Sermon Tone Analysis

Good morning!

Man, I want to start this morning by saying a huge thank you to Carey.

He did an amazing job last week and if by chance you missed it, you would be doing yourself a huge disservice by not going and listening to the podcast.

I cannot even begin to tell you how excited I am for us to dig into Luke’s work.

I want to remind you of a few things as we get started today.

We are not in a hurry.

Carey alluded to this once or twice last week.

wink wink

between this gospel and Acts, Luke wrote 1/3 of the new testament.

Our goal in this study is not to complete it but to come to know Jesus.

It will take what it takes.

That is a life-long process and we are here for it.

Amen?

Luke’s goal was to investigate for himself the person of Jesus and then he compiled what he discovered.

This is our goal as well.

We want to discover the person and mission of Jesus.

We want to allow God to challenge our preconceived ideas of who He is and what He is about.

We are going to see over and over again that Jesus challenges the religious people who thought they understood/knew God.

We are going to be challenged in the same way.

It would be hubris for us to think we have it all figured out already.

God wants us to invite others to join us along this journey.

This is how Jesus did ministry.

He would reveal a bit of God’s power and Kingdom and then invite people to literally follow Him.

God wants the same thing to happen in our lives.

I intend to preach each week in a way that doesn’t require that people have heard the previous sermons in order to know what is going on.

Don’t shy away from inviting people to join you.

God wants us to experience this together and we are going to see the crowds grow as Jesus reveals God.

The same should naturally happen for us if we are growing too.

These first few chapters are narratives that are packed with allusion.

Last week Carey mentioned Luke’s mastery of Greek and of the Septuagint (the Greek Old Testament).

As Luke shares these accounts of Jesus’s life, he packs them with throwbacks to Old Testament stories.

More than likely, you will pick up on those as you read ahead.

As we read, my goal is to draw out some of those allusions so that we can see what Luke was communicating to the original audience and then make application for us today.

Are y’all ready?

Let’s dive in.

Turn with me to

Luke 1:5-25

Luke begins his book before Jesus’s birth is announced, and this is very intentional.

If you think back to some of our prior conversations, until this moment of Zechariah's encounter with the angel, there had been no prophet and no discernable action by God among His people.

For Luke, this point marks the beginning of the Messianic age when God would not only return to His people, but He would be doing so to fulfill the promises He made.

Luke begins here because it this visitation is the moment that God begins His work.

Immediately we begin to see the allusions that Luke is making.

Just the mention of the name Zechariah, which was a very popular name, and the temple people would have remembered the prophet, Zechariah.

As Haggai encouraged the returned Jewish exiles to rebuild the temple, Zechariah encouraged them to repent and renew their covenant with God.

Such spiritual renewal would be necessary for the people to be ready to worship God once the temple was rebuilt (about 516 B.C.).

He accused them of doing the very things their ancestors had done before the exile.

He was concerned about social justice for widows, orphans, and foreigners.

But as the people endured opposition from the non-Jewish inhabitants of Judea, Zechariah reassured them of God’s abiding comfort and care.

God would continue his covenant with Israel.

Messianic hope was rekindled during Zechariah’s ministry, and the book ends with the promise that the Lord would establish his rule over all the earth (14:9).

“Repent and renew their covenant with God.”

It seems like that is something that we are going to hear from a voice in the wilderness.

Here is the interesting thing, during the Babylonian exile, Israel is allowed to go back to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple, God’s dwelling place on earth.

They go back to Jerusalem, but rather than rebuilding God’s house, they build their own.

The prophet Haggai calls them out and they begin to do the work God told them to do, which was building the wall.

The prophet Zechariah comes and tells the people that their sin patterns are the very same thing that caused the exile, and the destruction of the temple, in the first place.

He reminds them that God told their forefathers that if they would obey His commands, He would be their God, and they would be His people.

So the temple is completed, but God doesn’t show up like he had done when Solomon’s temple was dedicated.

Everyone is obviously bummed and so God sends Malachi.

Although the urging of Haggai and Zechariah had brought the completion of the temple (516 B.C.), this had not produced the messianic age many expected.

The warm response to Zechariah’s call to repentance had grown cold, because God apparently had not restored the covenant blessings.

Malachi, writing a short time later, called the people to repentance with respect to: the priesthood, which had become corrupt; worship, which had become routine; divorce, which was widespread; social justice, which was being ignored; and tithing, which was neglected.

“Will man rob God?” the Lord asked through Malachi (3:8), and he promised to “open the windows of heaven” (v.

10) for those who pay their full tithe.

Malachi predicted the coming of both John the Baptist and Jesus, referring to each as a “messenger” of God (3:1).

So what we see is that the sin that Israel struggled with in the desert, under Saul, David, Solomon, and many other kings, was still there.

God’s people, over many generations, had not changed.

So God speaks through Malachi that He will be sending another prophet.

The one that would prepare the way for the Messiah.

Malachi 3:1 Malachi 4:5-6

These two verses are the last verses of Malachi.

This is the last thing that God says to Israel and then God makes His return to another Zechariah.

And then… 400 years of nothing.

This is the backdrop that Luke is building on.

Luke picks up where God picks up and Luke wants us to see from the outset several important things.

400 years of silence, and Zechariah goes into the Holy of Holies and an angel appears.

Here is what we need to see in this passage.

1. God works in the circumstances of our lives to complete His mission.

One of the commentaries I read said that there were usually around three thousand priests working in the temple at any given time.

We see in verse nine that Zechariah was chosen by lot.

This was a common practice and we see it all through the old testament.

This was one way that they believed that God spoke.

His being chosen was quite literally a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

His job was to go into the Holy of Holies, where God’s presence was supposed to be, and clean up the old incense and replace it.

As Zechariah is going about his priestly duty, his job, God sends the angel Gabriel with a message from God.

Zechariah was doing the work that God had given him.

He was righteous, not sinless, but intentionally living to be as righteous as possible.

Whatever God has called us to is the place where He intends to show up.

When God shows up He is there to do a work.

Let’s look again at what God was doing through Zechariah.

Luke 1:10-17

Man, that sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

God is going to send Elijah.

Where have we heard that before?

Malachi...

Elijah has come and he has come to prepare the way!

Jesus even testifies to this and Matthew records it in his gospel.

Matthew 11:10-14

This is what Gabriel is telling Zechariah, “your son will come in the same power as Elijah did.”

Zechariah makes a mistake, though.