Join me in the book of Luke chapter
1 and we've been kind of going through Zachariah's prayer, his
song, as he regained the ability of speech from the Lord in Luke
chapter 1. We'll begin reading in Luke chapter
1 and verse 63, and he asked for a writing table, Zacharias
did, and he wrote saying, his name is John, his son that was
born. What a picture we have in Zacharias. You know the scripture
said that both him and his wife were righteous before God, they
were innocent before God, and we know that there's only one
way that happened, and yet, In the flesh, the Lord revealed
to him that you're going to have a son that's going to be my messenger,
that's going to prepare the way of the Lord that's going to come
and be born here. He just couldn't reconcile the
fleshly part of him with that. And boy, you know, we just, as
even regenerated people, we have trouble with that. Well, God
said, I sure don't see how that's going to happen. And he just
didn't believe it. And so the angel said, well,
since you don't believe what I just told you, you'll just
not be able to hear or speak until these things come to pass. And that's what happened here
as we got to this portion of Scripture here where his mouth
was opened and when he said, Thou shalt call his name John,
his mouth was opened immediately and his tongue loosened and he
spake and praised God. The first thing that came out
of his mouth was he had all that time to think about God think
about the prophecies that he knew and what the Lord had revealed
to him. And he says, it's here. Hallelujah. We've waited all
this time, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years for the
Messiah to come. Thousands of years. It's been
prophesied of. David, the Psalms, the Law, Moses
all prophesied that He would come. And as I speak right now,
He is here. And He wasn't born yet, but He
was there. His mouth was open, his tongue
loose, and he spake and praised God. And fear came all that dwelt
around about them. And these sayings were noised
abroad throughout all the hill country of Judea. And all they
that heard them laid up in their hearts, saying, what manner of
child shall this be? And the hand of the Lord was
with him. And his father Zacharias was filled with the Holy Ghost
and prophesied, saying, Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for
he hath visited and redeemed his people. And that was our
subject last week, the visit. And this week is from verse 69,
and hath raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house
of his servant, David. And as he spake by the mouth
of his holy prophets, which have been since the world began, that
we should be saved from our enemies, from the hand of all that hate
us, to perform the mercy promised to our fathers, to remember his
holy covenants, the oath which he swore to our father Abraham,
that he would grant unto us that we being delivered out of the
hand of our enemies might serve him without fear and holiness
and righteousness before him all, the days of our life." Boy,
there's just a message in every sentence from here on out, as
there has been. The oath that he swore to Abraham,
amplified in Hebrews, he swore by two immutable things. Hebrews chapter six, verse 18. So anyway, today we're concerned
with this, an horn of salvation and what exactly that means. And so from Luke chapter one,
verse 69, he hath raised up an horn of salvation for us in the
house of his servant David. Certainly he knew about what
he was talking about there, even though the Lord wasn't yet born. It was prophesied of and reported
that the Messiah was going to come through the line of David.
The Messiah was going to come. If you recall from our time in
Romans back in 2017, chapter 1 verse 3 talking about
the gospel which he promised to for by his prophets and the
holy scriptures concerning his son Jesus Christ our Lord which
was made of the seed of David according to the flesh and declared
to be the son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness.
So it was a fact that was just well known. And so this horn of, he calls
him this, the horn of salvation. And we're going to just kind
of look at that a little bit today and see what the roots of that
are. And the horn is kind of a symbol of power and it's used
throughout the Old Testament and back in Genesis and Exodus. And it's a descriptive word used
here and it's kind of alluded to here in this chapter 1 verse
69 in reference to Psalm 18. If you turn over to Psalm 18
quickly this morning. In Psalm 18 verse 1, to the chief
musician a psalm of David, the servant of the Lord, who spake
unto the Lord, the words of this song in the day that the Lord
delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the
hand of Saul. And he said, I will love thee,
O Lord, my strength. Isn't that what Zacharias said? He praised God. And what better
praise could you give than just to say, I love you. And that only comes from one
thing. A revelation of Christ in you. We love Him because He
first loved us. And when we come to a realization
of that, which was, thank you Lord, we love you. Boy, we just
miss Calvin so much. Every time he prayed, he just
summed it all up. He just said, Lord, we just love
you. It just boils down to that. And
it's either that or it's nothing. It can't be two ways. And so David said, I love thee,
O Lord, my strength. He'd been camped out in the caves
and the mountains and the rocks, and they'd been trying to hunt
him down and kill him. And the Lord protected him, delivered
him. He said, I'm here in the rocks,
but the Lord is my rock. I'm here in a cave, but the Lord
is my fortress. I'm hiding out, but the Lord
is my deliverer, my God, my strength, and whom I trust, my buckler,
the horn of my salvation, and my high tower." All these things
that he describes the Lord, these descriptive words, the rock,
a foundation, a solid base, an immovable, immutable, unchangeable
base. the rock ever the same through
time. He's my fortress. He's a stronghold,
a defense against all enemies. In Romans chapter eight, and
we go there quite a bit of the time, but it's, as Paul said,
that in chapter one, the Savior is going to come out of the house
of David. Now he says, in regards to the Lord being our rock, our
fortress, our deliverer, our high tower, if that's on our
side, what can go against us? If the Lord is with us, who could
be against us? What shall we say to these things?
If he did all those things that we read about in Romans 8, 28
and 29, And 30, working all things for
good to those that love the Lord who are called according to His
purpose. And we just mentioned that the only reason we love
Him is because it's been revealed to us that He loved us first.
And we believe that. So what should we say to these
things? If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared
not his own son, but delivered him up for us all. And that's
the key to everything. How shall he not with him also
freely give us all things? Who shall lay anything to the
charge of God's elect? It's God that justifieth. Who
is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather,
that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who
also maketh the intercession for us. Who shall separate us
from the love of God? Shall tribulation or distress
or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword We're more than conquerors through
Christ. That's what David was saying.
He's my fortress, my rock, my deliverer. One who carries me
away to safety. That word means to provide an
escape. My God. And that term that he used, my
God, he recognized God as Almighty in that term. And it doesn't
really appear that way in the English translation. But if you
read that in the Hebrew text, it would say, he is my El, my
Almighty. I was thinking there's a hymn
Mike often has us sing out of the Green Book. when I can read
my title clear. My God, my all, it says in there.
My God, my heaven, my all. That's the way David looked at
him. My strength, the one who places me in a confined area
of safety in himself. That's kind of what that word
means. Hedged about, defensible, not of my own strength, but He
is the deliverer. My strength is solely in Him.
Isn't that what we determine? That faith is just total reliance
on Christ for salvation, not in anything else. In Him only
I trust. There's another hymn we sing.
It's funny how a lot of these hymns that we love are just based
on Bible truth, scriptures. I dare not trust the sweetest
frame. but holy lean on Jesus name, on Christ the solid rock
I stand. He's my rock, my buckler. It's just another word for a
shield and protection. And then he says, and he kind
of sums it all up in this one descriptive analogy. He says, he's the horn of my
salvation. the symbol of power that sums
up all these descriptive terms that were previously cited in
this Psalm 18. My rock, my fortress, my deliverer,
my God, my strength, my buckler, the horn of my salvation, my
high tower. He just attributes everything
to God because he knows that's where it comes from. He puts that into descriptive
words. Horn, we're pretty familiar with
horn. It's the shape of one and the
purpose of it is used in music or that kind of
verbal thing, it amplifies. It came to be used later on as
a term of abundance and plenty. Who knows what the horn of cornucopia
is? At Thanksgiving, you always have
these images of the cornucopia. It's just a manifestation of
a ram or a goat's horn with all these wonderful things spilling
out of it. And it starts out small, and
then it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. It's just
a manifestation of grace and power. It's just a manifestation
that, even though it seems like it starts out small, It just
grows and grows and grows. Where grace, where sin abounded,
grace did much more abound. It's just a picture of the Lord. In the Old Testament, we find
also in the Psalm, in the 132nd Psalm, that the use of the horn,
it's described as budding in the 132nd Psalm. And it's descriptive
of the Lord announcing that from the house of David, God would
make the horn of David to bud, to bring forth, to bring forth
the Savior, which is Emmanuel, our Lord, our God is with us.
The Lord, in Psalm 132 verse 11, the Lord has sworn in truth
unto David. He will not turn from it. He
swore by two immutable things in which it was impossible for
him to lie, the covenant of grace. of the fruit of thy body will
I sit upon thy throne. And if thy child will, or thy
children will keep my covenant and my testimony that I shall
teach them, teach them in their heart, I shall teach them their
children shall also sit upon the throat forevermore for the
Lord hath chosen Zion, he hath desired it for his habitation. This is my rest forever. Here will I dwell, for I have
desired it. I will abundantly bless her provision.
I will satisfy her poor with bread, the bread of life. I will clothe her as priest with
salvation, and her saints shall shout aloud for joy. And there
will I make the horn of David to bud. I have ordained a lamp
for mine anointed. His enemies will I clothe with
shame, but upon himself shall his crown flourish. So I take
you back to Luke chapter 1 verse 68. Blessed be the Lord God of
Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people. He has raised
up a horn of salvation. for us in the house of his servant
David, as he spake by the mouth of his holy prophets, which have
been since the world began." In Psalm 75, and I was talking
to Norman about this, you know how religion always tries to
take the truth and turn it wrong side out and mess with it. In our natural state, we're just
We just can't deal with it. It says in Psalm 75 that is used
to declare that the power of the wicked will be eliminated,
but the horn or power of the righteous, which is Christ our
Lord, will be exalted. Psalm 75 10, all the horns of
the wicked also will I cut off. All the things that they substitute
for the gospel, all the things that they substitute for the
Almighty, all the things that they substitute for Christ, those
are gonna be cut off. They're of no value. They are
no power. But the horns of the righteous
shall be exalted. Christ is gonna be exalted. He
is going to be raised up and praised because only he is our salvation. We find it used in a kind of
a false imitation fashion of prophecy back in 1 Kings chapter
22. I don't want to read that whole
chapter, but that they're kind of having war with Syria, and
the kings of Israel and Judah are kind of trying to get together,
and the king of Israel says, well, I'd like to go to war with
them, but I don't know how it's going to work out. And so they've
got a bunch of prophets there that are phonies. The very ones
that Norm's always telling us about that are making a mockery
out of the sacrifices, and they're making a mockery out of the gospel,
and they're making a mockery out of God, and so the king says,
well, let's have a prophet tell us whether we're going to be
successful if we go against Syria or not. So they bring out this
prophet Zedekiah, the son of Jenea, and he says, well, I have
to go prophecy, and the king wants to whip up on Syria really
bad, so I have to Being a yes man, I have to kind of provide
that for him. So he makes up a couple of horns
of iron. as a symbol of power. And like,
you know, the prophets are always saying, well, there'll be a horn
of this and a horn of that. And then this horn will slay
that horn. And so the horns are kind of used in that way in the
prophets. And so he makes two horns of
iron, man-made horns. And he says, thus saith the Lord with these
Shalt thou push the Syrians, the horns as the animals use
those horns to push with, until thou have consumed them.
He says these horns represent you and you're powerful and you'll
use these horns to go against the Syrians until thou has consumed
them. And all the prophets There was
a bunch of 400 other prophets, some big number, and they said,
yeah, that's right. We're going with him. All the
prophets prophesied so, saying, go up to Rameth, Gilead, and
prosper, for the Lord shall deliver it into the king's hand. Well,
then he says, He wasn't really confident in that because he
knew they were shaman fakers, you know, and they were just
telling him what he wanted to hear. And he says, well, isn't
there like a real man of God around that can tell me what's
going on? And so he sent for this real prophet. And they said,
well, we got this guy. And he says, well, not him. He
hates me. And he's always prophesying bad
stuff against me, which always comes true. So I don't want him.
But he was the one that came, and of course, if you go to read
the end of that story, he goes with the fake prophets and they
go against him. Remember the story where the
bowman shot a purr-adventurer into the air with an arrow and
it landed between the armor of the king of Israel? And just
as the prophet said, but these horns used in a false way
to promote themselves and not used in the connection of what
they were originally made at. So if we go back to Exodus, we
find some symbolism in horns, because
the altar in Exodus 27, the altar was made of wood, shidom wood. In Exodus 27, one, thou shalt
make an altar of shidom wood, five cubits long and five cubits
broad, and the altar shall be four square. and the height thereof
shall be three cubits. And thou shalt make the horns
of it upon the four corners thereof. His horns shall be of the same,
and thou shalt overlay it with brass." Now the altar kind of
pictures humanity or nature, unregenerate nature, wood. It's
not very tough. And prone to fail. You overlay it with brass, and
brass usually pictures judgment when it's applied spiritually
in the Bible. And so you have this picture
of man and judgment over it. And these horns, these corners
of the altar that hold it up, and these horns, they look like
a horn kind of sticking up. covered with brass, and it's just so typical that
we find, every time we find a scripture that's talking about wrath and
judgment with God, the gospel's hooked right to it. There's always
hope. There's always good news. the brass that is typical of
justice, completely covering the horns and the wood. Now we come to the mercy and
grace of the Lord our God in satisfying the justice and righteousness
of God against sin. He said, the priest will come
in and he will slay the sacrifice and he will take blood on his
finger and he will put it on the horns of the altar. Isn't
that a good analogy, a good metaphor, a good picture? Here we have
fallen man, and we have the brass of judgment upon him, and yet
here is the blood put upon that judgment that satisfies it. And when they made that sin offering,
they poured that blood on those, and they poured it on the altar. and the horns of the altar were
designated as a place for refuge. In Exodus 21.13, if a man, he's
talking about these judgments that if you do this kind of crime,
here's what to expect. So he gets down to if a person
is killed. If a man lie not in wait, but
God deliver him into his hand, then I will appoint thee a place
where there he shall flee, kind of like the cities of refuge.
Well, here it was the horns of the altar. And it says in verse
14, but if a man come presumptuously upon his neighbor to slay him
with guile, trickery, deceit, fakeness, if he slays him with
guile, then thou shalt take him from the altar that he may die."
As long as he held on to the altar, he was offered safety. But if he was lying and full
of deceit, they could take him away from
that and slay him. We have an example of that in
1 Kings 1 verse 50. Adonijah, you remember Adonijah,
he was the fourth son of David. and his other three brothers
had died, Absalom, and I don't remember their other names, but
it was down to him and Solomon. Solomon by Bathsheba, Adonijah
by another mother. Adonijah said, I want to be king. He pronounced himself king. Bathsheba
said, Solomon? You promised Solomon would be
the king. David didn't know anything about it. He's dying in his bed. And so David says, I now pronounce
Solomon king. And he is on the throne. Well,
then Adonijah says, oh, I'm in trouble now. I've usurped the
throne. And now my brother's on the throne. And my life isn't worth a plugged
nickel. And Adonijah feared, because
Solomon arose, and went, and caught hold on the horns of the
altar. And he would not let go. And
it was told Solomon, saying in 1 Kings 1 verse 51, Behold, Adonijah
feareth King Solomon, for lo, he hath caught hold on the horns
of the altar, saying, Let King Solomon swear unto me today,
that he will not slay his servant with the sword. And Solomon said,
If he will show himself a worthy man, there shall not a hair of
him his fall to the earth. But if wickedness shall be found
in him, he shall die. So King Solomon sent, and they
brought him down from the altar. And he came and bowed himself
to King Solomon. And Solomon said unto him, go
to thine house. So he filled out the form. He said, I believe. I said the prayer. I held on
to the horns of the altar. But in his heart, he was, I'm
going to be king. In his heart, he was still usurping
the throne. He just said what was necessary
to get him past the moment. And then that's a lot like religion.
Well, I need to do something. I'm going to fill out this form.
I'm going to sign this or come down and repeat after me. I swear
I'll be obedient to the throne. And then he goes right to Bathsheba
and says, oh, by the way, How about if you give me the widow
of Absalom to be my wife?" Well, that was just saying that he
was going to be the elder brother that the inheritance fell to,
and he should be inheriting the throne as well. It was just a
form of guile and deceit, just what it said in Exodus chapter
27. He planned to overthrow his brother with guile and deceit. 1 Kings 2, chapter 2, verse 24. And there are now, therefore,
as the Lord liveth, which is established me, and set me on
the throne of David my father, who hath made me in house as
he promised, Adonijah shall be put to death this day. So the moral, I guess, of this
story is you can't go clinging on to the horns of the altar
in a deceitful way and expect God to say, well, I know you
said the prayer. I know you said the words. But
you have not had Jesus revealed to you. You have not been regenerated. You just are still in your own
righteousness, in your own guile. And another guy in 2 Kings there,
Joab, he was one that kind of was a henchman for Adonijah and
built him up with the army and everything. He tried that ploy
too, but nobody was buying it. For him too. So you can't misapply
the blood of the Savior. You can't just say the words
and expect mercy. Exodus 29, 12 says, thou shall
take the blood of the bullock and put it upon the horns of
the altar with thy finger and pour all the blood beside the
bottom of the altar. Leviticus 4, 25, the priest shall
take the blood of the sin offering with his finger and put it upon
the horns of the altar of burnt offering and shall pour out his
blood at the bottom of the altar of burnt offering. Interestingly, also there's another
Psalm. In Psalm 118 verse 27 it says,
God is the Lord which has showed us light. Bind the sacrifice
with cords even unto the horns of the altar. That's just a picture
of Christ being bound by the oath of the covenant. It's just
a metaphor for that. It's not like he had to be physically
tied because they didn't have to drag him there and tie him
up so he wouldn't escape because he didn't want to do that. But
he was bound by his oath, his covenant, his blood. I think there's a hymn about that
too. His oath, his covenant, his blood. Support me in the
whelming flood. It's just a picture of the Lamb
slain from before the foundation of the world, symbolically bound
to the altar by the cords of the oath of the covenant of grace.
And when the sacrifice is no longer pictured the true nature
and scope of the sacrifice of the Son of God, then for them
the symbol of that power is cut off. In Amos chapter 3 verse
14, in that day I shall visit, there's that visit word, and
here it's not used in a good sense. Remember how we said it
could be used in various ways? I will visit my wrath upon them
and that kind of thing, or I will visit them with grace. He says,
I'll visit the transgressions of Israel upon him. I will also
visit the altars of Bethel, and the horns of the altar shall
be cut off and fall to the ground, because they did not acknowledged
Jesus, the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world.
They took those lame and halt and awful things that they couldn't
sell in the marketplace and said, well, let's just offer these
up instead. And we don't even have a right concept of God.
They're always worshiping idols and stuff. You're not going to have a symbol
of the grace of God having mercy. If you have no understanding
at all of the whole thing. Jeremiah 17.1, the sin of Judah
is written with a pen of iron. That's just pretty descriptive
there. And with a point of a diamond.
It is graven upon the table of their heart. and upon the horns
of your altars, guile and deceit in the gospel." Cut off. Hebrews 8 verse 9 says, not according
to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when
I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt,
because they continued not in my covenant, and I regarded them
not, saith the Lord. the horns of their altar is cut
off. And the six angels sounded, and
I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which
is before God." Now John's having this vision from this revelation of Jesus
Christ. And he hears a voice, and that
voice is from Christ. And it's a voice from the four
horns of the altar, the four corners. of brass that were covered
with that blood of that sin offering, which is before God. The sixth
angel sounded, and John saith, Ye heard a voice from the four
horns of the golden altar, which is before God. And Hawker said,
Well, this could be no other than Christ that John heard,
for the golden altar is the propitiary, or the mercy seat for intercession,
so that a voice from there must have been Jesus speaking, because
he is the only mediator and high priest. Hallelujah. And so kind of one of the things
that I wanted to bring out today, he's raised a horn of salvation,
a mighty power of salvation, and there's no other name given
whereby we must be saved. And it's just so important to
realize that no matter where you go in the scripture that
you look at a place where God is judging sin, the gospel is
just right there next to it, right? With it. He never takes
us to a place where there's just judgment, but there's a picture
of grace accompanying it. So to those that would not hold
out any hope, Jesus says, come unto me. Come unto me. We will
if He makes us. by his grace that we just would
try to manufacture our own horns if it was just strictly left
up to us. So we'll stop there. We've gone
a little bit over time. But anyway, I thought that was
such an important thing that we cover that. Next time, I think we're going to talk about
the day spring from on high, from Luke chapter 1, verse 78
and 79. So thank you for your attention.
As always, be free.