Good morning. If you've made it here in
person, congratulations. You have survived at least part
of the plague thus far. If you're joining us online and
you're sick in bed or you're home with sick kids where you're
glad that you can join us there as well, turn in your Bibles to
Luke chapter 1. Luke chapter one, verse 5 is
where we're going to be today. Before I get started, I want to
recognize somebody this morning. It's Vern Farrow here.
Where's Vern? Oh, right there.
I I'm not going to make you come up on stage, Vern, because.
Because I love you. But some of you know, about 7
years ago, Vern stepped down from full time working on staff
here at the church to part time. Vern's now decided he's ready
for full retirement. And we are so thankful for Vern.
Yeah, you can give him a round of applause, Vern.
You can correct me if my numbers are wrong, but 25 years on staff
is what I heard. 2620, Oh, there you can take out with your
daughter. You guys can argue about that.
And then 35 or more years just serving in production as a whole
here on the church, both volunteer and staff.
So thank you for that. One of my favorite kind of
Christmas tropes is like the commercial that comes on where
kid has moved away from home and mom and dad are getting all
ready for Christmas and they think they're going to do it
like a video call with their kid.
They get on the call and all of a sudden they realized as the
doorbell rings, the kid they're on the call with has showed up
right there at the house that day.
That gets me every time. I think the older I get, the
older my kids get, the more I think about that, it gets me
even more. In fact, we had a personal
example of that this last Christmas.
At Christmas Eve. I was out there, I was greeting
people as they were leaving. And then all of the sudden I saw
Greg and Kate Isaac and I thought, what you guys are
supposed to be in Nicaragua? What are you doing here?
And it, it was just a joy that they were able to be present
right there in that moment. And I think that's because love
and presence go hand in hand, right?
We, we, we want to be with the people that we love and we
experience love in the presence of others.
So it's absolutely true, as the old saying goes, that absence
makes the heart grow fonder. There, there is a sense of a
longing that takes place when we're separated from people by a
distance. But there is a shift that can
take place in our hearts where, where there's just a long
absence, where it seems like we haven't seen somebody or heard
from somebody in such a, in such a long time that it starts to
feel like we wonder if we've been actually forgotten by them.
Maybe you don't get a phone call from a kid or from a loved one,
from a friend in such a long period of time that you start to
feel neglected and you start to wonder how important you really
are in their life. And I think that that's not just
true in our human relationships, but it's true in our
relationship with God, that there's a lot of people who
struggle. And maybe you're in those choose
today because you feel like you've been forgotten by God.
You're not sensing his presence. It feels like it's been a long
while since you've heard his voice.
Yes, sometimes doubt arises because of suffering, but I'm
convinced there's a whole lot of people where doubt in God, maybe
not in his existence, but in his love for them arises because of
his silence even more than the suffering when prayers go
unanswered. Years pass by when dreams seem
to fall to the wayside and life starts to turn out very
differently than we had hoped for or expected.
And and there's questions that begin to bubble up in our hearts
and in our souls where we're like God, Why?
Why are you answering? I mean, you tell me you care,
but but I'm not hearing from you.
God, have you forgotten about me?
God, do you really still love me?
We've talked about this by we're in Advent.
This is the fourth week, the last Sunday of Advent, and
Advent is this season of waiting.
And often times that season of waiting feels like a season of
silence. And in the story that we're
going to look at today, I am sure that the 2 characters,
Zechariah and Elizabeth, had long stretches of time where
they struggled in the waiting because God felt so silent.
And I think that their story reminds us of this truth by the
end, that God's love never forgets his people, even when we
feel forgotten by him. So let's work our way through
this story, this passage together, starting at verse 5.
In the days of King Herod of Judea, there was a priest of
Abijah's division named Zechariah.
His wife was from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was
Elizabeth. Both were righteous in God's
sight, living without blame according to all the commands
and requirements of the Lord. But they had no children because
Elizabeth could not conceive, and both of them were well along
in years. So we learn a few things about
these two characters, Zechariah and Elizabeth, in just this
first section of this passage. First of all, we learned that
they were righteous. This has been kind of a
recurring theme of characters that we've looked at and their
stories over these past four weeks.
But we learn again, in this case, Zechariah and Elizabeth,
God refers to them as righteous. They, they love God, they served
God, they were as far as we can be as human beings, obedient to
God. That doesn't mean they never
messed up or they never failed, but but they had a deep heart
and care for and faith in and obedience to God.
So we learned that they were righteous.
We learned they were childless and, and not a not a conscious
childlessness. This was not a choice that they
wanted to make. This is just a painful reality
in their life. And I think it's really
important that we recognize that this childlessness in the
society in which they found themselves in would be a deep
shame. It would point to many people
that they must be under the curse of God in some way because
children are a blessing. And so if God has not blessed
them, then why is that? And then we see they're both
well along in years, which means they're not just childless, but
they're hopeless about there being a child, about there being
a change in the childlessness that this moment seems to have
passed them by these, these righteous people.
For some reason, God has not blessed them with a child.
And there doesn't seem to be any hope on the horizon.
So what we have here is people, faithful people with unmet
longings, with unmet prayers, with unanswered prayers.
And the first thing I want us to see is that unanswered prayers
aren't necessarily evidence that we've failed to love God.
Luke, Luke is going out of his way to make this point.
If we understand the context and the culture, Luke is saying
Zechariah and Elizabeth, they're unable to have a child that they
desperately want to have. But for Zechariah and Elizabeth,
this is nothing of their do. They didn't do anything to make
God angry or to deserve this. They're righteous and faithful
people. And for some of us here or
listening online, I think the thing that you need to hear in
the midst of maybe your unmet prayers, unanswered prayers,
deep longings, is don't jump to the conclusion that just because
God hasn't answered your prayer, he doesn't care about you.
He doesn't love you, or more importantly, that you don't love
him, that you've failed him, but this is somehow God's punishment
in your life. Does God ever discipline us?
Of course he does. He wouldn't be a loving dad, He
wouldn't be a loving father if there weren't times where we
were disciplined. Hebrews 12/5 to 11 talks about
this reality that God disciplines those whom he loves.
If we're his kids, he's going to discipline us.
I remember growing up, I had a friend and I thought he was the
luckiest kid in the world, man, because that kid could do
anything and not get in trouble, right?
Like just anything. He, he would run out there, he'd
do crazy stuff. And I'd be like, are you going
to get grounded for that? And he's like, no, who's going
to do it? I thought he was so lucky.
And then one day I just realized, no, he's just so
unloved. Because when you love a kid, you
discipline them. You don't want them to do things
that are going to be hurtful or harmful to them.
You see where a roads are going to lead and you try and cut it
off before they get to a point of destruction.
So unanswered prayer is not proof of our failure to love
God, and unanswered prayer is not evidence that God has failed
to love us. Again, we need to understand
this. God never anywhere in His Word,
makes a promise that if you love Him and follow Him, everything
that you desire and want in that moment, every prayer you utter,
everything is going to go according to your plan.
If you find that Scripture, you come bring it to me.
We'll talk about that. But God's promise is this.
I love you so much. I sent my son to you.
I sent him to die for you. And if you place your faith in
him, I'll give you life and I'll give you life to the fullest.
And, and there will be a life that blows all of the realities
and expectations away that you could ever have in all of the
unmet longings of your heart will one day be met, but that
day is not going to be tomorrow. I imagine Elizabeth and
Zechariah had a lot of moments in the midst of what felt like
unanswered prayers in God's silence, where they sat there
and they wondered, so God did, did we fail you or are you
failing us? Right.
We know they've been praying for this child.
This, the story is going to show us this and I imagine their
prayers were like many of our prayers when we seem to go long,
long periods of time where God seems silent and answering a
prayer. I don't know if this is your
pattern, but I know it's been my pattern.
And in a number of things where I've just been praying and
praying and praying. And early on, right, you're
praying fervently, you're praying with hope.
And then that hope that those prayers of hope, they move to
prayers of desperation. And then kind of as that
desperation kind of fades and you can't live in that space
anymore, desperation turns to prayers of resignation.
You kind of just going through the motions on it.
Like I, I should keep on praying for this, but you know, I don't,
I don't want to put my heart into it anymore.
And then at a certain point when it just seems beyond the realm
of anything ever changing or happening, at least for me in my
life, there's been a lot of times where the prayers just go
silent. I'm just, what's the point if I
keep on praying? You know?
3 weeks ago we looked at the story of Simeon as we kick this
off. And Simeon had a waiting in
expectation, right? He was showing up and God had
made a promise and he was living in expectation of that promise.
But Zechariah and Elizabeth are living in a very different type
of waiting. So I think they have fallen into
living in the waiting of just acceptance.
Maybe that's the space you're in today.
We're you've long since moved past expectation and you're just
kind of in a place of acceptance.
You keep showing up, you keep moving forward, try and put 1
foot in front of the other, but to protect your heart, to keep
yourself from hurting too much, to protect yourself from getting
too disappointed in God, you've stopped expecting and you just
live in acceptance. I think that's where Zechariah
and Elizabeth were. But then one day when ordinary
day Zechariah is going to do his priestly duty, God shows up.
Verse 8. When his division was on duty
and he was serving as priests before God, it happened that he
was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to
enter the sanctuary of the Lord and burn incense.
At the hour of incense the whole assembly of the people was
praying outside, and an Angel of the Lord appeared to him,
standing to the right of the altar of incense.
When Zechariah saw him, he was terrified.
So overcome with fear, the Angel said to him, Don't be afraid,
Zechariah, because your prayer has been heard.
Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will name him
John. There will be joy and delight
for you, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be
great in the sight of the Lord. He'll never drink wine or beer.
He'll be filled with the Holy Spirit.
While still in his mother's womb, he'll turn away.
He'll turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God,
and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah to
turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the
disobedient to the understanding of the righteous to make ready
for the Lord. A prepared people told you that
they've been praying for a child.
And here's where the Angel confirms it, right?
This is how we know it. He says don't be afraid,
Zechariah, because your prayer, it's been heard.
I wonder how long it had been since Zechariah had last uttered
that prayer. I mean, scholars agree that
Elizabeth here is at a minimum 60 years old, that that when
when they talk about her age there, the cultural threshold
for advanced age was 60 at the time.
They're saying she's well past biological childbearing age.
I would guess that it had been quite a while since Zechariah
had uttered a prayer, expecting that a prayer would be answered
for a child for him. I mean, it's obvious as we're
going to see in a moment that he certainly was not expecting an
answer. He he wasn't expecting God to
show up in any way to answer this.
God tells him then through this Angel, hey, your prayer has been
heard, Zechariah, that prayer that you had forgotten about,
that you had given up on, it's about to be answered.
And then he goes on, he says more.
And it's about so much more than your longing for a baby.
It's about so much more than your longing for a child because
it's about fulfilling a promise that was made from the very
beginning of everything getting all messed up, that a saviour
would come, a rescuer would come, a Messiah was coming.
Your son is going to be the one who prepares the way for that.
And what I see in this, what we see in this, is that what seemed
like delay in answering Zechariah's prayers was actually
God doing something much bigger and better than he ever dared
dream. And I want you to know that the
ultimate proof of God's love for you is found in the coming of
Christ, not in the current status of your prayer.
You can't allow your heart to get pulled off course and to
doubt God's love for you because in this moment your prayer seems
to be left unanswered and unmet. I love the fact that the
unanswered prayer and the coming of the Messiah are tied together
because when we're in that spot, we're tempted to wonder, God,
what are you up to? What are you doing?
Do you care about me? Do you love me?
And what Zechariah and Elizabeth, what they may have
longed for was a son, but what God knew they needed more than
anything was a savior. The granting of their son was
delayed because God understood that they had bigger needs than
they even understood. So what is Zechariah's response
to this incredible news? Verse 18 he says, how can I know
this? Zechariah asks the Angel.
How can I know this? I'm an old man and my wife is
well alone in years. I love that when God finally
shows up and God finally answers Zechariah.
He can't even allow himself to believe it.
And I totally get it. I've been there.
Again, like, it's, it's dangerous.
It just feels dangerous to allow our hearts to begin to hope.
As Gabriel points out, though, an Angel showing up, that's
pretty good proof, right? He says the Angel answers him.
I'm Gabriel, who stands in the presence of God, and I was sent
to speak to you and tell you this good news.
How can I know this? You've got an Angel in front of
you, Zechariah. What more you looking for?
What I what I see is I look at this, I see a guy who knows in
theory that God could do the miraculous.
I mean, he knows in theory that God could even do this miracle.
This is a man who is well acquainted with Scriptures.
He knows this is not the first time this miracle has been done.
He he knows the story of Abraham and Sarah like the back of his
hand. Every good Jewish person knows
Abraham is the father of all those who believe.
He knows that he comes, that his story is one of a woman who was
barren, who gave birth to a child.
That's the story of his entire people.
He knows. But knowing and knowing are two
different things, aren't they? You know what I'm saying,
Knowing God loves you and knowing that God loves you and
trusts you are two different things.
I do wonder how many of us would say, yeah, I know God loves me
Intellectually, I would assent to that statement.
I could write it down on a sheet of paper.
But in this moment, I'm not sure that I know that God loves me.
With what's going on in my life right now, what my head knows,
my heart isn't feeling. I just want to say to you, no,
No matter what you're going through, no matter how silent
God seems, no matter how long you've been praying for that
thing, I can tell you with 100% certainty with something that's
even more miraculous than an Angel showing up to answer your
prayer, that God loves you. Because Romans 58 says this.
God proves his own love for us in this while we were still
sinners, Christ died for us. The cross is a better proof than
an Angel of God's love for you. It's the ultimate good news.
The Angel comes and says, I got good news.
Your prayers been heard, but there's better news to come.
A Savior's coming. God's love is proven at the
cross. Not in the state of your current
circumstances, but the most famous verse in all of
Scripture, John 316 For God so loved the world in that world,
that's you and I. For God so loved the world that
He gave His one and only Son, so whoever would believe in him
would not perish, but have eternal life.
The proof of God's love for you. You don't need an Angel because
He sent you His Son. He sent you something better.
That God came while you and I were still sinners.
We didn't qualify for that title Righteous.
And he loved us anyhow. And he sent his son, not just
ASA, not just a baby, but his son.
He stepped into his creation. That's what we celebrated
Christmas, God with us. The incredible mind blowing
reality of the incarnation that the Creator takes on flesh, he
adds to his divinity, humanity and and comes to be with us.
Not just to be with us, but to die for us so that he could be
with us for all time. That's the invitation that
you're given, the invitation that God has given to you.
His presence showing up to show you his love.
That's why we celebrated Christmas goes on.
Now listen, the Angel says to Zechariah, You will become
silent and unable to speak until the day these things take place,
because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled
in their proper time. Meanwhile, the people were
waiting for Zechariah, amazed he stayed so long in the sanctuary.
When he did come out, he could not speak to them, and then they
realized that he had seen a vision in the sanctuary.
He was making signs to them and remain speechless.
When the days of his ministry were completed, he went back
home. They won't even let him go home
and you got to stay and complete.
You think you got a bad boss? I mean, Zechariah is here.
He comes out, speeches are like Zach.
He's still got some work to do Stick around.
I think it's really ironic that Zechariah manages to stay
righteous and faithful to God when it seemed like God was
silent. But the moment God speaks, he
struggles to believe him. And so he says, OK, well, now
you're going to go silent. And it is important, I think, to
recognize when we fail to trust God and we fail to take him out
there, there's consequences to that.
And some of you, you're living in the mess of some of the
consequences of you failing to take God at his word.
You're, you're living in a mess where you didn't listen to his
commands and you're just living with some of the natural
consequences of being disobedient.
It's not because God doesn't love you.
It's not because God's punishing you.
Maybe today it's like you just you feel anxious and you feel
angry. And deep down, the reason that
you feel anxious and angry is because you're really refusing
to trust God and take Him at His word and believe His promises.
Sometimes there's times where I felt abandoned and I felt
forgotten by God. And in my heart, the reality of
that is I just am failing to believe that when He said in
Matthew 28, I will never leave you or forsake you, that He'll
be with me until the very end of the days.
I struggle to believe that. My heart struggles to believe
that and I deal with the consequences of that sometimes.
But the good news is the story doesn't end with us living in
the consequences of our struggle to even as believers sometimes
believe. Because verse 24 says after
these days his wife conceived and kept herself in conclusion
for five months. So first of all, God still kept
his promise despite Zechariah's failure to to believe that he
would. And then Elizabeth says this.
She said the Lord has done this for me.
He's looked with favor in these days to take away my disgrace
among the people. What I want all of us to
understand is that God's love is demonstrated to us through his
unfailing grace. Question, did God owe Zechariah
and Elizabeth the child? Answer no, He doesn't owe them
anything. Something in US says, but they
were righteous. So surely at some point he
should have answered that. Cry.
Let me point out to you that Romans 310 makes clear that
we're none of us are actually righteous.
We are only made righteous through faith in Jesus Christ,
through faith in the Messiah. And Elizabeth and Zechariah had
faith that God would be faithful to His promise in sending a
Savior and sending a Messiah, so they were counted amongst the
righteous. We look back now and if we have
faith in Jesus, that He is our Savior, that He died on the
cross for our sins, then we're made righteous through Christ,
not through what we do, right? That's what 2nd Corinthians 521
says God made him to be who knew no sin to be sin for us so that
we might become the righteousness of God.
So through Jesus we can be made righteous.
But God doesn't owe us anything. He didn't owe Zechariah and
Elizabeth anything. We received that righteousness
by faith through by grace, through faith.
All of us in our sin, we deserve God's wrath and His punishment.
But God in his love offers his Son to us so that we can be made
right with him. He gives us forgiveness.
He gives us grace. He gives us freedom from shame.
That's what the love of God does.
That's what Elizabeth understands.
God is the type of God who gives a love that takes away disgrace.
God is the type of God who who pours out his favor on the
undeserving. That's the type of love he
offers up. That's the type of love that we
celebrate came at Christmas. A love that that that didn't
just hear our prayers, but that responds to our needs.
The love that doesn't just bring a son to Elizabeth and
Zechariah, but brings a savior for the whole world.
Some of you, you're coming to Christmas and you're wondering,
does God love me? Has he forgotten about me?
You've been waiting for him to show up.
You've been wondering when he's going to show up.
I just want to go back to that picture of the the child who
shows up at his parents house or her parents house for Christmas
to just be present and demonstrate love at Christmas.
God doesn't send a message. He shows up at the door because
God's love and his presence go hand in hand.
And so even in those moments, if you love Jesus, you feel like
he's gone silent. He hasn't forgotten you.
He hasn't forsaken you. Not if you know.
Emmanuel, God with us, I want to invite you to church to invite
some people along with you who need to know that message this
Christmas Eve. We got 2 Christmas Eve services
coming up and there's a whole whole world of people outside
our front door, outside of your front door in your workplace who
need to know that there is a God who loved them so much that he
showed up at Christmas. And so just be asking the Lord
who he'd have you just tap on the shoulder to invite to come
along with you this. I'm telling you, there are
people, they're itching to come. They just need somebody to
invite them. The story of Elizabeth and
Zechariah, the story of Christmas is this God always
shows up. He's not forgotten you.
He won't abandon you and he'll never fail you.
I'm going to, I'm going to ask the band to come out.
We're going to close today with a song called Oh come all you
unfaithful. We've already sang Oh come All
Ye Faithful. But I think we need this song
this morning. I think we need this song in
Advent. I want to read some of the
lyrics to you. The lyrics go like this.
Oh, come, all you unfaithful, come weak and unstable.
Come. No, you're not alone.
Oh come barren and awaiting ones, weary of praying.
Come and see what your God has done.
Oh, come bitter and broken. Come with fears unspoken.
Come taste of his perfect love. Oh, come guilty and hiding ones.
There's no need to run. See what your God has done.
Christ is born, Christ is born. Christ is born for you.
He's the Lamb who was given, slain for our pardon.
His promise is peace for those who believe.
Then it closes with this verse. So come, though you have
nothing, come. He is the offering.
Come, come see what God has done for you.
We're going to have some people up here ready to pray.
If those lyrics describe how you've walked in the door today,
if you find yourself in one of those spots, maybe you're
sitting there with an unanswered prayer, waiting and weary.
We would love to be able to just pray alongside you.
Hold up your hands. If you've come today and you
feel disgrace and shame, we'd love to pray alongside you that
you would know God's grace and favor and mercy and His love.
If you've come today filled with anxiety about what this next
week might bring, or you've come filled with a heart that is
broken over who won't be sitting at the table, we want to be able
to pray with you. If you're mad at God because you
feel like he's dropped his end of the bargain, then let us pray
and you can express that to him because he's big enough to take
it. But don't leave here today
taking the same burdens that you brought in.
Come on down and let somebody help carry the burden with you.
And I know, listen, I've been around this church long enough.
I know the amount of fear that it can exist in coming forward.
You know what? There's not a single person in
in this room who those lyrics don't describe today in some
fashion or form. It's not a single person in this
room who doesn't need prayer for something.
But there's an enemy who's come to seek and kill and destroy,
and he's the father of lies. And he's going to tell you, the
people will judge you that you don't really need it, that
somebody needs it more, that it's going to be too difficult.
You can't come down from the balcony because it'll take so
long. And your kids, what, how are you
going to get to them? They might run out of time and
they'll be 1,000,000 reasons why the enemy wants you to walk out
the door as burdened and as heavy laden and as broken as you
came in. But there's a God who loves you
enough that he beckoning you, if you need to, to come down this
morning and be prayed for so he could give you healing and so
you could sense his presence today.
And so let's sing this song. And if, if you don't need to
come down today, would you just be praying for those who do?
And if there's people down here who come down, would you lay
your hands out and pray over them?
I love the fact that in this story, if you go back and you
remember at the beginning, Zechariah was in the place, he
was lighting the incense and all the people were gathered,
praying, and God showed up. I think there's some people here
who need you to be praying that God would show up for them this
morning as they come down. And we'll take as long as we
need to this morning. And if you need to get out for a
Turkey dinner, you're welcome to leave whenever you need to.
But we're going to sing and I'm going to ask the the band to
lead us, and I'm going to pray that many of you will have an
opportunity to have God lift some burdens off you today.