Big Boy Voice

Luke 1:67-79

Zacharias now has his voice back and he starts singing in v. 64.

It’s a song, and it is sung. And that’s what people do when they celebrate. We are familiar with that because Christmas is filled with music, and we never get enough. It is natural for people to sing when they’re happy, and at the greatest occasion in all of human history it’s little wonder that so much music is identified with the coming of the Savior.

But this is nothing new really for the people of God. Songs of praise are all over the Bible. In fact, the book of Psalms is a book of songs, a hundred and fifty songs that the children of Israel would sing – songs of worship, songs of praise, songs of petition, songs reciting history, songs of confession, songs of joy, songs of sadness. They expressed everything in their lives in song, and God gave them a songbook to sing so that their songs they’re singing would be accurate. But again, much of the Psalms is joy and praise to God for what He has done.

If you go back to the book of Exodus, you will find that Moses and the Israelites, when they had passed through the Red Sea that God had parted, they went through safely, and then the water closed and drowned Pharaoh. Upon getting to the other side safely, Exodus 15:1 records these words: “I will sing to the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously. The horse and the rider He has thrown into the sea.” It was a song of deliverance.

A little bit later in the book of Judges, again we find Deborah and Barak, two of the judges that God used to rescue Israel from surrounding and vicious pagans. And when God had declared His victory, they burst forth in praise. Essentially it’s a Deborah and Barak duet that proclaims the strength of God in delivering His people, Judges chapter 5. It goes all the way for thirty-one verses, this song of deliverance.

And then there was Hannah who had been delivered from the stigma of not having a child, and the Lord had promised to give her a child and had given her Samuel, and she sings in response to that deliverance from that stigma, 1 Samuel chapter 2, the opening ten verses. It’s her song of praise.

Solomon had a great choir for the temple, a choir to sing praise to God – praise for God’s glory, praise for God’s deliverance and salvation. And when the shekinah glory entered into the temple, all the trumpeters showed up and all the singers showed up and they began to praise the Lord with thanksgiving for all He had done for Israel, and you see that in 2 Chronicles chapter 5.

Earlier in this chapter was Mary’s Magnificat, verses 46 to 55 of chapter 1, and that too is a song. Mary is offering a song, a song of praise to God for sending salvation through the very Child that she would bear.

So much of our singing is connected to our salvation. In fact, we could argue that were there no salvation there would be no singing. Salvation is the heart and soul, the core reality that gives us all our Christian music.

And it wasn’t just the people who sang in the times of deliverance. There was a heavenly choir as well, such as at the birth of our Lord Jesus. Luke 2, verse 13.

Even Simeon, down in chapter 2 and verse 25, is at the temple. And when Mary and Joseph bring the child there for the celebration and the ceremony of purification for the new Child, he sings a short solo.

That is why when you go to heaven in the fifth chapter of Revelation you listen for what is going on in heaven, and you hear a great throng singing about how worthy is the Lord.

If we were not saved, if we were still in our sins, there would be nothing to sing about.

Zacharias got his voice back, and ironically, it was right when he named his son John, who would be the voice crying in the wilderness, introducing the Messiah.  Look at the chorus in v. 76.  But he’s not singing about John…he’s singing because the forerunner means the Messiah is coming soon.

Have you ever witnessed to a Jew?  Will they consider what you have to share?  Not really.  So try asking this:

“Would you believe the testimony of an Old Testament priest, like an Old Testament rabbi, an Old Testament scholar, a scholar in the Old Testament who had spent his long life studying the Old Testament? Would you believe his testimony about the meaning of the arrival of the Savior Jesus Christ?”

You will have their attention.  They will say yes.

You continue: “Well then, I would like to introduce you to one. His name is Zacharias. He’s an Old Testament man. He’s been declared righteous by faith. He’s a man whose life is marked by blameless behavior before God. He’s a true worshiper. He’s a teacher of the Old Testament. And if you want to know how an Old Testament priest views the arrival of Jesus, here it is; he’s given it to us in the first chapter of Luke.”

I want you to take a look at this song from his perspective as an Old Testament priest. He knew that there were three very important promises that essentially laid out God’s pledge for the future of Israel’s salvation and the world. And he, by the way, understood that it was not just Israel, but it was far beyond that; it was the world. There were three promises. One was made to David, one was made to Abraham, and one was made to the prophets, in particular, Ezekiel and Jeremiah.

vv. 67-68         He anticipates the arrival of Messiah as if it’s already happened, so he puts it in the past tense.

Now in the Old Testament you have God visiting at times. A visit from God was always monumental, whether it was for judgment or for an expression of grace. And God showed up when Jesus came. God showed up when Gabriel came to Zacharias and Elizabeth. God had arrived in history. Decades, centuries, millennia had gone by, with people waiting and waiting and waiting for God to arrive. And finally, He comes.  [And here we are today waiting for Him to come again.]

They were all looking for the redemption. They were looking to be redeemed. They wanted to be bought back from the bondage of sin. They wanted to be rescued. Redemption is to rescue at a cost, in fact, a very high price.

God had shown great power to redeem, and the touchstone for that was the Egyptian display of divine power. He had rescued them after 430 years of bondage in Egypt in miraculous ways through the plagues and the exodus and the dividing of the Red Sea and all the miracles in the wilderness.

How will God accomplish redemption? Verse 69: “He hath raised up a horn of salvation for us.”

“Horn” here not in the sense of trumpets or trombones – but in the sense of an animal. When the Jewish people talked about strength, they would speak, as a figure of speech or kind of a metaphor, of animal power. And the power of an animal basically was in its horns, its ability to do killing damage. So a horn became an expression for power.

Psalm 132:17, “I will cause the horn of David to spring forth.” Wow. What is the horn of David? That is the Messiah who comes in the line of David. And that’s exactly what you have here.

v. 69b      He is in the line of David. Back in 2 Samuel 7, God said in verse 16 to David, “You will have a greater son who will reign on your throne everlastingly, eternally, in a kingdom that will never end.” This was not Solomon, this was the Messiah far down in history but in the line of David. That’s why Matthew gives a genealogy of Joseph, showing he comes from David’s line. And we have also in Luke a genealogy of Mary who came also from David’s line. [V. 31]

vv. 72-75         Zacharias takes a look at the second promise and covenant that is fulfilled.

This is referring back to Abraham. God gave the promise to Abraham in Genesis 12 that He would have a people come from his loins. They would be a people that would spread across the earth, they would be a blessing to the nations of the world; they would have a land. They would have blessing, they would become a blessing. A little later in the book of Genesis we find out that this covenant also includes a Redeemer, and that is graphically predicted in Genesis 22, where God tells Abraham to go slay his son Isaac. And then as he’s about to do that, God says, “Stop, I have a substitute,” and brings out an animal to be slain in the place of Isaac. And God is saying there will be a divine substitute, a sacrifice who will suffer death on behalf of God’s covenant people.

That’s why Matthew 1 says He’s not only Son of David, He’s a Son of Abraham.

Then there’s a third covenant in the mind of Zacharias in verse 77. Remission=forgiveness. This is the first time this is mentioned. The Davidic covenant doesn’t talk about forgiveness. Neither does the Abrahamic.

Where did Zacharias find that?

Jeremiah 31:31: "Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah."

Not even like the Mosaic covenant. No, the Mosaic covenant was simply this: “Here’s the law: you obey it, you’re blessed; you disobey it, you’re cursed.”

There’s coming a new covenant, not like that one, not like a covenant that requires obedience or death. There’s a new covenant, a new promise. What is the character of this new promise?

Jeremiah 31:34: "And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more."

That’s the new covenant. The new covenant promises forgiveness of sins. So Zacharias understands that the Davidic covenant is being fulfilled in that a King is coming. The Abrahamic covenant is being fulfilled in that a substitutionary Redeemer is coming. And now he says there is the reality that the knowledge of salvation depends on the forgiveness of sin. So this is the fulfillment of the new covenant, when our sins will be completely forgiven.

Ezekiel 36:24-27

For I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land.

25 Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you.

26 A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.

27 And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.

That’s the new covenant. The new covenant is a transformation in the forgiveness of sins.

So all of this is in the mind of this Old Testament priest. Everything that was promised to David is going to be fulfilled in this Child. Everything that was promised to Abraham is going to be fulfilled in this Child. And that most glorious of all Old Testament promises called the new promise or the new covenant, the covenant of forgiveness is going to be fulfilled. Here comes the One who will make the provision by which God can forgive our sins.

And Zacharias understands why God would do this. Look back at verse 78a. This is what defines God: tender mercy. If mercy is music to your ears, then tender mercy is a symphony.

As a result of all of this, Zacharias knows that the final promise of the Old Testament has been fulfilled in the arrival of the Messiah. Listen to what it says. Malachi 4:2, right at the end of the Old Testament. “But for you who fear My name, the Sun of Righteousness will rise with healing in His wings.” The Sun of Righteousness will rise. That’s the last word in your Old Testament; and then the screen goes dark, the curtain drops and it’s all darkness.

v. 78b      Finally, the Sunrise. Literally, the rising. It’s a term that simply refers to the dawn. The first light of sun rising to dispel the darkness of the night. Jesus who said, “I am the Light of the world. Whoever believes in Me will not walk in darkness, but will have the Light of life.”

The rising has come, the darkness is over – darkness, four hundred years of darkness, and darkness for millennia before that; the rising, the sun.

verse 79 –Jesus, he says, is the Sunrise promised at the end of the Old Testament, to shine upon us.

That’s why the book of Revelation concludes with that most magnificent recognition:

Revelation 22:16: "I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star."  The brightest morning star is the sun!

The Old Testament ends with the Sun will come and dispel the darkness. The New Testament begins with the rising of the Sun. The Bible closes with a declaration that Jesus is that Sun, dispelling darkness. And for those who come to Him and to the Light, “He guides our feet into the way of peace.”

Zacharias knew his Old Testament. And what that tells me is so did John the Baptist. This was his dad.  He had been taught all these things and many more. And when on that day he pointed to Jesus and said, “Behold the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world,” he was essentially saying, “Forgiveness has arrived. The Sun has risen, the darkness is over.” And for every person who believes in Him, that’s exactly what He does: He dispels the darkness and He opens the way of peace.

Let’s use our voice like these guys did.