Luke 1:57-80

What do you think about the letter written by the physician Luke?

He's writing to his patron Theophilus.

This is volume one of uh his teaching.

And so, yeah, you can just give me a little bit more volume when the heater comes on.

That's perfect.

Thank you.

Um, so this is um the intent is is he wants to buffet and hold up Theophilus' faith.

Imagine a man who is wealthy, a man who could have lived in False Point, a man who could have afforded his own doctor, and he um has trusted in Christ, and he's relied upon other accounts, but Luke really wants to stir up his faith.

He wants him to believe what he believes with certainty.

And so he's written this account.

It's a 35-foot-long skull, and Luke's themes are the plan of God and the kingdom of God.

Those are gonna continue to rain out as we go through the text.

So far, we looked at how God came Zachariah as he's performing his priestly duties.

Um, Zachariah is married to Elizabeth, who's barren and older, cannot have children.

And God tells Zachariah, You're gonna have a child.

You're gonna name him John.

And then God speaks and reveals uh to Mary through the angel Gabriel that she's gonna have a child.

Even though she's a virgin, she's gonna have a child.

And Mary travels and goes to see Elizabeth, and Elizabeth's uh uh baby in Elizabeth's womb, at six months old, leaps for joy, and Mary sings out a song of praise to God.

And the whole theme of the song is how God um is involved in our human affairs, he's he cares about humanity.

And then we jumped in when we did the miracle of the Christmas event.

We looked at the birth of Jesus, how Jesus was born in probably the lower chamber of a house, probably the guest chamber.

That would be translated in, that we classically think of the word as in, um, more commonly referred to the guest chamber of a home.

Um, and because there's a census and because Joseph and Mary were younger, they wouldn't have had the um uh they wouldn't have been topped in the pecking order of being able to uh view their relatives' guest chamber.

They were placed on the bottom floor of the house, probably where the animals were kept, and where the uh feeding trough was for the animals, the animals, for the sake of protecting animals, were brought in at night to that lower floor, and uh and that's probably where uh Jesus was born, on the lower bottom floor of one of these uh Jewish homes.

So let's go backwards to the text here, and we'll look at um the birth of John.

So the time came Elizabeth gave birth, and they decide that they want to, the relatives and the neighbors are expecting that he will carry on this name of Hechariah, just like his dad.

And Elizabeth has to say, no, that's not the case.

This is not, that's gonna be name.

Instead, this baby is gonna be named John, and then it's confirmed to a writing tablet.

Probably the way that these writing tablets would work is like a piece of wood with a little bit of a um wax layer, and then you'd have an iron um uh kind of pencil looking thing to etch out and lighting.

And that's probably how Zachariah, throughout all of Elizabeth's pregnancy, had been communicating with her husband um during that time, or some somehow that was kind of the way that communication was taking place.

Well, this is like a magnetic uh thing.

But not too technically.

Not too dark.

Okay.

So um here's here's the thing.

As we look at John's um naming, right?

So he's named on the eighth day.

He's circumcised and name, which this the circumcision of John represents him being brought into the covenant, the Abrahamic covenant.

So it wasn't just a formality, it definitely wasn't just a formality for the baby, um, but it represented literally being brought into God's plan.

Again, the plan of God that um was revealed originally to Abraham, and then now every time there's a male that's born and circumcised, it represents him being brought in to that um covenant.

You know, as I was praying about this text, the thing that just stood out to me is that Christmas plan unfolding through a child, right?

In our world, the world that we live in, there is the world's way of viewing babies and kids, and then there's God's way of viewing kids.

In um, there was, I was looking up, doing some research to prepare for this, and uh there's a QA, kind of like um an asked market type QA in The Guardian.

And a girl, she wrote in, uh she says, I've been with my boyfriend for three years, and recently he has decided he wants kids.

When uh before we both shared views, so like six.

Yeah.

We gotta get we gotta get him on stripe.

Okay.

Slide Slide.

Yep.

Oh, Stripe is the payment method, yeah.

So okay.

Um okay, where were we?

Okay, so here's here's this uh question that was written to the uh editor.

I've been with my boyfriend for three years, and recently he's decided he wants kids when before we both shared views on not wanting them.

He believes time to change my mind.

He's 31, I'm 22, but I know myself I'm ready for another big step in life.

In the house, getting married, both of which he hasn't expressed that he wants.

I want to believe I will change my mind, but I'm afraid it will then be too late for him to have kids.

I'm scared he will resent me if I don't give him a baby, and worse, I believe I will resent him if I do.

Any by any bias, I don't want to leave him.

I'm afraid it's the more responsible decision, no matter how much it will hurt.

So the calmness responds this way.

Whoa, steady on, you presented me with a more complicated situation than is immediately apparent.

In isolation, the baby issue may appear uh momentous, but it's actually more of a distraction.

You're barely out of your teens and have years ahead of you in which to ponder your options on parenting.

It would be unusual if you were chomping at the bit to get on with pro-breeding when you're only 22 years old.

When it comes to breeding, we're evolving into late starters, not least uh because with increasing lifelines, we cling to the distractions of youth for much longer.

There are uh plenty of arguments about the best time to become a parent, and although leaving it too late is a bad idea, idea, very few arguments away on the upside of extreme youth.

Why does he want to highlight an impasse that exists between you and him at this time when it is truly not relevant?

Working out who you are and what you want to achieve is definitely more easily embarked on without the responsibility of raising a child.

But do not make the mistake of assuming what you feel now is what you will feel forever.

Um last paragraph here.

She says adaptability is a key characteristic key characteristic characteristic as we move through life.

But I'd wager you're in the majority of young women who prefer to defer until they have the time to enjoy unfettered freedom.

As you go through the article, is a good bit longer than this, as this woman uh tries to give advice on when this girlfriend should be willing to have a baby or not.

And what is amazingly clear is that there's no good answer.

There's no mournings, there's no um anchor for an opinion.

It's it's the values that come out as, well, you have freedom and you're young, and and she actually, the further she goes on with her vice, she says she starts to blame the boyfriend and say really the boyfriend is just using this because he knows you don't want the baby, and so he's using this as an excuse to break up.

It's just a mess, right?

When you and the point is this is that the world's view of children and babies, the further the world gets away from God, the less value is placed upon children for got for the purpose that God gives to children.

Right?

And so imagine for just a second, if I came to you, let's say I was a new uh newly married, and I said to you, what reasons can you give me that I should have a baby, that we should that we should get pregnant?

What would be what would be the the basis for that as you think through it?

That question is is really important.

Some of you will go on, you have kids, have families.

Some of you will counsel on families, some of you will, we all work with children in one way or another.

And the word has its set of reasons of why to have kids or not have kids.

And the Bible has a completely different agenda.

This is when we talk about kids and babies, you have an intersection that is uh a mess, essentially.

In the Western culture, uh babies are often viewed as dispensable if they're not yet out of the womb.

They can be aborted.

They're viewed oftentimes some will say they're a burden to society because the world is overpopulated.

Um say that they're in direct conflict with the cultural value of personal freedom.

Personal freedom in our Western culture is just like up there at a top way to navigate life, right?

What makes you feel good?

How do you express yourself?

Individuality and freedom are like one of two chief ethics within Western culture.

Um of the negative views on childbearing within the West.

Some of the bad reasons that are given for childbearing in the West is that they can be a source of happiness or um entertainment or a means of accomplishing unfulfilled objectives in life.

You know, I'm gonna live out my life vicariously through my kids.

I didn't make it to the Olympics, but I'm sure my son can, right?

That type of thing.

Those are those are bad reasons uh for having kids.

They can be uh useful, or in this case, the way that in this one scenario that plays out in The Guardian, this baby is spoken of by both the girlfriend as and as a person giving counsel as a bargain chip.

Literally, as if as if the relationship hinges upon this child, and the future of this relationship hinges upon this child.

Um and then there's one of the most arrogant views of children, which is this idea that um potential parents think that they are so beautiful or so smart that they need to reproduce themselves so that the world can have more of them.

I know you I know you run into a lot of people like that, but there are um more affluent in people who we call elites who really view procreation and having kids as kind of just a um an arrogant, arrogant view of um themselves, that the world needs more of me.

But here in our story, God has a plan that is unfolding as he has over and over again throughout the Old and the New Testament, and he brings a baby into the world to accomplish that plan.

In Genesis chapter um, well, first of all, we have the covenant, right, that is viewed in this text.

The Abrahamic covenant is in view as this baby is getting circumcised.

That gives it its significance.

The second thing that we have is this name that's given to him.

It's not the normal name, it's it's a breaking of the cycle of instead of giving a generational name after 400 years of God being silent.

Imagine Israel hasn't had a prophet for 400 years.

That's longer than America has been a country, right?

For 400 years, God's been silent since Malachi, the book of Malachi was written.

And now, all of a sudden, the name of a baby is to be not his father's name, it's to be the name John.

Because God is breaking into the world again, once again, revealing himself and saying, you need to name this baby John.

And then the neighbors and relatives are questioning what this child will become because of the special circumstances.

So God's got people's attention.

They're wondering, what is the teacher?

Because of what has taken place here.

In Genesis chapter 1, 27, it says this God created man in his own image, and in the image of God he created male and female, he created them.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

Then God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, still the earth, subdue, and have dominion over the fish of the sea.

So, right there, right at the beginning, the very first chapter of the Bible, we see children were command within the garden.

So this is before the sin, before the fall, God is saying, Be fruitful and multiply.

Psalm 127, 3 says this, behold, children are a heritage from the Lord.

The fruit of the womb is a reward.

And then in Psalm 128, 3 uh 3 and 4, children are presented as a um, again, as as an aspect of wealth.

Psalmist says, Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine in the very heart of your house, your children like the olive plants all around your table.

Behold, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord.

So having these kids all around your table, again, it's a sign of God's blessing upon you.

So a biblical view of children is this.

First, they're a gift or a reward from God, it's a display of God's favor that God allows us to have kids.

Second, they are a part of God's original plan in the garden, to be fruitful and multiply.

So it's an act of obedience.

Third, children represents God's plan unfolding in the world.

So, over and over again, when we see um so like even the Abraham covenant, God comes to Abraham and says, um, I want to I want to bless the world through you, I want to create a nation out of you.

That promise is a contingent upon a baby being born.

Right?

That that covenant cannot be fulfilled without a baby being given Abraham and his wife Sarah.

So, um it's a part of God's plan, it's a fulfillment of Abraham covenant, and finally God works in even as before they are.

Um, we see Joseph being given a dream of what would take place.

We see David, a shepherd boy, killing God.

We see Hazen, a young man who becomes a king of Israel.

God is not afraid of you.

All those things are so important as we can easily become hard.

Right?

Um society can easily take a lesson valuable.

Um bring it home a little bit here in February in the city of Baltimore, um, when the new year was running, and the crisis that we had is that we had a hundred and thirty thousand and a hundred and a million dollar shortfall with education public, which represented about a thousand um staff cuts across the school.

So there's this outcry, how many hair for kids?

So as Christians, we have a voice in that process.

We have a voice into what kids mean, right?

And I would suggest that the answer to um valuing kids from a biblical perspective is more than just um education.

My kind of worldview without it, I think too much of a burden to place upon teachers to the future generation of society.

Who was doing the name of the one who was the name of the society after the name of the children?

It wasn't all that wasn't the government in the name of the job.

They were the ones that were the ones that had uh we do right.

Um what should I have here?

What should I think about the answer to that question?

We don't have kids on the self-design.

We don't have kids on how they are in shape, or if I think we're relationship.

We have we have kids because we're not in the world.

We can't have to say any thing.

It's a representation of God.

Praise be to the Lord God of Israel because he has helped his people and we need that.

He's raised up the Lord's salvation for us in the house of his servant being as he said through his holy prophets long ago.

Salvation from our enemies and from the hand all who had, to show mercy to our ancestors and to remember his holy covenant.

We owe his swore to our fathers, Abraham, to rescue us from the hand of our enemies, and to enable us to serve him without fear and holiness and righteousness before him all our days.

And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High, for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way of him, to give his people the knowledge of salvation, and the forgiveness of their sins.

Because of the tender mercies of our God, by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven to shine on those living in darkness and to shadow and the shadow of death to guide our feet into the place of peace, the path of peace.

And the child grew and became strong in the spirit, and he lived in the wilderness until he appeared publicly to Israel.

So, just in passing, note the language right in right off the bat in verse 67.

The father Zachariah, he's filled with the Holy Spirit.

That's the language that's used to go through through Acts, right?

So who Acts?

Same guy that wrote Luke.

So as you go through the story of the beginning of the church, the beginning, the leaders of the church and different members of the church acted in the same way here that Zachariah acted, filled the Holy Spirit, right?

The relationship that we have with God, and so there's the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

The Father sent the Son into the world to die on the cross and save us from our sins, right?

To live the life that we couldn't live, to die to death that we deserve to die, so that we could live anew with him.

But then Jesus ascended to the Father and He sent His Spirit into the world, not under the old covenant, but according to the new covenant, where we have an ongoing, unbroken relationship with the Holy Spirit.

And the Holy Spirit not only is in us, but sometimes comes upon us to do what is done here, which is speak a prophetic word.

In 1 Corinthians 14, it talks about how in the early church there were those who would come into the church and would prophesy.

Now, prophecy takes on two roles.

Sometimes it's telling the future, and other times it's telling the truth about the modern day and connecting God's truth with the reality today, kind of calling the kettle black, right?

Calling things as are.

And so here, Zechariah is just allowing the truth of God to break in, like this baby has come in, and now the Spirit of God gives Zachariah this word about this baby.

And here's the amazing thing is a baby, right?

You gotta this can kind of continue on the theme of the blessings that are given in the Old Testament, where a father would lay his hand upon the firstborn, or Jacob laying his hands upon his twelve sons and blessing them prophetically.

That blew my mind because it's this speaking about here's what's gonna happen.

And that is a baby laying there, right, eight days old, just having been circumcised, right?

So vulnerable.

And yet this baby here is being spoken of about its future by God through the instrument of Zechariah.

Now, Warren Wearsby takes this um this paragraph and he breaks this song or this prophecy into four parts.

Verse 68, he says it's the picture of a prison door being opened.

Here's what it says He says, Praise the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come to his people and he has redeemed them.

Redeem is to buy back, right?

He's taken them, he's paid the price so that they can be set free.

So we see that God is the God who's going to open the prison door.

This is the language of Israel after 200 years in Exodus 3.

Remember in Exodus 3 when Israel, they're making bricks, they don't have straw anymore to make the bricks, they're enslaved under Pharaoh, they're crying out to God, and God reveals himself as the God who hears, the God who sees, the God who looks upon his people.

And so here Zechariah uses the same language and says, God, this is the God who redeems his people.

So our God, the God who we worship tonight, at the end of 2017, going into 2018, is the God who opens prison doors, who pays our redemption price, who wants to open up those prison doors for us.

The second revelation of God here in Zechariah prophecy is that he's pictured as the God who wins the battle.

Verses 69 to 75, 69 to 75, he has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, as he said through his holy prophets of long ago.

Salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us, to show mercy to our ancestors and to remember his holy covenant.

The oath he swore to our fathers, Abraham, and to rescue us from the hand of our enemies and to enable us to serve him without fear.

So he's rescued us.

He's rescued us from our enemies.

It's a picture of a God who comes in and beats our enemies, right?

Beats Satan's will for us, overcomes the devil on our behalf.

Then, third, we see in 76 through 77 the canceling of our debt.

And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the most high, for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him, to give his people the knowledge of salvation through forgiveness of their sins.

So the forgiveness of sins, this is the canceling of our debt.

We'll come back to that in a second.

And then you see the dawning of a new day.

Right?

That's the fourth word picture that's used here.

78 through 79 says this.

To shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace.

Well, sorry, let's go to 78.

And because of the tender mercies of God, by which He raised the rising of the sun will come to us from heaven, the shining of those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death.

So John is participating in all this.

Awesome promises.

This is this is John the Baptist as a baby being prophesied over that he's participating in the great word of God, leading into this.

Look at verse 77, just in closing, this is like the capstone passage.

It says to give his people the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of sins.

He's given each of us, I know with all of us in this room, like we have the knowledge of salvation.

That God's revealed himself to us, that we have the forgiveness of sins.

It's so important, I think, and I've said this before, and I'll probably keep saying it as long as we're going through the Bible.

We should be preaching the gospel to ourselves on a regular basis, on a daily basis, reminding ourselves of those four truths, right?

What does our salvation mean?

It wasn't just an act that God did, you know, 10, 15, 20 years ago, whatever it was that you were saved.

No, it's something that is real true today.

We have the knowledge of salvation.

Again, the four points of salvation.

We were created by God in his image.

We were intended to be in a loving relationship with God for eternity.

So we bear his image, and he intended for us to love him and receive his love forever.

But the fall came in.

That's the second part of the gospel.

That um we rebelled against God, all had rebelled against God, and experienced death on a universal scale, and are deserving of eternal damnation for that rebellion.

Right?

Reminding ourselves of that on a daily basis is humbling, right?

It puts us into the proper place that we deserve judgment.

The third part of the gospel is redemption and restoration, that we have been redeemed.

The story of the scripture is the story of God's redemption.

Over and over again.

God is coming to save the day.

He saved Israel over and over again from their enemies.

And yet the ultimate expression of God's redemption is through his son Jesus dying on the cross, paying for our sin, so that we could be forgiven and be rescued from eternal damnation.

And fourth, we have new life, right?

God is now at work in those who have surrendered their life to him, and he is making all things new.

He's making all things.

So every day, that message is a deserving message that we should preach to ourselves, reminding ourselves that we have been saved, that God did it because he loved us, not just because, um, or not at all, because there's anything in us that deserves that love, but he did it because he wanted to bring glory to his name.

So, in closing, a miracle baby was born because God had a plan to bring King Jesus into the world to redeem us and rescue us from all that is messed up.

So we get this prophecy about John, and it's revealing that God's plan is unfolding, that it's continuing on, and that it what's going on with John literally 2,000 years ago has ramifications for us today.

Um and, you know, I'll say this too.

However, if it's that the whole thing about how God just just watching how God works through kids is so important.

I don't know what that means for you, and kind of your life and your relationship with other kids around you, but it is so important that we have a biblical understanding on babies and on children, and understand that God loves them, has a plan for them, is working through them.

Um we see that with John, but we see John is just kind of when it comes to time, we see it all the way throughout the Old and New Testament.

Let's pray.

Um let's bow our heads, Lord.

We just um pray you take this text.

Let me look at John, and here's this this prophet prophet who's gonna prepare the way for you to come into the world.

God, we just are are grateful for how you're planified and how you are establishing your kingdom.

And for each of us in our own stories, or whatever it looks like for us to to remind ourselves and preach to ourselves the truth of the gospel.

We pray, Lord, for um we just ask for that that reminder, that work in our life on a regular basis.

As we go into 2018, Lord, let it be a year where just the message of John uh just prepare the way the Lord just humble hearts, just accepting of the Messiah, the role of the Messiah, where we pray that we would be a people that that receive that work in our lives.

That we receive your work in our lives.

So um go before us, we pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.

We're gonna take communion.