As we record these broadcasts, we are building up to Christmas and so this is Christmas week, and we are talking about the incarnation. Yesterday we looked at the Old Testament prophecy of the incarnation. It was no accident. God had planned this from all of eternity and it is revealed in the Old Testament. Isaiah 9 is perhaps one of the key passages in the Old Testament in the prediction of the incarnation.
Now we are looking at the anticipation of the Jewish people prior to the coming of Jesus. So, now we have the Old Testament saints, who believe the message of Isaiah, and it is because they believe the message of Isaiah that they anticipated the coming of the king, the coming of the Messiah. One of the premier places for that is in Luke 1 and the prayer of Zacharias. Zacharias was the father of John the Baptist and Zacharias had been told that John would be born, and he would be a forerunner of Jesus Christ the Messiah.
John is born when we come to Luke 1:67 and on. Zacharias prays a magnificent, beautiful prayer full of truths and theology and even prophecy. What we find here, in the first several verses, is that the Messiah had come to set the people free. He came to set them free physically from the bondage that they are in, at this time they were under the bondage of Rome. So, Israel would be set free physically by this coming Messiah. Zacharias talks about that.
When we come to Luke 1:76 he begins to talk about the spiritual liberation that is ours in Jesus Christ, the coming Messiah. Here are the things we pick up on there. About five different things in this prayer. Luke 1:77 says, “To give to His people the knowledge of salvation.” This says that when the Messiah comes, He is going to “give to His people the knowledge of salvation.” The Old Testament people had a knowledge of salvation. There were people who were saved and there were people that were regenerated, but the full extent of salvation is not possible until Jesus Christ would come to this earth, live a perfect life, die on the cross and be resurrected from the dead. So, this knowledge of salvation is the full knowledge and extent of salvation that would be given by our Messiah . . .
