Immanuel Sermon Audio
Luke 1:57-80
We'll take your Bible out and find the Gospel of Luke. You can also take out your bulletin and there is an outline if you like to follow along in the outline. Our passage is Luke chapter 1 verse 57 to 80. Our Sunday morning series is just to study through the Gospel of Luke. We started in chapter 1 verse 1. We're going to go all the way through the end of the book. It's a long book and the theme verse that we're going to talk about every week in this series is Luke 19-10 and that's it right there up on the screen. The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost and our passage this morning fits perfectly with that theme verse and I'm going to begin by giving you the big idea. This is up at the top on your outline if you're following along there. Here's the big idea of this passage. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit worked through ordinary people to resume and to fulfill Old Testament prophecy. Father, Son, and Spirit worked together through ordinary people to, number one, resume Old Testament prophecy and more importantly, most importantly, to fulfill Old Testament prophecy. The story we're about to read is about Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth and their son John and some of the people involved in that story. Notice that none of their names are in the big idea because while the story centers on them, the real point of the story is not try to be more like Zechariah, try to be more like Elizabeth, try to be more like John. The point of the story is to see what the triune God, Father, Son, and Spirit did to put this plan of salvation into motion where the Son of Man came to earth to seek and to save the lost. This is a passage about what God has done to resume and to fulfill Old Testament prophecy. Before we read this passage and we're going to begin in Luke 1.57, just remember that for 400 years at the time of this story, for 400 years there has been no prophet in Israel. Israel was used to having prophets since the very beginning when Moses was the first prophet who spoke for God to the people and after Moses there was others who came along and you remember some of them Elijah and Elisha and maybe you remember some of the major prophets who wrote books, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, God's people always had prophets but then for 400 years there was no prophet. There was nobody speaking directly for God to the people. There was nobody rebuking sin explicitly on God's behalf. There was nobody giving hope expressly from God to the people, 400 years of silence from God. There was important things that happened during this period of time. There were great military leaders. You can read about the Maccabees and the revolt that they led. So there was great military leaders and there were great spiritual things that happened. The first Hanukkah happened during this 400-year window of silence but for four centuries, that's a long time, four centuries, no one speaking to the people directly from God. And then in the events that we're studying on Sunday morning in the early chapters of Luke's Gospel, God began to do something. He began to resume Old Testament prophecy and work to bring it to fulfillment. The words that we're going to read from Zechariah are technically the last Old Testament prophecy about Jesus before Jesus was born. There's some other things that are going to be said about Jesus. We're going to study them in the Gospel of Luke but they are said after Jesus is born. This is the last word inspired by God's spirit before the birth of Jesus. And so we're going to begin this morning by reading the passage. It starts in Luke chapter 1, verse 57, you follow along as I read the words of God. Scripture says this, "Now the time came for Elizabeth to give birth and she bore a son and her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown great mercy to her and they rejoiced with her. And on the eighth day they came to circumcise the child and they would have called him Zechariah after his father but his mother answered, "No, he shall be called John." And they said to her, "None of your relatives is called by this name and they made signs to his father, inquiring what he wanted him to be called and he asked for a writing tablet and wrote, "His name is John." And they all wondered. And immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue was 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 and all who heard them laid them up in their hearts saying, "What then will this child be for the hand of the Lord was with him?" In his father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and he prophesied saying, "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people 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 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 and holiness and righteousness before him all our days. 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 of the tender mercy of our God whereby the sun shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death to guide our feet into the way of peace. And the child grew and he became strong in spirit and he was in the wilderness until the day of his public appearance to Israel. Let's pray. Father, we are grateful for the Bible and we believe that it's true. We believe the words that we have just read are your words and our prayer this morning is that as your spirit inspired these words many, many years ago that your spirit would take them and apply them to our heart that you would illuminate our minds to understand and to respond in a way that would bring you glory. We have no other king but Jesus and he is better than anything that this world has to offer. And this morning we want to see Jesus in these verses and so that's our prayer and we pray it in Jesus' name, amen. Last week we looked at the first of four songs in the early chapters of Luke's Gospel. We looked at Mary's Magnificant. This morning the song we just read is Zechariah's Benedictus. In the coming weeks we will talk about the glorious sung by the angels in Simeon's Nuke Demetis. But we talked about last week in Mary's song that Mary was celebrating something exciting in her life and she was doing it in a way that most of us don't celebrate. She bursts into Elizabeth's house and she starts singing a song. And most of us don't do that. We get excited about lots of things but we don't just break into chorus every time we're celebrating something. And we talked last week that maybe it wasn't entirely spontaneous on Mary's behalf. She comes in, she's just taken a journey, a mini miles, maybe 50, 75, maybe over a hundred mile journey and she's done that probably on foot. Maybe she had an animal to ride, a donkey or a cult of some kind. But she's taken a long journey. She's been thinking about everything that Gabriel said to her. We know from scripture that she was a pious woman, a God-fearing woman. She's thinking about what she knows from the Old Testament. She's trying to put all these different pieces together and she gets into the presence of Elizabeth and she breaks out into this song. And it's an overflow of what Gabriel had told her and what she knew from the Old Testament. I can't show you in the text but my hunch is, my personal guess is that on this long journey, she's sort of putting this song together and she's fitting all these pieces together in her mind and she gets into the presence of Elizabeth and then it overflows. I think the same thing happened with Zechariah. Most of us again do not break out into song to celebrate something exciting in our lives but that's exactly what Zechariah did. And I want you to remember what the last few months of Zechariah's life had been like. About nine months earlier, he had gone into the temple to pray and to offer incense. It was a high privilege, one that many of the priests in Israel would have never got to do. And he goes into the presence of God and he's praying and Gabriel appears to Zechariah and he says to him, "Your prayers have been heard. Your prayers have been answered. Your wife, Elizabeth, will have a son." And you remember Zechariah's response? He sort of chuckled. He sort of laughed to himself and said, "Really? Because we've been trying this for a long time and nothing's happened and we're old. We're advanced in years. We've never been able to have children and now all of a sudden you're telling me in our old age we're going to have a son." And his exact words in Luke 1, 18 are, "How shall I know this?" And the angel says, "This is going to happen and his response is really, prove it." And Gabriel says to him and I'm paraphrasing, "You want me to prove it? I'll prove it to you." For nine months, you're not going to talk, silence. You read in Luke 1, 20 that he would not be able to talk. You read in Luke 1, 62 as they're making these signs to him that apparently he wasn't able to hear either. You could have just asked him, "What do you want your son to be named?" And he could have written it down. Instead, they make some sort of goofy sign to him and he writes down on the tablet, his name is John. Now if you were Zechariah and for nine months you can't speak and you can't hear, what do you do? You do a lot of thinking and you think, "Maybe I shouldn't have asked Gabriel that question." Maybe I should have taken the angel at his word and believed what God said and you do more thinking about, "I'm going to have a son." And I'm supposed to name him John and Gabriel said that he was going to do these things and we know that Zechariah and Elizabeth, like Mary, were God-fearing people. They loved the Lord. They served the Lord. They knew the Old Testament and so here's Zechariah for nine months. He can't communicate with the outside world almost at all and he's just sort of mulling this over in his head, thinking, nine months, putting all these pieces together. The angel came. I'm going to have a son. He's supposed to be the prophet. He's going to prepare the way and he's fitting all this together in his mind. And then after 275-ish days of nothing, he gets to speak. He writes down on the tablet, his name is John, his ears are opened, his vocal cords are loosed. He gets to say something and my question is if you were Zechariah, what would you say? Nine months, you would sing. What would you say? I think some of us might complain and we would do it in sort of a backhanded way and we would say, "Oh, it's so good to be able to talk again. I've missed being able to hear you guys. I've missed being able to say what's on my mind." Oh, this has been torture, nine months. I haven't been able to say anything and we would sort of start with that sort of overflow. Or could you blame Zechariah if he talked first about his son? He'd wanted a son his entire life and now in his old age, miraculously, God has given him a son and he could have just burst into this stuff about John. He just named him writing it down on the tablet. He could have said, "Oh, look at him. He looks like me. I've got your nose." Oh, isn't he the greatest but he doesn't do any of that. There's no complaint that God took his speech for nine months. There's not even any focus on John and his excitement. All of his attention is directed where? To God and praise. His tongue was loosed and he spoke blessing God. In the first words out of his mouth were this, "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people." That leads us to the first thing you need to take away from this song of Zechariah. The idea is this. God has come to redeem his people. God has come to redeem his people, verse 68 to 70. Here's the key words. If you're just looking in the text and you're looking at verse 68 down to 70, notice these words, "God visited, redeemed salvation from the house of his servant David as he spoke by the mouth of his prophets." God has visited and redeemed his people to save them from the house of David. Was Zechariah from the house of David? It's from the house of Levi. He's a priest. He's not talking about his family. He's talking about somebody else's family, just as the prophets have spoke from a vault. I don't want you to miss the magnitude of this, and quite honestly, I don't want you to miss the awkwardness of this. Here's Zechariah. He's old, always wanted a son. His wife gives birth to a healthy baby boy, and it's time for his mouth to be opened. He's going to break out in song. He's not complaining. That's good. But he's not talking about his son. He's talking about somebody else's son. He's singing about someone else's baby. This is like if you could put yourself in the waiting room of the maternity ward at the hospital, and you're waiting there with all the excited people and everyone sort of on the edge of their seat. Who's going to come out next? And you hear the door open down the hallway, and whoo-hoo! Somebody comes running down the hall, and this new dad, first-time dad comes busting into the waiting room, and he says, "I've got great news! The lady across the hall in 215 is about to have a baby. Let's sing about it!" And you would walk up to the guy, and you would grab him by the shirt colors, and you say, "But what about your wife? What about your son? What about your daughter? What about your baby? Oh, no, no, no, no. It's much more exciting over in 214. You've got to come see what's happening. It wouldn't make sense to us. That's exactly what Zechariah is doing. His wife just has a baby. He breaks out in the song about his nephew. But nine months of silence were good for him. As he thought about what Gabriel said, is he put together the pieces that he knew from the Old Testament, and he realized who his nephew was. He was excited to have a son, and he was excited about the ministry and the purpose and the job that his son was going to have, but he was most excited about God coming to redeem his people. And so he breaks out in song, not about John the Baptist, but about his cousin Jesus. And he's singing about the fact that God has come to redeem his people. Once you think about that word "redeem," that's a word that in our popular usage today means the exact opposite of what it means in the Bible. And so when you read that God has come to redeem his people, that can be a confusing thing for some of us. So think with me about how we use the word "redeem." We talk about people redeeming themselves. And what we mean is you need to do something to make up for a mistake. You need to do something to make up for your error. And a lot of times we talk about it in the arena of sports. And so just follow me in a totally hypothetical sports scenario. Just imagine with me that the Dallas Cowboys football team had a quarterback. To have this quarterback, and he's really good, he's spectacular at times. He just knocks your socks off, does things you can't believe. But just hypothetically speaking, imagine that in the big game, in the big moment, he can't deliver. I know this is a stretch for you, but just stay with me. Imagine that this is real life. He just chokes, he can't deliver in the big game, he can't win the big one, he can't get over the hump, he just can't do it. And just when you think he has invented a new, I'm making this up of course, but just imagine that when you think he has now invented the last way to lose a football game, no, he surprises you. And he says, here's another way you can lose a football game. Imagine that this is real life. And the season ends, and you're a Cowboys fan like me, and so you have tried all year not to get your hopes up, but they got up at the end of the year and you come down to that last game and you say, oh, we need as one win and we're in the playoffs, just one win and we're in. And of course your heart is broken, hypothetically speaking, just imaginary. And you turn on the TV that evening and you're dejected and you watch SportsCenter and they say, well, another disappointment for the Cowboys, maybe next year, this quarterback can redeem himself. And then you sort of make it through the off season and you get excited about the draft and training camp and the first games coming in the fall and you think maybe this is our year, maybe we can stay healthy, maybe our quarterback, maybe, maybe, maybe, and you're watching SportsCenter and they say, is this the year that this person redeems himself? And you get through the end of the season, you get to the big game again and you say, it could be a time of redemption. And all along the way, what the guys on SportsCenter mean is, can he do something to shake off these past mistakes? Can he do something, pulling himself up by his bootstraps to make a tournament or to make payment or to make things right when he's blown it in the past? You see, we talk about redemption as something we do. I need to redeem myself. That's the exact opposite of what we're talking about in the Bible. In the Bible, you cannot redeem yourself. The word literally means in the text to release by making a payment, to set free by offering a price and it's a price that you can't pay and it's a price that I can't pay. That's the whole point of the Gospel of Luke, Luke 19, 10. The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. You're lost and you can't do a thing about it. Jesus has come to save you. You can't redeem yourself. He has come to redeem you. Look at this verse from 1 Peter. Peter says, "Knowing that you were ransomed, you were redeemed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ." That's the story of the Bible from beginning to end, that God does what we could never do for ourselves. That God takes action through His Son to purchase us back, to buy us back, to redeem us. You can't redeem yourself. It's something that only Jesus Christ can do for you. And way back here in Luke chapter 1, after nine months of not being able to say or hear a thing, Zechariah's got all the pieces put together and he's saying God is coming and He is coming to redeem us. Here's the second thing you need to see. God's salvation leads to our service. Redemption leads to our service, verse 71 down to 75. The climax comes as Zechariah sings about this redemption in verse 74. He says, "That we, being delivered, being redeemed from the hand of our enemies, might serve Him without fear in holiness and righteousness before Him all our days." In other words, God is doing all of these things so that we might serve Him. Now listen, because you can go completely off the tracks at this point. You can leave Christianity entirely at this spot. The order matters. First God redeems you, then you respond with service. And because of the sin in our hearts, we are bent to try to flip those two and get them backwards. They will listen, I need to have a relationship with Jesus, but first I need to clean up some stuff. I need to do this and I need to take care of this and I need to do this. And once I make myself good enough, once I redeem myself, then I'll come to Jesus Christ. And what Zechariah is singing about is the biblical reality that you can't redeem yourself. You can't save yourself and it's God's redemption, God's salvation that leads to your service. It's always been this way, Old Testament, New Testament, it doesn't matter. Think about the defining moment of the Old Testament, Moses and Israel and Egypt, which came first, deliverance in the Exodus or the Ten Commandments. The Exodus, first I'm going to bring you out, first I'm going to deliver you, first I'm going to redeem you, then I'm going to show you how you serve me. I'm not bringing you out because you have served me so faithfully, in fact, you haven't. And I know that going forward you're not going to. But I am first redeeming you and then I'm calling you to respond with service. Look at the New Testament passages that we're going to put up on the screen. First one is from 1 Corinthians. You are not your own, you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. The order matters. You are not your own, you were bought, you were redeemed with a price, not gold or silver, but the blood of Jesus Christ. As a result of that, now you glorify God in your body. Look at the other passage that we have from Ephesians 2. For by grace you have been saved through faith and it's not your own doing. You haven't redeemed yourself. It's the gift of God. It's not a result of work so that no one may boast for we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works. You're not saved by your good works, you're saved for your good works. And that's exactly what Zechariah is singing about here. You have redeemed us. Not just so that we can kick back and do whatever we want, but that we can give ourselves in service to you for the rest of our lives. So he sings about redemption, about God coming to redeem his people. He acknowledges that God redeems us to serve him and the third idea is this, salvation involves the forgiveness of sins. That may sound really elementary when you fill in the blank. You may think, duh, why do we need to fill that? Why make a point of this? It's very, very important. Salvation involves the forgiveness of sins. Verse 76 to 79, he actually now in verse 76 begins to talk about his own son, John, and he says, you, child, John, you will be the prophet of the Most High. You will go before the Lord to prepare his ways to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins. Knowledge of salvation in the forgiveness of sins because of the tender mercy of God whereby the sunrise will visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death to guide our feet into the way of peace. Can I tell you why, John, the Baptist was so polarizing? It was not because he talked about salvation. You can go to any church, any synagogue, any mosque, any temple, any religious building on the planet, and you can hear somebody stand up and talk about salvation. We're all fine with salvation. We all want to be saved. Do you want to be saved? Or not to be saved? Yeah, I think I'd like to be saved. Everyone's talking about salvation, but what John is talking about is salvation from the forgiveness of sins. And as John talked about that, it polarized people. Some people were cut in the heart and they came and they said, I need to be baptized, confessing my sin. I need my sin forgiven. I need to get ready for the Messiah who's coming. And other people listened to John and they were outraged and they said, who are you to talk about my sin? We're not interested in that kind of salvation. We're more interested in political salvation. We're more interested in military salvation. We're more interested in national salvation. We're more interested in racial salvation. For the forgiveness of sins, we've got bigger fish to fry here, John, and people were polarized. Are we any different? Are we more concerned with salvation from sin or salvation from circumstances? I think our prayers in the silence of our own heart would tell the truth about us. I think our Facebook posts would tell the truth about us. What's more burning on your heart that you're saved from that other political party? That you're saved from a dead-end job? That you're saved from a bad marriage? That you're saved from financial ruin? What are you more concerned about? Salvation from sin or salvation from circumstance? Because many of the people who listened to John as he talked about salvation through the forgiveness of sins, they weren't buying what he was selling and weren't interested. That's why Jesus was so polarizing. They were so excited for him to march into Jerusalem but when he refused to be the kind of king they wanted, they backed off. They didn't just back off, they hung him on a cross. That's a polarizing message. What are you more concerned about? God saving you from your circumstances or God saving you from yourself? John is talking about salvation through the forgiveness of sins. Now I say that and you may be tempted to leave and say, "Well, preacher's saved. God doesn't care about my circumstances. I'm not supposed to pray about this, I'm not supposed to pray, but what am I supposed to pray about?" That's not what I'm saying. God cares about your circumstances, He cares about every detail of your life. Bible says bring all your troubles, all your requests, all your concerns to Him because He cares for you. Here's what I am saying. The biggest problem you have in your life is not out there, it's in here. And the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost, not just from their circumstances but from themselves. And so John stands up as the prophet of the Most High and he preaches about salvation in the forgiveness of sins and he talks about the mercy of God. He talks about light shining into the darkness and he talks about finding peace. How do we respond? How do we respond to Jesus in light of this spirit inspired song known as the Benedictus? Two very, very simple ideas that I don't need to say much about. Number one, believe in the once promised, now fulfilled work of Jesus. Everything Zechariah is singing about is pointing us forward to Jesus who came to die on the cross, to shed his blood, to purchase us and to redeem us. Believe that and believe that he did it for you. Number two, commit to holy righteous service all our days. The order is vitally important. If you flip one and two at the end of this outline, you have missed the station completely. First, you believe in the promised and finished and fulfilled work of Jesus Christ who came to seek and to save the lost. And then, and only then, you give yourself to follow Jesus Christ for the rest of your days. I don't care who you are in this room. I don't care how old you are or how young you are. I don't care how many Sundays you have sat through a church service a lot like this one, how many songs you have sung in church, how many prayers you have prayed. I don't care if you met Jesus last century, if you met him last week or if you met him this morning for the very first time. This is how every person in the room ought to respond. I believe that Jesus Christ came to seek and to save the lost, that he came to redeem me. And as a consequence, as a result on the flip side of that, I'm giving my life and service to him. I want to pray for you if you would bow. Father, we are grateful for Your Word. We're grateful that Your Spirit inspired this song that we have studied this morning. We're blessed to have the opportunity to study it and to listen to You and to sit under the authority of Your Word. And our prayer is simple this morning that You would give us faith to believe the truth about Jesus. Father, we sang earlier, make our hearts believe the truth about Jesus, that He died for sinners, that He came to seek and save the lost, that He is better than anything bad or anything good that this world has to offer. Father, I pray for those who are here who have never put their faith in Jesus. Maybe they're trying to redeem themselves, maybe they're trying to make up for their mistakes, to cover their sins. Father, I pray that they would simply come to You confessing their sin and trusting in Jesus today. Father, for those of us who believe the truth about Jesus, we want to, this morning right now, recommit ourselves to following Jesus. And we pray the exact same prayer, Father, we pray that You would help us to hold on in faith to the truth about Jesus, and that by Your grace, by the power of Your Spirit, that we would give ourselves in service to You. Father, we want to sing together, we want to sing about Jesus and His worthiness and His greatness and His goodness, and Father, as we sing together, we pray that You would receive our praise. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.