Immanuel Sermon Audio
Luke 1:5-38
If you have your Bible this morning, take it out and find the gospel of Luke. Last week we started a new Sunday morning sermon series in the gospel of Luke. The title of this series is "The Son of Man Came to Seek and to Save the Lost." And that comes from the theme verse of the gospel of Luke, Luke 19-10, that simply says "The Son of Man Came to Seek and to Save the Lost." And our passage this morning fits perfectly with that theme. I want to begin by just giving you the big idea up front. And so if you like to follow along on the outline that's in the bulletin, you will find this up at the top. This is the big idea of our passage this morning. Jesus coming to seek and save the lost was a work of the Trinitarian God. Christians believe in the Trinity, that means that when we look at the Bible we see very clearly that there is only one God. We also see that the Father is recognized as God. We see the Son is recognized as God and we see the Holy Spirit recognized as God. And so we believe that there is one God, three persons, we don't really understand that. We can't really wrap our arms all the way around it, but we believe it because that's what we find in the Bible. And the big idea of the passage we're going to look at this morning, Luke 1, verse 5-38, is simply that Jesus' mission to come and to seek and save the lost was a work of the Trinitarian God. The stories we're going to read are probably familiar to many of you, and it's a pretty simple story. It involves the angel Gabriel, and it involves an old man. And it involves an old childless couple, Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth. It involves a young peasant girl named Mary, and it mentions Jesus. And in all of this story I want to be very, very clear that this is a story about God. It would be so easy to stand up and to preach a sermon about, well here's how Zechariah experienced this. Here's how Elizabeth experienced this, and here's how Mary experienced this, but it's not a story about Mary, it's not a story about Elizabeth, it's not a story about Zechariah or John the Baptist. This is a story about God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and what the Trinitarian God has done to send the Son to seek and to save the lost. And so I just want to, at the outset, before we even read the passage, just get this clear in our minds. This is not a story about you should be more like Zechariah or less like Zechariah. You should be more like Mary or less like Mary. This is a story that says this is what God has done to save you. And in light of what God has done to save you, there will be a response that you need to make at the end of this sermon. So if you have your Bible, take it out. Luke chapter 1, beginning in verse 5, we're going to read all the way to verse 38, so you follow along as I read. Scripture says this, "In the days of Herod, King of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah of the division of Abijah, and he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth, and they were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commands and statutes of the Lord. But they had no child because Elizabeth was barren, and both were advanced in years. Now while he was serving his priest before God, when his division was on duty, according to the custom of the priesthood, he was chosen by lot to enter the temple of the Lord and to burn incense. And the whole multitude of the people were praying outside at the hour of incense, and there appeared to him an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense. And Zechariah was troubled when he saw him, and fear fell upon him. But the angel said to him, "Do not be afraid Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John. And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great before the Lord, and he must not drink wine or strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother's womb, and he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go before him, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, in the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared." And Zechariah said to the angel, "How shall I know this, for I am old and my wife is advanced in years." And the angel answered him, "I am Gabriel, I stand in the presence of God, and I was sent to speak to you and bring you this good news, and behold, you will be silent and unable to speak until the day that these things take place, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time." And the people were waiting for Zechariah, and they were wondering at his delay in the temple, and when he came out, he was unable to speak to them, and they realized that he had seen a vision in the temple, and he kept making signs to them and remained mute, and when his time of service was ended, he went to his home. After these days, his wife Elizabeth conceived, for five months, she kept herself hidden, saying, "Thus the Lord is done for me in the days when he looked on me to take away my reproach among people." In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin, betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, or the house of David, and the virgin's name was Mary. And he came to her and said, "Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you," but she was greatly troubled at the saying and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be, and the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God, and behold you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great, and will be called son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end." And Mary said to the angel, "How will this be since I am a virgin?" And the angel answered her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, the power of the Most High will overshadow you, therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God." And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called Baron, for nothing will be impossible with God. And Mary said, "Behold, I am the servant of the Lord, let it be to me according to your Word, and the angel departed from her." Let's pray. Father, we're grateful for the Bible, and we are grateful for the Gospel of Luke. We pray this morning that you would give us eyes to see the truth, Father, that we would understand more clearly this morning exactly what you have done on our behalf, that we wouldn't see this as a story about priests, women without children, people who are engaged to be married. We would see this as your story about what you have done, about how you have intervened into our lives, into our hopelessness, into our desperation, and Father, we pray that by your grace we would respond this morning in a way that brings you honor and brings you glory. We ask it all in Jesus' name, amen. First question, let's ask is this, what can I learn? What can we learn from the interaction between Zechariah and Gabriel? What can we learn from this dialogue and this interaction between Zechariah and Gabriel? Three ideas. God doesn't always use suffering as punishment. God does not always use suffering as punishment. Now I want you to think about Zechariah, and I want you to think about Elizabeth, and I want you to think about the fact that they knew firsthand the pain of infertility. They desperately wanted to have children, and they weren't able to do it year after year after year. You know that pain, personally, some of you know that pain through family members, brothers, sisters, or maybe your own children. Some of you know the frustration and the anxiety and the questions that come along with that. Maybe this isn't your particular lot of suffering, but maybe you know what it is to suffer. And I want you to think about Zechariah and Elizabeth. At some point in time, the light bulb came on and they sort of had this glimpse of what God was doing in their life. But for year after year after year after year they had no idea what God was up to in their life. And they wondered, and they questioned. And maybe at some point they even ran out of hope saying you know what this point is just not going to happen, it's just not in the cards, it's just not God's will. And if they're anything like me and they're anything like you, they probably questioned themselves and said what did we do to deserve this? What is God trying to teach us in this? What are we not paying attention to? What do we need to change in our lives? What is God trying to get across to us? And in none of it was God punishing this couple, in none of it. In just the right time he enabled this older woman to conceive and she bore a son and they named him John. But in none of the years and the decades before was God punishing them. And here's the beauty of their situation. They did not allow their suffering to drive them away from God and how many of us do that? We suffer, we struggle, we don't understand, we question, we doubt. And as a result we walk away from God and we say well God must be displeased with me. He must be angry with me. He must be trying to get even with me for something. And we allow our suffering on this earth to separate us from a close relationship with God. Elizabeth did not do that, he served faithfully as a priest. They worshiped the Lord regularly and consistently. And they continued to hope in God even though their lot in life was unpleasant in some ways. Listen, I don't have to tell you that you're going to suffer. In life you will suffer. And some of the suffering in your life will be a result of your own stupid decisions. And some of the suffering in your life will be the result of other people's stupid decisions. Some of the suffering that you experience in this life will just be a consequence of the fact that this world has fallen and broken. Not necessarily a decision that anybody made or didn't make. And in all of it understand that suffering does not necessarily mean that God is punishing you. That's the mistake Job's friends made. They came and they said you're suffering, God must be trying to get something across to you, you must need to repent, you must need to change that wasn't the point in any of it. And it wasn't the point in Job's life, it wasn't the point in Zechariah's life or Elizabeth's life. Number two, understand this, God is always worthy of our trust. Always worthy of our trust. Even when you're suffering and even when you have questions and doubts about what's happening in your life, and we read about Zechariah and he goes into the temple and he's burning the incense and he's offering his prayers as he does this as the priest, he was supposed to pray specifically for the redemption of Israel and so we assume as a righteous man that he was doing that as a man, as a follower of Yahweh, he was also allowed to pray for whatever was on his heart. I don't think it's too far of a stretch of the imagination to pray that he, or to think that he prayed for his wife and her barrenness and a child and that whole situation. So he's there and he's praying and Gabriel comes and Gabriel says, "Hey, your prayers have been heard. Good news. Your wife will conceive and she's going to give birth to a son and you're going to name him John and he's going to be a big deal. He is going to be great before the Lord." And when you read the story about Zechariah, it's obvious that yes, he questioned what was about to happen, but he questioned it out of a sense of doubt. He questioned with a lack of faith. He was incredulous when he heard what was going to happen in his life. And Gabriel rebukes him saying, "You did not believe my word." He doesn't get mad at him for questioning. What he says is, "You did not believe," regardless of the promise that God is speaking into your life and regardless of your circumstances, God is always worthy of your trust. And there will be times in your life where God's promises are hard to believe. There will be times in your life where you struggle with sin and you will wonder whether or not God really will forgive you. If you confess your sin again for the thousandth time, is he really going to cleanse me and make me clean and make me new? I don't know if I can believe that. Some of you are going to face circumstances and situations where you say, "I don't know that I believe God's really going to provide in this situation." Some of you may face circumstances in your life where you say, "I don't feel like God is with me." And someone will say, "But Jesus promised to be with you," and you may say, "I don't feel it. I don't believe it." Whatever the promise, however far fetched it may seem, whatever your circumstance, God is always worthy of our trust. You don't have to understand. You don't have to be able to put all the puzzle pieces together here on this earth. But God, in who He is, is always worthy of your trust. One last idea as you think about Zechariah and Gabriel is this, God's work was sovereignly planned and executed, sovereignly planned and executed. Verse 9 in Luke chapter 1 says that Zechariah's division was on duty and as was the custom he was chosen by Lot to enter. Most of the scholars I read this week said that there were anywhere in Zechariah's day, anywhere from 18,000 to 20,000 priests in Israel. And this was a duty or a privilege or a responsibility that would come up when your group was on duty and only one of your group would be chosen by Lot at random in a lottery to go in and to offer this incense and to make this prayer. Most of these priests would never get to do this in their life. We know that Zechariah was an old man and so every time his division came on duty they would have this drawing. In year after year after year after year his name was never picked. John, James, Peter, Stephen, no Zechariah year after year after year. And it just so happens, wink wink, that in this year when his division is on duty his name is picked in the lottery and he's the one who goes into the temple and in this exact moment God is ready to begin unfolding his plan of redemption. And he says I'm going to do it through you. Despite all the pain and suffering you've been enduring I'm going to work through you and through your wife and you're going to have a son, John, excuse me Zechariah it is no coincidence that you're here today. Zechariah learned what Proverbs 1633 says and that's this. The lot is cast into the lap but it's every decision is from the Lord. The lot is cast into the lap but it's every decision is from the Lord. And when it was God's time for Zechariah to be in this spot so that he could hear this news from Gabriel his name was chosen and God's plan was sovereignly planned and prepared and executed at just the right time. Now let's move on from Zechariah and let's think about Mary. What do we learn about Mary as she talks to Gabriel in their interactions? The first thing you learn is this. God can handle your questions. He's big enough. He can handle your questions. Zechariah questioned God and maybe there's a few indicators in the text but really we know that he didn't believe because Gabriel says you did not believe. Yes you questioned but the problem is that you didn't believe that God could do what he says he's going to do. Mary is not rebuked. She's not stricken as a mute for months and months and months but she questioned God too. And Gabriel comes to her and it says that she thought about this and she tried to discern what was going on and the wheels were spinning in her head and she couldn't make sense of it all. And she said almost the exact same thing Zechariah said how is this going to be? How am I going to know that this is really happening? I don't understand that you're going to do what you say that you're going to do but in all of it her questions were tempered by faith. And we see her faith at the end where she says I'm the servant of the Lord. Whatever you need to do through me whatever you choose to do through me whatever you plan to do through me let it happen. And she questions God but she questions from a position of faith. And what I'm saying to you is this there will be times in your life, circumstances in your life where you're going to have some questions for God. And it's okay to ask those questions. You may or you may not get an answer but you can ask God what are you doing? What are you trying to teach me? What's going on? I don't understand this but as you question Him do it from a position of faith. Don't be like Zechariah where you don't believe in God and His goodness and His promises but you do it from a position of faith God can handle your questions. Number two God working in your life may come with costs. God working in your life may come with costs. Imagine you're Mary and if you have grown up in church you've heard preachers talk about this you've thought about it yourself but you're Mary you are engaged. You have not yet come together with your husband and you hear from an angel that you are going to conceive before you come together with your husband. She wasn't stupid. She knew her husband wasn't stupid. She knew her father wasn't stupid. They knew about the birds and the bees and all of the things that we know about. We think of them as ancient idiots but they weren't stupid. They understood where babies come from and Mary says to herself okay so this is going to happen to me and no one's going to believe the story. No one will believe it. They're not stupid. They didn't see what I saw. They didn't hear what I've heard. They are not going to believe this and yet she says what? I'm in. Let it happen. I trust the Lord. It's going to cost me, might cost me my husband. It's certainly going to cost me my reputation for the rest of my life but I would rather follow the Lord and lose all of this other stuff than to walk away from Him. Now more than likely God is not going to work in your life the way he worked in Mary's life. But God will work in your life and God will call you to follow Him and there may be costs. It may cost your reputation. Lord may lead you to make a decision that other people look at you and think you're an idiot for. May not make sense to them. The Lord may call you in a missions capacity to take some sort of risk to go to some part of the world that your family just doesn't understand, doesn't support, doesn't believe in. The Lord may call you to make decisions about your money that from a worldly perspective look foolish. Following Jesus may have costs and we see here that they're worth the cost to follow Jesus. One last idea about Mary is this, God's work was sovereignly planned and executed. Just like we saw with the birth of John, we see it in the birth of Jesus, God's work was sovereignly planned and executed. I'm going to mention some Old Testament texts. We're not going to look them up. You may want to jot them down as I mentioned them. Genesis 3.15, there was a promise that the seed of the woman would crush the serpent. Genesis 12.3, there was a promise that the entire world would be blessed through Abraham's family. Genesis 49.10, there was a promise that the kings would come from the line of Judah. There's 24.17, there was a promise that a star would rise from Jacob. Deuteronomy 18.15, there was a promise that a prophet was coming. The great prophet was coming. Second Samuel 7.13, there was a promise that one of David's sons would rule forever. Isaiah 7.14, there was a promise that a virgin would conceive and bear a son. Micah 5.2, a promise that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. Malachi 4.2, a promise that the Son of righteousness would come and would bring healing. Listen, that's a small sampling to remind you and to remind me from Genesis to Malachi. God is not winging it. He's not flying by the seed of his pants. He's not making it up as he goes. He's not trying to figure it out on the fly. He has always had a plan. And he's been promising that plan for year after year, after decade, after millennia to his people over and over and over and over again and at just the right time he enacts his plan. He does it completely and totally sovereignly. Now let me just reiterate one thing we talked about last week and you see again in this passage. God likes to use nobodies for his glory. He delights in using the foolish and the weakness of the world for his own glory. You know there's a king mentioned in this passage, King Herod. The only thing he does in the story is give us a date. In his days, and you expect to say, "Oh, God did something great with this king." No, no, no, no. It's not about the king. It's about this older couple that everybody thought was cursed by God and they're just a couple of humble peasants and God decided to use them. You say, "Well, there's an angel in the passage. The story's about an angel." It's not about an angel. The angel's just doing God's bidding, taking God's message to people like Mary. In all of it, God is delighting in using nobodies for his glory. And we're reminded when you see that in Zechariah and Elizabeth and Mary, there's really not about them. It's not that they had anything great to offer God. It's not that their resume was so impressive. God delights to use nobodies for his glory. And so as we talked about Gabriel and Zechariah and Mary, go back and look at your outline. Every point on that outline is not about Mary, is not about Gabriel, is not about Zechariah, it's about God. God. God. God. God. God. God. All of it is about what God is doing in the lives of his people. It leads us to the last question that's this. What can we learn from the saving work of the Trinitarian God? What do we take away from the saving work of the Trinitarian God? Three ideas. Very, very simple. Number one, God Himself came to do for me what I could never do for myself. God Himself came to do for me what I could never do for myself. The angel tells Mary that you should name your son Jesus. He's not putting in a suggestion, he's not making a recommendation, he's not asking for a favor, he's saying the kid's name is Jesus. I'm picking it. The kid's name is Yahweh, saves. Jehovah saves. The Lord, capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D, the Lord saves. And you name him that because the Lord, Yahweh, Jehovah is coming to save his people. He's coming to do for them what they would never be able to do for themselves. This makes the Bible and our faith different from every other faith on planet earth. You can look at every other religion under the sun and here's what they say. We've got a big long list for you. And some of this stuff we're going to need you to do and some of this stuff we're going to need you to stay away from. And if you do enough of the good stuff and you stay away from enough of the bad stuff, we've got our fingers crossed that it's going to tilt your way in the end. Here you go. The rules change, the number of rules change, the one giving the rules changes. But that's about every religion under the sun. Here's a bunch of stuff. Do some of it. Don't do others. And hopefully it washes out for you in the end. Luke's saying God himself has come to just do for you what you could never do for yourself. You can't do enough good stuff and you can't stay away from the bad stuff. So God himself has come to do for you what you could never do for yourself. God himself came to live a life of perfect obedience that you couldn't do and I can't do. And he came to take your place on a cross and to die your death and to take the punishment that should have fallen on you and to deal with it. He has come to do for you what you could never do for yourself. Second idea is this in this last section. Jesus came to rule forever as the king of all kings. He came to rule as the king of all kings. We struggle with this a little bit I think. We like the part where Jesus comes to do for us what we could never do for ourselves. That sounds like a pretty good deal. I'm a sinner, I've messed up, I can't fix my sin problem, I can't earn my way back into a relationship with God and Jesus has come to just do all of that for me. Who wouldn't want that? Don't forget that the same Jesus who came to do for you what you could never do for yourself also came to rule as the king of all kings. Look at verse 32. He will be great. Not great before the Lord like John but he will be great, period. He will be the son of the Most High. He will sit on David's throne. Verse 33 he will reign over Jacob, over Israel forever and his kingdom will have no end. It's a great mistake in our day and in our part of the world. When people think I'm going to have the Jesus who did for me what I could never do for myself. I want him but I'm going to put this Jesus who wants to rule as the king over here. I'll have half of Jesus. You can't have half. You're going to have all or you're going to have nothing. And the one who came to do for you what you could never do for yourself who came to show you grace and mercy is also the king who lays claim to your life and who wants to rule over your life. Last idea is this. As we think about the Trinity we come full circle and we say the Spirit sovereignly creates life and empowers God's people. The Spirit of God creates life and empowers God's people. Verse 35 he creates life in Mary's womb from nothing. It wasn't hard. It wasn't challenging. It wasn't tricky. He did it in the beginning. He did everything from nothing. And in Mary's womb he created life from nothing. He empowers God's people. It says that he was with John the Baptist filling John from birth to empower him and to direct him in the same spirit that empowered John empowers you. The Spirit sovereignly creates life and he empowers God's people today. I thought about stories this week as I thought about this story and I thought about great stories and stories that we like and I got to looking around at movies and best-selling movies and top-grossing movies and came up with a list. This is the official Wikipedia list of top-grossing movies of all times. It's not adjusted for inflation. It's a completely different list. This is just basically the movies in our time that people have loved and watched and paid a lot of money to see. And here's the top 10. We'll just tick through them. Number one, Avatar. Number two is Titanic, both of those James Cameron movies. Number three, Marvel's The Avengers. A bunch of superheroes there. I don't know what number we're on but this is Harry Potter, Deathly Hallows. So Harry Potter made the list. Next is Frozen. A lot of you have seen Frozen. We've seen it at my house about a million times. Iron Man 3 made the top 10. Transformers, Dark of the Moon made the top 10. So Transformers represented Lord of the Rings, a little bit older than some of these movies. That's the third version of the Lord of the Rings. Skyfall, one of the most recent James Bond movies. If you're a Bond fan and I think this is number 10, Batman, The Dark Knight Rises. Those are the 10 movies that we have paid more money to see than any other movies. That's the top 10. Those are the stories we value. The stories that intrigue us. The stories that captivate us. And there are different movies in that list. There's cartoons and there's action and there's girl movies and there's guy movies. But let me just tell you a couple of threads that run through most of those movies. Number one, we want to be part of an adventure. We want to feel like we're part of something big. And so we watch Titanic and we watch these superhero movies. We want to feel like we're in an adventure. We want to believe in the supernatural. For all the scientists among us who naysay and doubt and make fun of us for believing the Bible, look at the movies we watch. We desperately want to believe in something not natural, something other, something other worldly, something beyond us. We want to believe in the supernatural. And can we all agree that you look at those movies? We're looking for a hero. We need a hero. We want adventure. We want something supernatural and we need a hero. Here you go. Luke's got the story just for you. And not a story about Zechariah is not a story about Mary. Is not a story about Elizabeth and how excited she was to have a baby. It's not even a story about John the Baptist as great as a prophet of God as he was, is a story about the God, Father, Son, and Spirit who created everything out of nothing, who felt the pain of rejection when the creatures that he made in his image turned against him and rebelled against him, trying to overthrow his rule. And instead of just wiping them out and annihilating them, he decided to do something to save him. And so Father, Son, and Spirit worked together in a plan of redemption. And the Father sent the Son and the Son came, Luke 19, 10, to seek and to save the lost. And they sent the Spirit to create life, just like he had done in the beginning, he created life out of nothing. And he still does it today in the hearts of people like me and you who are dead and our trespasses and sins, not holding on on spiritual life support, but spiritually dead. And the Spirit of God still comes today and creates life, creates life from death in the hearts of people who follow Jesus Christ. The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. The Spirit of God creates life in his people today, just like he has always done in creation with Mary all through the years and through the millennia. And the greatest part of this story is that while it's a story about God and who he is and what he's done, it's a story that you're included in. It's a story that you are invited into. It's not about you, but you have a role to play in the story. In this morning, God is calling you to do three simple things. Maybe you've done these things, maybe you've been doing them for decades, maybe you have never done them in your life, but here's what God is calling you to do this morning. Number one, repent of your sin. Acknowledge that this big, long list of stuff that you've been trying to do and stuff you've been trying not to do, that you've made a total disastrous mess of it all. That you don't have anything good to bring to him or to offer him, and turn away from your sin. You put your faith in Jesus Christ, believe the simple gospel message that the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. That's me and that's you. And number three, you follow. Wherever the Lord leads, you follow. This morning, show of hands. You want to do that. You've done it before. You want to do it for the thousandth time. You want to this morning be a follower of Jesus Christ. You want to continue to pursue Him. You want to walk in faithfulness with Him. I want to pray for you. Bow your heads and let's pray together. Father, we love you. You are a good God. And the story that we see in Scripture is a story about you from beginning to end. You're the Creator. You're the Sustainer. You're the gracious one. You are the Redeemer. Father, we marvel at the fact that Father, Son, and Spirit have worked together an amazing plan of redemption in sending the Son to seek and to save the lost and sending Your Spirit to create life in our hearts. Father, we want to this morning follow. Whether we've done it for years and years or whether this morning is the very first time we want to confess our sin to you, we want to put our faith in Your Son, Jesus Christ, in His death and His resurrection, and Father, we want to follow wherever You may lead us. Lord, we want to sing together. We want to worship together. And our singing is to You and about You and for You. And as we lift our voices together, we pray that You would receive our worship, that You would be present amongst us and in us and with us. Father, we love You. We are grateful for who You are. We are grateful for what You've done in our lives. Be honored as we sing and as we worship. We ask it in Jesus' name.