I resent a little your pastor’s description of me in the bulletin. “Zechariah the Silent”? It’s true, for nine months I was unable to croak out a single “Shalom!” to those I passed on the street. But ever since God opened my mouth again I have not stopped praising him for what he did for me…and for you. I’m here to tell you about that in my Advent Admissions. May they be a blessing on your Advent preparations.
But who am I exactly? I was the father of John the baptizer. He was the one who prepared the way for the coming of our Savior, Jesus. I was also an active priest who regularly served in the temple in Jerusalem. Unlike many of my fellow priests, I actually believed in what I was doing. I was careful not to just go through the motions of worship as if merely chopping up an animal and throwing it on the altar earned God’s favor. No, I understood that those animal sacrifices were an expression of God’s favor. They illustrated how God willingly accepted a substitute to be punished for our sins. I guess that’s a little bit like your scientists today conducting medical tests on animals for the benefit of humans. But oh, how my wife Elizabeth and I longed for the day when God would send the real substitute for our sins. This Messiah had been promised thousands of years earlier.
There was something else that my wife and I longed for: children. In our day and age if you didn’t have children, people suspected that God was punishing you for some sin. Elizabeth and I knew that we were indeed sinners but the Evangelist Luke himself wrote about us that we were “upright in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commands and regulations blamelessly” (Luke 1:6). He described us the way Moses had described Noah from the Old Testament. That’s quite an honor!
So why didn’t God answer our prayers for a child? There were times when we thought that God owed us for being such faithful believers. But who were we kidding? God doesn’t owe sinners anything. Is that perhaps a truth you need to be reminded of this morning? Have you been pouring your heart out to God for something you think you really need – a companion, a better job, more energy, less pain, a house of your own – but it seems as if you might as well be speaking to a brick wall because God hasn’t answered? Oh but he has. So far the answer has been “no.” Don’t give up. Keep praying and keep entrusting yourself to a God who knows you better than you know yourself. If God doesn’t give you what you want, it’s because he’s given what you need right now.
Should God answer your prayer with a “yes,” don’t be surprised as I was. Let me tell you more about that. It happened when I was in the temple offering incense. The purpose of this was to illustrate how all the prayers of the faithful rose to God, like the smoke of incense wafting up and up. While the priest offered incense, the faithful would offer their prayers outside the temple. I of course added my own petitions. I prayed for the well-being of our people. I prayed that God would turn many hearts back to him. And yes, out of habit, I prayed that God would grant Elizabeth and me a child. And then suddenly an angel appeared, and I think my heart stopped for a couple of seconds I was so scared! But he said: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to give him the name John. 14 He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, 15 for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from birth. 16 Many of the people of Israel will he bring back to the Lord their God. 17 And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord” (Luke 1:13-17).
Wow! Not only was God going to give us a child, that child would be God’s forerunner to prepare the way for the Messiah and to turn hearts back to him. More than one of my requests was being answered with a “yes”! You would think a mature believer like me would high-five the angel before tearing out of the temple to share the good news with everyone. I’m ashamed to say that’s not how it played out. Instead I doubted. I mean had the angel forgotten that my wife was not only sterile but also past the age of child-bearing? When I expressed these facts, Gabriel, as the angel was called, solemnly announced: “…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” (Luke 1:20).
Oiye! I was of course glad that God didn’t change his mind and give this child to another couple. Still, do you know how inconvenient it is for a priest to lose his voice? After the incense offering I was expected to bless the gathered worshippers. They must have thought that I had forgotten the words of the Blessing – something you might expect from a rookie. But with many hand gestures I was able to convince them that I had experienced something supernatural and was now unable to speak. Because I could still write, I was able to communicate clearly to Elizabeth what had happened. Unlike me, she believed the angel’s word and was overjoyed to hear that God was going to give us a son.
Let me just pause here to emphasize a truth I was reminded of that day: God wants his Word taken seriously. You may think that Word restrictive, like how God says that sex is something only to be enjoyed by those who are married to each other – not planning on getting married. Or how you are to honor those in authority – even the clueless boss or the less than motivated and motivating teacher. God frankly doesn’t care about your opinion on those matters. He, the Creator of the universe has spoken. But because he’s also your Savior you can be certain that he has spoken in such a way as to benefit you. When I was talking to your pastor about this he mused that it would be like a car owner who ignores the maintenance recommendations in his car manual because he thinks they’re restrictive. “Change the oil every 5,000 km? Who has time for that? Rotate the tires every 8,000 -10,000 km? They’re just trying to make work for mechanics!” But someone who never bothers to read his car manual and abide by the recommendations will only wear out his vehicle more quickly and put himself and others in danger. That’s true too of those who don’t bother to live by God’s manual.
But God doesn’t just shout out commands in that manual called a Bible; he also promises. He wants you to take those promises seriously too. That doesn’t mean just believing that Jesus exists; it means believing that Jesus exists for you! It means trusting that Jesus’ death has paid for your sins no matter what they are. Would you be more apt to believe God’s promises if an angel delivered them? Hah! If you think that, you haven’t been paying attention to my true story. An angel did deliver God’s promise and I still doubted!
That God-imposed silence gave me lots of time to think about the impending birth of my son. I spent hours dreaming of what I wanted to teach him and the places I wanted to take him. But while John would be my son, Gabriel had made it clear that John was first and foremost God’s servant. That’s true of your children and grandchildren too you know. No, I haven’t been sent by God to tell you that your son has been chosen to be the next pastor at St. Peter’s, or that your daughter is destined to spend years teaching English in a foreign country where she will also support mission work. But your children do belong to God. Have you encouraged them to think of serving the Lord in the full-time ministry? Are you willing to make financial sacrifices to send them away for that schooling? In my day you had to be a descendant of Moses’ brother Aaron if you wanted to serve as a priest. It’s not like that anymore. God takes mechanics’ kids and office workers’ kids and makes them his faithful ambassadors. Wouldn’t you be proud to have a child grow up to serve as an official ambassador of the King of kings? I hope you’ll pray about that and talk to your children about it too. While not every Christian should become a full-time church worker, every Christian should at least consider it.
I was so happy when my son was finally born but I remained unable to speak. It was only eight days later, at his circumcision, that God unloosed my tongue. It happened after I asserted through a written note that the baby not be named after me as relatives were insisting. He was to be called John, as Gabriel had instructed. John was a fitting name because it means “the Lord has been gracious.” Indeed, the Lord had been gracious to Elizabeth and me by giving us this son in our old age. But he was also gracious to all because this son would prepare the way for the Messiah who was about to come. When I finally spoke for the first time in nine months, God the Holy Spirit gave me his words to proclaim. As you can imagine I described my son and his work. I said: “And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High; for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him, 77 to give his people the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins” (Luke 1:76, 77). But I also spoke about the coming Messiah. “[God] has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David 70 (as he said through his holy prophets of long ago)… to rescue us from the hand of our enemies, and to enable us to serve him without fear” (Luke 1:69, 70).
Yes, Jesus, the Messiah has come as promised. He has rescued us from sin so that we now serve him without fear. Because of this I am no longer Zechariah the Silent but Zechariah the Jubilant! Join me as we praise our Savior-God with the song I sang at my son’s birth. (Congregation sings “Blest Be the God of Israel” CW 275.)
