Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church
## Pastor Dennis Tuuri

We’re going to shift gears a little bit this morning. We’ve been dealing for the last three weeks with forgiveness and repentance and church courts. We’re going to shift gears now and go into a series of four messages relative to the Christmas season.

I wanted to just point out I read something in the paper Saturday—the Oregonian—relative to what we were talking about last week in terms of forgiveness of sins and when there is forgiveness and when there isn’t forgiveness.

I don’t know if many of you have been keeping up on this situation with the Cuban prisoners. But I saw in the Oregonian on Saturday—a bishop calls for forgiveness for these Cuban prisoners who rioted and held hostages and who apparently many of them wanted to kill the hostages, only to be beaten off by other prisoners. This bishop calls on us now to forgive all these men. It’s interesting that in saying this at a news conference, he said that he couldn’t condone the violence and understood why the prisoners revolted.

“Each and every one of us is in some way responsible for what has happened to Oakdale and Atlanta by our silence and our failure to act,” he said in a news conference at his church. “So I hope you all feel sufficiently guilty over creating the conditions that cause these poor men to break God’s laws and assume autonomy, move into a position of overthrowing the established authorities in that prison.” Well, of course, that’s nonsense.

The bishop should study his scriptures better and understand that forgiveness is not based on man’s autonomous action. He does the very thing that we talked about last week should not be done in a situation like this—and that is to give reasons why we sin, to make excuses as it were for our own acts and for our culpability in them. That’s specifically what is not part of the forgiveness process.

There’s no forgiveness for men who don’t acknowledge and confess with sorrow before God their evil deeds and turn from them. I’m sure there are men in that prison situation who did that and they have forgiveness, and those we should proclaim God’s forgiveness to. But we shouldn’t say peace to those who have no peace. But this morning, we’re going to talk about the basis for peace really. I guess we’re going to start, as I said, a series of four messages.

Next week we’ll deal with the Magnificat of Mary. The following week we’ll deal with joy and peace to the earth—a Christmas message. And then following that we’ll talk about “Out of Egypt I have called my son,” another passage of scripture relative to the early life of our Lord and Savior. But this morning, we’re going to deal with the Benedictus. And this is Zechariah’s song that he sang upon the loosing of his tongue by God.

Now, a little bit of background here. Zechariah was a priest of the course of Abijah. He was chosen by lot to burn incense in the temple services during this particular time of his life. And while there, he had a proclamation from the angel of the Lord who told him that his son would be born. He and his wife had no children. They were aged. They were advanced in years. And so we have here somewhat of a miraculous birth being announced to Zechariah.

And he doesn’t believe it. And he says that he wants a sign from this angel as to the reality of the birth of his son to happen. And then the fact that his son is going to prefigure the coming of the Messiah—that John would come in the power of Elijah to prepare the people for the Lord and for his ways. Well, Zechariah rather asked for a sign from this angel and as a result was struck dumb.

He demonstrated his unbelief through an improper use of his tongue and he was struck dumb for the length of the pregnancy of Elizabeth with John. And then John was born and what we have here now occurs probably on the eighth day itself. John’s been circumcised. “Do you want to name the child now on the eighth day?” And there’s a discussion over what his name should be and his mother tries to tell the people that his name is John.

“We’re going to call him John because that was the name that the angel had commanded them to call him.” And they don’t—they think that’s kind of a weird thing. “Nobody in their family’s ever been called John,” they say. So they ask the father, who still cannot speak at this point in time. He takes a tablet and writes on it: “His name is John.” Which is kind of an interesting way to phrase it—it shows the initiative of God in naming John the Baptist.

Well, after he does this and after he acts in obedience in this way in the naming of John, his tongue is loosed by God. And his speech, then, which had been used improperly to talk about unbelief in regard to God and to his promises, is now used properly. His mouth is now used for the proper purposes of glorifying God. And so we have here a song that Zechariah sang, chanted, said—whatever—upon the loosing of his tongue by God.

And it’s a song of prophecy. The scriptures tell us specifically in verse 67 that John’s father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Ghost and prophesied. And so, not only do we have here a priest of the course of Abijah, but we also have now a prophet in some sense through the word and this prophecy that he gives.

Now, next week, as I said, we’ll talk about the Magnificat. That’s in verses 46 to 55 of this same chapter: “My soul magnifies the Lord.” And that was spoken, of course, by Mary. And Mary is of the Davidic line. And so that’s a kingly pronouncement of Jesus Christ and his coming. And we have here a priestly pronouncement. These two activities—the priestly and kingly aspects of Christ—are involved also in the prophetic aspects, and this priest now is prophesying really go together. It’s an implication of salvation, the kingly reign that he has established.

But there are two separate songs here and we’re going to deal with it that way. And so this week we’ll talk about the first of those songs that, theologically, the first—the salvation of individuals, personal salvation, I guess. Primary salvation is what we’re going to deal with this morning. And then next week with the Magnificat, we’re going to talk about secondary salvation, or cultural salvation. The results of salvation for the entire created order and not just in terms of the remission of sins, but then the effect of that for all power and authority in the land.

This morning’s passage of scripture really is two sentences. Verses 68-75 is the first sentence. Verses 76-79 is the second sentence. That second sentence begins with the first reference to the child, his child who is now born—John. In verse 76 it reads: “And thou child shall be called the prophet of the highest, for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord, prepare his ways.” It’s interesting that we have here an indication that the son of the father here, John, would image his father. His father has just prepared the way, begun the preparation of the way of Christ with the proclamation of the importance of his advent for salvation, for remission of sins and redemption. And his son John will take that and become his lifelong ministry of preparation for the coming Savior Jesus Christ.

So John kind of images his earthly father in that sense. His earthly father, of course, is imaging the heavenly Father who loosed his tongue. God had given Zechariah a couple of very great gifts. He had granted after all the wish of a son after many years—40, 50 years perhaps—of seeking a child and having none. There are people in this congregation who understand how difficult that is emotionally. You want children from God and you want that very badly and yet God doesn’t provide that.

And by the way, that shows that barrenness is not necessarily a curse from God. The scriptures are real explicit in saying that this couple were righteous and holy and obeyed the commandments of God fully, which of course doesn’t mean that they were without sin, but it means they acted in obedience to the requirements of God and had a heart set on obeying him. And still the wife was barren for all her life until the birth of John.

So they would rejoice greatly in that, of course, and John’s coming would be a great cause of rejoicing to them. But also he was to be the forerunner of the Messiah—and that’s the second great thing that was promised to Zechariah in the temple and is now coming into fulfillment. And it’s the second thing—the advent of the Messiah himself—that Zechariah focuses on. And that is interesting, isn’t it? That his focus in praising God, the loosing of his tongue and for the gifts that God has promised to him now, does not focus primarily on his own son coming to fulfill that great need in their life but rather focuses instead on the coming of the Messiah.

He doesn’t even talk about his son until, as I said, later in this verse, in this chapter, in this song—in verse 76. Then he refers to him: “Thou child.” He doesn’t say “my child.” He acknowledges that this child is God’s child and has a special ministry and purpose. And it’s that ministry and purpose that John has been called to by God that Zechariah thanks God for, in context, rather than thanking him for his son.

This should set forward a pattern for us—a correcting of our priorities, I think is what I’m trying to get at here. That our first priority must be God and his work. We should rejoice in that and recognize the blessings we have are to be used for God’s glory. Let’s pray as we seek to have God correct our priorities with this scripture before us.

Let’s pray. Father, help us to understand this passage of scripture. Help us to bow the knee to it. Help us to rejoice in it, Lord God, and to rejoice in your purposes in the earth as we approach this Christmas season and to get our priorities straight. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

The song itself begins with a declaration of the blessedness of God. “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel.” Now we said the name of this passage has been referred to by the church as the Benedictus. That’s from the Latin Vulgate translation of this particular verse, and “blessed” translates into Benedictus.

And so that’s the title the song receives from that first word. The way the Magnificat receives its title from the magnification of the Lord that Mary talks about earlier in this chapter. So the Benedictus refers to this first phrase: “Blessed be God.” And in your outline, you’ll see that our first point is that God has sent. What we’re going to talk about in a few minutes. Now I hope for this message this morning to be one of encouragement to you as we move into this holiday season.

I hope that this song of Zechariah would be a model for us as we consider this week and over the next few weeks some primary applications of the advent of our Lord. Certainly the starting point of Zechariah’s song is an appropriate place for us also to begin and for us to teach our children that the appropriate starting place of all that we do is to declare the blessedness of God and his praises.

Now Christmas is of course marked by an increasing secularism. I don’t need to—I suppose that’s been going to be said hundreds of thousands of times across the country this next month in very churches—it’s true. And it’s certainly important that we recognize that. I’ve known of families that are close to myself that over the years I saw these families have Christmas celebrations that began centered around church service in the evening, centered around the reading of the scriptures and the children doing plays based upon scripture teachings of Christmas.

And yet I saw as well in these families the crowding out of that aspect of Christmas with the giving of gifts on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day and how it tends to crowd out the grace that God has demonstrated to us in Christ and the celebration of that, which is what the real message of Christmas is of course all about. Now gifts are fine. Gifts are good. Gifts are an indication to our children—they should be—of the great blessings God has given to us at Christmas time.

But when those gifts crowd out consideration of God himself and of the best gift of all, Jesus Christ, it becomes a curse to us instead of a gift. Our culture has declined in many families, and their observance of the advent of our Lord has declined as well over the years, slowly and gradually, having the birth of Christ pushed to the background. Now this song helps us to reestablish that. It begins, and this declaration of the blessedness of the advent begins with a statement of God’s blessedness.

God hath sent. God had the initiative in this event. There are some practical ways that I might suggest you try to recover or correct the practice of Christmas in our homes. Some of you may know that today is the day the church has traditionally recognized the birth or the life of St. Nicholas. Actually, it’s probably the day he died on. St. Nicholas was a real bishop—bishop of Myra—in somewhere around 300. Born around 270, I think, somewhere in that area in the region of the world now known as Turkey. St. Nicholas—the Santa Claus myth, of course, comes from St. Nicholas. We don’t know a lot really factually about St. Nicholas himself, but there are various legends about his kindness, his early devotion to God.

And there’s one specific thing that we do at our house to remind ourselves of that. The current practice of Santa Claus has its origin in a man of God who sought to meet people’s needs. St. Nicholas apparently knew of a situation in a town where there were three girls who had no dowry and so couldn’t get married. And so, one of the girls—the story, this is, you know, as I said, a lot of this is in myth and legend. So the fact of the story is kind of hard to distill from how it’s been embellished over the centuries. But apparently, one of these girls perhaps thought of selling herself into slavery to get money for her other two sisters so that they might get married and they might have a blessed life.

And so St. Nicholas heard about this and he went by the house one time late in the evening. The window was open and he threw three bags of gold in for the three to provide three dowries for the three girls and so bring them into the blessedness of marriage, Christian marriage. And supposedly the story goes that as he tossed these bags of gold and they found stockings hanging by the fire to dry, these bags of gold rather miraculously ended up in these stockings.

But in any event, that’s the myth that provided the basis then for the stockings being hung by the chimney with care and hope that St. Nicholas soon would be there. And so we do, for instance, on St. Nicholas Day to reinforce to our children the story, to tell them the story of St. Nicholas—a real person, a Christian. We do that. We have our stocking celebration on December 6th and not on Christmas Day.

And that kind of removes one thing the children look forward to very much—you know, whatever gifts are in the stocking—from the Christmas Day celebration itself. We’ve also chosen to remove the gift-giving portion to New Year’s Day. We’re trying that, tried that for the last 5 years. We pretty well have established now as a family tradition. Again, it’s good to give gifts. It’s good to have children rejoice in that this time of year, but somehow to try to make it second place as a word of the celebration of our Lord’s birth.

Now, why do I bring all this up? I bring this up because we should be trying very diligently in our families with young families to establish traditions that teach what Zechariah is here teaching with the first word of his song. And we begin with God. Zechariah’s song begins with praise. And our celebration of nativity time and season should as well begin with praise of God. And he then speaks of God’s initiative and the great deliverance that has been wrought through the arrival of the Messiah.

He uses a phrase here: “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel.” And that’s a very distinctive title for God—the Lord God of Israel. It has obvious covenantal connotations. It refers to Yahweh and it refers to Israel, the covenant community. And so it specifically demonstrates here a bridging of the two testaments, the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. And I think it’s important that as we move into, in a couple of minutes, consideration of the proclamation of the gospel of Christ, we see that Zechariah puts it in the context of continuity between Testaments.

He addresses God as the God of Israel, the covenant God of Israel. He bridges the testaments in this. Much of the song of Zechariah can be seen in harmony with Malachi 4 in the last chapter of the Old Covenant. And most all of this song can be patched together from various Old Testament quotes in the prophets. We worship the same God as they did then. We have the same God yesterday, today, and forever.

He changes not. He’s the covenant God of Israel, and he’s our covenant God. We are the Israel of God. And we’ll talk more about that in 3 weeks as we consider Jesus’s being brought out of Egypt, which was the redemption prefigured in Israel’s redemption from Egypt. So there’s continuity here. Before he goes on then to discuss the discontinuity between the covenants—the fact that the Old Covenant imaged, shadowed, mirrored, as it were, what was to be their full reality to come in Jesus Christ—that’s what he’s going to be talking about in a few minutes. But that expansion of blessing in the new covenant is based upon basic continuity between the covenants. It’s important for us to see that.

So Zechariah begins with the blessedness of God, the Lord God of Israel, the covenant God of the covenant people. And he says that God hath raised up the horn of salvation. And that’s our second point. This verse, these series of verses talk about the horn of salvation.

“For he hath visited and redeemed his people, and he has raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, as he spake by the mouth of his holy prophets, which have been since the world began, that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all that hate us, to perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant, the oath which he swear to our father Abraham, that he would grant unto us, that we, being delivered out of the hands of our enemies, should then move on into service.

“Verse 77: ‘To give knowledge of salvation unto his people by the remission of their sins, through the tender mercy of our God, whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us, to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.’”

God raises up a horn of salvation. And a horn of salvation is first of all a horn of power. The use of the term “horn” here brings with it obvious connotations of power and strength. Throughout the Old Covenant, the term “horn” was used in that way. In Psalm 75:10, it talks about the horns of the bulls of Bashan shall be cut off, but the horns of the mighty shall be lifted up. The horns of the bull is what they use to defend themselves and also to aggressively go on the attack against other people. And the horns of the wicked are said to be cut off by God’s action of the horns of the righteous being lifted up.

Jeremiah 48:25 says, “The horn of Moab has been cut off. His arm has been broken.” The arm was the arm of strength. The horn then was also an emblem of the strength of Moab, and that strength was to be cut off. And so the horn was said to be cut off. It’s interesting that in the time of Ahab there was a whole—I guess it’s sort of similar to our time—there was a whole group of false prophets around and very few real prophets, and Ahab would seek advice from these prophets who would always tell him what he wanted to hear.

And it’s much I’m afraid like many of our churches today who counsel presidents in the past. They tell the president what they want to hear, not the word of God. But in any event, one of these particular false prophets, Zedekiah, in telling Ahab that he would be victorious in battle—and one of the things he did was he made some iron horns. Keil and Delitzsch said these iron horns were probably iron spikes held upon the head.

And then Zedekiah says: “With these thou will thrust down Aram even to destruction.” Some translations say you will gore through Aram. And so the horn is a position of power and strength. Now this false prophet was using that term based upon other prophets in the scriptures. It’s interesting that the blessing of the tribe of Joseph given in Deuteronomy in chapter 33, verse 17 says: “The firstborn of his ox majesty is to him and buffalo horns. His horns with them he thrust down nations all at once the ends of the earth. These are the myriads of Ephraim and these the thousands of Manasseh.”

And so what are the blessings of the tribe of Joseph—and the tribe of the firstborn of Joseph—in terms of God’s blessing was this idea that they would have mighty buffalo horns. This ox would have buffalo horns. Buffalo horns, of course, are stronger horns than ox horns. And so you got this symbol of an ox with buffalo horns. So horns in the scriptures have always talked about deliverance, salvation, strength, and power. And this prophecy, of course, ultimately testifies to the coming of the true Son of Joseph, Son of David, Son of the covenant people, Jesus Christ. And his horn would be the one that would ultimately crush and destroy all enemies over the entire world.

Zedekiah had that wrong. He tried to attribute that quote to Ahab and became a false prophet. But we know that the horns that are spoken about here, the horn of salvation, is a horn of power. That horn of power is also a horn of convergence. Then if that horn is spoken of in the Old Testament and now finds its fulfillment in Jesus Christ, it’s a horn of convergence. And by that I mean that with an animal, for instance, an ox or a bull, his power is focused on the tip of that horn.

The horn apart from the body really doesn’t mean a whole lot, but the bull puts all his strength. He focuses it into the use of his horns in attacking. And so the horns are a convergence of power—a focusing of that power at a particular point. This song of Zechariah shows the convergence of power of God throughout the centuries and the prophecies that God has given, that convergence of power focusing on the nativity of our Savior Jesus Christ.

Zechariah, being a priest, knew all the Old Testament significations of the temple worship. He participated in them and he could see in Jesus Christ true redemption from sins, true remission that all these had pointed to and focused on. And so he uses those terms—redemption and remission—in terms of this convergence onto the advent of Jesus Christ accomplishing those things. In verse 70, he says that horn of salvation was witnessed to by the prophets.

This is the focus of all covenant history—the redemption of God’s covenant people. The whole scripture prophesies of Jesus Christ. Ebenezer Schofield in one of his books has attested to at least 400 specific overt messianic references in the Old Covenant. Now we know that in Luke 24:27 we read that all the Old Testament testifies to Jesus Christ. And so all the Old Testament—all the promises, the prophets—now are finding their convergence in the nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The whole volume of the scriptures prophesied of Jesus Christ. He was the sum and scope of all their predictions. He was Abraham’s promised seed, Isaac, Jacob’s Shiloh, Moses’ greater prophet, Isaiah’s Emmanuel, Ezekiel’s shepherd, Daniel’s holy one, Zechariah’s branch, Malachi’s angel of the covenant. All of them predictions of the coming of our Savior. He was Abel’s sacrifice, Noah’s dove, Abraham’s first fruits, Aaron’s rod, the Israelites’ rock, the patriarchs’ manna, David’s tabernacle, Solomon’s temple.

All these prefigured his incarnation, which we celebrate at this time of year. He was Jeremiah’s “The Lord Our Righteousness” in terms of salvation. He was Daniel’s “Son of Man” whose dominion is everlasting dominion. He was Micah’s ruler in Israel. And he was Malachi’s angel of the covenant. All these Old Testament prophecies focus and converge upon the nativity that we celebrate at this time of the year and that we rejoice in. The convergence of all creation also came unto him.

Here he had the Creator of all the world coming unto his own. One of the writers of the early centuries of the church wrote this about the incarnation, quoting first from scripture. “And so it was that while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her son, the firstborn of the whole creation, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn.

“She wrapped in swaddling clothes him who was covered with light as with a garment. She wrapped in swaddling clothes him who made every creature. She laid in a manger him who sits above the cherubim and is praised by myriads of angels. In the manger set apart for dumb brutes that the Word of God reposed in order that he might impart to men who are really irrational by free choice the perceptions of true reason.

“In the board from which cattle eat was laid the heavenly bread, in order that he might provide participation in spiritual sustenance for men who lived like the beasts of the earth. Nor was there even room for him in the inn. He found no place who by his own word established heaven and earth. For though he was rich, for our sakes he became poor and chose extreme humiliation on behalf of the salvation of our nature and his inherent goodness toward us.

“He fulfilled the whole administration of unspeakable mysteries of the economy in heaven and in the bosom of the Father and in the cave in the arms of the mother reposed in the manger. Angelic choirs encircled him singing of glory in heaven and of peace upon earth. In heaven he was seated at the right hand of the Father and in the manger he rested, as it were, upon the cherubim. Even there was in truth his cherubic throne.

“There was his royal seat. Holy of the holy and alone glorious upon the earth and holier than the holy was that wherein Christ our Lord rested. To him be glory, honor, and power together with the Father undefiled and the altogether holy and quickening spirit now and ever and unto the ages of the ages.”

Zechariah had reason to sing forth the praise of God because he saw this convergence of all creation. He saw the convergence of the prophets. He saw the convergence of the priestly aspects of the scriptures in Jesus Christ. He uses the term “Lord God of Israel” in verse 16. As we said, when he used this verse, he would bring to mind all the great and tremendous events of covenant history and all the golden hopes of the years that were based on these events and the manifold promises connected to and prefigured in them.

And therefore, the horn is also a horn of the covenant. It’s a covenant horn. The Old Testament references here to Malachi, to Israel, the continuity of the testaments that we talked about earlier—here Luke, a Gentile, remember, certainly saw himself a part of the true Israel of God, which Paul later would say clearly and elucidate very clearly in the scriptures. It consists of those whose circumcision is of the heart and who are true Jews inwardly, not outwardly.

It’s so sad that the church continues to look at physical realities and identifies Israel in terms of them where the scriptures plainly teach that the birth of the one we celebrate at this time of the year is the birth of the covenant horn who has come to his covenant people, the true Israel, which we are.

The verse speaks of the covenant oath as well: “To perform the mercy promised to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant, the oath which he swore to our father Abraham.” The record of that swearing by God to Abraham is found in Genesis 22:15-18. After Abraham was willing to sacrifice his only son Isaac, the angel of the Lord appears to him. And he says, “By myself have I sworn because you have done these things, I shall greatly bless you.”

Hebrews 6:13 comments on this verse and on the promises that God made in this verse and on the swearing by himself in the following manner:

“For when God made promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no greater, he swear by himself, saying, ‘Surely blessing I will bless thee, and multiplying I will multiply thee.’ And so, after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise. For men verilely swear by the greater, and an oath or confirmation, is to them an end of all strife. Wherein God willing more abundantly to show unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath. That by two immutable things in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge, to lay hold upon the hope set before us, which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which entereth into that within the veil, whether the forerunner, as for us, entered, even Jesus made a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.”

God gives his covenant oath, and Zechariah saw in the advent of our Lord the fulfillment of the oath sworn to Abraham, sworn to the covenant people, by which all these things are assured. And so Zechariah doesn’t use the future tense when he talks about salvation. He uses the past tense. The prophets have spoken to it. God has sworn by himself, and so these things shall come to pass. And indeed, the advent of our Lord had already occurred and was going to now be taking forth its proper role in the history of the covenant people.

The horn is a covenant horn. And because of that it’s also a horn of deliverance. That deliverance is spoken of clearly in this passage and is probably the central thing that’s talked about. The question becomes: What are we delivered from? If it’s a horn of deliverance, we have a horn of power and convergence, a covenant horn, and therefore effectual unto deliverance. But from what are we being delivered?

I heard a song several years ago. The chorus went, “I’d love to change the world, but I don’t know what to do.” Joni Mitchell. I saw her on a recent TV show talking about the transition of rock music from the ’60s into the ’70s—from being kind of protest or meaning songs into songs that were more aimed at the whole move. The whole rock and roll phenomena became more entrenched in making money and became a big business. Joni Mitchell said, “Well, we found out we couldn’t change the world. We couldn’t change ourselves. So, let’s make some money.” “You know, that’s kind of what we did,” she said. “Well, they couldn’t change the world because they started there. They couldn’t change themselves because there’s no power in man to change himself.

“What this scripture speaks about is to change the world, God changes us. Okay? Joni Mitchell cites a failure to change the world and is at least honest enough to go on to confess her need for, although coupled with an inability to accomplish it, to change herself. Now, we should know that in spite of the many and varied characterizations of Christian Reconstruction to the contrary, that we must begin with ourselves.

It’s not as if we get our own act together and then we straighten up our families and then we can exercise dominion. That’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re saying that dominion is straightening our own lives out and is getting our families together and straight before God and is doing all things in accordance to God’s word and preaching the gospel of Christ and its implication for everything that we have.

But there is a transition. There is a working out then of that faith into all areas of our life. Having cleared up, as it were, having worked upon and first priority, our own sin in our lives. We do have to remove the mote from our eye as Jesus talked about last week in the scriptures we read. But we do then move on to remove splinters from other people’s eye and so be a blessing to the world as well. We must tend to first things first.

We need deliverance ultimately from sin, from disobedience to the commands of God. We need deliverance from the ethical rebellion toward God and then the manifestations of enslavement to sin that accompany it and its multiple manifestations and effects in our lives. And that’s what Zechariah praises God for ultimately: salvation from sin. There’s several clear indicators in these verses that’s being talked about.

In verse 71 it says the hand or the power of them that hate us is what we’re being delivered from—enemies, yes, but the power of the enemies is what we’re being delivered from. The hand indicating the strength of the power. Paul tells us clearly that our battle is not against flesh and blood. We wrestle instead against powers, principles. We wrestle then against Satan and against his dominion and his allegiance.

Satan, Zechariah is saying, is to receive his crushing head blow at the feet of the Savior as accomplished in the advent of our Lord. Verse 77, he talks about his child John who’s going to prepare for the deliverance of people. And how is he going to prepare them? By knowledge of salvation, remission of sins. The political end here is not primary but personal salvation. Remission of sins is necessary, prior to preparation for dominion in all other areas. First things first.

Joseph, when the angel announced to Joseph that he would have a son and told Joseph that the son would be named Jesus, why? “For he shall save his people not from hell, not from political dominion—he shall save his people from their sins.” Lenski, in commenting on this verse and whether or not the salvation was political or spiritual, says the following:

“Calvary holds the whole territory.”

That’s a good phrase. I think that Lenski’s lack of optimistic eschatology is evident somewhat in his comments on this verse. And to really posit the two in isolation from each other, personal salvation and cultural salvation, is not appropriate. We’ll talk more about that next week. But in any event, both those two come out of Calvary. Calvary does hold the whole territory in this verse.

And the primary application must be to personal sin. Some of you may know that there’s going to be a special. Bill Moyers is doing a PBS special, a series of three culminating in one on December 23rd on politics and religion. And the one on December 23rd is entitled “On Earth as it is in Heaven” and deals specifically and exclusively with Christian Reconstruction. He interviews Rushdoony on that show. And in the little blurb I got about it in a magazine that I receive, Moyers says the following, which is really a good quote:

“It’s a grassroots movement,” says Moyers. “So the political sphere is the last the Christian Reconstructionists seek to change but that is the ultimate aim.”

See, he has the priorities right here, doesn’t he? It’s important that we get our priorities in line with that as well. The political arena is the last that has changed because it’s a manifestation of everything else we’re doing. Salvation from sin and death has been accomplished through the redemption spoken of in this verse and foretold by the prophets.

The scriptures promised in the Old Covenant that various things would occur with our sins. And John is going to pronounce that to the people. And John’s father Zechariah sings this song of praise because of the accomplishment of that deliverance. Malachi 7 said that God would tread our iniquities underfoot and cast them into the depths of the ocean. Psalm 103 said that our sins would be removed from us as far as the east is from the west. So will our Lord remove our transgressions from us. Isaiah 43 says that God will wipe them out—wipe out our transgressions—and will no longer remember them.

This week I often think about several years ago we had a Christmas play put on by the church and we videotaped it. And the day before that, or the day after, I was practicing with the cameras at our house for a few days and I taped some sequences around the house, the tree and the kids and everything. We just left it running for a while. I’ve watched that videotape several times since then and you know, it’s so painful for me to watch it.

There comes a place in that tape—I come home for lunch and I’m kind of upset by some stuff at work and the kids do something, they get in my way or they get in the way of the camera or something, they hit the camera and I yell at them real bad. Pretty crossly. Just in my opinion, it’s pretty cross.

And I think of that videotape a lot and I think of that sin that’s manifested. It’s preserved there, you know, for future generations. And it really is embarrassing to me. But this scripture—you can think of your own lives and activities you’ve engaged in maybe in the last week that if you saw a videotape, you wouldn’t be particularly comfortable with. Well, it’s so important that we understand that we’ve been redeemed. We’ve been saved from our sin. That these verses about the elimination of our sin and God remembering them no more and casting them into the deepest ocean are true. And that’s one of the things we celebrate at Christmas time.

The coming of the Savior would provide total salvation and it’s an everlasting salvation as well. Isaiah 45:17 says that Israel has been saved by the Lord with an everlasting salvation. Goes on to say, “You will not be put to shame or humiliated to all eternity.” God removes those things. He deals with those sins. Now, as we said last week, it’s an important part of the process for us to confess those sins, to understand that redemption, to receive the forgiveness from God. But once we do that, God deals with it once, for all, final, finished, no longer to be brought up to us, no longer to humiliate us, but instead he atones for those sins through the coming of the Savior, Jesus Christ.

In commenting on this verse, Lenski quotes from the Concordia Triads as a basic definition of this salvation that’s been accomplished by Christ: “This poor sinful man is justified before God—that is absolved and declared free and exempt from all his sins and from the sentence of well-deserved condemnation and adopted into sonship and heirship of eternal life without any merit or worth of our own, also without any preceding, present, or any subsequent works, out of pure grace because of the sole merit complete obedience, bitter suffering, death and resurrection of our Lord Christ alone whose obedience is reckoned to us for righteousness.”

Tremendous definition of our salvation and justification before God. Keil also links all the other statements of Zechariah with this remission of sins.

John ministered to the remission of sins. His preaching, which works faith, is the means of apprehending it. Salvation is the essence of it. The mercy of God is the fountain of it. The dayspring from on high is the meritorious cause of it. Illumination and the walking in the way of peace are the result of it. Tremendous salvation that we should rejoice in with Zechariah.

We have release from sin. We are saved from sin, but we’re also saved from death. Secondly, we’re saved from the effects of sin. Verses 78 and 79 say, “Through the tender mercies of our God, whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.” The shadow of death is the result of sin. And the picture used here is of the sun rising in a darkened world.

One of the pictures that commentators frequently refer to in terms of this dayspring idea is that of the coming of the sun. That in this time of the world, if you’re involved in a caravan and you were out, you had lost your way. You had gotten off the path. Night comes, the wolves howl. Animals—wild animals—you’re afraid of them. Robbers in the night. It’s darkest night. You’re out there. You don’t know where you’re at. Death seems totally imminent. And you shudder and you tremble throughout the night. And then in the morning, the dawn comes and light is shed upon your path.

It’s interesting to me that we celebrate Christmas the time we do—the darkest time of the year, really. More and more recent evidence, in spite of what you might have heard to the contrary, indicates that’s probably the appropriate time to celebrate the nativity of our Lord. But symbolically, it’s certainly fitting with this picture here. December 22nd, the shortest day of the year—it’s the darkest day of the year, is another way to think about it.

And after that darkest day of the year, the light of Christ is what we celebrate. The coming of the dawn, the rising of the sun unto a world wearied by sin and death. And so, deliverance from death is also spoken of in these verses. Spurgeon wrote that many candles as you can light can’t make day out of night. Much effort as we put into trying to enlighten our way and trying to remove the effects of sin apart from Jesus Christ are like lighting candles and trying to create daylight.

Just can’t be done. No matter if you had a whole mountain full of wax that you were trying to burn, we can’t make a day. We can’t make the rising of the sun. And we can’t make the blessedness of Christ rising upon us either. I remember an illustration of this in The Lord of the Rings. I don’t know if many of you have read those series of books, but they do—you know, he does a tremendous job of depicting the misery of sin and of the evil one’s influence in our lives.

And as the little hobbit crawls toward the mountain to destroy the ring of power to accomplish the one small act that will accomplish the rolling back of the darkness and the coming of the day, the darkness increases. It’s never day in more throughout the 24-hour cycle. It’s continual darkness and smoke and death is all around and the landscape is like a moonscape. There’s no life in it and he crawls through this dark, dreary death and you can hardly keep crawling because of the darkness of the path that you’re on.

Yet he finally makes it up there and eventually the ring is destroyed and the darkness is rolled back. Mighty battles rage off in the distance and it’s the same with us. Battles rage. We have a tough time dealing with certain aspects, but God brought forth the arrow out of the sheath—that was Jesus Christ—that was hidden through the ages and accomplished the one thing to roll back that darkness and to cause the dayspring to rise and the righteousness of Christ to rise upon us.

No wonder that in Malachi 4:2 rather it said that “the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings and you’ll go forth and skip like calves from the stall.” You ever seen calves skipping from the stall in the springtime if they’re born? They’re joyous. It’s a beautiful sight to watch. And that’s what we’re described as being like. We’ll skip like calves. We understand the implications of what we celebrate at the Christmas season—the coming of the light of Jesus Christ in the midst of our darkness.

Isaiah 9:2: “So the people who walk in darkness have seen a great light. Those who live in a dark land, the light will shine on them.” 2 Samuel 23:3-4, writing of David. It says, “The rock of Israel spoke to me. He who rules over men righteously, who rules in the fear of God, is as the light of the morning when the sun rises—a morning without clouds when the tender grass springs out of the earth through sunshine after rain.”

The rule of God on high has come. That’s what Zechariah is saying. What David prophesied about there comes in its totality. He wasn’t just speaking of earthly kings who rule righteously. The rule of the great King of Kings, Jesus Christ, has come and he rules in the fear of God according to God’s standard in our world now.

And that is the light of the morning when the sun rises—a morning without clouds in which the tender grass springs up out of the earth through sunshine after rain. And because it’s a rule and rain, then the third thing that Zechariah talks about is that God has delivered forth this horn of salvation for a purpose. And that purpose is to affect our service.

Third point. Verse 74 says that he would deliver us out of the hand of our enemies. So that we can just stop there? No. To go on—that we might serve him without fear that we might serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all the days of our life. Service is what God affected through the coming of the Messiah. Verse 79 talks about this light that we’ve been talking about. The purpose of it is to guide our feet into the way of peace—a way of walking in obedience to God’s command and in peace.

We’ve been saved from sin. We haven’t been saved ultimately to ease. We’re not just released. We’re not just taking away the punishment for our sins—the effects of our sin. God deals with the cause of that punishment, our sin, our ethical disobedience to God’s commands. Light has been given to us by God to direct our paths to the paths of righteousness. Isaiah 59:8-9 talks about us before that: “They do not know the way of peace. There’s no justice in their tracks. They have made their paths crooked. Whoever treads on them does not know peace. Therefore, justice is far from us and righteousness does not overtake us. We hope for light but behold darkness; for brightness but we walk in gloom.”

The walking in gloom is an effect of our rebellious ethical rebellion against God and disobeying him and so ending up with crooked paths in a darkened land. This verse talks about our adoption, and we have been adopted to serve our Father and to obey him to act like the princes and princesses that we are now positionally in Jesus Christ. There’s many New Testament references I put on your sheet there to talk about that. There—most of those references reinforce the idea that we have been saved for a purpose. That purpose is to walk in the newness of life that God has given to us.

According to Ephesians 4:22…