Week 2 | Zechariah's Prophetic Hope

Introduction

Biblical Background

The Song presents a mélange of images—divine visitation, Exodus, Jubilee, New Covenant, illumination—...to project its magnitude, its immeasurability, its irreducible quality. What God is doing extends the reach of what God has done; it exceeded what had been hoped.(1)

Study Notes

v.67

1. As readers of the OT, we ought to recognize hints here that God is doing something new in these early chapters of Luke. Angels appear throughout the narrative. The Holy Spirit fills members of an entire family (Zechariah, Elizabeth, and John). God is on the move. All these realities point us back to OT promises in order to point us forward to what God would do through Jesus.
2. When we place Zechariah’s Spirit-inspired prophecy alongside Elizabeth’s and Mary’s, we see God beginning to fulfill Moses’s prophetic hope from Numbers 11:29: “I wish that all the LORD's people were prophets and that the LORD would put his Spirit on them!” (NIV) These early chapters in Luke foreshadow Jesus pouring out his Spirit upon his new covenant people in the book of Acts.
3. Craig Evans points out that “being filled with the Spirit in order to speak is a common theme in Luke/Acts (cf. Luke 1:15, 41; Acts 2:4; 4:8, 31; 5:3; 13:9, 52).(4)
4. What marks Spirit-filled people in these opening chapters? One mark is that people filled with the Holy Spirit in Luke and Acts take up the Spirit-inspired words of Scripture to proclaim Jesus.

v.68

1. The connector “because” (ὅτι) tells us that these clauses provide the ground for Zechariah’s praise.
2. The verb “visited” (ἐπισκέπτομαι) here communicates “the loving and seeking care of God.”(6) Note that Zechariah uses this same verb in v.78 when he compares the Messiah’s birth to the light of the rising sun. This pairing of God’s “loving and seeking care” with the theme of redemption foreshadows Jesus’s mission “to seek and to save the lost.” (Luke 19:10)
3. Redemption here refers to God freeing his people from oppression.(7) Like Mary, Zechariah realizes that God sent Jesus to free his people from their captivity to sin and the oppressive hand of God’s enemies. David Garland clarifies:

It is remarkable to note how theological terms in Scripture have lost their meaning in contemporary American culture. For example, the term redemption (1:68) is now more often connected with sports than with Christianity...Redemption in a far more profound sense, the biblical sense, cannot be won by our better performance that makes up for past letdowns, flops, and humiliations. It is brought by God and God alone to persons who are unworthy to receive it except that they have placed their hope exclusively in God. God delivers us from evil, provides the atonement for our sins, and saves us from our seemingly irreversible corrupted state.(8)

v.69

1. While this may be a strange metaphor to many of us reading today, animal horns were symbols of strength and kingship,(9) especially in the OT. We see this in the vision God gave Daniel in Daniel 8. In the OT, the metaphor became associated with God’s promise to send the promised Davidic king to rule eternally over God’s eternal kingdom of strength and justice.
2. Zechariah praises God for “raising up a horn of salvation.” Here we ought to recognize a prophetic foreshadowing of the cross, the resurrection and the ascension,(10) by which God appointed Jesus “the Son of God in power.” (Rom 1:4)
3. Salvation is a prominent theme in Luke and Acts.(11) Zechariah foresees the holistic and total nature of the salvation God would accomplish through Jesus. It involves God delivering his people from the hand of our enemies (v.71) through the forgiveness of our sins (v.77).(12)

vv.70-71

vv.72–73

1. Here “mercy” refers to YHWH’s covenant love. Just as the Lord remembered his promises to Abraham and so delivered Israel from their slavery to Egypt, so now he sends Jesus to uphold his promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God’s loving faithfulness provides the foundation for our salvation.
2. v.73 clarifies that “holy covenant” refers to the Abrahamic covenant. Abraham had died thousands of years before. And yet, God faithfully fulfills what he promised to Abraham. Through Jesus, God would bring about the curse-overcoming blessing he promised to send through Abraham’s seed.
3. Here then Zechariah teaches us where to place our hope. When we pray for our churches, for our friends and family members, for the nations, and for our own souls, let us ask God to save us in line with his promises to Abraham.

1. At the end of Micah 7, the prophet rejoices in the compassion and forgiveness and steadfast love of God (v. 18-20). Zechariah echoes this language in Luke 1:72.
2. God always remembers his covenant (Ps 105:8). He did so when Israel was enslaved in Egypt (Ex 2:24), and he promised to do so again after a time when Israel would be exiled for her sins and later repent (Lev 26:42; Deut 30:1-10).
3. The covenant spoken of in verse 72 is the Abrahamic covenant, as verse 73 shows. See Gen 17:4; 22:16-17; 26:3.

vv.74-75

The goal of their physical deliverance was not simply their physical freedom. The goal was worship. This is the New Testament version of what God told Moses to tell Pharaoh: ‘Let my people go, so that they may worship me’ (Exod 7:16).

God saves so that we might worship. Freedom is a good goal, but it’s not the ultimate goal. The freedom God seems most interested in is the freedom to worship him. Just as Zechariah worshiped God when God mercifully opened Zechariah’s mouth and ears, so all Israel is to praise and glorify God for the salvation he brings.(13)

v.76

1. Here Zechariah shifts his gaze from God to his son. But even as he looks into the face of his newborn son, he cannot help but return to praise.
2. Regarding the change in subject and verb tense, Robert Stein helpfully notes:

This verse begins the second major part of the hymn honoring the miraculously born child whom God has appointed for his service. There is a change of tense at this point, from the past tense, which describes what God had already begun to do, to the future tense, which speaks specifically of John’s future mission.(14)

1. Zechariah prophetically lays out John’s calling according to OT promises regarding a prophet like Elijah who would prepare the Lord’s way (Micah 4:5-6).
2. John’s title (“Prophet of the Most High”) parallels Jesus’s title (“Son of the Most High”).(15) This parallel clarifies that Jesus and not John was the center of God’s saving work.(16)
3. Note also that Zechariah prophetically identifies Jesus’s birth with YHWH’s promised coming by alluding to Isaiah 40: “you will go before the Lord to prepare the way for him.”

v.77

1. In Luke's Gospel, both John and Jesus focus on the forgiveness of sins as they preach. Later, in Acts, the apostles too focus on this theme in their preaching.(17)
2. The infinitive (“to give”/τοῦ δοῦναι) explains the purpose of John’s preparing the Lord’s way. John would prepare the Lord’s way “in order to give his people knowledge of salvation…” This knowledge of salvation in John’s ministry would come through his revealing Jesus to Israel as God’s promised, messianic Son. We see this happen in Luke 3:27–37. Thus, Zechariah prophetically reveals that God’s promised salvation centers completely upon the person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ. Readers of Isaiah, Luke’s Gospel, and Acts should know already that this “salvation through the forgiveness of sins” would come only through Jesus dying on the cross for the sins of his people.

vv.78–79

1. The Greek word translated “tender” is σπλάγχνα, which communicates the idea of compassion.(18) The Gospel authors used the verb for this noun to describe Jesus’ compassion on people (see Matt 14:14; Mark 8:2; Luke 7:13).
2. The word “mercy” here refers again to the LORD’s faithful, promise-keeping love. The prepositional phrase (“on account of.../διά+accusative) tells us that God would save his people because of his covenant love. Once again, Zechariah calls us to hope in: (1) God’s faithful love, not our loveliness and (2) upon God’s trustworthy words, not our faithfulness:

You cannot earn forgiveness. You cannot demand forgiveness. You cannot swap forgiveness with a trade. There would be no peace in salvation if we had to earn, demand, or buy forgiveness. We would only worry if we had done enough, if we were strong enough, or if we had paid enough. Forgiveness comes only by mercy. Which means forgiveness is free and undeserved. The only step we can take to find forgiveness with God is to ask for it. Beg for mercy, and God will show it. Confess your sin, and he is faithful to forgive it (1 John 1:9).(19)

1. Here Zechariah moves his gaze from John to Jesus, the coming Messiah. Once again, Zechariah interprets Jesus’s birth through the words and images of the OT (see the section below on the OT background for this verse).
2. Zechariah uses the verb “come” (ἐπισκέψεται), which communicates “the loving and seeking care of God.”(20) By using the same verb from v.68, Zechariah prophetically identifies Jesus with “the Lord, the God of Israel.”
3. Don’t miss that this light comes “from heaven” (ἐξ ὕψους). We are not able to save ourselves. Whereas our favorite Christmas movies and songs point us to some inner light that we can work up through the strength of our belief, Zechariah points us to a hope that comes from God, a light that comes into our dark world from the outside. As the psalmist declares in Psalm 146: “Do not put your trust in even the noblest among us, in human beings, who cannot save. When their breath departs, they return to the earth; on that very day their plans come to nothing. But blessed are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD their God!” (modified NIV)

The need for [the Messiah’s] ministry is described in bleak terms. … These OT images appear to refer to those who are oppressed spiritually and physically, like Israel before the exodus…. They refer to people locked up in ignorance, on the edge of death. Threatened with rejection, they lack righteousness, do not demonstrate justice, and stand in need of release and forgiveness.(21)

1. Malachi prophesied of a healing sunrise in 4:2 while Isaiah prophesied that would shine light upon “those living in the land of deep darkness.” (Isa 9:2) Like Matthew does in his Gospel (Matt 4:13–16), Luke identifies Jesus with that same light through Zechariah’s prophetic testimony.
2. Isaiah prophesied of Jesus’ coming to bring light (Is 9:2; 42:7; 49:9). The phrase “darkness and the shadow of death” is used twice in Psalm 107, referring to those who had rebelled against God’s words, and whom God afflicted, yet saved when they called out to him (Psalm 107:10, 14). Jesus came to save sinners (Luke 5:32)!

v.80