Lent 3—Oculi
Dear friends in Christ. These beginning weeks of Lent have as their theme Jesus’ struggle against the devil and His victory over him. Two weeks ago we heard of Jesus overcoming the devil’s temptation to sin—Jesus, as our Substitute, overcoming the devil and all his temptations, doing what we cannot do. Last week we heard Jesus casting a demon out of a Gentile girl who was severely demon possessed. Today’s Gospel begins with: Now [Jesus] was casting out a demon that was mute. When the demon had gone out, the mute man spoke, and the people marveled. Again, Jesus shows his power over the devil because as Jesus points out here: the devil is a strong man, fully armed, guard[ing] his own palace, [and so] his goods are safe; but Jesus is the One stronger than he [who] attacks him and overcomes him, [and] takes away his armor in which he trusted and divides his spoil. That is precisely Jesus’ work that He came to do and that we especially think about this Lenten season.
Our Gospel reading is indeed good news for in it we hear that Jesus has overcome the devil, plundered his kingdom, and has opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers. That’s the point that Jesus’ casting out demons shows. When He casts out a demon, it shows that although the devil is strong and powerful, leading us into sin and death, Jesus is the Stronger One. In Him is victory over the devil, sin and damnation that would await us. Jesus showed His almighty power over the devil as He cast out demons. But precisely by Jesus’ weakness, He overcame and conquered the devil and plundered his kingdom—His weakness in coming to this earth, becoming also true man, placing Himself under the Law of God, taking our sins upon Himself, suffering on the cross God’s wrath as the world’s sinner, dying. Each demon that Jesus cast out was a reminder to the devil of Jesus’ greater work of rescuing the human race and the devil’s defeat. But again—how did Jesus conquer and overcome the devil, attack him and overcome him, [and] take away his armor? By weakness—suffering and dying.
Our text today from Zechariah is a vision that the Lord granted St. Zechariah to see—and in this vision we are lead into the very heart of the Christian faith where we see the same thing that we see in today’s Gospel: the devil’s powerlessness in the face of Jesus; the devil’s inability to hold on to his kingdom.
As we examine our text and come into the very center of the Christian faith, we will see the grace of God and the righteousness of Christ. Because of this grace and righteousness the devil’s kingdom is plundered and we are rescued from it.
1. Notice the scene depicted for us by St. Zechariah: Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him. What is this? It looks like a courtroom scene: you have the angel of the LORD, that is, the Second Person of the holy Trinity. Then before Him is Joshua the high priest—this Joshua is the High Priest, a leader of the people when they had returned from the exile—and at Joshua’s right is the devil/ Satan acting as his adversary, accusing him and condemning before God.
And then notice how Joshua is described: Now Joshua was standing before the angel, clothed with filthy garments. So often in Scripture, the Holy Spirit uses the phrase/ image of filthy garments to refer to sins and our life of sin. After all, people see you by the clothes you wear; that’s how we present ourselves to the world. When God looks at us He sees the clothes of the filthy garments of sin. So, picture this scene of our text: standing before God there is Joshua, dressed in filthy garments—the filthy garments of sin; and at his right is the devil/ Satan accusing him—and rightly so—of sin. And with each of these accusations of sin, the devil is claiming more and more the right to him, to drag him condemned to hell forever. And notice what Joshua says throughout all this? Absolutely nothing! He has no defense. He knows his sin. He knows he’s a sinner, one who has gone/ rebelled against the holy and righteous will of God and by that has earned only God’s eternal wrath and is worthy only of hell. So, yes, the devil is rightly accusing him of sin. He is silent; he cannot deny the charges.
So here in this vision granted St. Zechariah we see a picture also of ourselves—that we stand before God and Satan is rightly accusing and condemning us as sinners, claiming us as his own, wanting to keep us in his kingdom and dragging us down to hell. And like Joshua the High Priest, we have to remain silent because we know we are guilty of sin. We may try to explain away our sin or minimize our sin, but at the end of the day, if we are honest, we will all have to say: I, a poor miserable sinner, confess that we are by nature sinful and unclean and have sinned against God in thought, word and deed and rightly deserve God’s punishment now and forever.
But notice in this courtroom scene as Joshua with all of his sin stands before God and is being accused by Satan, what does the angel of the LORD, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, do? We read in our text: And the LORD said to Satan, “The LORD rebuke you, O Satan! The LORD who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is not this a brand plucked from the fire?” In this scene in which we come to the very heart of the Christian faith, we see the grace of God shining forth so beautifully as He is ready to show us grace. To be sure, Joshua was clothed in filthy garments—he was a sinner through and through; he couldn’t deny it/ offer up a defense as Satan was ready rightly to accuse him. But look at the Lord’s readiness to show mercy. He defends Joshua and reprimands Satan. In fact by saying, “The LORD rebuke you, O Satan!" the Lord is actually condemning Satan instead of the one Satan wanted to be condemned. Remember, this is the Son, the Second Person of the holy Trinity, here called the angel of the LORD, who rebukes Satan, who condemns him instead of the sinner. He has the power and authority to do so because He is the LORD. That’s what we see in today’s Gospel as Jesus casts out the demon: He is rebuking the devil. And as He rebukes the devil, He shows that His authority and His word stand. At the very heart of the Christian faith is the grace of God and His readiness to show mercy—to give to us what we do not earn and deserve; to give us grace and every blessing in spite of us being the sinners we are.
Look at the exalted terms how the Lord here talks about Joshua. The LORD who has chosen Jerusalem… In great grace, the Lord chose; He accepts believers in Him as His people and does not let Satan interfere with His choice. And because He calls Joshua a brand plucked from the fire, doesn’t it point to the Lord going to great lengths, here described as braving fire, to rescue His people? Isn’t that what Jesus and His work is: His holy life and His innocent suffering and death? Isn’t that His grace to us? As He here rebukes the devil trying to accuse and drag His dear believer back down to condemnation and hell, doesn’t that point to God’s continued favor on His dear Christian, the one whom He has already snatched out from sin, death and damnation, as a brand plucked from the fire? Of course! Dear Christian, that’s what we enjoy. Although we are sinners, worthy only of being dragged down to eternal damnation in hell, the Lord has come and in the word and by the waters of Holy Baptism rescued us and continues to show us His grace and mercy, forgiving us our sins, rebuking the devil who would accuse us of sin.
Our text: And the angel said to those who were standing before him, “Remove the filthy garments from him.” And to him he said, “Behold, I have taken your iniquity away from you, and I will clothe you with pure vestments.” Here is the full and free absolution/ forgiveness of all his sin. The filthy garments Joshua wore signifying his sin—are removed/ taken away. That’s the complete act of forgiveness—sin being removed from us and they never again cling to us. So, yes, we are sinners before God, the devil can be there at our right to accuse us of sin, but in the grace of God He deals with our sins by forgiving us. This is the very heart of the Christian faith.
2. As we look at this courtroom vision the Lord granted St. Zechariah a little further, we come to the heart of the Christian faith and see that Jesus is our righteousness. We have seen the grace of God to Joshua in forgiving him his sin; and this is a picture of what happens with each of our Lord’s dear Christians. But only because Jesus is our righteousness can God forgive us our sin. This scene with Joshua the High Priest is a proclamation of Jesus’ being our righteousness.
Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him. It is important to remember that Joshua is the High Priest because in the OT times the High Priest represented the whole people before God. And so here Joshua the High Priest, clothed with filthy garments, the filthy garments of sin, pointed to the sin of the whole people.
But as we understand our text to be also a preaching pointing forward to Jesus, what do we see? That Joshua is a picture of Jesus; and that Jesus is standing there in the courtroom clothed with filthy garments, the filthy garments of sin. Jesus, our Great High Priest, as representative of the whole human race, is standing before God clothed with filthy garments, the filthy garments of sin of the entire human race. And that’s what Jesus did as He went to the cross that first Good Friday. He went to the cross as the world’s sinner. He took upon Himself our status and standing before God’s righteous court. All our sins were charged to the account of an innocent Man. And He suffered the wrath and punishment for them all. This is the way that God deals with sin. He forgives sin, yes! As a holy God He must punish sin but as a merciful God He did not punish us for our sin but Jesus, the one standing there, clothed with filthy garments of our sin, as the Representative of the whole human race—He who was holy and sinless but took on our sin to suffer for them. And He did so willingly [Is 53.7]: He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth.
The very fact that Joshua and the people then could have the forgiveness of sins and why we today can have the forgiveness of sins—“Remove the filthy garments from him.” And to him he said, “Behold, I have taken your iniquity away from you, and I will clothe you with pure vestments”– is because not only did Jesus take our sins upon Himself and suffer for them for us but because He is our righteousness. Jesus is the One who obeyed all of God’s holy law perfectly for us, giving God that perfect keeping of His law that He requires if we are to enter heaven. In other words, because Jesus took on, was clothed with filthy garments, of our sin, we are now, in the forgiveness of our sin, clothed with the perfect holiness of Jesus: Behold, I have taken your iniquity away from you, and I will clothe you with pure vestments, the pure vestments of Jesus’ perfect righteousness/ sinlessness. “Let them put a clean turban on his head.” So they put a clean turban on his head and clothed him with garments. The heart of the Christian faith is that we, dear Christian, now stand before God not with all of our sin and unrighteousness but clothed with the holiness and perfection of Jesus. That’s how God sees us. In baptism [Gal 3.27] He clothed us with Christ. Although we daily sin and soil our baptismal garments of Jesus’ righteousness, in confession we give Him all our sin and He once again gives us in the absolution His perfect holiness.
How blessed we are in our text to come to the very center of our Christian faith: God’s grace and that Jesus is our righteousness. May we daily remember and rejoice in this and be strengthened by it. INJ