ZECHARIAH'S VISION OF JOSHUA THE HIGH PRIEST - SpurgeonZECHARIAH’S VISION OF JOSHUA THE HIGH PRIEST
NO. 611,
DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, JANUARY 22, 1865,
BY C. H. SPURGEON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE,
“And he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the Angel of the Lord and Satan standing at his
right hand to resist him. And the Lord said to Satan, The Lord rebuke you Satan! The Lord who has
chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is this not a log plucked from the fire? Now Joshua was
clothed with filthy garments and was standing before the Angel. Then He answered
and spoke to those who stood before Him, saying, Take away the filthy
garments from him. And to him He said, Behold, I have removed
your iniquity from you and I will clothe you with rich robes.
And I said, Let them put a clean turban upon his head.
So they put a clean turban upon his head and they
put the clothes on him. And the Angel of the Lord stood by.”
Zechariah 3:1-5.
THE original intention of this vision was to foretell the revival of the Jewish state after its long depression through
the Babylonian captivity. Joshua, the high priest, with his tattered garments, must be looked upon as the type of the Jewish
people in their deep distress. He was ministering before the Lord in worn and filthy garments, to show at once the sin
of Israel and the poverty into which they had fallen. They were so poor that the service of God could not be conducted in
suitable apparel, but the high priest himself appeared before the altar in robes unfit for his sacred work.
The set time to favor Zion is according to the visions most near at hand. And Satan, the old adversary of the chosen
race, bestirs himself to resist them and turn away the favor of God from them. But that same Angel of the Covenant who
led the people through the wilderness and carried them all the days of old, stands before the Throne as their Advocate
and at His request Jehovah rebukes Satan and begins to bless the people. Joshua, their representative, receives a change of
clothes, in testimony that the people’s sin is forgiven and that God accepts their worship.
The vision then sweeps on to the day of the Lord Jesus and the heart of the Prophet Zechariah is cheered by a sight of
the whole land restored to its former peace and happiness under the reign of the glorious One who is called, “My servant,
THE BRANCH.” While we have been interpreting the other visions of Zechariah, we have tried to derive present comfort
and profit from them. We will endeavor to do so on this occasion. We may very properly take Joshua as a type of all
the people of God as they stand in their sense of sin and natural faultiness, subject to the accusations of Satan, but delivered
by their ever gracious Lord.
And the change of clothing as setting forth the forgiveness of sin and the imputation of the Savior’s righteousness,
which is the joy of all Believers. Let us take each particular separately and may God the Holy Spirit shed a sacred light
upon the vision and may we see in it more than Zechariah himself discovered! May we see Jehovah Jesus in all the glory of
His love, manifesting Himself to His chosen as He does not unto the world.
I. To begin, then, where the vision begins—with THE BELIEVER HIMSELF REPRESENTED BY JOSHUA. The
Believer himself is described as a priest standing before the Angel of the Lord. Let us mark this. He is a priest. Who are
the priests? Certain sons of Korah, who take too much upon them, say, “We are the priests, we are the legitimate descendants
of the Apostles and a mysterious power distills from our priestly hands.” We reply to them, it is impossible that
you should be descendants of the Apostles and yet claim to possess priestly power, for the Apostles never claimed any peculiar
priesthood for themselves above other Believers.
They spoke of their Brethren, the Christians of their age, as being on a par with themselves in the matter of priesthood.
“You also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable
to God by Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:5). If, then, these pretenders to priesthood are priests in any special sense,
they certainly are not descendants of the Apostles—for the Apostles claimed no priority of priesthood beyond the rest of
their brethren, but said of all the saints, “You are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood.”
The fact is they are neither one nor the other—they are not descendants of the Apostles, for they preach not the
Apostles’ Gospel and know not their Spirit! Nor have they any priestly office, unless it is that the old Babylonian harlot
accepts them as her foster children and gives them a name and a place among those who partake in her abominations.
Who are the priests? Why, every humble man and woman that knows the power of Jesus Christ in his own soul to purge
and cleanse him from dead works is appointed to serve as a priest unto God! I say every humble man and every humble
woman, too, for in Christ Jesus there is neither male nor female—we are all one in Him.
We offer prayers to God knowing that they ascend to Heaven like sweet odors before the Throne! We offer praise,
believing that “whoever offers praise, glorifies God.” “Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God,
which is your reasonable service.” Jesus has made us priests and kings unto God and even here upon earth we exercise the
priesthood of consecrated living and hallowed service and hope to exercise it till the Lord shall come. When I see, then,
Joshua the high priest, I do but see a picture of each and every child of God who has been made near by the blood of
Christ and has been taught to minister in holy things and enter into that which is within the veil.
But observe where this high priest is—he is said to be “standing before the Angel of the Lord,” that is, standing to
minister. This should be the perpetual position of every true Believer. I have no business on the bed of sloth. I have no
right to be wandering abroad after private business. I can claim no time which I may set apart to my own follies, or to my
own aggrandizement. My true position as a Christian is to be always ministering to God—always standing before His
altar.
Do I hear you ask how this can be—with your farms and with your merchandise? Know you not, Brethren, that
whether you eat, or drink, or whatever you do, you may do it all to the glory of God? Understand you not that every
place is now God’s temple and that everywhere is God’s altar and that you can as truly serve Him in your daily callings as
in the assemblies of the place of worship? You know not the true position of a Christian if you fancy that you are only
priests on the Lord’s Day and only to minister before God when you stand in the congregation of the faithful. You are
appointed priests like your Lord—forever—and you are forever to be offering the sacrifice!
By day and by night should your hearts be going up to Him. You should fall asleep with your Master’s name upon
your tongue and when you awake you should say with the Psalmist, “I am still with You.” Happy Joshua! Notwithstanding
the filthiness of his garments, he is to be commended because he keeps in the position to which he is called and like the
servant whose ear was bored, he does not leave his master’s house. Come, you that profess to be God’s people—if you
have been negligent in the duties of your high calling, and if your hearts at this moment are going after vanity—pray
God the Holy Spirit to put you into a proper state to perform the functions of your holy office! And now in the courts of
the Lord’s House, stand like Joshua, with your hearts prepared by the Lord of Hosts to minister before the Lord.
Yet, notice where it is that Joshua stands to minister. It is before the Angel of Jehovah. You and I can never stand to
minister before Moses, the mediator under the Law—much less before Jehovah Himself. For our God is a consuming
fire. It is only through a Mediator that we poor, defiled ones can ever become priests unto God. Perhaps some of God’s
people here may have forgotten this. You have been searching yourselves and trying your hearts as in the sight of God’s
Law and you feel very deeply that you are far behind what the glory of the God in the Law would ask of you. Therefore
you begin foolishly to mistrust your Father’s love and to think that your service before Him will not be heeded.
Beloved, it is ill serving God in the light of the Law—but oh, how blessed is it to stand and minister before Christ
and in Christ! Then, if I can bring Him nothing but my tears He will put them in His bottle, for He once wept. If I can
bring Him nothing but my groans and sighs He will accept these as an acceptable sacrifice, for He once was broken in
heart and sighed heavily in spirit. Gracious God, I bless You that I have not to present my sacrifice directly to Yourself,
else you would consume my sacrifice and me with the flames of Your wrath! But I present what I have before Your Messenger,
the Angel of the Covenant, the Lord Jesus! And through Him my prayers find acceptance wrapped up in His
prayers!
My praises become sweet as they are bound up with bundles of myrrh and aloes and cassia from Christ’s own garden.
Then I myself, standing in Him, am accepted in the Beloved. And all my poor, defiled, polluted works, though in themselves
only objects of Divine abhorrence, are so accepted and received, that God smells a sweet savor. He is content and I
am blessed. See, then, the position of the Christian as a priest—he is to stand before the Angel of the Lord. Now read the
next word in the light of your own experience—“Clothed,” it is said, “with filthy garments.” Did you ever feel this when
you have come to serve God?
Perhaps it is at evening prayer—there has been something amiss in the family during the day and you know it—
perhaps, as the head of the household you have to conduct prayer and you feel, “O God, I cannot pray, I cannot pray as I
would! I am Your priest in this house, I know, but how can I minister before You, for I have filthy garments on?” Possibly
your business kept you up very late last night. Things are not going on as well as you wish in matters of trade and you
have come here distracted. And while sitting in the pew listening to God’s people as they praise the Lord, you have
thought, “Ah, I have my filthy garments on. I cannot pray to Him. I cannot praise Him as I would.”
I know what it is to come and preach to you sometimes and to feel such an overwhelming sense of my own unworthiness,
that, were it not, “Woe unto me if I do not preach the Gospel,” I would not come on this platform again, for it is
hard to feel that your garments are defiled while endeavoring to be God’s mouth to men. Perhaps this afternoon, when
you are going into your Sunday school class, you will feel much warmth of heart towards God. You will confess that you
are not your own, but bought with a price. You will desire to live unto Him and honor Him.
But, oh, that dread impediment of conscious guilt—it will make you cry out—“How can I stand before Him who
charged His angels with folly and declares that the heavens are not pure in His sight? How can I hope to have a blessing
on anything that I do when I feel a heart of unbelief departing from the living God? How can I give a blessing to His
saints when I want a blessing myself? How shall I break the bread of Christ with unholy fingers and pour out the wine
into His cup with a sinful hand?”
But stop, Christian! Do not think of renouncing your priesthood! Do not let a sense of unfitness keep you from your
service! Stand where you are—for remember, you are standing in the only place where pollution can be washed away—
you are standing before the Angel of the Covenant! It is before Christ that sin is to be confessed. Confess it anywhere else,
your sorrow is not repentance, but remorse.
“What is remorse?” says one. Remorse is repentance made out of sight of Jesus! True repentance is sorrow of sin in
the Presence of Christ. Foul and filthy as you are, there is but one Voice which can speak you clean. Go not away from
that Voice. There is but one Hand which can touch you and make you pure—stand where that Hand is close to you and
still, filthy as your garments are, shun not the face of your best, your only Friend! And breathe out this prayer, “Lord, if
You will, You can make me clean. Purge me, oh, purge me now, for Your love’s sake.”
II. Let us turn to another individual who figures in the group. We have, in the second place, AN ADVERSARY.
Satan stood before the Angel to resist Joshua. Does not his opposition seem superfluous? Poor Joshua feels enough the
filth upon his garments without needing to have the devil to withstand him. And I, poor I, do often feel so much my own
sinfulness that it seems a work of supererogation on the devil’s part to lay accusations—conscience accuses enough without
him!
But yet, so cruel is he that he avails himself of the times of the weakness of God’s people—then and there to resist
them. Observe what he is called. He is called Satan, which signifies an adversary. He is an adversary and that by nature.
His nature is now so vile that he cannot help being the adversary of everything that is good. From the day on which he
was expelled from Heaven and dragged with him a third part of the stars of glory, he has been God’s bitterest foe. And as
to man, from the hour in which it was said, “The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head,” he discovered in that
humble creature, man, his great destroyer. And he has never ceased to nibble at the heel of the seed of the woman, foreknowing
how terribly his head is to be bruised.
There is something, however, very comforting in the thought that he is an adversary—I would sooner have him for
an adversary than for a friend! O my Soul, it were dread work with you if Satan were a friend of yours, for then with him
you must forever dwell in darkness and in the deeps—shut out from the friendship of God! But to have Satan for an adversary
is a comfortable omen, for it looks as if God were our Friend and so far let us be comforted in this matter. Yet,
remember, Satan is an adversary not to be despised. Of keen intellect, ripened by years of experience, with a fullness of
cunning and craft which made even the serpent, when possessed by him, more subtle than any other beast of the field, he
is an antagonist worthy of angelic might.
Gabriel might lose in such a conflict if he did not stand clad in the golden armor of perfect innocence. We, so apt to
sin, carrying about with us so much tinder, had need to fear the fiery sparks which he scatters. It is a dreadful thing to
stand foot to foot with Apollyon. Read Bunyan’s description of Christian’s fight in the Valley of Humiliation and you
have there a shadow of what the true conflict is. Better to endure all kinds of temporal pains and trials than to be beset by
Satan. He who wins, gains nothing—and he who fails will find his weight full heavy when the dragon sets his foot upon
his neck. You have a stern adversary here and one who will never cease to vex you till you shall be out of gunshot of him,
in having crossed the river of death.
Now you will perceive, if you look at the passage, that this adversary selected a most fitting place in which to do
Joshua damage. He came to accuse him before the Angel—before God’s own Son! Oh, if he could once make the Lord
loose His hold of us, then we should soon be his prey! You perceive he does not attack Joshua first, but he comes before
the Angel to prevent Joshua’s being accepted. If Satan can once persuade you or me to think we are not God’s children
and not accepted, he knows that he has done us serious injury. In the arsenals of Hell there are great stores of “ifs”—
“ifs” are Satan’s bombshells—“If you are the Son of God.”
If he can make you doubt, then he makes a breach in your wall. If you are strong enough to say, “I know whom I
have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him,” you will then come off
more than conqueror! But the drift of Satan is to touch you just there, in that place where your strength lies. He is like
Delilah—he feels that if he can cut off the locks of your faith, where your strength dwells—then he may put out your
eyes and sell you to the Philistines forever. Take care, take care, when Satan comes to accuse you before the Angel and to
make you doubt your interest in the Lord Jesus, that you at once leave the case in the Angel’s hands—for your Advocate
can plead better against the accuser than you can!
And it is best for you to hold your peace and to let that great Advocate stand up and say, “The Lord rebuke you,
Satan! The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you!” You will agree with me that the adversary not only selected a
very fit place by coming at once to the Throne to lay the accusation, but a very fit opportunity. Joshua had his filthy
garments on. Satan is a great coward—he will generally meddle with God’s people when they are down. I find that when
I am in good physical health, I am not often tempted of Satan to despondency or doubt. But whenever I get depressed in
spirit, or my liver is out of order, or my head aches—then comes the hissing serpent—“God has forsaken you! You are
no child of God! You are unfaithful to your Master! You have no part in the blood of sprinkling,” and such-like things.
You old rascal! If you say as much as that to me in my days of health—when my blood is leaping in my veins—I shall
be more than a match for you! But to meet me just then, when you understand that I am weak, yes, this is just like you,
Satan. What a thorough devil our enemy is! I can call him by no worse name than his own! But if worse there were, richly
would he deserve it. You must expect, Christian, when you have lost your sense of justification, when you are conscious of
sin, when you feel unfit to minister before God—you must expect that just then he will come to accuse you.
If Joshua’s garment had been perfectly clean that morning when he went to minister as a priest, Satan would have let
him alone. But see Joshua depressed in spirit and heavy in mind—weeping over his sins—then comes Satan and he says,
