Welcome back to Further. I am Brenton Grimm. Chris Carr, welcome back. Thank you. It's been a minute. A couple weeks. It's good to be back. Yeah. Yeah. So your back was Zachariah.

(...) Yes.

How was prep for this one?

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At first, it was a little overwhelming, because I'm looking at 14 chapters, and I'm going. There's no way. So thankfully, the Lord pretty quickly led me to chapter 3. And so that made it much more of a manageable task, for sure.

Sure. So yeah, obviously, this book is one that, I'd say, largely the church is unfamiliar with, although as we were talking a little before this, there are many New Testament references to it.

Well, yeah. It's one of those books that we're more familiar with than we think, because of how often it's used. I was telling you, it's used almost 60 different times by the New Testament authors. Zachariah is either quoted or alluded to.

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So I guess one of my questions is, why did you land on chapter 3?(...) There's 14 chapters here of all the content you could have covered. What made you land on 3?

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Well, probably the primary reason

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is because, well, the book's really divided up into three portions. And I didn't talk about this on Sunday, but you've got the initial several verses where it's basically the overview that we've been talking about in the Minor Prophet series is God says, return to me.(...) He calls the people to return to Him. And Zachariah is pointing out to the people in his day that God had called those people to it before, over and over before. And they hadn't responded. And there were consequences that come to it. And so through Zachariah, God's calling his people again to return to Him. And they do.

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And that is seen in how they began to rebuild the temple. So again, Zachariah and Heggi are ministering virtually at the same time. I don't know if we could call them ministry partners or not. I'm sure they knew each other.

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But they're basically focused on the same thing get the people to return to the Lord and to show that by obeying and rebuilding the temple. And so they do. So that leads into the second section of the book where God promises to bless the rebuilding of the temple and to restore Jerusalem, the city, which largely represents the people. And He conveys us interestingly, not the way that we would do it today, but like in these visions, night visions or dreams that He gives to Zachariah. And so then the last part of the book is actually more of what we normally think of prophecy. It's like more of the kind of in the end times kind of things. So the reason I landed on chapter three is chapter three of those eight visions kind of is the center of it. And really the point of the whole thing about how God is actually going to restore His people,

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how He ultimately brings them back to Him. And it pictures, it's just a great illustration in the picture of the gospel.

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And I felt like it's from a practical standpoint, and I hope this was the case is to show people A, how the gospel is in the Old Testament, but also how the gospel applies to us very practically today. And I just kinda, so I was reading and there was like latching on like, this is something where we see the accuser

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and that's just something that I think everybody struggles with and it really speaks to, it's the way the gospel speaks to something that we wrestle with, all of us I believe wrestle with to some degree, pretty much every day.

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Yeah.

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Okay, so yeah, you focused in chapter three, but what were some things that you found

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that you didn't have time to go into on Sunday?

Sure,

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well, I really loved it and I actually, if you were to see my manuscript actually wrote Zachariah 4.6 down at the very top of the page one because there,

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you know, in that vision,(...) it's the vision of a golden lampstand that Zachariah sees. And in the explanation of what this means,

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God basically says, hey, I'm going to use Zerubbabel to rebuild the house. He says the house, this house, which this house is God's house, the temple. I'm gonna use him. But what he says in verse six is everybody needs to know it's not by might, it's not by power, it's by my spirit, says the Lord. This is how it's gonna happen. I'm gonna do it, but it's ultimately, you know, Zerubbabel will be the instrument, but it's actually my spirit that is actually going to do it. And what a great picture there of actually house of salvation again.

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About anything about this, the temple was the place where people came and they came into God's presence, they came to worship him and then pointing to

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how ultimately that happens, the ultimate fulfillment of the way that we come before the Lord is through Jesus. He is the temple.

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And that happens for us, not by our might or our works, our effort, but only by the spirit. So there's that. Then there is the chapter nine, which is just one of the many references that we are familiar with in the New Testament, which is really that passage that talks about the triumphal entry. So rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion.(...) Shout out loud, O daughter of Jerusalem, behold, your King is coming to you righteous and having salvation as he humble and mounted on a donkey on a colt, the fall of a donkey.

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And so that's just another, like, great passage that shows us that this would have been roughly 500 years before Jesus was even born. It's a predicted that one day he's gonna come into Jerusalem, mount it on a donkey. And we actually talked about that passage in our series of John back in, yeah, just a few months ago.

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So, and again, one of the things that I've gone through the series is like, okay, we need to do a whole series on Amos and on Zach Raya. And, you know, we have on Habakkuk, we probably could circle around that again. And a lot of these deserve a lot more time than we've given to them. Yeah, for sure.

Well, it's been good to have an overview at least.

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So early in the vision, you pointed out that Joshua isn't just standing there as an individual. He's actually representing all of God's people.

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Why is that significant and I guess kind of foreshadowing, like, how does that prepare us to understand Jesus as our representative?

(...) Sure, so really what we need to talk about here is priesthood and Jesus as our high priest.(...) And again, I didn't talk about this at all on Sunday. For a lack of time, but I hope even one of the things people maybe will just be reinforced today is like, there's so much more in the Old Testament than we probably realize. And so there's a lot of connections between Zachariah and Hebrews and it might be just helpful to read one passage here. So I'll go to Hebrews nine and I'll just read it. I'll just read at the end. It says, "For Christ has entered not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things." Okay, so that's talking about the temple that was rebuilt. There was the first temple and then it was destroyed and then it was rebuilt in Zachariah's day.

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But here the author here says, "Christ didn't enter into that old temple

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because it's copies of the true things, okay? But he entered into heaven itself now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf."

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So Christ is the high priest who enters on our behalf, "Nor was it offered himself repeatedly as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world." So the point here is that the high priest through the Old Testament, they had to go and they had to offer sacrifices every year to cover over, because they only temporarily cover the sins of the people. Christ went once and so it says this, "But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself."(...) And just as it's appointed from man, did I want that comes judgment. So Christ having been offered once to bear the sins of men, he will appear second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him. So the point is that Jesus is the high priest who goes once for all and pays for our sins by his own blood.

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And because of that, we are declared not guilty and righteous in his sight. If we wanted to go further here, we could talk about the first Adam and the second Adam.(...) Okay, like that, you know, in Adam's fall, we sinned all, so we're connected to Adam. And so we need then someone else to be connected to that will take away the consequences of our sin and the consequences of it. And that's why Christ is the second Adam. So there's another way of talking about representation. And in some ways, Adam is like, he was a priest and now Christ is the greater Adam, the greater high priest.

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Was this idea of kind of headship in this way? I mean, the term for this is federal headship. So Adam was our head and then Christ became our head.(...) Was that common in Judaism at that point? Like, would they have had a firsthand understanding of this kind of like what Joshua was doing here?

I think so. I think very much so. I don't know that they would have had the understanding in terms of, you know, federal headship so much in terms of like Adam being seen in that way, although perhaps, but yeah, they would have understood that the high priest that Joshua was their representative. He was, there was only one priest that could go into the Holy of Holies and ultimately fully into God's presence there and only once per year. And what did he go in to do? He went in to take blood and spread it on the mercy seat as like a symbolizing atonement for their sin. They couldn't do that. They needed somebody to do it for them.

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But in his going in there and doing it,(...) their sins were covered.

Yeah, right. Yeah, I think just what comes to mind is like purporting that into our day. I think there is a big conversation on whether that's fair or not, you know, like especially the Adam side of that. Sure. Right? Like the whole original sin conversation.

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Well, yes, no doubt. There's a lot of discussions about this fairness idea, but there's no arguing biblically speaking that we are,(...) to use the title of a book of a friend of mine, Chris Braun's, we're bound together.(...) Like we are, as human beings, we are bound all the way back to Adam. The Bible clearly teaches that.

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And really if we're honest, we can see how in Adam's fall, we sin, like it comes down to us.

Paul has a lot to say about that.

Right. And yet the whole, like his whole argument in 1 Corinthians 15, like with the resurrection is like,

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because Christ rose again, because now we're bound to Him, we are in the same thing as we see in Romans as well.

Yeah, good.(...) You identified the angel of the Lord as the pre-incarnate Christ and referred to this as a Christophany. I think we've talked about this briefly on the show before, but where else in scripture do we see these?

Sure.

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So one thing I want to be clear about is that there are some passages in the Old Testament where it's clear that the angel of the Lord is divine himself.

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And then there are other passages where it's less clear. And so we got to be careful, we got to understand the context there and we've got to read carefully. So there's some places where he's very clearly identified as the Lord Yahweh himself. And then there are other places where it would actually would seem that it's actually simply an angel(...) who is providing a message, like he's coming and speaking for the Lord. So there's a difference between speaking as the Lord and speaking for the Lord.

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And we've just got to be careful. But we see it, the first time is interesting in Genesis 16 when the angel of the Lord appears to Hagar. It's really so interesting. And you are the God who sees, that's what she says to him. Then we see in 22, which is when Isaac is about to be sacrificed, the angel of the Lord appears to Abraham. Both of these, by the way, in a couple of weeks we're gonna start a series on the life of Abraham.(...) And we'll look at both of those passages. Then we see it in 31 and 32 where the angel of the Lord appears to Jacob. Couple of great stories there. You go to the Exodus three, the burning bush, that's the angel of the Lord.

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Go to Exodus 14 there and the angel of the Lord at the Red Sea.

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And so, I'm only in the first two books of the Bible. I've listened like five or six already here. And we really see it throughout the Old Testament, but especially in Genesis and Exodus do we see this angel of the Lord. But we see it, there's Joshua as well.

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Yeah.

(...) Okay.

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What are these appearances reveal about Christ's character? You know, I think obviously we see Christ as a New Testament character because that's when he was incarnate. But what does this tell us about his character that even back before his incarnation that he was interacting with his people?

Yeah, well, I mean, we see him

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revealing truth to them.(...) So we see that Jesus is the word of God, and we can see that. We can see him manifesting God's presence, showing his people, God's people, that he is with them, that he is there.(...) You see the interceding part for them. We see him fighting for them, protecting them.

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You know,

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I love it really, we're gonna see this again in Genesis and some of these stories are really, really powerful, the things that we can learn about who God is and who the Son is in particular, and how he's interceding for his people, fighting for his people, protecting his people, revealing things to God's people.

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And ultimately we see him in his grace and his mercy and a sign of God's steadfast love for his people.

Yeah, I think you also see his Godness there too, right? I mean, you're like that he is eternal, that he existed before he was incarnate.

Yeah,

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absolutely.

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Okay, you said that the primary way that Satan is described in scripture is not tempter or deceiver, but accuser.

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Why do you think that this accusation is such an effective weapon on us?

Yeah, one thing I would clarify is I think that, one of the ways that Satan actually tempts us and or deceives us is by accusing us.(...) So I don't think that those things are mutually exclusive by any sense of it. So why is it such an effective weapon?(...) Well, we all know that we are guilty,

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right?

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Whether we will admit it or not to other people and even to ourselves, we know that we have fallen short of the glory of God and that we continue to fall short of the glory of God. So it's,

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the thing about Satan is, in my opinion, rarely tells outright lies. He tells half-truths. Half-truths are much more effective than outright lies much of the time.

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And so he just takes something that is true, but seeks to get us to believe it in an untrue or apply that reality and that truth in an untrue or in a harmful way. And we're just, the fact that it is true, I think makes us more prone to be susceptible to it.

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Maybe this is more of a practical question regarding this, but, and I don't know how much biblical information there is on this, but like,(...) how does this come about in our lives? Like, in what ways does Satan use this,

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use things to accuse us, right? Because we wouldn't think that like Satan has the same ability to speak to us like the spirit does, right?

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The spirit convicts us, Satan doesn't have that ability.(...) So by what means does this happen?

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I can take a shot at this.

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So one, we know that there are legions of demons,

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which Legion is like an almost, I don't know what number that actually is, it's just a lot. A lot. Okay, and we see that in the New Testament. And so while Satan is not omnipresent, like he can only be in one place at one time,

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that doesn't mean that he doesn't have his henchmen, so to speak, that are not active and working

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in a lot of other places.

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And so, in fact, I think that really is true. From the New Testament, we can just see, there's a lot of people who are demon possessed.

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So there's that, but I think, as I tried to point out, is a lot of times this accusation comes to us through other people.

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Now, I'm not saying that Satan is possessing those people, but has he demonically influenced other people in such a way that their words and actions towards us

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are accusatory.

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Or I think condemning is kind of a helpful word there, because we all know what it's like. And now, I'm not saying that people aren't responsible for that, their own sin and their own actions, they are.(...) But it's not, and it's a both and, it's not an either or.

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And so,(...) and then I do think that,(...) I don't think, I'm confident that Satan influences our media. And by media, I'm not just talking about, I'm just talking about, you throw all of it in there. Yeah. There.

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Our media is condemning,

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especially more and more today, it's all designed to make you feel like you're not enough, you're not good enough, you're not right.

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And that just,

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I mean, you can't,

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I'm not on social media anymore, okay?

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But I know you can't go on social media without feeling bad about yourself, if you scroll at any times, because there's always somebody who's better or got more, doing more, even if they're not, it's not actually true,

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it's there. All advertising is actually designed to make you feel bad about yourself,

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so that you will look to this product to make, to be your solution. And for us to think that that's not

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demonically influenced is, I think it's naive.

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No, that's interesting. I just, this is another thing that we've talked about on the show before, like the cultural influence of how we think about spiritual things, whether it's kind of the devil on our shoulder idea of how he works to make us do stuff or whatever. So I think it'd be helpful to give more of a practical view of how this actually happens, which I think you're right, through culture, that's through culture and media or whatever, that's a huge influence on what we do and how we think about ourselves. So yeah, I think that's helpful.

(...) Yeah, it's so interesting with our culture today is in some ways, it's like, you believe in this, the spiritual, how stupid are you?

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And then on the other hand, what are the most popular movies?

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They're horror movies.

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And many of those,

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with some type of spiritual component to it. Honestly,

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if I go and look at West Lindwall, what they've got showing, which I haven't been in a movie in a long time now, although Spider-Man's coming up this week.(...) Yeah, I know you're a big Marvel fan.

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But if you look on there, almost always there is at least two horror movies. Yeah, they only have like six. And almost always a third of them are gonna be horror movies. They must be popular, they must be making money. They are popular.(...) Yep.

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Our culture is very interesting on that. We wanna deny the spiritual, but we also have a great interest in it. Or the use of paranormal, but something beyond this visible world of what we can see. And that's because we, again, we're hardwired for that.

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Yeah, for sure. No, that's good.

Not hardwired for what we're consuming, or hardwired to believe in.

Yeah, okay.

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Okay, so this brings up another question. How can we then distinguish between when the Holy Spirit is convicting us of sin and when Satan is condemning us for sins that Christ already paid for?

Yeah, this is a really great question(...) because I think it has a lot of practical import to it. So, and we can spend probably a lot of time on this, but conviction, the point of conviction is to bring us to Christ.(...) Condemnation actually is meant to push us away from us. So it's like to bring us near, or to,

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what the devil or Satan would want is for us to feel condemnation and then to run and hide from the Lord. And the Holy Spirit, the only way, the reason that the Holy Spirit does it is to draw us in so that we can come to Christ

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and experience forgiveness and renewal.(...) And so now that doesn't mean that that's necessarily easy to discern like which is which here, but to help maybe more is, here's an example,

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specific versus sweeping.

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So conviction is generally gonna be specific over something that we have done wrong, like a sin that we've committed.

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Condemnation is kind of a sweeping, like you're terrible.

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Like some of the language I use, you're good for nothing.

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You've done it again, like in these kind of big overushing, rather than, okay, you were harsh.

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Okay,

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and so yesterday, for example, I had a conversation, I was in a long conversation with someone and later on they texted me and said, hey, I need to ask you for giving me for gossiping during our conversation. That's conviction.

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I gossip, I convict me, I need to confess.

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And there's restoration and all that.

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Condemnation is like, I just screw up all of, I'm just horrible.

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I'm horrible. And that's the reason it's time for us to be crushed by our sin, but especially in situations where it's not, you know, like it's not this huge thing that I've like really, really blew it.

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And then maybe another example is, I think this is really, really helpful.(...) It's the failed versus I'm a failure aspect. Okay, so we all fail, like I have failed. That can be conviction.

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Failure is that's who I, like I am just at the root of it. I'm a failure.

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And it's more,

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and I think really,

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conviction is more God focused and condemnation is more self focused. It's like this condemnation, this is me, it's about me. It's what I am, what I've done.

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And conviction is more, I've sinned against the holy God and I need to turn to him for forgiveness.(...) And believe in then that we do. So, yeah. And I just wanna say it, like that, it can be really hard. Like this is something that we have to learn and we have to grow in because hearing the voice of the whole spirit versus the voice of the evil one can be,

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we would think it would be like easy, but it's not unless we're, you know, the New Testament talks about having our powers of discernment trained. Like we have to discern and even discern the voice of the spirit versus the voice of the evil one. Or what's coming from the evil one.

Yeah, no, I think that's a helpful list.

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Yeah, okay. We'll move on to this last one. One of your main points was that we need to fight the accuser through the advocate.

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And we do that by believing, but you said the belief isn't passive, that believing means taking what's true and acting on it.

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And I think there are, you know, all of us in some way would say that, you know, that we believe in the gospel and we do, yet we still live under guilt and condemnation every day. So can you kind of unpack this a little more? What does it actually look like to believe in the gospel when those accusations come at us?

Sure.

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First I wanna say this is where it gets a little bit tricky. Because we can feel condemnation for living under guilt and condemnation.

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And so we even just gotta be aware of that.

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But I think we have been unduly influenced by this idea that belief is something that we just simply, like it's a passive, it's kind of like, I'm just like, yep, I believe that is true. And we set aside our belief, our faith, and don't actually act. Like faith is a trusting, like entrusted. And it's not a one, simply a one, it's a continual trusting, continual exercising our faith. Paul tells somebody, fight the good fight of the faith.(...) The faith, like we have to fight with it.

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And I don't know if everybody's gonna hear this, but we're here in Burlington and they're working on the roof. And so it sounds like, my goodness.

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They're gonna come in. Yeah, so if anybody hears, they're fighting something upstairs,

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but it's like Paul tells the Philippians, Philippians chapter two, work out your salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God who works in you. Okay, so God works in, we work out.(...) And so that's what I'm talking about there is like, we take these truths and we have to, if I can use this word, we weaponize them in a sense, like I said, weaponizing is often used in a, not in a good way, but no, we do. And so, a great model for this is the Psalms and the language that the Psalmist use where they are clearly wrestling.

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And a lot of times they're going, they're taking,

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two steps forward, one step backwards, or sometimes it's two steps backwards. And once I like it's, but there's a battle, there's a fight that's going on. And they're taking like what they know to be true of God, what they've seen him do in the past. And they're even like,

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I just read this the other day, it's been kind of resonate with me the last week, Psalm 116.7,

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return, oh my soul to your rest for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you. So the soul's not at rest, he recognizes it. He's telling himself return, he's preaching to him. Return, oh my soul.

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And how? Well, because the Lord's dealt bountifully with you, with me. So what's he doing there? He's remembering what the Lord has done for him. And then he's taking that and he's saying, hey, soul, you need to return to resting in the Lord. Now,

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we might say, well, it sounds like it's easy. Well, it's not, you read the rest of the Psalm, read the rest of the Psalms. And it's not going, this Christian life is not easy. It's going to be a fight. And so the language we use here all the time is preaching the gospel to ourselves.

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And our worship arts ministry talks about rehearsing, remembering and responding.

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That's a great way to think about it and to approach it. But one thing I will add that I didn't get to, this is why we also need other people in our lives who are speaking the gospel into us and who are just helping us to believe, put our faith into action.

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This is why Colossians 3,(...) teach one another and admonish one another.

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It actually says, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another with hymns, songs and spiritual songs.

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So we sing to one another, we over one another, we pray for one another and we speak to one another so that we can activate one another's faith. And altogether, really what we're doing is we're saying to Jesus, I believe, help my unbelief.

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And we're doing it in community.

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And I just like,(...) man, I almost want to preach another sermon on this because this is where the rubber heat meets the road.

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It is literally the day to day of our life. And I can't tell you how many people I talk with that this is their struggle. I mean, we're sitting here in the table in my office and there's so many people who sit in the seats that we're sitting in right now. And I'm literally having this conversation about their struggling with guilt and shame. And condemnation and whether it's from the church that they have come from, a parent, teacher, spouse.

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And what happens for so many people is that those voices become our own voice and then we just live in that over and over again. And even, I mean, I meant it, like this is a battle. I have to fight the battle. So I'm not immune to it by any stretch of the imagination. But I also can testify that if you do, if I can use this phrase, if you do the work.

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And so we're not saved by works, but we're saved by faith apart from works, but our faith is a faith that works.

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Again, work out your salvation and fair and trembling. So there's a whole nother message you didn't ask for, but...

(...) No easy solution then is what you're saying.

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It's not, but it's not an easy solution to do nothing either, it's actually a harder one.

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Okay.

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That's all I got. Good.(...) All right, well, if you have any questions, feel free to email us, ask at furtherpodcast.com. Talk to you next week.

(...) (Upbeat Music)