Well, are you all ready for Christmas? Shopping done? Wrapping done? Tree up? Decorating done? Christmas cards done? Cooking done? Me, neither. Feel exhausted just thinking about it?
All those jobs that are part of preparing for Christmas can make December a very hectic month. And there is another kind of preparation that is also needed, a kind of preparation that all too easily gets squeezed out in the Christmas rush, a kind of preparation that is much more important in the long run. And that’s a spiritual preparation
When it comes to preparing people for the birth of Jesus, the all-time expert is John the Baptist. Right before Jesus appeared on the scene in Israel to begin his public ministry, John the Baptist had the job of getting the people ready, stirring up expectations. Today you might say he was the warm-up act for a band, although his preparations were much more than just getting a crowd excited.
This morning we are not really going to talk about John the Baptist’s ministry. But when John was just 8 days old, his father, Zechariah, was inspired by the Holy Spirit and made a powerful speech about what God was doing in the birth of Jesus. And I want to look at that speech this morning to help us understand the wonder of what God did for us centuries ago so that we can make our most important preparations.
Our text for this morning is Luke 1:67-79, and that’s on page 58 of the New Testament section of your pew Bible. I’ll invite you to have it open in front of you so that you can refer to it as I talk.
67 Then his father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke this prophecy:
68 "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,
for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them.
69 He has raised up a mighty savior for us
in the house of his servant David,
70 as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old,
71 that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us.
72 Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors,
and has remembered his holy covenant,
73 the oath that he swore to our ancestor, Abraham,
to grant us 74 that we, being rescued from our enemies,
might serve him without fear,
75 in holiness and righteousness
before him all our days.
76 And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;
for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,
77 to give knowledge of salvation to his people
by the forgiveness of their sins.
78 By the tender mercy of our God,
the dawn from on high will break upon us,
79 to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace."
The text begins with God’s preparations for Christmas. What we are going to be celebrating is much more than one nice day, with fancy foods and presents and family time together. We are going to be celebrating is God’s gift of salvation and the presence of His Spirit to bring peace and love and justice to this world. And if God laid this as the foundation, we won’t get very far at all if we try to build something that doesn’t fit in with the start that God made. The foundation is all his. If we try to build something on top of it that doesn’t fit the foundation, it just won’t be very durable.
In the five verses, 68 through 73, Zechariah tells us wonderful things that God had already done. Any one of them could be a sermon by itself. In verse 68, we read that God has looked favorably on his people. Do you know people who have no sense at all that God looks at them favorably? Is it hard to believe that yourself sometimes? This is good news for our world! An awful lot of people have trouble even seeing that God is out there at all, let alone looking at us favorably. But when you know and can feel it in your heart that God is on your side, rooting for you, all the ups and downs of life are much easier to bear. This may be a time to just sit and let God speak his love to your heart. Read his love letter, the Bible. It is always the time to experience God’s favor for yourself. God loves his people. He looks at us with favor.
And still in verse 68, God has redeemed his people. Redemption is what you need when you are stuck. In the Old Testament the word would be used if somebody had lost the farm to the bankers and they needed a whole bunch of money fast to get it back, to redeem it.
Or this word was used when the Israelites were slaves in Egypt and they needed somebody awful big and strong to set them free. And that was their God.
Is there anybody here who feels stuck today? Stuck in depression, stuck in a destructive habit, stuck in family conflict, stuck in a financial mess, stuck in a frustrating job?
When we talk about Jesus coming to earth, there is a whole lot more to this than a cute newborn sleeping in his crib. Zechariah could see that. He could see that God was raising up a mighty savior, someone who can really help. This is a time to call out to the God who can really help.
We talk about the good news of Jesus Christ, not the good views or ideas. It is good news, a powerful and loving and God has intervened in our world. He didn’t just create everything and then walk away. He didn’t just mail us an instruction manual and then leave us to figure it out alone. He came himself into this world with power on the first Christmas day and his Spirit is here today with power. This isn’t something you just sit and talk about. It’s something that has happened and is happening today and something that we need to order our lives around. It’s good news. God is on the move!
What help do you need from God today? Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Don’t be afraid to take the steps of obedience that he speaks to you to guide you out of the wilderness and into a good place. We’re not talking about magic here. We’re talking about God guiding us to build lives that are on solid foundations because they are lived right. In verses 74 and 75, we can read this wonderful promised, “that we, being rescued from our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.” Let that be your vision for this month, to live without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him.
God’s preparations are in place. He has done mighty things to reach out to us. He became a human being. He demonstrated a whole new way of living that is so good and right. His Spirit is here. That’s all good news. We can get so set on just plodding through life on our own power, following a few good rules, trying to do right ourselves, and forget completely this God who is out there reaching out to us, more than able to enter into our lives and stir things up. It is the coming of God into our lives that makes all the difference.
There are many things that we can do to prepare ourselves to receive this wonderful gift. But our text focuses on just one of them. In verses 76 and 77, Zechariah looks at his newborn son, excited over the role that John will have in what God is doing, and he summarizes it this way, “for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins.”
Maybe the most important preparation we can do for Christmas is to take time to learn about his salvation.
Read the story in Genesis about Abraham, so much wanting to have a son, but unable. And God redeemed him from that pit. It didn’t happen instantly. It took years and years. It didn’t happen easily. Abraham’s faith was tested over and over. But God came to Abraham and blessed him with a son, and not only a son, but a son who became one of the great patriarchs of the people of Israel.
Read the story years later when Abraham’s descendants had become slaves in Egypt. Just being one of God’s chosen people doesn’t mean that everything goes easy for you. Abraham’s descendants were slaves in a foreign land. But they called out to God and they dared to follow the leader God gave them, Moses. And Moses dared to speak out that it was time for Pharaoh to let God’s people go. And God redeemed them from slavery.
Centuries went by and the Israelites were again in captivity, under Roman occupation, and calling out to God for deliverance. And God certainly could have just run the Romans out. But their problems went a lot deeper than anything they could blame on the Romans. Their problems were that they had turned their backs on their God and were living self-destructing lives. So instead of a military general he sent his own son, born as a baby. And he took the time to show us the goodness of his heart and his concern to heal and to comfort. And he took the time to show us how we can live a life that is not hurried and pressured by materialism or competition or spoiled by resentments of people who are different. He demonstrated God’s forgiveness to all who came with a humble and contrite heart and he died on the cross to make that forgiveness possible. He brought us a complete salvation.
And everywhere you turn in the Bible you find the stories of God’s salvation, the living God, the active God, the God who steps in, rarely the way we want or when we want, but always with perfect timing, not just to solve today’s problems, but, more importantly, to teach us, to draw us deeper into life and closer to himself.
The most important preparations we can make for Christmas are to fill our minds with the knowledge of salvation, to learn just who this God is and how he works, and to open our hearts for his redemption here and now. Amen
