Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come to his people and redeemed them. He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David (as he said through his holy prophets of long ago), salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us.
Luke 1.68-71
Notice two remarkable things from these words of Zechariah in Luke 1.
First, note Zechariah's faith. Nine months earlier, Zechariah could not believe his wife would have a child. Now, filled with the Holy Spirit, he so confident of God's redeeming work in the coming Messiah that he puts it in past tense. Zechariah has learned to take God at his word. He has remarkable assurance: "God has come... and redeemed." A promised act of God is as good as done.
Second, the coming of Jesus the Messiah is a visitation of God to our world. For centuries, the Jewish people had languished under the conviction that God had withdrawn: the spirit of prophecy had ceased, Israel had fallen into the hands of Rome, and even the godly in Israel were growing weary in awaiting the visitation of God. Luke 2.25 tells us the devout Simeon was "waiting for the consolation of Israel." And Luke 2.38, the prayerful Anna was "waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem."
These were days of great expectation. Now the long-awaited visitation of God was about to happen indeed. He was about to come in a way no one expected.
This is a excerpt from 'Joy to the World-Daily Readings for Advent' by John Piper.
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