Luke 1:5-25 “Back-story; the Birth of John the Baptist”
Who here has ever had a major disappointment in life? How many have prayed for something, but it just seems like heaven in silent? Let me ask you...how did you feel because of that silence or lack of an answer to prayer? What were your thoughts?
This morning, as we come back to our study in Luke chapter 1, we’re going to be introduced to people who have had just that experience...and who very well may have felt the exact same things.
Last week, we read the introduction to Luke’s gospel, and considered a few of the reasons why this account was written, now today, we’ll get to the beginning of the story.
You know, the fact that the Bible comes in story form is as important as the truth the story tells. God wants to draw us into his action, through history to our present moment. The story form is meant to shape the way we understand life, in history and for the future...and especially in the present.
A story has a beginning, middle and end...and most of all, a story has a PLOT.
As we read this story of Jesus...we will find as we go, that WE’RE also in the story...as we read it and take it in, we’ll find ourselves journeying toward God...being drawn toward him in the currents of the story. We’ll be able to see ourselves as we consider what’s happening to the characters we read about.
This morning, we’ll see ourselves as we see one couple who faced a lot of disappointment.
So...lets begin this morning by picking up where we left off, and reading v5-7
5 In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, of the division of Abijah. And he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. 6 And they were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord. 7 But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were advanced in years.
This opening sequence is often called the “gospel overture”...it’s sort of like Luke saying “before I tell you Jesus’s story...let me give you the back-story...let me back up and tell you about someone else who played an important role in the story as it unfolds.
Luke, wanting to be a good historian provides a reference to a time period for us by telling us that he’s starting this story back during the days of Herod, king of Judea.
Now, this would have been a man known in history as Herod the Great. At least, HE called himself great. Remember that, it’s important later on. He was in power between 37bc to 4bc.
He wasn’t really a king, like a sovereign ruler...he only had limited authority under Rome...and history isn’t kind in remembering him...he was known as a power-hungry, brutal man. He did a lot of building projects, including the temple in Jerusalem and the port in Cesarea…
But the people of Palestine hated him no matter what he did...because he was a puppet ruler.
Now...he’s not who this story is about... he’s just a point of reference...so the camera pans away from this larger than life historical figure….and lands on an old backwoods priest and his infertile and most probably post-menopausal wife.
Why are we here Luke? Who cares about these people? Luke tells us, “hey, they’re good people...they both come from the priestly lineage and they are committed and devout practitioners of Judaism! They’re important, you’ll see.”
This falls into place with so many characters in the bible before them...Abe and Sarah, Jacob and Rebecca, Hanna, Samson’s parents...so right away, this fits into the pattern of all the stories that had gone before it.
Now the text tells us that they walked “blamelessly”...and we don’t want to mistake that for being “sinless”...it’s just saying that they were sincere in their devotion...and that’s an important detail because in that time and culture, people would have often assumed that Zach and Beth’s infertility was the result of some sin in their lives that G was punishing them for.
But Luke wants us to understand that’s not the case...these were good people who had spent their lives serving G...but in spite of that, they had still lived a LIFETIME of disappointment and shame.
Shame? Oh yes...in that culture at that time, a woman who was childless was considered a disgrace. According to law, Zach could have divorced her...and it had its practical side to it...without children, there would be no one to carry on his name or take care of them when they were old. There was no Social Security or Medicare or even Hospice in those days. You had your kids...or you had nothing.
They had wanted a child...they had prayed and waited their whole lives...and now it was too late….because now they were too old to have kids.
Talk about disappointment. Talk about heaven being silent. All those feelings we mentioned earlier must have continuously haunted them.
There are many disappointments to be faced in this life. Maybe someone is like this couple, wanting children but not able to conceive….or maybe a person is single, desperately wanting to be married, but it hasn’t happened. Maybe someone IS married...but it sure hasn’t turned out like you’d hoped...maybe it’s a chronic illness that hasn’t been cured or healed…And like Zach and Beth, we pray and pray...but heaven has sent no answer.
This story tells us something important in the face of disappointments...and that is,
FAILURE TO RECEIVE THE ANSWER WE WANT DOES NOT INDICATE GOD'S PUNISHMENT
The fact is, stupid stuff happens to good people all the time...all through Scripture, all through history. We have GOT to break the habit of thinking that G is mad at us when something goes wrong, or prayer doesn’t seem to be answered.
Yeah but why doesn’t God answer my prayer? Well...he DOES, but not always in the way we want or expect. Let’s face it, sometimes God says no.
“God, I want my enemies to be crushed!”
“Uh...I’m gonna’ just havta’ say NO to that.”
“God, I just can’t live if I don’t get a better job!”
“Really?...I think you will live...in fact, you’re going to be alright, come on, I’ve got stuff to show you.”
A perceived silence from heaven does NOT mean we're on God's bad side, or that we're being punished or even corrected.
Does God ever use circumstances to correct us or get our attention? You bet...C.S. Lewis calls pain God’s megaphone….BUT, if that’s the case, we’ll KNOW what its about. God isn’t playing games with us...what kind of parent would walk up and smack their child and say “you figure out what that’s for!”
God would make it clear in our conscience if we are suffering in order to get our attention about an issue.
So...if times are hard and heaven is silent...don’t despair...God isn’t ignoring you or punishing you…sometimes life goes stupid for good people in this broken world. AND, sometimes, heaven is silent which means the answer is “not now, later.”
Let’s keep reading, v 8-10
8 Now while he was serving as priest before God when his division was on duty, 9 according to the custom of the priesthood, he was chosen by lot to enter the temple of the Lord and burn incense. 10 And the whole multitude of the people were praying outside at the hour of incense.
To get an understanding of what this is talking about...Zach was one of anywhere between 18 to 20,000 priests in Judea at the time.
Back in the days of King David, they had organized all the priests into 24 different divisions, because there were just too many to serve in the temple all the time. So, each of these divisions would serve in the temple for a 1 week stint, 2 times a year. Out of each division, they would cast lots to see who would go into the temple and burn incense outside the holy of holies, and pray for the people of Israel.
This was something a person did only once in their lifetime.
Here’s what the temple looked like in Zach’s day...the people would all wait outside of the Holy place, a huge congregation of people...and Zach would have walked up these stairs, into the temple building, and up to the great curtain which separated the rest of the chamber from a small, inner room called the Holy of Holies…a place where the ark of the covenant used to sit, before the Babylonian captivity.
So...up to that altar Zach goes, in this once in a lifetime experience...to burn the incense and pray for Israel. It looks as though he’s there by a roll of the dice...but we’ll see he’s there by the direction of God.
V11
11 And there appeared to him an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense. 12 And Zechariah was troubled when he saw him, and fear fell upon him. 13 But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John. 14 And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth,15 for he will be great before the Lord. And he must not drink wine or strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother's womb. 16 And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God,17 and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.”
Luke gives us details that could have only come from Zach’s first hand experience...even down to WHERE the angel was standing...to the right of the altar. What did this angel look like? No idea...tells us where he’s standing, but not what he looks like. That’s a drag, because as an artist, I’d really like to have known.
His sudden appearance and probably the WAY he looks frightens old Zach...amazing he didn’t have a heart attack. This is the most common reaction to angels in the Biblical narrative….that whole show Touched by an Angel...forget it. When angels show up, people are more likely to poop their pants than anything else. People fall down, faint, get sick…honestly, I have no real desire to have an encounter with an angel.
But usually, people don’t have any say about this...as in Zach’s case.
The first thing that the angel says after “don’t freak out” is “your prayer has been heard.”
You know...concerning disappointment, that alone should comfort us...because
no matter what WE hear, God ALWAYS hears us.
G had heard Zach and Beth….AND, as we see from what the angel announces, he had heard the prayers of Israel for the coming of the messiah.
Scott, on Wonderwhat wrote: [Wonderwhat.net is a blog where we discuss the upcoming passage before we teach on it]
"Interesting that a personal prayer was answered while he was performing a service for the public. The angel didn't appear while he was praying quietly in his own house."
There was something bigger going on than just Zach’s desires...but they were part of it too! God promises to provide a miracle of Biblical proportions...this aged, infertile couple is going to have a SON! Woot!
But not only that...this son is going to be GREAT! In the days of Herod the great, this son will be born, and HE will be great...not Herod.
There is serious irony being applied here.
This son is going to be the herald of a new age for Israel...a spiritual awakening...he’s going to be set apart to God even before he’s born,
following the strict practices of the Nazerite, which we read about in Numbers 6...a strict separation from pleasures, much like Sampson was called to.
But the indication is that the Holy Spirit will be his joy...and he will fulfill what the last prophet who spoke to the Israelites forecast...he will come in the spirit and power of Elijah, as a forerunner to the Messiah.
That was the last thing a prophet said to Israel, in the book of Malachi...he sort of left everyone hanging with this cryptic prophecy that said Elijah would come back and prepare the way for the Messiah.
So this angel is standing in front of Z telling him that is about to come true through the son he and his wife will have….so this is an answer to their prayer, as well as being an answer to all of ISRAEL’S prayer!
So in the face of disappointment, this is another comfort…
EVEN IN THE FACE OF UNANSWERED PRAYER, GOD HAS AN UNFOLDING PLAN
The angel is telling Zach that God is going to use this lifelong disappointment he and his wife endured to reveal himself in a whole new way!
See...we don’t want to give up on God, or give up on ourselves...or give up believing and holding out hope! Just because things may not have happened in our timetable, or the way we wanted them to happen, doesn’t mean that God isn’t working. We have to hold on to the hope that God has a plan in all these things.
The greatest disappointment in Zach and Beth’s life was the source of the greatest miracle they would ever know...as well as being the source of joy for all of those who believe.
We need to see our disappointments in a different light...see them as the potential for God revealing himself to us in brand new ways.
Ok...so now the story takes a comical turn...and we certainly don’t need to be afraid of letting the Bible BE humorous when it wants to...if you were making a movie of this...you’d have the orchestra building as the angel makes this speech to Zach...and then you’d hear a loud record scratch sound...and get to v18
18 And Zechariah said to the angel, “How shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years.” 19 And the angel answered him, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I was sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. 20 And behold, you will be silent and unable to speak until the day that these things take place, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time.”
So here is Zach, standing all alone in this sacred place, when suddenly a cosmic being appears out of nowhere and tells him he’s gonna’ have a son!
We pick on Zechariah...but I LOVE his response...and the record of his response is so human and so believable that it lends weight to the story...at least for me.
The Bible never populates it's stories with people who have no trouble believing God...no, just the opposite,...66 books of people puzzled and tentative and asking “was THAT God?”….just what you’d expect REAL people to do.
Zach is a real guy...and he’s flabbergasted. Not only is he startled and frightened by what he’s seeing...what he HEARS makes him incredulous!
He’s probably thinking what was IN that incense ANYWAY! What are we smoking in here?
He looks at this angel and is bold enough to question the angel’s sanity! “Say WHAT? How is THAT gonna’ happen? How are two old folks like us gonna’ have a baby...you ever hear of menopause fella? Believe ME, I can tell ya!”
It’s as if he’s trying to correct the angel...like Gabe is gonna’ say “oh...how old ARE you? I’ve never been good with ages, What’s your name again?”
No...instead the angel sort of retorts...sort of scolds Zach. The result is a corrective impairment...and Gabe says it’s because he didn’t believe the message.
Brad, on Wonderwhat had an interesting take on this:
"Reading Zechariah's story, I feel like I can relate to his reaction. ...almost like a knee-jerk reaction he says: 'Wha? How?' And then the angel says: 'Do not doubt me. Now you're mute.' I imagine Zechariah's first instinct would be: 'I'm not doubting you; I just don't know how it can be done.'
"In other words, doubt ... can take an unexpected form. Sometimes I don't even realize when I'm doubting God. Sometimes I don't even consider it a lack of faith -- it's just me, you know, wondering how on earth things could ever work out.
"It's like a child, looking at some gooey cake batter, trying to touch it when his mother isn't looking. 'Are you sure that's going to be a cake? It doesn't look like a cake.' And then mom sends him to his room because his lack of faith just put a dirty child-finger into the batter."
And you know...it sort of gives us a lesson here…
A FAILURE TO TRUST GOD IN THE FACE OF DISAPPOINTMENT CAN SOMETIMES HAVE CORRECTIVE CONSEQUENCES
God’s whole purpose appears to be to get us as humans to trust Him...on all levels, trust Him that he has a plan….trust him that He can do ANYTHING...and trust Him that He CARES! And sometimes...that’s the whole thing, right there.
We had some really good responses on the Wonderwhat site...and Kris had this take on Zach’s response:
"Maybe Zechariah had gotten so used to reproach from the community, wondering why... for so long that he started to doubt himself and his own worthiness. Maybe he felt like, 'Who, ME? How can HE do this for ME? Seriously???' It’s kind of hard to doubt a bright shinning angel right there in your face, (or at least I think it would be). It’s easy to doubt your own worthiness of blessing from God though."
That’s so true...and YET, it is still the very doubt that ended up causing Zechariah to receive correction. This wasn’t a judgment on Zechariah...this was like Mom sending kid to the room...here’s something to help you think about this…
See...doubt isn’t just doubting that God can do something...it is also doubt to not believe God will do something...that he VALUES us enough to do it.
"I love you...I’ve heard you…I have a plan for you...and if you REFUSE to believe that, then I’ll have to get your attention."
In Zach’s case, it was something to get him to shut up long enough to let God PROVE that he was up to something.
Sometimes God will allow things to get our attention...and as we said before...we will KNOW what it’s for, just as Zechariah did, because Gabe spelled it out for him.
So, this part of the story finishes up...v21
21 And the people were waiting for Zechariah, and they were wondering at his delay in the temple. 22 And when he came out, he was unable to speak to them, and they realized that he had seen a vision in the temple. And he kept making signs to them and remained mute. 23 And when his time of service was ended, he went to his home.
24 After these days his wife Elizabeth conceived, and for five months she kept herself hidden, saying, 25 “Thus the Lord has done for me in the days when he looked on me, to take away my reproach among people.”
You know what I take from this final section…
DISAPPOINTMENT IS REVERSED WHEN WE LOOK FOR GOD'S PURPOSE IN OUR LIVES
You figure everyone was getting a little antsy...especially people who had gotten on their knees in genuflection...after a while, they’re looking around thinking, I love you GOD, but this marble is getting pretty hard….could you hurry that guy up?
And out comes ZACH...and they ask him what happened...and he can’t say anything. Now the perceptive ones around him realize something happened in there...he’s had an ecstatic experience, a vision maybe.
All Zechariah can do is try to use his hands to explain what happened. Heh...and how do you explain that you’ve seen an angel by pantomiming it?
(flap your arms)… “he’s telling us he’s gone batty.”
He couldn’t pronounce the final blessing...someone else had to do it for him.
And, he stayed on the job until the time of service, that is, the week was up...so he had a week to sit and ruminate over what happened...a week where he couldn’t explain to anyone what had taken place…and yet...just as the angel said, when they get home, the couple obviously get busy...and Beth gets pregnant!
It’s not clear why Elizabeth hides away for 5 months… (maybe so stoked to have mute husband?) but its very possible that she wants to let God do the talking by what he’s DONE, instead of her just trying to erase her own reproach by talking about what God is going to do.
There’s something interesting in this.
She was going to let God’s purposes be revealed in HIS time….even though in the eyes of everyone else, nothing had changed.
God did something that was impossible to do...and when His purpose was revealed...all the disappointments she’d suffered before fell into their proper perspective.
We, like ancient Israel are waiting for God to break in on human history again. They were waiting for the first appearing of Messiah….we’re waiting for his return.
All the different disappointments we face are much like the ones Zechariah and Elizabeth faced...and the story here is much more than just the joy that they have at finally having a son...its about the fulfillment of God’s promises and purposes.
But the NEED, and HOPES and FEARS of ordinary people are NOT forgotten in this larger story...precisely BECAUSE of who God is…
the God of lavish, self-giving love...who hears us, and cares about us...and has a plan in it all, as we’ll see over and over as Luke’s gospel unfolds.
When God acts on the large scale, in our case, leading toward the fulfillment of the age...he takes care of smaller human concerns as well.
This gospel story that takes the stage is the story of God, the world and every ordinary human that he lovingly made.
So that’s the back-story...the prelude for the story to come...lets learn what we can from it...and hand our disappointments to God, looking for his loving purpose to be revealed. Right on?
Well, this story is like a warm up...Like Luke saying “you think THAT was weird...just wait till you hear what happens NEXT, its NUTS!”
So...hope you’re reading Luke and hope your getting stuff out of this.
