Liberty Baptist Church
DECEMBER 21

      • Psalm 19:1–11ESV

  • HARK THE HERALD ANGELS SING
  • O COME ALL YE FAITHFUL HIS NAME SHALL BE
  • COME THOU LONG EXPECTED JESUS

      • Revelation 1:4–7ESV

  • KING OF KINGS
  • O come let us adore Him
  • If you have your Bibles, and I hope you do, go ahead and grab them and open to Luke 1. This morning we are going to look at moment before the big moment. We’re setting the stage today for what we’ll look at on Wednesday night at our Christmas Eve service.
    Earlier this year Walker and I got to go to one of the greatest sporting events that happens. We walk into the stadium and make our way down to our seats and you can just feel the buzz in the air. 60k people all have descended into this stadium. We enjoy watching the players warm up and survey the crowd to see if there’s anyone we might know. The team leaves the field and all the sudden you hear the drum line. The band comes marching down the tunnel and takes the field. The announcer comes over the speaker and says, please rise for the playing of the national anthem. People are continuing to find their seats. The student section is filling up and everyone stops and turns their attention to the American flag. The band plays, the crowd cheers. Unfortunately, there’s no fly over today. The song ends and the announcer comes back over the speakers and says, “And now, The Matador Song.” The crowd begins to cheer and yell. Everyone raises their guns in the air to join the band singing. The energy is becoming palpable.
    Now, the Matador Song is not this raucous song. It’s actually pretty calm tune that moves somewhat slowly. Yet when the announcer says, “And now” the stadium begins to swell with excitement. Why? Why does that statement and that song—that’s collegiate in nature rouse the crowd to be full of anticipation? That statement and that song is a sign pointer. It sets the stage for the greatest entry of a team onto field in all of college sports.
    Luke 1:57–80 ESV
    Now the time came for Elizabeth to give birth, and she bore a son. And her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown great mercy to her, and they rejoiced with her. And on the eighth day they came to circumcise the child. And they would have called him Zechariah after his father, but his mother answered, “No; he shall be called John.” And they said to her, “None of your relatives is called by this name.” And they made signs to his father, inquiring what he wanted him to be called. And he asked for a writing tablet and wrote, “His name is John.” And they all wondered. And immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue loosed, and he spoke, blessing God. And fear came on all their neighbors. And all these things were talked about through all the hill country of Judea, and all who heard them laid them up in their hearts, saying, “What then will this child be?” For the hand of the Lord was with him. And his father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied, saying, “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. And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.” And the child grew and became strong in spirit, and he was in the wilderness until the day of his public appearance to Israel.
    This is God’s Word for God’s people. Thanks be to God. Let’s pray.

    Trust God in his timing.

    Last week we looked at how Luke has taken the narrative of these two women and woven them together. Both Elizabeth & Mary have rejoiced at what God has done and now we find ourselves zooming back in on Elizabeth and the birth of her son, John the Baptist.
    Remember, Elizabeth is way too old to have a baby, and she has “been a reproach” to her community. Ostracized & outcast. In fact, the wonder, joy, and miracle of this pregnancy caused her to keep herself hidden for 5 months. But once her son is born the community—relatives & neighbors—hear of it. Isn’t that what we do with good news?
    Something exciting happens in your life, something your heart has longed for, something that you’ve worked for actually comes to pass and when you’re given the opportunity, you can’t wait tell people. Good news spreads, but notice the language Luke uses here to couch this good news:
    Luke 1:58 ESV
    And her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown great mercy to her, and they rejoiced with her.
    This news, this child, is the mercy of God towards Elizabeth and towards Zechariah, and unbeknownst to them, it’s God’s mercy to them too, but it’s not just the child himself, it the timing in which God sent this child.
    Now we don’t know exactly how old Elizabeth was during her pregnancy. Scripture tells us she “was advanced in years,” which is the polite way of saying, “She’s really old. In that culture someone was considered “old” when they were 60 years young or older. Aren’t you glad we live in a different culture?
    I’ve read some people who think she could’ve been well into her 80s. Regardless, she was old enough to be a grandparent, possibly a great-grandparent, and now here she is having a baby for the first time. Mercy. Now I don’t know about you, but I think I’d be going, Lord have mercy, not Lord thank you for mercy.
    How gut wrenching, how hopeless must she have become knowing that she would never have what her heart longed for. I mean think about how long ago Elizabeth must’ve stopped praying, “Lord, give me a child.” 30, 40, 50 years ago? Yet God in His mercy, says I’ve got something much greater for you, and not just for you, but for all of creation. Now, the time had come. God heard her prayer and he showed mercy at just the right time.
    You might be here this morning having grown weary from asking the Lord for something. You may have given up years ago. But one of the things we see this morning is that God, in his mercy, hears your prayers, he doesn’t forget them, and he answers them at the right time and in the right way both for your good and for the good of those around you. You can trust God in His timing because He is a God of mercy.
    His mercy doesn’t just stop at his timing, however. The second thing God’s mercy calls us to do is to receive discipline with joy.

    Receive discipline with joy.

    Let’s think about Zechariah for a minute. Back at the beginning of Luke 1 he encounters an angel of the Lord and this angel gives him the miraculous message that he will become a father, yet he doesn’t believe. So what happens?
    Luke 1:20 ESV
    And behold, you will be silent and unable to speak until the day that these things take place, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time.”
    His ability to speak is taken away, and then if you look at Lk. 1:62
    Luke 1:62 ESV
    And they made signs to his father, inquiring what he wanted him to be called.
    Quite a few scholars think that he also lost his ability to hear as well. So for over 9 months Zechariah at least lost his ability to speak and possibly his ability to hear all due to his lack of faith. 9 months in silence. That seems bad enough, but what was Zechariah’s job? He was the high priest, and what did the high priest’s do? He spoke to God on behalf of the people, and to the people on behalf of God. 9 months of silence not being able to do what you do. His entire identity stripped away from him. Mercy.
    His silence and the stripping away of his identity & abilities was God’s mercy to him. I love this quote by Paul Tripp, “God will lead you to places you never intended to go in order to produce in you the things you never would’ve been able to achieve on your own.” I am sure silence and inability is not where Zechariah would’ve have gone, but look at what God produces in Zechariah.
    Luke 1:63–64 ESV
    And he asked for a writing tablet and wrote, “His name is John.” And they all wondered. And immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue loosed, and he spoke, blessing God.
    We could say a lot about what God produced in Zechariah during this timeframe—how humbling it must’ve been to have your wife be the one to give the name of the child; faith would’ve grown because of how God had worked; hope in what this miraculous birth pointed towards; this humility definitely would’ve produced an obedience in him regardless of the circumstances, but above all that, what happens to Zechariah when he lives out his humble, faithful, hopeful obedience? His tongue is loosed and he blesses God. God produced praise in Zechariah through His discipline.
    God took the fear, the doubt, the disbelief in Zechariah and because he loved him he disciplined him to produce in him humility, faith, hope, obedience, but mostly, praise. Ironic, for the high priest, is it not? The guy who was supposed to lead in these things, needed God to produce them in him. See the mercy of God. He did for Zechariah what Zechariah could not do for himself.
    Now there’s a number of questions that I think we could work through and ask about the discipline of the Lord, but what I think this text calls us to reflect on is what do we do with it? What do we do with the discipline the Lord gives?
    I remember that when I was kid I responded in a number of ways to discipline. As a dad, I’ve seen my kids respond in a number of ways to discipline. Sometimes, I’d get really mad. I’d respond to what my parents would tell me to do, but I sure wasn’t happy about it. Sometimes I would explode in rage. In both of those situations, what my heart really treasured was being exposed, and sometimes even pried out of my hands. I hated it. Unfortunately I can’t think of many (or any) instances where I responded to discipline well, but I can think of moments in which my kids have recognized that the giver of discipline is doing what he’s doing for their good.
    When the Lord disciplines us we can oblige out of necessity, we can harden our hearts, or we can remember the giver of discipline is a good Father who because of his mercy disciplines us. When we do that, instead of rejecting discipline, or hardening our hearts in the midst of it, we receive it. We receive it with joy because Hebrews 12:11 “For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.” Because of the mercy of God, you can receive discipline with joy.
    The third thing God’s mercy coming to us calls for is to

    Respond appropriately to his work.

    One of the things that I’ve found interesting in this passage is how Luke continued to record the people’s responses to what was happening. With Elizabeth they rejoiced. When they named him John the people wondered. When Zechariah suddenly spoke, they feared, yet talked about it. As news spread, people “laid them up in their hearts.” That last phrase is essentially saying that people made permanent mental markers to remember all of what was going on. The surrounding community knew that something of this magnitude and peculiarity was indicative of something. Something must be going on.
    And it was. God was bursting forth onto the scene, but just not in the way that they had expected. Remember, the Lord had been silent for 400 years now. No prophets, no word from the Lord. The Jewish people had been oppressed by a number of different empires. They were waiting for their redemption, and freedom, and so when all of these miraculous events occured, all sorts of emotion rose up in their heart and they took note of it.
    Now here’s why I find this interesting…what were all of these things? They were signals. They were these huge signs popping up to tell the people, God is doing something. They weren’t meant to just entertain curiosity — they were mean to awaken expectation.
    But think about how merciful God was in sending these signs this way. These people, God’s chosen people, had a heritage of him working miraculously. The Old Testament is replete with stories of God doing things in an incredible way, and the people celebrate for a minute, and then forget and rebel. They continue to go back to the false gods that the surrounding world worships. I’d get it if he said enough is enough, and then came riding on the clouds to execute his judgement.
    But don’t we do the same thing? —Could develop this here to drive home how we’re no different.
    But God in his mercy doesn’t come that way. He comes to visit and redeem his people. He comes up to deliver them from their greatest problem—not Rome, not Babylon, but themselves. And he doesn’t come in riding on a horse dominating. He comes in humbly, and even signals his coming. He gives his people time to see, observe, think, and prepare themselves for his visitation.
    This same God is still working today. He’s still redeeming and setting free his people, and my question is, how do we respond? Do you see God working or are you totally oblivious to what He is doing? And when you do see that God is doing something, even something that seems minor, are you carrying on as normal, or pausing worship? Really, maybe the question is do you have a regular rhythm of wonder, fear, rejoicing, and remembering? (How do we do this?)
    While these responses from the surrounding community are descriptive as to what was going on, I think they are instructive to us. Luke is challenging us to survey how we’ve responded to the work of God around us and he is inviting us to respond appropriately to what He is doing.
    The fourth way Luke calls for us to respond to God’s mercy coming to us in this passage is found in Zechariah’s Spirit filled prophesy:

    Live securely in relationship with Him.

    We’ve seen God show mercy in the timing of the birth of John so we’re called to trust in his timing. We’ve seen God show mercy in how he disciplines; so we receive discipline with joy. We’ve seen God show his mercy in the way he works, so we respond appropriately to His work, but honestly, all of this has been building to these last two points. God has been showing his mercy in these other things all for this purpose: so that he might live in a relationship with His people.
    Once Zechariah acts in obedience, the Lord restores his ability to speak. The first words out of the high priest’s mouth are a prophecy, but not about the birth of his child—They’re about the birth of the child of his relative Mary. When he explodes into blessing God, it’s not about him, it’s about what God is doing for him.
    This prophecy is known as the Benedictus and the first 7 verses are entirely about the baby that will be born, not the one that was just born. Like Mary’s song that we looked at last week, everything Zechariah speaks points backwards to the Old Testament, and the prophecy reaches it’s high point in Lk. 1:72
    Luke 1:72 ESV
    to show the mercy promised to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant,
    The work God is doing, the birth of John the baptist, is signaling that the mercy of God that was promised long ago is being realized in the person of Jesus. JB is just a pointer to the main show. The mercy God promised to their fathers, the covenant that God made to Abraham, is being kept, despite the continued rebellion, the lack of faith, the obvious betrayal of the Israelite people.
    And look at how God does it: starting in verse 68 he visits and redeems his people. They had sold themselves into the slavery of their enemies. Their covenantal unfaithfulness led to their being servants of the one who hated them and opposed them. So God sends his son to purchase and redeem his people.
    He calls him a “horn of salvation.” One of my previous pastors, JD Greear, preached a pretty cool sermon built on that phrase. He points out that in Jesus’ day the horn of salvation would’ve meant several things. The watchman was called to sound the horn so that the city would be saved. Horns were also used to anoint new kings. Whenever the time came, a prophet would take the horn of a mighty animal and fill it with oil to anoint the king. Horns also were symbols of abundance. Think of a cornucopia. And, horns were a sign of strength.
    What was Jesus? He was the horn of God’s strength; the one who could free the people from their greatest enemy. They thought Rome was their oppressor. They thought that if they had a new king, one that could defeat their surrounding enemies that they’d find the shalom—the peace, the unity, the perfection that their hearts longed for. But that wasn’t the enemy Christ came to set them free from. He came to set them free from themselves.
    The mercy of God came to the people of God not to restore them to prominence among the nations, but to right relationship with the very God with whom they had betrayed. He is the announcement of good news. Because of Jesus they wouldn’t have to cower in fear to serve God, but rather because of his righteousness and holiness they could be free to to live all their days in relationship to him.
    But the real good news is that this wasn’t just for a generation 2000 years ago. This is applicable to all of those who make Christ king. To those that will surrender to him as Lord they will find deliverance, they will find freedom from the sins that have taken ahold of them, and in place find all the abundance of all that God is.
    The Lord God of Israel has visited and redeemed his people through the horn of salvation—Jesus. He has shown us mercy in that he has kept the covenant even when we cannot. He is the one who has set us free. It’s not by our works. It’s not by our efforts. Our relationship to Him isn’t dependent on us, rather, it’s dependent upon his mercy.
    We tend to think of mercy as not getting what we deserve. That’s the definition I’ve always known growing up. But what have we seen about mercy in this? Yes, it is that. It is not getting what we deserve, but it’s more than that. The mercy of God moves. It doesn’t just withhold. It moves towards. It comes to us.
    Which is such good news for me and for you. Because this mercy comes to me and it’s what makes me holy and righteous, and it’s what enables me to serve without fear, and it’s what saves me and sets me free, I can live securely in my relationship with him. There is no fear of retribution. There is no condemnation. The mercy of God has come in Jesus. If you are in him you are secure.
    This leads me to one question: has Jesus redeemed you? Has he set you free from you and made you into something new? If he has, live securely. If he hasn’t, then I actually think our fifth and final point applies to you. Here’s the last thing the mercy of God calls us to in this passage:

    Walk in the tender mercy of our God.

    Zechariah has prophesied about that Christ to come. Now, in verse 76 he looks at his own son and speaks for the first time defining John’s life in relationship to Jesus’s life and mission.
    Luke 1:76–79 ESV
    And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”
    He will go to give knowledge of salvation. This means he will proclaim a message to people. One that I’ve already pointed out, but Zechariah is now making clear is that this salvation isn’t political in nature. John the Baptist is going to tell people that this salvation is through the forgiveness of sins. Christ has come to rescue people from their sin.
    He goes on to say that he will give light to those who sit in darkness. Sin traps us in darkness. I think of an addict. They get sucked in to thinking that the only way they’ll feel good, or have relief, or find purpose is to take a hit. They’re trapped by the promise of a drug, but really, all sin is like that. Gossip, slander, lust, gluttony, anger—they all pull you into the darkness of believing a lie. But the sunrise, or dayspring as your translation may say, has shone what you’ll see is that the darkness we’ve lived in leads to death, but by walking in the light, as he is in the light we will have fellowship with him and we’ll find the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.
    When sin doesn’t reign, when you’ve been forgiven of your sin and set free from your enemy, do you know what does reign? Peace. This light not only delivers you from the darkness, but into peace.
    Now what would bring such a thing about? V78, “because of the tender mercy of our God.” The tender mercy of our God gives you knowledge of salvation—are you growing in that knowledge? The tender mercy of our God grants you forgiveness of your sin—have you received it? The tender mercy of our God guides your feet into peace—are you walking in it?
    God in his mercy came to us. We can trust His timing. We can receive his discipline with joy. We can respond appropriately to His work. We can live securely in relationship with Him. We can walk in these tender mercies that he extends to us.
    But you might hear all of this this morning and look at your life and go, if my life is any evidence of the mercy of God in Christ, I’m not impressed. In fact, Gavin Ortlund in his book Gentle & Lowly grapples with that very statement. Hear his response:
    [If that’s you, if you aren’t impressed with the mercy of God in your life], “To you I say, the evidence of Christ’s mercy toward you is not your life. The evidence of his mercy toward you is his—mistreated, misunderstood, betrayed, abandoned. Eternally. In your place.
    If God sent his own Son to walk through the valley of condemnation, rejection, and hell, you can trust him as you walk through your own valleys on your way to heaven.”
    He goes on to say, “Perhaps you have difficulty receiving the rich mercy of God in Christ not because of what others have done to you, but because of what you’ve done to torpedo your life, maybe through one big, stupid decision or maybe through ten thousand little ones. You have squandered his mercy, and you know it.
    To you I say, do you know what Jesus does with those who squander his mercy? He pours our more mercy. God is rich in mercy.”
    He’s so rich that he has sent you sign pointers. He’s timed things just right for you, like maybe your presence here today. He’s disciplined you or maybe he’s disciplining you now. He’s worked among you, even enabling your right response from time to time. But all of those things just point to something greater: he’s come to you. In His mercy, God came as a baby born in a manger to a lowly teenage girl. He came to redeem you buy purchasing your freedom with his blood. He delivered you to serve him and walk with him without fear. He’s come because he wants you to know Him as he knows you. He wants to live in a relationship with you. He wants you to know peace. He wants you to know him.
    Source:
    https://jdgreear.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/20231210-EverlastingWonder-1-SermonTranscript1.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com

      • Luke 1:57–80ESV

      • Luke 1:58ESV

      • Luke 1:20ESV

      • Luke 1:62ESV

      • Luke 1:63–64ESV

      • Luke 1:72ESV

      • Luke 1:76–79ESV

  • O COME ALL YE FAITHFUL
  • WORTHY OF IT ALL
Liberty Baptist Church
office@lbcdalhart.com
8062495344
http://www.lbcdalhart.com
7 members