A Brand Plucked Out of the Fire

Yonatan stopped arguing about eighteen months ago and it felt, at the time, like maturity.

For years he had answered it. There is a voice, and it makes a case, and for a long time he had a counter case: context, circumstances, the parts nobody sees, the fact that he had tried, the fact that other people had contributed to it.

All of that was true, and none of it was ever quite enough, and one evening he simply stopped putting it forward.

Not out of despair. Out of something that felt more like honesty. He had noticed that his defense always required him to be slightly generous with himself, and he did not want to be a man who was slightly generous with himself, so he laid it down.

And here is what happened next, which nobody warned him about.

The accusation, unopposed, did not go quiet. It got louder and more detailed and considerably more confident. And because he had stopped supplying the counter case, the only voice in the room was now the one making the charge, and it was accurate.

That is the thing. It is accurate. He has checked. Every item in it stands up. He is not being lied about by his own head; he is being described.

So now there is a man who has stopped arguing, listening to a correct account of himself, with no reply available, and calling that state acceptance.

It is not acceptance. He has worked that out. It is a man losing a case he never should have been trying.

And this is where I stop writing about Yonatan, because you stopped arguing at some point too.

I am not going to ask what the case says, and I am not going to tell you the facts are wrong. That is yours and it stays yours.

Nobody in that courtroom disputed anything

I want to take you into the strangest courtroom in Scripture, because the thing that happens in it is the exact thing you have been waiting for and have never seen anybody do. It is Zechariah 3, and the Holy Spirit had it written down for people standing in rooms exactly like yours.

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?Zechariah 3:2

The setting is a vision. Joshua, the high priest, is standing before the angel of the Lord, and there is an accuser standing at his right hand to resist him. And Joshua is described, in the next verse, as clothed with filthy garments.

Now notice three things, in order, because the order is the whole thing.

First: nobody disputes the garments. Not the angel, not the Lord, not Joshua. The filth is stated as a plain fact in the text and it is never once argued with, and it is not minimized. The case, so far as the facts go, is correct.

Second: the answer is not a defense. It is a rebuke, and the rebuke is aimed at the accuser and not at the accused. Read it again if that has not landed. The one being told to be quiet is the one bringing the charge.

Third, and this is the sentence for you: is not this a brand plucked out of the fire.

A brand is a piece of burning wood pulled out of a fire. It is charred. It is blackened. It is unmistakably a thing that has been in a fire, and it is out, and the reason it is out is that somebody put a hand in and pulled it.

So take that where you sit with the case going on in your head. You are a brand plucked out of the fire, and Zechariah 3:2 says so about a man in filthy garments with an accuser at his elbow, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a fact about you rather than a story about a priest.

And then look at what happens next in the chapter, because the answer to the facts was never an argument. He is given new garments. The filth is dealt with by exchange rather than by dispute, and the written word never once asks Joshua to say a word in his own defense, and the Spirit of God has never asked it of you either.