Zechariah 3:1-4 "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.” Today's episode talks about how important it is to remember Jesus dies for our sins. We don't have to do anything to earn God's love, we already have it. It talks a bit about a performance mentality vs. a inheritance mentality. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Satan is the Accuser
Zechariah 3:1-4 "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.”
I chose this scripture this morning because when I read it I was reminded of a powerful story someone told at prayer group yesterday and I felt that was confirmation from the Holy Spirit that I should talk about it. I also love to talk about this topic because I feel it is one we have a hard time believing. These verses are from the old testament, so Jesus hadn’t even died on a cross for them and yet God is taking way Joshua’s sin. The first sentence in these verses says, “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.” Did you know that Satan does this to us too? When you hear that voice pointing out all the things you have done wrong and you start to feel shame building up inside, or you start to feel like you are an awful person, that is Satan. That does not come from God. God never accuses us. The Holy Spirit will sometimes convict us of our sins, but always does so in a loving way that make us want to change, but does not make us feel guilty and certainly doesn’t fill us with shame. That is all Satan.
I have heard people say that Satan is the Father of lies a lot, or the prince of darkness, but I don’t hear people talking about how he is the accuser. This is also why I wanted to use this verse this morning. This way all of you who are listening will know that when you hear someone listing off your sins, you will know that it is not God, it is Satan. Knowing this can take a lot of the pressure off because when you start to hear the enemy accusing you, you can command him to leave and you can ask the Holy Spirit to come fill you up. In the verse above it says, “The Lord said to Satan, “The Lord rebuke you, O Satan!” You can rebuke Satan as well. What I have learned to say from my prayer group is, “In the name of Jesus, I rebuke you Satan and I send you to the foot of the cross.” Evil Spirits flee at the name of Jesus. They are subject to Him and so if you send them to the foot of the cross in Jesus’ name, then they have to go. Then Jesus can take care of them.
The next part says, “The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is not this a brand plucked from the fire?” This part was a bit confusing. I did not have any idea what it meant. Luckily I did not skip over it, but I took a minute to look it up online. Apparently what it means is that we were chosen by God. The fire is all the accusations that Satan is throwing at them, and God is plucking them out of that fire because the Lord has chosen these people to be His chosen people. God has done this for us too. I love this verse so much because it shows that God has loved us and saved us from the beginning. The Old Testament if full of stories about God saving his people. I like this one though because it talks specifically about God saving them from Satan and all his accusations. Yes, we are sinners, Satan is not lying, but God chose us anyway. God sees us for who we are inside, not for our sins. God chose me and He chose you. You are chosen by God. He sees you!
This next part is perhaps my favorite part. It says, “ 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.” First, just the fact that Joshua got to interact with an angel is pretty cool. I wouldn’t mind that. That would be awesome. What I love though, is that the angel said that they took away his iniquity and clothed him with rich apparel. They wiped away his sin, and they gave him new clothes so that he would look on the outside like he did on the inside. God is so good!
Did you know when Jesus died on a cross he took away our iniquities too? Did you know when He died He took all of the sins we will ever commit with Him. An eternal life in Heaven is our inheritance from Jesus dying on a cross. I am pretty sure I have talked about an inheritance mentality vs. a performance mentality before and yet I am going to go over it again because it is really hard for us to grasp. Most of us grew up with and still have a performance mentality. We feel we have to earn love and respect. This is true in the world a lot of the time, so we apply it to God and we try to earn His love and respect. We constantly feel we are not doing enough. We are constantly trying to figure out what we need to do to make God happy and to earn His love. God already loves us. There isn’t a single thing we need to do to earn his love. It is freely given to all.
This is an inheritance mentality. We understand that we don’t have to do anything because God already loves us. Think of an inheritance you might get if you have a loved one who dies. Let’s say your grandparents die and you inherit their farm. What did you do to inherit that farm? Nothing, they died and that is why you inherited the farm. It is the same with the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus died on the cross and because of that we have inherited the Kingdom of God here on earth and the ability to spend eternal life in Heaven. We did not inherit it though any action on our part. We are just the beneficiaries of Jesus’ death. I hope that makes sense as it can be life changing when we learn to truly believe that we don’t have to earn heaven and we don’t have to earn God’s love. If you allow that to change the way you go through life, your life will change.
I want to end with the story that was told at my prayer group yesterday. Actually it was first told at our Encounter class and I am not quite sure how it came about. I want to say it was a dream the instructor had, but I don’t remember clearly. I am also probably not going to be the best at retelling it, but I think I will hopefully do a good enough job that you get the gist of it. There was a woman and she was walking down a dark hallway towards a bright light. She could feel the accuser behind her calling out all of her sins as she walked down the hallway. He was calling out every sin she had ever committed in her whole life. She was feeling so ashamed as she knew he was speaking the truth and that she had done all those things. When she got to the end of the hallway and walked into the light she saw God. He was sitting there behind a desk, looking like a judge and He said, “Well, you have heard the charges, how do you plead?” Just as she was about to say guilty, as she knew she had done those things, Jesus walked up next to her, he wrapped a red mantle around her and said, “Not guilty.”
It makes me tear up every time I hear this because it is such a great visual of what Jesus did for us. He is the reason we are saved. He is the reason our sins are forgiven. We cling to our sins, we won’t let them go. We remember them and we hold on to them. God doesn’t. He just wants us to repent and move on. Tell God what you did, go to confession and then forget about them. God has forgotten about them, so why are we remembering them? Why are we clinging to them? Let them go. Jesus died so they could be forgiven and forgotten, it is our duty to let them go once we have confessed them and repented. Whenever you are tempted to hold on to your sins, whenever you have the accuser on your back listing off your sins, I want you to picture Jesus standing next to you, wrapping his red mantle of love around you and picture Him saying, “Not Guilty.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we love you and are so grateful you love us so freely. We are grateful you send Jesus to die on a cross for us. Father, help us to switch from a performance based mentality to an inheritance mentality. Help us to realize we don’t have to do anything to earn your love and forgiveness, we already have it. Dad, help us to see we don’t have to earn our way into heaven. Help us to understand it all. Lord, we ask for the Holy Spirit to work on our hearts and to soften them and help us to see you the right way. We pray for wisdom and knowledge to understand you and all you have revealed to us. You have given us so many reasons to be grateful and we definitely are grateful. You are amazing and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on my journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed weekend!