The Gospel of Luke: Fulfillment in the Forerunner

Transcript

JRNT 65
08/04/2024
The Gospel of Luke: Fulfillment in the Forerunner
Luke 1:57-66
Jesse Randolph


We are back in the Gospel of Luke this morning and I was sharing with some men from our church earlier this week how preaching through this book has been in one sense quite a bit different from preaching through some of the books of the last two summers, James and Colossians. Those two books of course have so many sharp imperatives, those Spirit-directed, get-under-your-skin type of burrs where whether you read them or hear them preached you feel that heaven-sent rap on your nose. In James we came across directives like everyone must be quick to hear and slow to speak and slow to anger -- become doers of the Word and not merely hearers only who delude themselves -- my brothers, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism -- do not many of you become teachers, my brothers, knowing that you will receive stricter judgment -- cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts you double minded -- and then you, too, be patient, strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand. That's just a scattering of some of the imperatives we heard in James.

And then in Colossians Paul doesn't lower the bar in any sense. He says -- as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him -- set your mind on things above, not on the things that are on earth -- as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, bearing with one another and graciously forgiving each other -- whoever has a complaint against anyone, just as the Lord graciously forgave you so also should you. Paul also said -- wives, be subject to your husbands -- husbands, love your wives -- children, obey your parents -- fathers, don't exasperate your children -- slaves, obey your masters in all things -- everybody work heartily as unto the Lord -- devote yourselves to prayer -- let your words always be with grace.

As those words came from this pulpit we all walked out of here with a bit of a limp and a bit of a hitch in our gait as God did His work in each of our hearts each week as we made our way through each of those clear and Spirit-directed commands.

And then we came to Luke. Over the last four months or so we've been in the Gospel of Luke and Luke we know is historical narrative written through the pen of Luke, this Gentile man, this historian, this physician who meticulously recorded various details surrounding the birth and the life and the death and the resurrection, of course, of our Lord Jesus Christ. And in case you haven't noticed, we've been going quite slowly. We're four months in and we're still in chapter 1. And while there haven't been as many of those “mic-drop,” dagger-like moments in the Gospel of Luke as maybe we had in James or Colossians, I hope and I trust that we've all been benefiting from this study of this rich chapter of Scripture. Because it does reveal to us so much about God's character and man's need for a Savior and God's perfect plans and purposes in sending that Savior into the world in the person of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

We'll be in Luke 1:57-66 this morning and this simply is the next section or paragraph in this narratival section of Luke's Gospel. And it's a simple and easy-to-follow story. It really fits in with the rest of the account that we've been working through over the past many months, and as we're going to see as we work through it, while it was written at a specific time and in a specific context by a specific man, Luke, to a specific person named Theophilus -- our text, no less than those passages I just rattled off from James and Colossians, is God-breathed, 2 Timothy 3:16. And it's profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness so that the man of God may be thoroughly adequate, equipped for every good work.

So with that let's get right into it. Our text for this morning again is Luke 1:57-66. I'll read it and then we'll work through it. God's Word reads, “Now the time was fulfilled for Elizabeth to give birth, and she gave birth to a son. And her neighbors and her relatives heard that the Lord had magnified His great mercy toward her and they were rejoicing with her. And it happened that on the eighth day they came to circumcise the child and they were going to call him Zechariah after the name of his father. But his mother answered and said, ‘No, but he shall be called John.’ And they said to her, ‘There is no one among your relatives who is called by this name.’ And they were making signs to his father as to what he wanted him called. And he asked for a tablet and wrote as follows, ‘His name is John.’ And they all marveled. And at once his mouth was opened and his tongue loosed and he began to speak, blessing God. And fear came on all those living around them and all these matters were being talked about in all the hill country of Judea. And all who heard these things put them in their hearts, saying, ‘What then will this child be?’ For the hand of the Lord was indeed with him.”

Now as I mentioned just a few moments ago this is really simple narrative. I doubt that there is anybody who has just heard those words read and you are wondering, what does it mean? What is happening here? I doubt there is anybody here that is confused by what is being described here. But because it has been a couple of weeks since we've been in Luke, let's take a moment to jog our memories about where this account fits in with the overall narratival picture that Luke's Gospel is painting. See, what we've been looking at so far in our study of Luke are these twin conception narratives. In the first the angel Gabriel visits Zechariah, this faithful priest who was from the hill country of Judea, and he is ministering there in the temple in Jerusalem. And this angel appears to Zechariah to tell him that his wife, Elizabeth, would conceive a child who would go on to be the forerunner to the Messiah that had long been promised to Israel. Zechariah, we saw, doubted what God had revealed to him through Gabriel and he was punished by God through Gabriel by having his lips sealed and his ears stopped up. Nevertheless, Zechariah goes home to Elizabeth and he somehow communicates to her what the angel had communicated to him, “And behold,” we read, “Elizabeth conceived.” That was the first conception narrative.

The second conception narrative involves that same angel, Gabriel, visiting Mary, this young Jewish virgin girl from Nazareth who was betrothed to a man named Joseph to announce to her that she would be the mother of this actual Messiah. And though Mary was perplexed at the angel's announcement and though she pondered these things in her heart, she ultimately submitted herself to the word of God, which we saw in verse 38, where she says, modeling for all believers of all time, “Behold the slave of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.” She then visited her now pregnant relative, Elizabeth, out in the hill country and then we saw those two pregnant women were sharing those stories about all that had been shown them by the angel Gabriel. That then led to the text we studied last time, Mary's “Magnificat” as it is known, in Luke 1:46-56, where she lavishly praises and magnifies the Lord for the faithfulness and the favor He had shown not only her but the people, the people of Israel.

Now with today's text, verses 57-66, Luke now moves us over from those parallel conception accounts to the first of two birth accounts, the first of course being that of John the Baptist which we are going to get into today, and then the second being that of Jesus of Nazareth which we'll get into in Luke 2 one of these days. But he turns the spotlight back to John the Baptist here. We've been talking about Mary and her pregnancy and the “Magnificat,” now we're back on John the Baptist and his parents and specifically the circumstances surrounding the birth of John. Our sermon has eight headings this morning, I won't rattle them all off at the outset here, instead I'll just rattle them off as we go through it. But we're going to start with this one, if you're a note taker this morning our first heading is “The Fulfilled Promise.”

Look at verse 57 again, it says, “Now the time was fulfilled for Elizabeth to give birth, and she gave birth to a son.” Now let's start by pointing out the obvious here. When John the Baptist was born he was immediately identified as what? A son. Whoever Elizabeth had the help of when she delivered this child, whether it was a midwife or whether it was Zechariah himself, they looked between the legs of this child and said, “That's a boy, that's a son.” Now I know it's such a backwards and antiquated notion in our day to look at physical, biological evidence and make gender determinations, but that is exactly what Zechariah and Elizabeth did. When their child was born they immediately recognized that they had a baby boy. It was a biological reality which is why Luke, not only being a historian but being a doctor, a physician, recorded that Elizabeth gave birth to a son. Not a gender neutral baby, not a baby who would later decide what gender they wanted to be, not a “they-be” but a baby. She gave birth to a son, a baby boy, a son, a son who would know that as the son of Zechariah and Elizabeth he would be God's appointed forerunner to the Son of God, the Messiah, coming on the earthly scene.

That's what is being described here by Luke where he says in verse 57 that “the time was fulfilled for Elizabeth to give birth.” Those words, “the time was fulfilled,” those were carefully and cleverly chosen by Luke our human author here. In fact, we're going to see him use very similar language in Luke 2:6 when he is referring to the birth of Christ and he says, “Now it happened that while they were there the days were fulfilled for her to give birth,” speaking of Mary. And in both instances, the birth account of John and the birth account of Jesus, those words, “the time was fulfilled” or “the days were fulfilled” have multiple meanings. First they have the biological meaning as in the nine months of Elizabeth's pregnancy had run their course. Her pregnancy, you could say, was at full term. She was pacing, eating hot foods, whatever they were doing in that time to get that baby out. But there is also a theological meaning to these words, “the time was fulfilled,” namely the time for God's promise to come to fruition was now fulfilled.

And here in the case of John the Baptist and his birth, which promise was it that was now being fulfilled? Well, it was the promise that God Himself had made through the angel Gabriel to Zechariah the priest earlier in the chapter. In fact, go back with me to Luke 1:11, it says, “And an angel of the Lord appeared to him,” to Zechariah there, “standing to the right of the altar of incense and Zechariah was troubled when he saw the angel and fear fell upon him. But the angel said to him, ‘Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son and you will call his name John.’ ” You see it there, “your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son.” And that's exactly what we see happening here in verse 57, right? Yeah. “She gave birth to a son.” This long promised, long awaited, monumental moment had arrived. The forerunner to the Messiah was now on the scene. This was the one who we've seen would turn the people of Israel back to the Lord their God. This is the one, the text tells us, who would turn the hearts of the fathers to the children. This is the one whose ministry would make the people of Israel's hearts ready for the arrival of the Messiah. Christ the Savior was on the way.

Now we learn a few things here, looking at this text and what it is indicating to us. We learn that Zechariah was now this new father, we learn that Elizabeth was this new mother and that this baby boy had arrived on the stage of world history. But I would submit that what we learn most importantly here is that God is faithful and true. When God speaks, He speaks truth. God had promised to Zechariah and his wife that she would give birth to a son and then a son is born. God is a truth-telling God, He is a faithful God, He is a promise-keeping God. His word, whether it is verbalized through the lips of an angel or through the pen of an apostle, can be trusted. And that truth is testified to all over the Scriptures. Numbers 23:19 says, “God is not a man that He should lie.” 1 Kings 8:56, it says, “Blessed by Yahweh who has given rest to His people Israel according to all that He promised. Not one promise has failed of all His good promises.” Psalm 89:14 says, “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne, lovingkindness and truth go before You.” Psalm 146:5-6 says, “How blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in Yahweh his God who made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, who keeps truth forever.” Isaiah 65:16 calls God the God of truth. Titus 1:2, Paul says, “God cannot lie.” The author of Hebrews in Hebrews 6:18 says, “It is impossible for God to lie.”

All that to say when God speaks, He speaks truth. And when He told Zechariah that his wife Elizabeth in her old age would give birth to a son, He was speaking truth. And of course, what that means for you and me is that when God has delivered promises to us in His Word, like the promise in Philippians 1:6 that “He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus,” or I Peter 3:14, “Even if you should suffer for the sake of righteousness you are blessed,” or I John 1:7, “If we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin,” or Revelation 1:7, “Behold He is coming with the clouds and every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him,” we can take each of those statements to the bank as certifiable truth. The Word of God is not just truthful, though it is, it is truth. What did Jesus say to God the Father in His high priestly prayer, John 17:17? “Sanctify them in the truth, Your word is truth.”

So we've seen, verse 57, “The Fulfilled Promise,” the fulfilled promise of this birth of a son to Zechariah and Elizabeth. As we turn to verse 58, the camera angle you could say widens and it captures this entire community of individuals who were living alongside Zechariah and Elizabeth there in the hill country. Look at verse 58, it says, “And her neighbors and her relatives heard that the Lord had magnified His great mercy toward her and they were rejoicing with her.” Our second heading this morning is “The Familial Praise.” So word about the birth of Elizabeth's new child drew a crowd, a crowd made up of her neighbors and her relatives, it says. Which in these towns of the hill country during these days there was likely a good degree of overlap between those two groups, meaning some of Elizabeth's neighbors were, in fact, her relatives and her relatives lived close by. They were her neighbors. This would have been a small tightly knit community. In these days in this time in this part of the world families stayed in the same place, they stayed in the same villages in many cases for centuries. And there are reports of people never leaving their villages for their entire lives. It's that group that Luke is referring to here, a group of relatives and neighbors.

And note how Luke describes what they had heard in verse 58. He doesn't say simply that they had heard about the birth of this child, though they had heard about the birth of this child, but look at the worshipful language he uses to describe the reaction. He says, “Her neighbors and her relatives heard that the Lord had magnified His great mercy toward her.” In other words, as we put these two accounts, Mary and Elizabeth, side by side, you have Mary magnifying the Lord over in Nazareth like we saw last time for the great things He had done in her and through her. And then here in the hill country God had magnified or shown Elizabeth His great mercy toward her. And that word “magnified” is the same one we see in Mary's account in Luke 1:46, “megaluno,” where she says, “my soul magnifies the Lord.” And here we are told that God had “magnified His great mercy toward Elizabeth.”

And what is mercy? A very simple definition is God's loving action toward undeserving people. God's loving action, God's loving acts towards undeserving people. And how had God magnified His mercy toward Elizabeth? He had done so by removing her barrenness, by allowing her to carry and deliver this child who had just been born. Recall that for years she had experienced the reproach of others, she had faced the embarrassment and shame of being unable to conceive. And she carried these experiences and these feelings of shame and reproach all the way into her old age. But the Lord was now, through the birth of her son, magnifying, showing His mercy toward her. He was showing His goodness to this elderly woman. He was showing her the kindness that she, like any of us, ultimately didn't deserve, but magnifying His mercy.

And note what comes next at the end of verse 58. We see the reaction of her neighbors and her relatives and they were doing what? End of the verse there, it says “they were rejoicing with her.” There is no record here of unwarranted doubt or unrighteous envy or unnecessary shock. No, there is only joy. These would have been the individuals who in a small and tightly knit community like this, they had heard about, they were aware of Elizabeth's earlier challenges with conceiving. They had seen her as she aged, they had seen the wrinkles deepen in her forehead and above her cheekbones. They had seen her hair go from jet black to gray to shock white and they had shared their pain with her. And now that this child had arrived they were rejoicing with her, they were thankful, they were happy over the birth of this child. This was a true miracle baby, the one who would be that next prophet after Malachi and the one who would introduce Israel to its Messiah. And by the way, part of the rejoicing they were experiencing, I think had to do with how long Elizabeth had kept this whole matter secret. Recall back in verse 24, she kept herself in seclusion for those first five months of her pregnancy it tells us. And then after that she had a husband, Zechariah. She was under the leadership and the authority of a husband who had been rendered mute, so he didn't have a whole lot to say about the matter. And then Mary had visited Elizabeth, we saw, and the two of them had rejoiced on the doorstep of Zechariah's house. But there is no indication that the news spread any further beyond that. So for many, many months Elizabeth's pregnancy was really the hill country's best kept secret. But now the baby was born. No longer was it a secret, now her relatives and her neighbors are descending on their home, swept up in the joy that these new parents were experiencing. And these relatives and neighbors, they are rejoicing over the fact that God had been merciful to this couple, he had shown His favor toward them. There was great communal joy here.

And again, and this is important, this wasn't just great joy and this wasn't just communal joy, this was predicted joy. This was the very joy that the angel Gabriel had previously predicted would come to pass with this couple down the road. In fact, go back again, if you would, to Luke 1:14. We have Gabriel here speaking to Zechariah, still in the temple now, and look what he says, the angel to Zechariah, “And you will have joy and gladness and many will rejoice at his birth.” Well, fast forward nine months and that's exactly what we see happening in verse 58, they are rejoicing at the child's birth, “they were rejoicing with her,” it says. And so just as he did back in verse 57 with the account of the birth of John, with the account of the joy that John's birth brought, verse 58, what Luke is doing here is not only highlighting the ability of the angel Gabriel to call his shot like Babe Ruth pointing to center field, he is also making the bigger point and with great precision and intentionality here that God's promises are true. His Word is true. All that He says will come to pass, will in fact come to pass. He can be trusted.

Does that encourage you here this morning? I really hope that encourages you. We are two verses in to today's text and we've already been reminded twice about God's true and trustworthy character. Does that encourage you that when you are walking through the storms of life, holding onto tree branches, wondering when this thing is finally going to blow over, when you are going through a season that is scary or difficult or seemingly with no end, no matter how bleak or hopeless it may seem, God is always faithful, as we see right here, to keep his Word? Does it encourage you that unlike banks, earthly financial institutions whose word is as good as their investors, the Word of the Lord is backed by His very name? Proverbs 18 says, “The name of Yahweh is a strong tower. The righteous runs into it and is set securely on high.” It doesn't get much more encouraging than that. And so my encouragement to you this morning from the Word of God and specifically from what we see here in this account of the birth of John the Baptist is to be unwavering in your trust in the Lord. Trust in His promises. Sure, His promises may not come to fruition the way that you would like them to come, but they will come to fruition the way that He designs them to come to fruition. Aand any plan that He drew up before the foundation of the world surely is better than your plan or mine. Remember Hebrews 10:23, such a simple statement but we can take it to the bank. It says, “He who promised is faithful.”

Well, speaking of faithfulness, that brings us to our third point for this morning which will be “The Faithful Practice.” Look at the first half of verse 59, it says, “And it happened on the eighth day they came to circumcise the child.” This is yet another evidence of what we saw back in Luke 1:6 which is that Zechariah and Elizabeth were righteous and blameless in the sight of the Lord, doing His commandments. We see that here because circumcision at this time under the Law in these days was obligatory. Genesis 17:12 tells the whole story of Abraham. It says, (this is God speaking to Abraham in Genesis 17:12) “Every male among you who is eight days old shall be circumcised throughout your generations.” So he gives that command to Abraham to be carried out in his day with the males of his day. And it's to be a sign of faithfulness to the covenant that God had entered into with Abraham.

Then we get down the road historically, that requirement was then codified in the Mosaic Law, specifically in Leviticus 12. Here is Leviticus 12:1-3 which codifies the circumcision requirement to all of Israel, not just Abraham. It says, “Then Yahweh spoke to Moses saying, Speak to the sons of Israel saying, ‘When a woman gives birth and bears a male child, then she shall be unclean for seven days as in the days of her menstruation she shall be unclean. Now on the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised.’ ” In other words circumcision by the days of John the Baptist, many hundreds of years later, after Abraham, after Moses, was this customary mark of a Jewish male in obedience to the Law.

And in fact, we get over to Philippians, you can turn with me to Philippians 3 if you would, and we see Paul here laying out the significance of circumcision at least as he thought it in his previously unconverted state. He is laying out his credentials, his former credentials as a good practicing Jew. He eventually in this section will tell us it's all rubbish, it's refuse, it's “skubalon,” garbage, dung, “so that he might gain Christ.” Look at Philippians 3:3, he says, “For we are the circumcision who worship in the Spirit of God and boast in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh, although I myself might have confidence even in the flesh. If anyone else has a mind to put confidence in the flesh, I far more—circumcised the eighth day of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews. As to the Law a Pharisee, as to zeal a persecutor of the church, as to the righteousness that is found in the Law found blameless.” Now note what tops Paul's list of Jewish credentials there in verse 5 before mentioning his tribe and before mentioning his Pharisaical associations or his perceived righteousness under the Law. What does he mention first? Circumcised, circumcision. Circumcised on the eighth day, meaning Paul's parents like John's parents back in Luke conformed to these traditional notions of Jewish piety. They circumcised their son, they did so to identify him with the nation and with his people, to identify him as a partaker of this covenant that God made with Abraham and also to secure his necessary Jewish credentials to be a qualified mouthpiece for God. And as good compliant Jews, both Paul's parents and John's parents here, they teed it up to the very letter of the Law. They got him circumcised on the eighth day as prescribed by the Law. Not much more needs to be said there about the procedure of circumcision or the medical reasons for it or any of that, there are other good Jewish writings, extra-biblical writings that go through that. But the point that Luke is making here in verse 59 is that Zechariah and Elizabeth were righteous people, they were godly people, they were faithful people, they followed the Law.

As we continue on we're going to get to our fourth point now which is “The Foreseeable Prediction.” Look at the second half of verse 59, after “they came to circumcise the child,” it says, “and they were going to call him Zechariah after the name of his father.” So there was this large group of relatives, of neighbors, they were marveling that this elderly woman, Elizabeth, has given birth. This previously barren relative of theirs is now right in front of them, cuddling this baby boy. They are magnifying the mercy of God, they are rejoicing over this incredible development. And so the next natural question, the question you and I ask whenever we meet a brand new baby is, what is its name? What is this child's name? What are you going to name him? But note, they don't ask that question necessarily. Rather, what is recorded here is really more of a statement, and actually not really even a statement so much as an assumption, and the assumption being that this newborn son that Elizabeth was now cradling in her arms would be named Zechariah, as it says here, after the name of his father. Now, when it says here “they were going to call him Zechariah,” that's not saying that they were going to assign a name to him as these relatives and neighbors. Rather this is what they were going to address him as, based on their assumption that that was, in fact, the child's name. And that was a very natural assumption to make in this time in this culture in this place because it was customary in these times to name a son after his father, especially if that father was highly esteemed. And Zechariah would qualify as being highly esteemed, he was this faithful priest, he was this righteous man, he was this godly man. He had been visited by an angel which would make him a notorious man and it was going to be through his line that the forerunner to the Messiah would come. So if there were a father/son relationship in these times in which one would naturally assume that tradition would be followed and the son would be named for the father, this would be it. So when Luke says here in verse 59 that they were going to call him Zechariah after the name of his father, that was a foreseeable prediction. It was foreseeable that they would assume that that would indeed be the child's name.

But look at how Luke captures Elizabeth's response in verse 60. It says, “But his mother answered and said, No, but he shall be called John.” She didn't hesitate, she spoke definitely. She said, “No.” This is clearly emphatic in the Greek language here, it's like no indeed or definitely not or absolutely not. And we can imagine that reaction of absolutely not really setting back the crowd, really throwing them for a loop. Like, what? Excuse me? Why wouldn't you name your son after your husband Zechariah, after his father, after this great man of God? What on earth is wrong with going with tradition here? And then Elizabeth tells them exactly what he would be named. She says, “No, but he shall be called John.” Now note that Luke here doesn't tell us how Elizabeth came to know that the child that she was bearing and had now delivered would be called John. Remember, the angel didn't appear to her, the angel appeared to her husband back in the temple. But the assumption that we can make, and I think safely so, is that when Zechariah went back home to the hill country he scrolled out as many details as he could remember about that encounter with the angel, put them in front of Elizabeth, including the fact that this child that she would now carry would be called John. So through the new-normal-for-them form of marital communication with him signing things out and writing things out, he must have communicated to her at some point. And that means from the lips of the angel to Zechariah's ears, from Zechariah's stylus to Elizabeth's eyes and then from Elizabeth's mouth to the ears of this gathering of relatives and neighbors came these words in verse 60, “He shall be called John.”

We've already seen that that name John comes from a Hebrew name, “Jehohanan,” which means God is gracious, which would be a fitting name for the one who would serve as the forerunner to the Messiah, the One who would graciously offer the kingdom when He came, the One who would graciously offer salvation when He came to all who would believe upon His message and trust upon His name. Remember John 1:17, “The Law came through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” And John was the forerunner to all of that.

So Elizabeth not only knew what the angel had commanded Zechariah back in Jerusalem as it had been communicated between the two of them, righteous woman that she was, she believed. So she not only knew the information, she believed the information that her husband got from the angel back in the temple. She believed that she would be gifted this son and she believed each of those descriptions that the angel Gabriel had given Zechariah back in Jerusalem, that many would rejoice at his birth and that he would be great in the sight of the Lord and that he would be filled with the Holy Spirit while in his mother's womb and that he would turn many of the sons of Israel back to the Lord their God and that he would go before the Christ in the spirit and power of Elijah and that he would make ready a people prepared for the Lord. In other words, Elizabeth not only knew that her son's name would be John, she believed that it should be John because she believed in God's promised plans for this child.

Well, that was too much for her relatives and her neighbors, they weren't having it, which is why we see this response in verse 61. “And they said to her, ‘There is no one among your relatives who is called by this name.’ ” And that brings us to our fifth point this morning, “The Forceful Pushback.” The crowd of relatives and neighbors here, they were astonished, they were shocked. They were expecting that regular customs and traditions would be followed. They thought not only that the child would be called Zechariah but that he should be called Zechariah and they likely thought that it was a great dishonor and snub to his father, the faithful priest, that his long-prayed-for son would not be named after him. And so they resist here, they push back and they say, “There is no one among your relatives who is called by this name.” That's the equivalent of saying, What are you? Nuts? Are you crazy? Why would you do such a thing? Why would you break with custom and tradition?

So what do they do next? Well, they turn to her husband, Zechariah. They hear Elizabeth's answer, they take their cue and they appeal to a higher tribunal, her husband. She, they thought, was clearly out of line here so they go to the priest, the measured one, the reasonable one, the godly one for a more reasonable answer. Look at verse 62, it says, “And they were making signs to his father as to what he wanted him called.” So they are exasperated, they don't accept the answer of Elizabeth. This crowd of relatives and neighbors, they are thinking surely her husband has some opinion here. Surely he will be the voice of reason, surely he has thoughts here that line up with what we want and he'll express them even if he doesn't have functioning vocal cords.

And by the way, speaking of Zechariah's limitations, some have asked the question and indeed some of you have asked me this question, was Zechariah merely mute at this point, as in could he only not speak or was he also deaf, as in could he also not hear? I take the position that he was both, he was both deaf and mute. Let me lay out for you really briefly why I get there. Go back to Luke 1:20, kind of lay out the progression here. Luke 1:20, this is the angel Gabriel speaking to Zechariah, he says, “And behold you shall be silent and unable to speak until the day when these things take place because you do not believe my words which will be fulfilled in their proper time.” And you drop down to verse 22 and Luke records when Zechariah exited the Holy Place in the temple. It says, “He was unable to speak to them.” And then down at the bottom of verse 22 it says, “He kept making signs to them and remained mute.” Now in our verse, back to verse 62, it says, “They were making signs to his father as to what he wanted him called.”

So before that reference in verse 62, I'm on board with the view that Zechariah was only mute because everything up to that point describes his being unable to speak and his having to make signs to communicate to people around him. But in verse 62 this new wrinkle is added and that wrinkle is that people are now making signs to him as a way to communicate with him so that he could understand them. They needed to make signs to him to communicate with him, whether that sign was nodding or pointing with their hands or making motions with their hands or their eyes. They didn't have ASL back then. But I think what this establishes is that Zechariah was not only mute but he was deaf, he couldn't hear what others were saying and so signs had to be made for him so that he could understand what was being asked of him.

And note, verse 62, what was being asked of him as they made these signs to him. It says, “They were making signs to his father as to what he wanted him called.” Now what they are asking Zechariah here is somewhat indirect. Note, they don't ask the direct question, what is his name, Zechariah? Tell us, what are you calling the boy? That's not what comes out here, it is more oblique. What their question here is doing is it's designed to pit Zechariah against his wife. Essentially the idea here is, okay, we've heard what your crazy wife thinks, she wants this kid to be called John. But what about you, Zechariah? If you could speak right now, if God could open your mouth and move your tongue, what would you say the child's name should be? So right here we have this pressure point for this elderly couple, they are being pitted not only against each other but really against the norms of their community. And the question that Luke is teeing up for us here is, are they going to buckle? Would they buckle under the pressure that was being imposed on them by these neighbors and these relatives? These neighbors and these relatives clearly thought they were odd and crazy and out of step with what was normal. So were they going to buckle? Or instead, would they do what God had told them to do via His word, namely through the lips of the angel Gabriel? Would they name their son John even if it was a source of puzzlement and provocation to the community, or would they bend and break and disregard God's divine directive and name him Junior? That was the question here.

And by the way that's not really exclusively a problem for Old Testament Jews, right? It's one we face today as well. Are we going to go with the flow around family, around friends? Are we just going to sort of, kind of, go along with cultural expectations? Take the path of least human resistance? Or instead are we willing to kick against the cultural and societal goads for the sake of what God has revealed to us in His Word?

Well, Luke tells us the direction that Zechariah and Elizabeth went in verse 63 as Zechariah, this priest, this righteous, godly man, this leader of this now family of three does something remarkable. This takes us to our sixth point here which is “The Fatherly Persistence.” Verse 63, it says, “He asked for a tablet and wrote as follows, his name is John.” He is still unable to speak, he is still, I think, unable to hear, he had to communicate his thoughts in writing on a tablet, not a tablet like an iPad or a Kindle or whatever your kid watches Cocomelon or Bluey on. But what this was, was this flat piece of wood which was covered with a film of wax on which letters could be traced out with a stick or a stone or a stylus of some sort. And it was reusable. Some of you are old enough to remember the old Etch-A-Sketches, that's what this would be. You would kind of warm up the wax when you were done writing on it and then smooth it over and start over again. That's what Zechariah was asking for here, that kind of tablet.

And look what he writes, verse 63. He doesn't say we've decided to call him John or considering calling him John or please refer to him as John. He says, “His name is John.” Period. No further explanation is given. The matter is settled, the matter is fixed. Similar to what his wife said back in verse 60 where she said, “He shall be called John,” Zechariah was firm and he was definite and really even more so than Elizabeth. He said, “His name is John.” No longer doubting, no longer balking, no longer seeking signs, no longer seeking proof. Zechariah here was plainly obedient and finally obedient. He was obedient to the words he had received from God through the angel back in the temple in Jerusalem after nine months. The angel had told him back in verse 13, “You shall call his name John” and now Zechariah was affirming that reality, that his name was John.

And this is one of those moments where again every jot and tittle of Scripture just blows you away because even that word “is” is significant, even that little verb tense choice there by Luke is significant. It is interesting, it is important because what it tells us when he says, his name is John, is that this matter of this baby's name was already settled. When Zechariah wrote the child's name on that wax tablet his name was already John. He wasn't naming him then in that moment on the eighth day of the child's life at his circumcision. No, he had been named long ago, long before these neighbors and these relatives showed up from the hill country. He was named by God, John, while he was in the womb before his birth.

So Zechariah as his father was persistent. And look at the results that Zechariah's persistence brought. Reading on in verse 63 and through 64 it says, “And they all marveled. And at once his mouth was opened and his tongue loosed and he began to speak, blessing God.” So there is the response of the crowd and they all marveled, that's the end of verse 63; then there is the divine response, the response of God as He freed up Zechariah's tongue, now allowing him to speak; and then there is the response of Zechariah who now free to speak was praising, blessing God.

We'll take each of those one by one, starting with the crowd of whom, Luke says, they marveled, verse 63. They were amazed, there was great wonder among them. And why? Well, they marveled primarily because Zechariah being deaf could not have heard what Elizabeth said to them earlier when she said, “He shall be called John.” In other words, he wasn't here copycatting his wife. Rather his words substantiated her words, his words confirmed her words. They were in unison, in lockstep, they were in hearty agreement. And that was a form of supernatural confirmation that this child really was named John, and this child really should be called John. So the crowd here is marveling, they are in this state of awe and amazement. They realize they were wrong; he shouldn't be named Zechariah, he should be John. Zechariah and Elizabeth were right.

Well, that then leads to the divine response which we find in the first part of verse 64, it says, “And at once his mouth was opened and his tongue loosed.” So Zechariah had many months, nine months, to think about his initial response to Gabriel, God's sent angel, and how he had initially responded in unbelief. But now, having learned his lesson, this time Zechariah responded in faith as he said directly and clearly to the relatives and the neighbors, “His name is John.” “And at once,” it says here, verse 64, meaning immediately, “his mouth was opened and his tongue loosed.” See, once Zechariah humbly and obediently said to the crowd of neighbors and relatives, “His name is John,” God immediately unstopped his ears and He opened his mouth. This was a legitimate miracle, giving a man who was previously deaf the immediate ability to hear and giving this man who was previously unable to speak, words. This was God's power on display, which reminds us of passages like Matthew 19:26, “with God all things are possible,” or Genesis 18:14, “Is anything too difficult for God.”

And what this also was, was yet another example, as we've seen now three times in this text, of God making good on His promise, following through on fulfilling what He had previously stated in His Word. Go back with me again to Luke 1:20, go back in the narrative here to territory we covered many, many weeks ago at this point. But Luke at Luke 1:20, again this is Gabriel speaking to Zechariah, we're still back in the temple in Jerusalem here, and he says, “And behold you shall be silent and unable to speak,” and then get this word, “until the day when these things take place.” What was the angel saying there? He was saying that Zechariah's deafness and his muteness wouldn't go on forever, it was, rather, temporary. It would ultimately come to an end, those conditions would come to an end in their proper time. And with the birth of this baby boy and Zechariah's response of faith in saying “His name is John,” that proper time had come. And just as the angel Gabriel, speaking for God, had said would happen, Zechariah's mouth was opened and his tongue was loosed. This was a promise fulfilled.

So there is this response of the crowd who marveled, there is this divine response in opening Zechariah's mouth and loosening his tongue, and then there is this third response which is Zechariah's response. We see that at the end of verse 64. Speaking of the priest, Luke here records, “And he began to speak, blessing God.” Note how profound those words are and how profound that description of Zechariah is. He has been unable to speak for nine months, he has had to bottle it all in, he has had to hold it all back like water behind a dam. And what's the first thing he does when he regains the ability to speak? He blesses God, he praises God, praise to the God of heaven and earth is now flowing out of him. We are going to see it next time when we get to the section of his prophecy and the verses that follow, but what I'd like us to do here is reflect on something for just a moment. This is ‘thought’ experiment time, okay? If the Lord were to take something away from you today as a way of bringing discipline upon you as His child, and if the thing that He took away from you was something that you had until today taken much for granted, like your ability to hear or speak or smell or taste, or your ability to see a certain loved one or embrace that loved one, or your ability to go certain places or enjoy certain freedoms -- and if the Lord took that away and the Lord then chose to give back to you that very thing, what would your reaction be, having now that thing that was previously taken away? Would you grumble? Complain? Would you accuse the Lord of being unjust and unfair in taking that thing away in the first place? Would you follow the pattern of Job's wife (remember her?) who says to her husband when he had something taken away, you should just curse God and die? Or would you praise God? Would you bless His name, and follow the example of Job himself who lost much? And what did he say in Job 1:21? “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord.” Zechariah didn't grumble or complain. Zechariah didn't finger-point or fist-shake, rather Zechariah praised God, he blessed God. His reaction here as a man who had learned his lesson under the divine hand of God is a model of faithfulness to all believers of all generations.

And his response we see brought on a further response to all who were there for this occasion. That brings us to our seventh point which would be “The Fearful Perplexity.” Look at verses 65-66, it says, “And fear came on all those living around them, and all these matters were being talked about in all the hill country of Judea. And all who heard these things put them in their heart saying, ‘What then will this child be?’ ” So first there you see there was fear. That would be a normal reaction when you see the mighty hand of God move. Whether it's the deafening crash of a thirty foot wave or the loud clap of thunder or the blinding brightness of a nearby lightning strike or wind knocking down trees or power poles like was happening last week, these events that we see here were brought about by God and caused by God. And whenever we see God moving with His mighty hand, it does bring, it ought to bring a sense of awe and reverence and fear at the power and might of God. In fact, even secular, non-believing people, when something like an earthquake or hurricane comes, what do they call it? An act of God. They have no other title for it because it is true. That was the case here. This gathering of relatives and neighbors who were there to meet Elizabeth's new baby boy, they knew, they knew that God had orchestrated each of these events, from the angelic visitation, to the sealing of Zechariah's lips, to Elizabeth's pregnancy, to the birth of this child, to the circumstances surrounding this child being named John. It all evoked fear because it was obvious that something transcendent, something other worldly, something that couldn't otherwise be explained by human reasoning or human faculties was now happening in their midst. God was clearly carrying out His plans in their midst and it left them in this state of holy awe and awestruck wonder and fear.

Well, it not only caused fear, we see in verse 65 it also caused discussion. It says, “And all these matters were being talked about in all the hill country of Judea.” Of course, they were being talked about. It's not too often that you hear about angels visiting earth in your backyard. It's not too often that you hear about 70 or maybe 80-year-old women becoming pregnant and delivering healthy children. It's not too often you hear about a deaf and mute man immediately being given the ability to hear and to speak. And this was, they knew, a once-in-their-lifetime event, that the once promised, long promised Messiah of Israel was now on the way. So of course, they were talking, of course, this was a topic of conversation. What else was there to talk about?

And then we see this in verse 66, there was heart level contemplation. “All who heard these things put them in their heart saying, ‘What then will this child be?’ ” Just like Mary later would ponder in her heart, Luke 2:19, what the shepherds from the field told her, this gathering of friends and relatives of Elizabeth were doing the same. They now believed, they believed that something special was happening. They were treasuring these things in their heart. They now believed that Elizabeth and Zechariah were telling the truth, that this child really was named John and that something clearly extraordinary was going to and would happen through him. But what was that thing? What were the implications? Who was this child? What would he be?

Well, whoever he was going to be, whatever he would become, (and we're going to learn much more about what he would become in the next two sermons as we finish Luke 1) what we learn at the end of verse 66 is something very important about this child. “For the hand of the Lord was indeed with him.” That's our eighth and final point for this morning, which is literally for alliteration's sake, “The Final Point,” which is that the hand of the Lord was with this newborn child, John. That's a common expression in the Scriptures, both the Old and the New Testaments, to describe God's powerful presence—the hand of the Lord was with so-and-so. And the point being made here by Luke is that whether he was preaching in the wilderness or preaching a message of repentance or baptizing sinners or standing up to King Herod, which he would do later, the hand of the Lord was indeed always with John. He was constantly supported by the power of the Lord. And what this is, is masterful storytelling by Luke. See, so far in our text for today Luke has just been laying out the narrative. He's like a dad with his child on his knee, reading a story to that child, just recounting the various historical details as he lays them out from point to point to point, telling the story. But with these words that I've just read to you where it says, “For the hand of the Lord is indeed with him,” it's like the dad now turning to the child and giving his editorial comment. It's not just narrative now, it's editorializing, it's explaining. Luke is doing this with intentionality here to draw our attention to something very significant about the person and the ministry of John, which is that the hand of God was with him.

As we start to land the plane this morning it's important to note that as much as it seems that this account that we've been in here in Luke 1:57-66 is about Elizabeth giving birth in her old age or this marveling crowd or Zechariah's tongue being loosed, that's actually not ultimately what this is about. What Luke has just reminded us in this ending part of verse 66 where it says, “For the hand of the Lord was indeed with him,” he's telling us that this account is all about God. I mean, think about it. Zechariah was a priest of God, Gabriel was an angel of God, Elizabeth was a child of God, Mary calls herself a slave of God and John would be the forerunner to the arrival of the Son of God. What's the common denominator, the common thread? God. This is about God. That's what Luke is drawing out for us in this little aside at the end of verse 66, that “the hand of the Lord was with him,” and that's because this whole account ultimately is about God and His perfect plans and purposes.

As we close here, just a reminder. I'm not only a preacher, only a teacher up here. I hope you aren't perceiving me as just some kind of dispenser of data behind this pulpit, you know, here are your ten verses, now go be warmed and be filled, have a great week. No, I'm a pastor and I'm your pastor. And I bring that up because I want to give you some pastoral encouragement as we close, having just seen what we saw here at the end of verse 66. I know that many of you here in our church, here in our body, are going through various trials and matters and difficulties and various things that may be hard to think about and hard to talk about right now. I know that many in our body here are going through financial trials, I know that there are marital difficulties in our church and medical uncertainty, and I know there is anxiety and worry and distress and fear, the loss of a loved one, estrangement from a loved one.

If nothing else, what I hope you will take away this morning is this, that the same hand of the Lord that was with John the Baptist, admittedly in a unique way for a unique man who had a unique ministry, that same hand of the Lord who was with him is also with you. If you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ here this morning, you can know confidently that the hand of the Lord is with you. How can I know that? How can I say that? How can we know that? How can we know anything? We know it from Scripture, God's very breathed-out word and Scripture tells us, Job 12:10, “In God's hand is the life of every living thing.” Psalm 145:16 says, “You open Your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing.” Isaiah 41:10, God says, “Surely I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.” And of course, if you have put your faith in Jesus Christ, you remember the words of our Lord Himself in John 10:27 where He says, “My sheep hear My voice and I know them and they follow Me and I give eternal life to them and they will never perish, ever, and no one will snatch them out of My hand.” You are secure in His hand, you are supplied for by His hand, He will uphold you with His hand, He will never remove that hand, He will never allow you to stumble off the narrow path He has appointed for you because of that hand. I hope that's an encouragement to all here who are truly brothers and sisters in Christ, that the hand of the Lord is with you, just as it was for John the Baptist.

With that, let's close in a word of prayer. God, we thank You for this time together in Your Word. I pray that last word that the hand of the Lord was with John the Baptist would be an encouragement and an encouraging reminder to those who have put their faith in Jesus Christ, that we can't be plucked from Your hand. Your hand upholds us, Your hand will sustain us and Your hand will carry us to the very end. What a praise, what a comforting truth that is. God, I do pray, though, also that if there is someone here who does no know You, somebody who is deceived or someone who is open in their rebellion and their unbelief, I pray that You would chase them down. I pray that You would not give them false assurance or allow them to have false assurance. I pray that they would understand that they don't have Your protective hand, that they are dead in their sin, that they are acting in rebellion, that they are facing Your wrath, Your holy wrath which is to come on all who disbelieve and unbelieve. God, I pray that they would put their faith in Jesus Christ, put all of their hope and trust in what He has done for them on the cross and be saved. God, we thank You for the precious promises of Your Word, may You be glorified in our lives today and every day. In Jesus' name, amen.