The Benedictus

This morning, we continue our new series titled "The Four Songs of Christmas", which is looking through the first chapters of Luke surrounding the birth of Jesus. Four songs that were sort of sung around His arrival, and they all give an insight to who this Jesus is that was coming into the world. So I get you to turn, please, to Luke chapter one. We're gonna read from verse 67 through to verse 80. Luke one, verse 67.

And his, this is John, John the Baptist, 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 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. 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 us that 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 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."

And the child grew and became strong in spirit, and he was in the wilderness until the day of his public appearance to Israel. So far the reading, this is the word of the Lord. Day in, day out, the old man climbed the pebbled roads that led to Jerusalem. His knees sore, his hips stiff. He climbed through the narrow alleys of that ancient city of David.

Before him rose up the imposing visage of Herod's Temple, by all estimations, one of the great wonders of the world. And day after day, that old man named Zechariah ministered as a priest in the great temple. Luke says that he and his wife Elizabeth were both aged people, but were godly. Verse six says that they were righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all His commandments. And it was to Zechariah, on the day that he was allotted to burn incense in the temple, that the old man's eyes nearly peeled out of his head.

He saw an angel standing beside the very altar that he was going to burn that incense on. And the angel made a very surprising announcement that he and Elizabeth would be having a son in their old age, and that they were to call him John. The angel said that you will have joy and gladness, and in fact, that many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great before the Lord. And he will have this mission, that he will turn many of the children of Israel to their Lord and God, that he will make ready for the Lord a people prepared. How can this be?

Said Zechariah. But my wife and I are very old. Elizabeth is barren. To poor old Zechariah's dismay came these words: "I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I was sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news."

"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." We're told by Luke that for nine months, up until the birth of John, Zechariah was totally mute. Not a single word ran over his lips for the duration of Elizabeth's whole pregnancy. That little boy was born, and eight days later, when it was time for his circumcision, a great commotion came upon his relatives. What will he be called?

"Zechariah," someone shouted from the back. Surely Zechariah, after his wonderful father. But Elizabeth answered, "No, he needs to be named John." Someone else yelled, "John? That's not a family name."

"Surely, it would be Zechariah, a only child, a son born miraculously in the twilight years of this man Zechariah. Surely, it would be Zechariah." Instead, Zechariah motioned for something to scribble on, and the crowd that had sort of gathered around Elizabeth, you can imagine, sort of just hobbled their way around Zechariah. And as he wrote, what did he write? He wrote the name John.

And he had barely put the last stroke on that writing tablet when Luke says, verse 64, "Immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue loosed." What do you think would be his first words after nine months? "Honey, eight and a half months ago, you left the lamp on when we went to bed, and you know how much I hate that." No. His first utterance is a song of praise.

Luke writes, he spoke a blessing to God. The latter name for Zechariah's song is called the Benedictus, which simply means blessing. And it takes it from that opening phrase, just like we saw in Mary's Magnificat, where Zechariah blesses God, which is another way of saying that he praised God. We began this morning, the call to worship was to bless the Lord, and that is what we did in praising Him. And so this morning, we're going to spend some time unpacking why Zechariah praised God, and we'll see that God is worthy of our praise because He has been faithful in delivering His people.

That is the main reason Zechariah praises God, blesses God, because He's been faithful in delivering His people. In verse 68 of our passage, Zechariah begins his song with the words, "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for He has visited and redeemed His people." This is not a God who stands away loftily and demands for the people to come to Him. Even as Zechariah was the priest who would go to the house of God, even though the people would come to the temple, Zechariah says He is the God who has visited His people.

He is the God who has stooped down, and as we'll see in Christ, has visited us for the purpose of what? Redeeming His people. What does it mean to redeem something? Well, simply, it means to restore something by paying a price. Often, in the context of Luke's day, a slave was able to be redeemed when a person would pay the value of their life to their master.

They would be set free when they have been redeemed. It's with this thought in mind that Zechariah says, "I praise God because He has come to us and at a cost redeemed His people." He has set His people free from what he will later call the enemies of the people. The question is, what exactly is this restoration? What is this freedom?

Well, Zechariah gives us three reasons for why he blesses God. In verses 68 to 71, God is to be blessed because He has raised up a horn of salvation from the house of David. If you were to start reading the Gospel of Luke for the first time, you will have no idea what the redemption of Israel, the redemption of God's people would look like. In fact, Zechariah's listeners had no idea. But Luke tells us that Zechariah, verse 67, was filled with the Holy Spirit and he prophesied when he sang his song.

In other words, Zechariah, through the Holy Spirit, is looking to the cross. He knows what it means for his relative Mary to be pregnant. He knows what it means for John the Baptist to be sent ahead of the Saviour, but he knows that this redemption will happen through Jesus Christ. But even as he looks prophetically ahead, notice the tense in the wording that he uses when he sings his phrases. It is all past tense.

Have a look. "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel for He has visited and has redeemed His people. He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of His servant David." Remember where this is in the story of the gospel. This is before Jesus has arrived.

This is before the cross. But through the spirit, Zechariah knows that the redemption of God's people is as good as done. God has raised up a horn of salvation, verse 69 says, in the house of David. Now that could refer perhaps to a trumpet that calls a victory in battle, that sort of the bugle, so to speak, that is played when a battle has been won, when the enemy retreats. But most likely, it's referring to the horn of an animal like a bull or a sheep.

I'll get you to turn to Psalm 132, that's been written many years before. The following words were written about a future descendant of David with the very words found here. Psalm 132, verses eleven and twelve: "The Lord swore to David a sure oath from which He will not turn back. One of the sons of your body I will sit on your throne. If your sons keep My covenant and My testimonies that I shall teach them, their sons also forever shall sit on your throne."

That's the promise. Then in verses seventeen and eighteen, we get this further promise: "There, I will make a horn to sprout for David. I have prepared a lamp for My anointed. His enemies I will clothe with shame, but on Him His crown will shine."

This is probably why Zechariah talks about and refers to the prophets of old as he sings his song. It's the prophets of old who have spoken about this horn of David, and it's a promise. It's God's promise through the prophets that He would be sending a king to the people, a redeemer, in fact. This sure oath mentioned here in Psalm 132 took place in 2 Samuel seven, where we find the Davidic covenant. It's a moment where God promises David that his royal line will remain forever, and that ultimately, a descendant of David would reign over His people forever.

So what is this saying? Zechariah is claiming that the promised saviour still in the womb of Mary would be this long-awaited saviour of the people. God's people, who had been without a Davidic king at this point for hundreds of years, would be receiving the promised king at last. So that's the first reason that Zechariah begins to bless the Lord. The second reason is that God is to be blessed because He has remembered His promises to Abraham.

In verses 72 to 75, Zechariah's song focuses on a key figure, another key figure in the story of Israel. Perhaps arguably, he is the key figure, and his name was Abraham. This promise that was made, this oath that was made to Abraham was that he would become a great nation, and that through his people, all the peoples, all the nations of the earth would be blessed. And again, if you know the story of the Bible, you also realise that just as the Davidic lineage had died out for hundreds of years before the arrival of Christ, so had the people of Israel failed to have been that blessing to the nations. At no point in the story had Israel been a blessing to everyone.

And yet, Zechariah is saying that God's covenant promised to Abraham is coming true in Jesus, that He would be the fulfilment of the promise. You'll notice that between the mentions or the allusions to David and His promise in verses 68 to 71, and here alluding to Abraham's promises in 72 to 75, there's the phrase of being saved or delivered from our enemies. What does a king do? He fights the bad guys. He drives back the enemies of his kingdom.

And then here in the second section on Abraham, he says that as our king drives back our enemies, verse 74, that we, having been delivered from the hands of our enemies, might serve God without fear. How? In holiness and righteousness before Him all our days. In other words, through the fulfilment of the Davidic covenant in Christ, the conquering king who will conquer the enemies, through the fulfilment of Abraham's covenant will come a dwelling with God that is marked by holiness and righteousness in the presence of God without fear. That because the Davidic king has conquered the enemy, now we may be with God.

A lot of people will try to argue that Zechariah had no idea really what he was talking about here, that he thought that this king that was to be born would be taking and pushing back against physical enemies, that he was having in mind that this saviour was going to redeem the people from Rome that occupied Judea at the time. Other people believe that this is talking about an earthly kingdom that Jesus physically, literally reigns in, whereby he pushes back physical, earthly human enemies. But we know, if we know the Bible, that physical enemies have never been the real problem for God's people. The problem has always been the problem of the heart. God was always able to defend His people.

The times where the people's enemies won was the time that Israel succumbed to their greatest enemy, sin. And that is what the great victory of the Abrahamic covenant fulfilled means: holiness and righteousness without fear in God. Praise God, says Zechariah, because it was God's plan to conquer our greatest enemy, sin, so that we may stand before Him fearlessly, to enable us to live and to serve God forever, to enjoy forever communion with our Creator. And so friends, by faith through Jesus, as we've already started saying this morning, we are holy. We are righteous.

Not because of what we can do, not by anything that we can offer, because the truth is we still wrestle with our sin. But a day is coming that is as good as done, when that final battle is won, when Christ's victory is complete. Zechariah says, praise God, bless God for that. The third reason that God is to be blessed or praised is, thirdly, because He has sent us a way by which we can find our Saviour. From verses 76 to 79, beginning at verse 76, Zechariah begins speaking not of the Son of God, Jesus, but now speaking about his own son, John. Notice that at the party that is to the honour of his son being born, he's been focusing in these first words, not on his son, but on the coming Saviour.

That's because, as verse 76 mentions, what makes his son John special is that he is a prophet of God preparing the way for the one who is to come. Think back. Old Zechariah had lived his entire life in what is termed the silent years. For four hundred years, there had been no prophets in Israel to speak the word of God on behalf of God to the people. For four hundred years, there had been no news of what God was doing.

But when the angel visited him, he said that John would be a preparer of God's salvation, that he would be, in fact, a speaker on God's behalf. So for four hundred years of silence, here in Zechariah's lifetime comes the next prophet. After four hundred years of silence, and what will be the job of this prophet in preparing the way? What would be the end goal? He says in verse 77, "To give knowledge of salvation to people in the forgiveness of their sins."

That is the job of John the Baptist: to give knowledge of salvation to people in the forgiveness of their sins. In verse 78, then, Zechariah tells us, which echoes verse 72, that God is doing this out of what? Mercy. Last week, we saw that word again. Mary saying that God in His mercy had remembered His people.

Here in the Benedictus, it is not just mercy, but it is tender mercy. It is the tender mercy of our God. What that adjective means is that this is mercy from the innermost part of God. It is mercy that has come from Him from a deep and profound level. God will save His people not because they're good, not because I've earned the right.

This mercy is totally unforced. This mercy is pure, is good, is wonderful. In that second half of verse 78, there's this statement of a sunrise that will visit us from on high. Now that word visit, if you remember, is a throwback to that opening line where God, the God of Israel, has visited His people. And Zechariah probably has in mind here Malachi chapter four, which is incidentally the very last prophet before the four hundred years start.

And in the last chapter, chapter four of the last prophet Malachi, comes this verse. "For you who fear My name," says God, "the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings." To people who have been sitting in silence and darkness says Zechariah, a Saviour has come. To whom John would point, who would redeem those sitting in darkness in the shadow of death, as verse 79 says. That on those people, a sun would rise, that a sun would visit those who are in darkness experiencing the shadow of death.

And this is nothing but the soul-destroying power of sin, Satan, and eternal death that Zechariah is talking about. That is the shadow of death. God is to be praised, says Zechariah, because He has sent to us someone who will direct us to the Son. And that is what John did. It's hard to really overestimate the significant influence that John the Baptist had in his life.

He had a phenomenal preaching ministry, and many, many people thought that he was the Messiah. The reason we call him the Baptist is because he baptised people, and he baptised them in the acknowledgment of their sin and their need for forgiveness. That is why he baptised people. He baptised people pointing to this very mission: to acknowledge and to know their sin. And he was readying the hearts of the people.

And finally, when it came time for the ministry of Jesus, thirty years into Jesus' life, roughly thirty years into John's life, there came a moment when John pointed to Jesus. Remember that in John one? And what did he say? He said, "There, behold the Lamb of God who will take away our sin." Jesus is the Son that has risen on us, who came to us, who at one time sat in darkness and loneliness, isolated from God.

That's why Matthew's gospel account actually announces the start of Jesus' public ministry at age 30 by quoting another Old Testament prophecy, this time from Isaiah nine, and see the resemblance. "The people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light. For those dwelling in the region and the shadow of death, on them a light has dawned." This is why we celebrate the birth of Jesus every year. It's an opportunity for us to do exactly what Zechariah did at the very first moment.

His mouth was open, his tongue was loosened. It's to praise God, to bless His name, because He has raised up for us a salvation from the line of the kings. For a king who will reign over His people forever, who has fulfilled the promises to Abraham of creating a people for His own, who would be a blessing to the world, who would live with God in holiness and righteousness without fear. And we know the Saviour to be Jesus because the great prophet, the last prophet, John pointed Him out and said, "Behold the Lamb of God who will take away the sins of the world." Jesus, through Abraham, the blessing of the nations.

Let's pray. Lord, we praise and we glorify and we bless Your name. Lord, as we remember the coming of Jesus, as we prepare our hearts to remember that again, we thank You, Lord, for what it means that You came. Your victory is as good as done. It is achieved for us right now.

The kingdom has come even as the kingdom is coming in. Forgiveness has been given. Salvation has been received even as we wait for it fully when Jesus Christ returns again. We thank You, Lord, that You are faithful to Your promises. We thank You that You, in Jesus Christ, fulfilled the promise to David that a son from His own body would sit on the throne of the people of God forever.

And that from the body of Abraham would come a son through whom the whole world would be blessed. And we thank You, Lord, that we are reminded today that You are a God of promises, a God who has been faithful. And if You've been faithful in that, You are faithful to us in our small things. You're faithful to us as Your children. And so we thank You and we praise You and we bless Your name because of what You have done in Jesus Christ for us. Amen.