THE LONG-AWAITED VISITATION
“Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and
redeemed his people and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house
of his servant David, as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of
old, that we should be saved 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, nine months earlier, Zechariah could not believe his wife
would have a child. Now, filled with the Holy Spirit, he is so confident of
God’s redeeming work in the
coming Messiah that he puts it in the past tense. For the mind
of faith, a promised act of God is as good as done. Zechariah has learned to
take God at his word and so has a remarkable assurance: “God has visited and
redeemed!” Second, the coming of Jesus the Messiah is a visitation of God to
our world: “The God of Israel has visited and redeemed.” 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Jewish people had languished under the conviction that God had withdrawn: the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
all the godly in Israel were awaiting
the visitation of God. Luke tells us in 2:25 that the devout
Simeon was “looking for the consolation of Israel.” And in Luke 2:38 the
prayerful Anna was “looking 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.
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