Luke 1:57-80 - God Has Visited You

Main Idea: Have a response of joy and obedience to Jesus’ gifts to you.

JESUS CAME TO GIVE YOU SALVATION (vs. 68-71)

• Salvation from sin and its penalty.

• Salvation from Satan and all demonic forces.

✦ Am I living my life as though I’ve been given victory in Christ?

JESUS CAME TO GIVE YOU PURPOSE (vs. 72-75)

• Your purpose is to serve the Lord.

• Your purpose is to serve the Lord without fear.

• Your purpose is to serve the Lord with personal holiness.

• Your purpose is to serve the Lord with public righteousness.

✦ Am I living my life to fulfill God’s purpose or my own?

JESUS CAME TO GIVE YOU LIGHT (vs. 76-79)

• He’s shown you that you can know you are saved.

• He’s shown you who He is.

• He’s shown you His way of life.

✦ Am I living my life following God’s light, or walking my own path?

Sermon Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by Apple Podcasts)

Very grateful for this study, as we've been looking at a physician during the first century, who was not a personal eyewitness of Jesus' life, but he had conversed with many of the individuals who had firsthand witness of what Jesus had done while he

was here on earth and what he had said. And Luke traveled around with the Apostle Paul.

At times, he was in Jerusalem with some of those apostles that were there during that time period that had spent years with Jesus and hearing about his life and God's word.

And so Luke wrote his gospel so that a man called Theophilus would be able to know that what he had heard about Jesus was actually factually accurate.

This wasn't just a new myth or cult, but this was grounded in reality in specific times and places when specific rulers were in charge of the world.

And you could go and you could talk to these individuals that had interacted with Jesus while he was here on earth.

And as God was bringing Jesus Christ into the world, he began by bringing Jesus' forerunner, that is the herald, the one that would go before Jesus, announcing, hey, the Messiah is on his way, the chosen one of Israel, the one who's going to take

away all of our sin and our guilt and our condemnation, the one who's going to set us free, he is on his way, that herald, John the Baptist. And God was bringing John the Baptist first into the world through Mary's cousin, Elizabeth, and her husband,

Zechariah. And we learned about this at the beginning of the month, that Zechariah and Elizabeth, they had been childless for decades, and they had lost all hope that God was ever going to answer their prayer request for a child.

And God miraculously brought that about.

God sent a messenger to Zechariah as he was serving in the temple there in Jerusalem in the first century, and he said, hey, God has heard your prayer, and you are going to have a son, and you're going to call his name John.

What a moment that must have been to be within that holy place and to hear a direct word from God. And yet, Zechariah's response was not like, God, thank you.

It was not, God, I didn't think it would ever happen, but you came through, you actually did listen to our prayers. Instead, it was, well, I don't think that's going to happen.

Now, if I'd been asking for something for decades from God, and you finally said, yes, I'm going to give it to you, I don't know that my immediate response would be, nah, but that was Zechariah's.

And so as a result, the messenger told Zechariah, because you haven't believed, you're not going to be able to speak until after the baby is born. So Zechariah finished the remainder of his time serving at the temple. He went home to Elizabeth.

They conceived they had their son named John. And I can think of what a blissful nine months that must have been for Elizabeth as there was no words coming out of Zechariah's mouth.

And we find ourselves today in Luke 1 and verse number 57 at the ceremony, the circumcision ceremony, where this baby boy would be named. Now, if you'll remember, the messenger from God, the angel, already told Zechariah his name is going to be John.

We're going to read the passage in just one second. See, I psyched you guys out. I'm so sorry, Jimmy.

I did the old bait and switch on you. We are going to be looking at that today. And Zechariah's response once he is finally able to speak again, and that's what we're going to be spending our time studying.

The title of today's message is God has visited you. That's the declaration from Zechariah as he's finally able to speak after nine months, is God actually cared about us and he has come down and he has made a difference in my life.

An important visit can mean the world. My pastor back in Washington, while he was in college, Hurricane Katrina had happened.

And so he went down with a group of college students and leaders down to Louisiana to be able to provide some relief and to build housing and provide food and all kinds of stuff. And that visit meant the world.

I can think of one time in college that I was just going through an insanely tough time and my dad flew out and came and visited and spent a couple days together. And that meant the world to me to have someone that cared enough about me to visit.

And that is what God did for us 2000 years ago. And he didn't just stop by, but he gave us some gifts when he came. If you will, this Wednesday, it's Christmas, there'll be kids across the country that are like, oh yes, Santa.

And I won't say anything more for any parents that might be in here. But they might think, okay, he's coming, he's visiting, and he's bringing gifts. But when Christ came, he did give us gifts.

And they weren't gifts like we might unwrap on Wednesday, but they were gifts that are vital for your life today, tomorrow, this week, and for the rest of your life.

So we're going to be looking at those gifts and having a response of joy and obedience to Jesus' gifts to us. We're going to read initially verses 57 through 66. We're going to pray.

And then we're going to dive into Zachariah's singing response. This has been called in kind of church history, the Benedictus. This is the blessing of God from Zachariah, that he says, God, you are amazing.

He's no longer doubting whether God is going to answer his prayers. Now he's just rejoicing that God has blessed him. And so he says, I'm going to bless the Lord.

Let's begin in verse number 57 in Luke chapter 1. Now the time had come for Elizabeth to give birth, and she had a son. Then her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown her his great mercy, and they rejoiced with her.

When they came to circumcise the child on the eighth day, they were going to name him Zachariah after his father. Now before you get like two after these people, you know, my name is Brian, my dad's name is Brian, my son's name is Brian.

It kind of goes along.

I think Owen, your son's name is Owen. So it kind of gets around a little bit. But here they say, we're going to name him Zachariah after his father.

Verse 60, but his mother responded, no, he will be called John. Then they said to her, none of your relatives has that name. I don't know if you guys know this.

You probably know the expression mama bear. For a lady that had been praying for decades to have a child, I'm not sure that I'm counteracting her when she says, here's what his name is going to be.

And they're like, no, that's not what his name is going to be. I can imagine, you know, my wife and I got married at, I think it was 20, 21 or 22 years old. And even by that time, you know, she had some baby names that maybe she had listed out.

And that was just a few years into her adult life. I can think of what Elizabeth might have imagined her child's name to be over the course of decades.

And now she's saying, okay, here's what the angel told, we can assume from the rest of the passage that Zechariah had written out. Hey, the angel said, this is going to be his name.

And so this is then what Elizabeth is saying in response to the question, what should his name be? They say, none of your relatives has that name. So they motion to his father to find out what he wanted him to be called.

For some of you, maybe in a younger generation, this is kind of sexism. This is, okay, we don't care what the mom wants him to be called. We'll ask Zechariah.

Verse 63, he asked for a writing tablet and wrote, his name is John, and they were all amazed. We shouldn't necessarily be amazed when our wife is right. Certainly, actually, my wife's in here.

I don't even have to make that statement, Brownie points, whatever. Verse number 64, immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue set free and he began to speak praising God.

What would be the first words out of your mouth if you couldn't speak for nine months? Maybe for some of us, we would think of every argument that we had with someone during that time period and we'd say, no, it's actually pronounced this way.

No, that's not true. It was this. But the immediate response to Zachariah, once he could talk, was to praise God.

Verse 65, fear came on all those who lived around them and all these things were being talked about throughout the hill country of Judea. It's not every day that the mute suddenly gained the ability to be able to speak.

Verse 66, all who heard about him took it to heart, saying, what then will this child become? For indeed, the Lord's hand was with him.

And even as we looked a few months ago at the beginning of John 1, we saw John the Baptist and his ministry, how he preached the gospel. He preached it unashamedly.

He wasn't afraid to tell the tax collectors and the soldiers and the priests and the scribes exactly what their sins were before a holy God and to call them to abandon sin and to follow the Lord. But right now, he's just a small baby.

And in verse number 67, it says, then his father, Zechariah, was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied. So here's the direct words from the Holy Spirit, God's own presence moving and working in Zechariah to be able to say some things.

And we're going to see these four gifts that Zechariah highlights that the Lord has given to us because he has visited us. And we'll see how we can use those gifts in our everyday life.

Let's pray together, and then we'll dive into those four gifts today. Dear Jesus, thank you.

Thank you that you did not abandon us to our own devices, but that you loved us enough to save us, that you loved us enough to pursue us all the way to your own death.

And God, we ask today that you would help us to recognize the gifts that you have given, and that we would respond in joy and obedience to who you are and what you've done.

Lord, I ask again, if there's anyone today that doesn't know Jesus as Savior, that today would be the day that they make that choice.

We love you, God.

We pray all of this in your name.

Amen.

The first gift that we're gonna look at today that Jesus came to give us is Jesus came to give us salvation. And we can see this in verses 68 through 71.

He says, blessed is the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has visited and provided redemption for his people.

He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, just as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets in ancient times, salvation from our enemies and from the hand of those who hate us.

When I think about God coming to save us, and from this verse in particular, that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hands of those that hate us, there are some enemies that we are encountering.

Certainly during Zachariah's time, he was thinking specifically of the Romans that were the occupying force in Israel and in Jerusalem during that time period. But we have some enemies that we are facing that Jesus has given us salvation from.

First, Jesus gave us salvation from sin and from its penalty. Even in verses 68 and 69, God has visited and provided redemption for his people. To redeem something is to buy back something that once was yours but is now gone away.

We talk about it often here, that all of us have not walked the path that God created us to walk. He created us for relationship with him, that we would do right by God and by others.

And through our thoughts and our words and our actions, we have fallen short of God's standard of perfection.

And as a result of that, the Bible says that there is punishment, there is justice, there are consequences for the wrongs that we have committed.

Even to our thoughts and our words, everything that goes against the nature and character of God, his perfection, his holiness, his love, his righteousness.

And the Bible says that the wages, the earnings of our sin is death, both physical death and eternal death forever, and what the Bible calls hell, separation from God eternally.

But the Bible also says that though the wages of sin is death, the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord. You see, Jesus came 2,000 years ago, not just to give you an example of what it's like to be a good person.

Jesus didn't just come to maybe make some social reforms.

Jesus came so that we, separated, alienated from God entirely, would be given new hearts that our spirits, which were dead, would be revived, and that we would be able to know God personally, to have a relationship with him, to love him and to walk

in his ways. And one day, when we pass, that we would be with him forever in his presence.

So Jesus saved us from sin and its penalty, that those that turn to Christ in faith, that 2,000 years ago, as Jesus died on the cross for our sins, he took the punishment that we deserve, that there was a price that had to be paid for sin, and he

paid it in full. So that anyone that calls on Jesus, that accepts his free gift of salvation, would not be under condemnation, would not have to fear death and hell, but would know that they are forever secure because of the work of Jesus Christ

accomplished completely on the cross. So we've been given salvation from sin and its penalty. We've also been given salvation from Satan and from all demonic forces. They are in verse number 71.

Salvation from our enemies and from the hand of those who hate us. I'm very grateful for this fact. Many of us know around the world that Satan is working in lives and in people to destroy them and to bring them down.

If we believe that God exists, then certainly we ought to believe in scriptures account that there are other spiritual beings by no means as powerful as our all powerful God, but those that hate us, those that hate you and want to destroy you because

you are made in the image of a holy God that Satan and the rest of the fallen angels hate. We would read even in scripture that Satan and his forces are at work in the cultures of this world. And Satan has a plan for this world.

Ephesians chapter 2 calls Satan the prince of the power of the air. You can read even the book of Revelation and see what will happen one day when God allows him to work unrestrained on a global scale before Christ comes to demolish all evil.

Yet God has saved us from the power of Satan. Even in the song that we just sang, to save us all from Satan's power when we were gone astray, tidings of comfort and joy.

The promise of 1st John 4 is, greater is he that is in you, that is Jesus dwelling within the believer in Christ. Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world.

The one who rebelled against God, that convinced a third of the angels to join his side in the rebellion and the fight against God, that powerful being has been conquered by our God.

We've seen the devastation that happens with demon-controlled people, both in the pages of scripture, and as you read missionary biographies from different areas around the world, we can see the horrible wreckage that comes from demonic oppression

and possession. But God has saved us from Satan's power.

So if God has saved us from sin and from its penalty, if God has saved us from demonic forces, from Satan, that he has no more power over the child of God, are we living our life as though we have been given victory in Christ?

You see, the victory is found only in Jesus.

It is not accomplished by you.

In your life, you do not need to, of your own volition, of your own great will, be able to conquer all sin.

Jesus is the one working in you through his Holy Spirit, that as you lean on him day by day, calling on him to help you as you seek to battle sin and seek to conform yourself to the image of Christ, Christ is the one that wins that battle.

We are fighting a fight that the captain of our faith, the author and finisher has already won. And we are merely walking behind him, proclaiming to the world around us the victory that Jesus won.

When it comes to sin in your life today, you don't have to feel like you can't overcome your addiction. You don't have to feel like you are just stuck being a curmudgeonly grumpy, angry person.

You don't have to feel like you can never overcome this relationship difficulty that you keep having with a spouse or with a friend or with a neighbor. Instead, realize Christ is the one that gives victory.

Are you walking in the victory that Christ gives us? But Jesus didn't only come to give us salvation. The second gift today that we'll see in verses 72 through 75 is that Jesus came to give us purpose.

Verse number 72, he says, He has dealt mercifully with our ancestors and remembered his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our father, Abraham, to grant that we, having been rescued from the hand of our enemies, would serve him without fear and

holiness and righteousness in his presence all our days. So here, Zacharias highlights, God, the promise that you made a thousand years ago to Abraham, you have been faithful to keep, that he has given them purpose.

He says, you saved us, you were merciful to us for a reason.

There in verse number 73, there was this oath that he swore to Abraham, so that we, to grant that we, having been rescued from the hand of our enemies, that's that salvation, would serve him. We're gonna continue on.

First, I want us to notice that our purpose is to serve the Lord. God did not just place you on this earth and say, good luck figuring it out. God has a definite purpose for your life.

And whether you are 95 or five, God has a purpose and a plan for you today and for this week. What is your purpose before the Lord? First, to serve him.

God didn't put you here simply to make money, have a family, retire one day, and then do nothing until you pass. Instead, God has given each of us this purpose of serving him. And this incredible thing is that it doesn't just take one form.

Serving the Lord doesn't just mean, okay, now you have to be a missionary. Like, sorry, Shelby, we're shipping you off to Siberia. You can serve the Lord wherever you are.

You can serve the Lord as a parent. You can serve the Lord selling plumbing equipment. You can serve the Lord being a retiree and drumming and witnessing to your grandkids.

You can serve the Lord in whatever area of life that God has placed you.

You can even serve the Lord as a kid or as a teen, knowing that God says to obey your parents and showing the same kind of submission and obedience that Jesus did with his heavenly father, as is mentioned in Philippians 2.

Have you considered that the purpose of your life is not to live for you, but to live for the Lord? Your purpose is not just to serve the Lord, but as we see at the end of verse 74, we would serve him without fear.

In other religions, you might serve with fear. You might fear the lightning bolt that comes and strikes you. You might worry that if you don't give enough money, God will break your refrigerator or something in order to get you back in line.

But that's not the way that we serve the God of the Bible. We serve him without fear. You don't have to worry in the Christian life about saying, well, I really hope my good eventually outweighs my bad before I stand before the Lord.

When we serve him, we don't serve a heavy handed taskmaster. We don't have a slave owner. We serve our heavenly father.

And because we serve the perfect one, the one who loves us wholly and completely and more than we could ever know, we can serve him without fear.

We don't have to fear his judgment knowing that all condemnation has been taken away because it was put on Christ. Romans chapter eight and verse number one says, there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.

We don't have to serve with a fear of God. Like was the two bucks that I put in the offering plate, like was that enough for you? God, I went to church this week.

Is that, did that make you happy? Or are you angry with me? We don't have to live our lives in fear because we know that our relationship with God isn't based on our good works.

It's based on the good works of Christ. It's based on the fact that He forgave us, that He adopted us, that He has loved us.

And so we can serve our God without fear.

Now, I do want to give one caveat here. Scripture sometimes speaks about fearing the Lord. That is a reverential awe and a respect.

That is, you know, I might not necessarily, my sister's boyfriend Ryan is here today.

Ryan's a tall guy, I didn't realize how tall you were until you showed up.

And I have a healthy fear of Ryan, because he looks like he could kind of throw down a little bit, and I'm a little nervous. But I don't fear him in the sense of, well, I'm just going to stay away from him, or I'm going to make sure.

I have a healthy respect for his fist fighting abilities or something. But it doesn't mean that I live in terror or petrification of him. For God, he is not looking for you to be petrified and not want to go to him, not want to be honest with him.

He is your heavenly father, that yes, we respect him as we would our earthly fathers, but we serve him without fear, knowing that he does truly know us and love us entirely. Our third purpose is that we are to serve the Lord with personal holiness.

That's there in verse number 75. We being rescued from the hand of our enemies would serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness. Holiness is that attribute of God that sits him totally apart from us.

It is his otherness. It is his perfection. It is what makes him distinct from humanity.

And he calls to us, be holy for I am holy. You can read that throughout the Old Testament and 1 Peter chapter 1, among many other places. And we are called to have a personal holiness before our God.

You are not free to just do whatever you want with your life.

There is a holy God who calls you to think the way that he thinks, to speak the way that he speaks, to love the way that he loves, and to interact with the world around you in the way that Jesus did 2,000 years ago and the way that he has outlined

for us in his word. Sometimes we can just excuse away any action, any word, any thought that we want, because we say, well, I'm justified in this because... And the truth is that we are to walk with God in personal holiness.

That what scripture says, we have a responsibility to follow. That we would say, I know the world wouldn't think much of it if I lied in this scenario, but God calls me to holiness.

Man, the world would say, yeah, cut off that person, have no forgiveness, spread gossip about them. But God's word says to, as much as it lies in us, live peaceably with others.

We ought to have a personal holiness that says, God, you have a claim on my life as my Lord and my Savior and my God. And so I'm going to follow the path that you have outlined for me.

And then lastly there, your purpose is to serve the Lord with public righteousness. This word righteousness, it's doing right by God and by others, that we serve with a personal holiness, that we say, I am accountable to God for what I do.

But if we just thought that and maybe we went and lived on a mountain, we could say, yes, I'm just the holiest person. I haven't insulted anyone in a very, very long time because I haven't been around anyone.

God calls us not just to have a holiness or a mimicking of the character of our God, but a righteousness that we would do right in our interactions with others.

Can I tell you, sometimes we can think we're doing really well in the holiness department, and yet in our interactions with other people, there is no righteousness.

That maybe we can't even talk to specific people in our life because we have so alienated them from us through cutting or unkind words.

There might be those that if we were to share the gospel with them, or if we were to invite them to church, they'd be like, wait a second, you're a Christian? I've seen how you treat waiters.

I've seen how you treat these people or how you talk about this group of people. You're a Christian? And God calls us not just to like a moral superiority in and of ourselves.

God calls us to live in holiness before a holy God. And to live righteous lives both to God and with others. Today, God's given you these purposes to fulfill.

It's a gift. You could have lived your life completely aimless. But God gave you the purpose to serve him, to serve him without fear, to serve with personal holiness, to serve with public righteousness.

Are you living your life to fulfill God's purpose or your own purpose? The really fun thing about a God-given purpose is that you can accomplish it at any time.

If your purpose was, I'm going to be president of the United States, the whole time until you were president, you would not be living out your purpose.

Or after eight years or four if you were less loved, you would no longer be fulfilling your purpose. You'd say, man, my whole purpose was wrapped up in this and now it's gone. Whereas a God-given purpose is walking with him each and every moment.

So if you are raising kids in the nurturing admonition of the Lord, you can be accomplishing your God-given purpose.

And when those kids grow up and they're out of the house now, now it's just you and your spouse, and maybe you're interacting more with neighbors or with friends, you can still fulfill your God-given purpose in those scenarios.

Or maybe if you have a spouse that passes, and now you're living maybe on your own or you're living with family, you can still accomplish this God-given purpose because it's not reliant on a location or a vocation or other people.

It's your relationship with God.

So are you living to fulfill God's purpose for your life or your own? And then the last gift that we're gonna look at today that Jesus came to give us is Jesus came to give us light. We can see this in verses 76 through 79.

Now Zechariah kind of turns from this big blessing of God. And now he's prophesying to little eight-day-old John the Baptist. He says this, And you, child, will be called a prophet of the Most High.

For you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give his people knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins, because of our God's merciful compassion, the dawn from on high will visit us, to shine on those who live in

darkness and the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. There from those verses, he reinforces what the angel had told Zechariah about who John the Baptist was going to be.

He's also echoing the words from the prophet Isaiah several hundred years before, and from the prophet Malachi several hundred years before, that prophesied that there would be one that would go in front of the messiah to prepare the hearts of those

in Israel to say, yes, we really do need to follow this messiah, this one that the forerunner, the herald is saying, this is the point of it all. And so here's Zechariah, he's rehearsing these Old Testament scriptures that are proclaiming the New

Testament Christ. And he says this in verse number 77, that John's purpose is he's going out, preparing the way of the Lord, to give God's people knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins.

And this light that the day spring from on high, that is the sun that rises in the morning, or you might think about the brightest star in the night sky is often Venus.

And you can think that Jesus is the one that made a dark world that did not have spiritual direction, that did not have spiritual hope, that did not know that they had a relationship with God, that they thought it was based on their works, but really

it was through Jesus and through God's loving kindness that John's purpose was to go and to give God's people knowledge of salvation. Aren't you glad today that you can know that you are saved? It's not guesswork.

1 John 5.13 says, I have written these things to you so that you may know that you have eternal life and that by believing you may have faith in his name.

If all I had was a guess that I was saved or a hope that I was saved, that would bring fear, that would bring stress, a constant worry about, am I going to be okay?

But because Jesus loves us, he has given a certainty of salvation because it's not based on you, it's based on him and his righteousness.

Not only has Jesus given us the light that he has shown you that you can know you are saved, he's given you the light to show you who he is. He has shown you his character.

And we can see this beginning in verse number 76 and on, he calls John a prophet of the most high. In the Old Testament, this would be El Elyon. It's the God above all other spiritual beings.

He is going before the Lord to prepare his ways. In the Old Testament, that would be that Tetragrammaton, that Yahweh or Jehovah.

That is the title that is given to him, that this is who Jesus is called by prophecy from Zechariah with the Holy Spirit living inside of him. Then verse 78, because of our God's merciful compassion, this is who God is. He's a God of mercy.

He's a God of compassion. And he's also called the dawn from on high. That is the light that comes into the world, that gives light into your darkness, that into your griefs and your failures.

God says, I have not forgotten you. I have not abandoned you. I have not rejected you.

My love is with you. I love from all of those descriptions of who God is and the way that that tells us about him. I think of verse 78, our God's merciful compassion.

Kind of the Old Testament word for this would be chasad, the word that Tyndale coined several hundred years ago as loving kindness or steadfast love and undying covenant love that God has for you.

That because Jesus has promised that whoever comes to him, he will never cast out. That means that on your worst day, you're a child of God. On your best day, you're a child of God.

And every single moment of your life, you can know that because God has made a promise, because Jesus paid the price for your sin, he is never going back on that promise. What comfort that brings us. That's the kind of God we serve.

We serve a faithful, promise-keeping Savior. God shows us that we can know we're saved. He's shown us who he is.

And then lastly, he's shown us his way of life. There in verse 79, to shine on those who live in darkness and the shadow of death, to guide our feet in the way of peace.

The Book of Psalms would tell us that God's word is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. And Jesus was that most brightly illuminating light from the Lord.

The final word from God, that's what John terms him, the word, the logos, the one who showed sin-sick, weary world that God loved us.

And the way back to God was running straight to him.

Not trying to set up our own righteousness, but relying on the righteousness of Christ. God doesn't want you to stumble through your life and wonder, what am I supposed to do next?

God wants you to realize that he will direct and guide throughout your life.

That is his goal.

And that's been his goal from all eternity past, that you would have his way of life, that you would have life and have it more abundantly, as Jesus tells us. In Proverbs, it says that the way of the transgressor is hard.

Living life on your own without the guidance of the Lord is a tough road to walk.

But God didn't design that for you. He wanted you to know the blueprint for your life.

He wanted you to know the comfort of his presence, his Holy Spirit living inside of you, to know that you have a home and a future, to know that you have a heavenly father who loves you and is watching over you.

And that is the way of life that we are called to walk in.

God's given us his word, his Holy Spirit. He's given us brothers and sisters in the Lord who are equipped with spiritual gifts to be able to help us on our journey through this life.

God's given us spiritual leaders and God has given us his way, the way of peace. Today, are you living your life following that gift of God's light, or are you just following your own path?

Sin left us in darkness.

Our own way left us in the shadow of death. But God enlightened us and showed us his way. So, are we living our lives like we can see the path?

Today, we've seen these four gifts that God has given us.

He has given us the gift of salvation, salvation from sin and its penalty from Satan and all demonic forces.

Jesus came to give us purpose, to serve the Lord without fear, with personal holiness and with public righteousness.

And Jesus came to give us light, the light of knowing that we can be saved, the light of showing us who He is, and the light of His way of life.

Sometimes on like America's Funniest Home Videos, you'd see those videos of a kid, and they would get a present that, you know, the parents spent 50, 100, 150 bucks on. They'd be like, no, I didn't want that. I wanted the other brand.

I wanted this instead. And all of us would see that. And there can be a chuckle.

There can also just be like, what a brat. But God has given you these gifts for your life.

Are you utilizing them? Are you walking in his way?

Have you accepted the gift of Jesus' forgiveness for your sins? In just a moment, we're gonna go to a word of prayer, and I wanna challenge you. Whatever gift that God spoke to you today, hey, I've given you this, make full use of it.

Enjoy it. It is given for your benefit that you would walk in the life that God created you for. If you today do not know Jesus as your Savior, you've never asked him to forgive you of your sins and to be your Lord.

Today can be the day that you make that decision. You don't have to go through like a six month program to prove to God that you're serious enough. The Bible says, if we confess with our mouth what we believe in our heart, that we will be saved.

The Bible says, whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. That as we repent from sin, that is, we turn from our own way to say, I'm the one in charge of my life. I'm going to do what I want.

I'm following my own way. And we turn in faith to Jesus to say, God, I recognize I am a sinner and I need a savior. I need forgiveness for my sins.

There is punishment for sin. And I believe that you paid the price for my sin. And so I'm going to follow you now.

You are going to be my Lord. Please forgive me of my sin and help me to live for you. You can make that decision today.

I did it as a nine-year-old boy. And whether you are nine today or 99, that offer goes out to you as well.

Will you accept the gift of God's salvation?

Christian today, are you making full use of the gifts? Are you responding with joy and obedience to the gifts that God has given to you?

God has visited you.

Does your life look like he's made a visit?