For those of you who are unfamiliar with this season of Advent, as I was just a few years back despite growing up in church, Advent is a season of waiting and of in-betweens, anchored in between 2 events – that Christ has come, and that Christ will come again. It is anchored in the incarnation and the cross - the proof that God has visited and redeemed His people with His precious blood. And it is anchored to His return - we must not think that the kingdom of Christ has come in full already. So as we gather round the second song in the first chapter of Luke, Advent reminds us that we are a people in darkness who have seen a great light. Both our surrounding darkness and our encounter with the light, Christ Jesus, are true.

In Lk 1:67 we find a priest who is singing, and his name is Zechariah. His song can be divided into three sections: God visits, God saves, and the outcome—that His people would serve Him. We will look at each part and ask:

Who is this God that visits?

What does it mean that He saves?

How do we then serve Him?

(A) The God who visits and redeems: the Lord God of Israel keeps His promises to His people (Lk 1:68-73)

The Dramatic (and Strange) Backstory

To understand the song fully, we need to back up and see what has happened to Zechariah prior to this. In Luke 1:7, we read that Zechariah and Elizabeth had no child: “Elizabeth was barren, and both were advanced in years”. Barrenness was a cause for sorrow for the couple. Coupled with their age, it was highly unlikely, biologically speaking, that they would ever have a child of their own.

Yet, their prayers for a child had been heard by God and would be answered (Lk 1:13). An angel, Gabriel, brought glad tidings! The Lord had heard their prayer, and Elizabeth was promised a son. In Lk 1:57-58, we discover that she does bear the son, and there is much rejoicing. Then 1 verse before our song begins, we find the folk of their town murmuring. All who heard what happened were saying, “What then will this child be?” They could tell that something is special about this baby – what is it? It is after these murmurs that Zechariah breaks into song.

Now this is not an uncommon reaction. In the OT, when God grants a child, you sing. People often expressed their joy at the birth of a child by bursting into song: consider Hannah with Samuel, and Mary with the baby Jesus. This was a longstanding tradition, and Zechariah was simply stepping into their pattern.

But things get stranger still. Because only 2 verses of this 12 verse song refer to Zechariah’s son. The majority of the song is not about the child, but about the God who has given them the child. This sets the tone for our study of the passage. Zechariah sings, not because he has done something right, not because Elizabeth and him discovered 10 sure-win home remedies for barrenness, but because God had given them a free gift of sheer grace. Advent is the season of the year where we put an end to our pretense of self-help. It is the season for rescue, not advice. Advent, and all that it brings, comes to us a as a free gift - or not at all. So just like Mary, Zechariah opens his song, Benedictus, by blessing the Lord who has given him an impossible gift. As we get into the song itself, it is fitting then that we begin by considering the identity of Zechariah’s God.

Who is the God of Zechariah?

Who is this God whom Zechariah blesses? That’s an important question, because in the society they live in there were many gods who were worshipped. Zechariah uses YHWH, all caps, to refer to the Lord God of Israel (Lk 1:68). The one who has given Elizabeth child in her old age, the one who is acting, the one on the move, is none other than the ‘Lord God of Israel’, a term used throughout Israel’s history to refer to YHWH, the Lord God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He is a God who makes promises, and keeps them, and delivers His people. To the people of Israel: the parting of the Red Sea, the giving of the 10 Commandments on Sinai – all these seminal events would have sprung to mind when those around Zechariah heard him say: ‘the LORD GOD OF ISRAEL’. The next line then makes perfect sense. Of course He visits and redeems His people (Lk 1:68b). That’s just the kind of God that He is. With the first line of his song, Zechariah immediately places his child, his family, and himself, squarely within the storied history of the Old Testament.

Because this is the Lord God of Israel, Zechariah’s song is not simply a song about motherhood and childbirth. Because the LORD GOD OF ISRAEL has visited and redeemed those who needs are invisible and whose sorrows go unnoticed, the season of Advent is good news not just to Zechariah, not just to us in our air-conditioned churches on Christmas Day and at watchnight, but good news to shepherds with their sheep, their skin brown and leathery from the sun. To babies who are damaged by birth. To mothers who tremble as they give birth in war-torn countries. Advent is not a season of sentimentality. It is a season centered unswervingly on a God who makes promises, and keeps them. Everything that is about to unfold is not some isolated, small-town miracle, but a fulfillment of a promise made by the God of Zechariah’s forefathers.

Meeting the God of Promise

In his song, Zechariah picks up on 2 promises of God (Lk 1:73, 69) to Abraham and to David.

In Gen 17:8, God promises Abraham that his people will have land. They will have it forever. They will have it with God. This is a shocking promise because God is speaking here to Abraham, part of a group of nomads and wanderers. To these land-less people, God promises a home to call their own, to possess, free of enemies, free of danger. This is one thread of the promise: the promise of Land where they can live, with God, in safety. God also promises Abraham fruitfulness and that kings will come from him (c.f. Gen 17:6). Again, remember that Abraham is a nomad, a nobody, and yet God promises him a land to call his own, and a king from one of his own descendants.

The promise to David picks up both threads - land, and king. To David in 2 Sam 7, God promised a king from his line that would rule over them eternally in a safe land. God would bless His people by raising up a mighty king. The term ‘horn of salvation’ is used twice in the OT in 2 Samuel 22:3 and Psalm 18:2. Both times, it refers to God Himself: God is my shield, and the horn of my salvation. Yet now this title is given to someone who is from the house of David. This makes no sense at all - how can God be ‘raised up’ from a human house? Who is this king who will come from the house of David? How can this king receive a title that is only for God? The Israelites would have puzzled over this!

These 2 big promises meet fully and finally in the person of Christ. The King that they are waiting for is finally here. And they teach us that Advent is a time to consider and to remember the promises of God – the NT is unintelligible without reference to the OT! It is also important to remember that Zechariah’s song came out of a long period of silence – his own, but also a 400-year silence where no prophet spoke. All that Israel had was God’s words to them, written down – and it was enough. Just the promises in the OT without the fulfilment recorded in the NT. But they treasured, and they pondered and when Christ came, they could sing of all the promises that Jesus fulfils!

Likewise, Advent invites us to sit ourselves down in the promises of God and the unfolding story of what He is doing. This year has shown us that our stories are fragile and crumble like sandcastles. But Zechariah’s story and song show us that even in the darkness of not hearing God speak, we have God’s word and we can enter into that true and better story. When dealing with our broken dreams, the solution is not to build new ones that will crumble again, but to enter into the shelter of God’s story. Perhaps some of us are having a particularly difficult Christmas, where joy is far from us. Perhaps we are separated from family and are stuck overseas. Perhaps we are going to spend it in the hospital. Or perhaps we are just feeling far and distant from God. Yet like Mary, and like Zechariah, we have received a word from the Lord God of Israel, and this song invites us to consider how we are held firm by God’s promise in the midst of our uncertainty and struggle. In our waiting, the season of Advent invites us to treasure up God’s words and ponder them.

(B) The God who saves His people: from their enemies, and most of all their sins (Lk 1:71, 74a, 77-79)

The Shape of Israel’s Hope

What did Israel think the Messiah would save them from? They thought that the Messiah would save them from Roman imperialism. Even in Acts 1:6, we find the disciples (people who lived with, walked with, talked with Jesus) asking the risen Jesus when He would restore the kingdom of Israel. This was their vision of salvation. And can you really blame them? For the last 500-odd years, Israel had been under a series of foreign rulers — the Babylonians followed by the Persians and then the Romans. They longed for the promised Jewish king to destroy Rome and establish an eternal land where they would be free from earthly enemies. In their mind, it probably looked like this: God comes. Rome crumbles. Israel rises. So even in Zechariah’s day, when he sang the words in Lk 1:71, Israel looked to God to end their military oppression! Israel was on tiptoe, craning their neck to look into the future and find some hope.

Yet if we read on, this is what deliverance from the enemy results in: [that we] might serve Him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before Him all our days” (c.f. Lk 1:74-75). This is not an outcome that military conquest can accomplish. The overthrow of Rome can happen by the consistent and intense application of military might. But no amount of military might can help them serve God without fear, and in holiness and righteousness.

If you invert the words of v74-75, this is what the verse is saying: Israel is not serving God. She is always afraid. She is impure, unholy, idolatrous. She is unrighteous and wicked. Israel’s problem is primarily internal. All this points us to 1 conclusion – the true and enduring captor of Israel is not Rome. Yes, Rome is their current slave master. But if you flip back through all 39 books, the story of the OT is the story of a people who are slaves to sin. God frees them from slavery, and they run right back. God takes them out of Egypt but they demand to return, God reveals Himself and they build a golden calf to worship instead. If God had only freed them from slavery to Rome, He would be returning them right back to slavery to idols. Israel would simply change hands from one slave master to another.

The stubborn sin and idolatry of God's people meant that if Christ had come as a judge then, Israel would not stand. Advent reminds us that we would not be spared either. The sin and darkness of Israel is not just a distant story in the Bible. We too worship idols. Wealth and power seem to weave rather than undo the webs of lies and greed. For all the progress in our world, I think of how the 20th century, the century of rationality and ‘progress’, was marked by almost cosmic problems: genocide, war, and by the willingness all around the world to let poor people starve so the super rich can get super richer. And there are also the personal problems that we struggle with: anxiety, depression, fear, trauma. As we reckon honestly with the hopelessness and darkness of our situation, confronted with the weight of sin, this old song sounds out fresher than ever.

When Zechariah sings of a deliverer, we may wonder: if this is true, what would it really look like? What if there were good news, not only for those in their homes but for those who have no place to lay their head? News not only for the homeless, but for those of us who are afraid of the homeless? For the barren and waiting, the bitter and broken. Fleming Rutledge wrote an article, in December 2019, titled: “Advent Begins Where Human Potential Ends”. The problems that plague us are so huge that they exhaust human potential. To discover this is to discover the message of Advent – the season sounds a call to us to turn, and to turn our face toward the action of God, not man. Towards the promises of God, not man. To hope in God, not man. We cannot save ourselves or each other. Something or someone must break in to save us. And so v72 of our song names the task that our deliverer will perform: Jesus Christ had come to “show the mercy promised” to the fathers of Israel. To receive salvation is to have the mercy of God meet with and overcome the weight of our sin..

The Shape of God’s Sure Salvation

If Israel’s deepest problem is sin and idolatry, what does salvation look like? Salvation means that God “redeems His people” (Lk 1:68), and has provided for the “forgiveness of their sins” (Lk 1:77). It is the picture of a God who “give(s) light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death” (Lk 1:78).

What does redeem mean? To make a payment, and thereby gain possession of something or someone. In the book of Colossians, the apostle Paul also describes our salvation in similar terms. He tells us that redemption and forgiveness are linked: as we are forgiven, we are also ‘delivered from the domain of darkness, and transferred to the kingdom of God’s beloved Son. God has come to make us His possession. Deliverance is not just a clean record – it is a new address.

Redemption also looks like a gift. The closing verses of Zechariah's song tell us that “because of the tender mercy of our God, the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.” Isaiah 9:2 puts it this way: Those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone. God gives and God shines. The actor is not Man, but God. There is no other way! In Luke, those who God visits are sitting. Sitting in darkness, with death’s shadow hovering. In Isaiah, the situation depicted is far worse - they are not just sitting, they are dwelling. Darkness and sin have become their home. They know no other way. But God gives light. He does so by giving them Himself. Notice also that while v68 says that the Lord God of Israel visits, v78 says: the sunrise shall visit us. Where? From on high. So when Isaiah says that “on them has light shone”, Luke clarifies this by telling us: God is not rescuing His people by shining a light from afar. He has Himself come in the person of Jesus Christ, Mary’s child.

A sunrise is beautiful. A baby is precious. And the mixing of these images is stirring. But this passage does not leave us with mere sentiment because sentiment does not save. We must remember that from the moment of Jesus’ first cry, he is already headed to the cross. And so Isaiah the prophet could say about this baby: He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief, and we esteemed him not. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities. He takes on the full darkness of the cross to dismantle and defeat it so that those in the mantle of darkness now come under the sheltering fold of his kingship. All of this is a gift - there is none of it that we can perform for ourselves. The true light, the sunrise that visits us, come to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.

How should we respond? Our response to all this must be to realise how we are like Israel, quick to point out the darkness in others, slow to acknowledge the darkness in ourselves. At Christmas, we do so love the Christmas hymn that goes: Joy to the world, the Lord is come. Yet in leaving out an old stanza, we miss out the anchor of that joy:

No more let sins and sorrows grow Nor thorns infest the ground;

He comes to make His blessings flow Far as the curse is found

How far do God’s blessings flow? Far as the curse is found. There can be no promise of joy to the world without reference to the curse. So if we say: in my life, you will find no darkness here! No curse here! No sin, nothing to see! Then we also say: redemption has no place here. If we insist on not talking about our sin - then any talk of forgiveness, of rescue, of salvation, will make no sense.

The flip side is true. This whole song, Zechariah sings about a king that Israel thought was headed off to conquer Rome - right to the centre of power. But look at v79 and burn it into memory, because this is the address of our conquering King. “Those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death”. This is where royalty is headed. This is where you will find Him. These people are who the king visits. This is who the king loves.

If you are on your last leg, Jesus Christ is that searching and rescuing light that you have been hoping for. Because God came down, you can’t be so low that Jesus can’t come down and find you. You can’t be so lost that Jesus can’t reach out to you. Because Jesus Christ did not sidestep darkness on His way to you, it means that there is no darkness so dark that you are left alone in it. A king like this is a Savior for the least of us. This is a king that we can give our entire lives to.

(C) God redeems those who He saves (Lk 1:74-75)

Zechariah’s song ends with a mention of a people that “live in holiness”. We think that holy people are those who say the Lord’s Prayer every morning when they wake up. There is genuine despair that sets in whenever we hear such verses. If we read this as a command, without reference to God’s promises, it will crush us because we know that v74-75 are not a true description of us now. But this entire song is a reminder that if we fail, and trip up, and mess up, God's promises are for us. Christ has come. 

If we step back from this song, it is so strange that we get to trace the family trees of two humans, Abraham and David, and have these records of human history tell us something about the Son of God. This is only possible because Jesus Christ has took on human flesh to redeem it. We are reminded of the way in which Christ steps into our shoes and wears them so beautifully when we listen to the lyrics of the hymn “Once in David’s Royal City”:

For he is our childhood’s pattern;
Day by day, like us He grew;
He was little, weak and helpless,
Tears and smiles like us He knew;
And He feeleth for our sadness,
And He shareth in our gladness.

And our eyes at last shall see Him,
Through His own redeeming love;
For that Child so dear and gentle
Is our Lord in heaven above,
And He leads His children on
To the place where He is gone.

Because Christ is our good Shepherd who knows our human condition, we have great hope. God has not accomplished our salvation, then left us to accomplish our sanctification — He did not save you from the penalty of sin so you could live under sin’s power. God has not come and gone. He has visited and stayed. The work is not done — but God is at work. Here is a sign, right at the start of the gospel of the good news of Jesus Christ: God at work. Scripture is full of commands. But every command that Christ our Lord issues is built on the promises that God has given to us. He will make fruit grow.

Even in this difficult year, what sanctifying and washing work is God doing in us now? As John Piper wrote, “God is not standing by, arms folded, watching if you can swim to shore.” He is with us in the deep. The message of Advent is not: be moved, go away, try harder. It is: you have been remade. Come and see what that is like. Come and see who that is like. He visits, He redeems, He saves. It is all about God. Forget building your house of hope on yourself. Build your house on Jesus Christ. Zechariah puts this so gently. He guides our feet into the way of peace. This path leads to Him. So let us walk.