Luke 1:67-79 So Much Praise

To the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Felsick preaches from his series, Christmas Praise, Poems of Worship from the Gospel of Luke. Let's listen in.

Good morning and welcome to Recast Church. I'm Don Felsick, I'm the lead pastor here. And I am really glad to be gathered together with all of you as an expression of the body of Christ here in Mattawan, Michigan.

How many of you are glad to be here? Glad to be here? All right, let's go. God is bringing us into connection with each other to grow us in faith, grow us in community, and grow us in service. We believe that taking in God's word is the way that we grow in faith, that he is calling us to increase in our knowledge of him and trust in him in our daily lives, and he does so in community.

He desires for us, he's created us for connection with others, and then he has also gifted us, and that's what we mean by growing in service. He's brought us all together for a purpose, not just merely to kind of take in a show on Sunday morning or something like that, or to just learn some tidbits of information, but he wants us to serve one another well, and so we wanna be continuing to grow in service.

I'm looking forward to looking deeper into praise over the next few weeks leading up to our Christmas celebrations. We're gonna be looking into the poetry of praise written in the gospel, the gospel of Luke, surrounding the birth of Jesus Christ, and I'm convinced that starting with our text this morning, God is gonna be working through the scriptures to draw us away from the distractions of this season, and instead, he is seeking to draw us toward a more robust thankfulness and gratitude for the advent.

That is the word that means the arrival or the coming of Jesus Christ, the incarnation of Jesus Christ in his first advent. Where we live, we look forward to an advent yet to come, a second coming, but right now, we think of that first advent as an anticipation and a building up of the recognition that he is indeed coming back for us.

So to some degree, I think we may lose the vision of what I would just say is a massive, glorious, cosmic, jaw-dropping, epic glory of Christmas, because I think human nature has a tendency to water things down into routines and traditions, and there's nothing wrong with tradition.

How many of you would just say you love some of your Christmas traditions? Like, you love some of those things. Like, there's just something that's kind of comforting about the cadence and the routine and the doing of things, but that's great as long as that doesn't become self-serving, right?

Like, the traditions and the routines that can kind of water down in our minds the things that God wants to really teach us and do in us. Our text this morning is maybe a familiar passage to many of us.

To be honest, it's a familiar passage to me that I hadn't dissected before. I hadn't really dug in and really wasn't very thoughtful. I've read this passage many, many times, but it's a poetic prophecy of praise given by the Holy Spirit to a man named Zechariah who is the father of John.

We'd say John the Baptist, although he wasn't a formal Baptist like we would think of today. He was John the Baptizer, named because he baptized people. But the vision that he has given, that the father of John the Baptist has given, is meant to evoke within us awe and wonder over the many things that God is doing in the sending forth of his only son to this muddy and dirty place where we live.

In this text, God will give us so many reasons to praise him this Christmas, so many reasons. And I hope you're a note taker this morning because I'm gonna encourage you to take notes. And this might be, if you do take notes this morning, I believe that this is a list that you ought to keep at the front of your Bible so that you can keep turning back to it over the course of the season.

In the busyness, when you kind of go like, another party, really? Another busy thing in this season? Another thing to do? And you can turn back to that and say, this is the point. Jesus Christ is the point.

And I think you'll see as we go through this, a bunch of different things that will help set the trajectory. My hope is that this passage and this message this morning will aim our hearts in the right direction.

Aim our hearts in the right direction, setting a tone for our remembrance of God and his great love for us in the sending forth of his son. So let's open our Bibles or your apps or your devices. We're gonna be looking at the first chapter of Luke.

Near the end of that chapter, actually the very end of that chapter, Luke 1, verses 67 through 79. So the Gospel of Luke, give you a second to get there. But recast, this is God's holy and precious word revealed to Zechariah, a prophecy directly from the Holy Spirit, surrounding the birth of Jesus.

Luke 1, 67 through 79 says this to us today, church. And his father, Zechariah, was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied, saying, blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people.

And he 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 prophet. 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 of 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.

Let's pray. Father, the way of peace seems hard to find. It seems like not the reality of my past month, my past six months, my past year. I'm thinking going back to the start of this pandemic and going back to even childhood, there have been difficulties and frustrations and pains and all kinds of things.

There's been glory, there's been great things to give thanks for, but we recognize that this world is not the way that it was meant to be. I recognize that some people are coming off of fabulous weeks and they're like, they don't even know what I'm praying about right now.

They're just thinking, wow, this has been a great run and all rainbows and butterflies, but then others are here in a difficult place right now. But for all of us, we recognize the need for you to break in, the need for you to come and rescue, the need for you to come and set things right.

We thank you for the many things that are sealed for us in the first coming of our Lord and Savior, the things that were set in motion there that are for our ultimate good and for our ultimate peace and for our ultimate blessing that our sins will be dealt with and are dealt with on the basis of his arrival here among us to be one of us to take our sins on his shoulders.

I pray that that would result in great joy as we talk about these things this morning, as we think about these things, as we just read these things. I pray that you would light up our hearts with joy and gladness like the sunrise dawning after a dark night, and that the weight of what we deserved in light of what we're actually granted is forgiveness and holiness and eternity with you would just spill out of us in praise and gladness in our singing this morning.

We ask this in Jesus' name, amen. Yep, you can go to be seated, but if at any time during the message you wanna get up and get more coffee or juice or donut holes, you can take advantage of that back there.

You're not gonna distract me at all if you get up during the message, and then the restrooms are out the double doors down the hallway on the left-hand side if you need those. And then I ask that you also please keep your Bibles open to Luke chapter one, 67 through 79, so you can follow along in the text and see, and this is gonna be a very much follow-along verse-by-verse kind of message, and so I would encourage you to just have that open in front of you so that you can take advantage of seeing that the things that I'm saying are coming straight out of the Bible.

This song that we're looking at, really this praise is set in an interesting context. Verse 67 tells us right out of the gate that it was given by the Holy Spirit to a man named Zechariah. Now many of you have read, and you know the history of Zechariah, but he had this interesting thing.

Prior to this praise that he utters prophetically, revealed by the Spirit, there was a dramatic event in the life of Zechariah that we need to consider. It's helpful for us to understand to set some of the context of this praise that he offers.

Zechariah was a priest, and the priests during this era took turns serving in the temple, and they might not even live in Jerusalem. They might live out in other places, but they traveled to Jerusalem on their turn to go offer incense, offer sacrifices.

In this particular case, it was Zechariah's turn to offer the incense within the holy place. So he went in there, and as was custom, people prayed outside as he entered in that holy place where there was fear.

There was fear surrounding this, in that he knew he was a sinner. He knew he had sin. He had to bring sacrifices and all of that before he entered that holy place, even as a priest, to offer that incense.

When he was in there, the people are praying outside. An angel met him, and they're afraid. They begin to increasingly pray, and I think the prayer got more and more fervent as it took him longer while he was in there.

It says that in the first chapter of Luke earlier on than where we're at this morning. An angel met him there. He was afraid, but the angel told him, chill for just a minute, calm down and listen, and he informed him that his wife was gonna have a baby.

Well, Zechariah didn't believe the angel, and it even says he didn't believe the angel because Elizabeth, his wife, was past childbearing years. She was older, and so he's like, nah, you're wrong. Speaking to an angel.

Starts off with fear, and then by the end, he kinda, like humans usually do, we kinda pluck up our courage and eventually stand our ground, and that's what he did. Nah, you're wrong. There's no way that my wife is going to have a baby.

So the angel says, I'm gonna give you a sign, dude. I'm gonna make sure that you know that the things that I'm saying are true. When you walk out of this curtain, you're no longer gonna be able to talk until the baby is born, and that's exactly what happened.

So imagine that you're in that prayer group outside. Zechariah walks in, takes a little bit longer. You're praying for him. You're going like, God, don't smite the guy. He walks out. He can no longer talk.

You're like, what happened? He can't even tell them what happened behind the curtain. So he obviously, eventually, is probably able to write to them or whatever, but he steps out of the temple to those praying, and he can't speak.

So just before our text of praise, Zechariah's still mute. His son has just been born. Now, we know that because he's eight days out, and the naming ceremony for a child during this time was eight days after their birth, and they are getting ready to circumcise him and name him.

He's there. He cannot speak. Zechariah cannot speak, and he was told by the angel to name him John. The family's all very eager to step over the mute Zechariah and name the boy on his behalf. The guy can't talk anyway, so why don't we just name him?

And they were ready to name him Zechariah Jr., the text tells us. They were gonna name him Zechariah Jr., but he's given an iPad. It says a tablet right in the text. It literally says a writing tablet, so what do you expect?

And he writes on there, his name is John, and at that point, when he honors the word of the Lord through the angel given to him in that most holy place, when he honors that and says, no, we're not gonna name him Zechariah, we're gonna follow the prophecy of God, and we're going to name him John, at that point, his mouth is open for the first time in nine months, and John speaks the words we're looking at today.

That's the context of what we're talking about this morning. A pretty dramatic event, I think, in the life of Zechariah. I said John speaks the words we're looking at today, Zechariah speaks the words we're looking at today.

And these words are credited to the Spirit directly in the text. These words are said to be prophetic words, and these are certainly words of poetic praise for us to take on. We need to understand that Zechariah's given a vision of the epic and cosmic work that God is doing in these current events, current, of course, in the lifetime of Zechariah.

These are things that are going on during his lifetime, things that are epic and cosmic in their scope. So the verb tenses in prophecy can sometimes get confusing. But this is all written in the sense that the arrival of the Messiah ensures things for humanity as if they have already been accomplished.

So when we talk about the arrival of Jesus at Christmas, spelling our redemption, well, how many of you know something else needs to happen first? Like the eight-pound baby Jesus in the manger didn't save you from your sins.

Did he have to do something else? What did he have to do? He had to die for us, right? Well, that hasn't happened yet, but Zechariah in a prophetic voice is speaking as though those things are sealed.

And how many of you know they're done in God's eyes? Like those are things accomplished. Like he doesn't live in time and space like us. And so when the Spirit says these things are realities because Christ came, you can take that to the bank.

You can take it to the bank that we're gonna live forever with him on the basis of our faith because of what Christ has done for us, even though we yet know that there's more yet to be done. And so our outline's gonna be robust.

Buckle up this morning. There's gonna be 12 points because each one of these verses contains a facet of the advent of the Lord, what the Lord has done for us by sending forth his son. So each verse a point.

No, we're not gonna be here until this afternoon. We're gonna get through this. Actually, it might be just a couple minutes after noon. I don't know, we'll see. I just made a promise I couldn't necessarily keep, but we can translate these verses into 12 reasons to praise God during this Christmas season.

And you can see why I said in my introduction that I would love for you to take notes, write these 12 things down, 12 things for you to go back to over the course of this season. If you're running low and you're running low on reasons to thank the Lord, this is a good list.

And by the way, this is not just for Christmas. This is a good list to have beside you, but these are things that the advent, the first advent of our Lord secures for us. So out of the mouth of this mute priest flows the revelation of the Spirit as he is given a vision of what the Lord is doing for you and for me.

So we'll start off with the first one. In verse 68, we see that in his advent, God has come to bring redemption. In his advent, God has come among us to bring redemption. The purpose of everything that comes after this verse is set out at the beginning of this text.

Blessed be the Lord God of Israel. All of this is for the purpose of blessing him. It is clear that Zechariah's words are meant to bring glory to God and him alone. He will shine, Zechariah will shine a spotlight on what God is doing.

And the core of what he is doing is visiting, according to this verse, visiting and redeeming. Visiting and redeeming, arriving and restoring is another way to say that. He is pitching his tent among us to rescue us.

Christmas and Easter, church must touch each other. Look at verse 68. Visited, think incarnation and Christmas. Redeemed his people, think Good Friday and Easter. The two of them are a package deal in our salvation.

That he arrived, that he might pay the price for you and for me. Zechariah is given a vision we all need here at the start of the season. God deserves praise for coming to rescue us. In his advent, God has come to bring redemption, to pay for our sins.

The second thing is in his advent, God has exercised his mighty power to save. In verse 68, to raise up a horn is to exercise might or power. And we might not relate to this use of the word horn at all.

Like when you hear horn, you think like honking horn, like on your car, like what kind of horn are we talking about here? Like devil's horns or what? What is the meaning of that phrase, the horn of salvation?

In a primarily agrarian society, a pastoral society, and a society that raised sheep. Sheep were currency. The visual images of powerful rams clashing in the field and the hills were a common thing. Their horns were a clear symbol of power.

And when God sends forth his son, he is clashing with our enemies. The mention of David here is a reminder of our past year studying the book of 2 Samuel. It's right here at Christmastime, and yet it's a reminder of all that we've studied for the past year in that book about King David.

God promised to David to raise up a mighty ruler from his line who would smash the enemies of God and bring about peace. That was the promise to David, and here it's reflected that that promise is being kept.

Consider this season that in sending forth his son, God is raising up his head to clash against our enemies. What kind of enemies? Well, our enemies of sin, our enemies of death, our enemies of the world, the flesh, and the devil, the enemy of pride, the enemy of lust, the enemy of want and covetousness and gossip and slander and lies.

He's setting in motion a powerful act of salvation to rescue us, and he is doing it through the promised descendant of King David. In his advent, God has exercised his mighty power to rescue, to save.

The third thing is in his advent, he is fulfilling the prophetic promises. This is the third point. In his advent, he's fulfilling the prophetic promises. We're gonna see a lot of emphasis. At least three of these points are gonna center around the idea of God's faithfulness.

In verse 70, Zechariah says that what he is doing is in accordance with the holy prophets of old. What God is doing is new. It's a new thing in Christ, but it has always been a part of God's divine plan.

This is significant because we see that the advent of Jesus was a part of the plan all along. It was always what God was going to do. Sending Jesus to die for our sins was not some kind of plan B or C or D.

You know, if this doesn't work, then I'll try this. If this doesn't work, then I'll try this. God is fulfilling promises that he made to Eve and to Abraham and to Moses and to David and to Isaiah and to Malachi and to Micah and to all of these prophets.

In his advent, we see God faithful, faithful to keep his promises. And so in his advent, he is fulfilling those prophetic promises. In his advent, also, verse 71, the fourth thing, he has rescued, God has rescued us from our enemies.

Now, I mentioned earlier, but I wanna flesh it out a little bit more that he has saved us because the church still has enemies, not even merely metaphorical enemies. And we know that the Jews suffered from an expectation that this meant that Jesus was gonna come and remove the Roman occupier, so we wanna turn this metaphorical really quick, and I did a little bit of that earlier by saying sin and death and lust and lies and all those enemies that we face, but there's a reality to which these are genuine enemies.

You see, we could just say the Jews got it wrong and leave it at that and go, well, Jesus didn't come to oust the Romans and defeat them and set the Jews free and let them rule and reign and be their king and set up an earthly kingdom.

So we could emphasize the fact that they got that wrong and misunderstood these things without much thought to what it really does mean that God will defeat our enemies. You see, here's our problem, church, in understanding this.

We live in such a unique age. You see, most people in Christian history would read this and cling to the promise of vindication and vengeance against those who put to death their fathers and their mothers and their sisters and their brothers and their neighbors and their friends and other people in their church.

The church's history has been one of being fed to lions. It is a history of being burned as candles at dinner parties for the Caesars or imprisoned or thrust through with spears or killed in a variety of ways, dipped in vats of boiling oil, all kinds of gruesome things that were done to Christians in history.

When Jesus returns, he is not gonna come back and just say, hi, everyone. It's not gonna be like, thumbs up, chill, Jesus. He will come back to establish his eternal kingdom. He will cast down all of his enemies and not just metaphorical enemies, though he will deal with sin and death, and praise God, that's like the greatest thing, but real people and real demons who have rebelled against him will be cast down on that last day.

The advent of the Lord spells real and true justice for his people. It will not be until later, but it is sealed by his coming in the flesh. So do you consider, church, it's a strange application, but do you consider celebrating during Christmas that all wrongs will be made right because this child was born?

There is hope for vindication. There is hope for true and abiding justice because that child was born. That includes the judgment of those who have done wicked things to his people. The fifth thing, remind you what the fourth was.

God has rescued us from our enemies. The fifth is that in his advent, God has fulfilled his covenant, verse 72. This is pretty significant because there's some people that think there's still a lot of covenant stuff that needs to be fulfilled, but three of the 12 points this morning revolve around the idea of God keeping his promises.

He is faithful. God's faithfulness is so important. It is such a major theme in scripture because everything hinges on whether or not you can trust him. If he's capricious, if he just changes his mind, if he's unfaithful to the things that he said that he's done or that he will do, then we're all kind of like in trouble, right?

How many of you know what I'm talking about? Like if God just willy nilly just decides like, today I'm just not gonna accept the blood of Jesus for salvation. You hope you don't die today, right? Like it's, I mean, of course that's not the case and that's why the scriptures go over the top to emphasize his faithfulness because we have no hope and we have nothing to cling to without his faithfulness.

So it wants to make us understand deep in our souls that God will complete that which he started. And in verse 72, the focus of his faithfulness is to keep his promise in order to show mercy. He promised to forgive sins in the Old Testament.

He promised to grant people new hearts. He promised to grant eternal life. He promised to give his people the Holy Spirit. Many, many promises and I'm just scratching the surface of the promises that God gave in that old covenant that's now fulfilled in the new.

His arrival is to show that God is faithful to complete the acts of mercy that he has promised in his ancient covenant to rescue us from sin. He said, I'm gonna crush the head of the serpent. And it was revealed to Zechariah that God was initiating that very mercy in his lifetime.

The sixth one is that in this advent, God has fulfilled his promises to Abraham specifically. Now Abraham, a very key character in the Old Testament. Abraham was the first one that God gave a specific covenant to that he met with.

I remember I was reading through the Bible in 90 days a few years back and I remember getting emotional when I got to Genesis 12. It was weird because I didn't expect it and I didn't see it coming, but the darkness of those first 11 chapters, it just spirals and spirals and spirals till every thought was only wicked and everybody was just focused on themselves and the darkness that came from that glorious beginning of being in the garden with God and the fall and the brokenness that just, it just seems to accelerate in those first chapters of Genesis.

And then you get to 12 and Abraham and God doing something different. God coming to man and saying, I will redeem, I will save, I will promise, and I will secure a covenant with people. We don't deserve that.

We don't deserve God to reach out to us, but he did in Abraham. So that's the kind of significance we're talking about here when it says that he's gonna fulfill his promise to Abraham in Christ, in the arrival of Christ.

You see, Abraham was given a very specific three-part promise there early in Genesis, well, in the middle of Genesis. He was told that God would multiply his people, he would give those people a great land so that one of his offspring would be a blessing to all people.

Who was that offspring? Who is it? Jesus, he's the promise given to Abraham that one of his offspring would be a blessing to all people. You see, the promise of making a great nation out of Abraham, the promise of giving him a land was all for the purpose of bringing forth a Messiah.

In other words, in Jesus, all the promises of Abraham are fulfilled. The promise of the nation has served its purpose. It preserved the Jewish line all the way down to Jesus. The promise of the land has served its purpose.

It sustained the people until the arrival of the Messiah. In Christ, God was once again showing himself to be faithful so we would do well to focus some time this season meditating on and then praising God for his faithfulness demonstrated to us in the sending forth of his son.

The seventh one here in the text is in verse 74, God has, in this advent, God has removed our fear. God has removed our fear. We have nothing to fear. Personally, I need this reminder here at the start of this Christmas season.

Our culture feels more divided than ever. The stakes seem to be higher than ever in our culture. And persecution of the church seems like it could be right around the corner. We don't know which direction we're gonna fall off this hill, but we know that it's sliding.

And yet look right at the text of verse 74. Go ahead and look at it with me. That we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear. We have security in the arms of Jesus, church.

Though they feed this body to a lion or riddle it with bullets or call me dirty names and drag my reputation through the mud, I need not fear for the advent of Christ, the defeat of my enemies has been secured.

So faithfulness to the truth of God may bring persecution in the coming years. Encourage you to be faithful to God. But the spirit through Zechariah is reminding us that we are brought to a bold fearlessness in the service of our God.

Service like evangelism, service like singing his praises, service like taking a strong stand on truth without fear. Two words we might not readily associate with Christmas, right? Pretty packages, good cheer, sparkly Christmas lights, good food, good friendship and fellowship.

But those things give way in our hearts, must give way in our hearts to a more robust and sustaining tradition of considering the boldness that the advent of Christ is meant to ignite within us. He has come to secure us for eternity so that we can boldly live for him now.

In his advent, God has removed our fear. The eighth one, in his advent, God has granted us holiness and righteousness before him forever. In his advent, God has granted us holiness and righteousness before him forever.

Does anybody feel that? Does anybody feel what is true of you in light of that? Or is that just words? Let me say it again. In his advent, God has granted us holiness. Raise your hand if you feel holy today.

Righteousness. Are you righteous? Have you done everything right this week? Raise your hand if you did it all right this week. Did you get it? Did you nail it? No. In his advent, God has granted us, church, holiness and righteousness.

Where? Before him forever. Holy cow. How in the world? How can we be unmoved by that? I can tell you, I don't deserve an ounce of that. Nothing about me is holy except Christ my Lord. Nothing. That's what he came for.

To declare us holy and righteous before the holy and almighty one that's before him like at his face. Like how many of you just acknowledge like I would be torn apart if I stand before him in my sin? I should be consumed and toast.

What has Christ done for us, church? Has he bought us some diversion? What kind of drab and dark month of December so that we've got some fun and some, that's actually sunny, isn't it? A nice sunny day to illustrate with.

Has he bought us some diversion so that we've got some fun stuff to do in the darker winter months of December? I wanna remind you that Zechariah is being given a vision of the whole complex of salvation rolled up in the arrival of Jesus.

At first advent, we know that Jesus died on the cross to save us, but his arrival and the birth and the manger sets the entire process of our salvation in motion. So the advent of Jesus allows us to serve God without fear, but also now we look forward to a day when we will serve him in holiness and righteousness.

The holiness mentioned here, by the way, when I mentioned that and you kind of go like, when I was asking you, are you holy, are you righteous, to clarify what those words mean. Holiness mentioned here is an internal purity.

Righteousness is a more external purity. So that holiness has to do with your thoughts and your feelings and what's going on inside you while righteousness is in relationship to others around you. We respond in righteousness and acts and deeds.

So our destiny has shifted on the basis of what began with his advent. If anything should make us praise God this Christmas season, it is this, that we will spend unending days in holiness and righteousness before him because he came to set us free from sin and death.

And if that sounds boring, then you might need some help with your imagination. God made us to be creative. He made us to subdue creation, to work, to rest, to enjoy, and all of that will continue in eternity.

In holiness and in righteousness before him, all of our days does not mean in an unending church service forever. I can understand why you might think that's boring. But what it means is picking up where we left off with a command to be his image bearers to this world, a real physical place.

That's why it's called the new heavens and the new earth. That's our destiny. It's not floating on clouds with harps and ethereal angel bodies or something like that, or spirits. That's what the resurrection, that's what Christ was raised for, to bring back flesh, to make sure that we recognize that these bodies will be redeemed in the end.

And we in that future will be corporal. There will be technology. There will be advancement. There will be all kinds of things because of the way that God has designed us and made us. There will be no sin.

But most importantly, Jesus Christ, our Lord, will be our king. And he will reign, as we sang earlier, forever. Forever in righteousness. Raise your hand if you look forward to that day. Even so, come Lord Jesus.

Verse 76, ironically, there's a little bit of a break in the text. It introduces Zechariah's son, John the baptizer. After eight verses describing the blessing of the Messiah, there's one verse that is granted by the Spirit to introduce John the baptizer.

This is his dad prophesying, and you would expect all of his prophecy to be about the birth of his son. It's not. It's almost all about Jesus. One verse dedicated to John's purpose, and John's purpose is clearly expressed in verse 76.

He is the forerunner, the herald, the one who will prepare the hearts of the people to receive the glory of the Son. And what he does for the people is still part of what I'm gonna include in the things that God has done for us in sending forth his son.

John's ministry still serves the much higher ministry of Jesus. So that .9 I'm gonna credit to the ministry of Jesus, though it's performed through his herald, John. And it's this one, the ninth one, verse 77.

In this advent, God has given us the knowledge of salvation and the pathway of repentance. That pathway of repentance is a way of saying he's gonna show them their sins, and that's what John's ministry primarily was.

In this context of the times of Zechariah, the hearts of the people needed to be prepared for the arrival of Jesus. The reason being that most people were living their lives. You see, I think we can have in our minds that everybody was just waiting for Jesus to be born the day that he was born.

Like everybody was out in the, everybody was kind of like, okay, Messiah's gonna be here any minute. But how many of you are like, in all honesty, like Jesus could come back like any minute, but it just doesn't seem very likely?

It's gonna be today, it's gonna be my lifetime, like who knows? But you kind of don't think about it every moment of the day, right? Just being honest. I'm a pastor, I'm raising my hand. Like look, I don't think about it every day.

Like not every day I'm like, oh, today's the day Jesus is coming back. It's not the way that they lived during that time either. Most were subsistence farmers, meaning that they ate what they grew or they raised.

How many of you think that might take up quite a bit of energy? If you were like, the only thing that you would put in your mouth was the things that you grew, you might spend a little time farming. You might spend some time taking care of that goat or that cow or whatever it is, right?