Sunday, December 10 , 2023 AM

Sunnyside Baptist Church

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Let's go to the Lord together in prayer. Heavenly Father, we bless

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Your name today. We praise You for Your goodness, that it is unchanging.

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We praise You for Your grace, that it is all -powerful. We praise

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You for Your love, that it is everlasting.

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We thank You for gathering us here today to rejoice in Your Son by the power of Your Spirit.

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We ask that You would help us to worship You as You so deserve, that You would lift us to You, even as You have drawn near to us.

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We confess that we are often distracted, often we do not praise

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You as You deserve. But God, You are so patient and long -suffering, so kind and so gracious, and so righteous in Your mercy as You forgive us of our sins for the sake of Your Son, Jesus Christ, who for us and for our salvation in due season was born under the law, fulfilling all righteousness, dying upon the cross,

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Your Lamb, satisfying Your perfect standards, raised from the dead the third day, ascended and reigning over us.

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Lord, we give You praise. We ask that You would help us today to rejoice in Your truth.

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We pray these things for the sake of Jesus Christ. Amen. I invite you to open your

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Bibles and turn with me to Luke chapter 1. Luke chapter 1, and we will read verses 67 through 79 in a moment.

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Luke chapter 1, verses 67 through 79.

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We began in the Gospel of Luke with the Annunciation, how Gabriel came to Mary, announcing that she would be the mother of the

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Messiah, the mother of our Lord. Then we considered her song, her praise to God, the

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Magnificat, she magnified God. She magnified the Lord and she rejoiced in God, her

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Savior, for confirming to her by the sign of Elizabeth, though she was old and barren no more, she was fairly along with a son who leapt in his mother's womb at the arrival of Mary, who was bearing

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Christ. So the Annunciation, then the Magnificat, and now another

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Christmas carol, sung by Zacharias. The very first word of the praise that he offers is,

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Blessed, blessed, blessed be God, blessed be the Lord God of Israel.

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In Latin, this word comes to us as Benedictus, thus the title of this second

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Christmas carol in Luke. I invite you to stand with me as I read, if you're able, as I read

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God's Holy Word, and we hear the praise that Zacharias gives to the

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Lord. Luke 1, beginning in verse 67, Now his father

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Zacharias was filled with the Holy Spirit, and prophesied, saying, Blessed is the

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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

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David, as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets, who have been since the world began, that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us, to perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant, the oath which he swore to our father

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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 the days of our life.

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And you, child, will be called the prophet of the highest, for you will go before the face of the

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Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the remission of their sins, through the tender mercy of our

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God, with which the day spring from on high has visited us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.

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This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. Does God ever answer your prayers?

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Good, I'm glad to hear that. How do you respond when your prayers are answered?

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Some of you will remember the encouragement exhortation of our brother Randy Brooks.

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Don't only keep track of what you're praying about, keep track of the answers to prayer, and then reflect on that, and give praise to God.

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How do we respond when our prayers are answered? How do we rejoice with those whose prayers are answered?

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Even when ours are not. Have you ever had an answer to a prayer that you had prayed for many years?

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Well, that's a little different than a prayer prayed for several minutes. Oh, it's impressive when you call out to God and ask for him to do something in the now, because we need it right now.

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Oh, I've seen it. It's happened. You can rejoice in the Lord for that. But what is it like to pray for years and to have that prayer answered?

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How about a prayer answered after many decades? My goodness.

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The momentum of all of those prayers, exchanged for the praise and the giving of glory to God who heard and answered after many seasons of knocking and seeking.

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Now, this is something interesting. Have you ever inherited a prayer from your mother or your father?

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That's a bit more rare, isn't it? I've not yet seen this prayer answered.

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I give it to you to keep praying. What about inheriting a prayer from a grandmother or a grandfather?

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Something for you mothers and fathers and grandparents to think about handing down. What are you praying for that you have not yet seen answered?

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If you don't see it in your lifetime, maybe you should bestow that upon your grandchildren to keep praying.

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What if there was a prayer answered after hundreds and indeed thousands of years?

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What kind of celebration should be given when a prayer that had been offered up for thousands of years was answered?

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Merry Christmas. Zacharias, as we hear him giving praise to God, it's in response to the

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Lord. It's connected to the Lord giving him a son. Zacharias and Elizabeth grew old, yet they kept on praying for a child.

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They kept on praying for a son. And when the angel Gabriel confronted

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Zacharias in the temple, one of the things that Gabriel said was, your prayer has been heard.

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They were beyond the time that it would be possible to have a child.

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And yet, Gabriel says, your prayer has been heard. You will have a son. You're going to name him

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John. And here's a sign. You're not going to be able to speak until he is born.

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When Zacharias finally gets to talk, he comes out with a burst of praise, astounding praise, blessing

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God. But it wasn't simply only for the fact that he had a son now.

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But it was more than that. There's a kind of praise that one gives when he finally has a son in his old age, when he never thought he would have one.

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There's that kind of praise. But then there's a kind of praise when God gives his son.

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And that's the kind of praise that we see going on in this carol.

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We also should bless the Lord for keeping his promises in his son

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Jesus Christ. An answer to prayer thousands of years in the making deserves celebration, deserves praise to God, deserves an organized effort for us to honor

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God who keeps his promises. So in Luke 1, verses 67 and 68, we see that Zacharias gives praise.

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Blessed be our God of faithful past. So Zacharias, we see, verse 67, he was filled with the

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Holy Spirit and prophesied, saying, Blessed is the

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Lord God of Israel. Blessed is the

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Lord God of Israel. Now as we read the first part of that verse, we see his father.

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Whose father? John's father. John's father, Zacharias. And he's filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied.

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But given the background of the story, the fact that he has not been able to talk for nearly a year, and this is the first thing that comes out of his mouth, it seems to be a little bit more impressive.

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We often consider the wakiness of someone's last words. And what about the nature of the words of someone who hasn't spoken in nine months?

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They haven't talked for nine months. And finally, they say something. What is it that they finally say?

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Well, let's go back to verses 12 through 17 here in Luke 1. You might have to turn back a page or two.

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As a priest, Zacharias was serving his rotation in the temple itself.

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That was a very special thing. The waiting list was so long, you might only serve once or twice in your lifetime.

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And there, Gabriel, the angel of God, confronts him with an answer to his prayer.

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And notice in verse 12. And when Zacharias saw him, he was troubled, and fear fell upon him.

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But the angel said to him, Do not be afraid, Zacharias. It's always the first thing they say.

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Do not be afraid, Zacharias, for your prayer is heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son.

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And you shall call his name John, Yohanan. God is a gracious giver.

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What a great name for a son, John. And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth.

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For he will be great in the sight of the Lord. You see, the angel is clarifying.

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It's not just that God has heard your prayer and that you're going to get a son. But we've waited this long to make it such a big deal that all the hill country of Judea is going to be astounded that Zacharias and Elizabeth has had a son.

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And God is going to draw attention in this way because it's not just about you having a son, but the kind of son you're going to have.

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You see, he's going to be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall neither drink wine nor strong drink.

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He will also be filled with the Holy Spirit. He's not going to be filled with wine and strong drink. He's going to be filled with the

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Holy Spirit, even from his mother's womb. In this way, he's not exactly a

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Nazarite and not exactly like Jeremiah, but we're getting ideas of that. And verse 16,

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And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. That's good news. He will also go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children.

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That's the ending of Malachi. Warning about the

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Lord coming and striking them with a curse if the hearts of the fathers and the children are not turned towards one another.

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And also the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready a people prepared for the

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Lord. Well, that's Isaiah. And so, he will be that promised forerunner.

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That's what Gabriel is saying to Zacharias. And so, as a sign,

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Zacharias is mute, cannot speak until his son is born and when his son is born.

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And the happy, rejoicing community comes around and say, What's his name going to be? Zacharias Jr.?

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No. Elizabeth says, No, his name's going to be John. He's like, That can't be right. And they ask,

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Zacharias. And he writes it down. His name is John.

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And as soon as that happens, God looses his tongue, and this praise here in our passage this morning, this is the praise that comes flowing out of Zacharias as soon as he gets the chance to speak.

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And what does he say? He says, Blessed. Blessed is the Lord God of Israel. First thing out of his mouth.

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Blessed is the Lord God of Israel. This is not the blessed of the Beatitudes, the

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Machairos, happy is the man. This is the blessed of where we get the word eulogy from, eulogetos, eulogy.

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What is he saying? He's saying the Lord God of Israel is to be praised. He is to be adored.

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He is to be honored. Why? Because of what he has done, and because of what he has done that testifies to what he's just about to do, and so on and so forth, as we're going to see in his carol.

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So he says, God is to be praised, adored. He is to be honored.

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As all of this grace is coming from God upon our lives, then this must redound to his glory, and we're going to use good words, proclaiming good things about a good

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God. And that's what he means. Bless, when he says, Blessed is the

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Lord God of Israel. He's not talking about just any

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God. He's talking about the one true God who has revealed himself throughout redemptive history to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel, then to the children of Israel, even to the children of Judah, and the son of Judah, David, and his descendants.

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And all the promises of God come into view when Zechariah says, Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, and all of those promises that go with it, because we're going to praise him because he's going to keep those promises in his son.

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The promises of God, the covenant promises that God made, were funneled through and concentrated in the life of Israel, and all of those promises were but expansions of what he told the serpent in the hearing of Adam and Eve still in the throes of their sin, that there would be a seed who would defeat evil and set the image of God aright again, and Zechariah knows, my son is the forerunner of that son.

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So, blessed be the Lord God of Israel. Zechariah is praising

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God. Praising God. Which comes down to this.

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Zechariah has promised a son, John, who is the forerunner of the promised seed, the answer to the prayers of a hundred generations, and that's not hyperbole.

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Zechariah is filled with the Holy Spirit, and so he praises God. We also read earlier in chapter one,

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Gabriel said that John would be filled with the Holy Spirit from his birth, and would be proclaiming the praises of the

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Messiah, going before him, preparing the way for that greater servant. What are we seeing so far?

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When the Holy Spirit fills a person, the results are obvious. The results can be observed.

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The results can be heard. Praising the Father, praising the

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Son, praise lifted by the Spirit, the three yet one, what is so often artificially induced by aesthetic formulae.

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Do things in a certain fashion, very artistically, people will feel things, we'll call that the

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Spirit. What is so often artificially induced by emotional manipulative formulae, do things in this way, in a certain format, people will feel things, get emotional, and we'll call that the

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Holy Spirit. That is not only easy to do, it is pagan to do.

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It's been around a long time, nothing new about it. Only God can genuinely provide what we need.

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God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. Well, those are the gifts of God.

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Those are the gifts of God. So we must seek and desire the gift of God, the filling of the

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Spirit, the blessings of the presence of the Spirit, so that our praise will break forth. And I think it's fitting that as the arrival of the

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Messiah is in view here, that the Holy Spirit's power is so manifested. The Holy Spirit is going to fill

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John from the womb. The Holy Spirit filled Zacharias. The Holy Spirit filled Elizabeth. The Holy Spirit overshadows

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Mary, and by his creation power, Jesus is conceived in her virgin womb. Why all this manifest power of the

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Holy Spirit on display here at the beginning of the Gospels? I think the same reason why he's so manifest at Jesus' baptism there at the

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Jordan. So manifest on the day of Pentecost when the enthronement of Jesus Christ is the topic of the day.

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You see, the Holy Spirit, he's been at work long before any of us were around.

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He's been at work long before the day of Pentecost. In fact, we find the

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Holy Spirit in perfect cooperation with the other persons of the Godhead in the creation of the universe.

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The Holy Spirit hovered over the face of the deep. And so, we know that the

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Holy Spirit, that he has been acting and he has been powerful and working all throughout biblical history, and then we see a concentration of his work here at the beginning of the story of Jesus being born.

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What was he doing during the Old Covenant? Well, he bore along holy men who wrote down the words of God exactly as God intended.

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Holy men moved by the Holy Spirit wrote down the words of God so that the Word of God is breathed out by God and perfectly good for us.

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The Holy Spirit was also at work bringing about the circumcision of the heart, causing many to be born again.

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And although not every member of the Old Covenant was born again, only a few of them were and they were called the remnant more than once.

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There was a group amongst the Old Covenant Israelites who were born again. They actually did. They felt bad about sin, convicted about sin, and loved the

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Lord and had their affections changed and so forth. But was every member of the Old Covenant born again?

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Filled with the Holy Spirit and dwelt by the Holy Spirit? No, not at all. What's different in the

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New Covenant is that the New Covenant temple is made of living stones. Living stones.

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And the Holy Spirit indwells the people of the New Covenant and every last one of us who are in Christ in the

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New Covenant have our sins forgiven. We all know the Lord and the Holy Spirit indwells us.

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And because this is one of the most significant changes between the Old Covenant and the

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New, the Holy Spirit is being actively manifested in the bringing about of Christ's birth.

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Zacharias considers what's going on. The Lord has broken these 400 years of silence and he is speaking by his angel and here are the promises coming true of the forerunner and the promises of the

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Messiah. And Zacharias finally gets his chance to talk after nine months of thinking about what he's going to say and he starts off by saying,

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Blessed be the Lord God of Israel. We have a great deal for which to bless the

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Lord God of Israel. And how often do we bless the Lord? A bit of a strange thing.

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Sometimes we don't know how to pray, but we thank God that the Holy Spirit intercedes for us with groanings too deep to be uttered so we know that we can pray even if we stumble through and don't know how.

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We just go ahead. Just break through. Jesus didn't say pray like an expert.

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He said pray like a child. You know how bold a little child can be in asking his father for the most outrageous things.

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Jesus says come to God like that and he'll sort it. We know how to pray to God asking for things and we should feel the freedom to do so.

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We know how to pray to God and ask for forgiveness of our sins. We call our sins the way that God calls it. Confess our sins.

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Ask him for forgiveness. Ask him for the cleansing of our lives. We know how to do that. And we know how to thank

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God. We know how to thank him for all his many blessings and we've been pausing at Thanksgiving and naming all the things we could think of about how

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God has been so good in providing for us. But do we know how to bless God in our prayers? Do we know how to...

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It's not wrong to ask for stuff and to confess our sins and to thank God for the things that he has given.

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But do we know how to bless God? Do we know how to simply say high and wonderful things about God?

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Let me encourage you. I was talking to Brother Dean about this the other day. A word fitly spoken,

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Proverbs says, is like apples of gold in settings of silver. Apples of gold in settings of silver.

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Now think about the attributes and the character of God. Think about the fact that he is everlasting.

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Think about he's all powerful. Think about that he is unchanging. Apples of gold.

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And put those into settings of silver. That he is loving. That he is merciful. That he is kind.

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That he is holy. Bring those together. He is everlastingly holy. He is all powerful in his grace.

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Bring those together. Tell him. Tell him.

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Well, he already knows. He already knows what you did wrong. He already knows what you need.

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He already knows he gave you that blessing. So why do you tell him about those? Because he's your heavenly

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Father. So go to him in prayer and bless him. This will brighten up your prayers. This will brighten up your prayers when you bless the

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Lord God of Israel and give him praise for who he is. Bless the

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Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me. Bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget none of his benefits.

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Psalm 103, verses 1 and 2. We brighten the eaves of our house.

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We brighten the corners of our home. We brighten the tables upon which our feasts are laid, but let us also brighten our prayers.

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Let us bless the Lord and to praise him and adore him for his faithfulness, for the giving of his

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Son. Blessed be our God, a faithful past who keeps his word to save.

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Verse 68 continues here in Luke chapter 1. For he has visited.

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I want to bless God. Why? Because he has visited, he has visited and redeemed his people and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant

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David. As he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets who have been since the world began that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us to perform the mercy promised to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant, the oath which he swore to our father

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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 the days of our life.

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Zacharias understands what this means. The birth of his son as the forerunner of the

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Messiah means that God has as good as accomplished everything that he said he would do.

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It's here! There's no doubt that God's going to do everything he said he would do, but when you realize you're on the edge of seeing it all come to pass, well, it's

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God who's doing it. It's as good as done. God has visited. He has redeemed.

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He has raised up a horn just like he spoke that this will save us.

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He is doing this to perform his mercy. He has thus remembered his holy covenant.

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This is granting our deliverance and our sanctification. He's like, this is as good as done.

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Bless the Lord. Now, it's interesting that Zacharias says he has visited his people.

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Now, when you read the Old Testament, if you come across the word visit, it's a scary word.

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Some of you all don't like company. You hear the doorbell ring and you get scared. Israelites knew to be scared when

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God visited. Hebrew word pakad. Almost every time you read that God visited, it was

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Judgment Day. God paid a visit to the tribes, the peoples, at the

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Tower of Babel. Hello, judgment. God visited

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Egypt. Oh, no. What happened in Egypt?

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God visited the land of Canaan and all those judgments fell.

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When the prophets warned about the judgment of God, they warned that he would visit.

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It's the picture that God is long -suffering, that he is patient, and that he is enthroned in the heavens doing all that he pleases.

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But there comes a day when his long -suffering ends and he steps up out of his throne and he comes for a visit.

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And the prophets say when he comes, the mountains melt like wax, the islands go away, the stars stop shining, and the sun and the moon fail.

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Now, that's a visit. Zechariah says he has visited and redeemed his people.

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God with us and God for us.

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The hope of the Gospel. He raises up for us a horn of salvation.

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This is what Hannah prayed. This is what

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Hannah prayed. At the end of her prayer in 1 Samuel 2, she praised

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God and prayed that he would raise up that horn of salvation. Someone who could be the leader to bring the people out of their peril, their enemies.

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And it was from the house of his servant David. Zechariah says, well, Hannah was praying this because God gave her a son named

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Samuel. And who did Samuel anoint? He anointed David, the king.

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And it was David who is the ancestor of the Messiah. See, Zechariah can't think about the

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God of Israel keeping His Word without thinking about how God kept His Word to David and to Abraham and the full scope of the promised deliverance as God's remembrance of His holy covenant.

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And these prophets have been saying this from the beginning. When we think of the prophets, we might think, oh, the oldest, the first prophet, trivia time,

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I'm going to guess Samuel. No, maybe it was Moses. But when Jesus talks about the prophets, when the apostles talk about the prophets, they go back even farther.

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Jesus gave a list one time that started with Abel. Abel as a prophet. And who begot

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Abel? Adam. Who was it who told his sons and the generations that followed?

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Who was it who for 900 years told the story of what God said to the serpent about a seed who would be raised up to defeat evil and set the image of God aright?

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Who said that for 900 years? It was Adam. Noah's grandpa heard him say it.

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And Noah said it to Shem, and Shem was still alive when Abraham was there. The prophets have been saying it from the beginning.

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They speak as one of the covenants of God summed up as one, anticipating the one

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Messiah. He keeps his word to save. So Zacharias blesses him.

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You ever notice how the stories of Genesis serve as a prequel to the saga of the kings of Israel?

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How quickly we move through creation and fall and the stories of Noah and Abraham.

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And then our attention is placed upon Israel, which does not remain very long without a king.

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By the ninth book of the Bible, there's a king in Israel. But that was anticipated by the eighth book,

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Ruth. What's the lineage of the king? Which was foreshadowed by the seventh book, the days of the judges, in which there was no king in Israel and everyone did what was right in their own eyes.

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So there's the need for the king. And of course, the manner of the king was prescribed in the fifth book of the

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Bible, Deuteronomy. It just seems to me that the Father by the Spirit directed the prophets to write eagerly of the fuller shadows of the sun incarnate.

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The king. The king. God made His covenant with Noah concerning all of creation, saying, despite the sin, despite the violence, despite that the heart of man is evil continually, despite all of this, those who are made in the image of God will be under God's protection and they're going to continue the creation mandate, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it.

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But what about all these families on the earth? What about all these warring tribes? Well, He makes a covenant with Abraham assuring blessing to all the families of the earth, no matter how scattered they are, no matter how much they hate each other.

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And the promised seed who would come and say would come through the nation of Israel with whom God made a covenant, a nation for the nations, a light for those who are in darkness, but that light was even further concentrated into a lamp burning brightly in Jerusalem.

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It was by God's covenant with David that His son would come and reign forever, the servant for all the nations, a light for those who are in darkness, bringing blessings to all the families of the earth.

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He comes as the last Adam bringing shalom and glory to God. He comes to make

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His blessings flow as far as the curse is found. This is an old story.

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An old story. And by this we may enrich our prayers. Tell the old story.

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Brighten your prayers by blessing the Lord. Enrich your prayers by taking up that old, old story.

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And praise God like Zacharias does. He's praising God for Messiah because of all these things that God has said and now

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God is keeping in His Son. Blessed be our

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God of faithful past who keeps His word to save. His promised Son now at long last.

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Zacharias holding his Son. You can just see him rejoicing in his Son for the very first time.

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The child now out of the womb hears his Father's voice. A child will recognize his

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Father's voice even from all the time that he or she is in the womb. But now John hears his

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Father's voice and this is what Zacharias says to his child. And you, child, will be called the prophet of the highest.

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For you will go before the face of the Lord to prepare His ways.

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What is he saying about Jesus of Nazareth? John is the forerunner of Messiah.

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The Christ. The anointed of God. Prophets were anointed. Priests were anointed.

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Kings were anointed. All throughout the old covenant. But here comes Messiah. Prophet, priest, and king.

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The anointed of all anointed. And what does Zacharias say? You, my son, are going to be his forerunner.

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You are going to go before and be the prophet of the highest. As in God the

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Most High. You are going to go before the face of the Lord. The Lord God of Israel.

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What is he saying about Jesus of Nazareth? That He is going to be as much God as God is

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God. Isaiah chapter 40 verse 3.

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The voice of one crying in the wilderness. That's John the Baptist. Prepare the way of the

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Lord. Make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

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John the Baptist was not a civil engineer. He did prepare the way for the

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Lord. He did preach in the wilderness. And that was a good setting to remind the people of Israel of their spiritual condition.

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That it was dry. That it was barren. That it was dusty. The rain had not fallen.

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The sky was as brass. And they must look for the one to come of whom

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John proclaimed. Malachi chapter 3 verse 1. Behold I send my messenger. Lowercase m, messenger.

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And he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple.

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Even the messenger, uppercase m, of the covenant. So John is the messenger of the messenger.

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And Christ is the messenger, in some translations, the angel, using the same word, of the covenant.

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In whom you delight. Behold he is coming as the Lord of hosts. And so John comes before him and he continually says things that exalt

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Christ and deflects attention away from himself. In Luke chapter 3, as John is preaching, as we see that indeed he is that promised forerunner, what does he say about Christ?

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In chapter 3 verse 16, John answered saying to all, I indeed baptize you with water.

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But one mightier than I is coming whose sandal strap I am not worthy to lose.

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He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fan is in his hand and he will thoroughly clean out his threshing floor and gather the wheat into his barn but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.

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What did Malachi say? He will suddenly come to his temple? What does

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John say? He's going to come to his threshing floor? Where was the temple built? On the threshing floor of Auranah.

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And he comes to sift and to show who really are the people of God. John just magnifies

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Christ. To make things clear, he said, I must decrease, he must increase. That's the way it has to be.

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So let's bless the Lord. Let's magnify

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Christ. We should heighten our prayers as we say things that are true about Christ.

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I was reading one commentary by an old author,

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R. C. H. Glinski. Quoted someone named Bishop Browning. I couldn't find who the guy was.

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But this is what Bishop Browning said. The whole volume of scripture did prophesy of Christ.

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He was the psalm and scope of all their predictions. He was Abraham's promised seed, Abraham's Isaac, Jacob's Shiloh, Moses' great prophet,

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Isaiah's Emmanuel, Ezekiel's shepherd, Daniel's holy one, Zechariah's branch, Malachi's angel.

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All of them predictions of his coming. He was Abel's sacrifice, Abraham's first fruits,

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Aaron's rod, the Israelites' rock, the patriarch's manna, David's tabernacle, Solomon's temple.

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All these things prefigured his incarnation. They were but folds and swathing bands of this babe

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Jesus. That was too good not to share. And fourthly, all of this, the light of God will shine upon man's grave.

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Verses 77 through 79. Zacharias concludes this way.

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To give knowledge of salvation to his people by the remission of their sins.

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Through the tender mercy of our God, with which the day spring from on high has visited us.

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To give light to those who sit in darkness in the shadow of death. To guide our feet into the way of peace.

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So earlier, as Zacharias was describing the salvation that would come, more than once he talked about deliverance from their enemies.

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Deliverance from their enemies. And he speaks of the horn of salvation.

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And then as we think about what kind of salvation Christ brings, we see here, to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the remission of their sins.

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By the forgiveness of their sins. This makes sense in two different ways.

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And the first way is this. That for those living under the old covenant, who were required to attend to those sacrifices on a regular basis, to follow those laws of ceremonial cleanliness, to demonstrate their faithfulness to God and to shine a light to the nations by their fidelity to the one true

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God, in all those different ways. Those who were living under the old covenant, if they had enemies who were oppressing them, if they had enemies who had taken away their freedoms, if they had enemies who were taking away their children and their crops and their animals and so on and so forth, this was never ever an issue merely of socio -political concern.

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It wasn't an issue of like, well this nation doesn't like us and they have more weapons than we do and so now we have a problem.

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It was never just about that. The enemies that they had were always a covenantal concern.

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God told them, if you are faithful to my covenant, you will be blessed.

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You're going to be the head, not the tail. You're going to be running things. Everyone's going to come to you to be blessed by the light of the glory that I have among you.

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But if you are unfaithful to my covenant, if you are idolatrous, if you are immoral, if you are unjust, if you break my covenant, then you're going to be the tail.

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You're going to be the ones who are always oppressed by your enemies and they're going to come and take things from you. So what is

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Zacharias saying? Until we have the forgiveness of our sins and until everything is made right with God, we're never going to know the blessings of God.

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The enemies of God are going to oppress us and oppress us and oppress us and we're just never going to get away from these curses.

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When Jesus Christ comes as Messiah and as the Lamb of God, not only does

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He take away the sins of those who trust in Him and takes away the curse, bearing the curse for us upon the cross, but He fulfills the entirety of the covenant that God made with Noah, Abraham, Israel, David.

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The whole thing is fulfilled in Him. He wears it as a mantle and therefore there's nothing left but the blessings of God in Christ.

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Shall we live in fear that based upon our performance some curse is going to fall upon us?

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We live in the merits of Jesus Christ. He's the faithful servant, so we're not having to be scared of curses falling down upon us.

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And indeed, He saves us from our enemies. Indeed, He saves us from our sins.

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Saves us from our sins. The law, which was added because of transgressions, showed the sinfulness of sin.

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But grace and truth are through Jesus Christ and He as Shiloh brings shalom.

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He brings the peace. He is the dayspring from on high that brings light to those who are in darkness.

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Now, just one final note from Zechariah. Look how he prays. He prays about what is yet to come.

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He says that John, his son, will go before Messiah and that Messiah is going to bring this knowledge of salvation, the gospel, the reality of salvation by the forgiveness of sins, that God's tender mercy will come, the light's going to come to those in darkness,

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He's going to guide our way, guide our feet into the way of peace. What's he praying about?

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He's praying about all that is yet to come. He's praying about all that is yet to come.

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He's blessing God because of all that is yet to come because of Jesus Christ. So, we can brighten our prayers, we can enrich our prayers, we can heighten our prayers, and we can lengthen them, too.

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Not like that. Not like, you know, I've got to add ten minutes to my prayer. God, Jesus is not against true piety.

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Pray all day. Lengthen in this way. Pray beyond your immediate situation.

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Pray beyond the current crisis. Pray beyond this current decade.

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Pray beyond this current generation of all that is yet to come because of who

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Jesus Christ is. Let's close in prayer.

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Father, we thank you for the time you've given us in your word. We pray that we would, Lord, that we would learn to bless you in all these ways, that we would give you glory and give you praise for your keeping your promises through your

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Son. Thank you for the joy that we can have in Christ. And I pray that you would make that joy vibrant in our hearts.