A Christmas Song for the Second Sunday of Christmas. Is there a tune on your lips? Everyone likes a good Christmas Song.
Consider the tense of this song. John the Baptist is born, but notice who isn’t. Jesus isn’t born yet. But if you listen to Zechariah he believes with all his heart that what God has said will happen. “Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come and has redeemed his people. He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David (as he said through his holy prophets of long ago), He believes all this because he finally had a son. He saw one promise fulfilled and now everything makes sense.
You could say, Zechariah that’s good for you, but that’s not enough for me. I do not have any promises from the angel Gabriel. When I have a promise from Gabe that I’ll have my mortgage paid off, then I’ll believe all the other promises that go along with the Christ child. When he promises that he’ll take care of your family, he doesn’t exactly say how. Do I need to wait until God pays off my mortgage? Does that mean that there won’t be any disease? No. What is means that there are things far worse than poverty, far worse than sickness and disease – far worse than even death! God has saved you from the worst of those things – your sin is gone because of the death of his son. Then to a lesser or greater degree God will take care of our needs; it’s just not always so obvious to us.
Zechariah in his unbelief was struck dumb; what might God do to us? And so if there are hardships and troubles waiting for you in 2022, I don’t want you to think that God is punishing you. God can only bless you because he punished Jesus in your place. Romans 8:2 There is no condemnation in Christ Jesus.
Want to hear more? Watch this Sunday’s message taken from Luke 1.
Book(s): Luke
Tag(s): Christmas
Speaker(s): Fred Guldberg