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Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. The text for this morning comes from the Gospel reading. You may be seated.
Okay, you’ve got to get ready. Only six more months until Christmas, so get out there shopping. See, that’s how they set John the Baptist’s nativity. They first decided and declared that December 25th would be the date that the church would celebrate the birth of Christ. Then, because of what the Gospel of Luke clarifies for us, Luke says that John the Baptist was born six months prior to Jesus, hence today, June 24th. Six months later, December 24th.
But this is not about John the Baptist. Just as when John the Baptist was preaching and proclaiming, he did not let it be about him; he let it continually be about Christ. So it is this morning. His father, Zechariah, was given a great revelation by a very special someone named Gabriel. In fact, there are some beautiful similarities between the birth of John and the birth of Christ our Lord Jesus. Consider that both the angel Gabriel communicated to Zechariah that he and Elizabeth would be given a miracle; that they, beyond the age of childbirth, would be able to bear children. So Mary, who had not had any contact with any man as a virgin, would also bear a child in a miraculous way by the same angel Gabriel.
Zechariah was told how to name the child John, which means “the Lord has been gracious.” Joseph was told to name the child Jesus, which means “God. He will save his people from their sins.” So, there are a lot of interesting comparisons between the birth of Jesus and the birth of John. But it’s really what Zechariah says when the Holy Spirit comes upon him. His song, called the Benedictus, which is just a Latin phrase for the first word of it, “blessed be,” was given to him to proclaim about the child that would be born. Amen. The one, not just John, but the one that John would point to, Jesus.
It also has a little bit about John the Baptist himself in the latter part: “You, my child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High, for you will go before his people to prepare his way.” But John the Baptist was not a Baptist, meaning like a Baptist, Methodist, Episcopalian, or something like that. He was a baptizer. And as a baptizer, he gave the people baptism as a symbol of repentance. You can imagine how outraged he would be if he were to be tied and know that his name would be tied to a body of believers who look at this as merely water and not as being baptized by the Spirit of which John himself spoke.
John’s mission was to point to Christ. Zechariah’s revelation by the Holy Spirit was to give us a beautiful revelation of Christ. You see, John becomes the final fulfillment of all the Old Testament prophets because John literally was alive when Christ was alive, only six months older, and pointed to Christ and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” Zechariah’s song about Jesus brings up all of these Old Testament facts as fulfilled in this child known as Jesus.
The first one, which seems to be somewhat innocuous, is very important. It talks about being visited by Jesus. Now, “visited” doesn’t mean a text message was sent, an email, or a phone call, but a face-to-face visit. Did Jesus come? God in the flesh. Always before, throughout the Old Testament, there were little pictures of God’s presence with the people: the pillar of cloud, the pillar of fire, the rainbow, the sacrificial lamb in the Passover, circumcision, all kinds of different things that God used, but they never were lasting and really weren’t Himself. But in Christ, God became man. God became flesh. God visited you and me in Christ Jesus. And now that visit is not a small thing.
Now, knowing your wife, if someone would all of a sudden show up and you hadn’t helped her clean the house, tsk, tsk, tsk. But Jesus visits unclean houses. He visits unclean hearts. He visited you. He came to a dirty, messy place and called you His own. That’s the kind of visiting Jesus does. We don’t entertain Him or serve Him; He comes to entertain and serve us, to host us. This is a very profound visitation of which Zechariah was given the words to use that He visited His people.
Sadly, when someone visits, not everybody receives the visitor personally in the manner that the visitor wishes to be received. When Jesus rode in on the donkey, the colt of a donkey, on Palm Sunday, the text says that He visited His people. But you and I know that the same people—in fact, many of the people who threw out those garments and those palm branches and who witnessed Jesus’ visitation, God in the flesh—turned their back on God in the flesh when He died for them. They rejected God in the flesh who came to offer Himself for them. They spurned the visit of Him coming to them; either because they didn’t think their house was that dirty, or because they thought their house was too dirty, or because they thought He had nothing to offer.
You and I have been given a great gift. But we’ve not been given a gift without also God giving us a place to utilize that gift. Do not think it was because you applied for a job that got you into Austin. Do not think that because your parents grew up here, that’s why you live here, that it’s not a part of God’s purpose. Do not think that because you retired and you’re no longer working that you are not going to be used by God. Do not think that simply because you’re a student, simply because you go to school somewhere, that you are not going to that school, interacting with those students, with those co-workers, with those teachers, with those retirees, that God is not using you to invite people to be visited by Christ here.
Here is where God comes in a very fleshly way—God in the flesh—to visit people, to interact with them, to bestow upon them something, to give them something, no matter how dirty their house is. That’s the beauty of being visited. The second thing that Zechariah sings about is not just God visiting us, how you doing, see you later, but when He visits us, He adopts us, He redeems us, He buys us back, He claims those who are not claimed as His own.
This is not like a game on the playground where you pick teams. If you’ve ever been on a playground where there were teams picked and you were picked last, you know the feeling. Jesus picks the last one first. That’s you. And He doesn’t just pick you out of randomness. Because on a playground, why do you pick certain people? Because of their abilities. He chooses you because you have no abilities. You’re worthless. You’re worthless. But He picks you because you are worthy to Him because of Him who was sent for you, who visited you.
To be redeemed means that you were bought. You were bought like a slave, like a piece of property. You were bought. You were owned, not by yourself, but by the one who bought you. And He didn’t buy you with something as transient and as temporal as gold or silver. He bought you with blood. True redemption; there is blood involved. He bought you with blood. And yet, when He died on that accursed tree and shed that blood for us, fulfilling that great Passover lamb, slain and sacrificed, many people viewed that as being unimportant.
You and I who have been placed in this city, in this state, in this country, in the community that we are a part of, have been placed here for a purpose. But yet we live among people who view this sacrifice and this redemption as not important. Many view this sacrifice and this redemption as actually being divisive among people rather than unifying. That is damnable. That is a sin.
The temptation is for us to cave in on these matters of our redemption and say that it’s unimportant or that we don’t really want to unload the whole ball of wax or the entire load of hay to that person, or perhaps it may offend them; it may turn them off what we do here. Poppycock! You were brought here. Are you different? You were given this great gift. You enjoy and relish God’s visitation, and you treasure His redemption.
Maybe not on all the days, but on your darkest days, you treasure that redemption deeply, because you know you are His. Like the son of the prodigal son, the father who received him did not wag his finger like you had done to you by possibly your father, or that you might have seen yourself due to your own child. There is no wagging a finger from the Father in heaven. You’ve been redeemed. You’ve come home. “Welcome home,” He says. There is no lecture to be given. Boy, did we lecture, and we were lectured by our own parents.
There is no lecture. There is just, “Come and celebrate. Come and eat the feast prepared for you. Come and remember that you have been redeemed and bought back.” The third thing that Zechariah sings about of great importance is that he reminds us that this covenant God has remembered. Now when you think of a covenant or a contract or a testament, typically it is bilateral, meaning two people. I tell you what I’m going to do; you tell me what you’re going to do; we both sign the contract; it binds us. I give my vow to you; you give your vow to me. It joins us together. We are joined into a bilateral covenant.
That is not, that is not, that is not the kind of covenant into which God entered in with you. What do you and I have to offer Him? Infidelity is all we have to offer Him. What do you and I have to offer Him but nothing? Nothing. He has everything to offer us, and it was a unilateral covenant where He said, “I contract with you, not on any performance on your part.” This is absurd in today’s business world, isn’t it? This is your comfort in this realm, isn’t it?
When Abraham was given the covenant of faith, in the promise, when he was told—remember, isn’t it interesting?—Abraham and Sarah, how like they are to Zechariah and Elizabeth, well beyond their age of childbirth, and then God blesses them; not only blesses them, but through Isaac would come the promise. And before anything, when Abraham believed that promise, did God just say, “You are righteous.” Then He did the covenant promise. Then He gave him that covenant in His own flesh in circumcision.
Because covenants are not written or executed without blood. That’s a real covenant. Blood. The death of something. When Abraham had that covenant wrought with God, there was an animal that was killed and cut in half. When the covenant with us was wrought, there was the lamb killed, slaughtered. Innocent though He was and is, that there would be a fulfillment of the covenant.
This is what Paul preaches about in the Acts lesson. The God of the people of Israel chose our fathers and made the people great, not because they were great; He made them great. You are great, not because you are great, but because He made you great. The same thing as the latter part of us. This message of salvation, this gift that He has given us, is a fulfillment of all of these things—the Covenant of the New Testament.
This is the new covenant or new testament of my blood, of my blood, because a covenant, there’s got to be blood shed, poured out for you. For what reason? For the forgiveness of your sins. This covenant has all come together and climactic here at the rail. All of those Old Testament passages, all of those Old Testament promises, all of the visitation of the Old Testament, all of the redeeming that was done, is all focused here where we are visited again, where we are redeemed again, and where we eat the very redemptive price paid for us.
We eat the redemptive price paid for us—the blood that was shed, the sacrifice. The sacrifice. And we are then knit together into this relationship with the Father as His children, just similar and much more profound than any Sunday dinner with your family, or any Thanksgiving feast, or any Christmas dinner with your family either. This is the feast of God’s family that’s eternal.
This is the three things that God has done through Zechariah’s song, giving us this great revelation of His visitation of us, our redemption in Christ, and the new covenant of which we are now partakers of in this family of God that He has knit together. This is the direction of the way of peace that Zechariah speaks of. Because peace comes with forgiveness. And with forgiveness, there is peace. But peace cannot be given unless the price has been paid.
Behold the Lamb of God slain from the foundations of the world, whose blood was shed, whose body was slaughtered, that we might then be partakers of this peace for eternity. In the name of Jesus, the one whom Zechariah proclaimed, the one whom John preached, the one who has come to us today, the peace of God which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and your minds on Christ Jesus to life everlasting. Amen.
