The Accuser Was Not Answered, He Was Overruled

There is a courtroom in Zechariah 3, and it takes four verses.

And he shewed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right hand to resist him.Zechariah 3:1, King James Version

Three parties. A defendant, a judge, and an accuser standing at the defendant's right hand, which was the position a prosecutor took in a court of that world. The staging is legal and everybody who first heard it would have recognized the arrangement.

The man in the dock is a real man. Joshua the high priest is one of the two leaders of the return from exile, working alongside Zerubbabel to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem in the years after 538 before Christ. Zechariah 1:1 dates the prophet's ministry to the second year of Darius, which is 520. This is not a symbolic figure. This is the actual priest of the actual returned community, and he is standing in a vision with somebody prosecuting him.

Now, the thing I want you to see is what is missing from this chapter.

Nowhere in it does anybody say the accusation was false.

The charge is never disputed

Watch the order of the verses, because the order is doing all the work.

And the LORD said unto Satan, The LORD rebuke thee, O Satan; even the LORD that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee: is not this a brand plucked out of the fire? Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments, and stood before the angel.Zechariah 3:2-3, King James Version

The rebuke comes first, in verse two. And then, in verse three, after the accuser has already been silenced, the text calmly tells us the state of the defendant's clothes.

Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments.

The narrator says it. Not the accuser. The passage itself, after the case is over, records that the man was standing there filthy.

So the accusation was not slander. It was accurate, and the court knew it was accurate, and the court did not answer it.

You are not standing on your own record, and Zechariah 3 never once pretends the record was clean. The written account puts the filthy garments in verse three, after the rebuke in verse two, and it is the Holy Spirit who keeps that order intact for a reader who has been told they must first prove the charge wrong.

I want to sit here, because this is the exact place people get stuck.

The accusation in your head is probably not a lie. That is what makes it so heavy. If it were a lie you could refute it, and refuting things is work a person knows how to do. What sits there instead is a charge with your own memory as its evidence, and every time you go to answer it you find yourself agreeing.

Zechariah 3 does not offer you a better argument. It offers you a different authority.

Look at what the rebuke actually stands on. Even the LORD that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee: is not this a brand plucked out of the fire? Two grounds, and neither of them is about Joshua's conduct. The first is a choosing: the LORD that hath chosen. The second is a rescue: a brand plucked out of the fire, which is a stick already burning that somebody reached in and pulled out. Both grounds are about what somebody else did.

You have grounds standing under you that were never about your performance, and both of the ones named here belong to God. Zechariah 3:2 gives a choosing and a plucking as the whole basis, and the same Spirit who preserved those two clauses is the reason a person with a true accusation against them is not without a defense.

Then comes the moment, and it is one of the most physical things in the Prophets.

And he answered and spake unto those that stood before him, saying, Take away the filthy garments from him. And unto him he said, Behold, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I will clothe thee with change of raiment.Zechariah 3:4, King James Version

Take away the filthy garments from him.

Notice who does it. The order is given to those that stood before him, which is to say the attendants of the court. Joshua does not change his own clothes. He does not go and wash first. He is not asked to explain how the garments got that way. He stands there while other people take them off him.

You have been undressed and dressed by other hands in this scene, and there is no verse where the defendant cleans himself up first. The written word gives the instruction to attendants and never to Joshua, and it is His Spirit who keeps a reader from quietly volunteering for a job that was assigned to somebody else.

And then the sentence that turns it: I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee. Past tense, spoken over a man still wearing the evidence.

There is one more detail, and it is the reason I love this chapter. Zechariah himself speaks up. And I said, Let them set a fair mitre upon his head. The prophet interrupts his own vision to ask for the turban, which is the mark of the high priesthood, the thing that says this man may serve. He is not content to see the man clean. He wants him back at work.

And the request is granted. So they set a fair mitre upon his head, and clothed him with garments, and the angel of the LORD stood by.

You were reclothed and returned to your office in the same paragraph, and the second half was not held back pending good behavior. Zechariah 3:5 puts the mitre and the garments in one sentence, and the same Spirit who kept that sentence whole is the reason cleansing and commissioning are not separated by a probation period.