Zachariah's Song of Salvation: The New Covenant, Part 2
Luke 1:67-80
Let's turn in our Bibles to Luke chapter 1. In our ongoing study of Luke, we have arrived at the last section of the first chapter. And as you know, we have slowed down significantly because of the nature of this material. The last section starts in verse 67 and is a song of salvation given by Zacharias when he was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied.
You remember the scene. Zacharias, the old priest, was married to Elizabeth. The two of them had never been able to have children but in their old age, in their sixties or seventies or perhaps even in their eighties, God allowed a miracle of conception and Elizabeth in her old age became pregnant, carried the boy to full term and gave birth. The boy born of this union, born to this barren couple in their old age was none other than John, John who became known as John the Baptist, John the prophet who was the forerunner of the Messiah. He was the one who would announce the Messiah's arrival. He was the one who would identify the Messiah, point to the Messiah. He was the one who would prepare the people for the Messiah's coming.
When Zacharias gives this song of praise, he's holding this little baby John in his arms who is perhaps eight-days old because it was on the eighth day that they all got together for the circumcision of that child according to the Mosaic Law.
Zacharias, holding in his arms the little baby, his own son, knowing that this is the prophet of God, the first prophet in over 400 years, this is the last Old Testament prophet, the forerunner of the Messiah, this is the one who will announce the Messiah, point to the Messiah, prepare the people for the Messiah, he knows also that the Messiah is not far behind. In fact, he has already met the mother of the Messiah, the virgin Mary, the young thirteen or fourteen-year-old girl who was given a child planted in her womb by the Holy Spirit without a man, that is a virgin conception, that young Mary has just spent three months in the home of Zacharias and Elizabeth. So he knows full well that she is pregnant, the Messiah is already being formed in her womb. The forerunner is born, the Messiah is only a few months behind. He also knows that it will be a few years after that for those two to develop, perhaps 20 years, and the prophet John will begin to announce the Messiah and the Messiah will begin His great and glorious work.
All Israel had been waiting for the Messiah because they tied all the fulfillment of blessing to the Messiah. All the hopes of the promises to Abraham would be fulfilled in Messiah. All the hopes of the promises of David would be fulfilled in Messiah. All the promises of the New Covenant salvation to the nation would be fulfilled in the Messiah. And so Zacharias knew this because he knew the Old Testament. Upon the arrival of his own son miraculously conceived, he realizes that God is doing miracles. He realizes a prophet for the first time in 400 years is on the scene. He realizes that angels are active among men for the first time in over 400 years and miracles are happening and they haven't happened for 500 years...at least he would have to reach that far back in redemptive Scripture to find one. So this is a monumental moment in the life of Zacharias and he pours out this unique hymn of praise here which pulls together the Old Testament Covenants...the Davidic Covenant, the Abrahamic Covenant and the New Covenant.
Now we know about that. Verse 68, his song realizes that redemption has come. Salvation has come and that God has raised up a horn of salvation, that horn simply means power, strength, and refers to the Messiah. He is looking at the fact that the Messiah is coming, the Messiah will be the great power of salvation who will bring redemption. He further identifies the Messiah, verse 69, as coming in the house of David and fulfilling the great Davidic promise that Israel would be delivered from their enemies and the hand of all who hated them. That is they would have their own kingdom. They would have their own ruler who would reign over Israel and the whole world. So he sees the arrival of Messiah as the fulfillment of the Davidic Covenant.
He also sees the coming of Messiah as the fulfillment of the Abrahamic Covenant. In verse 73...or verse 72 he refers to the Holy Covenant, the oath which God swore to Abraham that He would grant us that we might serve Him without fear in holiness and righteousness before Him all our days. The Abrahamic Covenant was a Covenant of blessing, of peace, prosperity, righteousness, reigning and ruling in the promised land. God had made this promise of a Kingdom to David and this problem...this promise of a land, an inheritance and peace and prosperity and blessing to Abraham and the Jews knew that it was all tied to the coming of Messiah and here Messiah was on the horizon and Zacharias, not alone, but for all who looked for redemption in Israel could anticipate the fulfillment of the Davidic and Abrahamic Covenant promises.
But as I've been saying to you, there's a third Covenant that he refers to here and it begins to be identified in verse 76, and we looked at verse 76 last time, we won't go over it again. Here Zacharias, holding in his arms perhaps the little child John, looks in his little face and says, "You, child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High, you will go on before the Lord to prepare His ways." And that's exactly what John was to do. And when the Messiah comes, what's He going to do? Well, He's going to bring the fulfillment of the New Covenant, first of all, that in verse 77 is to give His people the knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins. The main feature of the New Covenant, which is not included in the Abrahamic Covenant, not included in the Davidic Covenant, and certainly not included in the Mosaic Covenant, or Sinaitic Covenant, the law given at Sinai, is the forgiveness of their sins. This will come because of the tender mercy of our God with which the Sunrise on high shall visit us to shine upon those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death to guide our feet in the way of peace.
The New Covenant is the Covenant that brings the forgiveness of sin. The New Covenant is the Covenant that brings the personal experience or personal knowledge of salvation. The New Covenant is the Covenant that extends God's tender mercy or grace to us. The New Covenant brings the Sunrise that shines on our darkness and delivers us from the shadow of death and leads us in the way of peace. This is all New Covenant language. And so we've come then in our study of these three covenants to the New Covenant.
Now let me help you to understand the New Covenant. There would be a number of ways to approach it and I've thought about it a lot for the last few weeks and I've landed on a way that I hope will be most helpful to you. Stay with the flow of this as I play the role of the theologian a little more here.
Let's start at a point we can all understand. One truth that the Bible makes abundantly clear, one truth the Bible makes unmistakably clear is that all men are sinners...all men are sinners and that their sin is not just a behavioral problem. It is not just an attitudinal problem. It is a deep-seated flaw in their nature. It's not a matter of just how they act, or how they speak. It's a matter of what they are. Just as we have five senses physically, we have some non-physical components...emotion, thought, will, and sin. It's endemic, it's systemic, it's in the fabric of man by virtue of the Fall. In Adam who sinned, the whole race was plunged into sin because Adam was cursed and passed on that curse to all who came from him.
So, man is sinful and it's not just a minor problem. Jeremiah 17 says he's deceitful above all things and desperately wicked...desperately wicked. That tells you the depth of his wickedness, the breadth of his wickedness defined in Romans 3, "There is none righteous, no not even one.
There is none who understands.
There is none who seeks for God.
All have turned aside, together they have become useless.
There is none who does good.
There is not even one.
Their throat is an open grave.
With their tongues they keep deceiving.
The poison of asps is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.
Their feet are swift to shed blood.
Destruction and misery are in their paths and the path of peace have they not known.
There is no fear of God before their eyes."
I mean, that's just a very comprehensive description of the endemic, systemic sinfulness of man.
Now in Romans chapter 7, Paul calls this presence of sin, and it's important to follow this, the law of sin...the law of sin. He says there is a law in us called the law of sin and it's in me...he says...it's in my flesh. Now let me use that metaphor "law" to help you to explain the issue here.
Paul does use the term "law" metaphorically because it expresses something with power, something with authority, something that controls so that the law of sin, or the word "law" is used not so much as we normally might use it when we talk about a law written on a book, but more the way we talk about it when we talk about an operative principle such as the law of gravity. When we say the law of gravity, we're not talking about something that is a standard to be lived up to, we're talking about a force and that's the way the apostle Paul uses the term "law." Sin is a force that is in us. It is a law that is in us. And I think it's important to understand that. It's an operative principle. It's not just a moral rule that's sort of out there, it's not just a moral rule that is established externally. We're not talking about that. It's not just the idea that somehow we fall short of that standard. It is that there is in us a force, there is in us a power like the law of gravity, it bends us, it draws us, it pulls us toward itself.
In that sense hunger is a law because it has the power to drive us, to compel us. Thirst is a law, it has the power to drive us and compel us. Sexual desire is a law because it has the power to drive us and compel us. Fear is such a law. Anger is such a law. Sorrow is such a law. Because they impel us, they bring a force to bear upon us that ends in a certain kind of behavior.
Well indwelling sin is that kind of force. It entices us. It pushes us. It manipulates us. It bends us. It dominates us. It controls us. And the law of sin doesn't work from the outside like other laws, it works from the inside. We have a lot of laws on the outside, they're all around us, all kinds of laws. Laws in the Bible that God has established, laws in society, standards and rules in our careers and our business and our work place and schools or wherever else we live out our daily lives, standards that we adhere to in our home, we have a lot of external demands, commands, laws, rules, standards, and so forth. We're not talking about that. We're talking about a principle that is a force that is in us. In Romans 7 Paul says, "The law of sin is in me...it is in me...it is living in me...it is in the fabric of my humanity."
And listen to this, no promises from God however good they are, no promises from God however often they are repeated, no promises from God no matter how attractive they are, no promises from God no matter how clearly understood, no promises from God at all can overpower the law of sin. Did you get that? That's very important to understand. They can't do that. And let's turn it over. No threats from God no matter how powerful, no matter how formidable, no matter how frightening, no matter how fearful, no matter how permanent, no matter how deadly, no matter how eternal, no threat from God can overpower our disposition to do evil.
So, you can take the whole law of God, the whole Mosaic Law, the whole righteous standard that God laid out in the Old Testament, take the book of Exodus, take the book of Deuteronomy, list everything there that God requires, put it in front of your face, read it, memorize it and it will have no effect on you because it cannot from the outside overpower the force on the inside. Or take the Ten Commandments, just reduce it like Dr. Laura does and holds it up in front of society...here it is, folks, here's the ten, you may agree with them, you may think they're good, you may think they're helpful, you may really desire to keep them...forget it, you can't, because even though it is the Law of God, even though it is written by God Himself, even though it comes with divine authority, divine clarity, and divine precision, you can't keep it. Or maybe you'd like to just reduce it to the simplest point and that's the first and second commandment, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength...and your neighbor as yourself," which in effect is the fulfilling of the whole law...hang that in front of your face, memorize that, believe that and try to apply that...can't be done. No sinner can do that.
When God gave the promise to Abraham and said, "I'm going to bless you, I'm going to give you the land, I'm going to bless you, I'm going to make you prosperous, I'm going to bless you and through you bless the whole world, I'm going to make your life rich beyond any other nation," when God made that promise to Abraham, that promise in itself had no ability to make those people obey so that they could receive that promised blessing. And when God made the promise to David and through David to the nation Israel that some time Messiah would come and He would be of the line of David, the royal seed and He would take up the throne in Jerusalem, He would establish His rule in Jerusalem, and He would bring peace to Israel, He would destroy all their enemies and He would rule over Israel and they would have the Kingdom, the glorious wondrous Kingdom promised. Not only would they be ruled by Messiah, but the Messiah ruling over Israel and through Israel would rule the entire world and that His Kingdom would be everlasting, when God hung that glorious promise out in front of them and asked them to obey, it was impossible for them to do that no matter how wonderful that promise was, no matter how glorious it would have been to receive all of the promises of Davidic blessing and Abrahamic blessing. There wasn't anything in the Davidic Covenant and there wasn't anything in the Abrahamic Covenant that could overpower the force that was in them. There was nothing that could cause them to live their lives in a way that would bring them into the place where they would be able to receive those blessings.
You say, "What about the Mosaic Covenant?" No, the Mosaic Covenant was even worse because the Mosaic Covenant just heightened their sinfulness. God laid out all of the laws. The law told them to obey. The law says if you will obey I will bless you, if you don't I'll curse you. They couldn't obey because they had a force within them. They had the law of sin operative within them. And all the law did was serve to demonstrate their inability to obey. All it did was show the depth and hopelessness and pervasiveness of their sinful hearts. And it showed that what they really needed was mercy and grace and forgiveness, which, by the way, was not provided in the Mosaic Law.
So, when God made promises to David that there would come the great King in the line of David, from David's royal line, that the great King, Messiah, would come some day and set up the glorious throne of royalty in Jerusalem and He would set aside all the enemies of Israel, He would bring Israel freedom from all its enemies, a Kingdom like no kingdom had ever been, a Kingdom from which Messiah would rule the entire world and He would never relinquish that rule again, He would rule for a thousand years on the earth and then establish the eternal Kingdom from which He would rule, over which He would rule forever and ever, when He promised that, they were thrilled to death about that, they wanted to see that happen. They longed for that to happen.
The problem is, they didn't have the ability in their own hearts to meet the conditions to bring it about. And when God promised to Abraham a great nation and a land and a people and prosperity and peace and blessing to them and through them to the world, they wanted that. They longed for that. And they associated that with Messiah and that's why Zacharias gets excited because he sees the Messiah coming and with the Messiah is going to come Davidic fulfillment, Abrahamic fulfillment. But, you see, before they could ever receive the promises made to David, or the promises made to Abraham, they had to deal with one huge issue...they were on God's bad side because they kept violating the Mosaic Covenant.
They couldn't keep His law. No matter how great the promises, and no matter how frightening the threats, external promises even from God and external threats even from God can't overpower the bent of the human heart. And the Mosaic Law just made it clear that they couldn't do what God wanted them to do. No matter how severe the threats, or how glorious the promises, threats and promises even from God cannot break the power of the more compelling law of sin.
Would they never receive those promises then? Would they only receive those threats? Were they doomed to curses and never blessings? Is that how it was going to be? Was there any hope? How were they ever going to receive the promises of God? Was there a hope that somewhere along the line two things could happen..one, they would be forgiven for their violations, they would be forgiven for their inability to keep the standards of God, they would be forgiven for breaking the law of God, forgiven for not being able to meet the conditions for Abrahamic and Davidic fulfillment? Would there ever be a time and a way to be forgiven? Secondly, would there ever be a means by which they could obey? Would there ever be a means by which they could obey? What they needed was another covenant.
The Davidic Covenant gave them great promise. The Abrahamic Covenant gave them great promise. The Mosaic Covenant at Sinai, or Horeb, both the same place, the Mosaic Covenant just damned them. If they were ever going to inherit what was promised to David and Abraham, then the sins, the violations of the Mosaic Covenant were going to have to be forgiven. And, secondly, they were going to have to be changed on the inside so that they possessed another force that could overpower the force of sin.
Bottom line, they were looking for a covenant, another covenant that could do two things...forgive their sin, and change their heart. Got that? If you understand that, you understand the ground work for the New Covenant.
Now go with me back to Deuteronomy 27. And if you think I'm going to finish this today, you are whistling through the cemetery, it's not going to happen. But I'm going to finish what I want to say to you today...but I'm going to leave a few verses for next time, at the end of this chapter. Twenty messages on chapter 1 and there are twenty-four chapters in Luke. This has to change somewhere down the line.
All right, Deuteronomy 26, 27 and 28. But what can I do? What can an expositor do but exposit, huh? Deuteronomy 26...now Deuteronomy is a word really from the Greek deutero nomos, deutero , means "second," nomos means "law." This is the second giving of the law. So you have in the book of Deuteronomy a very, very careful giving of God's Law, the Mosaic Law. All through the first part of this book is God's Law laid down.
Now come to chapter 26 verse 16, and this really sets the stage. Chapter 26 verse 16, "This day the Lord your God commands you to do these statutes and ordinances. You shall therefore be careful to do them with all your heart and with all your soul. You have today declared the Lord to be your God," and these people were well-intentioned, and they declared, "that they would walk in His ways and keep His statutes, His commandments, and His ordinances and listen to His voice." That was what they did. They made this...you can go back to Exodus 24 where they did the same thing. In fact, they had a big slaughter, they slaughtered all kinds of animals and they said, "God, we promise to keep Your law, we promise to keep Your law, we'll walk in Your ways and just to show you how serious we are, we've sacrificed all these animals." They collected all the blood in great big flat basins and then they decided that they would sort of act out their covenant, as was often done, as I told you before. And so they took some of the blood and they dumped it, sloshed it all over the altar, that symbolizing God's side of the covenant, and the rest was the people's side and they took these big sort of flat pans full of blood and they sloshed the crowd with them...and just sloshed them with blood.
That was their affirmation of the fact that they were going to keep the law of God. You have the same thing here in Deuteronomy 26. You've said that you're going to do it. You're going to walk in His ways, you're going to keep His statutes, His commandments, His ordinances, you're going to listen to His voice. You're going to do that. "And the Lord has today declared you to be His people, a treasured possession as He promised you and you shall keep all His commandments and He'll set you on high above all nations which He has made for praise and fame and honor." In other words, you'll get the Davidic promise and you'll get the Abrahamic promise, all of that is going to come to pass if you're obedient. And you said you'd be obedient.
Problem...they can't do it. They can't do it. But verse 1 of chapter 27, they certainly were well-intentioned, "Moses and the elders of Israel charged the people saying, 'Keep all the commandments which I command you today. Keep them all.'" And when you get over there in the promised land, you're going over there, you just make sure you hang on to this law. "You set up some large stones and coat them with lime and write on them all the words of this law. When you cross over put it in some permanent place so that you enter the land which the Lord gave you, a land flowing with milk and honey, the Lord, the God of your fathers promised you, and you get over there, you want to remember the Law. Build that altar to the Lord your God, offer your offerings...verse 7...and write on the stones all the words of this law very distinctly." You set that law right there in the land when you get there and you keep that law.
Then in chapter 27 verse 9 there's an interesting thing. "Moses and the Levitical priests spoke to all Israel saying, 'Be silent and listen, O Israel, this day you've become a people for the Lord your God, you shall therefore obey the Lord your God, do His commandments and His statutes which I command you today.'" I think they're getting the point, don't you? I mean, he just keeps saying it over and over...obedience, obedience, obedience, obedience.
Now, that's the issue, obedience to the law of God. Here's the illustration. He says in verse 11, and charges the people, Moses does, "When you get over the other side I want some of you to go to Mount Gerizim, six tribes of the twelve go to Mount Gerizim, six of you...verse 13...go down to Mount Ebal." Those were two mountains separated by a valley in which Shechem existed and it might have been that the priests were in the valley and the Ark of the Covenant was in the valley as well. Put six of you on one mountain, six of you on the other side, Ebal was the mountain that expressed the curses and Gerizim was the mountain that would express the blessings. And so they were to dramatize the situation.
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