The Promised One: Advent Day 16

Read & Journal

Read Luke 1:67-80. Ask yourself:

• What is happening in these verses? How would you explain it in your own words?

• What do these verses teach you about God and his character?

• Does this passage reveal anything about Jesus, his mission or his purpose?

• What do you learn about the role John the Baptist would play in God’s story of redemption?

• Consider Zechariah’s prophecy in its entirety. How does it help you to see that God keeps his promises?

• If you were writing a list of ways God has been faithful to you or your family, what would you include? List a few specific examples of how you have seen God remain faithful to his character and his promises in your life.

• Consider verses 74-75. How does Jesus’ life, death and resurrection make it possible for us to serve God without fear?

Ponder

At just the right time, with the angel’s words to Zechariah in the Holy of Holies, God had broken his silence. Then, after John’s birth, Zechariah broke his God-imposed silence. And the words that spilled out of him in a torrent weren’t a hurried explanation or a list of all his thoughts on everything that had happened while he was silent. Instead, Zechariah poured forth praise and prophecy.

Zechariah’s response is sometimes called “The Benedictus,” a nod toward the first word in the Latin translation of the passage. The old man who had long ago packed away his dreams of fatherhood, now stood, holding his tiny newborn son and traced the thread of God’s promises from a people set free from slavery in Egypt to God’s covenants with David and Abraham. Throughout his long history with Israel, God had been faithful. And more than that, he had been merciful. It was within God’s power and rights to punish the sinful people, but instead he had poured out his mercy on them again and again.

In verse 76, as Zechariah directed his prophecy toward his infant son, the elderly father seemed to realize that his son, John the Baptist, would be an instrument of God’s mercy in the world. In the sin and darkness and oppression that overwhelmed them, God would send John the Baptist as a voice crying out in the wilderness, a prophet preparing the way for the Messiah. Rather than punishment for sin, God would offer forgiveness—and John would be the one who announced that news. “Because of God’s tender mercy, the morning light from heaven” (v. 78, NLT) was about to shine on a hopeless people stuck in a hopeless cycle of sin and oppression. The Messiah. The Promised One. Jesus.

Like the people of Zechariah’s day, we are a people who walk in great darkness. Maybe we’ve grown tired of waiting or feel hopeless and lost, oppressed, overlooked or forgotten. Maybe the promises are true—but for everyone else but us. We are sinners; a people who deserve punishment, but instead God has overwhelmed us with his mercy in Jesus. In him, we are forgiven, redeemed, made whole.

Put your trust in him today. He is the light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death. He will guide you in the path of peace. Let his mercy break over your life like the sunrise after the darkest night. Rest in him.