June 30, 2000

• Luke 1:56-66

  

  The Miraculous Birth of John the Baptist

  Luke 1:56-66

  "And Mary stayed with her about three months and then returned to her home.  Now the time had come for Elizabeth to give birth and she brought forth a son.  And her neighbors and her relatives heard that the Lord had displayed great mercy toward her and they were rejoicing with her.  And it came about that on the eighth day they came to circumcise the child, they were going to call him Zacharias after his father.  And his mother answered and said, 'No indeed, he shall be called John.'  And they said to her, 'There's no one among your relatives who is called by that name.'  And they made signs to his father as to what he wanted him called.  And he asked for a tablet and wrote as follows: His name is John.  They were all astonished and at once his mouth was opened and his tongue loosed and he began to speak in praise of God.  And fear came on all those living around them and all these matters were being talked about in all the hill country of Judea. And all who heard them kept them in mind saying, 'What then will this child turn out to be?  For the hand of the Lord was certainly with him.'"

  A very simple story, but God is the main player in this drama. Psalm 19:7 calls the Bible the testimony of the Lord.  Scripture is God's only self-disclosure.  It starts with God and it ends with God and everything in between is about Him.  God's hand is in all of this, and certainly His hand was in the miraculous striking of Zacharias deaf and mute, which He did as a judgment on his unbelief.  And His hand was also evidenced when Zacharias was loosed from that divine chastening and spoke.  The hand of God is everywhere here.  And Luke wants us to be sure we're seeing it, so he reminds us at the end of verse 66.

  Luke's words here are very carefully chosen to prove to us, to show to us that God's Word is veracious, it is true.  Numbers 23:19 says, "God is not a man that He should lie."  Joshua 23:14 says, "Not one word of all the good words that the Lord your God spoke concerning you has failed.  All have been fulfilled for you, not one of them has failed," which was Joshua's farewell speech.  First Kings 8:56, "Blessed be the Lord according to all that He promised, not one word has failed of all His good promise which He promised."  Psalm 89:14, "Loving kindness and truth go before you."  Psalm 86 says, "You are abundant in truth."  And Psalm 146 says, "God keeps truth forever."  That's why Isaiah calls Him in Isaiah 65:16, "The God of truth."  Titus 1:2 Paul says, "God who cannot lie."  Hebrews 6:18, "It is impossible for God to lie."  And Jesus gave the greatest attestation in John 17:17 when He said, "Thy word is truth." 

  When God speaks, He speaks the truth.  And God had spoken in a prophecy and God had said, verse 13, through the angel to Zacharias, "Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son and you will give him the name John and you will have joy and gladness and many will rejoice at his birth." And that is exactly what Luke says happened.  Verse 57, "She brought forth a son," verse 58, "And they were rejoicing with her."  The...the angel had said from God, you'll have a son and many will rejoice, and that is precisely what happened.  And Luke records it with great precision to make the point that God's word is true.  He's putting God on display here.

  Verse 57 says, "The time had come."  The great epoch had arrived, the monumental moment of the birth of John, the prophet who was the forerunner to Christ.  Here is the launch event of the coming of the Savior of the world.  This triggers everything.  The forerunner comes, then the Messiah comes, then the work of redemption is accomplished.  Time had come for Elizabeth to give birth.  Nine months of pregnancy was completed, she was now ready to give birth.  And indeed she did, "And she brought forth a son."  Exactly as God through the angel Gabriel had promised.  The Word of God, as always, is true.  And she rejoiced...she rejoiced I'm sure beyond many mothers because of her life-long barrenness and the stigma that she had endured through that, she was even called "the barren one," as you remember, a terrible stigma for a Jewish lady to bear.  And joy beyond even that because the child that she had been given was not just any child, he was great, filled with the Spirit.  He was the forerunner to the Messiah.  He would turn back many of the sons of Israel to the Lord their God.  He would turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, the disobedient would take up the attitude of the righteous.  People would be made ready for the coming of the Messiah.

  God was giving her not just any child.  So her joy was wonderful.  She may have been like Sarah.  Sarah was so happy when she had Isaac.  I mean, she was in her nineties then.  She had been barren all her life. She finally got a son and she couldn't stop laughing.  Genesis 21:6 says she just laughed and laughed and laughed and named the child "laughter," Isaac.  Well, I'm sure Elizabeth had a similar joyous experience.

  Verse 58 indicates the prophecy regarding others rejoicing came to pass.  Her neighbors who would come from near and her relatives, probably coming from further distances, living in various places, heard that the Lord had displayed His great mercy toward her and they were rejoicing with her.  Just precisely and exactly as Gabriel had told her they would when they heard the Lord had displayed His mercy toward her.  It was mercy.  What is mercy?  God's favor...God's kindness...God's goodness.  Mercy is God's loving action to undeserving people.  God's loving action to undeserving people.  God is good.  We read that in Psalm 73.  God by nature is good.  God shows favor and kindness. The Old Testament word is chesed, loving kindness.  It's part of God's nature.  And He was good to this old couple.  He acted toward them with kindness though they were undeserving. 

  Mary knew that.  She celebrated God's mercy too.  In the wonderful praise of Mary in verse 50, she says, "His mercy is upon generation after generation."  Further in her praise in verse 54 she mentions the fact that God has given help to Israel, His servant, in remembrance of His mercy.  And later on, Zachariah will praise God and in verse 72 he celebrates the fact that God chose mercy.  Mercy is somewhat of a theme here as sinners being so profoundly blessed by God recognize their unworthiness and God's loving action toward undeserving people.

  The second thing we learn about God here is that His unfolding purpose is gracious.  Verse 59, "It came about that on the eighth day they came to circumcise the child.  And they were going to call him Zacharias after his father, and his mother answered and said, 'No indeed, he shall be called John.'  And they said to her, 'There's no one among your relatives who is called by that name.'   And they made signs to his father as to what he wanted him called.  And he asked for a tablet and wrote as follows, 'His name is John.'  And they were all astonished."

  God is a God of grace and His purpose toward sinners is to be gracious.  His purpose in salvation is to put His grace on display before all, including the angels who otherwise would never see His grace unless there were some sinners to whom He could be gracious.  Thus He allowed sin in order that He might display grace and thereby be glorified for His grace which is an attribute which can only be displayed in the forgiveness of sins.  God delights in being gracious.  He delights in giving sinners what they don't deserve.  He delights in saving them from sin and death and hell.  Ephesians 1:9 describes God in this way, and I think it's a great praise.  It says, "God has kind intentions toward us."  God who is infinitely holy, who hates sin, and hates persistent sinners still has kind intentions toward us.  That's why in 1 Peter 5:10 it calls Him, "The God of all grace."  Psalm 84:11 says, "He gives grace."  Hebrews 4:6 says, "When you go to the throne of God, when you approach His holy, majestic throne, you are approaching...I love this...the throne of grace."  God's grace is described in the Bible as great, sovereign, rich, exceeding, manifold, all-sufficient, abundant and glorious.  And we're going to be exposed to His grace not just in time but in eternity because it says in Ephesians 2 that in eternity He's going to pour out the riches of His grace and His kindness toward us.  That's why 1 Peter 3:7 says we are heirs of grace.  We will inherit an eternal grace.  Romans 6:14 says, "For now, we're under grace."  And where sin abounds...what?...grace much more abounds.  And grace came by Christ...grace came by Christ.

  This comes through in this little conflict that ensues.  Let me give you the story.  The eighth day arrived, and on the eighth day it was necessary to circumcise this little Jewish baby.  That was by God's law.  Genesis 17:9 to 14 introduces circumcision and Leviticus 12 gives us a very simple straightforward definition of circumcision.  On the eighth day, it says in verse 3, the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised, cut off.  Why is that done?  If God felt that it was better for that to be done, why did He create people without doing that...why did He allow a foreskin to be there if it was something to be removed?  He is the creator, He made man as man.  Why did He do that?

  Well, the answer is three-fold.  First of all, there was a physical reason.  There was the reason of perpetuating the nation Israel.  In history, you can read medical records, Jewish women have had the lowest rate of cervical cancer and other infections and that is because there is a physical cleansing that occurs.  Not so much in our modern hygienic world but through ancient times.  This had a benefit physically, and that was part of God perpetuating the people of Israel in order to achieve His messianic purposes and thus He allowed them to have this special protection.

  Secondly, God wanted them to have a special mark that nobody else had that identified them with the Abrahamic Covenant.  And so there was a national purpose as well as a physical one, and that was that they would bear a unique sign and symbol that they belonged to Abraham's seed.  They were therefore part of the Abrahamic Covenant, the people of God.  So there was a physical protection, there was a national identification.

  Thirdly, there was a spiritual symbol in that.  God was showing them their sinfulness.  Now if I wanted to define how profound man's sin is, if I wanted to define for you how systemic or how endemic, how deep-seeded and pervasive the sin of man is, where would I go to prove that to you?  Somebody might say, "Well you can tell it by what people say."  But some people can't talk and some people can guard their words very well and I might not hear them say anything that would reveal the depth of their depravity.  And even people who do occasionally say things that indicate their sin, by so saying don't necessarily show me how profound that depravity is.

  You say, "Well, if you just watch what they do."  Well I can't necessarily see how profound their depravity is by what they do.  Some people guard carefully what they do when I'm around and when you're around or when anybody's around.  Most people don't sin in a crowd. How do I really know how profoundly sinful man is?  The best way to know that, very simple, procreation.  If you want to know how wicked and how sinful a person is, you know it best by what they produce because we all produce sinners, right?  The essential element of depravity is the component of my very nature which is passed on in procreation and that makes the point...how deep my sin is.  And God was there for giving to Israel a lesson, an object lesson, a picture that they needed cleansing at a profound level of sin.  In circumcision therefore there was that spiritual symbol. 

  So it was the eighth day and it was time to do this.  To do this which protected them physically, which identified him uniquely with the Abrahamic promise, and which represented to everybody around, and would to him his whole life, the desperate need for spiritual cleansing because sin was so endemic.  The little child would be taken, a boy would be taken and usually the father did this.  Sometimes women did it, in the case of Zipporah, the wife of Moses, who circumcised their child.  Sometimes an appointed person did it.  There's no necessary prescription in the Old Testament about who does it.  But the tradition developed among the Jews that there needed to be, and probably a tradition later than this, but we don't, at least in terms of the number, but it was significant that when a circumcision occurred there was to be a witnessing group.  Later on the tradition developed that there needed to be at least ten witnesses.  For the sake of modesty in the future, there would need to be witnesses who could affirm that a circumcision actually did occur.  So the tradition developed there had to be ten witnesses of the circumcision of a boy. 

  And so, there was the crowd there and appropriately so.  No doubt ready to witness this as was the tradition.  And in the process of this they circumcised the child and the group that were there decided that they should all participate in the naming of the child and they were going to call him Zacharias.  So they had a little discussion among themselves and they all decided, I guess, uniformly that the child should be named after his father.  That was a nice gesture, let's honor the man.  I mean, he's a priest and he's served this little community.  A couple of weeks a year, twice during the year, he goes down to the temple, the other eleven months of the year he's up here and he's caring for us and he's teaching us and he's serving us as a local priest in a little town in the hill country of Judea, a few miles out of Jerusalem. And he was beloved to them and he's gone through a life of sorrow and pain and he's never been able to have a child. And then, after all, for nine months he's been unable to hear, unable to speak, and we kind of feel sorry for the old guy. Why not give him a little joy at the end of his life and name the boy after him?

  Now it wasn't unusual for people to participate in naming.  Go back and read Ruth chapter 4 verse 17 when Naomi and Boaz had a baby boy, the people gathered around and the people all together collectively named him Obed.  He became the father of Jesse, who was the father of David.  So it sometimes was a kind of a group decision.

  And also in Israel, names were very, very descriptive. And naming this child Zacharias would be such an honor to his father and it was a family name, although infrequently boys were named after their father.  More frequently they would be named after their grandfather.  And sometimes names were chosen to describe physical features.  For example, if you go back and read Genesis 25, you read about the birth of Jacob and Esau.  Jacob was named Jacob because Jacob means "one who grabs the heel.  And Esau was named Esau because Esau means "hairy."  And you remember the birth?  Esau came out and the first remark was, "Boy, he's hairy."  And he was hairy from then on.  And Jacob came out and he had a hold of Esau's heel and Jacob means "one who holds the heel."  And the idea is the supplanter, you know, trying to pull him back in there and get out first.  So the conflict between those two guys was life-long and it started in the womb when they were fighting about who was going out the shoot first.

  Sometimes names then were tied to physical features.  Some Jewish names were designed to express the parents' joy, such as Saul or Samuel which means "asked for."  And in the case of Samuel when Hannah was given her child which she had asked for, she named him "asked for."  Some children were named to express the parent's faith.  Elijah was one.  His parents named him Elijah because Elijah means "Jehovah is my God."  And his parents named him as a testimony to their faith in God.

  Well it just seemed right to this group to name this baby Zacharias.  Watch what happened.  Verse 60, "And his mother answered and said, 'No indeed.'"  In the Greek, ou kai alla(??), strong Greek emphatic, absolutely not.  And, you know, I mean that would be a little hard to swallow.  I mean, what do you have against the guy?  Zacharias...I mean, what kind of an answer is that?  "No indeed, but he shall be called John."  What a great name. (Laughter)  "This baby is named John," there's no discussion on this, this isn't a group decision.

  Why John?  Why is this such an issue?  Why is he to be called John?  God doesn't get involved in naming everybody.  God got involved in naming Jesus and God also got involved in naming John.  What about this?  What is the significance of this?  John is a great name.  It's a short form of a longer word, Jehohanan.  The first part of Jehohanan is Jeho...what's that?  God...Jehovah.  The latter part means grace.  John means "God is gracious" and God wanted that child named "God is gracious" because God's purpose through that child and the Messiah he would declare was gracious.  What you see in the story then is God telling us that His promise is veracious and His purpose is gracious.  And He'll fight for that name because it identifies His purpose.

  Well they didn't get it.  John?...they said...John?  Where did that come from?  So they said to her in verse 61, "There's no one among your relatives who is called by that name."  I mean, we don't get it.  I mean, if you had a choice, why not honor your husband?  But, I mean, pulling a name out of the air, what's the point?  And they probably thought she had...she was a little decisive and absolute in the face of the fact that her husband hadn't gotten his input.  Was she overstepping her bounds as a woman?

  So, they went over her head and verse 62...now remember, Zacharias can't hear and he can't speak.  He was struck miraculously by God and made deaf and mute.  And so what did they do in verse 62?  "They made signs to his father."  The actual Greek word means they kind of nodded, you know, like...you know, what's your input on this, Zach?  What do you want him called?

  This heightens the drama a little bit.  By the way, it's clear to me that he was both unable to hear and unable to speak.  The word that describes his silence back in verse 20 is kophos and it's used in chapter 7 verse 22, 32, 37, chapter 9 verse 25 of Luke's gospel to refer to someone who was both deaf and mute.  It's also used in the Septuagint translation of Habakkuk 2:18 and 19 to speak of idols that can't hear or speak.  So I think he got the package, he couldn't hear and he couldn't talk.  If he could hear, why in the world are they making signs to him?

  "And he asked for a tablet."  For nine months he had been having to write everything.  The word "tablet" here is what Greek scholars call hapax legomena(??), it's the only time it ever appears in the New Testament.  It's a wonderful little word and it's very descriptive.  It describes a piece of wood, a board and what they would do is they would take a piece of thin board and then they covered it with wax and they would literally have a sharp object like a stick or maybe a stone in which he could write on the wax.  Then he could rub the wax again and rub it out.  It would be something that could be used again and again.  And so this poor old guy had to be lugging this wax board around for nine months. So he got his little board out and he wrote as follows...and people who communicate that way make short sentences and not long explanation because it's hard to carry the conversation if you go on too long.  "So he wrote as follows, 'His name is John.'"  No explanation, period.  And they were all astonished.  I mean, they didn't get it.  They didn't understand why. It just didn't...where did it come from?  And there was not given to them here any particular explanation.

  By the way, the way he wrote it in Greek, it went like this, "John is his name."  And the Greek always puts the emphatic in the first place in the sequence of the sentence. This boy was named by God and his name was going to be John because through Him the grace of God would explode on the world, right? 

  Now Jesus was named also with a unique name, but so was everybody else in this whole thing.  In fact, you can unfold the whole opening of the plan of redemption by just looking at the names.  First there was Zachariah which means "God remembers His promise."  And God long ago had made a promise of a Messiah, of a Lamb, of a sacrifice, of a Savior.  Elizabeth means "God is the absolute faithful one."  God will keep that promise.  John means "God is gracious."  And Jesus means "Jehovah saves."  The whole gracious purpose unfolds in the names.

  You know, when God is this specific about a name, it's more than just trivial.  What do you see in the story?  His promises are true, His purposes are gracious.  All of this is about God being gracious to the world.  He's sending His grace and John is a key in that sending.

  Final aspect of God's nature, His promise is veracious, His purpose is gracious, His power is wondrous.  Something happens immediately in verse 64, "And at once his mouth was opened and his tongue loosed and he began to speak in praise of God." This is a miracle.  This is a guy who can't hear and can't speak and instantaneously he can hear and speak.  This is God's power on display.  I mean, everywhere in the Scripture God's power is extolled.  Psalm 62:11, "Power belongs to God."  Over and over He's called El Shaddai, God Almighty, His power is defined in Scripture as great and strong and glorious and everlasting and sovereign and effective and irresistible and incomprehensible and incomparable and unsearchable.  Matthew 19:26 says "All things are possible to God."  Luke 1:37, you remember that, said, "Nothing is impossible with God."  Genesis 18:14 says, "Nothing is too hard for God."  And the heavenly hosts in Revelation 4 and 5 celebrate the power of God.  He has power to create.  He has power to sustain.  He has power to govern.  He has power to give life, take life.  Power for miracles, for resurrections and for destructions.  He is the all powerful God and His power is wondrous, it's awesome.

  Notice in verse 64 the very important little phrase "and at once."  Now let me just plant in your mind, that's a miracle phrase.  You say, "What do you mean by that?"  You're going to see that phrase repeated all throughout Luke's gospel and you see it through the book of Acts.  Why?  Because it's attendant to miracles.  One of the things, I wrote about this years ago in the book I wrote on the Charismatics and the follow-up book on Charismatic Chaos, when you look at the healings of the New Testament, the healings of Jesus and the Apostles, they were all instantaneous.  There was none of this TV evangelist approach where you've been healed now you go home and claim your healing and in a few weeks you'll feel better.  There were healings that were absolutely instantaneous in every situation.   And that's why "at once" is a critical component in the description of healings through Luke's gospel.  Luke chapter 4, chapter 5, chapter 8, chapter 13, chapter 18, you're going to see that phrase associated with miracles.  This then is a miracle noted by the use of that phrase which Luke repeats miraculously, instantaneously.  "His mouth was opened and his tongue was loosed."  And that, by the way, also is a fulfillment of a prophecy in verse 20, "You will be silent, unable to speak until the day when these things take place.  And in the day when these things take place, you'll speak."  And he did.  And again, footnote to the first point, God's promise is true.  He began to speak.

  And what did he say?  "He began to speak in praise of God."  For nine months it had been pent up and the dam burst and he just started praising God.  By the way, his praise turned to prophetic praise in verse 67, and you have it in the great and glorious paean of praise that runs from verse 67 to verse 79.  And we'll look at that next time.

  This old man began to praise God.  The whole experience was so overwhelming and the power of God was so great and so incredible and so marvelous.  And verse 65 says, "And fear came on all those living around them and all these matters were being talked about in all the hill country of Judea."  The power of God is wondrous.  It inspires wonder.  It inspires fear.  It inspires awe.  Fear in the sense of awe, in the sense of recognition of divine intervention, heavenly action.  This was an awe that was a sort of holy trauma, a kind of spiritual shock at what they had seen. 

  What caused this awe?  A miracle conception and a miracle birth, a divinely given name from God and a powerful and instantaneous healing of a deaf and mute man.  These awesome things were just the first. This is the first time you have a crowd in awe. And frankly, this sets the stage for awesome things all through the gospel of Luke as the awesome power of God through Jesus Christ creates continual wonder.  You see the same in the book of Acts under apostolic power as well.  The power of God is awesome...awesome, and they saw it in the miracle of the birth, in the miracle of the healing right before their eyes.  And the buzz went everywhere, everybody was talking about it all over the hill country of Judea.  "Oh..that old priest, Zacharias, he and his wife had a baby and they insisted that the name of the baby be 'God is gracious' and that baby is the forerunner of the Messiah and that baby was filled with the Spirit from his mother's womb.  That baby is going to be used to turn the hearts of those people who are indifferent toward God back to God and that baby is going to grow up and be a prophet and he's going to be the one who announces the arrival of Messiah.  Messiah must be on the verge of coming.  How do you know this is true?  Because there was a miracle conception and because we saw with our eyes a miracle healing, a man who couldn't speak and couldn't hear, instantaneously could."

  And verse 66 says as those people who were there and saw it began to spread it, and it started to be talked about all around the hillsides of Judea, it says in verse 66, "And all who heard them," that is those people who passed on what they saw, all who heard them pondered it."  Kept them in mind means they pondered it, like Mary pondered these things in her heart.  Later on in chapter 2 we'll see that, when she started hearing about her child, she pondered that which simply means there was a constant preoccupation about this...is this it?  Is the Messiah coming?  This is His forerunner. And it was all in their minds and they were saying, "What then will this child turn out to be?"  Is this really the...the final prophet before Messiah?  Is this it?

  It became the main preoccupation of thought, and certainly the main topic of conversation as the wonder and the awe began to carry itself through that entire area.  And so we see the power of God is wondrous.  God put His power on display.  He put His purpose on display, which is gracious.  He put His promise on display which is always true.  And I say the main character is God and so does Luke.  The end of verse 66 he says, "For the hand of the Lord was certainly with him."  Him, no doubt, referring to John the Baptist from the start.

  By the way, that phrase "the hand of the Lord was certainly with him," is a common expression in the Old Testament.  Some time you just look it up and trace it to the Old Testament, it always indicates God's mighty, powerful presence.  God's holy presence.  The inescapable conclusion Luke makes for us and for everybody else, folks, God is acting redemptively, graciously in human history.

  

  ---

  • 08:06
  • 1 Comment