Meet Zacharias

Luke 1:5-10

Christmas happens in chapter 2.  But we’re in chapter 1.  In this chapter in verse 78, toward the end of the chapter, the comment is made that "The dayspring from on high hath visited us.”  It’s the sunrise of the Son of God.  That is a reference to the Messiah.  We could conclude then that the account of chapter 1 covers the final hours of darkness before that sunrise arrives, before Messiah comes.  And the night, frankly, for Israel had been long and dark, not only for Israel but for the world, waiting for the Savior.  Through all of Israel's history, that began with Abraham, a history of exile 400 years in Egypt, of wanderings forty years in the wilderness, of the conquest of the land of Canaan, of the occupation of the land of Canaan, of captivity, the northern kingdom taken captive in 722 B.C., the southern kingdom taken into Babylon in 586 B.C., the northern kingdom never returning, the southern kingdom returning seventy years later.  Israel's long history of coming back out of captivity and trying to rebuild, only to be oppressed as Greeks invaded and controlled the land, and then Romans came and further oppressed them; the long night of Israel's history of blessing and cursing mixed, the long night of Israel's history of faithfulness and apostasy.  And what sustained those who really looked toward God through all those long, long years of darkness was the hope that the sunrise would one day break.

The last book of the Old Testament...Malachi promised in the last chapter of the last Old Testament book that the sun, s-u-n, of righteousness would arise with healing in His wings.  And he was really saying exactly what was said in verse 78, "Sunrise is coming.”  The darkness is not permanent, but it's usually true that the darkness is the deepest just before the dawn.  And for the 400 years since Malachi said that, there was no prophet in Israel.  There was no revelation from God.  Therefore it was the darkest time of all.

For 400 years heaven was silent. Prayers went up but it seemed as though they hit a glass ceiling and bounced back.  And Israel sunk deeper and deeper into depression, oppressed by the Greeks whose ruler Antiochus Epiphanes actually had the unmitigated gall to step into the sacred Holy of Holies, the holy place of the temple, and desecrate those places, even sacrificing a pig on the altar; a time when the Gentile Greeks came in and brought their pagan gods and their pagan theology and mingled it in that sacred land with the people of Israel.  They were followed by the Romans, also with all their idolatries.  This made the depression all the greater.  And as much as the Jewish people cried out to God, God didn't speak and no prophet appeared.

Where was the sun of righteousness?  No one dreamed it would be 400 years from the prophecy to its fulfillment.  Where was the day when righteousness triumphed over evil?  

Malachi 3:1

Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the Lord of hosts.

Who is the messenger?  John the Baptist.

Isn’t it interesting that now we’re in the temple with the priest, and it’s all commencing?

So that's how the Old Testament ends.  It ends with the promise of light, the promise of the sun of righteousness, the sunrise on high, the light of the world, Messiah, the Lord Savior will come and shatter the deepening darkness.  But as I said, 400 years have gone by since Malachi's words were uttered in about 430 B.C.  No prophet appeared, no word from God at all, and no light.

Israel not only sunk deeper into depression because of oppressing nations occupying her land, but sank deeper into sin and apostasy until by the time the gospel of Luke begins, Judaism as we know it existing in the land of Israel was apostate.  It had abandoned the true message of the Old Testament for a false one, engaging itself in works-righteousness, self-righteousness, all those things which God hates.  Israel had suffered then from sin and apostasy as well as the oppression of foreign nations desecrating its holy ground.

Where was the light?  Where was the sun?  Where was the dawn of redemption?  Where was the hope of every Jewish heart?

The prophets said that a forerunner will precede the Messiah.  He will be a voice crying in the wilderness.  Because Luke is such a careful historian and because he is so comprehensive in what he wants to cover, he therefore has to begin his story with the arrival of that forerunner.  And that's precisely what he does.

vv. 5-10

And with that, the silence of God was broken.

Luke connects the Old Testament with the New Testament.  That is critical.  The Old Testament and the New Testament do not propose two different religions.  There is not the religion of Judaism and the religion of Christianity.  Rather, the Old and the New Testament are one revelation from God with continuity telling the story of redemption, of only one religion, one faith and that is faith in the true and living God which involves His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.  It is one complete revelation from God.  Each testament is incomplete without the other.

The Old Testament, which is Scripture, makes predictions which the New Testament fulfills. Therefore the New Testament is Scripture as well.

It is also true that the birth of John was a miracle.  His birth was miraculous, and so was that of Jesus Christ.  And so by telling us the full story of the birth of John, the miracle of his birth, and the involvement of angels with a message from God, Luke is careful to begin the story where the story really begins, where God first initiates supernatural activity.

If we know that John is the forerunner, then we can therefore know who the Messiah is; it is whoever John identifies, right? 

These two births are woven together in chapters 1 and 2 of Luke's gospel.  They're woven together because they're inseparable. 

Luke doesn't begin his story like fiction.  He doesn't say, "Once upon a time."  Rather, he gives us history.  So he begins in verse 5, "In the days of Herod, king of Judea."  He's not a fictional character, he's a very real character and history has left us an immense amount of information regarding this man.  Luke places us in the accurate moment in history where the story begins to unfold.  He was known as Herod I in terms of the fact that he was the first of a long list of ‘Herods’ who ruled in one way or another in the land of Palestine.  But he commonly called himself Herod the Great, king of Judea.

Herod was cruel and merciless and vicious beyond description.  He was incredibly jealous, completely suspicious of everybody and afraid that someone was going to take his position and power.  He feared every potential threat and every threat that was just manufactured in his own mind.

For example, he had the high priest, the Jewish high priest Aristobulus, drowned. That was bad enough, but it was his wife's brother, which made it worse.  His wife wasn't happy about that. By the way, he attended the funeral of the brother-in-law he had drowned and wept in a pretense of affection, and then, to silence his wife about what had happened, he killed her.  And then knowing that mothers-in-law can be a problem, he killed her mother.  Fearing that his sons might tell the truth about him, he killed two of them.  Five days before his death, which is about a year after Jesus was born, he had a third son executed.  One of the greatest evidences of his blood-thirstiness and his insane cruelty was having the most distinguished citizens of Jerusalem all rounded up and imprisoned just before his death.  He knew he was dying.  He got all of these nobles and put them all in prison.  He knew that no one would mourn his death because everyone knew him as a slaughtering, massacring, serial killer, so he ordered that at the moment of his death all of those nobles who were in prison be instantly executed so at least there would be mourning in Jerusalem when he died, even if it wasn't for him. The press could put a spin on it.

That barbaric act, along with all the others, really pales in the light of the most horrifying thing that he ever did.  When he heard that a king had been born in Bethlehem, in order to kill that king he slaughtered all the male Jewish children in Bethlehem and its surroundings from two years old and under in the hope of killing someone who might someday be a threat to his throne.  How paranoid he must have been at his age to fear a child under the age of two.  That's Herod.

v. 5  Now we go from Herod to Zacharias.  From the king to the humblest of men, just a certain priest, a common guy.  That name, Zacharias, appears on behalf of thirty different people in Scripture, a very common name.

So now we meet the first character in the story.  Not particularly notable, there were eighteen thousand priests in Palestine at the time.  The Jews, although under Roman occupation, had the right to practice their religion freely.

All the priests were sons of Aaron.  Every male child who came from the family of Aaron was considered a part of the priesthood.  They were the agents of God.  They basically operated the theocratic kingdom.  To be a priest then was to be honored. [priest appreciation month?] It was the priests who were the butchers who actually did all of the sacrificing of the animals for the people.  It was the priests who interpreted the Scriptures.  It was the priests who taught the Scriptures and who counseled people out in their villages where they lived. 

Now all the priests came to the temple for Passover.  It wasn't uncommon to slaughter as many as a quarter of a million lambs at Passover.  They were covered with blood to the top of their head all the way to the toe of their feet. 

Now it also tells us about him that he had a wife.  He married the daughter of a priest.  And since all male descendants of Aaron were priests, her father was a priest, her brothers were priests, her uncles were priests, her grandfather, great-grandfather, she was in a world of priests.  She grew up immersed in Jewish priestly function.  He chose the best.  I think this tells us a little bit about his devotion to the priesthood, his devotion to God, to his priestly duty.  He married a girl who was most exposed to the devout involvement in the religion of Judaism.

And, you know, she must have come from a pretty good family, a pretty serious family of priests because they named her Elizabeth.  Elizabeth is a beautiful name but did you know that Elizabeth, according to Exodus 6:23, is the very name of Aaron's wife?  She was named after the wife of the original high priest Aaron.  That tells you something else about this family that she came from.  These are people who are serious about their religion.  These are people who are serious about priestly function. 

This is a remarkable couple.  And this certainly provided tremendous heritage for John, didn't it?  In a time of Jewish apostasy and a time of Jewish defection from true worship of God, a time of hypocrisy, a time of self-righteousness, this couple was devout.  And we know that specifically because of verse 6, look at this, "And they were both righteous before God."

They weren't like the hypocrites.  The hypocrites were righteous in the sight of men.  They were very concerned about how they looked.  That's why Jesus said about them in Matthew 23 that you're like painted graves, inside you have the stench of death but you're whitewashed on the outside.  You're dirty on the inside.  But that was the way Judaistic religion at the time was. That was the scribes and the Pharisees.  Jesus repeated it over and over again that they were going to get cast into eternal hell for their hypocrisy.  As far as God was concerned they were right with Him and God doesn't look on the outward appearance, God looks in the heart.

God said they're righteous. That means their sins were covered.  How did they get saved?  The same way Abraham did.  He believed God would provide a lamb and God declared, then your are righteous…because you have faith in that blood. Every sacrifice they made was a picture of the blood being a covering…and paying the price of sin.  And that's why when John first saw Jesus, when John was down at the river in his ministry and Jesus showed up for the first time, John didn't say, "There's the Messiah, there's the King."  John said, "Behold the Lamb."  John spent his life head deep in blood in the sacrificial system day after day.  And never ever did it take away sin permanently. The people had to come back make another one, all their life long.  He was looking for the final sacrifice, the one who would bear his sin.  He was believing that God would provide a sacrifice.  Doesn't that sound like Abraham, who took his son up on Mount Moriah way back in Genesis and believed that God would provide a sacrifice?

You can imagine the exhilaration in John the day he pointed to Jesus and said, "Behold the Lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world." 

They were really part of a remnant, true godly Jews in the midst of a nation of apostates.  There were more.  And we're going to meet more: Joseph, Mary, Anna, that old lady in the temple, Simeon, that old man. They were part of the remnant.  They probably were hanging on to Malachi's words that the sun of righteousness is going to rise and hoping it would be in their lifetime.

These people evidenced for Luke the fact that the New Testament message is not in conflict with true faith in Old Testament Israel.  It's not a new religion.  It's not a new way of salvation.  It's not a different way to God.  And Jesus did not come to oppose the Old Testament law or to oppose the Old Testament sacrifice, He came to affirm them and fulfill them.