Today's Word Radio

Brett Meador: Paul’s argument there in Romans chapter 3 makes it really clear. He says, “As it is written, there is none righteous, no, not one.” Who was Paul talking about here? The answer: humanity, the whole world. There’s no one righteous, not even one, Paul would say.

Guest (Male): Pastor Brett Meador declares the good news concerning sin.

Brett Meador: For He hath made Him, that’s Jesus, to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.

Guest (Male): The Old Testament book of Zechariah details powerful visions revealing a gracious God to His people. In today’s word, Pastor Brett Meador describes a vivid heavenly courtroom scene revealing a God that forgives, restores, and calls His people to live for Him—not because they’re worthy, but because He’s graciously made a way of reconciliation for all believers.

Brett Meador: Turn with me to Zechariah chapter 3. Zechariah is having eight different visions or dreams, and some of them are pretty crazy. It’s like he must have had some pretty spicy pizza before he went to bed because he had some serious dreams all in one night. He had eight visions or dreams, but not just the pizza. It’s actually he was given those dreams, inspired by the Holy Spirit to write them down in it made the Bible, the canon of scripture.

And you’ll see why these dreams are powerful and important. But I’d like to fast-forward to vision number four of the eight here in chapter 3, verse 1. It says in Zechariah 3:1, “And he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to resist him. 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. 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 a change of raiment.’ And I said, ‘Let them set a fair mitre (or turban, as some of your translations say) [upon his head].’ So they set a fair mitre upon his head and clothed him with a garments, and the angel of the Lord stood by.”

We have an interesting scene and it’s this courtroom scene. We’re into courtroom scenes, it seems, as a culture. Have you noticed? But this is a trial that’s worth looking at right here. Criminals, you know, are interesting when you when you see them on trial and hear their stories. One of my favorite things to do is read stories about the dumb criminals. There's a lot of dumb criminals that kind of crack me up.

One of my favorites: in San Francisco, a man walked into a downtown Bank of America and he took one of their deposit slips, you know, and he wrote on there, “This is a stickup. Put all your many in this bag.” And he spelled it with M-A-N-Y. He wasn't really the brightest criminal, you know. “Put all your money in this bag.” So he’s standing in line at the Bank of America, but he starts thinking, “I wonder if somebody saw me write the note.”

And so he got a little nervous and so he kind of went and left out of the Bank of America and went across the street to the Wells Fargo and he waited in line there. And when he got to the teller, he handed the teller this note. And she, reading his spelling was a little off, realized he probably wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer kind of thing. So she said, “Oh, I'm so sorry, sir. You can't—we can't do this with a Bank of America [deposit slip]. You’ll need to fill this out on a Wells Fargo deposit slip.”

Well, looking somewhat defeated, the man said, “Okay,” and he left the Wells Fargo Bank. The teller then called the police, who arrested him a few minutes later as he was waiting in line back at Bank of America. Great story. People are kind of stupid. And the thing that's funny is we all are sort of guilty of sin, and we're going to end up in what we would call God's courtroom.

That's an important thing to understand. And the question is, what's going to happen when you stand in God's courtroom, if you would? And that's kind of what we see here in our text. We see Joshua, the high priest, standing in the courtroom, if you would, of heaven. We all need to kind of start out realizing we've all fallen short, we've all sinned, and we're all guilty. In 520 BC when this happens, Israel kind of had this attitude.

And their attitude was they didn't realize how sick and sinful they really were. They thought of themselves as basically good, that they were generally okay and that, you know, God wouldn't be mad at us. So we worship Baal and Ashtoreth and these other gods and goddesses, but we also go to the temple and still worship, you know, Jehovah, the God of the Jews. And they had this worldview that said, “We're basically good,” kind of like today, where a lot of people today think, “You're a good person,” and “We are the world,” you know, and “We are the people” and all of that.

And that's just a huge lie. We're all a bunch of sinners according to the Bible. So we see this courtroom scene in in the fourth vision of Zechariah. And let's go over just, if you would, the the key characters of this courtroom scene. And the first key character that we look at here is the judge in the story, and that is God Himself. And when I say God, we want to be clear: Jehovah.

In fact, when you look at this, you'll see the word “Lord” in verse 2: “And the Lord said unto Satan.” That word “Lord” is Jehovah because it's in the capital L-O-R-D, all caps. Whenever you see that, that's that word, the Y-H-W-H, the great tetragrammaton of the book of Exodus. Remember, “I am that I am.” And when the Jews would write down the name of God, it was so holy that they would leave the vowels out.

And so we don't really even know how to pronounce the name of God. But I do, it's “Jehovah.” And others will say, “No, it's Yahweh.” And others might say, “Yebuho.” I don't know, whatever you want to do. But we don't know. You can say you know, but we really don't. Even the most knowledgeable Hebrew scholars kind of have to admit we don't really for sure know how to pronounce the name of God as it turns out.

But the word Jehovah or Yahweh, we're talking about the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the true and living God. He is the judge in the courtroom scene. And the thing about God—don't forget this—He knows all and He sees all. You know, He's not a judge that we can dupe and say, “I didn't do anything. The police officer was wrong.” I'm sure none of you guys have spent much—I've spent a little time in traffic court, just confession.

And it's always a bummer, you know, because you try to go and, you know, state your case and all this stuff. But I've learned over the years, only the few times I've been there, I've watched people and the way they approach judges. Have you ever noticed this? It's kind of funny. In fact, going to traffic court is entertaining when you just see how people are. Some people are really kind of crazy.

They they sort of saunter up to the podium when it's their turn and act like, “Yo, bro.” That's not how you address the judge. You say, “Your honor,” because you realize the judge is in a position to change your future—what you're going to have to do. And he's kind of going to say it one way or the other. And so to go up there with a bad attitude, it's amazing how many people do. “I was only going 20 miles an hour over the speed limit.”

That's not going to be a good argument. See, when a police officer pulls me over, in my mind, this is the way I think. I think, “Man, I deserve every bit of this ticket he's about to give me because he didn't see even the way I was driving yesterday. Like, if they only knew all the stuff that I—like, I'm guilty as charged and probably worse than he even knows.” Like, that's truly my—so when I go, I just say, “Officer, you're totally right, man, and I was speeding.”

But it's amazing. I'm not trying to manipulate anything, but a lot of times police officers will kind of change their attitude a little bit when they realize, “Oh yeah, he realizes he's a total goofball and was messing up.” It's amazing how things happen there. But if you say, “What are you doing? I wasn't doing anything wrong,” that's a lose-lose. Worse still when you're standing before the judge. See, that's the idea of repentance when you and I—it's not the traffic court that we're worried about. It's the courtroom of heaven.

And for somebody to say, “I haven't done anything. I'm a basically good person. Why do bad things happen to good people, God?” Is that the attitude we should look at or should we say, “Oh, there are no good people and we're all sinners and we all deserve everything we get”? But good news: we not only have a righteous judge, we also have a compassionate, kind-hearted, merciful judge. That's the good news, especially, well, for the next person of our characters.

We see the judge, who's God. The second one we see: the accused, which is Joshua. Or you'd say Yeshua in the Old Testament or even in the New Testament times. That was the name of Jesus, Yeshua, same name. But this is not the Joshua or the Yeshua of the book of Exodus. You remember Moses and Joshua? That was Joshua the son of Nun. You say, “What, he didn't have any parents?” No, his dad's name was Nun, N-U-N.

So Joshua the son of Nun, that's the guy that was with Moses and led the people of Israel into the promised land. That's that Joshua. This is a Joshua that came, you know, hundreds of years later, who was actually the high priest in Jerusalem at the time where Haggai and Zechariah and all those guys were there reminding the people, “You’ve got to finish the temple” and all this stuff. And he would be the high priest during that time.

Now, the high priest for the Jews was God's representative to man, but also man's representative to God. The high priest was the one who would sort of act on behalf of the people but speak on the behalf of God. And he was pulled out to be set aside, consecrated, holy to represent the people. And if he was a big sinner, the people were in big trouble. Do you remember the most important day of the year for the Jews was that one day?

Does anybody remember? What's the day where everybody—see, not like our day in the church age, but in their day there was a single day where they'd all have their sins forgiven. Does anybody remember? What was that day called? The Day of Atonement, or Yom Kippur, as it's called. And on Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, the priest would go through all the Jewish legal rituals and, you know, the sacrifices and the changing of garments and all kinds of things that he'd go through, the high priest.

And on that one day, he would go there into the holy place where he'd stand before the table of showbread and the altar of incense and the candlestick, and he would worship and beseech God on behalf of the people. And then—then, this was the scary part—the high priest would then move from the holy place into the Holy of Holies. That's where the Ark of the Covenant was, where the Shekinah glory of God dwelt over the mercy seat of the Ark.

It was a visible—the Hebrew word is *kabod*, the weightiness of God's presence—was there in the Holy of Holies. And the priest, he needed to have his life and his situation kind of intact or else he could be in real trouble. If you didn't do what God told you to do and if you didn't do it right, you could end up dead real fast. Do you remember as they were David was trying to bring the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem and Uzzah was driving the cart with an—Aho, guys, they were driving along in the cart with the Ark of the Covenant, but the oxen sort of jerked the cart and the Ark of the Covenant started to slip off and Uzzah reached back and touched the Ark of the Covenant and, man, he died right there because they weren't doing things by the protocols of the Levitical law of the priests.

It was that grave. So suddenly the high priest is like, “Man, I hope we got our sacrifices right. I hope we did everything. Hope I'm dialed in right now because if I go into the Holy of Holies in the presence of God”—and only the one guy got to go into the Holy of Holies one time a year. That was it. Well, what was the point of that? Well, there the high priest, in this case Joshua, he would go in and he would worship God before the Ark of the Covenant and the holiness of God would be there.

And he'd spend time in there giving glory to the God of gods, the true and living God. Then, toward the end of the day—and by this time, by the way, the whole day was very somber, the Day of Atonement, very somber day until the high priest would emerge out of the Holy of Holies, out of the holy place, back out into the courtyard and he would stand on the steps there of the temple and he'd cry out to all of Israel and he'd say, “Your sins are forgiven,” or atoned for.

And man, that's when the party started. [Beatboxing] And the Jews would just celebrate from that point on. Big feasts, all kinds of music would be playing. That's where it was exciting. Everybody was excited because their sins were forgiven. And for the next year, they're good to go. That was the way of the Old Testament. So you have to understand, the high priest was the best they had to offer.

It'd be almost like we'd say, “Okay, this is our best, cleanest, most holy dude we've got and we're going to send him into the Holy of Holies and he's going to represent us.” And so you'd say, “Gulp, here we go, Day of Atonement. The high priest goes in. I hope he's—I hope he's not having an affair with the neighbor's wife. Hope he's not skimming money and greedy. Hope he's not—” because that's the kind of—it was a grave situation.

So for the people to hear this prophecy of the vision of Zechariah, to hear that there's this courtroom scene and God the judge is there and they see their high priest Joshua as the accused—oh dear, that's a problem. You're in trouble. You're in big trouble. Because not only is Joshua there, but what's he wearing? This would have shocked them when you read verse 3 where it says, “Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments and stood before the angel.”

This would have been unthinkable to the Jews. Our high priest wearing filthy garments? In fact, it even says there the Lord speaks to Satan and says, “The Lord rebuke thee, O Satan. Even the Lord that has chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee.” He says, “Is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?” If you think about a brand, that'd be just a little dry twig that's thrown in the fire and it was about to burn, but instead it was plucked out of the fire and saved.

And that's what He's saying sort of rhetorically, “Isn't this Joshua the high priest, the one that was headed for hell and to be burned but we've plucked him out? Is not this the one that we plucked out so that he wouldn't be burned?” But there he is. That's what the Lord does, by the way. He plucks us out of the fires of hell. That's how you're saved. But we learn more about that as we keep reading because there he is wearing filthy garments.

Now, the word “filthy.” The unfortunate thing is the translators of the Bible cleaned the word up. If you go to the original text of the Hebrew, you would be shocked even like the Jews. So here's their pristine high priest, the guy that's supposed to be cleaner than everybody else. I mean, think about the most holy person you know and picture them being splattered with what? Well, filth.

But if you look up the Hebrew word, I'm just going to tell you. The Hebrew word is *tso* or *tsoah*. It’s a word from the Hebrew, means filth, soiled, excrement-bespattered. That's what my Hebrew dictionary says at home. And that's exactly what it is. It's nothing else. It's not that he's just dirty, that he was changing the oil in his pickup and got a little oil on his shirt. Nope, excrement-bespattered. To the Jew, is that a clean, kosher kind of thing to have happen, let alone the high priest that's supposed to be representing you on behalf of the people to God?

This would have been a horrifying image to them. In fact, if you keep reading in my Hebrew dictionary, it's excrement-bespattered, not just vilely dirty, but offensively foul. That's the language of this story. Now, it's interesting because Joshua, we don't see him shocked that he's wearing this kind of filth on his clothing. He doesn't seem surprised at all. Could it be that Joshua knew that that was a reality just like you and I know that we're sinners?

You know, we might be shocked that Joshua's being called that, but it seems like he knew that he was vile just in and of himself. It seems like that in this story, at least. He's just standing there wearing the clothing because that's in fact what is true. See, this clothing that is vile and filthy, it's a symbol of his own sinfulness. Check out the way the language goes in verse 4.

He answered and spake unto those that stood before him saying, “Take away the filthy garments from him.” And then it says, “Behold, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee. I will clothe thee with a change of raiment.” Change of clothes. And that's where He ties in the passing of the iniquity. That's the filthy garments. That's the sinful behavior of Joshua the high priest. Again, the people would have said, “No way! Not our high priest! We can't have a defiled, unkosher, excrement-bespattered high priest. That's like embarrassing. We don't even want to put him before God.”

But God is saying, “That's the best you have to offer.” It reminds me a little bit of Paul’s argument there in Romans chapter 3, verse 10, where he makes it really clear. He says, “As it is written, there is none righteous, no, not one. Their throat is an open sepulchre. With their tongues they have used deceit. The poison of asps is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace have they not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

Who is Paul talking about here? The answer: us, humanity, the whole world. We all fall short. There's no one righteous, not even one, Paul would say. So even the best they had to offer, Joshua the high priest, he's standing there with filthy garments. And the people would have said, “How's that possible? And that means we're all toast.” In the same way in the New Testament, the Pharisees and the scribes, they were thought to have been the cleanest of the clean, the most holy of the holy.

They were the guys that were so religious, they would walk around in their religious clothing and acting very religious. And most people thought, “Wow, we could never be as holy as the Pharisees. Like way out of reach.” And remember, the Bible even tells us the Pharisees would pour out all their spices on the table and then they'd start divvying it up: one speck of pepper for God, nine specks of pepper for me.

And they’d divvy it all out to make sure they were tithing even the mint and the rue and all that stuff that they would give to the Lord, one tenth of all that they possessed. And so they had this outward appearance that, “Ooh, holy, holy, holy is the Pharisee.” But then Jesus says this: “Unless your righteousness—” and He's talking to the average dude. “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees and of the scribes, you shall in no case enter the kingdom of heaven.” In other words, you won't go to heaven.

So the obvious question the people would be thinking in their minds is, “Well then, who gets to go to heaven? If you have to be as good as the Pharisees and scribes, good luck with that. Those guys, they spend a whole living trying to be holier than everybody else.” And yet Jesus is saying, “Yeah, you’ve got to exceed that. Good luck.” But see, this is where this story of Joshua in the courtroom of heaven in Zechariah 3 sort of collides with this idea of your righteousness having to exceed that of Joshua the high priest and exceeding that of the Pharisees and of the scribes.

And you and I might say, “Man, we're all so filthy. We've all sinned, like Romans told us, so we're all toast.” Except for this: the New Testament tells us we have a high priest who was tempted in all points like we've been tempted, yet without sin. See, there's good news. We, the church of Jesus Christ, we have a high priest that never sinned at all. And that's our high priest, Jesus Christ, is our high priest, the Bible says.

So in a sense, you say, “Joshua, man, of the Old Testament, he kind of fails this, but Jesus, He is our high priest.” And the reason this works for us is a doctrine that you should know about and I've done whole sermons on: imputed righteousness. I love the doctrine of imputed righteousness. We read about it in many passages, book of Romans, but also in 2nd Corinthians chapter 5. I love this passage.

It says, “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are passed away. Behold, all things are become new. And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.” In other words, when you and I sin, we are separated from God. Jesus came to reconcile you back into good standing, good relationship with God.

And so it says to wit, verse 19, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself. Check this out: “Not imputing their trespasses unto them, and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us. We pray you in Christ’s stead: be ye reconciled to God.” Now this final phrase is so cool: “For He hath made Him [that's Jesus] to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.”

He who knew no sin, our high priest Jesus, the perfect high priest, made Him to be sin. What does that mean? It means that when Jesus, the sinless person, hung on the cross for the sins of the world, my sin and your sin was piled on Jesus. That's why He who knew no sin literally became sin, embodiment of sin, because of our filth. If you would, our filth was poured on the perfect high priest.

So He who knew no sin became sin that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. That's what imputed righteousness is. We are declared righteous because He is righteous, because He took the hit, the penalty for us.

Guest (Male): Pastor Brett Meador with a good reminder that it was the one who paid a debt He didn't owe because we had a debt we couldn't pay, and that's the Lord Jesus Christ, clearly reflected in our study of Zechariah in today’s word. And stay right there as Pastor Brett will join me here in a moment. But first, if you're new to today's word, Pastor Brett Meador is the senior pastor of Athey Creek Church in the Portland suburb of West Linn, Oregon.

Each day, he’ll share an in-depth study of God’s word. If you’ve missed any portion of our time today, you can find this message online at TodaysWordRadio.com. You can also watch or listen to Pastor Brett’s past messages, including his monthly prophecy updates, at TodaysWordRadio.com. Well, Pastor Brett has joined me now. Brett, with all that’s going on in the world today—wars, discord in politics, and a growing hatred of Christians, it seems—if you were to give a state of the church address right now, what would you say is the current state? Are you encouraged or discouraged?

Brett Meador: Well, Kurt, that's an important question, and it'd be easy to get discouraged when you just look at some of the things at the surface. But when I think about the state of the church, I'm actually encouraged. And the reason why is really part of what Jesus promised in Matthew 16:18. He said, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” I think we've seen evil really actively pushing against Christ’s followers and Jesus’ people.

But what that means to me is what we're seeing is that we're facing challenges, yes, but the gospel always shines brighter in the darkest times. And so the state of the church today is one of refining. I think God is purifying His people. I think there's a line being drawn. Some churches are falling off and kind of being recognized as not really Bible-based churches anymore. But the churches that are getting back to the word of God, we see a purifying effect and the raising up of a young generation that's not ashamed of the gospel.

So my outlook is really hopeful. The church's future isn't tied to political peace or cultural approval from everyone. It's really tied to the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, who’s promised. He said, “I'll be with you even to the very end of the world.” So that gives me, I think, every reason to move forward with courage and trust that God's doing a great work in the church.

Guest (Male): That is encouraging, and to see people coming back to church recently is really great to see as well. Thank you, Pastor Brett. Well, I want to mention that if you’d like more information about Athey Creek Church, Pastor Brett Meador, or Today’s Word, you can visit our website at TodaysWordRadio.com. Well, next time, Pastor Brett Meador will reflect on how the gift of salvation is clearly illustrated in the book of Zechariah.

Today’s word with Pastor Brett Meador is an outreach of Athey Creek Church in West Linn, Oregon.