"And Mary stayed with her about three months, and then returned to her home. Now the time was fulfilled for Elizabeth to give birth, and she gave birth to a son. And her neighbors and her relatives heard that the Lord had magnified His great mercy toward her, and they were rejoicing with her.
And it happened that on the eighth day they came to circumcise the child, and they were going to call him Zechariah, after the name of his father. But his mother answered and said, "No, but he shall be called John." And they said to her, "There is no one among your relatives who is called by this name." And they were making signs to his father, as to what he wanted him called. And he asked for a tablet and wrote as follows, "His name is John." And they all marveled. And at once his mouth was opened and his tongue loosed, and he began to speak, blessing God. And fear came on all those living around them, and all these matters were being talked about in all the hill country of Judea. And all who heard these things put them in their heart, saying, "What then will this child be?" For the hand of the Lord was indeed with him."
Good Morning my beloved,
Spiritual growth and maturity is a basic, fundamental principle of Christian living, to grow in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, with the ultimate goal to become more like Him, living to the glory of God. Now if that’s true, and it is, than I believe that if we're not living to the glory of God, then it is evident that we're living to the glory of self. The basic principle of growing in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ and living a life that is glorifying God in everything I think, say and do is the most important desire of my own heart and has set the tone for my own ministry throughout all these many years. That’s why everything in existence has been created, for the purpose of glorifying God. Paul says in Colossians 1:16, "For in Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him." Yet, even though God has revealed Himself to man in creation and in conscience, because of his fallenness, he has made the choice to glorify Him not. Because man has known God and refused to give Him glory, and made other gods out of his own corrupt imagination, God turned man over to a depraved mind, receiving the due penalty of his own wicked sinfulness. (c.f. Romans 1:21-32)
The older I get, the more I am aware that we are living in a fallen world. And, in this fallen world, I've recognized that many people live for all kinds of things, which they decide for themselves, some live for their family and friends, some live for their careers and for success, some live for drugs and alcohol, and for obvious reasons, you can only live so long for that, but as Christians, our reason for living is to glorify God and exalt Christ in an unbelieving world, demonstrating a transformed life, therefore, I believe the one key question we need to continually ask ourselves at all times, for every thought, for every word spoken, and for every deed done in public or private, is "Will this glorify God, bringing honor to His Name and will exalt Christ, making Him more attractive to others?" Glorifying God is the reason for humanities existence, and until man lives purposefully to the glory of God, he does not have any real meaning to his existence. We don't give glory to God, it already belongs to Him, we don't add to His glory, its intrinsic to His nature, it's Who He is, we merely declare it to the world by living a holy life. If we’re going to be the Church, living every day for God's glory, then we have to put Him in His rightful place, above everything else; that means family, that means friends, that means money and success, whatever the cost.
I've often been asked, "So, why is God going to bring judgment?" Because He judges those who refuse to give Him glory He deserves, those who have rejected Christ. I believe that we all are very much aware that God has been dishonored and Christ has been rejected in our nation and in the world wholesale. The first thing God does to judge a society for rejecting Him, is He turns them over sexual impurity and unrighteousness, people will become consumed with the lusts of their hearts and we certainly witnessed that in this nation during the sexual revolution of the 60's and 70's. Then second step that occurs when God judges a nation that has rejected His truth, is He turns them over to a homosexual revolution, meaning men with men, and women with women and we saw the many devastating effects that produced with HIV/AIDS. The third thing does when God judges a nation, is He gives them over to a reprobate, non-functioning mind filled with every kind of imaginable sexual wickedness, I believe this fully explains the gender and transgender insanity that our nation is currently facing today. Another thing God does when He judges a people He gives them wicked rulers, to make unrighteous laws, sending them careening further down a path of transgression, iniquity, and sin, and as much as some would like to believe it, the next election or any other election is not going to fix it, because we are under God's judgment at a very severe level, we’re in the final stages, His divine judgment can't be stopped, the good news is that God protects His people.
The last step, which is still to come, will be God's global judgment that will occur at the end of the age, where all those who have His offer of salvation will be judged based solely upon their works alone, meaning every thought, every word and every deed will be judged against God's perfect righteous and holy standard. It must therefore be understood that simply doing good deeds cannot not erase the consequences of past wrongs. In other words, there is no amount of good works sufficient to atone for sin. In fact, God's judgment is actually part of the Good News, it gives us the assurance that every wrong ever committed will ultimately be made right. We all want justice to prevail right? Man's justice is incomplete and imperfect at best, God's justice is always perfect! Only those who are in Christ can escape God's judgment, the rest will face eternal judgment in Hell. It's not a matter of if, it's only a matter of when God's global judgment that will occur .
In the words of the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 7:1, "Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God."
Let us pray
Heavenly Father,
Amen
Today's Message: Standing On The Promises of God
Open your Bibles with me, if you would and turn to the Gospel of Luke,
Luke chapter 1. Today, we will be looking at verses fifty-six through sixty-six, the birth of John the Baptist. I invite you to follow along with me read this text to you, to set it in our minds.
"And Mary stayed with her about three months, and then returned to her home. Now the time was fulfilled for Elizabeth to give birth, and she gave birth to a son. And her neighbors and her relatives heard that the Lord had magnified His great mercy toward her, and they were rejoicing with her.
And
it happened that on the eighth day they came to circumcise the child,
and they were going to call him Zechariah, after the name of his father.
But his mother answered and said, "No, but he shall be called John." And they said to her, "There is no one among your relatives who is called by this name." And they were making signs to his father, as to what he wanted him called. And he asked for a tablet and wrote as follows, "His name is John." And they all marveled. And at once his mouth was opened and his tongue loosed, and he began to speak, blessing God. And fear came on all those living around them, and all these matters were being talked about in all the hill country of Judea. And all who heard these things put them in their heart, saying, "What then will this child be?" For the hand of the Lord was indeed with him."
At a cursory glance at this fascinating account of John's birth in Luke's Gospel, it would appear that much of the story appears to be about Zachariah, but it is really a story about God. In fact, more than anything else, the entire Bible is God's divine self-revelation, God's self-disclosure, God's truth in His own words, so that men may know Him. I learned long ago, that every passage in Scripture reveals something about God, so it has become common practice when I'm studying the Bible, regardless of the book or particular passage, to look for what God has chosen to reveal about Himself.
There are a lot of things that once seemed impossible a hundred years ago, today, they are not only possible, they've become an ordinary part of everyday life. With the invention of the Internet, instead of waiting for the news to arrive in a newspaper, you could see worldwide events happening in real-time for yourself. Today, the Internet has given birth to an entire host of services, such as social networking services, online shopping, enabling many brick and mortar stores the ability to expand to serve a much larger market, as well as internet television and other popular streaming services. In fact, there are many today who can’t believe that anyone could grow up without it. And, to the glory of God, it has also allowed the Gospel of Jesus Christ to reach many people and places once believed to be impossible, fulfilling the command to make disciples of all the nations, for which I am personally most grateful. I am reminded of Jesus' words in Matthew 19:26, when He said, "With people this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." Nothing is impossible with God!
Our text today proves when God's hand is in it, nothing is impossible. Now, Luke wants us to see that God is putting Himself on display, launching the greatest era of miracles in human history, proving His promises are true, beginning with fulfilling His promise to a man named Zechariah and his wife, Elizabeth, both advanced in years, well past the age of child-bearing, to establish His church of which we are all a part. The birth of a child in Israel was cause for great joy and celebration, after the child was born, family, friends and neighbors would come from afar, ready to celebrate the birth of the child, especially if the child was a male. It was Jewish tradition to hire local musicians to accompany the celebration and the crowd would break out into song. And, if the child was a girl, it was considered a birth of sadness and the musicians went away in silence. Because Elizabeth had been barren, never being able to have children, we can assume that the celebration went on in the common Jewish fashion, and may have even been greater, since the child they'd been praying for all these years has finally happened. You might expect Zechariah, overjoyed with finally becoming a father in his old age, a son at that, to be going around shouting and passing out cigars, but because God’s doesn't take very well to His messengers being told that their message of good news is "impossible," Zechariah wasn't able to do the first thing that probably came to his mind, shout for joy. In other words, if you cannot praise God for what He wants to do for you, then you just won’t be able to say anything! I believe that sometimes God just has to shut us up, so to speak, before we'll stop refusing to listen to what He has to say to us. Luke wants us to know, when God says He's going to do something, we shouldn't question it, because He always speaks the truth.
Let's look at verse 56, "And Mary stayed with her about three months, and then returned to her home." You will remember, that after Mary received word from the angel Gabriel that she would become pregnant, bearing in her womb planted there by God miraculously. She was betrothed to a young man named Joseph, but still a virgin, because they had not consummated their relationship since the wedding had not yet occurred. Let's be completely honest, the concept of having a child miraculously planted in your womb by God isn't an easy one to sell. So, Mary went to see the one woman she knew would understand her situation, her cousin Elizabeth, because God had already granted her own conception miracle. If God could miraculously work in an old woman's womb, surely He could the same in a virgins womb, right? It's fascinating how Luke wonderfully weaves the two conception miracle narratives that occurred by the hand of God together. After Mary staying with her cousin Elizabeth for about three months, which would put Elizabeth in her ninth month of pregnancy, Mary returns home to her mother and father.
Verse 57, "Now the time was fulfilled for Elizabeth to give birth, and she gave birth to a son." Now the time was fulfilled, this tells us all we need to know, nine months of pregnancy was fulfilled, and the moment for Elizabeth to give birth to John, the forerunner of the Messiah had come, exactly as God had promised Zechariah through the angel Gabriel. The point that Luke is so concerned in making here, is that God's Word is always true, that's the issue. This is the moment that triggers the monumental event, leading to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world. We can only imagine the immense joy Elizabeth must have felt, after her life-long barrenness and the horrible stigma as a Jewish woman she would have endured of people thinking she was cursed by God, but knowing that this was not just any child, but a prophet in the spirit and power of Elijah and the forerunner to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. Surely, her joy would have been beyond belief. Once you have discovered the power of what God can do, believing that nothing will be impossible for God, it will empower you to spread hope and encouragement to others that God can do what seems to be impossible for them too! That's important because God promises salvation and forgiveness to those to who will call upon Him through the Lord Jesus Christ.
Verse 58, "And her neighbors and her relatives heard that the Lord had magnified His great mercy toward her, and they were rejoicing with her." The neighbors and relatives rejoicing with her was fulfillment of the Word of God is true and that He is gracious to answer the prayers of those who cry out to Him for mercy. Not only did the the Lord have mercy toward her, He magnified His great mercy toward her. God not only answered Elizabeth's prayers for a child, but He did it far more abundantly beyond what she asked, and in Matthew 11:11, Jesus said, "Truly I say to you, among those born of women there has not arisen anyone greater than John the Baptist!"
We shouldn't be surprised that God is gracious, in fact, He delights in being gracious! His graciousness toward sinners is displayed in the forgiveness of sins, giving sinners what they don't deserve. How much more graciously will He pour out the riches of His grace on us, the heirs of His grace? Thank God we're under His grace! Paul says it wonderfully in Ephesians 3, "Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or understand, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen."
Verses 59-60, "And it happened that on the eighth day they came to circumcise the child, and they were going to call him Zechariah, after the name of his father. But his mother answered and said, "No, but he shall be called John." According to God's covenant with Abraham in Genesis 17, on the eighth day every male child born was to be circumcised, the flesh of his foreskin was to be cut off and verse 14 says, "An uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, or that person shall be cut off from his people; he has broken My covenant." I've often been asked, "If God felt that it was better for that to be done, why did He create men with foreskin? The short answer is God is God, He is the Creator and He can do whatever He wants. Beyond that, circumcision had national purposes, God wanted the Jewish people have have something that identified them with Abraham's seed and the Abrahamic Covenant, that nobody else had. And, if you understand the physical dynamics of circumcision, because of physical cleansing that occurs, Jewish women have had the lowest rate of cervical cancer and other infections. Then, there was a spiritual symbolism behind it, in which God wanted them to see their sinfulness, He wanted to show them that they needed cleansing at a profound level because sin is so endemic. Abraham circumcised himself given that he was the first and he later circumcised his sons, Isaac and Ishmael, whereas, Zipporah circumcised Gershom, her first-born son. In other words, there was no Old Testament prescription about who does it.
Since things have changed today, according to Jewish Law, it is still technically the responsibility of a father to circumcise his own sons and a mohel trained in the practice of brit milah, the "covenant of male circumcision" assists with the ceremony, which is brief, usually in a synagogue in the presence of a minyan, a quorum of ten Jewish men, thirteen and older, for the sake of modesty. However, for John's circumcision, there was a crowd of people ready to celebrate this tradition and appropriately so. There was a group of people selected from those attending to play special role in the naming of the child, and after a discussion among themselves, they decided to name the child after his father, in honor of Zachariah. Just a footnote, a child's name was sometimes chosen from the circumstances associated with the conception, as in the case of Isaac, or the delivery, as with Jacob and Benjamin. Other times, it was chosen from divine acts or to describe physical attributes. By the way, naming the child on the day of circumcision at some point became a Jewish tradition, but there was no Old Testament prescription about when a name was to be given to a child. But Elizabeth answered and said, "No, but he shall be called John." In the Greek it is emphatic, meaning she said "NO, absolutely not, that's out of the question!" Why is this such an issue for her? Because when the angel Gabriel appeared to Zachariah, he said he is to be called John.
Verse 61, "And they said to her, "There is no one among your relatives who is called by this name." They probably thought she had just pulled that name out of thin air, but God wanted him named John to identify his purpose. The name John or Jehohanan, means "God is gracious," and this child would later declare the coming of the Messiah, through Whom the grace of God would explode upon a sinful world to forgive unworthy sinners, God was certainly gracious to Elizabeth as He has been to all of us. As we noted earlier, this is really a story about God.
Verse 62, "And they were making signs to his father, as to what he wanted him called." I can't help but to chuckle every time I read this; because not much has changed over two-thousand years later. When they didn't like the answer that Elizabeth gave them, they immediately ran over to Zachariah, as if to say, "Hey, Zachariah, what's your input on this? Elizabeth is clearly overstepping her bounds as a woman, she's taking advantage of your not being able to speak!" But because God struck him mute, unable to utter a sound for the past nine months, they may have assumed he couldn't hear them, we can't be dogmatic because Scripture doesn't indicate that, although the word used usually describes someone who is both deaf and mute. In any case, they started making signs to him, I can just imagine them flailing their arms around to communicate what was happening by gesture. There are certainly a lot of people like that in the church today, I've had many conversations with them, and have even received numerous emails from them every time they dislike something that was said, they're often very dramatic in expressing their strong opinions.
Verse 63, "And he asked for a tablet and wrote as follows, "His name is John." And they all marveled." The Greek puts this in the emphatic, so what he actually wrote is "John is his name," period with no further explanation. Luke then says "And they all marveled," all the people gathered around were absolutely astonished, it just didn't make sense, they couldn't understand it. God doesn't get involved in naming everybody, but when He does, it's no trivial matter, God reveals His gracious purpose and His promises in the names of His people. Zachariah, means "God remembers His promise," and Elizabeth means, "God is the absolute faithful one." God named Jesus didn't He? It means "Jehovah saves."
Verse 64, "And at once his mouth was opened and his tongue loosed, and he began to speak, blessing God." Luke is very concerned that we understand that this is a miracle, so he begins the verse with "And at once," he wants us to see this is God's divine sovereign power on display. In fact, he repeats that phrase throughout his Gospel account and in the book of Acts. Luke wants us to know with all certainty, God's promise, spoken through the angel Gabriel in verse 20 is true. At once Zachariah's mouth was opened and his tongue loosed, and he began to miraculously, instantaneously speak, "blessing God." Genesis 18 says, "Is anything too difficult for Yahweh?" God is all-powerful, He has power to give life, and to take it. Once you've settled on the belief that nothing will be impossible with God, you’ll have the courage and the strength to do whatever God wants you to do, in His time. Even if He has to take something away to get your attention, I'm speaking from my own experience here. The word impossible does not belong in a Christian's vocabulary.
Verse 65, "And fear came on all those living around them, and all these matters were being talked about in all the hill country of Judea." God's wondrous power inspires fear in the sense of awe. Psalm 145:3 says "His greatness is unsearchable." Remember, no one had seen a single miracle in hundreds of years, so they were in shock. "And all these matters were being talked about in all the hill country of Judea," the matters of miraculous conception and miracle birth of a child, divinely given his name from God, Zechariah, who had been silent for nine months, instantaneously praising God. O' the Lords wondrous works are too many to number, and cannot be fathomed, for He has made them all.
That brings us to verse 66, "And all who heard these things put them in their heart, saying, "What then will this child be?" For the hand of the Lord was indeed with him." Notice, Luke says "all who heard these things put them in their heart," that's another way to say, it was not only the topic of conversation, they were fixed on these things. And everyone began to wonder, "What then will this child be? For the hand of the Lord was indeed with him." That's a common Old Testament terms indicating God's powerful presence. God's Mighty hand redeems, it brings both blessing and judgment, it protects His people and it fulfills His purposes! God's Mighty hand was indeed on John the Baptist from the very beginning, filled with the Spirit from his mother's womb, he was the last Old Testament prophet, the forerunner who announces the arrival of Messiah! God's hand was graciously moving throughout redemptive history and it's certainly moving in the world today, fulfilling His divine purposes as we move toward the end of man's age.
May it be so..
And now may the Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make His face shine upon you,
And be gracious to you;
The Lord lift up His countenance upon you,
And give you peace.
Now and forever, in Jesus' name
Amen
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