I — Text: (Stand to Read): Zechariah 3:1-8

 

II — Theme:

Self-identity is eternally deadly. The chief reason Christianity sets itself apart from all the world’s religions is that none of the world’s religions promise you that, by the work and grace of God, you will receive the actual identity of the god you serve. And without the identity of the only God of the universe, you will eternally perish under the wrath of that same God.

  • So, what scene are we seeing here, in Zechariah the prophet’s vision? We’re seeing what the ancient Hebrew culture would have known was a death and judgment scene. Yes, the Bible says that death & judgment are really a thing
  • Anytime someone is standing in front of the Angel of the Lord (aka, The Lord), and Satan, the prosecutor (accuser) is at the right hand of the Lord in order to accuse the person, you can be sure, in ancient Hebrew literature, this was to represent a typical death and judgment scene
  • Hebrews 9:27 is, therefore, spot-on: ..every person will die, and after that they will be judged, by a perfect, holy God, based on what they’ve done
  • Aristotle, the go-to philosopher for modern Western Culture, is perhaps most famous for the assertion that, “You are what you’ve done.” If the judgment scene in Zechariah is true, it’s gonna be the one time you really don’t want Aristotle’s philosophy to be true about you
  • If our identity is wrapped up in the things we’ve done in our lives, and we’re standing before a holy and perfect God who says that our sin deserves only death, then we’re in real trouble!

 

  • Now, for the person who believes that there’s nothing after death, there’s no reason to fear God’s wrath, because there is no God
  • But what about for the countless people out there—maybe even in this room right now—who believe that Jesus is just one of many gods, and that He was just a good teacher, and that “many paths can get me right with ‘God’—whoever or whatever he is?”
  • Often for them, if it should ever enter their mind on any serious level, that the thought of facing the judgment of a holy God is really a thing; the thought is usually tempered with the concept that “I’m basically a good person, and surely God’s gonna see that I have more weight on the good side of my scales than on the bad side…I do, and have done some bad stuff, but not all the time, and I try to be a good person…He made me who I am, so He’ll forgive me, right? (I was one of these folks for 33 years)
  • But if that’s what we think will save us….

….think about who’s standing there being judged by God: A High Priest! If there’s one thing we can all be certain of, it’s that not one of us has ever attained to the kind of holy mindset and outward practice of worshiping God in every action, that the ancient Jewish High Priest did. He is untouchable in the area of holy living.

  • And yet the whole story speaks of Jeshua the High Priest’s unholiness, as it compares to God’s holiness: We see it particularly in the description of the clothes he’s wearing; that they are “filthy”—meaning that his holiness and righteousness are as nothing to God, because he’s still an utterly depraved sinner in his heart (his outward actions are not what God’s judging most severely, but instead his heart).
  • So, if Jeshua the High Priest is standing in judgment before God without a prayer beyond straight-up mercy, then what chance does our “I’m basically a good person” plea have?
  • It’s at this point that we should logically and seriously consider what really happens after death, which is, as God tells us in His Word, that there is certainly a cognizant life that continues after our death from these bodies, and it is first met with the judgment of God, based on what we’ve done in this life.
  • And while there really is a place called “hell,” where unrepentant sinners spend eternity, notice that God immediately gives Jeshua mercy, by rejecting Satan’s accusations against him. God doesn’t say the accusations aren’t true, just that He rejects them, and therefore will not judge Jeshua according to his sins
  • Then, the Lord gives Jeshua new clothes—that is, a new righteousness/holiness, that’s not his own, but instead is from the Lord, Himself! Jeshua receives a new identity—the identity of the Lord, Himself—by which he’ll be “judged!”
  • But how can these things be true and how can we trust them to be true for us?
  • Surely something caused God to decide not to prosecute Jeshua.
  • We see the answer in verse 8, where the Lord tells Jeshua that what’s happening to him in this vision is a “symbol of things to come,” and that the “thing to come” is God’s own “Servant,” aka, “the Branch” actually coming to His people. This is God saying that He is going to send His Messiah—His Son—into the world to be the final High Priest
  • That’s pretty important because, one of the most important functions of the High Priest in ancient Jewish culture was to first cleanse himself from his own sins by certain rituals, so that he could then offer sacrifices for the sins of the people, so that they, too could be forgiven by God. He becomes their substitute, as it were, so that they don’t have to be judged by God directly, for their own sins
  • So in light of this, who is Jesus Christ?

When His disciple, Phillip, asks Him to “show them God (the Father), Jesus replies, “Have I been with you so long and you don’t know Me? If you’ve seen Me, you’ve seen God.” Jesus & God are one-in-the-same! Jesus is God, in the flesh! And “Christ,” His title, means that He is the “Servant/Branch” of God’s earlier prophecy through Zechariah; which in turn means that Jesus Christ is our Substitute, when we trust His work on our behalf, by faith.  

  • So when God decides—as He did with Jeshua—to save us from our sins instead of prosecuting us for them, He does so on the basis of His own work on our behalf in the Person of Jesus
  • And a huge part of Jesus’ work on our behalf is His death & subsequent Resurrection from the dead. The penalty of our sin is physical and eternal, spiritual death, according to God, and so Jesus literally dies in our place
  • Likewise, He is also resurrected, in order to prove that the penalty of death no longer has power over us, because He has overcome it for us—as our Substitute!
  • In the Gospel of John, chapter 20, when Mary Magdalene, Peter, and John find the tomb of Christ empty on Easter morning, and then subsequently see and talk with Jesus in His new body, they discover the same kind of incredible joy that Jeshua the High Priest did when God gave him mercy instead of wrath
  • For, it was at this point, that they realized, once-and-for-all, that everything Jesus had been promising had come to pass. In other words, with His Resurrection from the dead—the conquering of death itself—Jesus had sealed the promises made to us, that if we trust in Him and His work for us as our Substitute, then we will never have to be anxious over our eternal destiny, because He secures us forever in Himself, by giving us His very identity!
  • So how can we put the power of the Resurrection of Christ together with the death scene in Zechariah, in such a way that it might affect our hearts to either draw closer to Jesus in our relationship with Him, or to put our trust in Him for the very first time today? Here’s an illustration based on both Scripture and an amalgamated version of how culture-at-large tends to think about the after-death experience. I pray that it powerfully illustrates the final results of the Gospel, and that it beckons our hearts & attitudes about Christ to change this morning:  

Now it’s not an unusual cultural paradigm to think of death & judgment as a sort of “life flashing before your eyes,” or in more recent times, when you die and face God, it’s as if He plays a film of your life, right before your eyes; and He judges you based on what He sees in that film. The implications  are quite clear. Do wrong, and you will be judged for it. Do right and you will be rewarded.

And while this “film” business is certainly theologically suspect, at best—the point of what our human conscience tends to think regarding what happens after we die is made clearly. We know, in the depths of our soul—in a place we often suppress so we don’t have to think too much about it—we know there is something or someone to whom we will answer, in some way, shape, or form. In fact, God tells us in Romans 1 He has actually created us to “know” those kinds of things.

Using the scene from Zechariah 3 as our backdrop, picture this, if you will: you, like Jeshua the high priest, have died and are now standing before the Lord, dressed in the filthy rags of your so-called “righteousness”. Satan takes his rightful place, as “prosecutor,” at the right hand of God in His court (Zechariah 3:1).

You are afraid, knowing you’ve fallen so very short of God’s perfect standard. There is a great tension in the air, as God will judge what He sees weighed in the balances.

Satan has moved to the table holding the scales of your deeds in life, and is busy loading the evil side of them with more bad stuff than you remembered, and thus far, there is nothing, whatsoever, loaded upon the righteous side.

Then the Lord gives the command for your whole life to be played on heaven’s “big-screen monitor.” You’re utterly petrified by now, realizing that your every evil is about to be made known! You’re sick with fear as you look at the scales so out of balance, and now, your very darkest moments about to be displayed for all to see, and by which the Lord will render His awful judgment. All you wanted to hear, all your life, was what the preacher told you to work for: “Well done, good and faithful servant,” and yet, now there is surely no hope for that. Satan glares at you from the bench with a confident grin.

But then, a sudden unexpected turn of events—as the moment of truth finally comes; and as the film begins, you’re confused….

….You don’t understand why you see an infant in a feeding trough, surrounded by animals and shepherds. Then you see a 12-year old boy, with wisdom beyond his years, engaging in Scriptural conversation with the elders of a grand temple. As the movie progresses, that boy is now a grown man, and is being baptized by a man of the wilderness. You watch the Spirit of God descend upon him and you marvel as you start to remember that story.

What is that? Ah, it’s Satan, now tempting the man in the desert, but to no avail! (He’s pretty embarrassed watching this part of the film, by the way!)

You rejoice in your soul, as you watch the devil flee in rejection, not only from the man in the film who has rebuked him and his temptations; but he has now also left the courtroom altogether, which is met with a mighty shout of joy from all the holy ones in God’s court!

Back to the film—the man is healing everyone brought before him. He makes the blind to see….

….and the deaf to hear, and the mute to speak. He even casts out demons from those who are possessed, and some are even brought back to life!

In the next scene, He’s entering a great city on a donkey, with so many singing his praises for all they’ve seen him do. They’re singing, “Praise God! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!”

And it’s just about now that you wonder, why have I seen nothing of myself in this film yet? This is supposed to be a film of my life, right?

But that thought is shattered, when suddenly, in the next scene, you see that the man is now being brutally nailed to a cross, and with him a hostile decree—the Law of God, which you were supposed to have followed perfectly, but instead, because of your failures, it has completely turned against you (Colossians 2:14). You’re speechless in that moment, but you can’t help but notice that, as the man upon the Cross is dying, that terrible decree against you is withering and fading away to nothing, as well.

You’re choked with emotion, as you watch him upon the Cross, and hear him cry out, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” And yet a peace returns to you when you hear him say to God, “It is finished.” (John 19:30) Then you watch, as He breathes His last, and it’s then, that the film unexpectedly stops. You think to yourself, “Still nothing of myself in this film…I don’t understand…”

At that moment, the entire heavenly court falls on its knees—a corporate reverence like you’ve never known—and you see the man from the film coming towards you; and you realize it’s Jesus Christ! He is the man in the film—of course!

He first presents Himself at the right hand of God the Father—having taken the Accuser’s place—and then presents Himself as your Defense Attorney (1 John 2:1), and as He steps up beside you to stand and face the Holy God with you—indeed for you—God looks at Jesus and says, “My Son, on behalf of this little one whom You have kept, well done, good and faithful Servant!

His identity is in You, and not in himself—though often in his life, because of his weak faith, he did not realize that to be true in his own heart. You have kept him, even through his many rebellions against Me—rebellions he hated, and didn’t understand why he engaged in them. Nevertheless, he has loved Me with all of his heart, soul, mind, & strength because of his ultimate trust in You—and You always love Me perfectly. And now, we rejoice because You’re presenting this little one to Me in Your identity, utterly spotless!”

And it’s then that you hear from God, “Come, and enter into My eternal rest that I’ve prepared for you!” From His own Word in Revelation 21, He says to you,“Look, My home is now with you, in a tangible way! I will live with you, and you will be Mine forever. I will wipe every tear you’ve ever shed from your eyes, and you will see no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone for you, forever.” I am making everything new for you, starting with resurrecting Jesus from the dead!”