Zechariah's Song

0:00 · Speaker 1 Morning. I think it's just so appropriate when we're focusing on Christmas playlists, we've been led in some amazing words of truth. Thanks, Ricky, and your team. Just so much great, great truth in those songs. So it's that time of year again, the annual stress of what do you get the man who has everything? Or more likely, the man who couldn't be bothered taking time to give you some ideas and then blames you when you buy them socks. Well, fear not because this year your prayers have been answered. I have done my research and I can now reveal to you not just one, but a whole range of options that fit the bill for the man who has everything.

0:44 · Speaker 1 In fact, I even came across the top 75 things to buy for such a person. So you've way more options than you actually thought you had. Now, I'm not going to give all 75 away. You've got to do some work for yourselves, and I'll leave some for next year, but I'm going to share a few to get you started. So take note. A Thera face mask to tighten his jaw and get rid of the blemishes on his skin. A mere 549 pounds. Or, Felix Music, some Dyson Zone headphones with built-in air purification.

1:24 · Speaker 1 Also £549. If he's a traveller, maybe the Rimowa cabin suitcase, just for the cabin, not a big one. £1,070. If he's a fashionista, what about the Laurel Piano Neve denim jacket? £3,500. Or what about this? A Bruno Cuccinelli calfskin beauty case, or as I would call it, a wash bag, £870.

2:02 · Speaker 1 Or maybe a more discerning traveler, the Metier Nomad duffel bag, £3,150. Now some of you are going, I can't afford any of these. So a bit more affordable. What about a Dupteck Golden Land refillable candle, if you please. 208 pounds for a candle. And if he's a bit worried about his skin, something small in a little bottle, a Dr. Barbara Sturm face serum, just a little bottle this size, 410 pounds. There you go. You're welcome.

2:42 · Speaker 1 I look forward to hearing stories of grateful men in a couple of week's time. Maybe not realistic for most of us. I can't say that any of those represent what any of us might really need. But what about real needs? The greatest gift ever given really was about meeting our deepest needs. And we get a glimpse of how great this gift was in today's song from our Christmas playlist. And as we've already been told, it comes from the song of a man called Zachariah, who's famous mainly for being the father of the character he knows, John the Baptist. So I want us to hear part of his story and listen to the words of his song.

3:28 · Speaker 1 We're gonna watch it from the Lumo Gospels.

3:34 · Speaker 2 She gave birth to a son. And neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown her great mercy and they shared her joy. On the eighth day, they came to circumcise the child, and they were going to name him after his father, Zechariah. But his mother spoke up and said, No, he is to be called John. They said to her, There is no one among your relatives who has that name. Then they made signs to his father to find out what he would like to name the child. He asked for a writing tablet. And to everyone's astonishment, he wrote, His name is John.

4:34 · Speaker 2 Immediately, his mouth was opened, and his tongue set free, and he began to speak, praising God. All the neighbors were filled with awe, and throughout the hill country of Judea, people were talking about all these things. Everyone who heard this wondered about it, asking, "What then is this child going to be?" For the Lord's hand was with him. His father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied, Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come to his people and redeemed them. He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, as he said through his holy prophets of long ago, salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us, to show mercy to our ancestors and to remember his holy covenant. the oath he swore to our father Abraham, to rescue us from the hand of our enemies and to enable us to serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High, for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him, to give his people the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins.

6:07 · Speaker 2 because of the tender mercy of our God, by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace. And the child grew and became strong in spirit, and he lived in the wilderness until he appeared publicly to Israel.

6:42 · Speaker 1 There's so much that's significant in that story, but also in the words of praise that Zachariah spoke or sang. We can't cover it all. So I've decided to pick out just three things that he mentions that show us why the birth of God's promised Messiah, Jesus, meets our greatest needs. And they're found in the last few lines of his song. And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High. For you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him. To give his people the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins. Because of the tender mercy of our God, by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven.

7:24 · Speaker 1 To shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death. To guide our feet into the path of peace. and the first reason for me why Jesus is such a great gift is this he brings forgiveness to give his people the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins because of the tender mercy of our God Ernest Hemingway once wrote a short story called the capital of the world and in this story Hemingway told the story of a son who had sinned against his father and in his shame ran away from home. The father searched all over Spain for him, but still he couldn't find the boy. And so finally in the city of Madrid, in one last desperate attempt to find his son, the father placed an ad in a daily newspaper and the ad read like this, Paco, meet at Hotel Montana noon Tuesday. All is forgiven. Papa. So the father prayed that the boy would see the ad and maybe, like just maybe, he would come to the Hotel Montana.

8:35 · Speaker 1 So Tuesday came and the father in the story arrived at the Hotel Montana and he couldn't believe his eyes. A whole squadron of police officers had been called out to keep order amongst the 800 young boys named Paco who had come to meet their father in front of the Hotel Montana. 800 boys named Paco read the ad in the newspaper and hoped it was for them. 800 Pacos coming to receive the forgiveness they so desperately needed. It's only a story, but is it only me who finds myself sometimes suddenly blushing inside as the memory of something I've said or done just comes out of nowhere and bites me and I'm full of regret. Or if we're in any way representative of the rest of humanity, some of us are sitting here today and we long to be forgiven. We've apologized and we've tried, but as yet the people we love and then we've hurt haven't forgiven us. That's bad enough.

9:53 · Speaker 1 But we've an even worse situation. And it's illustrated so well in the story of King David in the Old Testament. he committed a heinous crime the very worst of crimes he had an illicit fling with another man's wife and then he arranged for that man to be isolated in a battle and killed it's a shocking story and God confronted him through a prophet called Nathan and in response David had to make a great confession of course he had wronged Uriah but even worse he realized he had wronged God. And he wrote this, against you, you only have I sinned. However heinous his sin was against another person, his worst issue was when he realized he had broken God's law, because that's fatal. We live in intriguing times. We have a culture around us that has, by and large done away with any notion that there is a holy and just God. And yet it's a culture that seems to be incredibly hung up on its own version of right and wrong without stopping to think how incongruous that is.

11:11 · Speaker 1 We've got this new thing called, well it's not all that new, virtue signaling. And all media is rife with it, attacks on those who say the wrong thing or who have the wrong opinion. And yet when we ask our society from where we get these definitions of right and wrong, well, the silence is deafening. And I've been just wrestling in my own mind with this recently. How does a society with no concept of absolute truth decide what has value and what doesn't? And I came to, this is a pretty simple conclusion, I'm no philosopher, but value normally comes from two things. Value either comes from what something is made from, like a diamond ring or a really expensive car. Or value comes from whomever created something.

12:12 · Speaker 1 Like a piece of art. I mean, if you take the Mona Lisa, it's just painted on canvas with regular oil paints. Its value doesn't come from what it's made from. It comes because it was painted by Leonardo da Vinci. And so I'm thinking like that, and I'm starting to apply that to human beings. And those who know the physical makeup of our bodies tell us that we can actually be boiled down to a pretty ordinary collection of minerals and materials. So our value doesn't come from that. And that leaves those who come from a secular atheistic approach in real trouble.

12:48 · Speaker 1 How can you assign any value to physical matter that isn't all that valuable and that allegedly just came into being because of some random chance? Why would any one collection of physical matter be any more important than another. And how on earth can you ascribe right and wrong to such collections of matter and how they behave? You can't really. And only the most extreme atheist is actually prepared logically to go there and say that, yeah, it's true, nothing really matters. At least that's consistent, even if it's somewhat abhorrent. So if our value doesn't come from the physical material from which we're made in, what about the alternative? Our value coming because of who or what has made us.

13:44 · Speaker 1 That takes us in a whole other direction. It brings us to the place where we have to confront the truth of a creator who, in the Bible's terms, made us in his own image. And the same David who sinned said that he had crowned us with glory and honor. But not only that, this same creator has to us the right way to live. And when we turn our backs on him, when we choose our own path, when we ignore his righteous just commands, we don't just stop damaging ourselves and hurting other people. We put ourselves at odds with him. And there's no worse place to be. Because in his holiness, he is clear, he cannot tolerate sin.

14:35 · Speaker 1 And so we are his enemies. Consequently, our greatest need is some way to deal with that sin that has made us his enemy. Our greatest need is forgiveness. And Zechariah grasped it. Because this holy God is characterized by mercy. by love. A fact that so many of the Old Testament prophets pointed to, because he is. He makes a way for us to be forgiven.

15:10 · Speaker 1 And it's through the promise of the coming Messiah to whom Zachariah's son, John, would point when he said, look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Zachariah could see that God's plan was to forgive and it was now unfolding before his eyes. And we have no greater need. That's why Jesus is the greatest gift. But there's more good news. Forgiveness may be our greatest need, but we have other great needs as we navigate the challenge of day-to-day living. And the great news about Jesus is he meets those needs too. Because the second thing that he brings us is light.

16:03 · Speaker 1 Zacharias sang, by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven and shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death. We've been going through some pretty dark times the last few years, even in our own experience. The COVID situation. Ukraine that's not getting any better. An energy crisis. Cost of living hurting many people. Now the strife in Gaza. Not to mention the sense of division politically, both on this side of the Atlantic and the other side of the Atlantic.

16:40 · Speaker 1 And even our own issues here in Northern Ireland that keep haunting us. It's a long litany of stuff that can very easily leave a sense of gloom. But darkness has other manifestations as well. There's the darkness that envelops society when we decide we will go our own way. Some of what's happening around us has pretty sinister overtones and dire consequences. And we can feel powerless to do anything about it. And then just in case we think it's all darkness that's caused by other people, There's the darkness we bring on ourselves when we decide that we know better than God, when we walk away from his paths for whatever reason. And then there's the darkness we sense when we're confronted with situations that we just don't know how to handle.

17:30 · Speaker 1 The stuff that happens around us where we genuinely have no idea where to turn. And yet whatever the particular darkness we're facing, Jesus brings. Now, when the world's problems seem so overwhelming, we lift our eyes to the risen Christ. We did it in our songs, whose presence makes a difference, whose resurrection points us to a better day, and whose promise to return and make all things new gives us a perspective that goes beyond what we see around us. Or when the darkness we face is because of our own bad decisions. He's the one who brings the forgiveness and renewal that we've just been talking about. And when the darkness is stuff where we're totally at a loss, he's the one who shines a light on how to respond. He calls us to follow his example, even in life's most perplexing issues.

18:38 · Speaker 1 I heard Philip Yancey speak recently and he said this. If you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus. And in Jesus we get God's light. God's way to respond to the perplexing situations of the day. In our boy's cell a couple of weeks ago, we were discussing the challenge of how to live and react with acceptance. To those we totally disagree with on life issues or their lifestyle choices, accepting them without at the same time approving of their choices or affirming their behavior. And the truth is that Jesus is the only one who gives us that example.

19:27 · Speaker 1 In his love and his grace. Or as Zachariah talked about, the tender mercy of our God. And Jesus showed that whilst never once lowering the standards to which he called people to live. His is a unique example. And when the darkness seems to overwhelm us, we look to him to show us the way to go. He brings forgiveness. He brings light. And then finally, Jesus is the greatest gift because he brings peace.

20:05 · Speaker 1 he will guide our feet into the path of peace sang Zachariah and his wouldn't be the only song to mention peace we talked about the challenge of buying presents for certain men well my dad was the worst not because he had everything but because every year when we asked him what he'd like for Christmas. He said the same thing. I just want peace. Now, we were never quite sure what he meant. Was it because we were growing up in the troubles in Northern Ireland, or was he actually referring to a few days off from work at home with two unruly boys? Or was he actually, you know, was it thought of trying to juggle so many wider family and church responsibilities around Christmas. We never actually find out what it was but in the peace we find in Jesus, it's way more than any of those. The Hebrew concept and word for peace was shalom.

21:09 · Speaker 1 And it points to wholeness. To things being the way they are supposed to be. And Jesus brings exactly that. He is the promise of restoring things to how they are supposed to be. He brings us peace, wholeness, and restoration with God. Paul would write this, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. His perfect life, his sacrificial death and resurrection being the perfect and only sacrifice for the sin that has made us enemies with God. But he also brings peace and wholeness and restoration to our earthly struggles as well.

22:04 · Speaker 1 Those strained relationships that can only be healed as his grace takes hold of us. And we find that he really can bring restoration and hope. And even when it comes to the state of things around us, it's the hope we have in Christ and his promise to return, to make all things new, to restore things to what they were intended to be, that helps us not to be overwhelmed by it all and gives us an eternal perspective that brings peace and wholeness to our souls. It's no wonder Zacharias sang a song of praise. Forgiveness, light, and peace. And who doesn't need more of all of those? But before I finish, I want us to notice something else. All of our focus has been on themes in his song, and rightly so, because those themes point us to the Savior.

23:12 · Speaker 1 but I want us just to finish by taking a quick look at the singer of the song because I think Zachariah himself has something to teach us and the first thing is the context in which in which this happened we're told early on in this chapter that all of this happened in the time of Herod king of Judea and that wasn't just a historic note to the story it also points to something of the darkness around. He was a dreadful man. He was capable of the most awful cruelty, and he was also someone who sucked up to the Romans, the occupying power. Now, to make it worse, although he was king in Judea, he wasn't even a real Jew. I mean, he was actually a descendant of their enemies, not from the line of King David. And whilst he built a great temple to try and court favor with the Jews. He also built and worshiped at other pagan shrines. So these were dark days.

24:13 · Speaker 1 And yet even in dark days, Zechariah was able to sing a song of praise. Because even in the darkness, after several hundred years of what appeared to be silence from God, he was still able to see that God was at work. You see, no matter how dark things are, we must always trust that God is working out his purposes and choose to praise him. Something else about Zachariah and his song. Remember what has given rise to this situation. He and Elizabeth, his wife, both of them old and childless, experience the most amazing intervention as God gifts them with a child. It's a huge deal. But what does Zachariah sing about?

25:03 · Speaker 1 he doesn't sing about his family and his son he sings about God's bigger picture and only where his son fitted into that and I think that's really telling because let's face it we're all tempted to put ourselves at the center of the story Zachariah didn't even with his own incredible joy and this wonderful miracle his thoughts were on what God was doing. God's big story. And I suspect all of us need to get our own eyes there much more often. And then finally, here's what really stands out to me. This man was a serving priest. He sang a song pointing us to the amazing gift of the Messiah and what he would bring. He didn't center it on his own family, his own story and their own miracle, but had great insights into what God was doing on a grander scale. That's impressive, but let's ground it.

26:05 · Speaker 1 Because for all he sang and realized, this was also the guy who didn't believe it when God told him he was going to have a son. It's all too easy for us to have idealized pictures of some Bible figures. And then we think that we're so different to them. We're so far removed from them. when actually they were people like us. And Zachariah is no different. The man who sang about forgiveness, light, and peace at first found it almost impossible to believe that God could do it.

26:44 · Speaker 1 And I hope that that brings hope to someone here who's hearing all that we've talked about this morning, deep down acknowledging that it's true, but right now struggling to believe it because the pain we've suffered or the darkness we're facing is just too much. Zachariah tells me that God is patient even with those who find it hard to believe and that his tender mercy reaches out to us. Even a tiny shred of faith is still faith. And as long as that faith is put in the right place, it will not be disappointed. The late Tim Keller wrote this, it is not the strength of your faith, but the object of your faith that actually saves you. Strong faith in a weak branch is fatally inferior to weak faith in a strong branch. even if today it seems far away from how you feel let me encourage you to grasp in faith the amazing gift that God gives us in Jesus and find in him forgiveness light and peace let's pray Lord God we echo the praise of the Apostle Paul when he said thanks be to God for his indescribable gift

28:45 · Speaker 1 and Lord God we celebrate today the reality of the gift that you gave when you give yourself to the world that moment in time and history when you made such an amazing appearance. And we thank you that in the incarnation of the Christ, that your promise of forgiveness, of light and peace was being fulfilled. Father, help us to see the reality of that through eyes of faith, however weak our faith may be, however dark our darkness appears to be, however difficult our circumstances appear to be, however heavy the weight of our sin appears to be on us today. God, our Father, help us to find in Christ forgiveness, light, and peace. We praise you. in Jesus name, Amen