There is a very important scene portrayed in Zechariah 3. I always envision a courtroom when I read it. God sits as judge. Joshua stands as the accused and satan stands as the accuser. This is all revealed in the passage, “Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and satan standing at his right side to accuse him.”
What I find so incredible is the absence of the arguing. No evidence and no comment from satan the accuser. The verse says that satan was standing at Joshua’s side “to accuse him”. The next thing that is said comes from the Lord. “The Lord rebuke you satan!” . That’s it. The next thing that happens is the angel says to remove the filthy clothes off Joshua and replace them with new clothes. Nothing else is said about satan the accuser. Was he excused? Did he just walk away? Was he kicked out of the court? All we know is that the Lord openly and harshly rebuked satan and that was the end of it.
What we need to always remember is that the same scene applies to us as Christians. Satan stands and accuses us every day. He accuses us of being failures. He accuses us of not following God’s commands. He accuses us of being hypocrites, and liars, and cheats. We are also accused of such things as gossip, lust, pride, gluttony, and every other sin imaginable. The most incredible truth about this situation is that we are basically in the same scene as Joshua in Zechariah 3. The other most incredible truth is that everything is done exactly the same way. God sits as the judge, we stand as the accused and satan stands as our accuser. One thing to acknowledge is that the accusations that satan brings against us are all true. We know that we sin and fall short of where God wants us to be. Even so, we stand victorious and satan gets rebuked. The reason that satan gets rebuked and sent on his way is that Jesus Christ has already paid the price for all our sins. This is confirmed very vividly in Revelation 12:10-11 where we are told, “the accuser of our brothers , who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down. They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony..” There is much to be thankful for when we realize the great price that Jesus paid to have our sins removed from our record. Otherwise, it would be satan doing all the talking as we stand before God.