The Birth of John the Baptist

The birth of Jesus wasn't the only miraculous birth foretold in the Gospels.

Stay with this story. Luke tells us that Elizabeth's days were fulfilled, that it was time for her to deliver her child, and so she brought forth a son. And then we have this simple note from Luke. When her neighbors and relatives heard how the Lord had shown great mercy to her, they rejoiced with her. Now we know that when Elizabeth first received the news that in her old age and in her barrenness that she would conceive and have a child, that she withdrew from her residence. She withdrew from her friends and relatives and went to be alone because there was a type of embarrassment perhaps that she would experience being noticeably pregnant after all these years of barrenness.

And obviously, she did not want to be an object of scorn or of ridicule or of pity or any emotion like that. But nevertheless, nevertheless, the word got out. I don't think anything moves faster than CNN news than the news of some woman's becoming pregnant. There is a sorority among women that as soon as one conception is known, it spreads like wildfire throughout the whole community.

That's a good thing because the people are rejoicing in the news of the imminent birth of another child. And so one way or another, all the friends and relatives heard about this coming event. And Luke tells us simply this, that when her neighbors and relatives heard how the Lord had shown great mercy to her, they rejoiced with her. Beloved, this is the communion of saints. This is what it's all about in the community of people who believe and put their trust in God. The Word of God tells us that as Christians, in that communion of saints, we are to weep with those who weep and to rejoice with those who rejoice so that your joy is my joy, and my joy is your joy, and your sorrow is my sorrow, our sorrow.

And that's how it is to be among the people of God. I have to say this this morning, December the 18th, a very important day in the life of our family, that I have been nothing less than astonished at the degree of concern and the intercessory prayer that has gone on for the last eight months and indeed for the last eight years for our dear daughter-in-law and for her family, for the children, for her husband. One just needs to look at Facebook and see the prayers and the statements of support from all over this land and indeed from other parts of the world. We've been overwhelmed by that kind of communion of the saints. And so certainly our family, and I believe our whole congregation, has been uplifted and strengthened by that intercessory prayer. And when the chapter in that prayer comes, when the one who suffers so much for so long is relieved of that and enters into the presence of Jesus, for those who are left behind it is a time of sorrow, but for her she joins the general assembly of the saints and of the spirits of just men and women made perfect in the heavenly sanctuary. So with that we rejoice just as the friends and relatives of Elizabeth came to share in her joy and came to share in her experience of the tender mercy of God.

That's what we share every day, the tender mercy of God. Then Luke goes on to say that on the eighth day they came to circumcise the child as the Jewish law required, and they would have called him by the name of his father Zacharias, that is the friends and the relatives. They came, and they wanted to see on the eighth day the circumcision of Zacharias Jr.

They wanted to share in the joy of that moment when the father would be honored by the naming of the son with his same name. And so that's what they expected to hear, and instead they were shocked because his mother, Elizabeth, answered, because obviously at this point the father Zacharias was not able to answer anything because he wasn't able to speak, but Elizabeth answered and said, no, he shall be called John. John.

No, no, no. He shall be called John. They weren't satisfied with this answer from Elizabeth, and so we're told that they said to her, there isn't anyone among your relatives who's called by that name John. You don't have an uncle. You don't have a cousin.

You don't have a grandfather, a great-grandfather, a great-great-grandfather. Nobody in this family ever been called John. Are you kidding us, Elizabeth, that this baby shall be called John? Well, you would think that these wonderful friends and relatives that had gathered to share in the joy of the birth of this child and of his circumcision, would they ever say, well, that's fine. Whatever you want to call your babies is fine with us. So, fine, his name shall be called John.

No. The friends and relatives say, just hold on here. We're going to check this out with the father. We want to know what Zacharias thinks about all of this. And so they motioned to him, and apparently he not only couldn't speak, but he couldn't hear anyway, and his ears were blessed by not having to listen to this intramural debate among the friends and relatives that were assembled on this occasion. And so they motioned to him. They want his verdict on the matter.

Now, before we get to his verdict, I want to jump off at this point, for an application may seem like a little bit of a stretch to you this morning. Some of these texts that we encounter seriatim as we go through the Bible verse by verse are extraordinarily difficult to find application for our lives, and sometimes I have to be a little bit creative in it. But here's what I want us to think about. What you have here is a conflict with custom. It was the custom of the people that the child would be named after one of the relatives in the family. That was not a principle required by God. Rather, it was a tradition that grew up over the centuries, and it had become what we call a custom. That is, it was customary to name the child after someone in the family. And now all of a sudden, Elizabeth and Zacharias are going against the custom. Now, the people had no idea why they were going against the custom. I don't think that these friends and relatives had plotted together and said, well, we know that the Lord God Omnipotent has decreed that this child will be named John, but we'll have none of that.

We have a custom to protect here, and so we're going to make sure that this child is named Zacharias Jr. There was none of that. This struggle with custom was not a deep, profound, ethical, or theological issue. The custom itself was what we call adiaphorous.

It had no inherent ethical import. It was perfectly all right if families named their children after relatives. I'm proud to have been named after my grandfather and my father and have the same name for my son and for my grandson until at some point some infant in a sprawl crib will rise up and protest and say, I've had enough of this R.C.

Jr. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, stop. But we carry on that custom in our own family. There's nothing wrong with that. But, beloved, there are times when principle and custom clashes that are so significant and so important that we need to be extremely alert to them. It is never excusable for a believer, or anyone else for that matter, to disobey a principle set forth by God for the sake of a custom, or of a tradition, or of a contemporary community standard. I would rank as the second most egregious ethical issue our nation has ever faced was the issue of slavery. And do you realize that people who were well respected, in many cases godly people, who bought and sold slaves as chattel, who debated the question of whether those slaves had souls? Can you imagine educated, enlightened people having discussions like that? And do you have any idea what Wilberforce and others had to go through to change public opinion, to change what was customary, to change what was acceptable in the secular culture and even in the religious culture with respect to slavery?

But it was a custom. I said a moment ago that, in my opinion, slavery was the second most egregious ethical issue our country has ever faced. And I think that far ahead of that is the issue of abortion. And I pray God for a multitude of Wilberforces who will relentlessly speak against this monstrous evil until such a day that our nation will wake up.

But I listen to the rhetoric and I see the signs, and I say, are you people thinking at all? Pro-choice. A woman has a right to her own body even though we know that that unborn child has its own unique DNA. It may be in her body, but it's not a part of her body.

It has its own unique identity, its own heart, its own brain, its own consciousness. And you see the videotapes of the actual procedure by which these unborn children are mutilated, and you see, you can't hear it, but you see the silent scream. You see the reaction, the visible physical reaction of the unborn child in the contortions of its face, the screams of its mouth, and its revulsion in pain as its body is being torn limb by limb. Auschwitz? At least those people had some time to live on this planet before they were tortured to death. That mother's choice ends exactly where that baby's choice begins, just as my freedom ends where your freedom begins.

What could be more simple than that? But it's accepted. It's part of the culture, the culture of death in which we live. And as I've said every chance I get it, I've studied theology for over fifty years, and there are things about God I don't know.

He's incomprehensible. But if I know anything about God, I don't just think I know without a shadow of a doubt that He hates abortion, and He will judge nations that support it. But there are churches that support it. There are people in this room who support it, and I don't think they've thought about it for five minutes.

How could they? We may be that wicked, but we're not that stupid. But that is a custom that collides with the vengeance, with the principles of the sanctity of life set forth by our God. And so I beg you not to base your life on what is acceptable in your culture. I just talked to a lady the other day, a very nice lady. She's divorced, and she looked at me and said, talk to me. She knows I'm a pastor.

And she said, well, I never thought I'd be using birth control at this age in my life, but I need to because my boyfriend wants me to. She said it to me without shame, just as we have people in the church living, cohabiting without shame, because it's acceptable. Yes, it's acceptable by a culture that's pagan. Yes, it's acceptable by a culture that's barbarian, but it's not acceptable in the house of God. And the first thing you have to understand if you're going to be a Christian is that you cannot be conformed to this world, that we march to a different drummer. You can't say that Jesus is Lord and allow the social mores of your community dictate your behavior.

It's that simple. Well, thank God for Zacharias. And they made signs to him what he would have the child called. And he asked for a writing tablet, and he wrote saying, his name is John.

Did you catch that? He didn't say the same thing that Elizabeth said. What did Elizabeth say? She said, she said, he shall be called John. He said, well, we'll see about that. We'll ask Zacharias. And so they asked Zacharias, and he asked for the tablet, and he writes on the tablet what? His name will be John?

No. He said, his name is John. The deed is done.

The discussion is over. He already has his name. His name is John. And at that point Zacharias had shown how much he was controlled by custom and how much he was controlled by the Word of God. And so they all marveled. And instantly his mouth was opened, his tongue that had been bound, shut up tight, was loosed, and he spoke praising God.

The first words out of this man's mouth after he had suffered through nine months of silence were praise and adoration for his God. You know, I've had the opportunity in my ministry to write a few hymns, some of which we've sung at this church, and I always love to sing them. But only one of those hymns that I write the words and the music. Everyone else, I wrote the words, and we got somebody who was a real musician to write the music for it. Now I don't know how long ago it was that Randall, who's sick, and you pray for him because he has that concert this evening, we sent him home. But we don't know how long ago Randall came to me, Burke, a couple of years, a year or two, and asked me if I would write a hymn on the Benedictus. And I did. Do you remember singing it? No. I hope not because we've never sung it, and the reason we've never sung it is he hasn't found anybody yet to write the music, but he's working on it.

Right? So one of these days, Lord willing, we're going to sing the Benedictus in response to this amazing tender mercy of God to His servant Zacharias. When that happened, we're told, fear and wonder came on all who dwelled around them.

These sayings were discussed throughout the hill country of Judea. Did you hear what happened to Elizabeth, the Zacharias, and that baby that they named John? And how when Zacharias wrote on the board, his name is John, suddenly he was able to speak again after all these months. Every village in the hill country of Judea was abuzz with the news of these extraordinary events, and all those who heard them kept them in their hearts saying, what kind of child will this be?

They couldn't wait to see what this little baby would grow up to be like. My wife said to me this morning on the way to church, she said, honey, do you think that Zacharias and Elizabeth had any idea that their little boy was going to run out into the desert and act like a wild man eating locusts and wild honey? I don't think they had that on his program or their plan, but the hand of the Lord was with him. It was with him the day he was born. It was with him before he was born, when he leaped in his mother's womb. It was with him when he came to the Jordan River to baptize and call Israel to repentance. It was with him when he was in prison, and it was with him when he was martyred. The gospel of Luke tightly intertwines the birth of Jesus with the birth of John the Baptist.

These two births fulfilled prophecies in a way that amazed the people, and they were an unmistakable sign that the Messiah had arrived. Thanks for joining us for the Sunday edition of Renewing Your Mind. I'm Lee Webb, and each week here on the program, Dr. R.C. Sproul walks us through the gospel of Luke. Our resource offered today will help you continue your own study in this gospel. It's a digital download of R.C. 's expositional commentary on Luke in nearly 600 digital pages you'll find R.C.

's easy-to-understand analysis of every verse. So contact us today and request it with your donation of any amount. Our team is off today worshiping with their families, so this is an online offer only. You can make your request and give your gift at renewingyourmind.org. Well, all of this, of course, is leading us up to the birth of Christ, and next Sunday Dr. Sproul will walk us through that miraculous event. We hope you'll join us for the Lord's Day edition of Renewing Your Mind.