Joy to the World - Pt 5

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. (Luke 1:68-75 ESV).

It’s the season of malls, commercials, traffic, rehearsals, and parties. Sometime we find ourselves just wishing for the gift of silence! Zechariah was a character who learned quite a bit about silence in the season leading up to Christ's birth. My hope is that we will learn some of these things by focusing on his song found in our reading today. I do like the way that we can listen to Christmas music at this time of year from multiple venues and sources. Sometimes you can still even walk into a mall or a store and hear those Christmas carols playing. I don’t think anymore that everybody is familiar with what all those words are, but if you grew up hearing those carols, they’re a rich part of our Christmas heritage. There are so many of them that tell the story of that first Christmas. Luke has the fullest account of the first Christmas of all the gospels in the New Testament. My favorite accounts of that first Christmas take place in the Gospel of Luke. One of the things I enjoy about the Gospel of Luke is that it includes five songs, or hymns, that were sung or spoken at the first Christmas surrounding the birth of Christ. Zechariah’s song is one of those. We should notice two remarkable things from these words of Zechariah. First, nine months earlier, Zechariah could not believe his wife would have a child. Now, filled with the Holy Spirit, he is so confident of God’s redeeming work in the coming Messiah that he puts it in the past tense. For the mind of faith, a promised act of God is as good as done. Zechariah has learned to take God at his word and so has a remarkable assurance: “God has visited and redeemed!” Second, the coming of Jesus the Messiah is a visitation of God to our world: “The God of Israel has visited and redeemed.” For centuries, the Jewish people had languished under the conviction that God had withdrawn: the spirit of prophecy had ceased, Israel had fallen into the hands of Rome. And all the godly in Israel were awaiting the visitation of God. These were days of great expectation. Now the long awaited visitation of God was about to happen—indeed, he was about to come in a way no one expected. God just does that. He shows up in some of the most unexpected ways. The key is in the fact that he always shows up! Trust in that truth today!