Luke 1:1-56 – The dawn just before sunrise

Introduction

Have you ever been in a terrible situation that you just wanted to end? For instance, a terrible day that you wished would be over. As you sat in pain, waiting for the night to be over, you longed for the dawn, for the sun to rise to bring the hope of a new day, a fresh start.

This is the situation that Israel was in. It had been over 400 years since the last prophecy from Malachi. He prophesied that “the sun of righteousness” would “rise with healing in its wings,” but before that would happen, God would “send” “Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord…” This prophet would “turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers.” This is in keeping with Isaiah’s prophesy some 200-plus years earlier that said that this prophet would be the forerunner who would prepare the way for “the glory of the Lord” to “be revealed” so that “all flesh” would “see it together.”

You see, God was saying through Malachi that his plan was in the works. One day Jesus would come, the Son of God, who is the sun of righteousness who would bring healing to God’s people. But just before the dawn that brings the sun of righteousness, a prophet would come in the spirit of Elijah who would announce that the daybreak was coming.

In our passage today, we are going to be looking at the dawn just before the sunrise. We are going to see that Jesus is the great leveler who is the Savior of the world, especially to those who are humble and needy.

Purpose of the series and background (1:1-4)

You might be thinking, “Why Luke?” Well, Luke says that he wrote it so that Theophilus might have certainty concerning the things he was taught (1:4). And so, the purpose of preaching this to you is the same. I want you to have certainty that the things you have been taught about Jesus being the Savior of the world are true.

Who was it written to? Even though it appears to have been written to Theophilus, or it was dedicated to him because he may have funded Luke’s research and writing, it does seem that it might have been written with a broader audience in mind, probably a mostly Gentile audience because Luke focuses on the incorporation of non-Jews.

What was Luke’s point? Theophilus probably learned about Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection at a high level (1:4), and perhaps some of you too, so Luke writes to show the truthfulness of these events that fulfill Old Testament prophesies that the apostles have been teaching as eyewitnesses of Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension (1:2). Luke is a historian. He is going to show the truth of what has happened by compiling an orderly account from meetings with eyewitnesses like Peter and John (1:2), and probably consulting other sources and writers like Matthew and Mark (1:1). In other words, Luke’s gospel is going to focus on getting all the details right, and making sure he puts them all together in an orderly manner (1:3). In other words, he is going to make sure that he interviews all the right people and puts all the events in an orderly manner. This ordering should bring certainty into the minds of those who are reading Luke’s gospel (1:4).

Exposition

A promised miracle met with unbelief by the positioned (1:5-25)

Luke frames this whole narrative in a definite time frame which would have been and is verifiable…in the days of Herod, king of Judah.

We then get a historical framing of the first of our two stories and a setup for the first response. Meet Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth. These are godly and righteous Israelites of the priestly order of Aaron. They are godly but also afflicted with difficulty. They are barren, they have had no child.

This is where the story takes a turn. This couple is going to be told by a very important angel, Michael, that God is going to intervene in their life and answer their prayers for a child. But the reason for the birth of this child is not to carry on the Aaronic line through them, for their son will die childless, but for him to be the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham and ultimately to Adam and Eve.

Their son, John, Yahweh is gracious, is going to be the last Old Testament prophet. He is going to prophesy that not only is God’s kingdom coming, but it is here because his relative Jesus is the answer to all the promises. John is the dawn before the daybreak, the sun of righteousness, Jesus Christ arises to bring in the kingdom of God.

Zechariah, a priest who was the priest chosen to burn incense, representing the people’s prayers to God would be told this amazing news, that God would take the barren womb of his wife and restore it so they could have the child prophesied in Isaiah and Malachi, who would prepare the way for the Lord Jesus to come.

God would tell this amazing news to Zechariah through the angel Gabriel who told Daniel of this same kingdom that would eventually come. This is incredibly significant.

He was told by Gabriel that John would be a great prophet and would be used by God to make his people ready for the Messiah to come. He would be used by God to preach a message of faith and repentance.

Zechariah, after hearing the news, does not believe it. He, a priest, does not believe that God would do this. He looks at his natural circumstances, thinking that it is not possible for him and his wife to have a child.

Zechariah has great news to tell if he would believe it, that the promised prophet and the promised Messiah will come in his son’s generation. But he doesn’t believe it, so Gabriel won’t allow him to speak until God fulfills his prophecy.

The priest who was supposed to pronounce the blessing on God’s people after he finished his service could not pronounce it. God’s true blessing to us, the word of God, was being delivered by God soon enough, but there is no room for unbelief in the coming of this kingdom…no hypocrisy is allowed. There is no blessing that Zechariah could pronounce because our blessing only comes through Christ.

And so, just as Gabriel prophesied, Zechariah’s wife, Elizabeth conceives a child. God has done two things…he has taken away her reproach in their society of being childless, and he has brought in the herald of the kingdom of God into the world.

A question should be asked here. Do you believe that God has power over the natural world? Can he bring conception to a barren womb? Do you believe this story? And the many stories to come? Or will you stand in judgment over what God can and can’t do like Zechariah?

Will you believe the stories found in the book of Luke about the great and mighty God interacting with the world to bring about his plan and purposes? Will you believe, or will you be unbelieving?

A promised miracle met with belief by the lowly (1:26-56)

The next story is astounding. It is the story of a young peasant girl who has nothing about her that makes her worthy of great honor or privilege. While she is an Israelite descended from David, so were many, and what that makes her, in a sense, is a nobody from a tiny no-place town (Nazareth). She is still a virgin and is engaged to be married to Joseph who is a descendant of David.

The angel Gabriel shows up again. This time he talks to Mary. He tells her that she is the chosen woman that every Israelite woman wanted to be. She is the one who would give birth to the promised serpent-crusher. This young woman would bear the seed who would defeat Satan and bring salvation to the world. She was favored by God to be this woman.

She would have a child who would be great like John the Baptist, but even greater. Why? Because he would be a man born without sin, a man conceived by God himself in the womb of a virgin. He would be greater than John because he would be called the Son of God, the Most High. But not only would he be called the Son of the Most High, but he was the promised one who would reign on the throne of David, over God’s people, but he would reign not just for a short time on the earth, but he would reign for all time over all things. Mary would have the seed that was promised to Abraham that would bless the entire world, all the nations.

Mary’s response is not unbelief like Zechariah, but belief. Though it may look like unbelief by questioning, she is basically asking what she needs to do because she doesn’t understand how she can have the Son of the Most High as an unmarried virgin. The angel Gabriel, the one who visited Daniel and prophesied about Christ who would come and make an end to transgression and sin, and atone for iniquity, bringing in everlasting righteousness, tells her that the Holy Spirit would somehow impregnate her without her knowing a man. The conception of the Son of God, the Son of the Most High would be by the power of the Most High. This child that she would carry and raise would be holy, set apart, perfect, without sin because he was not born by ordinary generation. He would not inherit the sin of Adam.

Gabriel then told her that her relative Elizabeth was also pregnant. Gabriel gives a sort of explanation to her that she already knew, since she was already believing. Nothing is impossible with God. Think about it. God will impregnate Mary with the Son of God…an impossible thing to believe in a sense. But don’t worry, God has already done something humanly impossible, that elderly relative, Elizabeth who was barren, is already six months pregnant.

Mary’s response of belief is the same attitude found in her soon-to-be Son, Jesus. Not my will, but yours be done. She tells the angel that she is the bondservant of Yahweh, the Lord. Her response is essentially, “do whatever you have said.”

The narrative then moves into the story of Mary taking a trip to visit her relative Elizabeth. It seems that she is excited to learn about Elizabeth’s pregnancy, so she wants to visit her to celebrate with her. She takes the trip into the hill country to a town in Judah. She shows up, and greets Elizabeth, probably with excitement, and something incredible happens. As soon as Elizabeth heard Mary’s voice, the baby who is six months old in the womb leaped. John the Baptist, Yahweh is gracious, recognizes something incredible. He recognizes, because he has the Holy Spirit living in him in the womb, that his Savior, the Savior of the world, Jesus Christ, has just entered the room.

At this point, Elizabeth is also filled with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit reveals to her something incredible. She knows that the woman standing in front of her, who just greeted her, is the mother of her Lord, the mother of Yahweh, the I Am. She is overwhelmed that the mother of Jesus Christ, very God of very God has visited her. She felt John the Baptist jump with joy in her womb. Knowing that her husband didn’t believe but Mary believed and trusted that God would do what he said he would do, she pronounces a blessing upon Mary, the believing one. Mary believed that Yahweh would do what he said he would do.

When Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, cried out that Mary was blessed by God to be pregnant with the God of the universe, and blessed that she had believed such an astounding prophecy about her, Mary did not do what we would expect most people to…become proud and boastful in themselves. No, Mary, instead of thinking that she is somehow great and was chosen because of her greatness, praises the Lord for willingly choosing one who was not worthy of this incredible honor. Mary understands who she is, a simple poor girl from a small town who is a sinner in need of a Savior, who happened to be used by God to deliver the sinless one by the power of the Holy Spirit.

And so, Mary breaks into a great song of reversal that we call the Magnificat. She, inspired by the Holy Spirit, echoes a prayer just like Hannah’s found in 1 Samuel 2:1-10. A summary of this Magnificat could be: the poor are lifted up, and the powerful ones are humbled in God’s work of salvation through Jesus Christ.

This song is filled with allusions to the writings and prophets. It echoes Genesis 17:7, Psalm 34:1-3, and many other psalms, 1 Samuel 2:1, Isaiah 41:8-10, Isaiah 61:10, Habakkuk 3:18, Zephaniah 3:17, Micah 7:20, and many other passages. This makes complete sense, because she wasn’t well-educated, she simply strings together Scripture that she has probably memorized.

I could do a whole sermon series on verses 46-55 alone, but let’s just pull out some highlights.

Mary’s soul, the core of who she is, holds her Lord in great esteem. She has been brought to a place of praise at the Lord’s blessings upon her. Mary’s spirit, essentially just a synonym for the core of her being, greatly rejoices in her Creator, who is her Savior.

She gives many reasons for her praise. First, God took not only a woman, but a humble one at that, and caused generations to count her as especially blessed by God. Notice that she calls herself God’s slave, a bondwoman claimed by God.

Second, God, the all-powerful one, has done great things for her, the one who is holy, completely set apart.

Third, God has shown mercy to those who reverence him.

Fourth, God has done mighty things by his power, he has dispersed or scattered the proud even with their haughty thoughts.

Fifth, he has taken the powerful and thrown them down from their thrones and exalted the lowly.

Sixth, he has helped the hungry and sent the rich away with nothing.

Seventh, he has helped his people by being merciful to them and fulfilling all his promises even if they didn’t deserve it.

This song is an incredible song of reversal. Think about it. She is completely overwhelmed by God’s grace and mercy to his people and especially to her. She is so amazed by God that she calls him 5 different things: Lord (the covenant faithful I Am), God (Creator), Savior (Redeemer), Mighty One (All-powerful one), Holy (Above all). To Mary, her God is faithful, all-powerful, kind, and merciful God.

Her God has taken someone who was looked at as not having any significance, a poor young woman, and has blessed her so that she would be remembered for her trust in God and belief that God could do something completely astounding, conceive the very Son of God, the Almighty himself, in her womb without the help of a man, and save the entire world through him. She believed that God sent Jesus to be the Savior of the world! And she would be the vessel that would nourish, love, and protect him through his early years! The Savior of the world would in a sense, entrust himself to her care.

Her God would bring about a great reversal. He would save the world by becoming a servant. Mary, calls herself a servant of God. How fitting that the mother of the Lord Jesus Christ, who emptied himself of his glory and became a servant, would use someone who considered herself a servant. Jesus Christ would exalt Mary, and he would also be exalted after his death. Her God would take the mighty and bring them down. He would take the powerful and show their weakness.

For us, nothing is as it seems. The powerful will be made weak. The weak will be made strong. The rich will be in poverty, and the poor will be made rich. All is not as it seems. Jesus proved that.

Luke wants us to know that Jesus is the Savior of the world. He wants us to know that the powerful often don’t think they need a Savior, but they actually do. For them to embrace Christ, they must be brought low. The weak, the humble, and the broken are the ones that Jesus came to save. He came to save those who need a Savior.

The darkness of the last 400 plus years, awaiting the promised Savior of the world is coming to an end. John the Baptist, who would be great, the one who proceeds the great and awesome day of the Lord, has been conceived and will soon be born, who will herald the coming light of the world, Jesus Christ, the greatest of all, who has also been conceived, and will be born in some time from this moment. The darkness that proceeded the dawn is fading, the dawn has come, and for those who reverence the name of God, Jesus Christ, the sun of righteousness has come and is going to bring healing for the nations.

John the Baptist might be great, but Jesus is greater. Jesus will save his people from the sins, and his people are those from all the nations of the earth, Jesus, as we are seeing, and will continue to see throughout the book, is the Savior of the world.

Application

Most of the world will say that there is no God, or if they do believe, that he doesn’t intervene in the world. It looks at the world through natural eyes, what is natural is possible, what is supernatural is not. It is unbelieving at its core. It says, “How shall I know this? This isn’t possible.”

Faith in God believes. Mary believed that God was going to do what he said. She believed that God was the one who could restore a womb that could no longer conceive a child. She believed that God could impregnate a young, poor virgin with the Son of God, the perfect Son of the Most High. She believed that this child would one day save the world from their sins and bring about all the promises that he had made from Genesis to Malachi. She believed that nothing is impossible for God. Mary believed that God is the God of great reversals. God takes the proud and brings them low and exalts the lowly.

Do you believe? Do you believe that God can do whatever he wants? Do you believe that God sent his Son to save the world?