Bulletin

‘That we should be saved from our enemies.’

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Last week we listened to the Virgin Mary, the Mother of Our God, sing. We heard her as she sang of those who are hungry being filled with a good thing. There is none good but God, and surely it is by Spirit of God that we she was overshadowed, and it is with the Son of God that she was filled.

Her song taught us that faith is a kind of emptiness, a hunger, a void, like the void in the beginning of creation. It is in such emptiness that God created in the beginning, and it is in the emptiness of her faith that the Son of God took on flesh. Even now our faith is not something that we strengthen, we cultivate, we grow, and then offer to the Lord. 

Even now, it is nothing but an empty sack, an open palm, a blank space. It is something that is nothing but an open place within which God can be manifested.

For this reason, we say that children can have faith. We do not mean that children have the intellectual ability to recite the Nicene Creed, much less understand and confess its dogmas. When we say that Baptism creates faith in an infant, and that in faith, that infant receives the Holy Spirit through Baptism, we say nothing else that God creates the emptiness that He Himself will then fill, even as He created the Virgin Mary, that He might become incarnate by her flesh.

If, then, in the Magnificat, we learned that it was necessary that the emptiness of Mary’s virgin faith be present before the fullness of the Godhead would be manifested among us in Our Lord Jesus, tonight, by the Song of Zechariah, the Benedictus, we are taught that it was necessary for all the world be overcome by darkness before the light of Christ would dispel the shadow of our sin, and drive away the oppressors of the people of God.

This should not surprise us. If God will not enter the Virgin unless she has nothing of her being to offer, so He will not enter into the world unless it has nothing of its glory to give.

I once, when preaching on this very canticle, wrote at length about the manifold sins and idolatries of the children of Abraham, the people of Israel. How from the time that Moses led them out of Egypt by the strong hand of God, to the time of the destruction of the Great Temple, in Jerusalem, the Israelites did not cease from worshiping the elemental spirits of the world, the false gods and their lies, the cults and practices of the gentiles in service to their demonic spirits. I wrote of how God seemed to have forsaken His people, and rightly so, for a good husband shall only tolerate so many adulteries before he releases such a harlot from his sight and hands her over to the abominations of her whoring heart.

But I would be unkind if I were to say that the Israelites merely out of faithlessness to God simply went and sought the benefits of the heathen idols.

It would be wrong to insinuate that these idols do not have power, and that Israel was not subject to them, threatened by them, oppressed by them, conquered by them.

It would be false to say that Israel was not ripped away from the hand of God by a power that no man can resist.

Which is to say, I would be lying if I were to say that God’s people, and God Almighty, did not have an enemy.

We do not come into this world saying to ourselves, ‘I will dedicate my life to wealth.’ ‘I will become a lover of pleasure.’ ‘I will make money, success, power my god, and women, gluttony, and indulgence my delight.’ We like to think that perhaps we have higher goals, something more enlightened. Even the most barbaric heathen would have thought the same.

But the love of money forces itself upon us, and the lust for power throttles us. If we do not seek money, we will have nothing and those who have something will lord it over us. If we do not have power, then those who do will trample us down under foot. If we do not have status, we will not be able to influence anyone for the good, since no one listens to a loser, so if we do not have some ambition, then lesser men will be doing the influencing, and do nothing but create a lesser world.

Money is the ability to act in the economy. Power is the ability to act in the state. Status is the ability to act in society. If one does not do the acting, one will be acted upon; and woe unto you when you meet those who seek to enact their will upon you.

Do you wish to be spared from the whims and desires of others? Do you want to be kept safe from the ‘slings and arrows of outrageous fortune?’ Do you want to make sure that others do what is right, as opposed to being made to do what is wrong? Then seek power, and that which can give it. Seek money, and that which can give it. Seek status, and that which can give it.

You have no choice. You cannot do otherwise, unless you simply want to be handed over to the torturers.

Seek the idols, and the gods they represent, who promise all these things. Seek them, and devote yourself to them, and then maybe, just maybe, you will be safe.

What hope is there in God? Is He not the one that told Israel to have no king and no army, that they might have no defense against the nations? Sure, God delivered Israel from the house of Egypt, but where was He when they were first put in bondage to begin with, to remain there for four hundred years?

Will you, and your children, then wait four hundred more years under the yoke of slavery, that you too might one day hope to be set free? And then what? Will you just be handed over again, all to wait again?

These then are the oppressors of God’s people, the idols of the world, that offer themselves freely to all, and give their power to all, if only they be worshipped. And if you fail to bend the knee, then those who do will fall upon you like a thief in the night, a bolt of lighting from a dark sky.

These then are the oppressors of God’s people; that which keeps us from being able to worship the true God in peace, for we ever tremble in fear against the world, and against the demons who dwell therein.

These, then, are the enemies of God.

That which keeps us from ‘hallowing God’s name or ‘letting His kingdom come.’

What, then, will God do to these enemies, these which hold Israel in ‘lonely exile here?’

To Zechariah, it must have seemed, that He would do nothing.

For five hundred years has Jerusalem, the Holy City, and all the land promised to Abraham, been possessed by sinners, by those who shed blood and sacrifice to images. Be it Persians, or Greeks, or now Romans, what does it matter? Those who love money, and love power, and love glory; those who worship the gods of this world; it is they who rule, and the so-called Lion of Judah is nowhere to be found.

But it was necessary that the Lion remain asleep, at least for a time. It was necessary that the heathen rage, and the nations imagine a vain thing, at least for a time. It was necessary, for if the rule of the wicked were not allowed to reign, how would we know that they had nothing to offer? How would we know that their promise of peace and paradise is a lie? How would we know that money cannot buy happiness, that power will consume you, that glory is fleeting? How would we know, unless we first tasted, and then sipped, and then gulped, and found that it was not good.

Let all the darkness of the devil be manifested in the world. Let Satan, and all his demonic legion, and their idols and harlotries and sins dance in the carnival of this world. Let the Devil present himself in full regalia, in his finest clothes, as king of the world, that we may know the vanity of his promises.

Let the Devil come out in the open, that God might face him, and only him, in battle; the enemy of His bride, the enemy of His Israel, the enemy of His church.

It is the case that God intends to destroy the Devil. Indeed it is His will, to break and hinder every evil plan and purpose of the Satan. And indeed, I tell you, vengeance shall be His.

Behold, even now, a child rests in the womb of the Virgin. Even now He drinks in her humanity, bit by bit, that hour by hour, He might grow more like us. For in the form of a man, and in the flesh of Adam, shall He crush the idols, and desecrate the gods, and cast down Satan to the pit of fire; for it is man who shall judge the angels.

Zechariah is said to be righteous, and just in the sight of the Lord. The reason why is simple. He is patient. He waits.

He waits for the God that has been silent for so many centuries. He waits for the hope that has faded to less than a whisper. He waits for the Lion to awake, and great will be its cry.

His wife Elizabeth is now pregnant with the forerunner of the Lion, Him who will declare the Lion to be the Lamb. And in this moment, the patience of Zechariah, and endless ages of waiting, is justified, for now he knows that the enemy shall be destroyed, and the Lord shall redeem His people.

For He has overcome the world.

‘That we should be saved from  our enemies, from the hand of those who hate us.’

But what is it that he sees, that ensures him the final deliverance is at hand?

‘The Lord has created a new thing in the earth—a woman encompassing a man.’

‘A virgin found with child.’

Wait just a little longer, O aged Zechariah. And you, O Church of God, wait with him, in the darkness of this world, and the hell of this life. Wait, for soon a child is born in Bethlehem.

‘To give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet in the way of peace.’

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Preached by Pastor Fields