Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

We all have moments of doubt, worry, and fear.

We have moments of hopeful expectation.

We desire great things to happen and great things to change the situations we are in.

Maybe we have great promises guiding us and to lean on.

Maybe we just have a strong positive attitude and mindset.

What is clear is we have hope in something, we hope for this to happen.

Maybe it was in having a baby.

Maybe a job, maybe a horse, a saddle, maybe for that all-clear order from a disease.

There are many things we all wait for and hope for to be the case.

I know a few years back we made a trade on a couple horses for a horse out of Florida.

We were to meet a guy coming from Florida to Glen Rose one night.

He was to let us know when he got close to Weatherford because we were to meet him at the truck stop off of 281 and 20 there at Santo.

He messaged us that he was just east of Fort Worth and we decided to go ahead and get down there, mind you this was at 10 at night.

We get there and we wait and wait.

It is around 2 AM and he texts and says they were in Fort Worth.

We wait and wait some more.

We go in and eat some truck stop hot box food and immediately regretted that.

So now the wait is miserable as well as long.

Finally at around 4:30 the man arrives.

We get the horse and papers and leave for home at about 5.

We get in around 6:30 and get a few winks of sleep to just get up and go to work all day.

Now, we waited a long time for this horse to get there.

We were told that it was coming and we went and waited.

The horse arrived as said but just not when we felt it should arrive.

We even suffered some during the wait and was miserable.

But the horse arrived and we got to go home.

We knew the horse was coming and we waited expectantly at every vehicle that turned in at the truck stop.

But this hope we had is nothing compared to the hope of this little boy.

I read this story this week and I feel it perfectly describes the hope that Zechariah displays in this section of Scripture.

A man approached a little league baseball game one afternoon.

He asked a boy in the dugout what the score was.

The boy responded, "Eighteen to nothing--we're behind."

"Boy," said the spectator, "I'll bet you're discouraged."

"Why should I be discouraged?"

replied the little boy.

"We haven't even gotten up to bat yet!"

He was not downcast at all because he knew they had a chance if they got in to bat.

Even this hope from both these stories is not the same hope Zechariah had in the Messiah coming.

No, this hope is a “confident expectation, solid assurance.”

We see this same hope in the song of Zechariah.

They just had a baby and he had just received his voice to speak again.

But he did not praise his son or that he had his voice back.

No!

He praised the savior who had not been born yet but was in the womb of Mary.

He praises Him in all past tense verbs.

Meaning that at this arrival all said was accomplished even if it was to be a while before they came to fruition.

Let us look at the hope Zechariah had in Luke 1:67-79

Luke 1:67–79 (ESV)

67 And his father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied, saying, 68 “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people 69 and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, 70 as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, 71 that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us; 72 to show the mercy promised to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant, 73 the oath that he swore to our father Abraham, to grant us 74 that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear, 75 in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.

76 And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, 77 to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins, 78 because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high 79 to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

This hope is seen in three stages the first is...

He Has Visited(67-69)

Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and he prophesied that “he has visited and redeemed his people…[He] has raised up a horn of salvation.”

Has visited in this we can almost hear exasperation in this coming of the Messiah that the prophets had told of long ago.

The Messiah had been promised for centuries but it was certain He would come because the prophets were proved to be true prophets in that the words they spoke came true before the people.

They had spoke truth in many areas and the accuracy was and is astounding.

We see over three hundred OT prophecies fulfilled with the first coming of Christ.

God made each one come true just as He said they would and that means that the prophecies of the second coming can be just as trusted.

Christ has come He has visited and He will visit again.

This is a certain fact we can lean on and know to be true.

This is more certain than the little boy’s team getting ahead in the baseball game and more certain than the man from Florida delivering the horse to us.

Those stories were of people and people fail, but the Lord does not.

This is why Zechariah had so much praise for the child still in the womb of Mary over the praise of his own child.

The Long Awaited Hope was fulfilled in the fact that the Lord had visited.

He has come and He has raised up a horn [power] of salvation in Him alone.

Many long years of waiting and silence and misery, beyond the misery of the truck stop hot box food on us, were now behind them.

The prophecies were fulfilled and that is hope attained and delivered.

This is genuine hope this is a time of rejoicing and praise because He has Visited.

Zechariah praises this because He has Redeemed His people.

This means set free.

He has liberated people from the prison of sin and death.

His visitation is comparable to when the Allied forces discovered the concentration camps in WWII.

Those imprisoned Jews were set free and released from death.

Jesus did this in His visitation.

Yet, Israel still lived under the yoke of Roman rule for many more years and they still struggle in the world today, Jesus has visited and made freedom, true freedom, available to all who believe.

The second coming will vanquish all evil and oppression and disease and physical death.

And we can rest assured in this coming since He visited this first time.

But not only has He visited but...

He Has Saved(70-74a)

The promise of salvation and mercy delivered by the prophets is coming to fulfillment.

The deliverance is certain, just the time is unknown.

The horn [power] is in the child to be born.

Jesus is the all-powerful Son of God.

He is the power of salvation.

His power is above all forms of humanity or spiritual.

His deliverance is certain, we maybe just don’t know the means of this deliverance.

But the one thing we do know, the enemy is defeated...he cannot capture more prisoners.

It means total victory for the people of God.

The word salvation carries the meaning of “health and soundness.”

No matter what the condition of the captives, their Redeemer brings spiritual soundness.

When you trust Jesus Christ as Saviour, you are delivered from Satan’s power, moved into God’s kingdom, redeemed, and forgiven (Warren W. Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary, vol. 1 174.)

He has saved.

This is stated emphatically here because He has visited.

In this visitation He made salvation ours and redemption ours.

Jesus came and brought atonement for us and all who will believe.

He did this because of love and because we could not do it ourselves.

We are powerless to defeat the true enemy.

He has a death grip over the world and people and it took Christ coming and making the way to God possible for us because we can not do this.

It took Him coming so sin could be conquered and deliverance made possible.