WWUTT 2263 Zechariah Blesses His Son (Luke 1:76-80)

Zechariah gave a blessing to his son John, who would be John the Baptist, and the blessing that he gave to John was just confirmation from the scriptures as to what

John the Baptist would accomplish in Christ when we understand the text. This is

When We Understand the Text, a daily study of God's Word that we may be filled with the knowledge of His will.

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Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. We come back to our study in the Gospel of Luke chapter 1, finishing up Zechariah's prophecy.

To keep everything in context, I'm going to go ahead and read through the prophecy again. So starting in verse 68,

I'll read through verse 80 of Luke chapter 1. Hear the word of the Lord. Blessed be the

Lord 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 from 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, in 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 into 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.

So to recap once again, this is the prophecy that Zechariah made following the birth of his son

John the Baptist. Yesterday, we looked at the first portion, which was verses 68 to 75, in which

Zechariah blesses God, and he demonstrates all the ways in which God is fulfilling

His promises. Numerous Old Testament references there, back to prophecies of old, and we looked at some of those references yesterday.

If you missed the first half of Zechariah's prophecy, then I would encourage you to go back and listen to that.

The second half, it's really the second third. It's kind of like the first two thirds were verses 68 to 75, and then this final portion is just verses 76 to 79.

So this is where Zechariah blesses John. It's kind of fitting that John gets about a third of the prophecy, and Zechariah blesses

God in the first two thirds of the prophecy, because that's kind of the way the Bible is laid out, isn't it?

You have two thirds of it is the Old Testament, and then the other third is the New Testament, the revealing of that which was prophesied in the

Old. And John the Baptist is going to be the one that kind of bridges the gap.

There is a gap of about 400 years in which God was not speaking to His people through any prophet, and here is

John the Baptist, who is the last prophet and the forerunner to the coming

Messiah. Right at the very end of the Old Testament, the very last thing that we read about in the

Old Testament is in Malachi chapter four. So right before you get to Matthew one, you read in Malachi four, behold,

I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes, and he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.

That is a prophecy concerning John the Baptist. It is the very last thing we have in the

Old Testament, the way that those prophets, the way the books are laid out. And lo and behold, what do we have right at the start of the

New Testament, but the coming of the one who will precede the coming of the

Lord, just as was prophesied in Malachi four, the one who will come in the spirit of Elijah is

John the Baptist. He comes before the great and awesome day of the Lord, and he turns the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest God brings destruction on the land.

If the people do not turn to the Lord, which they do through Jesus Christ and the gospel that comes through him, if that did not happen, then

God would bring judgment upon the land. But it is through Christ that the gospel has come, that our sins are forgiven, that the

Holy Spirit inhabits us, and we dwell with God, he dwells with us.

The hearts of the fathers turn to their children, the hearts of the children to their fathers, and the people are reconciled to God and to each other through Jesus Christ, who pays the penalty for our sin and bridges the gap.

Really, he's the one that bridges the gap. The biggest chasm that exists is the one between man and God, and the cross of Christ gets us to the

Father. Luke 1, verse 76, and you, child, will be called the prophet of the

Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways.

Zechariah understands. He knows exactly the purpose that his son is going to fulfill.

The angel, of course, told him that he would have this son, that he should name him

John. By the way, John really derived from the Hebrew name Yohanan, and it means

God is gracious. So the grace of God is coming through the son,

Jesus Christ, but the forerunner to the Messiah's arrival is John the Baptist, who will proclaim that God is gracious, to send his son to redeem us from our sins, to reconcile us back to God, and the child will be called the prophet of the

Most High and go before the Lord to prepare his ways. We heard from the angel

Gabriel speaking to Mary that he will be great and he will be called the son of the Most High, talking about Jesus, and the

Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David. So here,

Zechariah says the same thing. He will be called the prophet of the Most High, so John the

Baptist becomes a prophet of the one who is sent from God. You will go before the

Lord to prepare his ways. And we see the testimony of John the

Baptist, as we've read in the previous two Gospels, Matthew and Mark. John the Baptist cries out in the wilderness, prepare the way of the

Lord, make his paths straight, the words that were prophesied by Isaiah, and John the

Baptist fulfills them. And so going on to verse 77, as Zechariah continues this prophecy, you will give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins.

When Jesus is sitting with his disciples at the Lord's supper, at the last supper, which is the institution of the

Lord's table, he says to them, take and eat, giving them the bread. This is my body, which is given for you.

Eat this in remembrance of me. And taking the cup, he passes it to them and says, drink of it all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

And so it is being said here that John the Baptist in announcing the coming of the

Messiah will give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins.

It is in that forgiveness that we know that we belong to God and through faith in Jesus Christ, we will know that our sins are forgiven.

It will be the grace of God that covers us. It's not by any human effort.

It's not by any human assurance, nothing that is said to us by a priest or a Pope or anyone else that can declare us forgiven.

That's not how we know the forgiveness of our sins, because somebody told us you're forgiven. It's because God said you were forgiven.

It's because hearing his gospel, reading his word, knowing his promises that he has given to us in Christ, that's how we know the forgiveness of sins.

It is in knowing Christ, we know forgiveness. To give knowledge of salvation in the forgiveness of their sins.

And so going on to verse 78, because of the tender mercy of our

God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high.

In Malachi 4 .2 it says, that for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings.

And by the way, sun here is spelled S -U -N in Malachi 4 .2 and also in Luke 1 .78.

The sunrise, of course, you know what it is that's being talked about there.

But the sun of righteousness in Malachi 4 .2, that's spelled S -U -N. You're surely familiar with the

Christmas carol, Hark the Herald Angels Sing. It's in the third verse where it begins,

Hail the heaven -born Prince of Peace, hail the sun of righteousness. Have you ever been in a church where those lyrics are up on the overhead?

You may be questioning it if it's up on the overhead, you might not question it as much in the hymnal, because you probably assume in the hymnal, editors have gone over this and they got the spelling right.

But whenever you see it on the overhead, surely you've done this before, because I do this almost every Christmas.

I think I've learned enough now, I've figured it out, that I'm not going to second guess myself again. But there are so many

Christmases that when we sang Hark the Herald Angels Sing, and that lyric is up there on the overhead, and it's spelled

S -U -N, that I think to myself, oh, the guy that's doing the slides misspelled that, and I need to go tell him to correct it.

So, because it will read, Hail the heaven -born Prince of Peace, hail the S -U -N of righteousness.

No, no, no, no, no, that should be S -O -N. But the sun of righteousness,

S -U -N of righteousness, comes right from Malachi 4 .2. That is the correct spelling.

It's supposed to be the S -U -N of righteousness. This past Sunday, I was preaching on Sola Scriptura.

Right now, the sermon series that I'm going through for the month of October with my church is through the five solas of the

Protestant Reformation. And one of the things I mentioned was a teaching from John Owen, in which

Owen said that light is self -affirming. Light does not need to prove itself.

You know that there's light in the room. You know right now if there's light.

And if there's no light, well, you know that too. So light affirms itself.

It doesn't need to prove itself that it exists. It is self -actualizing. And so it is with God's word as well.

God's word does not need to prove itself. It is affirming itself.

You know when you hear the word of God. A friend of mine is going through seminary right now, and he's reading the

Church Fathers. And he just shared with me, you can tell that none of this is scripture like the

Roman Catholics will treat it. It's tradition. And so it's every bit as much the word of God as what we read in the gospels or in the epistles in the

New Testament. No, you can tell. When you read the Church Fathers, it sounds like somebody giving a sermon or writing commentary.

It doesn't sound the same as when we read the scriptures and we read from the actual apostles whom

Christ appointed to give us this word from the

Lord. You can tell the difference between that which has come from God and that which is coming from man.

And so the word of God, as we call the Bible, the scriptures, is self -affirming.

It doesn't need to be proven. Now, of course, we can prove it. We can back it up. We can show that what we are reading in the

Bible is what was originally written. We can even test and affirm which books belong in the

Bible and which ones do not. There are certainly arguments and defenses for that, apologetics, as we would call them.

We can give those defenses. But really, when it comes down to it, the Holy Spirit reveals to us that which is truly the word of God and that which is not.

So it is of little wonder, then, why the Bible refers to itself so much as being light.

That even the scriptures themselves are the light of God. Consider 2 Peter 119. We have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.

Same sort of thing that's being said here in testifying about John the Baptist.

The tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high.

Verse 79, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.

Now, first of all, give light to those who sit in darkness, well, that goes right back to Isaiah 9 too.

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone.

And that is in reference to Christ, who is the light. Talked about at the beginning of John's gospel in John chapter 1.

So John the Baptist, he will be a prophet of the Most High. He will give knowledge of salvation to his people 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.

Now, that sounds like a reference back to Psalm 23, doesn't it? Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

I will fear no evil for you are with me, your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

So the Lord gives light to those who sit in darkness, those who dwell in the shadow of death to guide our feet to the way of peace.

Now, John the Baptist will guide people to the way of peace, but it is certainly

Jesus Christ who gives us the way of peace. The angels will say of him when we get to this in Luke chapter 2, glory to God in the highest and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased.

For it is Jesus Christ who makes peace between us and God. The enmity that exists between us and God because of our sin, we rebel against God.

God's wrath is burning against us. But Jesus Christ satisfies the wrath of God and changes our hearts to desire him.

So that which was broken has been fixed, redeemed by his blood as we talked about yesterday.

So in him, we have peace, the greatest peace we could ever know, peace with God, that his judgment is not against us anymore because of our sin, the wrath of God is satisfied by the blood of Christ shed for us.

He will guide us into the way of peace, the greatest peace we could know.

Now finally, as this all ends, that's the conclusion of Zechariah's prophecy, him blessing the

Lord, talking about the fulfilling of prophecy in verses 68 to 75, and then him blessing

John the Baptist verses 76 to 79. And even though Zechariah is saying this when

John is still a baby, surely these are things that will stick with him through the rest of his life, knowing these words that have been said about him.

The Pharisees even come and question John. They ask him, who are you? Why are you here? Are you the

Messiah that is to come? No, I am not. You're the Christ. I'm not the Christ. Then who are you?

And John the Baptist knows he is the fulfillment of what was said in the prophet Isaiah, the one who will come saying, make straight his paths, prepare the way of the

Lord. And so it is said in verse 80, at the end of this prophecy, we have this small little narrative, and the child grew and became strong in spirit.

And he was in the wilderness until the day of his public appearance to Israel.

So as he grew in the ways of his father, remember his father being a priest, so Zechariah and Elizabeth surely teach him all kinds of scripture.

He is strong in spirit, bold, confident. He knows the mission.

He fears God. He is going to fulfill that which he was meant to fulfill.

So he goes out into the wilderness. Just as Jesus before his ministry begins, he goes into the wilderness.

So the same was the case with John the Baptist until the day of his public appearance to Israel.

He's out in the wilderness. He's there with God. And the gospel of John even tells us that John the

Baptist was told by God, he on whom you see the spirit descend and remain.

This is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit. John testified to that in John 1 33.

So at some point, God from heaven even spoke to John the Baptist and told him the one whom the father had sent, you will see him, you will know him when my spirit comes and rests upon him.

And so John the Baptist is in the wilderness. Perhaps it's even why, while he is there, that God reveals this to him until his public ministry begins.

This is kind of a foreshadowing narrative because then we're going to rewind in time and come back to the birth of Christ in Luke chapter two.

So we're not going to pick up this part of the story with John the Baptist again until we get to in chapter three.

So for the next chapter, chapter two, which we will start on Monday, we read about Jesus childhood, his birth, even a little bit of his story when he was just 12 years old teaching in the temple.

It's only in Luke's gospel that we have that account. So we know a little bit more of his life before his earthly ministry began.

Luke shed some more light on that than any of the other gospel writers do. But then we come right back into the

Holy land, those things that are happening in the ministry of John the Baptist and Jesus Christ when we get to Luke chapter three.

And that's still the introduction to this gospel. Those first three chapters are the introduction to what we've been reading here.

So we're going to finish there for now. We'll come back and pick up in Luke chapter two on Monday.

Remember once again, as we have read here in this prophecy from Zechariah, that the son of God has come to shine on us.

And you can spell that either way, S -U -N or S -O -N. He has come to shine on us and reveal to us the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

And so we know peace with God. We know fellowship with him. We know his promise of eternal life.

We know the forgiveness of our sins when we know Jesus Christ.

Heavenly father, we thank you for what we have read. And I pray that we do indeed have that knowledge of salvation and where we are struggling, where we don't know, where we're saying,

Lord, I believe now help my unbelief, that you will meet us there, build us up, fill us with the knowledge of your word.

As the apostle Paul says in Colossians chapter two, it is in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

So grow us in the knowledge of your son. Forgive us of our sins.

Show us your tender mercies. And we have dwelt in darkness. Now in Christ, we dwell in the light.

So may we walk in the light as he is in the light. As said in first John two, guide our feet into the way of peace.

We pray in Jesus name. Amen. You've been listening to when we understand the text with Pastor Gabe Hughes.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Gabe will be going through a New Testament study. Then on Thursday, we look at an

Old Testament book. On Friday, we take questions from the listeners and viewers. Tomorrow we'll pick up on an