Zachariah's Song of Salvation: The New Covenant, Part 3
Luke 1:67-80
We are having a wonderful time these days, studying the gospel of Luke, the third book in the New Testament. I would invite you to open your Bible to the gospel of Luke. I don't make any apology for week after week, year after year opening the Word of God and teaching it to you because I really don't have anything to say that could even compare with what God had said. The whole mandate and calling of a preacher is to make God's Word known. And so Sunday after Sunday, month after month, year after year we look into the Word of God and we discover here such profound and immense treasures of truth that once we have begun to develop an appetite for the Word of God, frankly nothing else will satisfy us.
Luke chapter 1. Let me give you a little bit of background. Years ago a book was written entitled The Greatest Story Ever Told. And as you might guess, it was the story of Jesus Christ, which, in fact, is the greatest story ever told. This is the very story we are being told by Luke. Luke is a biographer of Jesus. There were four biographers of Jesus...Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Each of them writing about the life of Jesus from a perspective unique to each writer, covering the same story, the same truth. But when you put all four gospels together, you get this perfectly harmonious composite picture of the record of Jesus Christ. One of those four writers and a marvelous one at that is the writer Luke. By profession a physician, but by divine calling a diligent historian, a careful biographer, a thoughtful theologian and most of all a committed disciple of Jesus Christ.
He was commissioned by God Himself to write the story of Jesus Christ, the greatest story ever told. Actually Luke really took that seriously and he penned the longest of the four gospels. Though there are more chapters in the gospel of Matthew, there are more words in the book of Luke, and even having finished Luke, he wasn't finished with what he wanted to write so he just kept writing the story and wrote 28 more chapters that we call the book of Acts. Fifty-two chapters in the history written by Luke so I say he is a diligent historian. He starts before the birth of Jesus, goes through the conception of Jesus, the birth of Jesus, the life of Jesus, the ministry of Jesus, the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, the commission that Jesus gives to His apostles and then launches in to the story of the spread of the gospel and the establishment of the church in the world which is recorded in the gospel of Luke and then the book of Acts.
So, we're studying, really, a biography. But it's more than a biography, it's also a theology. Luke is a very thoughtful, very careful and somewhat systematic theologian. We're not very far into this book, we're only at the end of chapter 1. We're already being introduced to the profound depths with which Luke understands theology. And in his most remarkable way as he unfolds the story in the form of a narrative, it is injected at precise points with rich theology.
Now as Luke begins to unfold the greatest story ever told, he starts with two great miracles...two miracles really in the same category, two conception miracles. In one case, an old barren couple, an old priest by the name of Zacharias, probably in his seventies, married to an old woman named Elizabeth in her seventies, not able to have children, barren all their lives, having a stigma for that barrenness, God miraculously allows them to conceive and have a son. That's the first conception miracle you're introduced in Luke's narrative. The second one is even more remarkable because this one is not to otherwise barren people being miraculously being able to conceive, but this is one in which a virgin who has never known a man conceives a child by the work of God who literally implants the child in her womb. That woman being Mary, the virgin, who is pregnant with the Son of God, the Son of the Most High, the Messiah, the Savior of the world, Jesus.
The whole great redemptive story of Jesus then is launched by Luke with two conception miracles. In both cases there is an appearance of the angel Gabriel and in redemptive history nobody had heard from an angel in five hundred years. There hadn't been a prophet in over 400 years. There hadn't been a miracle in 400 years and there hadn't been multiple miracles in longer than that. But Luke says at the time when the Messiah was coming into the world, angels appeared, a prophet is born, miracles happened. And there is a flurry of divine activity which, in a sense, is previews of coming attractions because when the Messiah comes there will be massive miracles wrought by Him and by His apostles, the likes of which the world had never seen before and has not seen since.
The remarkable unfolding of the greatest story ever told then is built around these two narratives of conception miracles and births. The first is the conception and birth of a man named John and John is the prophet, the first prophet in 400 years and the last Old Testament prophet and by the words of Jesus, "The greatest prophet up to that time who had ever lived." His responsibility was to be the forerunner of the Messiah, the herald of the Messiah, the announcer who would point to and identify the Messiah and who would get the people ready for the Messiah's arrival by having them face their sins and repent and be prepared to receive their Savior. The second birth is the birth of the Messiah Himself, Jesus, who is planted, as it were, in the womb of Mary to be born as Savior and King, the Lord of salvation.
Now for this morning we come to the end of chapter 1. We have just read about the birth of John. The birth of Jesus occurs in chapter 2. We've already studied both conception miracles. We have gone through the announcement by the angel Gabriel in both cases. We have met the parents of John. We have met the parents of Jesus, Mary being His earthly physical mother, Joseph His sort of adoptive parent who wasn't involved in the birth but nonetheless was the father by adoption. We have gotten introduced to the families. We know the angelic involvement. We know the conception miracles that have occurred and John has now been born, as we noted earlier in the chapter.
At the birth of John the Baptist, a very common ceremony occurred eight days later and that was circumcision. That was a traditional Jewish occasion in which that surgery occurred which identified every male child with the nation Israel. And it was probably on that day of circumcision when everybody was gathered together, family, friends, the miraculous work of God occurred int he life of Zacharias, he had been unable to speak the whole time of his wife's pregnancy because of his unbelief, his tongue is loosed at the time of the circumcision of this child and out of his mouth, starting in verse 67, comes praise to God.
Now remember, Zacharias is a priest in Israel. He understands Jewish theology. He understands the Old Testament. So what comes out of his mouth is just rich with Old Testament understanding. It's just loaded with it. Verse 67 says his father, Zacharias, probably holding this little eight-day-old baby in his arms, his father Zacharias being filled with the Holy Spirit which several times in this first chapter of Luke is an indicator of someone is about to speak the Word of God, and that was the case with Zacharias. Filled with the Holy Spirit he prophesies and he gives us a message right from God, though certainly true to his own thoughts. He prophesies and he says this, "Realizing what's happening, blessed be the Lord God of Israel for He has visited us and accomplished redemption for His people and has raised up a horn of salvation for us."
And I just note here, Zacharias knows what's going on. He knows that the Messiah is already in the womb of Mary because Mary has just spent three months at his house visiting them. He knows the Messiah is to be born and that is the culmination of redemption. He knows the Messiah is the horn of salvation, horn meaning the authority, the power. He knows the Messiah is coming. This is not a song of praise for his son who is the forerunner of Messiah, although he does speak to the child in verses 76 and 77, calling him the prophet of the Most High who goes before the Lord to prepare His ways. He knows the role that his child is to play. But he knows more than that, that the birth of his son signals the arrival of Messiah who is only a few months behind, already forming in the womb of Mary. And so he is celebrating the blessedness of God who has brought redemption. He is celebrating that redemption and salvation has finally come, long awaited.
Any good and faithful priest would have his heart filled with the hope of redemption. A priest's, you see, job was to bring his people before God. That's what they did. They were the intermediaries between God and the people. They cared about God's will. They knew God's Word and they cared about God's people. And any true and righteous priest, and he was such, would have cared about the salvation of his brothers and sisters in Israel. He cared deeply. And when he heard this most incredible news, this most remarkable news that the Messiah was to be born, the forerunner already being held in his own arms, his own dear son was to be the prophet of the Most High who would make the people ready for the arrival of Messiah, he knew what was going on. This was the high point. This was the great pinnacle of redemptive history. The Redeemer was about to be born, the great Messiah, the King, the Savior of the world was soon to appear. Angels, messages from God, miracles and the Messiah, he understood that, but he understood it in an Old Testament way. He understood it with an Old Testament perspective.
And let me talk about that for just a moment by way of review. You cannot understand the flow of redemptive history, you cannot really get the clear picture of the relation of the Old Testament to the New unless you understand the significance of the term "covenant...covenant." God made certain covenants with Israel, pledged or promised in the Old Testament to be fulfilled later on by what is accomplished in the New Testament. It's sad to say there has been tremendous amount of misunderstanding about the covenants. There's an awful lot of, I think, needless dialogue about what the covenants are, what the covenants mean, how we are to understand the covenants, what their nature is, whether they've been revoked, or whether they're permanent, how they're going to be fulfilled, are they literally to be fulfilled or are they figuratively to be fulfilled, what are the actual covenants and so forth and so on.
I don't really think it's that difficult. It is a very critical issue in understanding redemptive history to understand the covenants. Frankly, that's why I've slowed down a bit, I've slowed down a lot, frankly, at this particular point because I have to deal with this. If for one reason, it's critical for you to understand it, for another reason, it's critical for me to teach you what I believe is in this passage by way of the rich intention of the Spirit of God to inform us. Furthermore, we are getting ready, myself, Dick Mayhew and Phil Johnson, to write a 1500-page, one volume systematic theology that is largely dependent on an understanding of the covenants. And so it's critical to cultivate my own thinking in this area as well. And I confess to you that as I approach a passage, typically I'll read about 20 books on the passage that elucidate that passage to me, and after having done that I still was left with what I thought was sort of across the surface treatment of this text, and so I sort of set the books aside and started to dig into the text itself and that's when I began to discover or uncover the covenantal indications that load this entire document that comes out of the lips of Zacharias and was recorded for us by Luke. It is, of all things, a treatment of the significance of covenant fulfillment in the coming of Messiah.
And as I told you last time, as he sees the Messiah coming to bring redemption to Israel, first of all, as well as to the world, as he sees the arrival of the Savior that he calls the "horn of salvation," he sees this in fulfillment of three great Old Testament covenants. The first of those Old Testament covenants we call the Davidic Covenant. It was a covenant or a promise made by God to David. It first appears in 2 Samuel chapter 7, we've gone over that, we won't do it again. But he knows that. And notice verse 69. Zacharias says, "God has visited us with a saving visit, accomplishing redemption for His people. He has raised up a horn of salvation for us," and immediately he connects it to the house of David, His servant, as he spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from of old, which involves deliverance, or salvation from our enemies from the hand of all who hate us.
He knows immediately that the arrival of Messiah is the fulfillment or the potential fulfillment of the promise God made to David back in 2 Samuel chapter 7. God said to David, "I'm going to bring a Son out of your loins some time in the future and I'm going to give him a kingdom like no other kingdom has ever existed. I'm going to give Him a glorious kingdom, He is going to reign over Jerusalem. He is going to reign over Israel. And through that nation going to reign over the whole world." Indications of the Davidic Covenant also occur in other portions of the Old Testament. The Davidic Covenant then was the promise that a Messiah would come who would be King. He would establish the royal line of David again in Jerusalem. He would reign over Israel, that is to say they would be a sovereign nation with their own sovereign King, something they had not experienced really for a long, long time. They were either under Babylonian rule, they were under the rule of the Medo-Persian Empire, they were under the distasteful and heinous and idolatrous and pagan leadership and rule of Greece, and then and now as the New Testament was written, they were under the horrifying idolatrous, pagan, Roman occupation. They were forever and always besieged by their enemies and those who hated them.
But the promise to David was some day they would be free from all of that. Some day they would be a sovereign nation with their own sovereign King who would not only be sovereign over Israel, but who would rule the entire world with a rod of iron. The psalmist had referred to that as well in Psalm 2 and many other places. Well Zacharias realizes that the arrival of Messiah signals the fulfillment of this Davidic Covenant, that this redemption involves fulfillment of the promises to David.
There was, secondly, another great Old Testament covenant that God made with Abraham, even before the Davidic Covenant, He made a promise to Abraham. It's recorded in Genesis 12, Genesis 15, Genesis 18, Genesis 22, and repeated several other times. And that promise was that God would give to Abraham a great nation, a great land and immense blessing. Well the fact of the matter is, they didn't have their land at the time of the New Testament. Their land was occupied by the Romans. Their land had been literally whittled down to a small portion of the original promise given to Abraham. There was tremendous conflict. They were not experiencing blessing in that land. They were not experiencing righteousness and holiness in that land. But Zacharias knew that that was what God had promised to Abraham and so he says in verse 72 that the Messiah is coming, the redemption will be accomplished, the horn of salvation is coming because God is remembering His holy covenant, the oath which He swore to Abraham, our father, to grant us that we being delivered from the hand of our enemies because of the fulfillment of Davidic promise, would then be able to serve Him without fear, without fear of oppression, without fear of assault or attack from enemies and there would be holiness and righteousness before Him all our days. That was Abrahamic promise.
Well Zacharias knew these covenants. The Jews had lived in the light of their fulfillment. They had waited and waited for them to come to pass.
But there's another covenant here in this passage that is critical to everything. And while David is mentioned, and Abraham is mentioned, the name of this third covenant is not mentioned but it is the New Covenant and we know that because of its component parts. Starting in verse 77, after that brief address to the child John in verses...in verse 76, he comes in to verse 77 and introduces the New Covenant. And here is the nature of the New Covenant, "God has promised to give to His people the knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins." There's no issue of forgiveness in the Davidic Covenant, there's no mention of forgiveness in the Abrahamic Covenant, but it is the New Covenant in which God promises the forgiveness of sins in which verse 78 God expresses tender mercy. It is the New Covenant, verse 78, that brings the Sunrise from on high which shall visit us to shine upon those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death and it is the New Covenant that guides our feet into the way of peace.
Now when you read that...and when I read that, first of all, it didn't strike me that that was all New Covenant, but when I began to take those phrases that are used here, those references to forgiveness, tender mercy, the Sunrise on high shining in the place of darkness, the shadow of death and guiding our feet in the way of peace, when I went to the Old Testament to find the source for that, it was all New Covenant context. This is, in fact, the third great covenant, the New Covenant.
Now I remind you, there are three other covenants in the Old Testament. One made to Noah that God would never again destroy the world by water, that's the Noahic promise. One made that God would have a permanent priesthood by which people could have access to God, the Priestly Covenant. And then the Mosaic Covenant was the Law of God in which God stated His moral perfection and His holy and righteous standard. But none of those three, not the Noahic Covenant, nor the Priestly Covenant, nor the Mosaic Covenant, had a salvation feature. Those were not covenants associated with salvation, there's nothing in the promise to Noah that requires salvation. There's nothing in the Priestly promise requiring salvation. There's nothing in the Mosaic Law that can save at all because no man can be saved by the law. But the Davidic and the Abrahamic Covenant required salvation. In other words, they couldn't receive the King and His Kingdom, they couldn't receive the land and its blessing unless they were saved, so there had to be a saving covenant and that's the New Covenant.
I'll say it another way. When God made the promise to David of a coming King to establish the glorious throne of royalty in Jerusalem, bring Israel freedom from all its enemies, bring them sovereignty and autonomy and a Kingdom like no other kingdom that ever existed, a Kingdom that would literally spread itself across the whole world and that the Messiah would reign over with a rule of iron...with a rod of iron, a Kingdom that would never end, that would be eternal, that was an amazing and thrilling promise the Jews had long awaited its fulfillment. And when God promised Abraham a great nation, a great land, great prosperity, great blessing and the righteousness and holiness and all of that, that was a great and thrilling and amazing promise and they long waited for that. But they hadn't received either fulfillment and they still haven't received them today. Why? There's a barrier, the barrier is disobedience. That's the barrier...disobedience. THey couldn't please God. They couldn't keep the Mosaic Covenant. They couldn't keep His law. They were disobedient. They were sinful so consequently the nation has been cursed.
Now mark this. There has always been a faithful remnant who saw their inability to keep the law, who came to God, confessed their inability to keep the law, recognized their sin, pleaded for mercy, pleaded for grace, asked for forgiveness and were forgiven. There's always been a penitent remnant even today. But as a nation, the nation continues to be in an unfulfilled condition. They have never yet received the fulfillment of Davidic and Abrahamic promise because as a nation they have never repented and believed. They're still cursed by their inability to keep the law. Throughout all, however, all of this history, there have been individuals...individuals who have believed God, seen their sin, cried out for mercy and who have been forgiven on the basis of the death of Jesus Christ, even though they lived before He died. That's why the Bible calls Him the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world. God applied the virtue of His death, the substitution of His death for sinners, to sinners even before He died as well as sinners since His death. So there's always been a faithful remnant.
There is today. There are in this congregation many Jewish people who have seen their sinfulness, repented, come to God, asked for mercy and put their trust in Christ as their Lord and Savior. But as a nation, they have not repented and the barrier of disobedience is still there. They're trying to earn their right to Abrahamic and Davidic fulfillment rather than realize they can't earn it, fall on their face with a Beatitude attitude and cry out for forgiveness and grace provided through Jesus Christ.
You can take all the promises to Abraham, take all the promises to David, you can take all the threats that came through Moses, all the threats of cursing and terrible devastation to those who disobey, add up all the promises, add up all the threats, dump them on people and they can't change the heart. They can't change the heart. There's nothing in the Davidic Covenant that can save the sinner, there's nothing in the Abrahamic Covenant that can save the sinner, there's nothing in the Mosaic Covenant that can save the sinner, there has to be another covenant that can change the he