Then his father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied:His father Zacharias was filled with the Holy Spirit, and prophesied, saying,And his father Zacharias was filled with the Holy Ghost, and prophesied, saying,And his father Zacharias was filled with the Holy Spirit, and prophesied, saying,
3 sermons cite this verse
… For the hand of the Lord was with him. And his father, Zechariah, was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied, saying, 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 to show the mercy promised to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our father Abraham to grant us that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare His ways, to give knowledge of salvation to His people in the forgiveness of their sins because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. …
… We're going to talk about those just briefly today. So I want to remind you of the very, well, it's not the first one, but Luke chapter 1, verses 67 through 79. This is John the Baptist's father, Zechariah. And John has just been born, and he utters this beautiful prophetic psalm. And you get to the very end of it. It starts with, it's called the Benedictus because it starts with the word bless. And these canticles were all, the names come from the Latin. So Benedictus means to bless. And he begins, bless the Lord, God of Israel. But when you get to the end, it's one of my favorite verses in all the Gospels, actually in all the New Testament. It says this, because of our God's deep compassion, the dawn from heaven will break upon us to give light to those who are sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death to guide us on the path of peace. And Jesus is that dawn from heaven that will break upon us to give us the light and to lead us in the path of peace. …
As I showed you a few moments ago, the church was filled with the Spirit on the day of Pentecost. By chapter 4, Peter was filled with the Holy Spirit. The end of chapter 4, they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the Word of God with boldness. By chapter 6 and chapter 7, Stephen was filled with the Holy Spirit. By chapter 9, it says Saul was filled with the Holy Spirit in Damascus. In chapter 11, Barnabas was filled with the Holy Spirit. And then in chapter 13 again, Saul, who now is Paul, was filled with the Holy Spirit, completely under the control of the Holy Spirit. It is possible. It's a command in Ephesians, but I just gave you illustrations of its reality. It's not something that has to be attained with some kind of great long-term difficulty. It's a command that can be obeyed. And it can be obeyed because the one great requirement for this command to be a reality is the Holy Spirit, and He's already there. …