GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
LUKE 1:64-66
I will be traveling on Friday. Please accept devotions for today and Friday, and God bless you!
64 Immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue was set free, and he began to speak, praising God. 65 Fear fell on all their neighbors, and all through the hill country of Judea people were talking about these things. 66 Everyone who heard about this wondered about this in their hearts, saying, “What then is this child going to be?” For the hand of the Lord was with him.
The word translated “immediately” here is parachrema (παραχρῆμα). Luke uses this word thirteen times (out of seventeen) in connection with miracles of healing (or the reverse, sudden disease or death). He is using it as a keen observer of medical phenomena, asking: Did this set in gradually over several minutes or hours, or was it immediate, as when a splinter is drawn out and relief is instantaneous? It is to Zechariah’s credit that the first words out of his mouth were praises to God. He might have whined and complained that this had really been a tough ordeal, but he knew better. It wasn’t time for doubts or complaints. It was time to worship the Most High God.
The news spread. People wondered what kind of man this baby John going to grow up to become. Verses 65-66 don’t make it into our Advent preaching very often (there’s so much else to preach on!) but look at those verses again now. The people were filled with reverent fear. The news spread through everyone’s lips all through the hill country of Judea. Everyone who heard about it thought about it. They wondered, “What then is this child going to be?” These events were a sign that God was carrying out some powerful event. And some people were already beginning to wonder whether it was time for the Messiah to come, at long last.
How shall we take: “The hand of the Lord was with him”? The two possibilities are that this is about Zechariah, or about John. We could take it to mean Zechariah because he was filled with the Holy Spirit and he had begun to prophesy. However, it’s clear from the context (especially the next verse, 1:68) that this is about John himself. Even as a baby and as a boy, people saw that the Lord was with him. We can’t make a list of likely details as to what this looked like. It would be dangerous to insist that it means one thing or another. Why? Because we would be binding hearts about something the Scriptures say nothing. We simply need to accept that this was the conclusion people made. Is that a conclusion people might make about you? “Wow—she’s a Christian, and you just know that she trusts in God, and God is with her.” May it be something we strive for—to put our faith into practice every day, every way that we can.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
LUKE 1:67-71
67 His father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied, saying,
We should note that the Holy Spirit took declared that Zechariah was prophesying as he spoke. The first Zechariah spoke about redemption as the return of the exiles, “I will signal for them and gather them in. Surely I will redeem them; they will be as numerous as before” (Zechariah 10:8). But not this second prophet Zechariah declares that such a redemption is merely a faint picture of greater things to come. Through Christ, the whole world is ransomed, not just one nation from another, but all nations from the power of the devil and from sin and death itself.
68 “Praise the Lord, the God of Israel,
for he has come and redeemed his people.
Zechariah understood that the coming of his son John meant that soon would follow the coming of the Lord’s Christ. So the Lord, the God of Israel, is the one “who has come.” The purpose of the coming of Christ was to redeem his people, so these two things, the coming and the redeeming, were the very first things Zechariah proclaimed as soon as his voice returns.
69 He has raised up for us a horn of salvation
in the house of his servant David,
70 (as he promised through his holy prophets long ago),
71 that we should be saved from our enemies,
and from the hand of all who hate us—
The “horn of salvation” is a phrase used by David (Psalm 18:2; 2 Samuel 22:3). It’s used there as the counterpoint to shield. In a man’s hand, a horn is a musical instrument, but that’s not what David or Zechariah mean. They’re talking about a horn still sitting on the head of a charging bull. It’s a savage offensive weapon, powerful and deadly (Exodus 21:28-32). “In majesty he is like a firstborn bull; his horns are the horns of a wild ox. With them he will gore the nations, even those at the ends of the earth” (Deuteronomy 33:17). This powerful and dangerous weapon is Jesus. Raised up from the house of David, Jesus came to destroy the work of the devil; to pulverize every one of the devil’s strongholds and defenses.
Some of Jesus’ followers thought he would come and be such a savage horn of destruction against the Romans, or the Pharisees, or someone. Even at his ascension, they asked, “Are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6). But the enemies he came to destroy were not the Romans, or the Pharisees or Sadducees, or any human group. The devil, the grave, and sin—these are the enemies from whom we’ve been saved. These are the ones that still war against us in their death throes, but we have Christ, and so we have nothing to fear, not even the grave. Through Jesus, we have the promise of the resurrection and the certainty of eternal life.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Archives by Wisconsin Lutheran Chapel: http://www.wlchapel.org/worship/daily-devotion/
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota