10 Our Horn of Salvation
CHAPTER
10
Our Horn of Salvation
Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel,/ because he has come and has redeemed his people./ 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—/ to show mercy to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant,/ the oath he swore to our father Abraham:/ to rescue us from the hand of our enemies,/ and to enable us to serve him without fear/ in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. (Luke 1:68–75)
Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist and the author of this song, was practically the last of the priesthood. Because of his priestly office he was chosen to be the father of John the Baptist, and thus, both directly and through his son, the witness to Christ, although Judaism afterwards rejected Christ notwithstanding its own testimony. True to the spirit of Judaism, when the message came to Zechariah about the birth of his son, his unbelief refused to accept it, and God visited him with dumbness and silence until the birth of John. The silence of Zechariah was significant of the silence that was to fall on Judaism as she gave place to the testimony of Christ and sank back into silence at His feet, while all heaven proclaimed, “This is my Son, whom I love; … Listen to Him!” (Matthew 17:5b).
How different was the spirit of Mary when the message came to her requiring even greater faith! More truly she represented the spirit of Christianity. She implicitly believed it, and her answer was, “I am the Lord’s servant, … May it be to me as you have said” (Luke 1:38).
But at length Zechariah’s lips were opened at the circumcision of his son, and with this last song his voice died away with the voice of Judaism into eternal silence. There is a beautiful bird which has but one song, and that its own death dirge. After silently sailing the waters for its whole life long, the beautiful swan at last, on the bosom of some peaceful lake, perhaps as the shadows of evening are falling and darkness is passing over its simple brain, opens its mouth and pours out the strangest, saddest song that ever fell upon the ear. Then its beautiful, graceful neck relaxes and it sinks upon the waves in the silence of death. It has breathed its life out in its one last song. So Zechariah passes out of view with his own song, but it was a song worthy to be lost in, for it is the keynote of redemption and yet will re-echo in the song of Moses and the Lamb. There are three strains in it. Like all great songs, it is extremely simple, but swells out into infinite echoes of glory and blessing.
He has visited His people
We love to receive a letter from a friend, but how much more the friend himself! Sweet is the message of affection, but sweeter the visit of our loved ones! The glory of Zechariah’s song was that God was about to visit His people. This was the cry of Moses, “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?” (Exodus 33:15–16). Not even an angel’s presence would satisfy or fill the place, none but God Himself. This was the burden of all Isaiah’s promises. The Lord Himself will come to visit His people. This is the preeminent glory of redemption. God Himself has undertaken it. The Eternal One has come to our world in person and identified Himself forever with humanity.
It tells the story of the incarnation. “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). He has come into our house of clay, and He has come to stay and to the latest ages of eternity. Generation after generation will visit the universe, lift up their eyes to look upon God and see the face of a man, a form like our own, God in the likeness of humanity. He has come so near to us that He has come into our own nature.
Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil … For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants. For this reason he had to be made like his brothers in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God. (Hebrews 2:14–17a)
When the first missionaries went to St. Thomas, they could not get near the suffering and degraded slaves until they took part in their bondage and asked the masters to make them slaves also. Then they were received with perfect confidence and were able to bring multitudes of the poor suffering ones to Christ. They trusted them when they saw that they had become identified with their very own life and lot. “Praise be to the Lord the God of Israel,/ because he has come and has redeemed his people” (Luke 1:68).
But He comes closer. These missionaries could work by the side of the slave, but they could not come into their hearts. I can sit down and talk with you in your home, but I cannot walk into your brain and into your spirit and put my being into yours so that you will have my thoughts and feelings and life. In some measure love can impart almost its own soul to the beloved one, and yet only in a faint measure compared with the great and divine example which Christ has forever set before us; for He not only has visited our race, but He has visited our hearts, and made our very bodies His temple and home.
For this is what the high and lofty One says—
he who lives forever, whose name is holy:
“I live in a high and holy place,
but also with him who is contrite and lowly
in spirit.” (Isaiah 57:15a)
I will put my dwelling place among you, … I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people. (Leviticus 26:11–12)
Has He visited you, beloved? Has He come into your brain and possessed all its thoughts and given to you His light and wisdom, His understanding and mind? Has He come into your will and taken the key of the chamber from which all the acts and purposes of your lives are directed? Has He been admitted to the innermost chamber of your confidences, where only your dearest ones ever come? Does He control all your heart’s affections and supremely hold them for Himself, so that you have no life apart from Him? Has He found his way without restraint into every inmost apartment until you find they are being enlarged by His ministry and filled in every capacity with His love and life, as He thinks in you, trusts in you, wills in you, rejoices in you, speaks in you, prays in you, praises in you and pours out through your whole being the fullness of His life—not a transient visitor, but a perpetual Guest? Oh! how much He will do for the heart that thus receives Him!
Happy was the loving woman of Shunem the day that Elisha passed her door that she received him in the name of the Lord and made him welcome to her home and her heart. Little did she dream that it was going to bring her, in the coming years, deliverance from her sorrows and her trials, the child of her affection, and that child a second time restored from death itself.
What care He will take of the house that He owns and lives in! How He will love to heal, strengthen, beautify and glorify the temple of His indwelling. What infinite rest it is to live with Christ in His own house, and have Him bear all the burdens and responsibilites, while you dwell a happy guest in the house you once called your own.
A more glorious visit
And then He is coming in a little while on a still more glorious visit, with sound of trumpet and mighty processions of angels and ransomed men, while earth and heaven will signal His glorious advent by signs and wonders such as the universe has never beheld.
The King of kings is passing by these days of time, a lowly man and a wayfarer. He asks a sacrifice of you. He asks a welcome from you. He asks the key of your heart’s inmost chamber. Will you trust Him? The day is coming when it will be much to have one glance from His glorious face, to have Him recognize you among the myriads of the resurrection and say, “Come my little child, and sit with me on my throne, and share my kingdom; for on earth you received me, and even so do I now welcome you.”
Yes, He is coming again to visit our earth and to leave it no more. “Now the dwelling of God is with men,” will be the announcement of that glad day, “and he will live with them … and God himself will be with them” (Revelation 21:3). “They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night” (22:4–5a).
Even when the glad millennial age is ended, it will expand into a gladder and better time, and the new heavens will be added to the new earth. Redeemed humanity will colonize over all this great universe, and we may have stars for kingdoms and worlds for our inheritance. Then will we sing as we cannot now, “Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come and has redeemed his people” (Luke 1:68).
He has redeemed His people
This is much more. The missionary can stoop to the lowly condition of the slaves, but he cannot set them free. He can die with them in their chains, but he cannot break the fetters. Jesus not only visited His people, but He has redeemed them. He has given His own freedom for ours, and the ransom suffices, and the great manifesto has gone forth. “The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,/ because the Lord has anointed me/ to preach good news to the poor. … to proclaim freedom for the captives” (Isaiah 61:1). This word redeemed is the characteristic term of the gospel. It speaks of the crimson tint of sin and the deeper crimson of Calvary’s blood. It tells of a heaven that has cost something, a salvation that is established on the eternal principles of justice and righteousness that has met every claim of law and right, and that has placed the ransomed soul in as good a position as if he had never sinned.
All human hearts instinctively know that such a redemption was demanded. The most stone age savage is conscious that some propitation must be made for sin and that evil cannot be lightly passed over, even by clemency, without some satisfaction. When the proud and haughty Tarquin sat upon the bench to judge his own son, with the Roman instincts of justice, he could not acquit him. When the mother pleaded for her boy with bitter tears, and brothers and sisters claimed his life, and the citizens who loved him interceded, the father could only answer, “The father loves him as much as you, but the judge must punish him,” and to the lictors he was delivered without mercy, to be beaten and slain because law and justice could know no mercy.
Very beautifully have the Hindu legends embodied this truth, and at the same time foreshadowed the mystery of the gospel through which love has triumphed over justice and yet has left justice uncompromised and vindicated.
In the ancient Hindu legends there is a story of a poor sinner pursued by the spirit of retribution in the form of a demon. Flying from its pursuer and about to be overtaken, the sinful spirit cried to Vishnu, the goddess of Mercy, for help, and she immediately changed the fugitive into a dove.
With a glad cry of gratitude the dove swept up into the air, striking her wings upon the firmament and bore away above her pursuer, thanking her kind deliverer. But a moment later the demon had been changed into a hawk, and she found herself pursued by a stronger wing and a swifter flight than her own.
She was about to be struck down by the cruel talons of the hawk when suddenly she lifted up her prayer again to Vishnu, and the goddess opened her bosom as an asylum for the fluttering dove and folded her wings about her as she lay there secure from her enemy.
Then the hawk approached the goddess and demanded his prey. “She is mine,” he said, “by every right of justice. You, Vishnu, have declared and know that sin must be punished and that I am entitled to my victim, and I demand her life or its equivalent.”
Vishnu answered, “I recognize your claim. Her life you cannot have, but you may have as much of mine as will be its equivalent.” And with that she opened her bosom to the devourer and bade him thrust his fierce beak and talons into her quivering flesh until he had torn from her breast as much as he would have consumed if he had devoured the little dove.
Satisfied, he withdrew, and the trembling dove looked upon the bleeding breast and knew what its life had cost its deliverer. And as it floated away a little later with the stain of blood upon its wings, it never could forget what its redemption had meant.
You and I were that dove. Justice pursued us with every claim of right. Even God could not forego its claim, but must execute it or cease to be God. But the blessed Redeemer opened His bosom, gave His life and blood to meet the claim, bore the judgment we deserved, and now sprinkled with this precious blood, we sing,
To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood … be glory and power for ever and ever! (Revelation 1:6)
Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain. (5:12a)
And with your blood you purchased men for God/ … You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God. (5:9b–10a)
Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel,/ because he has come and has redeemed his people. (Luke 1:68)
He has raised up a horn of salvation
Salvation is the fruition of redemption. Redemption purchases it, salvation realizes it and brings it into our actual experience. Zechariah speaks not so much of salvation as of the “horn of salvation.” This bold figure, perhaps, originated in primitive times when mighty hunters, like Nimrod, returning from the chase, loved to grace their tents with the splendid horns of the animals that they had slain: the antlers of the deer, the tusks of the elephant, and the horn, perhaps, of the mighty rhinoceros. And so the word “horn” came to be the figure of beauty, power and dominion. It has passed into the imagery of inspired prophecy and song, so that we find the earthly powers described by Daniel and John as horns upon the head of the beast.
And so we find the Psalmist speaking of God as his Horn of Salvation and his High Tower. In speaking, therefore, of Christ as a Horn of Salvation, Zechariah meant to emphasize the glory and beauty of the Savior, His supreme and universal dominion and His infinite and divine power. It is Coronation, singing, “Bring forth the royal diadem, and crown Him Lord of all.” The verse that follows explains this thought more perfectly than any words of ours can do. This glorious salvation does four things for us.
Delivers us
1. It delivers us from all our enemies. Christ has come to overcome everything that is against us. Never does He want us to be crushed or defeated. Always He causes us to triumph if we will but trust and allow Him. How beautifully does the prophet Zechariah illustrate the words of his New Testament namesake, as in his first chapter he gives us his vision of the four horns. Horns that were lifted up against Judah and Jerusalem, representing the evils that are opposed to us from all sides, so that whichever direction we look, north, south, east or west, we sometimes can see nothing but enemies. But he saw four carpenters following the four horns, and as he asked the meaning of this vision he was told that these were come to fray the horns, that is, to soften them, to peel them down, to take their sharpness from them, to render them harmless.
How wondrously does God do this for His people! How He takes the point out of the devil’s sting and the enemy’s sword-thrust and quenches all the fiery darts of the wicked one with the shield of faith, so that things that seemed sufficient to destroy us pass away harmlessly, and we wonder in great amazement at the providential goodness of our wonderful God. Each of us has often had enough perils to wreck our life and work many a time, but as we look behind we cannot even trace a shadow of the clouds that once covered all our sky. Everything that seemed against us has become a voice in the chorus, “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him” (Romans 8:28a).
Delivered to serve
2. We are delivered from our enemies that we “might serve him without fear” (Luke 1:74). Our fears are sometimes worse than our enemies. Who of us is there that has not spent hours and days fighting clouds that never came to rain or lightning? They seemed intensely real, and they hurt as much as if they were real. Christ comes to deliver us from all our fears. He tells us that the king of fear is the devil, and that fear from him must always be recognized. As long as we abide in Christ, it is a voice from Satan. If it is a voice from Satan, it is a lie; therefore it is not to be allowed to come into the soul. Indeed, we may turn it into a benediction, and say to Satan as he holds up the shadow, “Thank you very much, for now I know that the opposite is coming—a blessing as glorious as the shadow had been dark.” This is the way to get the victory over your fears. Refuse them and extract good out of them, even as the woman of Canaan did from her Savior’s refusal and from the dark and discouraging prospect that for a time seemed to overshadow all her cares.
God cannot use you fully in His service if you are loaded down with a pack of worries. You must be rested workers. You must come to Him for rest and then take His yoke upon you.
3. We are delivered that we might serve “in holiness and righteousness before him” (Luke 1:75). You will observe that it is not righteousness and holiness, but holiness first. We often begin the wrong way and try to get our lives right before our hearts are pure. Like Elisha, let us go up to the spring and put salt there and not in the channels of the river below. Cleanse the fountain and the waters will always be pure. Get the holiness of Christ in your heart, and your life will be regulated with the full tides of life and love. Divine life regulates itself and the more it overflows, the more it purifies.
4. We will serve all the days of our life. We used to think that holiness and victory were for our last days and that if we got too near to God we were being prepared to die and might go soon; indeed, that it was not very safe to be too devout. But thank God, we have found that holiness is to live by and that we need it for earth’s duties and trials much more even than for heavenly enjoyments. Christ sanctifies us to “serve him without fear/ in holiness and righteousness before him all our days” (74b–75). We can spring into the very fullness of His grace from the very morning of our conversion. We can go from Egypt to Canaan in less than three months and need not spend 40 years wandering in the wilderness of sin. “Oh, if I only had known of this 25 years ago, how sweetly I could have lived,” said the dying Payson as he stood in the last moments of his life looking into heaven, realizing the full salvation that he might have known all his days. Beloved, will we take Him for all the days, and go forth singing?
I’m so glad I’ve learned to trust Him,
Precious Jesus, Saviour, Friend;
And I know that Thou art with me,
Wilt be with me to the end.
There are two closing thoughts suggested by this figure, on which we will dwell for a moment. In the blessing of Joseph in Deuteronomy 33 it is said that his horns will be like the horn of the unicorn. The unicorn has only one horn, and the idea suggested by the strong figure is that they alone are strong who have no strength but God. The glory of my strength is to have God alone. God is never the fullness of power to us until He alone is our power, until we can say, “Whom have I in heaven but you?/ And earth has nothing I desire besides you” (Psalm 73:25).
The other reference is in connection with the sublime vision of the Lamb in the fifth chapter of Revelation, where we behold Him standing in the midst of the throne having seven horns and seven eyes, representing the seven-fold power and authority with which He is invested, and the seven-fold wisdom of the Holy Ghost which He administers. It is because He suffered and redeemed us that God has invested Him, not only with His own eternal deity and power, but with all the resources of the Father’s own fullness, so that He could say as He ascended from earth to heaven, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matthew 28:18). And yet that power is in the hands of One whom John describes as a “little Lamb.” Oh, the ineffable gentleness and nearness combined with majesty and power expressed by this figure. With a hand as soft as a child’s, a touch as gentle as a mother’s, and yet a scepter as mighty as omnipotence, He sits on the heavenly throne, so near and yet so great, so tender and yet so mighty, the blended gentleness and almightiness of the Lamb that is in the midst of the throne.
He is our Horn of Salvation. He has visited us and redeemed us, and He must reign until all our enemies will be made His footstool. Let us join in the chorus that swells in this chapter in billows and billows of praise, surging and surging out to the confines of the universe until “every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, [is] singing:
To him who sits on the throne and to the
Lamb
be praise and honor and glory and power,
for ever and ever! (Revelation 5:13)