When the Jews returned from Babylonian captivity, they immediately began to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem that Nebuchadnezzar had destroyed, and they had a major problem. In one of the three times Satan is mentioned in the Old Testament, he magnified this problem. There was no high priest who was holy to offer the sacrifices for sin and atonement. Read about this problem in Zechariah 3.
God solved that problem in a Divine vision given to Zechariah. The new high priest was seen in filthy garments with Satan standing beside him and God solved the problem. The filthy garments of iniquity were removed from the new high priest and replaced with rich robes (Zech. 3:1-8).
However, three chapters later, God created a new “problem” when a royal golden crown was placed on the head of that high priest. He is presented as being both a prophet and a king sitting on a throne. What was the problem? Every Jewish priest had to be from the tribe of Levi, and in Judah, every king had to be the lineage of David and that from another tribe, the tribe of Judah. Two hundred years prior to the time of Zechariah, a Jewish king, Uzziah, went into the temple and tried to offer a sacrifice. God immediately struck him with leprosy for this violation (2 Chron. 26). There, seemingly, was no way that a man could be both a prophet and a king at the same time. Yet, Zechariah had just placed a crown on the head of the high priest in his day. It was God who created this “problem,” and there was no way it could be solved.
Read carefully the details of what was said when the crown was placed on the head of the high priest. The prophet said that when you looked at this priest with a crown you were to see far more. Zechariah said that this priest with a crown was a BRANCH (I capitalized this word because the NKJV does this when quoting written prophecy). There was an Old Testament prophecy where the Messiah had been called a branch (Isa. 11:1), and the context in Zechariah shows that the people looking at their high priest were seeing a picture of the fact that when Jesus came He would be that branch and both a prophet and a king at the same time.
How can Jesus be both a king and a prophet when neither Uzziah nor the high priest in Zechariah’s day could be? How could Jesus fulfill this prophecy? He might be of the royal tribe of Judah, but He could not be a priest. How could Jesus be from two separate tribes? The answer is easy and is found beginning in Hebrews chapter five. Psalm 110:4 described another kind of priest. Not one from the order of Levi, but from the order of another kind—the order of Melchizedek. We will look more into this next week. There is no problem!