The Miraculous Birth of John the Baptist
Luke 1:56-66
As we turn together to the Word of God, I invite you to open your Bible to Luke's gospel. We are approaching the end of this great first chapter of Luke. Luke is unfolding for us the story of Jesus Christ. And in his unique and wonderful and inspired way, giving us profound insight into redemptive history as he describes the conception and birth both of John the Baptist and of the Lord Jesus Himself.
The text before us, Luke 1:56 to 66, is the account of the birth of John, called the Baptist for his baptizing ministry and being the prophet who was the forerunner of the Messiah, Jesus Christ Himself. Let me read this text to you, Luke 1:56..."And Mary stayed with her about three months and then returned to her home. Now the time had come for Elizabeth to give birth and she brought forth a son. And her neighbors and her relatives heard that the Lord had displayed great mercy toward her and they were rejoicing with her. And it came about that on the eighth day they came to circumcise the child, they were going to call him Zacharias after his father. And his mother answered and said, 'No indeed, he shall be called John.' And they said to her, 'There's no one among your relatives who is called by that name.' And they made signs to his father as to what he wanted him called. And he asked for a tablet and wrote as follows: His name is John. They were all astonished and at once his mouth was opened and his tongue loosed and he began to speak in praise of God. And fear came on all those living around them and all these matters were being talked about in all the hill country of Judea. And all who heard them kept them in mind saying, 'What then will this child turn out to be? For the hand of the Lord was certainly with him.'"
That last comment, "For the hand of the Lord was certainly with him," really does set the stage for what I want you to see in this account. It is a simple narrative. You weren't at all confused in reading it. Very easy to understand what happened. A child was born. People were there. They felt that it was appropriate to name him after his father. But his parents indicated his name was to be John. A miracle occurred that gave back to Zacharias his hearing and his speech and wonder filled everyone about what this child would become.
A very simple story. But there's something here that jolts us in the final statement. "For the hand of the Lord was certainly with him." As much as the story appears to be about Zacharias and the miracle that loosed his tongue, as much as the story might appear to be about Elizabeth, giving birth in her old age, as much as the story might appear to be a story about the child John, the great significance of his life and ministry, the story is really a story about God. God is the main player in this drama. God is the main actor. It is the hand of the Lord that Luke wants us to see here. And this is not just true of this story, it's true of everything in Scripture. Psalm 19:7 calls the Bible the testimony of the Lord. Scripture is God's only self-disclosure.
First and foremost the Bible is the revelation of God. It is His own word on Himself. More than anything else it is His story. Behind Zacharias and behind Elizabeth and behind Mary and behind John and even behind the coming of Jesus is the great and mighty revelation of God. His nature, His character, His works, His purpose, His will, He is being revealed. In fact, at all points in the Bible, God is teaching the truth about Himself. He is the one dominating figure in biblical revelation. The Bible simply is a book about God. It starts with God and it ends with God and everything in between is about Him.
I have learned long ago no matter what passage I'm studying to be looking for the revelation of God in that given passage. Every passage reveals something about God. Pursuing the knowledge of God in every portion of Scripture is a rich and rewarding enterprise. And how could it be avoided here when Luke makes a comment at the end of the passage in verse 66 and says, "For the hand of the Lord was certainly with him." Everything in the story of John the Baptist evidenced the mighty intervention of God.
You cannot understand the angelic annunciation to Zacharias when Gabriel was sent from God to Zacharias, as we saw in chapter 1, when he was in offering incense on the altar of incense, and the angel appeared and gave him a word from God and told him he would have a son. And you see the intervention of God through His Word, through His angel and through the miracle of conception that happened when Zacharias went home and in their sixties, seventies or eighties, those barren people were able to have the first child in their life.
You see the hand of God as He comes to Mary through again the angel Gabriel. We saw that starting in verse 26 of the first chapter, and unfolded to Mary this incredible reality that she would conceive a child without a man. And God would literally, miraculously plant a fetus in her womb and bring it to full size and to birth and that child would be the Son of God, the Savior of the world.
God's hand is in all of this. And certainly His hand was in the miraculous striking of Zacharias deaf and mute, which He did as a judgment on his unbelief. And His hand was also evidenced when Zacharias was loosed from that divine chastening and spoke. The hand of God is everywhere here. And Luke wants us to be sure we're seeing it, so he reminds us at the end of verse 66.
In fact, Luke as a historian is writing divine history, inspired in his mind by the self-revealing God, and so his concern, that we know this is divine history. As the gospel of Luke begins, Luke is especially concerned that we see the movement of God, the purpose of God, the plan of God for redemption unfolding. And Luke focuses on staggering supernatural events, two miracle conceptions, two miracle births and some attendant miracles that go along with them. And then the coming of John and the coming of Jesus and a plethora of miracles explodes on the world through the power of Jesus and the Apostles to whom He delegated that power.
The reality is that God is acting in human history. God who has been silent for 400 years, God who hasn't done a miracle in over 400 years or a series of miracles in perhaps 500 years. God who hasn't sent a visible angel to earth in that same amount of time is now acting in history. Luke wants his readers to see God being revealed. God launching the greatest era of redemptive history, the coming of the Savior of the world. He reminds us to look for God.
In Israel a birth was cause for great joy and celebration as it is today, especially if the child, and I hate to say this, was a boy. It wasn't right but it was the tradition that when the birth came, the friends would come, the neighbors would come and the family would come even from afar and they would be ready to celebrate because they would hire the local musicians to come to accompany the music of celebration after the child was born. And some Jewish writers tell us when the son was born, the gathered crowd would break into music and song. And some writers tell us that if the child was a girl, the musicians went silently away as it was a birth of sadness. It wasn't right, but it was the tradition. And the New Testament overturned that as the Apostle Paul in his wonderful way said in Christ there is neither male nor female and did everything he could to exalt women to the place where they deserve in the economy of God and not where the Pharisaical, legalistic, Judaistic tradition had placed them.
Well it was a boy. And so we can assume that the celebration went on in the common tradition. But even more so because this was an old man and an old woman, barren, never able to have children having a child, and this wasn't just any child either. You know, they...they knew that the child was a unique child cause it had been told that this child would be the forerunner of the Messiah, that he would be great, that he would be filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother's womb, that he would turn many of the hearts of the children of Israel toward righteousness, that he would make the way prepared for the Messiah to come. He was to be the last great pre-messianic prophet, not just any child. And so there was a great, great celebration. Lots to celebrate, the character of the child, the amazing miracle of the conception, the joy of these barren people finally having a child and a son at that, and a prophet at that, and the forerunner of Messiah at that.
But as great as their joy, ours, I think, can be greater. They're still asking the question in verse 66, "What then will this child turn out to be?" We know the answer, don't we? We know what he was like. We know about his life. We know about his preaching. We know about his impact. We know that all of Jerusalem and Judea was pouring out to hear him preach when he grew older and preached in the wilderness. We know that the population was getting baptized with the baptism of repentance, confessing sins, getting ready for the Messiah. We know what a preacher of righteousness he was. We know what a preacher against sin he was. We know that he confronted sinners in high places and it cost him his life, he was beheaded for his faithfulness to preach repentance. We know he announced, "The Lamb of God to take away the sin of the world," we know that he was, in fact, the forerunner of Messiah. We know Messiah came. We know He lived. We know He died. We know He rose. We know He ascended. We know He sent His Holy Spirit, established His church of which we are a part. We know He intercedes for us now. Will come in glory to take us to be with Himself, establish His Kingdom which is eternal. We know all of that. If their joy was great, ours ought to be greater.
Now Luke wonderfully mingles the two conception and birth narratives. First he gives us the wonderful story of Gabriel coming to Zacharias and the miracle conception between Zacharias and Elizabeth. Then he moves to the miracle conception that occurred by God in the womb of Mary and tells us that story. Now in this passage he goes back to the story of Zacharias and Elizabeth to tell the birth narrative. And when this one is concluded he will then tell the birth narrative of Jesus, which starts in chapter 2.
Two conception miracles, two birth miracles, two mothers, Elizabeth and Mary, two fathers, Zacharias and God...he weaves these narratives together and there's always the stamp of divine miracle power on them. God is putting Himself on display. And Luke in very precise and very sequential way tells the stories, mingling them and yet paralleling them. In each case it's the story of a birth and a circumcision and a naming and praise. That's what we'll see in the birth of John and that's exactly the sequence we'll see in chapter 2 in the birth of Jesus.
Now as we look at the narrative before us, God puts Himself on display in three ways here. In three ways we see the hand of God. First, number one, the promise of God is veracious. Now I'm going to educate you a little bit. That's a new word, it's not voracious, that' different. Veracious, v-e-r-a, it means true. It's a good word. It also allows me to alliterate my outline. But it's a good word. Veracious, not voracious, make the difference.
The word veracious means true...it means true. The promise of God is true and that's what the story shows us. We see the hand of the Lord here fulfilling His promise. Verses 56 to 58, verse 56, Mary, you remember, had gone down after she had received word from the angel Gabriel that she would become with child, pregnant, that she was bearing in her womb would be planted there by God miraculously. She was probably a thirteen-year-old girl. She was certainly a virgin. She was betrothed to a young man, but they had not consummated that relationship. The wedding had not yet occurred. When she was told by the Holy Spirit that she would be pregnant and she would be bearing a child, she realized there would be a very difficult assignment on the part of everybody around her to understand that. If a thirteen year old appears pregnant, there are lots of explanations, having a child planted in your womb by God isn't one that's easy to sell. But there was one woman who would understand, that was one who was in her womb even then bearing a child that had been granted to her by God through a conception miracle and she had had a similar encounter with the angel Gabriel. She would understand. And so when Mary was informed that Elizabeth, her cousin, was pregnant by the power of God, she went immediately to the one woman who would understand her situation and could vouch for the reality of it. She stayed with her three months.
Apparently from the flow of the text she left in the ninth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy and went, it says, in verse 56, to her home. Not yet wed to Joseph, she went back to the home of her mother and father. After her returning, the story goes back to pick it up from verse 25, back to Elizabeth. And it says, "Now the time had come for Elizabeth to give birth and she brought forth a son and her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had displayed His great mercy toward her and they were rejoicing with her."
Luke's words here are very carefully chosen...very carefully chosen to prove to us, to show to us that God's Word is veracious, it is true. And we shouldn't question that. Numbers 23:19 says, "God is not a man that He should lie." Joshua 23:14 says, "Not one word of all the good words that the Lord your God spoke concerning you has failed. All have been fulfilled for you, not one of them has failed," which was Joshua's farewell speech. First Kings 8:56, "Blessed be the Lord according to all that He promised, not one word has failed of all His good promise which He promised." Psalm 89:14, "Loving kindness and truth go before you." Psalm 86 says, "You are abundant in truth." And Psalm 146 says, "God keeps truth forever." That's why Isaiah calls Him in Isaiah 65:16, "The God of truth." Titus 1:2 Paul says, "God who cannot lie." Hebrews 6:18, "It is impossible for God to lie." And Jesus gave the greatest attestation in John 17:17 when He said, "Thy word is truth."
When God speaks, He speaks the truth. And God had spoken in a prophecy and God had said, verse 13, through the angel to Zacharias, "Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son and you will give him the name John and you will have joy and gladness and many will rejoice at his birth." And that is exactly what Luke says happened. Verse 57, "She brought forth a son," verse 58, "And they were rejoicing with her." The...the angel had said from God, you'll have a son and many will rejoice, and that is precisely what happened. And Luke records it with great precision to make the point that God's word is true. He's putting God on display here.
This tells us what we need to know about Zacharias. It tells us what we need to know about Elizabeth. It tells us what we need to know about John. More than that, it tells us what we need to know about God, that when He speaks it's the truth. It's the truth. That's the important issue here.
Verse 57 says, "The time had come." The great epoch had arrived, the monumental moment of the birth of John, the prophet who was the forerunner to Christ. Here is the launch event of the coming of the Savior of the world. This triggers everything. The forerunner comes, then the Messiah comes, then the work of redemption is accomplished. Time had come for Elizabeth to give birth. Nine months of pregnancy was completed, she was now ready to give birth. And indeed she did, "And she brought forth a son." Exactly as God through the angel Gabriel had promised. The Word of God, as always, is true. And she rejoiced...she rejoiced I'm sure beyond many mothers because of her life-long barrenness and the stigma that she had endured through that, she was even called "the barren one," as you remember. A terrible stigma for a Jewish lady to bear. And joy beyond even that because the child that she had been given was not just any child, he was great, filled with the Spirit. He was the forerunner to the Messiah. He would turn back many of the sons of Israel to the Lord their God. He would turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, the disobedient would take up the attitude of the righteous. People would be made ready for the coming of the Messiah.
God was giving her not just any child. So her joy was wonderful. She may have been like Sarah. Sarah was so happy when she had Isaac. I mean, she was in her nineties then. She had been barren all her life. She finally got a son and she couldn't stop laughing. Genesis 21:6 says she just laughed and laughed and laughed and named the child "laughter," Isaac. Well, I'm sure Elizabeth had a similar joyous experience.
Verse 58 indicates the prophecy regarding others rejoicing came to pass. Her neighbors who would come from near and her relatives, probably coming from further distances, living in various places, heard that the Lord had displayed His great mercy toward her and they were rejoicing with her. Just precisely and exactly as Gabriel had told her they would when they heard the Lord had displayed His mercy toward her. It was mercy. What is mercy? God's favor...God's kindness...God's goodness. Mercy is God's loving action to undeserving people. God's loving action to undeserving people. God is good. We read that in Psalm 73. God by nature is good. God shows favor and kindness. The Old Testament word is chesed, loving kindness. It's part of God's nature. And He was good to this old couple. He acted toward them with kindness though they were undeserving.
Mary knew that. She celebrated God's mercy too. In the wonderful praise of Mary in verse 50, she says, "His mercy is upon generation after generation." Further in her praise in verse 54 she mentions the fact that God has given help to Israel, His servant, in remembrance of His mercy. And later on, Zachariah will praise God and in verse 72 he celebrates the fact that God chose mercy. Mercy is somewhat of a theme here as sinners being so profoundly blessed by God recognize their unworthiness and God's loving action toward undeserving people.
When the people realized that God had been merciful, and God had showed this great favor, and God had demonstrated His great goodness to this old couple who were righteous and who had all their lifelong wanted so much to have a child, when they knew that it had happened, they came and they shared her joy. And the act that they rejoiced was a fulfillment of the Word of God. God who promised, Hebrews 10:23. is faithful. That's important because God also promises salvation to those who call upon Him. God promises that whoever comes to Him He will receive. God promises that when we confess our sins He'll forgive them. God promises forgiveness to those who ask. He promises heaven to those who cry for it. He promises strength to the weak. He promises wisdom to the ignorant. He promises riches to the poor. He promises answered prayer to those who cry to Him. He promises blessing to those who ask. He promises heaven to those who seek it.
Don't you want to know that He keeps His promises? He does. And so we learn in the outset of the story that the promise of God is true, veracious. Secondly, now you'll know why I used that word, the purpose of God is gracious...the purpose of God is gracious.
The second thing we learn about God here is that His unfolding purpose is gracious. And this is a wonderful, wonderful part of the story. Verse 59, "It came about that on the eighth day they came to circumcise the child. And they were going to call him Zacharias after his father, and his mother answered and said, 'No indeed, he shall be called John.' And they said to her, 'There's no one among your relatives who is called by that name.' And they made signs to his father as to what he wanted him called. And he asked for a tablet and wrote as follows, 'His name is John.' And they were all astonished."
Now we shouldn't be shocked that God is gracious. That's all over the Scripture. But this little vignette really points it out in a wonderful, wonderful way. God, we know, is a God of grace and His purpose toward sinners is to be gracious. His purpose in salvation is to put His grace on display before all, including the angels who otherwise would never see His grace unless there were some sinners to whom He could be gracious. Thus He allowed sin in order that He might display grace and thereby be glorified for His grace which is an attribute which can only be displayed in the forgiveness of sins. God delights in being gracious. He delights in giving sinners what they don't deserve. He delights in saving them from sin and death and hell. Ephesians 1:9 describes God in this way, and I think it's a great praise. It says, "God has kind intentions toward us." God who is infinitely holy, who hates sin, and hates persistent sinners still has kind intentions toward us. That's why in 1 Peter 5:10 it calls Him, "The God of all grace." Psalm 84:11 says, "He gives grace." Hebrews 4:6 says, "When you go to the throne of God, when you approach His holy, majestic throne, you are approaching...I love this...the throne of grace." God's grace is described in the Bible as great, sovereign, rich, exceeding, manifold, all-sufficient, abundant and glorious. And we're going to be exposed to His grace not just in time but in eternity because it says in Ephesians 2 that in eternity He's going to pour out the riches of His grace and His kindness toward us. That's why 1 Peter 3:7 says we are heirs of grace. We will inherit an eternal grace. Romans 6:14 says, "For now, we're under grace." And where sin abounds...what?...grace much more abounds. And grace came by Christ...grace came by Christ.
This comes through in this little conflict that ensues. Let me give you the story. The eighth day arrived, and on the eighth day it was necessary to circumcise this little Jewish baby. That was by God's law...that was by God's law. Genesis 17:9 to 14 introduces circumcision and Leviticus 12 gives us a very simple straightforward definition of circumcision. On the eighth day, it says in verse 3, the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised, cut off. That's circumcision. And it's kind of a strange thing in some way. The question might be asked...why is that done? If God felt that it was better for that to be done, why did He create people without doing that...why did He allow a foreskin to be there if it was something to be removed? He is the creator, He made man as man. Why did He do that?
Well, the answer, I think, is unique. It's three-fold. If you understand this you understand circumcision in its dimensions. First of all, there was a physical reason. There was the reason of perpetuating the nation Israel. In history, you can read medical records, Jewish women have had the lowest rate of cervical cancer and other infections and that is because there is a physical cleansing that occurs. Not so much in our modern hygienic world but through ancient times. This had a benefit physically, and that was part of God perpetuating the people of Israel in order to achieve His messianic purposes and thus He allowed them to have this special protection.
He gave them many medical formulas, many dietary laws that perpetuated them as well, protected them from unnecessary infections and illnesses. So there was a first physical significance to this, but secondly, God wanted them to have a special mark that nobody else had that identified them with the Abrahamic Covenant. And so there was a national purpose as well as a physical one, and that was that they would bear a unique sign and symbol that they belonged to Abraham's seed. They were therefore part of the Abrahamic Covenant, the people of God. So there was a physical protection, there was a national identification.
Thirdly, there was a spiritual symbol in that. And I think this is important to understand. God was showing them by that their sinfulness. Now if I wanted to define how profound man's sin is, if I wanted to define for you how systemic or how endemic, how deep-seeded and pervasive the sin of man is, where would I go to prove that to you? Somebody might say, "Well you can tell it by what people say." But some people can't talk and some people can guard their words very well and I might not hear them say anything that would reveal the depth of their depravity. And even people who do occasionally say things that indicate their sin, by so saying don't necessarily show me how profound that depravity is.
You say, "Well, if you just watch what they do." Well I can't necessarily see how profound their depravity is by what they do. Some people guard carefully what they do when I'm around and when you're around or when anybody's around. Most people don't sin in a crowd.
How do I really know how profoundly sinful man is? The best way to know that, very simple, procreation. If you want to know how wicked and how sinful a person is, you know it best by what they produce because we all produce sinners, right? I'm a Christian and I love the Lord and I serve the Lord. My children were all born depraved and my grandchildren are depraved and they are sinful to the core. So that the essential element of depravity is the component of my very nature which is passed on in procreation and that makes the point...how deep my sin is. And God was there for giving to Israel a lesson, an object lesson, a picture that they needed cleansing at a profound level of sin. In circumcision therefore there was that spiritual symbol.
So it was the eighth day and it was time to do this. To do this which protected them physically, which identified him uniquely with the Abrahamic promise, and which represented to everybody around, and would to him his whole life, the desperate need for spiritual cleansing because sin was so endemic. A little...the little child would be taken, a boy would be taken and usually the father did this. Sometimes women did it, in the case of Zipporah, the wife of Moses, who circumcised their child. Sometimes an appointed person did it. There's no necessary prescription in the Old Testament about who does it. But the tradition developed among the Jews that there needed to be, and probably a tradition later than this, but we don't, at least in terms of the number, but it was significant that when a circumcision occurred there was to be a witnessing group. Later on the tradition developed that there needed to be at least ten witnesses. For the sake of modesty in the future, there would need to be witnesses who could affirm that a circumcision actually did occur. So the tradition developed there had to be ten witnesses of the circumcision of a boy.
And so, there was the crowd there and appropriately so. No doubt ready to witness this as was the tradition. And in the process of this they circumcised the child and the group that were there decided that they should all participate in the naming of the child and they were going to call him Zacharias. So they had a little discussion among themselves and they all decided, I guess, uniformly that the child should be named after his father. That was a nice gesture, let's honor the man. I mean, he's a priest and he's served this little community. A couple of weeks a year, twice during the year, he goes down to the temple, the other eleven months of the year he's up here and he's caring for us and he's teaching us and he's serving us as a local priest in a little town in the hill country of Judea, a few miles out of Jerusalem. And he was beloved to them and he's gone through a life of sorrow and pain and he's never been able to have a child. And then, after all, for nine months he's been unable to hear, unable to speak, and we kind of feel sorry for the old guy. Why not give him a little joy at the end of his life and name the boy after him?
I mean, that's a nice gesture. Just as a footnote to that. Naming the child eight days after birth on the day of circumcision is not an Old Testament prescription. The Old Testament doesn't have any rule about when you name a child. It may have developed as a custom among some Jews by this time. And what may have sort of aided that custom was the Romans tended to name their child on the ninth day, that was sort of the Roman tradition. The Greeks did it on the seventh to the tenth day. And it just may have been that because the Jews were exposed to those kind of customs around them that they started doing it on the eighth day. It is also true that Moses was circumcised on the eighth...was named on the eighth day, the day he was circumcised. And Abraham's name went from Abram to Abraham on the day that he was circumcised. There was some Old Testament precedent for that.
Now we don't know that this was a widespread thing where children were not named until the eighth day. But at least this is what happened on this occasion and it must have been a custom at least in this case. Universal custom or not, this is what they did. When all the folks came on the eighth day, they assumed that this is the day when we make the name official.
Now it wasn't unusual for people to participate in naming. Go back and read Ruth chapter 4 verse 17 when Naomi and Boaz had a baby boy, the people gathered around and the people all together collectively named him Obed. He became the father of Jesse, who was the father of David. So it sometimes was a kind of a group decision.
And also in Israel, names were very, very descriptive. And naming this child Zacharias would be such an honor to his father and it was a family name, although infrequently boys were named after their father. More frequently they would be named after their grandfather. And sometimes names were chosen to describe physical features. For example, if you go back and read Genesis 25, you read about the birth of Jacob and Esau. Jacob was named Jacob because Jacob means "one who grabs the heel. And Esau was named Esau because Esau means "hairy." And you remember the birth? Esau came out and the first remark was, "Boy, he's hairy." And he was hairy from then on. And Jacob came out and he had a hold of Esau's heel and Jacob means "one who holds the heel." And the idea is the supplanter, you know, trying to pull him back in there and get out first. So the conflict between those two guys was life-long and it started in the womb when they were fighting about who was going out the shoot first.
Sometimes names then were tied to physical features. Some Jewish names were designed to express the parents' joy, such as Saul or Samuel which means "asked for." And in the case of Samuel when Hannah was given her child which she had asked for, she named him "asked for." Some children were named to express the parent's faith. Elijah was one. His parents named him Elijah because Elijah means "Jehovah is my God." And his parents named him as a testimony to their faith in God.
Well it just seemed right to this group to name this baby Zacharias. Watch what happened. Verse 60, "And his mother answered and said, 'No indeed.'" In the Greek, ou kai alla(??), strong Greek emphatic, absolutely not. And, you know, I mean that would be a little hard to swallow. I mean, what do you have against the guy? Zacharias...I mean, what kind of an answer is that? "No indeed, but he shall be called John." What a great name. (Laughter) "This baby is named John," there's no discussion on this, this isn't a group decision.
Why did she say that? Well, back in verse 13 when the angel came, appeared to Zacharias, he said you'll bear a son, your wife