Thank you to our worship team this morning for leading us in
worship so soon. We'll get Dan to come up and
bring the Word of God to us this morning.
But before that, we'll just take a time of prayer.
We'll pray for our offering. We'll pray for our Sunday School
children who will be hitting out to Sunday School soon.
And we'll pray for Dan as he brings the Word this morning.
So let's pray every Father, we come before you and we come
before you again with thanks and praise.
We thank you for this time of worship we've had where we can
bring our praise and our worship to you, the one who all honour
and glory is for. And Lord, we just pray now.
We thank you for the offering. We thank you for the the gifts
you give us. We thank you for the financial
things you give us in Lord as we come each week.
And we we bring that before you, Lord, as part of our worship
this morning. Lord, we just pray that it will
be used wisely and for your glory.
And we just thank you for releasing us in that way that we
can give back a small part of what you've given us.
A little bit might be a big part in our hearts.
And Lord, we just thank you for our Sunday School.
We thank you for our children. What a blessing it is to have
them as part of this church. And Lord, we just pray for each
one as they go out to Sunday School this morning.
Lord, we pray your work in each of the young hearts that your
word that they learn from the Sunday School teachers and Lord
that it will sink deep, LOL. We pray for them that they will
one day come to know you as their own personal Lord and
Saviour. We thank you for our Sunday
School teachers for the gift of time that they give and that
that offering that they give through their time to teach our
young children. And we thank you for them would
give them the words to say. We pray this day.
And Father, we pray for Dan as he comes this morning to bring
the message to us this morning as we continue our series and
and your book of Luke. And Lord, we just pray you'll
give him the words to say, Lord, give him clarity of thought.
And Lord, we just pray for our hearts.
We pray our hearts will be open to hear the word of God, but not
just here. We pray, Lord, that it will
challenge us and stir us and that we will apply it into our
lives. So Lord, we thank you for this
time ahead and we committed into your hand in Jesus name, Amen.
Good morning. Hey, great to see everybody this
morning. Hey, we are continuing our
series this morning in through Luke's gospel as we look at how
Luke has laid out his orderly account for Theophilus, who
seems to be this Roman living in a Greek world, serving a Jewish
Messiah. And so we've seen over the last
few weeks how as Luke's laying out what happened, there's this
contrast where he's talking about what happens John the
Baptist, and then it flicks to Jesus and then back to John the
Baptist and then back to Jesus. And so this week we're going to
be looking at the birth of John the Baptist, literally in Greek,
John the Mercer, probably in modern English, we say John the
dunker. We're going to look at his
birth. So we just need to review a
little bit. Jeff did an excellent job a
couple of weeks ago talking about what happened in the
announcement of John's birth to Zacharias, John's dad.
If you remember this along long time before the birth of John,
there was these guys, Nate having a boy who they were doing
the worship in the temple. And they sorted decided that
well, you know, because God had laid down very specifically how
he wanted worship done. They said, well, you know,
worship has me expressing myself to God.
I'm going to ignore that. I'm going to do it my way.
And they were struck dead, right.
And so there was this kind of fear went through everybody.
And so when the priest was serving in the temple, remember
they they were really, really worried that they would get this
wrong, right? They wanted to do it exactly the
way that God wanted it done as they lived that part of worship.
And if you remember, Zacharias sees the Angel standing by the
older Vincents. And there was this Jewish
legend, Jeff showed us this. If the priest got it wrong, he
would see the Angel of death standing by by the altar before
he was struck down. And so when Zacharias saw the
Angel, he was terrified that the Angel said, I bring you glad
tidings, right? I bring you good news.
That legend about the Angel of death turned out not to be
correct, so hang on to that thought cause we'll we'll come
back to that in a minute. But do you know what the most
common phrase is that angels say in the Bible say?
Anyone know? Have a guess.
Somebody said, yeah, do not fear, fear not, do not be
afraid. That's that's the most common
thing they say when people realise that they are in the
presence of an Angel, once they realise that they fall on their
face in terror, absolutely petrified.
I think that's important. There's some stuff that goes
around, You know, I see these things all the time.
People say, you know, I was working on this worship song and
it wasn't really coming, right. And then this Angel turned up
and the Angel went, hey, have you tried playing that in the
key of D? And it's like, ohh, yeah, that
works. Thanks, Angel.
It's like, no, when people realise they're in the presence
of an Angel, they fall on their face in fear.
If you remember the the Angel Gabriel tells Zacharias that
he's going to have a son, but the Angel Gabriel tells
Zacharias he's gonna have a son. Here's what the son was gonna
do. This is from Luke chapter 1,
who's 16 says, and he will turn many of the children of Israel
to the Lord their God and he will go before him in the spirit
and power of Elijah to turn their hearts to to sorry to turn
the hearts of the fathers to the children and the disobedient to
the wisdom of the just to make ready for the Lord of people
prepared. And Zacharias said to the Angel,
how should I know this? But I'm an old man and my wife
is advanced in years. Mary says something very
similar. We saw this last week when the
Angel tells her about that she's going to give birth to the
Messiah. But I think in Mary's case, you
can see from Gabriel's reaction to Mary that she was just really
asking like, what are the mechanics of this going to be?
I mean, how can I have a son? I haven't been with a man,
right? How's how's this going to work?
And you can see that from from Gabriel's response.
But I think from Gabriel's response that we're going to see
to to Zacharias, Zacharias was thinking, look, I know how
things work. My wife is old.
We've long since given up on this idea.
So what you're saying can't be right.
He's really sort of pushing back, I think in some way
towards what Gabriel's telling him.
And Gabriel says to him, I am Gabriel who stands in the
presence of God, right? That's, that's, that's quite a
quite a strong statement. And he tells Zacharias that he's
not going to be able to speak until after the baby is born.
And he's named the baby John. God is gracious.
I don't want to get into too much detail about this one, but
much later on in Jesus ministry because we going to see this
when we get into Luke Chapter 9 we'll see in more detail.
But Jesus takes three of his disciples up onto a mountain and
they get to see him in his glorified state.
He's talking with two other guys who are also in in a glorified
state. And Peter figures out who those
two other guys are. And that takes a bit of work,
right? You have to have quite a bit of
Bible knowledge to kind of figure that out because you go,
wow, is it, was it, is it Adam? Is it Abraham's father?
People. But but he figured this out.
It takes quite a bit of biology, quite a bit of deep thinking to
figure out who they are. And Peter says to Jesus, he says
it's great for us to be here. We should make 3 Tabernacle was
one for you, one for Moses and 1:00 for Elijah.
He figured it out. And then there's booming voice
comes from heaven and says, this is my son, my chosen one.
Hear him. And they fell on their faces in
fear. You were in the presence of the
Son of God. Be quiet and listen, right?
That's kind of kind of the message there, right?
Peter was right about who they were, but I think he really
wanted to let Jesus know that he'd figured it out.
I kind of connect with that cause when I know something
about a subject I like to let you know that I know, but they
can very quickly cross a line right into the sin of being a
self centred know it all. And that's quite a fine line.
Sometimes it's just really important to stop and listen to
God. Stop and listen to God.
Why is it important to stop and listen to God?
Lots and lots of reasons, I guess, but I think kind of the
main 1, main 2, I guess main one is we don't know everything.
And sometimes the stuff we think we know is wrong.
And so it's really important to just get with God to to pray, to
read your Bible, right, to make that connection, listen to God,
make time to do that. Remember that legend about
seeing the Angel of Death, the older event incense that turned
out to be wrong? Yeah, that that just wasn't true
at all. Let me show you this one.
Who's in this picture? It's not a trick question.
Who's depicted in this in this picture?
Satan. Yeah.
The devil, right. And where is he?
It's kind of obvious. Is that there's a sign there?
Yeah. Hell, right.
You could probably most people would kind of recognise that
what what's going on in that picture.
And in fact, most non Christians in New Zealand would probably be
able to tell you very quickly what that is.
Think about. That is almost everything that's
in that picture is wrong. It's not, it's not biblical,
it's not what the Bible says, right?
And it's funny cause we all kind of look at this and we all know,
right, all Satan's that it's kind of red guy and he's got
horns and he's usually carrying a pitchfork for some reason.
It's always a Trident, like the 3.1.
He's got a tail and kind of trotters.
You know that that's what Satan looks like.
Did you know the Bible? When you actually start reading
this and you start connecting with what God says, Lucifer,
Satan, the Devil was one of the most Beautiful Creatures in
creation. In effect, if you take the
descriptions of Lucifer in Isaiah 14, in Ezekiel 28 and you
punch them into an A I and you say from their description, draw
me a picture. What, what, what do you think he
would look like? You get something like this and
there's lots of different ones on this end.
There's, there's problems with that one as well, but that's a
lot closer than the, the red guy with the horns.
We just pick up on these legends, right?
And they just become a part of what we believe, but they
actually not connected with the, the, the scripture in anyway.
Also, there's this idea that Satan is in in hell right now
torturing people. That's what he does, except
that's not what the Scripture says.
He's on the earth. He is Peter.
She's walking to and through look like, to and fro like a
roaring lion seeking who he made the vow.
So we just pick up on all these kind of legends.
And so it's really, really important that we stop.
We just constantly stop getting to God's word.
Listen to what God says because all of us have things that we
believe about God or we believe about ourselves or we believe
about the way life works or the way life should work that are
wrong, that they're just wrong. And and it makes the difference.
It makes a difference to the decisions we make, to how we
connect with God, to how we treat other people.
All these things make it make a huge difference.
One more of these legends and then we'll we'll get into our
text. When Elijah went back to heaven,
he was a, a prophet of God in the Old Testament.
When he went back to heaven, it seems that the sort of flaming
chariot and flaming horses came down and picked him up and took
him away. He threw his, his cloak to
Elishah. He was Elijah and he Elijah was
his apprentice and he threw his his cloak to him and he was
taken away in this in this flaming chariot.
Now several places in the Scripture, particularly in
Isaiah, but also in Malachi, it says that before the awesome day
of the Lord comes, Elijah's going to come back.
And so let's have a look at one of these Malachi chapter 4 and
we'll see this because Zachary's going to paraphrase it in a
minute. The hold I will send you, Elijah
the prophet before the great and awesome they have the Lord comes
and he will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children
and the hearts of the children to their fathers.
Do you see that? That same thing that Gabriel
said to to Zacharias, unless I come and strike the lamb with a
decree of utter destruction. So Elijah goes when he went back
to heaven, when in the sort of flaming chariot.
So the Jewish people had built up this legend that when he
comes back, he's going to come roaring in and a flaming
chariot. And you can kind of see how they
got to that. Cause that's how we how we went.
So that's how they they kind of saw he would come back, except
the description doesn't actually say that.
It doesn't say it doesn't, but it doesn't say.
But they that was just kind of the the legend that they built
up. So when Gabriel told Zacharias
that his son would this is what he says.
His son would come in the spirit and power of Elijah to turn the
hearts of the fathers to the children and the disobedient to
the wisdom of the just to make ready for the law that people
prepared. Zacharias was likely thinking,
no, that's not right. Elijah comes in a flaming
chariot, not as a baby. Everybody knows that.
So I think that's probably playing into this whole thing.
The stuff that Gabriel said to him is is not making sense to
him. And he says, you know, how can I
know this? How can I understand this?
Well, this doesn't make sense. So Gabriel says them.
I stand in the very presence of God.
I am Gabriel, who stands in the very presence of God, he says,
tells him that for the next 10 months he's gonna be mute.
You know I gotta talk for the next 10 months.
Stop talking. Just listen.
Stop talking. Just listen and Zacharias
listens to God and he observes what's happening and he reads
his Bible and Mary comes to stay with him.
We saw that last week and he watches what happens and you can
kind of imagine his internal monologue as he's going through
all this stuff. Okay, what are the angels say?
What did he say? He said that we would have a
son. How does the Angel know this?
I guess he stands in the presence of God, right?
But doesn't he know how old I am?
And doesn't he know how old Elizabeth is?
You know, and and he said that I should call his name John.
Why? Why John?
There's nobody in in our family called John.
He said that I would have joy and gladness, but of course it
wouldn't. Any father joy and gladness and
having a son especially, you know, at my age, will my joy be
special? He he said many will rejoice at
his birth. Why will many rejoice?
Aren't we just ordinary people that live in the country?
How will many rejoice? He said he'll be great before
the Lord. But I guess you know it.
Doesn't every father believe that that this about his son?
But but if all these other things are true, what does this
mean? What does this mean?
What does it mean that he'll be great?
He said that he, he mustn't be filled with, with strong drink.
So are we supposed to raise raise him, you know, in in the
form of the Nazarite according to the Nazarite vow like Samson,
he said that he would turn many to the Lord.
OK, well, you know, what more could any further hope for it
and his son. But but he he said that he would
go 4th in the spirit and power of Elijah.
What does that even mean? We're all waiting for Elijah.
But could he be Elijah? But there's no flaming chariot.
But but maybe he could. He said that he would make
people ready for the Lord. He said that he would turn the
hearts of the father of the children.
That's exactly what Malachi said that when he and his prophecy,
maybe he really could be Elijah. What does the scripture say?
You can just imagine all these thoughts for 10 months where he
can't speak and all we can do is process what happened and think
about what's going forward. OK, so let's pick up the story.
We're in Luke chapter one, verse 57.
Here's what it says. 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. So friends and family came.
Two things there. One is, you know, they were old
and their long past given up on the idea of being able to have
children. And so this was, you know, this
was a thing to celebrate And and so the all the friends and
relatives came. But also, you know, it was very,
very common in those days for women to die in childbirth.
I mean, it was not that long ago that it was common in New
Zealand. But you know, these days it's
quite a rare thing, probably not as rare as you think, but it's,
you know, but back then it was, it was really common.
And she's an old lady, so there was a good chance she she wasn't
gonna make it. And so the the friends and the
family are there and they're, they're all rejoicing.
And then it says this, this 59. And on the 8th day they came to
circumcise the child. That's the according to the,
the, the custom from the the Old Testament law.
And they would have called him Zacharias after his father, but
his mother answered and said, no, he should be called John.
That actually demonstrates a lot of faith from Elizabeth in in
the message in in Gabriel's message, because she wasn't
there as as opposed to her. But it shows a lot of faith and
trust this number 61. 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. So you can see this.
This is not what everybody else does.
This is not what our culture dictates.
This is not the way we do things.
And this is their own family putting the family and friends,
putting the pressure on. And so she said, no, no, he's
gonna be called John. And they go talk to the hand.
And then Zacharias, what do you say?
This pressure is coming on. This is not what we do.
This is not what our culture does.
And I think for us, this is where we live because the it's
this really hard choice between are we going to do what God says
or are we going to follow the culture?
And that's a lot more difficult, I think, than than we sometimes
make it out to be. It's really, really hard
sometimes to go against the culture and go, no, this is what
Scripture says. This is what we're going to do.
But is that Karas had been listening, not talking,
listening and this is what it says.
And he asked for a tablet for writing tablet.
And he wrote, his name is John Definitive.
And they all wondered, yeah, this is what this is just not
normal, not what we do. But as soon as he he did that,
as soon as he wrote, that this is this for 64 And immediately
his mouth was open, and his tongue loosed, and he spoke,
blessing God. And fear came upon all their
neighbors. And all these things were talked
about throughout all the Hill Country of Judea.
And all who heard them laid up and laid them up in their
hearts, saying, What then will this child be?
For the hand of the Lord was with him.
So then following what God had told them to do just has this
outsized impact around all of all of Judea.
But he says this, it sees this. 67 And his father Zacharias was
filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied saying, so let's just
pause there for a sake, because what does that mean?
Filled with the Holy Spirit? Because this is the third time
that Luke has used this phrase so far.
And I counted about another 7 times after this that Luke will
use this phrase in, in looking in X.
So the Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity.
The word spirit is the word Numa.
You know, when you buy tyres, we would have to buy a wheelbarrow
while ago and they had two different kinds, right?
One that just had rubber wheels and one that had pump up tyres
to take air in them. And those tyres called pneumatic
tyres cause they're the ones that have the air in them.
So the word Numa actually means it means spirit, but it also
means breath or, or wind. So that's where we get our
pneumatic tyres that have the have the air in them that's
numerous. So the Holy Spirit, the Holy
Spirit or breath or wind. And I think because of that, I,
I think because of that kind of description of him, sometimes we
can get the wrong idea that the Holy Spirit is like some kind of
power that comes out from God, you know, but like in Star Wars
when someone uses the force, you know, I think we get that, that
kind of idea in our heads about the Holy Spirit.
But throughout the Scripture, the Holy Spirit is always
referred to as a he as a being. But the Holy Spirit can empower
and influence people in the same way that wind fills up the sails
of a sailing ship. It empowers and directs where
the ship goes. Paul say something very
interesting about this in in Ephesians chapter 5 and verse
18. He says this and do not get
drunk with wine for that is debauchery, but be filled with
the spirit. So he's, he's making a contrast
here. If somebody gets pulled over for
drink driving, the technical term for that is it is a DUI
that's used in sort of legal things.
DI didn't know what UI stands for.
Driving under the influence. Yeah, driving under the
influence. So what Paul saying here is
don't be under the influence of alcohol, be under the influence
of the Holy Spirit. So why does Luke keep using this
phrase? Well, if somebody was Jewish in
their day or even even today, you know, if, if you're a
Christian who, who grew up in church, we're, we're totally
used to the idea of an Old Testament prophet speaking the
words of God, that we, we just grow up thinking, yeah, yeah,
that's, that's kind of what they do.
But for someone like Theophilus, who's a Roman living in the
Greek world, so he's, he's growing up in the, in the Pagan
world, it would be easy for them to be thinking, well, how can
someone speak the words of God? How does this work?
Because it was quite common in the Pagan world to go to an
Oracle and the Oracle's like a spokesman for the gods.
And the Oracle would put themselves in a trance and they
did this thing called ecstasy and enthusiasm.
Is the is that what it was called?
Now put themselves in a trance and then they would speak these
kind of ecstatic utterances, which were thought to be the
words of of the gods. And so that's probably, you
know, the kind of the mindset of of most Pagan people.
But Luke uses this phrase to help him understand what's
happening. So Zacharias was speaking.
He was speaking, they were his words using his voice, but what
he said was influenced by God's Holy Spirit.
He was filled with the Holy Spirit.
He was influent under the influence of God's Holy Spirit.
So these, even though Zacharias were speaking, they were the
words that God wanted. Sid, does that make sense?
So what did he say? Right, verse 68.
First of all, the plan. He's he's he's understanding the
plan. He says this the 68 Blessed be
the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his
people and he's raised up a horn of salvation for us in the House
of his servant David. Okay, so after 10 months nearly
of observing, studying, quietly observing, studying the
scriptures, listening to God, Zacharias realises that that
what is happening is part of a plan that God had right from the
very beginning. How awesome is that?
Right when you just suddenly make that connection and go,
wow, this is this is part of stuff that God's said ages ago
and how it's all playing out. And I've got a part to play in
this that the God of Israel, right all the way back at the
beginning of their nation had promised to redeem them.
Redeem refers to when you had something and then you, you lost
it for whatever reason, and then you get it back.
Sorry, had these friends and they had this, it was their
second car and it was like an old, like 1970s Jeep.
And they loved that car. And then times got tough.
So they sold the, sold the car and then times got better again
for them in their business. And so they bought another car,
but they never liked the other cars they had as much as they
liked that, that Jeep. And years later, he met up with
the, the guy who was now the current owner of that Jeep.
So would you like to sell it to me?
And the guy said, yeah, for a price, the GP gone up in price.
And but he bought the Jeep and he redeemed the Jeep.
They, they got it back again. And so God had promised to get
them back, to get his people back, even though they they had
turned away to redeem them. And this is the horn of our
salvation, the horn of our salvation.
So the the horn of salvation or the horn of rescue refers to an
animal that fights with its horns.
That's the the kind of picture there.
In other words, just like He promised King David year,
generations ago, God has fought for us and He's won our freedom.
Here's what God said to David one of the times in Second
Samuel 7. He says this when your days are
fulfilled and you lay down with your fathers.
In other words, you, you die. I'll raise up your offspring
after you, who will come from your body, and I'll establish
His Kingdom. He should build a house for my
name and I will establish the throne of His Kingdom forever.
Second Life is kinda connecting onto this, right?
And then he says this, right? Here's the next bit of it.
The person. Here's how it works verse 70 as
he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from old that we
should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who
hate us to show the mercy promise to our fathers and to
remember His holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our father
Abraham. So God had promised right back
at the start of the the nation that he would make Israel a
great nation and through them all the families of the earth
would be blessed and if you were in at the moment young adults
were going through look at Genesis and you just see how
messed up that family was. You know, the the first several
generations, just how often they they just were terrible,
terrible people. And we're very unfaithful to God
it a lot of times. And God was always faithful to
that promise. And there were plenty of times
throughout history that that promise could have been cut off
and God made a way right all the way through to here that all the
families of the earth would be blessed through them.
Here's the next bit, the present this 73 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 in righteousness before him all our days.
God has brought us to this point that we can serve him, that we
can be right with Him. Amazing what he's what he's
connecting up, right? And then he turns to the baby.
This is the first thing he said in 10 months.
And you'd think, ohh, well, you know it all be all about the
baby. But it's been all about God and
what God has done and the promise and how God's done this.
Now he turns, turns to the to the sun, and he says, And you
child, will be called the prophet of the Most High, for
you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways.
And this is what that will cause verse 77, to give knowledge of
salvation to his people through the forgiveness of the ascents.
What Knowledge is a Greek word that means in Greek they had two
words for knowledge. One was a word order that means
to have an intellectual understanding of something.
And it's it's the idea that literally means to read again.
So you can read something in your book book and go, yeah, I
understand that they have another word which means to know
something because you've experienced it.
Experiential knowledge. This is the word that's used
here, the knowledge of salvation, the experience of
salvation to his people through the forgiveness of their sins.
Forgiveness. The Greek word emphasis that
means a pardon from prison or a pattern from the consequences of
what you've done. Well, this is the whole message
here, right, Isn't it? Yeah.
That we can experience rescue. We can experience salvation
through the forgiveness of sins. Do you think Zacharias has been
listening? Wow, this 78 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.
Zacharias has been reading God's word, and we know this because
he's he's repeatedly paraphrasing passages from the
book of Isaiah. Have a look at these these Old
Testament prophecies from Isaiah as I am 92.
The people who walked in darkness have seen a great
light. Those who dwelt in the land of
deep darkness on them has light shine.
Do you have to take us through the Messiah and the, and the Old
Testament? We were looking at this and, and
the people in these, the, these northern areas of Galilee were
the first ones to go into captivity when, when the, when
the Syrian invasion happened, they saw some horrific things
and the devastation of the nations.
And they were, they were the first ones to see it.
And that's what this property is about.
These people that lived up in Galilee have walked in darkness,
have seen a great light. As I 42 Mr. Six and Seven, I am
the Lord. I've called you in
righteousness. I'll take you by the hand and
keep you. I'll give you as as a covenant
for the people, a light for the nations to open the eyes that
are blind to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from
the prison, those who sit in darkness as I 60 verse one,
arise, shine, for your light has come.
The glory of the Lord has risen upon you.
He's saying, Look that the sunrise has come.
All the stuff that was in the in, in the Old Testament, it's,
it's, it's coming, it's happening.
We're in the middle of it. It's it's going on.
The apostle John sums this up this way, and in John chapter 1,
there's #4 and I think this is really good.
He says in him, he's talking about Jesus was life and the
life was the light of men. The light shines in the
darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
There was a man sent from God whose name was John.
He's talking about John the Baptist hero.
He came as a witness to be a witness about the light that all
might believe through him, through Jesus.
He was not the light. John was not the light, but he
came to be a witness about the light.
The true light, which enlightens everyone was coming into the
world. Yeah.
This is what Zacharias has connected with, right?
This 80. And then we'll we'll finish up
Susan. The child grew and became strong
in spirit that would spread means attitude is a strong
attitude and he was in the wilderness until the day of his
public appearance to Israel. Lots of similarities there to a
lodger conclusion sometimes. A lot of times it's important to
forget what we think we know, stop talking and listen to God.
You slipped up the side of the head by my own my own swimming
here. You know, it's a very
convicting, isn't it? But I think sometimes we talked
about this during the week. Sometimes I think we see prayer
as a last resort. When we get in a real jam,
that's when we pray, but it should just be a routine thing
that we do. We go to God all the time and
pretty we're connecting with God, We're stopping and
listening. We sang the song, you know that
you know, from the quoted Psalm 46, be still and know that I am
God. That's really cool phrase that
be still in Hebrew. It's a military term and when
they used to fight, you know, you have a sword in one hand and
you had a shield trapped the other arm and the word beast
still means to drop your hands by your side as a military term
that meant that be still and know.
I'm glad there are times just to stop and listen to God because
like we say, you know, we don't know everything.
And sometimes the things we think we know are just wrong.
And also, you know, our culture, we just get infected by it or
affected by it, and it can drive us towards unpleasant places.
And we pick up on these false legends, these bad principles,
and even without realising that we're doing that, it just
becomes part of how we think. So it's really, really important
to stop and listen to God. We want to be under the
influence of the Holy Spirit, not our culture.
We have wrong ideas about what what God's like.
We have wrong ideas about what we're like about the best way to
live life and James Book of James tells us that God's Word
is like a mirror that helps us see ourselves as we really are.
One of the things it does is is help us to see our sinfulness
and how we fall short and need a rescuer, which is this one.
Pardon from the consequences of our sin is possible, right?
That's why Jesus came. John's message was one of
repentance. Repent, turn around, point
people to Jesus. We need to inform our sins and
turn to Christ and ask for forgiveness, and then we can
have a knowledge that's gained through experience of being
rescued by Jesus and from the ultimate consequences of of what
we've done. You know, sin always has
consequences, but we could be forgiven.
So we're not. We're rescued from the ultimate
consequences of that. And I think it's also important
to stop and remember that you're part of something that goes
beyond the bookings of your life.
And I think this is what Zacharias kind of connected with
during his ten months of not saying anything.
That man is this plan that's been going on from way back here
and it goes on way off and into the future.
And we have a part to play in that.
We have a purpose in that. No matter who you are, you have,
you know, purpose in that. You know that crisis, you know,
Elizabeth, just people from the country youth group studying
through book of Amos. You know, Amos was just a, a
farmer and a fig picker, a farm hand actually, and a fig picker,
right? He's just an ordinary guy.
He, he, he wasn't something he says I'm not, I wasn't a prophet
or the son of a prophet, but God told me, God do this.
We all have a part to play, no matter who you are, because we
always think, well, I'm just me. I'm not this or I'm not that.
I don't have this skill or I don't, you know, but we all have
a part to play in in God's big scheme of things, which is
awesome to think about that God uses people like us.
Next week we're going to look at the birth of Jesus.
And so you won't be. You don't wanna miss that.
Really awesome, isn't it? The way that all these things
just connect and you start reading the script and you say
God this, Ohh, you said this, but that connects to here and
this connects to here and how it's all like it's amazing to
see. Alright, let's let's pray.
Father, we do come before you or struck at the brilliance of your
plan. Lord, we also come before you as
simple people and we often doubt and we often doubt your words or
doubt that you have our best interests at heart or that your
way of doing things would be the best way to do things.
And we just have those doubts and we fight those all the time.
Lord, help us to, to trust you. Help us to just have that faith
so that we could be like Elizabeth and just go, no, this
is what God said. Forgive us when we mess that up.
Thank you that you have provided you're the horn of salvation.
You, you've, you've fought and rescued us.
Lord, help us to make use of that forgiveness and that free
gift that's offered. Lord help us to understand that
we fall short. Lord, thank you for the chance
to worship today. Thank you for a chance to get
into your word and thank you for this amazing story as as Luke's
laid it out of of who you are and who Jesus is and how all
this works. Thank you for caring about us.
Thank you in Jesus name.