Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of Jesus Christ from Luke 1:57–80
Some years ago, I had the enormous privilege of officiating at the marriage of a young lady who married a Ghanaian, so parts of the wedding and reception were in Ga, and the clothing was a lot more colorful than what I normally wear, and the singing, the testimonies, and the participation of the family, it made the whole thing wonderfully cosmopolitan, international, partly North American, partly African. Then the babies came along, and in each case there had to be a naming ceremony.
When I was named, there was no naming ceremony. Somebody signed a piece of paper somewhere and it was done, but if you’re from Ghana, I gathered, and speak Ga, then there must be a naming ceremony. So, in both of these cases, the naming ceremony was at their home, and there were Ghanaians coming in from everywhere, and lots of food, and the appropriate people spoke, and all said the appropriate things; very colorful and, once again, you see how cultures are really different about handling the most mundane things.
I mean everybody gets a name, but when you actually start wandering around the world and discovering how people do things differently, just the little business of giving somebody a name looks very different in different cultures. Here, too, in the opening of our text, we begin with a naming ceremony, and I would like to begin by reading Luke 1:57 to the end of the chapter.
“When it was time for Elizabeth to have her baby, she gave birth to a son. Her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown her great mercy, and they shared her joy. On the eighth day they came to circumcise the child, and they were going to name him after his father Zechariah, but his mother spoke up and said, ‘No! He is to be called John.’
They said to her, ‘There is no one among your relatives who has that name.’ Then they made signs to his father, to find out what he would like to name the child. He asked for a writing tablet, and to everyone’s astonishment he wrote, ‘His name is John.’ Immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue was loosed, and he began to speak, praising God.
The neighbors were all filled with awe, and throughout the hill country of Judea people were talking about all these things. Everyone who heard this wondered about it, asking, ‘What then is this child going to be?’ For the Lord’s hand was with him. His father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied:
‘Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come to his people and redeemed them. He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David (as he said through his holy prophets of long ago), salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us, to show mercy to our ancestors and to remember his holy covenant, the oath he swore to our father Abraham: to rescue us from the hand of our enemies, and to enable us to serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.
And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High; for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him, to give his people the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace.’ And the child grew and became strong in spirit; and he lived in the wilderness until he appeared publicly to Israel.”
This is the Word of the Lord.
1. The naming ceremony.
Now in ancient Judaism they didn’t have a naming ceremony for each child, but it wasn’t entirely uncommon, either, and there was a ceremony for the circumcision of each male child. People did gather for that, and if the child was named at that time there was a sort of circumcision and naming event all in one, and there were a lot of people around. It wasn’t merely signing a register. It was an entire service.
It was usually a priest who performed the circumcision, and of course at the time that was not just a naming ceremony. It was an indication that the child was being welcomed into the covenant community of Israel. It was a ceremony with spectacular religious overtones rather than just familial naming overtones.
Elizabeth now has her baby, this elderly woman who shouldn’t have been pregnant at all by normal calculations of age, but she has her baby, and this child is a son. From the point of view of the culture, this means that she has been shown great mercy. Not to have a child was, for her, a matter not only of disappointment, but almost disgrace, but now, at the end of her life, she has a child, and her neighbors rejoice with her in what is from their cultural perspective the removal of the disgrace and certainly the removal of a great deal of pain.
And on the eighth day, as prescribed by the law, they come to circumcise the child, and again there are naming heritages, “So-and-so, son of so-and-so; so-and-so, son of so-and-so,” and one of the names that was very common to give to a boy in those days was the name of the father or of the grandfather, equivalent to our Bob Jr. or the like, or Bob III, or the like.
Zechariah, the father, was in this case an honorable man, a rather senior saint with priestly heritage and time served in the temple. Not every priest got that privilege. It depended on a throwing of dice, really, in effect. It was a choosing of lot to find out which priest from each family would serve in this way. This old, honorable man has served. Why not name the boy Zechariah Jr.?
But, of course, his mother and the father, who, at this point, is still dumb from the angel’s striking him dumb when the announcement of the birth was first given to him earlier on in the chapter, they have obviously conversed back and forth with notes. For nine months he has not been able to speak. She knows what has gone on. Nobody else does.
The friends and neighbors make an appeal that simply reflects the cultural expectations of the day. “There’s nobody in your family with the name of John! That’s not done!” You’re expected to have certain in-law names or descent names or the like.” In many cultures it is like that, but he takes a writing tablet and he simply writes out the words, “His name is John.” The name itself means the Lord has shown favor. The Lord has shown favor.
That was mandated by the angel at the beginning of the chapter in 1:13. “Do not be afraid, Zechariah. Your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John.” And so the father writes, “His name is John.” And everybody is a bit astonished, and even more astonished that now Zechariah is suddenly able to speak after nine months of silence. He opens his mouth and he begins to praise God.
Perhaps the terms in which he praised God are the terms, in fact, of this song. Perhaps what he said was the song. It sounds as if the story was completed, and then you get the song actually put in. This song is often called “The Benedictus,” because in Latin the first word is benedictus, praise be to the Lord or blessed be the Lord, and so the whole piece is sometimes called by the first word in Latin. So maybe what he did was open his mouth and actually sing or recite these words, and what is clear is that everything in these lines point forward to Jesus.
2. The prophecy.
So we come to the prophecy itself. The people are wandering around the whole countryside as the story gets out, talking about these things and beginning to ask the question, “What is this child going to be?” That may actually account for the fact that when John the Baptist does begin his ministry perhaps 20 or so years later, he immediately has a crowd.
“Oh, this is that kid. This is the guy who should have been called Zechariah.… Zechariah Jr. You know? He’s that one. You remember. That was an astonishing birth. How old was Elizabeth? I mean she was really ancient. We’ve got to go and hear him.” And in all of this, Zechariah’s Spirit-prompted prophecy is recorded, so we move from the naming narrative to the prophecy, verses 67–79.
There are two preliminary things to be said about this prophecy, and then we’ll run through it quickly, and then we’ll see how it applies to Jesus and to us. The first two things to be said are these:
A. Almost every line in this poem is a direct quotation or an allusion to the Old Testament.
Zechariah’s mind was simply steeped in the Old Testament. He was a priest and a godly man, a teacher of Scripture, and, Spirit-prompted, the words in which he expresses himself are scriptural words. I’m not going to go through the whole list, it would just take too long, but let me give you a small hint.
Verse 68, the first line, “Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel.” A very common way of speaking (1 Kings 1:48; Psalm 41:13, and so forth). “Because he has come to his people and redeemed them.” He has come, literally; he has visited us. That expression, he has visited, is often used in the Old Testament as God’s gracious visitation of his people when they are in need.
Thus, for example, at the time of the exodus God visits the people and enables them to escape (Exodus 4:31). When Naomi is in a far country because there’s famine in the land, then she hears that God has visited her people and there’s food there again, so she returns in Ruth 1:6. This visitation language is bound up with God graciously coming to his people in need.
“He has redeemed his people.” Common language, Psalm 111:9. In the first line of verse 69, “He has raised up a horn of salvation for us.” Now the horn here is not a trumpet or a trombone. It’s a horn of an animal, because in the ancient world, the strongest animals, if they weren’t animals like lions or the like, were oxen or creatures like that which charged with their heads, and their horns were their point of strength and contact.
As a result, the word horn itself came to be used as a metaphor for a king or for kingly authority or rule. When you read the book of Revelation and you see some beast or other with seven horns on its head, what that means is seven times the sign of authority, of rule, of perfection, of kingly authority. Do you see?
So now we’re told, “God has raised up a horn,” that is, some display of kingly authority, “of salvation for us in the house of his servant David.” Ah! Now we understand the horn. The house of his servant David, the Davidic line from whom the king, the ultimate king, the Davidic king, was supposed to come. This is an announcement, therefore, of the dawning of the messianic age, with the arrival of the Davidic king. Do you see? That sort of language is very common in the Old Testament (2 Samuel 22:3; Psalm 18:2, and so forth).
The reference to David, the account goes back to 2 Samuel 7, and on and on, all the way through this poem you can pick up phrase after phrase, line after line drawn from the Old Testament. This isn’t the only part of the Bible that does that. If you read, for example, the incredibly moving prayer of corporate contrition, of repentance in Nehemiah, chapter 9, once again almost every line is steeped in Scripture that comes before Nehemiah.
It’s just picking up Scripture, picking up Scripture, and weaving it together. In other words, there is something even here to be learned, isn’t there? That is, when your mind is steeped with Scripture, so often the very phraseology you pick up begins to reflect Scripture, its modes, its allusions, its terminology, and its vocabulary. It becomes your vocabulary as well.
My father was a bit like that. He memorized Scripture in English and in French, and sometimes in Greek and occasionally in Hebrew, and he quoted at us, and sometimes out of context, not because he was unaware that it was out of context, but simply because that was his vocabulary. So if we were whinging because it was a nasty day, he would look at us and say, “This is the day the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.”
Now, of course, he knew that in the context of the Old Testament that was a messianic anticipation, but it still had a kind of derivative application to not whinging and whining when the weather was mean. Do you see? He was full of Scripture, and so often, in fact, he used scriptural vocabulary to get across whatever it was he wanted to say.
Here Zechariah, steeped in Old Testament anticipation, a mind full of Scripture prompted by the Spirit of God, speaks in a fashion in which almost every line is a direct quote from or an allusion to the Old Testament. But the second thing to observe is …
B. The main thrust of this hymn, this song, this poem, whatever it is, is found in the opening verse, verse 68.
“Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come to his people and redeemed them.” Now the obvious question to ask is, “Is that redemption, this visitation of God, coming in this child?” We’re talking about John the Baptist here, the birth of John the Baptist. So is it John the Baptist who’s going to bring about this great salvation?
But then when you read the whole thing you discover that it’s not. That is, the whole song is about a salvation that’s coming to which John the Baptist is only the precursor. He’s the one who announces it. So this is an announcement of the announcement. That’s what the whole song is about. You read the whole song and very little of it has to do with John the Baptist. It’s all about what John the Baptist is going to announce.
So when we read, for example, in verse 69, “God has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David.” That can’t be referring to John the Baptist. John the Baptist was the son of a priest. That made him a Levite. The house of David was from the tribe of Judah. Do you see?
You work right through the whole psalm and you discover that there’s almost nothing in the entire psalm that is really talking about John the Baptist, except, when you get to the end, you discover that John the Baptist has been called on the scene of history to point out this great Redeemer, to point out who Jesus is.
We’ll come back to that point when we press on a little farther, but the entire burden of this benedictus, this blessing, this praise to God, in lines drawn from the Old Testament, is to point beyond John the Baptist to the one to whom John the Baptist himself points. This anticipation comes in three parts. The argument draws in lines of anticipation that point to Jesus in three parts.
First, anticipation from the line of David, verses 69–71. “He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant, David, as he said through his holy prophets of long ago, ‘Salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us.’ ” The Old Testament background to that, as I’m sure many will remember, is 2 Samuel 7. In that passage David, now established on the throne in Jerusalem, wants to build an appropriate temple to honor God.
At this point, after all, the place of meeting is still a bit of a ratty tent that people have been using for centuries from the time of Moses with, no doubt, the animal skins being changed and renewed every once in a while and so forth; but still, a bit of a grubby tent, a rather small thing in comparison with the temples that were in all the pagan nations all around honoring their gods. Now they’re in Jerusalem. The time is surely right to build a decent building to honor the great God of all.
But David is told, “Nuh-uh. Not you. You’re not going to build a house for me. I’m going to build a house for you.” Of course, there’s a pun in the words. When David says he wants to build a house for God, what he means is a temple. When God says he wants to build a house for David, what it means is a household, a dynasty, and so there is the beginning of this promise of a Davidic dynasty, with line after line, king after king in David’s line, continuing until there would be, ultimately, a king that surpassed all kings.
That’s not all that clear in 2 Samuel 7, but it becomes very clear 250 years later at the time of the prophet Isaiah, for example, in words that we hear quoted every Christmas, lines drawn from Isaiah 9, which is actually going to be quoted a little farther on in the words of the Benedictus, too. “Unto us a child is born. Unto us a son is given. He will sit on the throne of his father, David. Of the increase of his kingdom there will be no end, and he shall be called the Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.”
Now that’s not any ordinary Davidide. That’s just not one more kid in the line of David. It’s still in the line of David. That’s what we’re told. “He will sit on the throne of his father, David.” But he will be called the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace? And thus the expectations for a great Davidic king began to get stronger and stronger and stronger, first from 2 Samuel 7, about 1,000 BC, then in the prophecy of Isaiah in the mid-eighth century BC, and so on.
By the time that you got to the sixth century these prophecies were becoming clearer in the words of Jeremiah, and of Ezekiel, and so forth, and now that is the line of Old Testament expectation that is about to come to pass, and it’s not referring to John the Baptist. It’s referring to somebody in David’s line, a king, and so when Jesus does begin to preach, he begins to preach by announcing the dawning of the kingdom, the kingdom of God, the kingdom in which God himself makes himself present.
In fact, there’s one Old Testament prophecy along those lines that’s rather startling. In Ezekiel 34, God bemoans the false teachers, the corrupt kings even in David’s line, the false priests, the financiers, the nobility that are corroding the people all the time. He says, “Woe to the shepherds of Israel. They are corrupt. They are fleecing the flock. They’re stealing the mutton. They’re battering the people, but they don’t look after the sheep.
So I will come and be their shepherd. I will shepherd my flock. I will lead them to green pasture. I will lead them to clear waters. I will be their shepherd.” About 25 times, and then he says, after Yahweh himself, God Almighty, has said again and again, about 25 times, that he will shepherd the people, he then says, “I will send my servant David to shepherd them.”
You start asking, “What is the connection between the coming of God and the coming of the great Davidic figure?” That’s six centuries before Christ. Small wonder that the pieces begin coming together in the anticipation of the visitation of the Lord who is a Davidic king. Note, verse 68, “Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come to his people to redeem them.” In what manner has he come?
“He has raised up a horn of salvation for us,” and that was in his servant David. That’s the manner in which he’s come, through this promised Davidic king, and he will set aside, he will destroy the enemies of his own covenant people. In the Old Testament, those enemies took the form of Babylonians and Assyrians who were constantly attacking the land, and raping the people, and trotting off with their produce, and destroying their crops, and the like.
Eventually that is ratcheted up into a much bigger concept of the notion of the enemies of the people of God, for at the end of the day, the enemies are not mere political figures. They’re everything that is bound up with the curtailment of, the enslavement of, the destruction of, the soul-destroying wickedness of God’s own covenant people, so that in one remarkable passage the apostle Paul says, “Christ must now reign until he has put all of the enemies under his feet, and the last enemy to be destroyed,” Paul writes to the Corinthians, “is death itself.”
The most fundamental enemy is not the Hittites. It’s sin and destruction and death itself, and this Davidic king will destroy all of the enemies, even death itself. Nothing about John the Baptist here, absolutely nothing. So here is anticipation from the line of David and then …
Secondly, anticipation from the line of Abraham, verse 72 and following, “He has come to show mercy to our ancestors and to remember his holy covenant, the oath he swore to our father Abraham, to rescue us from the hand of our enemies and to enable us to serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.” Well, now you’re going back another thousand years, not 1,000 BC, at the time of David, but 2,000 BC, at the time of Abraham.
Abraham, of course, was the prototypical Jew. He was the ancestor of the Hebrews. He was the first one set aside, the beginning of the entire Israelite heritage and community, so, in that sense, he was ultimately David’s ancestor, too. But now you’re looking back, not to simply the Davidic line that comes down to Christ, but to the entire Jewish line, even bigger than this Davidic line that comes down to Christ, because this brings up the covenant that God made, this agreement that God made with Abraham 2,000 years earlier.
You can find this, if you want to study it more, in Genesis 12, verses 15 and 17. Now that’s a remarkable account, too. God chooses Abraham in Ur of the Chaldees, in the Tigris-Euphrates system, and eventually leads him right over the Fertile Crescent, into what would later be called the land of Israel. It was still the land of the Canaanites.
There God promises him that he would give him this land, that he would raise up a nation from his own offspring, even though at this point Abraham was not a father. In fact, Abraham and his wife, Sarah, would be very old, like Zechariah and Elizabeth, before the promised Isaac came along. There may even be an historical allusion in Zechariah’s mind when he thinks about that, too, but above all, God promises that in Abraham’s seed all the nations of the earth would be blessed.
The choosing of Abraham was a narrowing down in order to provide an opening up, a narrowing down to one man-one woman and the beginning of a new race, which would get narrowed down farther to the Davidic line, narrowed down finally to Jesus, the God-man, in order that, through this line, all the nations of the earth would be blessed.
This past week, I spent time with leaders of IFES, the International Federation of Evangelical Students, from 10 of the regions of the world. There were Fijians there, and Koreans there, and Chinese there, and Africans there, and there was me from North America, and from many other places, because of a promise God gave to Abraham 4,000 years ago, 2,000 years before Jesus, in this covenant; that from his seed would come one who would bless all the nations with salvation from their bitterest enemies.
Although Zechariah, no doubt, did not anticipate everything that would happen to the Lord Jesus, not at this juncture, he has enough of a grasp of Scripture to see that these streams are coming together, through Scripture, down into the focal point in history, and his son is going to announce it. Again, there’s no mention of John the Baptist. There’s still only an announcement of what John the Baptist will announce, and that brings us, then, to the third section of this hymn, this poem …
Thirdly, anticipation from the ministry of John the Baptist himself. Now, of course, that really started back in the words of the angel to Zechariah when Zechariah was in the temple. Do you recall 1:13 and following, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah. Your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John. He will be a joy and delight to you.”? Okay, that’s the personal dimension. Your frustration at being childless will be taken away.
But it’s more than that. “Many will rejoice because of his birth.” Well, why? Just because of sharing in the family happiness? I’m sure that’s a part of it. You get some of that taking place at the naming ceremony. There’s some familial over-rejoicing, isn’t there? But it’s more than that.
“Many will rejoice because of his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink. He will belong to the Nazirite system of vows and discipline, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born. Many of the people of Israel will he bring back to the Lord their God.” That is, he’s going to have the function of calling people back to repentance and faith within the covenant community of Israel.
“And he will go on before the Lord in the spirit and the power of Elijah.” That’s a reference to the prophecy of Malachi, which anticipates that before the visitation of God, there will be someone who comes along in the heritage of Elijah. John the Baptist will be like that. Why? “To turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
John the Baptist will be great because he’s going to call the entire nation to repentance, contrition, and new paths of righteousness in anticipation of the visitation of the Lord. Now we find here, similarly, John the Baptist introduced. Verse 76, “And you, my child.” At last Zechariah is, in this circumcision/naming ceremony, addressing the boy himself.
“And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High, for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him, to give his people the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins.” All those of you who know your Bibles, immediately you have to think of how John the Baptist preached. How does Luke record these things in chapter 3, verse 1? It’s worth reading some of this chapter.
“In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar: when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. He went into all the country around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” Do you see? Exactly as it has been ordained of him.
Now quoting Isaiah 40, “As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah, the prophet: ‘A voice of one calling in the wilderness, “Prepare the way for the Lord. Make straight paths for him. Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill made low.” ’ ” That’s a way of signaling repentance. Instead of the rough places of life, now it’s becoming a smooth path because of repentance and faith.
“The crooked roads will become straight, the rough ways smooth, and all people will see, not John’s salvation, but God’s salvation.” And then the working out of how this transpires in the lives of different social classes follows in the next verses. Then verses 78 and 79, “He will do all of this because of the tender mercy of our God, by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven.”
That was another Old Testament phraseology to talk about the anticipated coming of the Messiah, the rising sun; picturing everything in darkness, and the sun rises and begins to shed light. That language is also drawn from Isaiah 9. “The people living in darkness have seen a great light. Galilee of the Gentiles, a people living by the sea. The sun rises upon them and sheds light.”
Jesus himself quotes those words in Matthew’s gospel at the onset of his own ministry. Now the allusion is made once again, Galilee of the Gentiles, confirming the one that John the Baptist is announcing comes from David’s line in fulfillment of Abraham’s promise, that in him all the nations of the earth would be blessed. “And the child grew and became strong in spirit, and he lived in the wilderness until he appeared publicly to Israel.” So the naming ceremony, the prophecy, and now, finally …
3. Jesus.
In one sense, Jesus has been interwoven with everything so far, but let me offer four reflections on Jesus here, and we’re done.
A. What we have found is that the major turning points in the Bible point to Jesus, point to the Messiah.
That’s what we celebrate at Christmas. Zechariah understood it. He understood that this baby boy of his was part of the plan that pointed to Jesus, so from David to Jesus, from Abraham to Jesus, but you could easily add from the picture of the temple to Jesus, for Jesus insists that he’s the ultimate temple, the ultimate meeting place between God and human beings.
He’s the ultimate Passover, picking up right from the Old Testament, where, if you recall, a lamb was slaughtered and the blood of the lamb was daubed on the two doorposts and the lintel, so that the angel of destruction passed over the homes that were protected by the blood. So then the apostle Paul can come along and reflect on all this and say, “Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us.”
That is, the angel of death passes over God’s people, protected by the blood of Christ. Drawn from the Old Testament, the important role of Jerusalem in the old covenant, and so much more. What we find is that the major turning points of the Bible, the major institutions, come through the pages of Scripture and empty into Jesus, himself. So it is in this passage.
B. Jesus is, likewise, central in Luke’s argument.
A superficial reading of chapter 1 could, maybe, make you think, “Oh, there are two rather special births here, John the Baptist and Jesus. Both have angels. Both are well-nigh miraculous, one so late in a couple’s life that it can’t be an ordinary thing and the other one a virginal conception. There are two. Isn’t that nice.”
But when you read more closely, you discover that one serves the other. One announces the other. One is the focal point of all of history. The other is pointing him out, and this focus on Jesus, in this respect, is absolutely central in Luke’s argument. It’s central here, and, as the story unfolds, you have the birth of Jesus being made much of in the next chapter, then John the Baptist, when he begins to preach, doesn’t point to himself, but points to Jesus.
Then Jesus’ ministry begins in chapter 4 after his genealogy is given; not John the Baptist’s genealogy, Jesus’ genealogy. Then all of his ministries.… Jesus’ ministry. As early as Luke 9, that’s barely a third of the way through the book, Jesus resolutely sets his face to Jerusalem, and all the rest of the book, from Luke 9:51 on, is Jesus going up to Jerusalem in the full knowledge that why he’s going up to Jerusalem is to be killed. Tortured, crucified, and killed, and then to rise again the third day. That’s the whole gospel of Luke. It’s all about Jesus.
And in case we don’t get it, Luke himself draws these lines together. After Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, when Jesus is talking to some disciples, he says, verse 44, “This is what I told you while I was still with you. Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms.” Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures.
He told them, “This is what is written. The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance for forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.” Do you see? Luke understands where the book is going.
That’s Luke 24:44–48, and already the pieces are being woven together in the book that bring us, finally, to Jesus’ death, resurrection, and the Great Commission. You are witnesses to these things. So Jesus is central to the Old Testament argument, he’s central to Luke’s argument, and then John the Baptist thus illustrates a crucially important point.
C. Human beings discover their greatest importance in pointing to Jesus.
Do you hear that? Human beings find their greatest importance in pointing to Jesus. What is John the Baptist’s greatest importance? In what does it lie? “Let me give you my card. Prophet of the Most High God.” Isn’t that what his father says, “And you, my child will be called prophet of the Most High God.”
“John (Zechariah Jr.), Prophet of the Most High God,” and of course it would be the truth, for goodness’ sake, but it entirely misses the point. It’s not so much a status as a function, and the function is to point to Jesus. In Luke’s entire narrative, that is the importance of John the Baptist. We really don’t know much else about him, because, in fact, the important thing about John the Baptist is the way he points to Jesus.
You know, that’s a common reality in all of the Gospels. There’s a remarkably interesting passage in Matthew, chapter 11. I don’t have time to unpack it in detail, but there Jesus says, “Truly I tell you, among those born of women, there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist.” So in Jesus’ mind, John the Baptist is greater than King David. John the Baptist is greater than Abraham. John the Baptist is greater than Solomon. John the Baptist is greater than Isaiah.
“There has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist.” That’s what Jesus says, barring, of course, himself in the context of the argument, and the context of Matthew 11 shows why that’s the case. Because although Abraham, and Moses, and Isaiah, and David, and so on, all pointed to Jesus in some sense or other, only to John the Baptist was it given to say, “There! That’s the man. That’s the Lamb of God. That’s the one whose sandals I’m not worthy to undo. He must increase; I must decrease.”
It fell to John’s place in all the stream of redemptive history to point out exactly who Jesus was with the greatest immediacy, and that’s what made John the Baptist great. And then, in the same verse, Matthew 11:11, Jesus adds, “And indeed, I tell you the truth, the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than John.” That means if you’re a believer today, if you’re in the kingdom in that sense, you’re greater than John the Baptist. That’s what Jesus says, and John the Baptist was greater than King David, so you’re greater than King David. That’s what Jesus says.
Now, obviously you’re not greater than King David in every conceivable axis. It still is the context that is making clear the axis of this comparative greatness. What this means is just as John the Baptist’s greatness turns on the immediacy with which he pointed out who Jesus is, so your greatness, my greatness turns on the immediacy with which we can point out who Jesus is.
In one sense, we can say more about who Jesus is than John the Baptist could. John the Baptist was going to lose his head pretty shortly. He’s about 30 years old when his public ministry begins, and it doesn’t last more than two to three years before he’s executed by being beheaded under one of the Herods, so he never lives to see Jesus’ death and resurrection.
He never lives to see Pentecost, but any Christian today knows about Jesus’ death and resurrection and Pentecost, and as a result we can point out who Jesus is with greater clarity and immediacy than even John the Baptist, and that’s what makes us great. So the question comes to us, where does our self-understanding lie?
Where does our self-identity lie? You’re the biggest hunk? The most beautiful chick? The best income? The longest life? The tallest person? The greatest number of degrees? The happiest singer? Whatever. All of these places, all of these things have some sort of place and role in the scheme of things. It’s all part of life and social intercourse and family, all of which things are talked about, in one fashion or another, honorably in Scripture. But what gives us our ultimate importance?
It’s our supreme privilege of pointing out who Jesus is. It’s illustrated in John the Baptist. John the Baptist illustrates this crucially important point: human beings discover their greatest importance in pointing out who Jesus is. I’m going to recommend a book. Now you can all scramble and give it to one another for Christmas. It’s only 128 pages.
It’s written by a friend of mine called Mack Stiles. It’s the greatest book on evangelism I have ever read, and I’ve read a lot of them. Most of them give you how-tos and make you feel guilty because you don’t and all the rest of it, you know? You know, you get tired of them after awhile. I have enough things to make me feel guilty that I don’t need another book on evangelism to make me feel guilty.
This little book is called Marks of the Messenger. Now with other books on evangelism, you’re being told how to do it. With this book, when you come out at the other end of the 128 pages, you really want to do it. Marks of the Messenger, because the most important function you have as a child of God in this universe, is to point out who Jesus is. And last …
D. The coming of Jesus.
This Jesus to whom John the Baptist points, this Jesus whom we celebrate at Christmas, this Jesus who comes to give salvation, he comes to give salvation, we’re told in verse 77, “through the forgiveness of sins,” and, “to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death,” and verse 79, “to guide our feet into the path of peace.”
In other words, at this season of the year, we’ll be told again and again and again at shopping centers, and with Muzak coming in here and there, and on television and elsewhere, that this season is the season for giving, which, from one perspective, means the season for buying. Or we’ll be told the season is the season for being nice to people, for loving one another. It’s the Christmas spirit. Do you see?
There’s some truth to that. It is the season to remind us of a certain kind of giving, and of course we should be nice to each other, not just at Christmas, but what Christmas is really about is the coming of the God-man to bring us salvation by the forgiveness of our sins. Christmas is preparation for Good Friday, and Easter, and Pentecost, for salvation, and, in that frame, to give us peace. Let us pray.
Forbid, Lord God, that at this season of the year we should descend to merely the social expectations of the season, with the frenetic pace, and the cakes, and the candles, and the trees. and the lights. We thank you for all your good gifts, but O Lord God, we would be happy to see them all go, provided we have Jesus.
So fill our hearts and minds with the way he has taken on the greatest enemies: sin, death itself, alienation from you, and has defeated them all and brought us peace with you and with one another, because of his coming, his incarnation, this visitation of God that led to the death of the God-man and his rising again on our behalf.
So grant that we may see what Christmas is about and sing to the incarnate Deity, as our carols put it, “God, very God, made flesh that we might live again.” We offer our worship, our repentance, and our faith. In Jesus’ name, amen.
