Dwelling Place

Al Pittman: Love without the truth is a lie. If you're going along with your children and you're not telling them the truth and they're coming home saying, "I'm not a boy anymore, I'm a girl," you need to lovingly say, "You're wrong."

Announcer (Male): Thank you for listening to the Dwelling Place, a radio ministry from Pastor Al Pittman of Al Pittman Ministries. The purpose of this radio program is to encourage you, strengthen your walk with the Lord, and grow. To support this program financially or learn more about the ministry, visit us online at alpittmanministries.com. That's alpittmanministries.com. Your donations keep this radio program going. Thank you for partnering with us. Today, we hear a message from Zechariah chapter 3, verses 1 through 7, titled "The Lord Stood By." Now, here's Pastor Al.

Nathan Pittman: Praise God. Let's give him some praise in this place. Praise the Lord. You may be seated. So good to be with you all today. I'm Pastor Nathan. I want to welcome you all to Calvary Worship Center, whether this is your first time, your 100th time, or maybe you're coming back. We want to welcome you here. So excited to be with you.

And I have the unique and awesome pleasure of introducing our guest speaker today, who is definitely not a guest here. Our speaker today is an author. He is an international speaker. He pastored this church for 27 years. But more importantly than all of that, he is just my dad. And so I want to welcome to the stage Pastor Al Pittman.

Al Pittman: Amen. Praise the Lord. Amen. God bless you. It's so good to be standing in the midst of God's faithfulness and to see all the wonderful things God is doing here at Calvary Worship Center. Thank you, Pastor Nathan, for inviting me to come speak. This is our home church, so we are not guest speaking. We are here. We are in the back hiding, but we are here.

We just thank God for an opportunity to share with you. My wife is with me, Norma. Many of you pray for her. She's doing great. Somebody asked me last service and said you should stand up when I introduce you so you can see how good she looks. Come on, you gotta stand up. There she is. She is doing great. We celebrated 50 years of marriage last July 19th. God has just been so good. I am so undeserving of God's goodness, but that is the nature of our God. Aren't you glad about it?

I want to share God's word with you. I pray that it would encourage you this morning. I'm in Zechariah chapter 3. If you have a Bible, please turn to Zechariah chapter 3. We will be looking at verses 1 to 7, and I have entitled this message "The Lord Stood By." The Lord stands by us. Maybe you came in this day and you felt like maybe God is no longer standing by, that he has abandoned you. I am here to tell you that God is always standing by.

In Zechariah chapter 3, the backstory is that we have a vision of the prophet Zechariah concerning the high priest, Joshua. Now, this is not the Joshua who led the children of Israel across the Jordan; this is Joshua the high priest. He has a vision about Joshua standing before the angel of the Lord. "Angel of the Lord" is capitalized in your Bible because it speaks of deity. It is a theophany of Jesus Christ in the Old Testament. He is standing before the angel of the Lord with the appearance of a failure. Has anybody ever felt like a failure?

He's standing there before God. Why is that? This is 70 years after the Babylonian captivity. Because of Israel's rebellion against God and their idolatry, God allowed the Babylonians to conquer Israel, conquer Jerusalem, and carry the children of Judah into captivity for 70 years. After the 70-year captivity, they returned to the land. Joshua the high priest was supposed to help build the temple and establish worship there in Jerusalem along with Zerubbabel.

Zerubbabel was the governor of Judah at this time. They were supposed to rebuild the second temple. What we find here is that Joshua had given up on the mission and he is standing as a failure before the Lord. The temple in Jerusalem at this time lay in ruins, just a pile of rubble. They started to rebuild the second temple, but they did not complete the mission.

The Bible tells us we also are temples. We are the temple of God. As believers, we are the temple of God, but like the temple in Joshua's day, there are days we do not reflect the glory God has ordained for us. Maybe you walked in and you feel like your life is a pile of rubble. But I have good news for you: the Lord is standing by. Restoration and revival begins when we, in humility, despite our condition, choose to stand naked before God, not hiding anything.

That's where true revival begins—when we choose to stand before God. Before we get into reading our text, I am going to ask God to bless his word and to give us strength to stand in his presence just as we are, that he might minister healing to each and every one of us. I pray that however you came in, you would leave restored and renewed through God's word.

Father, we thank you for your word today. We pray that you would move by the power of your Holy Spirit. Your word, Lord, is sharper than any two-edged sword. It goes down, pierces the flesh to the bone, into the very marrow of our conscience, and it brings transformation. I pray that you would grant to us ears to hear and hearts to receive your word, that we might bear fruit upward to the glory of God. Lord, we commit this time to you. Be glorified, we pray. In Jesus' name, amen.

Let's read verses 1 to 3 in Zechariah chapter 3. The Bible says, "Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to oppose him. And the Lord said to Satan, 'The Lord rebuke you, Satan. The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is this not a brand plucked from the fire?'" Joshua was clothed with filthy garments and was standing before the angel.

The Lord stands for you. Satan, when he stands, always stands to oppose you and keep you from your divine destiny in Christ. Every one of us has a divine destiny in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. You are not just here to be a spectator, but to be a participator in our Father's business. Remember when his parents lost sight of Jesus in Jerusalem? He was 13 years old. They went back looking for him and found him in the temple teaching.

They wanted to rebuke him, but he said, "Did you not know that I would be about my Father's business?" Are we about our Father's business? We have a purpose. I don't care what your state is or what your health is like; God has a divine purpose for you to fulfill. Notice that the devil is standing there at Joshua's right hand. The right hand is supposed to be the place of a protector. It is interesting to me that people today are so busy foolishly promoting godlessness in our society.

They want to operate without God being involved in their business or their lives. They are promoting godlessness, which is the devil's agenda. They think as if the devil is their protector when, in reality, the devil has come only to punish you. The Bible says his modus operandi for each and every one of our lives is to kill, steal, and destroy. If the devil is standing there with you, he's standing there to destroy you.

The devil is accurately described in scripture as the accuser of the brethren. Those who are in Jesus Christ, he is always bringing accusations against you. I have heard people say of Charlie Kirk that he was a racist. I have listened to a lot of his videos; the man is not a racist. He is speaking truth in love. Yet people want to label him so they won't have to listen to him and can be intolerant of his teaching.

God got a hold of this young man's mind. You can't keep a good man down, and the gates of hell will not prevail against God's church. Jesus will build his church regardless. No matter what the devil does, God takes it and uses it for his own glory. The devil is always accusing people. That's why people can't get along, because we listen to the accuser. Don't listen to him. There's an old song: "Don't let the devil ride."

If you let him ride, he's going to want to drive. Don't let him be your friend. You think he's talked you into having an attitude or cussing somebody out? That's allowing the devil to ride. You say, "I'll just let him ride a couple of blocks and repent on Saturday night before church on Sunday." Don't let him ride, because he will drive your life straight into hell. If you're a believer, I am not saying you're going to hell, but he will destroy your witness.

In response to the devil's accusations against Joshua, the Lord rebukes the devil. The Lord says, "The Lord—that is me—am rebuking you. I want you to understand where the rebuke is coming from." The Lord said, "I am rebuking you. You have an issue? You deal with me." That's our God. If you are in Jesus Christ, the Bible says you are the righteousness of God. He who knew no sin became sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

When God looks at you, he sees the righteousness of his son because you put your faith fully in Jesus Christ. God's defense against the devil's accusations is that he rebukes him in your life. In essence, the Lord is saying to the devil, "How dare you try to redefine what is mine?" When the devil comes and tries to tell you that you are this or that, God would say, "How dare you try to redefine what belongs to me?"

Today we see the devil's attempt to redefine things in our society. We see the devil trying to redefine sexuality—that there are more than two genders. That is a lie from the pit of hell. God created two genders: male and female. When you try to defy God's law and institutions, you are going to wreck yourself. You cannot change the rule of God's word.

They try to redefine marriage. No, it is between a man and a woman. Not between a man and two other women or a woman and two men. What you're doing is coming against God's ordained authority. Rebellion against what God has ordained cannot be sustained by the perverted wisdom of mankind. God says in his word that he changes not. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. If it was sin yesterday, it is sin today and it will be sin tomorrow.

You say, "Pastor, you're not loving. You gotta love people." Love without the truth is a lie. I don't care how you put it. If you're going along with your children and not telling them the truth when they say, "I'm not a boy anymore, I'm a girl," you need to lovingly say, "You're wrong." You don't go along with it because you are just loving them. You are hating them, because love without the truth is a lie.

God's word will not change. When the devil drags us into God's court to condemn us, he is in fact trying to redefine us and redefine God's purpose for us. The devil forgets to read the sign above the entrance to the court of the Lord: "There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." Devil, you are just wasting your time. There is no condemnation for you if you are in Christ Jesus.

The authority of God's rebuke transforms death into life. Maybe you came in this morning and you haven't given your life to Jesus Christ and you feel dead inside. God can give you life where there is death. Maybe you feel like your marriage is falling apart. Spiritual decomposition ceases when God rebukes the devil in that situation. Lazarus had no choice but to come out of the tomb when Jesus called him because God's choice is always greater than the voice of condemnation.

Verse 2 tells us, "The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you." Why Jerusalem? Remind you, Jerusalem had committed sin and was caught up in idolatry in the temple. That's why God judged them and allowed the Babylonians to destroy that first glorious temple of Solomon. After 70 years of captivity, they come back to rebuild. Jerusalem was devastated at this time.

Yet because God had chosen it, he had not forgotten it. Why did God choose Jerusalem? Because Jerusalem would be the place where Jesus would make atonement for the sins of the world on the cross. By the way, Hamas and Hezbollah and everyone else that wants to destroy Jerusalem? God has still chosen Jerusalem to this day. God is a God of promise.

The nature of God is that he chooses devastated things. Jerusalem's temple was a heap of ruins, yet God wanted it. It reminds us of the fact that in Christ, God has chosen us. He has chosen lives beyond human repair, lives that people have given up on, lives that are just a pile of rubble. God still chooses us for his glory because he loves us.

God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty. Despised things God has chosen to bring to nothing the things that are, so that no flesh should glory in his presence. There will be nobody getting a trophy in heaven because it is only by grace and mercy that we have been saved. We were foolish and unable to save ourselves. The devil says you are not good enough or successful enough. But God says, "You are my child. You are more than a conqueror through Jesus Christ."