The Song of Zechariah

First and foremost, welcome to the New Testament! It took a long time to get here, but the time spent in the Old Testament will help us better understand what the people of Israel were looking for and what they expected.

Luke 1:67-79 contains the Song of Zechariah, and I won't print all the verses here (in case you haven't noticed, I'm now linking to an online Bible whenever I reference a Bible verse and don't print it out. If you're getting this post by email, the link should work as well). There are several elements of this song:

--salvation from our enemies (v71)

--rescue us from...our enemies (v74)

--guide our feet into the path of peace (v79)

As we read Zechariah's song, we have no doubt that God did (and will still) fulfill those words, but the question we have to ask ourselves will be the key question of the New Testament, which is:

JUST WHO WAS/IS THE ENEMY?

Without dwelling on it too much, I suspect that any hearer of that song considered that enemy to be Rome--they were the enemies from whom Israel needed salvation. However, living as we do in the Age of Grace, we know that the answer is much bigger than that--we know that the way that Zechariah's son, John the Baptist, would prepare for Christ would lead to the total and complete victory over sin and its hold over us. 

As you all know, this will be the primary misunderstanding of the people of Israel during Christ's ministry. Indeed, it took his closest associates every bit of the three years he spent with him to figure it out themselves (see John 16:25-32, on p1434). Everyone was looking for a worldly kingdom, or in other words, setting their sights far too low. Just as we're no different than the Old Testament people who continually disobeyed the Lord and refused to follow his commands, we too still want the secular world defeated in this life and place. We have even less excuse for thinking like this, since we have the gifts of the entire Bible, 2 millennia of commentary and understanding and the opening of our hearts and minds through the Holy Spirit to assist us. We will probably spend the next three months shaking our heads and saying "Wow, they were IN CHRIST'S PRESENCE, and they still didn't understand." In all fairness, do we?

Scott