The Messenger Is the Message: God’s Great Angel Visits His People

By Dr. Rev. Stephen R. Weist

Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him.

And the LORD said to Satan,“The LORD rebuke you, O Satan! The LORD who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is not this a brand plucked from the fire?”

Now Joshua was standing before the angel, clothed with filthy garments. And the angel said to those who were standing before him, “Remove the filthy garments from him.” And to him he said, “Behold, I have taken your iniquity away from you, and I will clothe you with rich apparel.”

And I said, “Let them put a clean turban on his head.” So they put a clean turban on his head and clothed him with garments; and the angel of the LORD was standing by.

And the angel of the LORD enjoined Joshua, “Thus says the LORD of hosts: If you will walk in my ways and keep my charge, then you shall rule my house and have charge of my courts, and I will give you the right of access among those who are standing here. Hear now, O Joshua the high priest, you and your friends who sit before you, for they are men of good omen: behold, I will bring my servant the Branch. For behold, upon the stone which I have set before Joshua, upon a single stone with seven facets, I will engrave its inscription, says the LORD of hosts, and I will remove the guilt of this land in a single day. In that day, says the LORD of hosts, every one of you will invite his neighbor under his vine and under his fig tree.” -- Zechariah 3:1-10 (RSV)

Countless times before His own incarnation, Jesus, the Word of God, who was with God in the beginning and was Himself God, appeared among men as the messenger of the Holy Trinity. As one poet states, “His love [was] too great that He should wait for His Nativity.” The eternally-begotten Son of God revealed the gracious face of His Father in many and various ways to our ancient fathers in the Faith. Some of the titles for this Messenger were Angel of the Lord, Angel of God, Angel of the Presence, and Angel of the Covenant.

The word angel simply means “messenger,” and the greatest messenger of God is He who is Himself the Ultimate Message of God, Jesus Christ, our Savior. He is ever the Messenger of the glad tidings that humankind has been justified, that is, “put right,” before the Triune God by virtue of the Father’s eternal love in sacrificing His Son for the sins of the world. Zechariah, the Old Testament prophet, exhibits the evangelical ministry of this Justifying Angel in several chapters of his book.

According to Zechariah 1, the prophet sees a man riding a red horse and standing among a grove of myrtle trees. To this central figure, soon identified as the Angel of the Lord, report all the other angels whom God has sent out to patrol the earth. At their glad tidings of peace throughout the world, the great Angel Himself asks for God’s mercy upon long-bereft Jerusalem and Judah, that is, all those who hold fast God’s promise of a Savior from sin, death, devil, and hell.

God responds to the intercession of His Angel with comforting words of Gospel for His people. So we see in Zechariah 1 that the Word of the Lord which came to Zechariah is none other than the Angel of the Lord, God’s own Word and Son, who secures mercy from the Father for all His saints (cf. Rom. 8:31-34).

The gracious bestowal of divine mercy upon men by the Angel of the Lord comes center stage in Zechariah 3. There we find Joshua, the high priest of God’s people after the exile, standing before the Angel of the Lord under the burden of grave accusation of sin by Satan (“the Adversary”). The Angel of the Lord, now identified as the Lord Himself, speaks a verdict of divine acquittal over this priest and his people: “The LORD rebuke you, O Satan! The LORD who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is not this a brand plucked from the fire?” (v. 2 RSV).

The Angel of the Lord, who stands by Joshua and stands up for him against the Accuser, commands that His high priest be clothed with fine festal apparel and a clean turban. This action is a foreshadowing of how the Lord Christ shall robe His own priestly people in white (Rev. 7:13-14), having cleansed and purified them with His blood by virtue of baptism into His death and resurrection (Eph. 5:25-27). The Gospel-Word of the Angel Himself to Joshua bears out that what is here performed for priest and people is an omen of the work of Him who is to come, the Servant sent from God called “Branch” (Zech. 3:8).

Martin Luther comments of Zechariah 3 that “in every way Christ is here shown as being God and an Angel coming into the world.” The Reformer rightly can say this because the Angel of the Lord is in fact the Son of God, who will become in His incarnation the ultimate Joshua (“Jesus”!), covered with the sins of the people. “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us—for it is written, ‘Cursed be every one who hangs on a tree’” (Gal. 3:13 RSV).Thus, the Son of Man prophesies to an Old Testament namesake of His in Zechariah 3 of His own work as the Branch who will hang from the Tree of the Cross.

Zechariah invokes the Angel of the Lord one last time in his twelfth chapter, which deals with Judgment Day: “On that day the LORD will put a shield about the inhabitants of Jerusalem so that the feeblest among them on that day shall be like David, and the house of David shall be like God, like the angel of the LORD, at their head” (v. 8 RSV). At this time all of Christ’s redeemed ultimately shall conform in glory not only to great David but even to great David’s Greater Son, God in the Flesh, the Angel of the Lord who is Head of God’s Church. Our glorification, which is wrapped up with our justification, is even now ours in part as we look unto Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith. Someday soon, our faces, like St. Stephen’s, will be radiant like the face of the Angel, for we will become fully what we behold by faith in that Son of Man who stands at God’s right hand to justify us!

Reverend Dr. Stephen R.Wiest is associate pastor of Our Father Lutheran Church, Greenfield, Wisconsin.