The Songs of Christmas: The Benedictus - The Song of Hope

Introduction

Read Luke 1:57-79

Luke 1:57–79 (ESV)

Now the time came for Elizabeth to give birth, and she bore a son. And her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown great mercy to her, and they rejoiced with her. And on the eighth day they came to circumcise the child. And they would have called him Zechariah after his father, but his mother answered, “No; he shall be called John.” And they said to her, “None of your relatives is called by this name.” And they made signs to his father, inquiring what he wanted him to be called. And he asked for a writing tablet and wrote, “His name is John.” And they all wondered. And immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue loosed, and he spoke, blessing God. And fear came on all their neighbors. And all these things were talked about through all the hill country of Judea, and all who heard them laid them up in their hearts, saying, “What then will this child be?” For the hand of the Lord was with him.

And his father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied, saying,

“Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,

for he has visited and redeemed his people

and has raised up a horn of salvation for us

in the house of his servant David,

as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old,

that we should be saved from our enemies

and from the hand of all who hate us;

to show the mercy promised to our fathers

and to remember his holy covenant,

the oath that he swore to our father Abraham, to grant us

that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies,

might serve him without fear,

in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.

And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;

for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,

to give knowledge of salvation to his people

in the forgiveness of their sins,

because of the tender mercy of our God,

whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high

to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,

to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

What is hope? Hope is a desire with an expectation of obtaining or fulfillment. It is a trust that what is hoped for will come to pass.

Hope or a lack of hope can change how people view their current circumstances. Many of our great stories play on this idea of hope. It is the hope in spite of circumstances that can help encourage and strengthen people to act in spite of how dark and discouraging things seem to be.

While the first Star Wars movie was simply named “Star Wars,” George Lucas later gave his first film the name “A New Hope.” The movie opens up with the entire galaxy being ruled by the evil galactic empire, a tyrannical form of government bringing oppression to its citizens. It appears to be a dark and hopeless situation because the empire is so strong and powerful and they have just developed a new super weapon able to destroy entire planets. Surely no one would be able to overcome such an evil and powerful government. Yet, there is a new hope in the character of Luke Skywalker who is rising up to challenge the evils of the galactic empire and there is a renewed hope that the citizens of the galaxy might escape and overcome the pain and oppression they are currently experiencing.

Hope changes everything.

Many stories play on the theme of hope in spite of the dark because we are all looking for hope in spite of the darkness we see all around us. Our hearts long for hope that believes that things can improve and get better from where they are at right now.

Every generation has had to face its own darkness and challenges that has led to finding the hope necessary to keep pressing on. We don’t have to be told that we live in dark times as many generations have gone through before us.

Over these last few years, we have gone through political turmoil, ethnic tension, a global pandemic, war between Russia and Ukraine, and now terrorism in the Middle East. This is just to name a few things.

What hope do we have when things seem so dark?

The people during the time of Zechariah were facing their own darkness. They were facing oppression from the Roman government, wicked pagan practices from people all around them, and not a prophetic word from God for the last 400 years, while still waiting for Him to keep His promise to send a King and Savior. Life appears dark and it seems like God has forgotten or abandoned His people.

And yet, there was still hope for those who feared God because they knew that no matter how dark things got, they knew what God promised for them.

Isaiah 9:2 (ESV)

The people who walked in darkness

have seen a great light;

those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness,

on them has light shone.

Malachi 4:2 (ESV)

But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall.

No matter how dark things seemed to get, there was always a hint of light, however small it might be, that gave the people hope that one day God would come through.

This is where we pick up with Zechariah and the reason for his song.

The Name of John

Nine months before our Scripture here, Zechariah was serving in the temple when an angel of the Lord had come to him to tell him that his wife Elizabeth was going to have a baby in her old age, very reminiscent of what God had done for Abraham and Sarah. It was a sign that God was getting ready to further his plan of redemption for His people.

Zechariah and Elizabeth had dealt with the darkness of being barren through all their married years, which was seen as a curse because child bearing was a sign of God’s blessing on a family. However, now Zechariah is being told that their prayers for a child was heard and was being answered by God and that this child was not going to be a normal child. He was a child of promise in that he was going to be used by the Lord to prepare the hearts of God’s people for the coming Savior.

However, the angel specified that this child’s name would be John. Normally, you would name a child after someone in your family. There was no one in Zechariah’s family named John, so others questioned why they would name their child by this name.

Names were not just labels we used to distinguish between people. Names told a story and communicated the character of the person. God used specific names to communicate what He was doing.

In this case, God used Zechariah’s, Elizabeth’s, and John’s name to communicate what He is doing in their time. Zechariah’s name means “God Remembers.” Elizabeth means, “God is my Promise,” or “God is faithful.” And John means “God is merciful.” God is communicating to Zechariah and to the people around him that hope is here because of Who He Is.

And the song that Zechariah sings in this passage communicates these three truths about God.

There is Hope Because God Remembers

Zechariah’s name means “God remembers.”

Even after over 400 years of silence, God has never forgotten His promise to His people.

Zechariah has hope in the middle of the darkness because he knows that God remembers His promises.

Luke 1:68 (ESV)

“Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,

for he has visited and redeemed his people

Luke 1:70 (ESV)

as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old,

Luke 1:72–74 (ESV)

to show the mercy promised to our fathers

and to remember his holy covenant,

the oath that he swore to our father Abraham, to grant us

that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies,

might serve him without fear,

No matter how long it might be since God has made His promises, God never forgets and never abandons His people.

Zechariah goes back to the covenant He made with Abraham to create a people through Abraham’s descendants and that they would inherit the specific land of promise in the land of Canaan.

Abraham’s descendants left Canaan because of a famine and spent over 400 years in the land of Egypt.

Not only did they live in a foreign land, they were slaves in this land.

One might have thought that God had forgotten about them and about the promise He had made to their father Abraham.

However, as the Israelites and as Zechariah is looking back on their history, they see the hand and presence of God with them and they know that God never left them nor forgot about them.

Zechariah even knows that the 400 years were a part of God’s good and sovereign plan to bring His people home.

Genesis 15:13–14 (ESV)

Then the Lord said to Abram, “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions.

God told Abraham that these things would happen to reassure him and his descendants that God would not forget about them.

And God did remember them. He kept watch over them and at the end of the 400 years He heard their cries and responded to redeem them from their enemies. He never forgot His promise!

God Knows and Remembers His People Today

There may be times in which we are tempted to think that God has forgotten us.

Maybe you are facing the loss of something, a job, a relationship, a loved one.

Maybe you are facing the darkness of a health diagnosis that seems dire and hopeless, a cancer or some debilitating disease.

Maybe you are going through a period of darkness where it is difficult to feel God’s presence in your life right now and you are wondering where He might be at.

Maybe after 2000 years, we are wondering if God has forgotten His promise to come again and to take us home to the place He has prepared.

Hope (or lack of hope) in who God is will change how we respond to situations. It will either lead us to trust in God, or the lack of hope will lead us to trust in ourselves or to give up altogether.

Think back over your life and remind yourself of how God has worked in your life and proven His presence with you.

Jesus has promised to always be with us even to the end of the age (Matthew 28:20), and we can be reassured that even in the midst of the darkest night, God has never forgotten us or His promises made to us.

There is Hope Because God is Faithful

But not only does God remember His promises, He is faithful to keep His promises.

Throughout the history of Israel, God promised them that He would send a King and a Rescuer who would save His people from their enemies.

When God saved David from the hand of his enemies and from Saul, David sang this song in 2 Samuel 22:2-4

2 Samuel 22:2–4 (ESV)

He said,

“The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer,

my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge,

my shield, and the horn of my salvation,

my stronghold and my refuge,

my savior; you save me from violence.

I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised,

and I am saved from my enemies.

God was faithful to deliver David.

In the same way, God delivered the people of Israel from the hands of the Egyptians when they were slaves there for over 400 years. Not only did He remember His oath to Abraham, He was faithful to keep His oath by rescuing Abraham’s descendants from their slavery in Egypt.

And now, God is once again being faithful to all His promises given throughout history by sending the Savior. Zechariah knows that the birth of his own son is actually a prelude to the greatest promise God has given to His people.

His Son John, is going to be a prophet of the Most High to prepare the way of the Lord. He understands that the miraculous birth of his son is a fulfillment of Malachi 4:5-6

Malachi 4:5–6 (ESV)

“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.”

The birth of John and the subsequent birth of Mary’s Son is the beginning of the great and awesome day of the Lord.

The good news in all of this is that Jesus is the fulfillment of all the promises God has made throughout the Old Testament. Jesus is the God Who is Faithful to Keep His promises.

2 Corinthians 1:20 (ESV)

For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory.

Just as God was faithful throughout the Old Testament to save His people from their enemies, so too God is faithful to save us from our enemies, and He did that through the sending of His Son in human flesh.

But our enemies are not enemies of flesh and blood, although there certainly are those who stand as enemies of God and His people.

No, the enemy we needed defeated are the enemies of sin and death.

Jesus is the horn of salvation raised for us to deliver us from the sin and death that has enslaved us.

Jesus was born for the purpose of dying in our place upon the cross. No mere human could pay the penalty of sin on behalf of humanity. Only God could do that. But God did not owe the debt. It needed to be paid by a human man.

Jesus, fully God, became fully human, so that He could do what only God could do and pay what only humanity owed in order to save us from our sin.

Praise the Lord that God is faithful!

Now we have hope because sin and death has been defeated! Jesus truly has overcome the world!

We can walk in hope knowing that Jesus has already conquered this world. It doesn’t mean life will be easy, but we do know how all this will end when it’s said and done.

And as we reflect upon Christ’s first Advent, we look forward to His second Advent, knowing that God will continue to be faithful in ALL of His promises.

There is Hope Because God is Merciful

Finally, we see from this song that God is merciful!

As we come to the end of Zechariah’s song, we see that there is a reason God has called John to be the prophet who will prepare the way of the Lord.

He is to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins, why?

Because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high.

Mercy. Mercy is love shown through undeserved kindness. Why is it that God saving us from our enemies considered mercy? If we have been oppressed and overtaken by sin and death, do we not deserve for God to save us from those enemies?

Possibly, if we had not done anything to bring darkness upon ourselves. But rather, we are walking in the darkness and brokenness of this world, not because of what was done to us, but because of what we ourselves have done!

Sin and Death are not our only enemies!

Sin and death have become our enemies because we have gladly welcomed our enemies into this world. We have chosen willfully to sin and rebel against our Creator God.

Which means, while sin and death are certainly enemies of ours, we have actually incurred the wrath of another enemy that we need to be saved from, God Himself!

Most times, Israel would be overtaken by her enemies, not because they were weak, but because they had rebelled against God and He was using their enemies to bring discipline and punishment upon them for their sin.

Christ Coming is Merciful Because We Didn’t Deserve His Coming

In the same way, our sin has rightfully incurred the wrath of God and made an enemy of God Himself.

Romans 8:7 (ESV)

For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot.

Romans 5:10 (ESV)

For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.

Before we come to Christ, we are considered enemies of God.

But the hope that we have is that God has chosen to love His enemies in spite of themselves.

Romans 5:1–9 (ESV)

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.

Why do we have hope that the darkness that we live in will not have the final say?

Because Christ has come to reconcile us to the God who loves us and wants to save us!

And God is merciful in that He sent a forerunner, by the name of John, to declare how we can receive the mercy and grace of God. We receive this mercy by turning from our sin and trusting in the work of King Jesus, our Lord and Savior.

This Advent season, we can find hope in the midst of darkness because of our God who remembers, who is faithful, and who is merciful all because of the work of Jesus Christ!