(ZECH. 2-3)
IN the vision recorded in these chapters, the prophet Zechariah is shown the purposes of God’s love towards His sinful and suffering people, and the means whereby He can reinstate them in His favor according to the claims of His righteousness. It is the history of the salvation and justification of every saved sinner; and the believer can see the similar ways of grace in this ancient prophecy to those of which he in his day has been the happy subject.
If we read the third chapter by itself, we rob the vision of much of its divine beauty. The need of the sinner is met in the third chapter, but the heart of God is declared in the second; and the action in chap. 3 is the removal of every obstacle to the fulfillment of God’s own blessed thoughts about His people in chap. 2.
Zechariah had made known the sad burden of the people’s sins, and had beheld the horns that God had sent to scatter Judah, Israel, and Jerusalem (chap. 1:19). He had seen the end of the people in judgment; and doubtless his heart was deeply moved at the judgment he announced; but thus he became a vessel fitted to receive the consolations of God. The sense of man’s ruin is needed to appreciate God’s grace. Surely we need to learn more truly what sin is, and what it has done, that we may value more the grace whereby we are saved.
Zechariah again lifts up his eyes, and he sees no longer the horns of scattering and destruction, but a messenger of salvation—a man with a measuring-line in his hand, on his way to the desolate city, where no man dwelt. God’s thoughts have gone forth—thoughts of peace, and not of evil. He yearns over His captives: He must restore them to their land. His word declares to the young man, that “Jerusalem shall be inhabited as towns without walls, for the multitude of men and cattle.” Thus faith can sing, through days of sorrow, “All will be well!”
God has not cast away the people whom He foreknew. Read the chapter, and see if the blessings promised do not far exceed the blessings of Solomon’s reign, which Israel forfeited by sin. We want our hearts enlarged in the love of God, and filled with the glory of His salvation, when we carry the gospel to sinners. Have we not God’s thoughts of love to declare, as well as God’s remedy for sin? Is it not well to lift our eyes and learn the lengths, and breadths, and depths, and heights, and know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge? May we go forth to the poor perishing world in the knowledge that God is a position, and to ask one’s self, Have I ever been thus before God as a polluted sinner, fit only for the place prepared for the devil and his angels? Such is the way in which God displays Himself in sovereign grace.
He answers Satan, and all the guilty fears of the sinner, by declaring His right to do as He pleases, and to choose, if He please, a worthless brand, and pluck it out of the burning. Satan resisted Joshua on the plea of his pollution; and it is just on that ground that the Lord silences him. If God wills to people heaven with the spoil of Satan’s kingdom, who is he that shall say nay to Him? And what else is salvation, if it is not God saving by grace those who are by nature children of wrath? If one cannot declare this as God’s good news, without addition or limitation, surely such an one has yet to learn what God’s salvation is.
This being God’s sovereign will, He (the Lord) turns to the polluted Joshua, and removes from him those filthy garments, pronouncing in accordance with the demands of His holiness and righteousness, “Behold, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I will clothe thee with change of raiment.” Was it a matter of Joshua’s appropriation? Nay; the justification was solely and entirely of God. In the gospel God has declared how He is just in thus justifying the ungodly. It is through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God has set forth a propitiation, through faith in His blood (Rom. 3).
Mark those words: “Whom God hath set forth.” The sinner has not to present Christ, or offer Christ to God, or plead the merits of His blood. God has set Him forth. God declares His righteousness. The sinner who hears the glad tidings as Joshua did, in God’s presence, with Satan silenced at his right hand by those tidings, has the joy of knowing that God has justified him, and caused his iniquity to pass from him; and for the vile garments of his sinful nature and condition as a child of wrath, God has clothed him with Christ, and he is made the righteousness of God in Him.
What more was needed to complete the picture? “Ah!” some would say, “if I could only get as far as the change of clothing, if I could only be assured of my justification by God, I should want no more.” But Zechariah had drunk into the purposes of God’s love more deeply; and seeing the justification of the late polluted Joshua, he says, “Let them set a fair miter upon his head.” He asks for his glorification, and he sees Joshua clothed as God’s priest in garments of beauty and glory.
Beautiful figure of God’s ways in salvation! He not only gives us peace, but gives us to boast in hope of His glory. He makes us meet for His own presence, who were in His sight “brands in the fire.” It was for this end that He rebuked Satan and justified Joshua; and having brought him to Himself into the holiest, as the high priest, He charges him to walk in His ways. There can be no walking with God until we have met Him; and while our consciences are unpurged by the blood of Christ, we have not met Him.
My reader, if you have not met God, remember you are away from Him, and under His wrath as a sinner who does not believe in His only begotten Son. How can you stand in the judgment? How can you answer the adversary? How blessed to be in God’s presence, with our mouth shut, and our ear open, to hear His good news! By Jesus Christ “all that believe are justified from all things” (Acts 13), and receiving His word in the simplicity of faith, they enjoy the priceless treasure of peace with God. Then are we in a position to learn the thoughts and purposes of His redeeming love, and then only can we really walk in His ways.