So if you were with us last December you may remember the previous time I preached on Luke 1 for Advent last year. That was the time where I made the admittedly atypical decision to preach on the Magnificat using Paul’s exhortation to women in 1st Timothy 2. Don’t worry it wasn’t the part about women remaining silent. It was the part about them being saved through childbearing. If morbid curiosity compels you to find out how that went you can find it on the website. But I remember shortly after that Jim told me, “hey man, I really just want you to preach a straightforward text sometime. Something like John 3:16. I think it’d be good for you.” Well, last month we did John 3:16! By way of the sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis 22. It was great fun. Talked a lot about chiasms, saw some slides that kinda hurt to look at, it was good. And now that box is checked. And here we are, a year later, back in Luke 1. But I don’t wanna just recycle last year’s sermon so don’t worry we aren’t going to do anything nearly so weird. This time we are gonna take a look at…. The chiastic structure of the seven night visions of the Prophet Zechariah! Not the Zechariah from the text today, a different one. From 400 years earlier. And we are gonna use these 7 visions of his to get a better handle on Luke 1. 

Now, I promise you, we are not just trying to be weird for weird’s sake. And we definitely aren’t trying to take what seems like a pretty straightforward passage and muddy it up with a very weird book. The honest truth is that the bible is really, really cool. And it does some amazing things with literary structure. And I want to show you some of those things today because they will help us see who Jesus is and what it means that he came to us. When it comes to really difficult passages like Zechariah, my experience is that the harder it is to crack, the better the reward is when you get it. So check this out. The book of Zechariah opens with these 7 visions the prophet sees in the night. And by the way, I preached on these visions back in April so this should be vaguely familiar to many of you, and if you want to know more about it that sermon is also available on the website under the sermons tab. So today we aren’t going to get super far into Zechariah, just look briefly at the structure because it’s going to inform how we read Luke 1. 

So, the first 6 chapters of Zechariah recount 7 different visions, and these visions for a literary structure called a chiasm. We’ve talked about these a lot before. Named after the Greek letter Chi - which looks like an X, It’s a way of setting up a structure of parallels that builds to a climax in the center which is the part of the story you’re supposed to focus on. The pattern can go a lot of different ways, but one of the most common is like a C,B,A,B,C pattern, which is basically what we have here. The first and last things parallel each other, the second and second to last parallel, and so on and so forth up to the center. Well in Zechariah’s visions, rather than a pyramid building to the top like we have seen before, it’s a little more like concentric circles. Or like a layered birthday cake viewed from the top, to keep the vertical aspect in mind. But you end up with this shape (1). And by the way, like last time this is going to move maybe too fast for notes and that’s ok, the point isn’t to get all the details just to see the big picture. The slides are available here, with the specific slides being referenced indicated by parenthetical numbers in the sermon text.

So, to set the scene, Zechariah is a prophet living in Israel after they have returned from exile, but are living in a broken down city with a pitiful temple and the presence of God hasn’t returned to the temple. God’s presence left the temple in Ezekiel, when the people were exiled and Jerusalem was destroyed, but it never returned. There had been no dedication ceremony like there was for the tabernacle or for Solomon’s temple, where the Spirit of the Lord came down in smoke and filled the temple and fire came down from heaven and consumed the sacrifice. The people had come back and rebuilt the temple, but God had not returned to dwell in their midst yet. 

This is the context Zechariah is living in when he has these seven visions in the night. Vision 1 (2) corresponds to the outermost circle, and the content of the vision concerns the eyes of God going out through all the world. Vision 2 (3) is the next circle, and it shows the craftsmen of God going up to rebuild the land of Israel. Vision 3 (4) shows a man with a measuring line going to measure the walls of the city of Jerusalem. And Vision 4 (5) is the center, and it shows the High Priest standing before the presence of the Lord in the temple. And the High Priest is dressed in filthy rags. And this whole time, you see this movement (6) of God’s attention and presence out from the nations, into Israel, then into the city of Jerusalem and the temple, where God’s presence used to dwell. So this was a vision of God returning to his people. And there, in the presence of God, the High Priest, Joshua, is given a set of clean clothes. God says to the angels, ““Remove the filthy garments from him.” And to Joshua he said, “Behold, rI have taken your iniquity away from you, and sI will clothe you with pure vestments.” 

And then one of the weirdest things happens - the Prophet speaks into the vision! Almost as if he can’t contain himself, he blurts out “And put a clean turban on his head!” And scholars have debated about the meaning of that line for years. But you know what it reminds me of? It reminds me of Peter, in the upper room, after Jesus washes his feet, and he says, “Lord, not only my feet, but also my hands, and my head!” As we saw last week, prophets represent God to the people. But Priests represent the people to God. If your priest is dirty, so are you. And so Zechariah sees his representative being cleaned, and he can’t help himself - he wants to make sure his priest is clean from head to toe. And the even wilder part is that the angels actually do it - they put a clean turban on his head! And God was standing there. And God says to the high priest, “If you will walk in my ways, then you shall rule my house and have charge of my courts.” And so you have this image of the High Priest not just being cleansed, but being crowned, and ruling over God’s house and his people. Which is weird, because priests don’t usually rule. Or get crowned. But I digress. Or technically I foreshadow. 

But the visions show the Spirit of God returning and rebuilding, healing, and cleansing the land from the outside in, all the way into the Holy of Holies (7). but he doesn’t stay there. The visions progress (8) and move outward from the temple and into the city (9), out into the nation of Israel (10), and finally back out to the whole earth (11). And you see God removing the sin of his people and establishing his justice and rule throughout the earth as he goes (12). And there’s your nice X to complete the chiasm (13). Hence the name. But as great as this sounds, it’s just a vision. The Prophet Zechariah didn’t see it actually happen. Fast forward over 400 years later and it still hasn’t happened. And after all this time, we come to the opening of Luke’s gospel. And to a very old Priest, by the name of… Zechariah. A name, by the way, which means, “God remembers.” You think God remembered that he’d already used that name? 

This new Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth were childless, but they were faithful. And Luke spends a lot of time giving us an unusual amount of detail and information about the priests, and the temple, and their work. And it could be that Luke is writing to Theophilus, who may not know much about Jewish culture, and so he’s trying to fill him in. But be that as it may, many commentators point out that Luke’s gospel has a particular interest and focus on the priesthood and the temple. So Luke tells us about how Elizabeth is also descended from the tribe of Levi, which was considered a special honor for a priest in those days, because there were so few levites that returned from exile - only four of the original 24 divisions of the priesthood, that to find a wife who was also a Levite and could give you children who were full blooded Levites was a special blessing. But they had no children. And Luke tells us that Zechariah had been chosen by lot to offer incense on this day. And that was a special privilege because there were more priests than there were duties in the temple to perform, and so the priests would share the responsibilities by a lottery system so that more people got a chance to participate. But the offering of incense in the Holy Place was a special privilege, so much so that each priest was only allowed to perform that particular duty once in their lifetime. And many priests were never even drawn for it. Zechariah is very old, likely at the end of his career, and his has finally been chosen. This is the most important moment of his life. 

Now this process of offering incense, it involved the Priest being allowed, for one time in his life, to enter into the Holy Place. Not the Holy of Holies, which only the High Priest could enter into once per year, but the place just outside the holy of holies. You can see on the slide here (14), this is the second to last court. For every priest other than the High Priest, this was the closest you could ever get to the presence of the Lord. When the incense was offered, all those in the temple were divided. The Gentiles would remain in the outermost court. Then the Israelites would go as far as the next court, where the women and children would stay in the back half and the men could go one layer further, then the priests would enter into the inner court, where the sacrifices were made. Then only the priest whose lot had been drawn would enter into the holy place. And there he would offer incense on behalf of the people, after which he would go back out to the steps and pronounce a blessing over the people - the Aaronic blessing, specifically, (“The Lord bless you and keep you”) and the people would know that the Lord had accepted the sacrifices they had made that morning, and heard their prayers - represented by the incense, and had blessed them. At least, that’s how it was supposed to work. 

But there were some problems with that process. For one, the Spirit of the Lord was not in the temple. So for 400 years, the priests had been going through the motions, offering incense and prayers to a God they hoped was listening, and pronouncing a blessing on the people that they couldn’t be sure of. Then on this particular day, the priest comes out to pronounce the blessing on the people, to offer assurance that God had heard their prayers, and he couldn’t speak... When you pray, do you ever feel like God is silent? So did everybody in the temple that day. And what they didn’t know is that for the first time in 4 centuries, the mute priest actually had a Word of comfort for God’s people. But because he doubted the angel, he wasn’t allowed to share it yet. Zechariah was told that he would have a child, and that this child, unlike the temple he was standing in, would be filled with God’s Spirit. And the sign that Zechariah was given, by which he would know that the Lord had remembered his promise delivered by the angel, he would be unable to speak until this happened. And when the baby was born, Zechariah and Elizabeth obeyed the Lord, and rather than naming him “Zechariah,” he scribbled on a piece of paper, “his name is John.” A name which means, “The Lord is merciful.” And Zechariah’s mouth is opened and he himself is filled with the Spirit of the Lord and he finally pronounces his long awaited blessing. But rather than blessing the people, he blesses the Lord. And he said (15), 

“Blessed be the Lord hGod of Israel, for he has ivisited and jredeemed his people and khas raised up la horn of salvation for us…nas ohe spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old…qto show the mercy promised to our fathers and rto remember his holy scovenant,.. that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him uwithout fear, vin holiness and righteousness before him wall our days.” (16) And to John he said, “you, child, will be called xthe prophet of ythe Most High; for zyou will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people ain the forgiveness of their sins, because of the btender mercy of our God, whereby cthe sunrise shall dvisit us8 efrom on high to fgive light to gthose who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into hthe way of ipeace.”

Back in Zechariah 14, the prophet Zechariah had written that when the Lord returns he will stand upon the mount of olives, to the east of Jerusalem, and the Lord will be King over all the earth and his people will live in peace and security. Now 400 years later, Zechariah the Priest is blessing the Lord for remembering his covenant - that’s what the name Zechariah means, and for sending his mercy - that’s what the name John means, and for sending it in the form of a sunrise that will give light to those who sit in darkness and guide them into the way of peace. Somebody help me out here, from what direction does the Son rise? 

Now look at the vision the prophet Ezekiel, who was also a priest, saw towards the end of his book (17):

“Then he led me to bthe gate, the gate facing east. 2 And behold, cthe glory of the God of Israel was coming from the east. And dthe sound of his coming was like the sound of many waters, and ethe earth shone with his glory. 4 As cthe glory of the Lord kentered the temple by the gate facing east, 5 lthe Spirit lifted me up and brought me into mthe inner court; and behold, nthe glory of the Lord filled the temple. And he said, (18) pI heard one speaking to me out of the temple, 7 and he said to me, q“Son of man, this is rthe place of my throne and sthe place of the soles of my feet, twhere I will dwell in the midst of the people of Israel forever.

Zechariah the priest was standing there, holding his newborn son, in his house - not in the empty temple, both of them filled with the Holy Spirit, and he blessed the Lord because God had returned to his people and redeemed them. Together, they served as living testimony to the fact that God had remembered his promises and been gracious to his people. But we haven’t even gotten to the good part yet. We have seen that something has changed. God’s Spirit has come back. Not to the temple, but to these people. And Zechariah the Priest treats this seemingly private return of God’s Spirit as if it means redemption for all of God’s people. Why? (19) Because Zechariah the Priests realized that what Zechariah the Prophet had seen is finally happening. (READ SLIDE) And so John, his son, grows up, and goes out of the city into the wilderness to prepare the way of the Lord. Because he knows where the Lord is coming from, and he knows where the Lord is going to. Thus he is equipped to prepare the way. Zechariah the priest knows the Lord is coming from outside the city, and he’s going to the temple, to purify the priesthood, because that’s what the Prophets Zechariah and Ezekiel said he was going to do (20). 

And get this, Luke seems to be in on the secret. So when Luke wrote his gospel and the book of Acts, you get these seemingly innocuous travel details of Jesus and the Disciples and Paul. Statements like, (21) “On the way to Jerusalem [Jesus] was passing from Galilee to Samaria.” Or this one in Acts (22), “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” See the pattern? If you’re still not convinced that Luke is in on it, how about this, he structured both of his books around this (23). This isn’t a map of Zechariah’s night visions, it’s a map of the books of Luke and Acts! Luke opens up with, “In those days a decree went out into all the world that everyone be registered.” Then Jesus is born and grows up in Galilee, that’s out past Samaria. And when he is grown he begins his ministry, the arc of which is one long journey from Galilee, through Samaria, into Judea, and toward Jerusalem, culminating in his cleansing of the temple. Luke is showing that Jesus is the fulfillment of Zechariah’s visions - God returning to purify his people. 

But that’s not the only part of the visions that Jesus fulfills. Luke shows Jesus is the true and better High Priest. But he doesn’t mainly show it in the way you and I might think. When we think of what it means to show Jesus is a true Priest we would probably be inclined to focus on the fact that Jesus is truly human - since all high priests must be chosen from among men. And Luke does do that, particularly by tracing Jesus’ genealogy all the way back to Adam. But that’s not the main thing. Maybe we would be inclined to focus on Jesus’ ritual purification and commissioning as a priest - and Luke does that at the baptism of Jesus. But that’s not the main thing. And we would, of course, want to focus on the priest offering a perfect sacrifice acceptable to God to atone for the sins of the people. And Luke does that, at the crucifixion. But none of these things are the main way you see Jesus’ priesthood demonstrated over and over throughout Luke’s gospel. 

The way Luke tells it, as soon as he begins his ministry in Luke... He starts healing everybody. And some people say that’s just because he was a doctor and noticed physical healing, and I’m sure that is true, but I think there’s more. In Luke’s gospel Jesus goes around casting out demons, and healing many, many people. Just scroll through the section headings sometime and you’ll see it. He’s his disciples. Then he’s healing lepers. Calling tax collectors to repentance and eating with them. Healing a paralytic. Teaching in the synagogues. Healing a man with a withered hand. Preaching the sermon on the mount. Healing the centurion’s servant. Raising a widow’s son from the dead. Forgiving sins. Calming the storm. Healing a man with a demon. Accidentally heals a woman who manages to touch the edge of his robe. On his way to heal the daughter of a synagogue ruler. Feeds the 5,000, heals more people, casts out more demons, eats with unclean sinners, heals more people - even on the sabbath, teaches parables about how eager God is to see sinners come home, heals ten lepers, tells them to let the children come, heals a blind beggar, finally enters Jerusalem and cleanses the temple by driving out all the evil priests who, instead of doing their jobs, were getting rich off of selling animals for sacrifice at a ridiculous markup in an empty temple. This is the main way Luke shows that Jesus is the true and better High Priest, because this, most of all, is what it means to be a priest. Look at God’s condemnation of the evil priests, whom he refers to as the Shepherds of Israel, back in Ezekiel (24):

“Thus says the Lord God: eAh, shepherds of Israel fwho have been feeding yourselves! gShould not shepherds feed the sheep?  hYou eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, iyou slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep.  jThe weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, hthe injured you have not bound up, hthe strayed you have not brought back, kthe lost you have not sought, and with force and lharshness you have ruled them. (25) mSo they were scattered, because there was no shepherd, and nthey became food for all the wild beasts. My sheep were scattered;  they wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill. My sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth, owith none to search or seek for them.”

Foremost among all of their very important duties, priests were supposed to be feeding the sheep. But they weren’t. They were supposed to be strengthening the weak, but they weren’t. It was the priests who God had appointed to bring back the straying and the lost, to bind up the injured, and to heal the sick. What did they think all of that stuff in the Levitical law about treating skin diseases and sickness was for? Or the commands to read the Word of the Lord to the people? Or to instruct them in the right worship of God? So look what God says (26):

I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, dand I myself will make them lie down, declares the Lord God. 16 fI will seek the lost, gand I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, and hthe fat and the strong [shepherds] I will destroy.

The proof that Jesus is both the true High Priest and the return of God to his people that Luke chooses to foreground is not his sinlessness, his humanity, or his baptism, though all of those are there. The definitive proof is his mercy. And I can prove it to you. When John the Baptist is in prison, he sends his disciples to ask Jesus, “are you the one?” He wants to know, “are you the one I have been preparing the way for?” And the proof that Jesus gives him is nothing other than his mercy. Look at this (27): 

And when the men had come to him, they said, “John the Baptist has sent us to you, saying, ‘Are you the one uwho is to come, or vshall we look for another?’” In that hour whe healed many people of diseases and plagues and evil spirits, and xon many who were blind he bestowed sight. (28)And [Jesus] answered them, “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: ythe blind receive their sight, the lame walk, zlepers5 are cleansed, and athe deaf hear, bthe dead are raised up, cthe poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is dnot offended by me.”

That’s the proof that Jesus is the true High Priest and God himself, that you see him returning to heal and redeem his people. (29) Do you remember what was at the center of Zechariah’s night vision chiasm? The cleansing of the priesthood. Not just the temple, the High Priest himself. He is given clean clothes, and crowned with righteousness, and given charge over all the house of God, and told to rule it with justice. And from there the Spirit of the Lord departs the temple, restoring justice in concentric circles out from the temple and into the whole world. Back in Luke-Acts (30), John cries out in the wilderness to prepare the way of the Lord, as Jesus journeys from Samaria to Jerusalem, doing the work of a true priest the whole way. Binding up the injured. Healing the sick. Feeding the sheep. And he stands on the mount of olives, to the east of Jerusalem, and weeps over his city. Then he gets to the temple and cleanses it of the evil priests with his own hands and his own blood. And receives the crown of righteousness. And is enthroned in glory. (31) And at the beginning of Acts, before he ascends to heaven, he tells his disciples, (32) “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” So the Spirit of God goes back out from the temple, into Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and the ends of the earth (33). 

Conclusion

The Spirit of God didn’t stay in the temple, He sent out a nation of priests - each one a little miniature temple, bringing the presence and the redemption of God out into the nations. And in this new economy, he has poured out his Spirit on all flesh, according to Joel 2. That’s why Paul says in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free. There’s no sections in the temple. It’s not because the gospel erases gender and ethnicity. It’s because the gospel erases barriers between God and his people, which also means he has erased barriers between his people. He has made all peoples able to draw near to him and to one another. He is the High Priest who has been crowned with righteousness and given charge of all of God’s house. His law is love and his gospel is peace, and He has sent his holy nation of priests to spread his reign everywhere. 

And listen to me, the same Jesus that went out binding up the injured, healing the sick, lifting up the brokenhearted, is the same Jesus that went out after you, and who now goes out with you. He wasn’t just doing all that for show. He wasn’t doing all that to live up to a standard. He set that behavior as a standard for the priests over his people because that’s what He is always like. And he wants his Priests to reflect his image. It’s not just a job. It’s who he is. He never clocks out of binding up the broken. He never takes PTO from healing the wounded and sick. And that’s what he sent you out to be a reflection of. And that is a hard calling. But he remains your High Priest. And he invites each of you, in time of need, as often as that may be, to draw near to his throne of grace, to find mercy and grace. He isn’t just sending you out to bind up the brokenness of others. He goes with you to continually bind up your brokenness too. 

Remember, as Hebrews 4 says, we do not have a High Priest who is unable to empathize with our weakness, but one who, in every respect, was tempted as we are - yet without sin. He can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself was beset with weakness. Do you know what it means that he was beset with weakness, yet without sin? Some people think it means he can’t really sympathize with you. Because sin is the hardest part of being human. And C.S. Lewis famously responded to that with an analogy that I’m slightly modifying, but it basically goes like this… If you have two people running a race. And one gives up and quits halfway, but the other keeps running and finishes, which one knows more about how hard running is? The one who couldn’t keep going, or the one who kept going in spite of the pain? It’s the one who kept going. See, you and I quit all the time. And even when we don’t outright quit we cheat. Even if we ultimately do the right thing, we still vent our stress and our sadness and our anger in sinful ways. Maybe we turn to an addiction. Maybe we lash out at our spouse or friends. Maybe we think our selflessness entitles us to a little selfishness now and again, as long as we ultimately mostly do the right thing externally and in public. But listen to me, if Jesus had done that even one time then you and I would be lost forever. If even one disciple, one single sick or needy person, or even just some arrogant sinner had come to him and he had lashed out at them, or gritted his teeth and gotten through it only to go take the edge off and get drunk, or gone out for a one night stand the whole world would be lost. Even if he had simply stopped loving the Lord his God with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength for a moment, it would be over. And he endured all of that while being beset, weighed down, burdened with weakness, just like you and me. He took no shortcuts. He asked for no grace. He depended on no forgiveness. So that when you and I stumble, even grossly, we can draw near to his throne at our worst and find mercy and grace every time. And that means the Lord Jesus is totally and completely safe. I won’t lie to you, bringing your sin to another sinner is risky business. It’s necessary, but it’s always risky. They might sin against you. But Jesus has never sinned against anybody. Ever. He has never sinned against you. And he is not about to start. So you don’t have to wonder if now is a good time, if you’ve caught him in the right mood, or if you’ve done enough to deserve his attention. You are never going to find a Jesus that doesn’t bind up the broken. Would you go to him with me in Prayer? 

This is the part of the service where we draw near to the Lord in prayer and hear what his Spirit says to our hearts through his Word. So I would invite you now to draw near to the throne of grace, and bring the most sinful, the most painful, the most frightening, and the most lonely baggage you have with you today and find mercy and grace for it in his presence. 

Benediction: 

In the Name of Jesus I assure you that if you have placed your faith in him, your sin is covered, your prayers have been heard, and your God is with you. Now receive this blessing from Him: “The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you, and give you peace.”