Luke 1
Amen. You can be seated. Turn
in your copy of God’s word to Luke chapter one. Over the next several weeks, we’ll
be looking at the characters of Christmas today. We want to
think about Zechariah and Elizabeth, the parents of John the Baptist.
We’ll think of Mary and Joseph, the shepherds, the angels. We’ll
think of. several along the way and into
the first Sunday of the new year and then at some point back into
the book of Acts. It’s the different times I think
these days that we live in where the things where we stop to observe
all that God has done for us, whether it be Thanksgiving Day
or the Christmas season, it just zips by. it zips by and you’re
swallowed up in it. So let me encourage you to take
advantage of these Christmas character messages, but also
lessons and carols next Sunday evening, I think is a great help.
Your lungs will be tired. from singing, but your mind and
your heart will be full of the truth of the goodness of God
and Christ. So we’ll read through various
passages here of Luke chapter one. Before we do, let’s seek
God’s blessing. Pray with me. Lord, your word
says that unless you build the house, we labor in vain unless
You guard the house, the watchman keeps watch in vain. Lord, we do not want to build
a house. We do not want to seek our own righteousness. We want
to sit and receive from your word and your Holy Spirit. Sometimes
in the Christian faith, we work, work, work, we checklist, and
we think we have done all necessary to please you. Lord, in these
few moments, let your word sink into our minds and hearts. so
that our hearts are affected, our lives are affected, that
we may love you more, serve you better, and that we may tell
the world of what excites us most, that Jesus came into the
world to save sinners. Help us, we do pray in this hour,
in the name of Christ, amen. This is the word of the living
God. We’ll begin at verse five of chapter one of Luke. 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 commandments and the
statutes of the Lord. But they had no child because
Elizabeth was barren, and both were advanced in years. Now,
while he was serving as 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 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 in the power of Elijah to turn the hearts of
the fathers to the children and 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 an old man and my wife is advanced in years. The angel
answered him, I am Gabriel who stands in the presence of God.
And I was sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. And behold, you will be silent.
You will be 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 the time of his service
was ended, he went to his home. After these days, his wife Elizabeth
conceived. And for five months, she kept
herself hidden saying, thus the Lord has done for me in the days
when he looked on me to take away my reproach among people. And then we’re gonna skip over
to verse 39. In those days, Mary arose and
went with haste into the hill country to a town in Judah. And
she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. And when
Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her
womb and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. She exclaimed
with a loud cry, blessed are you among women and blessed is
the fruit of your womb. And why is this granted to me
that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when
the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb
leaped for joy. Blessed is she who believed that
there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from
the Lord. And then down to verse 57, the
birth of John the Baptist. Now the time came for Elizabeth
to give birth and she bore a son and her neighbors and her 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 They would have called him Zachariah
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 him for a writing tablet and wrote, His name is John.
And they all wondered. And immediately his mouth was
opened, 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. And all who heard them
laid up these things in their heart saying, what then will
this child be? 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, the 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 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 and the forgiveness of their sins because of the tender
mercy of our God. whereby the sunrise 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 in the way of
peace. And the child grew and became strong in spirit, and
he was in the wilderness until the day of his public appearance
to Israel. Amen. The word of God, full of
power and truth. May his spirit write these things
on our hearts. I think you all are aware that
we speak of America now as being in a state of post Christianity. We only look to Europe and say
there are a couple of decades ahead of us, maybe, say, 50 years. Our missionaries that we support
who are, say, in the country of Wales or Spain or other European
context. They tell us that you can go
along the streets of their cities and their towns and you will
find beautiful old cathedrals, wonderful houses of worship,
full of beauty and set up for worship of the living God. They’re
now nightclubs. They’ve been turned into bars.
They have been turned into apartment buildings. And maybe in some
cases they have been raised and other facilities put up in their
places. I would say we’re not far from
seeing that in our own country. So many houses of worship dot
our lands. Yet for decades, we’ve been seeing
that same downgrade, that same downgrade of faith in Jesus Christ,
that same downgrade of right thinking, right belief, right
theology, that same downgrade in worship. We have come there
very quickly with the passing of COVID. Several years back,
what, three years ago now, churches were fuller than they are. And
the word on the street is, through surveys, is that 30% of people
who used to go to church now do not. I think the decline of
worship attendance was at a 7% rate. But in one fell swoop,
because of COVID and church closures, 30% in just 18 months or so time. And we are on this rapid decline
to be like Europe, to be a post-Christian culture. Now we could harp about
that and say, what bad news? What terrible news? The light
is going out in America. But I read a different perspective
on things this week. It was by a historian, Carl Truman,
who said something like this, Christianity in America is not
dead. It’s the mediocre Christianity. It’s the cultural Christianity
that we’re seeing dying out. True people with true faith are
still walking with the Lord. In fact, true people with true
faith in true churches may be walking with the Lord in a deeper
and stronger and more abiding way than ever before. I mentioned,
I think, that I read an article that was by Carl Truman. It was
not by Carl Truman. It was by, I believe, T. David
Gordon. But in this interesting article,
he was writing to encourage Christians, don’t listen to all this jargon
that we’re living in dark times and Christianity is being snuffed
out. Christianity may be stronger
than it ever has been because the work that God begins in the
hearts and in the minds of his people is a abiding work, a progressive
work. What he starts, he finishes.
He who began a good work will be faithful to complete it in
you. And I think we find ourselves
in what we might call post-Christian Israel, when we come to our passage
here in Luke chapter one. It’s been 400 years since God
has spoken a word to his people through a prophet. It’s been
400 long, silent years, and God’s people have been under the thumb
of various invading empires. It’s been the Persians, it’s
been the Greeks, and now it’s the Romans. The Roman empire
is now Eight centuries old and it has growing in strength and
it’s vast and it’s growth and it’s takeover of various lands
in Israel. The little land of Israel that
once flourished under David and Solomon. The land of Israel that
once attracted people from all over the world to come see this
people and their God was now an occupied territory. In fact,
when we read through all of the prophecies of the coming of the
Lord Jesus Christ in the scripture, we hear phrases like this, the
people walking in darkness. And when it speaks of the coming
of Christ, it says they have seen a great light. These are
dark times in Israel. These are post-Christian times
in Israel, we might say, to use the language of our own day.
And here we have this Older couple, Zechariah and Elizabeth. We don’t
know what their age is. The Bible says they were old.
They were advanced in years. Or if you read some of the translations,
they were stricken in age. Don’t you love the euphemisms
of the Bible? Some of us are stricken with
age. But there’s this couple, Zechariah
and Elizabeth. Ask their neighbors about them.
They put their trash out on Tuesdays. They kept their yard cut. Their
geraniums were neat. They didn’t cuss their cat. They
washed their car on Tuesdays. They were good neighbors. They
were law-keeping, law-abiding people. And in fact, the scripture
says to us of them, they were righteous and they were strict
in their keeping of the law. And we have to stop there and
think about that for just a moment. Were they righteous in their
own obedience? Were they checking off the boxes?
Were they ticking all the right duties? Or indeed had their hearts
been changed by almighty God where he had so declared them
righteous in his sight that their good deeds proved that spirit
wrought work in each of them. A little plug for tonight’s sermon
from James, faith. without works is dead. These were people whose faith
was proven, not proven for their justification, but proven it
showed fruit. They were fruitful people living
for God in a dark and dying culture. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
Maybe you’re the only car that backed out of the driveway this
morning in your neighborhood. And when you get home today,
those cars that you left as you passed them on the way to church,
they will still be there. If they haven’t made it over
to the shopping center or the soccer field or whatever. And
you think to yourself like, Elisha, am I the only one left? Am I
the only obedient one? Am I the only one? And maybe
that’s how Zacharias and Elizabeth lived. He was a priest. He was
from the line of Abijah. She was a of a priestly line,
a child of Aaron, a daughter of the Levites. And they were
living a life of normal kingdom business. Do your chores, do
your duties, go to work, keep up your home, you know, live
in godliness and all the spheres where God has placed you. but
fear God and keep his commandments. And for him, a priest, a couple
of times a year, he would leave home and go up to Jerusalem for
about two weeks. And he would serve in the grand
temple. You remember this temple complex built beginning by David
when he took the city of Jebus from the Jebusites and he built
Jerusalem, the city of David, and then Solomon, his son, because
he had less blood on his hands from wars, would build a temple
for God. And this majestic temple would
go on for centuries until destroyed at the Babylonian exile. You remember the exiles came
back and rebuilt it. It was smaller. The old men who
saw the former glory of the former temple cried and God said to
them, do not despise the day of small things. But over the
time that that temple was built and rebuilt, occupying leaders,
because the best way to win the hearts of those you occupy is
to help them in their religion. They would add on to the temple.
They would smack a little gold on it. They would put a porch
on it, a prettier roof. They were always improving it.
And so this was Herod’s temple. This was Herod’s temple where
where Zacharias was serving and he would go in because he drew
the lot into the most holy place. He would offer up incense before
God. Everyone was outside waiting
for him to finish offering this incense. And he would come out
and say the Aaronic blessing. The Lord bless you. The Lord
keep you. The Lord cause his face to shine
upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance
upon you and give you peace. That was his duty and his task.
But it was a different day in church for Zacharias. He was in that most special place
and he was offering the incense and there by the altar appeared
to him an angel of the Lord and said, your prayers, your prayers
have been heard. Your wife will no longer be barren. Your wife will no longer bear
the reproach, the social stigma of not being a mother, not having
a child. This must have been the content
of their daily prayers. And so here is a man who has
offered incense in his own life up to God. Give us a child. And
here he is offering incense, offering prayers up to God on
behalf of Israel. Everyone is outside waiting for
him to appear and to give them the benediction. And he doesn’t
believe the angel. Doesn’t that tell us about our
fix in life? We know our Bibles. We come to
church. We come to Sunday school. We come to Wednesday Bible study.
We come to this evening service. We know our Bibles. We’re listening
to our preaching. You know, we got our table talk,
our Ligonier apps. We’re listening to it on the
radio. And sometimes we can just flat not believe God. Can God
take an old couple? Can God take a barren woman who’s
passed childbearing years and give her a child? Well, this
isn’t God’s first rodeo. We remember Abraham and Sarah.
We remember Hannah and Elkanah and the little boy Samuel. God
is the one who before the creation spoke and it came to be. He speaks
a new life. He gives the dead rise. So we
shouldn’t disbelieve God, but maybe you’re in a stretch where
God has been silent and maybe your life is feeling barren.
And we need to remember in this very moment, Not to make the
mistake of righteous Zechariah and fall into unbelief. God rebuked
him. He gave his wife nine months
of pregnancy and gave him nine months of silence. Boy, what
would that do for you? We speak 18,000 words a day.
He spoke none. for nine months. What a rebuke. And you can imagine in these
months of silence, these months of one not wandering, but wondering. He had a lot of time to think.
He had a lot of time to jot on the the wax board to his wife,
the things he had been learning. God, through this chastisement,
was teaching him How to grow in grace, to grow in faith and
to grow in strength. And maybe you’re in this dark
stretch of life right now. Things aren’t going as you hoped,
as you dreamed, as you wished. And it may be in your own life.
It may be in some stretch of sin that you’re dealing with.
It may be with your children, your grandchildren. It could
be a disappointment. And God is saying, look at me.
He did that with his saints here in the Old Testament. And so
we ought to take challenge to learn these lessons. Zechariah
normally would have come out of that altar of incense. He
would have come out of the curtain and the people who were offering
their prayers would have longed for that great Aaronic benediction. And instead, he couldn’t say
a thing. He’s seen a spirit. He’s seen something. He’s scared
out of his wits. And so he makes his way back
home. And nine months later, a little boy is born. The one
they were anticipating. And the first thing John does,
the first thing Zachariah does when he opens his mouth is he
gives a benediction like he has never given before. We’ll sing
at the end of our service, the song of Zachariah from our hymn
book. And you’ll, you’ll catch the
sense of it. I think as you’ve seen it, but when he opened his
mouth, he exploded with truth about who God is. with scriptures
about what God has done in the past and with prophecies soon
to be fulfilled, yes, in the life of his own son, John, but
most of all, in the life of the coming one, the Lord Jesus. And
he speaks at the end of his little benedictus here, these wonderful
little words. He speaks of God being merciful
to his fathers, keeping covenant promise that he made to Israel
and to Abraham, the father. And then he says, there will
be a sunrise that will visit us from on high. I think later today, the sun
is supposed to come out. And so all of us will have awakened
to a dreary day. I heard the raindrops this morning.
I heard the gutters trickling and took my walk in the rain
this morning, but maybe by mid afternoon, I think the sun is
gonna come out and it’ll shock us, right? Be a different day. The time has changed recently,
and so morning walk has been in the dark. But the sun is peeking
over the clouds, and you see that little sliver of orange. And what does it give you? It
gives you hope. It gives you anticipation that
there’s a good day ahead. And in a dark world that heard
nothing from God for 400 years, in a post-Christian America,
we look at that little sliver of orange that is the coming
of Jesus to make all things new. And that will strengthen our
faith, won’t it? That will give us great hope. We won’t say all
is lost. No chicken little, the sky is
falling. No ostrich, poke our head in the sand and let the
apocalypse pass us by. No, that glimmer of orange that
we see from the pages of scripture, that God by his word and spirit
confirms to us. ought to give us hope that this
is no post-Christian culture. The fields are ripe for telling
others about the day spring from on high that has so blessed us.
Let’s look to our God in prayer. Lord, a little perspective, heavenly
perspective helps us. Our days, our minds are filled
with so many, so many things, many of them not true. Many of
them sad, many of them depressing, many of them heartbreaking. And
if we were to think this is all there is, boy, what a dark day,
a sad day this would be. But because of your grace, you’ve
shown us that glimmer of the orange sunshine that will soon
shine for eternity. It will shine from the presence
of almighty God who is light that can never be extinguished.
Lord, we need this hope and so strengthen it in us now. As we
make our prayer in the name of Jesus and all God’s people said,
amen.