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Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the text comes from the Gospel reading. You may be seated. There is a dichotomy in this text this evening, and I hope you heard it. If not, let me point it out to you. In the beginning of the text, it talks about the neighbors and the friends rejoicing with Elizabeth and Zechariah Over the grace that was shown her that she should not only conceive, but give birth to a son. But it’s what happens a little bit later, just eight days later. And the same neighbors are no longer rejoicing. The neighbors in the text have fear. It all comes about because when they try to name the child, Zechariah, Elizabeth, corrects them. And then Zechariah corrects them by writing on the tablet and then the miracle of his tongue being loosed. And he speaks and praises God. And if you read the text, the neighbors were afraid. And then they pondered these things and said, what then will this child be? Interesting, isn’t it? On one hand, rejoicing with her and giving thanks and praise, and then on the other hand, fearing her son and what it all means. It doesn’t go into detail as to what this fear entails. It just talks about it. Luke comments, the hand of the Lord was with him, meaning John the Baptist. It was already an assumed and understood reality. Then after this dichotomy of rejoicing and yet fear with these neighbors… Zechariah launches into Holy Spirit inspired benedictus, we call it. It’s in the morning prayer of our worship service. It’s the closing hymn of our service tonight. The words that are in our text that he proclaims. The first half of that benedictus is a proclamation about Jesus’ identity and His purpose. The second half or third of that same is about John the Baptist. And his identity and purpose. And that’s where we’ll start is with John. Since that’s what the neighbors were a little flummoxed about. For it said that they talked about it throughout the whole region of Judea, that area. Now you’ve got to know that it wouldn’t take long for the gossip people to begin gossiping about the old man and the old woman who were advanced in years, who by God’s grace conceived a child. And it was given birth healthily, and both mother and child lived. But that this child was appointed by God for a specific purpose. And every day of this child’s life, this child was told this promise again and again. You, my child, shall be the prophet of the Most High. You, my child, shall be the prophet of the Most High. That’s a lot of expectation to lay upon a little boy’s shoulders. Yes. And yet John bore it, faithfully. His parents, of course, died for him at a young age. So he was an orphan. And odds are, from the way the text is phrased, he lived out his life in the wilderness for the rest of his days after his parents had died. So here you have this boy that’s set apart for a specific purpose, that God the Holy Spirit spoke to his father and he proclaimed to him. And now he’s living this kind of unorthodox life of asceticism out in the wilderness, where he is continually reminding not only them, but you and me, that this world is not what it’s all about. And the things of this world are not what it is all about. And life in this world is really about what God has given us in Jesus Christ. This child prophet, it’s a very important phrase, you, my child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High. The only other child prophet called that was also a son of a miraculous birth too. His name was Samuel. His mother, Hannah. She gave him up to the temple in thanksgiving to God after she had weaned him. Walk away from your son at that age and entrust him into God’s hand. And realize that he never was hers to begin with. No different than when you and my children grow up and they leave the house and we grieve or go through sadness or sorrow. They never were ours to begin with. They were ours for a time and they’re God’s gift. Just like we owe our gifts to our parents. This child has been told since infancy that he will go before the One to prepare his way. Not a way of death, but a way of life. Amen. Constantly ringing in his ears from his father and his mother telling him this and played out before the people of Israel with his unorthodox eating of grasshoppers and honey and dressed in camel skin and a leather belt around his waist. He is not all about gloom and doom, though some like to picture him that way. He was a compassionate proclaimer. Yes, he proclaimed the law. But yes, he proclaimed the gospel because Zechariah told him he would give the knowledge of salvation to the people. And the knowledge of salvation isn’t an intellectual apparition. The knowledge of salvation is the forgiveness of sins. And that’s gospel, purely and sweetly. Because the tender mercy of God, and this proclamation guides our feet into the way of peace. Peace not being the absence of conflict, peace being in the midst of conflict, the acknowledgement that God is in control of my life. And I choose, by God’s grace, to trust in such confidence that He’s given me. We’ve been reconciled, and now we’ve been given it to give to one another. Amazing, amazing indeed. The text said, he grew strong in spirit, Lived in the wilderness and continued to proclaim these truths. And then came his cousin, our Lord Jesus. The one that Zechariah proclaimed the most about. That this one who was going to visit his people. Now, visiting his people wasn’t about coming and having a coffee clutch with him and leaving. In fact, anytime you think about someone visiting you, you take on the role of being the visitor. Host or hostess. When God visits His people, He is always the host. His people are the ones whom He serves. Even though He’s doing the visitation. When Hannah became pregnant, God had visited her. When Sarah became pregnant, God had visited her. When God visits in the Old Testament, that Hebrew word means to come with something to give that is something that was not there before. For Hannah and Sarah, it was a child. For you and me, it’s our God becoming flesh and revealing Himself to be the one who is like us to fix what was lost in the garden and to claim it as His. That’s what it means that He comes and visits His people. He becomes one with us. And in becoming one with us, He also must redeem us. That’s the other side of this proclamation. His visitation is a beautiful thing and we focus on His visitation with the nativity, but the nativity is always the precursor to the whole purpose of His life in this world to be the bloody sacrifice. You remember the covenant told to Abraham where Abraham had all those animals laid out and severed their bodies in half. And how the pot that came down from heaven passed between the halves of the body. Blood was spilled at the covenant of God that through Abraham would come the visitation of God to his people. And so if God is going to redeem his people, as it says, Zechariah’s words of Jesus, there has to be a bloody sacrifice involved to pay and to give cover, forgiveness. Finally, it talks about raising up the horn of salvation. You read about it in the psalm. It is here. To raise up the horn of salvation means to lift up God’s power and exalt Him. Horns were always referred to the ram’s horns, His power, His virility. But what does God’s power and virility then look like if His horn was raised up? Just as the Son of Man must be raised up, that all who look upon Him rise, Believing will have eternal life. That’s the work of God’s salvation, the raising up the horn of our salvation, where His power is made in weakness. His humanity is where His power is shown. His sacrificial love is where His power is revealed. All of this was fulfilled through all of those prophets, and John sealed the deal and kept pointing to Him with the climactic statement that we sing, Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world… Here he is, behold him. Zacharias’ song is profound indeed. But it’s that last part that’s the purpose. Jesus came that being delivered from the hands of our enemies, we would serve him without fear. If we don’t realize we do have enemies, we have no need to be delivered from. And if we know who those enemies are… Our flesh, first and foremost, this world and Satan, then we know how great it is to be delivered from such power that causes us such consternation and difficulty in our life. He desires to allow us to serve Him without fear, where we don’t have to measure up. He’s been measured up for us. We don’t have to wonder or question, have we done it or have we not done it? It’s been done for us. To serve Him without fear is not just to serve Him, it is to serve one another. Christ in the flesh in one another. The least of these, His brethren, our lords. And to serve them without fear. For He covers over our mistakes, covers over our failures, and cleanses us from our inadequacies. That’s the purpose of Christ’s coming. We talked about this before and we say it again. Amen. John’s message is our message. To give the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of sins to others. Now think about John. All of that preaching that he did. All of that baptizing that he did. And you know he never did get to see any of it come to fruition because his head was severed from his body. And yet he went faithfully about his work trusting that God would perform what he promised to do. And that’s you and me. You and me have the same. We proclaim and we’re faithful in our proclamation and serving Him without fear, knowing far, far beyond our imagination is He going to fulfill those things in these people’s lives. And we rejoice with the angels on our entrance into heaven to see the works God did through us who are but clay pots. In the name of Jesus, amen. The peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and your minds on Christ Jesus to life everlasting. Amen.
