Mid-Advent
3
Lk
1:57-80
12/18/24
“And
behold, you will be silent and unable to speak until the day that these
things take place, because you did not believe my words, which will be
fulfilled in their time.” That is what the
angel Gabriel told Zechariah when he announced that John the Baptist would be
born. As we heard two weeks ago,
Zechariah had doubted the word from the angel that Elizbeth would become
pregnant with a son. So Gabriel told
Zechariah that he would be unable to speak until this took place.
Our
text tonight begins with the words, “Now the time came for Elizabeth to give
birth, and she bore a son.” Just as Gabriel had said, Elizabeth had conceived
and given birth. Yet we find that
Zechariah is still unable to speak.
In fact, we learn that on the eight day after John’s birth, when
the friends and family gathered for the circumcision of John, Zechariah still
could not speak. Zechariah must have
begun to wonder whether he would ever be able to speak again.
The
circumcision was associated with the naming of the child. Those present would have called the child
Zechariah, after his father. However,
Elizabeth objected that instead he should be named John. It was pointed out to her, that none of her
relatives were called by that name.
So they
made signs to Zechariah, asking what he wanted the child to be called. He asked for a writing tablet and
wrote,
“His name is John.” And then immediately Zechariah’s
mouth was opened and his tongue loosed, and he spoke, blessing God.
Zechariah
had not been able to speak. But now he was filled with the Holy Spirit and
prophesied – he spoke words that provided revelation about what God was
doing. He said, “Blessed be the
Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people”. Zechariah praised God because he was now coming
to them and he was acting to redeem them – to free them.
Zechariah
declared that God had raised a horn of salvation in the house of David, just as
he had spoken by the prophets of the past.
This meant that the Messiah was going to be present – the descendant of
king David who brought God’s end time salvation.
He
added that God was showing the mercy promised to their fathers as he remembered
his covenant – the oath that he had sworn to Abraham. God was fulfilling his word, and this was
grounded in the promise he had made to the patriarch.
The
Holy Spirit used Zechariah to announce that the time of fulfillment had
arrived. This visitation by God was the
fulfillment of the promises that God had made to Abraham and David. God was keeping his word as he brought
redemption to his people.
And
then, Zechariah turned to the role that John would play. He said, “And you, child, will be called the
prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare
his ways.” John would be a prophet for
God. He would go before the Lord to prepare his ways – to make ready a people
prepared.
This
ministry would give the knowledge of salvation to God’s people in the
forgiveness of their sins. This would be
possible because of the compassionate mercy of God. Zechariah announced that by this mercy, “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.”
Zechariah
speaks about the role that John will play.
Just as we heard two weeks ago in the words of Gabriel, once again we
find that he will go before the Lord – he will go before God - to prepare the
way. He announces that the Lord God has
visited and redeemed his people.
While
John will go before the Lord, the rest of the prophecy speaks about what
God will do through the Messiah.
Zechariah says that God “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.” When he says
“the sunrise shall visit us from on high” he uses a Greek word that was
associated with the Messiah.
John
will prepare the way for the Lord – for God.
Yet it is the Messiah descended from David in whom God is working
salvation and giving light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow
of death.
There is, at first, something
puzzling here. The Messiah was expected to be a descendant of David. This describes someone who is a human being.
And yet Gabriel had told Zechariah that John would go before the Lord God in
the spirit and power of Elijah. And here Zechariah prophecies that John will go
before the Lord to prepare his ways.
So which is it? God himself or the Messiah? The answer that
we are preparing to celebrate during Advent is that both are true at the
same time. Gabriel had told Mary
that her son would be the Messiah. He
said, “And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father
David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his
kingdom there will be no end.”
And at the same time, the angel had
told Mary that her son would be the Son of God.
When she asked how she, a virgin, would conceive Gabriel said, “The Holy
Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow
you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy--the Son of
God.”
We learn that the Messiah descended
from David will also be the Son of God.
He will be a human being born to Mary, and by taking him to be his own
Son, Joseph will make him a son of David.
But he will also be God, conceived in the virgin Mary through the work
of the Holy Spirit.
No one expected that the Messiah
would be God. And no one expected that the Messiah would suffer and die. Instead, the Messiah was portrayed as mighty,
powerful, and victorious. Psalm 2
provided one of the verses most quoted by Jews about the Messiah. It described
what he would do to the nations as it said, “You shall break them
with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.”
However, Jesus Christ had come for the
purpose of winning the forgiveness of sins mentioned in our text. He came in order to redeem us. And he did this through the cross. St. Paul
told the Philippians: “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in
Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count
equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing,
taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And
being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the
point of death, even death on a cross.”
Christ died to win forgiveness for
us. And then on Easter God raised him
from the dead. He defeated death and
began the resurrection that will be ours as well. Because of his resurrection, Jesus is the One
who gives “light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.” The resurrection of Jesus means that death is
not the end. Instead, it is the
beginning of life with Christ which knows no sin or pain. And the resurrection
of Jesus means that he will raise our bodies from the dead when he returns in
glory.
In tonight’s text Zechariah
prophecies, “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.” We will celebrate at Christmas that Jesus is
God visiting and redeeming his people, and that he is the Messiah who descended
from David. True God and true man he is the One who has given us forgiveness
and salvation.
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