October 20, 2024
Luke 1:67-80
“The Horn of Salvation”
I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase, “Situational Awareness.” Some people have it, some don’t. Some are keenly aware of their surroundings, some aren’t. Zechariah didn’t have situational awareness, which led to his situational speechlessness.
As we saw a couple of weeks ago, Zechariah and his wife, Elizabeth, were childless. They were old. But then God intervened. He told Zechariah that he and Elizabeth would have a child. The important part for us to remember is, the angel of God instructed them to name him John. Who would he grow up to be? Right…John the Baptist. As the angel Gabriel describes it:
“And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great before the Lord. And he must not drink wine or strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother's womb. And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.”
Luke 1:14-17
Do you remember how Zechariah responds? With doubt. He questions God’s plans. So what happens? BOOM. Zechariah cannot speak. The situation drives his speechlessness. Gabriel puts him in an inability to speak timeout. Here’s the moment when his ability to speak is restored:
“Now the time came for Elizabeth to give birth, and she bore a son. And her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown great mercy to her, and they rejoiced with her. And on the eighth day they came to circumcise the child. And they would have called him Zechariah after his father, but his mother answered, “No; he shall be called John.” And they said to her, “None of your relatives is called by this name.” And they made signs to his father, inquiring what he wanted him to be called. And he asked for a writing tablet and wrote, “His name is John.” And
they all wondered. And immediately his mouth was opened and
his tongue loosed, and he spoke, blessing God.
Luke 1:57-64
Zechariah spent all of Elizabeth’s pregnancy unable to speak. I cannot even begin to imagine what that would be like. Think of what the neighbors must have thought. Is he being punished by God? If so, what did he do to earn such punishment? A lot of questions. And it went on for nine months.
We know why God pressed the mute button on Zechariah. He questioned God’s plan. He didn’t think God could make happen what God said He was going to make happen. It was a huge mistake; an error of epic proportions. And so he lived in silence for nine months.
Before we look at the final verses of Luke 1, take a moment to think about
times in your life where you really messed things up. It could be sin of
omission or commission. However you got off-track or how far you went off-track, you’ve had your moments. We’ve all had our moments.
Now here’s something you might want to write down:
“YOU WILL NOT BE DEFINED BY THE WORSE THINGS YOU’VE DONE.”
That’s our promise in Jesus Christ. That’s the promise for all those who repent of their sin. Because our names have been written down in the Lamb’s Book of Life, we stand in the full assurance of what Paul wrote in Romans 8 that nothing can separate us from the love God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
What happens to Zechariah? He is not defined by the worse moment in his life. As Luke 1:67-80 says:
And his father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied, saying,
“Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,
for he has visited and redeemed his peopleand has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David,as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old,that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us;to show the mercy promised to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant,the oath that he swore to our father Abraham, to grant usthat we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies,might serve him without fear,in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins,because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on highto give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”
And the child grew and became strong in spirit, and he was in the wilderness until the day of his public appearance to Israel.
We hear in this moment the redemption of God. We’ll get greater clarity on that in a bit. For now, let’s seek to understand what this moment is.
Plain and simple, Zechariah moves from doubt to trust. He moves from questioning God to praising God. That’s what this poem is. It is a moment of praise.
Now, don’t misunderstand. Zechariah’s praise isn’t about a barren man and a barren woman having a baby. It’s not about removing the stigma of childlessness. It isn’t about adding joy to a family. It is a celebration of the next step in the salvation history of God. It is about promise fulfillment. It is about our coming redemption in Jesus Christ.
Here’s where we look at that word I suggested you tuck away for a bit. Redemption. That’s the first point of praise from Zechariah. “For he has visited and redeemed his people.”
The term redemption has taken on a different meaning now than it had back in the days of yore.
Think about how often today we associate redemption with sports. A player flubs something that costs his team the game. Someone commits an egregious error. It gets replayed over and over. “Look at this idiot!” But then, the next game or the next season, they do something spectacular that makes amends for past letdowns, flops, and humiliations. What do we then say? He redeemed himself. He earned his redemption. Something like that. Totally different meaning from Luke 1:68.
How many of you participate in programs where you earn points for purchases? It could be a restaurant app or a store rewards program. I recently received an email, “Redeem Your Eddie Bauer Rewards Dollars Now.” We redeem things we earn. Or work for. We love that free hardshell
taco we earn through the Taco Bell app.
The Biblical expression of redemption is far more glorious than what our
culture gives us. Here’s something else you might want to write down:
REDEMPTION IS BROUGHT BY GOD AND GOD ALONE TO PERSONS WHO ARE UNWORTHY TO RECEIVE IT.
God delivers us from evil. When Jesus died on the cross, he was the atonement for our sins. Jesus saves us from our corrupted nature. That is redemption.
Later, in verse seventy-nine, Zechariah says, “Sunrise shall visit…those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.” Those two phrases…darkness and shadow of death…specifically mean ignorance and sin. Living in darkness means we make all the wrong choices, choices that lead inevitably to spiritual and physical death. But the promise…sunrise shall visit us…means that the coming of Jesus will free us from our bitter frailty. As Henry van Dyke captures it in his poem, “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee”:
Joyful, joyful, we adore You,God of glory, Lord of love;Hearts unfold like flow'rs before You,Op'ning to the sun above.Melt the clouds of sin and sadness;Drive the dark of doubt away;Giver of immortal gladness,Fill us with the light of day!
I love how beautifully he captures the tone and tenor of our redemption. He was familiar with Zechariah’s prophecy.
Let’s look at one piece of our passage, a piece that lends so strongly to the promise of redemption.
In verse sixty-nine, we read, “He has raised up a horn of redemption.” A
horn of redemption. It’s not a horn, like a trumpet. It’s not like a car horn. The Greek word used here – keras – refers to the horn of an animal. It symbolizes power or strength.
I recently read something that reminded me…tangentially…of the power of a horn.
It seems a sixty-year-old woman and her husband and their dog were walking in a thermal area at Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. They did something that idiots have been known to do at national parks. They walked off-trail. Her feet broke through a thin crust over scalding water. She suffered third-degree burns over her lower legs. Funny thing is, they have warning signs just for stupid people telling you not to go off trail.
Here's where we’re going as it relates to horns. Yellowstone also has warning signs about not going off-trail and getting close to bison. But what do stupid people with cameras and mobile devices do? Right…they go off-trail to get the perfect picture. And guess what? Stupid people get gored by the horns of big, strong bison. Have you seen those pictures? Have you seen those videos? A few have even died. Can you imagine dying for a selfie or because you knew better than a warning sign?
You see those big, beautiful bison, or watch the bull-riding or steer-roping in a rodeo, or the bull run in Pamplona, Spain, and you know the power of a horn. And that’s no bull. I’m sure you get the point. Those dudes are strong. Their necks are thick as a barrel. They are hard-headed. They are heavy-horned. They are not to be trifled with.
I’m also thinking here of rams. Same thing. Tough dudes. Check out this video…{show video}.
Verse seventy says that the coming of the horn of salvation was prophesied. Psalm 132:17 says, “There I will make a horn to sprout for David; I have prepared a lamp for my anointed.” Who is Jesus a descendent of? King David…David a descendent of Jacob…Jacob’s people protected by God against harm from the descendants of Esau…from whose lineage came Herod, who tried to annihilate God’s salvation history. It’s a beautifully connected thread.
When a horn sprouts from the head of an ox, it becomes like iron. He is feared by his enemies. Listen to Psalm 18:2:
“The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer,my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge,
my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.”
Do you hear what the Psalmist is saying? God is his shield…a defensive weapon. And God is his deadly and powerful horn…an offensive weapon.
So why does Zechariah refer to Jesus as the horn of salvation? Here’s the last thing you might want to write down:
JESUS WILL USE HIS POWER TO SECURE AND PROTECT HIS PEOPLE.
That is such a beautiful truth. And it brings us back to verse sixty-nine. Jesus is the horn of salvation because he is a deadly weapon. He is a tremendous power against sin and death. As verse seventy-one says, he saves us from our enemies and all who hate us. What better description of sin and death could there be? Jesus Christ will destroy his enemies, who are our enemies.
Never forget, the coming of Jesus will cast light into the darkness and banish the shadow of death. And that’s where we’ll pick things up next week. We will tie the end of chapter one up so we can then move on, on the first Sunday of November, into the birth narrative of Luke 2.
Until then:
SOLI DEO GLORIA…
To the Glory of God Alone
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