown.

Like this is an oversized, ornate, ceremonial crown that indicates power and authority and riches and wealth.

It's being made with gold and silver brought back from exile.

So make that.

What are you gonna do with that kind of crown?

Set it on the head of Joshua, the son of Jehosadak, the high priest.

The word son there could be grandson, and most commentators think it's likely this is the grandson of the high priest from before exile.

So now you're back in Jerusalem, you don't have a temple, and when they do get to finally build the temple, remember what happens?

They all cry over how small it is.

That's in the book of Ezra.

They look at it and they weep over how tiny it is.

I mean, these people are just trying to figure out what are we supposed to do to worship Yahweh?

No king, no priest, and now the prophet comes in and says, make a huge crown from gold and silver plundered from the Persians and put it on the head of the grandson of the high priest.

That's a big time no-no.

You don't get to make the high priest king unless maybe we're saying, hey, David's line is over.

David's line is yesterday's news.

Went the way of the Whig party.

Now there's a new hope.

There'll be a new line, a new sheriff in town, the high priest.

He can lead us to the Messiah.

That's what it seems to be saying.

Maybe Joshua is familiar with what happened to Uzziah, and he starts backpedaling.

Yeah, no, thank you.

That crown might go on somebody else, but not on me.

Anticipating that, verse 12, say to him, say to Joshua.

Thus says Yahweh of hosts, it's God's word that's telling you to do this.

This is God's plan.

Behold, Joshua, the man whose name is the branch, he will branch out from this place.

It's appropriately named.

He's called the branch.

He's going to grow out from this place.

This is not the first time we meet the branch, by the way.

Zechariah chapter 3 describes the branch.

Zechariah 3 · chapter mention

In Zechariah 3, the branch is going to be a person that in one day grows out of Jerusalem, brings peace to Israel, makes atonement for the sins of the Jews, and brings the Gentiles into the kingdom.

In one day.

Zechariah 3 goes on to say that branch will eventually have a kingdom that covers the world, and we will all get to relax, each one of us under his own fig tree.

That's a line from Zechariah 3.

Because of the work of the branch.

Even before that, the branches in the book of Isaiah.

Isaiah chapter 3.

Isaiah 3 · chapter mention

There, Isaiah 3, verse 2, it says, The branch will make Israel holy.

Isaiah 3:2

He will wash away the filth, the sin of Israel, and he will sanctify Israel.

That's what the branch will do.

Again, you don't know who that is until you get to Isaiah chapter 11, and it says the branch will come from the root of Jesse.

Isaiah 11 · chapter mention

The stump of Jesse, the branch will come from the bottom of it, like a sucker branch.

It's hard for people in Virginia to fully understand what a sucker branch is because everything here grows so fast.

If you have a tree and a little branch comes out of the bottom of the tree, you better clip that, or that little branch will become its own tree tomorrow.

That's the way things grow here.

But not in Israel.

In Israel, the phrase of sucker branch here, it's coming from those olive trees.

Those olive trees can live to be thousands of years old.

And from the bottom of those trees will come a stump, another branch.

And those branches, if left alone, will grow over a long period of time.

And as the olive tree starts to die and starts to hollow out, again, a process that takes a thousand years, as the tree itself begins to die, that little sucker branch becomes the new tree.

It takes over.

That's the prophecy in Isaiah 11.

That the Savior will be a branch that comes from the stump or the root of David and Jesse, Jesse being David's father.

It's a prophecy that the Savior will be from David.

That's the point of it.

Thousand years later, but he will be from David.

And so when you see the question here, is the high priest now going to be the king?

No, because behold, a man named the branch.

That means he's from David.

He will be in the Davidic line.

He will branch out of this place.

And he will build the temple of Yahweh, verse 12 says.

He will build the temple.

They're looking around.

They don't have a temple.

Don't worry.

The Savior will build it.

The Savior will build it, which leads to verse 13.

He will build the temple of Yahweh, and he will bear royal honor, and he will sit and rule on his throne.

And there will be a priest on the throne.

And the council of peace will be between them both.

This is a very difficult verse to understand, and I hope by the end of this morning you will have insight into it.

How can two people Be the king together.

I mean, that's what this is ultimately a prophecy about.

You have the priestly line and the kingly line, and there's no crossover, and yet the branch is going to come with a descendant from the high priest and the two of them will sit on the throne together, it says.

Have you ever heard of something like can two kings rule together?

Can they share the throne with each other?

Maybe one on Monday, Wednesdays, Fridays, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, some kind of rotation.

It's a mystery how this can happen.

You're going to have the priest, and you're going to have the king, and the two will rule.

Now, I mentioned earlier that kings and priests have different functions.

The priest wants mercy, the king wants justice.

The king makes laws, the priest asks for forgiveness for breaking laws.

The king gives judgment, the priest seeks pardons for breaking the judgments.

I'm not talking a good cop, bad cop situation here.

I'm talking about a king and a priest trying to rule together.

How can that be?

Plus, the king is from one tribe, the priest from another.

It doesn't make any sense.

But the verse at the end of verse 13 says, it will work because the counsel of peace will be between them.

The word counsel is the word that's used in the Old Testament to describe God's own will.

Think of Psalm 33, verse 11, a verse you maybe have memorized.

Psalms 33:11

The counsel of Yahweh stands forever.

The plans of his heart endure to all generations.

God's counsel endures.

And so it's God's plan to rebuild the temple, and he will do so by uniting the king to the priest, by uniting the branch to the priest.

That's the prophecy.

Well, what happens when it's done?

Everybody goes home.

In Zechariah 6, everybody goes home.

Leaving the grandson of the high priest awkwardly sitting there.

There's no record that they actually made this crown, as far as I know.

If they did, it'd be even weirder.

Do you remember what happened when there were rumors that the Israelites in the book of Ezra, there were rumors that the Israelites were going to nominate their own king?

It became chaos.

Anarchy, riots in the streets.

The Persian army was gonna stomp down on them.

You're gonna let these people make their own king.

Imagine what would happen if they found out they made this huge crown and gave it to the high priest.

It would have been Bedlam.

Over time, we know what happens.

The priestly role became the king-like person in Israel.

By the time Jesus comes, the high priest is acting like the king of the Jews.

He's the one sitting on the Supreme Court of Israel rendering the verdicts.

He's the one that oversees the trial of Jesus.

He's the one that is acting like the leader of the Jews.

The Pharisees, they're not acting like priests anymore by the time you get to the New Testament.

The Pharisees aren't asking for mercy.

When you think of priests and I say priests are supposed to act for mercy and forgiveness, you probably think of the Pharisees, and you're like, they didn't do that.

You got this whole rabbinical priestly class that comes that's the opposite of this.

They act more like kings than priests.

That's what happened to this prophecy.

The Jews just took it and gave up waiting for David.

Imagine the irony when Jesus shows up.

The branch from David.

And he's put on trial by the high priest.

I want you to go through verse 13 one phrase at a time.

I want you to see this morning that every phrase in verse 13 is fulfilled by Jesus Christ.

Every phrase.

Verse 13, it is he, the branch, the priest king person, who will build the temple of Yahweh.

This is a basic prophecy that the Messiah will be the one who builds God's temple.

Of course, Ezra oversees some building of it with Haggai.

They all weep when it's done.

That temple is going to get plundered.

Eventually, Herod the Great will build a temple.

It takes him almost 50 years to build it.

It's a massive temple that's there during Jesus' lifetime.

That's not the temple that's described here.

Instead, the prophecy says the Messiah will come and he will build the temple.

So you should think of John chapter 2.

John 2 · chapter mention

When Jesus comes into Jerusalem, he cleanses the temple, he drives all the money changers out of the temple.

The Jews are up in arms because they view that as an attack on their political sovereignty.

They're the ones in charge of the temple.

The Pharisees and the Sanhedrin, they lead the temple, not this rabbi from Nazareth.

And Jesus looks at them and says, You know what?

You can tear this temple down and I'll build it again in three days.

And then John 2, verse 22 says the Jews lose their minds, basically.

John 2:22

That's the Jesse translation.

The Jews lose their minds over it.

They're so upset about that.

They say, it took us 46 years to build this, and you're going to make it in three days.

And John says, they didn't know.

Jesus was talking about his body.

His body is the temple, not the nice marble that the Herod the Great had there.

That's not what the true temple is.

He was talking about his body.

And of course, they do tear it down.

They do kill him, they do throw him in a grave.

Three days later, he does rise from the dead.

Then the Spirit comes and he builds his church.

Ephesians 2, verse 22.

Ephesians 2:22

In the New Testament, it says that because we are in Christ, we are being built brick by brick together into the temple of the living God, a dwelling place for God built by the Spirit.

If you're a Christian, you're a brick.

Do you know that?

You are built into the temple of God.

You are, this is what we mean when we say the church is the body of Christ.

It's a metaphor.

We're the temple.

We are the body, his body that he built himself in his resurrection.

That is the temple.

We are adopted into Christ.

We are being built together with him.

We are the body of Christ.

That's prophesied in Zechariah 6, verse 13.

Zechariah 6:13

It will be him that builds the temple.

And you know what?

He's building you into the temple.

No high priest could do that.

Second phrase in verse 13: He will bear royal honor.

That phrase bear royal honor, it means he's presenting himself as king.

It's not just like a nice turn of phrase.

We use it as an idiom in English.

You know, somebody dresses up nice, you're like, oh, you look like a king or you look like royalty.

That is not the way this is being used here.

Bearing royal honor would be like the English equivalent of saying he moved into the White House, took the oath of office, and has Secret Service protection.

That means he's president.

He's in charge.

When you bear royal honor, it means you're the king.

If somebody bears royal honor who's not the king, he's a usurper and a traitor and deserves death.

In fact, the only time I can think of in the Bible where somebody bears royal honor who's not the king is Mordecai.

You remember when the king is staying up all night and Haman comes and asks him what should be done, and the king asks Haman, what should be done for the men in whom the king delights?

And Haman says, Give him royal honor.

Let him ride on the king's horse with the king's ring and the king's robe and the king's scepter and all that.

That's saying, let him be king for a day.

You remember the king says, Let's do it.

Golden, do that to Mordecai.

Haman's like, what?

He hangs himself.

That's this phrase.

So when this phrase says that the Savior will bear royal honor, it means not he will be king for a day, not that he will pretend to be king.

No, he will be the true king of Israel.

He will be the Messiah.

He'll be the king of heaven.

He'll be the king of Psalm 2.

I've set my king on my holy hill.

I've given him the scepter.

He will rule the nations.

He's the king of Psalm 110.

That I'll put his enemies under the footstool for his feet so my king can reign on the throne.

That's this king.

He will be the savior.

The Davidic promise isn't over, it's expanded.

That the Savior is going to come and he's going to rule the nations.

And of course, you find this in the New Testament.

Jesus does bear royal honor.

He enters Jerusalem in Passion Week, for example, riding on a donkey.

As he's welcomed in, the crowd spreads their coats on the road.

They cut down branches from the trees to make a path for him.

They're singing out, Hosanna in the highest, blessed be the name of the Lord.

He's the son of David.

He is the true king.

Hosanna in the highest.

And just so you don't miss the point, Matthew 21, verse 4 says, This took place because of the prophecy that their king would come mounted on a donkey.

Matthew 21:4

This is not ambiguous.

Jesus is put on trial, and Pilate asks him, Are you a king?

And Jesus said, You've said so yourself.

Yes, he's the king.

His kingdom's not of this world, though, he says.

If it was of this world, his soldiers would fight for his release, Jesus tells Pilate.

His kingdom is better than Pilate's kingdom.

Yeah, I don't know what Pilate's supposed to do with that.

Wash his hands and walk away, apparently.

He is the king.

He will sit on his throne.

The next phrase in verse 13.

He will sit on his throne.

Again, it's not a pretense.

He's going to sit on his throne.

Think of the honor that Jesus had when it says he'll bear royal honor that led to him sitting on the throne.

First of all, he had the sign above him that said, This is the king of the Jews.

He had the crown on his head of thorns, causing blood to come down his face.

We're a long way from the gold and silver crown in Zechariah.

He's got the royal honor of the king.

They robe him in a purple garment, a royal garment.

So Jesus, as he's led to the cross, is stripped naked but given a purple garment so he can have the honor of a king.

A crown of thorns, a sign saying this is the king, the crowd mocking him saying this is the king of the Jews.

That's him bearing royal armor, royal honor.

From there, he goes to the grave.

From the grave, he resurrects three days later.

He teaches for 40 days.

Then he ascends into heaven where he sits on the throne.

This had never happened before.

No high priest sat on the throne in the temple.

When you look in the temple, there's no chair there.

You get all the furniture of the Holy of Holies.

No chair is mentioned.

The high priest walks in the Holy of Holies once a year, sprinkles blood on the altar.

He's got his robe with his bells and all this.

He's not hanging out in there.

He's not checking text messages in there.

He gets in, splatters the blood, and he gets out fast before the Lord kills him.

That's why there's no chair in there.

You don't get comfortable in the Holy of Holies.

But Jesus enters in to the holy place of God.

In the very presence of God our Father in heaven, he enters in and he sits down.

That's insane.

Nobody would do that.

This came up at his trial, by the way, when he's put on trial by the high priest, by the usurper of God's authority, forced to answer for himself in front of the Sanhedrin, the council of all the judges.

They're berating him with questions.

Jesus doesn't answer because he's not such a sham trial, he's not obligated to give testimony against himself.

But they finally do get him to speak.

And when he does speak, he says, You will see me again.

And when you see me, I will be seated in glory at the right hand of God's power.

Do you remember what the high priestess when he hears that?

Rips his robe and shouts, That's blasphemy.

He deserves to die.

You know, in the Jewish Sanhedrin, they were supposed to vote in their cases.

They were supposed to vote from the youngest justice or the newest justice to the most senior justice.

That way the new guys weren't influenced by the old guys.

That was one of their rules.

Jesus says, You're going to see me seated in heaven.

The high priest, the chief justice, tears his robe and says, That's heresy, this guy deserves to die.

How do you guys vote?

I mean, they're setting aside their laws because Jesus said he would be seating down in heaven.

Obviously, this is a reference to being seated in God's throne.

And of course, when Jesus rose from the grave, like I mentioned, he taught for 40 days, ascends into heaven, where he sits down.

The priest never sat down in God's presence.

Jesus sits down on day one.

Hebrews 12, verse 2, a very common memory verse.

Hebrews 12:2

You might have it memorized.

Jesus is the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

You know, when I memorize that verse, I'm like basking in the first part of the verse.

He, you know, endured the cross, scorned its shame, sat down at the right hand of God.

That's just like the end of the verse to get, you know, to memorize it.

But no, that's the that's the glory of this verse.

Not just that he was crucified, but that he pushed through it all, endured everything, and sat down in heaven.

Nobody else does that.

But it's in verse 13 of Zechariah 6.

He will bear royal honor and he will sit on the throne.

What will he do when he's on the throne?

It says in verse 13, he will rule while he's there.

That's the middle of the verse.

He'll sit down and he will rule from the throne.

That's exercising his sovereignty over the universe.

It's a throne in heaven, and he's ruling all of the creation from that throne.

Hebrews 1, verse 3, he upholds the universe by the word of his power.

Hebrews 1:3

He's not sitting on the throne, biding time.

He's sitting on the throne, exercising sovereign dominion over all of creation.

Colossians 1, verse 16.

Colossians 1:16

By him all things were created in heaven and earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created for him, and through him is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

He is the sovereign leader of the universe.

He rules over every molecule, every soul, every angel from the throne in heaven.

This is why in heaven people recognize him as God.

Crazy scene in the book of Revelation, where the martyrs are praying for vengeance.

The martyrs are in heaven.

They've died, their souls are in heaven, they are in heaven and they are praying.

To whom are they praying?

They're not praying to saints, they're not praying to angels.

They're praying to Jesus.

And they address Jesus, Revelation 6, verse 10, O sovereign Lord, holy and true.

Revelation 6:10

In heaven, they recognize Jesus as the sovereign Lord who rules over the universe.

Back to Zechariah 6, verse 13.

Zechariah 6:13

He's reigning, he's wearing the royal honor, he's sitting on his throne, he's ruling on his throne, and then the next phrase, there will be a priest on the throne.

Now, he's not sharing his chair with a different person.

There's not two messiahs, there's not two saviors.

Instead, Zechariah 6 verse 13 says, the true Messiah, the true King, the true sovereign Lord of heaven, will also be a priest.

Zechariah 6:13

This is unheard of until this verse.

But it is fulfilled by Jesus, isn't it?

He is our high priest.

Hebrews 1, verse 3, which is the same verse I quoted earlier about him sitting down in heaven, but the part right before it, before he sat down in heaven, he made purification for our sins.

Hebrews 1:3

That's a priest's job.

He made purification for our sins.

I will put, I've so many verses to share, but I'll just put one on the screen for you.

Hebrews 8, verses 1 and 2.

Hebrews 8:1

Now the point in what we are saying is this.

And by the way, that is one of my favorite phrases as a Bible student.

I love it when the Bible says this is the point.

It's such a time saver from studying.

You want one point from this?

Here it is.

We have that kind of high priest who is seated in heaven.

Notice in Hebrews 8, it's connected.

He is that high priest.

He is seated in heaven.

He's the high priest.

He's at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in heaven.

He's ministering, which is priestly language, in the holy places, in the true tent, the Lord set up and not man.

That's Jesus.

He is the true king and he's the priest.

Hebrews 10, verse 13.

Hebrews 10:13

It says that as he fulfills the messianic prophecies, he does so as he makes his enemies under him, the footstool of his feet.

That's Hebrews 10.

Quoting Psalm 110, Hebrews 10 says Jesus fulfills that.

And when he does that, he does that by the power of a single offering for sin.

One time it was appointed for man one to die, and then the judgment.

Jesus, by a single offering at his death, atoned for our sins.

That's priestly work.

He died to bear the penalty for our sins.

Our sins deserve God's judgment and God's wrath.

Jesus, as priest, doesn't offer a ram for our sins or a bull for our sins.

He offers himself.

He is the priest that sacrifices itself.

His blood is splattered on the Holy of Holies.

His blood is brought before God in heaven.

His blood makes atonement for our sin.

He then takes his seat on the throne, having forgiven us of our sins.

In this sense, he is the one who rules and the one who forgives.

He's the one who mandates the sacrifice, and he's the sacrifice.

He's the one that sends the Savior to the world to die, and he's the one who goes to die.

He is the one who says, without the shedding of blood, there can be no forgiveness of sins.

And then he's the one who goes and sheds his blood for the forgiveness of sins.

He's the one that says that as king, I will not pardon iniquity.

As king, every sin will be judged.

And then he's the one who, as priest, goes and makes a pardon, makes a way for sin to be forgiven, and offers it to the king who accepts it.

He is both of those offices in one person.

And I hope by just hearing me explain it that way, you appreciate why it is so important you have a priest who is the king, which gets you to verse 13.

The end of verse 13.

The council of peace will be between them both.

The council of peace established by God through the Savior unites the office of priest and the office of king.

This is what Jesus does.

Since we have such a high priest, we have our sins forgiven.

Romans 5, verse 1, since we've been justified by faith, we have peace with God through Jesus Christ.

Romans 5:1

Paul ends the book of Romans by saying, May the God of peace be with you all.

In fact, Paul often refers to the Lord Jesus as the God of love and of peace.

Or he starts and ends his epistles with grace and peace.

Ephesians 2, verse 14, he himself is our peace.

Ephesians 2:14

I mean, this council of peace is what he brings to reconcile us to God.

We are at enmity with God because of our sin.

We have hostile relations with God because of our sin.

Jesus makes peace between us and God.

He abolished the power of the law to separate us from God.

He makes in his own body a temple of God, a new man with Jew and Gentile brought together, which Ephesians 2 says he does so by making peace with us.

He reconciles us to God through the cross, making peace with us and God, killing the hostility.

He says, I come to bring, I come to preach peace to those who are near and those who are far, Jews and Gentiles.

So that in him we can be built together into a new body, the new temple of God brought to us by the Spirit of peace.

And there's no missing this.

Do you understand?

If Jesus were only a king, he could not do this.

And if Jesus were only a priest, he could not do this.

A king cannot forgive sins.

A king cannot have his own sins forgiven except through a priest.

If you had a king without a cross, you would have a ruler without righteousness.

Because how can the king be forgiven?

If you had a king with no cross, you'd have an unrighteous leader.

If you had a priest with no throne, you would have the pleas of mercy falling on deaf ears.

If you had a priest who did not have access to the throne, what is he doing?

To whom is he praying?

But if you have the priest and the king joined in one person, that person can demand justice and be justice.

He can demand a sacrifice for sin and be the sacrifice for sin.

He can send and be sent.

The only hope of salvation that we have is through both Levi and Judah.

Through the priest and the king.

Jesus isn't from the tribe of Levi, of course.

He's a priest of a higher order.

We know that from Hebrews.

He's a priest in the order of Melchizedek.

That'll be its own sermon some other day.

But for now, just delight in the fact that because he is king and priest, we have the ear of one in heaven who makes a sacrifice for our sins.

By the way, whatever happened to that crown Again, I don't know if they actually made it.

Indiana Jones might be able to find it.

But you'll see that crown.

Do you know that?

Revelation 19, verse 12.

Revelation 19:12

Jesus comes on his horse.

There's fire coming from his eyes in judgment.

And on his head are many diadems.

And he has a name written that no one knows but himself.

God, we're grateful for the crown.

Be on your your head, the crown of the nations, the crown of creation.

All the beauty and the jewels of heaven will ordain you.

You are the king and you are the high priest of heaven.

We have salvation offered to us through your work on the cross.

We're thankful that you are our king and our priest.

I pray for anyone here today that has never trusted you for their salvation.

I pray that today they would turn and find the forgiveness that only a priest can make and only a king can grant.

We're thankful for the gospel.

It's in the name of Christ we pray.

Amen.

And now for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.