Mothers Of Great Faith

20 And now you will be silent and not able to speak until the day this happens, because you did not believe my words, which will come true at their proper time."

21 Meanwhile, the people were waiting for Zechariah and wondering why he stayed so long in the temple.

22 When he came out, he could not speak to them. They realized he had seen a vision in the temple, for he kept making signs to them but remained unable to speak.

23 When his time of service was completed, he returned home.

24 After this his wife Elizabeth became pregnant and for five months remained in seclusion.

25 "The Lord has done this for me," she said. "In these days he has shown his favor and taken away my disgrace among the people."

Luke 1:57-66

57 When it was time for Elizabeth to have her baby, she gave birth to a son.

58 Her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown her great mercy, and they shared her joy.

59 On the eighth day they came to circumcise the child, and they were going to name him after his father Zechariah,

60 but his mother spoke up and said, "No! He is to be called John."

61 They said to her, "There is no one among your relatives who has that name."

62 Then they made signs to his father, to find out what he would like to name the child.

63 He asked for a writing tablet, and to everyone's astonishment he wrote, "His name is John."

64 Immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue was loosed, and he began to speak, praising God.

65 The neighbors were all filled with awe, and throughout the hill country of Judea people were talking about all these things.

66 Everyone who heard this wondered about it, asking, "What then is this child going to be?" For the Lord's hand was with him.

The danger that any pastor-teacher faces when dealing with verses like these, verses that are so familiar to everyone, is that you will tune out, will stop listening, because you think you’ve heard it before. So today I hope to dig a little deeper and maybe point out some of the great things that God has placed in these words, for our blessing.

First, let me share some background on Elizabeth. When I looked into Nelson’s and Unger’s Bible Dictionaries, I was surprised to find lots of pages of information on Mary, but just a couple of paragraphs on Elizabeth. Her name Elizabeth comes from the Hebrew word Elisheba, which means “God is my oath”. She was the wife of the priest Zechariah, and the mother of John the Baptist. Both her and her husband were descended from the priestly line of Aaron, who was Moses’ brother. Aaron’s family line was the line of the Levies, so this qualified Zechariah as a priest (Luke 1:5).

The Bible tells us in Luke 1:6 that “Both of them were upright in the sight of God, observing all the Lord's commandments and regulations blamelessly. In other words, both Elizabeth and her husband knew God’s word, and in faith, obeyed the Scripture’s commands. That’s why in Luke 1, Zechariah is in the temple serving as a priest and burning incense.

We’re told about Elizabeth in verse 7, “But they had no children, because Elizabeth was barren; and they were both well along in years.” In those days, as it sometimes is today in certain churches, it was shameful for a couple not to have children. It was viewed as punishment from God for some kind of heinous sin that one or both of them must have committed. You can imagine at worse, the kind of conjecturing, gossiping, and maligning that went on, behind their backs as well as to their faces. At the very least, people would think, even if God isn’t outright punishing them, that there must be some bad reason that God isn’t “blessing” them with children either.