deliverance from hostile hands, that we may serve Him without fear,to grant to us that we, being delivered out of the hand of our enemies, should serve him without fear,That he would grant unto us, that we being delivered out of the hand of our enemies might serve him without fear,To grant unto us that we being delivered out of the hand of our enemies Should serve him without fear,
3 sermons cite this verse
… 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. And the child grew and became strong in spirit, and he was in the wilderness until the day of his public appearance to Israel. As I noted last week, and many of you will remember, there are four songs by tradition in these opening chapters of Luke. The Magnificat, My Soul Magnifies the Lord. This one here, the Benedictus, which is the Latin for that word in verse 68, blessed, and then the gloria in excelsis dea, which we have been singing about, the angel's song, and then the nuke dimittis, now may your servant depart in 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. …
… And Zechariah sang. By the tender mercies of God, the dawn from on high has broken upon us, giving light to those who sit in darkness, even those in the shadow of death, guiding our feet in the way of peace. We lost the great Irish poet Seamus Haney three summers ago. he wrote in one of his poems history says don't hope on this side of the grave but then once in a lifetime the long four tidal wave of justice can rise up and hope and history rhyme When he died August three years ago, he died on the operating table. He had taken a fall, was rushed to the hospital. His wife rode in the ambulance with him, but he died on the operating table. As they were preparing him for surgery, his wife sat anxiously in the waiting room. She heard the chime of her phone that she had received a text. when she looked at it she was stunned to realize that the text was from her husband in the operating room it turned out to be his last communication and he texted her two words in Latin no lead to Mary do not be afraid it was a text but it was also a song it was Gabriel's song to Zachariah it is the song of Christmas it is the hymn of the risen Christ standing victorious on Easter do not be afraid because the saving power of God is at work