Zachariah's Song of Salvation: The Abrahamic Covenant

Luke 1:67-80

     We return in our study of God's Word to the first chapter of Luke.  We are studying the last section of Luke chapter 1, the song of salvation which was given by Zacharias, the father of John the prophet, the forerunner to the Messiah.  The text begins in verse 67 and runs down to the end of the chapter.

     Before we look at this text, again I want to remind you that up to now we have pretty much played the role of the story teller and I have reiterated the narrative of this record that is the beginning of Luke's gospel.  Luke tells the story of Jesus.  He starts where the story really starts, he starts when God invades human history by sending an angel Gabriel to announce to an old priest by the name of Zacharias that he would go home and he and his wife would have a son.  They were barren, they were very old.  They were beyond childbearing years, as we remember.  This would be a miracle.  And indeed the angel's word came true.  This older woman, perhaps in her seventies, named Elizabeth conceived with her husband, became pregnant and brought forth a son.  The son was to be named John.  He was the forerunner of the Messiah.

     At the same time this wonderful story was going on between God, the angel Gabriel and Zacharias and Elizabeth leading to the birth of John, Gabriel was also visiting another person, a young girl about thirteen named Mary.  And there was a second conception miracle, this time without a man. She would be given a child while a virgin.  This child would not just be any prophet, but the Messiah, the Son of God, the Savior of the world.

     With these great narratives, Luke begins the saga of salvation which he tells, the story of the coming of the Messiah, the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.  We have gone through the annunciation to Zacharias, the annunciation to Mary.  We have gone through the identification of John, the identification of Jesus.  We have gone through the praise of Mary upon this wonderful reality.  We have now come in this part of the chapter to the birth of John the Baptist and starting in verse 57 down to verse 66 is the record that the child John was born.  And, of course, this is a great event because everybody in the family knows that this child is the forerunner of the Messiah.  Mary, who is to be the mother of Jesus the Son of God and the Messiah, is already pregnant and she has been three months in the house of Zacharias and Elizabeth so they know that the Messiah is already being formed in her womb.  Here is the birth of the forerunner and the birth of the Messiah in just a few months later.  Redemptive history is reaching its great high point, its great apex.

     Now you need to understand just a little bit about redemptive history by way of a sort of an overview.  We've been doing a series on creation, a series on origins and the question comes up...why did God create?  Why did God create the universe?  Why did God make the earth, the theater of the universe?  And why did he put mankind on a stage?  What is this all about?

     Well, the answer is, to put it simply, God created the universe as we know it, the physical universe as we know it, created the earth, put man on it in order that He might redeem a bride for His Son.  In order that He might bring to glory a redeemed humanity.  It was an expression of His love to give to the Son a bride, a bride who, in effect would radiate the Son's glory, would serve and praise Him and worship Him and adore Him forever and ever and ever...which is exactly what all redeemed people will do.  God will bring us to glory for the praise of His Son forever. 

     Now in order for God also in gathering a bride for His Son, to put Himself on display, God allowed sin to enter into the picture.  When creation occurred, the garden was a perfect environment, it was without sin, without corruption, without decay and without death, but into the perfection of that creation came sin.  Sin came in the form of a fallen angel by the name of Satan.  Lucifer's sin came, of course, in the case of Adam and Eve who believed the lies of Satan, disobeyed God and plunged the entire human race into depravity and sinfulness.  And thus God began to reach out and save sinners.  God created the universe to put His creative powers on display.  He created the universe to demonstrate a perfection of life and a joy that the creature could have with the creator.  He created the universe also to allow for fall and sin so that in response He could demonstrate the attributes that can only be demonstrated in an environment of sin...mercy, grace, compassion, forgiveness.  We would never know that about God if it were not for the fact that there is sin in the world.  And so, God allowed sin to come into the world and then began to put His grace and compassion and mercy and forgiveness on display and sought to redeem sinful man and to reshape sinners into a bride for His Son.

     Now obviously the apex of this whole redemptive plan is when His Son comes into the world to die in the place of sinners.  He comes into the world, first of all, to live a perfect life for 33 years so that a perfect life of righteousness which He lives could be put to your account and mine.  And then He died on the cross in our place.  So He lived a perfect life which is given to us.  He died on the cross bearing our sins.  On the cross God treated Him as if He had lived our life and by grace He treats us as if we'd lived His.

     So the apex of redemptive history is the coming of Messiah.  He comes and provides a sacrifice by which righteousness can be granted to sinners at any point in redemptive history...Old Testament and New Testament, from the beginning of God's redemptive to the end.  The Savior came to live a perfect life, came to die, came to rise again to provide the sacrifice for sin and it would pay the penalty for the sins of all who would ever believe throughout the whole drama of redemption.

     Now the Jews have been waiting for the Messiah to come.  They've been waiting for Him to come and establish the Kingdom and give them their land.  They have been waiting for Him to come and show the mercy of God, bring forgiveness of sins and all of that.  Zacharias was one of those Jews who along with others, as chapter 2 verse 38 says, were looking for redemption to come, were waiting for redemption.  When was Messiah going to come?  When would God provide the final sacrifice?  When would God save His people Israel?  When would the Savior arrive?

     Here was this common, ordinary garden-variety priest who gets a visit from an angel out of the presence of God named Gabriel to tell him that not only is the Messiah coming but before the Messiah is coming a prophet to announce the arrival of the Messiah like a press agent, like a herald.  And not only that but, Zachariah, he was going to come in your life time and not only in your life time but he's going to be your son.  The angel Gabriel brings a message from God that you and your wife Elizabeth who have been barren, now in your old age God's going to allow you to conceive miraculously and your son is going to be the forerunner of the Messiah.  And Zacharias knew that.  I mean, it was spelled out in absolutely crystal-clear terms back in chapter 1 that he would come, he would be great in the sight of the Lord, he would be filled with the Holy Spirit, he would turn back many of the sons of Israel to the Lord their God.  He would go as a forerunner before the Messiah in the spirit and power of Elijah and he would make a people ready for the Lord.

     So, they knew exactly who this child was.  And they knew that Mary was pregnant with the Messiah because she just spent three months with them.  Zacharias gets it.  He understands this is the high point, the apex of redemptive history.

     Now Zacharias at first didn't believe it so God miraculously made him deaf and mute. And so for nine months he hasn't been able to hear or say anything.  But upon the birth and circumcision of the son John, it says in verse 64, "At once his mouth was open and his tongue loosed and he began to speak in praise of God."  He had pent up for nine months with this desire to praise God for this incredible, incredible birth and finally when his mouth was opened he praises God.  Now there may have been other things he said, but one thing for sure he said is recorded in verse 67 and following.  This is what came out of the mouth of Zachariah.  And, folks, this is where we have to stop, we have to halt the narrative process and we find ourselves needing to just sort of build booths and stay here a while because this is really important material.  And Zacharias understood that and Luke didn't drop this passage in here whimsically, he didn't drop it in here because he thought it would make a nice balance for the narrative and slow things down a little bit.  He didn't drop it in here because he wanted to throw a hymn in the midst of the whole thing.  He put it here because it is absolutely critical material to link what's happening to the Old Testament.  Of course the accusation through the centuries of Judaism has been that Christianity is a heresy, Christianity is not true religion, Christianity is a form of false religion.  The fact of the matter is, Zacharias knew it, the Bible proves it...Christianity is the fulfillment of all Judaistic hope and promise.  The New Testament is the complete story begun in the Old Testament.  And this benedictus, this blessing, this song of praise or song of salvation by Zacharias ties to the Old Testament.  It makes the link for us.  And it is a...it is a very profound and far-reaching section of Scripture.

     I know we could read it and we could say that's nice, that's nice praise, and make a few allusions to it.  It's impossible to do that.  We have to stop and make the connection that is absolutely necessary.  This is a critical, critical moment in the history of God's salvation.  This is a critical coupling of the Old with the New.

     Now we've been looking at the...initially looking at this benedictus by Zacharias, what he said that day.  And I mentioned to you that it basically revolves around three covenants.  In the Old Testament God made some covenants, He made some promises that He pledged to keep.  There was the Noahic Covenant, He made a promise to Noah never to drown the world again.  There was the priestly covenant, He made the promise to Israel that there would always be a perpetual priesthood given to them.  He made the Mosaic Covenant which was a prescription of law given to Moses.  But there are three covenants that had as components as salvation.  You couldn't get saved in the Noahic Covenant, the priestly covenant or the Mosaic Covenant, those provided no means of salvation, no path to salvation and no promise of salvation.  The law...the Noahic Covenant promised only that you won't drown, it didn't say anything about the fact that you might burn to death.  The priestly covenant simply said there would be an available priesthood, it didn't say anything about who would be able to take advantage of it legitimately.  And the Mosaic Covenant didn't provide salvation, it only provided condemnation because nobody could keep the law therefore everybody was cursed.

     But there were three Old Testament covenants which God made that had inherent in them saving purposes...the Davidic Covenant, the covenant God made with David, the Abrahamic Covenant, the covenant He made with Abraham and what we call the New Covenant, the covenant which God made with Israel which is recorded in Jeremiah and Ezekiel and we'll look at that New Covenant in the next session.  But for Zacharias, he realized what was going on.  All the promises of the Davidic Covenant, all the promises of the Abrahamic Covenant and all of the anticipated promises of the New Covenant which had to do with changing the heart and the internal part and forgiving sin which was the entree to the fulfillment of Abrahamic and Davidic promise, he knew it was all hinged on Messiah.  It was all dependent on the Messiah.  It was the Messiah who could come and bring the Kingdom.  It was the Messiah who then would come and free the people from bondage and give them their land and their protection and the blessings of the Abrahamic Covenant.  It was the Messiah who would be the focal point of the New Covenant forgiveness that God would provide.

     So, these three covenants are the sort of the stanzas in his song of salvation.  The theme is salvation, we know from verse 68, "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel."  Zacharias filled with the Holy Spirit stands up and says...  Why?  "Because He's visited us and accomplished redemption for His people."  They associated the coming of John the Baptist with the coming of Messiah, rightly so, and with the coming of Messiah would come redemption.  And then he says the Messiah is none other, verse 69, than a horn of salvation for us.  A horn being a reference to animals, the horn was used for power and even to kill.  It was the formidable strength of the animal by which the animal was able to push and to destroy.  The Messiah will come with a push that will destroy the enemies of Israel and will free them.  And that's essentially what was in the Davidic Covenant because it says in verse 69, "This Messiah will come in the house of David, His servant, as He spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from of old," and what will He bring?  "Salvation, deliverance from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us."

     Now what did we say last time when we studied the Davidic Covenant?  We said that the Davidic Covenant was a promise to David by God that a Son would come out of David's loins ultimately who would rule in Israel and would rule over the whole earth and would rule forever.  It wasn't fulfilled by Solomon.  And, of course, after that the kingdom fragmented and split and today, of course, and for centuries and millennia three has been no real king in Israel.  But there will be a king.  God promised a greater son of David, somebody out of the Davidic line of David's blood would come to reign on the throne of Israel.  And from that throne would bring peace and prosperity to Israel, would rule with a rod of iron and His rule would extend over the whole earth.  This promise, by the way, was made in 2 Samuel chapter 7, repeated in 1 Chronicles chapter 17, repeated in Psalm 89 at the beginning of the chapter and the end of the chapter.  It is alluded to over 40 times in the Old Testament.  It is referred to in the statements of Isaiah 9:6 and 7, "Unto us a child is born, a Son is given and the government shall be upon His shoulders."  This is a ruler that is coming, a king.

     Back in chapter 1 of Luke verse 31, when Gabriel was talking to Mary, told her she was going to be the mother of Messiah, verse 32 after saying you're going to bear a son name Him Jesus, He'll be the Son of the Most High, verse 32, "The Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David."  So the Messiah was to be the fulfillment of Davidic Covenant promise.  He will, verse 33, reign over the house of Jacob forever and His kingdom will have no end.  So He's going to come, He's going to reign, there's going to be an eternal kingdom, a universal and eternal kingdom.  And we saw that last time, that when the Messiah was to come He was to be the King, He was to set up His Kingdom on earth and it was to be an earthly Kingdom in Jerusalem where He would reign from Jerusalem over the whole world and with a rod of iron.  At the end of that Kingdom would come the new heaven and the new earth, the eternal state, but He would rule in that as well forever and that's why it can be said that His Kingdom though it changes from being temporal to being eternal is nonetheless a forever Kingdom.

     And what the Jews thought about when they thought about the Davidic kingdom was freedom from oppression, freedom from our enemies, that's noted in verse 71, free from persecution, hostility and hatred and deadly animosity which, of course, Israel has endured through all if its history, all of its history and endures even to this day today.  Israel, God's special people, obviously had been the special attack of Satan, the subject of Revelation chapter 12 describes that.  Satan has done everything he possibly could to accomplish genocide against the Jewish people, to try to wipe them out, to try to destroy the messianic line, destroy of the people of promise.  But he's been unable to do it because God has protected them to bring to fulfillment Davidic promise.

     So, the Davidic kingdom looked primarily at the rescue of Israel from all the rulers around them and over them so that they would have ruled on nation and that the Messiah would not only rule Israel but from Israel rule the world.  He would take over and rule everything.  He would be King of kings and Lord of lords to borrow the language of the book of Revelation.  Psalm 110 we noted talks about it.  Zachariah 14:9 talks about it.  And, of course, it's unfolded in Revelation 19, Revelation 20.  I also showed you last time some of the characteristics of the earthly millennial kingdom.  There are hundreds of verses in Isaiah that outline the details and the nature of that earthly kingdom.

     So Zachariah's participation was Messiah's almost here, that means the Son of David has arrived, that means the Davidic kingdom is coming soon.  Maybe even Zachariah could hang on long enough, though he was an old man, to live to see its inauguration.  He didn't have any idea that they would reject the King, they would crucify the King and the kingdom would be postponed and still has not yet come.  It will, but it hasn't yet.  But Zacharias assumed when the Messiah comes the kingdom comes and so he's exhilarated because he sees the one who is coming from the house of David, delivering them from their enemies and the hand of all who hate them.  Now the Davidic Covenant was universal, that He would be the universal King over the whole earth, reigning in the nation, in the land of Israel on the throne of David.

     Zacharias had a second hope.  He knew this too was connected to Messiah and this is Abrahamic Covenant hope.  The Abrahamic Covenant is one of those rockbed elements to biblical interpretation.  And I want you to hang with me because this is really foundational.  If you understand this, you can get the big picture.  I know there are lots of people who come to church and all they want is a little fix on some thing in their life.  I'm not going to be able to address that today.  Some days we do that.  But what I'm going to address today is the rockbed foundation by which you can understand the whole of redemptive history and it's all bound up in the Abrahamic Covenant.  

     While essentially the fulfillment of the Davidic Covenant is universal, He will literally rule the world some day and it will be a world of believers and unbelievers during the Millennial Kingdom, the Abrahamic Covenant is national.  The Davidic is universal, the Abrahamic is national.  Let's look at the Abrahamic Covenant in verses 72 to 75.

     The intent of the Davidic Covenant was to deliver everybody in Israel from their enemies and set up the rule of Messiah.  The intent of the Abrahamic Covenant was to show mercy, verse 72, toward our fathers, to show mercy toward our fathers.  The fathers to the Jews were Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph.  And to remember where that first was launched, God's holy covenant, the oath which He swore to Abraham, our father, to grant us that we being delivered from the hand of our enemies by the fulfillment of the Davidic covenant, we've now been delivered from the hand of our enemies but now in the Abrahamic promise we can go ahead and serve God without fear.  Always we've served God with fear, always the Jew lives in fear, always the Jew lives in mortal fear of maintaining his own existence against all of the aggressive hostilities that surround his life.  But once Davidic promise is fulfilled and the Messiah reigns, fear is gone and we will serve Him, verse 75 says, in holiness and righteousness before Him all our days.

     So you can see that the Davidic Covenant and the Abrahamic Covenant were connected.  The Davidic Covenant brought the rule of Messiah in Israel.  And the rule of Messiah brought the blessing that the Abrahamic Covenant promised.

     Now let's go back to the Abrahamic Covenant for just a moment.  It says in verse 72 there, "To remember God's holy covenant, the oath which He swore to Abraham our father."  Now it was about mercy, it was a covenant to show mercy.  The idea is that God was compassionate, God was merciful toward undeserving people and He made a covenant.  Now this mercy was, first of all, to Abraham and then repeated to Isaac and Jacob and Joseph and then extended to the nation of Israel and then extended through Israel to the world.  So when it says in verse 72 to show mercy toward our fathers, that's just where the stream of mercy starts.  That's the headwaters of the stream of mercy, certainly not the extent of it because it broadens through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, the people of Israel and the mercy of God towards sinners spreads to the world and that's why we're here today because we have received that mercy once given to Abraham.  And it all began with a covenant, a promise made to the father of the Jews, the father of the nation Israel...a man by the name of Abram who later had his name changed to Abraham once he received the covenant of God.

     Now at the time of Abram there was no such thing as a Jew.  There was no such nation as Israel.  That all started with one man chosen by God.  To understand the essence of the Abrahamic Covenant let's go back to Genesis chapter 12.  I find this to be  just a fascinating, fascinating account.

     Now just to give you a little bit of a chronology in the book of Genesis, Genesis starts out with the creation account, God's creation in six days of the entire universe.  It's followed up, of course, with the discussion of the life of man on the earth.  Chapter 3, man falls into sin.  It progresses from there to a destruction in the universal flood where God drowns the whole earth and saves eight people.  And the story of man progresses from the eight people rescued out of the Flood.  That's up through chapter 11.  All you have basically is the creation, the Fall, the Flood, the scattering of the nations.

     The first sort of individual history starts in Genesis 12.  And here's where redemptive history really starts.  It starts with a man named Abram.  The rest of Genesis goes Abram, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and they take up the next chapters till the fiftieth chapter which ends the book.  But let's begin with Abram because that's where the covenant was made.

     "Now the Lord said to Abram, 'Go forth from your country.'"  Now Abram lived in a place called Ur of the Chaldeans as noted in verse 31.  It was a typical pagan place and Abram lived there and God just plucked him up, just picked him out of the crowd for reasons, of course, good reasons, reasons that God knows.  He picked Abram.  He said, "Go forth from your country, from your relatives, from your father's house to the land that I'll show you."  We can assume that Abram had some kind of connection to the true God.  We don't know all about how that can be defined but we do know that Abram knew of the true God.  And so God came to Abram and says...I want you out of here, I want you to go to a place where I'm going to send you.  And then in verse 2 He tells him why.  "I'll make you a great nation."  This is...this is absolutely a unilateral promise.  He's not asking Abram to agree to anything.  He said, "I'm going to make you a great nation and bless you and make your name great and so you shall be a blessing and I'll bless those who bless you and the one who curses you I will curse and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed."

     Now this is very, very important.  Get out of your country, away from your relatives, away from your family.  Go to this place I'm going to take you, which was, of course, the land of Palestine, as we know it.  And here's what I'm going to do, I'm going to make a great nation.  Out of your loins is going to come a great, great nation.

     Now that was a problem because he and Sarah didn't have any kids.  Hard to have a nation if you don't have one.  Back in chapter 11 verse 30, "Sarai was barren, she had no child." 

     So this is a pretty monumental promise and it's going to involve a conception miracle.  "I'm going to make you a great nation," and indeed that came to pass, obviously, the Jewish people are and have been a great nation.  "I will bless you," God says I'm going to bless you, I'm going to bless that nation and, "I'm going to make your name great." The Jewish people, believe me, they have earned a great name.  You could say they have earned a great name in medicine, you could say they've earned a great name in the arts, you could say they've earned a great name in education, you could say they earned a great name in literature, you could say they earned a great name in finance, you could say just about any category you want to say and pretty much Jews have earned a great name.  They are a quite unusual strain of homosapiens.  Whatever the genetics are that God made sure were in Abram have made a great contribution to this quite noble people among the peoples of the world.  And their name was great.  And their land has been the focal point of human history.  And even is today.  "And you will be a blessing and not only a blessing but in you...the end of verse 3...all the families of the earth will be blessed."

     This is quite a thing.  You're going to have...you're going to come...out of your loins is going to come an entire nation.  This nation is going to be a great nation. This nation is going to be a blessed nation.  This nation is going to have a great reputation.  This nation is going to be a blessing to others.  In fact, through this nation all the families of the earth are going to be blessed.

     This is the promise of the whole saving purpose of God...the whole thing is going to come through Israel.  The law came through them.  They were the writers of the Old Testament.  The prophets were Jews.  Everything...the covenants came to them, promises came to them, the adoption came to them.  They were the elect, they were the chosen people. And through them came the Messiah, He was born in the line of David.  Everything came through them.  That's why Jesus said in John's gospel, "Salvation is of the Jews."  He didn't mean it's only for the Jews, He meant it's through them...they have been God's divine conduit.  This was the promise of God.  A great nation, blessing, a great reputation, and through them the whole world would be blessed.

     But if you study the history of Israel, it didn't kind of work out that way.  Not all the time.  There were times of blessing, obviously there is inherent greatness.  There were times when they were a blessing to others...but the idea that all the families in the earth have been blessed through them has been in some measure without their cooperation.  Well all the families of the earth have been blessed through them because it is through them that we have the Old Testament and through the Jews that we have the New Testament.  It is through them that we have the gospel.  It is through them that we have the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ.  So it is true.  But they have not been able to join in on those blessings. 

     God has even protected them, "The ones who bless you I'll bless, the ones who curse you I'll curse."  God says I'm going to protect you. That's partly because God made a promise to do it and partly because He's going to perpetuate the people of Israel.  There's yet an unfolding plan for Israel and God protects them.  It's remarkable to me.  It doesn't matter what Adolph Hitler tried to do.  It doesn't matter what Joseph Stalin tried to do in committing genocide and exterminating the whole entire world of Jews.  It's not going to happen.  It's astonishing and an amazing thing from the human side, but not from the divine side.  God has preserved these people.  He's preserved them so carefully that in the end time in the book of Revelation, in the Tribulation time, the seven-year destruction before the return of Christ, God will select 12,000 Jews out of each of the twelve tribes, each tribe will yield 12,000 Jews who will become the 144,000 great preachers during that time of judgment.  Now they don't know what tribe they're of, but God knows...because the lines have been kept so pure through all these centuries.

     They haven't really enjoyed the fulfillment of the Abrahamic promise.  It...certainly if you were talking to Zacharias that day and you say...Hey, Zach, how you guys doing on the fulfillment of the Abrahamic promise?  Would you say that your nation is a great nation?  That God is blessing you and making your name great?  And you're a blessing and all the families of the earth are blessed through you?

     He's say no.  They were hoping. Right now we're cursed, right now we're under judgment, right now we're occupied by the insufferable Romans.  Right now life is hard.  Right now it's difficult.  But the dawning of a new day is come because the forerunner to the Messiah has been born and the Abrahamic Covenant fulfilled, it must be on the horizon.

       Now turn to chapter 15.  The Abrahamic Covenant is reiterated in Genesis eight times...eight times...chapter 12, 13, 15, 17, 22, 26, 28 and 35.  But we're not going to look at all of those, so relax.  But Genesis...Genesis 15 verse 18, "On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abraham."  Now I want to stop you for a minute.  He announced the terms of the covenant in chapter 12, he actually made the covenant, as we will see next week, here in chapter 15.  The terms of the covenant came, the covenant was confirmed in chapter 15. And he says in verse 18, "On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abraham," that's why we know this is an actual covenant.

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