Flanigan, Jim: Characteristics Of 3 Couples ~ As Seen In The Peace Offering-Luke 1

Now we have been reading in the Gospel according to Luke, and I'd like to read that again this evening, please, the Gospel according to Luke. I want to read just some verses from chapter one, the Gospel according to Luke and chapter one. And beginning at verse number one. the Gospel according to Luke, chapter one, and at verse one, a very lengthy sentence which actually goes down to the end of verse number four. For as much as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us, even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word. It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty of those things wherein thou hast been. There was in the days of Herod the king of Judea a certain priest named Zacharias of the course of Abia, and his wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. They were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless. And they had no child because that Elizabeth was barren, and they were both now well stricken in years. And it came to pass that while he executed the priest's office before God in the order of his course, according to the custom of the priest's office, his lot was to burn incense when he went into the temple of the Lord. And the whole multitude of the people were praying without at the time of incense. And there appeared unto him an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense. And when Zacharias saw him, he was troubled, and fear fell upon him. But the angel said unto him, Fear not, Zacharias, for thy prayer is heard, and thy wife Elizabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John. Thou shalt have joy and gladness, and many shall rejoice at his birth, for he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink, and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost even from his mother's womb. Many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their God, and he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. Now the Lord will bless that reading. I'd like to refer to other scriptures, but the Lord will bless what we have read. Now, there is a tremendous wealth in this third gospel, and reading it today, I just felt sorry that we hadn't more evenings, but I trust that perhaps what we do say during these few meetings might be an incentive, an encouragement to many to a deeper study of the Gospel according to Luke. It is well known that it is the Gospel which paints the portrait of the Lord Jesus as the perfect man. It is his lovely moral features that are brought out for us, and, uh, everything in this Gospel is somehow connected with that perfect manhood. We find the Lord Jesus in this Gospel as a, an infant, a newborn, and we find him also as a boy. Our authorized version rather obscures, eh, some words that are used. The distinction between them is lost a little bit in our authorized translation, but we do have the word babe used, and our Lord is an infant, and then he is a boy, he's a young child, he becomes a man, and we see the holy development of the perfect man in this lovely gospel in a way that perhaps we don't find it in the other gospels. What I want to do this evening is to look at these early days of the life and the ministry of the Lord Jesus, as we have them connected with four very interesting couples, four pairs of people who are mentioned in the early chapters. And I want to begin by making a little suggestion. Uh, there wouldn't be nearly enough time to follow this through, but I want to make a suggestion to you, which I hope you'll find interesting as you study further the Gospel according to Luke. You know that in the chapters of the book of Leviticus that deal with the Levitical offerings, that sometimes an offering had to be a male without blemish. There were certain offerings, and there was just, uh, no option. It had to be a male without blemish. There were one or two offerings that had to be a female offering, but it is probably fairly well known that in the matter of the peace offering, it could be either a male or a female. If a man bring his peace offering, whether it be a male or female, and then the instructions follow with regard to the presentation of the offering. Now, the male of the offering would seem to bring out that responsibility and, uh, perhaps the headship that we see in the Lord Jesus, and the female of the offering would bring out the submissive side of the Savior, would bring out something of the lovely subjection that there was seen in him, even as a boy in the home, there was a lovely subjection there, and as he moves, eh, amongst men in gracious ministry, there is, of course, that subjection to his father. So the peace offering could have been either male or female. Now, the peace offering had in mind, of course, that God and man would be brought into fellowship together, and that they would enjoy peace together. Very often, when we get that word peace in our Old Testament, it is the lovely word shalom. It's not always, and it's not the word shalom in connection with the peace offering, but it is a word, as the students would say, it is a word of the same family, a cognate word, and, uh, it is very, very like the word shalom. It has rather the idea of fellowshipping, and there is no doubt that it was a fellowship offering in which God and the priests and the people all shared. It was a bringing together of God and his people in a holy fellowshipping in connection with the offering. So that you might say that the purpose of the peace offering really was a restoration of what had been lost when man sinned in the garden. That first man and woman, that male and female, you remember that in their own way they sinned against God, one deliberately and one under deception. They sinned against him, they rebelled, and the communion was broken, the atmosphere is strained and sad, and the fellowshipping that God had enjoyed with his people had now been marred. It had been lost because of the, the sin of that first man and woman. But the peace offering restores all that. It brings, uh, about a basis whereby God and his people are fellowshipping together. Now, I think that in the Gospel according to Luke, that perhaps you should read it with the peace offering in mind and see how male and female are together seen here, bringing out lovely features of the Lord Jesus. Now, here's what I mean. We're going to look this evening at Zacharias and Elizabeth, and they would be the first couple, husband and wife, of course, male and female, and these are the first pair mentioned in the Gospel by Luke. We want to see some lovely features brought out in these two, and features which are seen in their fullness in the Lord Jesus. Now, those two are the beginning of perhaps about no less than um fifteen pairs in the first fifteen chapters of the Gospel by Luke. You'll find that there are fifteen couples mentioned in the first fifteen chapters. Now, there might be more than fifteen. but there are fifteen couples that seem to bring out the lovely features that are seen in fullness in the Lord Jesus. And, uh, then we come to chapter sixteen, and it, of course, is a very sad chapter, and our brethren who preach the gospel, they sometimes say that it is there that our Lord pulls back the veil and lets us see into eternity, and we see, of course, the end there of one who has rejected God and his mercy in chapter sixteen. After that, I doubt if you'll find any couples again until you come right away to the end, and when you come to the end onto resurrection ground, well, we're going to look at it in more detail in the coming evening, but I hope that, uh, many will agree with me when I suggest that the couple who walked to Emmaus were in fact a husband and wife. So that we have fifteen couples in the first fifteen chapters, male and female, that as they walk together, somehow they bring out these lovely features seen in perfection in the Lord Jesus. We're going to have a little look at Zacharias and Elizabeth and see what part they played in preparation for the coming of the Messiah, the coming of the perfect man. After Zacharias and Elizabeth, well, of course, there is Joseph and Mary, husband and wife again, and again bringing out some lovely features, which again are seen in perfection in the Lord Jesus. Then we come, not very long after that, to another couple, and not husband and wife this time, but still very, very closely related in a spiritual sense. And we have the old man Simeon, at least I think he was an old man. Scripture doesn't say so, but we keep calling him old Simeon. I suppose he was. He talked about dying, and he probably was an old man. And very closely related to him in the spiritual realm, there was, of course, this very, very aged Anna. We want to see that Zacharias and Elizabeth are linked with the preparation, that Joseph and Mary are very directly linked with the incarnation, that Simeon and Anna are linked with the presentation in the temple, and then a little bit after that, when our Lord begins his public ministry, there is another pair brought together by the Lord himself. Again, they're not related, except that both of them are Gentiles, and it is that that links them together. There is, of course, a Naaman, and you remember the story of Naaman, and the Lord Jesus will draw upon Naaman's experience. And then there was the woman, the anonymous woman, whom we know simply as the widow of Sarepta, and they again have one particular feature that, uh, comes out and again will be seen in fullness in the Lord Jesus. And before you leave that chapter four, there is another couple, again not related, but, uh, in some senses, in a symbolical sense, related. There is a man in the synagogue with an unclean spirit, and the power of the Lord Jesus delivers him. There is Peter's wife's mother, Peter's mother-in-law, and she is possessed of a fever, and the Lord Jesus delivers her. And together in chapter four, they seem to sort of stand out as perhaps the first great demonstration of his power as he moves in this gracious ministry among men. Now, those are the first five couples, and they're to be found in the first four chapters. Now, I don't know that we'll be able to look at any more of these even in the evenings to come, but if I could mention to you that in chapter seven there is a centurion and a widow from the village of Nain, it might be that we look at these tomorrow evening. In the same chapter seven there is Simon. Simon, a Pharisee, who has to learn, Simon the Pharisee learning, uh, something about humility and subjection. And, uh, in that same chapter, we have a woman, a certain woman in the city who was a sinner, and they're brought together by the Lord Jesus. They're found in the same home, Simon the Pharisee and the woman who was a city sinner. In the next chapter, you find the very first mention of Mary of Magdala, Mary Magdalene. And Mary Magdalene, of course, you know that when the Lord met her, she was possessed with demons. The Lord Jesus delivered her. We were looking last evening at the little place where she lived, Magdala, way up on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, and the Lord Jesus delivered her from her demon possession, and she's introduced for us in chapter eight. And it's rather interesting that in that same chapter we have a man who lived just across the lake from Mary of Magdala, and we know him simply as the man of Gadara, the man who lived among the tombs. So again, we have another couple, and, uh, there is a great feature, a great truth brought out in that particular couple. In the same chapter eight there is another mention of a pair whose names are not so very well known. There is a Joanna and also one whose name is Tusa, and they are actually linked with the great, uh, subject, the great truth of stewardship, and they have come to know the Lord Jesus, and Joanna and Chuza are linked together in chapter eight. They are, uh, husband and wife again. When you come again back to that same chapter, you have another pair. You have Jairus, you remember he was a ruler of the synagogue, and, uh, not only Jairus in that chapter, but also a woman with, uh, an issue of blood, uh, a hemorrhaging that was, uh, very slowly but certainly draining her life away, and, uh, they are somehow brought together because in the one movement, on the one journey, the Lord Jesus meets the need of Jairus, and he meets the need of the woman with the issue of blood. And again, at the end of the second five, the second group of five, you find that these are a kind of a demonstration of the power of the Lord Jesus as the Messiah in his miraculous ministry. When you come to, um, a later little portion, uh, in chapter ten, you have a mention of a certain lawyer. And before you read much further down, you have a certain woman, a certain lawyer who asked the Lord Jesus a question, and the Lord Jesus, uh, speaks to him about neighborliness and about, uh, uh, loving your neighbor. He asks, who is my neighbor? And when you come to the certain woman, she demonstrates what the Lord has been teaching, and it says a certain woman named Martha received him into her house. She has demonstrated what he has tried to teach the lawyer. Well, when you come then to the next chapter, eh, there is someone mentioned who was called simply one of his disciples. And then a little bit further down, there is a woman mentioned and, eh, simply called a woman of the company. And when you put this man and woman together, there is a lovely lesson on godliness, on piety, in connection with what they say. Then when you come to chapter eleven, a mention again of another pair, uh, Jonah and the Queen of Sheba are mentioned together, another male and female, not related except in the narrative. And, uh, when you come again to chapter e- eleven, uh, you have a mention of a, a man with the palsy, and uh, you also have a woman who needs deliverance too, and the Lord Jesus meets them, and uh, well, he again demonstrates his power. Then, when you come to the well-known chapter fifteen, you remember how the Lord Jesus begins a parable, and he says, what man of you? And he goes on to speak about the shepherd and the sheep. And then he says, or what woman? And, uh, he begins then to speak about the, uh, woman who has lost a piece of silver, who has lost a coin. And so those are the, the last pair, the man, the shepherd, and the woman with the lost silver, the last of actually fifteen couples, male and female. And when you put them together and look at the features that come out, it is this lovely story of recovery of things that have been lost because of the sin of the first man and the first woman. So then, the gospel by Luke, eh, just like the peace offering being demonstrated, this is a, a lovely study, and I just leave that with you. We have only time this evening to just have a little look at the, the earliest of these couples that we have mentioned. Now, Luke, we saw, was a very, very busy man. We saw that yesterday when we were talking briefly about him. He was the beloved physician. He traveled quite a lot, a companion of Paul, and, uh, he is quite a writer, as you know, and it is to his credit, apparently, I, I couldn't tell you, but they tell me that it is to his credit that he writes the most beautiful Greek in the New Testament. Uh, some, and it is a controversial thing, but interesting thought, some detect that they can find Luke's Greek in the Epistle to the Hebrews, and who knows, but he might well have taken the theology of Paul and put it into his own Greek, and that maybe together they had a share in the writing of the Hebrews epistle. Anyway, he writes the most beautiful Greek, apparently, and I'm told that if you do want the most excellent Greek passage in the whole of the New Testament, that perhaps it would be these first four verses of the Gospel according to Luke. And one great sentence, but a very, very beautiful sentence, and even when translated into English, there is some lovely vocabulary here in these early verses. Now, you'll notice that Luke is a very methodical man, and several times over he uses the expression in order, in order, in order. Several times in our reading this evening, we have had that expression. We perhaps remember that in connection with the burnt offering, we've got exactly the same expression, in order. It's good, brethren, that not only do we, eh, have devotion and affection towards the Lord Jesus, but that our devotion should be of an intelligent nature. Uh, you say, is it possible to have devotion otherwise? I think that perhaps it is that we may have a devotion, and eh, if we are not careful, it could become just sentiment, just sentimentality, and it does need to be balanced up by intelligence and by instruction. Maybe this is why we do have what we call the Maskil Psalms, psalms of instruction. Psalms like the forty fifth Psalm are called a Maskil Psalm, but a song of loves, and it seems to teach what we have in the burnt offering, that there must be devotion, but there must be intelligence, and there must be instruction with regard to a reverent and an intelligent approach to God as we come in a spirit of worship. So the priest was able to come, and in a very orderly fashion, he was able to take the pieces of the offering and present them in a skillful way, orderly, upon the wood that was on the altar, the the fire that was upon the altar. So Luke is a methodical man, and he's going to present this lovely offering in a very skillful way. He's going to do it, in fact, as Mr. Darby will translate it, he will do it with method. And so, in a very methodical way, Luke is about to set things in order for us. Now, a little expression that needs, I think, a bit of explanation in these early verses. Luke says, you know, these things have been delivered to us, eh, by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses. It seems that Luke has very carefully traced things from the beginning. Um, inspiration is not a magical thing. It doesn't mean that men like Luke and Paul, eh, just sat down and thoughts came to them. There had to be a good deal of study. There had to be a good deal of personal preparation, and Luke says that he has traced carefully from the beginning, he has traced these things, but he says they have been delivered to us, uh, by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses. Now, it's this next expression, ministers of the word. I think that that could be perhaps a little bit misleading. When we speak of ministers of the word, we speak of brethren who teach or brethren who preach the word, who preach the gospel, and we call them ministers of the word. Now, that is not what is intended here. This word minister is the same word as the word attendant that you might have in Luke chapter four. You remember how the Lord Jesus took the scroll, and he read the scripture, and then he handed the scroll back again, not to the minister, but to the attendant in the synagogue. It is the word attendant. Now, I'm wondering, and, uh, some are quite sure about it, does Luke now use the word which we usually associate with John? Those who were not ministers of the word, but attendants upon the word. And should we put a capital W at that word and then read it, those who were attendants upon the word, meaning, of course, using it in John's sense, that these who had given Luke the information were actually those who had personally attended to the Lord Jesus. A lovely thought that perhaps Luke the doctor has had the confidence of Mary. There is much in the early chapters that could only have come from Mary, and who better to confide in than the beloved physician. And Luke says, you know, we have gotten these things, he says, from those who from the beginning were not only eyewitnesses, but they were actually attendants upon the Word himself. So, Luke says, we have traced things from the very beginning, a complete understanding. We have got things from the very source, as it were. When he says from the very first, does he mean from the beginning, or does he mean from the very source? And I suggest to you that maybe that is the thought, that in his careful tracing of things, he has not only gone back to the beginning, but he has talked with those who were at the very source of things, and much of his information has actually come from Mary, who was, of course, the Virgin Mother. Now he says, most excellent Theophilus, he says, I have decided to put things in narrative form too, and things that have been handed to us orally, verbally, he says, I want to put them down in writing, and I want to give them to you. You see, Theophilus already knew these things, but he didn't have them in writing. That word at the end of verse four, the things wherein thou hast been instructed. Now, some of us as children, we had to learn a catechism, and this, in fact, is the word from which we get the word catechism. And Theophilus had actually been catechized. He had learned a catechism, as it were. He had had things handed to him in verbal fashion, in oral fashion, but he didn't have a Bible. He didn't have it in written form like we have it. So Luke says, I have carefully traced, I've gone back to the source, I've talked to those who were literally, personally attendants upon the word. And now he says, I'm putting things into order, I'm writing with method, and I'm going to confirm you in the things that you have heard verbally. And he writes, of course, to the most excellent Theophilus. Just, by the way, isn't it nice to see that when you come to the Acts of the Apostles, which was also addressed to the same Theophilus by the same Luke, that Luke drops the most excellent. If we were using this very literally today, we would call him His Excellency Theophilus. That would be our modern term. And Luke writes to His Excellency Theophilus when he's writing his gospel. But when he comes to write the Acts of the Apostles, he drops the excellency, and one wonders why. Has Theophilus now developed? Has he progressed so much that he sees now that, uh, human attainments and earthly distinctions are of no account in a spiritual realm? And Luke, knowing now the progress that Theophilus has made, he's quite happy to drop this, uh, earthly distinctive title, His Excellency, and so he just calls him Theophilus when he's writing the Acts of the Apostles. Nice to see, brethren, that, uh, because we do belong to one body, and we are all members, uh, each a member in particular, and all of us members together of that one body, that every kind of distinction in that body is gone. National distinctions and all those earlier things that used to divide us, they are everyone gone now because we are members of that one body. Perhaps now Theophilus has learned that, and Luke is able to drop the excellency part of it in his address in the Acts. So with that little preamble, Luke now begins his gospel, and he begins by mentioning that it was indeed in the days of Herod the King, who had no right to be king, but nevertheless he is acknowledged as Herod the King. He was a half-caste, he was a Edomite, he had no entitlement to the throne, but nevertheless he was there, and we call him Herod the King of Judea. But there was a certain priest, and this certain priest was more important in the purposes of God than Herod the King. And the priest, of course, was Zacharias and, uh, his wife of the daughters of Aaron. They were indeed of the true priestly family, and uh, both from the family, from the house of Aaron, Zacharias and Elizabeth, they are now about to be involved in the preparation for the coming of the perfect man, for the coming of the Messiah. They walked righteously before God. They were blameless. Now, that's a lovely tribute, and I hope that we don't think that it is beyond us to be blameless also. You find, indeed, when Paul is writing to the Thessalonians and when he writes to Timothy and some of his other little epistles, he will use this word, and he will exhort us and encourage us to a blameless life. And if the young believer thinks that that's a little bit too high to attain, you will remember, of course, that he doesn't mean faultless. None of us are faultless, but, uh, he means that we are to be beyond reproach so that people are not able to raise the finger and point at us and blame us for something. We may have faults, and we may come short, and we do come short, but we ought to strive to live without reproach, to live so that men cannot point the finger at us and blame us for this or that. We ought to live blameless in that respect, and this first couple, they lived like that blamelessly. And this first couple, they lived like that blamelessly. And if you were to ask me for a particular feature that is brought out by this male and female together as being typical of the Lord Jesus and seen in its fullness in the Lord Jesus, I would say that maybe that feature would be the lovely feature of patience. And here is a couple who, for many years apparently, have prayed, and they have prayed for a son. Now, it's not just the ordinary word for prayer that's used, it is in fact the word supplication. When eventually the angel comes, he says, fear not, Zacharias, thy supplication is heard. And the implication is that this had been a repeated request, and that again and again this couple had made the prayer, they had supplicated the throne of God, they had left the requests there, and in patience they had waited. So the lovely feature of patience seen in this blameless couple who walk righteously and keep the commandments, and they're now well advanced in years. And, uh, then, of course, came that historical moment when Zacharias had a vision. It is estimated that at this particular time, there might have been twenty thousand priests in Israel, tremendous number. There were twenty four courses of priests, and, uh, they cast lots for various ministries that they would perform, and, uh, it's probable that no priest would have burned incense any more than once in his lifetime, so that for Zacharias, this was a tremendous moment. He had made supplication for years, but he had not repeatedly been privileged to stand at the golden altar and burn incense. But in this particular case, this was his luck, that he was able to stand at the golden altar, and he was burning, offering incense before the Lord. He's in the temple. That word temple is used in a variety of ways in the Gospels, and in this particular place, it means, of course, that he was in the holy place. He was in the shrine. He was inside at the altar. And here he is, a lovely sight, a blameless man, a righteous man, his wife perhaps with the people outside somewhere, and he alone, likely, in the holy place, standing at the golden altar and offering incense. Now, as he offers incense, and the whole multitude waits, there appears an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense. Why is the Spirit of God specific that the angel was standing on the right side of the golden altar. I take it that it means on the right side, as far as Zacharias was concerned, that he was standing before it, and here to his left was the left side, and to his right was the right side. Now, if I interpret that correctly, it means that the angel must have stood between the golden altar and the table of showbread. And if the table of showbread represents again something of that fellowshipping of God with his people, well then, of course, this is beautiful that, uh, this fellowshipping in the peace offering is about to be restored in the gospel by Luke, and the angel appears on the right side, beside the altar, the golden altar, and between the altar and the table of showbread. Now, Zacharias was troubled, not much wonder, because again, it's most likely that no living Israelite at that time had ever seen an angel. Oh, after this, they are going to see angels on several occasions, but isn't it very probable that this is, of course, breaking the silence of about four hundred years, four hundred silent years when Jehovah wasn't really speaking to his people directly, and now the silence is about to be broken, and Zacharias, this delightful man, he gets a vision of an angel, an angel, a vision unique as far as men living at that time were concerned. We get the first of many, many fear nots in the gospel by Luke. Fear not, Zacharias. Thy prayer, thy supplication is heard. Thy wife Elizabeth shall bear thee a son. Thou shalt call his name John. Now, Zacharias listens to the angel. He shall be great. You'll notice that that same thing is said concerning the Lord Jesus later on. He shall be great. The angel had to say that about him. It might be that the ambassador of the king is taking character from the king himself, and the greatness of the king is about to be seen in the greatness of his ambassador. Thou shalt have joy and gladness, and many shall exult at his birth, leaping for joy, as it were, at the coming of the ambassador of the king. He shall be great. And then, of course, there is a kind of Nazarite character, eh, concerning John, and he's going to be filled with the Holy Ghost. I'm wondering, brethren, if Luke is the only writer in the New Testament who speaks about men being full or filled with the Holy Ghost. Luke may be the only one who speaks of that. I know that there is a little e- encouragement, a little, eh, some will call it even a command in one of Paul's epistles where he says, be filled with the Spirit. Some, of course, will not agree that that is the Holy Spirit, and what Paul is really meaning is that we go into the full for spiritual things, be filled with spirit and things of s- of the spirit, spiritual things. Well, if that be so, then I think it is a fact that Luke is the only one who speaks about men being filled with the spirit. Well, this is the prediction concerning John, and a strange expression that many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their God, turning the hearts of the fathers to the children. I wonder what this means. Does it mean that, in fact, the hearts of fathers, the hearts of men who are mature men, who are fathers, that those hearts will actually be turned to hearts of children, as John Baptist preaches his powerful message? Well, eh, Zacharias has got to listen to all this, and then comes the rather unfortunate thing. He says, whereby shall I know this? How shall I know this? He says, I'm an old man. As if to say, in fact, Gabriel, uh, he doesn't know he's Gabriel at this point, but as if to say, look, you've come with your, your message just a little bit too late. I'm an old man, my wife is well advanced in years, and now you come with the, with the promise, the prediction of a son, a child, a son. It seems as if the thought in the mind of Zacharias is the opposite to the thought in the mind of Mary later on, because when the same Gabriel comes back to Mary, Mary says, you know, I don't even have a husband. If I may paraphrase it, it seems as if Mary is saying, you've come too soon. You see, I haven't even got a husband, but for Zacharias, his thought is, you've come too late. Well, of course, we know that God is neither too late nor too early at any occasion, and eh, the thing is, of course, that Mary asks the question that she asks in a very sort of childlike, trusting way, and she's not doubting in any fashion, she's simply asking, how is it going to be? She's not doubting, but wants to know how God is going to work out his purpose. Zacharias apparently seems to be doubting, and the angel answers him, I imagine, with some indignation. And again, if I may paraphrase, I think that Gabriel is saying, Zacharias, you're forgetting who I am. I am Gabriel. I'm, I stand in the presence of God. You seem to forget who's speaking to you, Zacharias. I am Gabriel. You can't doubt what I'm saying. You can't doubt the word that I bring direct from God to you. I am Gabriel that stands in the presence of God. And then, of course, he pronounces the very sad, uh, uh, sentence upon this old man, and he's stricken, not only dumb, but deaf as well, deaf and dumb. He is stricken in a double way, deaf and dumb, and eh, the people outside wait, and eventually he comes out, and he's, he's speechless, and he, he, he beckons them and somehow i- is able to tell them what has happened. Well, Elizabeth and Zacharias, they are involved in the birth of the ambassador of the king. In a miraculous way, John Baptist will make his advent a miraculous birth, and Zacharias and Elizabeth, their patience is eventually rewarded, and their supplication is answered, and they have the great privilege of being the parents of John. John who heralds the coming of the king. I hardly ever think of, uh, John the Baptist, but I think of a little experience that we had at home some time ago. We had some colored men came to our gospel meeting. Someone brought these men from a merchant ship that was, uh, anchored in Belfast for a few days, and, uh, someone brought these men to the gospel meeting, maybe half a dozen of them. And afterwards, after the meeting, we had a cup of tea with them and a little chat, and I said to one of these men, I said, tell me, did you ever hear this message before? And, uh, he sort of looked puzzled, and he smiled, and he said, I don't know, he said, whether you would say I have heard it before or not. I said, now, what do you mean? I said, either you've heard it or you haven't heard it. And he said, no, it's not just as simple as that. He said, I'll tell you a story. One day, he said, I sat in my village under the trees listening to a missionary preaching. And he said, I remember him telling us a story about a strange prophet who preached by the riverbank, and the people went out and, eh, listened to this powerful preaching. Now, he says the missionary talked about this prophet quite a good bit, and he said, I remember that there was something about, eh, a mightier one that was coming after him, and the Prophet had preached this, and the Prophet had also said that, uh, something about his shoes, he said, something about him not being worthy to carry the sandals, he said, of the mightier one who was coming. Something like that, he said, I can't remember very clearly, but he said, I do remember that the Prophet preached that there was one mightier than him coming after. And he said, at that point, someone called me away. I had to leave. Then he said, I came back again, but when I came back, the missionary had gone. And he said, I never heard any more. Do you know, he said, that for years I have wondered if the mightier one had come. Now he says, I see tonight that he has come. The mightier one has come. Before his ship left Belfast, he had been back at more meetings and had confessed the Lord Jesus as savior. Well, we don't know who the missionary was. He can't be encouraged by the end of the story because we can't get it to him. We don't know who he was. But isn't it nice to see what we were speaking about yesterday, the sovereignty of God working behind the scenes. And here is a man who now, by the preaching of John the Baptist, in a very indirect but nevertheless a very definite way, he has been pointed to the mightier one. Zacharias and Elizabeth, they play their part in the working out of the purposes of God. It is the thing that we saw yesterday again, that if only we are in the right condition, at the right time, in the right place, that we can be useful to God. It so happened with Zacharias and Elizabeth, and they become the parents, miraculously, of the herald of the king. Now, we have already spoken about Joseph and Mary, and these are the second couple in the Gospel by Luke. I would like to mention one little thing for the benefit of those that are younger. In the Gospel by Luke, there is a genealogy of the Lord Jesus, a long list of names, and for Gentile writers, Gentile readers, and I know that Luke was a Gentile writer, but for Gentile readers, eh, these long lists of names can become a wee bit tedious, you know. But Matthew gives us a similar list of names, but now the problem arises that the list of names in Luke is different to the list of names in Matthew, at least for part of the way. And for a long time, young believers have ignored these genealogies, and then sometimes when we did come to them and tried to study them, uh, we had to sort of give it all up because there was a certain, uh, difference between these two genealogies that somehow we didn't understand. Now, the difference between these genealogies is very, very important, especially when we come to think of the part that Joseph and Mary have both played in the incarnation of the Lord Jesus. You know that in the gospel by Matthew, the genealogy begins with Abraham and works forward. But in this gospel by Luke, the genealogy actually begins with the Lord Jesus and works backward, so that Matthew goes away back to Abraham, and he comes along until he gets to David, and then he comes from David right down, and eventually he comes to the birth of the Lord Jesus, and what Matthew is doing, he is establishing our Lord Jesus' legal rights to the throne. Now, when you come to Luke's genealogy, he begins with the Lord Jesus, and he works his way back, and he's not content to go back to Abraham, he goes right back, in fact, to Adam. Well, you see, Luke is not giving us the genealogy of a king. He's not establishing the Lord's rights to the throne. That's not what Luke is doing. What Luke is doing with his genealogy is proving the true manhood of the Lord Jesus and showing that this perfect man has a real human genealogy that goes right back to Adam. But the genealogies are different. Now, I hope I can explain the difference between the genealogies. If you take the parts that are in agreement, what you do is this, of course, you try to imagine these lists of names as being in the form of a letter Y. You try to imagine a letter Y, and right down at the bottom of this letter Y is the name of Adam. That's the last name in Luke's genealogy. So you begin away back there at the name of Adam, and then you begin to work up this stem of the letter Y. Now, you've got to come to Abraham before Matthew will meet you, but when you come up to Abraham, then Matthew joins in here, and you keep going up these names, you see, up the stem of the letter Y, until you come to David the king. And when you come to David the king, it's here that you get these two parts of the letter. You're going to get now a list of names running this way and a list of names running that way. You've got a common stem for part of the way, but when you come from Adam up through Abraham to David, it's there that the genealogies part company. And for this reason, and it's very important. David had uh two sons. He had more than two, but he had two particular sons. He had a son called Solomon. And if you follow the lineage from Solomon, from David through Solomon, this way, this is the way that Matthew will, will trace the genealogy, and through Solomon, you'll come right up to Joseph the carpenter. So, if you want to begin up here with Joseph, you go right back to David the king, through Solomon, and then you go right back to Abraham, and with Luke you go right on down to Adam. But David's other son was Nathan. And when you follow the line that comes from Nathan, then eventually you come out to Mary. So, you see what has happened. Mary and Joseph are both linked with David the King. But Joseph comes from the line of Solomon, and Mary comes from the line of Nathan. Why? What is so important about it? You listen to what was said about a certain man in the line of Solomon. Thus saith the Lord, write ye this man childless, one of the kings from Solomon's line, a man that shall not prosper in his days. Now here's the important part. No man of his seed shall prosper sitting upon the throne of David and ruling anymore in Judah. Joseph came from that line. Joseph came from the cursed line of Jehonias of Jeremiah twenty two. Isn't it good that Mary comes from Nathan? So that you've got a clear, pure line from Adam through Abraham to David through Nathan, and right out to Mary. Now do you see the importance of the virgin birth? And now do you see also the importance of the Mary the Virgin having a husband? Because what has happened now in the case of Mary's son is that if he had been the son of the virgin only, there would have been no entitlement to the throne. But if he had been naturally the son of Joseph, he would have inherited the curse of Jeremiah twenty two. So what has happened now with a virgin birth as this, and with Joseph as the foster father, is that our Lord Jesus has a clear, pure genealogy, and he has inherited the right to the throne without the curse pronounced upon Jackanias. This virgin birth is very important. We live in a day when there are three attitudes to the virgin. There are some who say, we believe it wholeheartedly, without reserve, and believe it to be fundamental. I trust we are all in that category this evening. There are others who say, we don't believe it. I'm sure that none of us are there. There is a sad character category of men, and what they say is this: We believe it, but it's not important if other people don't believe it. We believe it, they say, but it's not altogether fundamental, and if a man decides not to believe it, that's all right. You know, that is just as heretical as not believing it. And people who say that somehow don't grasp the basic fundamental importance of the fact that our Lord Jesus must not be linked with Joseph. He is linked with Mary in a pure line right back to Adam, free of the curse of Jehonias, but at the same time, he has inherited the title to the throne. So Mary and Joseph, we've looked at them already, and together with Zacharias and Elizabeth, well, two lovely couples in connection with the preparation and the actual incarnation itself. Now the time runs out, it's gone, but you know that six weeks after our Lord was born, there was that lovely scene in the temple. He was forty days old. There are three forty-day periods in the Lord's life. Two of them are mentioned explicitly, forty days in the wilderness and forty days walking resurrected among his people. But this is the third forty-day period when he was forty days old, according to Leviticus twelve, he would be brought to the temple and there presented. What lovely characters are these two? Simeon. Says of Simeon that he blessed God, and then it says that he blessed them. Think well and think highly of God, and you'll think highly of God's people. Simeon blessed God and blessed them. And he stands in the temple, not the shrine now, not the shrine, not the same as the word temple in chapter one, different word. He's in the court of the women now, the outer precincts of the temple, and here he is with the, the infant Messiah in his hands. You notice what he says? He says, a light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of thy people Israel. And I'm a Gentile, and so are most of us, if not all of us. And we remember wondrous grace that reached out to us, who had no claim whatever upon God. And we feel like saying to Simeon, Simeon, we were just poor Gentile outcasts. If you had said it, Simeon, the other way round, we'd have been quite happy. If you had said, with the Messiah in your arms, the glory of thy people Israel, and a light to lighten the Gentiles. But he didn't say that. Standing in the temple of Israel and speaking to the God of Israel, this old saint of Israel says, a light to lighten the Gentiles. Then he adds, and the glory of thy people Israel. You see that word lighten? A light to lighten the Gentiles? Do you know what word that is? The last book in our Bible is the book of the Revelation, the Apocalypse. That's the word Simeon uses. Revelation for the Gentiles in this infant Messiah. And then, while he's handling the child and speaking those memorable words, this old lady came in. I hope that we're clear about her age. Some say that she was eighty four, and that's not right, you know. She wasn't eighty four. She was of a great age. You say eighty four is a great age. Well, might be, but more than that is intended. She was of a great age. And in fact, says Luke, she had been a widow for eighty four years. That's what Luke is saying. This old lady had been widowed for eighty four years. How long had she been married before she was widowed? seven years. Eighty four and seven, that's ninety one. Say she was married when she was nineteen. Oh, she's of a great age, all right. She's about a hundred and ten, this old lady. Lovely old saint, mother in Israel. And she comes in at that instant, and she speaks of him to them that look for redemption in Israel. And the same word is used of Anna as is used of Simeon, that they looked for, they waited for. And the word means, in fact, that they looked and watched and waited expectantly. That's how they were living, withing on the tiptoe of expectancy for Messiah coming. And now he had come. And male and female together bring out this lovely feature of devotion to the things of God. You put these three couples together. The patience of Zacharias and Elizabeth. The lovely acquiescence in the will of God, as you have it in Joseph and Mary. And the devotion to God's things, as you have it in Simeon and Anna. And in these males and females, we have features that are brought out in the true peace offering, our Lord Jesus restoring things that were lost by the first man. May the Lord bless our little meditation, shall we pray? Our Father, we thank thee this evening again for thy word, and we thank thee for the Lord Jesus. We thank thee for these people involved in those early days, and we thank thee for any measure in which we too might be involved in these last days. We think of the difficulties of those early days and remember the difficulties of these latter days in which we live. We pray that we too might live blamelessly and patiently and in complete submission and subjection to thy word and thy will, and that we might be useful to thee in testimony. We commit thy beloved people to thy care in the Savior's name. Amen.