67 And his father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied, saying,
68 “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has visited to help and has redeemed his people, 69 and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, 70 just as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from earliest times— 71 salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all those who hate us, 72 to show mercy to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant, 73 the oath that he swore to Abraham our father, to grant us 74 that we, being rescued from the hand of our enemies, could serve him without fear 75 in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. 76 And so you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High, for you will go on before the Lord to prepare his ways, 77 to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins, 78 because of the merciful compassion of our God by which the dawn will visit to help us from on high, 79 to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to direct our feet into the way of peace.”
80 And the child kept growing and becoming strong in spirit, and was in the wilderness until the day of his public appearance to Israel.
Luke 1:67-80
“Zechariah’s Song: Why Do You Need God? (Part 2)”[1] by Alistair Begg
Somebody’s Going to Pay for This
A few years ago I was driving my brother-in-law’s car round the streets of Glasgow in Scotland with my nieces in the back seat. Suddenly one of them said, “Uncle Alistair, you’ve gone wrong!” And while I was trying to rectify the situation, I crashed into a van. I’ll never forget—this fellow jumped out immediately, and he looked at his van and he looked at me, and he said, “Somebody’s going to pay for this.”
That was the first (though not the only) phrase out of his mouth, and he was right. A wrong had been done. A hurt had been caused. The mark had been missed. And somebody was going to have to pay in order for things to be put right. Someone would have to bear a cost.
And someone will have to bear the cost for our sin. The mighty God who is really there does not just wink at sin. He cares about how our sin spoils the world he made, and spoils the lives of those he made. He cares about how we reject his authority and seek to sit in his place. It makes him justifiably angry. He does not just let people off. He is a God who loves justice and brings justice, and so there is a punishment to be faced—there is a price to be paid.
The problem that confronts us is that we are unable to rectify the situation. We must pay the price—unless someone comes from the outside who does not share our predicament and who can pay the price to free us from the consequences of our actions; as if my brother-in-law had turned up as that fellow in the van said, “Somebody’s going to pay for this,” and had dug into his wallet and paid what it would cost to restore that man’s van and satisfy his justified anger. When it comes to our sin, that someone can only be God himself. We need God to come and we need God to help.
And this brings us back to Zechariah, because he is singing about the truth that God has done just that. He has turned up. And he has turned up to redeem us—to pay the price, bear the cost, of freeing us and restoring us so that we can know him and live with him again, forever.
A Question of Definition
At the heart of understanding the first Christmas, and why it is such good news, is an understanding of the nature of your predicament. And that involves accepting the nature of sinfulness—your sinfulness; and the seriousness of sin—your sin.
In other words, it involves letting God, not contemporary society, define sin. I read in a survey recently that only 17% of the American population refer to God in any way when asked to define “sin.” 83% see sin as merely something negative that’s had an impact on their life that they need to get cleaned up. And so they’ll never understand what God was doing at the first Christmas. He did not come merely to help us put the bits and pieces of our lives together in a way that gives us wholeness and stability. He did not come to provide a little religious Energizer battery that would make us nicer people. He did not even come just to make your life happy.
He came because you were drowning, pulled down by the weight of your sin and miles from the shore. If you’re drowning, it doesn’t help you for someone to come along in a boat and say, Come on now, thrash a little more. Try a littleharder. Swim a bit better. You’ll be able to get yourself out of that mess. No, you need someone to reach down their hand, grasp yours, and pull you up to safety and take you to the shore. And if you know you are drowning, you don’t refuse the person whose hand is offered to you. You grab it, and you splutter your gratitude.
And that is what Zechariah is doing. He knows that his son, John, will “go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him, to give his people the knowledge of salvation”—of rescue—“through the forgiveness of their sins.” He knows that John will spend his life saying, Hold on. God is coming. And God will rescue you. And so Zechariah sings, just as everyone who grasps what God was doing at the first Christmas sings:
“Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come to his people and redeemed them.” God was moving into the neighborhood to free people from their sins and to fill up the space between himself and sinful people—sinful you and me.
[1] Alistair Begg, Christmas Playlist: Four Songs That Bring You to the Heart of Christmas (The Good Book Company, 2016), 35–38.
67 And his[1] father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied, saying,
68 “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has visited to help and has redeemed his people, 69 and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, 70 just as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from earliest times— 71 salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all those who hate us, 72 to show mercy to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant, 73 the oath that he swore to Abraham our father, to grant us 74 that we, being rescued from the hand of our enemies, could serve him without fear 75 in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. 76 And so you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High, for you will go on before the Lord to prepare his ways, 77 to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins, 78 because of the merciful compassion of our God by which the dawn will visit to help us from on high, 79 to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to direct our feet into the way of peace.”
80 And the child kept growing and becoming strong in spirit, and was in the wilderness until the day of his public appearance to Israel.
Luke 1:67-80
“Zechariah’s Song: Why Do You Need God? (Part 1)”[2] by Alistair Begg
Song lyrics seem to have a way of embedding themselves in our memory, so that as soon as we hear the first line, we know the song. Growing up in the sixties, my memorable first lines include:
“When I get older, losing my hair …”
“Hello darkness, my old friend …”
“Hey mister, that’s me up on the jukebox …”
“There is a house in New Orleans …”
How did you score on knowing the songs? (If you’re young enough to be struggling with these classics, google the first line to give you the song.)
When it comes to first lines, the opening words of the song of Zechariah deserve to be in anyone’s list of memorable ones. While Mary’s is the first song recorded in Luke’s Gospel, hers was not the first miraculous pregnancy to be described in Luke’s Gospel. That belonged to her relative Elizabeth. She and her husband, Zechariah, had been “childless because Elizabeth was not able to conceive, and they were both very old” (Luke 1:7). But before the angel Gabriel visited Mary, he had visited Zechariah to announce that his wife would fall pregnant, and that their son, John, would grow up “to make ready a people prepared for the Lord” (v 17). John would be the warm-up act for the main event.
And that’s what Zechariah sang about as his son lay in his arms. It’s a song whose first line contains two words that lie at the heart of the Christmas message…. Here are the two words: “come” and “redeemed.”
A Visit with a Purpose
God has come to visit. He is moving into the neighborhood. But why? To redeem. If you want to understand the first Christmas—if you want to grasp the purpose of God’s visit—you need to understand redemption. So what is that about?
“Redemption” is the act of providing a payment to free someone. And Zechariah is explaining God’s work in his present situation by referencing God’s work in the past—in the time of the exodus, a millennium and a half before. It was the time when (to give an extremely cut-down summary!) God’s people Israel were stuck in Egypt, enslaved by Pharaoh. Despite Pharaoh’s resistance, God freed them through a series of plagues sent against the inhabitants of Egypt. The last plague was the worst—death. The oldest son in each family would die, God warned. But God also provided a way out—through the death of a lamb. The lamb died, the people who trusted God lived, and Pharaoh, devastated by what his decision to resist God had done to his nation, let them go. God had “redeemed” his people.
Well, that is great, and it is an exciting historical story—but what does it have to do with Zechariah, and what does it have to do with you and me?! Everything, actually—because, Zechariah says, God is redeeming people all over again. Not from enslavement to an Egyptian king, but from enslavement to their own sin—to our own sin. We need, he says, “forgiveness of [our] sins.”
What Zechariah is referring to here is not being freed from a material plight, but a moral plight. “Sin” is an unpopular word, but it is a word the Bible unashamedly uses, and it is a word which explains both what we see within us and what we see around us. Sin is essentially me putting myself where God deserves to be—in the place of authority and majesty, running my own life, charting my own course. It is saying to God, whether very politely or extremely angrily, I don’t want you, I won’t obey your commands, I will not listen to your word. I will call the shots.
Literally, to “sin” means to miss the mark. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the World Darts Championships. One of the main competitions is held in England each Christmas. Two competitors stand nearly eight feet from a board 18 inches wide and throw darts at it. Thousands turn up to watch them. And the worst thing the players can do is to miss the board—to throw short or to throw wide. These contestants are wonderful at it, and it sounds very easy—but if you’ve never tried it, have a go. It’s not as simple as it looks!
And the Bible says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Everyone throws and misses when it comes to glorifying—to recognizing, pleasing, loving and following—the God who made us, who sustains us, and who gives us everything we have. You can miss the target by an inch, or by a mile, but no one fails to miss. Often, we don’t much care whether we miss or not—we are not even aiming at living in a way that pleases God, but rather one that pleases ourselves. But even when we do care and do try to obey God, we still miss. Even on my best day, I miss the mark, the target. I sin. Sin is something we choose, and yet sin is also something that traps us. We can’t stop, even if we want to. Like a bad habit that proves impossible to break, we’re enslaved to what we’ve chosen.
Spoiled and Separated
And sin is not merely a bad habit. In fact, sin is our greatest problem. People suggest that our greatest problem is a lack of education. Or a lack of social welfare. Or a lack of self-esteem. But if that’s the case, then why are family gatherings at Christmas so often occasions of discord and conflict, even for the most academically gifted, well-off, personally confident people? Why is this not all fixed by now? Why is it not all sorted out? It is not fundamentally a lack of education or welfare or self-esteem that spoils things. It is sin. Sin causes alienation from others. It causes brokenness at the hands of others—and perhaps you are a victim of something that has been done to you. It causes conflict with others—not only wars on a world stage, but closer to home, conflict within our hearts, our houses, our marriages. The lies we tell. The envy we feel. The anger we show. Each time we miss the mark, we spoil our own lives and the lives of those around us.
But this “spoiled-ness” is not the most serious aspect of sin—because my sin has crippled my ability to know God and to live with God. I can’t know God. I can’t make my way back to God because I am trapped in my sin, enslaved by my sin. I’m stuck with being separated from God—both in my present and in my eternal future. We’re cosmically stuck, hopelessly separated.
The singer, Sting, once sang:
“Everyone I know is lonely And God’s so far away And my heart belongs to no one, So now sometimes I pray Please take the space between us And fill it up some way.”
I often hear people say that death is the great equalizer. The idea is that in eternity, all bets are off and, no matter what we believed or how we lived, the scale is reset. The Bible has a very different view. One early Christian, Paul, put it this way: “[God] has set a day when he will judge the world” (Acts 17:31). It will be absolutely fair and it will be completely final. There will be no redos. We have separated ourselves from God’s love because we have sinned. And so we will be separated from God for all eternity, suffering the punishment of eternity in the place Jesus called “hell”—a place separated from God and everything that is good.
Actually, this view of eternity—one that includes judgment—is the one that best fits our sense of justice. Whenever we hear on the news about some terrible human act and think, Why doesn’t God do something about that? we are asking him to judge. The Bible says that he will. All sin will be judged, and all sin will be punished by separation. That is very good news when we suffer at the hands of sinful people, and deeply troubling news because we ourselves are sinful people. Sin is our greatest problem, because it separates us from the God whom we were made to know and designed to enjoy. But in another sense, the truth about sin is also our greatest insight, because it explains life as we experience it. There is a mighty, loving God who made us—and so we are capable of acts of greatness and kindness. But we reject that God’s authority—and so we are capable of selfishness and evil. We were made to enjoy life with God eternally, but we all choose to live in defiance of him. Hence the flatness, the “blues” that come after Christmas as once again we get beyond the busyness and distraction of the festivities and think deep down, I don’t have the answer. There’s not a gift I could buy or a gift I can receive that seems to satisfy. There’s not a vacation I could enjoy, there’s not a book I could read, or a piece of music I could listen to that will actually fill the hole. When we feel this, we are really saying, God, please take the space between us, and fill it up some way. We are asking God to redeem us from the sin we have chosen—from the slavery we cannot escape and the debt we cannot repay.
17 Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come. 18 And all these things are from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ, and who has given us the ministry of reconciliation, 19 namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. 20 Therefore we are ambassadors on behalf of Christ, as if God were imploring you through us. We beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21 He made the one who did not know sin to be sin on our behalf, in order that we could become the righteousness of God in him.
That baby in the manger came as our ultimate substitute. Everything he would do, he would do on our behalf, for our salvation.
For once I was excited to go to Spanish class. Word had gotten out that our regular Spanish teacher was sick, and we would have a substitute. I had also heard something about the substitute: she wasn’t a Spanish teacher. I thought I had hit the jackpot. We would probably do nothing in class and would surely be assigned no homework. For the first time in my life, I rushed to Spanish class.
My apologies to any substitutes who may read this, but I grew up expecting very little from the substitute teachers who filled in for our regular instructors. They tended to be unprepared (probably because they were called at the last minute) and not very knowledgeable (probably because they were filling outside of their area of expertise), and because of these things, they were often nervous and ill at ease.
The Bible clearly teaches that Jesus came as our substitute, but in hearing that, you can throw out all experiences you have had with substitute teachers. Jesus came as the ultimate substitute to stand in our place, but he came to live infinitely better than any of us could ever live on our own. One of the ways the Bible talks about this is to call Jesus the “second Adam.” It is a provocative title, worth examining.
The first Adam was created by God and placed in a perfect world, in perfect relationship with God. Adam literally had it all: no earthly needs unmet and no separation between him and God. But in an act of outrageous rebellion against God, he took his life into his own hands, stepped outside God’s boundaries, and did exactly what God had warned him not to do. He had it all, but he miserably failed, and when he did, sin, sickness, and suffering entered the world. Like fine china thrown on the pavement, the perfection of the world shattered. Adam now lived under God’s judgment, and the world groaned in brokenness.
What the world cried out for was a substitute, but not any substitute would do. This substitute needed to be special in every way, so that he would not fail the test as the first Adam had. He had to be perfect in righteousness and mighty in power, or he too would fail. No one on earth could meet the requirements, so God sent the only One who was up to the task, the only One who would not succumb to the pressure and fail the test. God sent the one person whom he knew was qualified to be the second Adam: his Son.
Everything Jesus did, from the first moment of his birth until his ascension to the right hand of his Father, he did as our substitute. What he did in every situation, location, and relationship, he did in our place. Every decision he made, every temptation he faced, every trial or moment of suffering he endured, was on our behalf. But this is vital to understand: he never failed one single test. He faced all the ravages of life in this fallen world without sinning in any way. He was the perfect substitute. And because Jesus was the perfect substitute, on the cross he made the perfectly acceptable sacrifice, and because he did, he satisfied God’s requirement, and the penalty for our sin was lifted. Jesus, the second Adam, is our first and only hope in life and death. Because of his substitution we are redeemed. God sent One in our place who would do infinitely better than we could ever do, because our salvation depended upon it. The Christmas story is the most glorious stand-in story ever!
[1] Paul David Tripp, Come, Let Us Adore Him: A Daily Advent Devotional (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2017).
2 The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone. 3 You have multiplied the nation; you have increased its joy; they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as they are glad when they divide the spoil. 4 For the yoke of his burden, and the staff for his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, 5 For every boot of the tramping warrior in battle tumult and every garment rolled in blood will be burned as fuel for the fire. 6 For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. 7 Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this.
He, through whom time was made, was made in time; and He, older by eternity than the world itself, was younger in age than many of His servants in the world.
He, who made man, was made man; He was given existence by a mother whom He brought into existence; He was carried in hands which He formed; He nursed at breasts which He filled; He cried like a babe in the manger in speechless infancy – this Word without which human eloquence is speechless!
Application & Challenge
For some people, the Christmas season is full – full of family, friends, joy, activity, and so on. But, for others, it feels empty. If we have the hope that comes from faith in Jesus, we know what it is to have “walked in darkness” and the hope that comes from having “seen a great light” – we know what it is to receive “good news of great joy” (Luke 2:10).
Pick at least one of the following ways to reach out to those who need the Light shined in their lives:
Send a Christmas card with a hand-written note to someone who needs some encouragement or who may be feeling alone. Include a Bible verse to point them to Jesus.
Call or text someone who has lost a loved one over the past year. Let them know you love them and that Jesus loves them, too. If they feel like sharing, listen more than you talk.
[1] St. Augustine, Thomas Comerford Lawler (translator, editor), Sermons for Christmas and Epiphany (The Newman Press: Mahwah, NJ, 1952).
What John the Baptist did for Israel, Advent can do for us. Don’t let Christmas find you unprepared. I mean spiritually unprepared. Its joy and impact will be so much greater if you are ready!
That you might be prepared…
First, meditate on the fact that we need a Savior. Christmas is an indictment before it becomes a delight. It will not have its intended effect until we feel desperately the need for a Savior. Let these short Advent meditations help awaken in you a bittersweet sense of need for the Savior.
Second, engage in sober self-examination. Advent is to Christmas what Lent is to Easter. “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!” (Psalm 139:23–24) Let every heart prepare him room… by cleaning house.
Third, build God-centered anticipation and expectancy and excitement into your home—especially for the children. If you are excited about Christ, they will be too. If you can only make Christmas exciting with material things, how will the children get a thirst for God? Bend the efforts of your imagination to make the wonder of the King’s arrival visible for the children. Fourth, be much in the Scriptures, and memorize the great passages! “Is not my word like fire, says the Lord!” (Jeremiah 23:29) Gather ‘round that fire this Advent season. It is warm. It is sparkling with colors of grace. It is healing for a thousand hurts. It is light for dark nights.
[1] John Piper, Good News of Great Joy: Daily Readings for Advent 2013 (Minneapolis, MN: Desiring God, 2013).
Christmas is about the coming of Christ into the world. It’s about the Son of God, who existed eternally with the Father as “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature,” taking on human nature and becoming man (Hebrews 1:3).
It’s about the virgin birth of a child conceived miraculously by the Holy Spirit so that he is the Son of God, not the way you and I are sons of God, but in an utterly unique way (Luke 1:35).
It’s about the coming of a man named Jesus in whom “the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” (Colossians 2:9).
It’s about the coming of the “fullness of time” that had been prophesied by the prophets of old that a ruler would be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2); and a child would be born called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6); and a Messiah, an anointed one, a shoot from the stem of Jesse, a Son of David, a King, would come (Isaiah 11:1–4; Zechariah 9:9).
And, according to Mark 10:45, Christmas is about the coming of the Son of Man who “came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” These words in Mark 10:45, as a brief expression of Christmas, are what I hope God will fix in your mind and heart this Advent. Open your heart to receive the best present imaginable: Jesus giving himself to die for you and to serve you all the rest of eternity. Receive this. Turn away from self-help and sin. Become like little children. Trust him. Trust him. Trust him with your life.
[1] John Piper, The Dawning of Indestructible Joy: Daily Readings for Advent (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2014).
14 Then Yahweh God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, you will be cursed more than any domesticated animal and more than any wild animal. On your belly you shall go and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. 15 And I will put hostility between you and between the woman, and between your offspring and between her offspring; he will strike you on the head, and you will strike him on the heel.”
Genesis 3:14-15
12 Because of this, just as sin entered into the world through one man, and death through sin, so also death spread to all people because all sinned. 13 For until the law, sin was in the world, but sin is not charged to one’s account when there is no law. 14 But death reigned from Adam until Moses even over those who did not sin in the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type of the one who is to come. 15 But the gift is not like the trespass, for if by the trespass of the one, the many died, by much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, multiply to the many. 16 And the gift is not as through the one who sinned, for on the one hand, judgment from the one sin led to condemnation, but the gift, from many trespasses, led to justification. 17 For if by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through the one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one, Jesus Christ. 18 Consequently therefore, as through one trespass came condemnation to all people, so also through one righteous deed came justification of life to all people. 19 For just as through the disobedience of the one man, the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one, the many will be made righteous. 20 Now the law came in as a side issue, in order that the trespass could increase, but where sin increased, grace was present in greater abundance, 21 so that just as sin reigned in death, so also grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Back in Genesis 3, before sin had stained God’s good creation, Adam and Eve enjoyed fellowship with God in the garden. The first couple was free to enjoy God, and they were given dominion over His creation. However, Satan (through the serpent) deceived Eve into eating from the only tree that God had declared off limits. Adam went along with his wife and disobeyed God, and this led to God’s curse on creation. In today’s reading God declared that there would be war between the offspring of the serpent and the offspring of the woman. Yet, in the midst of this devastation, God gave a hope-filled promise: Eve’s offspring would “bruise” the serpent’s head and ultimately prevail.
Sin and death continued to reign long after Eve and her children died, and it looked as if God’s promise in Genesis 3 was in jeopardy. Even Israel’s greatest heroes of the faith could not overcome sin completely. But things were about to change with the birth of Christ. As a great, great, great grandchild of Eve, He would fulfill God’s long-standing promise. The head of the serpent would soon be crushed through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.
Application & Challenge
If you are in Christ, you are familiar with promises made in Scripture that give hope. But there are many who do not know Him. Some say that it is judging to discern whether or not a person is saved or lost, but it could mean the difference between eternal life or death – if someone shares the gospel with them.
Think of one person who you think does not know Jesus or might not know Him that you will see in within the next few days.
First, pray for them and ask God to show Himself to them through His Word and save them.
Then, pray for God to provide someone to share His gospel with the person.
Finally, thank God that He has sent you to share the gospel with them and ask Him to provide an opportunity and courage to share Him with them!
[1] David Platt, To Us a Son is Given: A Daily Reading Guide for Advent (Birmingham, AL: Radical, Inc., 2017), 21-22.
13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly army, praising God and saying,
14 “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among people with whom He is pleased!”
Luke 2:13-14
8 And when he took the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each one of whom had a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. 9 And they were singing a new song, saying,
“You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because You were slaughtered, and bought people for God by Your blood from every tribe and language and people and nation, 10 and made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they will reign on the earth.”
The angels sang because the everlasting Father had come to extend arms of redeeming grace to all who would give their hearts to him.
It is a wonderful, mysterious, hard-to-grasp, and beyond-the-scope-of-our-normal-reasoning story. But when you get it, when you come to fully understand the purpose and implications of this story, you will sing too. This story’s amazing plot wasn’t written when Mary got pregnant or when prophets began foretelling it or when God announced it after the disastrous rebellion of Adam and Eve. This story is so miraculous in every way that it could have only come out of the mind of God in eternity before the foundations of the earth were laid down by his mighty hand. It points to the divine imagination and screams the power of the divine hand. No man could write this plot and if he did, no man could expedite what he had written. This story is itself an argument for the existence of God and is a portrait of his holy character.
The beautiful world that God had created was now broken and groaning—the direct result of the rebellion of the ones God had made in his own image and had placed his guiding and providing love upon. The evidence of its brokenness was everywhere, from the inner recesses of the hearts of people, to violence and corruption of government, to the existence of plagues and diseases. Sure, there was beauty still to be seen, but the whole world groaned under the weight of its brokenness. It would have been just for God to stay his distance, to let the world quake and groan. It would have been a just response to the arrogant rebellion that brought this brokenness on the world. But in one of the gorgeous mysteries of God’s sovereign grace, he looked on his broken, rebellious world with eyes of mercy.
Yes, God would act decisively, and his actions would be what he had planned in the beginning, but they would be a stunning surprise to every mere mortal. His response would not be condemnation and judgment. His response would not be a meting out of justice. Rather, his response would be intervention and rescue. He would do in grace what the law could never do. He would do in grace what we could never do for ourselves. He would do what philosophers could never conceive, what leaders could never strategize, and what poets could never imagine. He would offer the only thing that would ever address the need and solve the problem. He, himself, would become the greatest, most costly, most transformational gift ever.
God would take on human flesh and invade his sin-broken world with his wisdom, power, glory, and grace. But he wouldn’t descend to a palace. Instead, the Lord Almighty, the Creator, the sovereign King over all things would humble himself and take on the form of servant; he would live on our behalf the life we could have never lived, he would willingly die the death that you and I deserve to die, and he would rise from his tomb as the conqueror of sin and death. He would suffer every single day of his life so that he could, with his life, give grace to rebels, extend love to those who would deny his existence, impart wisdom to those who think they know better, and extend forgiveness to everyone who seeks him. His coming stands as an affirmation that he will not relent, he will not be satisfied until sin and suffering are no more and we are like him, dwelling with him in unity, peace, and harmony forever and ever. It is true that you just can’t write this stuff! The majesty of the patient and forgiving love of this story defies words. The implications of this birth are not only transformational to the cosmos, but also eternal in their extent. This is the story of Jesus, born in a barn in Bethlehem. The Messiah the earth cried for now cries to be held by Mary and will soon cry in torment of the cross of salvation. He came to suffer because he came to save. The angels sang because finally hope had come. Don’t you want to join them?
[1] Paul David Tripp, Come, Let Us Adore Him: A Daily Advent Devotional (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2017).
The word advent refers to the arrival of someone or something important.
The season of Advent (basically the month prior to the celebration of Christmas) brings Titus 2:11-14 to mind:
For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession who are zealous for good works.
That phrase “waiting for our blessed hope” reminds me of those who had long-awaited Jesus’ first coming. It also reminds me of how we should be as we await His return!
We want to give you the opportunity to use this time – when people are trying to focus on and remember hope, peace, joy, and love – to focus on “our great God and Savior Jesus Christ”. Starting on December 1 and going up to Christmas day, we have a Bible passage to read and have curated devotions to help focus our hearts and minds on Jesus.
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11 On the way to Jerusalem he was passing along between Samaria and Galilee. 12 And as he entered a village, he was met by ten lepers, who stood at a distance 13 and lifted up their voices, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” 14 When he saw them he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went they were cleansed. 15 Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice; 16 and he fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan. 17 Then Jesus answered, “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? 18 Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” 19 And he said to him, “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.”[1]
Luke 17:11-19
Greetings Sojourners!
It’s been too long! But I’m glad to be back studying God’s Word with you!
I’ve been writing – just a different sort of writing. As I have said before, I am blessed to be a part of the Masters of Christian Theology program at William Carey University. It has not been easy, but it has been a blessing to me. As bad as I hate to admit it, I have lost a step or two since I was last in school (as a student), but it has been good to grow in my understanding of the Word of God and in theology; it’s even been good to grow as a writer through the (many) research papers.
While I have, unfortunately, been a little more hit-or-miss in the writings here, that is something that I hope will be remedied between now and when I graduate – and definitely beyond if the Lord allows. I have enjoyed our time spent studying Colossians, but we are going to pause that study for the time being. In the meantime, I will shift the writings between now and graduation to dive into passages that fit into and overlap with passages I am diving into either in personal devotional time or in my studies for Christ Community or at Carey.
Even as I look at how to better maximize my time and strategize to use it more effectively, I am thankful to get to be a part of all I get to do. I get to be a follower of Christ. I get to be a husband. I get to be a father. I get to teach and write and serve. I am even thankful for the time I must schedule all these aspects of my life.
This week is a time set aside in America for one to be thankful. The fourth Thursday in November is supposed to be a holiday devoted to celebrating all we have to be thankful for. Since the invention of social media, some challenge themselves to find and commemorate something they are thankful for every day in the month of November. Part of me thinks that it is sad that we need to be reminded to be thankful, but the rest of me knows just how selfish I am and that, left to my own, I will neglect to be grateful. Maybe you don’t need reminding, but I find that I do.
Today, I would like to look with you to God’s Word at a passage that reminded me to be thankful and convicted me of my own lack of thankfulness.
Meeting the Master and Finding Mercy (vv. 11-14)
Any time I study a passage in the latter half of Luke, I cannot help but think of Luke 9:51: When the days drew near for Him to be taken up, He set His face to go to Jerusalem. That phrase “set His face” could also be translated “he steadfastly set his face to go”[2]. This describes Jesus’ attitude and mindset when the end of His life was drawing near, knowing full well that the cross is why He was headed to Jerusalem. You see, He was not caught off-guard by His crucifixion. Luke’s gospel records this as the moment of Jesus “turned to Jerusalem to complete his work through the predicted betrayal, death, and resurrection.”[3]
This is important because it highlights that His sacrifice was willing. The fact that “He set His face” illustrates that He was resolutely focused on getting there. It brings to mind the sort of focus that an Olympic athlete has when preparing to compete. They focus only on things that are necessary to carry out that goal. Jesus, however, did not stop doing what He came to do – seeking and saving the lost (Luke 19:10), which is what He was going to the cross to do! So, the encounters He had with those who needed saving were not random encounters or detours, they were part of His mission.
Jesus and His disciples were, as we saw in Luke 9:51, still “on the way to Jerusalem” (v. 11) when they encountered ten lepers. Leprosy meant that these men would have had to declare that they had leprosy when approaching other people by crying out “Unclean, unclean!” (Leviticus 13:45-46) so that 1) people would not come into contact with the infected person[4] and 2) those concerned with being clean according to the Law would be made aware so they would not become unclean.
Leprosy was a catch-all term in the New Testament that referenced any skin disease from the period, but it is safe to say, regardless of the level of severity, that these men had been ostracized and at a distance from society for some time. They would have been unable to work or socialize with others, even family. They would feel isolated and alone. More than that, they were isolated and alone. When these men saw Jesus, they respectfully kept their distance, but they ceased their cries of “unclean” to cry out to Jesus: “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us” (vv. 12-13).
Time and again, those who are outcast and downcast found their way to Jesus seeking help from Him. These particular outcasts asked Him for mercy. The word translated “mercy” here meant “to have compassion or mercy on a person in unhappy circumstances” or “to be gracious toward [or] bestow kindness”.[5] This request for mercy would have been the same whether they were asking for charity or alms or to be healed, so it is difficult to tell exactly what they were seeking. They found more charity than they could have ever hoped to receive.
No matter what they were seeking, they were likely confused by Jesus’ response. He did not toss them a coin or lay hands on them for healing. He didn’t even make mud and rub it on them (John 9:6) or tell them to bathe in the Jordan (2 Kings 5). He simply told them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” If they had been familiar with the Law, they would have recognized that this was what those who were cleansed of leprosy were told to do in Leviticus 14:1-32 – to go and show themselves to the priest so that he could confirm they were clean and make an offering for their guilt and atonement for their sin. When the text says, “as they went” (v. 14), it shows that the men – all ten of them – departed to go to the priest. They had faith. Or at the very least belief or held to 1st century Judaism.
Nothing miraculous had happened to spark their journey, merely the command of Him from whom they sought mercy. But after they headed out on their journey, the miracle happened. They were cleansed. The sores on their skin were healed, yes, but something more happened. They were cleansed. Those who had just moments before needed to cry out “unclean” when they approached others were made clean by Jesus. They did not need lengthy washings or offerings by a priest because they had been cleansed by the God those priests served. Those ten men’s lives were changed in a moment. But the heart of one was touched more than the other nine.
Gratitude and Grace (vv. 15-19)
I cannot imagine what those men must have felt in their hearts – and in their bodies! It is important for us to look at the distinctions between the one and the nine in this narrative. Before we judge the nine too harshly, it is important to note as we did in v. 14 that they likely were heading exactly where Jesus had told them to go – to the priest. They were being obedient to Jesus and to the Law. The one who turned back would have had a hard time fulfilling that command, though, because he was a Samaritan.
All my life, I have heard the issue with Samaritans oversimplified to say that there was simply a sort of racial tension between Jewish people and those from Samaria. They have a long history of division. The Samaritans are largely the descendants of people brought in to colonize the region when the Assyrians conquered the land.[6] Those inhabitants were later educated in the Law after God had sent lions into the land to attack them (2 Kings 17:25-26) and some intermarrying occurred with the northern tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh.[7] They claimed the same or at least similar beliefs as their Jewish relatives, but they had different holy places and places of worship. So, the tensions over ethnicity are accompanied and highlighted by the religious differences. The Samaritans were not accepted by Jewish people.
A leper would have been ostracized, but a Samaritan leper would have been a total outcast. So, for the Master (v. 13) to show such grace apparently made quite an impact. Ten lepers were cleansed. Nine Jewish former-lepers went to show themselves to the priest like Jesus commanded them. But only one stopped to thank Jesus. In fact, saying that he stopped to thank Jesus is an understatement. Look at what the text says. He saw that he was healed, turned back to where Jesus was, praised God, fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, and thanked Him (vv. 15-16).
Imagine what led this man to have such a reaction – a potentially incurable and infectious skin disease, seeking charity in a foreign land that is hostile to you and your people. Then, he encountered the One from whom mercy could be found. Imagine the feeling when looking down at your hands, expecting them to be covered in sores and boils but seeing clear skin. You would still have to go to present yourself to the priest, but Jesus was still standing there. Being cleared by the priest would mean you could go back to your life, but the One who healed you is right there.
What we see as a display of thankfulness was an act of worship for this man. What does that say for our thankfulness for what God has done for us?
Jesus asked the man some important questions: “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” What can he ask of us?
Jesus knew the man’s heart. He knew what he meant when he asked for mercy. And He knew what drove the man to his face at His feet in praise and thanksgiving. Rather than showing himself before a priest, this man laid himself down at the feet of the Great High Priest. Jesus told the man, “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.”
Amen.
Wrapping Up
I asked you to imagine what the man must have been feeling, but, if you are in Christ, you know. If you are in Christ, you were formerly outcast (Ephesians 2:12). You were formerly not His people (1 Peter 2:10). You were His enemy (Romans 5:10). And you were dead in your sin (Ephesians 2:1-2, Colossians 2:13). Any of those are hopeless, but all of them leaves one desperate and despondent. Or it leaves one callous and defiant (Ephesians 4:17-19).
If that is true of you, does it move you to worship? Does it move you to gratitude? When is the last time that you cast yourself on your face before God and thanked Him for His love and grace and mercy?
Religion does not produce such a reaction.
When John the Baptist sent His disciples to Jesus to make sure He was the Messiah, Jesus answered them by paraphrasing Isaiah 29:18-19 and 35:5-10: “the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have the good news preached to them.” This answer satisfied John, and it points us to who Jesus is and what He does. He is the God who saves! One thing is for sure, dear Sojourner, the ones who can now see or walk who couldn’t before, the ones who were cleansed from their leprosy or given the ability to hear, those who were dead and are now alive – they are grateful! What does it say for me if I am not?
I needed this reminder. It is so easy to forget sometimes what it was to be lost, what it was to be dead in my sins. But there is a Savior who has earned my gratitude. He is worthy of better worship than I can offer.
I urge you to examine your heart – not because tomorrow is the fourth Thursday in November but because encountering Jesus produces a response. Encountering Him either drives us to repent of our sins and put our trust in Him or to vehemently deny Him. There is no middle ground. The good news is that if you find that you are not saved, He is still the God who saves! And I would love to help you encounter Him today.
Just Keith Harris 