Let us turn in the word of scripture
to St. Luke's Gospel, chapter 1, verses 67
to 80, where we have the famous Benedictus
of Zechariah the priest, or if you prefer
a different title, we should refer to it
as the dumb priest who spoke again, or
who sang again.
Now, the background will have become familiar to
most of you, to all of you I
trust.
We've referred to it already, and we're simply
going to say now that following his period
of being dumb, struck dumb by an act
of God, this dear man began to speak
again in the house of God.
There in his arms, or in the arms
of his wife, was the child that God
had promised that they simply could not believe
could possibly be theirs.
But John was there in the arms of
either father or mother in the temple.
And Zechariah begins to speak again, but you
notice he does not simply speak, he sings.
Neither does he simply sing, he sings as
a man who is filled with the Holy
Spirit.
We need to notice that.
Last Lord's Day morning, in the previous passage
here, we were being reminded that his wife
Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.
So too was Zechariah.
If we would bring children into the world
and bring them up as John the Baptist
was brought up, we too need to be
filled with the Holy Spirit.
That's just a passing comment, but it is
not the least important of what we have
to say this morning.
We need the grace of God in all
its glory and in all its fullness.
But when the dumb priest spoke again, he
had much to say, much to sing about.
I suppose there are two strands that we
might choose from the Benedictus this morning.
One I'd simply want to refer to in
order to remind you that it's there.
He speaks, first of all, of the prevailing
conditions that were so evident in his day
and age.
And if I were to choose two words
with which to express those prevailing conditions, I
suppose I would use the two words, desolation
and darkness.
Listen to these words, that we should be
saved from our enemies and from the hand
of all who hate us.
And then again, later on, verses 74 and
75, God has acted, he says, to grant
us that we, being delivered from the hands
of our enemies, might serve him without fear
in holiness and righteousness before him all the
days of our lives.
Those words refer to a background of sheer
desolation politically, morally, and spiritually.
Even if they wanted to, people were afraid
to live a life of godliness and righteousness
before God.
Then it was also a time of darkness.
He speaks in verse 79 of those who
sit in darkness and in the shadow of
death.
When this term darkness is used metaphorically in
scripture, it generally refers either to delusion or
depravity or despondency, sheer downright depression.
There is no gleam of hope in the
sky.
Everything is totally black, the prevailing conditions.
But now, the bulk of Zechariah's song has
to do with the fact that in his
day, God had moved into action.
The great acts of saving mercy and grace
in Jesus Christ have begun to move.
God is moving into action.
And there are so many things he has
to say.
I have to confine myself now briefly just
to pick out three of the images used
by this priest called Zechariah, the father of
John the Baptist, and employed by him in
order to describe what God has done, not
through his son John the Baptist, that was
the occasion of the song, but through the
babe that was still in the womb of
the Virgin Mary who was to be born
in the fullness of the time, Jesus of
Nazareth, the Son of God.
How did this spirit-filled man, this spirit
-filled priest Zechariah, how did he come to
think of the salvation that God was already
in process of performing?
Three images.
First of all, he refers to it as
a divine visitation.
In verse 68, blessed be the Lord God
of Israel for he has visited his people.
Now, the statement here in verse 68 has
to be understood against the background of Old
Testament thought and usage, which was essentially familiar
to Zechariah as a priest.
Old Testament writers used this word visitation to
describe something far more than a social call,
pay a visit, something much more than that.
When God is said to have visited his
people or to visit men, it means that
something momentous has taken place, either in terms
of grace and mercy or in terms of
judgment.
Let me give you just one or two
illustrations of each.
You remember the story of Sarah and her
husband without child in the book of Samuel.
We read in, I'm sorry, Sarah Abram's wife.
I was going to give you something else
and get mixed up in the process.
Let me speak of Sarah Abram's wife.
She was childless.
And we read in Genesis chapter 21 and
verse 1 that the Lord visited Sarah.
Now that visit was not just a social
call.
When God visited Sarah, he came to do
a work that was supernatural, a work that
would have consequences right down to the end
of time.
And a work of grace.
Or let me give you another illustration since
I began from the book of Genesis.
Joseph said to his brethren in Egypt, I,
he says, I'm about to die, but God
will visit you.
And then he goes on to say what
he means by that.
And we'll bring you up out of this
land to the land he swore to Abram
and Isaac and to Jacob.
What does God's visitation mean?
Oh, not a social call, but this.
He's coming down into Egypt to gather his
people together and to set them free and
to lead them through the wilderness and through
the Jordan into the promised land.
Divine visitation.
God has visited his people in grace.
To confine ourselves to the Old Testament again
and to the early books, God also makes
such a visit in judgment.
We are warned in Exodus 20 and verse
five, God says, I, the Lord, your God,
am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of
the fathers upon the children unto the third
and fourth generation of them that hate me.
You go on hating God and produce children
that hate God.
And they produce children that hate God.
And in due course, God will visit your
children to the third and fourth generation of
those who hate him in judgment.
Again, in Psalm 89 verse 32, I will
visit their transgressions with a rod and their
iniquity with stripes.
Now in the conception and birth of the
babe in the virgin's womb, God then, according
to this priest Zechariah, God was visiting his
people.
God was not simply coming down to pay
a social call to his creatures, but he's
coming to visit, to do something big, to
do something great, to purchase our redemption from
sin and from death and damnation, and to
liberate us, to be free to be his
servants, and to make us worthy and able
to enjoy fellowship with him.
A divine visitation.
When you think of Christmas, think of it
in these terms.
God has visited his people to save.
The second image or metaphor to which I
want to refer is this.
It's a very unusual one.
It almost takes your breath away.
You almost wonder whether Zechariah has made a
blunder here in referring to it in this
way.
A horn of salvation.
See how he speaks of it in verse
69.
He has raised up, he has raised up
a horn of salvation for us in the
house of his servant David.
God has raised up a horn of salvation.
What an amazing, what a strange metaphor.
Well you remember of course that this man
was a priest, ministering in the temple, offering
sacrifices day in and day out, and he
had a lot to do with cattle.
That statement has to be understood against that
background.
But what really does it refer to?
What did he have in mind?
I can't dogmatize, but I want to give
you four suggestions, and the four of them
may be true.
He may have had the four in mind,
but he may only have had one.
I can't tell you which.
First of all, a horn of an animal
was its strength, its weapon of attack and
of defense.
Be it a sheep, be it a goat,
or whatever animal is horned, it was the
means whereby he made war against others and
defended itself against those who would attack it.
And you have this in the Old Testament
brought out very, very often.
The false shepherds addressed by Ezekiel, for example,
are addressed in these terms.
You push with side and shoulder and you
thrust at all the weak with your horns.
Now he's speaking about men, he's speaking metaphorically,
but he's thinking of the false shepherds like
sheep with horns hurting one another, making war.
And some of the false shepherds of Israel
were doing exactly that.
They were hurting, they were harming the people
of God.
It may well be that the image in
Zechariah's mind of the babe of Bethlehem, yet
to be born but already conceived, was the
image of God coming down and manifesting himself
as a God who is on the attack.
A God who has come to declare war
against sin, against Satan, against evil, to exterminate
the world in due course and to purify
it of the sin that has ravaged it
from beginning to end until the great day
when the earth and the heavens shall be
set ablaze and purged and become a place
wherein righteousness is at home, as Peter tells
us.
A horn of salvation making war.
The horn was also used as a musical
instrument.
Did Zechariah think of Jesus in these terms?
And of all the usages of the horn
as a musical instrument, I suppose the one
that stood out in Israel's experience was that
used at the great fall of Jericho.
You remember how the book records with one
long blast of a ram's horn sounding, the
walls of Jericho came tumbling down.
Did the old priest think of the Lord
Jesus Christ as God sounding forth the word
of salvation and finality and victory?
That the walls of Jericho that had hedged
us in and held us in, were at
last torn down and men are freed from
the captivity of sin and death to move
into the land of promise?
If so, he was on the right tack.
But the horn was also used very especially
in Zechariah's experience of the four protrusions from
the altar.
Now I don't want to sound heretical, and
you remember the altar was something like this
pulpit, an oblong shaped affair.
There was a horn on every corner, on
the four corners.
And the point is this, whenever atonement was
made, you will notice in the Old Testament
that the horns of the altar were always
sprinkled with the blood.
So that reference to the horns of the
altar was invariably a reference to the place
where atonement was made.
Did the old priest think of Jesus as
the one who would come and somehow or
other in whom the great atonement would be
made, whereby sin would be expunged?
Did he know that?
I can't dogmatize.
I shouldn't be surprised if he did.
But last of all, as far as this
is concerned, I make you another suggestion.
The horn was also used in the Old
Testament for anointing with oil, prophets, priests, and
king.
The horn would have the oil in it,
and someone would come along and pour it
upon someone who was to be prophet, who
was to be priest, or who was to
be king.
What a picture of the babe in the
virgin's womb.
He held the horn.
He is the one who outpours the spirit
upon the church and who will pour new
life into the darkness of the darkened, dismal
souls of men and bring the life of
heaven into the experiences of sinners lost and
ruined by the fall.
Did he think of that?
I don't know.
But if he did, he was on the
ball.
He has raised for us a horn of
salvation.
The last image here is a very beautiful
one.
Divine visitation, a horn of salvation, a day
star or day spring from on high in
verse 78.
I'm quoting from the King James.
The day spring from on high hath visited
us.
What a vision was given to this spirit
-filled man.
It's no wonder his lips began to move
again.
And here he describes the Savior's birth literally
as sunrise.
Sunrise.
And all the pictures, you know, I really
like this.
What happened when Jesus of Nazareth conceived already
in the virgin's womb?
What happened when he was born?
I'll tell you.
The sun is risen indeed upon the world
and a new day has dawned.
The darkness is broken and it's only a
matter of time before it is completely scattered
and exterminated and night shall be no more.
The sun is risen indeed and the old
priest sensed it.
God's on the move, he says, and the
day spring from on high has already visited
us.
We are sitting in darkness, as he tells
us in another verse later on, sitting in
darkness and in the shadow of death reflecting
the thoughts of the prophet.
But the day spring has visited us.
Even though you don't see it yet, in
the virgin's womb he is.
As you and I come to the Lord's
table this morning, I think we would do
well with a concept of the visitation of
God in Christ.
With a remembrance that a horn of salvation
has been raised in the house of David.
He is the Savior of man and we
would do well, my friends, to come into
the light that is risen upon us in
the coming of the Lord Jesus, expose the
hidden recesses of our souls to the light
of his countenance and his knowledge of us,
confess our sins and begin to walk in
the light and to live in the light
that we may die in the light and
that the path of the just as the
shining light grows more and more until the
fullness of the midday glare is upon us.
The dumb priest spoke again.
Have you seen the vision?
Do you get it?
Do you trust Jesus Christ like this?
Then I trust that these few words of
mine this morning will not be only the
means whereby God will illumine you and teach
you some of the new concepts of scripture
employed to describe the glories of our Lord,
but that the same spirit will bring you
to rest in him, to trust in him,
and to be proud of him.
Let us pray.
Father in heaven, seal your word to our
hearts and minds by the spirit and enable
us, the better on account of them, to
have the right mind and the right spirit
and the correct attitude as we come to
your table.
Save us from undue familiarity with these holy
things.
Teach us how to receive with faith and
how to eat and drink with a confidence
that Jesus Christ is all in all the
bread and the water of life, yea, the
wine of heaven.
Amen.