Good morning. Let's pray together. Mhm. Our gracious and glorious Heavenly Father, we thank thee for the ties of grace and the ties of love that hold us to the our God above. Or it might be we'd be reminded this morning that you are in the heavens and that we are upon the earth. Lord, that we are dependent upon thee for everything and that you depend upon us for nothing. Lord, how hopeful we are that you will visit us this morning, that you will open our hearts, that you will open the windows of heaven, open thy word Lord, we know that what you open, no man can shut. Lord, how we need for you to meet with us and speak to us and reveal yourself to us. We know that if you do, it'll be in the person of thy dear son. our successful sovereign savior. Lord, might Christ be lifted up? Might your Holy Spirit take your word and direct our hearts and our our thoughts toward him? We ask it in his work in his name. Amen.

Last Sunday, we looked at Zacharias' prophecy in Luke chapter 1, and we weren't able to finish for time restraints. So I'd like for us to go back to that passage this morning. In Luke chapter 1, Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, the priest in the temple, has had his tongue loosed, and under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he's going to be a prophet. And in his prophecy, he's going to speak of the child that was just born by his wife, Elizabeth, who himself would be the prophet of the Most High.

Last Wednesday night, we looked at Amos chapter 3, And there's a verse in Amos chapter three that says, surely the Lord will do nothing, but he will reveal his secrets to his servants, the prophets. He will do nothing without making the revelation of what he's doing, the secret of the gospel, known to his prophets. And then the next verse, the scripture says this, who can but prophesy? When God reveals the secrets of his glory and of his grace by his prophets, we are compelled, we are compelled to declare that message.

It is the word of God. It is the revelation of God himself. It is the one thing that we need more than anything else. We need to know God. This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. The only way that we can know him is that he would reveal himself. and the revelation that he's made of himself, he's made by his prophets.

When the apostles were declaring the message of the gospel on the day of Pentecost, they were brought in to the Sanhedrin, the ruling Jews, and they were forbidden to preach this message anymore. They said they were turning the world upside down. Truth is the world was already upside down and they were turning it right side up by the message of the gospel. That's the world you and I live in. The world we live in is upside down. Everything that we believe about God is just the opposite of what it truly is by nature.

And Peter's response to the Sanhedrin was this. He said, Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, you judge. You decide for yourselves whether or not we should hearken unto God or whether or not we should hearken unto you. As for us, we can do nothing but declare that which we have seen. and that which we have heard. We must speak. God has revealed himself. God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spoke unto our fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his very Son, who is the express image of his glory. God has revealed himself in the person of the Lord Jesus. Paul said this in 1 Corinthians 9, he said, though I preach the gospel, I have nothing to glory in, for necessity is laid upon me. Yea, woe unto me if I preach not the gospel. Paul said, I have nothing to glory in for preaching Christ. The necessity of preaching the gospel has been laid upon me. The revelation of Christ has been made known and I cannot but speak. I cannot but prophesy. I cannot but tell the world what God has said.

Moses said this in Deuteronomy. He said, the secret things belong to the Lord our God. Now everything about God is secret. to man, everything about him. But those things that have been revealed belong to us and to our children that we might fear him forever. If we're to know anything about God, he must reveal himself to us. And he's done so by his prophets. fully in the person of the prophet. All the Old Testament prophets were types of the one who would come. We have in the Old Testament, we have prophets, we have priests, and we have kings. But never one man fulfilled all three roles in the Old Testament. They were all anointed by God to serve in those places. When the Lord Jesus came, he came as the prophet, the priest, and the king. So the full revelation of God has been made known in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, every major religion of the world claims to have a message from God. And they have a book, a book that they believe to be the word of God. The Muslims have the Koran, the Jews have the Talmud, The Mormons have the Book of Mormons. The Hindus have their prophets and their religious books and revelations. One thing that all of these religions have in common, they all claim to have a message from God.

But one thing they all have in common is they all reveal a God in their writings that is dependent upon them, man, to do something in order for God to be able to save them, without exception. Matter of fact, I didn't know this until looking at this just this week in preparation for this morning, that all of the major religions of the world have a form of purgatory. they have a form of purgatory. Of course, with the Hindus, it's reincarnation. But with Hinduism, if you get it right, eventually, then you don't have to be reincarnated anymore, then you get absorbed into the cosmos of deity. But Judaism, Islam, Mormonism, all the major religions have a form of purgatory. so that if you've not been as faithful as you ought to have been in life, after death, you can suffer kind of like the Catholic doctrine of purgatory. You can suffer temporarily in order to atone for your sins, and then you'll be able to enter into paradise. And someone might ask, well, what is the purpose of purgatory?

Well, if you don't have purgatory and only the faithful make it to paradise, then you've just lost 90% of your followers. So you imagine a place where the people who are not so committed can at least continue to participate in your religion and have some hope of entering into paradise when all is said and done.

What is purgatory? What are these religions? Most forms of Christianity are the same. It's a works gospel. It's what they all have in common. The only difference is what are the rules and regulations that have to be adhered to in order to be saved. And so all of these major religions that declare to have a book of God and a word from God have that in common. It's a works gospel whereby the God that is worshiped is a God who needs you to do something. The eternal destiny of your mortal soul is in one way or the other determined by what you do and what you don't do.

Reminds me, we look at the whole world today, it reminds me of the experience that Paul had in Acts chapter 17 when he went to Athens. And he spent a few days walking around the city. And he said this afterwards, he said when he went to Mars Hill, and preach the gospel to the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers on Mars Hill. He says, I've observed that you are a very superstitious people. I looked up that word superstitious and it's a conjunction of two words, to fear the devil. To fear the devil. All religions in the world are based on fearing the devil. And so you give man something to do in order to be able to deliver himself from that very natural fear.

He went on to say, I've observed your many devotions, your many statues all around the city. You have one over here for the Hindu God, I know they were Greek gods, I know that, but I'm just relating to that to our modern day circumstances. We have the Muslims right over here, we have the Pentecostals right over here, we're everywhere. And he said, I noticed that you had one statue to the unknown God, the unknown God. Perhaps it wasn't really a statue. Perhaps it was just a pedestal without a statue on it. And it just said the unknown God. It was the catch-all.

And what did Paul say to those philosophers on Mars Hill? He said, that's the God I'm going to preach to you. The one you don't know. The one who has revealed himself. through his prophets, through his prophets. Now we have a record of that revelation in the Bible.

Someone might be thinking, well, how do we know the Bible is the word of God? Can we prove it scientifically? Can we defend it historically? Can we Can we reason it out and make it more logical? No. The Bible is what we call self-authenticating. Self-authenticating. In other words, the Bible defends itself. You say, well, that sounds like circular reasoning to me. Well, think about it. If the Bible could be proven to be true by science, then let's just go with science because science is a higher standard of truth now than the Bible. If the Bible can be proven to be true by history, and there's lots of people that are digging up artifacts and trying to prove the Bible to be the word of God by historical events. If the Bible can be proven by history, then let's just go with history because now we have a higher standard. If the Bible can be proven by logic or reason, then let's just go with that. Because that stands above the Bible.

No, the Bible, for a book to be the word of God, it must be self-authenticating. We're not here to prove the Bible's the word of God. We're here to declare it to be. Do I believe the Bible to be the word of God because I've Because I've proven it to be so? No. No. I believe it. Therefore, it is proven to be so. You say, well, that sounds like blind faith to me. Well, call it what you want. It's a miracle from God. It's a gift of grace. and everyone that has been given saving faith believes every word in this book is nothing less than the inspired, infallible word of God, the revelation of the prophecy. 66 books written over 1,500 years by some 40 penmen. And they all have the same message. In the volume of the book, it is written of me. The message is salvation is of the Lord. The message is that we don't worship a God like all the other religions of the world that needs something from us in order for him to be able to save us. We worship a God who is sovereign and omnipotent in salvation. That's the message of the Bible. That's the God that we worship. That's the God that we bow to.

That is, as we're going to see in the next hour, the God who is, the God who is. We're not here to prove the Bible. We're not here to argue the Bible. We're not here to debate the Bible. We're here to declare it as the word of God. And we're confident of this. We're confident of this, that God's elect God's elect people will be given faith to believe what God has revealed about himself.

We're fully aware that the world is full of skeptics and scoffers, and we feel no need to prove ourselves to them. God has no need to prove himself to them. He's not in the least daunted by their unbelief in any way. God's word is given for God's people. Let the world do with it what they will. Let them pick and choose what they want to believe out of them. Let them turn the word of God, the revelation of Jesus Christ into a rule book of laws and regulations. Let them imagine themselves being able to persuade or to obligate a God to save them.

We open God's word looking for the prophecy that he's given of Christ. Let's go to our text, Luke chapter one. Zacharias, you remember, has been struck dumb because of his unbelief. He can't speak. But now he obeys God, the revelation that God gave to him through the angel Gabriel. And he names his son John. John, you remember what John's name means? God is gracious. God is gracious.

Oh, aren't you so thankful that salvation is by God's grace, that we approach the God of glory at the throne of grace, at the throne of grace to find help in our time of need, that it's not a bar of justice that we must approach God in order to have his blessings, The Lord Jesus did that. That's what the cross is all about. He satisfied the justice of God when he was made sin and suffered the full wrath of God's justice in order to put our sins away. He did that. And now we come. We come boldly. We come confident that the way has been paved. The veil has been rent. We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous one, sitting at the right hand of the majesty on high. And we come in his name and based on his merit.

This is the prophecy. So all the prophets, all the prophets speak of him. In verse 76, Now Zacharias is going to speak to John. He's just an infant, he's just been born. But you remember, he's already leaped in the womb of his mother. Now I'm not suggesting that John, as an infant, understood what his father was saying, but this is the prophecy that Zacharias speaks. And thou, child, shall be called the prophet of the highest, John. The Lord Jesus said, of John the Baptist, of those born of woman, there is none greater than John. Of those born of woman, that goes all the way back to Adam. Well, back to Cain and Abel. It encompasses everybody. And then he said this, yet he that is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.

Now, who took the least position in the kingdom of God? Who made of himself no reputation? Who is it that became a servant to his father? Who is it that washed the feet of his own disciples? Who is it that came and laid down his life willingly? For she's the least in the kingdom of God. No man born of woman is greater than John the Baptist, yet he that is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he, greater than he.

John said of himself, he said, when he saw the Lord Jesus and the spirit of God revealed Jesus to John as the Christ. John said, I'm not worthy to unlatch your sandals. I'm not worthy to be the lowest servant at the door washing the feet of this one who comes in.

Suffer to be so, John. The Lord had already told John to baptize him. John said, I can't baptize you. I'm not worthy to unlatch your sandals. Suffer to be so. that we might fulfill all righteousness.

The baptism, our baptism is a public profession of our faith. Does our baptism save? No, no. Those who are saved delight in being able to testify of that salvation and identify with Christ in baptism. But our baptism doesn't fulfill all righteousness. His did. His did. He is the one who was baptized with fire at Calvary's cross. And all that he did, all that he did to accomplish our salvation and fulfill all righteousness.

John also said to himself, when his disciples came to him for permission to follow after Christ, John said, go, he must increase, I must decrease. And it wasn't long after that that John was arrested and beheaded.

Here's what Zacharias, John's father, anointed with the spirit of God to prophesy of his son and thou child shall be called the prophet of the Most High." The prophet of the Most High. The scripture says that the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. So all the prophets were the prophets of the Most High. To him gave all the prophets witness, All the prophets spoke of Christ, but now John's gonna fulfill that role.

Almost the last of the Old Testament prophets, though he's living in New Testament era, hasn't been a prophet since Malachi, but now the Lord's gonna raise up John as the forerunner of Christ. And he says he's gonna be the prophet of the highest, the most high, none higher than him. None higher, none beyond the Lord Jesus Christ. Can't go any higher than God almighty.

He's going to be, turn back with me. I love because what Zacharias is saying now in his prophecy, he's just repeating what Gabriel told him. What the messenger from heaven brought to Zacharias, and now Zacharias, now that he has his voice, is gonna repeat the prophecy. And when we prophesy, that's what we're doing. We're not saying we have a new message from God, or we have a new word from God. We're just repeating what he's already revealed.

Look at verse 32. Verse 31, and behold, this is Gabriel now speaking. to Mary, and, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and shalt bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus. And he shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest. The Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David." Same prophecy now is made to Zacharias about John and Zacharias opens his mouth and declares this prophecy.

Look at verse 77, to give knowledge of salvation unto his people by the remission of sins. Look with me at Luke chapter 11. Luke chapter 11, verse 52. He's going to give the knowledge of salvation to his people. That's what prophecy is. We're prophesying, we're saying with John, behold, the Lamb of God, look to Christ. He's the only one that can take away your sins. He's the only one that can establish a righteousness for you before God Almighty. He's the only one that can atone for your sins. Chapter 11 of Luke, verse 52, the Lord Jesus is speaking to the Pharisees. And look what he says in verse 52. A lawyer's gonna speak up. The Pharisees have made their peace and the Lord has rebuked them. And now a lawyer's gonna speak up.

Woe unto you lawyers, for you have taken away the key of knowledge. You entered not in yourself, and them that were entered in, you hindered. Woe unto you, Pharisees, for you have taken away the key of knowledge. The Lord Jesus said to the apostles, I'm going to give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. And them who you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven, and them which you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. And now he says to these lawyers, you've taken away the key. They can't unlock the secret. And you've replaced it with a law that locks them out of heaven. They've made the law the means of salvation.

The book of the Jews to this day, the Talmud, is an interpretation of the Torah The Torah is 613 very specific laws, and the Talmud is the interpretation of those laws, and the rabbis are promoting the laws of Israel as the means of salvation. Nothing's changed. It's that way in every major religion of the world. And the Lord's saying to these Pharisees, you've taken away the key.

What is the key? Well, we could say, who is the key? Who is the key? The Lord Jesus Christ is the key. The gospel is a person. Christ Jesus, the Lord, who he is, who he is, he is the sovereign son of God. and what he did, he is the successful savior of sinners. That's the key, who Christ is and what he accomplished. That's the key. That's what they've taken away. You've taken away the key. The key is here. The key unlocks the mystery. The key reveals the secret, but you've taken away the key and you replaced it with the law. And you yourselves can't enter in because you can't keep the law. And now you're making it so that they can't enter in.

You can never enter into the presence of God by your law keeping. You can never enter into the presence of God by your will or your works. It is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth. It is of God who showeth mercy. John, Jehovah is gracious. He's going to be the prophet of the Most High, and he's going to give the knowledge of salvation. The knowledge of salvation is Christ. Who Christ is, that's the revelation of scripture. Who is the person of the Lord Jesus Christ? And what is it that he exactly accomplished? And we declare that. And God in his mercy gives his people faith to believe on Christ. To just believe on him. To reject any thoughts or any notion of being able to save oneself, or being able to atone for one's own sins, or being able to go to purgatory in order to make things right with God.

No, no. That's taking away the key to the kingdom. That's putting in a blockage to the kingdom. No. This one who's gonna be a prophet is gonna give knowledge of salvation. Knowledge of salvation. Who does the saving? He did it all. He did it all, he's God. He entered into a covenant promise with his father in eternity past to save and elect people. He left the glories of heaven and was made in the likeness of sinful flesh and bore our sins in his body upon that tree and put them away once and for all by the sacrifice of himself. He atoned for our sins. He redeemed his people. He was successful in accomplishing their salvation. He ascended back into glory and took his rightful place at the right hand of the majesty on high and sent the comforter, his Holy Spirit. The same Holy Spirit that inspired these prophets to reveal who Christ is now enables us to believe what's been written. And in the miracle of the new birth, He gives us eyes to see and gives us hearts to believe. And in the miracle of sanctification, He keeps us. He keeps us. Oh, we try every day not to believe, but we can't not believe. If you've ever been given faith, you can't not believe. If you can, you eventually will. But if you've been given faith, saving faith, you will remain unto the end because he will be faithful to keep us from falling and to present us faultless.

So from election to glorification, salvation's of the Lord, it's all of him. And God's people love for the Lord Jesus to get all the glory. They love to not compete with Him. They love to be made sinners in His presence and to glory in His grace and depend on Him for everything in their salvation.

The knowledge of salvation. You see, the world doesn't have the knowledge of salvation. and all the prophets that have pretended to bring to earth a word from God. I mean, take Joseph Smith, for instance. 1827, wandering around in the woods in upstate New York, and he finds some golden tablets. And he takes those golden tablets and he records them into the Book of Mormons. Of course, the golden tablets disappear. No one can find them. And now we have one book written by one man deceiving millions and millions of people around the world.

Same with Muhammad. Same with Muhammad. Conflict between the Middle Eastern tribes. in the 6th century AD and a man by the name of Mohammed records the whole book of Koran all by himself and pretends to be a prophet from God. One thing consistent with every one of them, the God they preach needs them to do something in order for him to be able to get them into paradise. The God that we worship did it all by himself, all by himself.

Notice in our text, verse 77, to give knowledge of salvation unto his people. This knowledge of salvation isn't just given willy-nilly to all men to accept or reject. It's given unto his people to know Christ, to have Christ revealed in your heart. Christ in you is your hope of glory. This is only given to God's elect. The rest of the world will not have him. They don't want him. They have no love for the truth. Adam, you read this in the study this morning, I think Adam's with the kids right now, but 2 Thessalonians 2, because they have no love for the truth, therefore God has sent them a strong delusion that they should believe the lie. What is the lie? It's a works gospel, it's a freewill gospel, that's the lie. They have no love for Christ.

Now, I say this again, Men can't come to Christ because they will not come to Christ. We come into this world spiritually dead. Yes, we have to be given a will. We have to be made willing. That's the new birth. We have to be made willing in the David's power. And he continues to make us willing. But it's not God's responsibility. that men who have not been regenerated are unwilling. As a matter of fact, Romans chapter one, we're gonna read that in the second hour, says that God has revealed himself to them in creation and in conscience, and they are without excuse, but they reject the revelation that God has made. What I'm saying is, let's make sure we get this in order. If we're saved, God gets all the glory. He made us willing. And we were able to come because we were willing to come. We could not not come. We were irresistibly drawn. We didn't want to go anywhere else. But if we don't come, that's all on us. That's all on us. No man will stand before God on the day of judgment and say, well, I couldn't come because you didn't elect me. No. God will say to them, you will not come unto me that you might have life.

The message of the prophets, all the prophets, particularly John here, is to give the knowledge of salvation unto his people by the remission of sins. When were sins remitted? When were they separated from us as far as the East is from the West? When will they be remembered no more? When we made a decision, when we lived up to a certain standard, when we fulfilled particular laws, No. The sins were covered by the blood of Christ when that blood was shed. When that blood was shed, the mercy seat in heaven is where that blood was put. 2,000 years ago, the remission of sins was taking place and took place for all of God's people.

We don't make any contribution to what the Lord Jesus accomplished. We don't make what he did work for us by something that we do. He actually remitted the sins of his people. He put them away. And we look back in faith to him and to his redemptive work. This is the message of the prophets. to give the knowledge of salvation unto his people by the remission of their sins, look at verse 78, through the tender mercies of our God. Oh, the tender mercies of our God. God comes to one of his children, he doesn't, he doesn't threaten them. He doesn't, he doesn't, It's the goodness of God that leadeth to redeem. He shows us. He said to Moses, I'm gonna cause my goodness to pass before you. I'm gonna cause my goodness to pass before you. And I'm gonna hide you in a rock, Moses. Moses was on Mount Sinai. He was on the mountain of the law. Moses had to be put in a rock, put in a cave, God's hand had over him. Moses, I'm going to cause my goodness to pass before you, and you're going to see my backside. You can't see my face, but you're going to see my backside. One day you're going to see my face. But you're going to have to have a glorified body to do that. You're going to have to have sinless perfection, incorruptible, before you're going to be able to see my face. In the meantime, you're going to see my backside. You're going to have to look back.

2,000 years ago and believe what the prophets revealed, what God gave to the prophets about our salvation was given to them of God and was accomplished by the key, the key to the mystery of the kingdom of heaven. Look at verse 78, through the tender mercies of our God, whereby the day spring on high hath visited us. Now that word day spring means, well literally it means east. But it's a reference to the rising of the sun. To the rising of the sun. And it's a picture of the son of God, the Bible says, who has circled the earth with the light of his glory. And Here's the, to give the light of the gospel to them that sit in darkness. Here's where we are, look at verse 79. To give light to them. What do we say? The darkest hours just before dawn. What a beautiful thing it is. Walking around in my driveway this morning, watching the sun come up. All of a sudden, that which could not be seen, that which was dark, all of a sudden it's illuminated by the rising of the sun. I love to watch the sun rise. And here's what the Lord's saying. You live in darkness. You can't see. You can't perceive. You can't understand. But when God, the Holy Spirit, who inspired the prophets to write, gives you faith to believe what they wrote, then the Son of God rises in your heart and the light of the gospel shines in the face of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the key himself to the kingdom. to guide your feet in the way of peace.

He guided our feet this morning to come here to this place that we might be reminded once again that the Lord Jesus Christ is the way. We live in a world that knows nothing of peace. They know nothing of peace with each other. They know nothing of peace with God. They know nothing of the peace of God that keeps our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus.

It's the light of the gospel. It's Christ himself that pushes away the darkness of confusion, the darkness of sin, and enables us to rest in Christ and to have peace with God. To show us, to enable us to walk in the way of peace.

And the child grew and waxed strong in spirit and was in the desert till the day of his showing unto Israel. Zacharias and Elizabeth are up in age, miraculous birth that John came by. We don't know exactly when John went, but the indications are that early in life he went to be with an Essene community, a community of men that spent their lives studying the scriptures of the Dead Seas, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, and spent his life there in the desert, preparing, God preparing him to be the prophet that would make way. for Christ.

He came out of the desert into the Jordan, and God brought people to hear a prophet who wore camel's hair and ate locusts. And, what'd you go to see, the Lord said? Oh, a prophet of God. What'd that prophet say? He said this, behold, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world. He had one message. We have that same message. It's a word from God. And it's not just a word, it is the word. For the word became flesh and dwelt among us.

And there's another thing, just in closing, that distinguishes our message given to us by our prophets from all the prophets of the world. I don't know of a prophet of the world, maybe in some cult, but in the major religions of the world, they were given a message from heaven dispensed to men, but what religion of the world says that our God came into the world and became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory as the glory of the only begotten of the Father The one who himself is full of grace and full of truth.

God has come. God is here. We gather together, he promises to meet with us. Oh, that he would speak by his prophets to our hearts.