Grace to you and peace. (1 Thess 1)
Jesus speaks to you on this evening from His book of Zechariah heard, saying:
“For behold, on the stone that I have set before Joshua, on a single stone with seven eyes, I will engrave its inscription, declares the Lord of hosts, and I will remove the iniquity of this land in a single day.”
This evening, we encounter our Malakh YHWH, or Angel of the Lord, for the final time in history and in Lent, for us, and it is a doozy. For I have spent this Lententide attempting to convince you that in a prophetic way, the Malakh YHWH is closely related to the pre-incarnate Christ.
This evening’s reading, however, seems to put the kibosh on that thought, because in Zechariah’s vision, we see the Malakh YHWH next to Jesus, or Joshua as our English translation poorly translates.
Yes, the Malakh YHWH and Jesus face off and are seen in the same room together, so we must have to conclude that Jesus is not the Malakh YHWH. However, when it comes to prophesy, we don’t always need a one-to-one correspondence to be a true picture of Christ.
For example, this past Sunday we heard of Abraham and the near sacrifice of Isaac. Isaac is a prophesy or picture of Christ, what He will do and how He will act when Jesus shows up. However, where Jesus actually dies, Isaac does not. Does that mean that Isaac cant be seen as a picture of Christ? No.
What we look for when we “search the scriptures” (St. John 5:39) for Christ, are the ways all the people acted like Jesus. As Isaac was the son to be sacrificed by the father, he gets to show us that Jesus will die for others.
In our Zechariah 3 reading, what we see in Jesus and the Malakh YHWH are the two natures of Christ. Notice how He is wearing filthy clothes in verse 3 and they were taken away in verse 4 and He was given priestly clothes, the same assigned to Arron and the Levites for pure service in God’s House in Exodus 28:4.
Jesus, in His human nature, is able to take on our filthiness and, as Transfiguration showed, He is able to take up “pure vestments” again on Easter. He is also our great High Priest, as Hebrews 4:14 tells us, “Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.”
Continuing on in Zechariah: that satan is at the “right hand” may seem disconcerting, as the right hand of God is reserved for Christ and the right hand of Christ is reserved for His sheep, from St. Matthew 25. In the case of this vision, satan takes on the role of God’s Law which always accuses as Romans 4:15 says, “For the law brings wrath” and yet remains holy, i.e. at God's Right Hand.
So it is that satan’s evidence and testimony which he brought to stand against Jesus is rebuked, thrown out. This happens because Jesus is being judged for another’s sins, our sins, for which He took the blame. Isaiah 53:12 says, “Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors.”
When we come to Jesus’s exaltation, in verses 4-5, it is not the Lord Who clothes and forgives, it is the Malakh YHWH! We know only God can forgive (St. Mark 2:7), so again, we are seeing this vision and it is blurring the lines, but only to those without faith.
So the Malakh YHWH gives Jesus the clothes of Aaron, of purification, of resurrection from the dead, where He is now dead to the Law (Gal 2:19) which accused Him mightily, and lives never to die again (Rom. 6:9) in order that He now sit at the right hand of God and, as He told us on Easter, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (St. Matthew 28:19) just as in v.7 of Zechariah 3.
The “right access” that Zechariah declares is none other than the High Priest’s authority to not only go in and out of the Holy of Holies, but now from life to death, heaven to hell. Hebrews 9:12 says, “through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption” and Hebrews 10:19-20, “we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh.”
As we get to this eye-balled stone in v.9, we come to the reason our Gospel reading was paired with Zechariah tonight. It is the stone the builders rejected, the cornerstone. The seven eyes are explained a little, by Zechariah 4:10, “These seven are the eyes of the Lord, which range through the whole earth.”
Thus, we simply state that this is the stone that Jesus described Himself as in St. Matthew 21:42. So now Jesus is not a man or an angel, but a stone. A stone with an inscription which apparently “will remove the iniquity of this land in a single day” (Zech 3:9).
What sort of inscription could possibly accomplish such a thing? Only the inscription of the Passion of our Lord. The marks of scourge, nail, and thorn inscribe upon the Body of Jesus Christ these words: “This is the King of the Jews” and in those wounds we are healed.
Pilate and the Jews believe it is words that hurt them, making offense and taking offense at the title plate that hangs above Jesus’s head while He hangs on the cross. But they are both mistaken. It is the Word made Flesh that both makes offense and takes offense.
He is a “A stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense” says 1 Peter 2:8 and “the one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him” (St. Matt 21:44).
So it is that the “single day” that takes away iniquity is the day when our High Priest, the Lord’s Branch, the True Vine was crucified and offered up as a ransom for the whole world. This is the prophesy and purpose of the Malakh YHWH, to show us Jesus, how He will live, how He will act, and how He will die for us.
You can ask Jesus when you get to His side about all of this, but for now, we have the depths of God’s Wisdom revealed to us in His Word in every verse of Holy Scripture and our brother, the Malakh YHWH, the Angel of the Lord is no exception.
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