Preached · November 29, 2015
Series · Advent 2015
Text · Luke 1
Preliminaries
We are in Advent (Coming). Next few weeks, two songs, Zechariah and Mary.
Background of Zechariah's song (Zech and Elizabeth, old, without kids; Gabriel announces John. Zech doubts; is dumb/mute.
The baby is born. Eight days, circumcision and naming. Zech gives name; he gets his ability to speak/hear again. And then is filled with the Holy Spirit and says this:
Let's stand for the reading of the Gospel.
What Is God Doing?
This week focuses on answering three questions. What is God doing? Why is God doing it? And what are the results of Him doing it (purpose). Next week we'll focus in on one last question: ***How*, in what way, is God doing what He's doing?**
So, first of all: What. What is God up to? Two things. The first we see in verse 68.
V. 68 Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has *come* (visited) to his people.
This right here is perhaps the biggest headline. This was what Israel - and indeed - all the world (though they may not have known it) had been waiting for. Israel desired Yahweh to return to Israel, to be their king, to be manifest.
New Testament audaciously makes the claim that God did --- in the person of Jesus.
Most of us have perhaps wished that God would show up. Physically make His presence known. If He would just show Himself then everything would be made right. And we make the mistake of thinking that if God did this, that it would be some huge cosmic display.
But God did show Himself. In the person of Jesus. If you want to know the character of God, look at Jesus. Born as an infant (to a poor family in a backwater country). Dedicated His life to serve others. Healed, preached Good News. And died for the sake of others.
Our problem, of course is that we got exactly what we asked for. God showed up. In real space-time. In history. An actual moment in time. Thus, to quote Jesus, "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed." We have the admittedly much harder task. But we also have the gift of seeing the church in action. And where God's church, there is God's presence.
V. 68-69 God Raised Up A Mighty Savior to Redeem Us and Save Us from Our Enemies
What was the point of this visiting? To be a mighty savior to save us from our enemies.
We're actually getting two pictures. To redeem means to literally pay off the debt; to buy one's freedom. A mighty savior is literally a "mighty horn." To save us from enemies. The idea is a leader like a bull who could, you know, spear enemies with his horns. It was a battle term.
So, God visits in order to redeem (pay ransom) and save (gut with a horn) our enemies.
What enemies?
Debate: are we talking political? Physical? Because, remember, this song is being song in the midst of a conquered people group. They had real enemies they wished to fight off.
And, remember, I think we could list off a bunch of physical enemies as well. We pay taxes to our military for some reason, right?
Or, imagine this passage being read in a refugee camp in Syria. Or a bombed-out building in Ghana. Or an underground church in China.
But what if this passage is actually about different kinds of enemies? Spiritual, emotional, mental? Remember what Paul will right some 50 years later. "Our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms."
And, if you're a person who is currently under threat of persecution or death or enemy threat, you may think, well Jesus didn't come to save me from actual physical enemies, just spiritual ones.
To which I say: I think the answer is both. But we're gonna talk about that next week . . .
So. What Is God Doing? Two things. 1) He is visiting. He's showing up. 2) He's redeeming us, saving us, rescuing us from our enemies.
Question 2:
Why Is He Doing It?
Again, two primary reasons.
V. 70, 72b, 73 As He spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from of old; to remember his covenant, his oath to Abraham.
To fulfill prophecy. God keeps his promises. God does what he says he's going to do.
V. 72 To "accomplish (lit: do) mercy to our fathers."
That's right: what God did in the first century was showing mercy to people who had lived hundreds - thousands! - of years before.
This one is something that we struggle believing or accepting. But basically by God fulfilling His promise to send a Savior, He is showing mercy to all those who were waiting for the promise to come true.
It's like Back to the Future---but in reverse. Marty lives in 1985, but jumps into the time machine, and starts messing around in 1955. The stuff that he does in 1955 has effects in 1985.
Okay, Jesus life and death and resurrection clearly have effects all the way forward in time. What Jesus did in the first century has effects that have lasted all the way up to this very moment time.
BUT what Jesus did in the 1st century AD also had affects all the way backwards in time as well.
Paul called the time that Jesus came "the culmination of the ages." In Hebrews we are taught that the great heroes of the faith---Able, Abraham, Sarah, Jacob, Joseph, Rabab, Moses, David---they were all saved not through their own efforts by the work of Jesus working retroactively in them.
That's right, Jesus life and resurrection not only works forward in time, but backwards as well.
Actually, one theologian puts it this way. God, being eternal, already exists at the conclusion of history. God is already at the end of our story, of everyone's story, of The Story. Therefore, the resurrection---all of Jesus' ministry---is the God's intended and glorious conclusion of history miraculously placed right into the middle of it. It's God knowing---writing!---the last page of the book, the last scene of the movie, and then placing that page, that scene, right in the middle.
And the power and the genius of it is that by knowing the end, you are drawn even more powerfully towards it. It pushes you forward, onward. AND by knowing the end, it re-colors and re-shades everything that you've read before. Like at the end of the mystery novel, and you get to the end, and you discover the killer, and you think, "Ah! That's who it was! How did I miss it? I must read it again immediately with this new knowledge."
Except God didn't give us a killer. He gave us the killed, the crucified one. He gave us mercy and grace. Again, as v. 72 says, "He did mercy to our fathers." Even though we think they are long dead and gone, by the visitation of God, in Christ, they too receive redemption.
Okay, if that didn't make any sense, let's try one more mind-blowing thing.
You are going to live forever. You are going to live forever. We don't really believe that or I think that all of our behavior would be a lot of different. But it's true.
Now, those ancestors, those fathers that this verse refers to. They are living forever as well. They had faith that God would fulfill his promise. And they experienced physical death waiting for those promises. BUT those fathers and mothers, those ancestors in the faith, they live on, awaiting physical resurrection, yes, but also still abiding with God. And when God sent Jesus, they saw God fulfilling His promises. As Jesus says of the Father, "He is not the God of the dead, but of the living."
That should give us a certain amount of hope as well, knowing that even if we die, waiting for justice, waiting for the world to be made right, we can also know that God isn't finished yet. And that God fulfills his promises. And that we've already seen a glimpse of eternity, a glimpse of the end of the story --- in the resurrection of Jesus.
Review: two questions. What is God doing? He is visiting; he is saving. Why? To keep his promise. To do mercy to all those who have ever believed. So...
What Are the Results?
V 74-75 To grant us that we, being rescued from the hand of our enemies, Might serve Him without fear, In holiness and righteousness before Him all our days.
The whole purpose of all of this: So that we might serve God.
We were created with a purpose. Westminster: Our chief end is to "glorify God and to enjoy Him forever."
[[Augustine]]: You arouse us so that praising you may bring us joy, because you have made us and drawn us to yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.
God created us in such a way that when we worship God, give him glory, praise, honor, live our lives in accordance with his will, then we are given joy. When we experience unrest, it can only be quenched by one thing: resting in the presence of God.
We are all born with a desire that cannot be filled merely by things of this world, created things, creature-ly things.
Lewis: Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for these desires exists. A baby feels hunger; well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim; well, there is such a thing as water. Humans feel sexual desire; well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.
So when we read that God has visited us, redeemed us, given us a savior, rescued us, all to keep his promises, to keep his oath, to show mercy on those living and those dead and those who are yet to be alive, when we read that God has done all of this the purpose is that we might serve him and thus that we can know joy.
And we are told how we are now able to serve God. Without fear. In holiness (that is, doing right by God) and in righteousness (or justice: that is, doing right by fellow people).
But this all leaves us from one last question: How!? How will God do all of this? And, of course, we've hinted at it. Something about Jesus. But in what way will God accomplish all of this? Because, let's be honest, it sounds a little ambitious, don't you think?
Let's pray.
