Four Reasons For Praise

Well, good morning, everyone. If you would care to open your Bibles with me to Luke chapter 1. We'll continue our study in Luke chapter 1 this morning. Before we begin, let's bow before our Lord together in prayer. Our Father, we carefully and reverently come before your throne of grace this morning, bowing before you, worshiping your matchless name.

And Father, we're so thankful that you tell us in your word that we can come boldly, confidently before your throne of grace in our Lord Jesus Christ, pleading his obedience as our only righteousness, pleading his blood as the only cleansing that we have for our sins. And Father, we bow before you, thankful people.

How thankful we are for the Lord Jesus Christ. How thankful we are for your eternal purpose to send him to this world to come made flesh and dwelling among us that he might redeem his people from all of their sin. Father, how we thank you. How we thank you for not leaving the salvation of your people up to chance, but that you send your gospel to your people, that you give faith in life, and that you do not miss one of them. Father, we're so thankful.

And Father, I pray this morning that you would bless your word as it's preached. Bless it, first of all, most importantly, for your glory. Enable us to lift up and glorify your matchless name. And Father, enable us to behold you with the eye of faith and awe and wonder. And Father, cause us this morning to truly be able to worship you in spirit and in truth. Enable us to forget about all the cares of this life for just these couple of hours. And Father, enable us to set our affection on things above and to worship you.

Father, we pray that this would be the day that you'd be pleased to reach your mighty hand of mercy and grace and power down among us and lay hold on one of your people that as of yet has not yet believed on you, that you might bring them to yourself through the preaching of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And Father, we thank you for the many blessings of this life, how richly you've blessed us, Father, we thank you, knowing we don't deserve the least of anything that you've given us. But Father, we thank you. We beg your forgiveness for how often we are ungrateful and murmur and complain after all you've done for us. Father, forgive us, we pray. Father, it's in Christ's name, for his sake and his glory, we pray, amen.

Now I've titled our lesson this morning, Four Reasons for Praise. You remember a few weeks ago as we looked at this, Zacharias has been silent for nine months. The Lord struck him so that he could not speak because he didn't believe Gabriel who came from the presence of God to tell him you're gonna have a son. And that's getting ready to change. We'll pick up here in Luke 1 verse 57. And Elizabeth's full time came that she should be delivered, and she brought forth a son. And her neighbors and her cousins heard how the Lord had showed great mercy upon her, and they rejoiced with her.

And it came to pass on the eighth day, they came to circumcise the child, and they called him Zacharias, after the name of his father. You know, this miracle child was born, and they wanted to name him after his father. They wanted to name him Zacharias, You know, many sons are named after their fathers. This is not easy to understand that, you know, how they would want to name this boy after his father. I'm named after my father. But this was not the child's name because this is what Zacharias and Elizabeth already knew.

God named this child. His name is John, verse 60. And his mother answered and said, not so, but he should be called John. And they said unto her, there's none of thy kindred that is called by this name. And they made signs to his father how he would have him called. And he asked for a writing table and wrote, saying, his name is John.

And they marveled all. Now when the time came, the child was born, and Zacharias obeyed God and named the child John, just like Gabriel told him, this child's name's gonna be John. Now Zacharias' mouth is opened. Verse 64, and his mouth was opened immediately, and his tongue loosed, and he spake, and praised God. And fear came on all that dwelt round about them. And all these sayings were noised abroad throughout all the hill country of Judea. And all they that heard them laid them up on their hearts, saying, what manner of child shall this be?

And the hand of the Lord was with him. Now for the last nine months, Zacharias has been silent. And now the Lord is gonna enable him to say something And we'll see this in just a minute in verse 67, that he was filled with the Holy Ghost. Once he's filled with the Holy Ghost, he's got something to say, doesn't he? He's got something to say, and he's got something worth hearing. And you know, this is the experience of every believer.

Before we know the Lord, we don't have anything to say. Now, we talk a lot, don't we? But we don't say anything. We don't say anything worth hearing. But after the Lord makes us know him, now we've got something to say. And it's worth hearing as long as we know God.

And verse 64 says that at the end of the verse, he praised God. In verse 68, he said, blessed be the Lord God of Israel. That word blessed means praise. So here in this prophecy, Zacharias is praising God. And I see four specific reasons in this prophecy that we are to praise God. And every believer will aim in these four reasons to praise God, because this has been our experience as well as Zacharias. And the first one, and to me, this is very important. We praise the Lord for who he is, for his person, his character. Verse 67, And his father Zacharias was filled with the Holy Ghost and he prophesied saying, blessed be the Lord God of Israel. Now what Zacharias is doing here is praising the Lord God, the Lord God of Israel. And I want to do that.

I want to truly from the heart, praise the Lord just for who he is. I want to praise the Lord, not just for the blessings that he's given, and His blessings are innumerable. We can't number them, can we? But I don't wanna just praise the Lord for the blessings. I want to praise the Lord for His person, because He's the one I'm in love with. I'm thankful for the blessings, but I'm not in love with the blessings. I'm in love with the person, with the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm in love with the blessor, not just the blessings.

If you look back at Psalm 103, This is what David said. He says the same thing. He says it in many Psalms, but I'll just read this first. Psalm 103, verse one. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me. Bless his holy name. Just bless the Lord for who he is.

I want to praise the Lord, not just for salvation that we have in Christ Jesus, I want to praise the Lord for the Savior, who he sent to save me, who loved me and gave himself for me. That's who I want to praise. I'm thankful for justification, to be made without sin, but I want to praise the one who justified me, the one who's both just and justifier. That's who I want to praise. I'm thankful for eternal life. But I want to praise the life giver, the one who died so that he might give me life, the one who is my life. Christ is my life. That's the one I want to praise.

He's the one that I'm in love with. And I want to praise the Lord for all of his attributes. Everything about him is worthy of praise, his holiness, his justice, His mercy and grace. You know, justice and grace and mercy don't typically go together, do they? They do in Christ Jesus.

And I want to praise God for that. I want to praise Him for His love, that even though God is holy, He has the capacity to love a sinner like me. I want to praise Him for that. I wanna praise Him for His wisdom. In His wisdom, He found a ransom to pay my sin debt and redeem me from my sin. I want to praise Him for that.

You see, there's a difference in just talking about those characteristics and the one who has them all. All of those characteristics are worth praising because there's none like Him. You don't find those characteristics anywhere but in God, and I want to praise Him I don't wanna just preach the doctrines of grace. I want to preach Christ. You can go to hell believing the doctrines of grace. You cannot go to hell believing Christ. I want to preach Christ. I want to believe Christ.

I'm gonna be taken up with him. And that's what Zacharias is doing. He begins this whole thing by praising the person of the Lord. Second, Zacharias praises the Lord for redemption. And in keeping with my first point, I'd like to say it this way. I want to praise the Lord for the redeemer he sent. Verse 68, blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he hath visited and redeemed his people.

You know, you and I have racked up a sin debt to God because of all of our sin and our rebellion against him. It's a debt we can never pay. Eternity in hell won't be long enough to pay for even one of our sins. Unless God does something for us, he must condemn us for our sin.

But Christ came to redeem his people from their sin. And I love how he did not do it from afar. He came and visited his people. He came where we are and redeemed his people from their sin. He redeemed his people from the law by paying the price that the law demands with his own precious blood. He didn't just write out a pardon, he paid the bill. And he did it with his own precious blood, the lifeblood that he shed in his dying agony.

If I know anything about that, I'll praise him for doing it. Christ did for me what nobody else could do. And I tell you further than that, he did for me what nobody else would do for a sinner like me. Only God would pay the redemption price for my sin against him. My sin is against him, yet he's the one that paid the price to redeem me from my sin. I tell you, praise his matchless name. Oh, I want to praise him for that.

And if you look at Psalm 111, The Lord did not leave the redemption of his people up to chance. Psalm 111 verse nine. He sent redemption unto his people. He hath commanded his covenant forever, holy and reverend is his name. The Lord Jesus Christ redeemed his people from their sin And he didn't leave it up to them to accept it or reject it. He sent it to them. He sent it to them and puts it in their heart.

I love how he does not leave the redemption of his people up to chance. And this redemption is a powerful redemption. It's powerful. Look at verse 69 in our text. He hath raised up and horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant, David. That word horn there means power. I'm assuming the big horn rams and these kinds of things, that's their power. They butt their heads against one another. The word means power.

Redemption in Christ Jesus is a powerful, powerful redemption. It's so powerful that by his sacrifice for his people, Christ has redeemed all of his people. What scripture tells us is a number that no man can number, from all of their sin. Just one sinner has an infinite amount of sin and a number no man can number each one with an infinite number of sin. Redemption in Christ is so powerful. He paid the entire debt for all of that sin by one sacrifice. By his one sacrifice, he paid the debt in full. And I tell you this, Redemption in Christ Jesus is so powerful, if he redeemed you, you can never be in debt again. Never. Tell you a little story. This does not work with human beings.

When I worked at the warehouse, I was the finance manager, and it was my decision whether or not how much credit we're gonna extend to different people and so forth. And this guy had racked up a real big debt with us, and filed bankruptcy. We had to write all that off to bad debt. Well, a few years later, the bankruptcy is now finished, and he wants to open up a new store, and he applied for credit. I said, no. My boss, the owner of the company, said yes. Can you guess what happened? He racked up another big debt and filed bankruptcy again.

You and I would do that unless the redemption that's in Christ Jesus is so powerful, we could never be in debt again. He paid the debt in full. The sacrifice of Christ is so powerful. He made his sinful people to be what they're not, to be the very righteousness of God in him. Oh, praise his name. Praise his name. Don't you just want to amen Zacharias in his praise, his precious name.

Verse 71 says, he did this that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all that hate us. Redemption in Christ Jesus is so powerful that God's elect are saved from every enemy. And I tell you the greatest enemy I have, it's me. The greatest enemy you have is you And Christ has saved us from ourself. He saved us from our nature. He saved us from what we would do to condemn ourselves. He saved us from our sin. Our sin is an enemy. Our sin demands our condemnation, but Christ took that sin away and paid for it with his precious blood. Christ has redeemed his people from this enemy, our self-righteousness.

You know it's self-righteousness that keeps anybody from believing Christ. If you're here this morning and you do not believe on Christ, as you hear him preach, I can tell you why. It's self-righteousness. That's all there is to it. You think there's something in you that's good enough to be trustworthy that you wanna trust it. Maybe you wanna trust it plus Christ, but that's self-righteousness.

And Christ has saved us from that enemy. And once the Lord saves us, Every believer knows this so well. Our experience teaches us this over and over and over and over again. Self-righteousness is not dead in me. Now Christ has redeemed us from that. He's redeemed us from that enemy. But self-righteousness is not dead in me. It crops up all the time. Doesn't it, you? Why doesn't it condemn you?

Because Christ made it so it can't control you anymore. Oh, that old man wants to prop up your self-righteousness and get you to trust in that self-righteousness, but the new man never will. He'll only trust Christ. Self-righteousness is there, but it can't rule anymore because now Christ rules. That's how powerful his redemption is.

He has saved us from the enemy of our blindness, the blindness and ignorance of our nature that we can't see. We can't see God. We can't see him as he is. That's why there's so many crazy religions in this world. It's because people are blind. They don't know who God is. They're blind so they don't know themselves.

But Christ has redeemed us from that enemy that keeps us from seeing him. He gives light. He gives eyes to see. Now I see. Once I was blind, but now I see. And I'll tell you who I see. I see Christ. It's not just seeing truths, just truthful doctrines that somebody wants to list for me. I see Christ. I see him. Christ has saved us from the law. The law is our enemy. The law is against us, Paul said. But Christ took the law out of the way, didn't he? Obeying it for his people. Every enemy you can think of was taken away by the Lord Jesus Christ, by his suffering and death for us. and by the new birth that we experience.

What's a powerful, powerful redemption. And I want to praise the Lord for it. And you see, I want to praise the Redeemer. I'm thankful for the redemptions in Christ Jesus, but tell you who I praise is the Redeemer, the one who redeemed his people from their sin.

Third, Zacharias praises the Lord for his covenant of grace. Verse 70, He did this 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 and from the hand of all that hate us to perform the mercy promised to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant, the oath which he swore to our father Abraham. I praise the Lord for his covenant of grace. And I think it's better put this way, praise the one who ordained this covenant of grace, the one who ratified this covenant of grace with his own blood. This covenant of grace is so important.

The only reason any sinner is saved is this covenant of grace. This promise that God made, God the Father made to save a people that he chose. before he created anything. That is the only reason any sinner is saved. God promised to save them. That's what the word covenant means. It means a promise. God promised to save those people by the doing and dying of his son before he ever said, let there be light. And here's what I know about God. God always keeps his promise. Always. You just go through this book and you look and you find every promise of God that you can find. He's going to keep them all. And you can take those promises to yourself as long as you fit the description of the person that he made the promise to.

God promised to save sinners. Are you a sinner? That's the question. Are you a sinner? If you're a sinner, God promised to save you and he's going to do it. He's gonna do it. Not only has he already saved you, he's gonna reveal it to you sooner or later, if you're a sinner, because the sinners fit the description of those that Christ came to save. I could go on and on and on, but that's the illustration I want to use in this point. If you're a sinner, God promised to save you. He's gonna do it.

See, the Father elected a people to save. He chose the ones that he would save out of Adam's fallen race, before Adam even existed. And he gave those people to his son. The father promised the son, I will accept these sinful people into my holy presence if you put their sin away and make them holy, make them righteous, and you make them what I can accept through your death, through your suffering, by shedding your blood. And the son said, father, I'll do it. I promise you. I'll do it. I promise when the time comes, I will be made flesh. I'll come and dwell among my people. I will visit them and dwell among my people. And I'll obey the law for them.

I'll take their sin into my own body on the tree. And since all we know is sin, we can't fathom the greatness of that promise made by the holy son of God. He promised his father, I will take the sin of my people into my own body on the tree. I mean the soul's suffering, the humiliation of that, to take the sin of his people into his holy body upon the tree, and then suffer everything that sin deserves. Suffer until that sin is gone, and then he'll die. because that's the law's demand, where there's sin, there must be death, and the son promised, Father, I'll do it.

He kept his promise. He came and visited his people. He obeyed the law, he put away the sin of his people by the sacrifice of himself, and the father kept his promise, and he's gonna accept all those people that he chose, all those people for whom the son died, and the Holy Spirit, he promised, I'll give all of those dead sinners, I'll give them life. I'll give them faith in Christ through the preaching of the gospel. And that's what the Holy Spirit's doing right now.

When I was a young man, I didn't wonder this as often, but as I've gotten older, I wonder this a lot. Why don't the Lord just wrap this thing up? I'm mean to tell you. I mean, I'm a sinful man. I know Christ, by God's grace I believe him, but I'm a sinful man. I'm so tired of this world, I just, yeah. There's a friend of mine I used to work with, said the world's gone crazy and I want off. Why don't God wrap this thing up? Well, I ask a question the Lord knows the answer to. because he hasn't called out all of his people yet.

That's why we keep meeting together to worship. We worship together. We need to hear of God. We need to be fed. We want to worship him. We want to hear of him. And we also want to see sinners saved. We want to see sinners called to Christ. And if he's going to do it, he's going to do it through preaching the gospel, isn't he? That's why we keep preaching the gospel.

The Holy Spirit is keeping his promise to reveal Christ to the hearts of all of his people. And I reckon when the last one's called out, then God's gonna wrap this thing up, but not till then. I promise you, it won't be till then. See, there'd be no salvation unless God promised he would save those people before he ever created anything. And here's how I know that.

Since we've been born on this earth, what have we done to deserve God's favor? Have we done anything to deserve God's salvation? Have we done anything to deserve being made righteous or being justified? We haven't done anything but sin. We haven't done anything but deserve damnation.

And God knew that before he created the world. He knew what sinners we'd be. And he promised to save us anyway. and he's gonna do it. He has already accomplished the salvation of his people and he's gonna apply it to our hearts at the exact right time. At the time he promised before the world began. Praise his holy name. Praise his name. Oh, what a, what a savior. What a savior that has accomplished the promise of God to save his people from their sin. And then fourthly, Zacharias praises the Lord. He tells us to praise the Lord by serving him. Verse 74 says that he would grant unto us that we being delivered out of the hand of our enemies might serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all the days of our life.

Now that word serve, I looked it up and it actually surprised me what this word means. It means to worship. It doesn't mean to go to work. It means to worship. I don't think if I would serve somebody, I would work, right? But the word means to worship.

Now, certainly, we serve the Lord through preaching, through witnessing. We serve the Lord by doing whatever it is that we can do to help this ministry, to give an offering, to do whatever needs to be done around the building so we've got a comfortable place to worship. But since this word serve means to worship, we serve the Lord just by showing up at the public worship service and worshiping him. Not just to show up so people see us, but show up with a desire to worship him from the heart. That's serving the Lord, because the word means to worship.

And I love what Zacharias says here. Don't miss this. Serve the Lord without fear. Without fear. Don't serve the Lord. Don't worship Him. Don't seek to do what you can do to spread the fame of His name and the glory of His name, because you're afraid God will get you. Serve the Lord without fear of punishment. Don't worship God because you're afraid He's going to punish you if you don't.

And don't serve the Lord out of promise of reward. Don't think, well, I'm going to get more crowns in heaven than somebody else because I served the Lord. I sacrificed to serve the Lord. Don't serve the Lord out of promise of reward. And don't serve him out of fear of punishment.

That's what a servant does. That's what a servant does. There were many times when I was an employee, I strongly disagreed with what my boss wanted to do. But Gary, I did it. You know why? Fear he'd fire me and promise of a paycheck on Friday. That's why I did it. That's a servant. That's an employee.

The Lord said, I don't call you servants. I call you friends. Serve the Lord as a friend of God. Serve the Lord as a loving son or daughter of God because you want to. Serve the Lord out of love for him. and love for his people. Serve the Lord because you're thankful. You think of this, the God of heaven and earth has enabled his people to serve him. Nobody's like us to serve him who is everything. Do that with joy and thanksgiving and serve the Lord by serving his people. This is the way that we can serve the Lord by serving his body here on earth, by serving his people. And sometimes that's through our actions one to another. Many times it's just by our attitude.

Be forgiving. Let's forgive one another. We know people do stupid stuff and maybe they mean to, maybe they don't mean to, you know, Let's be forgiving. Let's be understanding, because I got the same nature. Let's be forgiving as God, for Christ's sake, forgave us. Let's be kind and tenderhearted with one another. You know, I think of times, just me personally, I've been felt so low and so defeated and just, oh, and just Kindness, somebody being kind and tender hearted. It just make you weep. You know, it feels so good. Somebody just kind, just be kind.

And look out for one another. When somebody needs something, if you've got it, give it to them. If something needs done, do it. Just whatever it is needs to be done, just do it to help one another. That's serving the Lord by serving his body. and praise the Lord that he would enable us to do that.

Jan and I like these period history shows, you know, when you're probably familiar with that show, Downton Abbey. I mean, we loved it. We couldn't wait every week, you know, till this new show comes out. And all those servants that they had in that house, You know, they had to pass muster. I mean, somebody does something, you know, that the society looks down their nose on, a woman, a servant there, got pregnant out of wedlock, and they fired her. I mean, you know, you got to be a certain class of people to be my servant. Aren't you glad God doesn't do that? He's allowed us, just nobody's like us, to serve him. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. All right, I hope that'll be a blessing.

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Four Reasons For Praise

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