Blessed Be The Lord: Finding Joy in God’s Faithful Promises

[00:00:00] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_00]
[00:00:00] Amen. You may be seated. Please turn in your Bibles to Luke chapter 1. Luke chapter 1, be reading verses 57 through 80, the end of the chapter. Luke chapter 1. Let's ask for the Lord's
[00:00:20] help as we come to His Word. Gracious Heavenly Father, we pray not merely out of habit or custom, thinking that sermons ought to begin with prayers, but because we need your help, we do not want to waste our time. There are no points in heaven for enduring another sermon,
[00:00:43] so help us to listen, and I need your help to preach your Word faithfully with an unction from on high. So give us, both the preacher and the hearers, grace from your spirit that this word would do its work among us.
[00:00:59] We pray in Jesus' name, amen.
[00:01:03] Luke chapter 1, beginning at verse 57.
[00:01:08] Now, the time came for Elizabeth to give birth and she bore a son.
[00:01:13] And her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown great mercy to her and they rejoiced with her.
[00:01:21] And on the eighth day, they came to circumcise the child.
[00:01:25] They would have called him Zechariah after his father, but his mother answered, no, he shall be called John.
[00:01:34] They said to her, none of your relatives is called by this name.
[00:01:39] They made signs to his father, inquiring what he wanted him to be called.
[00:01:43] And he asked for a writing tablet and wrote, his name is John.
[00:01:51] And they all wondered.
[00:01:52] And immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue loosed, and he spoke, blessing God, and fear came on all their neighbors, and all these things were talked about through all the hill country of Judea.
[00:02:07] And all who heard them laid them up in their hearts, saying, what then will this child be?
[00:02:14] For the hand of the Lord was with him, and his father, Zechariah, was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied, saying, "'Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people
[00:02:29] and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us, to show the mercy
[00:02:44] promised to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our father Abraham to grant us that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness
[00:02:59] before him all our days.
[00:03:01] And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins because
[00:03:15] of the tender mercy of our God whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give a light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.
[00:03:30] And the child grew and became strong in spirit, and he was in the wilderness until the day of his public appearance to Israel." As I noted last week, and many of you will remember, there are four songs
[00:03:46] by tradition in these opening chapters of Luke, the Magnificat.
[00:03:51] My soul magnifies the Lord.
[00:03:53] This one here, the Benedictus, which is the Latin for that word in verse 68, blessed, and then the Gloria in excelsis Deo, which we have been singing about, the angel song, and then the nunc dimittis, now may your servant depart in peace.
[00:04:12] each one follows the same pattern. There is a narrative and then there is a song. We saw that last week with Mary's Magnificat. Verse 39, Mary visits Elizabeth. We have the interaction and Elizabeth's own praise. And then following that, we have Mary's song. Well, we see the same thing
[00:04:32] here. First, we have a narrative. It is the birth of John the Baptist and all that associates it.
[00:04:39] and then we have Zachariah's song. You can think of it in two headings, a baby and a blessing.
[00:04:47] So first, the baby, not the baby. We'll celebrate that baby, and we're remembering everything in this Advent season. But first, we have the forerunner baby who will point the way to the Christ's child. Look at verse 57 and 58. This is such a wonderfully realistic scene of what a thick
[00:05:10] community can be like. One of the great things about it, one of the reasons I think we love the Christmas story, it's this mix of very realistic, down-to-earth, you can imagine two women, Mary and Elizabeth, one a young virgin, one an older woman, both miraculous births.
[00:05:30] We can imagine them talking, wanting to discuss their pregnancies, and we can imagine this scene.
[00:05:38] Neighbors and relatives recognize God's kindness, and they come, verse 58, and rejoice with her.
[00:05:47] We never thought it was going to happen. I bet many of them said, Liz, we've been praying for you for so many years. They rejoice with her.
[00:06:00] Is there any area, just as an aside here, is there any area in the life of a church that is more dependent upon that verse, rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who
[00:06:14] weep than when it comes to births and pregnancies. There's almost nothing in a community more filled with great exuberant joy and also great heartache, especially in a room this size. It could be every single week. There would be those who have known joys and sorrows and those who are sitting
[00:06:39] on unbelievably good news and sitting on very difficult news. And it becomes challenging in the life of any family or any community. And yet, Scripture tells us what we ought to do.
[00:06:51] Here's one of the blessings and also one of the challenges when you enter into any community.
[00:06:57] If you just want to be a rock, an island, like Paul Simon said, and you feel no pain, but if you're going to be a part of a community, it means you open yourself up to everyone else's
[00:07:08] joys and you open yourself up to everyone else's burdens. And that's what the church of Jesus Christ is meant to be. That on any given day, you're hearing news, you're seeing it on social media, you're getting a text, you're getting a praise report or a prayer request, and you're
[00:07:27] saying, what wonderful good news. And you're also weeping with those who weep. And especially when it comes to children and birth and pregnancy. It's that difficulty. So, let me just encourage you not to run away from each other in those moments. Yes, be sensitive, but sometimes you just
[00:07:49] retreat to your corners, come in with great rejoicing when there's joy, and come in with sorrow and weeping when there is sadness. This family and these friends, these neighbors, they gather around Elizabeth and they rejoice with her. On the eighth day, as was commanded,
[00:08:10] this is a law-abiding couple. We saw that at the very beginning, Zechariah and Elizabeth, they were blameless. It doesn't mean they never committed sin. It meant these were exemplary Jews. And of course, then they obeyed the law. And on the eighth day, ever since Abraham,
[00:08:26] they were commanded to come and bring the child, the son, for circumcision. And it was customary that you would name your son, especially your firstborn son, after your father, maybe after your grandfather. But we see here in verse 59, everyone is just assuming. Zechariah, remember,
[00:08:47] Zechariah hasn't, his lips have been sealed. At least his tongue has been tied for nine months.
[00:08:55] And so they're assuming when this child is born that his name will be Zechariah. And Elizabeth says, whoa, no, no, no, time out. Nope. His name shall be John. Now, I said a moment ago that this
[00:09:10] is such a realistic picture of what a thick community is like. So, you have friends and neighbors coming around, throwing a big baby shower for Elizabeth. We're so happy for you.
[00:09:21] And then this is also what community is like. You would think their response should be, Oh, John, your baby. That's a good name. That's a strong name. Yeah, John. Sounds good, but that's not what they do. They say, can we ask the dad a second? Because I don't, you don't,
[00:09:45] there's no Johns in your family. We're happy for you, Elizabeth. You made a mistake on naming your child. That's what communities are like too, friends and neighbors. We got some advice.
[00:09:55] I don't like the name that you picked for your child. And so, they turn their attention to Zachariah. It is also just incidentally, just a reminder that though man-made traditions and customs can be good, I like traditions. Christmas is full of traditions and nostalgia, and they help
[00:10:19] provide order. They connect us to the past. They simplify our lives because we say, well, this is the way we do things, and yet we must always keep those man-made traditions and customs in their place. They're not sacred. Circumcise the son on the eighth day, that's commanded.
[00:10:36] Name the firstborn son after your father, that's custom and tradition. And it can be circumvented, especially when an angel tells you to do something else. So, keep our customs, keep our traditions in place. So, they asked Zechariah what he thinks. Now, obviously,
[00:10:55] he's been able to communicate this. He was the one who was told this by the angel, and Elizabeth knows it. And the fact that he's given a writing tablet, the first iPad in the Bible. Well, it wasn't that, of course. It wasn't even a legal pad. It wasn't a clipboard. It was
[00:11:13] probably some kind of board that was overlaid with wax, and that's probably how you would have, You think about it, maybe with your finger or a stick or something, you could write something and then you could heat that up and you could scrub out and it's a nice bit of technology. It's a big
[00:11:31] mess, but it's nice. And if you drop it, the glass doesn't shatter. So, he writes here on this writing tablet, his name is John. You can point out that Elizabeth says, well, his name shall be
[00:11:48] John. We were told to name him John. Now, Zechariah writes out, no, there's no future tense about this.
[00:11:54] This has already happened. We've named him John. Not up for discussion. The name was given to him by the angel, and suddenly his tongue is loosened. He begins to speak for the first time in nine
[00:12:08] months. And what would you say if you had not said anything for nine months? Well, all he wants to do is bless the Lord. We have in this little vignette a whole series of reactions and this multitude of
[00:12:27] reactions is a kind of precursor to the responses that will come to the gospel itself. What do we see in this passage? There's joy. Now with this happening, it says there's fear. We've seen lots
[00:12:46] of talk. This was all the...you could just hear the buzz, the chatter in the hill country of Judea. Just everyone, did you hear what happened with Elizabeth and Zechariah? Did you hear that they named their son John? Something is going on, something crazy. So, you have joy, you have fear,
[00:13:01] you have lots of talk, you have curiosity, and you have some confusion. This is what we would find in the rest of the gospel. In John's ministry, in Jesus' ministry, you could add to it there also
[00:13:15] some unbelief and later some anger and hatred toward the Lord Jesus. But here we see this is often what happens when God's Word is proclaimed. And maybe some of you are in one of these emotional
[00:13:31] states with the Lord this morning. Joy? Fear? What is this? Confusion? Curiosity? Tell me more.
[00:13:41] It's all the talk of the town. Well, it's already starting. Almost everything about this precursor is going to be a precursor. He is the forerunner for the Messiah, and so it makes sense that even with His birth, these responses are showing us the kind of responses that people
[00:14:02] will have to Jesus Himself. This is the way it was and is and always will be on this earth, that when there is talk of Jesus, we'd like to think everyone just says, yay, Jesus. And people may like a kind of sanitized version of Christmas and all the
[00:14:24] trappings, but if you really give them Jesus with every hard thing Jesus says, with Jesus who came not to tell everybody that you're great just the way you are, but that we're so messed up and sinful that God Himself had to die on a cross for us. That Jesus,
[00:14:42] there's bound to be many reactions, joy, fear, unbelief, anger, curiosity. And so it was already here with the birth of John. We see first then the baby, and then we see the blessing. We see in Zechariah, look first at the statement in verse 67,
[00:15:08] because this is important before we get to the blessing itself. And his father, Zechariah, was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied. Then we get to the Benedictus. I want you to notice here in verse 67, because this is a very important theme in the Christmas story,
[00:15:29] but also in the Gospel of Luke and in Acts. Remember, Luke wrote the Gospel according to Luke in Acts. And it tells us something important that we need to have with our doctrine of the
[00:15:41] Holy Spirit. I wonder if you noticed something. John 1.15, it says, or rather Luke 1.15, it says about John, he will be great before the Lord, must not take drink, wine, or strong drink, and he will
[00:15:57] be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother's womb. John would be filled with the Holy Spirit in utero. What evidence do we have of John being filled with the Holy Spirit? Well, it's when
[00:16:11] he starts kicking and elbowing and jumping for joy in the womb when Mary enters the room.
[00:16:18] For John to be as an unborn child filled with the Holy Spirit gives him this grace to communicate this excitement for Christ. Look at chapter 1 verse 41, Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, verse 42, she exclaimed with a loud voice. So, Elizabeth too is filled
[00:16:44] with the Holy Spirit. We're seeing the fulfillment of the prophecy from Joel that the Holy Spirit will come upon sons and daughters. They will be filled with the Holy Spirit. We see here that Zechariah, verse 67, filled with the Holy
[00:16:59] Spirit. He prophesies and then he utters this song, this word, but we could trace it out into Acts, Acts chapter 2. The disciples are filled with the Holy Spirit. They begin to speak in utterances, and there it's the miracle of tongues. In Acts 4.8, it says Peter was filled
[00:17:18] with the Holy Spirit, and then he spoke the Word of God. Acts 4.31, we read they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the Word of God with boldness. In Acts 9, it says Paul
[00:17:33] was filled with the Holy Spirit, and then he preaches the Word. Acts 13.9, again, Paul was filled with the Holy Spirit, and in this case, he looks intently at this false teacher, this magician named Elymas, and he rebukes him for his deceit. Do you detect a pattern? All of those examples
[00:17:54] in Luke and Acts, what happens when someone is filled with the Holy Spirit? They then speak boldly the truth about Jesus Christ. If you want evidence of someone being filled with the Spirit, sometimes use that language very casually, so-and-so was really, really filled with the
[00:18:21] Spirit. That was really Spirit-filled worship. Well, I hope so. What would Spirit-filled worship look like? Well, it may show itself in different physical manifestations. It may show itself in different exuberance or not. People have different emotional registers, different
[00:18:41] cultures shape us in different ways. Certainly, we have a Presbyterian culture that shapes us in certain ways, no doubt, and others might be given to be more expressive. But what is really the surefire indication of Spirit-filled worship. Is it something you feel? Well, feelings are good.
[00:19:05] Is it an impression you get? Does it mean that it's particularly spontaneous? We see in Luke and Acts, the evidence of being filled with the Spirit of God is that the Word of God is truthfully
[00:19:18] and boldly spoken. Spirit-filled worship is when the prayers and the hymns and the songs and the sermons and the liturgy are all infused with the Word of God, and we express them from our hearts. That's the Spirit. If you want to say, Pastor, that was Spirit-filled preaching,
[00:19:43] I hope you pray for that about every single Sunday. You know, we do gather there every single Sunday in that little prayer room and pray, several of the elders or pastors who ever come.
[00:19:55] I will pray maybe every single Sunday something like this, "'Lord, would You anoint the preaching of Your Word? Would You give an unction from the Holy Spirit for this Word so that Your people would hear not just a man with a message,
[00:20:10] but they would hear the Lord Jesus speaking to them. That's the work of the Holy Spirit.
[00:20:15] We see it in this Christmas story and throughout the gospel and Acts. The evidence of the filling of the Holy Spirit, this bold declaration of God's Word, because the Spirit, what does the Spirit, what does He love to do? The Spirit is that spotlight to throw a spotlight upon Christ,
[00:20:37] to say, look upon Christ, think of Christ, and everything in these Spirit-filled praises are ultimately directing our attention to the Messiah. There are two parts to this song turning to the blessing itself. The first part focuses on the promise, verses 68 through 75,
[00:21:00] and the second part on the prophet. So, baby and blessing, now under the blessing, two parts, the promise and the prophet. Mary's song started narrow and then went broad. Mary's song started personal, my soul magnifies the Lord, and by the end, it's national and universal.
[00:21:24] Zachariah's song moves in the opposite direction, starts with God's wide mercy to His people, and then narrows at the end attention to the special child who has just been born and the work that He will do to prepare the way. Notice the promise here in the first part of this
[00:21:42] Benedictus. In verses 68 through 70, Zechariah recounts three things. The Lord has visited and redeemed His people. He has raised up a horn of salvation for us, and He has spoken by the prophets of old. And then after those three things promised, he outlines quickly four results of
[00:22:05] those promises in verses 71 through 74. One, that we should be saved from our enemies. Two, that we would be shown mercy. Three, that God will remember His covenant with Abraham. And four, that we might serve Him. I don't think there's a secret code here, but it falls very nicely into
[00:22:27] that 3 plus 4 equals 7. Three promises, four responses, as Zechariah outlines what all of these blessings have done for us. All of this set in motion, now finding its fulfillment, because the forerunner has been born. The promise long ago, verse 73, the oath He swore
[00:22:54] to our father, Abraham. Now, that is coming to fruition. Now, we know our Bibles, many of us, and we think about Abraham. Of course, he's a very important person in the whole Bible. Yeah, it might take us a year to read through the whole thing, and we know Abraham's way back at Genesis
[00:23:15] at the beginning of the book, but we really can lose track of just how long this was.
[00:23:22] 2,000 years, these promises to Abraham. 2,000 years. That's older than America by a bit.
[00:23:35] 2,000 years? That's how long it's been since this happened. Think about that. All of that time waiting for the promise to be fulfilled. And now you understand why these scenes are exploding with joy. 2,000 years, you think of everything that has happened in 2,000 years? Everything you
[00:24:02] have to learn in your Western Civ class, I still hope you have one of those. And that's just Western civilization. You got the whole world in 2,000 years since the Roman Empire. That's how long
[00:24:14] they waited. And now the long-awaited deliverance is upon them. The waiting is over. Advent is a season of waiting. We're looking forward to the first coming. We're waiting for the second coming and perhaps it's fitting that in God's providence, Advent has also become a time where you do lots
[00:24:38] of waiting. There's extra cars on the road. You're waiting in traffic. You're waiting an extra day or two for your packages to be delivered. I mean, oh, the hardships. Sometimes they come in three days. It's terrible. All of the waiting and all of the lines, and many of us still have
[00:25:04] presents to do and wrapping paper to get. I made the mistake on Friday afternoon. I went to the post office. Oh, rookie mistake, pastor. It was a beautiful day. I walked from my office up there
[00:25:19] down to the Matthews post office.
[00:25:23] I knew it would be busy, but all I needed was stamps.
[00:25:27] And I know there's a little kiosk there just to get stamps.
[00:25:30] I wasn't going to wait in the whole line with all the people.
[00:25:33] The queue was almost out the door.
[00:25:36] I waited in just that one line and even saw, you know, saw people from church there as it happens when you're at.
[00:25:42] It helps the pastor, you know, try to be in his best behavior waiting in line.
[00:25:50] But it took maybe 10 minutes for my turn watching people weigh out their packages on there.
[00:25:56] And all I need is stamps.
[00:25:58] I've done this before.
[00:26:00] I'm going to, like a boss, I'm going to get these stamps.
[00:26:02] I have my credit card out.
[00:26:04] I see all these people.
[00:26:05] There's a guy right behind me has a dolly full of packages.
[00:26:10] People are looking like just life itself is draining from their faces.
[00:26:14] But I have my credit card.
[00:26:17] All I need is stamps, and I'm ready to go.
[00:26:20] because I've done this, and I think, you're all going to bless the woman that bore me when I get through with this, how fast I go. So, I hit stamps, and it says, you know, four to a hundred. I think,
[00:26:35] I don't want to wait in this line again. Dial up a hundred stamps, because, you know, they just zip out in those pages of 10 or 20 that just come right down there in the kiosk, and I get my credit
[00:26:46] card, and it says something that I ignore, something like, you know, we only have four-inch stamps available. Four, that's a big, I don't know what that is. So continue. Have you done this?
[00:27:00] So I just ordered the maximum number of stamps. Everybody waiting, a hundred stamps. And that four-inch deal is like this. And it does, I won't do the whole thing, but it's like a, it was like
[00:27:13] an old dot matrix printer or something. You just saw the scan, and it makes a lot of noise and drops out one stamp. They're coming out one at a time. That's what it meant. They don't have the
[00:27:31] sheets. They just have the big four. I am feeling really low. I wait what seems like forever until I finally just nonchalantly just grab a pile of them, hoping that we're about there. I count out
[00:27:45] 12. I wait a few more minutes and grab, and it's just eight more. It's just seemed, I can see everyone. And I am, I was, pride comes before a fall. I was ready. So, I start thinking of
[00:27:59] options. The best option I have is to turn, well, I already turned around. I said, I'm sorry, they're only printing one at a time. And my next step was going to be to just leave
[00:28:11] and explained to everyone, I'm sorry, this is going to be about 15 minutes. The good news is just take the stamps. Just as they come out, just take the stamps when they come. But then I think,
[00:28:25] well, then it's going to get the credit card still in there and it's going to say, continue, are you done? And I do think, how much postage could somebody really buy in one day on my credit
[00:28:37] card. It might just be worth it to walk out here. But I don't, and I come up with my second plan, which is to hit every possible button that's there until finally something says, do you wish to cancel? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. So I shrunk out of there with 38 stamps.
[00:28:58] It took about nine minutes to get my 38 stamps and felt so ashamed. All the people that I kept waiting. And what would it have been for a hundred stamps? Oh, I don't want to know.
[00:29:15] It felt so long. It would have been 15 very, very long minutes at 10 seconds a stamp. I would not have been making friends and influencing people. I would have said, no, I'm not Christ's covenant.
[00:29:27] No, I'm a pastor at First Baptist or something or other. But you can relate because you don't like to wait. I don't like to wait. It's not one of my strong suits. Patience in lines. Waiting,
[00:29:47] waiting, waiting. And we're so spoiled because our waiting is you miss the cycle at the light two minutes. Worst case scenario at the post office, 20 minutes. DMV a day. But you just, you're waiting, you're waiting, you're waiting. We can't fathom this kind of waiting.
[00:30:11] This must have seemed to them like wishful thinking for centuries through thousands of years, millions of prayers, and not to make light at all of the tears, the heartache, the wondering, the wandering they must have thought. As some of you may really deep down think about your pain,
[00:30:34] and your sorrow, and whether Christ is coming, and you think he will not really come because for 2,000 years, many of them must have thought that until one day he did. And here is the prophet
[00:30:50] to announce the coming of this child, to say after all of those journeys, the exodus and slavery and bondage and captivity and ups and lots of downs. Now, finally, the prophet will come.
[00:31:09] So, first the promise, then Zechariah turns his attention to the prophet, the one who will announce the days of waiting are over. Verse 76, you, child, will be called the prophet of the most high. He is a special child. He's a prophet. He will give knowledge of salvation. He will
[00:31:29] announce the good news of forgiveness because the hope is not ultimately in this child from Elizabeth and Zachariah, but in the one that their child will announce. The whole prophetic tradition is brought into the present moment, finding its fulfillment in John and then ultimately
[00:31:50] in Jesus, the completion. So, I do not believe in more prophets to come or a quorum of prophets, or a further prophet in Muhammad.
[00:32:04] Here is the fullness and the finality of the prophetic tradition.
[00:32:11] John to announce the prophet Christ.
[00:32:16] The son of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings, Malachi 4.2.
[00:32:21] There's an illusion there in verse 78.
[00:32:26] The sunrise shall visit us from on high.
[00:32:29] This kind visitation is according to the Lord's mercy, his tender mercy.
[00:32:40] It translates there, splunkna, sometimes translated elsewhere in the New Testament as the bowels of Christ.
[00:32:49] In your innermost being, that feeling affecting part, his tender mercies, the bowels of His mercy. For the people sitting in darkness, He has sent them light. God loves to send light. Are you willing to see it? What happens if somebody wakes you up early in the
[00:33:13] morning, and at this time, in the winter months, it's still dark if you get up at almost seven.
[00:33:19] and somebody flips on all of the lights, what do you want to do? You want to bury your head under the covers. It's too bright. Some of you may be doing that with the light of God's glory
[00:33:31] or with His convicting grace in your life. Or even at this Christmas season, you're almost close to taking Christ really, really seriously, more seriously than you ever have. And the light is making you a little uncomfortable, walk into the light. Enjoy the light. You know, yesterday
[00:33:53] was one of those beautiful southern winter days. It was high in the mid-50s. You're not sure if I go out, do I need jeans and boots? Do I need a sweatshirt if I'm going to go on a run? Do I have
[00:34:08] shorts and a t-shirt? But it's one of those days, if you were there in the early afternoon, where it's just cold enough. If you're in the shade, you're a little chilly. And yet to stand
[00:34:21] in the sun, it's not one of those hot blistering days. Humidity, you need the shade. It's one of those crisp wintry kind of days, 50 degrees. You want every bit of warmth of the sun. Just I'll
[00:34:40] take all of it. You know, lay down on your driveway and just take all of the sun's rays you can get. Why? Because it's just a little cold outside. When it's cold is when you need all the
[00:34:55] sun you can get to soak it up, to take in the light. We see in this family, Elizabeth, Zachariah, John, some of the first and best theologians for the Christ. We saw Elizabeth in some ways the
[00:35:14] first Trinitarian theologian. She's filled with the Spirit. She recognizes Mary is carrying the Lord, the Messiah, the Son of God, that Mary is blessed because she believes the word that was spoken to her from God the Father. Then we have John leaping for joy in the presence of the Lord
[00:35:32] like dancing, like David dancing before the ark? Why did David dance? Because the presence of God was in his midst, and so he couldn't help but rejoice. And so John dances in the womb as God's presence is there. And here Zachariah professes that
[00:35:52] this child will be the servant of the Most High, of God the Father, and he will prepare the way for the Lord." Kuriu. Jesus is called Lord in verse 43.
[00:36:04] The prophecy from Malachi was that the Lord would come to his temple.
[00:36:08] From Isaiah 40, prepare the way for the Lord, a highway for our God.
[00:36:13] The Lord who would come is none other than God himself.
[00:36:20] Elizabeth sees it. John will announce it. Zachariah here sings of it.
[00:36:29] Zechariah not only offers us this song, but I want you to think about this in closing.
[00:36:37] He is a parable for Israel and for us.
[00:36:43] We saw a few weeks ago this rich theological imagery.
[00:36:48] Why would Zechariah's punishment be the absence of a voice?
[00:36:55] It is to mirror that 400 years of prophetic silence from God.
[00:37:01] Just as the prophetic word had been silenced, so now Zechariah will be silent.
[00:37:07] When does he finally speak again?
[00:37:09] When the voice, John, has been born.
[00:37:13] When that voice comes into the world, Zechariah's voice returns.
[00:37:19] And what the silence to the voice, and what does the voice do?
[00:37:23] He prepares the way for the word.
[00:37:28] Zechariah knows that this one who has come, among those born of women, there will be no one greater, Jesus himself says, because he will not only point to one to come, but he will physically be
[00:37:44] able to say right there, look at him, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
[00:37:53] And so God opens his mouth again, just as by the voice of John, he will warn the people again, calling them to repentance.
[00:38:01] Another chance for Zechariah and another chance for Israel.
[00:38:05] And here's the lesson, another chance for you.
[00:38:09] Zechariah models what real repentance looks like.
[00:38:13] He made a mistake, a moment of incredulity, of doubt, and he learned from it.
[00:38:20] And on the other side, they're obedient, they circumcise their child, He doesn't come away from the Lord's discipline with a sullen spirit. He's not bitter.
[00:38:30] I think many of us, maybe even my own cranky heart, my first words might have been after nine months of God-imposed silence, might have been a little complaining, a little groaning, maybe defending myself. Let me explain what happened. Instead, with Zechariah, as soon as
[00:38:53] he can speak. The only thing on his mind is to bless God. This in miniature is the story of Israel. They had another opportunity to return. That's what John's message would be about, to prepare the way. How are you prepared? Repent. Most of them, sadly, would fail to recognize the
[00:39:17] one that he was preparing the way for. The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know
[00:39:33] him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. I hope that's not you.
[00:39:44] Now, that's talking about his own Jewish people, but you think of all of the privileges we have in a place like Charlotte, in a place like Christ's Covenant, a good Bible denomination like the PCA, a part of the country that still has lots of Christians and churches
[00:40:01] to his own people. Will you receive him? What have you done with the Lord's second chance, third chance, 400th chance? Zechariah blew it in his moment. Some of you can look back on this week
[00:40:20] or you feel like your whole life has been an episode of failing the moment God gives you.
[00:40:26] Well, He gives you now another moment. He's opening His mouth through this Word speaking to you. Do you have ears to listen? Because Zechariah announces this amazing good news to give knowledge of salvation to His people in the forgiveness of their sins. Because the oath
[00:40:52] He swore to our father Abraham, He will not forget. Here's the gospel. God always remembers His covenant, and in Christ, He will forget your sins. That's the good news of Christmas, knowing what God remembers and knowing what God forgets. Forgiveness is enjoying the light
[00:41:19] that God has provided for you in Christ, only in Christ. You don't want to go out on a winter day and put yourself in the bitter wind. Some of you are. You don't go out on a winter's day and go
[00:41:35] hide in the shade. You say, give me some sun, some light, some warmth. That's what it's like to know Jesus. That's what it's like to be forgiven. That's what it's like to know that He came and He is coming again. But to all who did receive Him, who believed in His name,
[00:41:55] He gave the right to become children of God who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, may you do this work of
[00:42:09] light and life for us. We pray that we would not be hard of hearing, that we would be like Zachariah, full of faith and obedience and contrition, and do this work in our midst by your word and your spirit that we may lift up our heads and be ready to welcome the Savior in.
[00:42:34] In Jesus we pray. Amen.